Subtleties

by
Anna S

Part Seven

"Buffy told me."

Of course she did. He can hear Willow's grin through the phone.

"And your objection is...?"

"None. I think it's cool."

He tells Spike that: cool.

Spike accepts this with a mildly amused mouth twitch and a quizzical downturn of his eyes, as if he's thinking of something that's funny or doesn't add up. No way to know what except to ask, and Xander doesn't.

There's that mildness again and--not then, but later, apropos of nothing, some TV debate--Xander says: "You were so feisty in New York. Now I can't work up a fight." It's a dumb, off-the-tongue word, feisty, but Spike is staring at him for other reasons, frowning.

Spike: "You want me to fight?"

Xander: "No. Of course not. I'm just saying, you've changed."

Spike, pointedly: "Not me that's changed." And when Xander doesn't get it: "You're a proper client now, aren't you?" It's like a punch in his gut, and then almost at once Spike is climbing astride Xander and winding his arms around him with an affable but reproving expression. "Now, now. Don't look like that. Nothing to get upset about." It's a seduction of voice that lifts and lowers the words.

Xander: "I thought there was. I thought this was wrong."

"Well, yeah." Spike blinks. "But a good wrong."

The next night they're in a graveyard killing vamps and Xander is still picking at the subject in a roundabout way. "So, you didn't kill anything all the time you were in New York?"

Spike: "Not after the first few months. Couldn't."

It's the first time he's said that word and it snags Xander's attention: "What do you mean couldn't?"

Spike, dusting a vamp: "They wouldn't let me."

It's like pulling teeth. Fangs.

Xander: "Who?"

Spike: "Local bosses. Demons." He's spinning, kicking, not out of breath at all, except in the permanent way. "Called me on the carpet not long after I got there--threw me on the carpet, more like, after playing piñata with my innards." He frowns. "Dripped a lot, but it was a red carpet. Which is sort of odd, now that I--"

"Spike!"

"Anyway. Said if I killed any more of 'my own kind', quote, I'd be made an example of. 'S why I had to look for other work."

Xander is flummoxed, upset about things that happened two years ago or more: "You could have left."

Spike, as the last fledge explodes, looks at him and says simply: "Could've. Didn't."

After pushing at the subject all the way home, Xander senses Spike getting tense, tight-lipped, and testy, and that is reason enough to keep at it, because that's his agenda--wind Spike up, get him kicking. Except when he figures that out, staring across the kitchen at Spike's set shoulders and stiff back, Xander lets it go. It wasn't fun five years ago, and it's less fun now.

They don't talk about New York for a long while.

In the immediate while of their lives, Xander is figuring out how to make love to Spike. If they've been hot and heavy already, it's now becoming humid. Tropical. As the novelty of paid sex wears off, Xander wants more. Can't get enough, wants more, gives more. He's all about making Spike lie back and take it now, learning his buttons, making him clench his fists on the sheets and turn his head aside and force back snarls. Dick bobbing up heavily, arching until it rests on his belly, swollen and dark and getting all wet at the head. That's before Xander even touches it, some nights.

He's gotten handcuffs, and it's a no-brainer that Spike likes them. But it's interesting to find out how much. Answer: way more than Xander expected. Frantic, gasping, hip-thrashingly more as Xander works him over and sucks him off and teases his ass. Sort of French Vanilla there, and if Spike gets so wild-eyed over this stuff, which has to be tame, what does real kink do to him? Scary thought.

Harsh sobs into Xander's pillows. Game face sometimes. Cursing, begging, strangled yelling. And the Night of Eleven Orgasms, which will awe Xander for years after that, since none of them were his. He kept his own tab, a modest number, but stayed home from work the next day, sore and exhausted and hormonally hungover from his efforts.

Now it's Spike who is beginning to look blissed out from all the sex. He looks the way certain surfers do, guys Xander sees on the nearby beach sometimes, thoroughly baked on sun, weed, and waves, with eyes that look as if they've seen god.

