TumbleTurnOverflow
by
Tabaqui
Part Five
When Spike woke up Xander was just finishing off the last of a bowl of cereal. He watched Spike's eyelids flutter and his eyes sort-of focus almost instinctively on the TV. His gaze was dazed and bloodshot, the lids only half way open. Xander got up and carried his bowl and spoon and cereal box into the kitchen - got a glass of juice and a bottle of water and walked back to the couch. Spike was shuffling his legs and arms in a random sort of way, as if he wanted to get up but couldn't quite figure out how.
"You need something?" Xander asked and Spike flinched - looked up at him and blinked a few times, his mouth a thin, tight line until he recognized who was standing over him.
"Need to piss," Spike said - wiped the back of his hand over his mouth and got his elbow up onto the couch, levering himself slowly to his feet. He gave a low growl of sound when his hurt foot touched the floor. "Fuck, fuck..." He got himself into a sitting position on the edge of the couch and then sat there, looking down at his foot, his hands white-knuckled on the edge of the cushions. "Don't think I can walk," he said finally.
Xander sighed and put his glass down on the end table. He wasn't exactly surprised. "You're such a fucking pain. Here." He shoved the water into Spike's hand and hauled him up, Spike's arm over his shoulder, Xander's whole body just too fucking close to dirty ex-vamp. They shuffled awkwardly to the bathroom, Spike doing his best not to touch his foot down. Once there, Xander turned him loose and got out. Spike could do the pissing thing on his own.
He went into the kitchen and ran the faucet until the water was good and hot - filled a big plastic tub halfway full and poured Epsom salts into it. He carried it out to the living room - went back for an old towel and a plastic grocery bag and the sticky latex gloves he had tucked into the back of the junk drawer. In a Slayer household, medical supplies came right in with the paper towels and gallons of milk. Xander hadn't bought any in a long time.
He settled back on the couch, flipping through the last few pages of Spike's journal. It wasn't very coherent. Long, rambling sentences about the taste of the night air and the scent of the wind interspersed with latitude and longitude and details gleaned from the clippings, coded with numbers and letters that were copied in shaking hand on the fragile newsprint. It meant nothing at all, at first, but there was something there. Some weird pattern Xander thought he could almost see. He looked up at a thump and saw Spike leaning on the stair rail, lip caught in his teeth.
"Fucking hurts."
"Come over here and I'll fix it," Xander said, and watched Spike inch across the floor, reeling sideways across the empty expanse where there was nothing to hold on to, his swollen big toe just skimming the planks as he tried to hop without touching down. He fell heavily against the back of the couch and then hitched himself over, slithering down into a heap on the cushions. He was pale - sweating - and his lip was bleeding. He saw the journal in Xander's hands and reached for it, eyes wide.
"Harris, give it back!"
"I'm not hurting it," Xander said. He leaned away from Spike and put the journal on the far end of the couch - slipped down to his knees, picking up the gloves. "Gimme your foot," he said, and Spike looked at the journal and then down at his foot, licking his lips. Uncertainty in his expression but mounting pain, too. Too much of it.
"Don't poke at me, Harris," Spike muttered, but he held his foot up and Xander found where the bandage had been clumsily tied - undid the sodden knot and then unwound the stinking mess into the plastic bag. The foot that was gradually revealed was swollen, the red skin shiny and hot. The cut across the bottom was open, sutures broken and the edges curling back white. The raw flesh underneath was angry and oozing. All of it - all of Spike that Xander could see - was streaked with filth.
"Jesus, Spike! Did you just - roll in the dirt? Find a few dead dogs to kick around?" He peeled the gloves off carefully, turning them inside out and dropping them on top of the bandage.
"Fuck you," Spike said, but his voice was cracked - a little breathless - and he was looking down at the wreck of his foot with something like horror. "Christ, that's fucking - disgusting." He took a sharp breath - coughed hard, his shoulders shaking and his voice going a little high - a little hysterical. "It's rotting."
"It's infected. Here - you're gonna soak it." Xander laid the towel out and then dragged the tub over - positioned it so Spike could put his foot right down into it.
"What the fuck good is that? Probably got fucking - m-maggots in it -"
"It's too cold for maggots, Spike, for god's sake! Stop being such a fucking pussy." Xander grabbed his ankle and yanked his foot closer - wrinkled his nose at the stench and shoved down.
