|
|
|
Sidelines
by
Anna S
1 My So-Called Life
Xander threw his duffel on the dull floorboards and looked around. He hadn't spoken more than a dozen words on the drive, and every one he'd spat out was a hard little thing, like a bitter olive pit. That didn't help right now. Didn't make him feel better when he couldn't even talk without betraying his parentage. Even disowned, he was the un-love child of the Harrises. Dad's hardness. Mom's bitterness. Except that when he'd left--no, wait, because he'd been tossed out on his ass, hadn't he--his dad had been yelling. His mom, crying. God. A scene from some crap movie off the Lifetime channel.
"It's a bit rough," Spike said, kicking some trash aside as he paced the width of the room.
His head slewed around dangerously, gaze fixing on Spike's back. He wanted someone to ask him how much he hated Spike right now. How much? So much that given the tiniest provocation he'd nail the vampire spread-eagled to a window frame to watch the sun rise. And oh, he'd stay awake for the show himself, too. Might eat some Doritos while he did. Listen to Spike beg. But he supposed you couldn't call the remark provocation, at least not with the diffident, apologetic tone Spike was putting on. Bullshitter.
"Fixer-upper," continued Spike. He lifted a saucepan from a hot-plate, considered the baked-on crud it held, then turned it over briefly as if expecting something to fall out. Nothing did. He set the pot back rather than tossing it. Boy, he was restraining himself. "Quick sweep, coat of paint. Be good as new."
Spike's ability to spout such brisk assurances without breaking face was a marvel to Xander, who wanted to punch him for it. "Good as a new sewer," he said in disgust.
"Rats would add something." Spike's hands found his pockets, and he heaved an affected sigh. "Namely, dinner." He still wasn't meeting Xander's eyes.
And Xander still couldn't bring himself to move or touch anything. He'd never been sure if the proverbial glass was half-full or half-empty, but he knew when the glass was broken. He felt it cracking now, and mustered the habit of meanness to distract himself. "Rats would be better company." And a small meanness was better than none.
Spike finally turned his head, torn midway between glare and resentful contrition. "I said I was sorry. Look," his arm waved doorward, "you want I should go back, tell them--"
"God, shut up! No! You've done enough." Xander's mouth tightened. "I can't even tell you how much enough you've done. Leave my parents alone. Leave me alone."
"Fine." Spike began to stride out angrily, all attitude and peroxide, the leather arm of his coat brushing Xander's sleeve as he passed, but when he reached the door Xander heard him pause, sigh again. "Look. I can't leave you here." Irritation, grudging acknowledgment. "Some vamp gets you and the Slayer'll be serving me my goolies for breakfast."
"Don't worry. When I'm the undead, I'll put in a good word for you."
Spike laughed, sort of. It was the kind of sound you could mistake for something else. Like a man's throat being cut. The soft rasp of his lighter followed, then a snap as it closed. Smoke drifted into Xander's airspace. "I'd like to see what kind of vampire you'd make." Spike's voice was thoughtful. "Bet you'd have fun."
The Joy of Vamping, Xander thought. It would be a bedside table book, the kind you kept with your tissues and Vaseline. Mind: stop wandering. Exhaustion was taking its toll. He'd spent too many recent nights trying to sleep within six feet of a chipped and restless vamp who would not shut the fuck up. It made no sense. Three years backing up a slayer, three years of paying half-attention to librarian lectures read from doorstops, and okay, he was never going to be Xan'Dar the Mighty, striking fear into the unbeating hearts of vampires everywhere, but he'd learned a little something about battling corpses animated by unholy blood-lust, so why was he thwarted by one neutered asshole slouched moodily in a chair, talking him to death?
"Fun," he scoffed aloud. A dark scoff. "Fun is carnivals and strip poker and naked boogie. Fun isn't ripping out people's necks with your overbite."
"Can be. Fun from both ends if you do it," he paused, "proper."
Xander heard a smile in the vampire's voice and hated him all the more. "Stop ogling my neck," he crabbed. He knelt to unstrap his sleeping bag, and rolled it out flat. Spike strolled back from the threshold and inspected the premises again. His boots scuffed the boards, somehow saying things even when Spike didn't. Like: I don't want to get dust on my duster. And: I'd kill you for a pint of whiskey and a pack of fags. I'd off you for no reason at all, Harris, not even bothering to feed. Then I'd lounge on your sleeping bag with my dirty boots.
And yet he was in no way scary.
"These floorboards are rotting," Xander commented. "If I fall into the basement while I'm sleeping..." He trailed off grimly, thought uncompleted.
"You'll what?" Spike asked after a moment, with his style of random, sociopathic curiosity.
"Me nothing. I'm thinking you'll probably lick my bloodied corpse."
"Yeah," Spike said. Wistfully. Then, pulling himself out of reverie with a head shake: "'S not so bad. I've seen worse squats. Dossed in places that'd make this look like the Taj Mahal."
"This comforts me why?" Xander laid himself out on top of the sleeping bag and stared at the ceiling. From the corner of his eye he watched Spike take off his coat, fold it up into a pillow, then lay down next to him, head to toe, toe to head. Still smoking all the while.
"No smoking in my rat-hole," Xander said. Because this was home now, and you had to start somewhere.
~*~*~*~*~
He opened his eyes. This was the waking-up part. Funny thing was, his alarm hadn't gone off. And the basement was lighter than it should be. Ceiling higher. Reality? Check. He sat up to find a demon in his view. Spike slept like the dead, immobile, hands laced on his abs, boots crossed at the ankles. A stripe of sunlight was creeping toward him across the floor. Xander, estimating with detached interest, gave it an hour.
The room looked different by day. Crappier. The floorboards were splintered, layered in filth, and littered with beer cans; the walls covered in graffiti; the windows half-boarded. Trash lined the walls and clogged the corners, and the only furniture was a crooked table that held the hot-plate, a can of coffee, and a broken mug. The whole place stank of stale piss.
"All the comforts of hell," he muttered to himself. Including a resident demon. "Wake up," he said, kicking Spike in the shoulder with his sneaker. But Spike slept on. Vulnerable, silent. So many possibilities spread out in Xander's imagination--most involving stakes and gasoline--that he was paralyzed until his fantasies subsided back into the gloom.
