Modus VivendiBy Wiseacress
Chapter Seven
Chinese again, and maybe that meant they were near Chinatown, but somehow he doubted it. Whatever, he polished it off and did his Oliver Twist routine, and this time it got him a second helping. He polished that off, too.
Then he sat in the chair with his trousers down again, while Liv changed the dressing on his knee. The bruises didn’t look quite as bad this time. Maybe he was just getting used to them.
Spike had changed into a different shirt, one that wasn’t soaked in blood, and he lay on the couch watching television with the sound turned off. Well, not watching, precisely. His eyes were glassy and sunken, and frankly closed a lot of the time. His mouth was tight.
Neither he nor Liv had said more than ten words since Xander had come out of the bathroom.
Liv taped the gauze around Xander’s knee and carried the tackle box back to the kitchen. When she came back she had his antibiotics in one hand, and a glass of tomato juice in the other.
No. Not tomato juice. He hadn’t spent twenty years on the Hellmouth for nothing. She put it on the table in front of Spike, and he opened his eyes.
“Fuck, take that away,” he said, looking revolted.
She paused, then picked it up and made it disappear. Xander swallowed his pills and stared at the little red half-moon the glass had left behind on the tabletop.
Funny, he hadn’t thought about it yet, but what exactly was Spike eating these days? It was possible that he was sticking to the Slayer-approved pig’s blood diet. Possible, yeah.
Sure.
Thinking about that would have made him jumpy if he hadn’t been riding the best part of the Demerol high. He was floating an inch above the chair, everything coming in smooth warm waves. The scene in the bathroom seemed almost funny now.
Almost.
The silence was starting to get to him.
“So, what do you guys do for kicks, anyway?”
Liv had her back turned, and Spike didn’t open his eyes. Neither said anything.
“Wanna play wink murder?”
Spike opened one eye and stared at him.
“Yeah, shutting up.”
Spike closed his eye.
Xander turned to face the television. There was something entrancing about the images without sound, and before he knew it he was caught up. Commercials for SUVs, for toothpaste, for life insurance. Somewhere out there, people were leading lives in which these things were important. In which they were everything.
Funny, how none of the Scoobies had ever thought to take out life insurance.
The commercials ended and a program came on, something with a man and a woman talking in a bedroom. He didn’t recognize it. He watched dully for a minute or two, and then the camera angle changed and there was a lamp in the background, the same lamp he’d had in his apartment in Sunnydale. Anya had ordered it from a catalogue.
And suddenly, bizarrely, he was jolted by a full sensory memory of Anya. Her smell, the feel of her skin, the taste of her mouth. The sound of her voice. It was as if she were sitting in his lap, warm and solid, smiling at him.
It was wonderful and awful. The pit of his stomach ached. Half of him wanted to say her name out loud, just start talking to her as if she were actually there. Delightful, beautiful. All the things he used to say quietly, to the back of her neck, while she was asleep. Love you, An.
The other half was horrified. Wanted to push her off because he was so dirty now, he had no business thinking about her or wanting her. Not just because the shower he wanted to take had been pushed back again into who knows when. That kind of dirty sucked, but at least it washed off.
How long had it been since he’d even thought about her? Why hadn’t he thought of her?
He looked over the arm of the couch and saw the top of Spike’s head, the damp bleached hair against the black cushion. He felt a wave of disgust and anger. When he woke up at night, the hand on his head should be Anya’s. It should smell like tea rose, not cigarettes. It should be warm.
He thought of Spike’s hand running down his cheek and his stomach turned over. He was disgusting. Not just for letting it happen in the first place, but for the way he felt now, which wasn’t just repulsed, but also turned on.
It turned him on.
He hadn’t meant to think that.
He clenched his left hand into a fist and shoved it against the arm of the chair. It felt stupid and dense, but it helped him breathe better and get his body under control. He swallowed a couple of times and blinked. Stared at the television. Bounty was the quicker picker-upper.
If he could walk, he’d get out. If he had a stake, he’d use it. He’d dust Spike in a second, and that would be a mercy to all God’s creatures, and Liv could take it up with management. As long as he got to see Spike blowing in the wind.
It was a satisfying train of thought, and he smiled and looked back at Spike.
Who was looking at him.
It gave him a little shock, and he lost the smile. Spike was paler than Xander had ever seen him, practically white. His face was thin and tired, the skin stretched taut across his cheekbones. His eyes were bright blue and bloodshot and watchful. He looked sick. No. For once, he looked like what he was. Half-dead.
