Future Ex-Girlfriend

Author: Emily

Pairing: Willow/Spike suggested, but mostly Spike/Harmony

Rating: PG-13, for language

Distribution: Bite Me, Please? Near Her Always and Soulmates. Anyone else, if you want it, just ask. I always say yes.

Disclaimer: The basic premise and characters belong to lots of people who aren’t me. There are several quotes directly from transcripts that don’t belong to me, either, and the song “Future Ex-girlfriend” belongs to Voltaire.

Dedication: To Dreamy. Happy birthday, darling!

Spoilers: Through “In the Harsh Light of Day”

Summary: Spike wonders what on earth he’s doing with Harmony

A/N: Song lyrics in asterisks

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
 
 
 

“Well, Devon dated her for a while, but she was too flaky for him. Which, stop and marvel at the concept.”

-Oz, “In the Harsh Light of Day”
 
 

Spike was cursing up a blue streak as he barged back into the crypt. He’d been so damn careful; doing everything he could to make sure that the slayer wouldn’t know that he was in town until he had the gem. He’d planned it all so meticulously, and it had all been going so well. He couldn’t believe all his efforts were shot straight down the drain just because that obnoxious twit of a minion had wanted to go to a party. Spike growled as he thought of Harmony. He had sent her out to hunt, not much caring what happened to her as long as she didn’t bother him for a couple of hours. And considering how appalling bad she was at hunting, it would take her a couple of hours to find a meal. For the time being, he had some peace and quiet.

He threw himself on his bed and closed his eyes, thinking back to his interaction with the slayer. The party had been going very well. The music was great, the alcohol was flowing, and Spike and Harmony had already snagged a very tasty main course to take home with them. But just as they were heading for the door, disaster struck.

“Spike!” the slayer had said, looking surprised. “And Harmony.”

Spike had fought the urge to take a swing at the bitch, just for old times’ sake. <Wait for the gem> he’d coached himself silently. <Won’t be much longer now.> Yeah, he’d hold off his fight with the slayer until he was invulnerable. Let the snippy little tart act so damn condescending then. Of course, just because he was holding off on breaking all of her bones into little tiny pieces didn’t mean he couldn’t use and abuse the opportunity to make fun of her date. Ridiculing the slayer’s love life was always fun.

“He's got. What's the word? Vulnerability.”

“And you with Harmony,” she’d replied. “What'd you do? Loose a bet?”

“Actually, how we met. It's a funny story.”

*Saw you on the street
We had to meet*

He’d been in Vegas. What was that they used to say? Lucky at cards, unlucky at love. Well, he had sod all luck with love, so he thought he’d give cards a try. Turns out, he didn’t have much luck with them, either. And then, there she was. A beautiful blonde shining like a glass diamond in the dirty alley where she was doing an absolutely horrible job of restraining the guy she was trying to drain. Spike went over and knocked the human out, causing Harmony to give him a look of complete adoration. He hadn’t been looked at like that in a long time.

*I thought I should greet you
In just one week I would delete you*

Even falling down drunk (which he was) it didn’t take Spike long to realize that Harmony wasn’t exactly the sharpest demon he’d ever met. At the time, he didn’t think it mattered. His plan was to use her, enjoy her, and then leave her behind. He wasn’t intending to stay long in Vegas, anyway. A demon in a bar had been babbling into his beer about the Gem of Amara residing in the Valley of the Sun. Spike suggested that the bloke check out Alaska, and then made his own plans to head back to Sunnydale. He figured a week with Harmony would be just about as much as he would want, and then he’d ditch her to head back to the hellmouth.

*People say the stupidest things
On their first date, like
“What's your real name?”*

When she asked him why his parents named him Spike, he’d started wondering if one week with her would be too long. But then she’d mentioned that she was from Sunnydale. In fact, she’d gone to high school with the slayer and her whole damn crew of sidekicks. Figuring that she might have the inside scoop on some useful dirt, he’d decided to bring her along. “Know thy enemy,” and all of that garbage. Besides, if the slayerettes didn’t know that she had been turned, she might be handy as a tool to use against them. Big mistake.

She started annoying him almost as soon as they got into the car. The first thing she had done had been to beg to be allowed to play with the radio. She insisted that since she was the one who had been most recently alive, she had a better idea of which stations to tune into for road trip music. Sick of hearing her beg and plead and whine, he agreed. After an hour of the Backstreet Boys (with Harmony singing along to every song) Spike thought that there couldn’t possibly be anything worse than listening to her sing, so he switched off the radio and asked her to tell him some more about herself, instead. That had been big mistake number two.

*They reveal their ignorance
But you adore them
So you just ignore them*

Now to be fair, Dru hadn’t always been the greatest conversationalist. Even Spike, with all his years of experience dealing with her, only understood what she was saying about half the time. But he loved her, so it never really bothered him that she was a little lacking in expository skills. Her other talents and attractions more than made up for it. Harmony was another story entirely.