Somewhere right now (okay, Stevenson dorm if you wanted to get technical), Buffy and Willow were waking up, yawning and stretching in their girly jammies, all with the college banter as they toasted English muffins with butter and strawberry jam and stop, don't think about food. They'd have let him sleep on their floor, no questions asked. Except they would have asked questions, the kind he didn't want to answer. Too embarrassing, his problems too unlike their own. He was fine sharing angst over an apocalypse or three, but parents were what separated them into tiny islands. His was the island of the damned.
Once he could have talked about this new development with Willow, but she'd left her own family dramas behind when she fled the nest, escaping so easily it was as if she'd always been poised to fly. His stories weren't as funny without hers to compare them to, merely pathetic. Their vibe was changing, too. Even before Oz left, Xander had started to notice that when she asked about his life, she cocked her head in that familiar way, with kind, spaniel-eyed attention...but then her eyes wandered, as if she were thinking about other things. Sometimes she'd smiled to herself and he'd known she was thinking of Oz. She hadn't been her old self since Oz went away, though, and that was just one more reason why he shouldn't dump his problems on her.
Funny. He'd always considered himself the more independent one--hey, every guy was a lone wolf under the skin; not just Oz--but here he was stuck in post-grad loser mode, gears grinding, while everyone else moved on.
Damn, he had to be at work by ten-thirty. Where was he going to shower? And then he knew. He wasn't going to, because there was no shower, and oh god, he was Bill. Bill from work. The sweaty guy with the greasy uniform who never bathed, who manned the pizza ovens in a soul-withering blaze of heat and odor that drove away all human company. Soon he'd become Bill Junior, and they'd end up hanging together by the dumpsters during breaks, forced into hellish proximity by natural law, two shlubs who stank with anti-social intensity and quiet desperation.
But Bill lived with his parents. Okay. Did that put him higher up the food chain, or lower?
"Dru," Spike crooned to himself; then his voice dropped in pitch and grew huskier: "That's right, love. Play gentle with the nice dolly...."
Kill me now, Xander decided, and fled.
~*~*~*~*~
He was Pizza Guy, hero to the masses, his secret identity carefully concealed behind...well, a big red uniform and a stack of pizza bags. Not so secret.
"Hey," he said to the shaggy and oh-so-baked guy who cracked open the door of his dorm room. "Pizza's here. You look hungry, man." The guy inarticulated a response, opened the door further, and peered carefully out, up and down the hall. Up and down. Up and down. Xander followed the guy's paranoid scan like a metronome. "You just missed them," he said when no action was forthcoming.
"What?"
"Those guys, you know, with the uniforms and badges. Campus security? Yeah, they were sniffing around, but all of a sudden this herd of squirrels shot out of the stairwell and the cops took off after them. Weirdest thing I ever saw." Xander stared earnestly down the hall, shaking his head as if amazed. The kid looked panicked, thrust some money into Xander's hands, and slammed the door. Xander waited. The door opened again, the kid took his pizza, the door slammed.
"I take my fun where I find it," Xander said. He slipped the bag under his arm and strolled a few doors down to knock on 214.
"Just a minute!" Buffy's voice called, and then she filled the doorway with a breathless rush, dressed in UC Sunnydale sweats that hung on her like someone else's much bigger skin. She held one hand behind her back.
Xander looked her up and down. "I was hoping it was a naughty minute, but you're just a fleecy little miss, aren't you."
"Oh, hi!" she said in relief, then drew her hand out from behind her back and gave the stake she held a self-conscious grimace. "Ever since Mister Blond and Chippy came to visit, we've been more careful with the invites."
"Smart." Xander gave a small, crooked smile. But a bit late on the Spike front, he thought.
"What are you doing here? And let me preface that with 'come in'." With a bright, apologetic smile, she opened the door wider. Inside the room smelled of flowery bath products, nail polish remover, and burnt toast. Twin, twee lamps shone cozily, and the CD player was spinning the Dingoes' one and only CD, Massive Snake Attack. Willow looked up from her bed where she was doing homework.
"Xander. Hey!" Her grin was wide, spontaneous, and all for him; looking closely, he couldn't even find the faint Ozless shadow behind her eyes he'd grown used to seeing. Her eyebrows quirked up. "Are you here to rescue us from hunger?" She affected a pitiful, whimpering sound. "Please say yes, please say yes."
"Alas, I have delivered every last precious pie to its rightful and very stoned recipient."
"Ohhh." Willow appeared crushed.
"That's okay," Buffy pepped. "We have ramen." There was a moment of pointed silence before she sighed and caved. "Okay. There was no way to make that sound upbeat. So hey, no pizza. What about demons? Any demons?"
Xander pretended to check his pockets. "Damn, I think I left them in the car."
"No demons, no pizza--what good are you?" joked Willow. And Xander smiled, and tried to take it as a joke, but he couldn't think of an answer. Luckily, a conveniently timed knock came at the door, and for a moment his life was the breezy sitcom again, and not the lame movie-of-the-week that was always one channel flip away.
Buffy opened door number one and revealed Riley, who smiled and gave them a well-balanced greeting somewhere between cheerful and earnest.
"Pookie muffin honey-cakes," Buffy chirped.
Riley's face went blank as internal guy circuits processed the greeting. "Are we…we're on endearments. I'm behind again, aren't I?" He took a deep breath. "Pookie?"
Smiling, Buffy closed the door behind him. "I'm just fishing for the fear. I admit it, I'm a fear junkie."
"I think the attraction is supposed to be your own fear."
"Oh. I like other people's fear. Does that make me a sadist?"
"No. That makes you a dentist," Xander said. "The two are easily confused."
"I was wondering where all my teeth went." Riley, hands in pockets, bounced on the balls of his feet, grinning widely. "I wake up in the morning and feel like I've been drilled and flossed," and Xander watched with fascination as Riley noticed everyone looking at him, Buffy's eyes growing bigger, "and I really am no good at extemporaneous humor," he finished, face falling.
