Chapters 1 2 3 4 5 >>>>

Your Horoscope for Today

by
Anna S

Part One

"I think you're missing the point here," Xander said, framing a foot-long point with his hands as he leaned toward his beer. "I was jilted. For a troll."

Slouched across from him as if his spine were slowly being dissolved by alcohol, Spike looked unimpressed.

"It happens."

"A troll."

"Hey, chaos demon here."

That didn't parse. Xander studied Spike's shellacked head for budding antlers, saw none. There was also a

distinct lack of slime. The literal kind, anyway. "Since when?"

"Dru, you git. She left me for one. Drippy, top-heavy bastard, too. Quoting Pablo Neruda and massaging her shoulders." He made a huh sound that Xander recognized, the harsh and scoffing huh of a guy dismissing another guy on the grounds of being a punk-ass. "Not like I wouldn't've done, if she'd just--" Catching himself, he shot Xander a daggerful glare like a man who'd been tricked into revealing too much, then abandoned his pose with a slump. "Doesn't matter now."

Xander was of the opinion it had never mattered, certainly not to him or anyone sane, but since they were bonding over woman trouble and a bowl of peanuts, it didn't seem right to say so. He would settle for projecting an utter lack of sympathy.

"Dru left," Spike rambled on, "Harm lit out for sodding France, and Buffy--" He hesitated and let that one drop, giving into a sigh. "Now I'm flying solo, just another pathetic ponce drinking alone on a Tuesday night."

"Hey. Sitting right here."

"God." He stared at Xander. "I'm just like you."

"Tell me how this even happened," Xander said, refocusing inward on the ridiculousness of it all.

"You had a tiff, big and ugly showed up, girl left you for him." Spike had a way of being helpful at just the wrong moment.

"Thanks," Xander said with zero gratitude in his voice, fixing the vampire with an irritated gaze. "I did have a front-row seat. But we're still missing the how. I mean, one day she's baking me heart-shaped cookies and playing with my toes, the next she's leaving me for a guy who eats babies."

"Mmmm," Spike rejoined thoughtfully, communing with his beer glass.

"Oh my god." Xander shuddered upright, camaraderie abandoned. "You just had a, a--craving. You did!" A sharp note of accusation lifted his voice, but of course Spike wasn't denying it.

"So?" he shot back, brow-pinched, surly, and maybe a bit confused. "Not like I can do anything about it."

"Baby eater."

"Now, now. Let's not bicker."

"You're only saying that because you have no money and want more beer."

"You really do have a gift for the bleeding obvious," Spike observed, his faux-concerned tone suggesting he was pointing this out for Xander's own good.

Xander let his shoulders droop a little and picked up his glass to study its interior. "My beer's empty."

"QED," Spike said dryly and raised a hand to beckon the waitress for another round. Either that or he was inviting her to perform a lap dance. Xander's mind wandered a few blocks into the red-light district then scampered back to him with a tail-tucked whimper. He pitched forward and banged his head three times against the planks that held a growing collection of cocktail napkins.

"Got to keep your nob off the table or they won't serve you." Spike. Ever the voice of wisdom.

Straightening up again, Xander felt the room sway. It was like being a minnow trapped in a whale's belly. An aerobicizing whale. He played off his moment of nausea by turning sideways and resting his arm casually on the booth back. It slipped off the vinyl with a loud squeak just as the waitress came up with a tray of bottles and glasses.

"Hey, Mindy." He managed a charming smile that he felt certain was not at all lopsided. Mindy smiled back. At Spike.

"I got you boys doubles," Mindy confided, then held a finger to her lips with a shushing noise. "On the house. I figured you could use a cup of comfort tonight."

"It's a very nice house." When the other two looked at him, Xander yanked another remark from the murk of his brain. "I was jilted for a troll."

"You poor thing," Mindy said, smiling at Spike.

Xander put his head on the table again until Mindy left.

"Nice girl." Spike sounded admiring. When Xander raised his head, he found Spike watching the rear view as Mindy bumpered her way through the maze of bar tables.

"Right. Goes well with a nice Chianti."

"Hey!" Cue one wounded vampire, defending his tattered chivalry with a scowl. "I don't eat waitresses."

"What, you're watching your cholesterol?"

"It's a rule," Spike said, almost sputtering with outrage. "It's unheard of. I may be a pariah but I haven't sunk that low."

Xander blinked and tried to soak up that thought with a shot of Jagermeister. "What about waiters?"

"Nah, they're fair game."

"So if Buffy were a waitress--"

"Now, look." Spike raised a finger. "Told you how I felt about her. I've reformed. Turned over a new leaf."

"Yes, but under that leaf is dirt." He knew as soon as the words left his mouth that he'd broken the bond of manly hops-sharing and commiseration; the hurt in Spike's eyes was almost real. At any other time Xander would have let matters take their course--suffer a few bitter British barbs and threats to his throat, then hunch into stage two of serious drinking while Spike stalked off to find a lower species of company. But tonight, post-Anya, it would just be too much.

Also, he would probably need help getting home.

"Nothing personal," he said, keeping his tone level and unapologetic as he backpedaled. "But as your fellow man--sort of--I think it's my duty to point out that you're deluded."

"Is that right."

"You don't love her. You can't love her. And you can't change. And god help me for saying this, but the only way you're going to be happy is if you go back to Dru, find some mad doctor to pull your chip, and spend the rest of eternity making little vampire babies."

Spike sank lower into his side of the booth and sulked. "It's not true," he said after a minute. He sounded troubled. "I could change."

"Sure. You could change your clothes, your name--you could take up knitting and nurse sick kittens back to health. It wouldn't matter. You can't change you. Because you're dead. It's the ultimate arrested development."

