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who: Spike and whomever
what: Looking for new digs and scavenging for stuff.
when: Soon after his arrival (2nd week of May)
where: The Inhabited Area and likely the Abandoned City.
warnings: Spike being a jerk? Possible language. Edit: Biting, drinking, the vomiting blood in thread w/Cain.

Flatmates. The only ones he'd ever been able to stand had been the ones he was shacking up with, and for the better part of a century, that had been Dru. Oh, they'd been off and on again a few times, but this... well. This was a bit more permanent. And now he was stuck in a room with a bunch of other living bodies. Ones he couldn't take a nip from. It was likely better than Xander's basement, but only just.

And a job. Seriously? They'd given him a bloody job and expected him to just... do it? Clearly they had no idea who they were dealing with. But, as he hadn't entirely sorted out an alternative yet, he wasn't ready to piss away what was being offered. Not until he'd set something better up for himself. Surely this place had to have a graveyard. A set of crypts. A nice little mausoleum tucked away he could take as his own, yeah?

For the next week, each time the sun dipped down below the horizon, Spike could be found leaving the shared accommodations to go scour the city for just that. Looking for where the city might have its graveyard, and deciding to snoop past the fence that encircled the population and led out past where he'd been told the wild things may roam. Well, that was all fine and dandy, wasn't it? He was a bit wild himself. Could be he'd come across something he could vent a little of his frustrations on -- aside from the small dark shape that smelled like fox that had been shadowing him partway through the week. The area was rife with them, the city boasting people walking around with them like pets.

Spike didn't do pets. He ate pets. Though, he had a feeling that kitten poker would be frowned on here. Pity. He wasn't too bad at it, and they weren't bad for a late morning snack.

Perhaps someone might come across him with a shopping cart full of odds and ends he'd found and salvaged. Or maybe they'd see him slipping into the cemetery, when he finally found one. Or he could be heard talking to the shadows or hissing at one and telling it to stop following him. Who knows? Spike's a bit of an odd duck, but until he figures out or is told a way to be able to not burst into flame in the sun, he'll only be seen during the night-time hours.

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There was no reply from Marcel. And considering the tentative peace the two of them had established, there really should have been. So, okay then. New Cainite on campus. That was both distressing and...in a weird way Fatima would never admit...comfortable. Vampires were the one kind of monster she knew how to deal with. And extremely effectively too.

Quiet as a cat, she jumped off the fence, landing in a squat in the shadow that it cast inward. It seemed, though, that she needn't have bothered with the stealth act. Whoever it was, they weren't all that concerned with being heard.

Open up for Spike.

He'd better be talking about the fence, she thought bitterly.

Standing up straight, Fatima followed along the length of the fence, the shivers getting stronger as she came nearer. She took one of her stakes out and shoved it down, between her skull and the elastic of her ponytail, just in case. Then she wrapped her hand around the second one, still inside the bag.

It was the hair she saw first. The moonlight gleamed off of it, making him look like his head was on fire. The thought nearly made her laugh. That was her job. The second thing she noticed was the polish. If he was from her world, he was definitely a Brujah. She hoped he was from her world. Brujah were so easy to deal with. They always had more muscle than brain.

In a split second decision, she decided to see what kind of vampire she was dealing with by playing an old favorite: The lost tourist game.

Well, not exactly a lost tourist, since this wasn't LA. But whatever the Riverview equivalent was.

"Uh," she said, dialing up her West coast accent to an eleven. "Are you okay, dude?"

He paused as he was about to bend to look at what seemed to be a split in the links, rolling his eyes as he looked up at the dark night sky. He only half turned, not wanting to interrupt his search for what was clearly going to be a pain in his ass. "Shouldn't you be off looking for a surf that's up or a chili dog? Whatever valley girls prefer that isn't pestering a vampire in the middle of the night while he's busy?"

Honestly. It was like some people wanted to get bitten. And him with the bloody chip in his head still. Unlife was cruel to him.

Well, he probably wasn't from her world. Not the way he casually threw around the word 'vampire.' It gave her a genuine moment of surprise, which she quickly decided to leverage to her advantage. After all, a valley girl would be surprised by the word too. Just in a...very...very different way.

"Puh-lease," she said, rolling her eyes. "You're no Brad Pitt. And since when have you ever heard of an organic chili dog? Gross."

Okay, it was possible that last bit was genuine. Fatima wasn't especially a fan of chili dogs.

