Archive of Our Own

Spike shouldered his way through the doors of the cantina, not caring who or what happened to get in his way. He was hoping that someone would object, would get in his face about it, and then he could chuck it all, get into a good old-fashioned, stress-relieving brawl. He needed a fist to the chops to help wipe searing images of Dru with that simpering, treacle-antlered git from his brain.

Sadly, it seemed that no one wanted to oblige him. Second-best solution then – drink. Get paralytic enough and he wouldn’t remember his own name, much less her face. Or the mental picture of her playing tonsil-hockey with antler-boy. God, he needed a drink. Preferably several. At once.

“Cerveza!” he bellowed at the weedy fellow behind the bar. “An’ Jack, if you’ve got any of that in this hellhole. Gallons of it!”

“Wait your turn.” The admonishing tone was gentle, but the deep bass voice rumbled the floorboards and vibrated straight up Spike’s spine to rattle his teeth. He turned quickly, ready to challenge whomever had dared – only to meet a trench coat sleeve. A sleeve that looked to be about three feet around the arm. He looked up – way up – to discover that the owner of the sleeve was some kind of demon, bright red and lantern-jawed. Stumps of sawed-off horns on his forehead gave him the incongruously jaunty air of an old-time aviator with his goggles pushed up.

Just went to show how rattled Dru had left him, when he couldn’t see a moving mountain in front of him. No matter.

“Piss off. I want a beer.” Lots of beers.

“And I said wait your turn.”

That was all the invitation Spike needed. He balled a fist and swung blindly, hoping that bipedal form meant the vulnerable bits were located in roughly the same places.

The next thing he knew, his hand was enclosed in a scarlet fist and what felt like a ton of bricks descended on his shoulder. Might as well have been bricks, he decided on looking at it. The demon’s right hand was a massive stone monstrosity nearly as big as Spike’s whole torso, and had him in a pincher grip front to back.

Any more struggle and his navel would be introduced to his backbone – and while it wouldn’t be fatal, it would certainly crimp his style for a while. Having had the similar experience much more recently than he cared to remember, Spike reluctantly chose the side of discretion and allowed himself to be settled onto a barstool.

Once he saw that Spike was going to be relatively reasonable, the demon gestured to the bartender who swiftly and silently deposited two frosted bottles in front of them, and swept away.

Recognition circuits belatedly firing in his brain, Spike identified his adversary cum benefactor. “You’re that Hellboy bloke. The one the tabloids keep writing about. The one who hunts down demons.”

Hellboy – for so he was – nodded acknowledgement. “I am.”

“Bloody turncoat, you are. Turning on your own kind.” It didn’t stop Spike from taking a long pull at his beer, however.

“And you have a problem with that?”

“Yeah.” Well, no, really, not if it meant taking out some of the excess population and leaving more of the swag and the fun for the likes of him, but damn it, it was the principle of the thing.

“Sucks to be you, then.” Hellboy turned back to the bar and proceeded to thoroughly ignore him.

There were no words that would express the depth of his outrage at such impertinence.

“You heard we were down here, me an’ Dru. You’ve come to take us out, haven’t you? Who sent you? The Slayer? You’ll get to my princess over my dead body.”

Hellboy turned back slowly, resignation written in every line of his craggy face. “I came for the beer, after a long, hard day. That’s all. And last I heard – along with everyone else in the bar, I might add – you and your girlfriend seem to be on a break right now.”

“We are not-- It’s no bloody business of yours what we are or aren’t!”

“What you aren’t is worth any more of my time or energy. I bought you a beer, so shut up and drink it.”

“You saying I’m not evil enough for you to come after? You’re as bad as she is, saying I’ve gone soft.” He forgot his spirited defense of Dru of a moment previous in the heat of this challenge to his own importance.

“Didn’t say anything. Doesn’t mean it’s not true.”

“ ’m evil,” Spike insisted.

“Try misguided.”

Now that was just going too far. Spike reached for his trump card, though he’d be roundly mocked in certain quarters for having played it. “Learned from Angelus, I did. Me an’ Dru, along with his bitch-queen. Were the scourge of Europe, we four.”

Hellboy sighed. “Spare me the overblown melodrama. Nazis were the real scourge of Europe. I should know. I hate those guys, but they won’t stop turning up every damn place I go. The four of you were small-time evil, in comparison. Penny-ante.”

Spike drew himself up, throwing his chest out belligerently, and tried to ignore the fact that the top of his hair would have barely grazed the top button of Hellboy’s trench coat. “Fine one to talk, you are. I’m more than twice your age.”

“Haven’t learned a thing in all that time, either. Too bad.” The stone fist descended on his head like the wrath of God and drove Spike into limbo. The last thing he heard was the delicate crunch of breaking glass, and then his beer was soaking into his hair.

“Waste of a good beer,” he heard the mountain rumble regretfully, and then he heard no more.

***

When he finally woke to find himself propped up in a corner, it was with an evil throb in his skull and an even more evil taste in his mouth. Hellboy – and Dru – were both long gone, and the bartender was making sidelong glances in a way that suggested he’d long outstayed his own welcome.

Fine. Cruddy little bar in some forsaken sinkhole of a town, anyway. Didn’t even have enough technology to be able to bring in any up-to-date football scores. The sooner he got the stink of this place off of him, the better he’d like it.

But during his involuntary rest, his mind had spawned an idea. He’d show them evil. Make Drusilla beg to take him back, he would. First stop: Sunnydale.

He’s got a date with a witch.