| Disclaimer: Mutant
Enemy and Rysher: Panzer/Davis think they control these characters.
I know better. I also know better than to make it a profit
off them, and believe me, it's not the corporations that are worrying
me. You'll see. Reunions
"Well, well, well. If it isn't Melvin Koren. Still ordering milk in bars, mate?" The snide, British voice slid over him like fine-grained sandpaper: an irritation, but not life threatening. Yet. Kronos didn't look back; he knew that voice. "William the Bloody. D'you know, I haven't heard any towns locking their doors before sundown in ages." Smoke curled up from the nearby ashtray where the demon had left his cigar when Kronos smiled at him. "Yeah, well, it's Spike these days." The vampire slid onto the bar stool next to Kronos with a rasp of leather and denim. Despite his bleached blond, spiky hair, the two looked oddly... similar. Black leather, black denim, black shitkicker boots, and those gleeful, manic eyes -- the two might have been brothers. There had been decades when that had pleased them both. Kronos smiled at Spike, one hand comfortably wrapped around a mug of some dark, foamy liquid. "Suits you." He deliberated, then said, "And it's always been Kronos." "So what happened to you, mate?" The vampire caught the bartender's eyes, all three of them, and flashed fangs to make it clear what he wanted to drink. The half-breed nodded once and Spike turned back to Kronos. "Haven't seen any of your trademark demolitions in decades, after all. Was starting to think you'd lost your touch, or someone'd finally done for you." Spike eyed him thoughtfully. "You do look like about three years of bad road, mind. Say, Los Angeles road construction, or the bloody A40 in London." "Yes, well, you try losing your head and reattaching it. It wasn't fun." "Sodding hell." Spike shook his head admiringly. "Not many could've done that. Who finally got lucky, though? You know," and he drew a finger across his throat with a whistling noise shockingly close to the sound of a blade cutting through air. "No one you know," Kronos growled. "No one I'm going to go after, either." "What?" Spike pivoted on the bar stool to stare at him, apparently genuinely shocked. "Losing your touch, Pestilence? I mean, come on: rotter takes your head, you live through it--" "That's the problem," Kronos growled, although he grabbed the wine glass and put it in front of Spike so he could chase the bartender away again. The half-breed looked like he wanted nothing more than to ignore these customers: good. "I don't know if I did." Spike jerked back, head coming up, eyes narrowing in the smoky light of the bar. "Now, look here, mate. You are or you aren't. It's like that whole pregnant problem the mortals go through. Now, you're not one of mine, you still smell like a live 'un, and damn if I can't hear your heart beating. What's the bloody problem?" "I'm not sure I'm healing quite right." Kronos said it softly, and with anyone else it might have been embarrassment. With him, it probably meant he didn't trust anyone in the room. Spike stared at him and then said cheerfully, "Well, that I can check." He reached for Kronos' hand, only to see the smaller man yank it away. "What?" the vampire snapped indignantly. "I brushed my fangs this evening. One stinking drop, you idiot, and I can tell you what's going on. I'm a connoisseur, I am." He glared at Kronos, still muttering, "Try and do an old drinking buddy one sodding favor--" "Since when are we drinking buddies?" Kronos asked coldly. "Since the time in South America. You remember -- you, me, Dru, two crates full of really God-awful red wine that you kept emptying that one boy's wrist into. Lovely time, really, all the fire glow and smoke... they don't sack towns like that anymore." Kronos leaned back, smiling fondly. "And the way Drusilla played with her food. I admire a woman with artistry. Nailing the priest to his own cross was such a fine detail. But there's something about the screams of the dying and the way the living beg to stay alive...." "Yeah," Spike agreed, sipping moodily at his drink. "Ah. Like that, is it?" Kronos muttered, and finished his beer in one long, throat-baring swallow. Spike never even noticed. Kronos shrugged minutely. Until he knew if he was mortal or immortal, sex with a vampire really was a bad idea anyway. "She'll be back eventually. If not, hunt her down and torture her. Dru always did like that." Spike glared at him for a long moment, and Kronos honestly thought there was a chance of a good, tension-burning, twist 'til someone screamed fight... and then the vampire laughed and said, "Good one. I might try that. If I knew what bloody plane of existence she was on. Dumped me for a fungus demon!" Kronos