Modus VivendiBy Wiseacress
Chapter Sixteen
The Jag didn't belong to Spike. Neither did the television, the stereo, the computers, the building itself. There was money in various accounts, various banks, and after several days of trying to track it all down Angel hired an accountant and still they probably didn't get it all. Later he told Xander they'd found records for four safety deposit boxes, and there were probably more of those too.
The Jag went to the police. The hardware went with it; the serial numbers were gone, there was no telling where it had come from in the first place. The agony print on the wall turned out to be part of a sixteenth-century Italian anatomical chart, razored from a medical library on the East Coast. Angel sent it back. The gooseneck lamp, the cot, the rice-paper partition—Xander never found out about those.
In the end, almost nothing in the warehouse had ever actually been Spike's. A few clothes, a Zippo lighter, some papers and photographs that Angel brought back in a bundle the second day and locked in a drawer in his office. The DeSoto. He gave Spike a night to get it running and out of the garage, before he broke the lease on the building.
He said the car was gone when he went back the next day to finish clearing out the loft. He said Spike would probably come by the hotel for his things sometime. He didn’t say when.
Xander spent two nights at the Hyperion, in the same room he'd slept in before, with his bloody clothes and the bloody sling still balled up in one corner of the bathroom. Angel lent him a new shirt, a clean pair of trousers. The dirty ones disappeared, Xander didn't know where.
He slept fourteen hours straight, woke up to use the bathroom, and went straight back down for seven more hours. When he finally woke up again it was almost midweek, and he was starving. Angel ordered a pizza.
It made sense for him to stay a few more days, until his legs were a little better and his head was a little saner, but he fell asleep in the bath and dreamed that Liv was sitting on the bed outside, a gun in her hand, waiting for him. That was it, he had to leave. There was no blood on the lobby floor anymore—Angel had taken care of it while Xander was sitting silently in his office, the door closed—but he didn't like going down there. One of the bullets had taken a chunk out of the doorframe to the hall. He didn't want to notice anything else.
He asked Angel for a newspaper, and started calling numbers. He had some money in the bank, he had some room on his Visa. It was almost too easy. He got a bachelor suite on the edge of Little Korea for just a bit more than he could afford, did the paperwork over Angel's fax machine, and found an old checkbook in the Nova's glove compartment. Angel dropped the check off for him.
He had his duffel back, and his wallet. Spike hadn't touched the cards. He even had the Timex. Spike had been wearing it the whole time; the band was bloody, and the face was cracked. When Angel gave it to him, Xander sat for a long time just staring at it, trying to tell whether it was really his or not. In the end he decided it didn't matter, and threw it away.
As it turned out, he didn’t have to see Cordy or Wes at all—he was gone before they came back to work. Angel never mentioned what he was going to tell them. Maybe nothing. Not a big talker, Angel. Especially not in the brief intervals Xander saw him in the hotel—he was like a ghost, wafting in and out and haunting the lobby, staring for long spells at the clean floor or the little chip in the doorframe. Xander asked him why Spike had given her the tattoos in the first place, and he shook his head vaguely and said it was ego. Then he shrugged and said maybe insurance. Xander nodded as if he understood. He still hadn't told Angel about the blood bags in Spike’s fridge. He couldn’t decide whether it would help Angel to know that, or whether it would just make things worse. In the end, he let inertia take over, and said nothing.
He left early in the morning, while the air was just starting to warm up, while it still smelled a little bit pure. As he was heaving the duffel into the Nova's back seat, he saw something jammed into the crack between the seat and the back, and fished it out with one finger. It was Buffy's key ring, the one from the Sunnydale Amoco, with the mace canister attached. He had no idea how it had got there.
He looked at it in the palm of his hand and felt absurdly like bursting into tears. But he was standing on the sidewalk outside Angel's hotel, and Angel was probably inside watching to make sure he didn't drive into a lamp post or anything, and there were the neighbors to consider. He put the key ring in his pocket, closed the door, and limped around to the driver's door. There was plenty of time to burst into tears in his own apartment, or in the unemployment line, or in the loans office at the bank.
He didn't ask what Angel did with her body. He didn't ask whether he was going to track down Bony Nose, or the caedo, or even Spike. He didn't want to know.
He got into the Nova, put his seat belt on, and drove.
To his own surprise, he got work again. He went to see Randall, the foreman, while he was still limping, while he still had the bruises and the spiderwalk of stitches in his face, and that probably helped his cause. He said he'd been mugged, and Randall launched into a long story about his own mugging in San Antonio, and how he'd used karate to disarm the guy, and how when the police came they said if more people were like him, muggers would be out of work. They were sitting in Randall's tiny office in the portable on the site, and there was a nail gun on the corner of Randall's desk. Xander smiled and nodded and said Man, that's amazing, and imagined picking up the nail gun and firing it directly into Randall's forehead.
Later, he remembered the vicious glee he'd felt at the thought, and felt sick.
He took a couple more days to heal up, then went back. The guys were good about it; he was slow but they put up with him. About once a day Randall would stop by and tell them all about the San Antonio mugging again, and they would stop work to listen, encouraging him with nods and comments, drawing it out as long as possible and flashing Xander grateful grins on the sly. Xander took the breaks sitting down; he was weak and he got winded fast. Once, on his second day, another guy reached out and grabbed him just as he was about to take a header off the fourth storey.
