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Sequel to Sidelines
Notes: So, Sidelines was an alternate version of BtVS season four, with an S/X flavor. This kicks off a season five, picking up more or less where things left off. Except, next fall of course. This won't make sense without reading Sidelines. It might not make sense even if you have, but that's another issue. Sidelines was of course sort of a scattery set of vignettes, coasting along on its concept with a lot of stuff missing--for instance, the first Buffy/Xander confrontation scene about his relationship with Spike. She probably wouldn't have taken that so well. I left it out deliberately, for reasons I now consider wrong. And so this story, as a sequel, is built on a backstory full of holes. I don't know that this method works for all readers, but hope it's not too strange and off-putting. |
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Sidelines Season 5
by
Anna S
1 The Other Half Lives
Summer was waning, fall waxing. There wasn't a whole lot of wax yet, but the worst heat of summer had burned off, leaving the nights two or three degrees cooler, a critical difference that in turn dictated shirtsleeves two to three inches longer, and so Buffy was wearing one of her new back-to-school shirts, bought just that morning, midnight-blue and midriff-hugging, its lower half resolving into a crepe pattern that her mom had been completely wrong about, unsurprising from a woman who still secretly liked batik.
"...and I saw these flared Pamela Dennis pants that would have been perfect with the blouse," she explained, "except they had no pockets." The memory made her sad.
"Nowhere to put your stake," Willow noted wisely.
"Well, sometimes I put it in the small of my back. But not with these, because they were, like, way fitted." She sighed and scuffed her shoes along the sidewalk. "It just wasn't destined to be."
"Destiny is a tricky thing." Willow matched Buffy's lackadaisical pace, nearly but not quite bumping hips. She held a stake of her own in front of her long denim skirt, toying with it in a nimble-fingered way Buffy didn't want to mention was rather suggestive and disturbing. "You never know what fate has in store for you. Someone turns right at the corner instead of left, or bends down to tie his shoe at just the wrong moment--or takes the plane instead of a bus and meets a blonde stewardess with big white teeth from Texas named Lola who's into modestly-sized guitar players."
That was certainly something to ponder, and Buffy gave it a moment of due respect, then said, "Huh?" She couldn't tell if this was mere idle noodling or a message of coded significance.
"I'm missing Oz," Willow admitted. They paused at the low graveyard wall where they often ended up during their patrols; the ground on the other side sloped up to meet it, making it the easiest place to hop over when the gate was locked. Instead of hopping over, they leaned against the bricks in companionable proximity.
"Where is he now?"
"Salt Lake City." The three words seemed to irritate Willow. "Who plays Salt Lake City? It's all Mormons and snow and cows."
"Cows?"
Willow pretzeled her arms with an excess of anxious pep. "They drink a lot of milk there. I think."
Smiling, Buffy patted her arm. "I'm sure there are no Texan stewardesses in Oz's destiny."
"But what about the Mormons?" Willow's lower lip held a lot of worry. "They can have five or six wives. Some guys might be into that."
"Oz? C'mon, Will. He's a one-woman wolf." Buffy jumped lightly up onto the wall and swung herself over, then helped Willow to the other side. Denim skirts: impractical for scaling masonry.
"I know you're right. It's just...he's not here, and I am here, and there's a lot of there between us." She let a little sigh out and flapped one hand. "But I'm okay. No worries." They stepped among the gravestones, feet guiding them through the familiar pattern of markers: Mrs. Emily Wilson 1938-1962; Fred Keller, Father and Husband; Lacey Hawkins, Taken Too Soon. "Hey," she said, "speaking of big elsewheres, when does Giles get back from England?"
"He's supposed to be back tomorrow." By old habit, Buffy tried not to show her feelings about this; the restless discomfort she felt at his being gone, the anticipation of his return. You couldn't invest too much of yourself in other people's comings and goings.
"I know he's an adult," Willow said, "but what's with this whole 'having a life' thing?" Her tone had lilted into mock disapproval. "He's been Mister Misterioso all summer, with the trips and the phone calls." She didn't notice Buffy's expression of loss. "Has he said anything to you?"
"No. I don't know what's going on." But Buffy was afraid she did. He was going to leave her. He'd been planning for months, preparing her with his absences and secrets, wrapping himself up in Council business to avoid telling her what she already knew.
"Oh! Maybe he's getting married!" Willow looked ridiculously pleased at the idea, the power of her grin sending current all the way out to the tips of her cute new haircut. She bounced through her next few steps, obliviously passing the Singleton Memorial with its stone angel looming high and watchful overhead.
Startled, Buffy swallowed her first sharp protest before saying, "I don't think so. He'd have been way more..." She sought a word. "Goofier. And better dressed." She couldn't think how else to describe the evidence of Giles's inalterable bachelorhood, but Willow was a female and was nodding in comprehension.
"Yeah. He's still really Gilesy, isn't he?" They pondered this quality of character in shared silence for a minute, walking over to the newer section of the graveyard, where the grounds were not as thickly planted with corpses, and new headstones often appeared. You had to keep an eye out for the family plots, too, but most fledges came bursting from the earth in the northwest corner, under the thick umbrella of the eucalyptus trees.
"Hey," Willow said suddenly, bending over to pick up something from the grass. Buffy stopped and waited. "It's Xander's knife." She held it up, the sharp blade gleaming in the moonlight, and Buffy couldn't control a mild grimace. "He lost it last week when we were chasing that Bjicknik demon."
"He probably has ten more just like it."
"No," Willow said earnestly. "This is Sting. It's his favorite."
Okay, Buffy wondered, how come Willow knew that and she didn't? But more importantly--"He named his knife after that guy from The Police?" That didn't seem like him.
"No." Willow tipped up a smile. "After Frodo's sword...from 'Lord of the Rings'?" Her curious, steady gaze made Buffy feel as if she were being assessed for a grade in Xander Studies, and receiving something in the range of a B minus, she suspected.
Buffy rolled her eyes. "Geek much?" Impatiently she moved on, forcing Willow into a light scurry to catch up to her side. The stake had been tucked away, the knife apparently taking its place as weapon of the evening. "He's way too friendly with the toys these days," she added, apropos of...well, of the big shiny toy they'd just found, but she knew she'd put a provocative emphasis into the remark, and Willow's sidelong glance said the other woman had caught it.
"He's working through stuff, Buffy." Her voice had taken on firmness, a note of defense that Buffy associated with Xander and with a friendship between the other two that had existed years before she came to Sunnydale, since a childhood she hadn't shared with them. Willow had no doubts about Xander.
"Working through stuff is good," Buffy repeated, trying to backpedal slightly. "Working through stuff with sharp knives--not so good."
The silence that followed felt like reproof to Buffy, but then with a typical softening of manner Willow resumed her role as advocate, always ready to bridge any gap between friends. Her shirt-striped shoulders flexed, and her head bent as she tracked the path of her footsteps with an absent frown. "He's conflicted," she said. "And I think he's lonely. He hasn't been the same since Spike moved out."
"Which was the single best thing Little Chippy Sunshine ever did." Buffy didn't temper the satisfaction in her voice.
"Buffy," Willow chided. "They cared about each other. I mean, sure, Spike's an unsouled fiend with a long history of bloodthirsty homicide--but he's been good for Xander. And Xander's been good for him."
"Spike's good for nothing except making people miserable and opening pickle jars." She wasn't upset; she was merely stating a fact. "And Xander will get over him. He'll find some nice, normal guy with a pulse and a conscience, and he'll--he'll move on."
"Like you did with Angel."
Ouch. Buffy's footsteps slowed and stopped, bringing her to the edge of the duck pond where no ducks had ever been seen, though sometimes you might find a few webbed feet and bones. The water rippled in the darkness, carrying leaves away from the shore like tiny boats. "I loved someone with a soul. It's not the same, Will."
"Not to you, maybe." Her friend's voice was rueful, gentle.
It pricked at Buffy, angered her on some level she couldn't communicate, that Willow would even draw a comparison between Spike and Angel, but she made herself let that go. "Xander will be fine," she said, promising herself the truth of that statement, with a faith that had carried her through a hundred battles to victory. "He's got an apartment, a job, a life--and he's got friends. Us."
Willow's face was open, her eyebrows lifted as if to say that she wanted to believe these words, but remained dubious. "That's true. He does have us."
"You know what we need to do." The thought struck Buffy with unerring timing and perfect sense. "We have to find him a new boyfriend." Brain rifling through its Rolodex, she ticked off qualities that anyone, male or female, would find attractive in a guy. "Someone easygoing, funny, athletic--but without being a jock. Reliable, outgoing, gainfully employed--or, maybe in school." She paused with her head tilted to one side, imagining the perfect man. "Someone nice."
~*~*~*~*~
The television was on, blaring a raucous laughtrack toward the empty couch, but it couldn't drown out the crash or thumps that were coming from somewhere nearby. Its blue light flickered over the coffee table, which was overturned on its side next to a pile of beer cans, a half-empty pizza box, several magazines, and a potted plant whose leaves gasped and reached for freedom across a spill of dirt. On the carpet, in a line meandering off to the side, was a boot, a sock, and a shirt. This trail of dishabille ended at a chair, its progress interrupted by the splintered remains, then resumed on the other side with a long black belt, a pair of jeans, and a second, matching boot.
"Fuck," someone said over the noise of hollow, rhythmic thuds. "Bloody fucking yes."
Through a doorway--past the jamb, in which someone had embedded a throwing knife--and across another stretch of carpet there was a foot, which was attached to a leg, which was half hidden by a toppled dresser but seemed to be attached to three more legs in an improbable way. Something within this tangle was kicking the bed frame, the only part of the bed currently being used. There was a dent in the wood.
Spike pushed himself up, shoulders flexing, hips twisting demandingly to find the perfect angle, and there it was, and his chin lifted, his neck arched as he gasped out wordless, guttural sounds, while above him Xander shifted and fucked him even harder. Digging his arms and knees into the carpet, head dropping forward again, Spike groaned in satisfaction at having provoked this delicious abuse, but a moment later one perfect, splitting hit ignited a spark inside him, and eyes widening he snarled frantically into game face, aching to blood his fangs. There was nothing for him to bite though, and Xander bore forward, sliding his arms alongside Spike's own until their fingers twined. He was one brilliantly brutal fuck, and his prick made Spike's flesh spasm, almost stammer against its length.
"Oh god," Xander said, voice husky and desperate. Spike felt his eyes glaze over, his lids fall flutteringly shut. Blood surged over him behind a wave of skin, and the friction and heat and that rude, hard rod pounding away inside him drove straight through to his balls. He began to come in ruthless pulses, forehead pressed to the carpet to anchor him, hips writhing frantically below, wanting to rub off on something and teased to merciless release by thin air, everything a torment that he'd sought out and relished like the perverse sod he was, and then Xander bucked against him and shouted his name, and Spike's head rang like a perfectly struck bell, game face sliding away in one long shudder of nakedness.
"Yes." Xander's hips were snapping forward. "Yes, yes, fuck, yes!" The baseboard cracked with one final blow and Xander made a tiny, gratified sound that sent a skittering roll of lust down Spike's spine like a silver ball descending a pinball machine. His vision thinned at the edges as he clamped down to hold all that juicy, blood-hot flesh pounding inside him, a rough bludgeon that could ride him blind and stupid, and god, yeah, he wanted that sometimes, wasn't the first time he'd rolled over and goaded his way to punishment, a bitch belly-down in heat and panting for it, squirming and desperate, and oh christ that was it, you thick-knobbed bastard, clever dick, bastarding beautiful fuck. He felt himself trembling on the edge as he used to with Angelus, body quivering and eager as a woman's to spend itself on command; then the need to come a second time eased off like a thwarted sneeze. Xander worked back and forth against him as he finished, chest stroking his shoulder blades, the wiry hair on his legs dragging across Spike's own thighs.
Eventually they shivered to a stop. Propping himself up on arms that should not have been trembling from exertion--big bad vampire, here--Spike eased himself free of his human weight and collapsed to one side. London bridges falling down, sorry mates, don't mind the rubble. He felt glorious and badly in need of a fag, but his smokes were in his coat, and his coat was in the other room, dangling from the ceiling fan. After several moments, he turned his head. Xander lay in a boneless, sweaty sprawl on the carpet, arms outflung. His eyes cracked open to meet Spike's through messy licks of hair.
"I have got to invest in a Wet Vac." This remark meant very little to Spike, but then, so many of Xander's remarks did. Cryptic bugger. "Also, you owe me for that chair."
"You're the one thought it was clever to play lion-tamer."
"I was defending myself." Xander sounded far too mellow to uphold this claim. "From the evil vampire in my living room. The one who sneaks in when I'm not here and drinks all my beer."
"Yeah, been meaning to say somethin' about that. You need to stock a better brand of piss."
"To entice you back?" Xander made a half-assed sound between a snort and a laugh, and shut his eyes again. Spike ran his own appreciatively down the length of Xander's body, safe in the knowledge that the other man wouldn't catch him out. There were still plenty of things he could do tonight with all that lean, hard muscle. Still demons to be fought. A spot of aggro, a few games of pool, another shag in a dark alley--the night was young.
The night was young, but he was old. He was lying well fucked in the wreckage of a bedroom, in Sunnydale, California, in the last traces of darkness before the dawn of the new millennium, a vampire without subjects, without a queen, with a meddlesome bit of government tin in his head, and a job--a job, the bottom rung of pathetic for his kind--and he'd spent the entire summer tearing up the town and drinking and fucking himself silly with a row of useless bints and the occasional pansy-arsed trick who'd bend over for him when he couldn't bring himself to crawl back here to the stupid, pansy-arsed human who had his balls in a knot.
He'd gone quiet, lost in a broody replay of the past few months, and Xander eventually drew himself up to rest on his elbows and looked across at him. "You all right?"
The question struck Spike hard, flying like an arrow out of the blue to lodge itself in him. He'd let his guard down and here was someone who'd have once been dinner, asking if he was all right. All wrong, more like. What in the great blistering hell was he doing? William the Bloody. What a laugh. William the Bloody Poof. Ever since Dru left he'd been one cannibal short of a missionary picnic and look where it had landed him. Grimly he sat up and reached for his jeans.
"Got places to be," he muttered. Then, with a pointed jab, added, "Wickedness to do." His gaze flickered to see how Xander would react.
"Ah." Xander didn't look bothered; didn't sound at all concerned, or disgusted, or hurt, or any of the other emotions he'd whipped out to berate Spike with over the summer, during their hundred and one fights. He sat up and pulled on his shirt.
"It's your job to stop me," Spike reminded him, since the other man clearly intended to shirk his responsibility. "Take me down, keep me from makin' unholy alliances with the powers of darkness."
"Uh huh." Xander drew up his boxers.
Offended, Spike zipped up his jeans with rough movements, looked around for his belt, didn't find it. "You just going to let me walk out then, send me on my nefarious way to steal from the church poor-box and mug little old ladies?"
"Spike." He'd scored a hit, could hear the sharp frustration in Xander's voice. A glint rose in his eye and he smiled inwardly. The human stood a few paces away in his striped boxers and white tee, wholesome as apple pie and far tastier. An accomplishment, to be the snake in that apple.
"What do you want from me?" Xander asked. "You want me to sing a few verses of 'Spike, don't leave', maybe do the funny dance? Sorry to disappoint you, but I'm over the thrill of rejection. It tastes stale, like crackers. Crackers that have been in the cupboard too long."
Spike raised his brows. "Stale like that simile, you mean?"
"Shut up. And don't use the word 'simile' when we're fighting."
Spike felt his lips curve up despite himself. Fighting touched a match to that place inside him he kept hidden, kept the pilot light burning. It kept a lot burning below the belt line, too. "So we're fighting, then?"
Shoving a hand through his hair, Xander shifted a few steps further away. "Yes. No. I'm tired of fighting."
A frown drew between Spike's brows. "A man gets tired of fighting might as well make his bed on the next new grave," he said seriously, holding Xander's eyes.
"Maybe I'll do that."
A flare of anger drove Spike forward to grab Xander by the neck, startling him. "You do that and I'll be there waiting when you crawl out." He'd meant it as a threat, but something in the idea excited him too, and when Xander's lips parted, lust uncoiled in Spike's body again, making his eyelids heavy, his prick stir. Without warning he took Xander's mouth, sliding his tongue inside and sucking out all the heat he could find. The other man staggered a moment under the assault, then shoved back, grappling at his jeans and wrenching down the zipper. He took Spike's cock out and stripped his flesh with unsparing force as they kissed, slippery and frantic, dancing against each other.
Spike tore his mouth away and ran his tongue across his lower lip, then, dark-eyed with hunger, dropped to his knees.
~*~*~*~*~
The moon had risen as far as it was going to, but nothing else had. Buffy and Willow were crossing back out of their last scheduled graveyard, calling it a night after an hour of desultory patrolling. "What's up with vamps these days?" Buffy wondered. "Used to be, you could count on one or two fresh graves a night, get in a couple of good slays, and now," she looked around in pouty dissatisfaction, "it's like a morgue around here. I mean, a morgue without any tasty undead treats."
Willow considered this, head tipped to one side as she chewed gum, trying to mash out those last few cherry flavored crystals. "Well, statistically speaking, it's actually kinda weird how many vamps you slay. Say you take down an average of two vamps a night, with four patrols a week--"
"I patrol more than that!" Buffy protested.
"--four patrols a week with actual slayage."
"I guess that's about right."
"Mm, 'kay, so you're slaying about eight vamps a week, fifty-two weeks a year--take off a few weeks for vacation--"
Buffy scoffed her opinion of that.
"--and that's four hundred vamps a year."
"Wow. I had no idea I was so...productive." She drew herself up with a touch of pride. "In sheer numbers, I'm badder than the Terminator. I'm the Terma-Buffy."
