Subtleties

by
Anna S

Part Ten

They go to The Rambler, the better of Sunnydale's two gay clubs.

As a reason for going, Xander says: "I don't want to lose touch with my roots."

Spike's gaze cuts up to his hairline. He's clearly puzzled, because Xander doesn't actually dye his hair.

Xander: "My other roots." A pause. "My roots in the gay community." Spike is staring at him and the words silly sod nearly appear in a thought bubble next to his head, kinda like when a cat stares at you and you know he's thinking: Give me fish, stupid human. "Okay," Xander has to admit. "I have no roots in the gay community. But why don't I? I should. It doesn't seem right to just be gay. You gotta shake your gay thing sometimes. Not that thing," he clarifies, as Spike's gaze turns downward this time.

They go to The Rambler. Spike dances. Men's heads turn to watch Spike dance--men's heads turn away from the go-go dancer on the bar to watch him dance, even when sometimes he's barely moving, but he also manages to make Xander look and feel less than completely lame.

Outside the club, as they're leaving, an earnest young man tries to hand them a pamphlet, asking, "Have you accepted Jesus Christ into your heart?"

Spike: "No, but I've accepted dick into my ass. No more room at the inn, wouldn't you say?"

The kid, amazingly, manages to come back from this: "He has room for you. We are all loved by our Lord and Savior."

Spike gently takes the pamphlet from his hopeful, outstretched hand, nods, and lets Xander escort him away.

"Jesus," Xander says with feeling when they're out of range.

Spike: "Just a messenger, I think."

Later, Xander finds the pamphlet on the counter, reads it: "He bled and died for our sins." He throws it away, then gets up at three a.m. and fishes it from the trash and puts it into a kitchen drawer below the delivery menus. Whatever. Spike might want it, and it's not his to toss.

They debate about installing a flatscreen TV in the bedroom on the wall opposite the bed, so that they can lie like beached fish after sex and watch cooking shows and Xander's Babylon 5 CDs. It seems both very right and very wrong to Xander, the first flagstone on a path to hell and the kind of tacky, all-out immersion in a gadgeted lifestyle that he's tried to avoid despite having loads of money. Tried to avoid...now and then. Once or twice at the very least.

"The bedroom is for sex," Xander slurs after one marathon session leaves him steamrollered. Flattened. Barely verbal.

No TV.

Looking back, it's clear that this was not the first flagstone on the path to domesticity, which is turning out to be nothing like hell. All of Spike's clothes have been moved into Xander's room now, his own side of the closet. His CDs outnumber Xander's. And he's stopped nesting in the living room quite so much. He's allowing himself to take up more space in the bedroom. Finally, one day: a paperback appears on his side of the bed, and what was Xander's personal space is suddenly theirs, shared.

He has his own side of things.

Right about then is when Spike starts to get antsy. The broodiness is like a third person in the house. One night Spike says, "I'm taking the car for a drive." His own car, but it's the first time he's ever expressed such a whim. He vanishes for three hours, comes back with blood on his shirt from a slice along his chest. It was a good shirt, not a throwaway. Xander isn't sure how many questions he should ask, or not ask. He has the inevitable thought: how would I know if he started eating people again? Not that he believes that. It's just the inevitable thought, a blip on his mental radar, and then gone again.

Totally, utterly unchipped vampire. And people with souls do bad things all the time.

The next week, Xander comes down with a hellacious cold and, after bringing him a mug of tea and some toast, Spike climbs back into bed with him among the littered, snotty tissues and stays there for three days. Reads books and lets him sleep. Fetches and carries. Cleans up his tissues and makes soup and orders ineffectual homeopathic medicines off the net by overnight express, based on a recommendation of Becca's. Shares a hot bath, sitting behind Xander and washing his body with soothing palm strokes. He's mellow, stretchy as taffy, folding himself to Xander's body whenever Xander gives him a sign that it's welcome. Spooning him, playing pussycat.

When Xander is well again--ye, having passed through the Valley of the Death Wish--he feels a profound sense of gratitude and can't keep his languid, molesting hands off Spike. Touches him all the time.

