I had seven years with Spike, seven good years, back when I was young

and human and stupid enough to hope it would last forever and stupid

enough to fear it wouldn't. They were strange, and silly, and almost

the sweetest I've ever lived, almost.

It started the night of my twentieth birthday. Spike was back with

us, as with us as he ever was, anyway. Somehow he'd managed to

wheedle and charm and insult his way back into our extended circle,

if not our good graces, and he even showed up for my birthday party

at the Bronze, though he steadfastly refused to wear a silly hat. He

gave me a new radio, to replace the one he'd "borrowed" when he moved

out of my basement, the one the Initiative soldiers had smashed to

pieces in his crypt when they went on their wild search-and-destroy

mission after Professor Walsh's death. The days when we thought Adam

was the monster to end all monsters.

The party wound on into the night, uninterrupted by vampires, except

the invited one, demons, or any of the other usual Scooby birthday

treats, and as the guest of honor, maybe I shouldn't have been the

first one to get tired and head for home, but I was. Anya...that had

fizzled of its own accord, a few months earlier. She had finally

figured out that she was stuck as a normal human girl, and she wanted

a normal human relationship, one that didn't involve things that

continuously go bump in the night. We'd parted more or less friends.

So I was heading home alone, and Spike mockingly volunteered to walk

me back to the house, to protect me from all the oogedy-boogedies out

there on the Sunnydale streets at night. The walk was quiet... Spike

was...almost nice. We joked about turning twenty on the Hellmouth,

party hats and why he was *never* going to wear them, on pain of

staking...little stuff.

We reached the door, I unlocked it, and turned to go inside. He was

still standing there, this strange expression on his face, neither

smug nor pissed, which were really the only two I knew how to

identify on him.

"What?" I asked, turning back to face him.

"Just..." he answered, standing outside the barrier of a doorway he'd

never been invited through, and leaning towards me, pulling me to him

under the porchlight, and kissing me. Long, soft, so very different

from Cordy, from Anya, and it goes without saying, from Faith. Though

there was something of her wild hunger in it. When he let me go, he

straightened my jacket, smiled a bit oddly, said "Happy Birthday,

Xander," and turned to leave.

"Spike..." I said, not knowing what I was saying, but knowing it was

right.

"Hmm?"

"Come in." And just like that, he did, and I let him in. Yeah,

literally and metaphorically, and anatomically, and permanently. I

led him back to my room, and there was us, me being awkward and shy

and twenty and male, and him being more tender, and less mocking,

than I could ever have imagined, and it was good. Good. That's a

laugh, but I'm not Baudelaire, though I've gotten a bit more wordy

with advanced age. It was better than good. It was... well, it was

Spike. It was there, in that moment, and I've never gone back, never

regretted for an instant. Oh, everything else, I live for regret, but

not Spike. Never Spike, never the paper-white skin, the silken cords

of his muscles, the hair still soft after a century of bleaching, the

rough throaty English voice in my ear, whispering into my mouth.

Never that night or any of the ones after.

***

There was sneaking, and laughter, and the usual cutting remarks

around the Scoobs, to cover the fact that we were getting groiny, as

Cordy would've put it, and just because he's Spike. Eventually, there

was Buffy catching us in a full-on tonsil-hockey session behind a

mausoleum on patrol. Yeah, fights, screaming, shouting,

recriminations, the usual happy Scooby life, and the Hellmouth nights

went on around us. If they didn't exactly accept Spike, they accepted

that I wanted him, accepted that I loved him maybe even before I

accepted it, and they were willing to give me that. He moved into my

room the next year, and as long as he did his half of the dishes and

didn't drip blood on the living room carpet, they put up with him.

He was with us through everything, though Dawn, as confused and

befuddled as the rest of us, though the vampire attacks and the army

of zombies, and all the signs and wonders the world and Sunnydale

could throw at us. Through Buffy and Willow's graduation, even, and

the party after, at which, to the amazement of all, he *did* wear a

silly hat. Granted, it was a mortarboard with "Slayer: Dress Size 2,

GPA ditto" spelled out on it in masking tape. He lifted Willow up to

help her hang her valedictorian certificate above the fireplace, and

kissed her on the forehead when she slid back down. Of course, then

he made some obnoxious comments about having enjoyed the ride, but

that's Spike for you. He was with us. He was with me, and by

extension, he was with us.

And when he was with me, wherever, it was the best place in the world

to be. It didn't matter what he was, except mine. It didn't matter

that he was five inches shorter than me-- when we walked down the

sidewalk or through the sewers or around the happy haunts of the dead

in the middle of the night, I wasn't afraid. Silly, when any punk kid

with a knife or a gun could've taken me out and Spike wouldn't have

been able to lift a finger, but I wasn't afraid of anything. Nothing

but losing him.

When did I start thinking about not being with him forever? Or about

being with him forever, for that matter? Well, I'm willing to admit

that I wasn't thinking about much of anything that first night,

leading him back to my room in a fever of strangeness and desire,

but...oh, about five minutes afterward, as we lay there in the

coolness of an air-conditioned room, and I listened to him not

breathe. Okay, I'm like that. Call me a girly-man. I wasn't planning

an afternoon wedding under the trees, or anything, but sleep with a

vampire, fall in love with him, and see if you don't start thinking

about eternity in a new light.

When you're twenty, twenty-five, it's easy to put off the question of

eternity. The question of whether you'd turn to your lover and ask

him to find some way to make you into what he is. You're young, you

have years before you start to fall apart, go gray, get soft around

the middle. And making me into what he was...from all we knew about

being a vampire, it couldn't really happen.

Even if he could, if he managed to get the Initiative chip out of his

head, which was getting less likely as that organization slipped

further into the X-Filesy black ops land of Never Happened, or if he

could convince Deadboy Senior to do it for him... It wouldn't be me.

I would die. A demon would walk around in my body, one that,

according to Anya, had a hunger for blood, a penchant for leather,

the hots for Willow, and a distressing tendency to eat former

friends. Which Spike might like, but I wouldn't be around to enjoy

it, or not, as the case might be. He shushed me when I tried to bring

it up. Repeatedly. Finally he whispered in the middle of the night,

locked away in our room where no one could hear, that he didn't want

me like that. That he wanted *me*, not something that looked like me,

no matter how good it looked in leather.

See how easy it is to break somebody's heart and make it sing, in the

same few words? I didn't bring it up again. But I thought it. Over

and over. Will he stay, as I get old and small and forget who I am?

Will he watch me die? Is sixty-some years with him enough? When I go

wherever I go, will he still be roaming around the world kicking

demon tail? Will he remember me in a hundred years? A thousand? When

he's dust, will he come to the same place as me, this demon whom,

despite myself, I love? Buffy and I have a few things in common, more

than our natural hair color.

Seven years, seven long goofy, painful, wonderful years, and every so

often, he'd look out at the horizon, at the ocean, at the desert, and

I'd know he wanted to be out there. He'd say "Let's us take off for

the Continent this summer, just you and me and a copy of 'Wicked

French for the Traveller.' We'll paint the town black. Take in a

Pistols revival show. Scare Dru out of whatever crypt she's hiding in

and have a little threesome." But spring turned into summer, and we

never did, never left. Not when my friends, sometimes our friends, if

he was in a good mood, were still fighting the good fight on the

Hellmouth. There's always another disaster around the corner.

***

Part Two

Seven years, and it all came down to one stupid, piddly little twelve

foot tall slime-spewing demon with sixteen spiny tentacles for arms

and no personal hygiene to speak of. Buffy was busy fighting

tentacles two, three, and four, Willow and Giles were paging through

some obscure tome written in bat's blood on the skin of a virgin

sheep, looking for the dispersing spell, and Spike was happily

battering away at three more of the thing's arms with a double-bladed

axe. Me, I was holding my own, which after eleven years of playing

Slayerette, wasn't as shabby as it had once been. Until one of those

extra arms whipped around and without so much as a 'Say your last

goodbyes now, kid' rammed a three-foot spine straight through my

heart.