"Careful," the guy said. He was new, his name started with a T but Xander couldn't remember what it was. He had curly white-blonde hair and a new guy's patchy sunburn, and his eyes were very blue. Staring at him, Xander had a second of vertigo.
Then he recovered, said thanks, and went back to the wiring. He tried to keep away from the edges of things for a few days after that.
He couldn't sleep. Nytol didn't work, and he didn’t have a doctor in LA, so he went to a drugstore and got a bottle of melatonin. It knocked him out and he slept like a rock for three nights running--like turning off the television, a dead screen, nothing.
On the fourth night, he started to have dreams. The pharmacist had told him it might happen, so he was ready for it. He thought he was ready for it.
He dreamed he was feeding Liv toast soaked in blood. He dreamed he was tied to a chair and Spike had a gun to his head. He dreamed he was crouched on the floor of his apartment, holding Liv's head up out of a pool of gore, while she stared at the ceiling and described what it was like to die--cold, light, terror.
He dreamed he was in the bed he'd slept in at the hotel, and Spike was lying on top of him, feeding from his neck while Angel watched. When he woke up from that dream, he had an erection.
He threw the rest of the melatonin away, and didn't sleep.
The girls came for a visit on a Sunday afternoon in September--they had some grand plan for a fall picnic and when they arrived he saw they weren't kidding; they had a wicker basket, a gingham blanket, the works. His apartment faced the street, and he saw them toting it all up the sidewalk from where they'd parked Joyce's Jeep. Buffy was laughing and Willow and Tara had some kind of identical braid thing going on with their hair, probably very hip but they looked like Klingons and he was so happy to see them, all of them, it was like a balloon was being inflated in his throat. It hurt, but he felt lighter.
He went down to let them in, and they were all grins up the steps, and then they saw him standing there and looked poleaxed.
"Xander," Buffy said. "Oh my God, are you all right?"
He stood holding the door open, a smile dying on his face, wondering what the hell she meant. "Fine," he said. "I'm fine, how are you guys?"
"Fine," Willow said automatically. She was staring at him like he had a dead puppy in his arms.
The bruises were gone, and the stitches were all out, but he still had the red marks where they'd been. He'd lost weight. He hadn't been sleeping. Maybe he looked a little rougher than he'd thought. Hard to say—he never really looked at himself except to shave, and he did that as fast as he could.
"I took a fall at work," he said. "It's no big deal, I'm fine, I didn't want to freak you out."
"Oh, Xander—" Willow came up the steps and put the basket down, reached up and touched his shoulder. He swallowed and smiled.
"I'm really glad to see you guys," he said, and he'd never meant anything more in his life.
Willow hugged him, and he stood there like an idiot for a second, still holding the door, then propped it with one foot and hugged her back as hard as he could. Another pair of arms came out of nowhere, and Buffy was hugging both of them. Then Tara piled on too.
He stood there in the middle of them, his face pressed into Willow's hair, Buffy's hand on the back of his neck. A car went by in the street and honked its horn; a man shouted something lewd. None of them moved.
By late October the work had started to slow down; there was a run of storms, and then there was a problem with the drywall suppliers, and then with the bank. He had some time off.
At first he tried to sleep it away. He wasn't dreaming as much now, he could lie down and start to drift and not feel that awful falling sensation at the edge of sleep, the loss and fear that made him scrabble for consciousness with a leaping heart. He needed to sleep. But he could only do it for so long, and then he would float back to the world and find himself lying on the mattress in the corner of the apartment, staring at the ceiling while rain beat at the windows.
He knew that he had to keep busy, though he didn't stop to think about why. He needed something to keep his mind from turning on itself. He didn't have a television, and he couldn't concentrate long enough to read. He went to movies, sometimes two a day. Soon he was seeing the same movies over, because he'd seen everything that was playing. He started walking.
L.A. wasn't a walking town, but he did it anyway, through Little Tokyo and Chinatown, up and down Olvera Street in the Pueblo. He walked past Grauman's Chinese Theater and glanced at the tiles without much interest, past Spago and Delmonico’s and Planet Hollywood, and it was really all the same. It didn't matter what he was seeing; the important thing was to keep moving and not think. He would have walked to Santa Barbara if he could have. He would have walked to Modesto.
He walked through rain and hail and wind, through some of the shittiest weather southern California had to offer, and when he got home at five or six o'clock it was always dark already, and he was soaking wet and cold, and his knees hurt. He'd take a couple of aspirin and get into a bath, and hope that there would be work tomorrow, so he wouldn't have to walk again, or think.
After a while, he started stopping in at bars on his way home. He'd have a couple of beers, watch a little hockey or basketball, then head home to the aspirin and the bath.
The night before Halloween, Randall left a message on his machine saying there'd been another holdup with the bank, and not to expect work for at least a week. Xander sat on his mattress and listened to the message dumbly, then played it again with a feeling of dull panic. A week, at least. He had a full week stretching out in front of him, and nothing to fill it up.
He didn't sleep much that night, and the next day he went to two matinees, then started walking. Around six o'clock it started to rain, and a wind came up and blew cold water down his collar. He started looking for somewhere to stop in for a drink.
