Boglescatverse

by
Witling

Part Eighteen

"If you had to give a percentage."

"A percentage of wellness?"

"Yeah."

Xander paused and considered. "Sixty-five." He took another sip of malted, and raised a finger. "No. Wait. He watched Dukes of Hazzard last night. Without complaint. Sixty."

Buffy and Willow looked at each other. "Sixty percent," Willow said, and played with her straw. "That's, like, a C."

"He passes," Buffy said. "That means he can go, right?"

Willow said nothing, applied mouth to straw, and looked sideways at Xander. He pretended not to notice.

"Sure." He let that hang for as long as it took for the waitress to deposit their burgers and leave. "Believe me, I'd love him gone. I'd fall down and worship his absence. But if he turns out to be the mystery player in this whole cacodemon fiasco—"

Buffy paused in smacking the ketchup bottle on the 57. "You still think he's got something to do with it?"

"When does Spike not have something to do with it?"

"Point."

She passed the ketchup to Willow and started in on her burger. "He said no, right?"

"Which would be helpful if he were the animated corpse of a Boy Scout, yeah."

"Ew," Willow said, leaning back from her plate. "That was a little too casually grotesque."

"I'm just saying, if you're in the mood to start believing people like Spike, uncle Rory's got some great deals on Florida coastals."

"He isn't making you insane?" Buffy asked. "I mean, he's…Spike."

"And we all know how you feel about that," Willow said. He glanced at her, but couldn't tell anything off her expression.

"And it's been almost two weeks," Buffy said. "That's a lot of…Spike."

"I figure I've got at least four more days left in me before I stake him," Xander said, wiping his mouth on his napkin. "I could be wrong, though."

"Okay." Buffy sighed and contemplated her pickle. "Anyone else getting really grossed out by the cacodemon parade?"

"That was a lot of goo last night," Willow said thoughtfully. "And when you speared that one on the pitchfork, and it sort of shattered—"

Buffy pushed her plate away and Xander took her pickle. "So no word yet from the giant British brain of Giles," he said, crunching.

"Not even from the mouth. Which is more the talky part." Willow took one of Buffy's fries. "And nothing else on vampire epilepsy. He actually said something about Spike maybe being a unique case, which would mean at least an article. Which is exciting." She paused and flicked a glance at Xander. "Except, not for Spike."

"Not so much, no."

They lapsed into a fry-eating silence. When the conversation revived, it was about the new stadium, which was falling apart already. Safe, easy. And if Willow didn't stop giving him those looks when she thought he wasn't looking, he was going to take her out behind the shed and give her a serious talking-to. Or at least drop a fry in her shake.

He came up the stairs whistling and sorting his mail, in a good mood for once. Payday, which was nice. Out of work on time, and burgers, and the night off from patrol because Giles was trying some kind of detonating powder on the bugs, and he didn't want anyone taking friendly fire. Fine. Great. Eight hours of sleep and tomorrow the insulation was absolutely going to arrive, they'd called from Akron, it was on its way. And tomorrow was Friday. Good deal.

Eddie Bauer, Delia's, Hard-to-Find-Tools, Restoration Hardware. Jesus. But he was in a good mood, so it was kind of funny. He tucked them under his arm, unlocked the door, and stepped inside. MTV on the television, and when he put his head around the wall, he saw Spike sprawled full-length on the couch, watching dazedly while Christina Aguilera gyrated.

"Oh, great. I was worried you might not find the couch and television."

"This bint." Spike gestured vaguely at the screen, without looking away from it. "This bint is just—" He trailed off.

"Uh huh." Xander dumped the catalogs in the basket and dropped his keys on the table. "Kids these days."

"Unbelievable," Spike said faintly. "Does she have any idea—"

"Yes," Xander said, walking through to the kitchen. "I think she probably does."

There were three blood-clotted glasses in the sink, neatly lined up. Dead soldiers, his dad used to call the empties. Very à propos. He ran a glass of water for himself and headed back to the living room.

"You been watching this all day?" he asked, pausing for a second to watch the circus. She was going to throw something out, doing that. He was pretty sure that even when he'd been straight, he hadn't been attracted to Christina Aguilera.

