Out of Africa

by
Witling

Part Seven

Later, there was spaghetti and red sauce, and a crystal-clear showing of Deep Rising on the SciFi network, courtesy of Xander's brief investigation behind the television set that Spike had given up for dead.

"What'd you do?" Spike asked, slurping up a red noodle, eyes fixed on the screen.

"Plugged it in," Xander replied, too engrossed to mock. He hadn't seen good television in years. And this wasn't good, not in the sense of "well-scripted, superlatively acted, and wow, those special effects!" It was, however, crystal-clear. And in English. And there was a monster.

"Shite," Spike opined at one point, getting up for another beer.

"Uh-huh." Xander stayed put, entranced. They'd unpacked the sofa and he was sprawled along it, luxuriating in the cushions. Cushions made by tiny Swedish elves, whose sole purpose in life was to extract the breast feathers of Swedish geese and the fluff from Swedish dandelions, and to weave them into sofa cushions of the finest, most supreme Swedish softness. He was going to write a letter of appreciation to the Swedish government, as soon as he got up. No, not appreciation. Love.

"Getting late." Spike was back, settling down on the floor at the foot of the sofa, beer and cell phone in hand. Huh. Spike with a cell phone—go figure. Xander cradled his head on his arm, and watched Spike go through the call registry.

"How many times have you done this?" he asked, thinking blearily of that overheard conversation, the unknown girl at the other end of the line. Spike looked at him blankly. "Had a house, I mean. Slayers. You know."

"Oh." Spike did a quick mental calculation. "Four, five. I set 'em up, pass 'em off, come back and do a little check-in once in a while. Spar with the girls." He frowned at the phone and flipped it closed. "Keeps them sharp."

Xander watched the screen for a while. "Do you like it?"

"Yeah." There was no hesitation there, no pause to dissemble. "Feels like… payback, I guess."

Because you used to kill them, Xander thought, but didn't say. He could have layers, too. He glanced down and saw that Spike was watching the television earnestly, as if escape from the depths were the most important thing in the world. At that particular angle, in the half-light of the late night living room, there was still some boy left in his face.

Without looking, Xander fished for his beer on the floor by his head. "How long do you usually stay?" he asked. "When you set up a place."

Spike shrugged. "Depends. A week or two usually. More if I'm passing off to a total berk." He reached over, picked up the beer, and put it in Xander's hand.

"Thanks." Now that he had it, he didn't really want it. He just held it, enjoying the cool wet glass against his hand, enjoying the softness of the couch, enjoying the bright light and sound of the television. He couldn't really see what was going on, but that didn't matter. He was okay with ambiguity.

"Do you think they're ever going to send us actual Slayers?" he murmured, letting his eyes fall closed.

"Yeah," Spike said, somewhere in the darkness. "Sooner or later. And then we'll really be screwed."

Xander smiled and let the bottle slip from his hand, back to the floor.








He woke up in darkness, under some kind of light scratchy blanket. No idea where he was. Blindly, he swung his legs out of bed and stood up. He could see dark, confusing shapes, random open spaces, strange shadows. Nothing made sense. He took a step and felt something crunch beneath his foot. His heart kicked up and he stumbled forward, hands out to meet whatever was there. Nothing.

He kept walking, nervous and blind, wondering where his bag was. He had a flashlight and a knife, he just had to find them. He remembered a woman he'd slept with, Fernanda—she'd stolen some stuff. Maybe she'd drugged him. He had all his clothes on, that was good. He couldn't think. He had to stop and think.

When the light came on, he found himself at the foot of the staircase, breathing hard, hands outstretched but touching nothing. Spike stood at the top of the stairs, in jeans and nothing else, his hair standing up on end. They stared at each other.

"Holy fuck," Xander breathed, lowering his right hand to rest on the newel post. "That was weird—"

"What's wrong with your foot?" Spike asked. Xander looked down. A small puddle of blood was forming around the base of his right heel. A moment later, he remembered the crunch.

