Notes: So, due to a variety of different things, I've been having a little trouble performing lately. Just, you know. I've been under a lot of pressure, I'm stressed out, my mind's on other things. It happens to every writer sometimes. It's perfectly normal. Doesn't mean anything at all.

Anyway, as a means of self-treatment for this unfortunate condition, I played around a little with something new and frivolous. A little Vamp!Xander, Spike & Xander, standalone, no relationship to anything else in canon or fanon or my own little carnival world of prevert delights. Just something to play with the boys and make them start talking again. This will not go anywhere from here.

And because I was rereading anniesj's Spander stories on All About Spike again tonight, loving each of them anew, I am stealing her random-song-title idea and for no reason at all, calling this little fillip...

Red Right Hand

by
Witling

Part One

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but the gist is that I'm now a soulless blood-sucking creature of the night."

"Right."

"I'm a vampire."

"If you'd rather."

"I don't feel like a vampire."

"Do this." Spike turned to look at him head on, and went to game face. Xander studied him for a few seconds, struggled to prop himself up against the passenger door, and…thought snarly.

"Did it work?"

Spike was watching the road again; he sent a quick glance over, and shook his head. Xander frowned, tested one finger against his canine, and tried again. "Anything?"

Spike reached over, grabbed Xander's throat, and cracked his head against the window. Once, twice. Hard. Then he looked over. "Yeah, that's it."

Xander took one hand off Spike's forearm and patted his own face. Bumpy and cold, a whole new terrain. Holy shit.

"Holy shit," he croaked.

"Yeah," Spike said. "Want to give me my arm back?"

"So what now?"

The wind swept a cloud of dust and road trash through the oasis, and Spike squinted at the buttons on the pump. The fluorescents in the canopy, fifteen feet above them, buzzed like insects and smelled weird. The whole gas station stank. He used to like the smell of gas.

"Now," Spike said, stabbing at the keypad and scowling, "we find somewhere to spend the day."

"Using someone's stolen credit card. Good idea. They'll never track us that way."

"How the bloody hell is anyone supposed to read these things? Fucking tiny little numbers."

"Give it to me, dickhead." He grabbed the card out of Spike's hand, swiped it, and punched okay. The DeSoto started siphoning. "Out of all the vampires I have ever met and dusted, I get mentored by the one who can't pump gas."

"I'm the one you lot never did for, remember."

"Not yet. When Buffy finds out about my new iron deficiency, we're both so staked."

"Right, well, that's why we're driving east, wanker. Don't top it up, the gauge's gone."

"I'm shocked."

"You're mouthy for someone who's just remembered how to walk upright." Spike pulled a few bills out of his pocket, riffled through them, and turned toward the convenience store. "I'm getting cigarettes. You want anything?"

"No." He let his head fall down and rest on the roof of the car. It felt good and cool against his skin. "The lifeblood of the till jockey, maybe."

"Check." Spike wandered off, and Xander had a brief moment of wondering whether he'd really - nah. Nah. He wouldn't. Would he? He propped his chin on the roof and watched Spike walk. The duster whipped in the wind, and his hair gleamed white.

"Kidding!" he yelled, just as Spike opened the door. Even from here, he could hear the electronic people-sensor go off. Spike gave him the finger and went in.

"You're going to have to eat at some point," Spike said reasonably, lighting his millionth cigarette. "If you go comatose, I'm leaving you behind."

"I'm not - " Xander couldn't think of a good way to end that sentence, because Spike was right, he was going to have to eat something soon. He'd been awake - no, alive, no, undead - for almost a full night, and he hadn't fed yet. It sort of surprised him that he wasn't more grr-argh, but Spike had brushed that off. "That's Hammer film stuff," he'd said shortly. "You wake up every morning and savage a plate of eggs?"

"Actually, since you mention it - "

"You're hungry, that's all. And you'll get hungrier, and sooner or later you're going to have to eat."