Spike nodded silently. His eyes were red-rimmed, and he looked drawn. Well, MTV would do that to a guy. Also, two weeks of not getting much better. That first encouraging leap back to health had been kind of a red herring, it turned out. There hadn't been much leaping since then. Except for the day he slept through one of his doses, and started seizing in the bed, in his sleep. Xander leapt clear across the room, then leapt back to keep him from opening up his head on the corner of the night table. Since then, very little leaping.

"I ate already," he said, watching the screen flicker. "You?"

Spike waved a hand at the kitchen, which was probably supposed to indicate the glasses in the sink. Xander nodded and started for the bedroom. He didn't need MTV as much as he needed sleep.

"Oh—"

He turned back, expecting a taco order, maybe something about the sheets. If there was blood on them again he was going to start charging a laundry tariff. Maybe a squick tax.

Spike was fishing for something on the coffee table, his hand trembling, his expression annoyed. He picked up a Mahal flyer, glanced at it, frowned, and let it drop.

"Your boyfriend stopped by," he said, and kept sorting.

Xander just stood there. His boyfriend— Ah, fuck. His boyfriend the mailman, or his boyfriend the Jehovah's Witness, or his boyfriend the landlord. Whatever. They were back to this shit, and he'd seriously had enough of it. Maybe he didn't have four days left in him. Maybe he didn’t have one.

"Fuck you," he said, and turned his back. He was shaking, he just wanted to get into his room—his room, and he couldn’t believe, right now, that he shared the fucking bed with Spike, let him sleep there like a guest when he was never going to be anything but an asshole. He got three steps and turned on his heel. He was too angry to say anything. He shouldn’t say anything.

"For a guy who's been walking around over a hundred years, you're really fucking provincial," he said. "You know that? Jesus Christ. Kids on my playground used to say that shit, Spike."

Spike's hand paused, and he rolled back slightly to look at Xander. His expression was fixed, hard to read.

"Left his number," he said after a minute. His fingers closed on a folded piece of paper and held it out.

Xander just stood looking at the white flutter, his hands at his sides, his face heated and prickling. He didn't get it. He was going to walk over there and take it, and it was going to turn out to be Sid next door asking him not to play MTV so loud during the day. He shook his head.

"You're a serious prick, Spike." He turned and headed for the bedroom. Behind him, Spike muttered something he didn't catch. "Yeah, you too."

He closed the door hard, put his water glass carefully down on the dresser, and stood with his hands in fists. Breathing. And staring at the unmade bed, the two body imprints in the mattress. He was such a fucking idiot sometimes.

Part Nineteen

Akron? Full of liars.

No insulation, but a call at five o'clock from Buffy asking if he could come right away, they'd just found a nest in the sewers below the Box, and needed all hands on deck to stem the flow. Christ. He found Daniel, consulted quickly, and called a halt till Monday. And if Monday arrived uninsulated, he was going to drive to Ohio himself and offer a little customer feedback, possibly with Giles's crowbar.

He got to the Box just before six, and Buffy hadn't been kidding. The cacodemon population had surged again. Willow was crouched on the counter, leafing frantically through a gigantic book; Giles was over by Mystic Influences of the Near Orient, smashing something into the ground with a staff. No sign of Buffy until a couple of husks came flying out of the storeroom, followed by a glass jar of powdery green stuff. It hit the floor and rattled up against the foot of the bookshelf by Giles, who glanced at it with irritation.

"Buffy, do try not to damage the—"

"Lungwort—check!" Buffy yelled from the store room. "What else?"

"Um—" Willow ran her finger quickly down the page. "Fenugreek! Spikenard, and…did you find the woad?"

"The woad to where?" Xander asked, and then had to grab an umbrella from the stand and run down to skewer the DuPont's that was scaling the counter beside Willow. She shielded the book from goo with her body and gave him a quick smile.

"Hi, Xander. We're working on a powder—"

A couple of bottles sailed out of the storeroom door, and Giles tried vainly to intercept them with the hand that wasn't skewering the cacodemon. Xander held up a one-second finger to Willow and went over to help. Giles gave the staff a twisting wrench, yanked it free, and stood waiting for further movement.

"Xander," he said, without taking his eyes off the cacodemon. "Take those things over to Willow and help her get started. And find something other than my umbrella to use as a weapon, please." The cacodemon twitched and he stabbed it again. Xander nodded and carted the bottles back to Willow.

