onlythebranch | (no subject)

The worse Mad Sweeney's luck gets, the more he thinks about Laura fucking Moon.

It's fucked up, he's very aware of it, because when he thinks about her, he's not just thinking about how badly he wants his bloody coin back. He's thinking of that moment after the second accident, when he'd stood on that highway with his blessed coin between his fingers and just stared at her and known. He's thinking about that creeping insistence inside him that he do the right thing, whatever the fuck that means, and he's thinking about how angry he'd been, how badly he'd wanted to turn and walk away and leave her rotting there on the asphalt.

He's thinking of how gently he'd placed the coin back on her chest, how her dead, skinned muscles had felt under his fingertips.

She didn't deserve the gift he'd given her, but then, he knows he had never deserved it either.

These days he's drinking more than he usually does, which is saying something. Chances are nobody really notices, he's drunk more often than not even when times are good. It's just that drinking makes the rest of it sort of blend into the background and he can forget all this shit he keeps thinking about. It starts with the coin, but it ends up at Laura, and over and over he finds himself wandering back to the idea that it's not the coin he wants to see again, but her.

And that idea can go fuck itself.

He drinks straight from the bottle, Southern Comfort minus the fucking coke, drinks enough that he's stumbling when he moves from the kitchen to the living room. There's a moment's consideration when he thinks he ought to call someone, but then he just collapses on the couch with the bottle resting against his thigh and he turns on the TV. What he gets is some reality show about body painting, which is fine, which is good enough for him. It's brainless and he doesn't have to think, he can just get lost in the alcohol and the colours and when he finds himself drifting off, he thinks he's never been so thankful for a little bit of sleep.

The last thought he has before he slips into a dreamless black is that he wishes he could see her.

It's late when he wakes again. The TV is still on, but it's a different show now, some late night bullshit that never quite makes any sense and it's made worse by the fact that he's still drunk. The lights are off, the room is dark, but all at once he's aware of some change. There's pressure against his thigh other than the bottle of whiskey, something cool and slightly damp.

The air smells like blood.

Carefully, he sits up and sets the bottle aside, then reaches for the lamp he knows is beside the couch. The room floods with warm, yellow light and he looks down into the pretty, dead eyes of Laura Moon.

She's wearing the same clothes she was the night of the accident. The one that killed her. The one he caused. She's lying on the couch beside him, her head propped up against his thigh at a perfect angle that he's staring down into her face. There's blood on her lips, dripping gently onto his jeans, leaving a dark red smear he can feel against his skin.

This isn't Laura with his coin. This is Laura quivering in her death throes on the side of a highway. This is Laura after deciding to suck Robbie's cock one last time, after Sweeney had swerved his truck into their lane on Wednesday's instructions. This is Laura before the coin, the Laura who should have been left to rot in her grave, but instead she's here. On his fucking couch.

He can't stop looking at her. He takes his phone out of his pocket and dials the first person he thinks might be able to help. It's late, he's not sure they'll answer, but when they do -- or maybe it's their voicemail, he's too drunk and too fucked up to think about it -- he just says, "I'm at home. I need help."

Then he hangs up again. Hangs up and stares at Laura staring back at him.

"Fuck," he whispers.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Spike didn't have the chance to even mutter, "What are you bloody on about?" The line was dead before that, and he was left staring at the phone, as if some sort of answer might spring up on its infuriatingly tiny screen.

In the middle of a closing shift, Spike considered sending his apologies, but there was something in Sweeney's flat, distant tone that told Spike that this was nothing to simply brush off. When he strode out of the club, he was uncertain whether or not he'd have a job later, but he wasn't too terribly broken up about it.

Perhaps it was time to move on.

He was there in under ten minutes, parking just down the block. As he climbed the stairs, turning the corner down Sweeney's hall, he could already smell the blood. The stench of death. The coming of rot.

"Bloody hell," he muttered to himself, startled when he tried the knob and found the door unlocked. Inside, the smell was stronger, his empty stomach giving a quiver of hunger.

Quietly shutting the door behind him, he took in the scene, his brow arched and his hands resting upon his hips.

"What's all this, then?"

The last thing he wants to do right now is explain himself, but he figures there aren't many people who are going to let him get by without. Spike might, if he refuses to give the details, but he needs the help right now, he doesn't have the slightest fucking idea what to do with a body in a place like this.

She'll not be the first body he's had to get rid of, but those years are long in the past and they'd been in places he'd been familiar with in ways he's not yet with Darrow. Because he hasn't had to be. Not until now.

