Reasons For Living

by
Narcolepticcat

5 Unravel

Tongue flick across skin and a tiny artificial breeze cooled the spot the tongue traced and raised gooseflesh on the taut torso.

"Don’t tease."

"Wouldn't dare, love."

A nip at a navel through a small patch of dark hair that led down and hands held a head to the stomach and clawed through the hair.

"You’ll never hurt me."

Fingers down the side of a body and little red marks where the grip held too fast and too strong but still gentle.

"You’ll never leave me."

A growl against stretched denim as a chin rubbed over hardness behind dark blue.

"I love you."

A button popped off between sharp teeth…

Spike played his hands across Xander’s chest. Mapped the spaces between veins and back again. Rambled from nipple to nipple, down to navel, back up. Neck. The vein there called. Spikes fingers danced on the vein for a moment. Then the hand fell away. Spike lay on his side next to Xander’s quiet, slow body. The movements more deliberate and meaningful than in wakefulness. No unneeded breath disturbed Xander’s sleep, just the slow, warm in and out that filled the body of a growing grown, yeah man.

It was night for once. Xander asleep at night was as against his nature as Spike awake in day. It was early though and Spike knew Xander would begin to stir soon He has to or the dreams…

Spike stood again, moved across the room; an echo reverberated in his head. Something he should never have heard. Something he should never have known was stuck in his head. A word, or its combination with two other words that sounded flat and empty and human to his ears. The Hellmouth grumbled beneath Spike’s feet, he shivered, shirtless, propped open the one small window in the room and grabbed a smoke and his lighter from the table, lit it, and inhaled without hesitation.

Love. The word was Spike’s vocabulary, it was all of it, except for those other words used for that pesky communication. The word should not have, had not until then, been in Xander’s vocabulary. And then it was there. Because Spike was in Sunnydale with him despite Spike’s own reservations? Because of the years of wanton sex, slaying and… killing? Spike looked over his shoulder to the bed. Smoke drifted from his nostrils and he stuck his chin out, pulled his bottom lip up.

He whispered as Xander began to stir, "Who do I have to kill so you won’t keep this bloody promise? Who do I have to kill so we can leave this shithole again, love?"

Love. It somehow who knows how always came back to that word. Like, souls, mates, consciences were all that great. Spike knew how he felt about Xander and didn’t even need the word to communicate it. Spike looked around the dark room, scanned the floor around the bed, found the jeans with his eyes. The button popped off, spat… somewhere oh, yeah, across the room. Spike felt that about Xander: too hot to wait, too cold to start, too desperate to leave, too desperate to stay.

Xander said, "You’ll never leave me."

Spike’s growl warned Xander, but also spurred him on. "I love you."

The flash inside Spike burned so hot and fast and he clamped his jaw and button popped, and almost choked, but no, and it was gone, across the room. Skittered across the floor as if Spike could have put himself into that button and moved himself as far away as… Love.

"Spike?"

Spike reached out the window, flicked the burnt filter of his cigarette into the lawn below the balcony. Turned back into the room. The night calling to him through the open glass pane. Fixed his sights on Xander, then the lamp Xander turned on. Back to Xander.

"You want to turn me, don’t you?" Xander looked up from the disheveled covers, his hands behind his head, and squinted to make out Spike’s expression.

"…" Spike stood still, but his jaw and fists clenched beyond his control.

"It’s okay, but not ‘til we leave again."

Spike couldn’t even form an ellipses with his confused tongue and shocked eyes. Xander smiled inward, but gave Spike an unmistakable expression of undying love.

Xander spoke again, "I love you … I have to believe that when you turn me, it’ll still be me, somehow, that’s what makes it okay. And it does. Make it okay."

Spiked turned away, again. Gettin’ dizzy, all this turnin’, talk of turnin. Lit another cigarette at the window and blew thin gray smoke into the deep growl of the Hellmouth at night.

Spike strutted through the cemetery, avoided that place he knew too well. Little shivers ran through him at the thought, but he brushed them aside and replaced them with the whys and whatfors and Love.

Xander’s home alone. Not home, someplace that used to smell like home. Spike growled low, inaudible to anyone but the fledge behind him. Spike turned, snarled, face to face with a little girl. A little, vampire girl. How sad.

"Ducks, I’m not a meal for you. You’d do better to run along now or I might have to end your short… whatever it is." Spike had never seen an undead thing in a body this small.

