Sidelines
by
Anna S
13 Unrest
Xander stumbled against the counter as Buffy jostled his shoulder. "Watch it, Slayer. That's some elbow you have. My popcorn almost spilled." He looked into the bowl to check if the kernels were still evenly arranged.
With that self-absorbed habit she had, back turned to him, she put her bowl into the microwave. It began to whir. "There's juice in the fridge."
"No thanks." Xander went down the hall toward the living room, carrying the bowl in front of him. The edges of the room were dark, almost sepia-toned in shadow. Giles looked very sepia, but then he always did. He was still wearing that smoking jacket. Or did the British call them that? He didn't want to ask. Because, fags. A word not to be mentioned. Xander sat down in the shadows, in the armchair, which was dusty and had cobwebs around its legs. Buffy didn't clean much in here, he noticed. But the television was on. Worked. He wish he hadn't moved himself in here with her. It was a shabby place, and not really for him. Not for her either. She deserved better.
"Did I miss much?" he asked.
Giles, eating his own popcorn, shook his head but didn't take his eyes from the screen. "Not very much at all."
"Massacring," said Buffy, shoving popcorn in her mouth. Like mascara, he thought. Girls were into that stuff.
On the television, soldiers were walking through the forest, carrying guns. The forest was tall, and light shot through the trees. It was beautiful, but there might have been Indians. "We gotta keep going, men," said the soldier. "We gotta take that hill."
"Overrated," Giles said, sniffing. How could he talk through all that popcorn, Xander wondered. The British were such pigs.
"It gets better," he answered dubiously, conscious that the others were all on the other side of the room, sitting on the couch. They had otherness about them. And togetherness. Why had he taken this seat? His side of the room was a mess, like half a dorm room.
It was a dorm room, but also not. And Buffy's hair was gold in the lamp light. Butter, as she sat on her bed.
"I forgot the butter," he said, rising and walking past the others with their damn otherness. It made him anxious. He went upstairs. He'd left his textbook up there earlier, and it was nice on her stairs and on the second floor of Buffy's house, with deep piled carpeting under his feet and a glossy banister. Someone had left beach clothes on the floor, though. Sandy bathing suits and maybe a plastic pail. He went into the bathroom, his--the hallway flickering and asserting itself as his own hallway, in his own home--because he was thirteen. Or not.
He went into the bathroom, but didn't quite. "Hey there, Xander," said Joyce.
Turning, he saw her at the end of the hall, his mother, Joyce. She'd just stepped outside her bedroom to check on him, wearing a long white gown with ribbons. She'd caught him upstairs, which was no place for a kid to be at a time like this, and she knew it. He should be somewhere else, doing guy things with the girls. At school, or out playing. It was late afternoon and it was someone else's house, it was his own house. He really shouldn't be here.
"Hey, Buffy's mom. We're not making too much noise down there, are we?"
She smiled at him. "Oh, no. They've all left. I have brownies, if you'd like some."
He caught an image of her kitchen, and felt the emptiness of the house with her in it. A kind of sadness in the middle of the day, with Buffy outside playing. "I have assignments," he told her with regret, meaning homework and an elsewhere to be.
And she was wearing a blouse and skirt and heels, housewifely and appropriate. "You do all your jobs," she said in approval. "I've always admired that about you."
"Well, thanks." It was said in a self-deprecating way. "I don't have many hours in a day. They're mostly at night."
"You should have dinner sometime."
"I do get hungry though, and then I eat."
He needed to get away from her, get moving, get on with it, but the stickiness of the hallway held him in place. She was inviting him into the kitchen behind her, where the bed was, and he didn't dare go. Politeness made him hesitate, but she was Buffy's mother and because she was Buffy's mother, he had to be polite.
"It's very late," announced Anya, who had joined them. "My watch indicates the hour by the sweep of the second hand."
"You mean the first hand," Xander corrected.
"Why don't you rest here?" the mother woman suggested, before returning to her kitchen.