"'S okay," Xander shrugged, "Neither am I. It's just this tone of voice I've cultivated." He was showing it off as he spoke: flat, casual, indifferent, the accomplishment of years poised between boredom and mortal terror. "Tone is everything. Content meaningless. Observe. Radishes are what's for dinner. Not the skunk again, honey. Yes, that is my broken foot you're standing on."
The other man laughed, and hey, Xander could admit it. He had a little man-crush on Riley. He was a nice guy--always friendly, always looking glad to see Xander. Like now. Happy smile on his face, happy guy. And fought demons, too. The kind of guy you'd want your sister to marry. Or, lacking a sister, your slayer.
"So what's up?" Willow asked from the bed, while Buffy took one of Riley's unpocketed hands and began swinging it a little. Riley, the gamest of game boyfriends, let her.
"We think a Hellgarth demon. Nasty critter. We were tracking it, but we lost its trail halfway across town in an energy surge."
"Magical?" Willow sounded hopeful.
"Maybe. We were hoping you might tell us."
"Can I? And how!" Bouncing off the bed, Willow radiated homicidal enthusiasm, but on her it just looked chipper. "Let me grab a few magic books and then you can tattoo my ass property of the U.S. Army." Off their faintly scandalized looks, she amended: "If it's a temporary tattoo for, you know, a few hours. And maybe you could just stamp my hand." She paused. "Okay, I'm in the kill groove. But a girl has her moods!" She began packing a knapsack, while Buffy turned back to Riley.
"Any call for a slayer on this posse?"
He smiled down at Buffy. "Always." Xander had the familiar feeling of being a spectator on the sidelines, or the guy you wrote into the scene but forgot to give dialogue, and then Riley turned to include him. "You're coming, right, Xander?"
"I don't get off work until nine. I have to end out someone's shift."
"I guess we could wait," Riley said politely after a moment's hesitation, reluctance written in his hopelessly honest face. It meant something, that offer, coming from a professional soldier. War didn't wait on pizza, right?
"No, that's okay. You guys go ahead. I've got this thing anyway." This thing. He pictured his new room in the abandoned building, a meal of congealing pizza slices from work.
The others hesitated some more for good measure, dragging out one of those sticky situations that made Xander want to hit something. Like maybe himself. Then they went their way, and he went his, back to his dilapidated car with the sprung seats and the cigarette burns of history. His rear-view mirror had come unglued again and fallen to the floor.
He passed his friends as he drove away through the dorm parking lot, but laughing together as they walked, they didn't notice.
~*~*~*~*~
The room was empty when Xander arrived, but his sleeping bag was still spread out on the dirty floor, unstolen and from what he could tell, unmolested. The rest of the place was different.
"Holy Martha Stewart and all her merry elves," he said in bemusement, holding his greasy pizza box and staring around. Floor, swept. Trash, gone. Sofa, grotesque--but, hey, sofa. Its flowery, half-stripped upholstery showed foam cushions that looked as if they'd been chewed by starving weasels, one arm and part of the back was blackened by fire, and you got the feeling that more than one O.D. had gone down in its homely embrace. Still, when Xander took a seat, it didn't crash lopsidedly to the floor, and he counted that among the day's few, small blessings. Tiredly, he began eating his pizza. He noticed a lamp as he chewed. It was on. Electricity. His life had electricity again. The pizza couldn't fill the pit of dread in his stomach that he'd have to thank someone for this.
Crashes and curses sounded from the hallway. It was the sofa fairy.
"Bugger!" Spike bellowed from somewhere outside Xander's field of vision, and suddenly a boot kicked an armchair into view outside the open door. Spike appeared a moment later, coat off and sleeves rolled up, wrestling the chair into submission. He knocked it aggressively around on its legs as he shoved it at the doorway, glowered in baffled rage when it didn't fit through the frame, then hauled off and began kicking its ass again and again in a savage frenzy. Pausing to look up, he scowled. "Could use some help here."
"Right now, Spike, you're my television. Do that dance again."
Spike huffed and finally managed to drive the chair into the room by brute force, but like some terrified animal, the chair resisted any attempt to slide it across the floor. The vampire picked it up and threw it bodily ten feet, landing it right-side up with a bang directly across from Xander, who continued to eat his pizza. Spike skulked over, tossed himself viciously into the cowed seat and drew out his cigarettes.
"I'm thinking a career in home decoration isn't for you. With your temperament, you might want to consider long-distance trucking. Maybe chef school."
"Hey, I just dragged this thing up three flights of stairs for you."
"You wrestled the bad chair for me?" Xander raised his brows. "And cleaned the place, too, I see." At Spike's glare, he made a clucking sound. "Aren't you quite the little Cinderfella."
"Watch your mouth. I don't have to take this." Spike sat up, affronted. "Try to furnish a hole to your spoiled, suburban standards and this is the thanks I get. Ungrateful, that's what you are." He pointed his cigarette Xander's way.
"It's the least you could do, isn't it," Xander replied calmly, "considering you got me kicked out of my home." After this reminder and a long pause during which he successfully stared down the fiendish undead, he conceded, "But thanks...you really did all this?"
Slouching back, Spike took a long drag and exhaled on his words. "Got bored," he admitted. "Long days, too much light." That nutshelled the plight of Californian vampires, Xander thought, and really, the placement of the Hellmouth was pretty ironic when you thought about it. "Don't get used to it," Spike warned. "Not going to put myself out for the likes of you every time you play the guilt card. Your punches are used up, mate. Here on out, it's every blighter for himself."
Yadda, yadda, yadda. "How'd you get the juice?" Xander asked, nodding toward the lamp.
Lacking a sparring partner, attention-deficit-man settled down again grudgingly. "Handy at splicing. Survival skill."
"Huh. I didn't know you had skills."
Spike ignored or didn't notice the jab. "Modernization separated the men from the minions. I learned to adapt."
Xander found he didn't really care. He tossed his pizza box aside, rested his head on the back of the couch and thought about his parents, and about Spike, and about the odds of going home again. Pride wouldn't stop him. To hell with pride. He could crawl to his parents on his belly as well as any other underpaid slacker, if it meant resuming his cozy basement. But this new anger, simmering deep inside, threatening to boil into an uprising...that might do him in.
