Automated Utopia :: Chapter Five.
Title: Automated Utopia
Author: fenderlove
Rating: This chapter is rated PG-13 though the overall story is rated R.
Summary: This fanfiction is set in a Victorian SteamPunk Alternate Universe in which inventions such as Charles Babbage's Difference Engine and the harnessing of steam-power have launched a technological revolution far earlier in history. The time is 1885, and Angel Investigations is working for Scotland Yard. A new case involving a missing artifact from the British Museum and a demonic cult sends the wayward detectives on a whirlwind adventure to reclaim the object before all is lost.
Warnings: This chapter contains shirtless manpires and consumption of alcohol and tobacco.
Pairings: Spike/Fred.


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Automated Utopia :: Chapter Five.

The members of Angel Investigations were huddled on the front stoop of No. 117 Fairfax Street as their employer hastily removed the ring of keys from his waistcoat pocket. All were eager to escape the bitter cold of the pre-dawn air. Spike lagged behind, having been delayed by having to remove his driving goggles and gloves. Just as he was exiting the Seville, Angel turned slightly to stop him.

"You cannot leave that hunk of metal on the street," Angel said, keys jangling as he turned the lock and pushed open the door. "Take it back to the Mews."

Spike bristled instantly, "Surely someone wouldn't mind taking it back in the morning... Someone less likely to become a walking incendiary when the sun rises than, say, you or myself."

"Do as I say for once," Angel groused as the others brushed past him into the warmth of the townhouse.

"I'm injured," Spike whinged somewhat petulantly, indicating the wounds to his neck.

Angel snapped, "As I am! Now stop being a brat and take that infernal machine back to the Mews."

Spike opened his mouth to respond, a cruel response instantly forming on the tip of his tongue, but he bit it back. His jaw ticked in irritation as he gritted his teeth. He got back into the Seville and slammed the door. He leaned out the window and said in a tone that spoke more volumes about his anger than his words ever could, "I suppose I should be grateful that you aren't insisting I need an escort for this as well. After all, I could get up to all sorts of nefarious schemes without someone to act as my warden!" With that, the Seville's engine roared to life, the tesla lights a blur in the foggy pre-dawn darkness as it rumbled down the street.

There was an uncomfortable silence when Angel stepped over the threshold of the townhouse, shutting the front door a little harder than he should have, the panes of glass rattling in their frames.

Fred was first to break the silence, the remains of Angel's volley gun in her arms, "I am just going to the workroom to begin the repairs before I head off to bed." Her voice was cold, expressing her distaste for the exchange between the two vampires. She moved towards the door leading down to the ground floor and the basement, her footfalls heavy on the stairs.

Wesley coughed self-consciously, shifting a bit from foot-to-foot, "Yes, I think I will give Dr. Breedlove's notes another once-over before I turn in for the night." He went to the library, closing the door behind him.

"And I'll see about getting Norman something to eat," Lorne said, carrying the sleeping baby demon wrapped in his coat, before disappearing into the kitchen.

Gunn and Angel were left in the foyer. As Gunn turned towards the stairs to the second floor, Angel moved to speak to him, but he was halted before he had exhaled a breath.

"Before you ask me, I will not tell you where Spike goes while he's out to the Mews. All that's important is that he's not up to any deviant activity," Gunn said with a nod to further show his affirmation of the fact, and then added, "Well, not while he's out fetching the auto in any case."

"I never said-" Angel began but was again quickly interrupted.

Gunn shook his head with a hint of sarcasm in his tone, "No, you simply had me follow Spike for no reason."

Angel's face coloured slightly, "I never meant to imply a distrust in his behavior, you know. I just wanted to be imformed as to where he was going."

"Did it not occur to you to simply ask him yourself?" Gunn asked as he continued up the stairs, waving a good-night as he did.

Angel was struck silent by this. He stood, alone, in the foyer, looking first to the stairwell which Gunn had taken and then out the window to the fog-ladent street down which Spike had traversed in the Seville. "The thought didn't occur to me," Angel mumbled to himself, a little confused by his own actions. He sighed heavily, pinching the bridge of his nose as he let the curtain fall closed. Angel decided it was best if he headed off to bed; there was nothing more he could do about this case tonight. As he ascended the stairs, he took one last glance at the front door, wondering if Spike would remember to lock it upon his return. Angel pushed those thoughts away and went to his rooms in the uppermost portion of the house.

