Survival Instincts
by
Savoy Truffle
Part Tewnty-Nine
Xander is quiet on the way back to the hotel, so Spike doesn’t try to talk either, afraid to shatter the moment, a moment he’s been waiting for longer than he’s actually willing to admit, even to himself. He watches Xander’s hands on the wheel—firm, white knuckled—a visible sign of the tension their bodies share.
Spike fishes in his pocket for his pack of cigarettes, pulls one out, lights it, then rolls the window down halfway so he can blow the smoke out of the car. It’s good to have something to do with his hands and his mouth, something besides the dozens of things running in though his head in full Technicolor—things involving Xander’s smooth, honeyed skin and the rougher, harder, darker texture of Xander’s cock. Spike watches his own hand shake as he ashes against the window’s edge.
Nicotine has never done anything for him. Cigarettes would have to be a hell of a lot stronger to affect vampire physiology. But the habit itself—the lighting, the sucking, the blowing, the flicking—has always calmed him. Not tonight. Tension, exquisite tension. Tension is good. But god, release will be better. So much better… as soon as they get back to the fucking hotel, the hotel where they will be fucking. Fucking Christ, why is this taking so long? The longing for Xander is like a living thing inside Spike, like the too rapid throb of a racing heartbeat he doesn’t have, racing for Xander as if Xander were a drug, which would explain the shaking of his hand as he draws it toward his mouth—an addiction too long denied.
The cigarette is in Spike’s right hand, an unsteady right hand, and suddenly he can’t resist bringing an equally unsteady left hand into his own lap and stroking his hardness through his jeans. Spike closes his eyes and pretends it Xander’s hand on him and he can tell the exact moment when Xander’s eye must have glanced over at him because suddenly Xander’s breath is shallow, his heart is beating double-time and the car is going much, much faster.
“Fuck, Spike…” The whispered words echo in Spike’s ears but he doesn’t open his eyes or stop his hand. The cigarette falls from his fingers, drops out of the window, down to the racing asphalt and winks out, forgotten. Spike thrusts up into his own palm.
At last the car turns and Spike opens his eyes as they come to a stop in a parking space beneath the shadow of their hotel. Finally, God, finally. Before Spike can even think clearly enough to move, he is being yanked out through the passenger door and pressed up against and upon, cold metal at his back and warm Xander at his front and a hot tongue in his mouth and it’s good that he doesn’t have to breathe, though he can hear Xander panting heavily. Or maybe that’s Spike’s own breath after all because now Xander’s hand is where Spike’s was a minute ago and god, it’s good, so good. Press of palm, slide and curl of fingers.
“God, Xander. Fuck.” And Spike realizes that he’s definitely the one doing most of the panting. “Gotta stop. Gonna… gonna…”
“Gonna what?” Xander whispers, breath burning Spike’s ear.
“Gonna get us arrested for public indecency.”
Xander’s hand drops away, his body steps back. “Shit. Right. Room. Now.”
Spike loves that Xander has lost the ability to make complete sentences.
“Yes, sir,” Spike teases, eyes full of playful obedience.
And apparently Xander has now lost all verbal ability because he’s down to pointing and dragging and then they’re making their way through the lobby like perfectly respectable people, with only the tips of their fingers brushing, though it might as well be flint against steel for all the heat being generated.
They wait for the elevator, toes tapping and bodies maybe bouncing, just a little. They get in the elevator and stand apart, trying to be good. Then Spike remembers that he isn’t good, he’s evil, or maybe not so much anymore, but still, so he meets Xander’s eyes and smiles wickedly and starts rubbing his hand over himself again. And Xander used to be good, but maybe not so much anymore, because the look on Xander’s face as Xander slides his hand up under his own shirt is definitely evil and Spike can’t take his eyes off the movement of Xander’s fingers through the cotton as they flick and rub and pinch at one nipple then the other.
“Fuck, Xan…”
“Would have,” Xander says. “Would have fucked you against the car, but you wouldn’t let me.”
Spike doesn’t know if Xander is telling the truth, if Xander really would have done it, but just the idea that Xander might want him that much has Spike crossing the space between them and reaching out and…
Ding. The elevator stops and the door opens and it’s hard to tell who’s dragging whom down the hall, but Spike has never hated any inanimate object more than their key card because Xander’s hands are shaking, too, and he can’t seem to get the rhythm right, the in and out, and when did Spike become unable to even think about a key card without it being dirty? But no time to wonder as the door swings open at and Spike is dragged inside and pressed up against a wall.
