Pairing: S/X, X/?, S/?
Rating: NC-17
Warning: AU, Sequel to Reasons for Living
For reference: Year: 2012 Ages: 132 and 2
Distribution: Here, or else simply ask.
Disclaimer: I only have rights to the story … the characters are simply living out my ideas for them. Spike, Xander, Buffy, etc. all belong to Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, 20th Century Fox, etc. I engender no profits (other than feedbacky ego strokes), so don’t sue.
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The Sequel to
Reasons For Living
Headfirst
Teaser: Jetsam
Ocean lapped on the limbs of the vampire. Suspended in the darkness of water and sky, the stars overhead interrupted by dark clouds and occasional rain, the vampire waited. The sea churned deep below him but he could not feel it; the surface rolled slow and tired pretended there was no angry swell that rose to meet flesh.
The stillness of the ocean’s surface paled next to the stillness of the vampire. He felt small fish brush against the back of his body, against his arms and legs and neck. He heard the distant cry of the large sea mammals and imagined the hungry growl of the darker, hungrier predators of the deep. Amidst all of this, the vampire waited.
In daylight the vampire expelled all air from his lungs, drifted down below the photosphere, where the light was only a memory and the darkness surrounded him. In gameface, somewhere between the sea-bed and the surface, he could see the predators swim past him. Some of them bared their teeth but never struck. The growl of the shark may have been imagined, but the growl of the vampire was real and traveled miles on the deep dark currents of the ocean.
When he rose again, in dark of night, he expected, always expected that the currents he drifted in beneath the surface would have moved him closer to anywhere, but he always rose to float on the surface beneath the same sky, the stars. He always surfaced with Casseopaeia at his nose and Orion’s belt at his feet.
He knew he wasn’t terribly far from the world; he heard engines sometimes or saw smoke stacks creep over the horizon and back down again. But somehow he has in hell and could move nowhere, immune to current, immune to predators, somehow immune to everything except hunger, which scorched his belly and his veins and made him slow and desperate.
No stitch of clothing hung on him. His body, unlike his mind, floated exposed to everything. In the night, he’d think of the past, even the recent past, and his cock would harden, tighten, expel under his touch. He tried to mark himself somehow, leave a trace scent for anyone who might look for him. But every day he drifted down; and every night he rose and smelled of nothing except the jetsam deep in the dark of the ocean.
His hair grew long and wild, sandy colored with white-blond tips. How many days had he spent on the ocean? Suspended by more than water; but also by love and fate. Everyday he floated, up, down, he knew that the world had not ended. Knew that disaster had been averted. But he did not know how. He did not know how he’d come to be where he was. How long he’d been there. The vampire did not know the answer to the one thought that hung in his head longer than the darkness and the wetness and the loneliness.
The vampire did not know the one thing that truly mattered, could not answer that one, overriding, desperate question:
Where is Xander?
1 Spike Ocean, Me Desert
“Do you want the theoretical beginning or the actual beginning? Do you want the beginning of this story or the beginning of the story? These are distinctions you’ll have to make. Also, chocolate. Not that I have the appetite for chocolate with Spike somewhere out in the middle of the open sea, hidden by a spell which is so old and powerful there is no record of it in any of your books. And yet I say chocolate. Since there’s not a handy supply of criminal blood lying around.”
“You eat actual people?” Dawn said.
“I eat people. You do too. You do eat people too,” Willow said. “Uhm, not really the same as doodling, is it?”
“Also, like, fourteen years ago Will, but snaps for trying,” Buffy said. “Now, let’s be clear here. Where is Spike?”
Xander frowned. His clothes hung off his body in tatters and he sat slumped on the sofa.
“I say nothing more without chocolate.”
“Buff, it’s serious. He means it. Look at that face. He stole that face from me.”
“This would be a resolve thing, wouldn’t it?” Buffy said. “Fine, chocolate. But I’m calling Giles too.”
“Chocolate. With brandy. Brandychocolicious.”
“Hurry Buffy, he’s got it bad.” Willow tried not to giggle.
“There was a struggle. And as a result of the struggle. The apocalypse was averted. But not before the dark goddess decided to banish Spike to an oceanic point of indeterminant indefiniteness.”
“Hey, you averted the apocalypse.” Willow said.
Xander jostled the mug of brandy-spiced hot chocolate back and forth between his hands, game face held beneath the surface by the palpable love in the room.
Dawn said, “Well, did he avert the apocalypse or an apocalypse? It’s really hard to tell these days what with every two bit floozy demon in the world, or in other worlds, trying to all, y’know, return chaos to earth. Or whatever.”