The girl vampire tapped her toes together, looked down at them with her hands clasped behind her back. When she looked up, she was a beautiful little girl. No older than ten and here, in front of him, who knew how old really. No heartbeat, anyone that couldn’t hear those things would be a big, grown-up blood-bag to this little girl. Spike stooped down low to look at her. So… Dru-like, and so Interview… Bloody stupid sires and their fucked up ideas of fun…

"What’s your name short stuff?"

"Spike, don’t be foolish."

His eyes got big. A sound more like Tim the Tool Man than Spike emerged from his throat.

"You’re kidding, aren’t you Spike? One big jest to you, it all is." The girl’s face shifted from teasing to confused. "Where’s daddy?"

"Who’s your daddy?" That didn’t just, bugger…

"Spike, you know better… I’ve been looking all night in this cemetery, and I can’t find his headstone, and I always always can. I rememberized it, you said I ought, for when we came back. But, I guess we never came back… I remember, trees and stars and boats and… Say a poem for me, Spike?"

"What poem love?" I don’t begin to know why this isn’t more odd to me.

"The one about daddy. The one that starts with, ‘Alexander the great…’."

Spike’s jaw dropped further than it already had. Where’s a witch when you need one?

Spike took the girl’s hand, "Come on then… I don’t quite remember that poem, and I don’t want to bollocks it up, now do I? We’ll go find my journals and I’ll read it to you proper, ta?"

"Sure, Spike, I like it best when you read to me. You wrinkle your eyebrows."

Spike led her out of the cemetery. They’d try the magic shop, failing that they’d hit the Summers' residence. Almost out of the cemetery and Spike stopped and asked the loaded question.

"So, kittens, what’s your name?"

"It’s funny when you play these games. My name’s Buffy, you know that."

"What’s the rest of it, kittens?" Spike’s head swam around the Slayer’s name, but he had to know, had to hear the rest.

"Buffy Rosenberg-Harris. Daddy taught me to sign things Buffy Harris. And Spike?" Buffy looked up at him, her eyes wide, nervous and expectant.

"Yeah, B… kittens?"

"I’m hungry." Buffy smiled and her little-girl game-face returned.

6 How

The phone rang by Xander’s not-really-asleep head.

"Dammit." He rolled over, flung his arm in the general direction of the phone and yanked it from it’s cradle. "Hello?’

"Xander, hi, you should, uhm, come over now." Willow, in the middle of the… what time is it? Hungry… uhm.

"What time is it? Do you guys have food?"

"It’s late. I know you said we should meet tomorrow, but Spike picked up something interesting on patrol."

Xander rolled over again, feeling the cool unused side of the bed and groaned, panicked even, but just for a moment. "He didn’t get skewered, did he? Tell me he didn’t get skewered."

"No, he didn’t get skewered, but he… well, hold on." Willow’s end of the conversation went quiet, but he could hear arguing from the other side of what he guessed was her hand on the mouthpiece. "Nevermind. Uhm. Just come over? Soon?"

"One order of Xander, coming right up. Do you guys have food?"

"Of course we have food. We eat, don’t we? Well, maybe that’s not an obvious question, but then, consumption of… Spike says to come now."

"He won’t talk to me?"

"Just come, it’s not a big… well, it’s not the biggest deal… but…"

Xander decided to spare Willow and himself an unnecessary babble, not that a good babble was ever unnecessary, but Willow seemed a little out of practice.

"I’ll be there in twenty. Can I shower first?"

"Sure, I think… I’ll say yes and Spike can yell at me when I hang up."

"Great," Xander said, "see you in a minnit."

"No, uhm, hurry."

Xander sat up in bed, replaced the phone and glared around in the darkness of his old apartment. Good goddamn thing Spike’s loaded. The Sunnydale Motor Lodge blows, and, or sucks. He stood. Walked into the living room, pulled open the dust-covered drapes and looked out into Sunnydale at night.

I can see why I like it here so much. Me and my big mouth, with the promises and the not leaving. Spike must want to kill me. Xander gulped. Not that he could, not unless I consented or… Or maybe he could, but so? He’s wanted to before and something stopped him then… But what’s to stop him now? Slayer? Slayer. Good, stick with the thoughts of the good and plenty, yeah.