When he lifted his head again, Spike was watching him squintily, with a head tilt. Awww. They were each other's television. "What?" Xander challenged.
"C'mon," Spike said, rising and collecting his coat from a nearby crate. "You look like you could use a good kill. God knows I can."
Despite himself, Xander stirred and followed suit. 'Every blighter for himself', oh yeah. Spike had all the short-term memory of a pudding cup. "So, shouldn't it burn your mouth to take the name of the Lord in vain?"
"Jehovah, Jehovah, Jehovah," Spike uttered with toneless satisfaction, leading the way out the door.
Trailing behind him, Xander shook his head once. "Guess not."
~*~*~*~*~
When your town center is built around a graveyard, local culture tends to have a unique spin. Xander had grown up on the lame-ass jokes: this town is a morgue and hang a left at the dead center of town. Add eleven more boneyards to the city map and things get even creepier, except when you're eight years old the creepiness is cool, Halloween full year round, and by the time you're sixteen, you're well on your way to taking it for granted. Then one day some perky blonde breezes into your life and you learn that all those yards of neatly laid out corpses, with names like "Peaceful Acres" and "Restful Realms," aren't peaceful and restful, because the dead like to boogie.
"That was my third-grade teacher," Xander realized, ten minutes and ten blocks later. "Mister Boney."
"You are joking." A wave of smoke rolled out on Spike's minor snort.
"No. I knew I didn't like that vamp! He failed my science project. I was showing the limitations of Dixie cups and string for the conduction of sound waves." Xander pondered the irony, or maybe the justice. "Hey, thanks for staking him, man."
"De nada."
Feeling generous, even--god help him--companionable, Xander had to admit that a good kill was a tonic. Got the blood pumping, cleared the sinuses, established a bond between men. Rarin' to go another round, he heard himself utter insane, careless words he could never take back: "You know, you and me--dusting vamps--we could be like a duo. Whaddaya say?"
"No."
"Come on. What happened to killing demons for truth, justice, and the American way? For puppies and schoolkids and--"
"And all that sickening rot? The moment's passed, Harris, and I'm tryin' to forget it. I only asked you along tonight out of sheer bloody pity and since that's an emotion I'm not harboring again in my unbeating breast, you'll have to stagger along on your own pins from here on out."
"Hey, okay. I just thought maybe you'd want a sidekick to throw your brilliant evil into sharper relief, but your call." A sidelong glance revealed Spike pondering this point with a sudden frown as they entered the gates of Serenity Manor. "Olive drab alert," Xander said, spotting a familiar group of people clustered together just past a row of headstones.
"Right. I'm off." Spike turned on his heel.
By the time Xander looked back, Spike's coat was flapping behind him as he strode off through the gates. You couldn't really blame him. Vampire, slayer, commandos: not a mixer you'd want to attend without body armor and heavy weaponry. Of course, some of them had that.
He walked over to the group, gaving a friendly little wave as he approached to ensure that he wasn't mistakenly targeted by their lifting crossbows. "Hi! Hey! Am I too late for the picnic?"
"Shhhh!" came several voices as Xander drew to a halt. Inside the protective circle made by several very large soldiers and one small but forceful slayer, knelt Willow, who was striking a divining rod against what on first glance looked like a piece of raw salmon, but which Xander quickly realized had to be something else entirely, unless the Hellgarth they sought was a very large salmon demon.
"Ducas eloqui vermentim," said Willow. It wasn't what she really said, but if Xander had been asked to repeat it ten seconds later, that's what he might have come up with. Still chanting, she drove the divining rod through the demon salmon and into the ground, releasing a puff of pink smoke that smelled of rotting flesh. Even the most hardened soldiers turned away, covering their noses and making gagging sounds.
"Wow." Buffy coughed. "That's some potent magic, Will."
"The reactive scent means the demon transmogrified."
"You mean it's something else now?" asked one of the commandos Xander recognized as a friend of Riley's. Graham--that was his name. "Oh, that's just great."
The black guy next to him wondered, "What do Hellgarths turn into?"
"And why didn't we have intel on this?" Riley added pointedly, anger hardening his voice.
"Giles might have something in one of his books." Willow stood up as she made the offer, brushing grass from her skirt.
"Thanks." Riley nodded at her, obviously trying to remain gracious despite being massively pissed off. Losing face in front of school-kids. That had to burn. Xander wondered if Riley would get over the whole misplaced pride thing. He was so transparent, and he hadn't figured out yet that Buffy didn't keep score--as long as a problem got solved by a successful application of brains, brawn, or magic, she was happy.
Give him another apocalypse or two, Xander thought, and he'd get it. Ego cut no ice when you were in the thick of battle; teamwork, that was everything.
Hey, look at me. Weathered veteran, wise advice on request. And yet, see me standing here with nothing to do. With wry, semi-professional interest, he watched the Army boys exchange crackling messages through their walkie-talkies with unseen back-up and then disperse in pairs on Riley's orders.
"Shall we?" Riley asked, deferring to Willow in a way that made Buffy smile. He took the lead with Will, the two of them chatting about mystical energies and great party tricks you could use them for. Buffy fell into step alongside Xander.
"Liberated from the pizza prison?"
"On a twelve-hour pass."
"Good." She linked arms with him. "I miss you." Xander tried not to preen too visibly. "I wish you were in school with us," she went on. "We were the three musketeers. Which were, like, swordsmen, right--not just a candy bar?"
"Right."
"Aren't muskets guns?"
Faced with this implications of this poser, Xander blanked. "Yeah. Huh."
"Of course, two of us are swordswomen, but I don't suppose they have a different word. Musketeers, muskettes--oh! Mouseketeers! I get it now!" She sounded genuinely delighted, and Xander lost himself in her smile for one golden, priceless moment.
Later, there was a near-miss incident involving shoelaces and the sudden attack of a curb, but he lingered in the Buffy afterglow all the way to Giles's place, where they threw themselves onto his furniture and pestered him with snappy banter until he broke, took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. Score, Xander communicated to Willow with a silent, brow-waggling gaze. Old game. See who could bring down the librarian's glasses first. Willow grinned.