Freed, Xander went into the bathroom and closed the door. He needed to take a shower and he undressed, which took a long time. Every article of clothing had to be removed, but it was so slow that he began the shower before he'd finished. Sodden pants and socks ended up in the bottom of the tub, and the tedium and inconvenience of it was outrageous. Also, he had a feeling people were watching him through the window. It was stupid, putting a shower on a street corner, like a showcase window. He was naked and it was time to go inside.
"This isn't a peep show," he complained.
Across the hall was his bedroom, which was just like he'd left it back in high school, with his wank magazines under the mattress and his uniform tossed across the bed. For when he went to war. When he sat down on his bed, though, the window looked out over the alley and he was in his apartment, the one he didn't pay rent on. It was like a movie, with the police sirens wailing in the night, and the screams and the gunshots and the demons. He could see a playground outside too, through the open window. It was brilliantly sunny, not night. Kids on the see-saw.
He looked at his front door, whose knob was turning. "Like a salesman," he said with irritation. "You never knock." The knob began to rattle, and someone pounded on the door with abrupt force. Xander jumped up from his bed, unnerved, watching it. "That's not the way out."
It helped to climb through the window--you could escape that way, like in all movies. His clever solution brought him to the playground. It was an urban playground set amid tall buildings, with a sandbox where Buffy played. Willow was on the swing-set in overalls, Giles pushing her.
"I came to play," Xander said, wishing they hadn't started without him. He was always late. It had to do with having to take a shower and get ready, with not finding his sneakers in his messy room.
Buffy was building a castle with her pail, scooping up sand with the plastic shovel. "Giles made a game with cards. See my hands." She held them out, palms empty, and he nodded distractedly. Had she said game or fate? He couldn't tell. "When were you looking for us?" she asked.
"After work." He crouched down next to her, tried to get himself into the sand.
"Higher," Giles said to Willow. "Faster. Like a bird. But not too much like a bird."
"Like a plane," argued Willow, her body cutting an arc through the air. Her feet were for a moment almost level with the top of the swing-set. She was going to fly off if she wasn't careful. Xander remembered how that could happen. You flew off, and you hung there and you couldn't get back down. You'd make these swimming motions through the air, but it did no good. He'd been there before.
"Giles has all the cool games." Willow seemed pleased. "I could play chess, I could sing songs. I could be in a barbershop quartet!"
"Don't fly too much." Xander was increasingly worried about her, even as he played with Buffy's sand. "You could get caught in the air."
Buffy had finished her castle and knocked it over to start again. "I have a big crush on you," she told him.
He was pleased and embarrassed. She was talking to him. To him. She looked a lot older now, and was wearing a bikini. Because, yeah, they were on the beach. A pretty big beach, too, and they were standing eye to eye, so he could just look at her with the sun flooding across her skin, and her smiling at him. Golden girl.
"Buffy, I don't really think you should go out there." He meant surfing on the water, which was deep, but she held up her hand to shade her eyes, and looked down the beach at the stretching sand. "It's further than it looks."
"I'm good," she said, and he saw behind her a desert of broken rock and twisted trees. "It's not coming for me yet."
"You need to protect yourself." Xander felt certain of this. "In that way you do." He turned to glance over his shoulder, where Willow swung, but she'd left with Giles. Gone inside. "I'm not the--" He turned back, but Buffy had gone too. "Man," he finished. He was always late, the last one to go in. A bell rang sharply and recess was over.
Back in school, he was carrying his books and late for class, hurrying through the halls. "I left my locker here," he said, staring around in panic. There were many other lockers, but they weren't the right ones. "I need my books. The different books for the other class." He looked around and headed down another hall. It was a damn big school; there was never time to get from one place to another between classes. "I'm running late," he told people, laughing at himself to make sure they knew he got the joke.
"You," he said to Spike, when they met each other. "Why are you here? You're not in my school."
"I failed the grade." He was smoking. In a school hallway. Nervously Xander's shoulders hunched. It seemed certain that someone would stop them, say something. But Spike was too cool, hard and dangerous in his black leather jacket. No teacher would dare interfere. "Got kept back. Got to retake all my classes. Then they transferred me here."