"It's supposed to be a deterrent," she said. "Like pennyroyal for ants."

"Uh-huh," he said. "The Martha Stewart-ness of this venture makes me wonder if we're just getting desperate."

"We're past desperate," Willow muttered, measuring powders into a mortar. "Where's the woad?"

"The woad to where?" he said again. Weak, but he couldn't help it. Another cacodemon skittered out of the storeroom, and he stabbed it before he remembered he was still using Giles's umbrella. Oops. "Man, these things just don't quit."

"Woad!" Willow called, and he backed up to the counter, sorted quickly through the bottles, and wished like hell that Giles could write in a normal, legible hand. And in English.

"What's the—" More cacodemons were emerging from the storeroom, and there was a crash from inside. "Buffy, you okay?"

"Fine!" A couple of wet thumps. "Nauseous!"

"I'm thinking, pennyroyal," he said, stabbing one-handedly and trying to sort at the same time. "I'm thinking, Deep-Woods Off! I'm thinking Agent Orange. And what the hell is the Latin name for woad?"

"Isatis indigotica," Giles said automatically, jerking his ankles away from a flailing cacodemon. "It's the green one."

"They're all green."

"Pale green."

"They're all—" He fended off a pair of feelers and risked a longer glance over his shoulder. Isatis indiwhatica—okay. Check. He grabbed it, turned, poked an advancing cacodemon in the proboscis, and turned back. "Woad at three o'clock, Wills!"

She looked up just in time to field the bottle, popped the cork out with her teeth, and dumped the contents into the mortar. No magic cloud, unfortunately. And something was getting cozy with his right calf. He went back to the thrust and parry, and when he looked back, she was grinding furiously with a pestle.

"Hey Wills, any idea when this whole 'deterrent' thing kicks in?"

"Now, I hope," she said, and shook a little of the powder on the cacodemon that was six inches from perforating her right foot. It paused, then zipped its proboscis back in and shot backward off the counter. Willow squealed with delight.

There was a lot of bashing and hewing still to be done, and in the process he managed to trip over a stool and rack his ankle, but between the powder and Buffy's shish kabob technique, the whole thing was over pretty fast. Then it was just cleanup and debriefing, which in his case mostly consisted of sitting on the bottom step of the library stairs, holding a cold pack over his ankle and watching the others drag husks back and forth. The floor was going to need a serious scouring.

"Can you walk all right?" Buffy sat down beside him and raised the cold pack for a peek. He gave her the idiot boy smile.

"I don't know. I may need help getting to my bed." Eyebrow waggle, and she poked him in the shoulder, and yeah, good times. Hollow, hollow, sadly ironic good times. He had to get better patter. And some coordination.

"Well, our position is distinctly improved now that we have the powder," Giles said, leaning on the railing and wiping his hands with a gooey handkerchief. "Excellent work, Willow."

She glowed, and Xander propped his head on his hands and took a second to love her. Smart, smart Willow. Without whom they would all be bug food. Well, without whom and also Buffy. Which didn't work grammatically, but he was tired and the point was that he was giving credit, no matter how scrambled it was.

"Xander supplied the woad," Willow said, turning her happy, sparkly smile on him. Including him in it. Which made him feel sort of stupid and embarrassed, because supplying the woad wasn't exactly the same as inventing anti-demon powder, or staking a hundred at one go, like Buffy. It was basically just Donut Boy under another guise. But still. From each according to his ability, right? He smiled back.

"The woad to where?"

"You have goo on your face," Buffy said, and poked him again, gently.

He had goo everywhere, like a victim of some massive rupture at the hair gel and rubber cement factory. They all did, but his brief encounter with the stool and the goo-slicked floor made his look particularly squickalicious. There was a smell to cacodemon fluids, he realized, driving home via back roads to avoid having to explain to any police why he was sitting on a towel and slathered in gack. It wasn’t a strong smell, thank God. It was actually sort of a nice, light, grassy smell. Or it would be nice if he didn't associate it with fast skittery feet and the light, exploratory caress of a proboscis up his pant leg.