When Xander is well again, Spike gets hincky and quiet and half-withdraws. Back to brooding. He's killing things grimly when they patrol, sometimes with an angry ghost of the old Spike vim. Kick, smash, snarl.

He's been the new-and-different Spike for so long that it nearly rips Xander to pieces when the vampire picks a fight with him. Bypassing any number of several smaller fights, he bears straight for the championship match, and it's a big rude bloodbath of shouts and angst. Never goes for the jugular, but it's still terrifying. Emotionally. Not physically. Meltdown, some of which Xander had guessed at, some of which he hadn't. Spike paces almost the way a lion does, but trying to hold back from attack instead of working himself up, Xander feels.

Spike, drunk, eyes angry with tears: "It's all so bloody pointless!"

Xander, teetering on the edge of heartbreak and afraid to touch him: "What is?"

Spike: "Why don't you just put a collar 'round my neck--chain me up in the garage with the car--not as if this is going anywhere--"

Xander: "Is this about the money--is it--"

Spike: "Of course it's about the fucking money!" A storm-eye of cold calm: "The fucking money, Xander."

Xander: "Take it, you can have all of it." He means it, and what he's trying to say is, it doesn't matter.

Spike's mouth twists. "Oh, right. Guess you've got me pegged, then. After your fortune, is all. Big wads of cash up my bum, thanks." Words dripping with contempt.

Xander: "No, that's not--that's not what I--"

And then, whiplash: "It's not about money."

Xander: "You just said--"

Spike: "Sod your magic money. You think I give a fuck--"

Xander: "No--"

Spike: "You're so bloody thick--it's a wonder you don't topple like a buffalo with that massive, self-absorbed head on your shoulders."

It's grossly unfair, it's incoherent, it's frustrating as hell, and it goes nowhere, at least not until Xander braves himself to walk to Spike and take the sides of his face in both hands. Spike, his head tilted down and to the right, resists looking up for a moment in a stubborn, bullish way that makes Xander feel strangely generous and tender and willing to play the big dumb man in this equation, to another man who keeps giving it up for him: "Tell me what to do--I'll do it. Please, baby." And he's only ever said that during sex. Baby. It's wrong, but he says it anyway. "Just tell me." He's reduced to babbled endearments and begging, as desperate about this as he's ever been about the sex.

And when Spike meets his eyes, he's so close to spilling over--anger, tears, pain, a miserable twist of death and time and soul--that it's hard not to flinch.

Spike sags against him finally, his head on Xander's shoulder, and Xander swallows down all pride as meekly as any man ever has in a fight like this--as he never in a million years would've done with Spike before he brought him back from New York, as he really never did with Anya, if you want to get honest about it.

In the morning, Spike is actually rather embarrassed, but things remain strained and there's the difficulty of being men and not wanting to talk about things in plain terms while sober. And just when Xander is afraid it's all going to cycle and spin out of control again, Spike stretches next to him on the couch one night and draws his eye and asks, "You ever put your mark on anyone?"

Xander's mouth goes dry and he shakes his head and the next night they come home and Spike has a tattoo on his lower back and Xander nearly breaks himself when he thrusts along the clasp of Spike's ass--outside, not in--and his dick is pushing toward the tattoo like a clock hand, pointing to his own stylized initial, almost reaching it and then suddenly rubbing across its bright surface. And he comes instantly, gasping, tremors, a slippery cry pulled from his balls, it feels like. Has to relearn how to hold his spunk after that, whenever he's taking Spike from behind. How to make it last.

It's really not about money. It's moving past that, and the money sometimes doesn't even feel like his own, so the idea that it could matter is starting to seem...off. There should be boring red tape, Xander realizes, paperwork, bank meetings, and it should be Spike's as much as his, in every formal, legal way. Something to solve. Spike doesn't even have a social security number. He'll need to call Willow, of course. These things usually end up in her lap, and Xander resents that if he thinks about it too much--a good sign that he needs to let something go, because she's his best friend and if he's feeling resentful, this is in fact a bad sign.