growled and stuck his hand out. "Here. Tell me what I am, damn it, so I can go kill that bloody Scot." Spike blinked but caught the extended hand. "Right, then, this'll only hurt for... well, a while." He sniffed at the tips of the fingers curiously, then laughed softly. Cool breath, cooler than any mortal's and dry as a tomb's, slid across Kronos' fingertips and palm and he barely kept himself from shivering. Arousal burned through him, hot to match the cold inhumanity next to him, and he knew Spike smelled it, felt it through his skin. The vampire chuckled against his hand again and murmured, "Oh, those were good times, weren't they, Koren? The look on your face when Drusilla rode you while I drank your throat out.... Never could decide which of us killed you, you know." "Neither could I," Kronos agreed huskily, and his free hand tightened around the mug. "She had the most glorious scream when we tortured her...." Spike laved Koren's fingers with his tongue, enjoying the taste of willing flesh, and tightened his grip around Koren's wrist for the sheer pleasure of hearing the other man growl even as he submitted. Spike took his own sweet time as he licked and nipped down across Koren's palm. He just didn't find that many hands like this anymore: all muscle, tendon and bone, callused from weapons and fighting until it was as utilitarian and deadly as an assassin's prize dagger. He shifted his grip down the man's forearm, though, licked across the inside of his wrist for the fun of it and to offer an invitation for later, then hissed his pleasure and sank his fangs into that sweet, not quite mortal flesh. One drop, he'd said, would tell him. Too true. But one drop wasn't nearly enough, not for his first willing meal in ages. Besides, Spike could taste the other man's immortality, a sweet roiling sensation in the blood, kind of like champagne bubbles tickling his fangs. Shouldn't set off his bloody Prime Directive, non-violence chip, either. Wasn't like he'd do him any permanent harm after all.... Spike smiled against Koren's skin and lapped at the wrist with his tongue even as he sucked, amused by the way sparks chased his tongue where he raised bruises with the suction. The sparks around his fangs felt electric, and made him want to drag Koren onto the bar and fuck him raw just for the feel of those same sparks around his cock. A hard hand closed around the nape of Spike's neck, accompanied by the warm kiss of body-heated steel pricking just between vertebrae, and the vampire sighed in lust. Leave it to Koren to mix danger with sex so fucking perfectly. He eased off on the other man's arm, let him drag it away from the fangs, because he wasn't about to lift his head with that knife there. No worry that Koren would ever threaten with a dull knife. It was one of the certainties of existence. "One drop, I thought?" Koren purred, but he sounded too pleased to be absolutely furious. The knife withdrew, too. Spike thought about some of the ways the immortal had of getting even and smiled knowingly without looking up. Oh, this is going to be a good night after all. He glanced up, knowing just what looking through his lashes like that would do to Koren, and let some of that same salacious pleasure slide onto his lips. "One drop would tell me, sure, but one drink is never quite... sorry, mate. Good news is, you're still you. Still lightning for blood, you are." Kronos matched his smile, knife still in the free arm, a few stray drops of blood clinging to his now healed wrist. He watched Spike glance at the crimson and lick those reddened lips before he asked, "And the bad news?" Spike grew serious. "You still taste like a few dozen centuries, Koren -- sorry, Kronos -- but it's a bit... muted from the last time. Kind of dull, like you're running too many lights on a low battery. When's the last time you've done the dirty? You know, slice, boom, bam, instant lightning?" "Not since I got free...." Kronos considered that, plans sparking and turning behind those stream green eyes. He looked over at Spike and smiled when he saw the same kind of mischief sparkling through the vampire. "You had something in mind?" "Well," Spike purred, "there's this annoying idiot. No clothes sense -- no sense at all, really. Kind of embarrassing to admit he's English. Don't suppose you could find it in your heart to deal with him?" "You know where he is?" Kronos asked thoughtfully, his smile shifting to something hungry and feral. "I might," Spike agreed cheerfully, settling back on his stool and wiping his mouth. "I mean, I can't kill him for you, against the rules and all that, but nothing says I can't have a drink, right? And if you should happen to turn up while he was still woozy, well, that's