Now it's Spike who sometimes comes up behind Xander and dares to manhandle him, hungrily sliding himself up under Xander's shirt, rubbing against his backside, mauling his neck with soft noises. Palm skating smoothly into the front of his jeans, reaching for Xander's cock, drawing it upright as if he's trying to tug a carrot from the earth.

They goof off and around, and have taken up a new hobby of grinning at each other, and when they have dinner with the girls, their audience is full of knowing glances and teases.

Wes comes up from L.A. on an errand--they're in the Magic Box for the confab--and he gives the two of them funny looks.

A week later, Angel shows up with little warning and visits them for an evening, disappearing to walk along the beach with Spike for an hour, returning with the same expressionless face he left with and delivering a few bland words of goodbye to Xander accompanied by a dark, direct, warning gaze, but after the other vampire leaves, Spike tells Xander his old sire has a lot of things on his mind, and Xander isn't sure but he thinks Spike may have gotten a little boost from Angel's willingness to take time out and check on him.

This makes him feel a strange thing. Happiness. Anything that associates happiness and Angel doesn't seem natural to Xander, but if Angel makes Spike feel good in any way, however small, he'll go along.

Part Eight

"I think I should have a lesbian phase," Dawn says. "Don't you?" She's asking Spike more than him, twirling her hair around one finger and wiggling her toes as a conscientious vampire tries to paint the little piggies. "It's probably emotionally healthy to explore my options."

Xander isn't going to get sucked into this one, no matter how many times Spike looks his way. He's working on his taxes. Ha ha ha ha ha.

He is strangely moved by the friendship Dawn has renewed with Spike, and relieved to know he has company once in a while. She visits during the day a few times a week, and is often still there when Xander gets home. She stays for dinner, is trying to be a vegetarian but moans and moos in worship of the Great God Cow when Xander drags out the grill. She writes essays for the university rag, wears strangely sloganed tee-shirts, takes back the night--irony there, since it's more a vamp than rape issue the campus needs to worry about--lectures them both about global oppression and textile employment practices, wrests the labels from their jeans and shirts up to view so she can judge their political correctness.

They adore her.

Spike is a big brother of a vampire to her, or would be, except they're bonding over weird shit these days. Music, fingernail polish (gold is the new red), classics of European literature, and the latest American Idol competition, which they both try to pretend is passé but watch avidly.

It's a suspicion Xander has, that Spike enjoys being a girl.

When he makes this joke to Spike, he gets A Look. Dry deadpan expression, slightly lowered head--Spike's big cat look--the better with which to contemplate Xander askance, as if assessing him for a head-butt or a smack, which he'd never try these days, but it still raises a whiff of punk sensibility. It's like the smell of your old favorite clothes unearthed from a drawer.

So very much not a girl, his look says, and he holds up one painted fingernail at Xander. The middle one. It's a startling victory of some kind, but then Spike is full of contradictions.

For an arbitrary birthday--giftday, she calls it--Willow enchants their bathroom mirror so that it holds Spike's reflection, and also the long mirror that hangs on the back of the bedroom closet door. The vampire of vanity immediately orders six hundred dollars' worth of hair care products from the net--six fucking hundred--and glares darkly at Xander for not saying anything about the state of his golden locks before now. Loon, thinks Xander. But he's smitten, loves looking at Spike's face in the glass, and often stands behind him and does the obligatory naughty stuff.

"Xander gives Spike money," Dawn says to Willow.

It's easy to reconstruct the conversation that occurred, and Xander does so many times in his imagination.

"Xander gives Spike money. Don't you think that's kinda weird? I mean, because he was, you know," a hesitancy, "selling his groove thing, and now he and Xander are in the groove, and it's groove, money, groove, money. How does that work?"

Her half-innocent puzzlement, her worry as she tries to work it out.

It blows up into a whole big thing: Spike and Dawn go shopping, Spike passes his card across the counter one too many times, Dawn is envious, Spike says too much, Dawn talks to Willow with a girlish frown, Willow listens, Willow confronts Xander in a dark, ferocious huff.