It's all about roots. Xander wants them, Spike might be afraid of them, Willow makes them. But really, it takes more than one person to make roots.

Part Eleven

It's funny, the things you can ignore, avoid talking about, take for granted. They're in bed and Xander has several slick fingers buried in Spike, who is gripping the rails of the heavy iron headboard hard enough to pull them out of true again, and it's like he always has a camera trained on him instead of just Xander's focus, framing every look and move--chosen to walk the earth in eternal night because his face caught a vampire's eye, his survival odds aren't hurt by being pretty. No need for fancy vamp thralls to keep Xander fixated. Watching the twist of his arms and the tossing of his head and his agonized-ecstasied face working is like seeing a religion getting born.

The handcuffs--manacles, really--rattle against iron as Spike tries to find a grip to keep him anchored, as if he might lift off the bed otherwise. His hips are weightless, muscles tensed, pushing him up from the pillow beneath his ass, and he's gasping and then chokes as if he he's cutting off the word god. It snaps into a sob and Xander feels a hot spurt of pre-come slide from his own dick at the sound. Parts of him start to tremble and vibrate with the strain of waiting, making himself wait.

"Fuck yourself on me," he says in a husky strangled voice. Spike is. Then Xander can't wait, he drags his fingers out--Spike gasping no with a wild shudder--and shoves his cock in their place, demand flushing through his balls all the way up to the sticky head, and sex, the need to satisfy the ache under his skin, is like that time he had a cast on his arm, stifled, sweaty flesh and knitting bone, twinges of pain and that maddening itch that made him want to rip things off and use his teeth on himself. He wraps his hand around Spike's cock as he fucks him, jerks it and feels Spike clench around him and there's no doubt at this moment that Spike is desperate for Xander's cock, working himself on it, going offline whenever Xander hits him inside at a certain angle--his wild thrash freezing suddenly, his body an arc, even as his muscles tighten to keep Xander right there, oh fuck, right there, love. And Xander is big, and Spike likes that, has told him so with amazing expressions on his face, in every position, hands free to clench on his shoulders, or chained and punishing the headboard.

Xander likes to feel big, and does when he's inside Spike, thrusting, sliding toward home, because it's always so tight, and he's a master at dicking, it's just something he does well, no bullshit false modesty, he can bring Spike off without even touching him, even if he takes his hand away, can make him shout when he comes, cock tight against his belly, spattering himself with little white stripes as Xander finishes inside him.

What they don't talk about is how Spike is always the one getting dicked. They've had a total of two short conversations on the subject, one in New York that ended with Xander saying, "I don't really like it," and the one about losing his cherry, which was Spike's way of dropping a hint, offering--or more accurately letting him know in an indirect way that he wouldn't mind a reversal of fortune now and then. Xander had ignored it.

He's felt remarkably little guilt. He's fucked Spike in the kitchen against the counter, in the shower, bent over the bathroom sink, shoved across tables and armchairs and deck rails. Spike on his knees facing the headboard, on his hands and knees, on his belly with his ass lifted up, upright and slouching back, straddling Xander while he sits or lies back. Every way they could figure out, and it's always good. After the first few weeks Xander confessed that he never much liked "the whole ass thing" before Spike, and he meant giving it as much as receiving. He kept the conversation from diverting to questions of reciprocity by adding, "I want you all the fucking time, twenty-four seven, I just want to live with my dick in your ass...maybe I can get one of those headsets to take conference calls from bed, what do you think?" Spike had looked amused.

But now he's beginning to feel something else, which is...Spike's dick. He feels it against his thigh, or rubbing against his own, heated by friction, or filling his hand or his mouth, or nudging him from behind whenever Spike spoons him, and it's melting his brain. He's got to have more, he's got to have it do something to him. It's not enough when Spike thrusts between his thighs--almost enough, insane-making, but now he wants it to prod up and in. He thinks he does. Except he honestly hasn't liked being on the ass-end of things up to now. There's a grossness factor and there's discomfort and he's never come that way, nothing like the way Spike does, where if you just touch him inside he's gasping and ready to pop.