"See, that's the thing," Willow put in with a geeky eagerness to explain. "It doesn't compute. There's no way we could have a death rate that high--that'd be comparable to, like, major cities, and we only have a population of thirty thousand. Even in Sunnydale, we'd be hearing about that all the time--it'd be huge news."
"Huh. " Buffy gave this some consideration, frown deepening. "Maybe they're all--or they could just be--" And then she stopped in place with panicky eyes, hands flattening out by her sides in a gesture that seemed designed to keep gravity in place. "Okay, where are all those bodies coming from? Because, having the freak here."
Willow hastened to ease her mind. "A lot of them are probably out-of-towners," she said. "And--" Then she hesitated, unsure if she should float any more distracting theories.
"And?"
Willow's eyes widened. "And there's two behind you now! Buffy, watch out!"
Already whirling at the warning, Buffy kicked out behind her and followed through to block an attack, but none was forthcoming. Her kick had sent the first vampire sprawling, and the second one was simply standing off to the side, twisting a purse strap in her hand. Both were in game face, but they didn't have a lot of zest. Instead of scrambling to his feet for round two, the vamp on the grass pushed himself up slowly with a stunned wonderment at his fall.
"Damn," he said, in a small thin voice.
"You okay?" his companion asked. She had stringy blonde hair pulled back in barrettes, and wore a quilted jacket with ragged holes in the sleeves, over a pair of faded jeans. Her voice had just as little body as his, as if it'd been starved out of her. When Buffy shifted on the balls of her feet, pulling out a stake, the girl vamp shrank back a step, all nerves.
"Fine," muttered the other, and then jumped to his feet. It was done quickly and in one fluid movement, but Willow could see even through the mask of game face that it had taken effort. If he'd still been human, he'd have been winded. "Hang tight, baby. I'm gettin' dinner."
"Well, you're getting stake," Buffy said dryly.
"Vic, we should go." The female inched forward just far enough to grab his sleeve. "She's not easy pickings, and you always say--"
"Shhh, girl. I got it under control." Vic's voice was gentle when he first spoke to her, but then he tossed his hair back and managed a sneer in Buffy's direction. "She's just a bitty thing."
"So they tell me." Buffy twitched her head, almost matching his hair toss. "And yet, five minutes from now--well, five seconds, really--I'm gonna be standing here in your dust."
"Vic, she ain't no meal, ain't no more'n a toothpick afterwards. Why don't we go, baby."
"Yeah, Vic." Buffy smiled. "Why don't you try that. Haven't had a good run yet tonight."
The scene made Willow vaguely uneasy. Though she knew that vamps were unsouled demons, stripped of conscience, sometimes she couldn't help but feel a pang for ones like this, all tattered and shabby, sad as the stray cats who lurked behind supermarkets. They probably hadn't asked to be turned. It could so easily happen to you when you're weren't looking. One walk home late at night, one step outside your door at the wrong moment, and wham. That could have been her, victim to Angelus's revenge or Spike's drunken whim, or the anonymous fangs of any of a hundred vamps they'd run across.
"Buffy, maybe you should just stake them," she heard herself say, tone falling somewhere between severity and wheedling. And drop the quippage for once, she wanted to add. Buffy turned her head slightly at her words, and there came Vic.
It was over fast, but a flinch hit Willow's gut and stretched there for one long moment as Buffy twisted back around to drive the stake home. Not the most spectacular killing, nothing to write down in your diary, but even as it was happening Willow knew that Buffy's distraction had been just another tactic. Draw the vamp in, take him out. It was like toying with dumb animals. Like a joke and its punchline. Willow didn't know how she knew that; she didn't think Buffy had meant her to know it. The satisfaction on Buffy's face was only a flash, quickly hidden.
The female vampire stared at the dust which had been Vic. "Oh sweet holy saints," she said, a disturbing, even horrifying invocation that made Willow's stomach twist further. "Vic." And she began to cry.
Buffy, who'd been approaching her with stake raised, paused, finally seeming to share some of Willow's discomfort. She took a deep breath, said, "Look, I'll make it quick."
Head lifting, the vamp slid off her demon visage to reveal the tear-streaked face of a young girl, probably no more than seventeen when she'd been turned. She looked shocked and horrified at Buffy's promise. "Don't kill me," she said, stumbling back and almost tripping on a gravestone. "I ain't gonna hurt you. I swear."
"Oh man," Willow said, feeling dizzy and nauseous, unable to remember the last time she'd felt so bad about being good. "Buffy, c'mon. Hurry."
"No," wailed the girl, holding out one hand and backing up further. "Don't hurt me, I didn't do nothin' at all, we didn't do nothin'--"
It wasn't impossible to say what Buffy would have done next; she'd have done her job, Willow was certain of it. But just then a figure appeared, a flashlight shining at them out of the darkness. Willow lifted her hand to shield her face, half blinded.
"What's going on here?" said a voice.
As soon as the cop appeared, the vamp took off, jackrabbiting across the graveyard and out of sight within seconds. Buffy started to follow, but the cop stepped in her path, and though she could have steamrolled right over him without breaking stride, she halted. "I'm sorry," she said quickly, "my friend--she's having kind of a bad trip, you know. We were at a-a party, and we told her not to drink that soda, because you never know what's in it these days. We were just taking her home."
The flashlight swung back and forth between them. "You girls haven't been drinking, have you?" They shook their heads, murmured denials until he was satisfied, and were let go with a warning.
Outside the graveyard, they walked in glum tandem toward home. "I shouldn't have let her get away," Buffy said, very quietly.
"Yeah, but..." Willow trailed off. "Yeah. But...you'll get her. Sooner or later." The words held no cheer, and weren't received with any.
~*~*~*~*~
The house's windows were open to the early evening, breathing in an air poised between the dissipation of sun and the first stirrings of crickets and vampires. Joyce Summers was finishing up the supper dishes, wiping plates dry with a checked towel. At the counter, Buffy was reorganizing the contents of a large, loop-handled deli bag.
After a gaze out the window, thoughts musing in a placid drift, Joyce picked up the dropped thread of idle, mother-daughter chatter that punctuated this time of day. "I'm glad that Mister Giles is returning. He always seems to help channel some of that pent-up energy."
"Mom! I'm not pent. I'm completely unpent. Also...weirdly verging on the inappropriate there, aren't you?"
Joyce turned around with a starched, indignant look. "Buffy! You know I didn't mean..." She sighed and snapped Buffy with the towel. "Tease the mom."
"Olé!"
"Isn't that an awfully lot of food?" Joyce asked, eyeballing the goods Buffy was packing. "You did just have dinner. You didn't grow an extra stomach while I wasn't looking? And why does that question seem not so rhetorical?" She tipped her head, striking a dry and reflective pose.
"Relax. The extra stomachs are all in my friends. One per friend." Buffy smoothed a bag of pretzels, a tiny crease of thought centering her brows. Non sequitur forming. "Hey, you know that guy you used to work with--the one with the beach house?"
"Eric?"
"What's he doing these days?"
Pausing between absent swipes of the counter, Joyce mused, "I think he moved to L.A. He wanted to get back into acting."
"Oh. What about that guy with the nose ring?"
"Peter. He quit, very suddenly. We never heard from him again. I always wrote it off as one of those 'Sunnydale things'. Of course, now that I know what that means..." Joyce sighed, then focused on her daughter. "Why this sudden interest in my old co-workers?"
"I'm trying to find someone for Xander. A nice guy--the kind who walks on the sunny side of the street."
"Oh, Buffy." Joyce's lips compressed, and her eyes held warning and concern. "I don't know if that's a good idea. And what about Spike? Aren't they still--" She hesitated, moving her hand in a vague gesture that Buffy raised brows at.
"Sharing the same beer bottle?" she finished helpfully. "No."
"That's a shame."
"Mom. Evil undead. Not exactly Hugh Grant material."
Leaning against the counter now, Joyce tipped up a shoulder. "I don't know. I've always rather liked him. Spike, I mean. Hugh Grant is just...odd. Don't you think? All that floppy hair."
"Ignoring that." Bag fully packed, Buffy set it on the floor. "Spike's likableness isn't a factor here. Killing thousands of people isn't excused by having a pretty face and a taste for marshmallows."
"Buffy!" Joyce stared at her with astonishment, then lowered her tone. "I know that." She shook her head, gaze sliding away as if to find answers in the plain, clean lines of her kitchen, where a vampire once visited. "I just can't look at him and see what you see." With resignation not unlike helplessness she met Buffy's eyes again, a world of feeling unexpressed. "I guess that's why I'm not the slayer."
~*~*~*~*~
"Buffy, did you find the--" A bag of tortilla chips came flying through the partition, and Willow caught them neatly. "Thanks!"
Xander appeared next to her at Giles's dining room table with a paper grocery bag and began removing goods for Willow to arrange: dip, soda, cheese wheels. "Remind me why we're here again," he said, sounding not at all rhetorical but as if he honestly couldn't remember. His blue cotton shirt hung loosely off his shoulders; Willow recognized it as an old shirt, but she couldn't decide if it had always hung like that, or if his endless work-outs had carved a few more slices of flesh from his body. Its sleeves were rolled up, and there was a thumb-shaped bruise on the back of his hand, like you get when they draw blood. Except he hadn't had blood drawn. Not there, anyway.
"Giles has been gone for three weeks," she reminded him. "And he said he had some big news for all of us."
Coming out of the kitchen with a bucket of ice, Buffy said, "We should have gotten nuts." She put the bucket down and looked at the snacks with dissatisfaction. "But he might have had some on the plane--do they still give you nuts? He's probably all nutted out. Also, they're fatty. When you're his age, it's time to cut back, even if it is the good kind of fat." She paused, apparently following her own private mental connections to add: "Plus, all that salt."
Willow and Xander exchanged a glance. "I think we have plenty of nuts, Buff." Xander's voice was light and dry, removing any edge from the words, but Buffy didn't even seem to hear him.
"Cups," Buffy said, and disappeared back around the corner.
"What's the wig?" Xander asked Willow in a lower voice.
"I think she's worried about Giles's news. He's been closed-mouthy all summer, and she's been getting more and more freaked, except she won't say so. They're like clams, both of them."
"She certainly is a tightly-wound little slayer."
The door opened and they both turned, and Willow felt her heart give an expectant bump, but it was just Riley, carrying more soda. They nearly had enough to float on by now, and Giles didn't even drink soda. "Hey," he said, smiling when he saw them. Perfunctory, thought Willow. That was the ten-dollar word for a smile like that. It wasn't fake, but he wasn't entirely behind it. She knew Riley liked them; he wouldn't smile that way unless something was wrong. Probably not a big something. Just one of those small somethings that had been piling up over the summer.
"Hey," Xander said, followed a beat later by her own greeting. They shifted away from the table just as Buffy came back out with her cups.
"You made it," she said to Riley. "I thought you had to work?"
An uncomfortable look passed over Riley's face and he stuck his hands in his pockets, elbows jutting out to the sides. "Yeah. I figured this was more important."
"Thanks." First the pleased Buffy, then concerned Buffy. "But I don't want you to lose your job or anything."
"Actually...it's a little late for that. I quit."
Oh oh, thought Willow. She pretended to be suddenly and deeply absorbed in twisting napkins into a kitty-katted pile, as if there was nothing of great significance being said. Xander seemed rather less worried, and watched the exchange openly.
"Another job? Why--what happened?" Buffy asked, questions flying fiercely at this news, then took a deep breath and visibly blew it off, covering her anxiety with a less than convincing smile. "Never mind. We can talk about it later. Hey, can you pick out a record? I think we're stuck with fuddy, but maybe you can find something low on the duddy."
Honoring the request with strained good humor, Riley saluted. "Record patrol, reporting for duty." He headed toward the stereo while Buffy drifted off again to unnamed preparations.
"He really is kind of a dork, isn't he," Willow observed to Xander, watching Riley pluck out records and scan the covers. "But it's not a bad dorkiness." Especially since it raised her own cool factor by comparison. There weren't so many people she could say that about.
"We should all be so dorky," Xander said. He paused a beat as the words sank in for both of them, depth charges that exploded a thousand memories of high school trauma. "Forget I said that."
"Forgetting now."
The front door swung open again, Willow's heart leapt again, but it was Spike. He stood on the threshold a moment, a phenomenon of leather, smoke pluming from his cigarette as he surveyed them, then took one last drag and tossed the butt aside. He carried a brown sack in which could only be a bottle. Willow had a feeling it was not so much a gift as an accessory, but he surprised her by thrusting it into her hands, and she slid off the paper to find an expensive fifth of Giles's favorite scotch.
"'Lo," he said shortly, to her or to Xander, or to whoever cared.
She held the bottle awkwardly and dredged up a smile. The scotch would have been more meaningful if he weren't a bartender and a thief, but that was no reason not to acknowledge the gesture. "Thanks, I'll just put this..." Letting action finish the thought, she moved off to set the bottle by the bar. She didn't mean to glance over her shoulder. It wasn't any of her business, when it came down to it, and though there was unfortunate history on the Buffy front, Xander had never suggested to Willow that she stop dating a werewolf, which tied her tongue, at least until he showed signs of heartbreak, and so far he didn't. It wasn't what you'd call a tragic love affair, not when it seemed to add two inches to his height and that sort of pantherlike shimmy to his walk, which she suspected she'd be seeing now if there'd been walking involved, but Spike had left no space between them whatsoever.
Was it wrong to find it kinda hot when your best ex-boyfriend was kissing another guy? She wondered that, because when they ended up draped against each other like tigers, greeting each other at the mouth, she noticed the temperature go up a few degrees, and Xander's hand was splayed against Spike's ribs in a tender way, and that wasn't just hot, that was cuteness. They had cuteness. It was terrible.
Buffy appeared from somewhere and stopped short when she saw Spike, who had broken off his hellos to wander couchward. "What's he doing here?"
Closing in to fix a drink, Xander said, "I invited him." He sounded calm but his eyes challenged Buffy to make something of it, and Willow's own gaze flicked nervously back and forth between them.
"I thought you'd broken up." Buffy paused. "Again."
"Oh, there was breakage." Xander's eyes glinted, and a wicked, satisfied, not-quite-there smile shaped his lips. "But we keep a lot of...glue on hand. To put the pieces back together." Willow got the feeling that by 'glue' he meant something other than 'glue' but she wasn't sure she wanted details.
"So you're back together," Willow said, hoping this would deter match-making plans and trying to message this to Buffy with her eyes.
Xander looked like he was tiring of the subject. "Not in the Hallmark anniversary card sense. You know how it is."
"And how it isn't," Buffy said, folding her arms. "Isn't healthy, isn't smart--"
That was all it took, and Willow's stomach sank as Xander tensed and leaned close. "You know, I don't need to hear Buffy lecture number five hundred and twelve right now--"
"No? Because I think that's exactly--"
"--especially from someone whose love life makes Romeo and Juliet look like high comedy--"
"--not enough glue in the world to fix your relationship--"
"--Typhoid Buffy ever since a certain--"
There was a throat clearing from across the room, and their argument dried up as quickly as it had begun, three heads turning to find Giles standing in the doorway, suitcase beside him, carrier bag slung over his shoulder. "I hope I'm not interrupting," he said mildly. His eyes captured them all in a stunned snapshot, somewhere between dismay and surprise.
"Giles!" Relief crashed down over Willow, making her giddy. She yanked the noisemaker she'd been saving from her pocket and blew it with a weak tweeting sound. "Welcome home."
~*~*~*~*~
They all sat together in Giles's living room, cooperating in a tacit truce so as not to distract from his announcement, but Buffy was nestled against Riley in an almost pointed display of heterosexual, human-loving wholesomeness, across from Xander, whose arm was draped over Spike's thigh. Giles, perhaps sensing the atmosphere, didn't look entirely comfortable, but he manfully forged ahead, cradling a glass of scotch in his hands.
"Well, I-I'd hoped to share this news with you sooner, but I wanted to be certain before I said anything." He paused with a serious expression on his face, fingering his glass, then took a sip. "I think you all know that the last twelve months have not been particularly...easy for me." Across the room, Buffy had discreetly detached herself from Riley and was worrying at a ring on one of her fingers, twisting it back and forth. "My--our--fall out with the Council placed me in a difficult position, far more so than I let on, I'm afraid." He glanced around, catching their eyes one by one, lingering last on Buffy. "I didn't want to worry you with details, but it is only with great effort that I've begun to repair the ties that were severed."
"I'm so sorry, Giles." Buffy's face was unhappy, drawn with guilt. "I never should have quit the Council."
"It wasn't the most strategic decision for the long term," Giles conceded. "But I don't fault you, Buffy. Or myself, for that matter. We did what was necessary at the time." He hesitated. "As I must do what is necessary now--"
"Giles, don't leave!" Everyone looked at Buffy with varying expressions of startlement or confusion, including Giles. "I know they've probably offered you a great job, doing research or, or watching a new potential slayer, and I know I can't pay you--"
"Buffy."
"--but we need you here, and maybe you can find a job--they have other libraries in Sunnydale, and bookstores--or maybe you could open your own magic shop, and oh, the last proprietor was just killed, so that's great! For you I mean. Bad for them--"
"Buffy, I'm not leaving."
"Oh."
"Bit of an anticlimax there, Rupes." Spike, slouched in his seat, looked as bored as a blind man at a tennis match. Giles ignored him.
"I'm founding a school." One of those silences fell in which everyone looked at everyone else to make sure they'd heard correctly, while Giles reached down to the floor by his chair and picked up a loose scroll of paper. He shook it out across the coffee table, and Riley leaned forward to flatten the other end. Willow's brows lifted as mental tumblers clicked into place.
"It's blueprints," she said.
"Yes." Reserved British enthusiasm lit Giles's face as he spread his hands across the drawing, tracing its lines familiarly. "It's the plans for Graydon Manor, an estate house just a mile east of here. We've just finalized the purchase and renovations will begin on Monday."
