@febuwhump Prompt: "bite Down On This"

@febuwhump prompt: "bite down on this"

***

"This fucking hurts!"

Spike scrambled through the tool kit in the workshop and finally seized upon a tool that had a rubber sheath on it. In his haste to get back to Faye he nearly tripped over his own two feet before reaching her side.

"Here! Bite down on this!" He encouraged, offering her the tool.

Faye's mouth opened in disbelief and she had to quickly smack the proffered item from his hand before he could stick it between her upper and lower teeth himself. Despite herself and the excruciating agony tearing through her, Faye began to laugh until tears were spilling down her cheeks.

"What the fuck are you thinking, you goof?" She demanded through giggles once she was able to speak again. "You're not setting a fucking bone here, Spike!" She snorted, her chin dropping to her chest for a moment.

Spike sat back on his heels, expression crestfallen.

"I don't know what you want from me, Faye. I don't know what you need from me. I'm way over my head here..." He took in a deep breath and tried to let it out slowly though his heart was still racing wildly. "I just... you... what do I do?" His voice was plaintive and warbled slightly as if he was fighting to keep from breaking down.

Eyeing the distraught cowboy, seeing fear prominently displayed on his features for one of the first times in her life, Faye took pity on him.

"Just... hold me, you dolt. I'll take care of the rest for now. Don't worry, Jet will get back here with Doc in no time." She winced as another contraction took her breath away. Spike looked physically pained by her discomfort and she tried to suck it up and play it off as he tentatively settled in behind her so she could lean back against him.

"This is ridiculous, Faye. You should be in a hospital." Spike muttered quietly.

"I don't trust hospitals." She replied when she could focus on something other than the pressure. "I trust you. I trust Jet. And given how many times he's put you back together again, I trust Doc too."

She felt Spike shudder behind her as he exhaled. "I just... what if... I mean... if something goes wrong..."

"Shh, shh, shh..." Faye reached down to grab his hands in her own, squeezing his fingers between hers partially for his comfort and partially to deflect the discomfort she was feeling somewhere else. "Don't go borrowing trouble. Fuck the future. There's only now. There's only this. The present is where we are and what we have control over. I've got this. Do you believe in me?"

He sighed shakily, burying his face in her hair so he could lean his face down to press a kiss against the side of her neck.

"You're one of the only things in this world I have any faith in." He replied eventually.

"Damn straight." She breathed. Another contraction was beginning to crash over her. It was awful but it was endurable. And, since she'd familiarized herself with all the available text and videos on childbirth, she knew that they still had some time before their baby entered the world. She wasn't sure if her water had broken or not, but she wasn't yet feeling the urge to bear down.

"You sure you're okay? I can't do anything else?" Spike murmured, flexing his fingers against hers as her hands relaxed as the contraction faded away.

"You're doing everything I need right now. You are everything I need right now." She replied in a soft voice.

Their world was about to change for better or for worse... hopefully for better even if it took a lot of work to keep it on a good course. She understood his fears, his concerns, his helplessness. She could welcome those emotions, address them, and ideally soothe him a bit. Perhaps it was the mother already in her that was so patiently dealing with his anxiety in a time when she herself ought to be comforted, but she felt remarkably calm. She felt nearly invincible, truth be told.

Spike so rarely fell apart. He did not often display any sort of true uncertainty or worry. It made him all the more human to her, his panic, and it made her love him even more deeply. He would likely put on a brave front when the others arrived, but for now he was clinging to her like she was the only secure thing in a world of upheaval.

And realistically, she was.

The woman who had cracked open his heart after Julia left it weakened and exposed... Faye had reset it like a broken bone and nurtured it until it was no longer paining him. She had become his guiding light, his north star, the safe port where he could moor his soul and rest easy enjoying the days at her side.

But neither of them were truly capable of relaxing into a life of easy sailing. They needed challenges to thrive... and what better challenge than raising a child?

@febuwhump prompt: killing in self defense

TW: attempted non-consensual sexual activity

***

It had been easier than she'd expected.

Well... sort of.

Scrambling over refuse strewn across a darkened alley, kicking forcefully at the bigger stronger brutal stranger trying to subdue her by sheer domination, clawing for any sort of object that could serve as a weapon... that was difficult.