And Xander seems to have a thing about manhandling Spike tonight, but Spike doesn’t really feel the urge to complain, besides which his mouth is currently full and, if Spike has anything to do with it, about to get a lot fuller. But once his mouth is finally released, Spike can’t resist teasing as he slides Xander’s jacket off his shoulders then reaches down to strip off Xander’s tee-shirt.
“What happened to slow, then?”
“Fuck slow,” Xander groans as Spike sinks down the wall, kissing and licking his way down Xander’s chest.
“A nice slow fuck,” Spike says as he unbuttons and unzips Xander’s jeans and pulls out Xander’s cock, running his fingers lightly over the head and down the shaft. “You really think we can do that, luv?”
Xander’s pelvis is trying to thrust, but Spike holds it in place with a single hand on Xander’s hip. “Think you’ve got the… control?” Spike asks.
“Oh, God. Did I say ‘slow’? I meant fast. Fuck fast. Fast fuck. Slow later, fast now. Does fast work for you?”
Spike grins. “I love it when you babble,” he says just before his mouth closes around Xander’s length.
Spike enjoys the stream of grunts, groans, curses and pleas that flow down on him from above, where Xander’s head hangs between his arms, his palms pressed hard against the wall as Spike’s mouth works him. Then Spike realizes that Xander is actually trying to form a sentence.
“Spike, you… you do realize that… that you’re not… a… a rebound… right?”
Spike slowly slides his lips off of Xander, bring forth another groan from above, then looks up.
“Fuck, Xan, if you still have the presence of mind to ask me that, I am definitely not doing this right.”
“Oh, no. You’re doing fine. Jesus, better than fine. I mean, shit, if they gave out Olympic medals for this sort of thing, you’d definitely get gold and you’d be standing on the top platform and they’d be playing the British national anthem and… And the fact that you’re a world class cocksucker is so not the point.”
“S’not?”
“No, the point is that it’s important, really important, that you know that this, that you and me, is… is…”
“What is it, luv?”
“It’s… real.”
The word hangs between them for a long moment, then:
“Yeah, I know.”
And the certainty in his voice surprises even Spike, but for once, he doesn’t have any doubts and it feels good and there’s Xander’s hand, reaching down to pull him up from his knees and over to the bed. And then Xander is undressing him, practically ripping the clothes from his body, but somehow it feels tender and Spike doesn’t know if he can remember the last time sex felt like this. And Xander’s off to some corner of the room and then back with lube and Spike has a technical question.
“How’s this gonna work then?”
“Hmm?”
Spike reaches up to run a hand down the side of Xander’s face, kisses him briefly.
“You wanna fuck or be fucked?” Spike clarifies.
“Oh, I… I guess I hadn’t thought about it…”
“Well, with Jamie, weren’t you always…?”
Xander reaches up to place his fingers over Spike’s lips. “Doesn’t matter.”
Xander replaces his fingers with his mouth and they kiss until Xander pulls back.
“I guess with your, um… Johns, you usually…”
Now it’s Spike’s turn to silent Xander with his fingers. “Doesn’t matter.”
And they’re kissing again and Spike feels Xander pressing the lube into his hand. Then Xander breaks away and lies back on the bed, looking up at Spike.
“You in me,” Xander says.
Part Thirty
Xander has almost become accustomed to waking up with Spike wrapped around him. What he is not accustomed to, however, is waking up feeling so… satisfied. But breathing in the smell of sweat and lust and come that surrounds him, Xander thinks he could get used to waking up this way pretty damn fast. Or maybe not. Maybe he’ll never get used to this feeling—maybe it’ll always be as sharp and overwhelming as it is at this moment—and that would be okay, too.
Maybe, Xander thinks as he extracts himself from Spike’s embrace and staggers toward the bathroom. Maybe it will always hurt so deliciously to walk after Spike’s been inside him, thrusting with the strength of demon and the skill of someone who’s been fucking men, women and demons for over a century. And the tenderness of a lover. A lover. His lover.
