Frozen in time. That's what all vampires were to an extent. Some took it to the extreme-- never changing their styles in clothing, living or killing. As the world changed around them, sometimes too fast even to be seen, they stayed the same.
And, more and more, as the world became modern and faster and it no longer took weeks to cross the ocean but merely hours, and information traveled faster than the speed of light, and they could be tracked, those stuck in the past perished.
Spike wouldn't be one of them. He changed with the times. His clothes, his mode of speech, his methods of killing. He adapted to automobiles and telephones and televisions and computers. To blood banks and flamethrowers. He learned to love first silent pictures, then talkies, then glorious color films. Now there were 'digitally mastered' and 'hi def', and while he didn't bother to learn what those terms meant--and most humans didn't either--he knew he liked them.
He knew how to make use of them.
So, he thrived in the modern era, moving through the decades like a human, changing identities as easily as he changed his clothes. One decade pegged trousers and skinny ties. The next Nehru jackets over baggy pants. Then ripped jeans hung low on his hips and blouson shirts that reminded him of his youth. When he turned punk, he found a style he liked, modifying it slightly over the years, removing the safety pins from his ears, adding neutral shirts to the jeans and boots, then a splash of color. The duster stayed in style and punk hung around enough for twenty-five years that he didn't look out place.
That he drove a car considered a classic didn't matter either.
It was retro. He liked the term.
Drusilla didn't adapt well. There were times, like their stay in Rome, that she took to the fashions and the fashionable crowds, but mostly she retreated to the gowns of her girlhood. Technology confused her, and while she enjoyed movies and television, she didn't understand a remote control and never learned to drive.
To Spike, that was fine. She was his ethereal princess and she needed him to take care of her. That never changed, either, and it was one part of his life he didn't mind was frozen in the instant of their first meeting.
Spike would grow up for both of them. He would survive for both of them.
And he would do anything to keep her with him, including killing their sire.
As he watched her finally sleeping, the pain gone from her face, he heard Dalton return with the others, and silently swore if they didn't have the spell, the whole bunch of minions would burn in the sun.
End