Terror had locked her throat up so she couldn't scream for help. She was practically hyperventilating which wasn't doing her focus any favors. Her blood was pumping in her ears so loudly she couldn't hear the swearing of the man she kept smashing with her heels.

Her knees were scraped. Various gross-smelly wet things had smeared against her exposed skin and her formerly clean clothing alike. There were sure to be bruises on her knuckles from how much power she'd been putting into her punches before the stranger had managed to trap her in this dead-end alleyway.

She could taste blood in her mouth from the backhand he'd given her. That casual slap had sent her sprawling but had given her a brief bit of space from her attacker. It had offered her a false escape, letting her lash out with her powerful legs from a position on the ground where he'd probably intended her to lay insensate and unable to move his bulk aside once he'd descended upon her.

Fortunately she had a thick skull or something because she hadn't been knocked completely silly and she'd been able to put her all into her attempts to defeat him or at least distract him with pain to the point where she could slip by and run out of the alley.

One of his beefy hands managed to secure her left ankle in a vice-like grip and he yanked her backwards so hard that she belly-flopped onto the concrete and smacked her chin with enough force to see stars. He took advantage of her disarray to wrestle her onto her back and pressed his full body weight down against her, covering her hips and her belly and her chest.

His face was above hers - too high for her to attempt to headbutt him - and his leer was something out of a nightmare. There was too much delight in his sky blue eyes... too much lust... he was getting off on the fight she was putting up as much as anything else. Nausea roiled in her stomach and she hoped she might be violently ill with enough propulsion to coat his face in bile and the scraps she'd managed to swindle earlier from the open market.

Her heels drummed on the pavement uselessly and her arms, free at her sides while he concentrated on holding down her body, beat weakly at his shoulders and ribs. He was grinning, a rictus smile dripping with confidence in the inevitable outcome of their altercation. And she kept landing feeble punches that seemed only powerful enough to tickle him.

It was infuriating.

And then her right hand swept over something cold and hard.

There was no time for thought. Familiarity shot through her arm like she'd struck something against her funny bone. Her left hand continued to strike him while her right hand traced muscle-memory movements along the shaft of the lethal device she'd discovered.

And then the safety was off and the gun was pulled free of the holster and the bullet - point blank through his side just beneath his ribcage on that side - was tearing into his innards on a mission of vengenance.

And then he was slumping over her, still too-fucking heavy for her to easily pull free, and hot blood was pouring out of the entry wound and coating her in stickiness that would never wash out of these clothes.

Gradually her heartbeat began to slow down to normal. Her breathing, still labored due to his bulk spread across the majority of her body, became calm. Disgust and frustration at the situation warred within her even as she realized she was safe.

Panic set in again. The unexpected panic of having survived intact. The desperate panic that would help her slip out from beneath this corpse.

Seconds or minutes or hours later, she found herself on her hands and knees with the gun still gripped tightly. The nausea returned and she made sure to vomit all over the asshole. It was a move she only mildly regretted later, once she had truly regained control of herself, and decided to pick through his pockets for anything else of value.

It was the first time she had had to take someone else's life.

She wasn't entirely sure what the rules on murder were in this dystopian future world but surely killing in self defense was still something that wouldn't land her in prison.

Best not to find out though.

She took the rings off his limp fingers, the watch with the broken face, the wallet and the keys and the comm. She took everything he had and, almost as an afterthought, yanked his pants down to his ankles before picking up a piece of wood from a busted up entertainment center near the dumpster in the furthest corner of the alley. Whacking his calves and thighs and ass with the board over and over and over was a form of stress release. With any luck it would also give the impression that he'd been the victim in this instance. If police thought he'd been accosted by one or more people, beaten savagely and then robbed blind, well... that meant they wouldn't be looking for some nearly-raped woman.

Satisfied at last with her work and worried about lingering too long at the scene of the crime, Faye took his jacket to cover the blood coated shirt she wore and fled into the night.

"You can pick and choose your battles, you know. You don't have to fight every one."

It was not the first time Spike hallucinated Jet speaking words of advice to him while he wavered on the cusp of consciousness and a lack thereof, or perhaps more accurately... living and dying.

It was, however, the first time he heard Faye's frustrated contribution in his mind...

"That's still too many battles! Put some back!"

Of course, neither of them had ever left any fight alone even the times they'd adamantly refused - verbally, at least - to engage... so really, what a bunch of hypocrites his crewmates were.