How long have they been on this path, moving inevitably toward last night? Weeks, months, forever? Xander knows that his life could have gone in a thousand different directions, that choice has nothing on chance and circumstance, but on this particular morning everything feels just a little more like fate.
“God,” Xander mutters as he empties his bladder, “who knew getting fucked up the ass would turn me into such a girl?”
But he can’t really bring himself to mind. And, to tell the truth, he can’t imagine it’s the same for girls, not really. Can’t imagine they ever get the same feeling of fullness, or at least not with the added benefit of a prostate back there to be brushed and bumped and battered again and again and again until you’re seeing stars or gods or nothing at all because you’re blacking out from the pleasure.
And even with their G-spot and the substantial compensation of multiple orgasms, Xander knows that no woman will ever experience the incredible feeling of being buried balls deep in something as cool and tight and goddamned amazing as Spike’s ass. Because, yeah, he’d let Spike fuck him first and had all but passed out after that, but somewhere in the middle of the night, he’d come to and spotted the lube on the bed and hadn’t been able to resist warming it between his hands and gently rousing Spike with the stretching of long, hot, thick fingers before bringing his lover to full wakefulness with the stretching of a longer, hotter, thicker cock. And Spike hadn’t seemed to mind taking Xander’s cock, not if the way he’d taken it was any indication, clenching and releasing, moving his hips forward, back and around like his body was made to used, filled, worshipped in that way.
And God, Xander thinks as he stares at the body in the bed, he wants nothing more than to wake Spike just that way again. To repeat each and every one of those sensations, up to and including the part where they kiss softly and fall asleep, utterly spent, in each other’s arms.
But then Xander notices the clock, which tells him that he’s supposed to be over at the Slayer Academy playing the handyman in 45 minutes and he’s well aware that Robin will call looking for him if he’s late. Plus, Spike is sleeping like precisely what he is—the dead—and it seems wrong to wake him just for the sake of a hard-on Xander can just as easily—if not as enjoyably—take care of on his own in the shower.
About five minutes into said shower, Xander is just soaping up his right hand and lowering it to take care of said hard-on when another hand reaches in to stop his. The hand is followed by a body—a naked, sleek, sexy body.
“No fair starting without me, luv.” A naked, sleek, sexy body that comes with a naked, sleek, sexy voice.
Xander doesn’t answer at first, just pulls Spike in closer and kisses him for long, long seconds. Not an I-want-you kiss, not yet. More of an I’m-so-glad-I-have-you-and-I-never-want-t
“I promised Robin I’d be at the school in forty minutes,” Xander says at last. “And you looked so peaceful, I figured I’d just let you sleep.”
“Sleep?” Spike reaches down to curl his fingers gently around Xander’s cock. “And pass up the opportunity for more of this? Got hours to sleep once you go out.”
Xander lowers his own hand to wrap it around Spike’s. “And you have years to do whatever you want to with this. It’s all yours.”
Spike slides his thumb thoughtfully over the head of Xander’s cock and meets Xander’s eyes. “Years, eh?”
“If you want them.”
“All mine?” Spike teases Xander’s slit with the edge of his fingernail.
“If you…”
“Oh, I want, pet. I definitely want. But just ’cause I’ve got years, doesn’t mean I can wait.”
“Don’t then,” Xander says with a moan. “It’s not like Robin’s paying me. He can wait.”
“Hey, there’s my favorite carpenter eye-candy.”
Xander looks up from the floor where he’s repairing a table leg and finds Dawn smiling down at him.
“Hey, Dawnster. And, hey! I don’t need you starting with the sexual harassment, too. It’s just too ooky. You’re still a kid in my mind.”
“And yet I’m older than your last boyfriend.”
“And about a hundred years younger than my current one.”
Dawn’s ensuing smirk and eyebrow raise suggest that she spent far too much time with Spike in her formative years.
“Yeah, I heard all about you hauling Spike off to have your wicked way with him after patrol last night.”
“I did not haul him anywhere.”
“According to Buffy you all but clubbed him over the head and dragged him back to your cave by his hair.”
“I’ll have you know that he was a very willing participant.”
Dawn’s grin was positively salacious. “Yeah? Do tell.”
“Oh no, you and I are not discussing my sex life. Not now, not in twenty years. Not ever.”
“Well, yeah, in twenty years, it’d be like totally gross.”