"Fucking hell!" Spike tried to jerk away and Xander grabbed his knee and pinched, viciously hard. Spike yelped but froze, shivering. Spike's leg was thin and bony - trembling under Xander's fingers.
"Fuck, fuck - that sodding well hurts, Harris! Jesus, it burns -"
"It's just Epsom salt and hot water. If you're lucky it'll draw some of the infection out. Just sit still." Xander pinched again and Spike jerked - clawed at the back of his hand.
"Get off me!"
"Just do what you're fucking told," Xander snapped, jerking his hand away from Spike's leg. He tied the grocery bag shut and knelt up - lobbed it hard toward the kitchen. It hit the floor and skidded and came to rest a few feet from the trash can. 'Damn, almost.' Xander pushed himself up onto the couch and retrieved the journal and Spike stopped fidgeting around and went still, his fingers sinking into his thighs. His nails - what there was of them - were filthy again.
"That's my private stuff, Harris," Spike said. But his voice was uncertain - laced with pain. With exhaustion. Xander patted the cover of the journal and snapped the handful of rubber bands back around it - tossed it into Spike's lap. Spike snatched it up, holding it close.
"I know. I figure you owe me." Xander leaned for his juice - Spike must have left his water in the bathroom - and took a swig. "What is it?"
Spike stroked the cover of the journal - ran a finger slowly down the side, ruffling the edges of newsprint that stuck out. "It's... It's kind of..." He looked up suddenly, eyes going narrow. Staring at Xander with a look Xander recognized from...before. A sizing-up look, narrow focused and calculating. "If I tell you, you tell me what the fuck is up with your eye - with you. Deal?"
'Was going to anyway,' Xander thought, but he'd let Spike have this one. "Fuck. Yeah, okay."
"Right." Spike almost smiled - looked back down at the journal and sighed instead. He leaned back on the couch, his head going back and his throat stretching taut and white, scarred just under his chin where Xander could see. Crooked slash of silver in the flickering light of the TV. "It's for - I started keepin' it about - six months after..."
"After you turned real?"
"Was already real," Spike snapped, shooting Xander a fierce look. "When the bloody Powers decided I was their golden boy. Fuckers. I never signed on to their bloody crusade. Just wanted -" Spike waved a hand, vague gesture that meant...everything.
"Andrew told us about - what happened. The amulet and stuff."
"Lying fuck; he promised he wouldn't," Spike said, but there was no heat in his voice. "Angel was tryin' not to be a total fucking wanker, brooding about not getting the prize. Some bloody prize." Spike shifted, sloshing the water in the tub a little and hissing in a sharp breath. "Went back to that bloody hotel of his and started up with the same helping the helpless or the hopeless or whatever shite he'd been doing..." Another shift and Spike's eyebrows were drawn down in pain - his lip between his teeth. "Said you were gonna fix this, Harris."
"Huh? Oh. Here." Xander pulled his pill bottle from his pocket and pressed an Oxycontin into Spike's hand - watched him dry-swallow it and grimace. "Want some?" he asked, holding up his juice.
Spike rolled his head on the back of the couch and looked at the bottle. "Fuck, no. Don't you have any beer?"
"You're a fucking pain," Xander said, but he got up and got them both beers and Spike drained half of his in long, gulping swallows - gasped for air and then sat there, staring at the ceiling. Xander took a gulp of his own. "So...Angel, LA, doing...stuff. And you're alive and...?"
"And I'm doing - stuff - too. Helping him save people so bloody stupid it's a wonder they remember to breathe. Killing demons and vamps and all that -" A wave of the beer bottle through the air. "All that shite. Then there's these demons...can't remember what kind. Big and ugly and scaly. And we're fighting and I...kinda forget."
"Forget - what. That you're fighting?"
"That I'm fucking human. Woke up in the hospital, my leg fucked six ways from Sunday and Angelus all broody at the foot of the bed. Tellin' me my fighting days were over, I needed to think about really living, maybe finding some bint -" Spike's voice choked off and he lifted the bottle to his lips, clattering the glass against his teeth. "I told him he was out of his bloody mind. Fighting and fucking, that's what livin's all about." Spike drank again and then was silent and Xander drank his own beer - watched Spike's right hand rub a worn spot on the journal cover, a slow circle that looked so habitual as to go unnoticed. The silence stretched out, thin and stiff.