He tells her to fuck off.

Not in so many words, not at first. But then, when she won't back down and she's scaring the living shit out of him, he does say that. And they stare at each other for a long moment. And he's nearly shaking because, fuck, he can sometimes be scared of his best friend. She's powerful and too ready to jump on what she sees as wrong.

She doesn't talk to him for two weeks. He waits for a spell, and has nightmares wondering if she's already cast one and he doesn't even know it. Wakes up each day checking for the status quo: is Spike still living with him? Does he sleep with Spike? Do they smile and canoodle and kiss?

He and Willow communicate through Dawn, and after a while Willow comes to the office, and he takes off for a few hours and they drive downtown for coffee. She doesn't apologize, upset that he doesn't fully trust her--that's the "trust issue" which they apparently have to talk to death. He can tell she wants to yield ground but can't quite, so they sit and spat in their awkward way and she assures him she's not the Willow of yesteryear, but she has such wounded eyes.

And all this is over Spike, which is a little odd if you back off for a moment and think about it, as once upon a time she had no use for him, and Xander didn't either. But now they're fighting over the vampire's peace of mind and the ethics of informal prostitution and similarly weird shit that they don't put into quite those words.

Who the hell are we, Xander wonders. It's like Hotel California is droning on some eternal replay as the soundtrack to their lives.

Xander, his cappuccino cooling and ignored: "It's my business and his, not yours."

Willow: "You'd never have even gone to get him if we hadn't pushed you."

Xander: "You don't even--so I give him money, so what? He buys stuff. It's what people do. Good, old-fashioned American consumerism. And so help me," his hand arresting like a slash in the air, "if you're going to claim a vested interest in where that money came from--"

Willow, getting het up: "I told you--"

Xander: "Uh huh. And I so believe you, because hey, any Harris can win the California State Lottery. On the Hellmouth."

Willow, bitterly: "Believe what you like."

Xander: "I will."

Willow: "Fine."

Xander: "Fine."

But they get over it. Time passes and Willow--as far as Xander can tell--allows the details of what she suspects to blur until she no longer seems to be holding a grudge. She starts coming to visit again and smiles warmly at Spike, hugs him on arrival and departure. He, like Xander, is cautious of her: "Witches are the scariest women you'll ever meet, mate."

Xander: "No fucking kidding. It's like the GynoPower 5000, with crispy frying action."

It's terrible, fearing that everything you've gotten used to might be taken away with the snap of someone's fingers, your memory burned clean and rewritten like the hard drive of a computer.

Fuck, Xander thinks, staring in tiredness at Spike's sleeping face as morning chirps into life. He is stressed and seriously thinking of leaving Sunnydale for a few weeks, months--however long it takes to shake this anxiety. See Europe is a thought that's been looping in his brain. Why not? Something to think about. He wants to spoil someone. It's what life is about, if you can afford it, and the idea of taking Spike away and fucking him on crisp hotel sheets in strange countries has a definite appeal.

It's unhappy for him to think that Willow can't see this, can't see that for fuck's sake he's not going to hurt Spike. What the hell does she think is going on behind closed doors? He knows that really, her concerns are more or less subtle ones about dependency and self-actualization and emotional vulnerability, but Xander manages to whip his dark thoughts into a latte-like froth, and rewrites the argument they had so that he can say things in his head like: "What do you think I'm doing--using him for a punching bag? A sex bot?" Because those things he can deny.

He's picking at his own anxieties.

Spike smiles when he wakes up. It's a smile that has taken Xander time to recognize--weeks--a movement of lips so small you might think it was your eyes playing tricks on you. He considers Xander alertly and says nothing for a minute, while Xander knuckles his collarbone gently. The day begins.

There've been several orgies of shopping both online and off, some of which Xander has participated in. Spike is pretty, ambling to the bathroom in striped silk pajama bottoms to stare at himself in the mirror, study his hair. Then out to the kitchen with careless gestures that still catch Xander's eye: lazy skritch of fingers across abs, vigorous hair scrub, thoughtful backhand check of jawline to see if a shave is needed--he shaves once a week, no more, the Lex Luthor of vampires.