"Oh, crap." He sat down heavily on the bottom stair, and studied the remains of his glasses, sticking out of the bottom of his heel. "Oh, crap."

"Hang on," Spike said, heading back down the hall to the bathroom. "I'll get the stuff."








"The good thing about a Slayer house," Spike said, slapping a final layer of tape on for good measure, "is all the medical stuff you get. Courtesy of the Council."

"Fantastic. I can't wait to start Band-Aiding superfluously."

"Don't knock the pharmaceuticals."

"I wouldn't—what pharmaceuticals?"

With a significant look, Spike dug a couple of bottles out of the kit and handed them over. "You can't read that, but it's morphine-based. Bloody good stuff."

"I'm sure." Xander handed them back. "I'm pretty sure I'm okay without the morphine for now."

"Wait till you have to hear that milkshake song forty times on repeat."

"Good point." Xander lowered his gauzed and taped foot to the kitchen floor and pressed experimentally, wincing. "Ow."

"Did a good job of it. Trashed the specs completely." Spike brandished the mangled, glassless frames, then tossed them onto the table. Xander sighed.

"I hereby declare this house open for business," he said hollowly, hobbling toward the sink. "Baptized in blood and everything. But not in an Omen-y way." He added that part hastily, and a little belatedly.

Spike closed up the first aid kit and watched Xander draw a glass of water from the sink. The clock over the stove read 2:35.

"I don't know," Xander said after a while, studying the glass in his hand. "Maybe you should take this one on your own." He didn't look up to see what Spike thought of that.

"Take what on my own?" Spike was using the careful tone again.

"The house. Maybe you should just set this up on your own, and if you don't want to stick around, they can get someone else to manage it."

"Why would they do that?"

"Because I'm blind. And crazy."

"So's half the Council."

"Spike." Xander looked up—Spike was staring at him intently, as if something faint were written on Xander's forehead, and he was trying to make it out. "Every time I wake up, I have no idea where I am. I'm thinking the first time I wander into a Slayer's room at three am, I'm going to get staked."

Spike considered the possibility, then shrugged. "It's just culture shock. It'll pass."

"Yeah, that's what the Lonely Planet guide says. But it also said to try the goat kebabs at Lua Cheia. What I'm saying is, I'm not really sure I'm up for this."

Spike let out a short, humorless wheeze that must have been a laugh. "You'd rather be sidestepping land mines in the arsehole of the planet."

"No, I'd—" Xander cut himself short and stared at the glass some more. Clean water, safe to drink. Free from the tap. Amazing.

"You're just tired," Spike said. "You're bloody exhausted and you're sad and angry, and you're scared you'll foul it all up. And you're lonely, and you think you'll never get love again, because you lost the eye and you don't have friends anymore to tell you it doesn't fucking matter."

Xander rocked back, as if he'd been punched in the chest. For a minute he couldn't think of a thing to say. His throat had closed up, like an iris spinning automatically closed. His brain lurched futilely. He was furious, and the back of his eye was hot. He was not going to cry in front of Spike. He was not.

"Africa," Spike said meditatively, with a kind of rich, complex hatred. "Fucking Africa."

Xander stared at his glass some more, then decided that if he wasn't going to cry in front of Spike, he had to leave the room now. He put the glass down and walked out without saying another word.

Part Eight

He was still awake at dawn, lying on his bed on top of the blankets, eyes closed, floating. He'd done his crying in the bathroom, in the shower. It had been shorter than he'd thought it was going to be, like the pain of ripping off a bandage. Now that it was over he was calm and even sort of grateful. Spike, of all people. Well, Spike had come back from Africa too. Once upon a time.

He knew he was going to fall asleep soon, but it was as if his body was waiting for the sound of footsteps on the stairs, then coming down the hall toward his room. Slow and hesitant. His door was open; he turned his head and opened his eyes, so Spike would know he was awake. He didn't have the false eye in. For once, it didn’t matter.

