Watching
by
apreludetoanend
Part Six
Harris is fucking up his schedule.
Can’t sleep when he’s supposed to be out chasing a fight.
Or, fine, walking around a pre-patrolled cemetery, waiting for an undercover team of slayers to throw the stupidest vampire they can find in his direction so he can pretend to be rescued by his slayer of the week. Or rescue her if she freezes up, which has happened too many times.
He’ll take a restless night in, though, if it means he doesn’t have to deal with Joanna anymore. Girl wouldn’t take no for an answer, and there’s only so long he can keep his cock in check with a half naked girl trying her damnedest to seduce him. She was bound to notice sooner or later.
And then what would he say, exactly?
“I know what this looks like, but I swear, I only fuck men these days.”
Yeah. That’d work.
“Spike?”
Fuck. “Yeah?”
“What’re you doing on the floor?”
“Watching you. Rupert’ll have my hide if anything happens.”
Xander laughs drowsily into his pillow. “This isn’t Nightmare on Elm Street. I think I’ll survive a night’s rest.”
“Right, then. Get to it.”
“Why aren’t you sleeping?”
“Can’t. Supposed to be training tonight, 'm not tired yet. That couch is a piece of shit.”
Xander doesn’t answer and he’s probably gone back to sleep, though it’s harder to tell than it used to be. Better to watch while he’s sleeping, though. No questions.
Spike’s figured it out, in the last few hours, what Giles sees in Xander. He’s beautiful when he sleeps. All dark curls and thick lashes and half smiles. None of the glaring and scowling that are all he remembers of an awake Xander Harris.
Though that’s really a thing of the past. In London, it’s been a casual nod in the hallway, a quick “hey” as he hurries by.
He’s not sure which is worse.
“Hey Spike?”
“Yeah?”
“Was there something you wanted to say?”
“Nah. You want to have a drink? Talk a bit?”
Tell me what the bleeding hell is wrong with you so I can get on with my pathetic life?
“I don’t drink when I don’t have to.” Xander tugs at the sheet. “Listen, if there’s something you want to talk about, it’s gonna have to wait till morning. Or preferably afternoon. If you’re just looking for a comfy place to sleep, then get in.”
Part Seven
Xander wakes up hungry.
There are other things, the tail end of a dream, fourteen hours’ worth of pressure on his bladder, a funny dent in the comforter—did Spike sleep here?—but mostly he’s just starving.
Or hungry. He tries not to use the word starving like that anymore.
In any case, there’s a need for food.
Spike’s nowhere to be found, so Xander helps himself to a stack of bread and the toaster.
He eats his way around the apartment. It’s obviously a Council house, but it looks like Spike’s first floor is the only part being used.
It’s surprisingly nice for a dwelling of Spike, but then, he really doesn’t know Spike anymore, except in a formerly evil but then possibly good and then definitely good but also dead and then back and way too confusing to even deal with kind of way.
Which is to say, not at all.
Doesn’t hate him, though, so all that time spent passing by at warp ten to avoid talking—because it’s just not right to hate someone who saved the world—was pretty much wasted.
Though he’s honed his avoidance skills. That’s a benefit. Maybe he can avoid Giles for the rest of the week. Or the century.
The phone rings, and yeah, Spike’s okay, but they’re not exactly phone answering buddies, so he lets the machine get it.
“Spike, this is Andrew at the Council”—Xander rolls his eyes—“and I have a message for you from Mr. Giles. He’d like you to fax him an update on quote the situation end quote. Also, I’ve registered quote the situation end quote on the master list of code names, but please call me so that we can discuss the scope of its use. Thank you, and have a—oh, Joanna says hi—have a good day.”
Xander sighs. The situation. He’s always thought it would be cool to have a code name, but this isn’t exactly what he had in mind. Probably what he deserves, though. He’s fucked up so badly that Giles won’t even call to check on him. Not that he’s ready to see Giles, but he might have liked to talk to him on the phone. Test the waters, so to speak.
He cleans up the kitchen and tries to feel like it’s better this way.
Part Eight
The third key he tries opens the lock. It was tempting to let Xander walk around in nothing but those old sweats, but in the end, he’d grabbed Xander’s wallet and keys and made the trip to his flat. Probably should have asked him what he wanted, but no sense in waking him up.
Besides, this way, Spike gets to decide what Xander wears. Which, for the foreseeable future, will be nicely worn jeans with tight t-shirts and maybe a sweater or two. And no, that doesn’t mean that Spike’s gay, it means that he’s not blind.
And how bloody pathetic is it that being human means you have to define it? He’ll never understand that. You love who you love and you want who you want and occasionally the twain shall meet and rip you to shreds, but feeling it’s better than not.
Not that he feels it for Xander. But he gets what Giles sees there.