"That's too bad."
"Yeah." Spike was looking around as if he wanted someone else to talk to. Someone cooler, Xander feared. He had the biggest crush on Spike, and that's why he followed him now into the bathroom to smoke. Hanging out by the stalls, in that cool way. Cool kids did this. He'd never kissed a guy in a bathroom before.
"Are you sure we can do this?" he asked as Spike pushed him up against the wall, hands sliding down Xander's sides. Erotic perfection. "Someone might walk in."
"They ought to. Ought to break down the fucking door." Spike nuzzled his shoulder and bit his neck. Straightforward and good, all bitey with his sharp teeth, drinking the Harris blood. He had his monster face on. Xander could feel the length of his body pressing close, leather and flesh.
"I'm so in love with you," Xander said with a rush of delicious terror, as if he might come right there in public. "I'm so in love with you."
Spike enthusiastically sucked more blood. Said, "That's glad."
"You have to meet my parents."
"I can do that. I can eat them."
"Dinner's good." Xander kissed him roughly, monster face and all, and wondered if he'd be able to stop. Dinner, he thought. But he was kissing someone else, some faceless guy, and hey, that was embarrassing. "Sorry," he muttered, slinking away and wiping his bloody mouth, looking for Spike. Down the halls he wandered, but when he reached the door out, he couldn't open it. There was something on the other side. He could hear it trying the catch, shaking the door in its frame.
"I'm not out yet," he said, backing away from the door. "Go away!"
"You may want to nullify it," Giles offered, wearing a problem-solving frown. "With your mind."
Xander turned to him anxiously. "I didn't do it. That wasn't me."
"It's because of what we did together. It's dead serious." He'd perked up and sounded candid, even cheerful. "We all may expire horribly. See?" He gestured with a nod of his head, and Xander followed his gaze down the hall, past the crowds of kids, through which something slithered. It was coming for him. "Well," said Giles, putting his glasses back on, "to the books, men."
He walked off and Xander followed in confusion. Giles led him to the library, where the others were waiting. Buffy sat in a chair, reading a book. Willow sat across from her, head thrown back, choking. Buffy paid no attention, nor did Giles, who opened his own book and began to read intently. Bewildered, Xander sat at the table and looked around.
"It says here I can fight this with olive oil, basil, and parmesan," Buffy read. "A quarter cup."
"Buffy, really." Giles's voice was dry and condescending, and faintly annoyed. "That's a cheese, you know."
"Oh."
"Look in the other book. The one about evil."
Xander realized Giles was talking to him. "Sir, yes, sir." He got up and headed into the stacks, winding his way back toward the shelf where the book was. Once back there, though, he got lost and found himself in the hallway of his abandoned building. He was heading down into the basement, which was funny because he tried never to go there. There were dark tunnels below, if you went too deep. You could get lost.
"I'm finding my own room," Xander said, to anyone who cared to listen. Crowds of demons and vampires lurked just at the edges of his sight, uninterested. "I can't believe they moved it. I paid my rent." But he got turned around in his searching, which could happen, and found himself in a familiar tunnel, and then a concrete well with an iron door. He was trapped inside with Spike, who looked over at him gloomily.
"Can't get out that way." Spike stood with his arms hanging down loosely at his sides, shoulders slumped in defeat. "I've tried. Banged the thing silly."
"You're evil. Don't you know its name? Buy it off! Buffy it!" Xander stared fixedly at the door; the metal was bending inward, creasing down at the corner where something was reaching through.
"It's not like that. I've got nothing to give." Spike's voice was resigned. "You do, though."
Xander looked over and found his demon masked and snarling. It tossed him against the wall, pressed against him. "Give us a kiss, love." Its eyes were red fire, glaring through him, and it was sickening and so wrong that Xander forgot how to breathe.
"I don't have it--don't have it--"
"No," his demon said coldly. "You haven't got the heart."
And he ripped it out to prove it.
