Out of Africa

by
Witling

Part Five

Hours later, Xander woke up in a dark room and a panic. He couldn't tell which way was up, where his head was, where his bag was. Couldn't remember what town he was in, or what he was supposed to be doing. Nothing made sense. He grappled with the sheets until he half-fell out of the bed, and it was only the feel of cool wood beneath his feet that jarred his memory back into focus. California. Right. God.

He was awake because he had to piss, he realized. There was a lamp somewhere—he remembered a blue shade. Clumsily, he fumbled for it. With the light on, he saw his bags still lying in the corner of the room, where Spike had put them the day before—or the day before that, he forgot now. Time seemed to be stretching and narrowing, playing tricks when he wasn't looking. He dragged on a pair of dirty jeans and ventured out.

His face, in the bathroom mirror, was middle-of-the-night strange. He'd taken the false eye out before sleeping, and its absence made him look old. His good eye was bloodshot and bleary. He needed a haircut and a shave, and some more Oreos. Africa had made him sunburned and skinny, like a bum. That was normal in Africa; he'd got used to it. In California he was a crazy person.

The little clock on the bathroom counter read 11:45. He washed his hands, ran cold water over his face, and went back to bed.

On the way, he heard a voice in the hallway. A quiet, distant, male voice, speaking at intervals. It took him a minute to realize it was Spike's voice. Drifting up through the old hot air register, from some other part of the house.

"—that's bloody stupid. You're worth four of him."

A long pause. Curious, Xander scratched the top of his right foot with the toes of his left.

"Mm. But you're back to uni in a few months anyway, right?"

Pause.

"And you're going to do what he tells you."

Pause.

"I never said you couldn't. Just never thought you were that kind."

Pause.

"The kind to do what she's told. Never bloody did what I told you to—"

Pause.

"I know you do, pet. I'm just saying, when people love each other they don't hold each other back, you know?"

Xander hung in the darkness, eyes closed, listening.

"Well, maybe he's—"

"Right, I know."

"Look, don't cry, all right? If you cry I'll have to rip his lungs out, and I've been doing really well lately—"

"I'm just saying, take some time and think it over."

"I know."

"Yeah."

"No, I'm setting up a place. Supposed to get another bunch of young hopefuls in."

"No, some other poor bugger this time. Harris. Used to be—"

Xander's eyes opened.

"Right. That's the one."

"It's…fine. Just haven't seen any of that lot in a while, that's all. It's a little…"

"No."

"No. Christ. What are you studying, bloody Classics?"

A longer pause, while Xander crouched slowly down and propped his elbows on his knees, his chin on his hands. Spike's voice was like a radio play in the darkness: disembodied, ghostly.

"Right, well, if you want my advice—"

"Then don't bloody call asking for it. Tell this bloke he can either wait till you come back, or pick up and move with you. He's not going to—"

"Well, that'd be an answer, wouldn't it?"

A long pause, long enough that Xander's eyelids started to close again.

"Right," Spike said at last, very softly. "Right, I know." Another pause. "I'm sorry."

Xander rose quietly to his feet and started back to his bedroom. He had the uncomfortable, belated feeling of having eavesdropped on something more personal than he'd realized. At the same time, he felt a sense of pending surreality—a wallop of surprise that hadn’t really hit yet, because he wasn't awake enough to feel it. Spike-with-a-soul had layers. He had tenderness and complexity and advice. He might even have something like friends.

Sleep was the best place to contemplate this new gaping chasm in the fabric of reality. Xander dove in headfirst, without raising a ripple.






He woke up just before dawn, uncomfortably hard. Stripping the jeans off took just a few seconds. Thoughtless, no need for self-consultation. His dick was hot and hard and familiar in his hand. It was the only hand that had touched him in a little more than a year. Fortunately, it was a very intelligent hand.

He jerked off on his back, driving up into his own closed fist, feeling an unlooked-for pleasure and release he hadn't felt in years. He was home. He was safe. He wasn’t with a stranger, he didn't have to worry about anyone breaking in with guns or clubs. He didn't have to use this to erase anything awful from his mind. He could just enjoy it. So he did. For about a minute, before the complex tumble of images behind his eyelids—breasts, mouths, dicks, a finger and thumb, rolling something small—yanked him over the edge. He didn't have to be totally silent here, so he wasn't. He heard himself make an animal, guttural sound in the base of his throat.

It lasted longer than usual, and when it had finally worked its way through him he lay breathing quietly, listening to his heartbeat slow in his ears. Feeling stupidly pleased with himself. Outside, a bird sang a few notes. He smiled.

Then he heard Spike walk quietly out of the bathroom, a few feet down the hall. He went down the stairs and into the kitchen, and there was silence.

"Oh God," Xander said, opening his eyes to stare at the ceiling.

The bird sang a cheerful little elegy for his dignity.

Part Six

"I understand that," Xander said, taking the glasses off and rubbing the bridge of his nose. "What I'm saying is, we need Slayers."

"And you'll get them," Andrew said. "It's just a little…well, there've been some mix-ups at the central branch. This is why it's so important that you fill out those forms properly. If people don't fill out their forms—" He trailed off into an implication of bureaucratic doom.

"I'll fill out the forms," Xander said, looking at the small pile of forms, and the large pile of ripped-up paper beside it. When he'd come down this morning, after a long and shamefaced shower, Spike had already separated the wheat from the chaff. "Every last one. I promise. But first we need Slayers."

"And you'll get them. Just relax, Xander. Think of it as a vacation."