"Says the expert," Spike parried. Xander could tell he was itching to draw blood. "Clawed your way up the ladder a few rungs, didn't you. Out of the basement, into the ranks of the happy little proles. Trouble is, that's as far as you're going, and everyone knows it. Your girl knew it. Why d'you think she left? You're an evolutionary dead end. Thirty K a year and a shiny yellow hat."

"Right." Suddenly walking home alone through the vampire-thick streets of Sunnydale seemed a more attractive prospect. "I can't tell you how special this has been--" Because it hadn't. "--but I think I'll be going. If I'm not home by midnight, my liver turns into a pumpkin."

"It's half past," Spike said flatly.

"Time to bake a pie then." He slid out of the booth, lurched to his feet, and took a brief moment to pause and contemplate the table top, into which someone had carved 'Ginny Luvs Harry.' He closed his eyes but when he reopened them the sentiment had not gone away. Neither had he.

"Any last words?" Spike asked.

"What?" Managing with great effort to winch his head up, Xander gave him the beady eye.

"For when the slayer asks." Spike lit a cigarette in that professional smoker way of his. "Not like you're going to make it home. If the vamps don't get you, I'm guessing telephone pole."

Before Xander could even formulate the first draft of a reply, the other man had palmed his wallet, tossed three twenties on the table, and manhandled him halfway to the door.

"Spike. Please. I'm begging you. Let me go. I would rather kiss a telephone pole at fifty miles an hour than--"

Graciously, Spike let him walk straight into a support beam. Even at three miles an hour the result was somewhere between bender and concussion. While pain rendered him speechless, he felt the vampire take his car keys. There might also have been a few fingers of scrotum-fondling through the front pocket of his jeans, but he was prepared to forget that.

"Oh god," he said when the bar door opened to decant them. A wave of fresh, cool air slapped him almost as hard as the beam, and he grabbed the nearest thing to keep from falling over, then leaned against the wall. The wall was Spike; the thing was his belt.

"If you heave, I'm tossing you back."

Xander lay his cheek against a broad shoulder and patted some muscles reassuringly. "I'm not going to heave."

He pushed off the wall and looked up into its face with a smile. "Hey," he said. "I love you, man." And then he cracked up, several times.

That was the last thing he remembered for a while. When he opened his eyes it was to a vision so horrible he thought he'd been turned to stone. The vision stared back, equally petrified and marble-eyed. Gradually it occurred to Xander that the monster was familiar. And that he could move his left arm. Ah. Yes. He'd been propped on the passenger-side window of his car and was staring at his own face in the mirror.

His head felt sandbagged. He must have been out a day, even a week. He checked his watch through bleary eyes. Ten minutes. The car, he noticed, was not moving.

"Spike," he said in a small and reasonable voice. Not yet ready to lift his head off the window, he waited, but there was no answer. No second tries, he decided, closing his eyes again. Time for a nap.

Part Two

"Start the car! Harris, wake the hell up! Start the car!"

He came awake in point-three seconds and flailed, ready to obey, but his hands didn't impact with the expected equipment. His right hand was rotating in the air, lost, looking for a key that wasn't there. The keys were gone! No, wait. The entire wheel was gone--someone had stolen his steering wheel! Bewildered at the specificity of the theft, he reached for the door handle and ended up flopping on his side like a seal, neatly missing something that whizzed through the car at head-level and into the driver side window with an explosion of broken glass.

"Fuck!" he yelled.

"Son of a bitch," Spike agreed, much closer, followed by the thump of a dead body hitting the car hood and sliding across. Bond, James the Bloody Bond. Two shakes later the door was pulled open and Spike's ass came sliding the opposite way across the seat, shoving a hip into Xander's face. "You're two yards of useless," he spat, but there was a rattled note under the anger, and that was bad, bad, bad.

"What's going on?"

"Poker debt."

"Yours or--" The car screeched rubber and spun a hundred and eighty degrees. "Never mind." They accelerated toward a brick wall and Xander braced himself with a healthy terror. Veering to the side at the last moment, Spike drove down an alley that seemed too narrow at the far end, but that had to be an optical illusion, because buildings were built to square.

They leapt out of the alley mouth and into the street, scattering the horses that would've been there if this had been a Western, and instead skidding into a mailbox before Spike got control of the wheel and drove Xander's first respectable car--monthly payments of $239, not to mention the insurance--onto the sidewalk.

Xander clung to the seat and concentrated on keeping his stomach down. No energy could be spared for hating Spike, even though this was the best possible time. "Why did you stop?" he yelled over the sound of the wind.

"Your pay-off couldn't wait?"

"Thought I could cash you in," Spike said. He was too serious. Xander boggled.

"Excuse me?"

"Cancel a few debts, clear a few kittens off the tab."

"With me."

"Ten pints in that skin, eighty proof. No harm in trying."

"No harm?!"

"Hold on."

They took a corner and Xander was flung against the passenger-side door. His stomach, panicky and blind, tried to claw its way up out of his abdomen and into his throat. All he could think was: just wait until I tell Buffy. This would be a story. Death Breath would be slalomed out of Sunnydale so fast it'd chafe the denim right off that sorry--

"Bugger," Spike said, braking suddenly. Xander bounced between dashboard and seatback like a pinball, getting his arms up in time to avoid serious injury. A bloody lip and a few bruises, that would be all he'd be sporting later, but right now his head was ringing.

"Déjà vu--no, wait, I've never been to Hell before." He stared down the road through his windshield at the...well, now. "Is that a...?

"Wizard holding a big stick? Yeah."

"I think the word you want is 'wand'."

"Any stick's a bad stick."

"Spike. Guy in purple robes with twig: not scary. Now if that twig turns me into a tiny, drunken badger..."

"Don't worry. Probably just kill you."