14 Aftermath
"...and then you ripped my heart out," Xander finished. He paused. "What do you think it means?"
Spike had a funny expression on his face, and seemed to be coming out of a trance, as if he'd been unintentionally caught up in the tale. His cigarette had nearly burned down to the quick. He noticed, pitched it, and lit a new one. "Hell if I know. Suspect it means you were breast-fed too long."
"What?!"
"It's always about the Oedipal complex, pet. Didn't they teach you Freud in that school of yours?"
"Oh, sure. He was that guy who used to wear women's underclothes, right?" Spike stared at him blankly. "Freudian…slip," Xander spelled out. "Never mind." He shifted in his chair and spent an idle glance on the band who'd taken the stage. Powerful Mint Gum was their name, which was about the stupidest name ever. They looked the part, too. Coming to you straight from a garage on Eucalyptus Street to the stage of the Bronze. He looked back at Spike, who was people-watching. They could easily hang out here for hours, held in place by their own inertia, drinking themselves numb and talking at length about the comparative merits of super-heroes and beers. About nothing. This was what he liked about Spike. A century of existence had honed his loafing skills. He could actually nurse his ennui for days at a time, before becoming restless and needing to kill something.
"You ever dream, Spike?"
"Yeah, sure, I dream." He sounded uninterested in the topic, but he usually did. It was a game, trying to engage his interest, watching for the moment when the pilot light went on with a whoosh and he surfaced from brooding with a sudden glint of eye and sly grin.
"Is it like chasing rabbits? For vampires, I mean. Do you dream about the one that got away?"
Another thing about Spike, he never asked, What kind of question is that? He'd heard it all before. "Sometimes. Not always. Usual stuff, really. Sex. Getting caught shoplifting in supermarkets. Big dogs chasing me."
"Big dogs?"
"Y'know, hell hounds. Mastiffs. That type."
"Huh. So you're the rabbit." As Spike considered that, Xander went on, "I dream about finding myself naked in math class. Which doesn't seem very fair. I've graduated, but my dreams haven't. On the other hand, I also dream of being eaten by zombies. A timeless classic."
"Oh, I've had that one. Fellow took a big chunk right out of my face," Spike gestured graphically at his cheek, "an' I woke up certain I'd still got the scars. Took Dru hours to convince me it was the black drop and not black magic. That was before Polaroids."
"It's funny how you can see yourself on film, but not in mirrors."
"Mystical laws set their own logic."
"Mystical laws," mused Xander, between sips of beer. "You think there are mystical lawyers?"
"Lawyers are eternal."
"Like love," Xander said semi-tipsily.
"Like this bloody song," Spike said in disgust, turning to look over his shoulder at the band. He raised his voice a little. "You'd get better drumming if you tossed your boots in the spin cycle, mate."
Xander didn't find it hard to imagine Spike making the rounds of the punk scene, trashing clubs and insulting bouncers, getting himself chucked across the mosh pit with a savage grin on his face. He had a feeling Spike missed that. "I think this is their homage to Pink Floyd."
"More like a hemorrhage to the bastard."
"Pink. Floyd." Xander stared at him. "The band."
"I know that, you git." Spike leaned back and eye-glinted at him. "You're not the best straight man, pardon the pun, but you're the only audience I've got. Not going to suppress my immortal lines just because you know me too well."
He wanted to grin then, and maybe he did a little. "I know you too well?"
Spike rolled his eyes, caught in his own snare. "Nothing to be proud of. I'm an open book."
"Comic book, some might say. Well, more of a graphic novel."
"Geek," Spike mouthed sotto voce, just before taking a pull of beer.
"Oh hey, there's Buffy."
Spike didn't choke on his beer, but lowered his bottle quickly as if he suspected Xander of trying to trip him up. She was coming to the table, though, and the others were winding their way through the crowd a few paces behind her.
"Hi!" she said cheerily to Xander. Her zing dropped a notch as she noticed Spike, and she gave him the hairy eyeball, but nodded politely.
"Slayer." He eyeballed her back, from toes to tits. "You're looking fresh and tangy."