He had an odd feeling he was in a familiar neighborhood, though he couldn't think why—and then he came around a corner and found himself across the street from The Summer Place. The "u" had burnt out of the sign, and there was a paper jack o’lantern in one window, a folding skeleton blowing in the wind on the door. It was still an ugly little dive. Staring at it, he felt weirdly sad, as if it were somewhere he'd spent many good years.
He shook the feeling off and crossed the street, heaved the door open and stepped inside. It smelled smoky and fuggy, and there was a hockey game on the television, loud as fuck. A couple of old guys were sitting at a table in the back with a chess board in front of them. Black and orange crepe paper hung in a limp twist across the room. Rosie was behind the bar. He smiled at her, and she looked at him but stopped just short of smiling back.
"Hello," she said, and that was it. No 'love,' no real smile. She didn't remember him. He shook rain off his coat and walked over to sit at the bar.
"Canadian Club, please." There was a paper witch taped to the bar—pointed hat, green face, wart. Willow would be so pissed.
Rosie set him up and swiped around his elbows, and he sipped and watched the game. She didn't ask him where he lived; maybe she wasn't feeling so talkative tonight. He wiped rain off his face with a cocktail napkin. His hair was soaked, and water was running down his neck.
The game went to ads and he finished the Club, slid the empty glass forward on the mat and said, "Again, please." Rosie set him up again without speaking, and went away to the other end of the bar to clean glasses. He turned back to the television, feeling strangely crushed.
Then he caught movement to his right and looked that way. It was him, reflected in the bar mirror. There were weals on his jaw and forehead where the stitches had come out. His hair was too long, plastered to his skull and neck. He'd been meaning to cut it for weeks. He was wearing a crapped-out T-shirt with a torn neck and a flannel overtop, one with paint and plaster on the tails. Mostly, though, it was the look on his face. He looked burnt out, jacked up, desperate. He looked like bad news.
No wonder she didn't call him 'love.'
He looked away, finished the Club and pushed the glass forward, and she came and poured him another. He kept his hands off the bar while she was there, because they were rough-looking hands.
She trusted him enough to let him run a tab, at least. He watched hockey and let the blare surround him, and after a while a few other people came in and sat down, shaking off the rain and bitching, and it felt a little better. More normal.
He slowed down on the Club, and was just finishing the glass when someone came in and sat down at the end of the bar, several stools away. Xander finished the Club, pushed the glass forward, and glanced over, one finger spinning a beer mat.
The guy at the end of the bar was Spike.
Xander sat looking at him, still spinning the beer mat, and didn't think anything. After a moment he looked away, back to the television, but couldn't process what he was seeing. He looked back at Spike.
He was wearing his old beat-up coat, and his hair was soaked to his skull, and he looked thin. He'd put a few dollars on the bar, and Rosie was giving him a beer. He said something and she smiled thinly and turned away to the cash register. Spike drank some of the beer, put it down, and ran his hand over his head to press some of the water out.
That wasn't right; he ought to look up, look around and see who was in the place. It was what you did. He was sitting with his hands on the bar in front of him, playing with a beer mat, not looking up. Xander looked away again, then back.
Spike must know he was there; he must have seen him as soon as he'd walked in. There weren't more than ten people in the whole place, and Xander was right in front of him. Why wasn't he looking up?
Xander looked back at the television for a while without seeing it, then got up, picked up his glass, and walked down to the end of the bar. He sat down on the stool beside Spike's.
Spike didn't look up, just kept playing with the beer mat. Xander watched the hockey for a while. There was a goal, a fight, a couple of lousy passes.
At last Spike sniffed, tossed the beer mat onto the bar, and said, "Fucking gale out there."
Xander stared at the screen and nodded. The weather; they were discussing the weather. All right. "Yeah." After a minute he turned and said, "This is a holiday for you, right?"
Spike looked at him, frowning. He had the faint remains of a black eye, Xander noticed. "What?"
"Halloween. You guys take the night off, right?" He nodded at the paper witch.
Spike gave a small half-laugh. "Right. Yeah, s'pose we do."
"Sucky weather for it."
Spike lifted his beer in a cynical toast, and drank. Then he went back to playing with the beer mat.
Xander watched him for a second, then caught Rosie's eye and pushed his glass forward again. She came over, looked at him and then at Spike, and took his glass without a word. In a minute he had another one, full, and she was back at the far end of the bar.
"Lovely lady," Spike said, without looking up.
"She was a lot nicer last time," Xander said. It was weird to mention the last time he'd been here, because it was the night it had all started. It was the closest he'd come to talking about any of it in months.
Spike glanced up at the television, frowned, and looked away.
"Not a hockey fan?" Xander asked, starting on his drink.
"Fuck no."
"That's too bad."
He watched the game for a while, spinning his glass slowly on the bar, and wondering what he was supposed to be feeling. Anger, probably. Disgust. Panic. He didn't feel any of that. He didn't feel much of anything, except a mild astonishment at the coincidence that had landed him in the same bar as Spike on a miserable Halloween night.
"What happened to your eye?" he asked after a while, when the game went to commercials again.
Spike gave him a quick sharp sideways look, then glanced away. "Fell down an elevator shaft."
The phrase rang a faint bell, and he remembered Spike standing in the loft with the bruises on his face. "Angel did it?"
Spike shook his head. "Nah. Did it to myself."
Xander stared at him a moment, wondering if he was supposed to understand something from that. He didn’t. He looked back at the game.