Which, honestly, is fucking worse. Can’t even call him on it because it makes sense. Harris’ll always be a better match for Rupert—hell, for anyone—than he will, and he can’t even hate the kid for it. He should be destroying Xander, not picking out his clothes and searching around for a book or a—
“Bingo.”
Laptop. Left on, half covered by a newspaper, but probably the best thing to bring back for him. Better than the truckload of alcohol in his kitchen, anyway.
Though for a raging alcoholic—Rupert’s words—the kid’s certainly not in a hurry to find a bottle. Didn’t even take the bait when Spike offered. Not that it was a real offer—dry house, what with the slayers staying over and all.
“Kid’s a fucking mystery,” he says, clearing the paper off the computer and hitting a key to kill the screensaver.
The document that comes up on the screen is one Spike’s seen before. Not this particular one, obviously, but it’s the same thing.
He grabs the newspaper. Five days old, and the headline—“Girl Killed In Brutal Attack.”
He’d known there was a new black file, but he hadn’t known this.
“Christ Harris, why didn’t you say something?”
Part Nine
It’s not like he’s done this in… well, okay, ever, but it shouldn’t be this hard. He’s got a vague memory of Twinkies, and he’s sure he called Harris Donut Boy at one point but he only spent a few weeks in that basement, and that was over five years ago. Christ, he’s died between then and now and he’s supposed to remember what kind of snack food Harris likes? It’s not like he gave a fuck back then.
Not like he gives a fuck now.
Except he obviously does, and he’s got Giles to thank for that.
Every time—every sodding time he’s ready to just be over it, over Rupert, it comes up and smacks him in the face. And for all Rupert says he cares, he keeps digging the knife deeper.
“I love him,” he mocks to the salt and vinegar crisps.
Of course Rupert loves him. Never met a human who didn’t love Xander bloody Harris.
“Then why the fuck did you send him to me,” he asks the jelly babies, “without telling me about the sodding black file?”
He dumps two varieties in his basket.
“And why can’t you love me?”
There’s no answer. There’s never been an answer, there’s just wasted breath and words he doesn’t understand and a hole, six months deep.
And now there’s Xander, and Spike’s supposed to fix him? This isn’t the kind of thing you fix. It’s gonna tear him apart, and the only thing anyone can do is be there to put him back together.
And anyone should be Giles, if he loves the kid so much.
Unless Xander doesn’t love him back. Which is what Rupert deserves, and Spike bites down hard on the piece of his heart that goes out to Giles.
“Fuck.”
He’s left to pick up the pieces, and he doesn’t even know how they fit together anymore. Probably never did. And he’s in the sodding grocery, starting with snack food.
A harsh giggle splits his throat and before he can stop it, it’s a laugh that rocks him so hard he grabs onto the shelf right below the Cadbury Fingers.
The laughter dies out and he rests his forehead against his hand as silent tears follow.
There’s a woman staring as he wipes the back of his hand across his eyes and grabs the biscuits, and he says, “These prices are killing me.”
Part Ten
“Hey,” says Xander.
Or maybe it’s “Where the fuck have you been?”
Either way, the vase hurtling through the air at Spike’s head says it better.
The crash is satisfying but the guilt hurts.
“My fault.”
He tests it once and it fits, so he says it again, and possibly once more after that and then his chant gets lost in soft cotton and warm skin.
Time passes differently in the curve of Spike’s neck, and by the time Xander realizes that his breath is rasping over wet cotton and sticky skin, he’s done with the crying or drooling or whatever it is that’s liquefied everything in the immediate vicinity of his face.
“It’s tomorrow,” Xander says, turning away. “You could have been dead.”
He walks the hallway alone, not by design, but because Spike doesn’t follow.
The bed is colder than he remembers, and the false warmth of the electric blanket never gets under his skin. The comforter’s stretched flat, and he misses the dent. He passes the time trying to reconstruct it, envisioning the blueprints and assembling the materials, dividing the labor and choosing the tools, but in the end, it’s just him and his hands awake in bed, failing in so many ways.
He figures he must have slept because he wakes to the cool plastic of a cordless phone and a paper cut. There’s a telephone number and a note—“I’ll always answer.”
There’s a thing about paper cuts. It’s not the cut that hurts, it’s the air that gets inside. And it always does, coating the edges of broken skin and burning like guilt.
Xander dials, and Spike answers on the first ring.
“Where are you?” he asks.
“Living room,” Spike answers, and Xander laughs.
“Want to come in here for a while? Talk or something? Possibly with snacks?”
Spike enters and his momentary silence is soothing. He sits without disturbing the stillness, but when he speaks, the air around him shifts, and it pries its way in and stings.
“It’s just you and Giles have that number,” he says. “And I will always answer.”
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