Xander took comfort from that, but it was a thin sort of comfort. "Why did you play poker with a wizard?

Even I know better than that."

"Spike!" the wizard called. "I'm a reasonable man. Let's talk about this."

"Hey," Xander said with relief, "he sounds pretty--"

The vampire shoved open the door and dove for the ground like an action hero practicing for his big scene. A few molasses-slow beats later, Xander mirrored his action, making it out just as the top of his car blew off.

Sheared metal flipped away to land about fifty yards behind his car and tumbled for a few more turns before clattering to rest on the asphalt.

Scrambling around the car out of sight of their attacker, Xander wondered where the hell his cell phone was, then remembered he didn't have one. A disheartening moment for the forces of technology.

His car gently chugged to itself while he scraped hands and knees across the ground, pausing every few moments to peer underneath for fireballs. When he reached the far edge of his rear bumper, he came to a cold stop.

He'd expected Spike to have set a new Olympic sprint record by now, but he was lying on his side in the opposite lane, unmoving, facing away from Xander.

The big purple wizard was standing over him. Sucker looked old but moved fast apparently.

As Xander watched he prodded Spike with his wand--easily the length of a sword or even a swordfish--and stroked his long white beard with thoughtful indecision before stepping back and taking aim.

"Hey, Dumbledore!" Xander yelled before common sense could kick in. "I'm a sixth-level sorcerer with forty-two hit points! Back off or you're sushi!"

His threat would have been far more menacing if he'd been aiming anything at the guy, but all he had to hand was a pair of Nike Air Huaraches with worn laces, not designed to make men quail. Despite the emptiness of his threat, the wizard's face took on a look of alarm and he turned and ran, revealing his own pair of battered sneakers beneath the hem of his robes.

Now was clearly the time to exult and shoot off a snappy catchphrase for any cameras that might be rolling, but Xander was still plastered enough that concern for Spike outweighed triumph. He crawled toward the motionless body, trying to keep in mind that motionless didn't mean dead for vampires, and that even dead didn't mean all that much.

"Spike," he said, reaching the other man. He pulled at the heavy leather coat until Spike rolled onto his back. He looked okay. Unconscious, pale, unbreathing, but okay.

"Wake up," he urged. "You're the designated driver...who tried to barter me off to a wizard and once threatened to eat onion dip from my skullcap, so why the hell I'm trying to mobilize you I don't know."

He'd originally caved to chauffeur service for the sake of getting home alive--but did he have better survival odds with Spike or without him? Always a fine point of judgment, and when in doubt Xander liked to remind himself which one of them was the soulless killer and which was the registered owner of his vehicle.

With this in mind, he got up and did his considerate best to drag Spike to the gutter where he'd be at less risk for ending up road-mashed under someone's tires.

Then he walked away, got behind the wheel, and sat there for too long with the motor idling, debating the vicissitudes of his life. He wouldn't even have vicissitudes if the word hadn't been on the SATs. School really was to blame for everything when you got right down to it.

A groan from the gutter reached his ears. Xander pressed his forehead to the steering wheel and moved on to blaming his mother. For being born.

"I'm not going to get out, I am not going to get out." Then he took a deep breath and, in fact, didn't. He put the car into gear and drove away, feeling both proud and irrationally ashamed, clenching the plastic in tight hands to keep himself on course.

At the end of the street he took a left turn. And then another left turn. And another. The fourth left turn brought his car roof back into sight and he gave it a disgusted look, pulled up beside it, and studied the gutter. It was empty. Just a few soda cans and some scraps of paper. Directly behind it extended an alley, also empty.

"Even Superman wasn't this conscientious," Xander decided. He shook his head once, left his arch-nemesis to the hands of fate, and went home to sleep.

Part Three

"He tried to barter you off for a poker debt?" Buffy said.

"Cut. Take two." Xander put an arm around her shoulder with a directorial air. "A little more outrage, please, and try not to emphasize the 'you' next time."

Her face turned contrite. "Sorry."

Willow, nibbles of blueberry muffin distracting her from an appropriate level of Xander-sympathy, gave him one of those interested looks she used to wear when dissecting frogs. "How many kittens were you worth?"

"Oh, I'm sure it was at least a litter," Tara put in kindly.

"This wizard," Giles said with a more focused area of concern. "Did you happen to notice if he had any insignia--any magical symbols on his robes or his, er, hat?" He stood by the shelves in a pose of inquisitive attention, head tilted, a book splayed open in one hand, glasses in the other. Still Life with Librarian.

"No. I don't know. It was dark. I was distracted by my impending death."

"Of course," Giles said, putting his glasses on and his nose back in his book. There was a dry, dismissive tone to his voice that Xander knew too well. "You were very fortunate to escape death by badger."

Buffy, who'd hopped up on the register counter and was kicking her heels lightly against the glass, put down her latte to frown at him.

"Giles, Xander could have been killed. Even if he was just badgered, think how awful that'd be. Look at poor Amy. Trapped in a cage, going round and round on her little wheel. Speaking as an ex-rat, I can tell you--there's trauma in the animal kingdom. I still dream of cheese." She stared off into space, growing absent. "Sometimes I'm the cheese."

"Does anyone else worry about the kittens?" Tara wondered, looking around.

"Okay, could I get a jot of respect here?" Xander asked sharply. Everyone stopped what they were doing and turned their eyes on him. Buffy had been tossing blueberries in the air and trying to catch them in her mouth. An interrupted blueberry hit the floor and rolled toward his shoe.

"A jot," Tara repeated uncertainly, glancing at Willow.

"It's like a really tiny amount," Willow explained in what Xander considered to be a very unnecessary way.

"Like a thimbleful--like, blueberry-sized." She held a berry up between stained fingers for illustration, then popped it in her mouth.