She took a few tentative steps forward, canting her head to one side to better observe her mark. He had a distinctness about him. It was more than the cheap Billy Idol look and the accent. His cheekbones could cut glass. How old was he? Young enough to know what peroxide was, she supposed. But Marcel's breed of vampire didn't follow the standard Cainite rules. So it was possible he didn't either.

Fatima really hated this 'multiverse' bullshit.

"Authors are the death of vampires, I swear to bloody hell. Gave Dracula a big head and had a bunch of namby pamby groupies thinking all vampires sparkled or dressed like bloody poofs." Spike turned, the pale of his hair and face the only spot of anything bright in all the dark he wore. He gave her a very blatant roll of his eyes. "You know how annoying vampire groupies are? Calling themselves bleeding 'children of the night' and drinking wine out of goblets and thinking they're all that and a bag of crisps? Idiots. The lot of them."

Please, Fatima. Idol stole his look. Did well with it, yeah, but Spike was the original British bad boy -- or so he liked to tell himself. "Go on, like a good little vapid barbie doll. I've got things to do."

His world had vampire groupies? That was sickening. Of course, to a certain extent, Cainites attracted them too. But at least they had the benefit of the blood bond and supernatural thrall that came with it. Anyone who was voluntarily into vampires needed a straightjacket.

Still playing the role of the 'vapid barbie,' Fatima took another few steps forward. "What kind of things?" she asked. "You're not supposed to be at the fence. We're not supposed to go outside."

She could only imagine how she would have responded if someone had said that to her.

The words 'go to hell' came to mind.

"Omigod," she hissed, channeling her inner Auntie Diana, "are you trying to break out?"

"Says you. No one puts a leash on me. I'll bloody well go out if I want to." And he planned on it. Besides, he hadn't strictly been told not to go outside. He'd been advised it wasn't wise, as there were 'dangers' out there. But he was a danger himself, so why the hell not?

He bent back to the fence, looking at where he'd seen the split. "I wouldn't have to 'break out' if they put a proper gate in, would I? It's their own fault, isn't it?" So there, strange lying valley girl.

"I guess," she said, chewing on the inside of her cheek.

Fatima had considered taking some more drastic measures against the fence, recently. Even lighting it on fire, just to see if it would burn. She was no more anxious to be fenced in than Idol Boy. But his incautious approach didn't jive well with all of her training. Maybe this was a blessing in disguise. Maybe he would collect some of the data for her. Let the vampire stick his neck out. So far, she had no evidence that he was up to the Order's standards in terms of morality.

But none that he wasn't, either. He was a bit of a jerk, sure. But so was Artemis. And she was their damn leader.

She folded her arms, watching him from where she was. "But where are you gonna go?"

"Wherever I want. Maybe find a way back home. Maybe find a better place to stay than my little sardine can." Spike didn't particularly like having to bunk with strangers. He'd been intentionally staying out while he could, if only to avoid having to smell a lot of people in one small room. Humans were smelly, smelly creatures. Especially the menfolk.

"Why are you so curious? Go find your own bit of fence to muck with. I got here first."

There was a certain beautiful irony in this. Fatima had been desperately trying to find people like her, people who weren't content being stuck in this freak show. People who wanted to actually go home. They'd be surprisingly few and far between. And now, when she finally found another one, it had to be a vampire.

'Kindred' spirit indeed.

Artemis would have found this hilarious.

But what did she know? She thought The Marx Brothers were the pinnacle of humor.

"Oh, I won't muck with your fence," she said, holding up her free hand, palm out. "I promise."

"Right." He gave her a suspicious look, but then turned his back on her, moving to grab a hold of the fence to start tugging at it, trying to break the split a bit more, bend it to give him room to slip through.

He hadn't exactly written her off entirely as a non-threat. The last unassuming valley girl he'd met had been a Slayer, after all, but he wasn't about to waste the night hours getting into a Mexican stand-off with what might be a vapid airhead. It was beneath him. She'd either try something or she wouldn't.

Maybe she'd been too quick to judge him. On the surface, he definitely had the temper of a Brujah. But he hadn't attacked her yet. Hadn't even feinted. Was that self-control? Was he just prickly, but not a total murder-happy monster?

It was...possible.