It hurt. Like a motherfucker, if you want a medical description.

There was a *lot* of blood, I guess, though everything was pretty

hazy. Spike was there, in a heartbeat, which he didn't have, and I

was rapidly losing. Buffy fought the thing into a corner, and Willow,

our little Willow, threw a *word* at it that I can't even form

properly in my head, much less transcribe. It burst into dust and

light, and everybody could've cared less, because they were all

crowded around me. It's so nice to be the center of attention. I

couldn't talk, could barely even breathe, and here's Buffy hitting

out at Spike, *ordering* him to stop this, to turn me, to do

*something*. Spike shifting between game face and human without any

control, raging that there wasn't a damn thing he could do, a damn

fucking thing. He held me in his arms, and let her beat at him, and

damn if he wasn't crying, which only Willow has ever seen him do, and

he was drunker than all hell at the time, and it didn't matter what

face I was looking at, monster or human, they were all Spike, my

Spike, and I was losing him sooner than I ever feared.

Then I was...elsewhere. Okay, as a travelogue description, that

pretty much sucks, but I think the place is pretty much designed to

defy definition. Wouldn't want those who make it back to be able to

draw a decent map or anything. It wasn't anything like a final abode

kind of place, anyway...it was just...elsewhere. Murky and full of

colored lights that glowed and disappeared, like when you rub your

eyes and stare into a dark room. There were voices, and rushing wind,

or water, or something that sounded like your basic ocean waves

relaxation sound played on the mother of all surroundsound stereo

systems.

"Do you want to live?" a voice rang out, echoed in smaller voices,

from the left, right, male, female. "Do you want to live, to live?"

"Of course," I shouted at the top of what passed for lungs there, and

of course it made no sound, because I didn't have any lungs, and I

wasn't on the play list for the cosmic DJ around there. But they

heard me all the same.

"Do you want to live forever, Alexander Harris? It's the only way

you're going back." A shimmery silver form spoke in a sexless voice

that seemed to have no emotion to it at all, neither concern nor

contempt.

Forever? Forever is a long time, when you're twenty-seven, dying on

the floor of some cruddy little sea-cave while your immortal lover

holds your body and whispers hysterical nonsense in a half-dozen

demon languages. Forever? Does Angel mousse too much, is Spike not a

natural blonde, are you not offering me the world on a platter?

"The Hellmouth needs a guardian," it said as it seemed to process my

thoughts.

"The Hellmouth has a guardian," I threw back, sending images of

Buffy, golden hair shining in the moonlight, kicking, punching,

staking, dancing like a demented dervish on the heads of demons and

vampires.

Now there was emotion, rebuke, something. "The Slayer does *not*

guard the Hellmouth. The Slayer guards the *world*. Others die every

day because the Slayer is tied to the Hellmouth, waiting for the next

apocalypse to rise. It was *not* meant to be this way. The Slayer is

needed elsewhere. The Slayer, the Watcher, must travel. The Hellmouth

grows strong, and it needs a guardian."

Fine, the Hellmouth needs a guardian, and I'm the man for the job,

apparently. What the hell I'm supposed to do is anybody's guess.

"Be there. Always. Slayers will come and go, those who fight

alongside the Slayer will rise and fall; those who serve the light

will be born and die, will come to town and fight the battles they

were meant to fight. You must be there always. To know what will

happen, to warn them, to help them, to guard the Hellmouth."

"Why me?"

Now there was true emotion, such as it was, a sneering smugness that

I'd only ever seen on Spike, and never so coldly. "Because you want

forever. So very, very much."

And I did. Whatever it was knew that I did. Wanted Spike forever.

"You cannot leave the Hellmouth. Understand this: you *cannot*. That

body will die, the true death, if you leave the borders of the town.

You must be there, always. You can tell your friends the truth,

that you were given to guard the mouth of Hell, but you may not tell

them why you cannot leave. You will not even be able to speak the

words. Accept or reject the offer, but when you accept, know that you

take on the responsibility. The body you will wear will live at the

mercy of your task, and you can lose it just as easily."

I took it. I made a deal with what I'm guessing are the Powers That

Be that Angel griped on about so much. Lesser powers, I hope. I keep

thinking somewhere inside me that whatever's really in charge of us

loves us, even after all the shit we've all been though. These things

didn't love us. They were just doing their jobs. The excuse of

soldiers and administrators and executives, and a thousand other

killers and torturers, down through the ages. Anyway, I said yes. Yes

to forever. With Spike, I hoped. On the Hellmouth.

***

I woke to find Spike holding me, still, human as he seemed to always

become in moments of emotion other than rage, ever since that day.

Just plain old human tears streaking his beautiful face. There's

enough water and salt in blood for a vampire's body to manufacture

saline, did you know that? They can cry blood, too, which is

picturesque and messy, but just like the baby doll your sister had

when she was six, they can cry real tears.

So when I stretched and yawned and looked at him, blinking, taking in

the face I'd never thought I'd see again, needless to say there was

dancing in the streets. Okay, nobody was up for dancing, but there

was Spike covering my face with kisses, and Willow and Buffy trying

to shove him out of the way to see if I was really alive, and even

the G-Man was looking like somebody'd pulled the rusted remains of

his Citroen from the junkyard, said Alakazam, and brought it back to

humming life.

There were explanations, and there was getting me cleaned off, which,

to everyone's disgust but mine, Spike did mostly with his tongue,

since an opportunity to get at that much of my blood hadn't exactly

arisen in the past, and somewhere in there they got their minds

wrapped around the idea that I was effectively immortal. Whooping and

hollering, and celebration into the night.

And the next night, as usual, there was something nasty waiting in

the woodshed. Unlife on the Hellmouth went on as usual. And on. And

Spike started looking at me like I was something he'd never seen

before. Not a thing to be cherished only because it was temporary,

but a longtime companion, with or without the irony.

***

Those years were good, too. Finding out that whatever the bad guys

threw my way, it had healed by morning. Fighting alongside Buffy,

Willow, Giles, and Spike, and the newbies of the week. Oz returned,

for a while, never getting back together with Willow, but letting his

mostly-under-control wolf out to kick serious oogedy-boogedy whupass,

then drifting off to the East Coast in search of a good sound and

someone to love.

Five years or so, and I was still twenty-seven, and Spike, well, he'd

been about that old for a hundred years already. We were a matched

set. Two guys in love and on the prowl, and if we felt each other up

in the middle of the town square under the full moon, who was gonna

mess with us? I could take the humans, he could take the demons, and

he could take me any damn time or place he wanted to.

But he wanted to take me to Paris. He wanted to take me to Prague. To

Whitechapel. To Brazil. To fucking Borneo. To Reno, at least. And all

I could say was "I have to stay. I can't leave the Hellmouth." And I

could feel him slipping away. I couldn't get the words past my lips,

when I tried to add "or I'll die...". My throat froze up, and I'm

sure he thought I was being all noble and stubborn and soul-having,

but I literally couldn't tell him. The bastards stopped me, every

time.

I could lie naked in his arms, be inside him, have him inside me,

have my mouth around his cock or vice versa, or my tongue in his

mouth, and I could see that no matter how *there* he was, he was

somewhere else, too. I never worried about him wanting Drusilla back,

funny. He would or he wouldn't, he felt about her however he felt,

but I knew how he felt about me. Thought I knew. I just...also knew

he wanted to be out there. He was never meant to live forever in the

cage of a little California town full of monsters and white-hats.

I was losing my mind, there in Sunnydale in my own little first floor

apartment with my sweet evil blonde lover, who I knew, just knew, was

about to leave. And one summer night, looking out the window at the

cheshire cat moon, he did. Asked me to come with him. Over and over.

Anywhere. We fought. We screamed, and shouted, and hit each other,

because I could always hurt him, and now I'm not really human

anymore, you see, so he can hurt me too. Not that he ever needed to

lay a hand on me to do that. And in the end he kissed me, and said he

loved me, and he had to leave, and he'd be back.