“An apocalypse. Spike is stuck in the ocean, in a way that very closely resembles forever, for the sake of averting not the apocalypse, but an apocalypse. Just your ordinary, run of the mill, goddess gone amok, apocalypse.” Xander said.
“Was she like way worse than Glory?” Dawn said.
“Not so much.”
“A teeny bit worse than Glory?”
“No.”
“Uhm, prettier than Glory? Because you know, prettier would be pretty challenging,” Dawn stammered.
“Dawnie, I know you’re like, on the beat and all, but… Oh, hey, is your cell ringing? Upstairs?” Buffy said.
“No, my phone is right…” She looked at the phone clipped to her belt. “Oh, yes, my phone is right upstairs, listen to it ring. See ya Xan.” She kissed him on the cheek and hurtled up the Summers’ house stairs.
“Xander, we’re going to find Spike,” Buffy said. “Right Giles?”
“Certainly, we’ll do everything we can… Do you remember what she said when she cast Spike into the ocean?”
“Yeah, I don’t think I could forget.”
“Well, that’s a wonderful starting place. Why don’t you tell Willow everything you remember, and I’ll try to reference that with whatever we know about this dark goddess. What was her name?”
“Uhm…”
“You don’t remember the dark goddess’ name?” Willow said.
“Well, the thing about that is that it was kinda… Well, an actual ancient dark goddess, not your run of the mill, ‘who-ever-heard-of-glorificus,’ kind of dark goddess.”
“So? She’s dead right?” Buffy said.
“She’s sorta… kinda… I don’t know.”
“So which actual dark goddess was she?”
“Medusa?” Xander said.
“Oh, well clearly you’re confused. Medusa wasn’t a dark goddess at all she was a Gorgon. And Greek. And sort of Libyan, but not South American at all.” Giles said.
“All I know is snakes for hair and concrete men all around her lair who had clearly tried to defeat her and lost.” Xander said, shrugged, and sipped alcoholic chocolate that was not blood and really, deeply should have been.
“And you didn’t behead the snakeheaded woman?”
“Uhm, I don’t know, exactly. I know we fucked up her ceremony. Then, uhm, it was kinda, Spike ocean, me desert. Fortunately the California desert not far from civilization… I don’t think she of the needing Pantene really paid much attention in sixth-grade social studies. If she wanted me to die she really should have sent me someplace much more middle-of-nowhere-y.”
Willow spoke up again.
“Not to like, be the ‘oh, poop on your apocalypse’ wicca, but I’m curious in a totally not serious, but please, let me lighten the mood somehow, sense of the word… What happened to your car?”
2 Blood of Antiquity
The car sat hillside somewhere. Near the bottom of the hill. Spike and Xander had climbed high into the Andes without much fear of the night weather in their search for an ancient Incan city.
Boldness. Spike and Xander together, both vampires, both inhumanly strong, consisted of love for each other, and stupid, immortal boldness.
When they found Medusa, struggling to cut off some of the living snakes from her head, they didn’t believe what they had found.
“Looks like Medusa, love. Isn’t she on the wrong bloody continent?”
“Maybe she migrated.”
“Gorgons don’t migrate. They turn men into stone.”
“What about vampires?”
“I don’t think so, love. Think we’re miraculously immune.” Spike smirked.
“Oh, okay.”
“And I think the bird she needs a new haircut.”
And they leapt and she didn’t see them coming and she screamed and they screamed and the ceremony she’d been ceremony-ing got fucked up somehow, but she cursed and heaved and Spike felt himself torn away from Xander and Xander felt himself torn away from Spike and they both seemed to plummet somehow through the cosmic soup toward points unknown.
Histories and eons and space and life and death whistled by their ears but for only a second and finally they came to rest. Xander away from Spike, surrounded by hard dark night and a familiar sky with cars rumbling in the distance, confused. Spike away from Xander, surrounded by water, confused.
“And now I’m back on a boat.”
“Relax, Xan, you’re with me now, what can go wrong?” Buffy said.
“Well, we left behind everyone we usually have for back-up, we left behind all reference material, and… Hey, you should know better than to say, ‘what can go wrong.’ Now something totally will. And why does all of this dialogue seem familiar to me?”
“Two words. High. School.”
Xander smacked his forehead. “Of course, why didn’t I think of that.”
“Probably because you were… looking over your shoulder right about now.”
“I was?” Xander turned his head as a giant tentacled thingie jumped at him from behind a bulkhead. Xander leapt out of the way. “Oh I was,” he said, slammed onto the deck as Buffy swung at the creature.
“Die beastie, die.”
“You’re getting cleverer Buffy. Every minute there’s a new shiny example of clevererness.”