So, yeah. That was it. He was going to have to savage someone sooner or later, and while he didn't think he felt quite the way he should about that, quite the way he once would have felt, he didn't really want to think about it. If he didn't think about it, maybe he wouldn't have to deal with it. Maybe someone really bad would just fall on his fangs. Like a serial killer. Or the president.

He went for the bag between them, and found Spike's hand already in it. "Hey," he said, batting it out. "My emergency rations, asshole. You had the clerk."

"How'd you - ?" Spike gave him a startled sideways look, then cupped his hand over his mouth and sniffed his breath. "Keep forgetting you're in the brotherhood now."

"'The brotherhood'?" Xander groaned and snarfled a handful of barbeque corn nuts. "Vampirism is so gay."

"I was joking, you idiot. And when did you smell that on me?"

"When you came back to the car with O negative all over your face. I'm serious, back off the snacks."

"I did not have - "

"Spike, I'm in the brotherhood now, remember? I can smell this stuff."

Spike stared straight ahead, a slightly concerned expression on his face.

"I can't believe you're having sex with Angel," Xander said after a minute or two, twisting the rear view mirror around to examine his lack of reflection.

"I am not - "

"Road, Spike. Remember the road."

"God, I hate you."

"Good to know some things don't change."

"Pair-a-dice," Xander said, dropping the depleted bag of gas station snacks on the chair by the door and shrugging out of his coat. "Pair-a-dice. Get it? The Pair-a-dice Motel."

"I get it."

"It's clever, huh?"

"It's a fucking tip." He stomped into the bathroom, flicked the light on, looked around, and came back out in a hurry, closing the door behind him. "We could have used that card at least till tomorrow."

"Spike, which one of us has a history of successfully-laid and -executed plans?"

"Neither."

"Right. And which one of us has a history of bad credit, materially ambitious girlfriends, and endless, depleting financial entanglements?"

Spike thought for a minute. "That would be you."

"Right. From now on, I'm in charge of how long we use the stolen credit cards. You can be in charge of, I don't know, wardrobe and ambience."

"Not sure I can handle all that," Spike said, eyeing Xander's sweatshirt.

"Don't worry, I'm sure you'll have me in the camel-toe black Levis in no time." He flopped back onto the nearest bed, wincing when it slumped under him. "God, what a dump."

"Pair-a-dice," Spike said helpfully. "See, it's like 'paradise,' only it's spelled - "

"Shut up. Is there any food left? I'm so fucking hungry - " He trailed off, one hand on his belly, the other over his eyes. Not a good train of thought. Spike said nothing; he was still wandering around the room, poking things and giving little snorts of disgust. "So, what happens next?"

"Next?" Xander opened his eyes and rolled his head back to look at Spike, who was trying to pry the remote off the table it was bolted to. "Next we have lashings of hot vampire sex."

Xander lay still, his eyebrows raised, struggling to focus properly through his hunger headache.

"Or we go find you something to eat," Spike said, frowning down at the buttons on the remote. Xander rolled to his feet and pulled his coat off the chair.

"You win, Monty. Let's go figure out how this is going to work."

He hadn't ever thought it would be like this; hot and messy and salty and sweet. Well, what else would you expect? It was a body, after all. It was blood. You had to expect this stuff. But he hadn't expected it to be so good. To make him feel like the top of his head had just blown right off, stairway to heaven right up through his spine, and all the little angels singing. God, maybe vampires weren't evil after all. Maybe it was all just a big misunderstanding and once you know how fucking good this was, you could get why they were always after it. It was like sex, that way. How could you blame someone for wanting something that felt like this?

He was still kneeling on the concrete, down behind the garbage cans. He still had the cooling body cradled in his arms, the wound pressed to his lips. He was rocking slightly on his heels. He knew he was smiling. He didn't ever want to let go.

"You going to eat that?" Spike asked, leaning back and glancing down at him with a smile somewhere between amused and disdainful. Xander couldn't muster any snark; he felt high and drunk and giddy and calm, and for the first time in what felt like weeks, he wasn't hungry. He just smiled, knowing he had blood all over his chin.

Spike studied his face carefully, shook his head as if he'd just confirmed something for himself, then smiled back. A proper smile this time, relaxed and friendly.