That was one of the better nights.
2 Aspirations
Early afternoon, a bright sunshiney day, mouth of Hell. Outside the glass window of the pizza parlor girls in shorts and halter-tops walked back and forth. Xander had been rubbing the same six inches of counter for about ten minutes, observing the wildlife and calling up vivid thoughts you couldn't show on TV, not unless you had the good cable.
Breaking into his fantasies with tragic eptitude, Pete appeared on the other side of the counter, clipboard and pencil in hand. Six-foot seven of assistant manager, all bones and nose. Xander craned his neck to make eye contact, but Pete was devoted to the raw beauty of his checklist and couldn't tear his eyes away. "It's slow. Why don't you take your lunch now."
"I've only been here an hour."
"We'll make an exception this time."
"Yes, but I'm not hungry."
Head raised, Pete's line of vision cleared the top Xander's red cap by most of a foot, making it easy to overlook him. "Marty, take the register," he called.
With a twitch of irritation, Xander tossed aside his rag and headed out. The world beyond was painfully bright, sun glaring off window glass and metal bike-racks. As his feet absently carried him toward the hot-dog stand where by default he took most of his lunches, he nodded at a pair of guys from his graduating class. They walked by without noticing him, talking seriously to each other about high-velocity, death-defying, ultimate-risk sports. Or so he guessed.
"Xander!" Red hair, stretching wave, grin.
"Will. What's shakin'. Gimme some skin." He slapped palms with her, and she giggled.
"I'm on my way to pick up some stuff from the magic shop. Are you on lunch?"
"Yeah," he said, and five minutes later they were knee-to-knee at a tiny grilled table, surrounded by sun-hatted women drinking iced coffee, and his hot-dog was already gone. Between sips of a milkshake, Willow rambled on about classes, projects, a Wiccan group she'd started going to. Xander didn't have to do much but nod in the right places and ask a few casual questions. He'd always loved listening to her talk. Now their lives only overlapped at the edges; they didn't share the same teachers, know the same popular and annoying people to make fun of. Difference and divergence happened. Sad, maybe--that is, if you were other people. Sad people.
No moping for him, though, and none of that woolly-headed British introspection. Nothing to see here, folks, move along.
"Do you ever feel like you're on the sidelines?" Xander picked up a stirrer and fiddled with it, trying to turn his latte into a sundial.
Willow unlipped her straw, receptive eyes focused wholly on him. "What do you mean?"
"I mean, like, someone else's life is the big show, center ring, and you're the clown over by the cheap seats. Tumbling on your ass for a laugh, kids tossing peanuts at you."
Willow's look turned knowing. "Xander, you're not a clown. Buffy is the slayer. She gets all the big dramas, yeah, but she also gets the big pain. It's not the kind of life you choose--it's the kind that chooses you."
He nodded diffidently and smiled a small, crooked smile. He wasn't getting himself across, and he wasn't even sure he wanted to, and yet he kept talking. "I don't mean Buffy. Well, maybe I do. But it's not just her--it's everyone." He waved a hand around the crowded food court. "The shoppers and lunchers and employees of the month. I don't get it. I'm not on track or something. Everyone's gettin' jiggy with it but me."
"Getting jiggy?"
"You know what I mean. What's my purpose?"
The expression on Willow's face suggested he'd just smacked her with a two-by-four. "For existing?" she asked squeakily, eyebrows leaping for her hairline.
"Yeah."
"You, you're, you're--you're Xander."
"Define 'Xander'." He wrote irony quotes with his fingers.
"You're my friend, and you fight evil, and--and you know all the words to 'The Rhubarb Tart Song'."
"I think therefore I am a rhubarb tart."
"See?" She smiled hopefully.
He always wanted to humor her, but somehow sarcasm oozed out instead. "Immortality is mine."
Willow's face fell a little, but she kept doing the friendly girl-thing, giving comfort where none would be taken. "You're just having a mid-life crisis. I mean, not mid-life, but uh, quarter-life, a quarter-life crisis. Just give it some time. Not everyone figures out what they want to do right away. Look at me. When I was six I wanted to be a biochemical engineer, and the year after that a veterinarian, and then there's my whole fixation-on-nuns phase that drove my mom back into therapy. And now, I have no idea what I'm going to do with my life, Xander. I'm studying psychology and history and magic, and I love it all. Next year I'll have to declare a major and I have no idea what I'm going to choose." Her voice was plaintive and reedy and inviting, knitting a warm sweater around Xander. He couldn't bear to tell her it didn't quite fit.
"Maybe I'll become a nun," he said off-handedly, and garnered one of her disappointed looks. She thought he hadn't been listening, that he was blowing her off with trademark humor. Truth was, he didn't know how to answer. He tried to ameliorate. "I hear what you're saying, Will. I just...it's not so much the having of too many options."
"You have plenty of options! You're smart, you're just--"
"Lazy? Bored? Unqualified for a job cutting fish?"
"Unmotivated," she said firmly.
"Oh, right," he replied, as if recollecting that.
"No more self-pity, mister." Willow shook her finger at him. "Stiffen that lip, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, and fly right."
Her own irony was shining through, but he knew some part of that scolding was in earnest, the important part, so rather than offering a rejoinder about the difficulty of flying while entangled in your bootstraps, he saluted her sharply. "Ma'am, yes ma'am."
When he returned to work, he carried the job ads with him.
3 Yummy Sushi
The hallway light was flickering again, but it was moths this time, cluttering up the measly glow and bouncing weird shadows off Clem, who was doing the left-no-right shuffle with Xander as they passed in the hall.
"Hey, Xander." Clem's greetings were always cheerful. "Sushi tonight?"
"It's like art, only better," Xander said, shifting his grocery bag. "You eat it. It fills the belly."
"Always found it kinda creepy," Clem admitted. "Raw, cold flesh. Weird colors." He gave a skinful shudder.
Xander had been meaning to ask for a while what exactly Clem ate, but refrained. He had his suspicions, but it wasn't human beings, and that's all any neighbor needed to know. "You seen Spike?" he asked instead.