Buffy laughed, kicked the monster between the tentacles, “Oh, go stake yourself Xan… But not really.”
The thing huddled in on itself and Xander climbed over to help restrain it.
“What is this thing?”
“Sea-slug?”
“Sea-anenome?”
“Sea-urchin? I don’t know really know where I was going with that. It’s kind of a Ghandi thing?”
“A Ghandi thing?”
“Yeah, you know. Uhm, waste-not, want-not.” Buffy said.
“That’s a ‘my grandpa’ thing, I think Buff. Not so much a Ghandi thing.”
“So you’re saying my Ghandi impersonation is a little rough?”
“Maybe just around the edges.”
“I love you, Xander.”
“We’ve been over this, Buffy. I’m not going to bite you.”
They laughed for a moment. The ocean air swirled around them.
The melodrama seemed suddenly endless and they turned and looked, both in the same spot, just a few feet away from them on the deck of the ship, cocked their heads, shrugged, and looked away.
“Did you feel like we were being watched?”
“Just for a second.”
“A really short second?”
“Yeah.”
“Xander, don’t tell anyone about this.”
“Only if you don’t.”
“Brownies honor.”
“Good.”
They clasped hands and disappeared below the deck, left the monster chained to a vent shaft to be discovered in the morning, neutered and probably dead.
Xander led Buffy to her tiny cabin. She opened the door, stepped into the room and then turned, leaned on the doorframe.
“Where do you think he is?” Buffy said.
“Probably disturbingly close to civilization, if Medusa was as stupid with her placement of him as she was with me. The thing is though, I don’t know exactly how her spell worked. And Will said it probably worked differently on both of us anyway or we would have ended up in the same place. I was in a totally obvious place, but I don’t think anyone would have ever found me, and there was no force holding me there. Spike’s gotta be stuck wherever he is, or he’d have come looking for me by now.”
“I think you’re right. Well, we get to Peru in a couple of days. Stay below deck during day-time, okay? I don’t want you getting sunburn before I can reunite you with Spikey dearest.”
“I’ll sleep,” Xander said, “if you’ll lay off the wire hangers.”
“Promise. Stake my heart and hope to… Or, not so funny actually. Good night, Xander.”
“Good night.”
Night good.
Ocean air traced its way over every part of Spike as he slowly rolled, over and over in the dark.
If the sun comes up, will I still burn? I’m in water, right? Not holy water, just big salty water. Would that save me? Well, I’m not going to bloody find out. You’re thinking about it, you stupid prat. Oi, am not. Yes you are. No, I’m bloody not. Yes, you bloody are. No, I’m not. Are too. Am not. Are too. Not. Too. Not. Too. Not… Stop bleedin’ arguing with yourself will you. Shut up. Oi, I’m just trying to get some peace and quiet; you’re a couple of right bastards you are.
Spike sighed. A deep sigh of incoming insanity.
He felt something brush against his leg. He knew, from the pain that it was something larger and hungrier than him. Something with rough skin and he knew his blood was seeping to the surface and out and he imagined the hungry growl he’d been dreaming of for weeks.
Spike himself growled and the night water shifted, first away quickly and then he felt the weight barrel toward him. For the first time, Spike moved for more than sinking or rising. Moved for more than floating and rolling. Spike dove down, looked up in the dark and saw the huge Hunger that swam around him. Thirty feet from snout to tip of tail.
Fuck bloody Steven Spielberg, for Chrissake’s that’s a big bloody fish.
He turned again, his senses, deprived though they were underwater, focused on the mammoth shark that again charged for him.
A moment. A perfect strange photograph. A shark, large and long, teeth bared, jaw extended for the kill. A vampire, weak and hungry, slow in the water by comparison. Jaw clamped, bite dodged, vampire locked onto dorsal fin with all his strength.
The shark swam forward faster, down as far as it itself could go and then back up. Spike’s face was a gleeful menace of vampiric rage and lunacy. You want to see hunger, do you ugly? I’ll show you sodding hunger.
And Spike bared his fangs, gnawed through the shark’s tough skin to a softer layer, and then, when the blood flowed hot and strong, the blood of antiquity, old, wise, ageless blood, Spike drank until the shark slowed it’s relentless velocity. He drank until he was sure he heard the beast moan in total agony, and then when he could drink no more, and the shark began to sink from lack of strength to swim, he reached into it’s mouth, pulled out two large, cerated teeth, and gouged out the shark’s eyes.
He kicked off the shark’s back, pushed the carcass deeper toward the ocean floor than it could have ever gone alive, and swam for the surface a trophy in each hand, and more strength than he had known for a hundred years.
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