Riley frowned down at Spike as he arrived, but immediately dismissed him and turned a smile and hello on Xander. And suddenly they were a table-sprawling crowd, filling out with a perky Willow, a sedate Oz, and a rather subdued Tara, who looked very much as if she'd been dragged along and wanted to be somewhere else. Another table was pulled up and Xander made room for people's chairs. Spike didn't move, and looked annoyed as the witches bumped chairs up to flank him.
"Drinks for everyone on me," Riley said gallantly, and collected people's orders.
"Double bourbon, no holy water," Spike said, after everyone else had spoken. Riley gave him a dry look and went off.
"You come down yet off the ultimate high?" Willow asked Xander, eyes glowing.
"What ultimate high was that?"
"Xander!" She swatted his hand. "The joining of our spiritual essences in one vessel to defeat a great and terrible evil!"
"Oh, that," he said casually. "Yeah, I've still got a bit of a buzz."
She grinned.
"Sounds like quite a show." Spike directed a pointed look at Xander. "Wish I'd been there."
"Sorry," Buffy said, not sounding sorry at all. "We were in Scooby mode."
"It's a whole mode thing." Willow continued to be smiley.
"Uh huh." Spike glanced sidelong at Tara, who was quietly twiddling a napkin and gazing at her fingers. Tara didn't even notice his look, but the rest of the table did and there was a moment of social hesitation.
"I wasn't there either," piped up Oz, filling in the silence. "I was unconscious."
"Your poor head." Willow patted him. Or you could say petted him, thought Xander.
"Riley is very sorry," Buffy said emphatically.
Riley walked up behind her with their drinks at that moment. "I'm sorry?"
Willow pouted. "For swatting Oz."
"You know," Xander offered, "when you were Robo-Riley." Unnecessary exposition, since it was two days ago and how could Riley have forgotten? But Spike hadn't been there, he'd only gotten the tale second-hand. He smirked faintly now at the discomforted look crossing Riley's face.
"Oh." Riley sounded unhappy. "I am very sorry about that."
"That's only the ninth time he's told me," Oz informed the table mildly. "I'm still bucking for double digits."
Riley managed an obliging smile and finished passing out drinks. "Sorry."
"Well, I feel all warm and fuzzy," Spike said. Xander could sense his faint disgust, see it in how he lounged back in his chair, hoping to antagonize someone and earn their ire. He liked friction, and tended to grow more belligerent the longer he went without it. Xander's self-appointed role was rodeo clown. If he could draw Spike's unruly attention to himself, no one got hurt. Including Spike.
"I think that's just my leg," he said, interjecting a response. Spike shot him a look, then a languid, private smile. Way too private for a crowd, but that was a vampire for you. They wore their ids on their sleeves. Tara was also smiling--just barely--but pleased at having caught her interest, Xander asked, "So, are you staying in Sunnydale over the summer?"
"Oh, y-yes." Tara seemed ready to let that stand, then realized more was expected. "I'm proctoring some classes for the Learning Annex."
"Wow. Is that a new requirement?" asked Buffy, eyes wide. "Because I already had my physical, and they didn't say anything about that."
"Proctoring as in supervision, Buffy." Willow offered a Cheshire-kitty smile. "Like in computer labs."
"Oh."
Tara looked flushed and uncomfortable at the misunderstanding rather than amused; her shoulders were beginning to hunch inward. Xander regretted that he'd turned the spotlight on her. "And what are you doing on your summer vacation?" he asked, turning to Riley on the opposite side. "Hitting the beach, catching some waves?"
"More like hitting some demons, catching some monsters." He paused. "Present company excepted, of course."
"Real big of you," muttered Spike.
"We're going to fight the good fight," Buffy said brightly, laying her hand over Riley's and ignoring Spike with the ease of long practice. "Aren't we, sweetie?"
"Takin' it to the streets," Riley replied, smiling into her eyes.
Spike snorted, and Xander took a deep breath and moved on. "Well, great. Will?"