He limped from his car inside his building without seeing anyone, the towel slung around his neck as a kind of mute explanation—I've been running, I've been at the gym, I had a bad fall in the Jell-o wrestling ring. No need, thank God. He took the stairs up to his apartment carefully, head down, sorting his keys. A shower. He wanted a shower and a beer, and he wanted to not see Spike, the ever-assholic freeloading dickhead Spike, about whom he had managed not to think once all day, and God that was a relief. Because really, who needed it? If he wanted an endless, predictable stream of bigoted taunting, he could just come out at work.

And maybe if Spike wasn't going to get any better, if he was just going to coast on this plateau of sixty percent, C average, it didn't matter where he did it. Maybe he could do it in the comfort of his own crypt. Mix his own scat and blood cordial, tell the rats entertaining little anecdotes about their boyfriends dropping by. Ask them what they thought he should do with the place—paint or paper? Tell them they were looking fabulous.

Yeah, Spike could move the fuck out.

And fuck it, that did not give him a little pang. It did not. Spike was just a sociopath, he was good at manipulating people, he gave a little in order to get a lot, and he was—

There was someone on the stairs to his place. He pulled up short and almost dropped his keys, thinking Fuck— Thinking it was the landlord, and here he was covered in cream cheese and afterbirth, and was that enough to get him kicked out? Fucking fuck.

Then his brain kicked in and he realized it wasn't the landlord. It was—

"Hi," Seth said. "Uh—" There was a brief pause, while his eyes flicked quickly over Xander, head to toe. A second for him to look nonplussed, a little worried. Then he smiled, his same open easy smile, and if it was a put-on, it was a good one. He leaned back against the banister, weight in his heels. "We were just talking about you."

Xander just stared. Then the we sank in, and he looked up another few stairs' worth, and there was Spike. Standing in the doorway to his apartment, holding it open about six inches, like a woman with a masher on her step. He looked strangely suspicious and pissed off. No shirt, Jesus. Bare pale chest, jeans with the top button undone. Christ. His hair a slept-on mess. Like he'd just woken up.

Fuck.

He thought that very clearly, but his mouth didn't work at all. None of him did. He just stood there staring at them, and they both stared down at him, until finally Seth raised one hand and Xander saw there was a bottle of wine in it.

"I finished my thesis," Seth said. "I was just fascinating Spike with the details." He turned and gave Spike a friendly smile. Spike stared back, unmoved. "And, uh—" He turned back to Xander. "I thought I'd see what you were up to. If you felt like celebrating with me."

Xander just stared. The back of his neck itched in a remote, Siberian kind of way. The goo was drying. He should hose off before he was shellacked like this. He couldn't stop staring at Seth's face, at his eyes, his mouth. Then he had a quick, vivid glimpse of Seth's mouth on his dick, and he jerked his eyes away and stared at his own feet instead. He was blushing, he was pretty sure.

"Um." He couldn't think at all. Spike and Seth had been discussing Seth's thesis topic? Or was that a joke? He hadn't even known Seth had a thesis topic. But that was what graduate students did, right? It was all kind of hazy at the moment. Right. Whatever it was on, he'd finished it. And he wanted to celebrate. Whatever that meant.

"Congratulations," he said after another couple of seconds, and it came out sounding so stilted and formal, he wanted to just turn around and skip straight back down the stairs, down to the lobby and out the door, into traffic. Death could not come fast enough.

"Thanks," Seth said. He sounded bemused, but not horrified. Not like he was trying to remember what drug he'd been on when he'd fucked this kid in the first place. Xander looked up quickly. Act, together.

"So you're a Master now?"

Seth smiled and shrugged. "Well, it has to be read by a few people, and there's a defence, but it's really just a formality. So, yeah. Master."

Xander nodded. "Cool." He had a brief, inexplicable urge to say, Hey, Spike's a Master too. You guys should rap. Instead he said, "That's very cool. And definitely celebration-worthy."

Seth nodded and looked at the bottle in his hand. "I was thinking, I don't know, maybe some takeout lo mein, I could read you the introduction and some of the footnotes—" In the pause that followed, he looked up and raised an eyebrow. "You know I'm kidding, right?"

"Yes," Xander said. "Listen, you want to walk downstairs with me?"