It's not hard to figure out that Spike would like to do him. It's the whole guy thing--you stick your dick in stuff and drain your brain cells off. That's what guys do even if he himself had never been fully sold on it. So no question, he's been depriving Spike in a bad way.

I'm a bastard, Xander thinks.

Spike is spooned close behind him, slick and working between his thighs with amazing little twists and thrusts that drag his cockhead up behind Xander's nuts--tease and stroke and push and a wet little kiss of the head to his throbbing flesh. "Oh fuck," Xander says, gripping himself to keep from coming. Spike is tonguing his ear too. It's a circuit of moist, horny vampire.

Xander: "Why don't you...oh fuck." He spreads his thighs a bit and drives himself back, trying to direct and intensify that brushing heaviness. Tying to manipulate someone else's dick like that is like trying to work a paint brush with your teeth, or master chopsticks, but once in a while the pay-off is amazing.

Spike: "Hmmm?"

Xander takes a deep breath: "Why don't you do me?"

It's an absolute pause, as if time stops ticking forward and the universe ceases spinning, and then--

Spike: "You sure?"

The rigidity of his body and his dick and the strain in his voice--not a growl, but some subharmonic note of tension that suggests the moment before game face--makes Xander realize how long he's made Spike wait, how badly the other man wants it. Probably wants to plunge inside him and howl and fuck him with rough, raging strokes.

Xander: "If you...you know I've never really liked it. But that's okay." He's not trying to be a martyr, but it's unnerving. Ass. Dick.

Spike: "You going to let me drive?"

Xander just manages to nod, and Spike slides his arm around him and thrusts again, three or four times, quickly, gasps and spills in the inseam of Xander's body. Just taking the edge off; Spike can raise wood on a dime.

The first time with Spike is like the first time. He's been almost apelike in his stupidity, he realizes--an epiphany that hits hard about seven minutes after Spike positions him face down on the bed, props a pillow under him, and begins tongue-fucking him, which is when Xander begins to shake all over and beg. He's actively discouraged this act before, though he's done it plenty often for Spike, licking his tidy vanilla-bean ass inside and out with no hesitation.

I am so dumb, he thinks dizzily, trying to climb out of his skin when Spike's tongue stabs him open--repetitively, obsessively--thick and long and clever and wet. He uses his tongue until Xander can't take it anymore, then two lubed fingers as he croons reassurances, and then his dick, which makes Xander sob. One slicked-up hand stays busy, keeping Xander stiff, driving him to the edge of climax and holding him there, and he's strong--vampire strong, duh--and lifts Xander up to his knees, sinks human teeth into his shoulder to pin him upright until Xander is driven to a good, new place that makes him snarl almost like Spike does, and his orgasm just about jumps out of him.

They lie together side by side on their backs, both of them nearly unconscious and unable to speak above a sedated murmur.

Spike: "So that was all right, then?"

Xander: "Shut up."

Spike: "Because they say it's not every bloke's cuppa tea."

Xander yawns, and then: "Bite. Me."

Spike: "Guess you'll not be wanting to do that again."

Xander smiles dopily at the ceiling, his eyes deeply closed. It's what they call a lazy smile: mostly on the inside because he's fucked himself to immobility, too wiped out even to widen his mouth.

Xander: "Mmm."

His head sings to itself.

I will buy you a new life. Perfect, shiny and new.

Two days later he and Spike are at Willow's house, standing on the back porch as dinner preparations are being finished in the kitchen--women bustling, men hiding, traditional gender roles triumphing--and Xander stands behind Spike, arms wound around his, their hands clasped, and he butts his chin on Spike's shoulder as Spike slouches in that melting, accommodating way he has which seems to make him three inches shorter.

I didn't kill him, Xander thinks. He can hear Willow talking and laughing in the kitchen, and there's this momentary braid of then and now, everything looping together like a big bow around the present, and he's startled to realize how little he could have predicted if he'd put his mind to it years ago. It's not just the earth-shattering things, but the people and what they do to you. If he'd been any one of his more ordinary classmates, he could have pegged some tacks into the map of his life: graduation, college, job, marriage, maybe a move across country or a sudden career change throwing him a minor curve, but no major shockers, not like saving the world or setting up house with a more or less dead ex-killer whose hair smells of the same shampoo he uses. The same pillow.