"I don't need a vacation, I need—" He paused as Spike walked back into the room, mug of blood in hand. "Look, I'm just saying, a house without Slayers is like a…"

"Day without sunshine," Spike intoned, sloshing blood down the drain. "Cat without kittens. Council without poofs. Try him on that one."

"Day without sunshine," Xander said grimly, studying a form. "Or whatever. Isn't it kind of pointless, having a house with no Slayers in it?"

"I'm working on it." Andrew sounded pissed. "Honestly, if you had any idea what it takes to get those bloody colonials to pay attention—"

"Andrew, you're from California."

"Xander, if you don't like the way we do things around here, you're more than welcome to go back to Swaziland or wherever."

Xander blinked at the table, taken aback. "Uh, that's okay. I mean, no thanks."

"Fine." Andrew took a deep breath at his end. "Sorry."

"That's…okay."

"I'll see what I can do. Don't expect miracles, though."

"I try not to."

They hung up, and Xander stared at his piles of forms and confetti.

"Watcher boy's on the rag," Spike observed, around a mouthful of Weetabix.

Xander glanced up furtively. He still wasn't sure what to do with the knowledge that Spike had heard him jerking off. Was there any possibility that Spike had lost ninety percent of his hearing in the last few years, and neglected to say so? Not really. But at least Spike didn't seem too interested in poking him with sticks these days. Thank God for the soul. Thank God for the kinder, gentler Spike.

"Pissy little bitch," Spike went on, mowing down another mouthful. "What he needs is a good hard fuck over some administrator's desk. That'd set him right."

In the brief pause that followed, Xander sat staring at Spike. It took Spike a minute to look up.

"What?" he asked, still chewing. "I'm just bloody saying."

Xander let his head fall forward into his hands, and wished briefly for a one-way ticket to elsewhere.






"Looks like the screw goes through the little…flange-y thing."

Xander drew back and waited in silence. There was a rustle of paper.

"Wait."

"I'm waiting."

A pause.

"Okay. Right, no, back up, I fucked it up. That's the cupboards. This is the dresser, right?"

Xander glanced up at the wooden skeleton he was building around himself. "That is correct. We are building a dresser." Or an ark. It was hard to tell.

"Fuck." More rustling. "What's it called? BARF? YÄK? Fuck."

Xander waited a couple of seconds more, then shimmied back out from beneath the dresser. Spike was sitting propped against the yellow armchair, cereal bowl at his side, squinting at a handful of papers. Xander set his screwdriver down carefully, where he could find it again.

"You can't read those either, can you?" he asked.

"Can too."

"You think it's a problem, both of us being pretty much blind? I mean, with the Slayers coming and all."

"Speak for yourself," Spike muttered, staring ferociously at the pages. "I see fine."

"How many fingers am I holding up?" He didn't bother to hold up any; as anticipated, Spike raised two of his own. "What is it, noon? I'm thinking it's Miller time." He shucked the glasses, heaved to his feet, and trekked down to the kitchen.

When he came back, bearing two cold Coronas and a bag of glorious American tortilla chips, he found Spike holding his glasses, studying them with a frown.

"Don't even think about it," Xander said, passing down a beer and continuing on to slump on the floor beside the half-built dresser. "Get your own."

"These are crap," Spike said, putting the beer down absently. "How long you been wearing them?"

"I don't know. A couple of years, I guess." About as long as Spike had been wearing his own hair color, he realized. And wasn't that a funny little coincidence. "It took a while to get them, over there."

"I bet." Spike folded the arms carefully, as if he were handling something expensive or worthwhile. "Not a lot of shopping malls."

"Not where I was." He raised his beer, paused, then asked, against his better judgment, "Where were you? I mean…when you went. There."

Spike didn't seem to notice the hesitation. "Kenya. Bloody mess."

"Yeah." Without thinking, Xander held out his beer. Spike had his halfway to his mouth, but he paused with a look of faint surprise, and held his bottle out. They clinked necks.

"To Africa," Spike said, his tone adding a whole paragraph of editorial.

"To Africa," Xander repeated, a little quieter. He couldn't quite bring himself to think everything he knew Spike was thinking right now--backward hellhole. It was, in a lot of ways. But it was also home, in a weird way. He had a thing for hellholes, after all.

They drank, and then there was a slightly awkward quiet spell. Spike pursed his lips and examined the ceiling.

"So," Xander said, and found he had nothing to follow that up with.

Spike raised an eyebrow, waiting for more. They looked at each other for a minute.

"This is weird," Xander blurted. "I'm sorry, I'm just…this is just weirding me out a bit. That's all."

"What?" Spike looked guarded, ready for the worst.

"You. Me. We're building a dresser. I keep expecting a giant snake, or a troll, or some, I don't know, some vampires or something. You know?"

Spike frowned. Xander sighed and put the flat of his palm over the mouth of his beer. "Forget it. I'm just…it's just jet lag."

"Kind of the point," Spike said, from under his frowning brow. "Isn't it? Running a Slayer house—it's retiring from the field. Let some other bloke get knocked down for a while."

"Retiring," Xander said, swigging from his beer. "Great. Terrific."

"Taking a break, that's all."

"There aren't even any Slayers." Xander lay back with a sigh and reached for the screwdriver, finding it without looking. The bottom of the dresser was fuzzy and dark. "Can I have my glasses, please?"

There was a pause, then he heard a scuffling sound, and Spike put his glasses in his hand. "Okay, so…what the hell am I doing, again?"

"Building," Spike said quietly. Xander closed his eyes and waited for instructions.