"Come on," he said, putting a hand down to help Xander up. "We can't stay here."

Reluctantly, Xander let the body go and stood up. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, then sucked some of the blood off. Spike gave him a look of parental frustration, and wiped his hand across Xander's mouth, flicking blood to the ground.

"You ready?" he asked. Xander nodded, his head still singing. Spike took a final drag off his cigarette and flicked it down next to the Rottweiler's corpse. "Man bites dog," he said, flashing Xander a quick grin. "That's one for the papers."

They took off at a run down the alley, and Xander felt like every step he took was ten feet long.

Back in the motel room, he washed his face until the water wasn't pink anymore, then got the hell out of the bathroom without looking closely at the toilet or shower. His whole body was buzzing, electric, little crackles leaping invisibly off his fingertips. He wanted to bounce in place, hang off the doorframes, trash the joint.

Spike lay on the bed closest to the television, studying the jumping picture with a frown.

"What next?" Xander did a circuit of the room, opened the drawer to the bedside table, looked at the Bible inside, and shut it again. Spike pressed a button on the remote and the picture skipped to something long and green and flickering.

"Next we find whoever did the satellite in this place, and gut him."

"Cool. And then we're going to LA?"

"LA?" Spike squinted at him as if he'd said Puka Puka. "What the hell's in LA?"

"Well, you and Angel - "

"Me and Angel nothing. We stop in LA, the poof's going to do his level best to stake the pair of us, same as Buffy would. Evil, remember? Soulless?"

"But you and Angel - "

"Are not sweethearts, you idiot. "

"So the sex is just - "

"For practice, yeah." Spike went back to the television, a little grumpily. Xander wandered over to the window and started singeing his fingers through the blinds.

"Stop that."

"If we're not going to LA, where are we going?"

"I was thinking Milwaukee. Or Guelph."

"I'd like to go to New York." He singed a black spot on his thumb, then watched it heal. "I've never been to New York. Actually, I've never been out of California."

"If you don't stop doing that right now, I'm going to come over there and light your head on fire."

"How come you never told me it was like that?"

"Because you were busy having a soul and not being a vampire. Now, I'm trying to watch a spot of shitty American telly before I fall asleep for the day, would you mind very much shutting up?"

Xander turned away from the window and wandered back over to the bedside table. He played with the molding on the edge until it snapped off in his hand. "Oops." Spike glanced over, and he quickly dropped the broken chunk down the side of the bed and concentrated on the looping television picture.

For the first time in his life, television held no appeal. The bed smelled like cigarettes and other people's hair and sex. He fingered the cover and remembered sprinting through the alleys behind the little houses where he'd taken the dog. If a dog tasted like that, felt like that - what did a person feel like? His mouth felt dry all of a sudden, and a strange, frightened shudder went through him.

"Spike?" He was pissing Spike off, he knew that. But he couldn't sit still like this, he couldn't be quiet. It was too much to process in silence. "Seriously, what happens next?"

"Next I fuck you into the mattress to make you shut up," Spike muttered.

"Fantastic." He rolled onto his side and studied Spike's profile.

"I'm not serious," Spike said after a minute.

"Okay."

There was silence for a minute or two.

"It'll get better," Spike said at last, still staring at the television screen. "You'll get used to it, you'll be fine."

"I know." He bunched his hands into fists, studied the veins in the backs of them, then went to game face, experimentally. Not the same thing, really. "Thanks for carrying me, Spike."

"You owe me."

"I know. I'll pay you back." He hesitated, stroked the bony ridge of his own forehead, and said shyly, "I'll make you proud."

Spike snorted. Then, after a minute or two, he looked over at Xander and smiled.

Part Two

"Bikers," Xander said idly, watching the bar pass by in a streak of green neon. Then it hit him. "Bikers, Spike."

Spike gave him a sour look. "Bloody disgusting."

"Oh, come on. Bikers! I've always wanted to eat a biker!" Spike just looked at him. "Well, okay, not always in the sense of forever, but now that it occurs to me--"

"They smell foul and they don't shave. Trust me, you don't want biker for lunch."