"Red called," Spike said. He hadn't moved, hadn't opened the door an inch more, hadn't smiled once. Dislike was radiating from him in small squiggly waves. Xander glanced at him.

"Um, yeah?"

"'bout five o'clock. Needed you at the Box."

"Yeah." Xander gave his clothes a long look, then turned it on Spike. "Yeah, I got that message all right, Spike. Thanks."

Spike said nothing. He just stood there, his face impassive, watching them. Xander raised his eyebrows, took a deep breath, and looked at Seth. "You wanna walk?"

"Sure." Seth gave Spike the same friendly, untouchable smile. "Nice meeting you, Spike."

"Don't trip."

"Never mind him," Xander said, gripping the banister and starting to limp downward. "He's a little bit of an asshole."

Seth said nothing until they got to the lobby, but he walked close enough to grab Xander if he fell. Close enough that Xander could smell him, or his aftershave at least. Good aftershave, not the liquid stink most guys seemed to wear. And not much of it. Maybe he should start wearing something like that. Aftershave wasn't the same thing as perfume, was it? And if it was, maybe it was okay to wear it after all, if it made you smell like that.

He had to keep some kind of focus here.

"You okay?" Seth asked, when they reached the bottom of the stairs. "You look a little—" He paused, and then didn't resume, probably because there was no good adjective for what Xander looked like right now. Not unless you were familiar with the cacodemon scene, at least. And presumably Seth wasn't.

"I'm fine," Xander said. "My friend's a…performance artist. Crazy stuff. She's working on this whole birth cycle, lots of cottage cheese and styling products, it's very New York." He scrubbed belatedly at his face with the towel and tried to laugh. "We make our own fun in Sunnydale."

"Wow," Seth said. "That's great. Does she show?"

"Uh, she's visible, yeah. If that's what you mean."

Seth gave him a sideways smile, bemused again. Then he reached out and wiped something off Xander's forehead with his finger. He flicked it to the floor and rubbed his finger on his trouser with a little laugh. "Three parts John Frieda, two parts curd, I think."

Xander smiled and couldn't think of anything to say. He could still feel Seth's finger on his forehead, a slow light stroke. God, he smelled good. Xander swallowed and bounced the towel against his leg.

"So—"

"So." How the hell did he seem so relaxed all the time? So totally calm and in control, and where the hell did he get eyes like that? It was ridiculous to get hard from someone's eyes. "Your friend's an interesting guy."

"No, he's not." That was automatic, defensive. Stupid. Spike was interesting like roadkill was interesting. Like slasher flicks were interesting. Like all bad things. "I mean, he's… He's just staying with me for a while."

Seth nodded, didn't seem fazed. Unbotherable Lad was being trumped by Unfazeable Guy. "He's hot."

"No, he's not." Sharp, snappish. Unbotherable Lad was officially out of the League. "I mean, he's…" Stupid. Spike was hot. Of course he was. You couldn't really argue it, not unless you could point out the evil-vampire part, and sometimes even that didn’t seem like much of an argument. "He's sick. He's just staying with me until he's back on his feet."

Seth's brow did furrow then, and he raised the bottle and placed the bottom of it against the wall, turned it a quarter turn. Unconscious, considering gesture. He had beautiful, tanned hands. "I'm sorry," he said.

It took a second for Xander to catch up, and then he had to rush all over himself trying to clarify. "No, no, he's not sick like that, he's straight. Which is, um, totally stupid because I do know that straight people get AIDS, and I'm not even sure that's what you inferred me to be implying, but I wasn't implying that, he's just— We think he has flu. Or something." He paused. "He's not my boyfriend, obviously."

Seth looked sideways at him, and smiled. "Does he know that?"

"Um. What?"

"Nothing. Listen, I’m sorry. I think I came at a bad time, and I didn't mean to make your life complicated. I just wanted to celebrate, and I thought of you."

Xander swallowed against the little warm bloom that made in his throat. "Wow. Well, thanks."

"No problem." Another quick, friendly smile. "So, you want to go get Chinese and make for Inspiration Point?"

Xander looked down at the towel in his hands, at the goo all over him. "I'm a little gummy just now."

Seth put a hand on his shoulder, straightened him up like a cadet, and gave him a once-over look. A look that made Xander's heart beat faster, and made his knees sort of feeble. He could feel heat in his face again. Seth's hand was warm through his shirt, against his skin.