***

A year later, to the day, and I hadn't heard from him, hadn't seen

him, hadn't gotten a scrap of a report of where he was or what he was

doing. Willow had looked through whatever magicks she could scare up,

but either he was hiding himself, or someone was doing it for him.

Buffy had waited six months before calling him every name in the

book, and a few I hadn't heard before. Showed exceptional restraint

on her part, considering her temper, and the way I'd gotten when

Angel lost his soul. Deadboy. Yeah, he got into the act, too. Shook

every vampire and demon tree he could find, to see if his wayward

childe, or any news of him, fell out. Nothing.

So. That would be the first night that I tried to kill myself. I

thought it all out very neatly, for a crazy man. A little music, a

nice Zinfandel, a picture of Spike and me on the Viking Ship at the

fall festival, grinning into the camera like loons. A note on the

bathroom door asking that Willow be the one to come in and take care

of me, as she always had. My sister-girl. She'd hate me, but she'd

understand. Because, like Spike, she loved me.

Sitting in a warm bathtub, looking at the two of us, arms around each

other, dark hair and bleach-white blonde, both idiots together. So in

love with him I'd have walked into hell and asked for his soul back

if I thought he wanted it. Still that much in love, and that much

alone. Holding a very sharp straight razor. Which would have looked-

out of place in my bathroom, our bathroom, since Spike was a true

creature of technology and had switched to electric the minute he

could steal one, and I'd stopped having to shave when I came back

from the dead. The hair on my head still grows. Don't ask me why.

Insert Hellmouth here. But I'd bought the razor yesterday, so no

questions from well-meaning friends. Just me and the water and the

blade and the music and the night.

It was cold, and sharper than I expected, but I'd been hurt worse by

any number of demony creatures' teeth. Pain-wise. Hopefully not

permanency-wise. Down the length of one arm, down the other. Let my

hands fall into the warm water, watched it start to turn pink, then

red. Spike would consider it to be a waste of good blood, but then he

wasn't here, was he? Started to get cold, even though the water was

warm with my blood as well as its own heat, but didn't really feel

like moving to do anything about it. Drifted off to sleep.

***

Part Three

Felt pretty damn stupid in the morning, when I woke up cold and

sticky in a tub full of my own blood. If you're gonna wake up cold

and sticky, you should at least have had a good time the night

before. Fuckin' PTB's, or whatever they really were. Didn't seem to

matter if it was demon, vampire, or Xander, permanent boy-moron, I

couldn't get out of it that easily. Took the sign off the door,

cleaned up the bathroom, thanked various gods that Willow *hadn't*

walked in on me, or I would've found out if "Death By Witch" could be

added to the list of no-go exit routes.

I can hear it now, so don't say it. First of all, what the hell made

me think I could off myself if nobody else seemed to be able to? I

don't know. Wishful thinking. Hubris. And of course, the next

question is "Why didn't you just take a stroll along Oxnard

Boulevard, past the city limits sign?" Because that would've been

admitting that Spike was never coming back. It would've been

permanent. Somewhere inside me I knew damn well that nothing I did to

myself was going to do more than hurt like hell, but it gave me the

illusion that I might wake up tomorrow somewhere else, maybe with a

badass British vampire rubbing my back, or sucking on my toes. If

there's a Heaven, that's as good a description as any I've read.

Spike could be dust somewhere, anywhere, and if there's a God, or

plural thereof, they'd let me end up with him, wouldn't they?

So I went back to being what I'd promised to be. The good and holy

defender of the Hellmouth. If you're counting, the Sunnydale High

contingent was on the yuppie side of thirty-three, now. Willow...

Willow had a girlfriend and a boyfriend... she was undecided on that

score, but each knew about the other. Buffy was beautiful. Strong,

angry, willing to fight and fight...and she was leaving. Cordelia

called from L.A. The Slayer was needed, or there might be a new

Hellmouth to contend with. It was starting.

Giles didn't follow her. He gave up trying to be her Watcher about

the same time he gave up hoping he'd ever be her lover, I think.

Instead, he'd become her best friend, and he sent her off to Angel

with a smile and a hug. Still ran the local magick shop, the only

owner never to be drained by vampires, because he had a brain in his

head and a cross over the door. Ethan Rayne stopped in from time to

time, either to cause trouble or just visit. When the trouble came,

we stopped it. When there wasn't any, and Ethan was around, I didn't

ask any questions.

***

Another year, still no word of, or from, Spike. So this time, on the

anniversary of his skipping town, I went the middle-aged debutante

route. A bottle and a half of Seconal, with a whiskey chaser. An

evening of British comedy on cable, laughing at the parts where Spike

would have laughed, laughing at the parts where Spike would have

groaned or thrown things at the screen. I've always been a cheap

date, comedy-wise. Popping a pill every five minutes or so, tossing

back the JD and imagining Spike on the sofa beside me, making fun of

me. Left the note for Willow, and everything.

The next morning, I cleaned up the vomit, turned off the TV, and went

back to work. Oh, work. I did have a job, of sorts. Daylight work in

the skilled labor industry, which translates to being the only guy on

the construction site not whistling at the Sunnydale jailbait walking

by. Not that I'd stopped appreciating the female form when I became

Spike's boytoy, or vice versa, but it just seemed like too much work.

There was only one body I really wanted, and it wasn't around.

Time passed. I can't say it was slow or quick, and I can't say I was

thinking much of anything worth repeating. I was trying not to think

at all. Willow knew. She saw me slipping away inside myself, and it

was eating her up, so I tried to be a brave little toaster for her. I

patented the goofy-grin, hey, Xander's alright, look. She didn't

believe it for a minute. Neither did Giles. Yeah, I cried, at home,

under cover of darkness. Bite me. I'm allowed.

On the evening of my thirty-fourth birthday, I walked home alone. I

sure as hell wasn't worried about oogedy-boogedies. There'd been a

party, yeah, and probably silly hats, which I'd probably refused to

wear, in silent honor of Spike. I was seriously thinking about

speeding up the anniversary schedule and trying something new and

entertaining tonight. Maybe electric shock. So when I turned the key

in the lock, and a hand touched the back of my neck, I wasn't

worried. Frozen, yes, but not worried. What could anybody do to me?

And then I recognized the touch, the one that pulled me around and

close to him under the porchlight, and whispered, "Happy Birthday,

Xander," as he put his mouth to mine.

I'm a creature of habit, and a sappy romantic, and all that shit. I

said, when I had breath to speak, "Come in, Spike," inviting him into

his own home and we went to the bed he hadn't seen in two and a half

years, and it was...better than good. Not like he hadn't been away.

Better than that. Better than that first, sweet, psychotic time.

Look, if you want blow-by-blow descriptions, ask Spike. He's good at

that. Interpret that any way you like. We found a few new ways of

doing things, and rediscovered a hundred old ones.

***

In the moonlight, in the lamplight, as we lay there in bed, my head

on his chest, I asked, knowing the answer, "You staying?"

"Thought I might do, yeah." Always a cigarette in his hand when he

thought he had to act like Brando.

"Forever?"

"Forever's a long time, pet." Which is polite vampire-speak for no.

And I nodded, and accepted anything I could get.

He stayed for four years, that time. Four torturous years, when I was

sure that any night, this would be the time he'd get up, smoke by the

window, pull on his jeans and duster, and disappear back into the

world. He stayed to see Angel get his redemption, his prize, his

humanity. Well, that was in L.A., but he stayed to see Angel and

Buffy get married. I was Best Man, and nobody asked any questions

when I asked if they'd have the wedding in Sunnydale. Giles gave her

away, Willow was Maid of Honor, and Spike walked down the aisle with

Cordelia on his arm as if it were the easiest thing in the world.