“Dawn…”
“Fine. Getting you to talk about you and Spike and the naughty touching is only half the reason I came to find you anyway…”
“Do I even want to know what the other half is?”
“I wanted you to come with me to pick up Giles at the airport.”
“Giles? Airport? Now?” Xander is surprised at how nervous the idea makes him.
Dawn shrugs. “Well, we could wait until tomorrow, but I think he’d be kinda pissed if we made him spend the night in the airport.”
Xander doesn’t grin, doesn’t laugh, just stares at Dawn for a moment. Then Dawn is offering him a reassuring grin and a hand up and he accepts them both and follows Dawn down the hall.
A look of surprise passes over Giles’ face when he notices Xander standing with Dawn in baggage claim. Of course, it’s a very British, stiff-upper-lip, sang-froid look of surprise, so the average observer might assume the older man were reacting to nothing more notable than a fingerprint on his glasses, especially since said older man is taking off those glasses and pulling out a handkerchief with which to clean them.
But Xander can tell that Giles The Unflappable is very much flapped and that he is possibly cleaning his glasses in an effort to make sure some sort of elaborate smudging pattern on his lenses hasn’t created the illusion of Xander before him.
“Hey there, G-man,” Xander says softly.
Giles replaces his glasses and stares for a second, clearing his throat.
“I… Haven’t I told you not to…? Oh hell, call me whatever you damn well please. Xander? Is that really you?”
Xander nods, and then Giles is opening his arms and Xander is stepping forward, allowing Giles to enfold him in a hug that isn’t particularly macho—a fact that concerns neither man one bit. When Giles steps back, he looks over at Dawn.
“Did I slip into an alternate dimension or something? I could swear I’ve only been away for nine days. What happened?”
Dawn smiles. “Not much. I had secretly found out where Xander lived and gone to see him in California about a month ago. And Spike was living with him and Xander refused to come back, but then Spike’s chip started malfunctioning, so Xander called me and Buffy called Riley and left a message for him at this undercover flower shop and the Initiative doctors showed up and Spike and Xander arrived and it was either fix the chip or remove it so Xander told them to remove it and then everyone went on a patrol, except me, because apparently nobody thought to invite me, since everyone still thinks I’m, like, twelve.”
Dawn crosses her arms and glares for a second as she stops to catch her breath.
“Yes,” Giles says, “it’s obvious that I’ve hardly missed a thing.”
Dawn uncrosses her arms and smiles, bouncing a little. “Oh, and Xander is sleeping with Spike.”
Giles tilts his head and looks thoughtful. “How is it that I so often go away and come back to find that someone new is sleeping with Spike?”
Giles looks to Xander who shrugs. “Um, Spike’s a big ho?”
Xander looks between Giles and Dawn, who are both frowning.
“What? I can say that. I mean, I’m in love with the guy. Or vamp. Or whatever.”
The declaration is met with silence. Then Giles starts laughing.
Part Thirty-One
They’re standing in front of the baggage carousel and Dawn is grinning like a fool, bouncing on the balls of her feet and squeezing Xander’s arm with a level of excitement over his declaration that’s actually painful for Xander, though he’s too manly to admit it.
Giles is still chuckling intermittently when his cell phone rings. He glances down at the caller ID box and looks back up at Xander and Dawn with an apologetic grimace. “Pardon me, I have to take this.”
Xander looks at Dawn and raises an eyebrow. Dawn looks back and rolls her eyes. Giles points out his bags as he frowns into the phone, the occasional muttered “Oh dear” escalating to several repetitions of “You can’t be serious” and finally graduating to a medley of “Bugger” and “Bloody hell.”
“That doesn’t sound too good,” Xander observes to Dawn as they roll Giles’ bags out to the car. Giles follows behind, still on the call.
“It never does,” Dawn answers as she opens the trunk.
“So this is the new Giles?” Xander asks as he lifts the suitcases.
“Yep.” Dawn closes the trunk.
”He seems to swear a lot more than I remember,” Xander notes as the three of them slide into the car—Dawn behind the wheel, Xander at shotgun and Giles and his phone in the back.
“Home or office?” Dawn calls over her shoulder.
“Do you honestly believe that the Council—office—is just going to accept that assessment of…”
Dawn turns back to Xander. “You ain’t heard nothin’ yet.”
