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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

That was definitely an interesting reaction, and the only movement Cain made was to watch Spike and to rub at the shiny clean skin where the bite mark had been moments before. With all of the blood collected, it had taken only seconds to close up and fix itself. It was... an interesting thing to watch Spike go on about feelings when it really did not jive with everything they'd spoken about before. Hidden depths or a good act. Either way.

"I didn't know," he said calmly. Part of him wanted to snap but it wouldn't do any good for them to get into an argument. "I figured if you were eating it, absorbing it and breaking it down, it had a pretty good chance of not doing that. But... this isn't the first time someone's experimented with you," he added after a moment of consideration, thoughts suddenly coming into alignment.

Really, his biggest dilemma was not the morals of what he had done. It was more about the emotional tirade going on now and whether he should apologize to assuage it, to make nice. He didn't want to totally alienate a potential resource (everyone was a potential resource, when it came down to it) just because he'd made a bad move.

Exhaling, he sat back on the cold, stone floor and ran a hand through his hair. "You can attack if you want," he offered. "Nothing stops you if someone's willing, right?"

"Of course you didn't," he spat out, scowling at Cain. "That's why you look so very surprised to see it happening. Only not at all, if you get my drift. You lying sack of... lies." He rolled over, reaching to prop himself up against the edge of the sofa, scrambling in his pockets to pull out his cigarettes to try to get rid of that sensation of something crawling up through him. "There's things you don't feed from and there's reasons why. If you'd bloody well explained that you were whatever you are, I might have come to my own conclusions. You're as human as I am, meaning you aren't. Regular folk don't call themselves 'immortals'. Regular folk are born, they age, then they die. How long you been all undying like, eh? Long enough to know better, I'll wager."

He lit his smoke, the rasp of flint on steel loud in the crypt, as was the crackle of dried leaves catching flame. "That's not how it works, but if I can feed from you, I can beat the bloody hell out of you too. Doesn't to much if you won't die, though. Wanker."

"I was regular folk for a while," he said with a shrug. He shifted when Spike did, levering himself to his feet and wandering over to the cart in the corner. Lot of junk in there and fancy little things to spice the place up but there was still the piece he had come here for in the first place.

Grabbing the TV, he moved to the couch and sat against the foot of it, opposite to Spike. Grabbing the multitool from his pocket, he started to pry the back panel apart to get a better look. He wasn't exactly beyond keeping his hands busy to avoid looking at someone during a hard confrontation — but then again, he wasn't beyond pretending that this bothered him more than it did, either.

"It's been two thousand, seven hundred and sixty-seven years since then," he answered. "I'm serious, though, we don't have non-humans where I'm from. I'd... hoped that it would work. You get over being surprised at everything pretty quickly, though. What's the word, jaded? Experienced?" He shrugged, glancing over to Spike.

"I would think after the first bloody millennium passed you might want to question whether or not you fit into the category of a normal human." His voiced was laced with sarcasm and smoke, the trails of it leaving him as he exhaled and continued to frown over at the man who seemed to be more than a man. And who, apparently, was still going to fidget with what he'd brought in. The whole manner of everything seemed so incredibly off to him, as if this was so casual. This was something more akin to his world than this muddled mix of one that seemed to be luring in all manner of beings from all manner of worlds.

"Ignorant. The word you're looking for is ignorant. And you're it in spades."

Being called a fool was nothing new. Hell, his brother practically owned the trademark and they had only known each other again for a few months. It didn't take a lot to know Cain was impulsive and didn't think through as many things as he probably should; he'd tried, when he was younger, and it was miserable to constantly be on guard when the lasting consequences were far and few between. So he'd sworn that off for a while.

Not that it helped when the Death Erasers came knocking, but they were something else all together. He was working on that one.

The TV panel popped off and he started to poke around the guts. Hopefully the sound issue wasn't anything too serious, and it probably wasn't if the picture itself was just fine...

"Here?" he asked thoughtfully. "Probably. Maybe back home, too. I haven't been this out of my depth since I was actually twenty-four."

Humans. If Cain could even be thought of as that anymore. But, the man was still a man, after all. He hadn't been possessed by anything, and it wasn't as if there weren't witches that had found ways to extend their lives in his world. Still... two thousand years old put him well past that of the Master's age, or of most vampire-kind he'd ever known. That made him the age of one of the true demons. That made him more dangerous than he let on, and Spike wasn't about to forget that.

"Is that about how old you were when your logic centers stopped working? Makes sense."