They looked at each other for a long second, and Xander’s stomach did a tuck roll.
Not again. Not doing this shit again.
He smiled tightly and spoke in a low voice.
“You should get your colors done, Spike. I’m thinking, you know, a nice neutral dust.”
Spike didn’t say anything. After a moment, he closed his eyes.
On the other side of the loft, Liv started putting dishes away in a cupboard.
Fight back, dammit.
It wasn’t fair. There was something hard and hot in his chest, and his skin crawled, and he was disgusting and foul and he hated himself. He wanted to be good again. Clean. But behind that, he wanted to apologize, and he wanted to touch Spike’s hair.
Jesus Christ.
He looked back at the television. The man and woman were laughing.
Anya was gone. That was a good thing, because he was dirty, and he didn’t want to get any on her.
He woke up in the chair sometime later. There was a glass of water on the table in front of him, and the two white pills.
The loft was silent and dim. He felt raw—his mind. It ached. Silence was good.
Spike was still on the sofa, asleep. He looked as if he hadn’t moved at all, but there was an empty blood glass on the table in front of him. Next to it, another glass with a half-inch of amber liquid. No bottle.
It could be midnight, or three in the afternoon.
Xander leaned forward and hooked Spike’s bourbon glass with his index finger. For a second he wondered whether it was weird to drink from Spike’s glass, or weird to wonder about it, or weird that he didn’t really care. He took the pills and drank the bourbon slowly, and for once he liked the foul, varnishy taste. If the bottle had been there he would have finished it, and maybe, with luck, it would kill him.
He dropped his head back against the chair and waited to fall asleep again. He was exhausted. Everything felt flat and distant.
There was a shifting noise and he opened his eyes slowly, more out of habit than curiosity. Spike hadn’t moved. He didn’t feel anything, looking at Spike. He didn’t feel anything about anything. He was inert.
He looked to the right and saw Liv curled up on the foot of Spike’s bed. She was asleep. Her jeans and T-shirt were folded neatly on the floor and she was wearing a man’s flannel shirt and a pair of wool socks. Curled up on her side in fetal pose. Willow pose.
He stared at her for a while, then turned his head again and looked at Spike. Still there, still dead. Planted face down in the cushion as if he’d dropped there from a height.
Xander let his head fall back and closed his eyes, and wondered what Willow was doing right now. He missed her. Never should have—what was it he never should have done? He couldn’t remember. For a brief instant he saw her face clearly, tilted and half-smiling, and then it was like the world revolved and dropped him into sleep.
He wasn’t ready to wake up yet, there were layers and layers between him and the surface, but there was the sound of punching and he panicked. A dream—he was dreaming, it wasn’t real. Like Bony Nose standing on his foot. Wake up.
He sat up abruptly and this time the curtains were open, there was a night sky outside, and lamps lit. It took him a second to get his bearings. Spike wasn’t on the sofa anymore, and Liv wasn’t on the bed. Liv was nowhere to be seen.
Spike, on the other hand, was across the room, industriously beating the crap out of the heavy bag. He was wearing his old red shirt and a pair of jeans, and the sound of his fists landing made Xander grit his teeth and swallow hard. There were sounds you wanted to be familiar with—lawnmowers and ocean and whiskey over ice—and then there was this. And he’d heard a lot of it in his life.
Spike paused and looked around, reaching out absently with one hand to steady the bag. Eerie, how he could tell when a person woke up. Xander raised his left fingers slightly off the arm of the chair, and Spike smirked and went back to the bag.
Xander took stock. He wasn’t going back to sleep, not with the upbeat rhythms of Whaling the Bejeesus filtering in from across the room. He was tired, a little dopey, but not in much pain for a change. That was nice. He felt a bit like he sometimes used to feel after a long, hard night of Scoobying, when he’d sustained a few minors but no majors, and was melting into the sofabed with a glass of the Harris household’s finest. It wasn’t such a bad feeling, if you left it unexamined.
His gaze drifted back to Spike, who was bouncing on the balls of his feet, slamming his fists and elbows and knees—anything handy, really—into the bag. He’d worked around to one side of it now, and his face was…happy. And angry. He looked mad and gleeful and he was hurling himself at the bag like he was going to rip it open with his teeth. While Xander watched, he whipped around and kicked it with a sound like a baseball bat in someone’s gut. And that, disturbingly, was also a sound Xander was familiar with.
It was awful and sickening, and he could feel himself pulling his head down into his shoulders as he watched, but he couldn’t look away.
He looked away.