He drinks coffee, and breakfast blood, collects the paper, and is usually sitting at the table when Xander comes in. Though they've never really made contract negotiations, waiting on Xander is by no stretch of interpretation part of his duties, and Spike remains charmingly thoughtless about many things humans need--bacon, cereal, fruit pulp. Even so, Xander has now and then caught Spike observing what he does in the mornings, and he thinks that if he could establish a regular breakfast habit, that he might come out one morning to find food prepared. Sadly, he is a male, and random, and his breakfasts go something like this:

There is no way to predict the whims of his body, and Spike has not yet tried.

Sometimes when he comes home at night Spike is still wearing the pajama bottoms and nothing else. It should annoy Xander, but it so completely doesn't. Also, though Spike loves showers and the jacuzzi, he sometimes hasn't bothered to wash. And the great thing about a vampire is, Xander decides, the low ick factor. Vampires, unlike the guys at his construction company, are not prone to interrupt their conversation with you to hawk up a gob of phlegm and spit it a yard from where you stand. They don't catch colds or develop unsightly rashes or have weird toilet practices you need to get used to if you're going to maintain roommate sanity.

Other evidence that Spike is in fact not quite what you'd call a guy. Except in the thousand other ways he very much is, like the drinking, swearing, grumbling, and casual tit-ogling he indulges in, not to mention his emphatic positions on music, his dislike of certain types of shoes, the panthery way he plays pool, and of course his dick, which is a handful of goodness Xander hasn't tired of and never will.

There's the strange New York sweater collection, though--high fashion, not femme, but Xander can't entirely accept that Spike's clothes nature has changed from dusters and Docs to silk and cashmere. It seems one of the most telling pieces of evidence that Spike is having some kind of mid-death crisis. He wears jeans when they go on their killing sprees, and shirts that he can toss afterwards if necessary. But the old Spike skin gets stripped off so quickly when they get home and Xander is often struck by how arbitrary and even false that skin has turned out to be. A lot of Spike's swagger was in the old duster which is god knows where, and he loses a few inches when he removes his boots, and then he's barefoot and cat-sleek again, groomed for indoors.

So it's a relief that he's cracking wise more often these days, and seems to be honing an edge again. Maybe it's the mirror.

Xander is waiting for Spike to nag him, to assert himself, to use his strength, maybe call Xander a few rude names. Give him the finger again.

I'm not a client, Xander thinks. He can be himself.

Whoever the hell that is.

Part Nine

He never tells Spike the exact comments of Willow's that were responsible for tipping his freak-o-meter into the red. "He needs fixing," she said with a determined look. And also: "Maybe we shouldn't have brought him here."

Words to chill a man who knows a witch. But the horizon is now sunny again.

The day is sunny too, and it's totally out of the blue when he turns around on site and finds himself face to face with Riley Finn. Immediate grin from Riley at his astonished expression, and then they're laughing and hugging in a manly way, clapping each other on the back. Riley doesn't get into town often--three or four times a year, following up on special ops business. This time around it's nothing urgent, and they go to lunch and shoot the shit. Xander learns:

1. Riley and Sam are going through choppy relationship waters.
2. The Australian outback is crawling with dragons. ("But that's hush hush," Riley says.)
3. The government is thinking of reestablishing a monitoring presence on the Hellmouth.

Xander: "Yeah?"

Riley: "Yeah. That's why I'm here."

Xander: "Huh. They didn't learn their lesson the first time?"

Riley, tipping his head to acknowledge the hit: "They want to learn from it. They're thinking of assigning a smaller unit here, more in a liaison capacity."

He has big hands, Xander notices as Riley toys with a breadstick. He's more likely to notice stuff like that now, even when he's not attracted to a guy.

