BtVS Fic: When the Dealing's Done [S/X, PG-13]
These 2,030 words that I can't believe I finished are called "When the Dealing's Done" (otherwise known as "Selected Scenes from a Revisionist Season Five, featuring Spander, yay!") and were written for lynnevitational.
This is a story about monkification. It starts before Season 5, and familiarity with the Season 5 episodes Buffy vs. Dracula, Triangle, Blood Ties, and Spiral is helpful but not necessary. The words I've borrowed don't belong to me. Neither do the characters. Mind the gaps and beware of Kenny Rogers, Snoopy dancing, wet girls, canon tickling, a troll, and a demon in a pear tree. No, really.
Much love to madame_meretrix and cordelianne for beta reading!
When the Dealing’s Done
1.
Whoever said thank heaven for little girls was out of his mind.
Little girls are evil.
Xander’s seriously considering mounting a campaign to have them added to the slaying roster.
Vampires, demons, little girls. Equal opportunity slaying.
“Xander, wait!” Anya runs out into the yard and shoves a framed photo into his hand. “In case her corpse is mutilated and you need a picture to identify it. A good babysitter should always be prepared.”
Xander raises three fingers in salute and heads in the direction of the playground, otherwise known as Potential Dawn Hangout Number One.
What it lacks in fourteen year old girls, it makes up for in skulking vampires.
Or, vampire.
“Spike,” Xander says. He holds up a hand. It’s less salute and more stop, with a touch of fuck off and die thrown in for good measure. “No time. Have your people call mine. Or, better yet, don’t.”
“Right, big hurry. What is it this week, time to make the donuts?”
Hardly, Xander thinks. For one thing, Fred the Baker had that whole bleary-yet-watchful vigilance thing going on. He wasn’t the type to let little donuts escape out their bedroom windows while his back was turned. No, Fred was a-
“Really?” Spike asks, eyebrow reaching new heights. “Donuts?”
“What?” Xander says. “No! I’m looking for Dawn.”
Spike chuffs a laugh that’s really more of a snort or a huff of air.
Xander glares.
Spike shifts his weight.
Xander sees that shift and raises him a head tilt and a lifted brow.
Spike folds with a shrug. “Food is food.”
It’s hard to embrace the victory.
Xander takes stock: hold ‘em vs. fold ‘em-check. Next up, walk away. “Speaking of food…” he calls over his shoulder, “Eating well lately, Headache Boy?”
“Might’ve seen her,” Spike says. “Could probably find her for you. For a price.”
Xander adjusts his poker face-perfected over a never-to-be-repeated night of playing Texas Hold ‘em for real money with Anya-before he turns.
“Or you could find her for free,” he says, “and I won’t tell Buffy you kidnapped her.”
Spike cocks his head and Xander waits.
“You fight dirty, Harris,” Spike says, finally. He lights a cigarette and takes the kind of drag that can only be accomplished by someone not in need of functioning lungs before sniffing the air.
“Come on,” he says. “Brat’s this way.”
This way ends up being eleven blocks.
Eleven long blocks, in which Xander conjures eleven vampires vamping, ten werewolves wolfing, nine zombies zombing, eight witches witching, seven curses cursing, six ghosts a-ghosting, five spells gone wrong, four vengeance demons, three apocalypses, two serial killers, and a demon in a pear tree.
He’s about to start on twelve when Spike points.
“There.”
And there, framed by pink curtains, are Dawn and Janice and a drug store’s worth of nail polish and two hundred stuffed animals all spread out on a pink bedspread.
Xander’s body launches into the Snoopy dance of Dawn’s-not-dead, which apparently involves a bout of arrhythmic whooping, followed by a series of claps on Spike’s shoulder which devolve into a choke hold and then into something loosely resembling a hug.
The kissing is actually not part of the celebration.
In fact, Xander doesn’t actually know what the kissing is. Or, for that matter, where it came from.
Much like the strange metal fragments they found in Roswell in 1947, according to Leonard Nimoy on last night’s repeat of “In Search of…”
He wonders whether there’s a passing weather balloon on which he can blame this entirely unreal and yet utterly fascinating development.