Of course, he painted something exceptionally rude on the soles of

Angel's shoes, slipped a sardine on toast down Joyce Summers'

cleavage, and got Wesley so drunk that he admitted to all and sundry

that he'd had the hots for Cordelia for years. Which, seeing as her

date was a tall black dude who reminded me vaguely of Riley's friend

Forrest, probably didn't do much for his reputation at work on Monday

morning, but Cordy looked touched. And beautiful. Spike also wore the

garter, which he'd caught with a vampire's preternatural grace, as an

armband on his rolled-up sleeve, and danced the Time Warp to great

applause from the assembled multitudes. Made Angel look like... well,

me, in high school. That's Spike. Good enough to eat. And I did.

Several times.

And months later, when I could feel him getting twitchy, I waited,

and of course, it happened. Middle of the night, stroking my chest

after sex, he got up with a strange little hop, and reached for his

jeans.

"Going, then?"

"Yeah, I think I'd better. Coming with?"

"Can't."

"Yeah. Love you, Xander. I'll be back." And he was out the window.

Gotta give it to the man (not that I wouldn't in an instant if he so

much as batted an eyelash), he knows how to make an exit.

***

Auto-erotic asphyxiation isn't all it's cracked up to be. I know

there's something in the knowledge that you just *might* bite the big

one while being stupid, with a belt around your throat, standing on a

chair, that's supposed to give you the stiffy of all time, but

frankly... Probably knowing that no matter how sore your throat is in

the morning, you still have to go out the next day and pound a mallet

to keep yourself in Cran-apple and suicide materials takes some of

the thrill out of it. The knowledge that no matter whether you fall

or you don't, you'll still get up in the morning... the fact that you

don't really want to get up in the morning...

I did. Fall, that is. Woke up to find myself swinging from the

chandelier with a hell of a sore throat, and no in-the-pants action

at all. Might have been better if I'd used Spike's belt, but the only

one he had was around his waist, wherever he was. Or at least I

assumed it was. I'd never asked if he'd had anybody else while he was

gone, and hadn't really cared. If he'd been happy, good. At least one

of us was. Anyhow, I whispered a sick-call to the site, and got down

to some serious sipping hot chocolate and being exceptionally

thankful that Willow hadn't found me this time.

She came over to check on me, as she always did, and I was lying on

the couch, reading some deep modern novel about love and redemption

and the internet.

"You okay?" she whispered, as if it had been her with the leather

around her throat.

"Oh, yeah. Strep, that's all." But I never get sick, and she knew.

She could see the bruises, and she knew. She's always known, and she

came over and sat beside me, and held my head, and she cried, though

I couldn't. Wouldn't.

"Why don't you go with him?" she asked, red hair shot with tiny

streaks of silver. "Why don't you just fucking go, Xander?"

"Can't," I whispered back, and my throat closed up as usual.

***

So...Spike would come and go, never here or gone for longer than five

years, and when he was gone, I was living on human time, every moment

tangible, every day dragging on like it wouldn't ever hit tomorrow.

I tried a hundred creative methods of suicide, but never did take

that walk down Oxnard Boulevard. Spike took to sending postcards, but

they were never from where he actually was, and nobody ever saw him.

Gifts, sometimes. A pair of boots from Barcelona, a Bob Dylan joke.

The softest leather you could touch. For Christmas, one year, a

duster just like his, cut to match my size. I wore it until the

summer got so hot you could swim in the sweat pouring off me, and

then reluctantly hung it on the coat rack until fall.

The next Christmas he was there, arms full of presents, and his hair

grown back to its natural dark brown. That was a shocker. Strange, a

stranger in my arms, and he looked so damn young. When he was there,

the world flew by on vampire time. It was...unsurprising, to watch

our friends age around us, Willow finally marrying, Buffy and Angel

returning for holidays with their one, precious, child, a little

brown-haired girl who Angel looked at with wonder and disbelief every

time she entered the room. With Spike in my arms, time both rushed

and stood still, and I couldn't see the passing. When he left, it was

all I could think about.

When he started to get twitchy, itchy, I could feel it, and I'd egg

him on. Better he go then, still in a good mood, kissing me and

ducking out the window, than leave after a fight and have that be the

one time he never came back, him dust in the wind and me never

hearing about it. It became a shorthand: Forever's a long time, you

coming, can't, I love you, I'll be back.

***

Willow finally found me out officially-- as a joke on the world, I'd

taken to leaving out that same note I'd taped to the bathroom door

the first time I tried to blow this joint, and with my finger, don't

laugh, stuck in a dismantled lightsocket, and the other hand in a

pitcher of water, I must have looked either completely hilarious or

completely pathetic.

For the first time, instead of cleaning up after myself, I woke up in

my own bed, with my sixty-eight year old best friend and surrogate

sister standing over me with her hands on her hips.

"Just what the hell did you think you were doing?" she bitched at me,

wiping my forehead with a cool washcloth.

"Umm...experiment?" I ventured, getting used to the feeling of being

able to use my tongue properly again.

"And we learned?" she sighed, sitting down on the bed.

"Don't give Willow a key to the apartment and expect her not to use

it?"

She bent slowly to kiss my cheek. "I don't suppose you'd listen if I

told you not to do shit like this, Xander?" Willow's language has

gotten more blunt over the years, especially when she's pissed at me.

Hey, when you're a multi-millionaire computer software designer who's

built two companies from the ground up, you can talk any way you

want, too.

I shook my head. "No, but you don't really have to clean up after me.

The note was just tradition."

She lay down next to me, and I liked having her there, just me and

Wills. It was just us now, in Sunnydale. Giles... Giles had died two

years ago, in his sleep, which must be the most peaceful way a

Watcher, even an ex-one, ever left. Ethan had come for the funeral,

and there was no talk of chaos, just a skeletal, quiet eighty-some

year old man with a shake in his voice as he read his bit of the

eulogy. I haven't seen him since. Buffy and Angel had moved to

England when Amanda graduated from college, but they came back for

Giles' funeral. Buffy didn't speak, the whole time.

Two Slayers had come through town, one after another, and a host of

other do-gooders, and I'd gone along with them on their demon-hunts,

been the white knight, played by the rules. Guarded the Hellmouth.

Gotten my scars and seen them fade in the morning. The power had left

Buffy when she got pregnant, so Doreen must have taken over from her.

The other-- a quiet, almost anorexic Indian girl, Subita-- Angel said

Faith had been killed in a prison fight, defending twenty other women

from a werewolf gone wild on the ward.

Who else? Oh, Anya. It would be funny if it weren't so... no, it's

just funny. She married, now wait for it, Parker Abrams. Straight out

of college. Maybe he mellowed, turned into a decent guy by himself,

or maybe the constant eye of an ex-vengeance-demon kept him on the

straight-and-narrow, but they moved to Tarzana years ago, started a

brood of little Anyas, God help us all. Willow heard from her

occasionally.

Cordelia was still single, still lovely at sixty-eight, had a swarm

of lovers, and was blissfully happy, running Angel Investigations

with a staff of two, Wesley and Gunn. Who, in the fine old L.A.

tradition, had squabbled over her for years and finally given up and

fallen in love with each other. Which suited Cordy just fine, since

she could tease them about sucking face in the office. At seventy-

two, Wesley Windham-Pryce sucking face with what still had to be the

most buff man of color this side of fifty. But then, they'd been at

it for years.

Oh--Amy. Amy the Rat. What a time to remember her, you're thinking.

But that's the thing. Your average domestic rat doesn't live very

long, you see. A few years at most. Amy. Willow never could find

the

right spell, but the little brown rat just kept running in her wheel.

Eating yogurt drops. She hadn't aged. Unless Willow had a deep, dark

secret and was replacing the rat every few years, Amy Madison was

still a seventeen year old girl trapped in the body of a rattus

norvegicus.

***

Okay, so it hasn't been the same construction site all this time.

Hasn't always been a construction site. And I'm my own Grandpa,

according to the deed on the apartment building. Vampires do it, so

can I. Granted, they usually do it by skipping town, see above

re:Spike, but it can be arranged on a local basis, especially when

you have a gorgeous ex-redhead of a hacker working her way through

your history.

