My fall_for_sx contribution.

I will warn that the ending is different than what you usually see from me. (The italicized line in this chapter comes from "Introduction to Metaphysics" by Henri Bergson.)

First, a couple of shout-outs:

Thanks to reremouse and crazydiamondsue for looking over early parts of this and offering encouragement.

Happy Birthday, ponders_life!

They Tell Me It Rained

by
Savoy Truffle

Part One

They meet on a Friday night, in an airport of all the unlikely places, striding down the concourse in opposite directions, that stream of strange and haggard faces that fills their fields of vision suddenly and unexpectedly giving way to a familiar and haggard face.

And there’s a moment—a definite moment on each side—when the strides pick up and they’re about to slip past and it’s all about to become one of those moments that crosses one’s mind at four a.m. when it’s too hot or too cold or too something to sleep and the low hum and flashing glow of the television are pulsing in the background. One of those moments one’s never sure actually happened.

The ground, with its wear-resistant blue patterned carpet, vanishes rapidly under two no-nonsense strides and it’s sixty feet, forty feet, twenty feet, five and their eyes have already fallen from each other’s faces to make the passing easier, but they’re still focused on each other in that way that causes navigational drift and in the end they walk right into each other.

They pull back and there are hands on arms steadying and holding too long and there it is, between two skins—warm and cool. And maybe it was always there—underneath the skin, quivering and shivering and waiting for a moment that never came.

There should be questions at this point. Questions like: what is a vampire doing in an airport, even if it’s well after dark? Questions like: what brings Xander to LA and how long does he plan to stay?

But they don’t care. It’s the moment.


The passenger traffic continues around them, like a river’s currents around two bits of debris lodged in the gravel of the river bed.

“Heard you were alive again. Or, you know, undead.”

“Haven’t heard a thing about you.”

It’s a Spike thing to say, though it happens to be untrue. He has heard a few things about Xander over the years. Things like Africa and marriage and daughter, but he doesn’t remember the details. Or maybe he never knew them in the first place.

a continual winding, like that of a thread into a ball, for our past follows us, becoming larger and larger with the present it picks up on its way

“I have some time,” Xander says.

Spike nods. “I have a place.”

Part Two

They don’t waste any time. Xander doesn’t tell Spike he has a nice place. Spike doesn’t offer Xander a glass of water or a beer. Xander heads straight for the bedroom, his duffel bag falling from his shoulder on the way. Spike locks the front door and follows.

The second Spike enters the bedroom, he’s pressed against the wall, a hand at his crotch and a mouth at his throat. He tilts his head back, pulling in air and pushing it out through his lips.

There’s no kissing, no talking, no undressing really. Pieces of clothing are torn away, crumbled and discarded like wads of cellophane or scraps of tinfoil. Without care. Without deliberation.

Arousal comes quickly, fueled by inelegant gropings and the incidental friction of skin against skin.

Spike’s been here before, this kind of thing—a no-frills, no-gimmicks fuck. Quick and dirty. Short and to the point. He’s been here more times than he’s ever cared to count and it’s clear that Xander has, too, and that’s the surprise.

This isn’t the boy—or the young man—he knew forever ago, if he ever knew that boy-man at all.

But it’s just as well. This isn’t the kind of thing you do with someone you know. This is a ritual between strangers. And Xander’s clearly no stranger to the ritual. He knows the rules. And he’s driving.

At first Spike isn’t sure how Xander likes it—wonders about it on the way home, even up against the wall—but the fingers that press into his ass as he falls onto the sheets, covered in hot, hard weight, declare the matter settled and Spike’s old enough not to have things to prove.

At least not in bed.

He’s flexible—and not just in the way that allows his knees to hook over Xander’s shoulders as Xander pounds him into the mattress.

Part Three

It’s over quickly for both of them. Not embarrassing quickly, just quickly, and they collapse together on the dampened sheets, side by side, not intertwined, though there are a few points of casual contact, which tingle and burn like poison ivy, the urge to scratch building into lust.

They take the lust to the shower, and scratch and claw at each other as they fuck, leaving marks that sting under the hot spray and lather, sting like the press of cock into ass—hurting in the way that tells you you’re still alive, or at least alive enough.

Xander comes in Spike and Spike comes on the shower wall and some soap gets bandied about and the water washes it all down the drain in a long continuous swirl that reminds you that nothing lasts forever.

Not even immortality—though Spike does seem to have something like nine unlives and it’s not even clear which one he’s on. In any case, he’s well preserved and has stamina to die for—or die from, or so it’s been said.

Spike steps out of the shower first and towels off so thoroughly that they’re both half hard again by the time he finishes.

Xander, it seems, is also well preserved.