*****

Fred had given a half-hearted effort to repairing Angel's volley gun cane for the better part of an hour before finally determining it was a lost cause until she had cleared her head with a decent spot of rest. She tossed her spectacles on the work table and rubbed her eyes. Perhaps after a few hours of sleep and a warm breakfast she would have a better disposition for approaching the repairs. Her legs felt like they would give out from under her as she had to walk back up the stairs. Fred cursed whoever built a house with such steep, narrow staircases, and she cursed whoever invented high-heeled shoes even more. When she paused to catch her breath as she reached the top landing, she noticed that the door to Spike's room was ajar, a flickering light glowing from within.

Peering inside curiously, Fred was able to catch sight of Spike standing in front of a small washstand which was wedged tightly between two bookcases in the room, which was no more a room than a closet or a small pantry. Spike was shirtless in front of his wash basin, his braces hanging down about his legs, the light from the heater stove on the other side of the room casting strange shadows on the skin of his back. It appeared that he was attempting to assess the still-open wound to his neck in the non-reflection of the tiny mirror mounted to the wall over the washstand.

Feeling bold, Fred ventured into the room, "It looks like it might be starting to heal."

Spike winced as he pressed a warm compress to his neck and then turned to face her, "I don't think the little nipper did any permanent damage."

It occurred to Fred that she had never been in Spike's room before. It seemed even smaller now that she was standing inside of it. Despite it's size, the room really was quite homy and comfortable. Fred was slightly envious of warmth in Spike's room. She could feel some heat radiating through the floor from the boiler in the basement; added to the heater-stove, small space was almost luxurious compared to the chill in her room on the second floor. She imagined Spike never had to worry about his feet touching an ice cold floor in the mornings.

Fred wandered about, mentally cataloging the room's contents as she was often taken to do in any new environment she was in. Spike's furniture was catty-whompusly arranged, possibly Spike's poor attempt to make a proper set of rooms out of the linen closet he was forced into. The bed was small with a mismatched headboard and footboard in an effort to create a four-poster. The canopy, however, was a red flannel blanket which sloped awkwardly from the chipped yellow painted headboard with taller, skinnier posts to the shorter posted mahogany footboard. The bed itself was layered with many quilts and pillows. Fred thought to herself that it looked quite inviting in a curious way.

On the opposite wall were Spike's washstand and bookcases. The books that were toppling out of the shelves seemed to all be secondhand, spines cracked and bent with pages falling out. A cabinet missing its doors and brimming with various bottles and boxes of hair colourants labelled "Hydrogen Peroxide," "Turkish Cassia Blonde," and "Paraphenylenediamine" was precariously a-fixed to the wall above the mirror. Fred reached up and carefully removed a box from the cabinet, admiring the lovely illustration of a blonde harem dancer on a flying carpet.

"You aren't going to lecture me on the immortality and vanity of hennaing my hair, are you?" Spike said, quirking his eyebrow.

Fred laughed and shook her head, "No, I'll leave Angel to that." She opened the box and quickly closed it, the smell wafting out of it nearly overpowering her. "Oh, that is an olfaction disaster."

"If you think that is awful, you should smell the bear grease that Angel uses on his hair before he douses it in lavender water," Spike said with a smirk. "And the big lummox has the audacity to call me vain."

"How do you think I would look as a blonde?" she asked, indicating the Oriental beauty on the box of henna.

Spike spoke without a moment of hesitation, "You would look beautiful no matter what colour your hair was."

Fred was a bit startled by his frankness, and it was obvious that Spike, while not regretting his sentiment, wished he had guarded his conduct a bit better in regards to his burgeoning friendship with the inventress. She wandered to the centre of the room, unsure of how to respond to him. She stood next to the escritoire with a roll-top that appeared to be stuck halfway between open and closed. Her fingers gingerly touched the sketches of toys, jewelry, and other novelties for Spike's metal-working that littered the desk's surface. She picked up one sketch that truly sparked her interest and sat down on his bed with it.