He took a quick visual tour of the loft and saw there was a light coming from behind him. He turned, wincing, and saw that along the same wall as the door down to the garage, there was a door he hadn’t noticed before. It was standing open to a small room, occupied by a desk with a computer on top, a printer, scanner, some stuff he couldn’t identify right off. Liv was sitting at the desk with her back to him. He couldn’t see what was on the monitor.
Mounted on the wall above the desk were what looked like four television sets. Three of them showed different sets of pictures on rotation. The inside of the garage. The downstairs door, from the inside and outside. The landing. The outside of the door to the loft. A few other shots that must have been outside the garage door and another entrance.
The screen that didn’t rotate was green instead of grey, and showed what looked like the inside of a sewer tunnel.
So, Spike had a home security system. That was nice. He’d have to remember to decide whether it made him feel safer or more of a prisoner.
As he stared, Liv turned in her chair and he had a spooky moment of wondering whether she’d felt him watching her. Was he the only one in the world without ESP? But no, she was just turning to pick up some papers from the desk. She sat leafing through them for a minute or two, frowning, and then she did glance up and see him looking at her. The frown deepened. He raised his fingers again—hi, Liv—and she squared the papers on the desk, stood up, and came out of the little room. Closed the door behind her with a solid click.
Spike looked around at that, and grinned when he saw her walking to the kitchen.
“C’mere, luv,” he said, stepping away from the bag and holding his fists up in mock-kangaroo punching style. Liv ignored him. “Come on, come and have a go.”
She was rummaging in the fridge, and for a moment there was nothing but the clink of bottles. After a moment she stood up with a bag of Chinese in her hand.
“You hungry, Nova?” she asked, opening the bag and peering into it.
Not really, but he knew deflection when he saw it. And food was probably a good idea. It was probably even the kind of thing they gave you in hospital.
“Sure. Wanna hit Spago?”
She put the cartons on the counter, then started searching the cabinets. Spike took a few steps forward, then spun around and kicked the bag again. It swung wide and he nailed it again with his other foot. The chain creaked in protest.
“Come on, Liv,” he said, turning back and raising his fists in front of his face, exaggerating the bounce on his toes. “Come take a stab.”
She muttered something that Xander couldn’t hear, and Spike laughed. “Right, now you have to,” he said cheerfully. “Talking to me like that.”
She didn’t move, and he stopped bouncing and dropped his tone a notch. “I’ve told you, now. Come on.”
She paused a moment longer, then banged a plate on the counter and closed the cabinet door with a bang.
“Don’t break the place up,” Spike said, as she walked over to him. He was smiling again. “Right, fists up.”
Xander watched as she put her fists up lamely in front of her face, thinking automatically, That’s too close, she’s going to get bopped in the nose with her own—
Spike sighed, dropped his fists, and carefully adjusted hers. “Like that,” he said. “Come on, that’s your guard, not a bloody valentine. Now—“ He gave her a slow, careful punch and she backed away and dropped her hands.
“Spike—“
“Come on, properly now.”
“Spike, I have work to do.”
He punched at her belly, pulled it before it touched her, and sent another toward her face when she flinched downward. He pulled that one too, and tapped her lightly on the forehead. “Look at that, two in one go. You haven’t had a single one in yet.”
“I don’t want one, Spike. I want to go back to work.”
“Yeah, well, this is work. Put your bloody hands up, at least.”
“Spike—“ He darted a hand in and stopped it just in front of her face, and she flinched, scowled, and tried to slap him. He caught her hand easily and she tried again with the other. He caught that one too, and laughed.
“Oh, brilliant. You give the guy your hands like that, he’ll reel you in and take your throat out.”
“Not if I kick him in the balls.” She actually tried it, to Xander’s amazement, and he sidestepped and swept her feet. Then she was hanging from his grip by her wrists, her lips pressed furiously together, staring at the far wall while he laughed and bounced her slightly up and down.
“Not fast enough, luv. And predictable. If a vamp ever gets you like that, you bash him in the mouth with your head, right? Break a couple fangs off, give him something to think about.”
She kept staring at the wall for a second, then said tightly, “Can I get up now?”
He pulled her to her feet and made an elaborate show of dusting her down. “Right, try again,” he said, kangarooing.
She walked away, back to the kitchen, and started spooning cold Chinese onto a plate. He watched her for a second, then shrugged and turned toward Xander.
It was weird, how fine he looked. While Xander stared at him, he grinned and shadow-boxed a little, did a quick little Ali thing with his feet, and there was no sign that he’d recently been a wet mess on the bathroom floor, that he’d been sick and bloody and too fucked-up to snark.