But Xander doesn’t leave the shower and Spike doesn’t go back in. Spike drops the towel and picks up a pack of cigarettes that’s sitting on the bathroom counter—he’s got one or more packs stashed in each room of the apartment, it’s easier that way—and strolls out through the bedroom to the balcony perfectly naked, emphasis on the perfect.

When he comes back in, the sexed sheets are lying in a pile on the floor and Xander is making the bed with fresh ones, which sort of amazes Spike since Spike doesn’t even know where he keeps his spare sheets, though apparently he has some. He’s had a cleaning service since he moved into this apartment—something Angel set up that keeps him in fresh sheets, fresh blood, fresh booze and blackout curtains. Self-sufficiency is overrated.

He supposes Harris is going to stay, doubts Harris would care that much about Spike not sleeping in the wet spot.

“You always give your neighbors a free midnight showing?” Xander asks.

Spike shrugs. “I like to smoke naked.”

Which is strange, but true.

Xander doesn’t seem to care. The second the last sheet corner is tucked, he hits the bed, face first, showing Spike a broad canvas of back—dark and firm and smooth between scars, peppered with scratch marks.

Spike glances down at his own fingernails and lies down on the other side of the bed, on his back. He reaches for the pack on the nightstand, has another cigarette. He doesn’t look at Xander. They’re not touching.

Until sometime before dawn when Spike wakes to find Xander curled into his side, left arm flung across Spike’s chest. Spike looks down at the rough and heavy hand resting near his shoulder, at the band of untanned flesh around the ring finger. The outline is sharp, not faded. He traces it with his eyes.

Part Four

An unfamiliar but persistent and electronic sound wakes Spike an hour or two after dawn. It’s soft and a bit distant, and Spike might not have noticed it without vampire hearing, but Xander stirs and starts groping the nightstand. Spike spares a moment of jealousy for the nightstand before he realizes the damned sound must be Xander’s cell phone. He kicks Xander toward the edge of the bed.

“Left your kit in the living room, wanker,” Spike mutters, watches through hooded eyes as Xander fumbles for wakefulness and stumbles out of the bedroom.

The sound of a zipper and some rustling and then:

“Hello?”

Spike closes his eyes, but keeps his ears open—curiosity kills cats, not vampires.

“Hey, baby.” There’s a warmth in Xander’s voice that Spike had forgotten—or maybe it’s a warmth Spike never heard. “How are you?”

Warmth and a sort of slow, measured cheerfulness.

“I miss you, too, baby. But I’ll be home soon—promise.”

Each word is over-enunciated and over-performed and they slice across Spike’s nerves like a Girl Scout troop on ice skates.

“That sounds good. What else are you going to do while you’re waiting for me?”

Spike flashes on an image of a coiffed and busty blond, frowning at words longer than two syllables as she reclines on a chaise lounge and paints her nails while awaiting dear Xander’s return—a growl rumbles in his chest.

“Ooh, coloring sounds fun…. I know you have new crayons. That’s gonna make it extra fun, huh?”

And just like that the image dissolves and the growl dissolves along with it, leaving Spike’s chest still and empty.

“You can show them to me when I get home, okay? … Good…. Daddy loves you, too…. Uh huh. Put Mommy on now, okay?”

There’s a pause and Spike hears Xander draw a deep breath, release it.

A second later: “Hey, honey. How are you doing?” And the tone jolts Spike, not because it’s changed… but because it hasn’t. “Is everything going okay?”

Quiet again as Xander listens for the response Spike isn’t close enough to overhear.

“Good. That’s good,” Xander says—firm, affirming, stroking, soothing. “Okay…. Yeah…. Okay…. Yes…. Call me anytime if you need anything, okay…”

Spike half expects Xander to tell his wife to have fun coloring with her new crayons and to save the picture to show him when he gets back.

“Okay, bye.”

Spike hears the phone click shut and then nothing, as if Xander is standing there staring at the disconnected phone in his hand. Almost sixty seconds later, bare feet pad their way back toward the bedroom. Spike looks up as Xander’s face appears in the doorway.

Their eyes meet and hold.

Xander knows that Spike heard and Spike knows that Xander knows that Spike heard and Spike’s not sure what he was expecting, but it must have been something like half-coherent explanations and babbled excuses accompanied by flailing arms and hapless grins—the kinds of things Harris used to be known for.

Because whatever he was expecting, it wasn’t silence.

Or stillness.

Spike breaks the gaze, shifts his eyes to the nightstand, reaches for his cigarettes. “There’s a restaurant downstairs,” he says. “Not half bad. Could order up breakfast. Number’s by the phone.”

Xander continues staring for a moment, nods, wanders out to the kitchen without a word.

It occurs to Spike that to truly be silent, you have to have something to say.

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