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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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Dumpster diving was a pretty time-honored tradition of the thrifty and Cain wasn't about to go disparaging it. Although he had plenty of money back home, there was a certain despair to spending too much from his childhood that he'd carried and reinforced over time. Better to mix and match between the shiny and new and things that still worked.

When he glanced up, there was a slight stutter to the motion. That was all he was willing to allow, catching himself when the shock of the numbers on this man's neck registered. Well, that wasn't normal. Even if clocks didn't appear to tick due to whatever metaphysical laws governed this place, he could still tell the difference between one that had stopped because of that and ones that had stopped. Weirdly, it seemed like this guy's silver numbers were counting... up? into the negatives.

Guess he could see dead people and undead people. Awesome. Sweet. Woo-hoo. Best superpower.

Not.

"Just that it's a pretty random collection. No project in mind?" he asked, not letting it stop him. Even if this suddenly turned a little sideways.

He didn't notice anything odd in the way the man looked at him, other than the fact that he was talking to him at all. Most tended to avoid men that looked like Spike did in the middle of the night, especially in a strange new place like this. But then, what did Spike know about the rules and laws of this place beyond the little 'welcome to blah blah' he'd been given. That he completely ignored. Intentionally.

"Yeah, I got a project. It's called 'let's not live with a bunch of twats I don't know and go find a big boy house all on my own'. That ring well enough for you?"

That told him quite a lot, although not necessarily about the parts he was curious of. Nah, he wasn't going to pry and let on that he could see things like this. Even for the living, that got people in trouble and just made more work for his brother and the rest of the Enforcers. That was about the opposite of what he wanted. Most times.

"Yeah," he said with a grin. "Yeah, sucks when they put you up somewhere without paying attention to how well you'll get along. So you're gonna sell all that?"

Pity. Some of it still looked totally usable.

"Sell?" He looked down at the bits he'd gathered, then up at the man who'd stopped him. "What for? You think I could get anything for it? Huh. May have to try." It was an idea, after all, and while he'd been told he had a 'job', the likelihood of him showing up for it was... well. Slim. Or at least on his own hours. And like bloody hell he was sleeping crammed in a room with a bunch of humans he couldn't munch on. That was just more than a vamp could bear. Like sticking a starving man in a room full of cake and wiring his jaw shut.

"That'd be the quickest way to finding someplace else to be with that stuff."

Okay, so what had he been collecting all of it for if he intended to use it for housing? Surely he didn't mean to build his own... That wasn't nearly enough, nor really fit for a project like that. He moved closer without really asking at all and peered into it, picking something up with a glance to the undead man to communicate interest rather than a fast one.

After a moment of handling it, he nodded. "Yeah, you could clean this up, fob it off. Get some other pieces, upgrade it, sell it for even more. Depends on how good you are at tinkering, though."

"Not that great. I can make a tv work with enough banging, but tech was never my thing." Didn't have a lot of it down in the sewers, and he was a bit before the era of the cell phone plague.

"Was really just thinking of using it to class up a new place. Get something to watch, a little ice box for... stuff." A moment as he caught himself before saying 'blood', hands dusting down his jacket before he pointed at what Cain was holding. "Not too sure what that is, but it lights up nice. Figured it'd do for a little ambiance."

Cain couldn't help but smile at that. It didn't sound like a bad idea, but there were definitely things that belonged in a home and some that would just take up space and could be sold for others looking for particular tech. He wasn't really in a mood to help out, but the idea of it was getting his mind back in gear.

"This is a portable charger," he said, twisting the object in his grip. "Looks like it doubles as a night-light. Don't know this brand or shape but you can see the port right here. Good for traveling, much as anyone's gonna travel around this place."

He got an almost blank look in return for that. "Portable charger for what? Another charger? Sometimes, I swear, people make things just to see if they can." Ridiculous. But it was pretty and wasn't too bright. Something just right for a vampire den.

In a crypt.

"Phones, maybe laptops depending on the strength of the battery," he answered. He started turning it around in both his hands to get a better look at it. Batteries large enough to recharge laptops were definitely still bulky and pretty annoying where he was from but he was almost wishing that this thing could do a job like that just so he could take it apart and see how it worked.

Something to look up on the internet, anyway. Maybe check out if there was a library in the Quarantine.

"Yeah, the light part is pretty extraneous but I can see where it'd come in handy. Keeping this, then?" he asked, moving to drop it back into the cart.

"Dunno. You interested in it?" Could be Spike could make his first trade sale, giving him an inkling of whether this would be a lucrative move or not. He'd been binning and scavenging for the better part of a century. He was used to it. Oh, sure, living in a nice home with new things wouldn't be bad, but he knew the difference between what he needed and what he wanted. He'd lived in sewers and crypts and caves with dirt and rocks as pillows and blankets. He had a few things he'd work harder to ensure he had; like a good, big bed. He did like his beds. But that was all part of the whole co-dependent relationship mess, which he didn't have to worry about at the moment.

So for now, it was knicknacks and bits of things to liven up a crypt. Make it a little less stony and a little more a place a bloke could put his feet up and have a beer in.

He considered the question, tossing it lightly between his hands. Fair enough, he could mess with this and get an idea for the level of technology here, keep himself busy while he looked into other angles at the same time. It would probably help in this moment, too, and he wasn't about to prove himself wrong about the idea of trading being beneficial for this guy's plans of comfy living.

"Yeah, sure," he said with a nod. "I don't have a whole lot for myself yet to barter with, but you got anything actually broken in there? Could probably see about fixing it up for you."