And time passed, as time does, even in Sunnydale. Joyce died a few

years after Giles, and Buffy and Angel returned for the funeral,

looking... human. Old. Never thought I'd see either of them old, for

different reasons, obviously. Spike was back in town, and he didn't

crack a single Slutty the Vampire Slayer joke. Amazing restraint. His

hair was blonde. Never the dark hair again, when he'd seen how much

it disturbed me, made me think of him as some young English guy who

lost his life in an alley two hundred years ago. Not my Spike.

A lot like how looking at his sire, gray and thin and in his body's

mid-seventies, made him feel, I think. Buffy white-haired and

scowling at him, that was a trip, too. No senility in the Sunnydale

gang, folks. We're all going out bitching and howling at the world.

Those of us that are going out. And we'd all lived to more of a ripe

old age than any of us ever expected.

And me, Spike gone to parts unknown again, still twenty-seven, at

seventy-five. It's a laugh and a half, it is. I took a stroll by the

twice-rebuilt Sunnydale High, and realized that I could wander in,

sit down at a desk, and probably learn more in the few hours it would

take them to figure out I wasn't a student than I did during the four

years I allegedly was.

***

Spike had been gone for seven years, the longest ever, and not a

line, not a postcard, not a pair of edible underwear in a plain brown

wrapper, in the last five. Willow was tired of finding me in the

morning, I think. I told her to can it, that we both knew I'd be

fine, but she said that wasn't the point. Sick of me hurting myself,

sick of the bruises, the "I'm okay's," the silent dry sobs that were

the closest I could ever come to crying with Willow in the room. I

was half afraid that this time he was dust, half afraid he just

wasn't coming back. But from the moment he first kissed me under the

porchlight, he'd never lied to me.

Being with him tore me up, but it was like breathing after being

choked, and it was the best thing in my life. Ever. Being away from

him...I was the walking dead. Except the dead don't hurt. I didn't

feel old. I felt twenty-seven. Just twenty-seven, and without the

only man in the world I love beyond all sense.

Our anniversary, as it were. The forty-second summer since Spike had

first walked out with a kiss and an I'll see you again. I considered,

briefly, seeing how far I could get out of town before this PTB-

sponsored body gave up the ghost. But there was always the

possibility I'd see Spike again, and as always, that kept me alive,

barely.

Home, then, and for a kick, I'd set up the oldie but classic,

bathtub, razor, wine, pictures. More, not just the festival picture.

Spike and me at the mall, him pointing to the Gap sign and making

Vomiting Face. In the vestry hall at Buffy and Angel's wedding, two

guys in tuxes kissing against a wall, oblivious to Willow with a

Polaroid. Most of me has the good sense to hope she took off after

she snapped that picture, and didn't stick around for what we did

against the wall afterwards, but a sick, twisted bastard in there

somewhere hopes she took an entire roll. All of us at the graduation

party. Willow and Tara. Willow and Jesse and me, in fourth grade.

Spike naked, smiling lazily up at me from the floor. Spike, Spike,

Spike and Spike, and some more Spike, for variety. A few in full vamp-

out face, which must have confused the folks at the Photo-Mat. Wait,

this is Sunnydale. Forget I said that.

For the music, the best of all. A party recording, done with Willow's

hand-held CD recorder, of Spike, singing along to "My Way." William

the Bloody, international recording star, bellowing out over the

voice of Gary Oldman playing Sid Vicious covering Frank Sinatra. Do I

have taste in tunes, or what? Am I a pathetic lunatic, or what?

Don't answer that. With Spike's voice alternately crooning and

wailing in my ear, depending on the verse, on permanent repeat, I

sipped wine, thought about how lame I'd become, thought about how I

didn't care, and how I didn't want to think about cleaning up the

next morning. Thought about Spike, fierce and cruel and funny and

loving and mine. Sliced and diced, and fell away into darkness.

***

I woke sooner than I expected, to the usual headache that accompanies

the loss and mysterious replacement of all my blood, and the sight of

Drusilla idly paddling her fingers in the reddened bath water. She

hadn't changed much in fifty-some years, but then, neither had I. She

was wearing some shiny thirties flapper number, so at least she'd

outgrown the pseudo-Renaissance Victoriana she'd been stuck on in the

late nineties. See, live forever and you, too, can become a fashion

critic, high-school geek boy.

If Dru was here. then he couldn't be far away. I looked over the

side

of the tub, where he crouched, staring at me. The weirdest look of

annoyance and terror and.I don't know. The music was still

playing,

and the lovely Spike-and-Xander shrine must've made me look

completely psychotic. Which, for Spike, is something of a turn-on,

but I was still utterly humiliated. I groaned. Which made my head

hurt more.

"How long have you been doing this?" he growled, reaching out to

touch my face. "How bloody long?"

Dru licked her fingers, and reached into the water for more. Sharp

fingernails came awfully close to the bits of me that I'd rather not

lose, but hey, they'd grow back, right? I tried to smile, but it was

a weak effort at best. "This?" I indicated the water, the razor, with

a floppy wave. "It's a classic. Only oldies but goodies. Or you mean

the whole shabang?"

Spike put his head in his hands. "God, she was right. She was right,

Dru." He rose, spun, kicked the wall hard enough to make the tiles

ring. Which hurt my head, too.

"Bitch." I whispered, only half meaning it.

"Dru?" Spike said, looking up

"Willow. Willow.told you." Dru was tracing patterns in the water,

and

Spike reached for my arms, trying to pull me up.

"Leave it, Dru," he barked. She looked up, a little girl's hurt on

her peaky white face. "Yeah, Willow told me. She was on the porch,

and she let me in. I've lost my keys. Lost the whole bloody duster.

Had to run us in under a flamin' tarpaulin. Dru, I said LEAVE IT!"

He picked me up like a child, and Drusilla snatched her hand back to

her mouth, wailing softly. I was dripping blood everywhere, of

course, down his blue silk shirt, white-t-shirt, stonewashed jeans,

onto the floor. Colors. I got him out of vampire monochrome. A little

delirious, folks. Even blood in his yellow-gold hair, trying to drape

my arm around him.

I gestured vaguely over his shoulder at Dru. "Go. go ahead, Dru.

No

sense wasting good blood. Spike, I'm fine." Dru happily dipped her

fingers in the water again, scolding forgotten.

"No you're not bloody fucking fine, you daft moron. You're nothing

like fine." He crushed me to his chest, oblivious of the blood. Well,

*someone* would have to get it out of the carpet if he carried me

through the living room, which he was doing, back to the bed. Our

bed. He set me down as gently as.as Spike is capable of, which is

far

more than you'd think.

"I'll be fine, Spike. I'm." I giggled. "I'm a professional. Don't

try

this at home, folks." He put his head down on my chest. Smelled me.

Spike's big on smelling, he is. And licking, and biting, and.

He pushed my wet hair out of my eyes, and stared hard into them. His

own blue eyes were unreadable. But they were there. I'll take

anything I can get, as I believe I've said before. "How long.have

you

been doing this, Xander?"

See, I'm not allowed to lie to him. It's one of the rules. Unspoken,

but there all the same. Leave things out, yes. Couldn't help that,

every time he asked me to go with him. Had to. But no lying, like he

never lies to me. "You want a date, or just a general timeframe?"

He growled. Pissed-off vampire growl. Ooh, I'm terrified. Don't like

him mad at me, though.

"July seventeenth, two thousand twelve. " One year after the first

night that you left, you bastard. "Love you, Spike." Pathetic, like I

said. He lowered his forehead to mine. Rested it there. So cool. Felt

good. The best.

Wet, though. Not Spike--not crying. Never an unmanly thing like

tears. Only when completely blitzed, after Dru left him the first

time, or when he thought I was dead. Well, I *was* dead, temporarily.

Only then. Spike doesn't cry. He's Marlon Fucking Brando with a

London accent.

