Gray Area repost
Hey, look, it's not dead. It was just resting.
I'm reposting all the previous parts of Gray Area here, because the others are currently under lock-down and I am too overheated and lazy to edit them. A new part should be following shortly.
Nothing explicit yet, but this content may not be suitable for readers of all ages.
Comments are always welcomed and adored.
Gray Area
Xander wakes up feeling good. Great, actually. Possibly better than he's ever felt.
This is cause for immediate suspicion.
He's a little caught up, what with cataloguing all the things that don't hurt anymore and trying to get hold of what that last dream was, exactly, when the low voice from across the room cuts through his thoughts and he knows.
"You're up, then," it says.
"I'm dead, aren't I."
"Manner of speaking, yeah."
"How long was I out?" Without hesitation, Xander starts for the door.
"Few hours, and don't fucking try it."
"So it's day, right?" He doesn't stop, and suddenly Spike is in front of him.
Xander stops, just inches from the body-check. "I don't know why you're doing this, but I won't let you-- I won't hurt them this way."
"Is that right? Taken a second to think about why your altruistic motives are still intact, have you?"
Now he's confused, and clearly he shows it, because Spike has him steered to a seat on the bier before he can raise a protest. "Now, you've plenty of time to dust yourself later, if that's your fancy, but what's done can't be undone, as the old bird said, so let's take the time to assess."
"I'm a vampire."
"Yeah, no one gets anything past you, hmm?"
"Cut me a break, would you? I just died. I think I've earned a little time for post-traumatic stress."
"And since you've just proven your personality's intact, once-in-an-unlifetime open season on questions."
"What the hell is going on, Spike?"
"Right, you don't deserve an answer for that one. You get a question. What do you know about vampires?"
"They're evil; Buffy kills them; we help. They regard the general population as a complimentary buffet. Something iffy about sires. Turn-offs are crosses and holy water. Ways to kill them include sunlight, fire, staking, and beheading."
Once he's subsided, Spike tsks at him. "Fightin' the good fight since tenth grade and that's all you've garnered 'bout the other side? I call it sad."
"Well, I call this ridiculous, and I might as well be a little pile of dust if we're just gonna sit here arguing like nothing's changed--"
"And the penny finally drops. Nothing has changed."
That has Xander on his feet. "I'm dead, Spike! No longer having a lifestyle definitely qualifies as a lifestyle change!"
"Easy, easy, no call for hysteria. Sit down." Spike glares until Xander does. "Better. Now, try thinking before you speak, for a change, and tell me how you feel different."
Xander opens his mouth, pauses. "I think I'm cold... my heart's not beating. Nothing hurts except--" His hand flies up, lingers where his pulse was. "--something's burning, here. I can hear... everything. It's actually dark in here, isn't it? I didn't realize before. Why'm I still breathing?"
"Habit. You hungry?"
"Star--" He trails off, gulps, gets paler. "Starving."
Spike cocks his head. "Why didn't you mention it before, then?"
Xander shrugs, ruefully. "I'm always hungry."
"Yeah? You ever wanted to go out and eat the general populace before?"
"No!"
"Do you now?"
"No!" Xander looks surprised. "Okay, now I'm confused."
"Yeah, that's usually a side effect, first time you start thinking."
"Hey!"
"I meant after long periods of inactivity, you know, like-- what's it been? Five years? An' you never stopped to wonder?"
"I'll have you know I think every day!"
That look, amused but skeptical. "Not so much before you talk, though."
Again, Xander reflexively starts to speak, pauses. Looks like he should be blushing. Bobs his head. "I'll grant you that point." He remembers, comes to a stop. "But, Spike, please, tell me? What's going on? How come I'm not all... grr?" He gestures half-heartedly with a loosely clawed hand. "Oh, my god. I'm a defective vampire, aren't I?"
That's it. Spike loses it, bursts out laughing. "You utter, utter git. No, you're not soddin' defective. You're just gettin'... shall we say, a different kind of upbringing."
Xander furrows his brow, realizes he'll never wrinkle. "You mean 'cause of the Scooby thing?"
"No, that's what did for you the first time, and it almost took you out the second, too. I mean, you're not goin' to have anyone whisperin' bloody death and nonsense in your ear."
"Okay, can we do without the metaphors and British swears and just have very simple explanations for the newly-dead-of-brain, please?"
Spike smirks. "Was speakin' literally on both counts, this time. What was that 'somethin' iffy about sires' you mentioned?"