And indeed he hasn’t, Xander discovers, as Giles ends the first call and immediately places a second, to someone to whom he’s apparently under much less obligation to be polite. Even after years of construction work, Xander’s ears are burning. By the time they find themselves standing in Giles’ office at the Council building, Giles is on his eighth phone call and isn’t sounding any happier.
“There has to be someone I can send…. You did hear me mention that it should be someone I trust, did you not?… Aside from his taste in beer, no, I honestly can’t say that I do…. Yes, she would be a natural choice, but in this case we’re obliged to send someone human…. Oh, yes, I forgot about him, he’ll do. But we can’t send him in alone. Who’ve we got for security? Preferably superhuman…. Of course, but what about—?…. But they’ve worked together in the past, have they not? …. Oh. Oh dear. I see. I hadn’t realized they were quite that close…. Well, perhaps we should look into some sort of non-fraternization rule…. Well, yes, I realize they’re essentially independent contractors, but it’s bloody irritating when a lovers’ tiff gets in the way of important business…. Yes, I suppose that would have been one reason that they worked so well together, but the fact remains…. Yes, well, why don’t you continue to look into the situation and get back to me? Dawn is here and she seems to have something substantial lodged in her throat and also to have developed a head tick. It’s quite distracting…. Thank you, Andrew. Goodbye.”
Giles hangs up, puts down the phone and looks across his desk at Dawn. “I assume you wished to have my attention?”
“Don’t get all stuffy with me. I just wanted to point out that Xander is human.”
“That fact hadn’t escaped my notice.”
“And Spike is superhuman…”
“Oh no, wait a minute.” Xander can’t believe he’s been this slow on the uptake. “Dawn…”
“And Spike has a soul now,” Dawn continues quickly. “And with the chip out he can fight bad humans, too. And they both know what’s what. And… and they’re family, Giles.”
“Dawn,” Xander begins, “I really don’t think—”
“She may have a point, actually…” Giles says, taking off his glasses and cleaning them thoughtfully.
“Well, you don’t have to sound so surprised about that,” Dawn says. “I have happen to have had lots of points—in all the research dossiers you pay me to prepare, for example.”
But Giles isn’t listening to Dawn. He’s studying Xander through his very clean glasses and nodding slowly.
“Look, Giles,” Xander says, “you don’t have to…”
“There’s an occult bookstore in Louisiana. Our sources report that its owners are in possession of a medieval volume containing information critical to several important prophecies we’ve been stuyding. They say they are willing to sell it to the Council—for a very substantial sum—but that they’ll only deal with humans. We cannot, however, be certain that they themselves are human, nor are we certain that this isn’t some sort of plot or trap. So we need a small, but capable and completely trustworthy team to send down to retrieve the volume. And Dawn is absolutely correct—you and Spike would be ideal.”
“Giles, I just don’t think that… I mean, I have an apartment and a job back in California and…”
“You would, of course, be on the Council payroll, Xander, but I’ll certainly understand if you—” Giles is interrupted by a dramatic fit of coughing from Dawn. Giles sighs and rethinks his words. “If you need a bit of time to think it over. Why don’t you discuss it with Spike and sleep on it and get back to me in the morning.”
Xander can practically feel the steep incline of the slippery slope, but still can’t bring himself to refuse outright. He nods and says goodbye to Dawn and Giles before walking the two blocks to the school, his mind racing.
Xander opens the hotel room door all prepared for a serious discussion, but his priorities do a rapid reshuffle as he is greeted by the sight of Spike spread out naked on the bed, slowly jacking himself as he watches some raunchy porn flick through heavy-lidded eyes.
Xander’s feet freeze, his jaw drops, his cock springs to life. He can barely hear the grunts, groans and slaps of skin coming from the television as everything but Spike fades into the background. Spike, who is running a thumb over the fluid bubbling at the head of his cock, who is bringing that thumb up to his mouth, whose pink tongue is sliding out from between his lips and sliding over that thumb, lapping up that moisture that Xander can practically taste against his own tongue.
Then Spike’s eyes meet his and Spike smiles, melting Xander’s last functioning brain cell. “You might wanna close the door, pet.”