"I was in that bloody hospital bed for most of a month!" Spike blurted, eyes wide - horrified. Terrified. "Hospital and some bloody - half way house or some such, doing physical therapy. Pins and plates and all kinds of shite in my leg, weak as a fucking kitten... Angelus fucked off somewhere, left me a fucking note. Sold the hotel, dumped a chunk of money in a bank account and told me he wouldn't see me die again. Bastard." Spike drained the last of his beer and sat twisting the neck of it in his fingers, squeezing the glass like he wanted to break it.
"So, you got money, you've got a fucked up leg - I don't get it." Xander drained his own beer - sat forward, his hands laced together, dangling the bottle between his knees.
"Don't get what?" Spike asked. His ragged thumb nail scratched a line through the damp label on the bottle.
"I don't get why you're being such a fucking asshole," Xander barked, and Spike flinched.
"Fuck you -"
"No - shut up! So you're fucking human - big fucking deal. So are we all!"
"You are, I'm not -"
Xander let the bottle in his hands slide to the floor - reached over and grabbed Spike's arm, yanking it toward him and digging his thumb into the raw, red mess that was his inner elbow. Spike hissed in pain, trying to jerk away. "You're human too, Spike. Just like the rest of the fucking world and where the fuck do you get off just - just wasting your fucking life -!"
Xander's thumb dug harder, splitting skin, and Spike's lips pulled back in a feral snarl. He rammed himself forward, forehead connecting solidly with forehead. A burst of pain - light like sparklers exploding across Xander's vision and he reeled back, letting Spike go.
"Is that what this is? Some bloody - intervention?" Spike wiped the back of his hand under his nose - seemed to notice the bottle he was holding and flung it. It hit the stone surround of the fireplace and shattered and Xander flinched. Flinched again when Spike's hand clawed at his shirt and then twisted in it, yanking him close. "You think you know what the fuck this is? Do you?" Spike shoved Xander away and stood, somehow - the first graceful move he'd made in days and for a moment he was Spike. He was the hundred-year-old predator that had made Xander's life a misery once upon a time.
Then he twisted on his bad leg - skidded, because the cut and the limp were on the same side - and went down, bony ass and hip and elbow thumping down hard. The tub overturned and the milky, bloody water soaked the towel - ran in rivulets toward the fireplace and Xander let it, watching Spike kick the tub away and then just sit. His jeans were soaked to the knee and his foot was bleeding and he just - didn't move. Left leg out straight in front of him, right leg bent and curled under - head in his hands. From tiger to mongrel in seconds.
"Spike, you just -"
"You don't have a fucking clue, mate." Spike's voice was muffled - thick and wet. "You don't know what those bastards did to me."
"They gave you life -"
"They took it!" Spike roared. He gripped his hair in his fists and yanked - looked up at Xander with eyes that glinted gold-green in the firelight. "I was immortal, Harris! I was strong, and fast, and nothing could stop me and they took it."
"Sunlight could stop you, and a stake -"
"A bloody stake could stop you, you fuck." Spike wiped at his nose again - looked around and spotted his journal and dragged it over - wrapped his arms around it. "When the bloody powers decided to make me human they didn't resurrect the man I was, Harris. William Shaw didn't suddenly wake up and look out on the bloody world! They just - just made me fit in here. Pushed me in and - crushed me down until I -" He dropped the journal suddenly, his fingers were clawing at his chest - at the t-shirt until it tore and then at the skin underneath. Xander pushed off the couch and to his knees and grabbed at Spike's wrists.
"Stop it, Spike, that doesn't -"
"Doesn't help?" Spike's mouth twisted in something like a smile and he coughed out a choking bark of a laugh, his eyes glistening. "Of course it doesn't s-sodding help. Nothing helps! They cut off what didn't fit and sewed me in here forever and I can't fucking take it, Harris. I won't take it."
"Jesus, Spike, it's just - it's just stuff. I mean -"
"I was a vampire for close to a hundred and fifty years, you ass. You think I remember how to be human?" Spike twisted his wrists in Xander's grip a little and Xander felt the tendons flex - looked down at how his fingers over lapped his thumbs and how blue the veins in the backs of Spike's hands were. How skeletal his fingers looked. "At least when I'm fucked up...Nothing hurts. I can fucking walk without limping and - and I can fight and not feel the pain... I'm what I used to be, then. What I should be," he added, his gaze focused somewhere else - some when else.