"Thanks," Xander said, jaw taking on an edge. "That was my left testicle you just chewed up. Want to complete the emasculation process? Because, much funny."

"Xander." Giles put a thousand years of British reproof into his name, as if invoking a gentleman's code that didn't need stating. Bad show, old chap.

"For the record, I think you're overreacting just a jot," Willow said.

"Forget it."

"No, I mean, what is that? Because we're lesbians we're all of a sudden emasculating you with fruit?"

"Did I say 'lesbians'? Did anyone hear me say 'lesbians'?"

"I know you're upset because Anya left," Willow plowed on, "but that doesn't mean you can take it out on us."

How could an ordinary conversation fall apart so completely so fast? Like this, kids: "Oh, so I can't run away to L.A. or cast spells on all my friends? I'm sorry. I guess I'll just take my heartbreak and my blueberries and my decapitated car and get out of your way then."

He stalked out of the shop, exit punctuated by the jangle of bells over the door.

"What just happened?" Buffy asked the others. "Were we unsupportive?"

"Anya leaving has really got him down." Tara said. "Plus the whole troll factor. We should try to be more understanding."

"He's young. Give him a month or two." Giles shoved his book back on the shelf. "I'm sure that even as we speak there's some mummified cicada or horrifyingly blunt hellcat just waiting for the right man to come along." When he turned away from the shelves he noticed their amazed faces and cleared his throat. "That was perhaps a touch cynical."

Buffy wasn't quite ready to lower her brows. "That's ready-for-detox cynical."

"You have to admit, Xander's track record isn't what you'd call normal, even for the Sunnydale dating scene."

Willow played with her drink straw, twisting it shorter and shorter. "Or even our dating scene. Praying mantis, psycho slayer, vengeance demon, mummy girl, Cordelia--all he needs is a succubus and he'll have the complete deck."

"Or a vampire," offered Tara.

"Banshee, dryad, harpy--oh wait, that was Anya."

"Oh," Buffy said, "maybe we could find him a nice mermaid. They're okay, right?"

Giles picked up his tea. "Well, apart from their tendency to drag men into the ocean depths and drown them,

I'm told they make charming companions."

Buffy looked downcast. "He is so doomed."

Part Four

The next evening, Willow came by Xander's apartment with a bundt cake and they made up with awkward smiles and diplomatic words. The day after that, they had to fight sticky white worms that dropped from trees on the unsuspecting heads of passers-by and melted them into goo, and Xander was drawn back into the fold, given an umbrella, and declared a hero for taking a worm to the face in the line of duty. When the weekend arrived, patrol kicked into high gear and someone raised the inevitable question.

"Where's Spike?" It was Willow, picking her way across the graveyard with nervous little glances at the trees above them. The worms were gone, but the memories remained.

Tara took her girlfriend's hand and swung it. "He hasn't been around in days."

Leading the pack, Buffy didn't even slow. "And we care why?" Her heels dug into the turf with force. Pfft, pfft, pfft.

"Well, he is helpful," Willow said in an apologetic way. "In a fight."

"We just took out three vamps." Xander backed up Buffy firmly, coasting on the success of dusting one of his own. "We don't need help from His Surliness."

"The last time you saw him, he was hurt, right?"

"He banged his head. Big deal. He's probably Johnnie Walkering it off in his crypt."

"Maybe we should check," Tara suggested.

Despite Xander's reluctance, they did, and found it inhabited by a skanky vampire in game face who volunteered that his name was Burt and that he'd found the place empty three days ago when he was looking for somewhere to crash.

"A beauty, isn't it," he said with enthusiasm. "You don't find crypts like this in every boneyard. Real estate market's a bitch these days. Gets electricity and plumbing too. No cable, though, and the place could use a good dusting."

Buffy obliged him and they wandered off, musing among themselves over what might have happened to Spike.

Xander aired the theory that Spike had fled town to avoid the consequences of his debts. A Spikeless Sunnydale. A happy thought, a buoyant relief.

A premature conclusion.

They became so certain he'd left that it was shocking when they found him. There'd been a few wizard sightings, never followed by good news, which made it a priority to locate the bastard and see what he was up to.

Through informants of the demon persuasion they got a location for his den--"We're off to see the wizard!" Willow had declared, triggering a scathing look from Giles--and busted their way in at the next opportunity. But it was pretty much deserted.

"Wizard droppings," Xander said, holding up a conical hat and a handful of long white hair.

"What the hell is that?" Buffy asked in horror.

Giles didn't quite roll his eyes. "I believe it was his beard," he observed with quelling matter-of-factness. He took the hair, ran it through his hands, then unexpectedly sniffed it before touching his tongue to the strands.

"Tell me you did not just do that." Xander gave a wigged-out shudder.

"Hair is a useful spell element. You can trace a person, control their movements. No wizard would leave such a

dangerous weapon against himself. This was merely a theatrical prop--glued on, I'd say."

"Huh," Xander said, picking up what Giles had tossed aside and examining it. "I thought that guy was a little too Gandalfy to be true."

"His power is real enough," Giles reminded them.

"My mechanic and my checkbook would have to agree with you." Xander dropped the hair-piece back on the table and wiped his hand on his jeans. "Anyone have an evidence bag?" He snapped his fingers. "I need a baggie here, sergeant."

"What's this?" Up a short flight of steps, Willow pushed back some gauzy, star-spangled drapes and disappeared into an adjoining room. A moment later her voice, newly anxious, floated out to them.

"Uh, guys. You'd better get in here."

They got, mounting the steps and parting the drapes in a herd of curiosity.

"Whoa." Xander halted just inside. Spike sat cross-legged on a round bed with heaps of pillows and silky covers, wearing a collar and what could only be called a harem outfit.