*Then came you, raising the bar,
Oh, you, you won't be undone*

Harmony reached heights of annoying idiocy that Spike had never realized were even possible. Every single word out of her mouth aggravated him. Half of Dru’s conversation might have been nonsense, but every now and then, she’d say something truly intelligent or interesting or at the very least, intriguing. Spike sometimes felt that listening to Harmony actually drained away his intelligence. He felt dumber for having spent time with her.

*I looked into your eyes
And much to my surprise
I saw there was nothing in there
'Cause there's nothing
Between your ears but air!*

The word airhead must have been invented to describe Harmony. To call her stupid was an insult to stupid people. Whole new world of obtuse opened up before him every time she opened her mouth. It would have been amusing if it happened to anyone other than himself.

He tried to ditch her. It didn’t work. Like a bad penny, she kept showing back up. No matter what he said to her, no matter what he did to her, no matter how many times he physically pushed her out of the car and drove away without her (deliberately driving over her foot on one occasion), she just kept tracking him down and following him around. Sometimes he wondered if this was the Fates’ way of giving it to him up the ass for all the times he complained about Dru not paying enough attention to him. If so, screw the Fates. He’d get them for this, if it was the last thing that he did.

*There goes my future ex-girlfriend
She's as sweet as a rose
Yes, she is
She has such beautiful lips
Now, if only they were closed*

If she said one more damn word about how she wanted him to take her to sodding France, he could not be held responsible for his actions. All she did, day in and day out, was make demands. Buy me clothes, take me to a party, take me out to eat, take me to France, let me turn all of the bleeding Screen Actor’s Guild. It was enough to drive a demon out of his wits. Fortunately, once they hit Sunnydale, it became a little easier to block out the noise. Blasting a hole in a wall while you looked for a secret cavern holding mythological jewels tended to block out all other sounds. Most of the time.

Of course, once he got her in bed, he could usually find other ways to keep her mouth occupied. One thing the girl had going for her was that she was up for it anywhere, anytime, any way that he wanted it. There was no I-have-a-headache or Now’s-not-a-good-time or I-was-nearly-torn-apart-by-an-angry-mob-in-Prague-so-why-don’t-you-wait-on-me-hand-and-foot-and-never-get-anything-in-return-from-me-so-I-can-heal-enough-to-fuck-Angelus-for-days-at-a-time from Harmony. Ah, the joys of bird-brained American girls. Acts that a man wouldn’t have expected a prostitute to perform in Spike’s day were par for the course from any ditzy cheerleader you could find. And Harmony was the classic ditzy cheerleader.

*I love how you adore me
Oh, but honey how you bore me

Your life's such a wreck
I've lost all respect
I don't mean to surprise you
It took me just one week to despise you!*

Once upon a time, he had thought that having a girl like that would be fun. He had longed for a girlfriend who looked like a model, screwed like a professional, and had just enough brain in her pretty little head to think that everything he did was wonderful and perfect. Was it Oscar Wilde who said that when the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers? Well, whoever said it hit the nail right on the head. Just as Spike would like to hit Harmony on the head. Repeatedly. With a blunt object. Over and over again, not stopping until she finally, finally shut the hell up.  Sure, it was fun to be with someone who worshipped the ground he walked on, but it was a little insulting as well. If it took a complete moron to think that he was perfect, then what did that say about him?

*And I don't care that you're a model
'Cause let me say it's clear to tell
That your brain is shot to hell*

And Harm had the most bizarre ideas of ways to pass the time. For example:

“Harm, what are you doing.” It was a statement, not a question. He didn’t really want an answer. He just wanted her to stop. And go away. Preferably outside, into the nice sunny day, or maybe into a church to play with some crosses and holy water.

“I'm writing Spike loves Harmony on your back.”

“Why?” Spike asked. Several questions lay underneath that single word. Why would you write such an absolute untruth, why are you writing on my back in the first place, and why, in the name of all things unholy, did you feel the need to do it in lipstick? And then, of course, came the classic answer.

“I don't know; it's fun. I'm bored. You can write on me.”

“I've got to get back to work.” Translation: I’ve got to get anywhere where you aren’t.

“You love that tunnel more than me,” Harmony complained.

“I love syphilis more than you,” Spike replied, relishing the opportunity to use a three syllable word that she would actually understand. Harmony might have had the vocabulary of a dim-witted parakeet, but she knew her venereal diseases. Whether or not she would realize that she was being insulted was a whole other matter. Most likely, she’d just shrug it off and go back to her plan to turn Antonio Banderas.