She took a step back to watch more carefully. He certainly didn't have the typical Brujah strength. Maybe he was winning against the fence, but it was a slow battle. 'Slow' being the operative word since he also wasn't demonstrating any sort of supernatural speed. Fact was, aside from pinging her radar, he didn't seem all that vampiric at all.

Well. He was pale. But that could have just been because he was British, or whatever.

"They say there are monsters out there," she murmured. "What will you do if you see one?"

"Eat one. Has to be better than that synthetic crap they pass out." He hadn't lucked out and gotten a living donation yet, or one from an actual human. Seems they just liked to mess with him and give him the worst of the worst. Or they were hoping he wouldn't notice. Rude. He did. Vampires like him could survive on any mammalian blood, but human was better. Specialty human was the best; witch, celestial being, slayer. Something with an extra kick to it. Tasty and with some oftentimes nice side effects.

As for his work on the fence, well... there was no need to speed up, was there? He could move quickly, faster than a human, but he had no need to. And ripping it right out of the post might do more harm than good. He'd grown into his strength. He wasn't some newbie fledgling vamp that needed to toss things around and marvel at how strong he was. He was over a century undead, after all. He'd learned to temper himself.

For the most part. "Otherwise, I might just kill it." Okay, so maybe he wasn't entirely calm and even tempered. He was a vampire, after all. Cut him some slack. "Or see if it likes nosy humans over quiet vampires."

"Yeah, yeah, Brad Pitt," she said, waving one hand. She had to admit, if she didn't know it was an act, she would have probably smacked herself by now. But Fatima wanted to gather as much intel as she could. And there was no easier way than by appearing unintelligent. Auntie Diana had taught her that trick.

Let people underestimate you, Tima. It'll be their mistake.

She planted her hand on her hip, popping it saucily to one side. "How exactly are you planning to kill a monster?" she asked. "I don't see any dragon slaying swords around."

Maybe he had rituals? Like a Tremere? A demonstration would be valuable. Albeit dangerous, but Fatima wasn't exactly famous for being non-reckless.

She was more the other thing.

He'd gotten a good hold of a bottom bit, giving it a long, drawn out pull upward until he heard the creak of it bending. Just as he was about to let it go, a piece of it broke off in his hand, sharp metal digging into flesh and making him curse, drawing it out and hurling it down with a scowl.

It was with that scowl in place that he turned to her, reaching into his pocket to pull out a scrap of a handkerchief to wrap around it. "Who needs a sword? I can just toss you at it and you can natter it to death."

Not a Ventrue, that was for sure. Besides totally not fitting the profile, his skin was apparently as mushy as a standard human's. And he needed to bind a wound? He didn't just heal it up right away? Damn, she was really and truly in alien territory. Not only was he clearly not a Cainite, she didn't think he was one of Marcel's kind, either.

Actually, he seemed kind of lame for a vampire, so far.

"Well," she said, "if you do that, I won't give you the bandaid from my purse." She actually had quite a few bandages. She'd never really used them on someone else, before. Mostly, it was when she got her own sorry butt kicked.

Delicately, making her balance look worse on those stilettos than it was, she picked her way over to him, stopping along the way to pick up the broken piece of metal. His blood definitely wasn't vitae. She couldn't feel the power in it. She pocketed the metal. "I have some disinfectant too. Lemme see your hand."

"What for?" For all he knew, she was some vampire groupie herself -- talking about Brad Pitt and pocketing his bloody metal. "It'll heal." Not immediately like Marcel might, but faster if he found himself a little snack along the way.

He'd take offense to her opinion if she voiced it, maybe give her a show of just how terrifying he could be, despite the fact he was all but neutered at the moment. "I think I'll save myself from bright pink patches or Spongebob whatever you might have tucked away." Looking down at the fence, he saw he'd done a decent job of pulling it away from the post. A little more tugging and he'd have himself a nice little point of egress. He could even hide it by leaning a few board against it just so. The night was looking up.

Spongebob? She was going for vapid, not twelve. Maybe she'd pushed too far. At the very least, she was pretty sure she'd gotten the basic information she needed. It was only the lingering question of morality that was the problem. A dick could live. A murderer? Not so much...

She shrugged, abandoning the bandaid pretense. "Just trying to be nice," she lied. "You've heard of 'nice,' right?"

Shit. That gave her an idea. It was a terrible idea, she was sure. But also a way to find out if he was susceptible to magic. Some vampires weren't. That was a valuable data point.

But did she really want to go there?