Xander squeezed Spike's wrists a little tighter - watched him wince but not pull away - not even try. "I can't believe you're just - giving up. Can't believe this is beating you. When you got chipped -"
"Stop it, Harris. Just...stop it." Spike's voice was cracking now - going hoarse and low, as if he'd run out of energy to even talk. "You don't understand a bloody thing."
"Sounds like you being a fucking pussy to me."
Spike lifted his drooping head and stared at Xander, some emotion smoldering there. But not enough. "I got sick, the first month I was human. Sick with some - 'flu or something. Felt so fucking awful...had to go to doctors and take all this...shite... And then it came back, or something like it. Every fucking month, every fucking day. Some bloody thing or other."
Spike pulled away finally and Xander let him go - watched him rub at his wrists in a distracted way and then gather up the journal again. "I can't see, Harris, you know that? Was okay at first but it's getting worse all the time. Can't hear a damn thing... My fucking bones hurt, in the cold. It's why I was down in that godforsaken place, trying to follow summer. Bones and joints feel like they've got fucking glass in them..." Spike lifted the hem of his t-shirt and wiped his eyes - wiped his nose, leaving a dark spot. Xander stared at the hollow of his belly - the scar that cut across from rib to navel, thin and curved.
"Spike -" he said. And then nothing. Nothing would come. 'I'll sound like a fucking Lifetime movie no matter what I say. Jesus. And he's right. I don't know...anything.'
"Yeah, Spike. William the Bloody only I'm just another fucking human, aren't I? In a defective fucking body."
Xander sighed - looked around at the mess and stood up, dragging the soaked towel and the tub with him. "Jesus, Spike, I... I don't...I'm sorry, okay, but, fuck - you're gonna kill yourself if you don't quit with the damn drugs."
Spike laughed, a tearing sort of sound, looking up at Xander and then away, shaking his head. "I forgot, you're a D.A.R.E. kid, aren't you? Just say sodding no. Grew up on that shite, yet here you are, all pain pills and whiskey and hypocrisy."
"It's not the same thing," Xander muttered, and Spike laughed again.
"Course it is. It's exactly the same thing. The world's rubbing you raw - getting under your skin one fucking razor-edge at a time and you need something to make it...less. Make it bearable."
"No, I -"
"If you're gonna lie to me, Harris, just fuck off. I'm too bloody tired to listen to your lies." Spike looked tired - tired to death. Shoulders bowed down and his skin like a thin parchment over his bones - his gaze as dead and lifeless as a doll's painted eyes.
"Fine. Whatever, I'm a drunk, who cares? It's not going to kill me."
"You sure about that?"
Xander strode into the kitchen - shoved the towel and the tub into the sink and came back to Spike, scooping up the journal and laying on the couch. "Yeah, I'm so fucking sure it'd make you laugh. Right now, though, you need a shower. You stink - again. And you need to soak your foot some more or it really will rot off."
"Oh god." Spike rubbed his hand over his face, soft scrape of bristles across callused palm. "I fucking hate this, I hate it, I just want -"
Xander crouched down beside Spike, putting a hand tentatively on his shoulder. "You'll feel better when you're clean. Clean clothes. I'll even - I'll help you cook up again, okay? You look like shit."
"Yeah? No - fuck." Spike winced as Xander got an arm under him - hauled him upright and got him moving toward the bathroom.
'He doesn't weigh a fucking thing,' Xander thought and it hurt, to realize that.
"Harris, you still owe me -"
"No I don't. You went into segue-land and forgot all about the journal." Spike looked for a moment as if he would argue but then he nodded tiredly and Xander sighed. "Pay tomorrow, okay? Enough fucking gut-spilling moments for one night."
"Wanker," Spike muttered, but he let Xander half-carry him to the bathroom. Let Xander fuss around with the water temperature and towels and put one hand on Xander's shoulder, one on the sink while Xander worked the damp, filthy jeans off him. While Spike leaned on the wall of the shower, face turned up to the spray, Xander shoved his stuff into the hamper and dug out sweats and a thermal and a washed-soft flannel, faded blue and grey and white.