In the absence of brain cells, it is difficult for Xander to process this suggestion. He stands, still entranced, for a long moment before a couple of stalwart neurons fire up somewhere deep in his head and he manages to turn and shut the door. When he turns back, Spike’s smile has somehow gotten sexier, though that fact defies all natural laws. But Xander doesn’t have to worry about figuring out how a smile that sexy exist in space and time because Spike is crooking his finger and beckoning Xander forward and those two stalwart neurons manage—in one last heroic act, god bless them—to propel Xander to the bed before shorting out for good, leaving Xander is Spike’s oh-so-capable hands.
Later, as they lie together on the bed, fresh from the shower, naked and clean and sated, words find their way back into Xander’s head. Xander tells Spike about picking up Giles at the airport.
“Mmm,” Spike says, trailing his fingers lightly over Xander’s chest. “How is dear old Rupert then?”
“Kinda the same, kinda scary—in a high-powered CEO kinda way.”
“I’ll bet he is. Always knew Ripper had brass knackers.”
“And I thank you, lover of mine, for that highly disturbing image. Anyway, Giles kinda made me… made us, actually, an offer.”
Spike listens until Xander finishing explaining. “Interesting,” he says helpfully.
Xander sighs. “I just don’t… I mean, I already have a job, you know? One I’m supposed to be getting back to one of these days.”
“That you do.”
Then it occurs to Xander. “You don’t, though.”
“Don’t what, luv?”
“Don’t have a job if we go back to California. I mean, you can’t… you know…”
“Can’t keep sucking cock for a living? Why ever not?”
Xander tenses and slowly comes up onto one elbow to look down at Spike with a worried frown. He struggles with the words.
“Spike, I… I mean, I’d never want to… But I just don’t think I could… I mean… Damn it, Spike, I love you, and… and…”
Spike smiles and laughs and reaches up to caress the side of Xander’s face. “Shh, shh, relax. I love you, too, you silly git. I was only teasing.”
Spike laughs again at Xander’s aggrieved expression and pushes Xander back, rolling to lie on top his pouting lover.
“’Sides, I didn’t say whose cock I’d be sucking for a living. Wouldn’t mind being a kept man. With so many lovely ways for me to earn my keep.”
“What? You’re gonna cook and clean for me, Spike?”
Spike laughs once more, louder this time, and runs a hand down Xander’s cheek, along his neck, over one nipple and lower. “Yeah, right. Offering to be your whore, Xan, your rent-boy, not your bloody housewife.”
And, god, that idea should not be so hot, should not be turning Xander on the way it is, the way Spike knows it is because the evidence is there pressing urgently into Spike’s hip.
“’Sides, wouldn’t have time for cooking or cleaning. I’d have to spend all day making sure I look perfect for you when you come home—choosing the right shirt, leaving it unbuttoned just so, making certain my jeans are worn just enough in all the right places, tousling my hair to look like I’ve always just been well-fucked… Which won’t be hard because I always will have been, won’t I? Have you coming home on your lunch hour, won’t I, Xan?”
“God yeah,” Xander pants as Spike’s thigh slides up and down against his hard, hard cock.
“You’ll hurry home, practically running all the lights and you’ll open the door and there I’ll be, posed just perfect for you, waiting—sexy and hard, reading and willing—always so ready, always so willing. And you’ll be on me before I can even say hello. You’ll be ripping at my jeans, and maybe you’ll tear them, but I won’t mind because they’re yours, just like I’m yours, yours for the taking. And when your fingers find their way inside, they’ll slide in smooth and easy because I’ll have slicked and stretched myself already because I know you haven’t got much time, know you’ll have to take me hard and fast and I won’t mind a bit…”
Somewhere way, way in the back of his mind, Xander seems to recall that they were in the middle of a serious conversation, but it’s hard to remember what about exactly. He also vaguely recalls that getting turned on by the idea of Spike as his whore, his rent-boy, is dirty, bad and wrong, wrong, wrong, but it’s hard to remember why exactly. So he figures he’ll think about these things later and reaches for the lube because Spike isn’t prepared right now, but he will be in a few seconds, and then Xander’s going to take Spike hard and fast and Spike isn’t going to mind a bit.
Part Thirty-Two
“I don’t want to be that guy again.”
“Hmm?” Spike wakes up to the words and tries to process.