"Sorry," Spike said right away, leaning against the doorframe. He crossed his arms over his chest, then cleared his throat and wrapped his hands around his upper arms, hugging himself, as if he didn't know what to do with his limbs. He looked even smaller than usual. The corners of his mouth had turned unconsciously down, twin commas.

Xander shook his head. "It's okay. It's fine."

"I do that, sometimes. Forget what to say, what not to say." He wiped his palm over his mouth, and glanced at the frame above him. He didn't seem to have noticed the lack of eye. "Say stupid bollocks."

"It's okay."

"Look." Spike stared at the frame, frowning fiercely, as if all his thoughts had collapsed into a tangled pile and he was trying to tease one out intact. Xander waited. The little bird outside the window gave an early-morning peep. At last, Spike shook his head and scrubbed a palm over his hair. "Fuck, I don't know. Whatever."

Xander closed his eyes. When he opened them again, Spike was studying him with a pained expression.

"You were right," Xander said mildly. "I'm pissed off and scared and…I don't really know if my friends are my friends anymore, you know? And I kind of need them. I think." He levered up on the bed, until he was sitting against the headboard. "I know."

Spike's mouth compressed. He didn't say anything.

"It's weird," Xander said, propping his knees up and resting his arms on top. "I thought it was a good thing to get out of the country for a while. Things were pretty bad here, and I'd never been anywhere, and it was just for a while…" He rubbed absently at a spot on his jeans. "But then it was a year and then it was five years, and I kind of hated it but it was kind of like sleepwalking, you know? I couldn't get out of it on my own. I just kept staying."

Spike made a faint sound that might have been recognition. Xander glanced at him, then looked back at his knees.

"It's weird being back. Buffy and Willow aren't here, it's not the same. I thought coming back would be…I don't know, coming home. Stupid." He breathed out a humorless laugh. "They're not here, I don't know what I was thinking. Just…I thought things would go back to normal. I would. Go back to normal."

"You can't go home again," Spike said, without embarrassment. Xander laughed, a little more easily.

"Thank you, Robert Fulghum."

"'s true."

"So I find."

Spike pushed off the doorframe and wandered into the room, glancing at the dusty pile of Xander's bags, then going to the window. The blind was drawn, but he fingered it open and peered out at the lightening sky.

"Johnny Flame. Step away from the light."

Spike made a derisive psh sound, but he dropped the blind and walked away, hands in his back pockets, studying the white walls and the night table and the rag rug on the floor. He must have put all that in there, Xander realized.

"Thanks," he said aloud. "For…I don’t know. Being around."

Spike grunted, fingering the lampshade.

"You're kind of Home Truth Guy these days," Xander went on, thinking of the overheard conversation, the unknown girl on the other end of the line. "Well, you've always been Home Truth-y, but you used to be more of an asshole about it. Now you're wearing an invisible cardigan of good faith. A cardigan of homilies and advice. Like Giles. But without the crumbs." He paused. "Sorry."

Spike was regarding him with faint amusement, he realized. "You're a wanker, Harris."

"Wanking is my specialty." Too late, he realized that was a bad comeback. He'd wanked; Spike had heard. Ouch. "I mean—"

Spike turned away, but not before Xander saw his smile turn sly. Ouch ouch ouch. "Let you get back to it, then."

"Whoah—it's hands above blankets at the Slayer House. From now on, I mean." Aware that he was blushing, he held up both hands, palms out. "I've learned my lesson. Little pitchers."

"They're teenaged girls," Spike said, starting for the door. "They're having more sex than either of us."

"And that is exactly the kind of home truth that gets us barred from running these kinds of establishments."

"Haven't been barred yet," Spike said dismissively, on his way out. "Of course, nobody else wants the job."