Xander plodded away from the window, scratched himself in a suitably manly manner and started running the shower. He looked in the mirror, thought about razors and haircuts and looking more like Zeppo Xander and less like Xander Reznor, but, no. Spike would definitely kill me if I cut my hair. He groped his manly bits in his hand and looked down at them and smiled. Glad we got us some, aren’t we boys?

And he felt some blood rush in, and he lifted his hand to his mouth and spit in it, brought it back down to himself and squeezed his head between his thumb forefinger. He moaned. Some more blood rushed in, and Xander moved his attention away from his swollen head to the thickening length of his hard-on. Spike. He brought his hand back up, spit in it again, and then began to pump his shaft. He started slow at first, built up momentum. He stared at his own dark eyes in the mirror, could see Spike inside of them, see the blue deep in himself. Steam rolled out of the shower and sweat began to pool in Xander’s navel and at the nape of his neck. So hot. Pull, push, pump. His movement quickened for a moment and on an upstroke he grasped his head tight, back down, up again and he squeezed his head and milked an awesome orgasm. The first load roared up to the mirror, landed on mirror-Xander’s lip. The rest sprayed the white sink, warm white-yellow puddles slapped down to the porcelain and Xander panted.

"Guh." He stopped rubbing his swollen tired piece, leaned on the sink, running water to rinse the stuff down.

Then he stepped into the steam of the shower and…

"Ow. Goddammit."

He turned the heat down, and reached for the shampoo.

His head clean but not empty Xander glided up the steps to the Summers’ house. This used to be the Summers’ house. It’s what now? The Summers-Rosenberg house? He knocked on the door. Spike opened the door and Xander registered a tic in Spike’s left shoulder as if he’d carried something too heavy. What’s too heavy for Spike? Xander worried and resisted the urge to begin an inner monologue.

"Baby… What’s going on?" Xander said.

"You," Spike looked over his shoulder into the living room. "Hold on."

Spike pushed Xander away from the door and stepped through himself. Okay, so what the fuck is this? Xander stood halfway between a scowl and a hug and waited for Spike to say something.

"Something’s… wrong."

"I gathered that Spike, but what, exactly is going on?"

"Nothing’s… going on. Something’s gone on, and it’s repercussions are here, and I…" Spike stopped. His head dropped down. "I don’t know how to tell you. This is… bloody… wrong."

"Tell me, how wrong could it be?" Xander hated the sound of this, hated the sight of his fearless lover as he trembled and avoided eye contact.

Spike straightened up, looked Xander square in the face, halted the tremors and sighed. "Xander, there’s a little girl… I found her in the cemetery. I brought her here. She’s taken to Willow, thinks Red is her long-dead mother… Xander, this little girl, she thinks I raised her. She thinks… sod it all… that you’re her long-dead father…" Spike stopped.

"…" Xander stared at the door to Buffy’s house, couldn’t look at Spike.

"Xan, love, the little girl. This girl, she’s a vampire. She says, at least she doesn’t think I turned her, but… Xander, she says her name is Buffy
Rosenberg-Harris."

Xander’s fists opened and closed like the beating of a heart, a heart that raced with rage, fear and confusion. A little girl? My little girl? Willow’s little girl? Buffy’s name-sake little girl? Does this mean… Is this something? Is this real? Can it be…?

"A spell," Xander said with some decision. "Gotta be a spell."

"Love, she’s real. As real as Dawn. As real as Slayers. If she’s a spell, it would be…"

"Horrible to undo," Xander said. "But we… I… never did that. Never had a kid. Gave up on that when I gave into…"

"Me." Spike finished. "I know."

"And you wanted to turn me." Xander concluded.

"I know." Spike sighed, it went unheard.

"This is… bloody well… fucked." Xander said.

7 Possum Kingdom

Life away from Sunnydale looked not unlike life in Sunnydale. People unaware of the world around them, demons unaware of the death about to meet them. Different flora and fauna, maybe, but essentially everything was green, or brown, or blue and whatever combinations of those three one could imagine.

For Xander life away from Sunnydale had been the longest period of unconditional joy he had ever known. His whole body thrummed with the knowledge that he was loved and watched over by the sexiest, smartest, most powerful vampire in the world, or at least probably maybe the most powerful. Every breath was an affirmation of the fact that he had chosen and was chosen to be Spike’s tether to reason, sanity, compassion.

