Title: He Ate A Decorator Once
Author: deborahw37
Disclaimer: If they were mine I'd play with them more.
Prompt: Challenge - I Ate a Decorator Once
Setting: Prague Season 2: Before Spike and Dru came to Sunnydale.
Word Count: 826
Rating: G
Author’s Note: This is silly :)
He Ate A Decorator Once.
Dru loved Prague; she delighted in roaming the labyrinth of streets and alleyways, making new discoveries at every turn. She loved the bridges and the statues and the profusion of churches and spent hours deep in conversation with the gilded angels which seemed to be everywhere in the city.
Most of all she loved hunting. Adored stalking, terrifying and draining the tourists and dropping their bodies into the murky waters of the Vltava River.
Spike loved Dru and Dru loved Prague so Spike was happy. Plus whilst Dru slept he was able to indulge his tastes for the opera and for the libraries and museums, and whilst Dru hunted the streets, he drank Czech beer in a little cellar rock club where the kids practised rebellion by wearing identikit uniforms and attitudes (black cigarette jeans and black shirts and spiky black gelled hair, black eyeliner, studied boredom). Rock videos played constantly on the cinema screen which adorned the back wall, MTV on satellite, old footage of The Sex Pistols and The Clash. The air was full of smoke (not all of it strictly legal) the floor was sticky with spilled beer, the lighting was subdued, the mood edgy and energetic.
It reminded Spike of London in the seventies and of the 100 club.
It reminded him of home.
The menu was limited and boasted neither Buffalo wings nor blooming onions but the pizzas were tasty… as were the clientele.
Yep, Prague suited the couple well, so well that they decided to hang around for a while. They found an apartment in Nerudova Street, had a delicious house warming meal (consisting mainly of the previous occupants) and settled in.
Within a week Dru was complaining about the décor, it was overdone, too dark, too dingy, too fussy, too rich. She wanted something more tasteful.
And Spike could deny her nothing.
Three weeks and four interior designers later Dru was still complaining and the good citizens of Prague were finding it increasingly hard to get their kitchens remodelled or their bathrooms re-plumbed. For some strange reason many of their favourite artisans seemed to have simply vanished off the face of the earth.
The apartment was a chaotic litter of fabric samples and colour charts. Some of the splashes on the walls may have been test patches for paint effects, others were the rather messy result of Dru losing patience with another unfortunate designer.
“You see my sweet Spike, he wanted to do the dining room in magnolia with a Wedgwood blue border and I was cross and my stomach was all rumbly “
“So you ate him?”
“Well, yes, after I’d played with him for a bit. Is my Spikey cross with his princess?”
Spike sighed and reached for the phone book to locate interior designer number five.
Interior designer number five was a rather attractive nummy treat of a man, dark eyed, dark haired , lean and sinewy. Spike hadn’t the heart to chide Dru for making googly eyes at the fellow, after all he rather fancied him himself.
However when he came home from the club one night to find the decorator’s trousers in the hall, his underpants draped halfway up the stairs and his artistic billowy shirt shredded and scattered over a wide area Spike’s patience came close to breaking. And when he entered the master bedroom and saw the bed draped in seriously tacky chintz patterned sheets and crowded with fluffy cushions he was halfway across the room in a blur of fists and fangs and fury even before registering that the offending bedlinen was further adorned with the draped, intertwined (and frankly sweaty) forms of his dark princess and interior designer #5
The last words the unlucky artisan heard were “ soddin’ pink flowers!!! What do you think I am? Some type of pouf?”
The last words he spoke were in a dialect which Spike sort of recognised and the harsh cries (which rapidly gave way to choked and desperate gurgles) sounded sort of... Curse-y ! And sort of summon-y and...
“Oh bollocks! Soddin’ Calderash clan”
Drusilla stirred from her languorous slumbers, muttered
“Ohhhh Spike, you really shouldn’t have done that! The gypsies will be all cross now"
gasped and slid slowly down the ludicrously floral pillows and into picturesque unconsciousness.
Oh balls, bollocks and buggeration!
Surely things couldn’t get worse than this?
Things got worse.
By morning it sounded as if the entire Calderash tribe were hammering at the door of their apartment and Spike, unable to fight in the sunlight, was forced to head for the less than picturesque environs of the Prague sewers and beat an inglorious retreat , dragging his semi conscious and delirious love behind him .
As dusk fell Spike, having carefully concealed Dru in the crypt of the deconsecrated St Lawrence's church, made his way to the National Library to begin the tedious process of locating a Calderash curse reversal spell, and to see if they had a D.I.Y. section… just in case.