"I've seen worse," Seth said, and leaned forward. Kissed him. Gently, warm and a little wet, the hand still on his shoulder and a good thing because otherwise he might fall down. Little red pings behind his eyelids, and Seth's mouth tasted minty and the same as he remembered. The same as he'd remembered a lot of times since then, usually in the shower with his hand around his dick. He pressed forward and made it deeper, wetter. God. His head was pounding.

He heard a small sound upstairs, like a door closing, and that was enough to remind him that he was kissing a guy in the lobby of his apartment building. Might as well just hang a rainbow flag over his door and start canvassing for the Fans of Streisand. He pulled back and took a little step away.

"Huh." They looked at each other for a few seconds, Seth smiling, and a slow smile starting on Xander's face, despite himself.

"Huh," Seth said back, and wiped something else off Xander's temple.

"I should shower," Xander said.

"If you want," Seth said. "I've kissed worse."

The slow smile sort of faltered, and before he could stop himself, Xander said, "Huh" again. In a different tone this time. Seth raised an eyebrow.

"You're a good kisser, Xander," he said. "I didn't mean you were bad."

"No," Xander said. "Thanks. I know." He rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. How many people had Seth kissed, anyway? How many had he spent the night with? That was what gay guys did, right? Slept around. It was like a cultural hobby. A hallmark of gayness. Maybe he should start fucking more people. Aftershave, promiscuity. Check.

"You okay?" Seth asked, stepping forward to make up the little distance between them, and reaching out a finger for Xander's waistband. Xander sent a quick paranoid look up the stairs, and remembered the sound of the door closing. Supersonic vampire hearing. His cheeks felt hot.

"I'm fine," he said. "Just—listen, let me get cleaned up, okay? Then I want to hear all about this 'thesis' thing I've been hearing so much about."

"No, you don't," Seth said, tugging his belt loop lightly. "It's boring. It's the kind of boring they sentence you to Connecticut for."

"Connecticut, ancestral seat of dullness," Xander said, unhooking from Seth's finger and starting to turn for the stairs. Then he paused and turned back. "Wait, really?"

Seth looked blank. "Really what?"

"Really, Connecticut?"

Seth nodded. "Yeah. That's where they keep Yale."

Xander stood with one hand on the banister, one foot above the other on the stairs. His brain felt blank. His stomach, on the other hand, felt sort of sick.

"Yale," he said. "Where they make the padlocks."

"Yeah. And the doctoral degrees."

"Wow. That's great. That's— Congratulations."

Seth nodded, his eyes on Xander's. "Thank you."

"Okay, well I'll just—" He started to turn back upstairs, then stopped and turned back. "Actually, you know what? I think—"

Seth waited.

"I think maybe, not. Not so much." His mouth was dry, and his hand was shaking on the banister. He felt weirdly, immediately sad, no reason or delay, just sad. Like he was losing something very important, or letting it go. Dropping it into the stream and walking away.

Seth stayed where he was, his eyes on Xander's face.

"Okay," he said quietly, after a moment. "I understand."

"I'm sorry," Xander said. He was. Sorry and sad and tired. "I just don't— I don't think this is what I want."

Seth stood still a few seconds, studying him. Then he stepped forward, put out a hand, and pulled lightly on Xander's belt loop again. "You're a pretty amazing guy, Alexander."

"I can't believe I told you my name was Alex." He smiled, remembering beer down his back and the moment of whiplash. "I had brainlock, I think."

"You're also incredibly hot," Seth said, as if he hadn't spoken. "I hope you actually realize that sometime soon."

Xander laughed, stared at Seth's finger, and then said quietly, "Thanks."

"No problem." He pulled on the loop, and Xander bent down, and they kissed lightly, like friends. Xander didn't think about the lobby, or his neighbors, or his landlord, or anyone. Seth's lips were warm and he tasted like mint. Clean, friendly taste. It could have been a lot worse.

"Have a good time playing doctor," he said, watching Seth shoulder the door open.

"Take good care of your friend," Seth said, smiling back. "Don't torment him too much."

What? Xander tried to ask, but the door was already closing, and Seth was gone.