Spike half-turned on his stool and looked around the bar, at the handful of wet sloppy people at the tables behind them. He'd hardly touched his beer, Xander noticed.
"What a pesthole," Spike said, and something about his voice made it seem as if he weren't just talking about the bar. He sounded tired. Exhausted.
"You ever meet up with that guy?" Xander asked, without looking away from the game.
"What guy?"
"That guy she went to talk to. The chip doctor."
There was a pause, and then Spike said, "I don't know what you're talking about." He said it slowly and distinctly, as if he were reading unfamiliar words from a page.
Xander sipped his drink and watched the screen.
"No," Spike said after a minute, and ran his hands over his face.
"Then you'd better not call it a pesthole where people can hear you. On account of they might take it personally, and kick your ass."
Spike lifted his beer and stared at the light through it. "I'll take that under consideration," he said.
The game flipped over into commercials again, and Xander watched them, drinking. When he was halfway through the glass he said, "Why did you make me put my hand on her face?"
There was a pause. "You couldn't hold her hand," Spike said. "They were tied."
Right. Xander watched the screen, but it was getting blurry and his throat hurt. He swallowed and wiped his palms on his trousers.
"So…what was it for?" He was still staring at the television, but he saw Spike shift in the corner of his eye.
"What was what for?"
"The tattoos, the copying the…caedo. Why did you do that?" His voice was quiet and rough, and he was having trouble keeping it from breaking. Stupid.
Spike didn't answer for a minute. He'd picked up his beer, and he was examining it again. Then he put it down and pushed it away.
"Seemed like a good idea at the time," he said.
Xander stared at the screen, not seeing, breathing hard. His hands were wrapped around his knees. He was sweating.
After a moment Spike pushed his stool back and stood up. "I'll see you," he said, and paused, and Xander sat waiting to feel a hand on his shoulder or back. Just something. But he didn't, and after a moment Spike stepped away and walked out, and the door closed behind him.
Rosie glanced over, then came to collect Spike's bottle. "You okay, love?" she asked, looking at Xander.
"Yeah," he said. "I'm--I'm fine, thanks." It hit him that she’d called him love. Her face was softer now, and she was lingering, and he had a sudden clear premonition that she was going to tell him Spike was no good, a bad man, he was better off drinking alone. He couldn't stand it, and he yanked his wallet out, threw a twenty on the bar, and was gone.
It was raining diagonally, a cold smack in the face as soon as he opened the door. The skeleton had blown off its hook and lay in a wet mass in the doorway. He stepped over it and stood on the sidewalk, looking around.
For a minute he thought he was too late, and then he saw Spike's hair in the light of a streetlamp, half a block away to the left. He started to lope with the rain blowing down his back.
Spike heard him coming and turned while he was still ten feet off, his face annoyed and suspicious, then surprised. He stopped and stood still while Xander walked up to him.
"What're you--" Spike started to say. Xander leaned forward and kissed him.
Spike's mouth was cold, and his face was wet. He tasted familiar. Xander's heart was jerking in his throat and he leaned forward more, kissed harder, brought his hands up and grabbed hold of Spike's coat to pull him in and hold him still.
Spike tried to turn his face and Xander yanked him back around hard by his coat. Then Spike was twisting away, stumbling a little and wiping his mouth with his hand. He took a few steps back and stood eyeing Xander watchfully.
Xander wiped his own mouth, and noticed that his hand was shaking. He was on a sidewalk in the middle of L.A., and he'd just kissed a guy. Cars were driving by, there were people around. He'd just kissed Spike in the middle of the street.
"Holy shit," he said, and took a step back.
Some of the guardedness left Spike's face. He settled his shoulders in his coat and pursed his lips. Then he tipped his head sideways, pointing down the street. "Come on," he said, and started walking.
Xander stood where he was, watching Spike go. He was breathing hard, and his heart was beating too fast. He felt sick and hopeless and like he might really open up and start to cry, right there on the sidewalk.
But at the same time, there was a small coal of warmth in his stomach. Not happiness or hope, just warmth. It was better than nothing.
He started to walk after Spike.
The DeSoto was parked on the other side of the street; Spike ran through the traffic with his coat flapping, headlights flaring white off his hair, and Xander followed with his heart in his throat. A horn blared. He didn't die. Spike was already in the driver's seat, and Xander walked around to the passenger side, hesitated a second with his hand on the handle, then opened the door and got in.
The car smelled of cigarettes and leather and dust, and of Spike. It was dark, because the windows were sprayed. Amazing he didn't get pulled over for that. Rain drummed on the roof. That was a good sound. Of the many sounds in the world, that was one that was worth getting used to.
Spike was wiping rain off his face, squeezing it out of his hair. He leaned forward and peered out through the little bit of clear pane in front of the steering wheel. "Fucking stair-rods."
"What?"
"It's raining fucking stair-rods."
"What?"
Spike turned and looked at him, seemed to think for a minute, then said, "Cats and dogs."
"Oh. Yeah." Xander looked away, examined the door beside him, turned and glanced into the back seat. It was too dark to see anything back there. At least nothing was moving.
He looked back. Spike was still peering through the windshield at the rain. One hand was lightly touching the key in the ignition, but he wasn't turning it.
"Where are we going?" Xander asked. His heart was galloping in his chest; he felt like he’d run farther than just across the street. The car smelled like Spike, and it ought to be disturbing that he was breathing it in deeply, that it made him feel safer.