"You're founding a school," Xander said, blinking. "Like a boarding school?"
Giles gave him an odd look, then seemed to realize that the rest of them were feeling just as bewildered. "Ahh...no," he said carefully, taking off his glasses and gesturing with them as he spoke. "Though I suppose there is that aspect. It's an academy for watchers, here on the Hellmouth. Watchers and associated agents of the council, I should say. Researchers, translators, witches--"
"Oh my god," Willow said, sitting up straight with a sudden jolt of electricity and waving her hands around as if she could somehow shake comprehension into the others. "You're--you're opening up a Hogwarts!"
Cocking his head to one side, lips parted a moment as if he were processing this dubious but fascinating descent into the pop cultural idiom, Giles slowly replied, "If a 'Hogwarts' somehow translates into 'academy for watchers', then yes," he nodded, "exactly so."
"This is so cool! Isn't this cool?" Grinning, she looked around at her friends. Buffy's face had lightened, losing several shades of worry, and Xander seemed intrigued.
"Terrific news," Spike said sourly. "Nothing I like better than having dozens of little nancies in starched knickers running around, tripping over themselves and nosin' where they don't belong." He glared at Giles in personal accusation. "Why the hell d'you think I left London?"
"I must admit I never considered the question, Spike." Giles's faint, smooth smile suggested he was not at all displeased at the idea of inconveniencing the vampire. "But I'll be sure to note that in your file."
"Huh," Spike said, and then performed a small double-take. "Wait. I have a file?"
"Relax, how much information could they have?" Xander said reassuringly. "The vampire is a stealthy creature. They probably don't know your favorite color."
"Black," Giles and Spike said at the same time. Spike glowered in outrage as if to say, "See?!"
"Okay, we're calling that one a lucky guess. Still--it's probably not a big file," Xander chanced.
"One thousand, two hundred and forty-seven pages, I believe." Giles tipped his head. "Of course, that's without the index."
Spike stood up abruptly, looking a bit jarred. "I need a smoke."
"Be stealthy!" Buffy chirped as Spike departed. Xander gave her a dirty look--well, closer to slightly smudged.
The rest of them shifted in their seats, and Giles leaned back with his drink.
"So," said Riley, hands resting together at the palms as he hunched forward. "You're going to be a headmaster."
"More or less." Giles began to lift his drink absently. "And though I have yet to firm up details, I think this will be an extraordinary opportunity for all of us to--"
The doorbell rang. Five heads turned in unison, struck to silence. "Did someone order pizza?" Xander wondered.
Giles went to answer, the set of his shoulders betraying the subtle but ever-present caution that any of them would feel at a strange knock on the door. In Sunnydale, hypervigilance was the unavoidable price of battling evil. Somehow the rest of them discovered a need at that moment to be nearer to the entrance, grouping like buffalo around the buffet. Willow picked up a handful of potato chips and nibbled, watchful gaze pinned to the door.
"Hello," Giles said, sounding bemused, and that was enough for Willow to amble forward with intent to snoop. A polished, thirtyish woman stood at the threshold in a navy suit, a leather bag slung over her shoulder. She was holding a sheaf of papers and smiling. "Hello," she said in a pleasant voice. "I'm looking for Buffy Summers? Her mother said I might find her here."
"Of course, yes." Willow sensed there was a 'do come in' on the tip of his tongue, but if so, it was withheld. "Buffy," he said, stepping back with his hand on the open door. "A-a someone to see you."
"Hey...lo," Buffy said, going from bright to uncertain in the space of a syllable when it became clear she didn't recognize the visitor. "I'm Buffy."
"Karen Denham, Buffy." She shuffled her papers, held out a padded clipboard and a pen. "I just have some papers for you to sign."
"Oh." Buffy blinked, stared down at the papers she found herself holding. "Are you from the college?" Stress hit her voice on schedule. "Didn't I complete all my paperwork? Because, I swear, I made sure this year to call and find out all the deadlines--"
"I'm not from the school. I'm a process server. You've been subpoenaed, Miss Summers." Karen Denham smiled again. "Have a nice night."
~*~*~*~*~
Buffy stood holding the papers in her hand, eyes going straight to Giles as the remedy for her confusion. He took the subpoena from her, then drew his glasses from his vest pocket and put them on. Silently, he read over the contents until everyone was on tenterhooks.
Whatever those were, thought Xander. Tenterhooks. It sounded like something you'd find in a meat locker, and that couldn't be good. "What is it?" he asked, unable to stifle his curiosity any longer. "Buffy, have you been double-parking in front of the ice cream shop again?"
"No!" she said, then looked quickly to Giles. "Can you get subpoenaed for that? Giles?"
He glanced up, face serious. "The charge is homicide."
Riley broke the stunned silence. "I may not know a lot about law, but I think we skipped an important handcuffs and mugshots step somewhere. Not," he said quickly to Buffy, "that I want you handcuffed." The matter was grave enough that no one followed up on that juicy line, not even Buffy.
"Okay, I didn't murder anyone." Buffy's gaze gathered up her friends as if they might doubt her, and Xander flashed back to what he knew of Faith's adventure in foul play, and felt a pang for Buffy's defensiveness.
"No, of course not. But it appears you did slay someone." Giles read from the document. "'This action seeks an award of compensatory and punitive damages for the wanton slaying of Victor Farrell, deceased, on the night of September 18, A.D. 2000.'"
Looking at Buffy, Willow said, "That vampire last night. That was his name--Vic."
"Since when is it against the law to slay?" Xander asked, feeling as if he'd missed a memo from The Powers That Be. At least this time he wasn't the only one.
Giles flipped down the top paper of the sheaf he held and frowned at it. "This is a summons to appear in front of the Tribunal."
"The who now?" said Xander.
The other man's face suggested he was searching for words to explain complex thoughts in simple sentences. "It's an otherworldly court of justice which hears petitions not suited to normal legal channels. If I recall, there are two levels of redress, one arbitrated by a Tribunal judge, the other settled by mortal combat."
"Combat I can handle," Buffy said, visibly relieved. "Mortal, immortal, I'm the can-do girl of combat."
"A regular Slayer Barbie." Spike joined them, cool, tobacco-scented air wafting in with his presence. "What are we combatting?"
"Not us," Willow said. "Buffy."
Holding up one finger, Giles broke in. "Actually, the subpoena indicates that trial by arbitration is the first measure. It appears to be a civil suit."
"I take it an appeal would involve pointy weapons and salty tears." Xander stuck his hands in his pockets, already resigned to the inevitable.
"We would of course endeavor to avoid that," Giles said, looking through his glasses at Xander on a slant of reproof.
"Call me cynical, but if the last few years have taught me anything, it's that every reasonable course of action ends in a death match." Xander's remark received a sidelong smile from Spike, sardonic but almost admiring, and Xander felt that familiar flippy thing happen to his insides. He knew Spike considered himself a mentor of sorts, seeking to instill in Xander all the qualities of distrust, misanthropy, and self-preservation that had kept him around for over a hundred years. And Xander wasn't entirely sure how he felt about that, but he knew that he was quite capable of growing his own pessimism without outside help.
"What happens if I just...don't show up?" Buffy asked, turning the focus back on the problem at hand. "It's not like they can arrest me, right?"
Giles blinked. "No. But there may be repercussions. Further research is indicated before we commit to a course of action."
Perking up, Willow declared, "Research party!" Xander could tell she'd been missing the books. He'd bet good money that she'd already bought back-to-school supplies for both semesters and maxed out her library card.
"Count me in," Riley said. "I've got nothing better to do."
For crying out loud, thought Xander. Don't call attention to the fact, buddy. He skimmed a quick look at Buffy's face, saw a shadow pass across it.
Spike was watching them both too, much in the same way he watched reality TV and soap operas--making no distinction between the two--with his head cocked as if he were trying to remember what it was like to be that human. Sometimes he accompanied his viewing with incredulous mockery, other times with an attentive frown that suggested he was making mental note of attitudes to mimic. Now the mockery was surfacing in his expression, tinged with faint disgust.
"Call me when there's killing to be done," he said, and matter-of-factly looped his hand around the back of Xander's neck and hauled him in for a kiss guaranteed--even designed--to irritate all his friends; a kiss that tasted of cigarette smoke, a kiss of death's deep tongue, but oh Jesus, for all of three point six seconds Xander couldn't make himself care about any of this, or anything else.
Spike swept out, leaving Giles and Riley brimming with masculine discomfort, Willow blushing, and Buffy...well, it was hard to tell, but Xander got the feeling she was disappointed in him. Surprise, surprise.
"I guess we should get to work," Xander said. It wasn't an apology, but it was an olive branch, and she sort of bit her lip and nodded, ducking her eyes away from him.
~*~*~*~*~
At two o'clock in the afternoon under a bright blue sky, Sunnydale was a very different place. This was the world Xander had expected to grow up into, one with simple rules and schedules, with digital clocks beeping you awake in the morning, salami for lunch, dinner timed to network news. In this world you had supermarkets, banker's hours, ice cream trucks. You went to the mall, shot some hoops, trucked out to the beach on summer weekends.
"Watch your proportions, Harris." Oliveria came over to squint importantly at the cement mixer. "You're putting too much water in."
"Thanks," Xander said. The longer he worked at Nash Construction, the more of his natural talents were surfacing. Accepting advice and making his appreciation sound genuine was a skill he'd honed to a razor-sharp edge. Especially when he wasn't putting too much water in. "Trying to get about three-quarters in before I dump the aggie."
"Yeah," said Oliveria. "Good." He walked off toward another area of the site, tool belt jangling on his ample hips, transmitting advance warning of his presence wherever he went.
Tom Kronlunk snorted under his breath at the departing supervisor, then leaned toward Xander in a comradely fashion. "You're putting too much water in my ass," he mimicked in a falsetto. "Oooh, Harris. Not so much, I'll bust my diaper."
Xander smiled, hoping that looked natural too. He wanted to fit in, at least on the surface. Had to in order to keep this job, because getting along was half of what they paid you for, even if they pretended otherwise. Good old teamwork, with the teams and players not so different from the ones he'd avoided in high school. And even now it remained a puzzle to him how other guys managed to adapt so easily to their surroundings, blending in with chatter about their girlfriends and wives, chucking off-color jokes back and forth like baseballs, bitching about their cars, their workload, their everything.
No one knew he was gay, of course. No one knew he shagged a vampire in his off hours, and killed others with pointy stakes he carved from scrap wood stolen from the site. These personal tidbits he kept under his hard-hat. He liked his balls and his paycheck and wanted to hang on to both, and that meant smiling when the other guys cracked jokes, and telling a few of his own if it came to that. He wasn't a regular guy, but he played one on TV.
Pausing for a moment, he wiped sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand. His body had settled into its mid-afternoon work ache, a not all that bad feeling of exertion that was lessening over time as he adapted to the rhythms of the job. Another six months and he'd be piling forty-pound cement bags on his shoulders three at a time like Tom. Xander glanced over at the hefty hubcaps of Tom's shoulders, and revised that prediction. Maybe two at a time.
"Hey," Tom said. "You coming to the Ready Room tonight? Guys are gonna give Lanza a send-off." Lanza was leaving Sunnydale to follow his wife, a lawyer, to her new job in Burbank. He'd received a lot of chaffing about that and would probably get a lot more tonight, along with a beer bath and a DUI, if the crew lived up to past performance.
"I don't know." Xander shrugged. "I'm supposed to go over to a friend's house, help him put up some bookshelves." And could that lie be any more ridiculous, he wondered, picturing for a moment Spike's apartment with its milk crates and rotting walls, and then picturing Spike, blooming against his mattress like some pale, exotic fungus; naked, curls of smoke drifting from his cigarette, probably stroking himself at this very moment, in that lazy-fingered way he had, so slow and--get a fucking grip.
"Put your shelves up and bring him along," Tom said, breaking this vision like a wrecking ball through glass. "Hell, Lanza won't care, long as you buy him a drink."
Xander nodded once to acknowledge the invitation. "I'll think about it."
"You're always thinking about it. Maybe you think too much."
Warning bells rang on the perimeter, and Xander had an itching awareness of being scrutinized. He wondered if this was how vampires and other creatures felt when they were trying to pass for human, this low, gut-level anxiety of being found out. Probably not. They were predators, not prey.
"My teachers used to say that a lot." He kept his voice light, knowing that any irony would fly right over Tom's stolid, well-muscled head.
"You got to get out once in a while, Harris."
I get out all the time, Xander thought. Every night, with the patrolling and the killing, and now and then the raunchy sex against tombstones. But he just said, "Yeah. I know."
But Tom was lumbering on earnestly, dumping rubble in his wheelbarrow at a comfortable union pace. "Seriously, you gotta cut loose--you're a young guy. And not some college fruit like Princess over there, either." Xander followed his gaze to where Lewis "Princess Di" Diamond, a UC Sunnydale soph with an uncle in management, was tightening the bolts on some scaffolding. "You're getting your chops in and you aren't afraid of hard work." Meaning that Xander readily accepted any shitwork task they gave him--his lack of choice in the matter didn't seem to weigh into Tom's good opinion.
"Well, my food habit forces me to earn a living wage. Sad, really. I tried crack and begging, but it just wasn't the same."
Reaching over to clap him on the back (Xander jumped), Tom said, "Hard work and hard liquor is what made America great, pal. And you can tell that to the British."
Thrown for a loop by this bizarre encouragement, it took Xander a moment to shake himself back to life. "I'll make sure he knows it."
~*~*~*~*~
The British was working behind the bar when Xander arrived, and adhering to at least half of Tom's philosophy, slamming back as much liquor as he served. Even from across the room he radiated a foul mood. His hair was sticking up all over in the wild baby-bird tufts that meant he'd slept late and ignored all hair care rituals (a look Xander privately found trashy and sexy as hell, though he'd never said so and never would), but the vampire's eyes were rimmed with shadow and his head was bowed at a particular, heavy angle that signaled drunkenness and danger. Patrons seemed nervous about approaching him
Xander walked up to the bar and took a seat. The bar-top was sticky under his hand, and decorated with the orange peels, parasols, and strewn napkins of several hours of previous visitors.
Dragging his head up, Spike focused a scowl on him. "Look here," he said. "It's the carpenter, come to nail me."
Very bad night, oh yeah.
"And hello to you."
With a disgusted look, Spike straightened to stand with his shoulders drawn back. It was a slow thing of beauty to watch, a snake's arching and deadly grace. He was fuckable and scary, and after months of snake-charming Xander had unlearned the difference. "What is it, time to kill?" Which couldn't be mistaken for a figure of speech. Also, Spike was trying to look at his watch, but he didn't own one. After a moment he gave up and dragged an ax out from under the bar. "Let's go, then."
"Whoa!" Xander came to his feet and glanced behind him to make sure no one had seen, then pushed the ax back across the bar into Spike's hands. "You might want to put that away for now. Let the place clear out."
The patrons were already straggling from the bar, most without needing to be asked, the remainder prompted by the bouncer until the room was empty, the lights turned off. The bouncer himself disappeared a minute later, leaving Xander behind the bar with Spike, helping him with his closing routine. Trying to.
"Just leave it," Spike muttered as Xander began to clear some glasses away into the sink. He knocked Xander's hand aside, then swayed.
"Spike, what the hell is wrong?" Niceness didn't cut it with Spike, and though Xander was used to thinking of himself as a nice guy, at times like this it was a relief not to have to bother.
"What then," Spike said, mouth twisting in private bitterness. "You want the digest or the special edition?"
"Whatever."
Pointing to his head, Spike said, "Government work mucking up my insides. Need a can opener to get it out. Found one."
A chill passed through Xander's body. "You found someone to remove the chip?"
Spike laughed, staggered away a few paces, then slid down the back of the bar until he was sitting on the floor, arms dangling over his knees. With his head bent, it took Xander a moment to realize his laughter had turned to sobs. He dropped down next to Spike, instincts tangling and knotting like shoelaces, and laid a hand against the vampire's arm. Some part of Xander loathed the violence trapped inside the other man, waiting for release. Snakes in a can, but not so funny. He'd come to care, though. Hiding his feelings behind comedy and irritation, playing it cool with his friends, defending his turf even while he denied to himself that he felt anything. Spike, oh yeah, what was I thinking. Boyfriend--don't you mean renovation project? Great fuck, sure, even greater annoyance. He practiced these thoughts in the mirror while shaving. But even the famous Harris brand products, bullshit and self-delusion, weren't infinite resources. You couldn't have someone pressed close night after night, face upset by hunger, mouth unlocking you, and not figure out how to care. At least, he couldn't.
"Had it all set," Spike said at last, heel of one hand pressed to his brow. "Paid ten grand to a warlock said he could magic it out if he had the right stuff. Had to special order it, he said. Went by tonight but he'd buggered off. Place was empty." He kicked out with astonishing suddenness, boot smashing through the bottom of the bar to leave a jagged hole in its woodwork, and then roared and vamped out, blitzed and in pain--and as usual, very noisy about it.
It was impossible to feel anything but relief. That and anger. "When the hell were you planning to tell me? When your fangs were ripping out my throat?"
A demon's eyes met his own, and then the demon slipped away, leaving a tired man. "Wasn't going to kill you."
"Why do I find that so hard to believe?"
"I had pets before. Me and Dru."
Sweet tits of Hecate, thought Xander. That was his defense? "So you wanted me to what--wear a collar? Bark and roll over on command and maybe fetch you blood? That's supposed to make me feel better?"
Spike's mouth tightened before he said, "You knew what I was about."
And Xander had. That was the terrible thing. He'd known and he'd let the knowledge slide off; he'd deferred it, thinking it might be ignored indefinitely. He'd come this close to meeting with an unchipped vampire tonight; would have let himself be fucked without question, ignorant until it was far too late. He imagined Spike with a belly of human blood, his lust stoked by fresh kills; sickened, he stumbled to his feet. The bar's sweet, boozy odors surrounded him like a bath of failure and unhappiness. He felt dumb.