"Oh, you know." Willow rocked her head side to side, catching the beat of the music. "Gonna hang out with my homies, kick the Wicca up a notch. Right, Tara?"
"What?" Tara looked up from the straw of her Coke. "Oh, r-right."
After a moment, a few heads turned to Oz. "I've been thinking of reuniting the band," he volunteered. "Maybe a world tour. Our world tours usually don't take us further than L.A., but we thought we'd get more ambitious this time. We're aiming for Portland."
"I'm going to be a roadie," Willow shared with girlish excitement. "Or maybe a groupie. Hey, can I be both?"
"Sure," Oz said amiably, and his eyelashes flirted back at her in a low-key way. "We're non-union." He closed his eyes as Willow pecked him briefly on the lips. His lips tilted up slightly afterwards.
Spike looked genuinely pained by the sweetness, brows knitting darkly as if he'd found himself sitting next to smurfs and couldn't fathom how it had happened. Xander knew the feeling, except that he found himself sitting across from a vampire and couldn't fathom how they'd started dating. He'd hated Angel so much in high school--still did--and never understood how Buffy could get it on with the undead son of a bitch. And now he knew that with just a twist of fate, he could have been her besotted twin, giving it all up for the nookie. Because, hey, his vamp didn't have a pesky soul acting as a magical chastity belt, and Xander was grateful for that on an almost nightly basis.
"What about you, Spike?" Willow finally asked, in her friendly and outgoing way. "What are you up to this summer?"
"No good?" Buffy suggested innocently. "Old tricks?"
"Unlike most of you pampered little brats, I'm a working stiff. No doubt I'll be serving liquid anesthesia to the drones of Sunnydale while you're off sunnin' yourselves."
"Pampered," Willow repeated indignantly. "Who's pampered?"
"You, kitten." Spike eyed her shirt. "How much did that scrap of silk cost? Fifty, sixty bucks? Sell off your wardrobe and I'll bet you could feed some family for a year. And who paid for it, hmmm?"
Willow looked huffy. "It was on sale."
"He is right, though," Oz conceded, looking around the table. "We're middle class, people." He seemed okay with that, and that seemed to give everyone else permission to feel okay too. Even Spike, with this acknowledged, looked prepared to back down.
"And what are you, Spike, a Marxist?" Buffy folded her arms on the table, chin jutting slightly. "After a century killing the good citizens and robbing their corpses, you're suddenly Comrade Chippy just because you've got a job? And we're the ones who are supposed to feel guilty." Her absence of guilt was crystal clear.
"You know, it may not mean anything to you, Slayer, but I've got a bloody biological imperative here, currently being thwarted. Next time you shove one of those great, dripping McCowPatties in your gob, why don't you set it back down and see how long you can live off a quarter-pound of oxygen?"
He was working himself up into a rant, but Buffy was visibly unimpressed. "You seem to be thriving on McBlood. Guess your imperative isn't so," she hesitated, shrugged, "imperative."
Vampire glared at Slayer, and Xander exchanged a look with Riley that said, We both know that they won't kill each other here, but maybe it's not a good idea to test that theory too far. It was one of those complex looks.
"Hey, wanna dance?" Riley asked Buffy, as if this thought had just struck him.
They went off, and everyone else relaxed a notch, except for Spike, who was stoked to fight something or someone. Xander thought it'd be helpful if he could ask Spike to dance, but that was no way, no how happening unless a big, crazy wizard dropped through the ceiling and cast a spell of dance fever on the inhabitants of the Bronze.
Xander glanced at the ceiling.
"I need to boogie too. Tara, whaddaya say? Let's get a groove thang on." Willow's exuberance was trying to catch.
"Ka-pow," Xander said in approval, letting himself live vicariously. "A little girl-on-girl action. All right."
Tara looked appalled. "Dance? W-w-with you?" Her thickening stammer betrayed the level of her alarm.
"Well, Oz doesn't dance."
"I'm neither a mover nor a shaker," Oz confided to Tara. "Mostly, I'm a watcher. Though not the official kind." Damn, Oz was wordy tonight.
