helltapestry sent : ‘ ain't you a sight for sore eyes. y'know, starin' at so many zombies makes me appreciate the finer things in life. '
“he said he was a what — ?”
spike actually sets down the beer can and leans forward, like he must have misheard. it casts this whole fucking afternoon into an even more surreal light. crane downs half of his own beer in two swallows.
“‘licken - thrope.’ spike — seriously, you think i can make this shit up? hand to god, man. he said he was the victim of an ancient curse, and that, uh — that he had to leave his safe zone because one of the survivors there was a —”
“then what, fuckin’ bigfoot?”
“colder.” he grins. “a ghoul. wanted me to help him grab, uh, wolfsbane, and — fuckin’ cinnamon? for some bullshit ‘cure’ dahlia told him about.”
“dahlia — that’s the one who thinks she’s a witch, right?”
“i’m not so sure she isn’t. or that she isn’t batshit enough to really believe it, anyway.”
“jesus, mary ‘n joseph, every time i think the world can’t get any crazier.” spike snorts a disbelieving laugh and shakes his head, picking up his beer again to gesture at crane with it. “what is it about you, man?”
“you attract crazy. you got this whole all - american, white - boy - former - military thing, you got most of the people in this city looking to you just as much as brecken, but — still, here you are, talkin’ to me about werewolves and ghouls ‘cause you managed to run across the one crackpot left who can’t even pronounce the word ‘lycanthrope.’”
“— lycanthrope?” comes deanna’s voice from the doorway. “damn. what’d i miss?”
crane looks over at her, the amusement in his grin softening around the edges. “oh, nothin’ much, just a guy —”
“crackpot,” spike corrects with a lift of the beer can.
“crackpot,” crane amends. “thought he was under some werewolf curse. don’t worry — i helped him find a cure. just in time for the full moon.”
she lets out a chuckle of an exhale, almost like it’s more to herself than to them; almost like she gets the joke better than they do.
there must be something all too plain in the way her eye contact holds crane’s, because spike clears his throat, pushing himself into a stand and arcing his empty beer can into the trash.
“you kids catch up,” he says, the uptick of a knowing smile at the corner of his mouth. “be easy, crane. see ya ‘round, dee.”
deanna moves slightly to the side to let him pass, then promptly takes his unoccupied seat. not before she snags herself a drink and pops it open with a satisfying fizz. “so,” she says.
“ain’t you a sight for sore eyes. y’know, starin’ at so many zombies makes me appreciate the finer things in life.”
he laughs and there’s a softness to it. genuine. heat touches the exposed skin on the back of his neck. she always does this, and he can rarely tell if it’s accidental or calculated or some combination of both that even she doesn’t know the finer points of yet. it started off small. subtle enough to overlook, to brush off and compartmentalize when there are a million other things coming at them from all sides, all the time.
moments like this, it’s harder to pretend nothing’s going on. moments like this where it’s just the two of them and the maelstrom outside is quiet.
“you’re good,” he says, but there’s more to it than that.
more in the constant friction between them than just a little heat.
canned fucking beer. go figure. remind him to bust into brecken’s stash next time.
“aside from the finer things — and let’s not forget the five - star view,” the visual tour he takes is anything but accidental, “what are we drinkin’ to?”