He was moving to leave when Spike caught his arm. No way to shake that loose, and Xander stiffened as he was drawn back to face the vampire. "Don't," Spike said. Just that. Eyes big and dark and strangely desperate, he stared at Xander.
"I don't know what I'm doing with you." The truth gave Xander a sore throat. "I've hated every vampire I ever met. I hated you before I wanted you...I don't know what the hell you are." He tugged against Spike's grip. "Let me go."
But Spike was shifting toward him, strange pain on his face. "I let you in," he said in a low voice. "I let you have me."
"Spike!" Xander tried to make himself heard, but nothing seemed to be getting through.
"You don't know what I am." Spike cracked a laugh and looked down to one side, swept his free hand across his temple. "You think I do?"
"Let go."
"'S not that easy." Spike looked at him, emotions mixed on his face like muddy paint. "It's like this chip--doesn't come out on its own, all that ache and torment."
Xander's wrist was hurting. That should have fired the chip, but the lines of consent between them had been blurring for months, and it was terrifying to realize that neither one of them might know when resistance became want, or the other way around. The chip worked for black and white, but they were close enough to be grey. Except sometimes like now, for a sharp moment that cut through familiarity, Xander would see Spike as the creature who'd killed and fed on so many people--it showed in the bones of his face and the darkness of his eyes, and it was real and unquestionable. Solid as the hand wrapped around his wrist, all sinews and muscle and whiteness. Something that drained men of blood without feeling anything, a clever machine built from dead stuff lying around a graveyard.
And then a flickering second later, the vampire's eyes would fill with so much anguished emotion that Xander couldn't see anything else, just that smokescreen of false humanity, tricking him into desire and even tenderness, the kind of feelings he associated with the soft clink of Spike's belt buckle coming undone in his hands, and lamplight and the smell of cigarettes, and the writing of cool fingertips across his own chest.
"What am I supposed to do about it?" he asked, wishing he could just leave. The words came out tight, with a hard edge that seemed to slice down between them. Spike blinked and finally let Xander's wrist drop. He looked done in.
"I got used to having anything I fancied. Shiny people, toys and blood and shags. Now it's out of reach. Golden apples."
"They say you can't always get what you want."
Spike met his eyes with unexpected sobriety and steadiness, took a deep breath. "Yeah. Heard that one."
Xander swallowed his own ragged breath. "Well, maybe it's time to figure out what you need."
The invitation lingered between them.
~*~*~*~*~
Daylight from tall windows filled the room, along with the hubbub of laughter and the clatter of dishes from a line of students trailing in a chipper, brightly-dressed ribbon around the counter and out the entrance doors, shuffling forward at a lazy pace as they socialized.
The orderly nature of cafeteria lunches comforted Buffy now as they never had in high school. Real food--food not constructed like particle board from mysterious substances--accounted for much of the difference, and with the relief of reliability she'd come to depend on the neat rows of boxed cereal and milk, the yogurt cups, the bowls of fruit, the perfect spirals of ice cream, the sandwiches pristine in cellophane looking untouched by human hands, though when you thought about it, that didn't necessarily bode well.
"You just got a salad?" Willow asked, a hint of concern in her voice as she eyed Buffy's otherwise empty tray.
"I'm the Buffy rabbit today. I tried on my suit for swim class this morning. Remind me not to do that again on a full stomach. Or an empty one."
They sat down with their trays near a window table, each taking her favorite seat with the synchronized ease of habit. "So, thumbs up on the slayer-fu," Willow said, "but you might want to work some more on the girl-power."
"Hey, I'm all about girl power! I'm girl to the power of ten."
Willow raised her brows. "Not when you help perpetuate the beauty myth of the male economic establishment, Mister." Buffy sensed at least a small chunk of tongue in that cheek.
"Did I do that?" Oops, she thought. "Sounds like Women's Studies is making an impression. So wait--should you be calling me 'Mister'?"
Grinning, Willow acknowledged the score and lobbed one back. "If we recognize gender as a fluid continuum, sure."
Buffy groaned with theatrical angst. "Yet another thing I have to worry about."
"Gender?" Willow took a bite of her sandwich with a questioning face.
"Xander." Scoping the cafeteria with a casual eye, Buffy tried to identify nice gay boys she could fix Xander up with. "Who looks gay to you?" she asked, gaze settling with critical interest on a table of guys who might have been drama majors. Maybe English Lit. Arty shirts, a few pairs of glasses, a certain type of stylish hair cut--good prospects.
"Um, I'm not sure that appearance is the best way to judge--"
"Oh, what about him?" Buffy discreetly cut her eyes toward a nearby table, where a pretty boy with a goatee was laughing at a friend's joke.
Willow followed her gaze. "Definitely. But Buffy, you can't just pick some strange guy and foist him on Xander like--like a new puppy, or some suit you want him to wear because you think he looks bad in jeans."
"Who said anything about foisting? It's been a while since I've exercised my match-making skills, but trust me, I used to put the yen in yenta. I fixed Katie Gilchrist up with John DeMeo, even though he was a cornerback and she was, like, so tragically Goth, and no one thought they would last but they went out for five whole months before the overdose--" At the expression on Willow's face, her own words caught up with her, and she changed direction midstream. "--and that might not be the best example, but usually I'm a crack shot."
"Yeah, 'cause dope fiends? Really hot."
Buffy rolled her eyes. "I accept your mockage, but--"
"Hey," descended a voice from somewhere behind her. Buffy turned to see Riley sliding out a chair and taking a backwards seat. Her pleasure at seeing him--as dependable and satisfying as lunch--was marred only slightly by a twinge of worry about his employment status. His status of un.
"Hey yourself," she said, with an approving smile for his tidy hair and wide open face, and the way his tee-shirt clung to his muscles. The whole guy package. It occurred to her for one odd moment that if Riley had been gay, he'd have been the perfect boyfriend for Xander.
Better not mention that.
"Anything new on that situation?" he asked.
"Situation? Oh, the situation." She reached for her iced tea, shook her head dismissively. "Zip. All quiet on the paranormal and legal fronts. Giles thinks we should file a--a what?" She looked to Willow for help.
"A counter-claim."
"Right. Aiding and abetting." She jiggled her straw in her cup and tilted her head as she dwelled fondly on this idea. "Wouldn't it be cool if vampires were illegal?"
Riley leaned forward against the chair-back and grew an earnest frown, the bowed set of his shoulders somehow conveying to Buffy without words the way he wanted to encompass and protect her, which meant he was worried. It gave her a warm fuzzy and a pang of impatience. "I'm still not sure about this plan," he said. "Blowing off that court appearance won't close the book--they'll find you, Buffy. You should have someone with you round the clock until it's safe."
"He's right," Willow put in. "You don't want to mess with lawyers. It could get ugly."
Right now, slayer-fu wanted to chop the debate short. She'd yinned the yang before on this, back and forth until it tired her. She had a job, and it was too bad for Riley that he didn't. She understood that he wanted something to fill his restless hours, but she didn't need a baby-sitter tagging along on every graveyard milk run. And--what else--following her into the bathroom, waiting outside the stall? Hovering next to her seat in History 201 like a Secret Service goon? Sleeping at the end of her bed like a dog? It was just a big pile of wrong. He needed to get his act together and do the thing with the boundaries you were supposed to do, according to all the books with full-sentence titles currently residing in a box in her mom's section of the basement, a post-divorce heap of pop psychology that Buffy had absorbed too much of to forget, and which made her feel now that she needed to take a firm stand.
A goodly part of this passed through her mind in a blink and she said, "Ugly I'm used to. And I'm a slayer, guys, not a diva. Bodyguards? Not part of the gig." She took as much sting out of the words as possible, and watched Riley surreptitiously to make sure he didn't get his feelings hurt. Spotting a flinch, she compromised on the spot. "But hey, I'm looking for a patrol buddy tonight."
The questionable moment passed and Riley smiled, and if there was any feeling more complex behind it than amiable boyfriendliness, Buffy couldn't tell. "It's a date then."
"It's a date," she echoed, cinching the deal.
~*~*~*~*~
Sixteen years of her life had been spent in pursuit of her dream, nine years toward making partner. A Bachelor's in Theology, a law degree from Loyola, and a senior year internship at Wolfram and Hart had led with planned inevitability to an invitation to join that prestigious company, and thus down a career path most of her peers could barely imagine, much less hope to achieve. Karen Denham hadn't lost a single case yet, and didn't intend to lose this one. Or her head.
It was unfortunate that her client was such a wet blanket. Karen eyeballed the vampire across from her, barely hiding a sneer of distaste behind her Merlot lipstick. The girl sat slouched in her chair as if someone had poured her from a laundry sack, mousy hair draggling into her face and weak features stamping her a victim, a fateful combination of poor breeding and undernourished ego obvious even in demon face. She'd been biting her nails and tugging the cuffs down on her borrowed dress for the past thirty minutes, and Karen was ready to take her rosewood fountain pen and stab the sorry little bitch through the heart.
"Stop fidgeting," she said, more sharply than she'd intended, then pasted on a smile to cover her slip, unaware that this sharklike effort of lips was no less intimidating. Around them, the dark emptiness of Judge's Chambers rustled with the movement of unseen presences. When a shape cut from the fabric of hell flapped past overhead with a grinding screech, the vampire cowered lower in her chair. It was unnatural, thought Karen, to see a demon cringing like that. Unnatural and reason enough to kill her when this was all over with. But she supposed it made her case easier.
"I really don't want to see that blonde girl again," her client whined.
"The slayer's not going to hurt you, Vicky." Karen crossed her legs, hoping that Vicky might emulate her pose and patience. "You're under the protection of Wolfram and Hart. No one can hurt you." Except us, she added mentally.
"She killed Vic. Just snuffed him out like a bug." Vicky's human face surfaced with a tiny, bone-crunching sound made loud only by the vacancy surrounding them, and tears slipped down her cheeks. "If we don't win, I don't know what I'm going to do. I never hunted by myself before. It was always Vic who took care of me."
"Which is exactly what we'll tell the judge," Karen said, smoothing down her skirt and fighting boredom. "I feel sure that any jury--or demonically empowered magistrate--will be sympathetic to your case. We just have to let them know the facts. Your head of household has been slayed, leaving you a poor widow, alone, with no means of support--"
"We didn't actually have a house," Vicky broke in sadly. "We had a nice trailer for a while, 'fore Vic took a bite of the park manager."
"It doesn't matter. It's your pain and suffering that's important."
"Yeah," Vicky said, sounding unconvinced. She chewed on a nail for a moment, the picture of pathos with her white, knobby-kneed legs twisted around her chair legs like that of an ungainly adolescent--which in point of fact she still was. Eternally. "Those are real pretty shoes," she said in a shy voice.
Karen looked down at her Manolo Blahniks, stroked to momentary goodwill by this tribute to her fashion sense. "Thank you. Neiman Marcus."
"Oh, he's a real good designer, ain't he?"
Massaging the bridge of her nose, Karen muttered, "I need an aspirin."
"Court is in session!" boomed a toneless voice, resonating in the chamber like thunder at the height of a storm. A cone of white light appeared just ahead of them in the dark, illuminating an empty judge's bench with a witness stand on one side. From around the corner a small, lumpy demon in ceremonial robes strode, taking a place next to the stand.
"The Honorable Tribune of the Ninth Sub-District Court of California presiding," the demon said in a normal voice. "All rise."
Karen got to her feet along with Vicky and waited while the Tribune took his seat. His face held an unassailable respectability, stern and timeless. He looked a little like Tommy Lee Jones, but with more horns. He took his time getting seated, rattling through his papers with a few coughs, then sipping some water. "One of those late summer colds," he said conversationally. "Those are the worst." He coughed again. "Okay. We've got here one Victoria Bourbon, claimant..." He paused to peer over his glasses at Karen and Vicky. "Bourbon?"
Without any ripple in professionalism, Karen said, "That's correct, your honor."
"Uh huh. New one on me. Victoria Bourbon versus Buffy Anne Summers, Slayer. Action seeks permanent injunction...yadda....damages, yadda...wrongful death." He read for another moment in silence before saying, "Well, that seems clear." Looking up and around he said, "And where's our defendant?"
Karen smiled.
~*~*~*~*~
Even Willow had to leave the library sometime, though the smell of books was vast and sexy and she could almost hear their papery voices calling to her with millions of sibilant words that hung just outside the range of understanding--
Wow. Really time to go now, thought Willow, gathering her texts and dumping them into her carrier bag. She was just passing through the wide doors into the foyer when she bumped into someone. You'd think with all that space a bump would be avoidable, but no, there was the old collision of particles and familiar sound of books and papers dropping--not hers--and the blush of embarrassment she'd meant to leave in high school.
"Oh wow, I'm so sorry," she said, ducking down to help the girl pick up her stuff. Long hair made a swing of curtains in front of her face, and then she looked up with warm eyes and a little lip-twisty smile of greeting. "Tara!" Willow perked up immediately. "Hey, you're here. I mean, of course you're here, in school here, but now you're in-my-face here. In, you know, the good way of in-your-face. There is one, isn't there?" Her rush and twitter ended on a worried note, and Tara's smile grew to a grin.
"Hey, Willow." They stood up together, belongings reordered. Tara, all generous curves, held her books in front of her more like a schoolkid than a college sophomore. "I-it's good to see you."
"Yeah. You too." Anxiety rose and tickled in Willow like soda bubbles. "I was getting kinda...I mean, you said your cousin was here and I know how it is. Family." She loaded the word with comprehension. "So I didn't stop by, but then...I was like, no, she's busy. And me. Busy. So." Jitters were scaling her body toward her ears, which she felt turning red. She trailed off, hoping she'd gotten her thoughts across, and was made hopeful by the punctuation of Tara's smile.
"It's okay. She just left." She gave an uncharacteristic, fed-up eye roll that explained everything and warmed Willow's cockles, as she sometimes felt Tara was a bit too wispy about standing up for herself. "I wanted to see you," she assured Willow, "but it was kind of..." She shrugged.
"I get it. I'm just glad we're...you know. Okay."
Tara ducked her eyes a bit and a flush touched her cheeks, but she nodded. "Oh, we're okay." Her smiley tone washed away Willow's last doubts. "How is everybody?" she asked, easing off the subject. "Buffy and Xander?"
"They're good." Willow shifted her bag, thinking in a physical way, almost without words, that it might be an idea to walk somewhere, get a coffee.
"And the evil?" Tara asked in a lower voice, with wide eyes and an almost comical seriousness, her tone somehow suggesting that evil was a horrible rash that might nonetheless have cleared up over the summer.
"Um, still there." One cool thing about being a fully initiated Scooby was the air of savoir faire it gave you in all things ghoulish and macabre--at least in front of newbies, and Willow had always felt a secret, guilty glow at how impressed Tara was by her experiences. She never wanted to seem condescending, though, trying instead for a matter-of-fact tone. "Right now it's this whole Tribunal thing," she said. "Evil lawyers. Otherworldly lawsuits."
"The Tribunal?" Tara looked astonished and doubtful, as if maybe she hadn't quite heard right.
Unaware of the slight disappointment in her otherwise surprised voice, Willow said, "You've heard of it?"
"Oh. Well, I don't know if it's the same. But in our parts--back home--they say it's the Devil's Court. If you cross someone, you might end up there. And you can lose." And of course you could lose, thought Willow, but Tara made the word sound more ominous.
"Lose what?"
"Your life. Your soul." Tara was picking up a worried look, and Willow could feel that vibe building and twanging between them, growing stronger with every word.
"Buffy's not going, though."
"I think they take you wherever you are." Tara's forehead wrinkled gently; she might have been apologizing. "One man--they lifted him right out of his car when he was driving."
That little matter of fact struck like a wasp, and Willow's breath caught. "I have to tell Buffy," she said distractedly, trying to remember which cemetery she'd been planning to patrol first. "I-I have to go." Tara stepped aside with graceful understanding on her face, and Willow rushed off with only one thought in her head: to reach her friend before the forces of darkness did. Again.
~*~*~*~*~
"Ten thousand dollars," said Xander, scuffing his feet across the raised, flatbed tombstone he was using as a foot-path and coming to land with a gentle thump of work boots on the other side. He still couldn't let the subject go. "If I had that kind of money, I'd buy this cherry 1955 Buick Century a guy at work is selling. Man, that's a sweet ride. Then with the rest, I'd get a new place and maybe--"
A black scowl tipped his way. "D'you mind? I'm trying to put it out of my head." As soon as he spoke, Spike winced at his own choice of words.
"Sorry. Can't believe you paid him up front. You're not exactly the trusting sort."
"Told you. Tosser said he needed supplies. I threatened to kill him, of course." Spike stopped in front of a headstone, read it with no visible interest, then kicked it in half with his boot.
Xander took hold of his arm and pulled him back from the damage, as if proximity might entice him to kill more marble. "You're hell on the infrastructure, you know that?" The dejected slump to Spike's shoulders moved him to unwanted sympathy. He couldn't let himself forget the cause of that gloom, though. Spike might hate his handicap, but Xander was grateful to the chip. Small as the diamond in an engagement ring, it was the gift of fate that allowed Xander to stand within ten yards of a vampire hottie without becoming kibble. "I know you don't want to hear it--"
Gaze swinging up and narrowing, Spike cocked his head.
"--but maybe this," he tapped lightly against Spike's skull, "is for the best." The timing was right; Spike's hopes dashed, his prospects bleak. Xander was finally voicing his own hope, and his words came earnestly as he sought to connect with the man in the monster. "I know it feels like crap now, but maybe this is the universe's funny way of saying you can take a different path. Do something good with your unlife. You're not the first guy stuck with a foot in both camps--look at Oz, Anya, even Angel--but you can choose your next step. This chip could just be destiny helping you along."