Spike tethered Xander to something completely different. Bedposts, chairs, ceilings occasionally, but most often Spike tethered Xander to confidence, strength, and violence.

Spike taught Xander to put down the things that stood in his way. Xander taught Spike to try to step around the things that stood in his way. And somewhere along the way the two taught each other to hide behind and stand up for, depending.

Life away from Sunnydale shaped itself into a giant sphere of a globe called Earth, this Earth, the one of admittedly deranged, bizarre persuasion where vampires and Scooby gangs were real. Xander half-expected Tuscan raiders and ewoks more often than not, and was often disappointed when they never appeared. Fyarl, Vampire, werewolf, Adam, gentlemen… these things had prepared him to believe in anything, including himself, and he’d seen far worse, far uglier, far more unbelieveable things in his wanderings with Spike.

So as he stood on the threshold of a house he’d spent too many hours in as a teenager, which was too many years ago, and stared at his too frightened lover who’d just told him something too unfathomable to possibly be true, and heard what sounded like a little girl’s too excited laughter through the living room windows; it was everything Xander had in him not to scream too loud and wake up too much of the neighborhood, so instead he held his breath a moment too long and passed out on the too abused front porch of the Slayer who’d lived too long.

"Well this is bloody not fair. You bein’ all passed out, while we deal with the drama goin’ on around you." Spike thumped Xander on the head.

Xander moaned. "Sorry."

"Not a problem love, but, you see, we’ve still got this nagging thing of your vampire daughter downstairs and…"

"I’m gonna hurl." Xander sat bolt upright in Buffy Summers’ bed.

"You’re not going to hurl, love. You’re going to go downstairs and check out Buffy’s namesake and see what you make of her."

"I’m really, really gonna hurl."

Spike climbed onto the bed The bed I used to dream of and held Xander back to chest, stroked Xander’s hair and whispered into Xander’s ear.

"I love you pet, and you said... And I still want to turn you; nothing’s changed. We just have to figure out where this little girl came from, and see that she gets back there, and if we can’t make her do that, we get to change our plans around a bit to include a daughter." Xander tensed up. "How’s that sound, love?"

"Willow put crack in your blood, didn’t she? I knew it. Silly wiccans and their…"

A tiny shriek of laughter found its way into the bedroom and Xander and Spike both turned their head toward it.

"Right love, good crack it was too. Now, can we please deal with this. And after that can you tell me once and for all why we’re back here?"

"You never met crack you didn’t like…"

Spike grinned. "Like yours well enough, that much is true."

Xander continued. "I don’t want to deal with this, and you know why we’re back here."

"Right. Pesky promises and such."

"I don’t want to be a father. Least of all to a girl I don’t know."

"Come on then, enough of the changing subjects. We’ll go downstairs, eh?" Spike started to move Xander off the bed, but he went limp in Spike’s arms.

"Love, I carried you up here, you think I can’t carry you down?"

Xander leapt away from Spike, away from the bed The bed I used to dream of. He stood in the middle of the room, surrounded by the things he knew he’d be surrounded by. Mr. Gordo on a shelf. Kendra’s Mr. Pointy on the desk. A cross over the door. The room belonged in a museum to 1998, but Xander knew it wasn’t that time; it hadn’t been that time for twelve years.

"We’ve never thought about how we came together," Xander said, pure statement.

"And we never will," Spike said, pure answer. "And it doesn’t bloody matter, you came with me, I come with you. Basically, a whole lot of coming, and that sounds right by me, yeah?"

"Yeah, except…" Xander’s thoughts strayed a bit from his point and he shivered.

"Let’s go do this, right?"

"Yeah. Except, hold my hand. And do it for me, y'know... for us, not just because it shocks them."

The girls and Giles sat in the Summers’ living room. Buffy, the girl version sat in the middle with paper and crayons drawing things that no child ought to draw. Spike and Xander drifted down the stairs as one being, hands entwined and for once, the gang didn’t think anything of it. Something stood between Xander and Spike, and that something was nothing. There stood nothing between the pair.

They stopped short, two steps left on the flight when Xander caught sight of the girl with the crayons. He knew that face, that hair; he knew where she came from in that instant. He turned his head to Spike, a small expression, one of wonder and fear.

He whispered, "She’s mine William. She came from me."