"Spike, when have I ever asked you for anything?"

Pointed silence.

"Jesus, Spike. You're turning into Giles, you know that?"

"Oh, right, I won't turn the car around and drive back to the biker bar so you can get shot in the face trying to suck forty-proof rhesus negative out of the Wild Bunch, which makes me Rupert."

"Can I have a cigarette?"

"No."

"That's exactly what Giles would have said."

Spike's fingers tightened on the steering wheel. Xander smiled and looked out his window. "Diner!"

"No."

"Pie!"

"No."

"Coffee! God, I could use a cup of coffee."

"Get--give those back." Spike grabbed the cigarette packet out of Xander's fingers and jammed it into his pocket. "Jesus Christ, if I have to pull this car over I'm going to stake you, I swear to God."

Xander sank back into the seat and trapped his hands between his knees. A sign went by on his side, upping the speed limit to 55 again. The DeSoto leapt forward; wherever they were going, Spike couldn't wait to get there. The car smelled like cigarettes and corn nuts and the clothes Xander had been wearing last night when he'd eaten his first person, a middle-aged man. Wrong night to walk the Samoyed down that particular lane, mister. Samoyed Man been hot and salty and beautiful, better than sex, and afterward Xander had had the strange compulsion to thank the body. Well, and also to fall down on top of it and roll.

He had the feeling he should be more bothered by... Well. Everything. But he wasn't.

"Stop that." Spike's tone was tight as Jackson pants, and he was rooting for another cigarette. Xander realized he was tapping his hands on the dash, and quickly shoved them back between his knees.

"Sorry." He wanted to roll his window down, stick his head out, feel the freezing wind on his face. He wanted to pop the door and see how much damage he'd take if he hit the ground rolling. He couldn't die. That was just starting to sink in, and it was making him crazy. Maybe because he'd spent his whole life so far taxidancing with death, and now suddenly he was the one with the mittful of dimes. An idea occurred to him, and he sat bolt upright. "God, you know what I want to do?"

Spike pressed finger and thumb to the bridge of his nose and said nothing.

"I want to ride on the roof. Can I--"

"No."

"Look, you don't even have to stop the car, I'll just open the window--" He started unrolling it, and Spike leaned over and slapped his hand away. There were a few seconds of mutal hand-smacking, until Spike upped the ante by grabbing him around the throat and slamming his head into the dash.

When the stars stopped whistling through his ears, he noticed that the window was closed again, and Spike had another cigarette on the go.

"Ow." He sat up slowly and felt his face. For a second he thought he was ruined--he felt all fucked up and broken--and then he realized he was just in game face. "Shid, Spike--" Back in human face, his nose was hard and hot and bloody. "I think you broke by node."

Spike's jaw was ticking. He gave Xander a quick sideways glance, then yanked his eyes back to the road. "You're fine."

Xander dabbed two fingers in the blood on his lip, tried to snort some of it back up, and almost choked. It tasted good, which was something. But still. It really fucking hurt. He sank back into the corner by the door, patting his face and staring at the mess on his fingers. He was shaking a little. Jesus, some vampire he was.

Spike kept sending him quick little looks, watching him regroup. "Your own fault," he said finally. Xander looked up in surprise.

"What--oh, yeah. I know."

"You've been pissing me off all night, you're like a fucking two year-old."

"I know, Spike. I'm a pain in the ass right now, I know."

"You're always a pain in the arse." That sounded sort of automatic, though, and next thing Xander knew, Spike was digging in his pocket and shoving the crumpled packet of Marlboros into his face. He hesitated. "Go on, wanker."

"Thanks." He took a cigarette and lit it off the dashboard coil. His face was already subsiding from pain into heat; it was almost nice. Then it was nice. Warm and nice. He dragged on the cigarette, coughed, and rubbed a finger over the bridge of his nose where it was still tender. That hurt. And he liked it. "Spike?"

Wary pause. "What?"

"I think I'm a masochist now."

"Oh, Jesus."