Spike: "I can hear the little cogwheels grinding."

Xander, pretending to misunderstand: "Sorry. I'm kind of hungry."

Spike gives one of those grunted laughs that doesn't quite leave the throat. A few moments later says: "You move that hand any lower and I'm going to give the ladies a show."

Xander: "You won't believe who I heard from today." Spike hums an inquiry. "Anya. She's coming to visit. I mentioned the us thing. The you-and-I-same-bed thing."

Spike: "And what'd she say?" Slightest possible emphasis on the she.

Xander, raising the pitch of his voice just enough to mark the quote: "'My god, Xander. If I'd known you were going to have sex with him too, I'd never have felt so guilty. All that wasted energy!'" Spike snorts, and Xander goes on in a normal voice: "I'm not sure I want you two in the same room. I think she might try for a threesome."

Spike, sultry: "And that'd be bad how?"

Xander: "Trust me. You so don't want to go there."

Spike: "I think it's you, doesn't want to go there."

Xander, copping to it easily: "You've got me."

Spike's seductiveness is like a thin, silk veil across naked uncertainty: the practice of distraction and undertones. "Have I?"

Xander lets his mouth warm Spike's ear: "My wallet, my dick, my hands, my..." Heart. "...green and utter jealousy."

Lashes lowering, Spike curls out a smile for him. "Your orgasms."

"Yes. You're a good orgasm friend." A surge goes through him, a river rush of feeling like he's only ever felt for Willow, a strange but wonderful thing. His lips move to add with gentle redundancy: "My friend."

Then they're called to dinner, and they go.

Part Twelve

Xander dealt with the attempted rape things years ago. It was ordinary alchemy. A while after the First Evil had been handled, Buffy was working Xander's nerves--he can't even remember the reason now--and at the same time Spike had done something equally forgettable that earned him a temporary spot in Xander's good graces. They'd all been at Buffy's: post-traumatic social gathering number nine hundred and whatever. He'd walked into the kitchen to get something, a drink maybe. The two of them had been in there talking--Spike and Buffy--and Buffy had briefly smiled his way, distracted, the conversation nothing so intimate that she clammed up or shooed him off.

The smile wouldn't normally have irked him, but it did, a feather across a sore, and he tried to pointedly ignore her, but she didn't even notice. She chattered on as Xander got his drink, and he was half-listening, casting the two of them casual and blameless "I happen to be in the same space as you people" glances, and something about Spike's slump-shouldered, helpless attitude of befuddlement struck a chord, because for crying out loud Buffy was so Buffy she drove them all crazy, and that didn't excuse Spike for one motherloving minute, but clearly Buffy had moved on, Buffy could deal with what had happened--whatever had happened, because the details were never shared. She'd dealt with Spike the same way she had with Willow and Faith and Angel and Andrew and too many others to count, and here she was, dressing down Spike in the mildest possible tones for who knows what, delivering sugar and tart verbal slaps, talking to him the way a know-it-all girl talks to a friend or some kind of social improvement victim, and there was still a lot of hatred on Xander's part, but it suddenly struck him as bloodless and lukewarm, like leftovers from some meal you can't recall eating; the kind of hatred you feel for some punk-ass stupid ex-flame of your sister's, and not a neck-crawling vampire.

The sister who never pressed charges and gave as good as she got.

Time can create small stitches of affinity as much as it can create distance, mend as much as rip. When you're young you don't get that. Aging helps. You don't get perspective so much as you just get tired.

So one night there's some movie on Showtime, enacting a terrible, disturbingly graphic rape. They watch in silence, as if someone had clicked the mute button on their normal idle commentary ("What the bloody hell's she wearing--looks like someone killed an ostrich on her head"), and then Spike gets up and leaves. Later they talk around the subject, briefly and with a crosshatch of aborted assurances to each other. They reach a mute understanding. Xander thinks they do, anyway. As much of an understanding as you can reach when you aren't verbalizing a goddamn thing. They could be acting out their issues with hand-puppet therapy, if they were oh, say, two other people.