Apparently that was all ancient history, because he looked as lively as a dead guy could look. Well, livelier than most, actually. He was rolling his neck and pulling at his shoulders, flexing his fingers. Buffy did that when she worked out. It always looked so cool.
“Be a love, Liv, put some music on.”
Liv was putting the plate of Chinese into the microwave; she turned and looked at Spike, then at the stereo, which was closer to him than to her. He smiled and went back to the bag, and she stabbed the microwave into action and walked to the stereo. That put her close enough to Xander that he automatically sniffed for gun oil. Nada.
“Looks like your boss is feeling better,” he said.
“Looks like.”
“I don’t get it,” Xander said. She didn’t look away from the CDs.
“Get what?”
“He just tried to hit you. How come he didn’t go all nosebleedy?”
She pulled out another jewel case and studied it.
“I thought you knew Spike. I thought you guys went back.”
“To my unending dismay, we go back many years.”
“Then you know about the chip. It’s intentional.” She put a CD in the spinner and dropped the case on the cabinet. “If he’s not really out to get me, no zap.”
Xander watched her run her finger down the stack of CDs, looking for a title. “Right, okay. And, uh, he seems like he’s fully recovered.”
She smiled grimly. “Sure,” she said. “Getting zapped riles him up. He always wants to either fight something or fuck something.”
Xander just sat there. Fight something or… He cleared his throat and fiddled with the loose end of his bandage.
“Put the Pistols in,” Spike called. She was just taking Never Mind the Bollocks out of the machine; Xander recognized the label. She quickly slipped it between a couple of jewel cases.
“Can’t find it,” she said. “Sorry.”
So he wasn’t the only one sick of Sid. Well, living with Spike would do it to you. He grinned and tried to catch her eye, but she wouldn’t look at him.
“So…he’s training you up, then. So you can, what, pick bar fights for him?”
“Sure.”
“Looks like you’re still at the wax-on, wax-off stage.”
She held up one finger. “Wax this, Nova.”
“I’m just saying, you don’t exactly look ready for the cage match yet.”
“Yeah, well.” She picked up a CD and examined the label. “Maybe you can give me some tips when you’re all better. I hear you fetch a mean donut.”
“It’s a calling.” He kept his face blank. “And actually, I was thinking Buffy could do the tutoring. You know, show you how to take a punch. Or a kick in the head.” It was the donut comment; he was pissed and it came through in his voice. Nasty voice.
Shut up, Xander. Don’t aggravate Demerol Lass.
He should smooth it over with a joke, but he couldn’t think of anything to say. She was still staring at the CD cases, her face tight and angry. Then she raised her hand to take a case out, and he saw that her fingers were shaking. She was scared. Of what?
His brain took a second to cough up the answer. Buffy. She was scared of Buffy.
Oh.
“Not going to be any of that,” Spike said quietly, from the other side of the room.
Of course Spike had heard them—Spike could hear grass grow. Liv flushed and stared hard at the case in her hands. He turned away from the bag, left it swinging, and regarded them with a smile.
“Bit of a non-starter in a scrap, I’ll give you that, but she’s a whiz with the ledgers. Aren’t you, poppet?” He dropped the smile. “What the hell are we listening to?”
“Nothing,” Xander said.
“Exactly.”
Liv hit play and walked quickly over to the microwave. He watched her hands tremble at her sides and forgave the donut comment.
Someone cracked a pair of drumsticks together, counted to four, and they were off. Loud, raucous, and fast, guitar and drums and hoarse shouting English voices. A train wreck set to music, if you could call it that.
Spike grinned and went back to the bag. Started throwing punches, hard and fast. The look on his face was pure evil bastard, pure bad happiness. Demon static. That look was the last thing on earth a lot of people had seen, definitely. But right now he was just hitting a bag, and that was all he could hit, and Xander couldn’t help watching.
She said Spike always got like this after he was zapped. Wanted to fight something, or fuck something. Wanted to rip the head off something, by the look of it, but he was grinning, too, and it was coming off him in waves. The air around him should be rippling with it. He looked stoned and insane and totally…
Xander looked away. Then back. His chest was tight, and his belly. His thighs felt hot.
His cock moved.
Jesus Christ.
He looked away.
The microwave beeped and Liv took the plate out, slammed the door, and stuck a fork in the food. She marched it over to Xander, dropped it on the table in front of him without a word or glance, then went back to the little room she’d come out of. She didn’t quite slam that door—not quite.