Possibly two balloons, if he has to account for Spike’s hands as well.
Which he does, because hands are important.
“Xander?”
His name comes through in stereo.
Dawn’s head is hanging out the window, and Anya is standing under the streetlight. His hands are fisted in Spike’s coat, and now, when he needs Kenny’s advice more than ever, all he can think is, I could go for some chicken.
After a brief pause in which no sinking through the pavement occurs, he turns to the window. “Hey hey, Runaway. You forget to tell me something about your plans for the evening?”
“Um…” Dawn says.
“Get your stuff. You’re going home.”
He walks around Spike. “Anya, I-”
“Janice’s mom called,” she says.
Somehow, it leaves no room for discussion.
And then Dawn’s out the front door, and there are five blocks between them and Buffy’s house. Xander counts them out, backwards this time.
Or forwards, depending on how you look at it.
A demon in a pear tree, two serial killers, three apocalypses…
“Dawn. I’m not gonna tell Buffy you skipped out on us. And you’re not gonna tell her-”
“Anything. At all.”
“Okay.”
…four vengeance demons, five spells gone wrong.
And one pissed off slayer.
“Where have you guys been?”
“Ice cream!” Dawn blurts.
“You went out for ice cream. With Spike.”
Who has apparently failed to be elsewhere and is in fact bringing up the rear.
“Nah, he just followed us home,” Xander says. “Hey, can we take him to the pound and have him put down?”
2.
The rearview mirror’s filled with the not-unpleasant swishing of towel on wet girl.
It’s the most action his car’s seen in months, and Xander doesn’t even try to feel guilty-it’d be a waste of valuable ogling time.
Plus, hey, you gotta reap what you sow, and the hot lesbians in his back seat sowed themselves a hell of a storm.
“It’s too bad Anya couldn’t come,” Tara says.
Her head is towel-bound and she misses the split-second glare Willow throws in her direction.
Xander doesn’t miss it, though. Xander sees all. Xander-
“Xander, watch out!”
-Xander hits the brakes. There’s squealing, the banshee-esque screech of rubber on pavement, but they remain mercifully crash-free, and Xander takes it as a sign.
Something along the lines of watch the road, not the lesbians.
Apparently Willow does, too. “See, Xander? It’s a sign! The name Anya brings nothing but bad luck and destruction and…”
“And?”
“Mayhem.”
Tara frowns. “I think mayhem means disfigurement.”
“That too!” Willow says.
“Will, I’m not disfigured,” Xander says. “And besides, it was an accident.”
“Accident my behind,” Willow grumbles.
Xander hits the gas again-slowly-and fingers the small scar on his upper lip. It was more like a freak accident. One in a million. The …will to Xander’s anything that can go wrong…
“You got stitches, Xander.”
“Two. And in all fairness, I did tell her to throw it,” he says. “Which is completely irrelevant because as of today, we are definitely, completely, one hundred percent over.”
“Is that the cause or the effect?” Tara asks, while Willow says, “You weren’t before?”
Xander looks left and then right and then left-“Wait, the who or the what?”- and then right and then left again before turning.
“I mean, is that why she couldn’t come?”
“Actually, it’s not so much couldn’t come as won’t take my calls.”
“Oh,” Tara says, “well maybe she… um…”
“Yeah, apparently saying let’s be friends and actually being friends are two completely different things. And apparently both of those are completely different from getting back together.”
“Well, good riddance,” Willow says. “Nobody dumps my best Xander for no reason. I should turn her into a toad. Ooh, no, a rabbit!”
Xander eases the car to a stop at a red light. “Will, I know you’re just trying to help…”
“Was it the rabbit thing? Too far?”
“Tiny bit.”
Willow sighs, and Xander settles for imagining her snuggling up against Tara. “Okay, totally not shirking my best friend duties here, but the customary hating of the ex is tricky business. I call time out.”
3.
Xander’s not asking for much. A little relaxation, a night out.
What he gets is something else entirely.