They talk about Buffy and Willow and Dawn, and then things reach a point where Xander has to make room in the conversation to say: "Spike's back...he's living with me." Existing with me, his mind corrects, but as Giles would say, that's pedantic and not especially humorous.

Riley: "Wow. That's...living with, or living with?"

Xander: "Emphasis on the with."

He sees wheels turning in Riley's head as the other man thinks about how this development clears one more ex-lover off of Buffy's greatest hits list, and what this might mean for a guy who is probably going to divorce his wife.

That's purely speculation. It's just that Riley seems a bit sad and lonely, and the way he was talking about Buffy earlier made it clear that he still has a thing for her even if he's tried to move on.

Riley's business is with Willow and with Bennett, their locally assigned watcher. He's in town for three days and they do the obligatory dinner on the second night. It's pure comedy gold: Spike, Riley, Xander, Willow, Bennett, Dawn, and Becca all gathered at a table over spaghetti and a carafe of blood, everyone but Dawn taking great care about what they say and how they say it.

Riley making small talk with Spike: Mister Iowa, well raised by his mother, puts a lot of effort into getting over the hump of the past, while Spike gazes across the table as if studying a not-very-interesting form of talking plant life. He's the least polite he's been since his arrival, very Old Spikish, and it would be heartening to Xander if it weren't so awkward.

At one point Riley gets some sauce on his shirt and Spike, who is wearing off-white silk and drinking blood, pauses with his wine glass halfway to his lips and stares for one long, obvious moment at the stain as if it's evidence of a character flaw or social gaucherie--this from a man who once cleaned mud from his boots on Xander's mother's coffee table with the broken rib of a Vargal demon he'd wrested earlier from its corpse as a trophy.

Riley clears his throat, dabs at his shirt, and excuses himself to the bathroom.

Xander kicks Spike under the table.

Two days later Riley is gone again and Spike sulks less, and time rolls forward again at a comfortable pace.

They go out for coffee in the evening on their way to a poetry reading, of all things--a university event that Dawn winningly begged them to attend--and end up waiting in line at the open-air cafe down the street from the Magic Box. They're debating the rankings of pricey sports cars, and gradually a man behind them adopts a listening attitude. When Xander drags his gaze from Spike for a brief moment, he realizes it's a famous movie star. The guy hit it big in a classic flick with Tom Cruise that still makes the cable circuit now and then, and several other films Xander can't immediately name. This close he looks both older than expected and larger than life.

When he catches the man's eye he nods to show he's cool, and the man nods back, casual and with complete politeness.

Spike's back is mostly turned to the star, so he doesn't notice a thing; he's yattering on about automatic versus manual transmissions, torque and cooling systems and cornering.

They reach the counter and Xander turns to order and it's as if his movement turnstiles Spike's head in the opposite direction--as he's focusing on the menu board he can see from the corner of his eye Spike nodding back vaguely toward the man, then he hears that matinee voice say, "How've you been?"

Spike: "Sorry?"

Famous Star: "Diane's last week, wasn't it? Rita introduced us."

Spike, slowly: "Oh. Right."

Famous Star: "Did you sign that deal with Miramax?"

Spike: "Nah. Didn't like their offer."

Famous Star: "I have a script you might be interested in. I'm producing it myself. You're with Kim at ICM, right?"

Spike: "Yeah."

It goes on like that, freaking out Xander, who fears at any moment the Famous Star will realize Spike is just fucking with him, but by the time they break away, he's given Spike a card with his cell number and invited them both down to his cottage for drinks the following night, letting them know that "Kevin and Phoebe" will be there.

Xander, admiringly, as they reach the sidewalk: "You're such a dick."

Time passes and it's hard to figure out how exactly it all happens or when, but it slowly dawns on Xander that Buffy and Spike have been talking on the phone a lot. He is not aware of this at first because she almost always calls him. First there's a conversation he walks in on, no big, Spike is lounging on the couch and keeps talking, Xander figures out it's Buffy, he talks to Buffy for a few minutes himself. All fine. Then Spike makes some comment a week later and it's some piece of news about Buffy, or not even news, but some tiny indication that he's up to date on her likes and dislikes. And that is a bit odd. Then Xander gets the phone bill and sees three long-distance calls to her number in the past month, each lasting about an hour.