'Invalid's clothes. Fuck. He's never getting better...' Spike was on the floor of the shower mostly passed out when Xander came back, but Xander was okay with that. He'd bathed bodies so debilitated by dysentery and malnutrition they'd been walking skeletons - bodies in the final stages of AIDS. He knew the tricks - he knew the easiest ways. He knew the feeling of death under his fingertips, and it made his stomach curdle tight inside him. "I've got you, Spike, just lean on me..."
When Spike was tucked up onto the couch, throw over his body and a pillow under his head, Xander swept up the broken glass and carried various cups and bottles to the kitchen. Cleaned up and did some laundry and took his own shower. It was almost three in morning but Xander wasn't tired. He sat down with a hoarded bottle of gin - left over from some god-awful party or other - and drank and re-read the journal and tried to find that elusive pattern. Tried until dawn, and fell asleep over a weirdly beautiful sketch of a dead woman, her throat torn and open like wings, her eyes smudged jade.
Part Six
The next day was...blurry. Spike used up the last two foil packets and then the one remaining Demerol and resorted to Xander's Oxycontin and the Jack that Xander had delivered. Xander went back to tequila and watched Spike drift in and out of consciousness - read the journal until Xander was sick of it. He got another fire going in the porcelain-blue of twilight and draped himself over the couch next to Spike, who was staring at the muted TV, his foot back in the tub of hot water and salt.
"I know what it is," Xander half-whispered, leaning close to Spike. "Your journal. I know what it is." Spike lifted a bottle to his lips and drank - rolled his head on the back of the couch and looked at Xander with dazed, bloodshot eyes.
"Figured it out, then? Good...good on you, H-Harris."
"It's a...it's like a map. X marks the spot," Xander said, and giggled.
"S'right. Treasure map. An'...you're X. Know what the - what the treasure is?"
Xander contemplated the bottom of the tequila bottle for a moment. "Pharmaceuticals?" he guessed, and Spike broke into snorting, wheezing laughter.
"You git. No, no. The treasure is...Dru."
"Drew. Drew what? Like a picture that...that....some famous - picture-making guy drew?"
"Bloody - h-hell, Harris! No, Dru. Drusilla. She's the treasure."
"Oh." Xander reached for a bag of cheese popcorn but his hand stopped halfway there. "You mean - crazy, scary, thinks I'm a catch, killed a Slayer Dru? Your Dru."
"My Dru, yeah." Spike's voice was thick with narcotics and memory and he closed his eyes, smiling. "My girl Dru. She's coming here. Been - tracking her. Watching the papers and...keepin' my ear to the ground. Underground. Gonna be here soon."
"How soon?" Xander asked, cold sobriety lancing through his warm cocoon of alcohol.
"Halloween. That's when she'll be here."
Xander leaned back again, watching Spike stretch to put his bottle on the floor - shift and settle, wincing a little. Shaking even now, when his blood stream all but oozed with drugs. "That's tonight, Spike."
Spike was humming something under his breath and he nodded along to the tempo of it. "Yeah. Tonight. Need t'get dressed. Can't greet her in these bloody...track pants."
"Fuck," Xander whispered. But he didn't get up. Didn't move. Dru couldn’t come in and...it didn't matter, anyway. She couldn't come in, they were...Spike was...safe. 'Why does he want to see her? If she - fuck, if she does...anything to him he'll lose his soul...if he still has...Jesus, what if -?'
"Spike, you're still soul-boy, aren't you?"
"Suppose so," Spike said, obviously not thinking about it. Making lazy circles in his thighs with his fingertips; digging in every now and again as a tremor went through him. "Don't suppose the sodding Powers took that away."
"Can't you tell?"
"Not when I'm fucked up," Spike said, and actually laughed. Rusty croak of sound that made Xander cringe a little. "An' I've been mostly fucked up for the last three years. I can't...feel it." He frowned then, lifting his head off the back of the couch.- put one hand on his chest, over his heart. "Can't feel much of anything, really." He sat still, staring down at his hand. Tapped his fingers over his breastbone for a moment. "S'why I do it, really." He turned his head in a funny little lock-slip-lock motion, as if the underlying armature of spine and neck were abrading away. Rusting and creaking and winding down. His eyes caught the fading light from the window oddly and glimmered. Chlorine-blue, pupils blown wide. His gaze made Xander draw back.
"That why you do it, mate? That why you're livin' on take away and finest kind?"