Spike didn't look away from the window. "Nowhere," he said after a minute. "Don't have a place right now."
"I do," Xander said, without letting himself think.
Spike didn't say anything. There was enough light coming through the glass to see the outlines of his face, and he looked drained. He tapped the ignition with his knuckles but didn't turn it.
"Listen," Xander said. Then he didn't say anything. After a minute Spike turned and looked at him, waiting for him to continue. Xander reached out, caught the wet edge of Spike's coat in his hand, and kissed him again.
He tried to be a little gentler this time, a little more in control. Spike hesitated, but he didn't pull away. His hand came up and touched Xander's jaw and neck. Xander could hear his own pulse in his ears, and the familiar taste was in his mouth. It was the taste of his life before any of this happened, the taste he'd had dreams about, and he was desperate for it.
They sat kissing, just kissing, for a long while. A few times Xander pushed his mouth hard against Spike's--hard enough to hurt, hard enough that maybe it wasn't a kiss anymore. Spike let him do it. Once Xander made a small noise in his throat, a needing kind of noise, and it didn't embarrass him but he didn't like it either, and he pulled away. Spike came after him at once, tugged him back and kissed him gently, and Xander touched his wet hair with shaking hands, and wondered if he felt the cold.
Some people walked past the car, laughing and talking, and they pulled away from each other automatically. Xander glanced at the window beside him; it was sprayed solid. He couldn’t sit still; he looked around at the back again, then looked up, reached a hand up, and touched the ceiling. A few flakes of vinyl or foam came down and got him in the face.
"I can't believe you dissed my car."
"Piece of shit, that."
"Yeah." He shifted his feet and kicked something in the footwell; by the rattle, a can of spray paint. "You going to actually drive this masterpiece, or am I walking home?"
Spike was silent for a moment. Then he moved—Xander heard his coat creak—and the engine rumbled to life. "Where d'you live, then?"
It took half an hour to get there, and Xander spent it flattened to the passenger side door. He'd never considered how awful it would be to ride in a car that had, essentially, no windows.
His panic seemed to perk Spike up. He drove casually, grinning and cornering sharply. "Hard to see with the rain like this," he said, letting the wheel go and patting at his pockets. The car swerved slightly and he caught the wheel with his knee to straighten it out.
"Spike--"
"It was raining like this the night I rolled that old Peugeot outside Albany. Well, maybe not this hard."
"Shut up, Spike."
He pulled his cigarettes from his pocket, hung one from his lip, and punched the dashboard coil.
"Second thought, it wasn't the Peugeot I rolled. It was the Valiant. The Peugeot I ran into a divider."
"Shut up."
He smiled and lit his cigarette, and squinted through the smoke.
At last Xander felt them nose into the curb and stop, and Spike peered sideways through the windshield and said, "Hovel sweet hovel." Xander sat up and felt for the door handle.
"Yeah, people without houses should shut the fuck up."
Spike didn't reply, and he hadn't turned the engine off. Xander looked around at him. Spike was just staring at him, and it was too dark to see his face. Xander let go of the door handle. "Too hovelish?" he asked, trying to make it a joke but feeling a weight drop into his belly.
Spike said nothing for a moment, then turned his head so he was staring into his lap. "Nah," he said. "Just—"
Xander waited.
"Nothing," Spike said, and cut the engine. He opened his door and got out, and after a minute Xander did the same.
The rain had died to a drizzle, and the air was cool and scrubbed. Somewhere up the street someone was letting off fireworks--screaming Catherine wheels and strings of crackers. The window below Xander's had a jack o'lantern in it.
He let them in and led the way up the stairs, sorting through his keys as he walked, and not thinking. There was no reason to think; this wasn't a thinking thing. It wasn't chess. It wasn't even checkers.
Still, he was glad his hallway wasn't as disgusting as the last one. He was glad he lived in a building where someone put a jack o'lantern out for Halloween.
He got to his door and stood sorting the keys some more. Spike stopped a couple of feet away, staring back down the hall, saying nothing. No help there. Xander looked back down at the keys in his hand, jingled them, then just opened the door and stepped inside.
"Come on in," he said, and shrugged off his coat.
Spike came in and looked around, and Xander closed the door behind him. He hung his coat on the doorknob and walked away to the kitchen. It struck him for the first time in a while that the apartment was tiny, and almost completely bare.
He drew a glass of water from the tap and stood leaning against the counter, drinking it, while Spike looked around. There wasn't much to see; just the mattress he slept on, his tools spread out on a dropcloth in one corner of the room, a pile of newspapers he hadn't read. He went and stared out the kitchen window, listening to Spike's footsteps.
They came back and stood in the door to the kitchen.
"Where's that bloody sofa?"
"Gone."
"Where's the telly?"
"Gone. It's all gone—I missed rent on the other place, my stuff got put out on the street." As he said it, he realized that in some small, petty way he'd wanted Spike to see this.
Spike paused, then said, "Well, that's a stroke of luck."
"Sure. I'm ready to embrace Buddhism now."
"You could buy a few sticks, you know."
"I will."
"Need a place to sit down and eat a proper meal, don't you?"
Xander stared out the window a second longer—the rain was a fine crosshatching in the orange halo of the streetlights—then turned. "Are you expressing concern for my well-being?" he asked.