The collar was attached to a chain attached to the wall. Eyes wider than an anime boy's, he gazed at them.

He was holding a small scruffy cat. It squirmed and dug its claws into his arm but he didn't let go. Both of them looked apprehensive.

"Spike." Giles was next to find his voice. "Are you..." He paused, obviously taking in the circumstances. "All right?"

It was several beats before Spike asked, "You the one?" The words came out rough and low.

Giles shot a glance at the rest of them. "The...one?"

"The buyer. Finch said I brought a pretty penny." The cat made a raw, creaking sound like a door hinge and wrestled out of his arms to bound away. Bewildered and forlorn, Spike watched it go.

A strange feeling tugged at Xander. He swallowed.

"Oh god," Willow said with a tone of revelation. She grabbed a handful of Giles's sleeve. "He's lost his memory."

Giles let his head sink a notch. "So I gather."

They all stood there for an uncomfortable pause until Xander said, "This is my fault. I left him. They must have--they must have caught up with him."

"It's not your fault." But Buffy sounded too quiet and not nearly sure enough to settle his mind. She sounded like a friend saying the right thing.

While they talked, Spike abandoned his position and backed along the bed, feet dragging the covers along.

When he reached the far wall and began jerking at the chain, Xander's heart rate kicked into a higher gear.

Hands outstretched in a James-T-Kirkian gesture of peace, he moved forward. It didn't seem so important to hate vampires just now. When they knew who they were and what they'd done, okay, fair game. But not now, not like this.

Spike flashed a blue gaze at him. His face was trying to stay tough and hard, but it had a panicked edge. For a change, he wasn't the monster in the dark, but the one who needed rescuing. Xander felt as if he were stepping into the panel of a comic book and donning a cape.

"Hey. Relax." He settled on the bed, careful not to touch the other man. "They're not that scary." He jerked his chin back at the others. "Trust me."

"You...you're him, yeah?" Xander had to strain to make sense of Spike's murmur. "Said he'd sold me.

Said...said I owed him." He looked down and touched his stomach. "I don't remember."

His fingers came away covered in blood. He frowned as if trying to figure out what he'd done wrong. This close, it became more apparent that he'd been drugged.

A wave of feeling threatened to drown the sensible, Spike-loathing guy Xander had been up to now. It might have been compassion.

"Don't worry," he said over a tightness in his throat. "You hurt?"

"Yeah," Spike admitted, sounding tired.

Xander reached out and Spike flinched and then straightened to show his belly. There were knife marks that stopped an inch above the trouser waist. Xander's fingers didn't quite meet the skin.

"What did--did he hurt you any place else?" God, what a creepy thing to ask. Next he needed to find a doll and have Spike point out the bad touches.

"Back." Spike didn't bother to turn.

"Right." That was as far as Xander wanted to go with this line of questioning. He shifted around on the bed.

"We need to get him out of here."

Buffy did some warrior-queen action with a broadsword and cut the chain from the wall, then twisted the collar

off while Spike hunched away from her, looking as if he wanted to follow the cat's example and bolt. His vampire instincts must have been going off like a siren, Xander thought, even if he didn't know Buffy was the slayer.

"He looks a little, um, spacey," Tara said.

Giles stepped closer. "Spike, stand up."

His tone could have been sharper, but it got results. As the vampire stood there, muscles tensed, Giles tipped his face with a careful hand and checked his eyes. "He's probably been given a narcotic or sedative to render him docile."

"What," Xander said, "like roofies?" Everyone turned to look at him. "Which I know of only by report."

"Yes, something like that." Giles took one of Spike's arms and lifted it. When he let go it remained in place.

"I'd say he's highly suggestible right now."

"It's like he's hypnotized." At this realization, Buffy perked up. "Can we make him cluck like a chicken?"

"Tempting, but no."

To Xander's eye, Spike may have been a bit zonked, but he wasn't a zombie. After a few moments he let his arm lower and his attention wander off to the side, where the cat was making a comeback.

When Xander snagged the animal and handed it over, he curled his arms around it and buried his face in its ruff as if he wanted to block the rest of them out.

"Oh, it's so cute," Tara said, getting that cooing pitch girls do, then glancing at Willow. "The kitty, I mean."

Right, thought Xander.

Less than an hour later they were back in the Magic Box, Spike sniffing out the territory on restless legs, Giles mainlining Darjeeling like it was the last pot in the world, the cat licking itself in a corner, and the rest of them gathered around the study table.

Xander kept a sidelong eye on Spike, feeling vaguely responsible for him, as if he were a loose dog that might suddenly leap and knock over a priceless urn.

"What are we going to do with him?" Willow asked in a hushed voice.

The Bat-Eared Boy can hear you just fine, Xander almost reminded her, but Spike wasn't showing any interest, so he kept quiet.

"Well, he's not dangerous," Giles noted with a half shrug. "Not with the chip intact."

"Um." One syllable and a tiny hand raise and Tara had their collective attention. "I know we don't have any reason to think the chip's out, but...how can we be sure?"

With the decisive action that marked her the slayer, Buffy strode over to Spike, jerked him around, and punched him. His head snapped back with the force of her blow and for a moment a blaze seemed to cut through the fog, but it died almost at once.

He lowered his gaze without hitting back or asking questions, without even wiping the blood from his mouth. When she raised her fist again, he averted his face and closed his eyes, waiting stoically.

Xander traded a glance with Giles. They'd both learned not to give a shit about vampires and Xander liked to think of it as a common bond, one of the few things that transcended the generation gap and the Atlantic. A vamp was the worst kind of demon, one that could seize a friend's body and take it for a joy-ride like a stolen car. Dust a vampire, sleep well. But beating one up when it couldn't beat back--okay, it had always given Xander a warm glow to see Spike smacked around. Today, not so much. Giles didn't seem easy about it either.

