Title: I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day Author: kindred Disclaimer: These characters are the property of Joss Whedon. Rating: PG-13 Feedback: Yes, please. Summary: Christmas morning, 1881. For the wicked, every night was a calliope of sensation. Such revelries the world had rarely seen and depravities that would make even the Caesars blush. Darla was efficient at capturing a mark. Men of sense and privilege toppled at her feet for the possibility of an illicit rendezvous. The fine curve of an ankle or the vast depth of cleavage brought many things...monies, accommodations, invitations and then the sweet aria of the abattoir. Darla's family never went hungry and after a feast, to bed. Angelus would sprawl unconscious in his fancy silks and velvets, claiming the entire bed. His fine suiting, flecked with the unmistakable evidence of his activities, spoke of the careless sloppiness of a night's abundant debaucheries. Drusilla lay curled to his side, a calm vision of innocence betrayed, tucked into the bosom of Darla or in the arms of her William. Days and days and days ran together into a torrent of blood, the widening of eyes and the last living drop from a fatally aroused tear duct. One morning church bells roused Spike as he was nodding off to sleep, drunk on another night's dark oblivion. Pealing, clattering, riotous bells. Bells for the living and the dead. Bells for another chance. One day and the next, what did it matter? But these bells wormed their way beneath his skin and with them a remembrance. For unto you is born this day...a Savior, which is Christ the Lord. Every Christmas before this one had been spent in church. At home there was extra coal for the fire, Cook's scones with jam and then reading with his mother, and when his father was alive there had been such presents! But what was that pittance to compare with what he had now? Power and eternal life. Each night bowed at his feet, any woman ripe for the taking and the allegiance of the most powerful creatures that roamed the earth: his Drusilla, Darla and Angelus. So why was he awake and thinking of the bells of Christmas Day when he should be dreaming of gluttony and avarice and the milky breast he would surely defile that evening? Spike licked his lips for a hint of dried blood but tasted only the sweet memory of a roasted goose, his mother's smile and the decadent wonder of freshly baked scones.