Spike didn't say anything, and Xander smiled, put the water glass down on the windowsill, and walked across the kitchen toward him. It was only a few steps. Then they were kissing again, and he had the familiar taste back in his mouth, the familiar lips against his own, and he didn't want to open his eyes ever again.
He raised his hands, caught the wet cold collar of Spike’s coat, and started to pull it off. For a minute Spike didn’t help; then he gave a little sigh and shrugged it loose, and it was history. His T-shirt was damp too, and Xander used one hand to pull it up, then put his palm flat against Spike’s belly. Spike gave a little start, hesitated, then leaned forward into the touch. He was cold there. Cold everywhere. Warm hands must feel good.
Xander brought his other hand up and laid it against Spike’s cheek, and again Spike paused. This time he pulled away, stepped back, and stood looking at Xander in the darkness. Xander stayed where he was, breathing fast.
After a minute, he said, “What?”
Spike said nothing, just kept looking at him, and Xander stepped forward. Spike stepped back.
“What—why are you—?” Stopping, he meant to say, but was suddenly too embarrassed to say it. He’d assumed he could do this, assumed that all he had to do was say yes, and he could give up and let it happen, but maybe Spike didn’t want it after all. Maybe Spike only wanted it when Xander was kneecapped and drugged and helpless. Maybe that was his kink.
He took a deep breath and wiped his hands on his jeans, then realized his hair was dripping down his face. He pushed it back and wiped his hands again. The weight was back in his belly, and there was an awful edge to it now. Because if not this, what?
“Hey,” he said, smiling as well as he could. “No problem. I’m just—” He couldn’t think what to say next. His throat was tight, and he cleared it. “I’m just a little crazy right now. I didn’t mean to—” Again, he had to let it hang.
After a minute, Spike said, “To what?” His voice sounded strange.
Xander tried to see his face again, but it was too dark. “I don’t know. Nothing. Maybe you should—” Go. But he couldn’t make himself actually say that either, and so he just stood staring at the floor, rubbing the back of his neck where the rain had soaked his shirt.
There was a long silence, and his eyes were getting hot, his throat was tight and blocked again, and now he just wanted Spike out. If he couldn’t have this he had to be alone, had to try to think it through rationally, like an adult, or maybe just drink until it was funny. He coughed painfully and stepped back.
“You should go,” he said, starting to turn back to the door.
There was a quick step behind him, and a hand on his arm. He turned back and Spike’s other hand was on his throat, the thumb along his jaw, tipping his head. He was in the square of light from the streetlamp now; Xander could see his face. He looked furious.
There was an instant to be frightened; then Spike kissed him, and he leaned forward into it so hard he lost his balance, and felt Spike’s hand steady him. He knew his face was wet, knew he was breathing in messy gasps, knew he was trying to get control and failing for all the world to see. It didn’t matter. Spike held the base of his skull and ran his other hand up and down Xander’s side, a comfort or just a touch. His mouth was cool and gentle. He let Xander kiss him desperately, mindlessly, badly, and when Xander finally pulled away and stood wiping his face and shaking, half-laughing bitterly, he put his arms around Xander’s neck and pulled him back, then just stood holding him.
For a minute or two Xander put his face down and closed his eyes and could have been anywhere. There were arms around him and the pain in his chest and throat was easing. What did it matter, whose arms they were? Maybe it was even good, maybe it would be all right to open his eyes and really be there.
But as soon as he started to consider it, he felt strange and wrong and uncomfortable. Without thinking any more he pushed lightly at Spike’s shoulder and after a moment the arms fell away. He took a step back, wiped his face, and wondered if he was blushing. It was very quiet in the apartment.
“Sorry,” he said, staring at the floor. There was no answer, and he looked up. Spike was staring at him with the same furious look on his face, and Xander felt another quick instinctive kick of fear. He swallowed and straightened up. “What—”
Spike reached for him again, curved his hand around the back of Xander’s neck.
“What?” Xander said softly, resisting the pull. “What are you—what do you want?”
They stood looking at each other for a moment. Then Spike blinked and cleared his throat, and Xander realized with a shock that Spike needed this—this, something, whatever it was—as much as he did.
“Want—” Spike said, and didn’t finish. Xander stood looking at him a moment, then sighed and stepped deliberately forward, and kissed him lightly on the lips.
“Back up,” he said, and gave him a gentle push. For a moment Spike looked confused; then he glanced behind him and saw the mattress in the corner. He stood still a moment, then turned, walked over, and sat down on the edge of it, his arms resting on his knees.
Xander stayed where he was. This wasn’t what he’d expected. The look on Spike’s face just now—he wanted this. Wanted something. So then why was it all awkwardness and uncertainty, and Spike sitting staring at him from the shadows with a damped-down, tired expression?
He felt strangely guilty, and hated it. He’d thought Spike wanted this.
He stood there a moment longer, then walked over and sat on the edge of the mattress a couple of feet away from Spike. It was all getting too complicated, he didn’t know what any of it was supposed to mean, and he didn’t want any of it to mean anything.
“This was supposed to be a lot simpler,” he said, staring at his hands. Spike gave a quiet snort.
“Too right.”
“I thought—” He stopped and scratched at a healing cut on his knuckle. “I don’t know. You know it’s your fault, right? I mean, we’re agreed on that?”