It’s not a coincidence. A coincidence is of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world.
This is more like a single saloon in a one horse town and they’re both reaching for the same bowl of nuts.
“Hey, watch it.” Or beer, in Spike’s case. “Oh, it's you.”
“Spike, don't let me stop you from not being here.”
“I was here first, you know.”
“Uh-huh. Go away.”
Xander has things to do.
“Now why would I do that, when it's bugging you so much having me here?”
Very Important Things.
“Oh, I don’t know. ‘Cause the lovesick puppy routine just makes you seem pathetic?”
Things like getting back to his regularly scheduled pretending he and Spike had never kissed.
Or, on second thought, battling a troll.
4.
It feels like an occasion.
Like St. Patrick’s Day, maybe.
Nothing really happens, things which were formerly not green now are, and a whole lot of drinking is necessary to get through it.
Except on St. Patrick’s Day, the fate of the world isn’t usually resting on keeping a green ball of energy turned little girl safe from an insane hellgod.
Hallmark never counted on this.
There’s no place to buy a “Congratulations, You’re Human Now!” card, even in Sunnydale, and even if there were, what do you get for the girl who used to be energy?
Not that she knows that.
Which is why Xander’s master plan, for the moment, is tickling.
Tickling good. Talking bad. It’s all very simple, and thank god those monks made her ticklish.
Xander’s kind of stuck on that.
Just when he thinks they’ve seen it all, hellgods and mummies and secret government robo-Frankensteins, and even Dracula, for god’s sake, they get hit with monks.
Working some serious monk mojo, and not just on the energy ball.
The thing is, he remembers Dawn.
He remembers bringing her banana milkshakes when she was eleven and broke her arm falling down the stairs.
He remembers when she was twelve and wouldn’t speak to Buffy for a week because Buffy had super powers and she didn’t.
He remembers her thirteenth birthday party, the series of goldfish she accidentally killed over that year, and the sleepover she had where he let her braid his hair.
He remembers when she took off while he was babysitting and he ended up kissing-
5.
“Thanks,” Spike says.
It’s not that Xander’s helping him. It’s just that he’s sick of watching Spike fumble with the lighter.
“You know those things'll kill you,” he says. Then, “Oh, right.”
And this is the problem with helpful vampires of indeterminate evilness. No shared frame of reference for small talk.
There’s always the old standby, though. “I mention today how much I don't like you?”
“You might’ve let it slip in…” Spike says, “once or twice.”
“How're your feelers?” Xander asks.
Because hands are important.
“Nothing compared to the little bits we're gonna get chopped into when the Renaissance Fair kicks the door in,” he says. “And here we bloody sit.”
Xander sympathizes, with his eyebrows, if not his voice, because Buffy’s the one making the plan, here. “Not like we got much of a choice.”
“We could make a break for it.” Spike says. “Use General ArmorAll as shield, get to the doc's car and-”
“Great plan, and while all the hacking and slashing’s going on, what are you gonna be doing, huh? Throwing migraines at them?”
It’s a typical Spike plan. Xander gives him points for enthusiasm, but he loses them for stupidity and goes negative for likelihood of getting himself killed.
“Look, we stay here, we all die!” Spike says. “At least some of us might get-”
Kissed.
Xander doesn’t think that’s actually the word Spike was going to use, but it’s the one he’s going with.
And it’s not so much a word as an action.
An action with lips and tongues and a little too much cigarette smoke for comfort.
Xander takes a second to breathe and Spike says, “Harris, what’re you-”
“Shut up, Spike. If I’m not doing something, I need to know what I’m not doing first.”
And what he’s not doing is kissing Spike.
“For real. Not some monkified fake memories.”
Xander presses in closer.
“And you’re not doing this?” Spike says.
“Nope,” he says, licking at Spike’s bottom lip. “No way.”