luck, right?" The cold stare that met his eyes made Spike smile. "I don't need you to kill him for me." Kronos took a long drink from his mug, then set it down again with a solid thunk on the wood bar. "Never said you did," Spike growled, ignoring his own barely touched blood wine. Why bother? He'd already had the real thing. "But I don't feel like wasting the blighter, either. Where's a vamp s'posed to get blood like that, hmm?" The knife disappeared into Kronos' leather coat, and his other hand snaked out to slide across the crotch of Spike's jeans. The pressure hovered just the other side of painful and Spike shuddered as he rocked his hips farther into it. "From me," Koren purred into his ear, his body a hot, solid warmth against Spike. "Afterwards." "Oh, good." Spike chuckled, then, and licked contentedly at Koren's throat. "We can fight about who's on top on the way there, then." "And afterwards," Koren told him in a rasping murmur, "we can discuss whether we're going after Dru... or just enjoying ourselves for a few decades. Might do her good to hear rumors that you're having a good time without her." "Might at that." Spike smiled against his throat and slid his arms around Kronos, feeling sharp metal and hard muscle and merciless will under his touch. Oh, this was going to be fun again. -=-=-=-=-=-=- "Most regrettable, Monsieur Pierson, we have no idea who could have done such a thing, or why--" The man's voice buzzed in his ear, barely annoying and almost completely incomprehensible, as Methos tried to take in what he was seeing and match it to the damascene certainty in his soul. Kronos' grave was... empty. The ground disturbed, the casket broken into pieces which still held open the tunnel to the surface. He swallowed, hard, and reached inside himself to feel Duncan's presence still there, humming soft as a tuning fork nearly silenced. Now, though, he could feel Kronos, too, barely, but unmistakably there. Alive, again. Methos shivered under his coat and turned away, ignoring the man who maintained the cemetery in Bordeaux. He had his suspicions as to how this had happened. His mind had been putting pieces together since he'd received the call earlier. Cassandra had set one too many youngsters on his trail. So Methos had, finally, hounded the bitch down and shot her, fair trade for her own use of tools and cat's paws against him. The crowning touch, and worst mistake, though had been vengeance: he'd dragged her body here, to the edges of the consecrated ground of the cemetery, before taking her head. It had been a whim, a malicious, perverse whim, to dance her on Kronos' grave -- to let her know, at the last, who he valued. She had, predictably, been furious and terrified to die above Kronos' body, as if he could do her some harm even now. "And maybe he did," Methos murmured to himself, wrapping his coat tightly around himself as much for the comfort of his blades and guns as for the warmth. He sped up as he headed toward his car, not sure what to do, but thinking furiously and terrified to stop moving because he might just panic. Kronos' body, that he knew so well... Kronos' quickening, carried in his heart like his own, for so many centuries. Just because MacLeod had never heard of a double quickening before didn't mean it had never happened before, after all. And Methos had taken the brunt of Kronos' quickening, no question there. He'd forced Silas into MacLeod, knowing the two would deal well enough with each other. Kronos' own particular brand of madness might have fought Duncan... or it might just have settled in and made itself at home in a Dark Quickening that no holy well would ever cleanse. It hadn't been worth the risk to Methos, so he'd done what he could. Now, apparently, he'd done more. He'd managed to bring Kronos back, by taking that much power over his body, and forcing Cassandra's quickening away, not wanting to accept it... had he somehow shoved power and Kronos' own quickening back into his body? Methos shivered again and got into the car. He headed toward a house he kept on holy ground, one he hadn't told anyone about. Worst of all, now, he needed to think, about what to do, what to tell Duncan, what not to tell Duncan.... Maybe Joe and the other Watchers would find out? Maybe he should drop an anonymous email to Joe and just not have this little discussion with the Highlander this century? Besides which,
Methos didn't know that he had that long. Somehow, someday
soon, he knew he was going to hear that familiar voice saying,
"Greetings, brother. We need to talk." And
then life was going to get... interesting again. ~ ~ ~ finis ~ ~ ~ Highlander
Stories: Aidan: Series
| HL: Aidan: Freestanding
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