"I don't know what you're talking about," Xander muttered, and Spike's fingers - ice cold and thin like long-buried bones, locked around his wrist and squeezed.
"You owe me, Harris. 'Fess up, now - tell Spike aaall about it."
Xander flinched away from his touch - lifted the bottle in his hand and took a long drink. The tequila didn't even burn, anymore. "Yeah, okay. Andrew told you I went to Africa, right?"
Spike nodded, picking up his bottle again and swirling the Jack in it in a slow circle. "Said you sent him a fish. What in hell'd you do that for?"
"It was a joke," Xander said, slumping down a little further, bare feet stretching out toward the fireplace. "Anyway, I got hurt over there a couple times. Got jumped by some soldiers, got shot...random, uh, stuff."
"The hazards of being a do-gooder who won't keep his nose out," Spike said, nodding.
"I was finding Slayers, Spike. Kind of important."
"I should sodding well hope so, since it was Red's mojo sent the poor bitches round the twist in the first place."
"I think you're the only ones that got a crazy Slayer," Xander muttered, and Spike laughed.
"I think we're the only ones that stopped one. Cold comfort, believe me."
Xander watched Spike rub his wrist, circling his fingers around bones and tendons and too-pale skin. "Anyway...I got kind of sick of the whole hospital routine. So when I was in Moscow for this...Council thing, I found a witch. Told her I wanted something that would keep me safe."
"Something wrong with your own personal witch?" Spike asked, and Xander shrugged.
"I didn't want to hear the 'come home' speech again. Every time I got hurt, Willow and Buffy tried to talk me out of working. Wanted me to do...desk stuff. And I couldn't..."
"Couldn't give it up, yeah? Excitement, danger -"
"Watching my first boyfriend get torn to pieces by vampires. Yeah, it was just like Indiana Jones." Xander tipped the tequila bottle up, swallowing the last few inches and then coughing when a swallow went down wrong.
Spike grinned crookedly at him. "Amazing, isn't it, how life continues to kick you in the goolies when you least expect it. So - witch and...boyfriend, Harris?"
"Yeah, boyfriend. Deal and move on." Spike made a tsk sort of sound that Xander totally ignored. "Witch. Moscow. Fucking cold. I told her I was sick of getting hurt. Was tired of everybody worrying about me. I told her...I didn't want to be so fucking vulnerable anymore. And she said she could fix it. And she did."
Spike tapped his fingers along the neck of the bottle, one two three over and over. Staring at Xander.
"What?"
"Oh, bloody hell! That's not the way to tell a bloody story, Harris! What the fuck happened with your eye? I saw it go."
"And now it's back. Having one eye made me vulnerable. It - grew back." Xander shuddered, remembering in a sickly flash the swift, painful growth - the pressure and crack of muscle and bone rearranging around the new foreign thing. "I screwed up my hip in Bosnia and that's better, too. Had a pin in there - it worked its way out." Xander still had it, in a drawer in his desk downstairs. Shiny steel pin that had taken four days to bore through him.
"So..." Spike looked a little confused. "You can't get hurt so you're drinkin' yourself to death?"
"No. No. You don't..." Xander sat up and leaned his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped tightly together. "I can't die, Spike. I jumped off a fucking building. I had to lay in the dirt in this empty lot for a fucking hour while my bones healed up enough so I could walk." An hour of grinding, screaming pain as shattered bones had knit themselves, slivers working through muscle and then the muscle itself having to grow again. That had been the last try.
"Sounds like a vampire, that. You sure you're not -?"
"I'm not."
"You're still not making any sense, Harris. You're immortal. There's no bad there."
"Oh, there's bad, all right." Xander picked at a ragged nail, glancing over at Spike. Spike looked pretty pissed off. In a loopy sort of way. "I really can't die, Spike. Even a vampire - sunlight or a stake - chop your head off - you're dead. But nothing... Nothing can touch me. And I've fucking tried everything."
"Yeah? More than just the dry dive?" Spike took a drink and sniffed, huddling a little into the couch. "Water's gone cold," he said, wiggling his foot.
Xander sighed and slid off the couch. "Every fucking thing you can imagine. Walked into a burning building once. Jesus..." Xander slid the tub of water out from under Spike's dripping foot. He swathed it in a towel and inspected the cut. It was still too open for Xander's liking, but the redness - the oozing infection - seemed less. He wrapped the towel around and around and tucked the edges in and then knelt there, looking up at Spike. "That made me think of you, you know?