Perhaps it was because he didn't feel any threat at all, or maybe it was because it was actually funny, but Cain laughed. His hands were feeling along the innards of his project while his eyes scanned for anything obvious. He paused only to turn and give Spike an amused look, and said, "You know recent studies have figured out the brain doesn't fully and totally mature until your mid-twenties? I wonder about that sometimes."

It was definitely food for thought. Had Cain's brain finished developing by the time he'd started to grow? He was closer than not, of course, yet there was a lingering doubt. Maybe things were even harder than they needed to be. Maybe the youthfulness he was stuck with made it easier. No real way to tell.

"Yeah, it's when I stopped aging," he said more helpfully when he went back to his task.

Spike watched as Cain tinkered, idly wondering what it was about certain types of people that found whatever comfort they found in technology. Most of the creatures he'd met who'd been alive before tech had invaded the world like a cancer were almost pathologically afraid of it. Oh, Spike wasn't terrified of computers or phones, but he just didn't care for them. He liked TV because it entertained him. Outside of that, he wasn't the type to take classes on coding or whatever other geekery the redheaded witch might have been into. "So you're a perpetual frat bro. Congratulations, you're a bigger ass than I."

For Cain, it was his survivor instinct that first pushed him toward it. Then he'd come to accept it, become good at it, have fun with it. Not necessarily in that order. It was like magic for humans, in some ways, the sort that didn't break any natural order yet opened the eyes of countless people across the world. It helped, it hindered, the world kept on spinning, and nothing would ever be the same as it was beforehand.

For someone who'd seen so much of what had come before, technology was a breath Cain hadn't known he was holding. Besides, it meant he could be perpetually lazy and most people would think he was still working hard on things that simply came naturally to him.

"How old were you?" he asked, brows raised and curiosity obvious. Pretty much every source agreed that vampires weren't born into it so much as dragged to that depth. There was a past there. Not one that Cain wanted to know entirely, just the context.

"What, when I died the first time?" He took another drag, leaning back against the couch and swallowing slowly, feeling that sting as the inside of his throat reminded him of what had almost been. "Older than you. Twenty-eight. All nice and proper posh. Then my dark angel came into my life, and... well. Ended it nice and quick and brought me into something I was better at." His eyes were unfocused as he looked across the room, remembering the first time he'd seen Druscilla. The first time she'd bled her face from that pretty doll-like vacant look to the predatory demon. And still, he'd tipped his throat to her, let her sink her fangs in and bleed him dry.

He never regretted it. Even if thinking of her now still hurt.

"So you grew out of the proper posh pretty well, I'd say," Cain said with more than a hint of amusement. He was tempted to switch accents right there but held off for now. This wasn't as much of a joking conversation as he usually saved that sort of thing for.

He pulled out a panel and set it behind him on the cushion, unfolding and folding the tool in his hand until it would be better to twist and manipulate the TV's innards as he went. "And that would make this dark angel of yours your sire? That the word?"

"That would be it. Sire, grandsire, sired... It's a whole little thing. Nothing beholden or anything like that. I've read some of those ridiculous books. There's no compulsion or whatever to keep a sired to their sire. It's just... love." Which was odd in and of itself. Angelus had no humanity to be burned out as a vampire. Without his soul, he was pure evil. Spike and Druscilla, on the other hand... were apparently flawed. Too human. If he took a moment to think about it, he'd blame Angel for that. Broke Dru a bit too much before he turned her, and she turned him, so it only stood to reason that there was a bit of a mess up there.

He missed her, though. He'd been with her for a hundred years. She'd been his entire reason for existing -- other than the few rows they had now and then. They never lasted long, though. And here he was. On another bloody reality with no way to get back to her or anyone he knew.

Thankfully for them both, Cain didn't go for the low-hanging fruit when Spike mentioned those ridiculous books. It seemed too obvious, although he did have to wonder after whether that series would have ever gotten off the ground with vampires being a real thing where Spike came from... Something for another day, probably. He didn't want to detract from what they were talking about just quite yet.

"It's like family," he summarized. Cain definitely knew a lot about that subject and it showed in his voice. Family of choice rather than family by blood. Or—some of both? He wasn't sure how being made a vampire quite worked but there was definitely blood involved. Whatever. "Do you... have people? Waiting back home?"

The problem with 'those ridiculous books' was that there were far too many. Too many authors who romanticized what one drunk Irish twat scribbled down once upon a moon ago. If there weren't people asking about sparkling, there were others who thought all vampires brooded in puffy shirts, or liked to drink fake blood down on the bayou. There was no winning with idiocy.