“I didn’t even think I could be that guy again, you know?”
“Hmm?” Spike opens one eye, slowly turns his head without lifting it from the pillow and looks for dopey, boneless, contented-smile, well-fucked Xander, but finds serious, tense, worried-frown, in-no-mood-to-fuck Xander lying next to him instead. Damn. And it seems Xander is trying to talk to him.
“But apparently I can be him again. In fact, it’s like I can’t not be him, not even if I try. Not here. Not with them.”
“Hmm?” Spike just isn’t following. Doesn’t Xander know that you don’t try to engage a vampire in deep conversation just after sunrise? Especially when you’ve spent most of the night fucking said vampire through the sheets. Spike’s trying—he really is—but he needs a recap. And maybe some adjectives. Fewer that guys and hims. Or context. Context might help.
“I mean, it’s like I’m standing there and I go on autopilot or something and I can, like, watch and hear myself from outside and I want myself to stop, to just shut up, but I don’t, I just keep going and going like the fucking Energizer bunny.”
“Bunny?” Or maybe diagrams. Or a Power Point presentation. Yes, that might help—slides and bullet points and one of those laser pointer thingies.
“I just… I wanna make a decision this time. Like, really make it. I don’t want to just let things happen. I don’t want to just slip back into old habits, following the path of least resistance, you know? I want to be in control of my own life. And maybe just think about myself for a change. Or maybe just you and myself. ’Cause I like you. But no one else. I mean, don’t you think it’s about time?”
And Spike gets that the question is important, but has no idea how to answer it.
“Xander—sweetheart, darling, second love of my unlife—I like you, too. And I’m trying my best, but I just woke up and I have no idea what the bloody hell you’re talking about.”
Xander takes a deep breath and then just cuts to the chase. “I want to leave here, Spike. I wanna go home.”
And no matter what preceded them, those words are clear enough. And it’s just like the song that stupid Little Peggy March bint used to sing—though he’d gladly have drained every DJ in America back in 1963 just to keep them from playing that infernal thing one more time—I love him, I love him, I love him and where he goes I’ll follow, I’ll follow, I’ll follow… Maybe the bint had a point after all….
Spike nods, finds Xander’s fingers and twines them with his own, squeezes. “Okay, luv. When do we leave?”
Xander doesn’t know why he asked Buffy to coffee. It’s like a bad breakup or something—like he wants to do it somewhere where she can’t make a scene. But that’s not it. Really, it’s that he suspects he wouldn’t be able to do it in the training room. Wouldn’t be able to look at Buffy being Buffy but only half a Buffy and go through with it. Wouldn’t be able to see her there—the way he had just a few days ago, going through the motions of being the original, accept-no-imitations Slayer, almost ten years after she should have died, really died, from saving the world so often, yet not even living in the world she had saved—without trying to be her white knight.
And Xander knows where trying to be Buffy’s white knight gets him. He has the scars—internal and external—to remind him. Besides, he gave that job up years ago—the pay was shit, the hours were long and it so often felt so thankless. Plus, he couldn’t ever get it right anyway.
So now he’s leaving again, but this time he’s going to say goodbye, which either means he’s getting braver or is more cowardly than ever. God, he can’t even tell. So he sits there, hands curled around his cup of coffee, letting the steam rise up to warm his face and wishing he’d asked Buffy to bar instead of a coffee shop because he’d much rather have his hands wrapped around a beer or three or maybe just a scotch, make that a double, because fuck, he really should have just disappeared again, taken Spike and run for the hills or the border because California has both and it’s nice and far away.
And then she walks in and she scans the room and their eyes meet and she smiles briefly but looks away quickly. And Xander doesn’t know why he thought it would be any easier here because punching a heavy bag, slaying a vamp, leading a battle charge or weaving her way between tables and artfully arranged couches in a Cleveland coffee shop, it’s all still Buffy.
And then there she is sliding into the chair across from him and looking at him and then looking down at her hands resting on the table and he’s glad because it’s easier to say it without the eye contact.
“Buffy, I’m leaving.”
Jesus, Harris, he thinks, you can’t even say ‘hello’ first? But he can’t, he really can’t and he didn’t and now he’s waiting, but there’s nothing—Buffy hasn’t even lifted her head. And he realizes he was expecting surprise or shock or even anger, but what he finally gets is a weak and weary whisper: “When?”