Spike sighed and lay back on the mattress, his arms out. “Yeah,” he said. “That we are agreed on.”
Xander started to scratch a streak of paint off his thumbnail. There was a silence. Finally he said, “Do you want—” He paused, examined his nail, and tried again. “Do you want to bite me?”
Spike said nothing. There was a tap of rain at the window.
After a minute Spike raised himself onto one elbow and looked at him. Xander kept his head down, studying his thumb.
“Yeah,” Spike said. He sounded bored. “Sure, I’ll bite you.”
Xander looked up sharply. “Hey, don’t do me any favors,” he said. “I was just trying to—” He stopped.
“Why do you care what I want?” Spike asked.
Xander blinked and shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe I don’t.”
“Maybe you don’t,” Spike said tonelessly.
Xander shifted uncomfortably. “I don’t know,” he said again.
There was another brief silence, and then Spike sighed and said, “No. You don’t.” He sat up, then started to push himself to his feet.
Without thinking, Xander reached out and caught his wrist. Spike paused, and in the faint light from the window he looked haggard and unbearably tired.
“Stay a bit,” Xander said. “If you want.”
Spike hesitated, staring at him, and there was something of that same expression on his face. It looked hopeful. Painful. Xander put his hand out and touched Spike’s hair, and Spike closed his eyes.
“Stay a bit,” Xander said again, and pulled at Spike’s neck.
Spike leaned over and pushed his head into Xander’s shoulder, and Xander let himself fall back onto the mattress with Spike on top of him. It felt strange and quiet and neutral, like lying with someone he’d known all his life, someone he trusted. For a while he lay listening to the rain on the window, the muffled bangs of fireworks up the street.
Then Spike’s hand dropped onto his hip, the palm cupped over the bone, and Xander frowned slightly, turned his head, and found Spike’s mouth with his own. It was the easiest thing to do. Spike kissed back, took hold of his hip and rocked it back and forth very slightly. His face was cool and he tasted like himself. It was sad and maddening, it tasted like something already lost and gone, and Xander kissed harder. Spike made a slight sound in his throat, and Xander pushed him over onto his back and rolled on top of him. When he glanced down, he saw that Spike’s eyes were closed.
He hesitated a moment, studying Spike’s face. He did know what Spike wanted. Of course he did—he wasn’t an idiot. He’d known for months, since Angel had come to save the day or maybe even before then. He even knew, or thought he knew, that it wasn’t anything personal. If it had been somebody else walking out of The Summer Place that night, drunk and tallying pocket change, it would all have happened differently. Maybe the message would have been delivered. Somebody else might have remembered it in time.
But it hadn't been somebody else, it had been him, and Spike wanted him, and it was just that simple and hopeless. Spike was still lying under him with his eyes closed. Waiting, or pretending. All right. Everyone had to pretend, sometimes.
Xander lowered his head and kissed Spike lightly on the mouth, felt the cool lips part at once and tasted the good familiar taste. He lifted his hand and ran it gently down Spike’s cheek, remembering the trace of bruise around the eye, then let the palm rest on Spike’s throat. Spike tipped his chin up, and his hands ghosted over Xander’s back. His throat was white and unmarked, and for a moment Xander imagined biting down hard, drawing blood.
He kissed it instead, and Spike started sharply. Xander paused, then put his mouth to the cool skin and gnawed lightly. Spike made a shuddering sound and pushed his hips up, and his hands settled on the small of Xander’s back. His skin tasted good, more of the same. Xander kissed the notch of his jaw and Spike’s hands pulled him down, forced their hips together. They were both hard, and Xander swallowed and caught his breath and tried to make his heart slow down. Spike gave a little moan and tipped his head further back, baring his throat.
The sight made Xander’s cock jerk, but at the same time it was awful, wrong, perverse. Spike wanted to be bitten. When Xander’s mouth was on his neck, he pushed his cock up and groaned, and maybe it was understandable, maybe it was even forgivable, it was his nature after all, but there were all kinds of dirty and sometimes you got to choose. Xander stared a moment longer at the gleam of Spike’s throat in the darkness, then reached down and rubbed his fingers over Spike’s cock.
Spike jerked and pushed up hard, and Xander didn’t let himself think about it, just yanked the button of Spike’s jeans open and forced the zipper down. Then his hand was on Spike’s cock, cool and hard and awkward at first to get out of the fly, and Spike turned his head to one side, bared more neck, and murmured, Fuck.
Xander hesitated, then put one palm on Spike’s chest, just below his throat, and pushed down Spike’s body. He felt Spike tense, maybe start to say something, and closed his hand around Spike’s cock, down and up. Spike jerked again and then lay rigid, silent. Xander held still, his head on Spike’s thigh.
He expected to feel repulsed, ashamed, at least unwilling—but he didn’t. It was strange, stranger still because there was a foreskin and he hadn't considered that, but it wasn’t disgusting. When he touched the tip there was wetness, and that made his own cock ache. He ran his hand up and down, feeling how it was the same as his own, how it was different, and when Spike pushed his hips up and cursed under his breath, it was bizarre and heady to know that he’d felt that exact feeling before.
He didn’t know how to do it, didn’t expect to be any good at it, but that wasn’t the point. He pulled his hand down, bared the wet smooth tip, and took Spike’s cock in his mouth.