A pause stretched in which Spike's widened eyes met his own and he actually seemed moved to consider this challenge. Then his face cleared. "Nah." He sighed. "Need a better plan." His gaze drifted off around the graveyard, as if he might spot that plan somewhere in the weeds.
Temper throbbing like a live thing, Xander clenched his jaw. He would let it go, just let it go.
"What's that?" Spike said, stiffening with his attention on some spot in the trees, alert as a setter. Xander didn't hear anything, but he trusted vamp senses and pulled a stake from his pocket. It filled his hand smoothly like something else he was used to handling, and his heart did a tricky little rumba, confusing sex and slayage in a sloppy way he hadn't yet dared to examine closely, but just as happy to be pumping for either one. He could hear footsteps now thrashing through the underbrush as something came closer, and then a figure in plaid pants and an orange sweater broke into view.
"Xander!"
"Will." He let his grip relax when he saw nothing was chasing her. "What's wrong?"
"Have you seen Buffy?" He shook his head, unnerved by her breathless alarm and the hoppity foot thing she was doing, which never boded well. "I met Tara and told her about the Tribunal. She said they call it the Devil's Court. And if you don't show, they'll suck you up like a vacuum, no matter where you are."
That was terrifyingly easy to visualize. "We'll find her." He began to launch himself in a more or less random direction, then paused. "Wait. Should we get Giles?"
Red hair shook in a negative. "There's no time!"
He nodded, met Spike's eyes to assure himself they were all on the same page. And then they were off.
~*~*~*~*~
If you were a slayer, chosen by higher powers to stand against the vampires, the demons, the unholy yadda, you learned to make use of every spare minute in your otherwise hairy schedule. Multi-tasking was an art form. You filed and painted your nails in class rather than in the morning. You tried to learn French verbs while pummeling a training dummy. You scoped for vamps while you shopped. And when you patrolled, there was nothing wrong with taking your honey's hand and leaning close. It was like...undercover work. Just a pair of lovebirds out late, strolling through the graveyard. Not at all dangerous. See our young, pretty necks, Mister Vampire?
"So what are you going to do?" she asked, and then, afraid she sounded like a nag, added quickly, "I mean, not that you don't already do a lot of stuff, a real big...stuff. Which is very important. There can never be too much killing." She paused. "Of bad things."
Riley's hand felt so big against her own, comforting, that it was weird to think he was the more fragile one. The awareness distracted her; not in a huge way, but it lurked on the edges of her mind whenever they patrolled. Her instincts were always at war--girlfriend instincts saying, he's tough, don't try to protect him, he'll hate it, while slayer instincts snapped, get between him and that vampire, draw it off, take it down fast and get back to his side.
She thought she might lose him--today, tomorrow, someday--and it scared her. Because Riley was perfect for her, and if she couldn't find the balance with him, what hope did she have of any normal life?
After a reflective silence, Riley took a breath and said, "I was thinking about grad school."
This surprised her. "Really? Though, I bet that whole ex-professor-was-a-zombie thing would make it hard to validate credits." She gave this thought. "Then again, they've probably heard that one before."
"I took classes before I was posted here. Mostly applied science. But Professor Walsh..." He broke off for a moment, staring into the middle distance, though he didn't seem aware of where his feet were carrying him. Buffy swallowed any words of comfort. There really weren't any she could give. "...she got me interested in psychology."
Trees whispered above them, and up ahead a heavy branch was making a soft creaking sound, the sound a wooden boat might make in an ocean of leaves. And Buffy had nothing to say--why didn't she have anything to say? She began to speak anyway, because the silence was worse. "I think that's a great i--" Which was when the vampire jumped out of the tree, its weight driving her to the ground.
"Buffy!" she heard, and then scuffles and grunts of a fight, indicating that Tree Vamp wasn't working alone. She blocked the fangs heading toward her throat and kneed the vamp hard; he winced and relaxed enough to let her throw him off.
"What are you, Tarzan?" she snarked in disbelief as the creature scrambled into a crouch and hissed at her. Pulling out her stake, she flipped herself like an improbably gymnastic turtle off her back and onto her feet, prepared for some hand-to-hand and then a stake-to-heart, but her foe spun off and took flight. Very unfoelike.
She followed at a fast clip, legs pumping. It was all she could do to keep him in sight, and rather than detouring to avoid the many headstones in her path, she hurdled over them one by one, the distance gradually closing.
~*~*~*~*~
Riley Tazered and then dusted his vamp, a little winded and more than a little disgusted with himself. He'd worked hard all summer to hide his condition and to correct the damage done to him by his own government. Correcting involved a lot of hard re-conditioning, but that wasn't working as well as he'd hoped. Down on one knee, he caught his breath and glanced around, almost glad for a moment not to see Buffy, whose worrying could all too easily become coddling.
It was a chick thing, he always told himself, not a slayer thing--before Buffy he'd dated a long line of girls with soft hands, the kind who brought you homemade soup when you caught a cold, playing wife and hoping you'd get the hint. Buffy couldn't make soup, not even from a can, and her hands were hard. Riley thought she'd make a terrible wife, in the most wonderful way. For a slayer, though, she was still all girl, which was what he reminded himself when she got that look on her face, as if she was gauging his fitness level. She just worried about him, and it shouldn't make him so ungracious and resentful.
His mother would have been flat-out ashamed of his bad attitude.
"Buffy," he called, getting to his feet. He kept his Tazer in hand, in case something else emerged from the night. God, he had a hate-on for the Hellmouth. He'd seen reports on other towns, places where the vampires were weak; migrants, trash, shit-kickers too dumb to live. Here even the fledges were strong, soaking up the place's energies right through hallowed ground to rise tough and cunning. And the 'mouth attracted all sorts, older vamps from Europe and Asia, demons, weird powers like this Tribunal. It looked a peaceful little burg, but it was a jungle.
Turning, he found himself face to face with Spike, who'd given no warning of arrival, watching him for who knew how long with those cold eyes. Proud of controlling his flinch, Riley grimaced what passed for a greeting. "What do you want?"
Spike, looking more like a streetcorner hustler than a master vampire, smiled in his mocking way as Xander and Willow came running up. "Look what I turned up," he said conversationally. "If Slayer Ken's here, our girl can't be far off. Not like you'd be out by your lonesome, is it?" he added to Riley.
Mouth tightening, Riley fondled his Tazer and thought about how good it would feel to shove it right in the bastard's chest. Just for shits and giggles, as his good old buddies back home used to say. But he was a better man than that. "We got hit by a couple of vamps," he said, directing this remark to the other two. "I dusted one--she ran after the other." Their expressions were sinking in and making his gut clench. "What's wrong?"
"We need to find her," Xander said. "She may be in trouble."
~*~*~*~*~
"Now this is where you need to ask yourself--" Buffy whirled and side-kicked the vampire back several feet. "'Do I feel lucky?'" Perkily, she advanced with her stake as the vamp swayed to its feet, a wary and confused set to its ridges. "Well? Do ya, punk?"
"Well, uh...now that you mention it," the vampire said, "not really, no."
"Oh." Buffy blinked, slightly thrown as she realized her next line didn't work now. "Okay, see, I'm pretty sure that was rhetorical."
She slammed the stake into the vamp's chest and watched him explode. That never got old. "Go ahead," she said to the dust settling in the air, tossing her ponytail. "Make my day." She frowned and then said with a dramatic flourish: "Make my night!" Paused to consider the implications of that one. "Ewww." Sighing, she put her stake away.
As she turned to head back to Riley, a cone of light appeared from the sky, stopping her in her tracks. She shielded her eyes and gazed upwards, thinking that for a helicopter it was incredibly quiet, and then noticing there was no chopper wind. The air around her was silent and luminous, like an invitation from heaven, and she might have continued to stand there mesmerized if something hadn't drawn her gaze back to earth. Past the light's thinning perimeter she saw her friends appear with Riley and Spike, startled looks on their faces. She started to shout a warning and bolt for safety, all in one fluid realization of urgency--
And then she disappeared.
~*~*~*~*~
To her it was no more than a wink and a disorienting sparkle, and for a moment she might have thought she was still in the clearing, but when she focused Buffy knew she was somewhere else entirely. She took in the smooth stone floor and a sense of unwalled vastness, then turned with one sharp movement at a sound behind her, which left her blinking dumbly with her stake raised when she found herself confronted with two ordinary wooden tables, several chairs, and a judge's bench. Karen Denham sat at one table with a familiar vampire, whose name Buffy remembered after a moment, from the subpoena. Vicky Something. Vicky and Vic. Adorable.
"Miss Summers," a voice said from the bench, and in response Buffy inspected the demon there, not able to place the species, not especially caring. It looked harmless compared to some things she'd seen, almost human, but that meant nothing and she didn't feel safe, not when she could be snatched out of thin air and brought here. "So glad you could join us."
"Not my choice," she snapped, covering fear with irritation. "Is that what you call due process?"
"I'm afraid you gave us no choice." The judge frowned over his glasses. "I'm inclined to fine you for contempt, but we'll let this one pass. Take a seat, little lady."
Oh, please. "Why don't we cut to the chase?" She glanced at Karen, not masking her disdain for humans who took vampire clients. "You're bringing some ridiculous," she underscored the ridicule in her tone, "trumped-up lawsuit, and I have to defend myself. So let's go." She flipped her stake and caught it again, with a pointed look for Vicky now. "Because I--"
An unseen force yanked the stake from her hand and sent it spinning off into the darkness, then slid her stumbling into a chair behind the second table, where it pinned her. She tried to get free and glared at the judge when she couldn't. Fear had ratcheted up a notch under her ribcage, but she wouldn't show it. A stubborn determination to get the better of her situation set in. After all, she'd done nothing wrong and would have no trouble justifying her actions. Not that she should have to, but...it looked like she might have to.
"The prosecution has the floor."
Karen rose smoothly to her feet. "Thank you, your honor. "The prosecution will show that my client has been deprived of spousal support and threatened with death--and that she is still in danger from the slayer. She seeks damages for the cruel and wrongful death of her husband, for pain and suffering, and for loss of companionship. There is also an economic hardship, as Mister Bourbon was the sole breadwinner for his family."
"I guess he was out shopping for bread when I staked him." Buffy mimed a philosophical look. "The lunging for my neck--that's what threw me off."
"Let it be noted for the record that the slayer has confessed to staking my client's husband." Karen smiled in a reptilian, but almost grateful way at Buffy.
"So noted."
"However, we still seek to prove the extent of liability," she went on. "For that, I call my client to take the stand." She touched the vampire's shoulder and Vicky beetled over to the witness box, giving Buffy a wide berth. Karen followed to take up a position nearby. "Vicky, will you tell us in your own words what happened that terrible, tragic night?"
Buffy folded her arms--at least she wasn't completely immobilized--and projected her unthrilled opinion of this charade, in case anyone wasn't already clear. She stared down the vamp with a stony gaze until Vicky's own gaze shifted, latching onto Karen. In human face she was younger than Buffy remembered, with baby-fine blonde hair and pale blue eyes, small as a mouse and motionless in the spotlight. Her flowered dress was cheap.
"Vic and I was out walking," she said. "We was hungry--we hadn't eaten for five days--and he said he'd get us some dinner. We saw a girl--"
"This girl?" Karen asked, gesturing at Buffy.
"Yes, ma'am. And he said he'd get her for us."
"'Get her.' What did he mean?"
"You know." Vicky hunched. "To eat."
"So you were going to kill her?" Karen asked, standing off to one side and speaking broadly to the court, her posture suggesting she was practicing for a much larger audience.
"Oh no, ma'am. Vic never killed no one. We only ever took what we needed, then we'd leave them where they'd be found."
"That's such a crock!" Buffy burst out, her words followed by the bang of the judge's gavel. "Vampires always kill," she protested, over his command to silence.
"Miss Summers, you will remain silent or I will have you gagged."
Unfortunately believing this, Buffy settled back into her seat.
Karen leaned one arm on the witness stand, radiating a soothing support. "Did you know this girl here--did you know she was the slayer?"
"No, ma'am."
"You were surprised then, when she attacked your husband and viciously and willfully ended his existence, and then threatened you with the same bodily harm?"
Vicky began to cry, while Buffy fumed at this characterization of her actions. Could they say that? Was that fair? She would have spoken again, but another look at the judge convinced her to remain silent. It was quite possibly the stupidest excuse for a case she'd ever heard, and she resented the tiny ball of guilt that Vicky's tears were stirring up. All vampires killed.
"I ran. I was afraid."
"Of course you were." Karen affected an air of sympathy. "Vicky, you're an orphan, aren't you?"
"Oh my god," Buffy muttered, rolling her eyes.
"Your parents died when you were just a girl," the lawyer went on, "leaving you alone in the world. But you had Vic. He looked after you. When you got sick, he turned you so you'd never die. What did he tell you, Vicky?"
"He said it was a holy gift," Vicky whispered. "He had the power to heal, but the government was after him." Her eyes were big with memory. "We could only go out at night, to be safe."
An awful sensation was growing in Buffy. She'd never had any doubts about her calling, at least not the slaying-bad-things part. Vampires knew what they were, of this she was sure. Monsters without souls, demons walking around in human shape. They enjoyed what they did, and didn't feel bad.
"Did you feel bad, Vicky?" It was as if Karen had read her thoughts. "When you had to feed?"
"I felt real bad," Vicky said, twisting her skirt between her hands. "I never wanted to hurt no one. But Vic said we needed to eat from...you know. Innocents. It kept us holy, bathed in the blood of the lamb. We made sure they was always okay, patched up after. I swear we did."
Karen nodded and squeezed Vicky's shoulder as the vampire broke down again into horribly honest tears, and then turned a sly, triumphant smile on Buffy, who felt her world slow and stop, and tilt.
~*~*~*~*~
"I blame myself," Giles said. He couldn't help the words, no matter how beside the point they were at the moment; he often found expiation as much in speech as action, though one didn't always have even that small luxury. He was angry at himself, with the kind of anger that would linger, even if--when--she came home safe, a low, savage anger that he could fuel for days, by drink and its bitter meditations. It wasn't a stretch to say that his incompetence would have been grounds for dismissal had he not already been dismissed; he'd been back not twenty-four hours before he'd failed her, letting himself be lulled to complacency by the ambiance of his apartment, the reassurances of his books, and the trust placed in him by these odd young people he called friends. He'd allowed himself to feel comfortable, and he'd misjudged matters.
"Giles, we don't have time for this." Willow was gazing at him fiercely, red haired and flushed, and her sharp words embedded themselves below his skin. Even in guilt, the stoked furnace of his temper made something inside him catch and flare, but it was a discipline of the mature mind to accept correction without regard to its source, and a discipline not to lash out at children.
"You're right," he said, ruthlessly tamping down his feelings. He turned toward his shelf, running his eye across the books in the hope of finding a source he'd missed.
"What are we going to do?" Xander asked.
He wished they wouldn't always ask such broad and provoking questions when something was, in fact, being done. Couldn't they see he was trying to find an answer? "Tara's information had the benefit of experience," he said, letting the habit of distraction fall over his words, creating a small buffer behind which he could focus. "Unfortunately, not everything is set down in books."
"Blasphemy on the lips of librarians," Spike said, and oh, it would have been a pleasure to turn his temper in that direction right now for one brief, brutal moment, but Giles let the dart bounce off, barely hearing Xander's impatient snap at the vampire.
The Micharta text. Bloody unlikely, but...he slid the book down and let it fall open in one hand, turning the pages rapidly with the other until he found an entry that might be relevant or might be grasping at straws, and he knew he'd have nightmares later, the ones where he fumbled through page after page, reading nonsense as Buffy's blood spread closer, but now he focused.
"I'd hoped to prepare a countersuit," he said--had in fact been working all day, but it seemed the rashest waste of time now. "We may be able to adapt that ritual, interrupt the proceedings on the grounds that Buffy is unrepresented by counsel."
"What do we need?" Riley asked.
Giles looked up from his book and briefly stiffened as he saw all their bright young faces fixed on him, and their painfully obvious hopes. He managed a steadying breath. "First we need an urn..."
~*~*~*~*~
On the witness stand, Buffy felt as if she'd been called up before the principal and subjected to interrogation from some teacher with a grudge, or one of the school psychologists who used to make her life so miserable. Karen Denham was walking toward her, fingers steepled loosely.
"Tell the truth, Buffy. Victor didn't attack you--you attacked him first."
"He was going to attack."
"You didn't know that."
"I knew that." Buffy's voice was hard and flat. "He was a vampire. That's what vampires do." She stared coldly into Karen's eyes. "They attack you, suck you, and kill you, and sometimes, if you're really unlucky, they turn you--into one of them."
"But he wasn't going to kill you. He just needed to eat. He was weak and starving, and it was a fundamental biological need. Just like we all have." Karen spread out her hands inclusively now, inviting the judge and Buffy to share a common bond. "You eat, don't you, Buffy?"
"I don't eat people."
"Are you a vegetarian?"
Buffy's muscles tightened with a desire to lash out and wipe that smug smile off the lawyer's lips. "Cows aren't people."
"I'll take that as a no." Karen stepped closer. "So, being a slayer. That's a hard job, isn't it?"
Drawing herself up a little, Buffy said, "The hardest job you'll never know."
Something in the woman's face changed subtly, just below Buffy's threshold of recognition. The false notes of earlier sympathy were replaced by understanding. "You're right, Buffy. How could anyone but you know what it means to be chosen? To make decisions night after night that men twice your age--men of war--would lose sleep and soul over. To know that the only judgment you can depend on is yours." Her quiet voice held no edge, and her gaze never wavered from Buffy's. "You're judge, jury, and executioner. Sometimes you even have to kill people you've known. People you've loved."