"Please," Xander said, resisting the urge to lay his aching head down on the table in front of him. "Tell me we have Slayers."

"You have Slayers," Andrew said solemnly.

"Finally. When do they—"

"Oh, you don't really. I just said that. You asked me to say that. I thought it would be funny."

Xander stared at the table and tried not to say the first thing that came into his head. After a brief internal wrestling bout, he said, "Ha ha."

"Actually you might have a couple," Andrew went on. "I doubt it, but there's supposed to be two heading in from Tempe, so if they were released on time—"

"Released?"

"I mean, if they made their bus, they should be getting in around, um…two o'clock."

Xander checked his watch. "It's one forty."

"Wow, you're late."

"Andrew, what do you mean, 'released'?"

"Don't worry, they probably won't wander off on their own if you're not there."

"Andrew—"

"The motorway's going to be jam-packed, isn't it?"

In his mind's eye, Xander had a brief, vivid vision of driving to LAX, getting on a plane, flying to London, and strangling Andrew with his bare hands. He could do it. He had a passport.

"I'll call you later," he said, with as much dignity as he could muster, and hung up.

Spike, seated on the living room floor in the middle of a large drift of instructional pamphlets, screws, bolts, flanges, slotted slabs of pressed wood, and tortilla chips, looked up with mild interest. "Where you going?"

"The bus station," Xander gritted, struggling to jam his taped foot into a shoe. "Where the hell are the car keys? We've got Slayers."







Three and a half hours later, he limped back through the front door. He was sweaty, exhausted, and filmed with toxic exhaust smog. His left elbow was sunburned. His head throbbed.

"No Slayers," Spike observed, from the same spot where he'd been sitting when Xander had left. There was no discernible difference in the pile of parts and manuals. Xander sank down into the couch without a word.

"First rule of running a Slayer house," Spike said, squinting at a screw head. "Don't listen to anything the bloody Council tells you."

Xander nodded vacantly. "The convict Slayers didn't make it through processing yet."

Spike gave his screwdriver an unsurprised look. "Convicts, huh? What'd they do?"

"Their guidance counselor."

"Thought they put the bloke in jail for that these days."

"He was a vampire. They staked him." Xander rubbed his forehead. "The Council's working it out."

"We'll see them around Christmas, then."

"If we're lucky." Xander sank down sideways and disengaged his brain. He heard Spike grind a screw slowly and tortuously into pressboard. Without opening his eyes, he could tell it wasn't the right screw or the right place for it. "You're just making it up now, aren't you?"

"They don't give you any of the right bits." Spike gave the screw a final ugly-sounding tweak, then got up and walked out. In a few minutes he was back, standing beside the couch. Xander opened his eyes. There was a beer hovering in front of him.

"Thanks," he said, faintly amazed.

"Second rule of running a Slayer house," Spike said, going back to the mutated dresser with his own beer in hand. "Don't go chasing Slayers. Let them come to you."

"Wax on," Xander said, gulping his beer. "Wax off."

"Last thing you need is to run all over the place trying to get them to fall in line. They won't bloody do it, and you'll look stupid. Also, you're half-blind and you'll probably crash the car anyway." Spike licked his thumb and rubbed the head of the screw he'd just put in, frowning. "Did you crash the car?"

"No." There might be a couple of door panel dings, but there was no way to prove those hadn't been there when he'd taken it out. And if he never had to drive glassless and gimpy in LA freeway traffic again, it would be too soon.

"Good." Spike glanced at the window, then went back to scowling at the dresser. "I'm out for a bit when it gets dark."

"Oh." For some reason, that gave Xander a small, momentary pang. "Okay."

He was going to ask where, but he left it too long and then it felt weird to ask. And Spike didn't volunteer. He just went back to driving another misplaced screw into the side of the dresser, his face taut with concentration, his beer forgotten by his side. For a couple of minutes Xander watched, and then he started feeling dumb and out of place, so he got up and limped out.