"Saw him at sunset, heading out. Bad mood." Clem was sucking air through his teeth, shaking his head. "Said something about crawling in a bottle and coming out next Tuesday."
"Great."
"Poor guy. The differently-abled lifestyle is a hard adjustment. My cousin-in-law has no arms or legs, and he's a real bear about it. Runs Mandy ragged and she's only got one arm herself. Hey," he perked up again as a new thought struck, "You want in on the poker game tonight?"
"Kinda short right now. Maybe next week."
"No problem. I can spot you a few kittens. It's between friends." Clem smiled effusively with every last one of his teeth.
"I'll think about it." Xander hated fobbing him off, but Clem was just too nice to turn down more than once. "Might drop in later."
"Great! Come thirsty--I bought some Zima!"
Xander continued upstairs to his apartment. He'd started thinking of it like that, like it was home, even though the mailman wouldn't deliver here and the nearest phone was down the street in the laundromat. At least he'd managed to get the plumbing working, trading a Mirrithi demon his collection of original Trek novels to do a rush job. Three weeks and already he was assimilating to life on the margins.
Spike, on the other hand, was doing less well. He'd moved into a room as far from Xander's as he could find while remaining in the building, and was nesting there sullenly among debris he was too lazy to cart out. Whatever housewarming zeal he'd dredged up on Xander's behalf seemed to have drained away. Xander had gone up a few times, but the bare mattress and peeling walls depressed and annoyed him. He'd thought about reciprocating Spike's gesture--lending a hand to move up some furniture and clear out the trash; had even taken the first step by bringing him a card table he'd found by a dumpster. Spike had flung it angrily over the stairwell with a string of drunken, nonsensical insults that did nothing to endear him to Xander. They hadn't talked much since then.
Despite the absence of any lock on his door, no one had yet disturbed his stuff. And that might have had something to do with Spike, too. No estrangement could quite kill the vampire's sense of territoriality; weirdly irrational as he was, he seemed inclined to keep Xander safe from harm. Okay, so he'd watched and lurked with cynic-eyed indifference while Xander got mugged last week, but afterwards he'd collected the perps--a couple of ratty Frellar demons--made them apologize and hand back the bag of tacos, and then killed them. That was nice.
The inside of Xander's apartment didn't look half bad now. Switching on the ceiling light revealed a room with tan, painted walls and neatly stacked milk-crates containing his clothes and a few personal items. He set his bag down and hung his jacket on a chair. Before he'd pulled more than half his groceries out, a knock came on the door.
Opening it--that was a mistake anyone could have made. "Anya." He stared, not quite getting the punchline. "What are you doing here?"
She was looking both ways down the hall, face pinched unhappily. "Let me in. I think there's someone following me."
As she brushed passed him without actual invitation, he peered out. "I don't see anything."
"Oh, it's probably just the cabbie. I think I lost him though. Can you believe he tried to claim he didn't know where you lived? He drove me around in circles and then expected me to pay him."
Xander shut the door behind him. "Well, he may have been thrown by the absence of street signs and the barricaded roads. It happens."
Paying no attention, Anya examined the room. "This is horrible. I knew it would be bad, but this is worse than my lowest expectations."
"Thanks. We try. So how did you find--" Me, he almost said. "--this place?"
"I bribed your boss to tell me where you were."
"You know, updating your employment records just never pays off."
"I was going to follow you, but you were wily."
He raised his brows in bemused disbelief. "Anya. I leave work. I go to the supermarket. I come here."
She frowned. "Yes, and I kept getting distracted. That supermarket is always having sales." With bewildered concentration, she wandered around the room, touching things with dainty fingers and miming the displeasure of a lady whose maid has not kept up standards. "I don't get it." She turned. "Why are you here? Is this a masculine ritual of self-abnegation?"
"Excuse me?" He boggled politely. "Say again?"
"A Spartan or ascetic lifestyle," she clarified, curls bouncing and eyes wide as if she couldn't quite believe she had to explain this. "Are you mortifying your flesh?"
"No, my mortification is not of the flesh." He aborted an incredulous laugh that would have been more unkind than she deserved. Not that she'd have noticed.
"Good. Because that would be terribly misguided." God, she was so earnest. He marveled at her, see-sawing between affection and irritation. He was growing more glad to see her by the minute, feeling the relief that comes with having one's sterile life invaded by feminine chaos; but also he felt uncomfortable. She didn't belong here. No one did, but especially not her. Unsure why, he sensed it had something to do with her purse. Nowhere to set it down.
"Do you want--" he began.
"I've come here because we need to talk," she interrupted. Then waited.
"Okay." He tipped his head, acknowledging this warily.
"The basement was bad enough, but this--this is--" She seemed to lack words and was taking deep breaths, perhaps to try and find them. "Xander, you're downwardly mobile! I can't have that in a boyfriend. Not after all the struggle I've gone through to assimilate into your materialistic culture. You have to shape up." She said this urgently, as if trying to convince him to lay off the crack.
"Believe it or not, this is me trying."
"Do better!"
Xander bit his tongue to keep the first words that rose from spilling out. The second words were: "Look, you don't have to come here. I knew you wouldn't like it. That's why I've kept it a secret." He moved over to her, gathered her in one arm and guided her expertly toward the door.
"I thought you were avoiding me because you didn't want to have sex."
"No. I always want to have sex."
"Oh. Do you want to have sex now?" She squared her shoulders with stiff, brave martyrdom, but the crinkled anxiety of her face told him she'd rather have stripped down in the middle of a boxing ring on national television than in his no-rent apartment.
"Yes, but I want to have dinner more."
Anya looked up at him, pretty-headed and trouble-eyed. "Xander, tell me the truth--are we still dating?"
There should have been an easy answer to that, because they'd gone out to dinner and a movie two nights ago, and hung at the Bronze with Willow and Buffy the night before that. Wasn't that dating? "Sure," he said, wondering why it felt like a lie. Uneasily he hesitated, then leaned in and pecked her on the lips. He'd just drawn away again when she wound her tight arms around him, pressed her breasts closed, and kissed him unstintingly. They kissed until he was hard enough to feel like he'd accomplished something necessary, then disengaged.