"How many times? How many fucking times?" Yeah, crying. Dammit.

I shrugged. Pointed to the bottom drawer of the bureau. My drawer.

Where I kept my comics and crossword puzzles and stupid human shit

that he'd never want to look at. And a stack of five-year diaries,

dating back to my twenty-first birthday. The days with Spike written

in green ink, the days without in black, the nights I tried to check

out described in clinical detail, in red. For scientific purposes, in

case I finally came upon one that worked, and some other poor sucker

set to guard the Hellmouth could make use of it. Yeah, I know. The

city limits sign.

***

Part Five

Spike got the books, turned the pages. Laughed a little at some of

the things I said about him, until he got to the first red page. Then

there was only silence, and the sound of paper turning. Every page.

Every book. Eleven of them. The look on his face when he looked up--

because I'd been watching him, you see. Wasn't going to sleep, as

much as I wanted to, not with Spike right here. In the glorious white

flesh. The look on his face.

"Why?" he whispered. "Bloody hell, Xander, why?" Cross-legged on our

bedroom floor, holding the pile of books that had been there all

along, if he'd been a nosier vampire.

"Helps to pass the time," I answered, which was as true as any other

reason, and not really a lie.

He surged back up off the floor, this blood-streaked guy with bleachy-

hair and blazing blue eyes. Did I mention I love him? His hand on my

chest, near my throat. Fingers making little white marks on my skin.

Feeling the blood pump in my veins. Not quite human blood, but tasty

enough for Dru to drink diluted, for Spike to lick and suck and kiss.

He sat down on the bed, his back to me. That's okay. I like to look

at that too.

"Why won't you go with me?" he asked at last.

Oh, that one. "Can't." It's a bit early for that exchange, but if I

know it's coming, I can remember the words.

He sighed. Dammit, he sounded old. Spike doesn't get old. He's twenty-

seven forever, just like me. "Yeah, pet, I know you can't." He turned

to me, and I was twenty again, standing on the porch outside the

house we all shared, seeing the smarmy, high-cheekboned face I

thought I knew become someone else, someone I loved.

"You do?" I asked, tentatively, taking his hand, playing with his

cold fingers. Wasn't feeling terribly strong, but I thought I could

manage that.

He touched my cheek with his other hand. So damn gentle, he can be,

when he wants, and rough as a bear, and wild as the demon that he

is. "Dru. She says you can't leave, but you can't tell anybody. She

thinks it's the best riddle she's ever heard." He laughed

painfully. "Then again, her favorite before that was ' What goes up a

chimney down, but can't go down a chimney up?' "

"A brolly!" said Dru from the doorway, proudly. Her face was streaked

with my blood, and her hair was in her eyes. "Spike, may I have some

ice cream, please?"

"Yes, love, it's in the freezer. That's the big white box with the

pictures of monkeys on the front," he answered gently, never looking

away from me. He knows there's always ice cream. She didn't leave,

though. She came closer to the bed, and looked at me, head tilted.

The last time I'd really seen Drusilla, she was in love with me, just

like the entire female population of Sunnydale. Wouldn't those

spellbound girls, then, be pissed, now, to know the only person who

got Xander Harris' ass was a smart-mouthed dead Englishman with a

severe attitude problem. Then again, most of them were dead

themselves. The next time Dru got near me, she was kicking major ass

in the Sunnydale High School Library, and killing Kendra, but some

happy vampire or other had thankfully knocked me out before I had to

see that.

So, once, long ago, she'd been the Enemy. So had Spike. Things

change. People die, other people live. Dead people, too. If she was

there, Spike had a reason for bringing her there. It'd been fifty-

some years. Yeah, vamps can hold a grudge for a long time, but I

wasn't a vampire.

"He tastes good," she said to Spike. Spike grinned softly, but it

didn't reach his eyes.

"That he does, love," and I knew he wasn't just talking about blood.

"Why can't you tell me?" he asked me.

"Can't." And my throat closed up. Drusilla smiled like somebody'd

just given her a new dolly.

"See? It's delicious!"

"No, it's not, Dru." Spike's voice was hard. "It's delicious when

it's somebody else. When it's somebody I love, it's not delicious. It

bloody hurts. Go eat ice cream. NOW. And don't eat any people." She

backed away, still looking at the two of us.

"Why didn't you ask me to stay? Really ask me to stay." Spike was all

questions, now, wasn't he.

I coughed, experimentally. Maybe the PTB's would let me answer this

one. "I wouldn't.keep you in a cage. You're not an animal. They

put a

chip in your head like a damn.stray dog, but you're not an

animal."

More than I was usually able to say this early on a post-bathtub

Morning After. I could still hear Spike singing, off in the bathroom,

rockin' out with the pseudo Sex Pistols.

"Oh, I am. I'm just the dangerous kind that walks on two legs." He

whacked the back of his head. " This soddin' chip kept you safe long

enough for me to fall in love with you. Hurrah for Riley Finn and his

Cowboy Commandos." He stroked my hair. I live for this shit, when

he's not around. Just Spike, touching me. However he wants to. Riley

Finn. A name I hadn't heard in years. Old home week around here.

"Why." I had to ask, had to ask, had to ask, because I'm a

pathetic

tenth-grade loser who has to know these things, "why didn't you stay?

Anyway?" He looked down.

"Thought you didn't love me enough to come with me, didn't I? At

first." He was quiet. "That'd be the first time you tried to kill

yourself, yeah? When you actually thought it might work? And me in a

shithole bar in little TJ that night, gettin' soused and arsing about

to anyone who'd listen about the black-eyed boy I'd left behind me.

God, but I'm a fucking moron."

No. My Spike may be an idiot at times, but not a moron. That's

reserved for me. "You didn't know."

"Should've. Should've bloody well known. I have eyes, I have ears, I

love you, and I should've bloody well known! Then. later, when I

came

back. I knew it was more than that. You wanted me. I could see as

well as the next blind gobsmacked dumbfuck. So I thought.maybe

he's

serious. About this Hellmouth thing. Maybe it's a cause, something I

just don't fuckin' get, 'cos I'm a dead guy with no soul."

"But rhythm. Plenty of rhythm." I interjected, thinking of Spike

doing the Time Warp. He shushed me.

"So I stayed. As long as I could, tryin' to understand. I get the

yours, mine, an' ours bit. No killing Willow, the Slayer, the

Watcher. Never really wanted to kill the Poof anyway, just

torture 'im a bit. But I couldn't understand why you stayed. Not

when the Slayer moved on. Thought I'd got it wrong again. Ran, 'cos

I was scared there was too much in you that you'd never see in me.

And when you wouldn't come with, well, there it was again. You wanted

this two-shilling shithole more than you wanted me."

"No." My throat was starting to tighten. Fuck you guys. Haven't

spoken to me in fifty-six years, you stay out of my conversations

with my vampire. "Never about you. Never loved anything more than

you. Ever."

"Yeah, well I said I was a fuckin' moron, didn't I. Later.I had

to

come back, had to stay as long as I could, had to be with you, more'n

anything, and I had to try to figure out what the hell was goin' on

in your head. But you'd get.antsy. Scared. Watch me like a kicked

dog. I couldn't tell if I was hurtin' you more by staying or going. I

had to go. Had to. Couldn't look at you like that. 'Til next time."

I'd driven him away? By being afraid he'd leave. I couldn't follow

that one. I thought of my head on Willow's lap, dry-sobbing while she

held me, pulling my hair away from my face. Maybe I could. I can

scare the living shit out of people who love me, when I'm being an

utter dickhead. I tried smiling, found it didn't make my face ache

too much.

"And between the next times, you're fillin' great bloody novels with

the hows and how-nots of killin' yourself. What's most painful, if

you like that sort of thing. "

"I'd have to go with traditional Vlad-type impalement on that one, or

crucifixion, not that I tried either," I offered. "For your actual

first-hand experience, I'd say it's a tie between slow suffocation

and repeated blunt trauma to the head. Knives are good, too, if

you're careful. You can make a lot of little cuts without losing much

blood, 'til you're ready."