The harsh light and hypnotic litany of words worked on Buffy like a spell, made worse by the knowledge that it wasn't. Vampires couldn't get inside without being invited, but humans could. She ducked her head, breaking eye contact, but though she told herself she had nothing to be ashamed of, old pain and guilt and doubt dragged at her conviction.
"All that stress must take its toll," Karen said, her voice so gentle now it could have been a mother's. "It's easier when everything is simple. Good and evil. Black and white. Kill or be killed."
"I don't simplify things!" Buffy lifted her head again, riled to defensiveness. "I've fought vampires for years. I know what they are."
"You know what your watcher tells you. You kill first and ask questions later."
"No."
"How many vampires have you slayed? A few hundred? A thousand? They're all the same to you. Faceless, nameless." Karen loomed over Buffy in her heels, forcing her to look up. "You make the world safe for your kind, and you justify yourself the same way every killer has over the centuries: they're a race of savages. Animals. The only good vampire is a dead vampire."
"It's not the same thing at all," Buffy said, her voice rising and tripping toward a stammer.
Karen was close enough for Buffy to smell her perfume, a light and expensive scent, to hear the small ticks of her wristwatch. "Buffy," she said. "Look at my client." Buffy looked over at Vicky, a small figure lost in her sack dress, her eyes filled with a dumb-as-dirt sadness that drowned all certainties. "Are you sure it's not the same?"
~*~*~*~*~
"Are you sure this will work?" Riley wondered, looking around the circle they'd established on Giles's living room rug, marked with the symbols of invocation. A small incense burner smoked in its center.
"I'm sure of nothing," said Giles, lifting his book again and frowning at its contents. "Stop talking now. Willow, when I signal, throw the amulet into the circle." He paused to peer across at her. "You have it?"
Willow held up the disc. "Yep. Where'd you get this, anyway?"
"Er, a junk shop in Portobello Road. Now, please. Concentrate." He began to recite the words of the incantation, sprinkling his powders across the incense as he did. Smoke flared up in bright red, then black. From his seat on the couch, Xander waved a hand and coughed, a faint streak of movement in the corner of Giles's eye.
"...Rhadamanthus, Astraea, Themis, we beseech thee to hear our petition, in the name and spirit of justice." He gestured to Willow, who threw the pendant in the circle. It vanished in another, stronger plume of smoke, which made everyone cough this time. As the smoke cleared, they all paused in silence and looked around as a group. And then the lights went out.
Or, no. Not the lights, thought Giles. The colors. His living room had taken on the tones of an old photograph, heavy shadows blurring everything, and everyone, to shades of black and white and grey. Willow held out her hands, touching her skin with an expression of shock, while Spike and Xander examined each other up and down, Spike's pallor more pronounced, his features brushstrokes of black paint and ash, Xander a husk of himself, drained of all hues of life.
Smoke billowed from the circle as a light within it brightened and spilled across the floor. And then it exploded with nuclear intensity, swallowing Giles where he sat.
~*~*~*~*~
"Miss Summers, do you have anything to say in your own defense?" The judge leaned to one side of his bench and gazed down at her. She sensed the aloofness with which he held himself, and knew that her case was already lost. What else could she have expected?
She marshaled her arguments anyway, though she wasn't quite sure what they would be until she said them. "Five years ago I was called as a slayer. When I saw my first vampire--and my second and my third and my tenth--I saw for the first time what evil was. Real evil. The kind of nightmares they scare kids with. Vampires killed my friends, they fed--and they laughed about it. They didn't just kill to eat. They killed for fun. I've never met a vampire who didn't enjoy the pain he caused. Or she."
Karen Denham stood. "Your honor, I believe Miss Summers misrepresents herself." She looked at Buffy. "You know a vampire by the name of 'Angel', I believe?"
After a dry swallow, Buffy said, "He's different. He has a soul." Different when he has a soul, she didn't say.
"I won't debate the existential fine points of spiritual grace, your honor."
The judge's voice was dry. "Thank you, counselor."
"Unless a test to determine the status of ensoulment was administered to every vampire slayed, I think it's impossible for the witness to say whether a soul constitutes a point of difference. And if there is no difference, then benefit of the doubt should be extended to all vampires." The mantle of righteousness Karen had pulled on fit poorly over her Donna Karan suit. "This wanton killing must stop."
"You don't honestly believe that, do you?" Buffy nearly laughed in exasperation.
"That's enough," the judge reproved. "I've made my decision."
"I'm afraid I must object." Buffy turned at the familiar voice and felt a rush of relief as Giles stepped forward into the light like a grim, tweedy angel, the whiteness above shining harshly on the cap of his hair and making his glasses nearly opaque. "This has not been a fair trial," he said. "The defendant is entitled to an advocate."
The judge leaned forward, robes flowing down along the massive arms which rested on his bench. "If she'd come at the proper time, yes. However, she waived that privilege by her failure to appear. The court finds her guilty as charged."
Giles's shocked face was a British portrait of the panic Buffy felt, but he didn't back down. "Then we appeal the court's decision," he challenged.
"I do love a good appeal," the judge said. He turned to Karen Denham. "Counselor, you have a champion ready, I assume?"
Composure rattled, Karen stood and rested one hand on the table, close to the papers she'd brought but not reaching for any. "Your honor, I was not prepared for an appeal--however, if the court would grant a recess, I can--"
"Tsk tsk." The judge shook his head. "If no champion is present, your client must fight her own battle."
"That's a--a grossly unfair match," Karen said, her voice growing strident with forced outrage. "My client will be massacred."
The judge's smile was wintry. "You could always fight on her behalf."
Vicky looked up at Karen Denham with hope written across her plain face. It was the saddest expression Buffy had seen there yet, and it was one of the last.
~*~*~*~*~
Giles had returned less dramatically than he'd left, deposited on his front step with Buffy and forced to knock for entrance. They'd both arrived with subdued expressions, and recounted the events of the Tribunal with a few short words. Nothing they said came as a surprise to Xander.
"So, the red tape of litigation was severed by the mighty sword of slayerdom," he summarized, holding back the I told you so of experience, though it may have shaded his tone just a bit. A man treasures such moments.
"I didn't actually have a sword," Buffy said in a quiet voice, crossing her arms in a strange way, a loose but self-conscious movement to rub one elbow. "Or a stake. I had to use my...my fist." Some kind of pain flitted across her eyes then. Xander saw it, but it didn't register fast enough; his tongue was too ready.
"Right. You gave her a good fisting." A range of shocked and horrified faces turned his way, and even Spike's eyebrows climbed to a scandalized height. "I so did not say that," he clarified, raising both index fingers to demarcate the wrongness of that comment.
Only Buffy seemed oblivious to his gaffe, her eyes still downcast. "I did what I had to do," she said, speaking more to herself than to them, it seemed. Xander felt a guyish mix of empathy and hyper self-consciousness that made his shoulders hunch, and wondered if everyone thought he was a shmuck for uttering something so stupid when Buffy was so obviously upset. Obvious, okay, and yet he wasn't entirely sure why.
"You did what you had to, Buffy." Willow's voice was sympathetic, and still Xander felt he was missing something. It was just another vampire, right? A soulless vampire, that is. Not the warm and fuzzy kind that you might sleep with if so inclined. Granted, shoving your fist through a set of ribs to pull out the cold unbeating heart of your foe wasn't fun. Not that he would know, but he could infer. That's where keen intuition filled the gap between slayer experience and the ken of mere mortals, and my god, could he be any less focused? He wanted to slap himself, and in fact his hand twitched, but he didn't realize the impulse because, man, that would send his precariously balanced rep right over the falls and into the churning froth.
Facade. Sanity. Maintain.
What were they saying? He rewound and caught up.
"I know," Buffy said. "She was just so...pathetic. I'm not sure she knew she was evil."
Her tentative statement was punctuated by the pistol crack of Spike's laugh, and everyone looked to him, Buffy with dangerously dark, blank eyes under a frown. "All demons know they're evil," he said flatly, then slowed to emphasize each separate word: "It's our nature." He paused, his gaze fixed on Buffy. "What, she weep and whine and beg you not to kill her? 'S common of a certain type, you know--turn 'em too young and they keep juvie habits. Anything to score a mark."
Xander swallowed, and avoided looking at any of his friends. He had a familiar neck-crawling sensation which meant he wanted Spike to shut up; any rotten thing Spike said reflected on him. And yet, a lot of the time Spike just spoke the truth you really didn't want to hear. It used to bug him more, but he was beginning to get used to it.
Was that good or bad?
Rather than answering, Buffy glanced at Giles and then turned away toward the buffet of staling chips and flattening soda, adopting a pretense of interest as she rearranged snack bowls.
A sigh made Xander look sideways to catch Spike's frustration, and a kind of baffled anger on his face. "What?" he asked. "How's that the wrong thing to say? Ought to make her feel better."
Turning back, Buffy said with eerie smoothness, "I'm fine." Her eyes roved around, as if daring anyone to contradict her. "Just fine."
~*~*~*~*~
With the patience that had made him a watcher, Giles stood motionless and silent just inside the doorway, his eyes growing accustomed to the dark until he could discern Buffy's profile against the foliage, where she leaned against the back patio wall. She'd laid one arm along its ledge and drawn the other across her stomach, and they latched at the wrist to create an artless but oddly formal pose, as if she'd stilled herself to have her portrait painted. Her arms were pale in contrast to her sleeveless blouse. Weren't all California girls supposed to tan over the summer, become brown and glossy as nuts? He'd thought it a requirement.
"I hear you breathing," she said, and he fancied he heard fondness in her voice. He took a step away from his apartment, toward her.
"Yes...yes. Sorry. Beastly habit." Ever the fool, he thought. I shall distract you from all worries, dear. I will be your foil against the night.
She turned, one of those funny smiles on her face. Too old a smile, too sad. "It's what makes you human."
Giles felt an ineffable gentleness toward her. "Yes." After a moment he took another step forward, hands in pockets--a diffident approach, almost a sidle, with a foot scuff thrown in for good measure, as he carefully didn't look at her. The young required such cautious handling if you wished not to spook them. "Are you all right?" It was of course expected that he should ask; house odds that she'd shrug it off. But sometimes she came through, paying off with simple honesty.
"I don't know. I've never...it's never been like that. I mean, Angel, but." A tightly controlled hand gesture. Something in his chest constricted as he realized tears were brimming in her eyes and that her voice was on the edge of breaking. "Slaying's my job, and the evil I fight--it's never prided itself on subtlety. But Vicky...I killed her, Giles." Stricken, she met his eyes like a demand. "And maybe she didn't know any better. She might not have known what she was, and--and she could have been telling the truth about not killing anyone--" Buffy began pacing the confinement of the patio with erratic energy, arms wrapped around herself as tight as burial bands. "Sometimes they make it easy. They attack, and it's simple. But I've taken out plenty of vamps without giving them a chance to fight. And others, maybe it was--self defense?"
"Put that thought out of your head," he said sharply, then took a deep stabilizing breath. "Buffy, if I thought you were really having a crisis of faith, I would do everything in my power to help you decide your future. But these feelings, these doubts--they're normal. You must repress them to a certain extent, to perform your duties, but you can't expunge them entirely. To do so would be to strip away what makes you human."
"How can I know?" she asked, gesturing again with a broad sweep of one hand. "Like that lawyer said, it's not as if I administer a purity test every time I go out staking. Maybe there are other vamps walking around with souls--"
Giles hardened himself, knowing that if he failed to stifle this first, tiny seed of doubt, it could take deadly root. "In the hundreds of years of recorded council history, there has never been evidence of souled vampires. Angel is the sole exception." He moved close, let his voice lower to the seduction of trust. "You must believe that, Buffy. It is the truth."
"And what about Spike?"
That startled him. "Spike?" Astonished, he laughed without thinking.
Buffy tensed almost as if ready for a physical fight, but Giles knew he wasn't the opponent she wanted. She looked so lost and in need of guidance that he verged on touching her, to soothe that nervous energy. But he aborted the reflex.
"He hasn't got a soul," she said, "but we haven't killed him yet. He, he sleeps with Xander. I mean, my god, Giles. It's wrong." Vehemence strained her words, and her fierce struggle to find meaning moved him, then stirred amused indulgence when she went on, "It's not as if he's a helpless bunny. He can still do evil. Maybe not deeds, but words. He could yell 'fire' in a crowded theater. So why don't I do something?"
"Perhaps you hold out some hope for his redemption, or await stronger proof that he remains a danger."
She couldn't have given it much thought before saying, "No, that's not it."
"Then perhaps you don't wish to hurt Xander," Giles said in a gentle voice. She raised her eyes to meet his, blue and clear and desperate for assurances. It hurt like a razor across his own flesh. "Compassion isn't a sin, Buffy. But you can never forget what separates Spike from those you must slay. What do you think would have happened if you'd shown mercy to Vicky? She had no life for you to save."
Buffy ducked her head again briefly, then lifted it. "I know. No life. No justice. No mercy. You'd think just once there might be something more than death."
~*~*~*~*~
"This is good. At least...better than I expected." Xander had tried to settle his head back into one of those perfectly defined hollows where Spike's shoulders met his neck; a ridge of bone was what he got for a pillow instead, but he didn't want to move. He was balanced on several awkward points, head to Spike's shoulder, hip to Spike's thigh, an elbow resting precariously somewhere--except somehow it all came right. The vampire was a chair made out of flesh and bone. A naked recliner.
They'd had sex. It was a Thursday night thing. And a Monday night, and a Tuesday, and in fact most nights ending in day. Even when they were broken up, they weren't--they did that as badly as everything else. And nothing changed. They had the dependability of mutual destruction and habit and a weird affinity for the same crap cable movies about mutant spiders and killer squid, and salty crunchy things, including each other.
Xander wondered if he should get a new couch, because they'd just about trashed this one in record time. He'd gotten used to it, though, the way it held the messy slump of their bodies. He threw one of his mom's afghans over it when any of the gang visited, and no one had yet asked.
"I've seen rats that size," Spike said thoughtfully, voice curling close to Xander's ear, jaw moving against Xander's hair when he spoke. It wasn't quite a response to his comment, but a grudging approval had been issued, the film's rodent quality judged not entirely suckworthy. "Don't think they were radioactive though. Subspecies of demon, I expect."
From the television came a high-pitched screech as several plump, mutant rats dropped onto Betty Number One's head.
Wrist rubbing across one of Spike's knees, thoughts drifting, Xander closed his eyes a moment. If he focused, he could almost pretend Spike was a normal date. The kind you didn't have to stock bloodbags for. The kind who kept you warm, rather than gradually sucking the heat from your body. It was warm enough in his apartment, anyway. A living temperature was overrated. A pulse could be mimicked by a pounding rhythm of thrusts and twists. Breath was optional, as long as you could gasp.
"I'm a slinky boy," Xander said, feeling the yes yes yes of his body ease and begin to carry him toward sleep. One of Spike's hands slid down across Xander's belly, flattening against his abs in an idle caress.
"You're cherry," Spike replied, giving relish to the second word.
Xander smiled, eyes reopening to stare at the television, where rats gnawed enthusiastically at the doctor's corpse. He shifted his head, finding another spot he liked. "Am I worth ten thousand dollars?"
"Mmm. Maybe on an installment plan. Low interest rates, no money down." Spike was only half attentive, the words offhand. Baseline Spike, ladies and gentlemen: restless and casual as a lion, affection encrypted in strange comments. Also, if you wanted a list: selfish, careless, blunt, rude, demanding, touchy, a bit broodier than he'd admit to. Not an obvious monster but always an effortless son of a bitch. Still able to turn violent and mean on a dime, of course.
And a secret cuddler. A graffiti-scarred, hard-bodied punk. A freakish collection of habits and tastes and gripes, driven by rage and lust.
A moment passed before Xander said, "You think it was true?"
Vampire fingers didn't even pause, continuing to run like a violin bow across his ribs. "What's that, pet."
"That vampire kid. You ever heard of vamps not killing, just...nibbling? A snack and run type of deal?"
"Oh yeah," Spike said, as if this was nothing at all, as if he hadn't let Buffy assume otherwise. Oh hey, just a bit of trivia, folks. "Continent's riddled with suckhouses, let you grab a bite for a bob without risking some blue heeler comin' down on you. Whole underground network. That's our continent, not yours, mind. Here, it's not so much the thing. Dunno why not. ... Never heard of a vamp making a lifestyle of it, though. 'S all right to get by, but sooner or later you'll want the real thing, the hunt and the kill."
"Right. Of course." Xander felt a familiar numbness creep over him, as if he were sinking into waters so cold that he couldn't feel anything at all. Disappointment felt like that. "The hunt. The kill."
"'S a beautiful thing," Spike said in a reminiscent, almost drowsy voice. His cheek brushed Xander's hair. "Gets you hot, gets you hard." In echo of his words, Xander felt a stirring behind him as flesh hardened. "Nothing makes you feel more alive. Nothing 'cept that moment of death, when you're all slick and joined together--" His hand slid lower down Xander's ribs, stomach, toward the source of all confusion. "--and you can almost feel your heart beating again."
Xander couldn't stifle the sound he made as Spike's hand closed around him. Things were not so numb anymore, because he wanted to feel, had to feel something. Thrash out of that icy grip and live. He arched back a little, letting his hips begin to move, and he felt Spike shiver all over, a quickening of need synchronizing with his own. "Tell me," Xander said breathlessly as his eyes closed.
He heard and felt Spike's face change.
"You want to know what it's like, love?"
Xander didn't answer, let his mind be a safe and silent no as his body said yes. He rolled his head to one side, offered not his neck, because they never did that, but the flesh of his shoulder, where the scars were beginning to overlap. His face froze in anticipation of pain and more, of everything else that followed, that was so twisted and fucked up and oh so fucking good.
"You have to tell me," Spike said in a low, coiling voice. "Tell me, Xander."