Spike pulled the throw down off the back of the couch and settled it clumsily over his chest and lap. "It did?"
"Yeah. That was probably what it was like for you, in Sunnydale. When you...died."
Spike shuddered, pulling the throw up a little higher. "Wouldn't wish that on anybody, mate. That was..."
"That sucked. Plus, all my clothes burned off. I had to sneak out naked and all fucking...crispy and get to my car without anybody seeing." And get home without being arrested. He'd stood in the bathroom afterward, just staring in the mirror. Watching his bald, blackened skin curl and come away in bits, new skin pushing up from underneath. Pale and delicate as a baby's skin, and just as perfect. Xander scrubbed his palms on his thighs - looked over at the fire, watching the flames dance - watching the embers scintillate in the heat.
"Still don't see -"
"If nothing can kill me... Jesus, Spike! Think about it. What if a Stephen King happened tomorrow - that bird flu or whatever?" Xander pushed himself to his feet - paced over to the fireplace, feeling cold himself now. Feeling a little sick from remembering. He leaned on the mantle, staring at the fire. "What if - what if somebody over in the Middle East gets some damn plutonium and gets the bomb?" He turned around, back to the fire, staring hard at Spike. "And then everybody's dead from radiation sickness and - and nuclear winter and all that and there's me, still wandering around like the world's biggest fucking cockroach!"
"Don't go all Kafka on me, Harris - can't stand that shite."
Xander laughed shortly, rubbing his hands back through his hair. "What? I don't even know what you're talking about. Spike, do you get what I'm saying?"
Spike turned his bottle up and drained the last of the whiskey - coughed once, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. "Yeah, I get what you're saying. You're saying you can't die and you can't be hurt or fucking maimed or - or kill yourself drinking or shooting up or bloody anything. And you're fucking sad about it. That about right?"
"Oh, you're such an asshole," Xander muttered. He folded gracelessly to the floor in front of the fireplace, moodily poking the coals with a long piece of wood. "Yeah, great, if my flight goes down, I'll live. After I live through whatever fucked-up things happen to bodies that fall fifty thousand feet through the air. And..." Xander poked the fire a little harder - watched a chunk of wood crumble into pieces, the edges glowing a deep, sullen red. "Everybody else is gonna be dead."
"That is the meat of the matter, isn't it, Harris? That everybody else is going to be dead...eventually."
Xander glanced up at Spike and Spike grinned. It was like looking at a death's head, and Xander shivered and looked away - back to the fire. "Yeah. And even if I'm...so fucking lonely, or - or crazy or the last fucking guy on Earth... I won't be able to die."
"Well, too bloody bad for you," Spike muttered, and Xander felt the surge of rage and frustration come up through him like fire - like a bubble of acid. He took a step toward Spike, fist's clenching... And then it faded. Like it always did. Receded like a tide, leaving nothing but blank sand behind. Spike squinted up at him. "Thought you were gonna hit me, Harris."
"Thought I was too. I wanted to." Xander flopped back onto the couch, squeezing his eyes shut. "But it just...goes away."
"It does?"
"All of it does. Anything too...extreme, it just...goes away."
There was a long silence from Spike, then he shifted a little on the couch and his cold fingers patted carefully - hesitantly - at Xander's. "Guess that'd make you vulnerable, too, yeah?"
Xander curled his hand a little, catching Spike's fingers between his own. "Yeah. Guess it would."
Drusilla arrived fifteen minutes before midnight, appearing in front of them like a ghost. Dressed in form-fitting red, the skirt smooth to her knees, she looked like some high-dollar lawyer until you saw her eyes. Then you knew she was something else entirely. Xander just stared at her while Spike woke with a little gasp, jerking upright.
"Trick or treat," she whispered.
"You weren't invited in," Xander said dully and she smiled a slow, sly smile at him.
"No need for an invitation into this house." She tilted her head at him, cat's eyes green-gold in the firelight, a curl of dark hair sliding over her shoulder. "I remember you." She looked at him from top to toes, her gaze almost tangible - caressing. "Oh, you've changed, you have. Shed your skin a few times."
"Dru?" Spike's voice was shaky - hoarse and breathy and Dru turned to look at him, her face crumpling into something like sorrow.