Shit. Here's me, going on about being a dickhead, as I tell my lover

all the wonderful ways I found to hurt myself while he was away. The

look on his face was enough to shut me up. I never want to see that

look again, as long as I don't live. He grabbed my wrists. Which

itched a bit, as the skin was already fusing together. Healing.

"Promise me you'll never do this again, Xander." My turn to look

down. At the bloody sheets, in the American sense of the word.

"I promise," I lied. He tightened his grip, then let go, dropping my

wrists to the sheets.

"No, love, don't lie to me." He helped me sit up, back against the

pillows. "If I stay, will you promise?"

I nodded, lying with my head instead of my mouth. I couldn't promise.

I'd always fear that he would leave, that he couldn't stay in the

Hellburg forever. I'd always fear that there'd be a next time out the

window, asking me to come along.

He saw through that too. "Yeah, that's what I thought. Liar." He

moved to lie next to me, as Willow had done so many times, once she'd

found out. A different sort of comfort, having Spike there. He put

his arms around me, and I could be warm, for a while. Even though

he's cold. It never did make any sense.

"Dru says." he said softly. "Dru says there's a way around this.

That

it was always there, and we were just too stupid to see it."

"Has Dru regressed to the stage where she thinks boys have cooties?"

I asked innocently. I knew he wouldn't smack me, even in fun, when I

was looking that fragile. I also couldn't stand hearing Dru's idea,

if it was one of the thousands I thought up and discarded along the

way.

"No, she's still shimmying up to anything with horns and a tail.

She's got three of 'em now, Hrontak demons, all at her beck and

call, pissing on trees to see who gets to grovel at the foot of her

bed each night."

"But she came here, for you, to tell me what to do about."

tightening

in the throat, yeah, I get the point."guarding the Hellmouth."

His

arms tightened around me.

"No, she told me that in Xpeelstin. On the way to which I had to

fight my way through a bleeding haunted wishing well, an army of

Japanese ghosts, and a dimensional portal with fuckin' *teeth*,

before I could even get to 'er."

"She was where? Is that a real place?" It sounded like the plot of an

anime film.

"Not in *this* dimension, it isn't."

That's why he'd been gone for seven fucking years? He'd been chasing

down Dru in some extradimensional Disney movie? I began to see why I

hadn't asked him where he'd been or what he'd been doing all those

times.

"I just.had a feeling she knew. That she was the last bloody

person

who'd care, so she obviously had to have the answer."

"So she came back here.what, 'cause she was bored?"

Spike laughed, but it sounded caught in his throat like a

fishbone. "Well, yeah, probably. She usually is. Attention-span

shorter than mine. She came back." he was silent.

"Yeah?" I prompted, wrapping my hands around his forearms.

"To turn you, if I can't," he finished. And didn't say another word.

And my heart broke, just another little bit more. You probably

couldn't notice it, by that time. Not after fifty-six years. Twenty-

two years old, and I'd asked him, shyly, if he wanted to, and he'd

told me he loved *me* too much to want something that looked like me

and acted like Angelus.

***

Part Six

"Well, it's one way to kill me." I ventured. Or I could just say yes,

I'll leave with you, and we could drive toward that city limit sign,

and see what happens. What do you want from me, Spike? What have I

got left to give? Have we changed that much? Seventy-five years old,

and you're ready to trade me in on the model with the demonic engine?

"No. Dru says no."

I thought he was answering the questions in my mind, and realized

after a few seconds that he was talking about my sarcastic little

offering. Dru says no? No what?

My bed. My vampire. Here, for the moment, it was my place, my power,

unless I was stupid enough to try to talk about why I couldn't leave.

I wouldn't ask. I'd turn to him, and I'd put my hands on his body,

covered in my own blood, and I'd kiss him, and I'd touch him, and I'd

make him mine again, until next time.

But I didn't. I live on hope. I'm a big dope that way. It's one of my

more endearing qualities, along with my dress sense.

"Dru says no, what?"

He pulled me around to face him. "Dru says no, we can let you keep

your soul. No, it was bloody there all along, and we're too

buggerfucking stupid to see it."

I pulled away. "We've got a spell. We've *had* a spell since nineteen

fucking ninety-eight. There's a little clause attached, Spike. About

losing it again if you have even one moment of true happiness. How

long." I laughed, in spite of myself."how long do you think

I'd keep

my soul, with you in the room? Two minutes? Five?"

"It's not attached," said Willow, from the doorway. I looked at her.

She was the same age as me, and unlike me, she looked every year of

it. Every unbelievable, shitty, wonderful, loyal, loving year of it.

She'd stayed on the Hellmouth for me. No other reason. She and

Jonathon could have gone anywhere. Not as if the place had great

emotional connotations for either of them. But she'd stayed, so he'd

stayed. She'd outstayed him by five years. The most beautiful seventy-

five year old woman I've ever seen, before or since. And she was

tired. Not tired of being alive, not my Wills, but tired of fighting

that body, as it aged, tired of fighting me, too, probably, as I slid

from one self-destructive game to another.

She looked at me. Don't know what she saw, aside from a twenty-seven

year old guy with dark hair and eyes, lying naked on the bed with his

fully-clothed vampire lover, streaked in the blood of last-night's

half-hearted suicide attempt. I had no body pride around Willow

anymore. I'd known her for too long, loved her for too long. She'd

picked me up off the floor, with her hands or her mind, too many

mornings, from too many unbelievably undignified positions.

Drusilla was standing behind her, making biting faces. Spike twisted

to face them, and raised a warning hand, but Willow had already

stopped the vampiress in her tracks with a cross, without even

looking back.

"Leave off, Dru. I said no eating people. Especially Willow," Spike

said patiently.

Dru pouted. "Oh, but she smells so sweet. She would've made a

beautiful princess, when she was young."

"She did." I called out. Beautiful, and sexy, and completely insane,

the vampire version of Willow that Anya had conjured up. "Leave her

alone, Dru. Go drink some bath water. " Dru disappeared, presumably

to do just that. If nothing else, I suppose we could've marketed

Xander-blood as a new vampire soft drink. An endless supply, bottled

in Sunnydale.

"It's not attached." Willow repeated, not distracted for a

minute. "We all thought it was. Assumed it was, because Angel was

still cursed. Well, not that Buffy and Angel tested it out, but we

figured, and then there was that time when the actress slipped him

that drug that made Angelus come out."

"Willow," Spike and I chanted in unison, after a lifetime of

practice, "you're babbling."

"Oh. Yeah, I guess I am. It's important, which is when I usually

babble. We all assumed it was part of the ritual of the undead, the

soul restoration spell. It wasn't. I've been playing with it for a

long time, now, translating and retranslating it. The soul-losing bit

isn't in there. It's something the Kalderash attached to *Angel*, not

part of the original spell. It's the part that wasn't on the paper,

that somebody spoke *through* me, when we gave Angel his soul back."

I slid back to lie flat in the bed and stare at the ceiling. It had

been there all along? No. No, it was too fucking easy. That would

mean all of this, all these years guarding the fucking Hellmouth--

from what, since the number of white-hats that came through here to

help was ridiculous--were wasted. Spike could have turned me when I

was twenty-two. Well, could've gotten Angel to do it. Except--those

years alive, with Spike, before I *couldn't* leave Sunnydale, were

the happiest seven years of my life. Almost. Unless you added up

every moment of first seeing Spike when he came back from wherever.

Every moment of touching Spike, or watching him shave, or licking

whipped cream off the tip of his nose.

"And you just figured this out now? Isn't that a bit too convenient?

A bit too "Passions" even for Spike's love life?" I asked bitterly.

Yeah, I can still be a mean bastard to Willow. It's part of the

Harris charm.

"No," she answered in a very small voice. "I've known since before

Giles died. He gave me the translation of the codex that finally made

me believe it, for Beltaine, ten years ago."