Xander sat staring at the plate in front of him, feeling no hunger at all. After a minute he looked up and saw that Spike had stopped beating the bag and was staring at the closed door, a frown on his face. For a second Xander was sure he was going to head over, and there was going to be another shouting match, and it was all getting kind of old and miserable—but then Spike shrugged and went back to the bag. He hit it lightly a couple of times. Left, right, left, right. Lazily, smoothly. It looked easy. His lips moved to the music.
Something about that made Xander’s chest tight. He shifted in the chair.
Spike turned and looked at him. His expression was vacant, then suddenly focused, as if he’d just remembered who Xander was.
He smiled.
Xander’s heart struggled, and he pressed his left hand into the side of his knee. Pain, that was good. That took his mind off the heat in his groin. Sort of.
Spike stepped away from the bag, shook his hands out, and just studied him. Xander knuckled his knee and stared back. The important thing was not to look guilty. Or interested. Or anything. He would have traded his one working limb for a Steve McQueen thousand-yard stare.
It went on way too long, and he was just about to open his mouth, choose a smart comment at random and let fly, when Spike started walking over to him. Still staring. Cracking his knuckles absently, left hand and then right, and there was a weird familiar look on his face, and Xander’s brain was worn smooth as porcelain. On some level, somewhere, he was panicking; he could hear himself thinking Fuck fuck fuck in a mindless, shrill kind of way.
Spike came around the couch and for a moment he just stood there, a few feet in front of Xander’s chair, staring. His expression was hard and purposeful and his eyes were brilliant. Xander opened his mouth, but for once the words didn’t come.
Then Spike took another couple of steps forward, put one hand on each arm of Xander’s chair, and leaned in. His shirt hung open. His chest was pale. There was a fine line of brown hair below his navel, disappearing into the waist of his jeans.
Xander pressed harder against his knee.
Spike leaned down closer, evil bastard smile now, smelling of booze and cigarettes and possibly blood. Bright blue eyes, electric and untrustworthy, and that familiar little scar in his eyebrow, like a brand. The music was pounding Xander’s head.
Spike was going to kiss him.
Fuck fuck fuck fuck
There was dirty and there was dirty, and he wasn’t going to do this. He turned his head to the side and stared at the far wall. He was shaking. His face felt hot.
Spike leaned even closer, until his nose almost touched Xander’s cheek, and Xander closed his eyes. He was breathing in Spike, not just the cigarettes and bourbon, but the smell of his skin and hair, and when he realized that, his cock went stiff. Dear God. He pressed his legs together and ground his thumb into his knee.
Spike inhaled, paused, then did it again. Then he just stayed there. Xander didn’t move.
“You need a bath, pet.”
Spike stood up and stepped back, and Xander let out a short gasp—didn’t mean to—and opened his eyes. Spike was looking at him with the evil bastard smile, his hands hanging loosely at his sides.
Spike knew.
Of course he did, he must have known as soon as Xander did, maybe even before, but Spike had just made it real, and Xander’s face felt like it was going to burn off his skull. He should say something, make a joke, that was what he was good at. But how did you make a joke about the hard-on you got for an evil dead guy?
He should say something, anything, but he couldn’t think of a thing, and he just stared at Spike like an idiot. Wondering how much torture Spike was going to dish out, and exactly what kind it would be. Wondering if he was going to get out of here intact. And whether that really bothered him.
Of course it bothered him.
He didn’t say anything, and after a minute Spike raised his eyebrows to invite comment, and he still didn’t say anything. Spike smirked and walked away.
He went into the bathroom, leaving the door open. Xander stared after him, and through the open door saw him turn one of the sink taps on full and run his hands under it. Xander watched numbly until he realized he was staring; then he looked away so sharply he heard his neck crack. Jesus Christ. The music was drilling a hole in the side of his head. Jesus Christ.
He wanted out.
He stared at the decibel lights on the stereo, all ramped up to eleven, and wanted to get out, get home, back to the Park, back to Sunnydale, back to Tuktoyaktuk or wherever, as long as it wasn’t here. Sitting in Spike’s chair having a nervous breakdown or a Change of Life or whatever the fuck this was. Out. Away. Please.
The song, if it was a song, ended and he heard the bathroom door close, and Spike’s feet went across the room to the bed. He gave it a minute or so, then looked carefully around. Spike had put on a black T-shirt under the red shirt, and he was pulling his boots on. While Xander watched, he yanked his leather jacket off the rack where Liv had hung it, and walked out.