"Ooh, Spike. Sweet Spike..." She flowed forward - folded to her knees, her hands reaching out and cupping Spike's face. Blood-red nails against his white skin and Xander bit his lip, hard. But he couldn't move.
'What if she...can she turn him again? He'll be here... God. I'm a selfish fucking bastard, he'll lose his soul...'
"Dru, I've been - following you. Trying to - trying to find -" Spike's hands skipped up her arms - latched onto her wrists and held on. Fine tremors shuddering through him, making his voice skip and catch.
"Shhh, love. I know. I could feel you, looking, couldn't I? I talked to Daddy, you know." Her thumb smoothed over Spike's lower lip and his eyes fluttered - opened wide and locked on her face.
"You did? When - when did -"
"Oh, I don't remember. Nights and moons and hunts ago." Drusilla looked over at Xander - leaned in a little closer to Spike, her voice husking down into a near whisper. "Daddy is ever so much easier to catch now that he's all souled. He told me - everything."
"God...Dru, please, I -"
"Shhh." Dru shushed Spike again - leaned forward more and dropped a light kiss on to his lips. "I know, love. You're like Sir Galahad, aren't you? Sent out into the world, told to find the Grail... And now you've found it, and I'm your Joseph, aren't I? Laying you to your rest after your long journey."
Spike's eyes were glimmering in the firelight and his chest was hitching and falling in uneven, half-strangled breathes. "Yes. Yes, Dru - please, I can't - they... It hurt, Dru. Hurt so fucking much and it won't stop, it won't stop..."
"I know, I know." Dru leaned her forehead on Spike's, her eyes closing, and Spike's did the same. His lashes were wet. "You screamed into the ether, love - shook the stars, rattled the bones... " Dru twisted easily out of his grasp and rose, smooth column of scarlet and black. "I've been searching too, Spike and I've found it."
"What did you find, love?" Spike was leaning forward, his gaze locked onto Dru and Xander ground his fingers together, fisting them into a knot of bone and flesh. Feeling his heart jump and skitter in his chest like a trapped bird.
Drusilla turned on one foot, curving spine and arms and leg like a dancer, seeming to float in the dim, golden air. Xander couldn't take his eyes off her. She bowed toward the fire - swayed to the far-left window and pointed out. The new moon was there, just at the edge of the sky. Slender quicksilver smile, like a razor. "New moon, Spike. Everything growing - changing - becoming. Just like you. I found my way - threaded the maze. I can bring you back, good Sir Knight. Back from your slow death. Back to the dark, out of the light."
"Thank Christ," Spike whispered. Spike's face was - glowing, somehow. Transformed by Dru's words - by her very presence. Lit from inside as hope and happiness kindled up in him.
'God, fuck, he looks...like himself, like... Like he should look, like... No, no...' Xander reached out and grabbed his wrist, squeezing it hard enough to make Spike flinch. "Spike - you can't, you'll be - just a monster again." 'Doesn't matter, I am too. This shouldn't hurt. Doesn't this make me vulnerable? Why does this fucking hurt?'
"Don't be a sodding idiot, Harris! Of course I can, and I bloody well am."
"I can - she can't kill me, Spike," Xander said, desperation making his voice harsh. "I can - stop her."
Spike snarled, jerking his wrist out of Xander's grasp. "You could fucking try. You think healing up from your jump or your fire was bad? What she could do to you would be ten times worse."
Dru turned suddenly from the window, clapping her hands sharply and startling them both. "Boys, enough. We have to wait just a little longer. Can't be getting up to mischief on Halloween." She looked toward the stairs and smiled, nodding. "But tomorrow... All Souls. We'll be making you whole again, Spike. Fixing all the hurts." Three vampires dressed mostly in black materialized from the gloom, glitter of gold and the soft shush of shoe leather. A delicate blonde woman, a slender boy with dreadlocks and earth-dark skin and a lion of a man, with broad shoulders and ash-gold hair fanned like a mane over his shoulders.
Xander just stared at them - watched Drusilla all but skip to the couch and pull Spike close - whisper into his ear. Telling him what they were going to do - telling him what was going to happen. And Spike slipped his arm around Dru's waist and leaned into her and closed his eyes. Relaxing into her hold and sighing softly and Xander clutched at the rags of his outrage - his fear - his bitterness.
But they slipped away from him, leaving him with nothing at all.
Next
Index