His more-or-less girlfriend looked better pleased with him now. "I'll be thinking of you later," she promised as he opened the door for her.
"You mean when you..." He cleared his throat, gestured southward.
Smiling like the sexy woman she was, she left him solitary and confused on the threshold of his apartment, thinking about her as she walked away. After the door closed behind her, his place was emptier and less human. He opened the unboarded windows, let a siren wail inward along with shouts and clanging metal from the alley. You were supposed to go after the dame now, he thought. Run down the stairs, grab her arm and whirl her. Kiss her and make it right, even when it was so wrong.
He didn't. He ate some sushi, read a comic book, then fell asleep on the top of his sheets fully dressed.
He was his own man.
4 Come Over All Demony
"I don't like this," Willow said, pacing next to him and twisting her hands together. "No one's going to call here. Whoever heard of a demon asking for ransom? Or even using the phone? And if it was going to call, why would it call the guy it kidnapped? Okay, sure, some demons are phenomenally stupid, but..." She trailed off, worrying at her necklace now.
Xander slammed the door against the wall in frustration, accepting there would be no hinge-fixing that night. "Damn it! What kind of grown man doesn't have tools in his house? Giles is at least forty--what if he has to fix a leaky faucet or board the windows up against zombies?"
"Oh!" Willow cried, and Xander turned to see her holding the broken necklace, its beads bouncing and rolling across the floor.
"Easy, Will." She was kneeling to gather the beads, but he stopped her, took her arms and pulled her into a hug. "He'll be okay." She snuffled and then cried against him; light and small, she felt no more than twelve. Like a kid sister.
"We don't even know what it was," she said, pulling away to wipe her face. "What if it's one of those things that liquefies your bones, or--or likes to pull apart its victims bit by bit?"
He took a deep breath. "You're just getting yourself worked up." And me, he thought, not liking the pictures she conjured. "Why don't we go through the books again?"
"There's thousands of demons, Xander." Willow's eyes brimmed with hopelessness, but her rebuttal came out like anger. He touched the side of her hair, stroked it smooth.
"We might match something to the descriptions. You never know."
"Well," said a voice behind them. "Place has certainly gone to hell since I stayed here. Why, I remember when the bellhop greeted you at the door--fact, I remember when there was a door."
Xander had turned to Spike, tension gathering in his shoulders, one hand clenching into a fist. If you can't hit the one you want, hit the one you're with. "This is really not a good time."
Spike lit a smoke perfunctorily, tucked his lighter away. "Looking for your lost watcher?" he asked, tipping his head, then held his out cigarette as if an idea had just occurred to him. "You thought about putting flyers up?"
Time and temper snapped, and Xander hit him. It didn't connect very well--Spike ducked to one side, and he overbalanced, but then he caught himself and spun Spike against the outer wall and hit him again. That one went home, and Spike's eyes flared with violence, a kind of intimacy between them Xander couldn't break away from. He lifted his fist again.
"Xander, stop!" Willow was tugging at his arm. "Please!"
"Yeah," Spike taunted in an affected, gutter voice. "Stop. Please. Don't hurt me, Mister Harris."
Seething with self-control, Xander stepped away. Spike remained slumped against the wall in the precise position he'd been left, bleeding and bright-eyed, shoulders tilted, coat askew. You might draw a chalk outline around him. And once not that long ago, Xander would have been so infused with hatred that he'd have left the vampire there in disgust, walked away without another thought. Now thoughts connected unwillingly.
"Wait, how did you know Giles was missing?"
"Oh, the other shoe drops with a crashing thud." Spike rolled his eyes, dug in his pocket, and pulled out something clinky and shiny which he tossed to Xander. "Came to return these."
"These are his car keys--his house key."
Willow suddenly bristled like an outraged cat. "If you've hurt him--" Both men's heads turned her way as she stammered on. "I'll, I'll turn you into something slimy and small and never turn you back. You'll be a snail on the bottom of my shoe and then you'll just be--you'll be flat!"
Wow, thought Xander. Even Spike looked impressed, somewhere under the veneer of his annoyance. "Relax, Red. Your woolly librarian's fine. Well, was when I left him. He's been turned into a Fyarl demon."
Her face lit up. "I've seen--I know those--there's a picture!" She ran inside, leaving them alone in an awkward moment glued together by a look, then broken when they decided to follow.
Inside, they gathered around the heavy demony tome. "Yep, that's the one," Spike said, before wandering off to the liquor tray.
"Oh, hey...mucous." Willow frowned.
"Killed by silver," Xander read aloud, finger tracing the line of text.
"We need to let Buffy know."
"Do we have Riley's cell phone number?"
"I know it." Willow went into the kitchen to make the call, and Xander's eyes were drawn to Spike, who'd tossed himself onto the couch with a full bottle of something expensive-looking. He took an unhealthy swig. Xander could still feel the ache in his knuckles from where his fist had met Spike's face.
"Why did you do that?"
Brow knitting, Spike glanced at the bottle he held. "I was thirsty," he said slowly, as if explaining to a five-year old.
"You knew I'd hit you." Xander held his hands out loosely by his sides, palms open. "What's your pay-off? Making me feel like an idiot? Because I don't. I'd hit you again. I don't even need a reason, other than the thousands of people you've killed."
Spike, head tipped slightly back, stared at him with the dark unwounded eyes of a predator, but said nothing. Eventually, Xander did feel somewhat like an idiot and walked off, just as Willow came around the corner beaming.
"They're fine! They're on their way back already!"
And it seemed like seconds later that they heard a car pulling up, Giles's familiar and tired tones, Riley's laugh. They swept in, Giles wearing a shirt made for mocking, and there was hugging and exposition and a general collapse of relief before anyone noticed Spike.
"Hey," Riley was the first to say, wearing a big friendly smile and tendering an outstretched hand. "We've met before, haven't we? You're a friend of--" His face changed. "You're Hostile 17." He yanked his radio from his belt as several voices overlapped with "Wait!" and "No!"
"No, Riley." It was Giles, his voice edged but quiet. He glanced at Spike. "He helped me tonight. And even if the incentive did require large amounts of my cash--"
"Which I haven't seen yet," Spike interjected pointedly.