He gave another shrug, gesturing to the pile. "Dunno. Like I said, not the most tech savvy. Some of it lit up, some of it made noises. That one there looks like it might be a telly of some kind, but I can't hear squat from it."

He nodded, shifting to set the portable charger into the seat of the cart before rooting around in the rest of the junk that had been collected. He was looking for himself if he noticed anything else that might have been defunct but picked up anyway. "Right, okay, where's that TV?" he asked, almost conversationally since that was what he was looking for.

He came over and lifted up a blanket he'd also pilfered. "This thing right here. I think. Looks... telly-ish, don't it?" It had to him, after all. But he also wasn't used to flat screens or plasma. Think a decade or two before that, Cain.

Cain lifted it out and tilted his head to regard it. "Been a while since I've seen one of these," he commented about the CRT flat screen. Kind of a misnomer compared to the tech people had today but he could see why it had been the new Thing to get at the time.

Of course, he had definitely nabbed one while they were hot. Trends being short or long were all the same to him, relatively speaking. Turning it over, he shifted to place it back in the cart and nodded. "Yeah, easy enough. I could take a whack at it, see why it might not be giving any audio."

"Yeah? Great." Then he had to look down at the pile of possible junk he had before looking back up at Cain. "You, ah, want to tinker with it at mine, or you got all that stuff at yours? 'Cause as far as tools go, I haven't exactly acquired myself a collection yet. Working on it, though." It was always good to have bits of things lying about. Never knew when it would come in handy.

"I've got some stuff at mine," he said with a shrug. "Something like this, I'd need to pop it open and see what the issue is first before I can say anything more."

It might need some new guts, or Cain might be able to fix the wiring on the spot. Hard to say when it was an issue like that and he didn't have that much to work with on his own just yet. He'd get there soon enough but for now he would need to wing it.

"My place is pretty... shared, though, so how about we head to yours, I take a look, and we'll see what I might need first," he suggested.

"That works." He pushed everything back on the cart, then headed to the front of it to grab it and start walking again. A momentary pause as he turned back to Cain. "You're not going to scream or get all weird if that place is in a cemetery, are you? Because otherwise... not worth the headache."

Not slowing his stride, Cain furrowed his brow at the question. It wasn't really odd considering the numbers along the man's neck, but on the other hand, there was no way to really communicate that he had expected something along those lines in the first place... Huh. Awkward.

"No," he said slowly. "Although I would ask why."

"Why what? Why would you scream or why a cemetery? Gonna have to be a bit more specific than that, mate." Digging into his pocket, he pulled out a pack of smokes with one hand, the other around the cart as he started to move.

"Why the cemetery," Cain clarified. The smokes were interesting, but thinking about it further... well, it was probably a lot easier to fall into addiction when you didn't have a soul and your body was apparently some sort of impervious to things.

He should hope, anyway. It would be weird if someone undead could get lung cancer.

Either way, he wasn't bothered by the smoke. It wasn't like he could get sick, and it really wasn't his business. Like, it was the opposite of something he cared about on a personal level.

"Better than the sardine can I was 'assigned'. Don't know what sort of bloke they think I am, but sleeping packed in a room with a bunch of wankers I don't know isn't my idea of a good time." Not to mention it just wasn't fair. Shoved in a room full of living, breathing humans. Tasty smelling humans. Humans he wanted to sink his teeth into and had suffered a few headaches because of those intense desires. And let's not bring trying to drink blood into the picture while sharing accommodations. Even synthetic or medically offered had a lot of 'ew' looks, and he could do without that.

Another shrug as the wheels started moving while Spike lit his smoke, puffing away. "Besides, sometimes stereotypes are fun to live up to. Vampire. Crypt. Like a gothic peanut butter and jelly sandwich."

"Vampire huh," he said. It was a thoughtful tone but not genuinely so. He'd started to figure that out already and he had a pretty good idea who this guy was. Self-identified vampire who spoke with a British affect. Whatever magic was working here to translate for those who didn't speak English, it didn't leave people with accents from what he could tell. Maybe he was barking up the wrong tree, but he doubted it.

Going for cheeky this time, Cain asked, "Username bigbad?" No matter how their conversation had ended, it wouldn't do to not poke some fun. Whatever the case was then, now he was about to help out. That would balance it, right? "Is that actually a comfortable thing or just what you do because that's how it's done?"

Spike took a long drag, looking over his shoulder at the guy who seemed to know who he was, but who Spike hadn't picked out yet. "That'd be me. So which one are you? The one I pissed off, or the other one I pissed off?" Slightly concerned that he'd lost his chance to trade and get help fixing things up, he assumed the mantle of 'not caring', blowing out a long stream of white that faded off as it mixed with the night. "Practical thing. What stories have you heard about vampires back wherever you're from, eh?"

"I'm the one that asked a million and one questions," Cain clarified. He had never considered himself to get mad at the guy on the network, just remained pleasantly skeptical throughout. So what if the undead were a blight on the natural order? It wasn't a personal thing that Cain thought so, and he didn't really intend for it to change how he deal with a person to their face.

Eventually they'd get what they really deserved, and that was opposite of Cain's job. It was a job for the dead, actually.

He saw the change in demeanor and noted it without reacting. At least the guy had a reason to be contrite even if it was out of self-interest. Cain wasn't interested in blowing this off, thankfully, since it actually could turn out pretty good for him in the end to go along with it. "Still think I'm not human?"

He paused, then, and eventually shrugged. "The popular stuff? Can't be in sunlight, drinks blood to live, need to be invited in, weak to sunlight, holy water and stakes through the heart. Et cetera, et cetera."

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