"C'mon," Willow said, grinning, red hair swinging. "Dancing is just good old wholesome family fun."
"I d-don't think so." Tara scooped up her purse and stumbled off her chair. "I actually--I have to go. I'm sorry." She mumbled good nights and shot off through the crowd like a curvy bullet, while Willow called after her in dismay.
"I don't understand. Should I go after her?" she wondered, face anxious.
"Oh, yeah, that'd be a great help," Spike said dryly.
Willow frowned. "What do you mean?"
Spike lowered his head a fraction, gave her an arch, are-you-kidding stare. "Don't tell me all those soft, sapphic sighs have fallen on deaf ears? Lonesome Dove's got a crush on you that'd flatten a semi. Even I noticed, and I don't give a damn about any of you."
"No!" Willow's expression grew horrified as it sank in. "Oh, no." She looked at Oz.
"I did kinda wonder," Oz said.
"I didn't know." Willow was wringing her hands. "I mean, okay, she was sort of with the eyes and the smiles--and then the spells. But she never. And I never. Oh. What if I led her on?" She nearly had tears in her eyes. "I have to talk to her." She slid off her chair and hurried away.
Oz hesitated, then got up. "I'd better..." He paused, clearly torn. "It's dark out there." After another moment of internal debate, he shouldered determinedly through the crowd after Willow.
The table, covered with half-emptied drinks and crumpled napkins, was quiet again. Xander looked over at Spike, who looked back, hand wrapped loosely around his glass. "Wanna get laid?" Xander asked.
Spike considered this with head tipped. "Yeah. Wouldn't mind," he said after a beat.
"Let's go."
15 Honeymooners
"I seem to have a thing for ex-demons," Xander mused to himself.
"I'm not an ex-anything, I'll have you know. I'm very evil. Just not...active at the moment."
"Yes," Xander said condescendingly to the evil sprawled next to him. "Very bad, very naughty." He kept his eyes closed as he spoke.
"I am!" Spike sounded disgusted. "Rotten to the core!"
"Am I arguing?"
"I'd rend you from top to toe if I could!"
"Uh-huh." Xander yawned, and slit his eyes open.
"God, you're a callous bastard." Spike propped himself up on one elbow and glared down at him in melodramatic outrage. "I'm in pain here. Existential angst seepin' from every pore, and all you can do is lie there and breathe."
"Yes, but your seeping is incredibly noisy. Try not to get it on the sheets, okay?"
Spike's mouth tightened and he rolled over to one side, yanking the sheets away. Xander's temper quietly rose a notch. "Don't even know why I'm with you," Spike went on. "Talk about vampires being cruel--there's a laugh. They could learn a thing or two from humans. All I get is abuse and tepid pig's blood. And you give terrible head."
Patience snapping, Xander shoved him roughly out of bed and onto the floor. Spike landed with a thump and a yelp, while Xander wrested back the sheets from Spike's tangled legs--or tried to. "What the hell'd you do that for?" he asked as Xander struggled wildly. The vampire stared up at him from the rug, but looked indecently satisfied instead of angry, leaning back on his arms all sprawly and delicious, a smirk on his face as if this had been just the outcome he sought.
"I'll have you know I give great head, Mister. I haven't heard any complaints before now."
"Yeah. From me, you mean." Spike tilted his head knowingly. "I am your first."
"That doesn't mean you're my only."
"That so?" Spike smiled as Xander tugged ferociously at the sheets, damp hair falling into his angry eyes as he tried to ignore the vampire's gaze. "Been out practicing the trade, then?"
"Shut up."
"Cruising the manly poof bars, lapping up those hot, spicy sausages--"
The sheets finally came loose and left Spike naked, legs splayed open, dick half-erect, looking like some satyr from a dirty postcard. Xander wrestled with the bedding in a breathless rage, and finally threw it aside with a bellow. He thrust his hands through his hair, forcing himself not to bolt from the bed and out into the night. "You sleep on the floor," he ordered.