He opened his eyes for just a moment, pupils taking in a haphazard blur of color from the TV, a rush of food and jingle and big, big savings, a crazy kaleidoscope like this, his life.
"I want to know."
And the screen went dark as the bite came.
2 House of Many Hearts
They walked along the lawn toward Graydon Manor, following the curve of the drive under the heavy trees. The grounds had been kept up well by someone, probably a gardener hired by the realty company, and the acreage was enough that you'd need outside help--it would be a bitch to maintain otherwise, unless you liked the natural look.
"So what do you think?" Giles asked.
Xander glanced at the other man. There was no mistaking the proud smile on Giles's face as he strolled along with his hands in his jeans pockets, looking like a tweedy lord of the manor. All he needed was a few hounds, a cracked rifle, and some Wellies and you could drop him in one of those BBC miniseries where everyone punted and cricketed and drank hock, whatever the hell that was. It would be a shame to wipe that smile off his face. Then again, you should never pass up the opportunity for fun. Bad for your heart, they said.
"Well, the house was built before zoning ordinances, so you've only got a twenty-foot setback off the eastern bluff, and with three inches of annual recession you'll have your own lakeside bathtub in another eighty years. Since you're not a vampire, you won't be around to worry, but you'll probably still want to build a retaining wall. Your septic system needs to be pumped out first, maybe even replaced, and you should re-roof in a year or so. Oh, and your realtor was wrong--you'll need to apply for a change-of-use permit before opening the school."
Glassy eyed, Giles drifted to a stop near an apple tree littered with windfall and said, "That all sounds...very expensive."
"You'll be fattening the college funds of dozens of blue-collar babies, no doubt about it. Think of it as your contribution to higher education."
"Lord help us," Giles murmured. "I hope the council accounts are flush." Visibly shaking off these distracting thoughts with a return of good cheer, he said, "We do have apples, though." He bent over and scooped up one, straightened again. "We'll be able to make a bit of extra money, I imagine, by...er...selling..." He trailed off, examining the withered, wormy fruit.
With a pang of sympathy, Xander took it from him. "Just close your eyes, think of England, and get out your checkbook," he instructed.
Giles sighed.
A hail came from the direction of the house, and they looked over to see Buffy and Willow on the second-story wraparound porch, leaning on the rail with sunny grins and waving down at them. A pretty snapshot of halter tops and girlish legs held Xander's imagination for a moment, reminding him of a time not so long ago when he would have appreciated the view even more. In a loud, forced, anxiety-ridden sort of way. He had a sudden impression of himself as he'd used to be, his entire personality like a gaudy shirt, worn as a disguise. If that Xander were here now, he'd be shouting naughty witticisms and bounding puppy-like into the crush of flesh and action.
Not really missing you much, old buddy.
The girls began mock-fanning themselves and blowing kisses over their shoulders like southern debs. Or maybe ladies in a cathouse. He wasn't entirely sure what they were going for. Next to him, Giles chuckled.
"Giles, this place is great!" Buffy called. "Did you know it has six fireplaces?" She'd leaned forward over the porch rail, bracing her arms on the weathered wood.
"Yes," Giles replied in tones that didn't carry. "No doubt useful for burning our heating bills." He turned to Xander a moment later, frown etching his brow. "You're quite sure that porch is safe?"
Xander squinted against the afternoon sun, then shaded his eyes. The three-story Victorian had been squatting out here in the backwaters of Sunnydale for a hundred years, and it looked disheveled, as if it hadn't been expecting company and got caught napping under its gables, but was solid for all that. "They built them to last back then," Xander assured him. "This house has survived a half dozen earthquakes and several generations of the most destructive force known to man."
A curious glance. "The Hellmouth?"
"Children. I used to bike out here when I was little, chuck rocks at the windows. Place has been empty for years. Real white elephant. You'd need a lot more than one perky slayer to--"
There was a shriek from the house and they watched, frozen in horror, as Buffy tumbled through a shattered gap in the rails and down the porch roof as if wiping out on a ski slope, then crashed to the ground below.
~*~*~*~*~
Xander and Giles ran to where Buffy lay groaning, meeting Willow, who'd hurtled down the exterior steps nearly as quick as gravity.
"Buffy!" Xander wondered how many times he'd said her name over the years with just that degree of urgency and fear, or he might have wondered, if he hadn't been overcome with urgency and fear. She'd pushed herself upright by the time they reached her side, and was sitting in her divot of grass, frowning more with pique than pain.
"Are you all right?" Giles asked her, dropping to one knee and not quite touching her shoulder. If you're British, apparently you save physical contact for truly extreme moments, like actual death.
"The Russian judge gives me a three for dismount--ow--and I just mowed the grass with my," a glance at Giles, "rhyming thing. Otherwise, fine." She got up without assistance, dusted off her rhyming thing, and looked up at the broken railings. The rest of them craned their necks to follow her gaze.
"I don't get it," Xander said. "Those railings broke like they were rotten, but when I checked them out earlier they looked fine." In bafflement he turned his attention to the debris, kneeling to study a cracked piece of wood. Flexing it in his hands, he said, "It's kindling." With a hundred hi-karate slayer sessions in mind, he looked at Buffy. "You weren't putting a lot of weight on it, were you?"
"Weight?" Buffy said with a woman's horror, as if he'd just accused her of forking up a troughful of Twinkies and chasing them down with the blood of the unborn.
"Giving it a little slayer oomph?" He punched the air lightly with a fist.
"Completely oomphless," she said, voice emphatic, folding her arms. "And who was supposed to guarantee a slayer-safe play zone?"
His professional rep called into question, Xander felt both defensive and guilty. "I swear, Buffy, it was fine."
Giles lowered his gaze from the porch, grimness edging his expression; not a look you wanted to provoke from the watcher. "The most important thing is that you're unhurt. However, I intend to have a few sharp words with the realtor." Having redirected the blame to everyone's satisfaction, he said as one struck by a thought: "I wonder if she might knock down the price."
"Glad I could help," Buffy said dryly. "Oh, hey, you want me to limp? Or I could black out a few teeth."
"No, of course not, I--"
"Giles, how can you think of money at a time like this?" The teasing in Willow's tone squeaked as clearly as helium to Xander, but Giles looked even more flustered.
"I only want to ensure that proper accountability is, is upheld--" Gathering his wits, Giles sighed. "You truly are cruel little beasts," he declared, dismissing them with a brisk sweep. "Worse than any demons the Hellmouth could spew forth."
They all grinned and caught his arms to guide him toward the house, a trio of tugboats escorting the dignity of Her Majesty's vessel to harbor.
None of them looked up again as they went inside, but above their heads a butterfly ascended toward the porch as if to investigate a crime scene. It flickered around the edges of the gap, then settled with breathing wings on the broken end of the balustrade.
By the open French doors a whirl of dust stirred without a breeze and took shape, drifting from the floorboards inside across the porch tiles, thickening as it moved. Halfway across the porch, the nebulous darkness stopped and coiled, lifting one undifferentiated end into the air and weaving like a snake preparing to strike, which it did a moment later, snapping across the porch to wrap itself around the butterfly. The creature struggled in its grip, growing brighter, wings illuminated like stained-glass windows that suddenly shattered in a brilliant flare.
The remains of the butterfly fell to the porch floor. The coil of darkness hovered a moment as if watching without eyes, then turned toward the house and slowly slid back inside.
~*~*~*~*~
The common room of Fischer Hall stayed busy even during class periods, and Willow loved to study there. It gave her the feeling of being a cell within a running artery of students, all carrying books and backpacks, their presence validating her own, even if they didn't know it. It wasn't like high school, where having a brain marked you as different, freaky different. Here, big brains were cool and sexy, and besides, most of these people didn't know her, which was liberating. They didn't know she'd been only one short step above a nerd for most of her life, shoved aside in hallways by girls with clicking heels and bright, shiny laughs. All they saw now was Willow 2.0, a smart, sassy college chica. She was confident, she was strong, she was--
"Oh no," she said, pawing through her bag and then dumping its contents on the table. Pens, fruit, and sage sticks rolled hither and yon, and panic set in. "Quick, look around. Do you see a green highlighter with a lucky tassel on the end--it's got to be here somewhere. Buffy, help me smoke it out!"
With a maddening lack of urgency, Buffy leaned forward to scan the messy spill of Willow's bag, plucked a marker loose, and held it up. "What about this one?"
"That's blue," Willow pointed out, staring at Buffy as if she'd lost her mind. "Blue highlighter for psych, green for history. I can't get psych in my history. It'd be, like, psychohistory! I'm not that advanced yet!"
"Okay, chill."
"You don't understand. I have a carefully calibrated study system. I'm a, a study machine. But the motor needs parts, and without that highlighter I can't study for my quiz and the car grinds to a halt and crashes into a ditch, and pow. Game over. I might as well quit school and sell my body to tramps."
As this nightmare vision of the future filled her mind--a parade of shabbily dressed men clutching bags of pennies, lurching through a junkyard toward the mattress where she lay--Buffy glanced around and then stretched to retrieve something from under the sofa. "Hey, here it is."
Willow snapped back into the present. "Oh, thank god," she said, beaming her gratitude and relief at Buffy.
"A loss for all tramps everywhere," Buffy said, tucking her legs back up onto the chair in side-saddle fashion.
"Did someone say tramps?" Xander asked, appearing from around a corner and dropping into a seat across from them with the most casual tude imaginable, as if he were simply hooking up for a quick chat between classes.
"Too late." Buffy waved one hand, sweeping the subject away. "We defeated them with inky goodness."
"I miss all the cool battles," Xander complained. He leaned back in a guylike sprawl and gave Willow a once-over. "Would I be the absolute gay stereotype if I said 'sweet boots'?"
The compliment startled a grin from her, and she extended her legs for ogling. "You like? We did the mother-daughter shopping trip this weekend."
"Way liberal with the Rosenberg funds, isn't she." Faint envy colored Buffy's voice.
"Yeah, she still has all this lingering guilt about trying to burn me at the stake. I mean, it was two years ago and she doesn't remember anything, but sometimes I'll pretend to grab a hot casserole from the oven--you know, without mitts?--and she'll be good for three, four hundred dollars at a pop."
Her friends looked at her with new respect. "You are the master manipulator," said Xander. "Slip me some skin." They slapped palms, and even added the little finger-waggle they'd tricked up last year during their big code-word-and-hand-signals phase. Willow felt ridiculously content for a moment, but kind of nostalgic too. It would be great if Xander were still going to school with them. Speaking of which.
"So what are you doing here?" she asked. "Just droppin' in to scope the fashion scene?"
"Lunch hour. Buffy asked me to stop by at," a swift check of watch, "twelve-thirty on the dot. Some kind of errand."
They both looked expectantly at Buffy, who'd straightened up in her seat, almost like a prairie dog sensing danger. "Yes, I--I wanted you to--" She hesitated. "I don't know. I forgot. Guess it wasn't important." She shrugged, nearly dislodging the white cardigan draped on her shoulders.
Oo-kay, Willow thought. Flaky. Xander seemed to be thinking the same thing, but merely said, "That's okay. I needed to get off-site for a while. There's only so much Whitesnake a man can endure before he takes the law into his own hands. One of these days I'm going to--"
"Hey," came an unfamiliar voice. Willow twisted around to see a standard-issue guy in Gap gear planted next to her couch, gripping the strap of his carrier bag like a mailman making deliveries.
"Derek!" It was Buffy's brightly-feigned-surprise voice, and it gave Willow a very bad feeling, the kind you get just before talent shows, or when you meet strange girls from South America, or when one of your best friends is intent on managing the life of your other best friend in a really horrible, embarrassing way. "What are you doing here?"
"Uh, you asked me to meet you."
Willow felt a desperate urge to cover her eyes. If one of those face-hugging parasites from Alien struck right now, she wouldn't even try to stop it from laying eggs in her throat. Go ahead, she'd say, make me a host for your foul and deadly implantation, as long as I don't have to witness this. If she wanted to see badly staged dramas, she could go to community theater.
"Oh, right!" Buffy said. "Sit down. Will, scoot over." She made scooting gestures with her hand, and Derek sat next to her on the Xander-facing end, looking as awkward as Willow felt. "Guys, this is Derek. Derek, this is Willow--" They murmured lamely pleasant hellos. "--and Xander," she finished.
"Hey." Xander sort of waved without actually moving his arm. He clearly hadn't gotten it yet, and Willow's dread keyed itself up another pitch. It was now like watching a car wreck in slow-motion. With proximity, she noticed that Derek smelled strongly of cologne, that he'd had a recent haircut, and that the inside of his left ear was shiny. He was wearing a hoop earring from which dangled a tiny, pink enamel triangle. Breathing softly through her mouth, Willow stared at it, trying to mesmerize herself into a state of hysterical blindness.
"Hi," Derek said to Xander. "Nice to meet you."
"Derek's in my social studies class." After Buffy imparted this information she paused, and with their stretching silence this fact seemed to take on special importance, as if it might explain the mystery of Easter Island or the Anasazi.
"Ah," Xander finally said. "Social studies. One of the more misleadingly titled subjects. You might think it'd teach you about dating and the fine points of club etiquette, but you'd be sadly wrong. Of course, maybe it's different in college."
"Not really," Derek said. "Though we do have a chapter on political parties next week, so who knows. Maybe Professor DeBecker will get her groove on."
Buffy laughed abruptly, then laid her fingers across her lips as everyone looked her way. "Sorry. I was just picturing that and you really had to be there...in my brain. Ignore me. Keep talking!"
"So you're in construction," Derek said to Xander, making an earnest show of interest.
With a bemused expression, Xander said, "Yes-s-s-s." Willow could see the connections forming. "Yes, I am." He shot a dark look Buffy's way from under his lashes. "Where I have access to power saws, cement, and conveniently sized pits."
Derek laughed. "Sounds like you have a few bodies to bury."
"Just one."
"Derek's dad is in construction," Buffy put in.
"My cousin, actually," Derek corrected. "My dad's in banking."
"Still." Buffy smiled, not to be diverted from her agenda. "You two have a lot in common." Willow closed her eyes and prayed for the heavens to open and blood to rain from the sky. Wasn't it time for another apocalypse? Any moment now. Any moment. "You both like science fiction," Buffy went on, "and you're both into music."
"You both have noses," Willow muttered under her breath, talking to no one but herself.
"You watching Farscape?" Derek asked Xander.
"Oh, hell yeah. Man, did you see the last one? Chiana--"
"Her brother!"
"I would have kicked that Varla's ass. Mind-frell me, will you--"
"They say there aren't any more eps until January--"
"I'm in withdrawal already--"
Buffy's face suggested that the conversation wasn't going in the direction she'd intended. "Oh," she interrupted, "you guys should go see Cibo Matto tonight at the Bronze!" She'd obviously meant this to seem like a spontaneous idea, but it smacked of scripting and she didn't quite pull it off.
"Yeah, sure," Derek said, smiling affably at Xander.
"Sorry." Xander's discomfort wiped any trace of a smile from his own face. Willow could tell he felt bad at having to hurt the guy's feelings, and it made her all the more angry with Buffy. "I have other plans tonight."
"Oh, come on," Buffy said. "You can cancel them." Meaningful look.
"No. I can't." He turned back to Derek. "Sorry. Bad timing."
"That's okay." Derek stood up as awkwardly as he'd sat down. "I understand. Here's my phone number if you change your mind." He handed over a folded slip of paper--it nearly broke Willow's heart that he'd had it already written--then he said his goodbyes and made himself scarce.
After he left, Willow laid an irky little glare on Buffy, who said, "What?"
"Buffy, how could you do that? That poor guy. And poor Xander," she slung a hand at him like a game show hostess displaying a prize, "having to turn him down."
"Poor Xander didn't have to turn him down, Will." Buffy flared her own hands wide. "Why didn't you say yes?" she challenged Xander. "He was nice."
"Do you know me at all?" Xander wondered. "Let's look at the Xander Harris dating catalog. Cordelia, Faith, Anya, Spike. Are we seeing any common theme there? Nice it ain't."
"My point exactly--why not try on nice for a change and go for a relationship that has a chance of lasting longer than yogurt."
"Has it ever occurred to you I might like a little bang in my buck?"
"Has it ever occurred to you to seek therapy?" Buffy shot back.
"Oh, man." Xander shook his head and stood up. "I'm outta here."
When she was in first grade, Willow's teacher had taken a special interest, would sit with her during recess and play logic games, or show her tricks. Once she'd given her a piece of paper and told her to make two small tears on one side, like a fat letter E. Now hold the ends, she'd said, and tear the middle section in two. Willow had tried and tried, growing furious and panicky when she failed and not letting go of failure all that easily even when Mrs. Hemming explained that it could never work; it wasn't supposed to.
She'd finally figured out the trick, though. It took two people, and when you ripped, all three parts came undone, and the middle tore too.
"Stop it," she cried. "No fighting!" Might as well reduce the issue to simple decibels. Plus, tart finger shaking never hurt.
Her friends seized up mid-spat, and Xander took a deliberate breath, acknowledging Willow without quite bending to her will. "I have to get back to work," he said. He made a strange little skim of fingers across air, like piano scales, and said: "If you all figure out my love life while I'm gone, here's a thought--don't tell me. Also, dressing myself, paying the electric bill--I've got that covered too."
As he left, Buffy slumped in her chair. "Crap," she said with an eloquence Willow couldn't fault, her voice smaller than before. "I screwed that up."
"I'm gonna go with...yeah."
Buffy's blue gaze implored her. "You know I care, right? I'm not just Buffy Buttinski?"
Her honest concern took the edge off Willow's irritation. "I know. He does too. But you've got to let him work things out for himself. Nineteen-year old guys--they're not so much the Dear Abby demographic."
"Yeah." Buffy looked downcast. "And I'm thinking Dear Slayer isn't hitting syndication any time soon."