"Buffy," he began.

But she was already backing away, fist lowering. She didn't look overcome with regret, but Xander didn't think she'd be punching Spike again any time soon. "Guess that answers that question," she said quietly.

"Not directly," Giles countered, moving to Spike's side. "But I don't think we're at any greater risk than before."

He took a handkerchief out of his pocket and gave it to Spike, who accepted it and studied Giles for a wary moment before rubbing the blood off.

"We could send him back to his crypt," Tara said. "But that seems so mean."

"Harmony left." Xander rested his arms on the table. "There wouldn't be anyone to look after him, and if that wizard guy came back..." Enough said there.

Giles was the one to put the unhappy truth into words. "One of us will have to look after him."

Worse, though, was when Xander heard himself say, "I'll do it."

"Mister Responsibility," Buffy remarked in a look-at-you tone that sounded more amused than admiring.

"Mister Dumb-Ass, more like. But I am. Responsible."

"Oh, you're so not." Now it was Willow's turn to play the reassuring friend. "Okay, maybe five percent. At

most. But the other ninety-five is entirely his fault." Even with this statement, she gave Spike an apologetic little look. The world was definitely tilting off its axis.

"Five or five hundred, it doesn't matter. I'll keep an eye on him until he's his fiendish self again. And hey, what could be more rewarding? I'll finally get my merit badge in vampire care, not to mention Spike's heartfelt gratitude."

You can never have too much sex or too much sarcasm, that was Xander's motto.

Most days he just had the sarcasm.

Part Five

"This is it. The classic one-bedroom bachelor pad. Formerly the den of sin, but without a girlfriend living in sin just isn't the same."

Xander turned to see Spike held at bay on the threshold of the apartment, palming the air with an uncertain expression.

"Sorry. Be my guest." He waved a hand and Spike stepped inside, letting the cat drop out of his hold. It hit the ground running and disappeared into the bedroom.

Based on events so far, Xander suspected that the vampire would do anything he was told--close the door, get naked, dance a jig--but those were bad thoughts, so he closed the door himself and circled Spike on his way to the fridge.

Miracle of miracles, he had beer. A half minute later he had six ounces less.

The Xander Harris beer distribution network was a go. Belly and brain settled into a happier state where a vampire's watchful presence became much less unnerving.

He thought about offering Spike a beer, then didn't. His first exercise of domestic tyranny. Beer probably didn't go well with whatever funky dope was in his system.

"I don't have any blood," he said. "I'll get you some tomorrow, okay?"

"Yeah." They stared at each other until Spike, apparently taking Xander's silence for expectation, added,

"...sir?"

"You don't have to sir me, Spike."

"All right."

Too easy, Xander thought. Didn't you have to repeat the command several times before they picked up a new trick? No, wait, that was dogs. He needed to stop confusing Spike with a golden retriever.

"Why don't you," another hand wave, "sit down. Relax."

Spike sat down in an armchair. Whether he relaxed or not wasn't entirely clear. He had the lazy-boy posture of a relaxed man, but a certain tightness in his shoulders suggested he had rigid thoughts.

Moving his head only a few degrees left to right, he inspected the lay of Xander's land in a judgmental way. Giving it a fresh eye, Xander had to admit that he'd let the place go since Anya left.

The living room had a stale fug from layers of greasy fast-food bags and unlaundered socks--manly territorial marking to reclaim his domain.

He sat on the couch a safe distance from Spike.

Safe meaning that Spike wouldn't be able to grab the remote away.

"Around this time I usually like to sit and watch TV and wonder why I don't have a hobby. Model airplanes, fantasy baseball. Model fantasies, now, I have those. Cindy Crawford, Tyra Banks. Cindy Crawford and Tyra Banks." Xander stopped babbling when he realized that Spike had tuned him out and was fiddling with the cuts on his belly again.

Guiltily, he abandoned his beer and remote and faced up to the fact that he'd adopted what was basically a large, stoned vampire child with special needs.

"You should probably take that off," Xander said as Spike fingered the hem of the silk tunic thingy that his crackheaded kidnapper had dressed him in.

"Just the shirt," he added with emphasis. He gathered a roll of mummy gauze and a wash cloth and nearly flattened himself on the cat as he came back through the bedroom.

"Good kitty," he said, while it purred and tried to kill him with sideswipes. "You hungry? You like Cheerios? I'd order in some mice, but I'm not sure--"

His idle prattle died when he saw Spike. Half-stripped, he was a raw mess, blood striping him from shoulders to waist. Carving and whipping didn't seem like the damage a wizard would do. Why not spells?

Maybe it had been more fun that way. Hands-on.

"They did a number on you, huh." Xander felt dry-mouthed and unsure of himself.

Put in a position of having to give aid and comfort to a vampire he'd never liked and whose very existence he objected to on principle, he wasn't sure what was called for. Should he try to keep a business casual attitude or was he supposed to show a little benevolent TLC? And would that TLC get him in trouble later? Spike was a hurt animal right now, but when he snapped out of it he'd be all demon again, resentful of any coddling, expressive, loud.

Meanwhile, there was more blood than he'd bargained for.

"I guess we're going to need more towels."

The delaying tactic bought him another minute, but when he came back it was somehow worse; Spike hadn't even moved while he was gone and the way his hands curled against his sides made him look like a statue that someone had taken a lot of time over.

The cat was nudging against one shin but getting no love. The apartment's silence made Xander hyper-aware of everything he did and was about to do, as if he were on a movie set under hot lights being watched by dozens of people.

He'd left the ceiling lights on--Anya'd always hated that, preferred lamps--so that was probably why things seemed so bright and strange, Spike's skin whiter than usual, his blood redder, almost fake. He could just give the other man a towel, tell him to clean himself up, but he didn't.