"Angel wouldn't tell me what it meant... I think that was after the second time you tried to kill us."
"You never looked it up?"
Truly incredulous Spike, that's a new one. "Guess it must've slipped my mind."
"For three years of researching-- No, forget it. Probably for the best."
"If I'm the one who doesn't think, how come I'm the one who keeps having to repeat himself? Would you just tell me already?"
Spike visibly decides against rising to that particular bait. "Strictly speaking, Xander-- and this is what I was taught, so the whole thing could be a load anyway-- your sire is the vamp who turns you, and the one who teaches you. Not that those're necessarily the same person, mind. Or that all vamps even get taught. Minions, for example-- that's the kind even you put a stake through on a regular basis. They mostly get left with a few instructions-- you're real susceptible to suggestions made those seconds right before you die, see? 'Cause once you wake up again, you know enough to know that nothin' from before that is right. So they try to find their master, and figure those parting words are their new way of gettin' where they're supposed to be."
"Why aren't I bumpy?"
"Now you're interruptin' me?" Spike raises an eyebrow. "Thought you wanted to know this stuff."
"Am I a minion?"
"No."
"Then how is this 'what's going on'?"
Spike glares.
"Okay, fine, sorry."
"Pay attention, would you? I was gettin' to that. You know how you don't see minions shift very often? Well, you wake up lookin' about the same as when you died, just less dead. Healed up, usually. Controlling the change takes practice; you've gotta learn how to bring it out and shake it off..." He does, of course, matter-of-fact and flaunting. "...which minions don't get the time for, usually. If you're not paying attention, you'll miss it happening. So the first time a minion fights or feeds, or sometime when they're diggin' themselves out, they end up in game-face without knowin' it. Easier for them to stay that way-- can't calm down enough to get back."
"So it's kinda like blinking?"
"Yeah, except completely different."
"Hey, Blondie, I'm trying to understand here."
"And I'm tryin' to make sure you get it right."
"And that in itself is enough to give even the undead a wiggins. Why are you helping me?"
"'Cos I feel like it, okay? Now, it's a lot more like learnin' how to keep a poker face, only with a whole new level you've gotta deal with...." Spike shifts to gameface. "See?"
"Does it hurt?" Xander asks, and Spike shakes his head. Xander finds he's feeling oddly hyper. "It sounds like it hurts. How do I make it go?" Xander scrunches his face, throws his head back and forth the way he's seen vamps do it, then checks his forehead: still smooth. Spike's laughing at him again. Xander thinks it looks even stranger when he's all bumpy.
"Can I...?" Xander reaches out, hesitant. Spike leans in toward the touch, recoiling slightly as Xander makes the first, glancing contact.
"Sorry." Spike pulls himself back into reach, but Xander's withdrawn.
"Why'd you do that?"
Spike hesitates. "You're... not warm. Just surprised me. S'all right now, go ahead."
Xander extends his hand again, not sure what he's expecting or why he's holding his breath.
Spike’s ridges aren’t hard, the way Xander realizes he’d expected them to be. He skims the very tips of his fingers up from Spike’s cheek, where they’d touched down without explicit direction. There's an odd springiness to Spike's game-face, he discovers, as he trails up across Spike's cheekbone, over his forehead, down the bridge of his nose, where his fingers slowly slide off to glance against Spike's lips.
Spike's hand comes up to cup Xander's cheek, his thumb stroking over the suddenly-bumpy brow, and an extended, breathless moment settles on both habitual breathers.
Xander's hand drops first, and he looks like he thinks he should be embarrassed. Spike just barely quirks his mouth, allows himself to hold the gesture-- the caress-- long enough to make sure Xander knows he's doing it. As the realization that Xander is leaning into it is still sneaking up on the horizon of his mind, Spike's hand falls away, and Xander finds he has to pull in a really deep breath before he can speak.
Then he finds he has no idea what to say.
Spike grins at him. "Looks good on you."
Xander's still thrown from the entirely new tension of a moment ago. "What?"
Spike raises an eyebrow, pointedly, and Xander's hands fly up to map his new face.
The fingers of both hands start at the forehead, skipping down to the bridge of the nose and tracing back up across the brand-new brow-ridge, down around the eyes to the cheekbones he'd swear hadn't jutted that much yesterday morning. He's trying to see what he must look like now, doesn't realize his eyes are closed until he feels Spike's hand on his shoulder. Xander's eyes fly open. Yellow, they must be yellow now. "Wow, this not having a reflection thing is gonna get annoying really fast, huh?" As he speaks, his tongue encounters fangs, and his fingers follow; thumb and forefinger touching on mirroring sides before the index finger slides up a much-larger canine to its root.
It feels... it feels like something he shouldn't do in public. He shifts uncomfortably, looking back across at Spike. "What do I look like?"
Catching Spike's eyes again is weird. They look... darker, and he's breathing kind of fast, which Xander wouldn't have noticed except that it makes him remember that he's not which makes for a sudden frantic gasping breath. There's a strange scent in the air, and he flares his nostrils and pulls in another breath to try and pin it down.
"Damn hot, is how you look."
And something flares behind Xander's eyes as what Spike just said hooks the hell up with the new scent and goes straight to his cock. Confusion and embarrassed shifting of position ensue as he tries to come up with a rigor mortis joke, but Spike's still talking.
"Lost the game-face, though."
Xander's mind is a blank. He's got nothing. Then two bits of this new information bump together, and he's wondering what that was to Spike when Xander touched his... touched him, a moment ago. He opens his mouth to ask and what comes out is not what he meant to say at all. "Who... sired me?"
Spike, unexpectedly, ducks his head, hand rubbing the back of his neck as he turns abruptly, pacing away. Xander is thrown. Does Spike... not know what to say? Does that happen?
"Look--" Spike starts, and Xander suddenly knows that he's--
"Hedging! You're hedging!" he says it out loud as it registers. Spike's not supposed to do that. It's weird.
"Xander--" Spike tries again, and the use of his first name is weird, too. "It's complicated. I found you..." Spike doesn't seem inclined to elaborate.
"And?"
"They don't know yet."
Xander's derailed. "Hell." He slumps, head dropping. "What..."
Spike is squatting on the floor in front of Xander, making an effort to look him in the face that Xander's not avoiding. The words are gentler than expected. "I think we'll need to tell 'em before they find out for themselves, or we'll both be dust."
"How do I...?"
"Think we'd best talk to the Watcher first. If you surprise them, that'll be it, yeah? No hesitation, an' we can't afford that."
Xander nods slowly. "Call Giles. And... tie my hands so he can see them."
_____________________________________________________
The next part is here.
I'm reposting all the previous parts of Gray Area here, because the others are currently under lock-down and I am too overheated and lazy to edit them. A new part should be following shortly.
Nothing explicit yet, but this content may not be suitable for readers of all ages.
Comments are always welcomed and adored.
Gray Area
Xander wakes up feeling good. Great, actually. Possibly better than he's ever felt.
This is cause for immediate suspicion.
He's a little caught up, what with cataloguing all the things that don't hurt anymore and trying to get hold of what that last dream was, exactly, when the low voice from across the room cuts through his thoughts and he knows.
"You're up, then," it says.
"I'm dead, aren't I."
"Manner of speaking, yeah."
"How long was I out?" Without hesitation, Xander starts for the door.
"Few hours, and don't fucking try it."
"So it's day, right?" He doesn't stop, and suddenly Spike is in front of him.
Xander stops, just inches from the body-check. "I don't know why you're doing this, but I won't let you-- I won't hurt them this way."
"Is that right? Taken a second to think about why your altruistic motives are still intact, have you?"
Now he's confused, and clearly he shows it, because Spike has him steered to a seat on the bier before he can raise a protest. "Now, you've plenty of time to dust yourself later, if that's your fancy, but what's done can't be undone, as the old bird said, so let's take the time to assess."
"I'm a vampire."
"Yeah, no one gets anything past you, hmm?"
"Cut me a break, would you? I just died. I think I've earned a little time for post-traumatic stress."
"And since you've just proven your personality's intact, once-in-an-unlifetime open season on questions."
"What the hell is going on, Spike?"
"Right, you don't deserve an answer for that one. You get a question. What do you know about vampires?"
"They're evil; Buffy kills them; we help. They regard the general population as a complimentary buffet. Something iffy about sires. Turn-offs are crosses and holy water. Ways to kill them include sunlight, fire, staking, and beheading."
Once he's subsided, Spike tsks at him. "Fightin' the good fight since tenth grade and that's all you've garnered 'bout the other side? I call it sad."
"Well, I call this ridiculous, and I might as well be a little pile of dust if we're just gonna sit here arguing like nothing's changed--"
"And the penny finally drops. Nothing has changed."
That has Xander on his feet. "I'm dead, Spike! No longer having a lifestyle definitely qualifies as a lifestyle change!"
"Easy, easy, no call for hysteria. Sit down." Spike glares until Xander does. "Better. Now, try thinking before you speak, for a change, and tell me how you feel different."
Xander opens his mouth, pauses. "I think I'm cold... my heart's not beating. Nothing hurts except--" His hand flies up, lingers where his pulse was. "--something's burning, here. I can hear... everything. It's actually dark in here, isn't it? I didn't realize before. Why'm I still breathing?"
"Habit. You hungry?"
"Star--" He trails off, gulps, gets paler. "Starving."
Spike cocks his head. "Why didn't you mention it before, then?"
Xander shrugs, ruefully. "I'm always hungry."
"Yeah? You ever wanted to go out and eat the general populace before?"
"No!"
"Do you now?"
"No!" Xander looks surprised. "Okay, now I'm confused."
"Yeah, that's usually a side effect, first time you start thinking."
"Hey!"
"I meant after long periods of inactivity, you know, like-- what's it been? Five years? An' you never stopped to wonder?"
"I'll have you know I think every day!"
That look, amused but skeptical. "Not so much before you talk, though."
Again, Xander reflexively starts to speak, pauses. Looks like he should be blushing. Bobs his head. "I'll grant you that point." He remembers, comes to a stop. "But, Spike, please, tell me? What's going on? How come I'm not all... grr?" He gestures half-heartedly with a loosely clawed hand. "Oh, my god. I'm a defective vampire, aren't I?"
That's it. Spike loses it, bursts out laughing. "You utter, utter git. No, you're not soddin' defective. You're just gettin'... shall we say, a different kind of upbringing."
Xander furrows his brow, realizes he'll never wrinkle. "You mean 'cause of the Scooby thing?"
"No, that's what did for you the first time, and it almost took you out the second, too. I mean, you're not goin' to have anyone whisperin' bloody death and nonsense in your ear."
"Okay, can we do without the metaphors and British swears and just have very simple explanations for the newly-dead-of-brain, please?"
Spike smirks. "Was speakin' literally on both counts, this time. What was that 'somethin' iffy about sires' you mentioned?"
"Angel wouldn't tell me what it meant... I think that was after the second time you tried to kill us."
"You never looked it up?"
Truly incredulous Spike, that's a new one. "Guess it must've slipped my mind."
"For three years of researching-- No, forget it. Probably for the best."
"If I'm the one who doesn't think, how come I'm the one who keeps having to repeat himself? Would you just tell me already?"
Spike visibly decides against rising to that particular bait. "Strictly speaking, Xander-- and this is what I was taught, so the whole thing could be a load anyway-- your sire is the vamp who turns you, and the one who teaches you. Not that those're necessarily the same person, mind. Or that all vamps even get taught. Minions, for example-- that's the kind even you put a stake through on a regular basis. They mostly get left with a few instructions-- you're real susceptible to suggestions made those seconds right before you die, see? 'Cause once you wake up again, you know enough to know that nothin' from before that is right. So they try to find their master, and figure those parting words are their new way of gettin' where they're supposed to be."
"Why aren't I bumpy?"
"Now you're interruptin' me?" Spike raises an eyebrow. "Thought you wanted to know this stuff."
"Am I a minion?"
"No."
"Then how is this 'what's going on'?"
Spike glares.
"Okay, fine, sorry."
"Pay attention, would you? I was gettin' to that. You know how you don't see minions shift very often? Well, you wake up lookin' about the same as when you died, just less dead. Healed up, usually. Controlling the change takes practice; you've gotta learn how to bring it out and shake it off..." He does, of course, matter-of-fact and flaunting. "...which minions don't get the time for, usually. If you're not paying attention, you'll miss it happening. So the first time a minion fights or feeds, or sometime when they're diggin' themselves out, they end up in game-face without knowin' it. Easier for them to stay that way-- can't calm down enough to get back."
"So it's kinda like blinking?"
"Yeah, except completely different."
"Hey, Blondie, I'm trying to understand here."
"And I'm tryin' to make sure you get it right."
"And that in itself is enough to give even the undead a wiggins. Why are you helping me?"
"'Cos I feel like it, okay? Now, it's a lot more like learnin' how to keep a poker face, only with a whole new level you've gotta deal with...." Spike shifts to gameface. "See?"
"Does it hurt?" Xander asks, and Spike shakes his head. Xander finds he's feeling oddly hyper. "It sounds like it hurts. How do I make it go?" Xander scrunches his face, throws his head back and forth the way he's seen vamps do it, then checks his forehead: still smooth. Spike's laughing at him again. Xander thinks it looks even stranger when he's all bumpy.
"Can I...?" Xander reaches out, hesitant. Spike leans in toward the touch, recoiling slightly as Xander makes the first, glancing contact.
"Sorry." Spike pulls himself back into reach, but Xander's withdrawn.
"Why'd you do that?"
Spike hesitates. "You're... not warm. Just surprised me. S'all right now, go ahead."
Xander extends his hand again, not sure what he's expecting or why he's holding his breath.
Spike’s ridges aren’t hard, the way Xander realizes he’d expected them to be. He skims the very tips of his fingers up from Spike’s cheek, where they’d touched down without explicit direction. There's an odd springiness to Spike's game-face, he discovers, as he trails up across Spike's cheekbone, over his forehead, down the bridge of his nose, where his fingers slowly slide off to glance against Spike's lips.
Spike's hand comes up to cup Xander's cheek, his thumb stroking over the suddenly-bumpy brow, and an extended, breathless moment settles on both habitual breathers.
Xander's hand drops first, and he looks like he thinks he should be embarrassed. Spike just barely quirks his mouth, allows himself to hold the gesture-- the caress-- long enough to make sure Xander knows he's doing it. As the realization that Xander is leaning into it is still sneaking up on the horizon of his mind, Spike's hand falls away, and Xander finds he has to pull in a really deep breath before he can speak.
Then he finds he has no idea what to say.
Spike grins at him. "Looks good on you."
Xander's still thrown from the entirely new tension of a moment ago. "What?"
Spike raises an eyebrow, pointedly, and Xander's hands fly up to map his new face.
The fingers of both hands start at the forehead, skipping down to the bridge of the nose and tracing back up across the brand-new brow-ridge, down around the eyes to the cheekbones he'd swear hadn't jutted that much yesterday morning. He's trying to see what he must look like now, doesn't realize his eyes are closed until he feels Spike's hand on his shoulder. Xander's eyes fly open. Yellow, they must be yellow now. "Wow, this not having a reflection thing is gonna get annoying really fast, huh?" As he speaks, his tongue encounters fangs, and his fingers follow; thumb and forefinger touching on mirroring sides before the index finger slides up a much-larger canine to its root.
It feels... it feels like something he shouldn't do in public. He shifts uncomfortably, looking back across at Spike. "What do I look like?"
Catching Spike's eyes again is weird. They look... darker, and he's breathing kind of fast, which Xander wouldn't have noticed except that it makes him remember that he's not which makes for a sudden frantic gasping breath. There's a strange scent in the air, and he flares his nostrils and pulls in another breath to try and pin it down.
"Damn hot, is how you look."
And something flares behind Xander's eyes as what Spike just said hooks the hell up with the new scent and goes straight to his cock. Confusion and embarrassed shifting of position ensue as he tries to come up with a rigor mortis joke, but Spike's still talking.
"Lost the game-face, though."
Xander's mind is a blank. He's got nothing. Then two bits of this new information bump together, and he's wondering what that was to Spike when Xander touched his... touched him, a moment ago. He opens his mouth to ask and what comes out is not what he meant to say at all. "Who... sired me?"
Spike, unexpectedly, ducks his head, hand rubbing the back of his neck as he turns abruptly, pacing away. Xander is thrown. Does Spike... not know what to say? Does that happen?
"Look--" Spike starts, and Xander suddenly knows that he's--
"Hedging! You're hedging!" he says it out loud as it registers. Spike's not supposed to do that. It's weird.
"Xander--" Spike tries again, and the use of his first name is weird, too. "It's complicated. I found you..." Spike doesn't seem inclined to elaborate.
"And?"
"They don't know yet."
Xander's derailed. "Hell." He slumps, head dropping. "What..."
Spike is squatting on the floor in front of Xander, making an effort to look him in the face that Xander's not avoiding. The words are gentler than expected. "I think we'll need to tell 'em before they find out for themselves, or we'll both be dust."
"How do I...?"
"Think we'd best talk to the Watcher first. If you surprise them, that'll be it, yeah? No hesitation, an' we can't afford that."
Xander nods slowly. "Call Giles. And... tie my hands so he can see them."
_____________________________________________________
The next part is here.