###
Reference Links:
[Thank Heaven for Little Girls] [Scout motto/salute] [Fred the Baker] [The Gambler/Kenny Rogers] [Air Sniffing] [The Twelve Days of Christmas] [Snoopy Dance] [Roswell] ["In Search of..."] [Kenny Rogers Roasters] [Mayhem] ["Of all the gin joints..."] [St. Patrick's Day] [Hallmark]
This is a story about monkification. It starts before Season 5, and familiarity with the Season 5 episodes Buffy vs. Dracula, Triangle, Blood Ties, and Spiral is helpful but not necessary. The words I've borrowed don't belong to me. Neither do the characters. Mind the gaps and beware of Kenny Rogers, Snoopy dancing, wet girls, canon tickling, a troll, and a demon in a pear tree. No, really.
Much love to madame_meretrix and cordelianne for beta reading!
When the Dealing’s Done
1.
Whoever said thank heaven for little girls was out of his mind.
Little girls are evil.
Xander’s seriously considering mounting a campaign to have them added to the slaying roster.
Vampires, demons, little girls. Equal opportunity slaying.
“Xander, wait!” Anya runs out into the yard and shoves a framed photo into his hand. “In case her corpse is mutilated and you need a picture to identify it. A good babysitter should always be prepared.”
Xander raises three fingers in salute and heads in the direction of the playground, otherwise known as Potential Dawn Hangout Number One.
What it lacks in fourteen year old girls, it makes up for in skulking vampires.
Or, vampire.
“Spike,” Xander says. He holds up a hand. It’s less salute and more stop, with a touch of fuck off and die thrown in for good measure. “No time. Have your people call mine. Or, better yet, don’t.”
“Right, big hurry. What is it this week, time to make the donuts?”
Hardly, Xander thinks. For one thing, Fred the Baker had that whole bleary-yet-watchful vigilance thing going on. He wasn’t the type to let little donuts escape out their bedroom windows while his back was turned. No, Fred was a-
“Really?” Spike asks, eyebrow reaching new heights. “Donuts?”
“What?” Xander says. “No! I’m looking for Dawn.”
Spike chuffs a laugh that’s really more of a snort or a huff of air.
Xander glares.
Spike shifts his weight.
Xander sees that shift and raises him a head tilt and a lifted brow.
Spike folds with a shrug. “Food is food.”
It’s hard to embrace the victory.
Xander takes stock: hold ‘em vs. fold ‘em-check. Next up, walk away. “Speaking of food…” he calls over his shoulder, “Eating well lately, Headache Boy?”
“Might’ve seen her,” Spike says. “Could probably find her for you. For a price.”
Xander adjusts his poker face-perfected over a never-to-be-repeated night of playing Texas Hold ‘em for real money with Anya-before he turns.
“Or you could find her for free,” he says, “and I won’t tell Buffy you kidnapped her.”
Spike cocks his head and Xander waits.
“You fight dirty, Harris,” Spike says, finally. He lights a cigarette and takes the kind of drag that can only be accomplished by someone not in need of functioning lungs before sniffing the air.
“Come on,” he says. “Brat’s this way.”
This way ends up being eleven blocks.
Eleven long blocks, in which Xander conjures eleven vampires vamping, ten werewolves wolfing, nine zombies zombing, eight witches witching, seven curses cursing, six ghosts a-ghosting, five spells gone wrong, four vengeance demons, three apocalypses, two serial killers, and a demon in a pear tree.
He’s about to start on twelve when Spike points.
“There.”
And there, framed by pink curtains, are Dawn and Janice and a drug store’s worth of nail polish and two hundred stuffed animals all spread out on a pink bedspread.
Xander’s body launches into the Snoopy dance of Dawn’s-not-dead, which apparently involves a bout of arrhythmic whooping, followed by a series of claps on Spike’s shoulder which devolve into a choke hold and then into something loosely resembling a hug.
The kissing is actually not part of the celebration.
In fact, Xander doesn’t actually know what the kissing is. Or, for that matter, where it came from.
Much like the strange metal fragments they found in Roswell in 1947, according to Leonard Nimoy on last night’s repeat of “In Search of…”
He wonders whether there’s a passing weather balloon on which he can blame this entirely unreal and yet utterly fascinating development.
Possibly two balloons, if he has to account for Spike’s hands as well.