The door closed behind him with a hollow bang.
Xander sat there for a second, staring after him.
Another song started up, howling and banging, and he groaned. His face was hot and he felt sick and angry and stupid and…guilty. He had the strangest feeling that he’d done something wrong. He looked down at his lap. His hand was still clenched in a fist beside his knee, and he shook it out. His fingernails had made deep dents in his palm.
Also, he had a semi.
He didn’t know what to do about that, so he closed his eyes and thought disgusting thoughts—maggots, liposuction, Mrs. Parmenter—until it went away. He was sick. He was in trouble. For some fucked-up reason, he felt like he should apologize to Spike.
The music was screeching at him and suddenly he couldn’t take it anymore, couldn’t stand being yelled at. He lurched to his feet, leaned over and hammered at the off button. The aggro cut out and he fell back into the chair in silence.
He hadn’t done anything wrong. Spike was an evil fuck, he was probably on his way even now to killing a nasty or doing the nasty, either one or both, didn’t matter. He knew how Xander felt—except it wasn’t so much a feeling as a visitation, something he couldn’t, wouldn’t lay claim to, something he just had to suffer through until he either got loose or whittled a stake—and that was going to be hell. It was hell already.
Except Spike hadn’t got much mileage out of it so far. Hadn’t teased him, or called him a poof, or taken advantage of his crippled state. Just this, whatever it was, this weird sniffing thing. Spike had sniffed him. That’s what it boiled down to.
Well, not just that. There was the hand on his head, too. The hand down the side of his cheek. And the look on Spike’s face, when he’d leaned in just now—that wasn’t a sniff look. Xander had been kissed before, he’d been to bed with predators before, and he knew that look. It was a sex look.
But he’d turned his face away, and Spike hadn’t kissed him. Hadn’t even touched him. He’d turned it into something else instead, a joke, a tease, and when Xander hadn’t been able to deal with that either, he’d gone away.
He stared down at his hand, at the fading dents in his palm. Having Spike lean in with that pure, determined look on his face, feeling his lips an inch away, breathing in the smell of his skin… He closed his hand into a fist again.
Mrs. Parmenter.
The door to the little room opened and Liv leaned out, frowning.
“What happened to the stereo?”
He didn’t say anything. She got up, leaned through the door, and looked around the loft.
“Where’s Spike?”
Xander cleared his throat. “I—I don’t know,” he said. His voice sounded normal. Normal voice, that was good. “He split, no message.”
She stared at him a moment with an odd expression, then glanced behind her at the computer and sighed. “You want a bath now?”
“Uh—all right. Sure.” Naked sounded bad, and it was on the tip of his tongue to say no, but it was better to do it without Spike around. A gazillion times better.
She came out and closed the door behind her, went to the tub and turned the taps on full. The sound of the water was familiar; all bathtubs sounded alike. She left it running and walked back to the rice paper partition, and he sat staring at the tub and thinking about nothing. Carefully thinking about nothing.
After a minute she came back out with a pair of his boxers and a T-shirt in her hands. She was wearing a blue T-shirt; she’d been wearing a black one when she’d gone back. He blinked, trying to figure that out.
And then he realized, and wondered why he was always such a pure-D fool. The cot hadn’t been set up for him. It was hers. The little rice-paper partition was hers. The dresser, the goose-neck lamp, the scratchy wool blanket. That was her room.
He thought about waking up and seeing her curled at the foot of Spike’s bed, on top of the covers. Not in the bed, not like she was used to sleeping there. Just temporarily crashed out, and it was kind of disturbing that she slept at the foot like… Well, like a dog.
“Shit,” he said. “That’s your room back there?”
She looked at him with surprise. “Yeah.”
“I’m sorry. I thought it was just—“ Temporary, he almost said, but caught himself in time. He had a particular talent for insulting her, it seemed. “I mean, why don’t I just stay on the couch? I don’t want to put you out.”
For a second her face softened. Then she shrugged.
“Doesn’t matter. I’m leaving soon anyway.”
“You—what? You’re leaving?”
She nodded and veered away, over to the bathtub. He stared in silence as she fussed with the taps. Everything was moving too fast, he was always a few steps behind. It was starting to get frustrating.
“Where are you going?”
“Disneyland.” Her voice was sour.
“You don’t sound too pleased about it.”
“I’m thrilled. There’s soap in the dish.”
“How long will you be gone?”
She swished the water for a minute, then walked over to him and held out her hand. He took it and she pulled him to his feet.