"Heard of it. Don't put much stock in it. Nice gets you killed, little girl. Especially out here with all the big bads." Like him. And if he didn't have a chip in his head that caused him immense, blinding pain from even attempting to harm a human, he might be considered a big bad himself. As it stood, he was going back to bending down and gripping the edge of the broken fence, paying her little more mind than keeping track of where she was in case she decided she wanted a taste of vampire. Or worse.

It was the 'little girl' comment that did it. Fatima had a high tolerance for insults. She'd grown up in a white community with the name 'Fatima,' after all. She knew how to let things slide off of her back like water and ducks and all that shit. But if there was one entirely-too-sore spot that remained, it was the matter of her age and inexperience. Maybe she was only in her early twenties, but she'd worked hard and she'd seen a lot. Enough to justify no one ever looking at her like she was wide-eyed again. She'd earned her place away from life's kiddie table.

So caution went to the wind as she struggled not to get angry and growly.

She got manipulative instead.

Liam had trained her in presence, enough that she knew how to summon up Awe. It wasn't a terribly powerful discipline. Only enough for one-on-one interactions and even then, sometimes, it was iffy. But it was a power she used well. It enhanced her, making her prettier, more appealing. Making her words seem more solid. Making her whole being more...just...more.

Almost without thinking about it--and certainly without considering the consequences, because she was irritated--she drudged up the Awe, letting it settle on her skin like a cocoon.

Little girl her ass.

For his part, Spike wasn't paying her any more attention than just keeping track of her. He may be susceptible to magic worked on him, but one had to pay attention to a glamor to be susceptible to it and the fence was more important just then. He got that gap a little wider. Then a little more wider. Then-- "Ha! That's what I thought, you little bugger."

He may not be paying her any mind just then, but he looked up and off along the edge of the fence on the side of the inhabited city when he heard a yip. The same yip that had been following him for the last day or so. "Sure, foxy. Come follow Spike outside and get eaten. It'd be your own bloody fault." And with that, Spike ducked his head down and started to wriggle through the opening, deciding the valley girl could find her way home on her own or be idiotic enough to follow him out past the gate. It was her head, not his.

Fatima didn't crawl. She climbed. And while she wasn't sure she wanted to follow a strange vampire off into the wilderness, she still wanted information. So she watched until he was about halfway through, before taking a few steps back for a running leap. She threw herself up toward the wall, catching it with her stilettos and using that momentum to push herself up so that she could straddle the top.

She paused there, looking down as Brad Pitt's head emerged on the other side.

Good thing she was wearing jeans, for a change. He would have been looking right up her skirt, otherwise. And that was definitely not something she wanted to use Awe for.

See, now, that would have caught Spike's attention. As it was, he stood and dusted his hands off, looking up and-- "What the...? Oh, bloody hell. You're not a bloody Slayer, are you? Come on."

He threw his hands up, looking entirely disgusted with everything. Why? Because come on.

"A Slayer?" she repeated, a line forming between her eyes. A snide remark about not liking thrash metal was on the tip of her tongue. But suddenly, she remembered the strange blond girl she'd met at the fence, in her first weeks trapped here. Buffy. She'd called herself a 'Slayer,' hadn't she?

Was that a thing? If so, she immediately didn't like it. Too closely connected to 'hunter,' which she hated with a fiery passion.

Might as well ask the obvious question:

"What's a Slayer?"

Oh, don't bring that name up around him. He was on the brink of feelings, and he tried to shove those feelings into the negative. That didn't always work anymore and it was pissing him off.

He glowered up at her, reaching into his trenchcoat again to pull out a pack of cigarettes. "If you have to ask, you aren't one." Which was a bit of a relief, but didn't really answer the whole climbing the fence and straddling it while giving him doe eyes and pretending she was 'just a girl'. Just a girl his rather finely toned ass.

"I'm a Gemini?" she volunteered. But even she knew that she wasn't going to be able to fall back on the valley girl act any more. Just as well, it had served its purpose.

And Gemini really was the sign for her. Sociable and energetic and bubbly and thoroughly two-faced. Maybe not a Slayer--and definitely not a hunter--but still remarkably good at what she did.

"Guess that's not what you were going for, huh?" she said, dropping down into a squat on top of the fence, as though gravity and balance weren't really factors that needed to be considered. Her normal voice was still pretty west coast, all things considered. But a little less intentionally so.

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