the writing seems to finally be coming back. I got the idea last night and typed it out this morning. Now if I can just write at my new home, without Hubby saying "Whatcha doin'?" every few minutes and derailing me.

Not-So-Deaf Ears

Spike slowly opened his eyes onto the darkened living room. Had he dreamed the low, rumbling growl, or was there something in the apartment? Behind him on the couch, Xander slept on.

He didn't smell anything other than him, the whelp, sex, and the ghost of the dozen take-out burritos from El Taco Loco that had served as dinner. Slowly he sat up, scanning the room. Nothing out of the ordinary. He shifted to gameface to trigger his full senses.

A faint, chuckling gurgle, somewhere close. He turned his head for triangulation, then slumped. Xander burped lightly in his sleep, triggering another of those mysterious gurgles.

Spike studied his lover. It was easy to forget how noisy human bodies were. Bubblings and gurgles and pops and creaks and clicks. Being surrounded by cacaphonous humans could drive a vampire crazy. That one particular human, though . . .

He leaned down over Xander, listening to the boy's body.

The tacos were sitting as well as could be expected, what with the extra hot sauce. Spike twitched at the sounds of digestion, trying not to remember that his body had done those sorts of things too, once upon a time. Being a proper Victorian, bodily functions were not something he had generally acknowledged. It had almost been a relief to fastidious William not to have to deal with that sort of thing any more.

Xander's lungs whooshed reassuringly, and his heart thump-thumped steadily. Spike had spent a few nights early on with his ear against Xander's chest, listening to the rhythm and the echos and the tides of blood through the arteries. He'd heard a brief syncopation one night and demanded Xander see his doctor, only to be told that an occasional stutter in the rhythm was to be expected in a system that never got a chance to rest.

Xander shifted, then grunted at the clunk of his left hipbones shifting. Spike glared at the joint. The life of a Scooby was hard on the body, and Xander was slowly losing the resilience of adolescence. On bad days, Spike could hear clicks from Xander's knees and elbows, and there was a hitch in the right shoulder that worried him. When Xander had loudly popped his neck back into alignment once, Spike had been ready to call an ambulance.

The less said about the wet sounds of infected sinuses the better.

Spike stroked Xander's forehead as gently as he could, careful not to wake him. So damned fragile. So damned mortal and human. Vampire bodies were silent unless something was wrong. He and Dru would lay in perfect stillness, listening to the shift of the world with themselves at the quiet center. He thought occasionally about rescuing Xander from noisy mortality, but the idea of a Xander who was silent in any way seemed go against the laws of the universe.

He settled back down, but he knew better than to think he'd get any sleep. He closed his eyes and drifted, cataloging all the sounds from the body next to him, trying not to listen for the tick of a clock slowing down.

I am pleased to announce the completion, after a year and a half, of my Italian Renaissance Spike/Xander AU story, Nessuno.

Whew.

[link]

I've gotten back into "Dead Women Can't Say Anything" and posted it here
[link] I'll probably finish this evening.

A little SpikenDru ficlet:
An Imaginary Night
Liverpool-1959

Yeah, sure, he looked the part, with his black jacket, skin you could fuckin’ see through and the sideburns. He looked like a negative of Elvis, Stuart said, and he was dead impressed. Everything always came down to looks with Stuart eventually because Stuart was a real painter, not just a messer like John himself.

“So you write songs?”

”I guess you could say that...they started off poems first.” The Jacaranda was one of the few places in Liverpool where even a tough-looking lad like this William fella could admit to dabbling in poetics.

“Well, let’s have ‘em, then. Not here for my health then, am I?”

“ Yeah. This time we get all the beer we can drink.” George. Fuckin’ kids. He just wouldn’t get it. If they wanted to be the best band ever, they had to act like the best band ever. All the time.John pulled on the old Holly specs and gave the stranger a look daring him to say one word, but the stranger didn’t, distracted as he was by his girl who seemed to be dancing to the music in her own pretty head.

She turned to Paul and said “You’re pretty,” and touched his face.

Paul, not guessing she’d be one of millions, blushed. “Thank you. You too."

“Ooh, Spike. Could I keep him? I’d feed him every day...”

“Drusilla, please...”
“Miss Edith could remind me, if I forgot, but I probably could hear his pretty tummy rumble.”

John wanted to break up laughing, but he didn’t dare. He was the leader of a band, and he didn’t think Buddy Holly got to be Buddy Holly laughing at the Crickets’ barmy girlfriends.
” You do paint a picture, mate.” he said, looking over the lyrics. “Bleeding ghastly as it is. But it’s cool, though, because you’ve got a vision. Except...”

“Except?”

“Well, it’s not on, is it? Too many bloody syllables. And it’s not rock and roll.”

“Effulgent’s a real word. Means “gleaming”.

“Just say “gleaming” because at least it rhymes with “dreaming” and “scheming”...I mean, you don’t see Carl Perkins putting out “The Effulgent Blues” do you?”

Oh, bravo, Erika! I like that.

Excellent!!!

Thanks. I guess it is pretty gear, at that.

I like it very much indeed.

Yes, I've got more constructive stuff to be writing, and yet?
Later... Cynthia Powell and Kate...Something were in the loo together. Cyn didn’t know Kate well, being that she was behind her at the Art Institute, and honestly, she’d been so swamped doing John’s work as well as her own, she didn’t make many girlfriends, but they had girl talk now and again while Cynthia messed with her mad new hair.
Sod Brigitte Bardot, she thought as she always thought towards the end of the evening when her hairspray had quit working and she felt like a clown. She just couldn’t carry off the sexpot bit, not in front of people anyway. Sometimes when they were alone together, though...but even the thought felt indiscreet.Not that that would bother Kate much.