Spike sighed, a smile in his words if not his face. "I know love, she’s wrong in this place, but she’s from you. She’s from both of us… and Red."

Xander looked back into the room and then his legs and Spike’s legs moved again and they were both at the little girl in a heartbeat.

"Daddy," Buffy squealed as she looked into the face of the man she hadn’t seen for, how long. Years? "I was looking for you in the cemetery when Spike found me."

"Why were you looking in the cemetery?" Xander said. Spike moved to silence Buffy, but it didn’t work.

"That’s where your headstone is, Spike made me rememberize where it was, but it wasn’t there, I swear it wasn’t, or I would have found it, because I know you don’t like to be alone on your birthday."

Xander’s jaw dropped. He knew the date, knew the girl wasn’t lying. Spike’s eyes grew wide, something he’d forgotten, forgotten even that he had remembered. A gift off in that old apartment, meant for later; now who knew how much later. Spike realized why they returned and pulled Xander away, made to move toward the door.

"Kittens, stay there, daddy and Spike will be right back."

Spike pushed Xander through the front door onto the porch.

"Twenty-nine, did you think I forgot?" Spike said.

"I didn’t. Well, I kind of thought. I didn’t actually think you forgot in the literal I-didn’t-remember sense of the word, but…" Xander slowed to a standstill.

"I love you. I won’t say happy birthday and all of that bollocks right now. I’ll save it for later, and you’re gonna like it." Spike paused. "But Xander, I know where she came from, and I know what she looks like, but she’s wrong."

The front door cracked open and Giles pushed through.

"May I have a word with you?"

"Sure," they answered, and Giles stepped out, closed the door behind.

"I think that Buffy, that is to say that little, red-headed vampire in there, is a trick. Some kind of ploy."

"To what end, watcher?" Spike’s teeth began to drop.

"Now, I won’t have you growling at me Spike. I just think we should be aware that whatever reality this being came from is clearly not ours. And she should return to where she came from before it completely upsets the balance of this world."

"Giles, do you really think it’s that big a deal? Vamp-Willow was here for a bit and she didn’t upset the balance of anything… except to maybe tip the
scales toward a sexier, snarkier gay-Willow which led to bad-Willow, which could be kind of an upset, so I see what you’re saying, nevermind…"

"Exactly, there’s no way to know what ramifications this girl’s presence in our world may have."

"Right then, love," Spike gripped Xander on the shoulders, looked him square in the face, "we stake her. Here and now and go on with our lives."

"Oh, but, hey. What if staking her upsets the balance?" Xander said.

"Sod it. I’m just sayin’ we get her out of our world, and she goes back to hers, right?"

"I don’t know, Spike," Giles continued as he looked at Xander, somehow weighed him with his eyes. "I do know that she’s already changed our perceptions of…"

Xander blushed. "I beg you not finish that thought, G-man."

"Xander. Here’s what I can tell. In her world, you and Willow both died while Buffy was a small child. Spike, who I think was either your lover in that world, or was simply in love with you from a distance in that world, brought her up after her parents were killed. Now, I think Spike must have died as well in her world because she seems to have been living alone, either by abandonment or by choice, for some time, and that is when I think she was probably turned. Spike, in some reality – not this one – who would you have taken the girl to for safety if you thought you wouldn’t be around long enough to see to it yourself?"

Spike fumbled into his pockets, pulled out cigarettes and his lighter, lit up and looked Giles right in the eyes.

"Only Druscilla would have been bloody crazy enough to turn a little girl into a vampire, but I’d have taken the girl to Angelus first."

"You mean, Angelus as in souled, poufy hair goes by the name of Angel, don’t you, Spike?" Xander said.

"Yeah, you know what I mean. Not crazy unsouled, red velvet, open the gates of hell Angelus. The other one. The smarmy bugger."

"Where are you going with this anyway Giles?"

"Well, I don't want to suggest anything outlandish, but I think she may need to destroy whoever she thinks sired her or else she may be here indefinitely. She certainly plays at being the happy little girl, but she's angry, and she's been a vampire far longer than we can imagine - at least in her world that's so."

Xander looked aghast. His jaw slack as if he'd been punched in the face, with about half that much understanding.

Spike only had one question, "So, then, who do we send her to kill? Angel or Druscilla?"

Xander blanched, turned, and hurled into the bushes lining the Summers’ house.

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