Spike made a thin noise in his throat and went still, and Xander pulled almost completely off, enough that he could taste as well as feel. It was how Spike tasted, but more intense somehow. It made his cock hurt. He closed his lips over the end and forced them down, thought of how he knew it felt, and ground himself into the mattress.
Spike’s hips were moving, and he was cursing in a constant monotone. One hand came down and touched Xander’s hair lightly, then his shoulder, then his hair again. Xander glanced up; Spike’s other arm was curled over his face, over his eyes.
He knew Spike was controlling himself, not pushing as hard as he wanted to, but still he caught the tremble in Spike’s legs, and knew what it meant. At the same moment, Spike’s hand came down and caught his shoulder. He pushed it away.
“Stop—” Spike said, grabbing him again. “Stop it, I’m—”
Xander knocked the hand away, closed his eyes, and used his teeth to lightly rake. Spike’s hand knotted in Xander’s shirt, and his thrusts turned suddenly short and hard. There was a moment of surreality, lust and panic together, and then cool wetness in his mouth, more than he’d though there would be, and some part of his mind noticed that Spike had been saying fuck fuck fuck and also love.
At last Spike stopped moving, and Xander wondered what the hell came next. He had to—well, swallow. He tried not to shudder as he did it. He tried not to be obvious when he wiped his mouth on the sheet.
Spike had taken his arm off his face, but he hadn't moved otherwise. And all of a sudden Xander was a little afraid to look him in the face. He didn’t want to see that look again, the one that said so clearly what Spike wanted, the one he’d been able to ignore so far. What he’d just done had nothing to do with that look, and they both knew it. It was why Spike had kept his face covered, and his eyes closed.
He couldn’t stay where he was, face down between Spike’s legs, so he sat up and faced away, and after a minute he felt the bed shift and heard Spike’s zipper close. It was raining harder; the window was a smear of black.
Spike sat up, and they were back where they’d started, almost, like some kind of perverse, intricate choreography. Except it felt different now.
After a couple of minutes, Spike ran his hand through his hair and cleared his throat. “Want me to get you a telly?”
Xander looked at him. “What?”
“Nothing.” But he looked embarrassed, defensive. He’d been serious. Of course he had. He looked away and ran his hand through his hair again.
He looked tired and skinny and miserable, and a part of Xander wanted to reach out and touch him, take hold of him and pull him in. He could taste that mouth again, smell that skin and hair, and there would be arms around him, a body against his own, bright untrustworthy eyes. He could be wanted. Needed.
He didn’t even have to do that much. He could just let Spike stay in the apartment for a while, just until he found his feet, it didn’t have to mean anything. It would be a humane and compassionate thing to do. He might do it for anyone.
He dropped his eyes and studied the faint trace of paint on his thumbnail.
“Nah,” he said. “I’ll get one myself. Thanks anyway.”
Spike sat silently for a moment, staring at the far corner of the room, then pushed abruptly to his feet. Xander stayed where he was while Spike walked to the center of the room and picked up his coat.
“Right,” Spike said, shouldering into it and patting the pockets absentmindedly. He should have looked Big Bad in it, but instead he just looked swamped. “Right, well. I’m off then.”
Xander said nothing. There was a sharp pain in his chest, and he wasn’t sure whether it was because he wanted Spike to leave or stay. He was suddenly disgusted with himself, and he shook his head without speaking.
Spike stood watching him silently, waiting, and Xander stared at the rain-streaked window and listened to the wind blow drops against the glass. The weather in California wasn’t supposed to be like this.
“Listen, love—” Spike said, and Xander jerked.
“Don’t call me that.”
He looked up in time to catch Spike’s flinch, and felt even sicker. “Sorry. I’m sorry.” He spread his hands as if they could speak for him.
Spike walked back over and crouched down in front of him. For a moment Xander was afraid Spike was going to take his hands, or kiss him, or try to comfort him in some other way, and he’d have to pull away because he couldn’t stand that right now. But Spike didn’t touch him.
“It wasn’t your fault,” he said firmly. “Any of it. You got that?”
Xander stared at the floor and nodded. He could feel Spike giving him a look, even if he couldn’t see it.
“You’re—what, twenty?”
It was such an odd question that he looked up and nodded automatically. Spike was regarding him without a trace of need or want; the bad eyebrow was up and he looked hard and skeptical and maybe a bit annoyed. “Right. Twenty years old, got your whole life ahead of you. Don’t be an idiot.”
Xander just stared at him. Spike sighed and started to enumerate on his fingers, as if giving instructions to a child.
“Buy some bloody furniture. Eat a proper meal. Take a fucking night class, meet some other tossers like yourself. And get a bloody girlfriend.”
That was a thumb and three fingers. Xander sat staring at Spike’s hand, a slight, involuntary smile on his lips. “What’s number five?” he asked.
Spike looked down at his hand, snorted, and raised it as if about to deliver a slap. “Number five’s a thick ear,” he said, but then he put his palm lightly against Xander’s cheek, leaned in, and kissed him.
It was fine. It was just a kiss, and when it ended Xander was still smiling slightly. Spike rocked back on his heels and regarded him.
“You’re going to be all right,” he said after a minute, and stood up.
Xander sat still and watched him cross the room and let himself out. He listened, but the rain was coming down too hard to let him hear the DeSoto’s engine start.
~Fin~
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