The next morning, Xander wakes from a dream that Spike is raping Buffy. It's creepy, but it's a dream, and the extent of his angst is to slink from bed, shower, and navigate his way through the rest of the day via a series of grunts and hand gestures.

That evening he does the wacky and unthinkable and brings Spike flowers. Which makes no sense, and on so many levels. Spike stares at the handful of truncated dead things in surprise and then smiles. It's an amazing smile. It's the only blossom worth looking at in the room. His eyes soften and he gazes at Xander as if he's never seen him before. The whole exchange stuns Xander, makes him Spike's bitch for the rest of the night, dumbfounded and clumsy and short-circuited by weird impulses, schemes to make Spike do that neat trick again with his lips. Cruises, chocolates, fancy dinners--okay, his impulses are not so much weird as trite, not to mention so totally inappropriate for both a vampire and a red-blooded male.

Xander's entire romantic history is Anya and that's just fucking scary.

Well, reconsider: his entire romantic history consists of Cordelia, Faith, Anya, and Tim--a guy who thought sharing Chiclets was a sign of commitment and started talking about moving in with Xander right after his own dishwasher broke.

Still fucking scary.

Anya comes to visit and it's just as freakish as expected. Her chain of magical shops--modeled after the Magic Box but given a New Age face lift--have been successful, and in consequence she's flashy and upbeat. She condescends to Becca and Dawn, trades snippy repartee with Willow (who, when Anya turns her back at one point, raises clawed hands in parodic witchiness and pulls the most comically terrifying face that Xander has seen in years), and shows way too much interest in the nuts and bolts of his relationship with Spike. Sexual innuendo fully applicable there.

Spike, strangely, takes some of her harsh edge off. He liquors her up over dinner and calms her down to a soft hum until her hair is a bit awry and she's pressing a tumbler against her cheek to cool it. Her old insecurities and uncertainties, still present, start to reveal themselves, drawn out by his mild questions. By the end of the evening everyone is feeling sympathetic toward her and the gathering closes with a series of hugs.

On the dark winding drive home, it strikes Xander that her visit was completely gratuitous, not at all business related, and--a bit tipsy--he almost starts to cry. They're all freaks, damaged and alone, and it's wonderful, like being part of a secret club--the ones who've saved the world--but it's also terrible sometimes.

He says nothing to Spike of what he's feeling, but maybe Spike senses it. They don't make love that night; they walk down the beach with their bare ankles in the waves. No demons attack.

I have a demon, Xander thinks. It's walking next to him, made colorless by night, just a figure in shadows. He is unutterably happy. The universe is huge and strange. Unkind but strange. And it's the strangeness that makes it bearable. He's only getting that now.

The season turns and it begins to rain all the time, warm rains. His nerves are a perfectly tuned piano and the weather plays scales on him, sends his moods up and down--it's really work that is setting him off, but the rain seems timed to accompany. He leaves work early more often and comes home to find Spike in the living room, lamps on, the rain busy outside, the cat making a lump of itself on the couch arm and staring at the TV. Spike will almost always be on the computer, shoeless feet propped on the coffee table. And when he looks up and sees Xander, he's never not happy. He's so fucking easy to please. This is his life.

Xander, erratic, sometimes drops down to the carpet and gives Spike a blow job that makes him writhe and card Xander's hair. Or they'll just sit, Xander's mind turning off for a while.

It feels as if stormclouds are massing, as if the dark is rising. Evil might be making dire plans at any moment in some crack or corner of town, or motoring on its way to the Hellmouth for a fling.

"I don't want to die," Xander says one day, when the sun is so overcast that Spike can stand with him at three o'clock in the afternoon on the deck and see the distant, restless waves hitting the beach, through a gap in the bushes.

Spike: "Don't knock mortality."

Xander, still watching the waves, feels a flash of anger: "You say all the wrong things."