"So why'd the wiz work you over," Xander said, going for conversational while he swabbed off blood. "Was it the poker debt?"

"Guess so."

"You remember that?"

"No."

"Must have been a hell of a pot." Rougher than he'd meant to be, Xander dragged across the edges of a cut with the cloth and saw Spike wince.

"Sorry." He slowed and shifted a few inches closer. Spike's chest didn't move but every now and then he took a tiny breath. It was odd. He hadn't been this close to a vamp before without the distraction of wanting to kill it and that included Angel.

It was usually an instinct, like smashing a bug with your shoe. Didn't matter that the things had once been human. Close up, you could sense the wrongness, dead meat that walked and talked--could feel their creepy difference like air coming off an open fridge.

It was a mistake thinking of them as people. He shouldn't have had drinks with Spike or guy-talked with him. Shouldn't be doing all this for him now, as if a vampire's pain or cleanliness mattered. What mattered was that this fucking monster had killed thousands of people, including a few kids and teachers he'd known personally.

"I could put a stake in you right now," Xander said, voice edged. "I bet you wouldn't even fight. That'd solve a lot of problems, you know? The others, they'd understand."

When he couldn't keep talking, he forced himself to meet Spike's eyes. Mistake, oh yeah. Spike was supposed to look tough and indifferent, cold and angry, amused and contemptuous. Not soft-faced and afraid and lost as if he was thinking that he'd have to let Xander do what he threatened because he didn't know how to stop it.

"I'm not going to stake you," Xander said and it was like talking to an animal. The silence helped. Maybe all Spike needed was the chip and a muzzle, and voila, a handy watch dog, a pet you could trust around children.

"I just want to know how you do that trick. Looking like a real human, with a soul, when you're completely empty."

"I don't know." Spike's tone and eyes were cautious, making Xander feel like some crazy man with a gun who needed to be placated, who might go off the rails at the wrong answer. He resented that feeling. He wasn't the bad guy here.

"You get that I'm not the bad guy here, right?"

"Okay."

Xander hung his head a moment and shook it to dislodge his conscience. Didn't work. Giving up, he continued to clean Spike's wounds, front then back, grimacing to himself. Most had healed over but fresh blood welled up here and there. Still, give the guy a nice heme smoothie and by tomorrow night he should be okay.

That was more or less his thought when he put Spike to bed on the couch with a blanket and the blinds closed and went to his own room--door very much shut--to collapse.

Some time later he jack-knifed upright in the dark, awakened by sharp cries. Disoriented, heart hammering, he crashed to his feet, and after a few blind fumbles for a light aimed instead for the door.

In the living room, Spike was a dark shape huddling next to the couch, head pressed to the coffee table. He was making the saddest sounds ever, sobs of grinding pain. The little hairs on Xander's neck rose to attention.

It was a toss-up whether to grab the nearest lamp as a weapon or turn it on. He turned it on and went over to Spike, pacing himself to avoid startling him.

"Hey," he said, spooked but kneeling anyway. He touched one shoulder, careful not to brush any of the gashes criss-crossing the skin. "Spike." Interrupted sleep made him testy, but testiness had already been blown out of the water, leaving him anxious. "What's the matter."

"Hurts, god--make it stop--" He was shuddering, rough spasms that radiated from his shoulders to his hands, which struck the glass table hard enough to crack it. "Please."

"What hurts? Spike!" Xander hesitated, then tried to pry him up off the table to see his face. It was like trying to persuade a redwood to move to the left a few inches, but finally Spike shoved up and twisted and, whoops, Xander hadn't intended to invite an armful of vampire, but now he had a quivering heap wound around him, head pressed to the crook of his neck.

If it hadn't been so obviously a non-bitey embrace he'd have panicked. Might have panicked anyway, but was distracted by the heat pouring off the other man.

"Wow, you have body heat to burn," he said. "That's gotta mean a fever, and that...makes no sense."

"Hurts, hurts." Spike scrubbed his head against Xander's shoulder, curls thrusting along the side of his neck.

"God." His voice softened to a groan but kept its urgency. "Please."

"You have to--uh, you have to stop that." Spike was mouthing his neck. "Remember the government hardware, turns bad thoughts into big pain, no, of course you don't, but take my word, oh--"

Still unfanged, the vampire had worked upward to suck his ear. The hell? Sudden lobe fetish? Ear to jaw, jaw to cheek, Spike zeroed in for a lip-lock that stunned Xander. He squeaked with heterosexual objection and Spike groaned again and gave him tongue.

He worked loose and pushed Spike's shoulders back. "You want to tell me what's going on? When did I become taster's choice?"

"Hurts, bad," Spike said with persistence. "Please."

Xander wasn't even sure that Spike knew what he was asking for--he didn't look fully awake--but then he launched another blitz of kissing and, well, that was pretty clear.

Evil, disgusting vampire, he reminded himself in an obligatory way, but it was one of those dream hours between midnight and dawn when a different state of consciousness took over and things that should have been horrifying became familiar and understandable, like when you suddenly get a joke that used to baffle you and hey, it was funny, and now you were in on it.

The sex joke. Oh yeah, he had plenty of excuses ready.

He could be dreaming, say. After all, vampires shouldn't be warm and kissable. That was a clue right there.

Any second now someone would begin speaking German and clowns would break into the apartment and he and Spike would escape out the window in a hot air balloon with Buffy and eat chocolate-chip cookies as they flew over the Pacific heading for Spain.

It was very quiet and clownless and they kept kissing on his living room floor.

Different, not-Anya kisses.

He thought things. Thought: so this is what Buffy was into. Smooching the dead. Does Spike kiss like Angel? Did Spike and Angel...?