It's embarrassing the way you behave when you're paranoid, and what follows after this is a painful period of several days, two weeks at most, where he chips away at Spike, a little bit here, a little bit there, trying through dozens of indirect questions to figure out just how much they're talking to each other, and what about, and why, and the ripple effect of his tension is palpable and laps into other talks, other things they do together.

One night it comes to a head, he doesn't even remember how. It's like crash, bang, and all of a sudden they're standing in the living room, mid-fight, and Supercat has flung himself at a gallop down the hall to escape the angry giants.

Xander: "Just tell me, okay--are you still in love with her?" Classic cliché interrogation, but the pain is uniquely his.

Spike: "Of course I'm not." The words are enunciated very deliberately, and his tone and eyes say: you stupid sod, but Xander thinks he may be reading them wrong.

Xander: "Then why the hell are you talking to her all the time?"

Spike: "I told you. She's just lonely."

Xander: "So tell her to call Willow. Or the sister she left when she decided to go off and see the world." Man, he's harsh. He hears it in himself but he can't keep it down.

Spike: "She does. I'm just one of the many, Xander."

A patient tone, and it's jarring, because he only ever uses Xander's name in bed, head hanging face-down over the pillow, hips working frantically back, voice desperate: "Christ, Xander, ah fuck, love, yes, fuck, need it harder--"

Hearing it now makes Xander ache, his temples throb. "You're mine. I've fucking paid for you." And he gasps instead of laughing, chest tight enough to burst, and turns and punches the wall. Hasn't done that in years, and fuck. It really, stupidly hurts.

Spike comes to him and doesn't do anything for his hand, just yanks him gently back by his belt and forces him to turn, and then shimmies against him as if to say yes, you have and he's kissing Xander's neck and baring his own, and then he's not quite moving anymore, but just waiting for Xander to do whatever he'll do.

The sex is so intense, it's nearly a walking, fucking black-out, a haze filling his brain, a cyclone. He throws Spike against the wall and kisses him and bites hard enough to split Spike's lip and he grabs Spike's head and pulls it forward then slams it back against the wall, hand full of curls at the nape, which makes Spike arch all over, mouth falling open and eyes falling shut, as if he's sky-rocketing into delirium. Xander rips Spike's shirt open, buttons flying, grabs his shoulders and his neck and his head again, wanting something he can't quite get his hands on.

He might have run out of steam then, become aware of his own violence and turned away from it. But Spike is a pro at this, more than in the strict sense of the word--he's got over a hundred years of passion behind him and he knows how to take the lead. He goads Xander by touching himself lazily, licking the blood from his lower lip, and then it's nearly impossible to wait as Xander fists his own dick out, makes Spike get down on the floor and suck him off, right up to the edge of reason, and then fucks him with madness over a chairback--some tumbled furniture before they find the right piece--and Spike's not slick for him, not easy to enter, but Xander does anyway and feels Spike thrash beneath him, hears him make noises that signal when he's about to come.

It's over quick for both of them, actually, Xander following several thrusts behind Spike, dick sharpening--that's how it feels--getting that edge that says now, now, now, finer and keener and faster, until he's spilling over. Bang.

He can't keep anger past that moment. He's immediately flush with the joy of aftermath.

He'd be giddy if he didn't ache so much, wanting forgiveness between them both, wanting it all to be good and not a literal fucking mistake.

Spike's lust-whacked face says it is. Not a mistake, but all good.

Xander is shaky the rest of the night, his entire body one big cocktail he can't unmix, but in the morning he wakes up and looks over at the vampire in his bed--dead, undead, bedhead--and Spike is already awake and watching him and smiling. And it's a real smile, sized just right, with nothing at all to hide.

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Subtleties

by Anna S

Part Seven

Part Eight

Part Nine

by
Anna S