“Who’s that?”

Cynthia saw what she always saw...one, no, two dark blurs. Time to look in the mirror and act like she’d seen a bit of everything...she was older and going out with a musician after all, although it would make moving around on Saturday nights a bit easier if Brigitte Bardot wore glasses!”Friend of John’s...why?”Cynthia pretended to touch up her makeup.

“He looks so dangerous!”Kate squealed. “You just know he wants to do more than lettering.”

“You mind yourself, there, petal. “

“I ought to tell you the same thing. If it weren’t for you, John Lennon would have been sacked from college.”

”He is a genius...the world makes different rules for geniuses... and we are each other’s great love, thank you very much.”

”They all say that when you have your hand on the right spot, dear.”

“Don’t be crude.” But what Kate said mirrored Cyn’s nightmares so much, she shivered.

To cover, she called out gaily, “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!”

Kate mock-complained “That ought to be a sparkling evening.”

Spike stood against the wall, more than a bit bored. Lennon was a good chap but he was so much more fun when he was drunk and angry and wanting to smash stuff. Today he wasn’t having any, going on about some sodding Little Richard song note for note till Spike wanted to poke his eyes out, or worse. If he thought he could get Lennon’s way with a lyric, he’d drink him like a kid with an orange squash, but somehow he doubted it worked like that, damn it. Lennon’s girl was a little stunner, too, somewhere in there. Spike liked the quiet ones, the ones that weren’t quite sure they were pretty because it was so easy to tempt them into things. Bad, evil, things. He’d had a bite of a sailor at the docks so it wasn’t really about eating...more of a palate cleanser, really.

Continuing my thread monopoly...one last big fannish score. Homicide/ House rated R for death Part one

BALTIMORE

Another crumpled working girl, the invitation of her fishnet stockings rendered macabre by her being so obviously dead.Bayliss shuddered, grateful for a burst of cold wind off the harbor sparing him too much scrutiny from Frank.Pembleton was on auto-pilot anyway, searching for tracks in the woman’s...Tim amended his thought; she was little more than a girl. Eighteen, tops. Christ. Tim felt an unwanted pang.

To distract himself, he cleaned his glasses.

Pembleton joined him and shrugged.

To fill the silence more than anything else, Tim asked “Nothing?”

“No tracks, no dents, no dings, Bayliss.” Pembleton explained. “She even still had her panties on.” It struck Tim strange that his partner would even know a silly word like “panties” but maybe being the father of a small daughter had changed him.

“Maybe Cox will come up with something,”Tim reassured.

”She better...this is what? The second this month...”

“Third,” Tim corrected, feeling satisfied in spite of himself.

“Whatever. I never thought I’d wish for a strangulation. Blood type...fibers. Bada bing.”

“Frank!”

“I’m sorry, Tim. I hadn’t realized I wasn’t being delicate enough for you...I treated you like a veteran homicide detective, not like the wide-eyed, floppy-haired rookie perpetually mourning Adena Watson. My mistake.”

Bayliss was silent, but Frank thought he noticed his partner touching his freshly shorn hair.

Dr. Cox wasn’t much help when the detectives checked in later that evening.

“Ms. Doe doesn’t appear to be murdered, gentlemen...it kind of looks like it’s not my area.”

”What do you mean?” Frank argued. “She’s dead. Of course it’s your area.”

”Her blood looks...funny. I wouldn’t be comfortable saying anything about whatever elevated this girl’s white count.”

”Why the hell not?”

“Look, fellas,” Cox explained. “By the time they get to me the blood’s stopped moving, and med school was a long time ago. Not to mention I’ve got total gridlock out there.”

“The city that bleeds,” Tim said.

“Don’t I know it...these ‘escorts’ have been dropping like flies, haven’t they?”
“Do what you can.”

“ Don’t I always?”

Bayliss blushed.

Frank contained himself until they were outside.”Funny? What kind of clinical judgment is that?”

”You’re always telling me to lead with my gut. “Tim said. “Dr. Cox is just trying to do the same thing.”

”Great. We drew the only well-adjusted cutter in town. Besides, your gut’s good.”

“Frank...I...”

“Write me a poem, Bayliss, and I’ll take it back. I swear. I’m in no mood now that we’re all alone with this body.”

”I know someone. Really. But he might not be worth the trouble.”

“If you get a psychic, I’ll shoot you.”

PRINCETON

Ah, breakfast...the most important meal of the day. Not if it consisted of cold coffee and a slightly warmer bagel while waiting for the first Vicodin of the day to work its questionable magic, no, it was not. The phone cut into House’s daily list of gripes.

He picked up. “You have reached Gregory House’s office. I can’t answer the phone right now...”

”Dr. House? I know it’s you.”

“Curses. Foiled again.”

“Well, I am a detective, sir. And that is a pretty old trick.”

House became wary. “Who is this?”

”Tim Bayliss, sir. I don’t know if you’ll remember me...”

“Extra points for the honoriffic, Bayliss. I’m fairly certain I wouldn’t forget impeccable manners like that.”

”You spoke in Baltimore...”

”Oh, now I know who you are...terribly earnest young man in the front row with an unquenchable need for strangers’ approval who asked a lot of questions and told an interminable anecdote of how your clean-freak mother wanted you to be a doctor and your daddy cut you down to size.”

Bayliss laughed nervously. “I (continued...)