Jet understood undertaking suicidal missions when there was a greater goal at risk. Faye understood the necessity of never backing down, of refusing to compromise. And yet they both mouthed pithy things at him as if to sway him from putting his life on the line just one more time... and maybe once again after that... and okay, yeah, a few more times perhaps...

The reproval in their eyes was clearly just a delusion on his part. When he finally woke for real, he knew he'd be met with expressions of relief on the faces of his comrades.

He'd made it through another life-or-death adventure. He'd won against the Grim Reaper.

And no one could stop him from fighting that good fight again and again.

dialogue is taken from... well, tbh I'm not sure the original source but we've all seen it before so obviously it's not mine

this is almost exactly how I pictured them when writing one of the chapters of Boogie Wonderland...

so very happy that you are drawing them! you've done a lovely job!

so happy to be drawing them, hope you like it too!

The reek of burnt flesh and smoldering corpses was heavy in the air despite the rain pouring down from unfeeling skies. There were easily a dozen bodies strewn amongst the rubble from what was undoubtedly caused by grenades, and half a dozen lay dead from bullet wounds beyond the destruction wrought by explosives.

Well, never let it be said that Spike Spiegel wasn't dramatic.

Vicious refrained from sighing as one of the syndicate brats that had tagged along on his mission became noisily sick at either the rank odor or the sight of dismembered White Tiger soldiers.

He had been ordered to investigate the disturbance at St. Jude's Cathedral and had gone to do so despite being well aware that he would not be able to recover Spike's body. The other man had done a bang-up job of ensuring that the battlefield bore no traces of anyone's survival, though Vicious could not believe that Spike had perished in the skirmish.

Odds had been against him, of course, but it's not like Spike had been required to attend to the infestation of White Tiger lackeys at this mournful edge of Red Dragon territory. Most would assume that he had gone out seeking notoriety because that is what they themselves were after. The Van would believe whatever Vicious told them about the matter since they didn't much know or care about Spike's character - he was merely one of countless pawns in their endless games of power over Tharsis.

Julia... well. Her reaction would be curious to behold. He had given her an assignment to end Spike's life - certainly not at the behest of the clueless Van - and it would be very telling to observe her response to his apparent death. Did she still plan to escape on her own now that he was gone? Had she ever truly wanted to leave? Would she be just as disbelieving of his fate? Had it all been part of the deception designed to hide them from the syndicate's watchful eyes and vengeful retaliation?

Deserters were not tolerated, after all. Spike and Vicious had eliminated a fair number of that type of doomed bastard over the years. They knew better than most what torture and demise awaited anyone who foolishly thought that they could elude capture.

The cormorant's talons dug into Vicious's shoulder for a heartbeat before the bird launched itself into the dreary sky with a horrible caw. Out of the corner of his eye, Vicious saw a different Red Dragon upstart flinch at the abrupt motion. It took everything in him to not draw his blade to end the lives of these inept oafs who had followed him to the ruins here. Their presence had not been necessary, the danger that had dwelt within these shattered stone walls and burial mounds had obviously been eliminated hours prior, yet they had been instructed to tag along anyway.

Perhaps the Van had less faith in the accuracy of Vicious's reconnaissance than he originally believed. It would not do to underestimate them, regardless of how weak-natured they were becoming as the years rolled on. That he had once revered those cantankerous fools... well, the past was the past and he was a wiser man now.

"Search the debris. Let me know when you find the eye." Vicious ordered. It was a futile mission - like seeking a needle in a haystack - and all the more impossible given that Spike's remains were most assuredly not present. But it gave him a perverse pleasure to send these spineless brats out into the massacre, a place they clearly found disturbing and would likely haunt their waking hours as much as their dreams. Good. Perhaps it would toughen them up a tad.

As for himself... it was time to track down Julia. Time to see what she knew, what she suspected, what she intended to do now...

Glancing boredly over the devastation one more time, eyes not taking in the brutality but rather sharply investigating the outskirts of the cemetery in case Spike was lurking nearby to oversee what sort of effect his supposed last stand had on his compatriots, Vicious was soon satisfied that there were no witnesses about.

A pity, that. He had been looking forward to letting his blade taste blood.

St Jude - the patron Saint of the hopeless and the despaired; also of desperate cases and lost causes; also of the impossible, of intentions that seem hopeless

I just want them a happy ending!