He's hard. He's rubbing off on my thigh. I have good thighs.

This is good, this is good. This is bad. This is good. I'm so going to Hell. This is the mouth to hell, in fact. And this is the tongue to hello, hello, is everyone having a good time, are you ready to party? Boogie. Down.

Thinking never solved anything.

Pulling away rather breathlessly, he asked, "Is there any chance you're under a curse? What I mean is, if I have sex with you, will you get your soul back? Because I could use some incentive here."

Spike grabbed Xander's dick and began massaging it through his boxers.

"That's...that's very incenting."

He made a ragged sound as Spike reattached warm lips to his neck and sucked like a sexy, sexy leech, hand still curling around his boxers in a rhythm Xander associated with a heavy bass beat, with clubbing, sweatiness, getting laid. Bingo.

"You should probably know that I've never done this with a guy before," he said as Spike pushed him onto his back and began grinding frantically against him.

"Sweet Jesus, that--just--okay--good."

A lifetime of resistance became a moment of profound not-caring and he relaxed and let Spike ride roughshod over him.

Spike wore a look of desperation and was dragging sounds from his throat like nothing Xander had ever heard, harsh gasps and cries as if he was being whipped to pleasure.

When it became clear he needed some help, Xander cupped his ass and lined him up, let him slide across home plate.

Spike's eyes fell shut as he went still, then he jerked several times in ecstasy before his entire body melted, a heavy vampire blanket, head locking into the curve of Xander's shoulder.

"I am a juke-box," Xander said, staring at the ceiling as he contemplated his suffocating hard-on and prepared for disillusionment. "Put your money in, press the button, and get three minutes and thirty-two seconds of name...that...tune."

But Spike groaned and lifted his head as if breaking the surface of a wave, gave him a heavily lidded gaze of pure sex--blue eyes, hair of sea foam--then worked his way down Xander's body, lapping at him like a man with a salt craving, shucking off his boxers, and blowing him until he forgot his middle name, which he'd never liked anyway.

Afterwards he found himself petting Spike's head, stroking the curls, and staring like a stoned bastard at his beautiful face.

Which was so incredibly fucking beautiful that for a while it seemed more than just an imitation of life.

Spike looked come-dazed and tired, at ease, as if he'd never killed anyone and never would.

"I made a promise," Xander said. "Back when Angel went Jekyll-and-Hyde, I swore I'd never sleep with a vampire."

He ran a palm slowly up Spike's hip.

"Then again, I only promised that to myself, late at night, and was careful not to make a hard copy. So I won't lose miles of face with all my friends. Maybe just a few acres."

"Vampires bad then?"

He stared at Spike, incredulity returning for the space of a heartbeat...one, two, three. No cymbal clash signaled a punch line though, and something like sadness washed over him.

"Vampires bad, yeah." He recited the gospel. "Soulless predators, demons, murderers of the innocent."

Spike's lashes lowered, covering his thoughts. "Guess that fits. Even if a man doesn't know his name, he knows who he is inside. In his gut. Knows if he's got a vocation to feed the poor, or if he's just lookin' out for himself." His gaze flicked up. "Not exactly overflowing with the milk of human kindness here."

"Not exactly, no," Xander said, and amazed himself by taking hold of Spike's dick. "But this isn't so bad. If you could stick to bad thoughts and good sex--" He hesitated on the brink of admission before stumbling into the danger zone. "There could be hope for you."

"So we knew each other before, yeah?" Spike pushed into Xander's hand, movement disconnected from the conversation.

"Yeah."

"We go to school together?"

"What?" Xander blinked out of a descending haze. "You're kidding, right? No. No. You're over a hundred. You're like this infamous master vampire, sowing death and destruction hither and yon, wherever you...uh, be."

"Why're you all come hither, then?" A smile was threatening the corners of Spike's mouth.

"Hey, you jumped me," he protested, but in his distraction he'd sped up the rhythm of his strokes. This seemed to give him the upper hand; Spike stopped smiling and gave a little cat rattle of approval from deep in his throat.

"I was straight before you used your wicked vampire thrall on me," Xander went on, trying to convince at least one of them. "I can call character witnesses, previous girlfriends, purveyors of dirty magazines, Christina Aguilera."

"What's that about protesting too much?"

"Oh yeah." Spike's hand had closed around Xander's own stirring dick. "I mean, no. I'm not protesting, I'm just...oh fuck it." He hitched closer to Spike, along an invisible border between straight and gay that ran between them on the carpet.

They kissed, they rekissed. And then Xander knelt and pushed the coffee table aside in a deliberate way and moved on to the serious work of getting jiggy with it.

Vampires quail before me, he thought as he plotted a route from neck to nipple and further south, avoiding all wounds, and then carried it out with his tongue.

After a minute he had Spike arching up to meet him and that was fierce, that was incredible.

He lost track of time, lost his baggage, and managed to shake off that part of his mind that always followed him around and reminded him of the tragedies waiting in store if he went astray.

When he neared Spike's dick, though, he froze, an awareness of what he was doing crashing over him--what was he doing? All his hatred and terror of vampires exploded with a sick feeling in his gut, while thoughts of what Buffy and Willow would say crowded his head, and he came close to turning aside, stopping.

He could stop cold if he wanted to, he wasn't that fuck-stupid, but just then Spike roused himself and said,

"You all right, mate?" in a husky, hungry voice, and Xander looked at him and accepted the invitation to his teacher's house and asked Amy for a spell and sent Buffy to kill Angel and led the graduation charge to certain death and let the timer run out on the bomb and sucked him off.

After a few more rounds of sex they fell asleep on the carpet side by side, border crossed, wall crumbling, and Xander dreamed he was in East Berlin surrounded by Nazis who had questions to ask him and who wouldn't take no for an answer.

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