Ten years ago. When Spike was still here, three years before his last

and longest walkabout. When we could've been out there, in Reno, in

Borneo, in fucking Xpeelstin, wherever that is. What the hell. Okay,

not as convenient as I thought, apparently.

"And you didn't tell us because." I let the words hang in the

air,

not condemning her. She was Willow. She had to have a reason.

"Because none of us thought it would work. You're not human, Xander.

Everything anybody knew said that only a human can be turned.

You're." she trailed off.

Right, we don't know what I am, but I'm not human. Not anymore. Got

it during the first seventy-five suicide attempts, thanks.

"We didn't want to tell you that you could, if you'd only not gotten

yourself killed fifty-six years ago. That seemed like a bit of a

shitty birthday present, somehow. The most we thought might happen

would be that you'd die. Really die. So sorry we didn't let you try

it," she finally added, a bit more bravely. "Sorry if I sound like

the evil bitch-monster of death, Xander, but have a Coke and a smile

and shut the fuck up about it. People love you. Dead people love you.

Cope and deal."

Leave it to Willow to make me feel about twelve years old and six

inches tall. Lying naked in a bed with the sexiest vampire on the

planet, bar bleedin' none, as said vampire would say, and all I can

think of is, oops, I pissed off the witch again. Sorry I've been such

a weaselly little Xander of a dork, can I please crawl in a hole and

die now?

Drusilla returned to the doorway with a bowl of ice cream, covered

in what I was pretty sure wasn't strawberry syrup. Yum. To each her

own, I guess.

"Okay, I refuse to believe I'm at a disadvantage here, but I do

happen to be the only naked person around. Could somebody either give

me a blanket that *isn't* covered with blood, or start taking off

some clothes?" Spike looked like he was having a tough time making

the decision, but at last he pulled a clean blanket from the top of

the hamper next to the bed, and spread it over me. My freakin' hero.

"Thank you. Now, am I getting this straight? You say you can do the

soul-restoration spell, without the oops-I'm-a-psycho-again clause,

Willow? " She nodded. "And you, Dru, say Spike can turn me?" Loony-

girl sucked on a spoonful of ice cream, as if she had something far

more pleasant in her mouth. "Drusilla?"

"Mmmm. I think so. If not, I will, and you can be my little boy."

Oh, no, I *Don't* think so. If anybody was sucking all my blood out,

it would be Spike. Aside from which, I wanted to keep what little

sanity I had left, and I don't think Dru would make a very good

mommy. Somehow.

"So this is." I gestured around at the roomful of people who had

been

witness to my continued idiocy, some for decades at a time.

"Call it an intervention." Willow said, pulling a little glass ball

from her pocket.

"Hey, now, what if I don't want to be a vampire?" I asked, scooting

back against the headboard. Playing for time, because if this did

kill me, it would be the last time I'd see Spike's face. Which was

looking at me like I'd just flipped my lid, okay, but.

"Shut up," he said succinctly, and pushed me down to the mattress.

"Well, what about guarding the Hellmouth?" Long-delayed guilt over

*that* little item popped into my brain.

"Fuck it. You're not workin' off some penance, Xander. You've been a

goody-good guy all your life. The bleedin' Hellmouth took you away

from me in the first place, it can damn well let you go now. Fuck it."

Straight to the point, gotta give Spike that. Or anything else he

wants.

"There's two Slayers. One can roam the world, one can guard the

Hellmouth. That's probably why it happened in the first place,"

Willow babbled. "Somebody got greedy when they made you permanent

zookeeper, Xander, not that we're complaining, but.'

"Willow!" Spike cut her off. "Make with the mojo, already."

"Um, I think you have to make with the biting, first." she said, and

I swear she was blushing, although I thought she was long past that.

"Er, right. Could you lot fuck off for a mo?" Spike asked

eloquently.

And they did, and we did. Nobody ever said being turned had to be a

bad experience. Well, nobody who ever met Spike did, anyway.

***

And sometime that evening, we stuffed Drusilla in the back seat of

the DeSoto with a gallon of Rocky Road and a last-chance cooler of

Xander-blood. Which ain't bad on top of Rocky Road. Spike had put new

glass in, thank God. Y'know, mirror-shaded UV-tinted you-can-see-out-

but-the-sun-can't-see-in stuff? I'd been hoping the black spray paint

would explain his driving, but no such fuckin' luck. Like a ferret on

speed. In a burlap sack. With Spike's Party Mix, all Spike covering

the Sex Pistols, all the time, in the CD player. And we crossed the

city limit sign. Literally. Three times, once in reverse, just to

make sure he hadn't missed it. Crunch.

You want a damn list of deaths and who's who, I know, but I'm not

tying up loose ends for you. Go visit the bloody Hellmouth yourself,

if you want to know who's doing cleanup duty there now. Dru. we

returned her to her little castle, and I was right. Disney on crack,

with three massively-hung demonoids dancing attendance on the

princess. Not that I was jealous. Well, not for myself, anyway. Which

didn't come out right. I don't need three Schwarzeneggars with horns,

when I've got one Spike, with a mouth like a drunken British truck

driver and the sweetest ass in any dimension. That better?

Sometimes I think about it. Sunnydale. Willow, who died a few years

ago. It's what you do. You stay young, you watch your friends grow

old, and die. I used to think that was the curse of any kind of

immortality. But it's not. I've met vampires, ghosts, demons, things

we don't even have an English word for, and we kept spending so much

time being afraid of death, in the middle of all this twisted

evidence that it's not the end. I'm here, with Spike in my arms.

Something loves us.

We did go back to Sunnydale, for another damn funeral. Willow's.

Cleaning out her apartment, we found an empty rat cage, and a dark-

haired seventeen year old girl sleeping on the bed. How's that for a

loose end? Of course, the conversation where I tried to convince her

that A) it was sixty years or so since she'd last seen the sun, B)

I'm a vampire, which isn't actually why I look so much like the

Xander Harris she knew in high school, but it'll do, and C) I have no

particular desire to suck her blood, and she probably shouldn't keep

pointing stakes at me.that was fun. Didn't help that Spike kept

making grr-faces at her and commenting pointedly about how he'd liked

her better as a rat.

Spike and I live on the road. In Madrid. In Barcelona. In Torquay.

Occasionally, in Reno. We see Dru now and again, now that we know

how to find her. I never asked, if he still loves her. I get the

yours, mine, ours thing now too.

I don't try to kill myself anymore. Not a lot of point in that. Not

when I have a vampire next to me who's threatened to feed me my balls

on shish-kebab skewers if I try it again. Not that he would, he likes

them right where they are, but I get the point. No fun near-death

games for Xander, when there's so many fun undead ones to be played.

We keep an ear in to the Hellmouth. Professional curiosity, I

suppose, plus Amy's the closest thing I have to a contemporary,

besides Spike, who's got a century or so on me. And his leg, at the

moment, which I'm not about to move. She found herself a guy who

doesn't seem to care that she spent the early part of the twenty-

first century munching yogurt drops and squeaking. No, it's not

Buffy's great-grandson or any hokey shit like that. He's just a guy.

A reasonably nice, normal guy living on the Hellmouth with a witch

for a wife. She's pregnant though, and I'm taking bets it's Willow.

Don't give me any crap about how convenient that is. If anyone's

coming back, it's my Wills, and Amy owes her. Big time. Sixty years

of back rent and habi-trail cleaning.

I'm still a tenth grade loser, and I still get scared. In the

morning, when the sun's coming up outside and we're going to sleep,

or at least to bed, I still pull Spike's arms tight around me, and

wonder if he'll be there come nightfall. "Staying?" I'll ask, and

he'll kiss me, and say "Thought I might do, yeah." "Forever?" I have

to ask, because I'm me, and after all this time, Spike's finally

figured out the right answer. "Yeah. Shut up. Git." He never asks

me if I'm coming. First, because he knows what the answer is, and

second, I'm pretty loud about it. Sorry, was that a bit too blunt?

***

Finis

***