The Sequel to
Reasons For Living

Headfirst

by
Narcolepticcat

5 Denial Boy

Xander hung up the phone. One month. One month exactly since he left Buffy on the beach. One month exactly since Spike beached their ship for god knows why. One month since Xander started hunting Spike down, first through Mexico, then north to Sunnydale, through San Diego, detouring to Vegas, back through L.A. and finally to Revello Drive. One month exactly, and no Spike. One month.

Xander stalked away from the payphone. He made his way back to the car he’d ‘inherited’ from a dead ‘relative’ in Barstow and climbed in. Streetlights reflected off the hood of the car as Xander drove out of San Francisco across the Golden Gate Bridge toward mainland California. Next was Sacramento, and then north to Seattle. Exactly one month in the car. One month since.

And you don’t want to say it. Just pretend it didn’t happen. Be denial boy. That’s what’s called for now. Denial boy. Spike will kill us both if he knows. He’ll kill Buffy extra dead. That is, if there were anything for Spike to know, which there’s not. Hence none of the killing, none of the hiding. See how easy it is? How easy what is? Exactly.

No one in Sunnydale had heard from Spike. The phone call was just like every other phone call, a waste of time. He could be looking. But he was on the phone. Xander frowned as he pushed the pedal down hard to the floor of the car and gunned across the bridge full speed at 3 a.m. He fumbled in the seat beside him, searched for a tape to play. The previous owner didn’t have much taste, but Xander found something. Something with a twang, to listen to.

So why do you feel so bad, huh? What did you do that was so wrong anyway? It’s not like Spike never went there, it’s not like he didn’t know I used to want to. Used to. Used. To. That’s difference. We both used to. Not we both me and her. We both me and him. Get with the program. Me and him both used to want to. He got to, I didn’t. End of story. Except I just wrote the after word. Crikey. That’s gonna be one mad vamp-o-dile. But it’s not. He’s not psychic. And I’m not talking. Not. Talking.

Xander’s foot lifted off the pedal inch by inch as he rambled to himself, until he found himself at a complete standstill in the middle of the Golden Gate bridge. He looked around, caught a phrase of the song.  

“…everything we got, we got the hard way…”

And he knew then. The thing he had to do. What he had to give up to get it back. How to find what was lost to him. Make the lost, look for him.

He shifted the gears into first, held the brake, pumped the gas, released the break and roared into motion, shifted into second, pushed the gas harder.

Let go of the wheel. Closed his eyes. Bounced from bridge wall to bridge wall, never took his foot of the gas, spun out, axel snapped, fender flew off, wheel caught, car spun into the air, flew over the side of the bridge.

The stunt lasted forever. The car hung in the air, wheels spun slow-mo with no ground under them. The bridge got smaller above, behind Xander as the car fell. The fog was rolling in.

Xander laughed.  

Water rushed up. Crashed. Glass shattered. Splinters. Spike. Cold. Dark.

“I feel pretty, oh so pretty. Oh so pretty, and witty. And gay.”

Spike drank.

The liquor soaked into Spike and became him. The liquor became him. He became the liquor.

“Chaos demon, schmaos demon. Buck Fuffy bucking Hummers.”

It began with anger. Then denial. Then stupor. Spike prowled his way up the Pacific coast of Mexico. Brooded his way up the Pacific coast of California. Drank his way into the middle of he wasn’t sure where.

“I’ve got a vague notion that Xanbot the Orgasmonator is somewhere fucking Slutty Hummers to death. If they didn’t already die I mean. Drown, precisely. Oi. What are you looking past?”

The bar was dark, the patrons quiet and almost still. Spike checked the clock over the bar. 1:45. Last call.

A tall man in black clothes strode up to Spike’s table. Placed both hands down, wide across the remains of Spike’s drinks. The man huffed, the sound was almost a chuckle in the near silence. Spike realized the silence wasn’t the normal demeanor. He looked up at the man leaning on his table and frowned. Even though he was the liquor he could still see the brutish, yet somehow irresistible, corn-fed face that stared down at him. Spike bit his lip and winced. He realized he didn’t have his best face on.

“So? You gonna stand there all night, or ya gonna take it? Everything’s free in America,” Spike said.

“And what’s got you all hung up on West Side Story this evening, Spike?”

“Bugger. You are a bloody bugger. I always knew it. Poufter. Queer bent bastard, is what you are, an’ I always knew it. Slutty slutted a fine line when she slutted you. Right oh, Riley Finn, right oh.”

Spike frowned harder when the name emerged from his mouth.

“Finn. Where am I? I was going to Sunnydale from Mexico. I was angry. Now I’m… I’m sad. This goddamned shit.” Spike threw the glass in his hand at the wall.

Before he could pull his hand back, Riley grabbed it and pulled Spike out of the booth and further, away from the bar, into the night streets.