Which he does, because hands are important.
“Xander?”
His name comes through in stereo.
Dawn’s head is hanging out the window, and Anya is standing under the streetlight. His hands are fisted in Spike’s coat, and now, when he needs Kenny’s advice more than ever, all he can think is, I could go for some chicken.
After a brief pause in which no sinking through the pavement occurs, he turns to the window. “Hey hey, Runaway. You forget to tell me something about your plans for the evening?”
“Um…” Dawn says.
“Get your stuff. You’re going home.”
He walks around Spike. “Anya, I-”
“Janice’s mom called,” she says.
Somehow, it leaves no room for discussion.
And then Dawn’s out the front door, and there are five blocks between them and Buffy’s house. Xander counts them out, backwards this time.
Or forwards, depending on how you look at it.
A demon in a pear tree, two serial killers, three apocalypses…
“Dawn. I’m not gonna tell Buffy you skipped out on us. And you’re not gonna tell her-”
“Anything. At all.”
“Okay.”
…four vengeance demons, five spells gone wrong.
And one pissed off slayer.
“Where have you guys been?”
“Ice cream!” Dawn blurts.
“You went out for ice cream. With Spike.”
Who has apparently failed to be elsewhere and is in fact bringing up the rear.
“Nah, he just followed us home,” Xander says. “Hey, can we take him to the pound and have him put down?”
2.
The rearview mirror’s filled with the not-unpleasant swishing of towel on wet girl.
It’s the most action his car’s seen in months, and Xander doesn’t even try to feel guilty-it’d be a waste of valuable ogling time.
Plus, hey, you gotta reap what you sow, and the hot lesbians in his back seat sowed themselves a hell of a storm.
“It’s too bad Anya couldn’t come,” Tara says.
Her head is towel-bound and she misses the split-second glare Willow throws in her direction.
Xander doesn’t miss it, though. Xander sees all. Xander-
“Xander, watch out!”
-Xander hits the brakes. There’s squealing, the banshee-esque screech of rubber on pavement, but they remain mercifully crash-free, and Xander takes it as a sign.
Something along the lines of watch the road, not the lesbians.
Apparently Willow does, too. “See, Xander? It’s a sign! The name Anya brings nothing but bad luck and destruction and…”
“And?”
“Mayhem.”
Tara frowns. “I think mayhem means disfigurement.”
“That too!” Willow says.
“Will, I’m not disfigured,” Xander says. “And besides, it was an accident.”
“Accident my behind,” Willow grumbles.
Xander hits the gas again-slowly-and fingers the small scar on his upper lip. It was more like a freak accident. One in a million. The …will to Xander’s anything that can go wrong…
“You got stitches, Xander.”
“Two. And in all fairness, I did tell her to throw it,” he says. “Which is completely irrelevant because as of today, we are definitely, completely, one hundred percent over.”
“Is that the cause or the effect?” Tara asks, while Willow says, “You weren’t before?”
Xander looks left and then right and then left-“Wait, the who or the what?”- and then right and then left again before turning.
“I mean, is that why she couldn’t come?”
“Actually, it’s not so much couldn’t come as won’t take my calls.”
“Oh,” Tara says, “well maybe she… um…”
“Yeah, apparently saying let’s be friends and actually being friends are two completely different things. And apparently both of those are completely different from getting back together.”
“Well, good riddance,” Willow says. “Nobody dumps my best Xander for no reason. I should turn her into a toad. Ooh, no, a rabbit!”
Xander eases the car to a stop at a red light. “Will, I know you’re just trying to help…”
“Was it the rabbit thing? Too far?”
“Tiny bit.”
Willow sighs, and Xander settles for imagining her snuggling up against Tara. “Okay, totally not shirking my best friend duties here, but the customary hating of the ex is tricky business. I call time out.”
3.
Xander’s not asking for much. A little relaxation, a night out.
What he gets is something else entirely.
It’s not a coincidence. A coincidence is of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world.
This is more like a single saloon in a one horse town and they’re both reaching for the same bowl of nuts.