"This is wonderful," Fred smiled, her eyes studying the drawing of what appeared to be a steam-powered duck for the bath complete with little paddle-wheels and a teeny smokestack.

Spike attempted to hide his embarrassment under the guise of removing a medical kit from beneath his washstand, "It's nothing, really. It's not like I could ever get it to work if I tried to make it." Sitting on the bed a respectable distance from where Fred was seated, he opened the kit and removed clean gauze and a roll of linen bandages.

Musing over Spike's design, Fred thought it was a clever idea but it was obvious that the vampire did not grasp the mechanics behind creating such a toy, only the most aesthetic placement of gears and such. She noted a few lines of flowing yet miniscule script near the bottom of the page.

"While traversing his porcelain pond/This mechanical fowl heats your bath/End-to-end with nary a set path..." she read aloud, having to squint slightly to make out each word.

Fumbling with the staunch of gauze in his hand, Spike interrupted her, a little defensive, "It's just scribbling."

"You should make this," Fred said reassuringly, holding up his drawing. "You could get a patent and sell it to a toy store. I'm sure it would be a success."

"Perhaps, but I don't know where to begin in constructing it," he replied, his voice soft and unsure. He winced at how unlike himself he sounded. After having difficulty in tending to his own wound, he felt one of Fred's small hands at his shoulder while the other took the gauze from his hands.

"Here," Fred spoke, gently placing some of the gauze over the bite to Spike's neck and carefully wrapping the linen bandages over his shoulder to hold it in place.

Spike pondered if his room had always felt so warm. Her hands were unlike anything he felt before, fingertips roughened from years of working with molten metal and tesla coils and burners yet there was such tenderness in each tiny caress. He swallowed hard and hoped that it was not audible.

"I could show you how to get the parts to work, if you wouldn't mind me helping. I could even help you in fashioning inner workings for your duck," she continued, her voice barely above a whisper, her lips close enough to his ear as she leaned next him to secure the bandages over his shoulder that he could feel her breath on the shell of his ear.

"Thank you, but I'm not inclined to believe that anyone would be interested in such a trivial thing as a duck-shaped bath-water warmer."

"I would," Fred said in a most sincere manner. "I would like one very much."

Feeling the heat rise to his face, Spike was slightly embarrassed that her soft touches and kind words were having such a strong effect on him. His body was most definitely more ardently reacting to Fred's attention than he would have been comfortable with. He shifted awkwardly, clutching the medical kit tightly over his lap.

"Well," he began, "maybe we could make one... together... but it would just be for you," Spike responded, meeting her lovely brown eyes for the first time since he'd joined her on the bed.

She inched a bit closer, pretending to be checking to make sure his bandages were secure yet again. "And how would I repay you for another wonderfully clever gift?" Fred asked with a coy smile, tilting her head, the light from the stove catching the metal barrette he had given her earlier.

Spike's eyes widened, a lump in his throat. He hated feeling so timid, so much like what he had once been in his human life, a feeling he was now wholly unaccustomed to. When he had become a vampire, he had vowed to never feel meek again, yet somehow Fred made him want to be that shy poet again. He was sure in his heart that she would not turn away from him. Still, Spike had grown very fond of being bold and brash in ways that his vampiric nature afforded him. Something told him that Fred would also appreciate that part of him as well.

Standing up, he moved to his desk and began rummaging through the miscellany scattered and stacked on its surface. "You could accompany me to my club tomorrow night," he said, feeling more at ease now.

Fred looked pleasantly surprised, "I wasn't aware that you belonged to a club."

"Wesley isn't the only one who has social obligations," Spike winked, removing a small cigar box from beneath a tattered and well-used blotter in one of the desk drawers. He held the open box open to her, obligingly offering her her choice of a variety of macaroons. Fred glad took one as Spike continued, "My club is very exclusive and very prestigious." He sharply tugged a decrepit trunk from beneath his bed. Flipping the lid open and after a moment's search through the voluminous clutter inside the trunk, he produced a bottle of Tawny Port and two small mugs.