“Spike. You’re in… Well, trouble, actually, and I’m tempted not to tell you anything further until…”

“Until wot, Soldier Boy? You think you can keep me? You don’t know much, do you, Finn.”

And with that Spike punched Riley hard in the chest, knocked the human back yards onto his ass. Riley glared up at spike from his position on the ground, rubbed the knot he felt forming on his chest.

“Damn it, Spike. I was playing. Wittle joke, on the wascawy wampire.”

“Joke’s over, Swastika breath. Where am I? How’d I get here? And why are you dressed like an undertaker?”

“I don’t own any Swastika’s. I don’t know how you got here. I’m not dressed like an undertaker. And where you are, is, well… Iowa.”

“Sodding Iowa! Of all the cocked up, bugger-all, tripe I’ve ever heard. I’m. In. That’s so funny, Krupke. Really, really fun… Is that a cornfield?” Spike faced out, away from the bar, across a small country highway. The moon cast short, dark shadows.

“Yeah. Corn.” Riley agreed. “You’re really, really in Iowa.”

Spike frowned, sure he had missed something, somewhere, that he should have noticed.

“Well, I know I didn’t sodding walk here.”

6 Attention

Riley Finn stood at ease in the shower. The hot jets of water eased out the tension in his back and arms. Rumor’d been Hostile 17 – From that fiasco on the Hellmouth. Finn, weren’t you there, didn’t you help H-17? – was on a rampage across America. Rumor’d been…

Riley lathered under his arms with the harsh bar soap. Crumpled in the trash can between the toilet and the sink the label said “.99 Cent Soap” in white across a red wrapper. He ran the soap from under his arms down their lengths, built up a thick foam in his hands moved the bar down to his groin which hung flaccid despite the opportunity sitting confused in the living room. The hostile opportunity. Opportunity Hostle 17.

He replaced the soap in its home and sealed his eyes shut, turned into the jets so they pounded into his face and neck and chest. She should have called. Said he’d gone violent again. Said anything. It would have been right. Riley shook that thought from his head, Because you’re so familiar with the right. Not counting church.

And somehow Spike had ended up in Riley’s hometown, in Riley’s hangout, in Riley’s house.

He turned off the water. Opened the door to the tiny shower stall, and stepped out. Towelling himself off. His groin and all it’s packaging were still flaccid and he was glad of it. His want was minimal, opportunistic but not desirous. I’ll fuck Spike if he needs to be fucked. He laughed to himself lightly. Same if he needs to be staked.

He pulled his robe from the hook on the inside of the bathroom door, and the pajama bottoms that hung under the robe. Wrapped the robe around himself and pulled the  pajamas up, left that string untied; tied the robe shut.

Spike lay curled on the sofa somewhere between asleep and dead. Deader. His back faced out, his face squeezed into the nook between the sofa back and arm. His own arms folded tightly between him, his knees and the sofa. He took up barely more than one cushion on the three-cushion chair. Riley sighed and checked the clock. Almost 5:30. Time for work, time for sleepy vamps to lay down to rest.

Riley traipsed into his room, pulled the comforter off of his bed, folded it over, and bunched it around the sleeping vampire, including his head.

“You are such a pussy, Agent Finn," he said to himself.

His drive into work was long. He kept one eye on the rearview, checked for a tail. Habit.

His connections were limited; the rumors that reached him through what was left of his old buddies were always the small ones, the barely classified kind, the we’ve-officially-disavowed-all-knowledge-of-you-and-the-fiasco-we-assosciate-with-you kind. Spike was just that kind of rumor. He knew things had gone sour when he’d left Sunnydale. He’d been back a time or two to see it for himself. He’d been back, but that was before he became the government’s Pariah.

He kept his apartment well outside of work in Des Moines. He didn’t want to be an easy target for the demons that had gotten away through years of poorly executed ops.

Riley Finn was in great shape, always would be, because of what they had done to him in the Initiative and beyond. But as a civilian, as a person, he worked harder for the body he had and his face showed his age, and the faint gray in his temples and beard. Whatever the government said or denied about Riley Finn, they could not deny that he was by far the most popular Psych professor at the University of Iowa. Of course, like most good professors, his teachings failed to seep into his own life and he was frequently at a loss to describe his own mental state which ranged from tired to angry to blissful to hungry and all stops in between.

He checked his rearview again. The same car from five miles ago was on him again. He didn’t know what to do. It had been years since his paranoia panned out into full fledged reality. He slowed down slightly, two, three miles an hour. The car behind him slowed five, six miles an hour. A tail. Yay. Espionage. He frowned, wondered about the rumor he’d left curled and bundled up on his sofa.