“Hey, watch it.” Or beer, in Spike’s case. “Oh, it's you.”
“Spike, don't let me stop you from not being here.”
“I was here first, you know.”
“Uh-huh. Go away.”
Xander has things to do.
“Now why would I do that, when it's bugging you so much having me here?”
Very Important Things.
“Oh, I don’t know. ‘Cause the lovesick puppy routine just makes you seem pathetic?”
Things like getting back to his regularly scheduled pretending he and Spike had never kissed.
Or, on second thought, battling a troll.
4.
It feels like an occasion.
Like St. Patrick’s Day, maybe.
Nothing really happens, things which were formerly not green now are, and a whole lot of drinking is necessary to get through it.
Except on St. Patrick’s Day, the fate of the world isn’t usually resting on keeping a green ball of energy turned little girl safe from an insane hellgod.
Hallmark never counted on this.
There’s no place to buy a “Congratulations, You’re Human Now!” card, even in Sunnydale, and even if there were, what do you get for the girl who used to be energy?
Not that she knows that.
Which is why Xander’s master plan, for the moment, is tickling.
Tickling good. Talking bad. It’s all very simple, and thank god those monks made her ticklish.
Xander’s kind of stuck on that.
Just when he thinks they’ve seen it all, hellgods and mummies and secret government robo-Frankensteins, and even Dracula, for god’s sake, they get hit with monks.
Working some serious monk mojo, and not just on the energy ball.
The thing is, he remembers Dawn.
He remembers bringing her banana milkshakes when she was eleven and broke her arm falling down the stairs.
He remembers when she was twelve and wouldn’t speak to Buffy for a week because Buffy had super powers and she didn’t.
He remembers her thirteenth birthday party, the series of goldfish she accidentally killed over that year, and the sleepover she had where he let her braid his hair.
He remembers when she took off while he was babysitting and he ended up kissing-
5.
“Thanks,” Spike says.
It’s not that Xander’s helping him. It’s just that he’s sick of watching Spike fumble with the lighter.
“You know those things'll kill you,” he says. Then, “Oh, right.”
And this is the problem with helpful vampires of indeterminate evilness. No shared frame of reference for small talk.
There’s always the old standby, though. “I mention today how much I don't like you?”
“You might’ve let it slip in…” Spike says, “once or twice.”
“How're your feelers?” Xander asks.
Because hands are important.
“Nothing compared to the little bits we're gonna get chopped into when the Renaissance Fair kicks the door in,” he says. “And here we bloody sit.”
Xander sympathizes, with his eyebrows, if not his voice, because Buffy’s the one making the plan, here. “Not like we got much of a choice.”
“We could make a break for it.” Spike says. “Use General ArmorAll as shield, get to the doc's car and-”
“Great plan, and while all the hacking and slashing’s going on, what are you gonna be doing, huh? Throwing migraines at them?”
It’s a typical Spike plan. Xander gives him points for enthusiasm, but he loses them for stupidity and goes negative for likelihood of getting himself killed.
“Look, we stay here, we all die!” Spike says. “At least some of us might get-”
Kissed.
Xander doesn’t think that’s actually the word Spike was going to use, but it’s the one he’s going with.
And it’s not so much a word as an action.
An action with lips and tongues and a little too much cigarette smoke for comfort.
Xander takes a second to breathe and Spike says, “Harris, what’re you-”
“Shut up, Spike. If I’m not doing something, I need to know what I’m not doing first.”
And what he’s not doing is kissing Spike.
“For real. Not some monkified fake memories.”
Xander presses in closer.
“And you’re not doing this?” Spike says.
“Nope,” he says, licking at Spike’s bottom lip. “No way.”
###
Reference Links:
[Thank Heaven for Little Girls] [Scout motto/salute] [Fred the Baker] [The Gambler/Kenny Rogers] [Air Sniffing] [The Twelve Days of Christmas] [Snoopy Dance] [Roswell] ["In Search of..."] [Kenny Rogers Roasters] [Mayhem] ["Of all the gin joints..."] [St. Patrick's Day] [Hallmark]