Spike, quiet. Sad maybe, though it's hard to tell: "Yeah?"

Xander, after a long pause: "No."

Spike has a particular sweater, wool and cable-knit and authentically Irish, in a complex shade of blue-green that Xander's eye keeps trying to puzzle out. It's one of many articles of clothing that are very unlike him. That is, the old him. He has dyed his hair again, though, and it sticks up in whitish-blond tufts that draw Xander's hand upward whenever they're close.

He loves Spike's face, the way it molds to his head, the way his head rests on his neck, the way his neck stems up from the downcurled edge of his sweater. Spike often smiles at him. He's so pale, and so perfect, and when Xander sees him at three o'clock in the pearly twilight of the sky he can't tear his eyes away.

It's time for something different, and he takes Spike to L.A. for no good reason. "Let's get out of here," he says. "Let's go somewhere." There's a concert Spike wants to see and they attend in ridiculous outfits, leather and ripped shirts, both of them laughing and stoned off some sweet pot that a friend of Dawn's scored for Spike, a thing Xander will never tell Buffy.

They visit Angel and company. Stay for a few days and help kick some local demon ass. It's a hell of a good time, and at one point Angel lifts his chin and laughs with genuine pleasure and Xander quite likes him. Just for a moment.

Then they take the car and drive east in random paths, heading toward Buffy. She's expecting them and when they get there, she's radiant, white teeth and wispy hair and big eyes. Such a skinny, pretty woman. No longer a girl, not at all. There are hugs exchanged--Xander lifts her off the ground and she squeals. It's hard not to look at her, impossible not to love her. Spike is more jazzed than Xander has seen him in a long time, ebullient and attentive to his slayer. They walk around the college, then town; have dinners, see the sights. Buffy introduces them to her boyfriend, her friends. She's found a place for herself.

Buffy: "I still get in a good slay now and then. The commute is nothing--New York, Boston, Philly. The vamps in Philly? So easy to spot. It's like a Michael Jackson video. I swear time stopped in the mid-eighties."

They're both terribly, manfully indulgent and protective of her, though she clearly doesn't need them to be.

Her friends are a mix of flighty and intellectual, goofy and aloof.

Spike, speaking softly as the first streaks of pink are appearing in the sky, as they're all sitting around in Buffy's apartment after a night of talk and beer: "Dawn misses you."

Buffy, looking down: "I know."

Xander: "Come home more often. If it's money--"

Buffy: "No. It's...not. I just," shrug, "I lose track of time. I mean to visit, and then there's a test or paper due, or I end up in Hartford tracking down some vamp with a kiddie kink. And Dawn is...she's doing so great. Best thing that ever happened, big sister leaving the nest."

The drive back to California is mellow, slow. They seek out the kitschiest hotels, the ones that still have unsold stock of color-tinted postcards from the fifties, agate keychains and rock candy and locally jarred honey, pine cabins and mountain views. They ignore interstates for the back highways and discover restaurants with proud pedigrees, selling huge, dripping burgers that stun Xander's cerebral cortex, touristy places that Spike visited with Dru once upon a time, though his stories require careful editing.

Xander's Jag has well-tinted windows, and he takes great care with his passenger. They don't fight over the radio. Much.

There's one motel where the walls are glossy knotted pine, hung with flying-duck paintings, and the lamps have small orange shades. The ice machine is broken. Xander has been chewing gum and his breath smells of wintergreen and Spike smells of the shower's tiny, floral soap. They are on rough sheets and the room's heater has an annoying buzz.

"I want you to stay with me," Xander says.

Spike, blinking up at him: "Don't I now?"

Xander: "Just stay."

Spike: "People clamor for my presence."

Xander: "I know."

Spike: "It's hard, bein' in such demand."

Xander: "You can't go, though. Tell them you're booked up."

Spike: "Well, I don't want to disappoint..."

That could be taken a few different ways, but he's looking into Xander's eyes, and his voice is a quiet thing, and his meaning seems clear.

Xander: "Good."

It's a moment of good. It's like a postcard.

Back