"--it would hardly be sporting to kill him."
"Oh, I'm not going to kill him." Riley gripped the radio tightly, poised to use it. "I'm just going to bag him and return him to captivity where he belongs."
Spike snorted, and even Xander had to admit that the macho was laid on a bit thick, though he wouldn't have said so.
"It was my understanding that the chip renders him harmless." Giles's attention was entirely on Riley, close and fixed as if he were trying to read something in his face beyond whatever reply he might give.
"You wish." Spike stood, puffing out his chest. "I can still throw down."
"You're not making a very good case for your freedom, Spike." Giles shot him a look, started to turn away, then arrested on the bottle. "Is that my Macallan?"
"It's my job to take him in," Riley said stolidly.
Buffy stepped up, arms folded. "And I'm completely willing to help, honey." She cocked her head at Spike, challenge in her eyes.
With a snarl of disgust, Spike stepped forward, and Riley was moving immediately, along with a confusion of Buffy and Giles--
"Stop it!" Everyone paused, brought up short by Xander's command. "You aren't bringing him in," he said to Riley, who looked put out. "And neither are you," he added, nailing Buffy with a sharp gaze. "He's been fixed, fangs pulled. He can't kill. If you let him go, all he's going to do is lie around drinking cheap booze and boasting about his glory days until some young punk gets sick of hearing it and dusts him." He met Spike's eyes; the vampire's face was appalled and his eyes out of focus, as if he were seeing a vision of his future.
Riley remained tightly wound, though. "I can't just let him go. I have to report this."
"So?" Xander shrugged. "You spotted a vampire near here. Ten minutes from now."
A long, tense silence passed before Riley reluctantly nodded--one sharp jerk of his head while he looked at Spike with dire promise. Spike started to say something, then compressed his lips and walked out past the rest of them. The party broke up after that, with Riley having little more to say to Xander before he left. It stung, but he could deal. Watch him deal.
"So, G. How was Mister Toad's Wild Ride?" He took a chair as Buffy came back inside.
"I beg your pardon?" Giles's brows arched as he poured himself a drink, then he sighed to himself. "I swear, I don't know whether to think Ethan mad or...well, perhaps madness is the simplest explanation."
"So, you just let the MPs cart him away?" Willow wondered, curling up with her cocoa. "Isn't that illegal? I mean, he is human."
"That's what he claimed," Buffy said dryly.
"Frankly, I'm more worried about them than him." Giles settled on the couch, noticed Willow's dubious face. "I shouldn't fear. Ethan is resourceful and has more than children's magic tricks at his command."
"Still. I like Riley and all," she shot a guilty glance at Buffy, "but if what Ethan said about the Initiative is true--I mean, we don't really know what their plans are."
"Yes," said Giles. "I understand your concerns and to some extent share them." He lifted his glass, then lowered it again without drinking. "However, I've been working with Maggie for a few weeks now and I have to say, I've been pleasantly surprised by her professionalism. I think if I can convince her to trust me--well, so far the exchange of information has been rather a one-way street. But I'm intrigued by some of the possibilities she's alluded to. Just think, Buffy, someday you may be able to take out a dozen vampires from a safe distance, without lifting more than your little finger."
Buffy looked at her little finger, crooked it and wiggled it. "Vampires, beware!" she growled, and made stabby motions before pausing to examine her fingernail polish.
"Yes," Giles said dryly. "Exactly so." Idly, his gaze panned away, stopped on Xander. "Are you all right?"
"What?" Xander drew himself abruptly from complicated thoughts, wondering how long the spotlight had been on him. "Me? Fine. Why?" He reined in his paranoia with difficulty at the other man's mildly concerned expression. "Just tired. Think I'll take off."
He left his friends, wishing them a good-night, and went out through the broken door. He was thinking of Riley and the Army and his parents, and his life in general. The tide of self-absorption crept in sometimes when he was distracted, and he thought there might be advantages to having a full-time job slaying monsters--your mission would at least keep your thoughts occupied when they tried to be elsewhere.
But he had no mission. Just a job and a half-life, and a bunch of secrets he didn't tell his friends. Driving home, he wished he had a better explanation for himself. Or some idea of why he'd stuck up for Spike. It wasn't guilt for hitting him. Nothing so easy to pin down. But then, parking his car and getting out in front of his crumbling building, he realized.
They shared an address.
~*~*~*~*~
The following week they ran into each other.
Spike, a brown whiskey-shaped bag tucked under one arm, spared him a scowl, then ducked his head intending to plow by. Stopping him with a show of strength was a laughable idea, but Xander stretched out his arm and leaned his weight into the wall. The other man halted, mouth tightening, eyes held straight ahead. His effort of will was obvious.
"You look like shit," Xander said, giving him the once-over. Shadows feathered Spike's eyes, dark enough they might have been bruises, and he'd never seen the vampire's face so drawn and white. Not chic goth, but fish-belly pale, like something dredged from the bottom of a river. He stank of drink. "You're just determined to make all my predictions come true, aren't you."
"Leave me alone."
"Gladly--except I have something of yours."
Turning his head, Spike waited silently. Looking into those cold eyes, Xander wondered where all the funny had gone. This wasn't a comical creature in a tasteless Hawaiian print trying to off himself, and his memories seemed suspect now, as if Spike might be able to make him see any illusion he presented.
Xander pulled the kitten from his jacket pocket and handed the mewling scrap of fur toward Spike, who recoiled an inch, brows drawn sharply together. "Sod me," he said, but his warning came out in an off-key, doubtful way, with a tone almost like astonished laughter hiding beneath. The expression on his face suggested someone unsure if he was dreaming.
"It's from Clem. He wanted you to have it. Something about a bar tab."
"Christ. I don't want it. Toss it. Keep it. I don't care." His words tripped out in a tired lilt.
"Hey, I'm just the delivery man."
Grimly they stared at each other until Spike, mouth pinched and eyes hard with dislike, took the kitten from Xander's hand, stuffed it in his own pocket, and walked away.
| Index | Next |
| Feed the Author |