"No," he answered, a short, simple word bitten off before he went into any depth about it. No, Druscilla had left him over visions that were ridiculous, and while he dabbled and rolled in the hay with Harmony, he'd just as happily stake her as sleep with her. No, he had no one waiting. No one who'd miss him.

That wasn't what Cain expected the answer to be, but he couldn't really argue with a statement like that. No way he could cajole and convince and look for something deeper in a stranger's life that perhaps Spike had overlooked about the caring situation, not when he was an undead bloodsucker with a diet problem. He nodded to that answer, moving to set the TV aside and levering himself to his feet in order to check inside the cart for what else Spike had found.

"Pretty sure it's just a blown fuse in there," he explained. "If you don't have anything in here that I can swap it out with, it wouldn't take much to get a replacement in the city. Pretty lucky problem to have."

It was almost like he was saying sorry this was the only simple thing going on right now. Or maybe he was just being sentimental in his old age.

Spike let him pick through the cart of odds and ends. If it would fix his telly, he'd sacrifice something else in there for it. If not, well, it may be good just to know what it was he'd wound up picking up. Another drag, another roll of his eyes, as if he was listening to Cain in the first place. "Right. Well, see if you can find a bit for it. If not..." A shrug.

That was an answer, right?

There was a lot of junk, stuff more decorative than anything that could serve a purpose. He was taking his time, however, to examine each piece since this place was weird and there could be plenty of weird functions he wouldn't usually anticipate on the baubles. That part was good to learn just from a curiosity standpoint.

Cain paused momentarily to glance at him when he trailed off. "If not, what?" he asked. Not enough of an answer for him, apparently.

"I'll figure out something, won't I? Always do." Whether it was finding something he could piece together, nicking a bit he needed, or finding money to put down for it, he'd manage. Spike was a survivor. A scavenger. He had no problem with surrounding himself with used items. Maybe he felt a bit of a connection to it. Him and other people's trash. Other things people had just tossed aside because it wasn't any use anymore. He gave it a home. He found a use for it.

Cain nodded. Yeah, Spike would get by with something or other but now that Cain had begun working on it, he wanted to see it through. If for no other reason than to give someone else an idea to look at things the other way. It wasn't necessarily helpful spirit so much as loving a good shake-up but those two things weren't mutually exclusive, either.

It's what he tended to tell himself, anyway.

"Might not need to," he said, pulling out what looked like a bluetooth speaker. Nothing fancy but if it was the audio connection that was broken in the TV, what better place than an audio device to look for a replacement?

Spike looked over, all the while pretending he didn't care in the slightest what Cain may or may not have figured out. Another last pull on his smoke before he ground it out against the floor, huffing out something close to a scoff. "That so? What, you managed to cram something in there that works? I may have to not kill you after all."

Bluff and bravado, Cain. Spike liked to bark a lot now that he couldn't bite so much.

"We'll see if it works." Potential fix in hand, Cain came back over to the couch where he had left the gutted TV and sat down, starting to take the speak apart this time. He wasn't even bothered by the threats, and while Spike's delivery made it obvious he wouldn't much follow up, there was the whole immortality thing that had left him incredibly unphased and blase about physical harm coming to him. It had lost its luster a while ago.

Except for the times they were followed through on, and when those times went far beyond the pale in executing it. But those were times he couldn't think about correctly and so he wasn't going to. Think about them. Nope.

"How would you do it, anyway? Kill me."

"Beheadings seem to work on a lot of things that think they can't die. Works on vampires. I'm assuming you can walk willy nilly in the sun, eh? Yeah, maybe a good old fashioned beheading. Or fire." Both things that Spike knew definitively could kill a vampire, so... if it was good enough for him, it was good enough for a blood-stealing ass.

"Nope," he said cheerfully. That was from definitive testing (okay, it hadn't been on purpose but it definitely left out some options for later experimentation when he got desperate) and although he wasn't eager to try it again, Cain was relatively okay with proving a point. Talking tough alone wouldn't really endear him to anyone.

This time, he didn't stop with his playing around in the device. He knew what to look for and what to do with it, so it was more of a background action than anything. Calming.

"I mean, you can try," he offered, "but those have been proven livable for me. Recoverable, anyway."

"Really? What about... dropped in a vat of acid? Eaten by a demon? Chopped up into a million pieces, burned, then scattered over the oceans?" Yes, he may have mocked most vampire literature out there, but it didn't mean he hadn't read it.

He canted his head to allow for those possibilities, then shook it to indicate nada. "No, eventually I'd still come back," he said slowly. "Like, eventually. Please don't actually do that last one, that's just a dick move."

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