“Your knees are better. You’re doing more of this on your own.”
“How long will you be gone?” He sounded desperate, but he didn’t care. It was just sinking in that if Liv disappeared, he’d be alone with Spike. He didn’t want that. Really. Didn’t.
She looked at him curiously as they walked over to the tub. “What are you, my mother? I’ll be gone as long as I’m gone. Here, give me your arm.”
He let her take his shirt off, and then she sat him down on the edge of the tub and started to unwrap the sling. It hurt his shoulder, and he grabbed the cold water pipe and breathed hard to keep from making a sound. She stopped and looked at him.
“Maybe it’s too soon for this.”
He shook his head vehemently. “No—no, it’s fine. I need a bath. Really.”
She kept looking at him.
“Come on, I smell like a Bantha.”
She started unwrapping again, very carefully.
His shoulder came out of the bandages looking like a side of grade-D beef. Bruised purple and black, and swollen like a heavyweight’s. It was kind of impressive, actually. He couldn’t move it, had to keep the arm curled against his chest like a baby bird wing, and while it felt good to have the sling off, the weight of his arm made the shoulder ache like a bastard.
“Trousers.” He had a second to reflect that she could be almost Ozeric at times, and then the khakis were off and he was in his boxers and nothing else.
“Uh, I don’t want to be all prim or anything, but—“
She handed him the towel.
“Put that over.”
“Okay—“
He unfolded it and put it over his lap, and she reached under and skinned his boxers off before he could even feel embarrassed. Then she stood up and held out her hand.
“Get in.”
He took her hand uncertainly, and she pointedly turned her face the other way. Balancing off her hand, he got his legs over the edge and into the tub, then sank down into the water with his right knee bent and dry. It was somewhere between warm and hot—perfect. Except he was now naked in clear water, and that wasn’t so much better than being naked on the edge of the tub. He covered himself as well as he could with his left hand.
“All right?” She was still looking at the far wall. It was sort of funny, probably, but not right now. Right now it was just kind, and he was grateful.
“I’m…fine. Thank you.”
“Shout when you’re done.”
He nodded, then said, “Okay,” when he remembered she wasn’t looking at him. She walked away.
Which left him to his own devices.
The water felt delicious, better than anything he could remember feeling since… Since breathing, sometime recently. He’d dreamed of telling Willow about that. He sank lower in the tub to get his neck under the surface, and the water lifted his arm and eased the pain in his shoulder. It was like being held in warm arms. Like being gently touched and washed clean, and Jesus it was just a bath, he just really needed a bath, but his throat was tight and his eyes were starting to blur.
He ducked his head so it wouldn’t matter. Warm dull sound filled his ears, the pound of water from the faucet, the sound of his heart under that. He ran his hand through his hair, felt it floating softly away from his head. Rubbed his hand over his face, over the bruises and stitches. His eyes were still smarting. He could lie here forever, warm and thunderous and gently held, nothing to see but the black behind his eyelids. It was something from a dream.
Finally he had to breathe. He lifted his head and the world of clear sound came back to him. It was just the faucet and the sound of the keyboard on the far side of the room, but it seemed so sharp that he almost put his head back down again.
The tub was getting dangerously full, and if he flooded the loft he’d have mad Liv on his hands. He sat up, wincing at the ache in his stomach, and shut the tap off. Then there was just the sound of typing, and water lapping around the edge of the tub.
He turned back around and picked up the soap. If he could reach it, he was going to wash it. Scrub it. Fucking flense it, if he could. He’d never felt this filthy in his life.
He rubbed the soap over his chest. The bruises sang out and he could practically rest his fingers in the notches between his ribs. Didn’t matter. His stomach was tucked in somewhere near his spine, and green with bruises. Didn’t matter. He soaped his legs and his feet, poured water carefully down his right thigh and shin to get clean around the bandage, ran the soap between his legs and wanted to scrub like a maniac but couldn’t because he was…sensitive. Didn’t matter. Don’t think about it.
He lathered his hair, ducked his head, shook the soap out, then did it again. His scalp felt light and warm. He scrubbed out his ears with his fingers and scoured his armpits. When he was done the water was cloudy with soap, and his skin felt slippery and tight. His eyes stung. He felt for the plug and pulled it.
Liv had put music on the computer. Piano, intricate and classical, probably Mozart or Bach or some other dead white guy. It surprised him a little, but he liked it. It was quiet and sort of sad. Made him think of sitting in his old apartment in Sunnydale, spinning quarters on the floor.
