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[not_that_spike]

It might be a record: two days running, and he's still in a great fucking mood. Hell, he'd probably be nice to Vicious if he walked through the door right now.

Then again, maybe not.

Spike sits at the bar with a cup of iced coffee, facing the rest of the room, looking through a handful of photographs. Every now and then he stops and smiles and looks like he's completely lost in memories.

Comments

[maid-of-astolat.livejournal.com]

Elaine comes over, still in fairly modern dress, and smiles. "Hello, Spike. Are you looking at pictures?"

He looks like he's happy. That's good.

[not_that_spike]

"Want to see?" He holds them out for her.

Just because he doesn't mention it doesn't mean he doesn't notice that Elaine looks like she's still a bit rattled by what happened. Hell, they can talk about that on Friday.

Sometimes, people just need time to decompress.

[maid-of-astolat.livejournal.com]

"Yes," she says, beaming. She takes the pictures into her hands. "What am I looking at?"

[not_that_spike]

He leans forward, pointing things out to her. "Look, there's the aviary. Second time we fed the lava birds. You can see them covering Beth. It's a cup of apple juice in her hand. They like to drink it and they're pretty tame. You can't reach out and pet them randomly, but they land on you when you have the nectar. She's got..." He stops, counting the number of tiny birds. "...eleven of them on her in that picture. They're only about this big." He holds out his hand, finger and thumb about 3" apart.

"If you look really close, you can see all six wings on this guy over here."

[maid-of-astolat.livejournal.com]

Elaine looks. So many colours. She can almost taste them. Beth looks happy.

Six-winged birds and so very small. "They're so beautiful, Spike. That must have been a wonderful day." She smiles, her mind full of bright colors and fluttering tiny birds.

[not_that_spike]

He grins, shuffling the photographs for her. "A couple more pictures of her with the birds. First time I ever saw lava birds, I was a kid. It was on Mars at this tiny aviary. I fed them then. Always wanted to do it again. It was fun."

A few more bird pictures, and then... "Ah. That's Lake Orion, and there's Beth getting ready to go parasailing. See, she's got that t-shirt on under the life vest, the one I told you about the other night." If she looks closely, she'll be able to make out at least what looks like a bit of lettering on Beth's shirt.

In the picture, Beth is smiling. Very broadly.

[maid-of-astolat.livejournal.com]

Elaine looks and thinks the whole set up looks terribly...fragile. "She's brave. It definitely doesn't look quite solid. But...it also looks fun. The lake is lovely."

[not_that_spike]

"Yeah." The purple water of the lake is evident in the background, along with some strikingly tall mountain ranges that look as if they're covered in pink snow. It's really pretty.

"There's the boat. She was called The Martinique for whatever reason. Nice boat.

The next picture is from the air. Again, it's of Beth and it's a close-up and she looks pretty damn thrilled. At least Spike thinks so.

[stbethadettes]

Beth's kind of smiling before she even reaches them. Sharing vacation pictures with friends just seems like such a normal thing to do.

It's just that Spike's a bounty hunter from the future and Elaine's from way in the past and the vacation was on Venus.

She drapes an arm over Spike's shoulders and looks down at the picture they're looking at, and it's still kind of strange seeing herself with the scar.

But she doesn't smile any less. "There are lots more pictures of me than of Spike. He won't be so lucky next time."

[maid-of-astolat.livejournal.com]

Elaine beams. "Hello, Beth! I expect he took so many pictures because he was so happy to see you smile."

She looks at the purple water, the mountains, and tries to imagine what that must have looked like from the sky. "Parasailing looks fun but scary. But it must have been amazing to be up there."

[not_that_spike]

"Oh, it's great. Not all that scary... at least I didn't think so. How about you, Slim?" Spike rests his arm around Beth's waist. "You know, I still have one of the cameras. When we're done looking at these, I'll take some pictures of the two of you."

He points to the next picture. "There's the open-air market."

There are signs and banners in all languages, and all sorts of strange-looking things on tables. It stretches out for an entire city block.

[maid-of-astolat.livejournal.com]

Elaine takes the picture. She looks at them all closely, getting the feel of the foreign landscape. Elaine couldn't even begin to identify the things on the tables and booths, or read even a few of the many languages on the banners, but it looks at home under the multicoloured pastel sky.