Xander sighs and he almost reaches across the table to touch her, but he can’t, just can’t.
“I don’t know. Maybe tonight. As soon as I can tell the others.”
She’s nodding slowly and still looking down, shiny blond hair a curtain around her face.
“Dawn and Willow won’t understand,” she says softly. And what the fuck is that supposed to mean, anyway?
“But you do?” Xander asks, because hell, is she gets it maybe she can explain it him.
“Maybe,” Buffy says and she glances up at him again and suddenly Xander notices the way her eyes slide across the patch and off his face, back down to her hands. The question slips out before Xander can stop it.
“You want me gone, don’t you?”
The slight pause before Buffy answers is answer enough as far as Xander is concerned.
“Of course not, Xander, I—”
“Damn it, Buffy, you can’t even stand to look at me.”
“That’s not true,” she says but she doesn’t look up to prove it.
“The hell it isn’t. You couldn’t look at me in the hospital and you can’t look at me now.”
“Xander, I—”
“I’m sorry, okay. I’m sorry I disappointed you. I’m sorry I let you down.”
And that finally makes Buffy’s head snap up. “What? What are you talking about?”
“Look, I know I was always a liability. I don’t even know why you took me down there that night.”
“I…” Buffy stops, shakes her head and tries again. “I took you down there because I was selfish. Because I didn’t want to go in without you. Because I needed you there.”
“And I let you down.”
“No, Xander, I let you down. I made you go in there and didn’t protect you. I failed. And that’s what I see every time I look at you. My failure.”
There’s a pause and tears are pooling in both of their eyes and when Buffy finally speaks again, Xander has to strain to hear.
“I can listen to your voice and you still make me smile. And I can look at you… from so many different angles… and it feels just like old times… like good times, if we ever really had those… but when I’m facing you like this, I…”
And Buffy is reaching out across the table, her hand slowly nearing the left side of his face, and then Xander can’t see the hand anymore until he feels the lightest touch of her fingertips there, at his temple, and he reaches up to cover her hand with his own, to hold it there.
“You saved the world, Buffy. No thanks to me.”
“Well, what the hell good was saving the world if I couldn’t save you?”
“It’s just an eye, Buffy.” The corner of Xander’s mouth lifts a little. “Fortunately, I happened to have a spare.”
The tears are streaming down Buffy’s face now and there’s half a laugh in the crying but she’s shaking her head.
“No, don’t do that. Don’t make me laugh. Don’t try to make me feel better. Don’t forgive me.”
Xander is crying, too, and he lifts his free hand, but he doesn’t reach up to wipe away his own tears, he reaches across the table to wipe away Buffy’s. And he opens his mouth and the truth comes out.
“I didn’t. I never forgave you. Not really. But I think maybe it’s time.”
There’s another pause, like Buffy can’t believe what he’s saying and Xander struggles for the words to make her understand, but then he realizes that they’re actually very simple.
“Because I’m happy, Buffy. I really am. And I know it sounds crazy, but if this is the way everything had to happen so I could be here now, then… well, I’m not sure I’d choose to go through it all again, but I just think maybe… maybe it’s a waste of time to regret anything, you know?”
A small laugh—a brief, humorless huff of air—escapes from Buffy’s chest and then she sniffles. “God, Xander, I regret so much…”
Xander hands Buffy a napkin and she wipes her eyes and nose.
“So maybe it’s time you let some of that go. Starting with me, okay?”
“But I—”
“Okay?” Xander asks again, in a tone that brooks no argument.
“Okay… but it might take a little time.”
“You’re—we’re both allowed a little time.” Xander takes another deep breath. “And I hope someday you can forgive me, too.”
“Xander, there’s nothing to—”
“There is, okay? So just think about it. And we can talk later. When I’m back in California.”
Buffy sniffles again and nods. “I’d like that.”
So they leave the coffee shop together and stand next Buffy’s car, just staring at each other for a long second. Then they both move at once and they’re hugging like they’re trying to squeeze the life out of each other, or maybe each just wants to imprint the other on his or her body, to create a physical connection that will last after they part. And they do part, finally, and Xander watches Buffy drive away until she's out of sight and longer before slowly walking to his own car and heading back to the hotel to pack.
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Index