He let the water drain, sluiced the soap out, then filled the tub a second time. A little hotter now, and he lay back on the bottom of the tub and let the water rise over him until it felt like he was floating. He could hear his heart beating under the sound of the water. He shut the tap off with his foot. He could hear his breath. He was clean and warm, and he didn’t hurt much, and he felt like he was being held.
He stared at the crisscross of pipes on the ceiling, and thought absently that this was where he’d first lain in the loft. It seemed like years ago that Spike had brought him here. He’d thought Liv was Dru, and his heart had almost stopped.
Liv was leaving. Going to Disneyland for the summer, and that would leave him here with Spike, and that was… A bad idea. There was nothing he could do about it. Where was she going? Who would pick up Spike’s clothes while she was gone?
He didn’t want to think about any of it now. He didn’t want to think at all. The hot water was soaking into him, loosening the ache he hadn’t known was in his spine. The pain in his shoulder had melted down. Warmth over his stomach, behind his neck. He tipped his head back and shook it gently from side to side, just to feel it move without hurting. He smiled.
He lay like that for a long time, eyes closed, ears under the water, right arm curled up over his chest to keep the weight off his shoulder. It felt like he was holding himself, keeping himself together. Keeping himself from drifting apart into pieces. He might have dozed a little.
Finally the water was lukewarm and he had to sit up. The sound of typing, and the piano wandering quietly, sadly back and forth. He was exhausted, could barely fumble for the plug and keep his eyes open. He grabbed the towel and started drying his hair while the water drained.
When the tub was empty he was tempted to just lie down again, pull the towel over himself as a blanket, and go straight to sleep. But that was a bad idea. He needed clothes. Also, a bed.
“Uh—“ His voice came out weak and thin, and he cleared his throat. “Uh…Liv?” It was strange to say her name out loud. He hadn’t said it before.
The typing stopped and he heard her push her chair back and start walking toward him. He covered himself with the towel.
She appeared above his head and looked down at him. Upside-down, her expression was hard to read, but he thought it was close to amusement. Or gentleness.
“Hi,” he said. “Can I—I need some clothes. Please.”
“Sure.” She bent down and came back up with a clean pair of his boxers in her hand.
“Can you get those on?”
“Yeah, thanks.” He took them and she went off somewhere for a minute or two while he struggled damply into them. When he was done he sat up, and she came back and gave him her hand, and together they got him out of the tub.
She walked him over to the chair he was starting to think of as his, seeing as he spent so much time in it. He’d been hoping for the bed, but maybe she was taking him up on his offer of vacating her room, and it didn’t matter anyway, he could sleep standing up. He practically was. He stumbled twice on the way to the chair, and knew she was carrying more of his weight this time.
She lowered him into the chair and he said, “Thanks,” and closed his eyes. Wait—he needed clothes. Can’t fall asleep here without clothes, his brain told him. Sounds like a good idea now, but wait till you wake up with Spike standing over you.
He made an almost physical effort to get back to the surface of consciousness, and saw that Liv had her ER pile there, and was cutting the tape on his knee bandage. He groaned.
“Come on—not now. Just, I just need clothes, and then I’ll sleep—“
“Take these.” She put the scissors down and handed him two red-and-yellows, then a glass of water. He took the pills and drank. He was actually pretty thirsty. He finished the water while she unwound his bandage.
His knee was definitely better. The swelling had gone down, and the incision was dry. Liv smiled slightly and started dousing a pad with antiseptic.
“That’s great,” he said blearily. His eyes kept shutting on their own. “Looks great. Relatively speaking.”
“Yeah.” She pressed the pad to his knee and started winding gauze around it. The cold felt good.
It was wonderful to be clean, to be warm and tired and teetering on the edge of sleep, to drink cool water and have calm gentle hands taking care of him. He felt her cut the gauze and tape it, heard the scissors go back onto the table. His ears were roaring. Her hands moved to his shoulder, lifted his arm slightly to slip some cloth beneath. It hurt, and he flinched and mewled.
“Sorry.” She moved his arm and it hurt sharply for a second, then fell into the right spot and the pain dropped away. He felt her tie the sling around his neck and nestle the knot into the dip of his collarbone. His arm was light again.
He was toppling backward, struggling hard to stay awake and tell her he needed clothes. Either he said it or she understood without needing to hear, because he felt soft fabric on his shoulders and back, and she put his left arm though a sleeve.
Thank you, he said, but he knew he didn’t say it out loud. He lost his balance completely and gave up, let himself fall.
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