"Meet Laura Moon," he says, his voice rough and low. He'd gotten up after calling for help, he hadn't been able to sit there and let the fresh blood from some awful internal injury continue to drip onto his leg. "The bitch with my coin before she got hold of it."

Dead, dead, dead. Because he killed her. Caused the accident that did this to her. That's the bit he thinks he can get away with keeping to himself, at least for now, and he looks at Spike with an unreadable expression. "Don't know what happened, mate. I passed out, next thing I know she's here on the couch, her head practically in my fuckin' lap."

"Wonderful," Spike said flatly, his lips curling with distaste. Sweeney smelled of guilt, of despair. It rolled off of him in waves, bitter and sickly. She wasn't simply the bitch who'd stolen his coin-- that much had been obvious the first time Spike had heard her name, but not the truth of it was nearly a tangible thing.

"And you want me to help you get rid of her, I suppose," he said, arching a brow. Drawing in a breath, he took a step toward the couch, dropping into a crouch beside it.

Buffy's lifeless, glassy stare flickered through his mind and his jaw twitched as he clinched his teeth. "We've got a few options. None of them are particularly pleasant, though I can't imagine this is the first body you've had to deal with, mate."

It's not just that. If it were just a matter of getting rid of a body, Sweeney would have done it without hesitation, and as soon as he realizes that, he tries to stuff it down. The reason he'd needed someone else here with him is because it's Laura.

And he'll be fucked if he doesn't hate that.

"Nothing pleasant about it one way or the other," he says, the words feeling as if they're grinding out of him. "She didn't even have the decency to bring my bloody coin with her."

Even if she had, he knows he wouldn't take it from her. Somehow that pisses him off even more, but he doesn't have the energy for real anger right now. "Where the fuck am I supposed to put her?"

"There are a few places in the countryside remote enough that she'd likely not be found. And I've put a few bodies in the Necropolis. People tend not to bat an eye at upturned soil there," Spike admitted with a shrug. Then, to clarify, he said, "No humans. Not all demons go poof when you off them. It's bloody inconvenient."

He got to his feet, walking across the room to grab a blanket from a well-worn armchair and moving to drape it over her. He'd seen countless bodies in his life, and they rarely got to him, but there was something about her hazy, dead-eyed stare.

"The other options aren't quite so nice. There's a man downtown'll put her in a veterinary crematorium for a price."

"Fuck," Sweeney says again. Anyone else, he doesn't think he'd be fussed about it, he'd shower gold coins at the man's feet to get him to get rid of a body and a crematorium, even one meant for pets, would do just the trick. But he can't face the idea of doing that to her.

He's not sure why. At least it'd prevent her from coming back.

"The Necropolis," he says on a heavy exhale. "Probably the best place. Keep it simple." And he thinks she'd like it better there than some shadowy corner of the woods where she'd just be forgotten.

Not by him, but by time. Same as everyone.

"Wise choice, mate," Spike said, blowing out a breath he didn't need. Getting her out of the apartment would be the real challenge, but at least she was petite.

"We'll use the back stairwell. Come on, mate. We'll move the car 'round," Spike said, motioning to Sweeney to follow him. "You need some air."

Truth be told, Spike didn't want to leave him there with the body. It seemed to screwing with his head enough already, and Spike would've preferred to do this with someone at least partially competent.

He doesn't like being told what to do, but it's not as if Spike's wrong and Sweeney gives another slow exhale before he nods. Turns his back on Laura. Just fucking leaves her there.

Not the first time he's done it.

"It's my fault," he says as they head down the hall. It's late and it's quiet, but he keeps his voice low anyway. The last thing they both need now is some nosy neighbour deciding to eavesdrop on their conversation and then try to get them arrested. "Her bein' as she is. I caused the accident that did her in. Did it on purpose, too. Off fuckin' Odin's instructions."

"And then that coin of yours brought her back?" Spike said, trying to make sense of a story that was likely senseless. Whenever gods entered the mix, all reason flew out the bloody window, in Spike's experience.

In the stairwell, he made sure to check for any cameras or anything that might put a wrench in their quiet escape.

"Did you know her? When she was alive, before?"

"That coin of mine brought her back," he agrees with a sour look. He's trying to be helpful, to look at what they're doing, judging whether or not they'll be able to get out without being seen, but he keeps getting distracted. Laura is lying dead in his apartment. Dead because of something he did. Because Wednesday asked him to.

Because, just like Shadow, he's Wednesday's man.

"No," he says. "Watched her a bit to get a handle on her schedule, but I didn't know her. Not until after she came back and wouldn't give me my bloody coin." Not until the days he'd spent on the road with her and Salim, then just the two of them. The second accident. The choice he'd made to give his coin back to her.