All this excitement made his arm itch at the big vein on the inside of his elbow. And how long since you fed that particular habit? Work was only twelve minutes away. He could make it. And he could take whatever might be riding in that car behind him.  

Ahead of him the sun peeked over the horizon.

Spike woke to a start. Knew he should still be sleeping. Felt the warmish dark around him. Riley fucking Finn. I’m in a sodding cell somewhere, soon to be prodded by mindless hordes of mad scientists.

He cautioned the comforter down and looked out over the arm of the sofa without moving. He turned his head up and peeked over the comforter itself into the room around him. It was dark, night dark, in the small apartment. He could feel the sun around the edges of the door and the windows. He wouldn’t be leaving until dark, but would Riley be back by then? He didn’t know.

He stood, tossed the comforter aside, and prowled around the small apartment and found a few things: a work out bench, four hundred pounds of assorted weights, the sofa he’d woken on, a t.v. on a fruit crate, a kitchen with no table, no chairs, just a fridge and a sink, two cabinets, all cans, five plates. In the fridge he found a case of Budweiser, condiments, cold cuts, a crisper drawer full of apples, all ripe; in the freezer a loaf of bread, HagenDaz strawberry ice cream, frozen corn, frozen green beans, a demon hand Demon hand?, and lots of freezer flakes. Elsewhere, the house was equally spare. The bedroom was a bed, or a mattress and box springs, on the floor, an alarm clock and phone with answering machine on the floor beside the bed, a closet of khaki pants, white shirts and plain blue ties. There was a single unit, stacked laundry machine (washer on bottom, drier on top) in another closet. And there was the bathroom. Painkiller prescriptions, toothpaste, toothbrush, floss, a wet towel on the door, a wet foot towel beside shower stall. A trash can. A toilet.

So much for swank government funding, ay? Sorry for you, Finn, really am, but why am I here? What, exactly, am I in trouble for?

“Oi. And where’s my car?”

The car parked and Riley fumbled with his briefcase for a moment. He’d lost the tail somewhere in the suburbs. He wasn’t sure if he’d lost the tail or if the tail had lost him.

The reappearance of Spike in his ordered, simple life led the old wounds, paranoias, and confusions to tumble out of him. Riley wasn’t sure how he was supposed to teach class today.

He climbed out of the car, buttoned his coat in the bracing morning air and noted the sparse parking lot. Two cars closer to his building; one farther away. He checked his watch. He was on time.

Inside the building the lights were off. He fished out the key to the little plastic box around the light switches, opened it, flipped them on, and relocked it.


When he topped the stairs and made it into his office, tossed his coat and briefcase into the chair in front of the desk, he finally felt like his routine hadn’t been completely wiped by Spike. He checked his watch again 8:55, office hours until 10:00, then class. He pulled a stack of papers out of his drawer and started marking.

Riley Finn checked his watch 9:37 and wondered that no one had come into see him. It wasn’t unusual, even at nine in the morning to have some over ambitious freshman kissing his ass. He looked closer at his watch, checked the date, then the calendar that lay
flat on his desk.

“Fuck.”

Riley stuffed the papers back into the desk, stood, grabbed his briefcase and coat, and left the office. He left the building, the lights still on, and climbed into his truck.

“Fucking Saturday.”

I’m gonna kill Spike. I’m gonna kill him. I’m gonna kill him with apples. No, not apples stones. I’m going to stone him. Why is he here? Dammit. I’m calling her.

Riley Finn drove home.

Riley opened the door to his apartment slowly. He squeezed through, cautious of midday sun sneaking through the southward facing door.

The sofa was empty. Nothing looked disturbed. He went to the fridge for an apple, pulled it out of the drawer, took a large, crisp bite. The sound they use in movies when vampires bite people. Riley winced. Tossed the apple, minus one sizeable chunk, into the trash can under the sink. He turned back to the apartment to look for Spike.

The living room, as marked by the empty sofa, contained no Spike, or sign of. Then he spotted the vampire. Spread across Riley’s bed, legs crossed, arms behind his head, Spike actually slept with a smug expression on his face.

Riley went back into the kitchen, got a beer from the fridge, and returned to the bedroom door. He leaned on the door frame, slugged back the first cold swallow of the beer and waited. Waited for Spike to wake up and make with the explaining, waited for Spike to wake up and say something.

I should call her. But I’m not one to question hiding out from  her either, so. That leaves me where? I should call her, honor dictates, but honor and Spike don’t have much to do with the other. I should call her. It’s the courteous Christian thing to do. I say that like I care. I do care. I should call her.

One of Spike’s hands drifted from behind his head. He rubbed his crotch for a moment before he rolled onto his side, curled into the kind of ball he’d been in on the sofa, both hands down between his knees, which were pulled up close to his chest. Riley looked closer. The smug look was gone. Replaced by something… sadder.

No way am I calling her.

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