"Amazing. It's hard to believe this is all real, but it is. Is this where you bought the watercolors?"

She feels some sort of pang of joy at the thought of all of that being real. All those colors, all the variety. It was incredible.

[not_that_spike]

Spike laughs a little bit. "Yeah, it's real." He nods to Beth. "You two stand together so I can take a couple pictures of you both."

Seems like a damn good plan. The camera's not fancy, but it works. And it still has about four or five pictures left on it.

[stbethadettes]

Beth claims the seat beside him.

She rests a hand on the bar, thinking about getting something to eat, but just looks sideways at Spike.

He's kind of magnetic.

[not_that_spike]

"Hey."

There's his reason for smiling.

[stbethadettes]

She grins. Just for him.

"Hi."

Her fingers lightly tap out a tune against the surface of the bar, and she goes ahead and asks it for an apple and a glass of water.

"What's the first thing you ordered when you got here?"

[not_that_spike]

He scratches his head, trying to remember.

And then he grins. "A prairie oyster. Had a hell of a hangover."

At least, that's what he remembers. "Shit, Slim. That was a long time ago. That was before I knew you."

And try as he might, it's hard for him to remember a time here -- at this place -- when she wasn't there with him. It's like that first couple weeks didn't even matter. Time was just laying the groundwork for what he needed.

[stbethadettes]

She laughs, picking up the apple that appears on the bar and absently rubbing it on the edge of her shirt.

(As if she has to do something like that here.)

Of course it was before he knew her. He did say he got here about a week or so before her.

"You sure it was a hangover?"

She bets he didn't do any heavy drinking before arriving.

[not_that_spike]

"Sure as hell felt like one."

Really, he doesn't remember a lot about what happened just before he got here. He knows he killed Vicious, but that's about it. Maybe he went out drinking to celebrate; sounds like something he might have done.

"But I'm not hung over now."

Just fucking fascinated with you, Slim.

He looks at her like there's no other woman in existence: he can't take his eyes off her. He watches the apple pick up more and more shine as she polishes it, and imagines her biting into it. The image makes him smile.

[stbethadettes]

She turns the apple over and over in her hands, a tiny smile still on her face.

"I can tell."

She's seen him hung over before. Just a few days ago, in fact.

[not_that_spike]

He just can't fucking help it.

He puts one hand on either side of her face and kisses her.

And then he kisses her again.

And then he leans back, smug as shit.

With a smile.

[stbethadettes]

Her eyes widen and then automatically close, and when he leans back and smiles like that, what else is she to do but give him an almost equally smug smile back?

And then it's her turn to lean forward, and she offers him her apple. "Want a bite?" She tilts her head. "I know the effect's not the same without the fig leaves."

But hell, he could see her in those any old time. They've been on the floor of his closet for months.

[not_that_spike]

Even when she wore the fig leaves, he still looked right through them. He takes the apple from her and bites into it: it's perfect.

Of course it is. All the food here is amazing.

Almost as amazing as Beth: he hands the apple back to her, wiping juice from the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand.

There's no one else in the bar, as far as he's concerned.

Not another living soul.

Just the two of them.

(He likes it that way.)

[stbethadettes]

She watches like the simple act of biting into an apple is some little magic trick, something she shouldn't miss a second of, and she drinks it all in: the sharp crunch as his teeth break through that shiny red peel and that glisten of juice she spies on the edge of his lips before his hand moves to wipe it away.

And the way his eyes stay on her, not (she thinks) out of some really deliberate (successful) attempt at seduction so much as an outright disinterest in most of whatever else may be going on around them.

And she smiles again as she takes the apple back from him.

He gets to her every time.

[not_that_spike]

That smile. That one right there: I love it. I love it. And he does what he wanted to do earlier: he takes her apple-free hand in his and kisses each of her fingertips in turn. He doesn't ask her which one she got in front of the camera's lens when she was little; he doesn't need to. He just wants to be close to her.

Intimate with her, intimate in a public way.

Intimate in a way they only are with each other. It's private, but it's not. He doesn't care who knows what they have, so long as they know.

"What do you want to see on Earth from my time when we go? Anything special?"

He knows it will happen. He just knows.