onlythebranch | [valentine's day]

People might not look at Spike and Mad Sweeney and see a romantic couple, but they'd be really goddamn wrong.

There's a poem Sweeney carries around everywhere with him, folded around his lucky coin, that says otherwise. Spike might not like it, might be pretty fucking embarrassed by it, but Sweeney doesn't give a shit. He loves it. Maybe it isn't great, it's not a poem that's going to end up published in a book or even some shitty student poetry pamphlet, but it's his. It was written for him.

It goes everywhere with him. The poem and the coin.

Their wedding wasn't exactly traditional, walking around the city and finding some municipal employee to marry them, but they don't need traditional. And they sure as fuck don't need traditional on a day like today, this dumbfuck Hallmark hijacked holiday, doused in pink and red streamers and then dipped in chocolate before being hung out to dry. Sweeney's more interested in the ridiculous alien cult than he is Valentine's Day.

Except for some reason he's found himself standing outside a florist. All the shit inside is overpriced, way too much money for something that's just going to die, but he isn't walking on. He isn't going home. Instead he stands there a while longer and by the time he does go home, he's somehow holding a dozen red roses folded inside their paper.

He'd been lucky enough to get the last dozen. Luckier still that the woman behind the counter had given him a discount, them being the last ones and all.

Now he'll just be lucky if Spike doesn't laugh his ass off over them.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

At the sound of Sweeney's thundering footsteps coming down the hall, Spike was quick to reach for the remote, switching away from the knockoff Lifetime network romance he'd shut his brain off to watch. It landed on a baking competition, and he left it there. Within moments, he was already stifling the urge to shout critiques at the telly and the idiot overmixing his angel food batter.

Just as a key slid into the lock, he caught a whiff of roses, and he turned to look towards the door, brow arched.

He thought he'd feel a bit more stupid than this, coming down the hall with a dozen bloody roses in his hand to give to the husband on Valentine's Day. A part of him is still sure Spike is going to laugh, but what the hell. He's got a poem in his pocket that tells him Spike is a goddamn hopeless romantic, just like he's always been, too.

He can laugh if he wants to. Sweeney will know he still likes the flowers.

Shouldering the door open, he tosses his keys at the hall table, then kicks off his boots, leaving them by the door. With a faint, only slightly nervous smirk, he heads for Spike.

"Shut the fuck up," he says, holding the flowers toward him.

"Oh, darling, you say the sweetest things," Spike said, brow arching even higher as he pushed to his feet, looking up at his lover— his husband with a barely contained smirk.

"What's the occasion, then?" He asked, playing coy as he reached out and took the bouquet. It looked a bit bruised, perhaps by Sweeney's meaty paw wrapped around their stems, and Spike suspected he'd bought them impulsively on his way home. Dru used to love roses, especially to let them whither and die, their sickly sweet smell filling the rooms of whatever darkened liar they inhabited. Months after she'd left him, he found a dried petal tucked away in one of his books, and hadn't been able to bring himself to throw it away.

But he didn't recall anyone ever giving him flowers before. They were silly and soppily romantic, and he found himself inexplicably charmed by the scowl on Sweeney's face and the roses in their crinkled paper, gripped a bit too tightly.

"Happy Valentine's Day," he answers, still scowling and he feels stupid and maybe a little bit romantic. Mostly fucking stupid, though, even if he knows Spike is just messing with him. The both of them, whether people would think it or not, have a romantic side and it's come out once or twice before in his life, with his wife and again, in weird fucking ways, with Laura, but never as often as it does with Spike.

He's quiet for a moment, waiting for some kind of reaction, and then he laughs suddenly.

"Do we even own a fuckin' vase?"

"'course not," Spike said, moving the flowers to one arm and moved in close, barely any room between them. "Might have a beer mug big enough, if we trim the stems a bit."

He smirked.

"You're making me look bad, love," he said, smirking a bit as he smoothed the pad of his thumb along the deep crease between Sweeney's brows. Pressing up on his toes, he hooked his hand behind Sweeney's neck and pulled him down into a kiss.

"Yeah, that's why I did it," Sweeney answers, his eyes closing at the press of Spike's cool thumb against his brow. "To make you look bad."

They're both such dumb fucking idiots, he thinks, slipping his arm around Spike's back and sinking into the kiss. Even now, together, in love, fucking married, some messed up part of Sweeney wants to bite at Spike's mouth, take the romance out of it, but even doing that wouldn't really take the romance out of it at all. No way to take it out when it's so fucking ingrained anyway.

"I love you, you dumb bastard," he mutters against Spike's mouth and then kisses him again, as sweet as he ever has.

"'Course you do," Spike countered with a smug smirk, catching Sweeney's bottom lip between his teeth and biting down just enough to sting.

He stepped back, giving the other man's chest an affection pat, before backing his way towards the kitchen, flowers held against his chest.

"I love you, too, you ginger twat."

"You fuckin' better," he answers as he follows Spike into the kitchen. "A dozen red roses? Shit. That's better'n most folks out there are gonna get tonight."

He grins, looking pleased with himself, and pretty goddamn amused. Apparently there's a bloody meteor shower or something of the sort and he figures if he wants to get real romantic, he can drag Spike up to the roof to watch it.

"So what?" he asks. "This shit gonna get me laid or what?"

"Oh, is it? Well, that's rather depressing for them," Spike smirked over his shoulder, setting the bouquet carefully on the counter as he began opening cupboards in search of something to put the flowers in.

"Is that what these are? Payment for services? Well, I think that could be arranged."

"Nah, we trade orgasms for blood," he answers with a shrug, finally reaching past Spike to pull a beer mug out of the cupboard. It looks just about deep enough for the flowers. "That's the payment. Dunno who's gettin' paid and who's makin' the payment, but feels like an arrangement t'me."

He's so full of shit and Spike knows he's full of shit. The flowers, the poem in his pocket, the way he's looking at Spike now, openly adoring, like there's not a single other fucking person he gives a shit about in this way. And there isn't. Not in Darrow. Laura's the only one who might've come close in her own twisted way, but she's gone now, and there wasn't ever going to be anything with her like what he has here.

This is everything he wanted without having the slightest fucking idea it was coming for him after all these years.

"Well, when you put it like that, it sounds so sordid," Spike said with a sly grin, reaching for a large pair of kitchen shears and clipping the drier ends of the roses' stems.

"Blood dries up, the orgasms go with it, eh? Sounds fair."

"Good thing the blood ain't ever gonna dry up then, huh?" Sweeney asks as he runs the tape and fills the mug with some water before he sets it on the counter. Then he presses up behind Spike, watching him with the shears, his arm slung loosely around his waist.

"Or any of the rest," he murmurs, pressing his lips to Spike's hair as he speaks. Any of the rest could mean anything, but he thinks Spike will know what he's saying. What he really means.

[valentine's day]

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject