FIC: Not Noisy or Excited (S/X, Mature) (Part 1 of 2)
In the interest of full disclosure, it's likely to be at least two weeks before I finish this fic. This part is 2,600 words.
Title: Not Noisy or Excited (part 1 of 2)
Pairing: Spike/Xander
Rating: Mature (not likely to change in part 2)
Disclaimer: Probably not what Joss envisioned.
Thanks: To cordelianne for the great beta; maybe this one won't have typos.
Summary: Alternate timeline, Spike never came back after leaving at the end of Season 6; Xander is looking for slayers in Africa, but finds Spike.
The second and third photos from the bottom on this site show the setting of the first scene.
It’s sort of a chicken-egg question, Xander decides.
He’s standing on a hill in Lalibela, Ethiopia, looking down on a gigantic cross carved into the ground.
Actually, the cross is a roof and the roof belongs to a church that’s been carved out of the solid rock hillside-forty feet tall, or is that deep?
Maybe the real question is: Who the hell carves an entire building out of a mountain? But he still wonders which came first-the vampires or the crosses-because Ethiopia is lousy with both and it’s no wonder he’s been sent here to track down no less than three new slayers.
He’s oh-for-three at the moment, but it took him a few days to work his way out of the city since he arrived on a Saturday and Addis Ababa may be the only African capital without a single cash machine.
Even Togo had one.
But what the country lacks in fast-cash, it makes up for in protective neckwear, so Xander figures Ethiopia’s got his back.
As if reading his mind-and you never can tell-a man appears at Xander’s side brandishing a handful of tiny wooden crosses on thin brown strings. But Xander prefers heavier chains. He slips a hand into his collar and catches them, lifting them out to display his collection. Three at the moment-one American standard, two more exotic-but the Coptic cross styles here have caught his eye and he’s likely to pick up a few more before he moves on.
The peddler admires for a moment, smiles and wanders off in search of the slightly less devout.
If Ethiopia had a McDonald’s, they’d probably give away crosses in their Happy Meals.
Hey, kids, collect ’em all!
Xander realizes he may be going a bit crazy.
He’d like to blame the Lariam.
This medication may cause stomach upset, stomach pain, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, fever, hair loss, ringing in the ears, dizziness, drowsiness, headache, insomnia, strange dreams, or lightheadedness.
What’s really cool is when you get to have the insomnia and the strange dreams at the same time.
Tell your doctor immediately if any of these unlikely but serious side effects occur: fast, slow, or irregular heartbeat, seizures, muscle pain, loss of coordination, numbness and tingling of hands or feet, vision changes.
Vision changes-boy, has he got that one covered.
No pun intended.
If any of the following highly unlikely, but serious side effects occur; call your doctor immediately; you may need to stop using Lariam and start another medication for malaria prevention: unexplained anxiety, mood changes, depression (sometimes severe, including rare thoughts of suicide), hallucinations, restlessness, confusion.
He’s got those covered, too, and it’s too bad he doesn’t have a doctor to call.
It’s too bad he knows it’s not the Lariam.
That night he dreams of the church.
He’s standing at the edge of the trench, peering down, and there’s a vampire there, lurking in the shadows. The walls of the trench are full of footholds-easy to climb-but it works its way up the church walls instead. Up and up it climbs-like a pale and slender King Kong-and when it reaches the top, it stands and turns to face Xander, features stark in the moonlight.
It smirks at him and lifts its arms, falling backwards like it wants to make a snow angel.
But it lands on stone, not snow. Lands on the giant stone roof that’s also a cross and starts to burn.
Xander hasn’t seen Spike in over a year.
Has never dreamed of him.
Their paths cross the next day.
Not much surprises Xander these days.
Even without the dream, when it comes right down to it, Spike had to be somewhere-Xander can’t quite imagine him as dust-and it’s just Xander’s luck to stumble into that somewhere.
Even-hell especially-when that somewhere happens to be a badly lit bar in a tourist town in the middle of the mountains of Ethiopia.
Why the fuck not?
Spike spent five years in and out of Sunnydale, playing the proverbial bad penny, and even if Xander still hasn’t figured out why the proverbial penny is so bad in the first place, that’s no reason to think Spike will stop turning up.
Seeing Spike doesn’t surprise Xander.
Their gazes catch and hold.
What surprises Xander is the rage.
It sneaks up from behind and sweeps through him like the Saharan winds-burns, stings, leaves his skin tight and his throat dry.
It brings Anya with it-and Buffy and Joyce and Dawn-and he didn’t even know he was empty until it fills him.
Didn’t know he was numb until the pins and needles start.
Doesn’t know how much of all this Spike reads off his face from his seat across the room, but Spike’s the one who breaks their gaze.
Spike’s the one who looks away, down.
Xander’s the one who turns and walks out.
He’s got two choices-think or drink-and it’s not what you’d call a stumper.
He starts out strong, but pulls up short of feeling-no-pain. Hits the point where the thoughts get too fleeting to hurt and sinks into bed.
Drifts, wondering if he’s asleep yet. He dreams of a slayer.
She’s not in Lalibela.
Morning comes, but Xander decides to give it a miss. He can get his plane ticket in the afternoon.
He doesn’t.
He finds a guide to take him up in the mountains instead. Up to the rock-hewn churches carved from even more improbable cliffs. It’s a long hike and steep in places, so the guide insists they take mules. After about an hour on the mule, Xander decides he’d rather have crawled. By the time he returns to his hotel, two hours later, he’s pretty sure if he ever sees a mule again, he’ll shoot it.
He pours himself into the bathtub. He’s smack in the middle of one of the three hours a day when he’s supposed to get hot water, but he only gets about four inches before it turns lukewarm, on the fast track to cold.
He abandons the effort, dresses, and walks back to the bar.
He tells himself he needs to find out what Spike’s up to, but Lalibela’s a pretty unlikely launching point for a campaign of world domination.
It’s closer to the truth to say he can’t help himself. Like poking at a cold sore with your tongue just to feel the sting. He can feel the numbness setting back in and he can’t resist a little jab.
It hurts too good.
He hovers in the doorway a few minutes-watches, fingers pressing into the doorframe-then slips back into the night.
The fact that he’s stalking Spike doesn’t trouble Xander until Spike starts stalking him back. He’s pretty much run out of anything else to do in Lalibela, but he can’t really follow Spike if Spike’s following him and there’s really nowhere to follow each other anyway.
Which is what leads Xander back into the same bar and over to Spike’s empty table. He sits and orders a bottle with two glasses, sets one up on the opposite side of the table and fills it, along with his own-waits.
Spike is to whiskey as moth is to flame and Xander wonders why they never asked anything useful on the SATs.
Not that he has any idea what the use is of buying Spike a drink.
Having Spike so close makes him itch under the skin.
“What are you doing here?”
It comes out an accusation, but Spike just sips and shrugs.
“Letting a strange man buy me a drink,” he says.
Xander ignores the strange part. “I’m not buying you a drink,” he snaps.
Spike raises an artful eyebrow.
“Okay, I bought you a drink. But it’s not like I’m buying you a drink buying you a drink.” It occurs to Xander that this situation really didn’t need that clarification. He veers back toward the point. “What are you doing here, Spike?”
“Preparing to launch my campaign for world domination. You?”
Xander feels his jaw ticking. “Looking for slayers,” he says between clenched teeth.
Spike flexes the brow. “Plural?”
“Spell,” Xander says. “First evil. Potentials to actuals. Long story.”
“Huh.”
Spike takes another drink and Xander has just enough time to wonder how Spike can be so out of touch with the demon community that he didn’t know the world’s now lousy with slayers before it occurs to him to balk at the idea of explaining the last year of Sunnydale to Spike.
Spike, who missed the whole thing. Spike, who took off without a word and had no right to leave and no right to stay and good fucking riddance and-
“You never should have come back.”
“Didn’t,” Spike says.
But if Xander wants to blame Spike for daring to turn up in Lalibela, Ethiopia, he’ll be damned if he lets logic stop him.
“You fucked everything up,” he says.
Spike finishes his glass. “I suppose I did.”
The lack of fight in Spike’s words, in Spike’s tone, in Spike’s body, leaves Xander windless and grasping.
“What the fuck are you even doing here?” As if there’s an answer that would satisfy him.
“You invite me to sit down just so you could yell at me, Harris?”
There’s a hint of the old Spike in that one, some indication that he’s not going to take Xander’s shit and that’s the perfect reason to glare with a single eye and say, “Yeah, maybe I did.”
And Xander expects Spike to tell him to fuck right off-which Xander won’t, of course-but he’s stepped into bizarro world because…
“Guess I ought to fuck off, then, and leave you alone.”
Xander blinks and says, “Yeah, I guess you should,” because he doesn’t believe Spike will, but Spike does.
Says, “Thanks for the drink” and just stands up and walks out.
Leaves Xander sitting alone in front of half a glass of whiskey.
And Xander just watches him go, suddenly terrified that he’s gone for good.
He resists the urge to finish the bottle himself, but still weaves a bit on his way back to the hotel. Doesn’t sleep much, but dreams of another slayer. Still not in Lalibela.
He still doesn’t make it to the airport the next day, but he makes it to the bar the next night and the night after that. Sticks with the whiskey, asks for the extra glass. Looks up from his drink each and every time the door opens until, somewhere around midnight, his thoughts finally manage to conjure a real Spike.
The real Spike, in fact.
Not the extra-pale imitation of his earlier encounters.
This Spike swaggers into the bar like he owns the place, swaggers up to Xander like his welcome is assured, pours himself a glass of the whiskey like he’s the one buying and tosses it back like it’s water.
“Miss me, Harris?”
In the last thirty seconds, he’s gone straight from the missing back to the seething resentment of Spike’s existence, so it’s barely a lie to say, “Yeah right, fangless,” with their signature antagonism.
The old insult rolls off Xander’s tongue, leaves a sweet taste as it goes. But all at once there’s a cool hand sliding over his on the table and there are naughty tingles that have no business in this reality and Xander has no idea what the fuck Spike thinks he’s doing until he feels the single fingernail pressing, digging into his skin.
“Ow. Fuck.” He scowls at Spike and pulls his hand away, but Spike’s all calm gaze and patient smirk and then Xander gets it. “The chip,” he says.
Spike’s hand returns to the bottle to pour them each another glass. “There’s more to the world than Western medicine,” he answers and Xander knows he should be getting the hell out of dodge right about now, but somehow he’s right where he wants to be.
Except he’s not.
Because right where he really wants to be shows itself two drinks and twenty minutes later, out in the dark dirt alley behind the bar where he presses Spike into the mud wall, gets a grip on his crotch and ruts against him until they both come in their pants.
He likes knowing that Spike could have pushed him away.
“Miss me, Harris?” Spike sits down and picks up the glass that’s already been poured for him.
They’ve worked out a nice routine.
“This town stopped being interesting a week ago,” Xander says. “At this point, I’d be excited to see foot fungus.”
The routine doesn’t work if they’re nice.
“Try not to let it go to your head, bleach boy.”
(The insult’s only slightly more accurate than ‘fangless.’ Spike’s roots have grown out so far that only tiny tips of blond remain. It’s a good look for Spike. Xander likes the way the tips peek out from between his fingers when he grips Spike’s head as Spike sucks him off.)
They’re about five minutes and half a drink from the alley when Spike goes off script. “Either they’re making slayers a lot harder to find these days or someone’s not looking very hard.”
Xander feels the itch beneath his skin. “Don’t fuck with me, Spike.”
He catches a glimpse of something-a thing he’s been trying not to see in odd after-orgasm moments when the moon shines in the alley and illuminates Spike’s face. The thing that suggests that Spike’s put-on persona is a little more put-on these days than it used to be; the edges where the wrapping’s peeled back just a bit.
It’s there and he’s not looking and then it disappears as Spike curls his tongue over his teeth. “Funny,” he says, “thought that was why you were hanging about. Gagging for it, aren’t you, Harris?”
Xander tosses back his drink. The glass hits the table-hard.
Screw the routine. Screw the alley.
Them’s fightin’ words.
Xander takes Spike back to his room and shows him exactly who’s gagging for what.
The new routine involves more lube and softer surfaces, but it’s starting to take the edge off and the problem is that the sheets smell like Spike.
Spike comes (and Xander comes and Spike comes) and Spike goes, but the scent lingers.
He sleeps with it and wakes up with it, until one night the sex starts seeming less about the angry and more about the lonely and Spike stays in bed past his clichéd cigarette-a moment too long-and ruins it all by asking:
“How are they?”
Xander doesn’t need to ask who they are.
“Get out,” he says, staring at the ceiling as everything he didn’t fuck into Spike tonight boils to the surface and over. “Get out. Now. You have no right, you hear me? None.”
Spike leaves without protest, but even after linen service, the scent lingers.
He spends the next day thinking about Buffy and Dawn and trying to picture himself picking up the telephone.
He can’t.
He stays away from the bar. One night, then two. His resistance cracks on the third, and caves on the fourth, but he sits across from an empty glass until closing. Fifth night and the barman comes to collect the unused glass and the words leave Xander’s lips unplanned.
“Have you seen the, um… man I was with before?”
“The vampire with the soul?” the barman asks. He goes on and maybe he even tells Xander when Spike was last seen and where he’s gone, but it’s all white noise.
He leaves his glass but takes the bottle. He dreams of Spike’s eyes.
Continue to Part 2...
Title: Not Noisy or Excited (part 1 of 2)
Pairing: Spike/Xander
Rating: Mature (not likely to change in part 2)
Disclaimer: Probably not what Joss envisioned.
Thanks: To cordelianne for the great beta; maybe this one won't have typos.
Summary: Alternate timeline, Spike never came back after leaving at the end of Season 6; Xander is looking for slayers in Africa, but finds Spike.
The second and third photos from the bottom on this site show the setting of the first scene.
It’s sort of a chicken-egg question, Xander decides.
He’s standing on a hill in Lalibela, Ethiopia, looking down on a gigantic cross carved into the ground.
Actually, the cross is a roof and the roof belongs to a church that’s been carved out of the solid rock hillside-forty feet tall, or is that deep?
Maybe the real question is: Who the hell carves an entire building out of a mountain? But he still wonders which came first-the vampires or the crosses-because Ethiopia is lousy with both and it’s no wonder he’s been sent here to track down no less than three new slayers.
He’s oh-for-three at the moment, but it took him a few days to work his way out of the city since he arrived on a Saturday and Addis Ababa may be the only African capital without a single cash machine.
Even Togo had one.
But what the country lacks in fast-cash, it makes up for in protective neckwear, so Xander figures Ethiopia’s got his back.
As if reading his mind-and you never can tell-a man appears at Xander’s side brandishing a handful of tiny wooden crosses on thin brown strings. But Xander prefers heavier chains. He slips a hand into his collar and catches them, lifting them out to display his collection. Three at the moment-one American standard, two more exotic-but the Coptic cross styles here have caught his eye and he’s likely to pick up a few more before he moves on.
The peddler admires for a moment, smiles and wanders off in search of the slightly less devout.
If Ethiopia had a McDonald’s, they’d probably give away crosses in their Happy Meals.
Hey, kids, collect ’em all!
Xander realizes he may be going a bit crazy.
He’d like to blame the Lariam.
This medication may cause stomach upset, stomach pain, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, fever, hair loss, ringing in the ears, dizziness, drowsiness, headache, insomnia, strange dreams, or lightheadedness.
What’s really cool is when you get to have the insomnia and the strange dreams at the same time.
Tell your doctor immediately if any of these unlikely but serious side effects occur: fast, slow, or irregular heartbeat, seizures, muscle pain, loss of coordination, numbness and tingling of hands or feet, vision changes.
Vision changes-boy, has he got that one covered.
No pun intended.
If any of the following highly unlikely, but serious side effects occur; call your doctor immediately; you may need to stop using Lariam and start another medication for malaria prevention: unexplained anxiety, mood changes, depression (sometimes severe, including rare thoughts of suicide), hallucinations, restlessness, confusion.
He’s got those covered, too, and it’s too bad he doesn’t have a doctor to call.
It’s too bad he knows it’s not the Lariam.
That night he dreams of the church.
He’s standing at the edge of the trench, peering down, and there’s a vampire there, lurking in the shadows. The walls of the trench are full of footholds-easy to climb-but it works its way up the church walls instead. Up and up it climbs-like a pale and slender King Kong-and when it reaches the top, it stands and turns to face Xander, features stark in the moonlight.
It smirks at him and lifts its arms, falling backwards like it wants to make a snow angel.
But it lands on stone, not snow. Lands on the giant stone roof that’s also a cross and starts to burn.
Xander hasn’t seen Spike in over a year.
Has never dreamed of him.
Their paths cross the next day.
Not much surprises Xander these days.
Even without the dream, when it comes right down to it, Spike had to be somewhere-Xander can’t quite imagine him as dust-and it’s just Xander’s luck to stumble into that somewhere.
Even-hell especially-when that somewhere happens to be a badly lit bar in a tourist town in the middle of the mountains of Ethiopia.
Why the fuck not?
Spike spent five years in and out of Sunnydale, playing the proverbial bad penny, and even if Xander still hasn’t figured out why the proverbial penny is so bad in the first place, that’s no reason to think Spike will stop turning up.
Seeing Spike doesn’t surprise Xander.
Their gazes catch and hold.
What surprises Xander is the rage.
It sneaks up from behind and sweeps through him like the Saharan winds-burns, stings, leaves his skin tight and his throat dry.
It brings Anya with it-and Buffy and Joyce and Dawn-and he didn’t even know he was empty until it fills him.
Didn’t know he was numb until the pins and needles start.
Doesn’t know how much of all this Spike reads off his face from his seat across the room, but Spike’s the one who breaks their gaze.
Spike’s the one who looks away, down.
Xander’s the one who turns and walks out.
He’s got two choices-think or drink-and it’s not what you’d call a stumper.
He starts out strong, but pulls up short of feeling-no-pain. Hits the point where the thoughts get too fleeting to hurt and sinks into bed.
Drifts, wondering if he’s asleep yet. He dreams of a slayer.
She’s not in Lalibela.
Morning comes, but Xander decides to give it a miss. He can get his plane ticket in the afternoon.
He doesn’t.
He finds a guide to take him up in the mountains instead. Up to the rock-hewn churches carved from even more improbable cliffs. It’s a long hike and steep in places, so the guide insists they take mules. After about an hour on the mule, Xander decides he’d rather have crawled. By the time he returns to his hotel, two hours later, he’s pretty sure if he ever sees a mule again, he’ll shoot it.
He pours himself into the bathtub. He’s smack in the middle of one of the three hours a day when he’s supposed to get hot water, but he only gets about four inches before it turns lukewarm, on the fast track to cold.
He abandons the effort, dresses, and walks back to the bar.
He tells himself he needs to find out what Spike’s up to, but Lalibela’s a pretty unlikely launching point for a campaign of world domination.
It’s closer to the truth to say he can’t help himself. Like poking at a cold sore with your tongue just to feel the sting. He can feel the numbness setting back in and he can’t resist a little jab.
It hurts too good.
He hovers in the doorway a few minutes-watches, fingers pressing into the doorframe-then slips back into the night.
The fact that he’s stalking Spike doesn’t trouble Xander until Spike starts stalking him back. He’s pretty much run out of anything else to do in Lalibela, but he can’t really follow Spike if Spike’s following him and there’s really nowhere to follow each other anyway.
Which is what leads Xander back into the same bar and over to Spike’s empty table. He sits and orders a bottle with two glasses, sets one up on the opposite side of the table and fills it, along with his own-waits.
Spike is to whiskey as moth is to flame and Xander wonders why they never asked anything useful on the SATs.
Not that he has any idea what the use is of buying Spike a drink.
Having Spike so close makes him itch under the skin.
“What are you doing here?”
It comes out an accusation, but Spike just sips and shrugs.
“Letting a strange man buy me a drink,” he says.
Xander ignores the strange part. “I’m not buying you a drink,” he snaps.
Spike raises an artful eyebrow.
“Okay, I bought you a drink. But it’s not like I’m buying you a drink buying you a drink.” It occurs to Xander that this situation really didn’t need that clarification. He veers back toward the point. “What are you doing here, Spike?”
“Preparing to launch my campaign for world domination. You?”
Xander feels his jaw ticking. “Looking for slayers,” he says between clenched teeth.
Spike flexes the brow. “Plural?”
“Spell,” Xander says. “First evil. Potentials to actuals. Long story.”
“Huh.”
Spike takes another drink and Xander has just enough time to wonder how Spike can be so out of touch with the demon community that he didn’t know the world’s now lousy with slayers before it occurs to him to balk at the idea of explaining the last year of Sunnydale to Spike.
Spike, who missed the whole thing. Spike, who took off without a word and had no right to leave and no right to stay and good fucking riddance and-
“You never should have come back.”
“Didn’t,” Spike says.
But if Xander wants to blame Spike for daring to turn up in Lalibela, Ethiopia, he’ll be damned if he lets logic stop him.
“You fucked everything up,” he says.
Spike finishes his glass. “I suppose I did.”
The lack of fight in Spike’s words, in Spike’s tone, in Spike’s body, leaves Xander windless and grasping.
“What the fuck are you even doing here?” As if there’s an answer that would satisfy him.
“You invite me to sit down just so you could yell at me, Harris?”
There’s a hint of the old Spike in that one, some indication that he’s not going to take Xander’s shit and that’s the perfect reason to glare with a single eye and say, “Yeah, maybe I did.”
And Xander expects Spike to tell him to fuck right off-which Xander won’t, of course-but he’s stepped into bizarro world because…
“Guess I ought to fuck off, then, and leave you alone.”
Xander blinks and says, “Yeah, I guess you should,” because he doesn’t believe Spike will, but Spike does.
Says, “Thanks for the drink” and just stands up and walks out.
Leaves Xander sitting alone in front of half a glass of whiskey.
And Xander just watches him go, suddenly terrified that he’s gone for good.
He resists the urge to finish the bottle himself, but still weaves a bit on his way back to the hotel. Doesn’t sleep much, but dreams of another slayer. Still not in Lalibela.
He still doesn’t make it to the airport the next day, but he makes it to the bar the next night and the night after that. Sticks with the whiskey, asks for the extra glass. Looks up from his drink each and every time the door opens until, somewhere around midnight, his thoughts finally manage to conjure a real Spike.
The real Spike, in fact.
Not the extra-pale imitation of his earlier encounters.
This Spike swaggers into the bar like he owns the place, swaggers up to Xander like his welcome is assured, pours himself a glass of the whiskey like he’s the one buying and tosses it back like it’s water.
“Miss me, Harris?”
In the last thirty seconds, he’s gone straight from the missing back to the seething resentment of Spike’s existence, so it’s barely a lie to say, “Yeah right, fangless,” with their signature antagonism.
The old insult rolls off Xander’s tongue, leaves a sweet taste as it goes. But all at once there’s a cool hand sliding over his on the table and there are naughty tingles that have no business in this reality and Xander has no idea what the fuck Spike thinks he’s doing until he feels the single fingernail pressing, digging into his skin.
“Ow. Fuck.” He scowls at Spike and pulls his hand away, but Spike’s all calm gaze and patient smirk and then Xander gets it. “The chip,” he says.
Spike’s hand returns to the bottle to pour them each another glass. “There’s more to the world than Western medicine,” he answers and Xander knows he should be getting the hell out of dodge right about now, but somehow he’s right where he wants to be.
Except he’s not.
Because right where he really wants to be shows itself two drinks and twenty minutes later, out in the dark dirt alley behind the bar where he presses Spike into the mud wall, gets a grip on his crotch and ruts against him until they both come in their pants.
He likes knowing that Spike could have pushed him away.
“Miss me, Harris?” Spike sits down and picks up the glass that’s already been poured for him.
They’ve worked out a nice routine.
“This town stopped being interesting a week ago,” Xander says. “At this point, I’d be excited to see foot fungus.”
The routine doesn’t work if they’re nice.
“Try not to let it go to your head, bleach boy.”
(The insult’s only slightly more accurate than ‘fangless.’ Spike’s roots have grown out so far that only tiny tips of blond remain. It’s a good look for Spike. Xander likes the way the tips peek out from between his fingers when he grips Spike’s head as Spike sucks him off.)
They’re about five minutes and half a drink from the alley when Spike goes off script. “Either they’re making slayers a lot harder to find these days or someone’s not looking very hard.”
Xander feels the itch beneath his skin. “Don’t fuck with me, Spike.”
He catches a glimpse of something-a thing he’s been trying not to see in odd after-orgasm moments when the moon shines in the alley and illuminates Spike’s face. The thing that suggests that Spike’s put-on persona is a little more put-on these days than it used to be; the edges where the wrapping’s peeled back just a bit.
It’s there and he’s not looking and then it disappears as Spike curls his tongue over his teeth. “Funny,” he says, “thought that was why you were hanging about. Gagging for it, aren’t you, Harris?”
Xander tosses back his drink. The glass hits the table-hard.
Screw the routine. Screw the alley.
Them’s fightin’ words.
Xander takes Spike back to his room and shows him exactly who’s gagging for what.
The new routine involves more lube and softer surfaces, but it’s starting to take the edge off and the problem is that the sheets smell like Spike.
Spike comes (and Xander comes and Spike comes) and Spike goes, but the scent lingers.
He sleeps with it and wakes up with it, until one night the sex starts seeming less about the angry and more about the lonely and Spike stays in bed past his clichéd cigarette-a moment too long-and ruins it all by asking:
“How are they?”
Xander doesn’t need to ask who they are.
“Get out,” he says, staring at the ceiling as everything he didn’t fuck into Spike tonight boils to the surface and over. “Get out. Now. You have no right, you hear me? None.”
Spike leaves without protest, but even after linen service, the scent lingers.
He spends the next day thinking about Buffy and Dawn and trying to picture himself picking up the telephone.
He can’t.
He stays away from the bar. One night, then two. His resistance cracks on the third, and caves on the fourth, but he sits across from an empty glass until closing. Fifth night and the barman comes to collect the unused glass and the words leave Xander’s lips unplanned.
“Have you seen the, um… man I was with before?”
“The vampire with the soul?” the barman asks. He goes on and maybe he even tells Xander when Spike was last seen and where he’s gone, but it’s all white noise.
He leaves his glass but takes the bottle. He dreams of Spike’s eyes.
Continue to Part 2...