"And what club would this be exactly?" Fred queried, watching as Spike very gentlemanly poured her port first and his second.

"The Slap Bang Club," he answered, as they clinked mugs in cheers, "We're all rapscallions and ne'er-do-wells. We meet for dinner at the Jolly Dogs Theatre. Perhaps you and I could do some dancing if the music is right for it."

"Sounds exciting," she laughed, taking a small sip of the port. Indeed, Spike's club did sound exciting, and she was already looking forward to her first night out since she and Charles had courted.

They continued sharing the bottle of port and eating sweets. When they were suitably near-silly from the combination of libations and sugar, the pair began to discuss the case under their current investigation. Spike gave a rousing reenactment of his own theory of what had transpired, complete with play-acting, which consisted of grabbing his chest and prat-falling for Sir Augustus and then squinching his face up in a fair approximation of Dr. Breedlove's countenance. The performance left Fred gasping for air from laughing so hard.

"Perhaps if I had not become a vampire, I should have pursued the stage," Spike said, collapsing on the bed next to Fred.

She held her side, her corset beginning to dig into skin as she laughed, "You've definitely left me in stitches. Oh, you would have been a splendid actor."

Looking up at her as he rested on his elbow, Spike's face practically glowed from the praise, "I should have been a great many things, Winnifred."

Lorne had been passing by the still open door to Spike's room with a well-fed and returned-to-sleep Norman when he caught a brief glance of Spike laying on his bed on his stomach, without a thread of clothing on above the waist, offering a cigarette to Fred from a small silver case. The blonde vampire sat up to light her cigarette, very gently brushing her hair away from her face as he did.

"Come on, Norman," Lorne whispered softly to the baby demon, "these goings-on are a little bit too grown-up for you."

*****

In the dank corner of a dimly lit room, Betta George was awakened from unconsciousness by a bucket of quite chilly water being thrown onto his body. George was a Splendeen demon, not unlike the beta fish of front parlor fish bowls across England in appearance. He bolted up into the air, attempting to further himself away from the source of the water. He was much like a fish in the ways that humans know them but he did not need water to breath, and he most certainly did not like ice water being poured over him at all. And to top it off, whoever had placed him in such an awful place had taken his bowler! It was most uncouth!

The left side of George's scaly body felt bruised and swollen, his mind reeled as he tried to remember what had happened to him. He had attended a burlesque show with some of his friends, but the noisy crowd of people had over-powered his telepathic powers. Too many worrisome thoughts abounding had caused him to take the air in an alleyway next to the theatre. However, he had no memories of anything after that. Fearing who had taken him prisoner, George reached out with his powers, seeking the thoughts of anyone nearby, but something was blocking his abilities.

"There's no point in trying to read my mind, demon," a strange muffled voice said from within the darkness. "Your powers are useless against me."

"Why have you taken me?" George demanded, hovering four feet from the cold stone floor, unable to discern anything that would giveaway his location. He tried to telepathically call out to his friends for help, but his powers were indeed being hindered. "I have no money if that's what your after."

"I have no need of anything like that. You're going to use your talents, and if you do as I say, you might be allowed to live," the voice responded with an odd sort of chortle.

George retorted, "Well, fat lot of good that's going to do when I can't actually use my powers!"

"Stupid creature, I can as easily unfetter your telepathy just as easily as I have restrained it." The owner of the voice stepped closer to the small pool of light in the centre of the room cast from a dingy tesla lamp overhead. His, or possibly her, figure was hidden beneath a heavy cowl and cloak. George's captor tossed three strange-looking books at the floor before him- one of the books was larger than the other two. "You're going to find the person capable of deciphering these for me."

"What if I can't?" George questioned, hedging carefully away from the dark-clad figure.

"Splendeens aren't the only demons capable of psychic telepathy. If you cannot, we will find something else. But then of course, we won't need to keep you around." The odd chortling sound returned.

George felt a cold rush of fear settle over his body. Where was the Slap Bang Club when he needed them?


To be continued...