*And no one cares that you love Keanu
Oh, what's the difference anyway
Everybody knows he's gay
Okay, I really don't know that
But let's face it
He's too hot to be straight!*

Staking Harmony himself was, of course, a very appealing option. He had come very close to it, once or twice. Once or twice an hour. Once or twice an hour, whenever she wasn’t around. It became more like once or twice a minute whenever she was nearby, for weeks, now. But he had to find the gem, first. Harmony knew the cemeteries like the back of her hand and had, for all her idiocy, cut the time he needed to find the gem nearly in half just by familiarizing him with the layout of the cemetery, and the major crypts. It was almost uncanny how much Sunnydale girls knew about cemeteries. Harmony claimed that the sheer abundance of them meant that the city had hardly any money, not to mention room, left over for parks and such. Any romantic, moonlit strolls had to take place through graveyards. Yes, that was his girl in a nutshell. She took frigging *walks through cemeteries* on dates until she was eighteen on the damn *Hellmouth*, and she still had no idea that vampires existed until she was turned. God, he couldn’t wait to be rid of her.

*There goes my future ex-girlfriend
That girl's such a prize
Yes, she is
She'll be the queen of the world
for a day or less in my eyes*

The worst of it was when she got bored. She had the habit of going out to wander around and the silly bint had an absolute talent for finding the absolute worst place to be at any given time, and choosing the absolute worst thing to do when she was there. Take, for instance, the time she decided to attack Willow.

It wasn’t as if he hadn’t told her a million times to stay away from the girl. Willow was his. He’d made up his mind about that that night back in the factory. The girl had spunk, and intelligence, and the sweetest smell Spike had come across in a century or more. Her neck… mmm… he still dreamt about it some nights, thinking of all the things he could have done to her if he had stayed instead of leaving to go after Dru. He’d wake up hard as a rock with her smell on his mind and her image burning behind his eyes and would fuck the hell out of Harmony.

When he told Harmony that Willow was strictly off-limits because he had his own plans for her, Harmony had ranted and raved (in a high, shrieking tone that felt like a needle being shoved in his ear) for nearly an hour, saying that he shouldn’t have any plans for a geek like that when he had someone like her to make “plans” for. Once Spike’s eardrums healed, he told Harmony that she couldn’t go after Willow because it would alert the slayer to be on her guard. It was partially true, at any rate. Besides, it kept her from shrieking. Spike really didn’t want to listen to her recount all of the ways in which she was better than Willow. The little time that he had spent with the redhead, she had amazed him with her determination, her loyalty, her surprising sympathy, and her totally unexpected courage. Even dead-drunk and totally miserable, she had impressed him more and more with every minute that he spent in her company. Harmony, for all her dubious charms, aggravated him more each second. As soon as he got his gem, he’d be more than happy to be rid of her.

*Perhaps I'll wear a suit
When I give you the boot
Oh, I hate to seem so superficial
I just think it’ll look more official!*

Oh yes, it was much more enticing to think about Willow. Once they were settled in Sunnydale, it was hard not to fantasize about the redhead. From what Harmony said, it was pretty clear that she and her fellow bitch-queens in high school had spent years making Willow as miserable as possible. Spike would imagine what it would be like to turn Willow and then set her loose on Harmony. It made Spike horny just to think about the brilliant redhead, vamped out and stunning in skintight leather, playing with Harmony and a blowtorch. He’d fuck Willow in the blonde’s blood while they removed her appendages one at a time (starting, of course, with her tongue). It was a lovely dream… Too bad it wasn’t possible. Until he had the gem, he had to be very careful. But once he had the gem, things would be different. Oh yes, his Willow would soon find that things were very different, indeed. But until then…

*There goes my future ex-girlfriend
She's as sweet as a rose
Yes, she is
She has such beautiful lips
Now, if only they were closed*

<Not much longer, now> he told himself again as he kept his eyes firmly closed. <Not much longer before the gem is mine and I can do whatever I want.> A wicked smile crossed his face and his cock stirred in his pants as he fell into his favorite fantasies of what he would do with his invincibility. Once he finished beating the slayer to a bloody pulp, he’d catch his beautiful witch and drag her into his bed. Spike moaned as he imagined biting into her as her orgasm hit, and then slashing open his own throat, feeling her take in his blood, take in his demon as he spilled himself inside her. She would be his childe, his mate, his own for all eternity. They’d torch Sunnydale, and then take on the rest of the world, maybe paying a little visit to his cheating bitch of a sire and her latest string of lovers. Spike’s smile grew wider. Yes, once he got his gem, everything would finally fall into place, and he’d have everything he wanted. Dru, Harmony, and the town that had witnessed so many spectacular kickings of his ass would be nothing more than a distant memory. Soon. Very soon.

*There goes my future ex-girlfriend
That girl's such a prize
Yes, she is
She'll be the Queen of the world
for a day or less in my eyes*

THE END

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