"Don't think so. Like my comfy bed."
"My bed. Just as soon as the monthly fees are paid off."
"Now, now. Don't be churlish." Spike drew himself up and grabbed Xander's ankle. Xander kicked, but felt himself inexorably drawn across the mattress, his capture just gentle enough to avoid triggering the chip. "Here, pet. Let me take care of that. Man who complains about a bad blow-job ought to put his mouth where his money is."
"And if you were paying me, that'd be even hotter," Xander breathed, tipping his head back as Spike swallowed him in.
16 Honeymooners Redux
Waking up, Xander really hoped it was a cat on his head. In a town where demons came in all shapes and sizes, the alternative didn't bear thinking about.
"Mrrrowr," said the affronted creature as he reached up and poked its side.
"Down, Byron. Shoo, boy." In response the animal sloped down off Xander's skull, leapt onto his chest and meandered across his bladder with hard little cat-feet. "Oh man," he gasped, as it began to knead. "You're as bad as your master." He lurched, and the cat slid from the blankets and scrambled with its claws a moment before tumbling to the floor. It immediately attempted to regain its dignity by dropping on its ass and licking its fur. Xander stepped over it on his way to piss, whereupon it swatted at his ankle, Xander hopped to one side and nearly fell, and the cat stalked off with a flicking tail of triumph.
Muttering curses, he made it to his bathroom and out again alive. In the living room, Spike was drinking a mug of blood and watching television with the drapes closed, and Byron was plunked on his haunches in the kitchen, noisily chomping kibble. Xander looked around his plundered, messy apartment--clothes tossed over furniture, magazines and beer bottles littering the tables--and tried to dredge up some annoyance, just to keep his edge, but noticed instead that Spike's hair was rumpled like a dandelion and he was wearing borrowed sweatpants and nothing else.
He was remarkably easy to forgive, even at six in the morning.
Xander yawned and made himself a bowl of cereal, then plopped onto the couch next to Spike. Mystery Science Theater was on.
"Horrors of Spider Island?" he asked conversationally.
"Yeah," Spike said. After a lull of five minutes, he said, "Notice they never show the ones with Joel. Why is that?"
"Something about copyrights."
"Bastards." Breakfast of blood finished now, Spike drew a cigarette from his pack and lit up pensively.
Xander looked sideways, spoon halfway to his mouth. "You know I have them all on tape."
Spike met his eyes, exhaling smoke as he processed this. "What, all the shows?"
"A to Z."
A smile slowly formed. "I knew there was a reason I moved in with you."
The End
| Back | Index |
Author's Note: It's kind of odd feeling you have to apologize for writing a story, but I know a lot of people have been waiting patiently for the next installment of Noir and sending me wonderfully kind, charming, unanswered e-mails. I had to get this out of my system though. It's been on my mind for a long while, and it was beginning to distract me from--and, um, creep into--the noir stuff.
So, okay, I cop to this being essentially just a big self-indulgent tumble of scenes more than an actual story, basically the fictional equivalent of skipping a stone across a lake, all surface, no depth, until it finally sinks of course, and then...yeah. I've always imagined that season four could be plausibly rewritten with Xander going through the Big Gay Change instead of Willow, with Spike replacing Anya as the demon of his affections. In some ways, a coming out drama makes more sense to me as an extrapolation of his previous characterization than it does for Willow's. Still, I do love canon, and I hope people won't be offended by the rewrite of Willow-Tara.
As this is a collection of scenic side notes to a slightly off-the-beam rendering of season four (hence the title) it helps to have familiarity with S4 episodes. I've taken that reader knowledge for granted, which some would say weakens a story, except is this a story? I still don't know.
I also suspect the section headers are lame, but they're one of the few flimsy devices giving this a structure. Many are quotes from S4 eps, or variations on episode titles; others aren't.
I tried to get beta readers for this but, uh, I think I scared them off. Feedback welcome at eliade@drizzle.com. I may revise this at any time. Take snapshots now.
Written for Sandy and Te.
| Feed the Author |
