onlythebranch | (no subject)

It's been days of restlessness now, near on a week, and by this point Mad Sweeney is sure Spike notices. He hasn't said anything about it, hasn't brought it up, and neither has Sweeney, not out of any desire to keep things to himself, but simply because he doesn't know what to say. He can't work out the reason for it, the cause behind this urge to move or risk forgetting everything he is.

There's no distance between them. For all his shitty behaviour and shittier habits, Sweeney hasn't pushed Spike away in an attempt to figure this shit out. He might go out and get blindingly drunk, but he goes back to Spike's place at the end of it and burrows into his bed and wraps a big arm over Spike's waist so he can properly fall asleep. He's a little more quiet lately, as quiet as a man like him is capable of being, but he thinks they've both been around long enough that Spike can understand that need.

And then one evening he's just sitting there. The sun is all but behind the horizon, dipping low enough to create long shadows and a dusky hue in the city. Dark enough that Spike can be out and Sweeney doesn't know where he is, but he thinks chances are good that Spike will find him. He's just sitting there in the park, near the lake where he had almost died, and he's smoking and thinking about nothing and then there's a voice in his head. A name.

Eorann.

Reaching up with one hand, Sweeney rubs his eye with the heel of his palm, then squints into the gathering night. Eorann. He can't place the name, only that he must have known her a long time ago, long before America, before Essie, before any of the world he knows now. He doesn't know what to make of it.

There's just so much he's forgotten.

Threaded | Flat

Spike noticed, of course. He noticed from the very onset. The distance, the absentmindedness, the disappearing for hours on end and returning stinking drunk, the quiet... It worried him-- of course it did, but he kept those worries to himself. Sweeney was a complicated man, with a long life stretching out behind him. It stood to reason that he'd be haunted once and a while, and Spike knew better than to demand he snap out of it, however much he might've wanted to.

Dozing through the afternoon, Spike woke to an empty apartment. It wasn't too unusual. They didn't officially live together, and both needed their space from time to time, but he couldn't help but feel the heaviness of it. Drinking down a pint of blood from the fridge, he took a quick shower, his hair still damp and curling as he struck out into the darkening evening.

It took no time at all to find him, his scent and the sound of his heartbeat having become something of a siren song long ago. Stepping up behind him, Spike reached out to touch his shoulder, hand sliding down to splay over his heart.

"Penny for your thoughts, love?"