~*~*~*~*~
The foreman consulted his spec as he circumnavigated the first floor of the house. The kitchen drainage system needed to be brought up to code and in some places completely replaced, and half a plumber was visible, legs sticking out from under one of the sinks as he exchanged new pipes for the corroded pieces piled on the floor next to him. The room was big enough to serve up meals for the dozens of students who'd once lived here, and the lumber and equipment they'd stacked on its tiled floor barely filled a corner of its space.
In the dining room a two-man team was in the process of spackling and painting the walls, and the foreman paused a moment to inspect the job before moving into the library. The walls here were almost entirely covered in bookshelves, currently empty, their looming forest broken only by a few tall windows, inset into the shelves and bedded by window seats. Their casements had been opened to let in a breeze, and a worker was stripping the floor. After a brief thumbs-up, the foreman strode through into the front hall, where the clamor of hammers and saws echoed through open doors and descended the wide stairs from the second-floor balconies.
Scanning his clipboard, feet carrying him on autopilot, he was brought up short by an object that didn't move out of his way. Halted by unerring radar, he gave a squint and recognized the owner of the house. He hated it when they turned up on a site, inevitably getting in the way of important work and delivering uninformed opinions picked up from amateur DIY magazines.
"Mister Giles," he said glumly, rearranging a wad of gum in his mouth.
"Ah, Mister Dinsmore." Giles stood with hands buried in pockets, surveying the scene as if the emancipation of slaves and victory of upstart colonials had never occurred. "I was wondering--the work you're doing to the stairs. It seems as if it would be more sensible to do that last, after the repairs to the second floor were finished."
"Yah-huh," Dinsmore said, snapping his gum and scratching his stubbled jaw a few times. "We could do that. 'Course, if we don't fix the stairs, someone could fall through, sue, and bankrupt us both."
Giles cleared his throat. "Good--good job there. Keep it up."
"Yah-huh."
As Dinsmore was congratulating himself on distracting the owner with threat of litigation, Giles went on, "I say, I've noticed a few...oddities that require explanation."
Listening to the other man speak was like listening to a stage actor who couldn't pass up an artsy pause on certain words. Dinsmore had already decided it was a British thing. "Do tell," he said. His parody went unnoticed as Giles removed a notepad from his pocket and consulted it.
"The flagstones on the rear patio have been dug up and stacked into a pyramid as if for removal, one of the apple trees has been chopped down, and someone has scrawled graffiti on the east wall of the house--'Leave Now, You're Not Wanted'." Giles raised his gaze over the slant of his glasses and abandoned the pretense of reading from his list. Dinsmore was willing to bet he had it memorized. "There have been other acts of vandalism within the house proper--this morning, the first-floor bathroom was defaced with what appears to be a mix of baby food and pistachio pudding." The notebook merely whispered as Giles closed it, but Dinsmore felt as if something had snapped shut smartly around his windpipe.
Cursing the current labor market, he said, "Look. That kind of stuff happens on any work site, and nine times out of ten it's a bunch of kids with a wild hair up their yahoos."
"While normally I'd be inclined to take this as the work of disaffected youth, the paint came from a can inside the house, which was presumably locked." Giles stared at him coolly.
Dinsmore had just opened his mouth with no real idea what he was going to say, when there was an enormous crash and cry from above that caused both men to race across the hall and up the stairs, Giles with surprisingly athletic vigor, Dinsmore with a jingle of loose pocket change and clomping work boots, clipboard abandoned behind him. By the time they reached the north landing, a group of workers was clustered around one of the bedroom doors. Dinsmore shoved his men aside, clearing a path for Giles to shoulder in next to him. At the threshold they stopped short.
"Good god," Giles breathed.
From the ceiling a supporting beam now protruded like an arrow through a broken ribcage, and from the beam a man hung by one foot, slowly turning. His foot was bound by a yellow power cord, his hard hat lay on the floor under him in a spill of coins, and he was groaning.
"Emmet?" Dinsmore said, wondering how the man had gotten himself into this predicament. He drank a bit, but that didn't explain...this.
Emmet shook a fist as he swung to face Dinsmore, one finger jabbing the air for emphasis. "It's always one joke after another with him." His voice took on mimicking tones. "'Hey, Emmet, you hear this one? Guy was so fat that when he stepped on the scale it said, 'To be continued'.' Har de har har."
A few of the guys standing in the hallway snickered, and Dinsmore whipped back a glare that silenced them.
"Or how about the guy who was so fat, he had to get baptized at Sea World?" Emmet went on more or less to himself, the bitterness in his voice strangely out of proportion to his actual girth; in his upside-down position, his shirt had slipped to reveal a belly not all that bigger than average for Dinsmore's crew. It wasn't the prize-winning melon by a long shot.
"Oh, stuff a doughnut in it, you big cry-baby!"
Startled, Dinsmore finally noticed the broken window just as Bill Templeton leaned through it, his furious face reddened with dozens of small cuts. He had to be standing on the roof--if he'd been flung out, though, it was a wonder he hadn't fallen, and so Dinsmore's thoughts led him in a distracting way until Bill lobbed a shingle through the window at Emmet, bouncing it smartly off the poor man's head.
"Hey!" Dinsmore exclaimed a beat too late for prevention.
"Whine, whine, whine," Bill sneered, jerking half out of sight as if looking for another shingle. "Every day, it's whine, whine, whine," his words carried from outside, "Light's too bad, boards are too heavy, break's too short--" Another shingle flew in, missing Emmet and rolling across the floor to rest at Giles's feet. He bent down and picked it up. Dinsmore stared at the object, which wasn't a shingle. It was a Bismarck.
He didn't know what to say, and was doing his damnedest not to look at Giles, because any minute now the bastard would start biting off unanswerable questions in that very British voice that made anyone in range feel itchy and unwashed.
"Shut up!" Emmet yelled in the direction of the window, still spinning by one foot in a lazy circle.
"Dough-Boy!" Bill yelled back.
"Perhaps we should..." Giles hesitated, clearly as much at a loss as Dinsmore.
A flash of light made Dinsmore and Giles flinch back, shielding their faces. As their eyes grew accustomed, they lowered their arms and stared at the doughnuts raining down from the ceiling and bouncing like hail stones on the boards. With ten or fifteen seconds, pastries carpeted the floor.
Murmurs of approval rose from the crowd behind them.
Dinsmore felt his entire psychological foundation creak and list to one side as he tried to process the impossible. "I won't bill you for those," he assured Giles in a stunned, automatic voice.
"Good...good man." Giles looked cautiously ceilingward as the storm petered out, one last doughnut falling to earth with a jellied plop. "Let's just hope there's not coffee to follow."
~*~*~*~*~
He'd had too many nightmares like this to count, of being lost in someplace familiar but wrong, the lights out, plastic sheeting hanging like ripped and dirty ghosts from a web of pipes, stirring as he shifted through them. You tried to make no sound, but the floor was covered with chunks of broken plaster and even though you stepped between them in your bare feet, you heard tiny scrapes that something else would be able to hear even better. It would know you were coming and the sword you carried would be useless against it, because it was stronger, faster, and far more evil than you could ever hope to be.
Those were the nightmares, but this was real, and Xander caught his breath and went still as the thing stalking him moved somewhere ahead, a fleeting shadow behind layers of plastic. Flexing his hands around his sword hilt, he turned sideways and eased shoulder-first through a tattered corridor that filtered out more light than it let through. As he grew conscious of his breathing, he tried to control it, but his lungs kept harshing the air around his face. Stupid lungs. Too bad you couldn't turn off your body for a little while, or turn down your feelings. Most distractions were tiny--crumbled insulation beneath his feet, a splinter in his left sole, sweat pooling in the small of his back--but they added up into one big swarm of danger. Focus, he told himself.
Another shadow flitted by, closer now, sending a whisper through plastic, leaving a few strips flapping in its wake.
It was just toying with him.
He gave up on sneakiness. "Now you may not know this," he said, ironing the ragged edge of his voice, going for nonchalance, "but I happen to date a vampire. Big, hulking Richard Kiel of a guy--or, if you're not a Bond fan--built like a brick shit-house. Mean too. Of course, all you vamps are, but he's in a class by himself. He's the whole school, really."
A draft kissed Xander's ankles and he spun, sword slicing across plastic. Half a swathe fell, folding onto the floor. "I think we can reach an accommodation," he offered, poking the tip of his sword ahead of him as he moved in the hope of randomly hitting his mark, since his senses were telling him nothing. "You let me live, he lets you leave town in one piece." Laughter floated out of the darkness. "Deal?" he called.
"No deal," came the mocking voice. "But when I've finished din-dins, I'll track down this fancy poofter and give him your head as a memento of...fonder times."
Xander lunged in the direction of the voice and succeeded in lodging his sword point in the slats of a pillar. He yanked it out and dropped as a whistling blur cut the air above him. Bouncing up into a pile-driver, he sent his opponent staggering back a few paces, into an area of the room where the boards were bare and the air clear of obstructions. Across the floor from him, Spike lowered his brow and drew a swift, restless figure-eight in the air with his sword. He was smiling in that not-nice way of his which would make dogs retreat, his eyes blue and empty as the sky. He might as well have been wearing a tee-shirt that said, "Your blood, my nachos." Or maybe, "Fuck your corpse, baby."
But he wasn't wearing a shirt, and his jeans were black, and it was almost as if the upper half of his body floated in the darkness behind the flickering fan of his sword. The motion of Spike's wrist was hypnotic. After a few moments Xander tore his gaze away. He knew better than to try and show off himself, so he just circled in. Spike slid counter-clockwise, bare feet drifting across the boards. They had timing based on familiarity with each other's style, which made it all the more unexpected when Spike lashed out ahead of schedule--damn him--and danced by like a clock-hand springing loose from the face.
Answering with his own dance steps, Xander felt nowhere near as graceful. His feet carried him out of range for only a second or two before their swords began to clash with an angry sound that would have woken anyone's neighbors except for Spike's, who were probably out for a midnight brunch. Xander's wrists began to feel the strain almost immediately as Spike's blade dragged and snapped at his own. The edges were dull, Spike chipped, and these were compensations, but human strength still wasn't much against a vampire's.
Spike was just toying with him.
"Don't watch the blade," he reminded Xander, his voice low, smooth, and dangerously lulling. "Watch my shoulders. And ease your grip--you're not throttling its bloody neck. Got to squeeze your sword gentle, pretend it's your best friend." A nasty lick of a smile, a head tilt heavy with innuendo, and Xander had to suck in a breath to keep steady.
"I ease my grip, you knock it out of my hands. Nuh uh."
"Yeah," Spike admitted as he parried a thrust with lazy attention. "Got a point. Doesn't help your opponent's always going to be stronger."
"Hey! You don't know that." Thrust, parry. "I might have to fight an angry dwarf someday."
"Dwarf'll put you six foot under right quick."
Sparking with anger, Xander lunged blindly and was promptly tumbled to the floor by a casual kick of Spike's foot. He rolled over and found himself looking up along the blade whose point rested in the hollow of his throat. It ended in the hand of an irritated vampire. "You're dead," Spike announced. His eyes were cold. After countless practice sessions, he still seemed to take it personally when Xander lost, as if it were his own failure to impart some critical skill that was responsible and not Xander's less-than-demonic strength and agility.
The indignity of lying flat on his back wasn't helped by the arrival of Byron, who stepped delicately onto Xander's chest and rubbed his cheek against Spike's sword. Spike sighed, ire deflating. He pulled his weapon back and leaned over to scoop up the cat, then held it a moment one-handed, at face level.
"You're going to be a flaming shishkabob if you don't stay out of here," he warned, speaking to the cat as if it could understand him perfectly well.
Byron dangled in his owner's hand and stared back with aplomb until Spike slung the animal across his shoulder. It rode there like a limp stole as they returned to Spike's place through the huge, gaping hole he'd knocked in the wall separating his apartment from the rest of the floor, thereby claiming it for himself. (A few ichorous evictions later, with full success.)
In the jaundiced fluorescence of Spike's kitchen, Xander went to the beat-up old fridge and took out a bottle of water, downing half its contents in several gulps. Behind him, he could hear Spike toss a rattling handful of kibble in Byron's bowl. When he put the water back and turned, Spike shoved him against the closing fridge and sealed their mouths together. He was half-hard.
Fighting. Got vamps all riled up.
There was some serious tonguing that Xander could feel heading toward dirty kitchen-floor sex, and then he made himself pull back for a breather. Spike let him exercise his lungs, but his hips didn't stop riding against Xander's, and he touched his tongue to his lower lip as if trying to decide what he wanted to taste next. It was hard to think when you had an armful of pervy goodness snugged up against you. Still, Xander made a point of not being a pushover.
"You know, Buffy asked the other day if we were back together."
Spike was looking at Xander's lips in a way that suggested he wasn't listening too closely. "Did she now."
"We need a code. Like the handkerchief code. But for other people. A red handkerchief means we're broken up. Green, we're back together. It'd be easier than trying to explain..." He paused, shifted his hips a little. "...this."
"Never apologize, never explain."
"You have a future in greeting cards. But I'd like to keep my friends." He hesitated, his mind adding, and you. But right now Spike was full of electricity and static cling, hips climbing up Xander's, his whole body like a blanket you couldn't peel off, and the words seemed unnecessary.
Leaning in, Spike mouthed his neck right on the pulse line, then dragged his teeth across it, like a surgeon marking the spot for his incision. Lust slammed through Xander's body right to his balls, but he turned his head away and said, "Not there."
Spike pulled his head back. "'Fraid they'll find out, give you a stern talking to?"
"They already think I'm crazy. Maybe I am. It's not like I'd let anyone else dick me around like this."
That did it. Spike stepped out of his arms and stared at him with a combination of affront and suspicion, the corners of his mouth tightening. "You got something to say, say it."
"I just need to know where we stand. Two steps forward and we're living together, one step back and you're here again," he waved at Spike's apartment, "because you need your space. One day we're fighting, the next we're necking. I know this is just your run-of-the-mill vampire soap opera, but it's kicking my ass."
"This the part where I'm supposed to go down on bended knee, give you a ring?" Spike paused for thought and blinked. "Hold up, that sounds fun."
"That," Xander said with frustration, running a hand through his hair. "That's what I'm talking about. This isn't all about sex."
"No?"
"Did I mention that Buffy tried to set me up with this guy? Nice, normal, probably not cursed. I could be out with him right now."
Something in Spike's eyes closed over, as if part of him had disappeared behind a lizard's transparent lids. "So why aren't you?"
"Hell if I know."
"Maybe this'll jog your memory," Spike said, grabbing a handful of Xander's jeans and twisting in a just-this-side-of-painful way.
Xander knocked his hand aside. "Cut it out."
"Spoiled for choice now, that it? Figure you don't need old Spike anymore. 'Course, Boy Normal can't give you this, can he?" Spike vamped out and bared his fangs with a wicked smile.
The vampire's display didn't so much scare Xander as make him feel weirdly sad on Spike's behalf--but was there anything more annoying than someone who referred to himself in the third person? "I don't need that," he said steadily, despite the flickering ache in his most recent bite scar.
Spike's demon dissipated like ripples across a pond, leaving an indulgent smile behind. "Care to make a small wager on that, pet?"
~*~*~*~*~
Willow lay across her bed, chin hooked on a pillow, and stared at her class notes with a sense of deep bewilderment. Auditing a graduate-level course on the asymptotic evaluation of integrals had sounded far more exciting when her advisor had suggested it, but now she just had a purple notebook full of nonsensical numbers, and what the hell did wave-propagation theory have to do with her anyway? She suspected that her professor was making half his lectures up, and that was no fun. Because sure, if you assumed that radio waves were actually created by reflections from the ionosphere, you could use that to explain echoes of radio energy, but that didn't even consider the effects of refraction and scintillation--
"So, if the earth revolves around the sun, what does the sun revolve around?" Buffy wondered aloud from her own bed.
Dragging her mind back into place, Willow propped herself up on her arms and looked across at her friend, who was kicking her heels bouncily assward and toeing off one frilly sock. Willow tried to figure out if the question was evidence of extraordinary ignorance or unexpected insight. "Actually, it revolves around the center of the galaxy, about once every two hundred and fifty million years."
Buffy popped loose her raspberry sucker with a cheerful, slurping sound. "Oh. Cool."
With a small affectionate smile, Willow rolled herself up into a seated position. "So, hey, are you and Riley going to the Bronze tonight?"
Matching her movement, Buffy sat up and abandoned her text book. She played absently with her lollipop as she spoke, turning it between her fingers like a shiny, sticky microphone. "I don't know. We haven't talked yet. Today."
Willow tipped her head to one side. "Are you guys having The Rift?" Gamely she made finger quotes, trying to convey the illusion of some shared, girlish vocabulary she wasn't sure existed outside of Cosmo.
"Grand Canyon size. He won't talk to me about the job thing."
"Maybe that's because you call it 'the job thing'?" Finger quotes again.
"Why are you," finger quotes, "air-quoting everything you say?"
Sighing, Willow had to admit, "I think I over-Seinfelded last night. Next time, take my remote away before the ab-sculpting infomercials come on."
In answer to her plea, Buffy just smiled with a peek-a-boo of amusement. "But you look so cute when your mouth is hanging open, with the drool and the glassy eyes."
Horror. "Oh my god, did I drool?"
"I'll just let the instant photos speak as evidence."
She may or may not have been joking, whimsical cur of Satan that she was. Just the possibility of doubt made Willow wince, though. "Okay, I'm confiscating the sticky film. It will be rationed out only to those who use it responsibly."
The phone rang then, interrupting girltime, and Willow slouched across the bed to answer it. "Hello?"
"Hey," came the voice of her boyfriend, mellowing from hundreds of miles away. Her boyfriend. His very existence still made her squeaky.
"Oz! Where are you? It's like you're right in my ear!"
"I'd rather be. Though, cramped." Background sounds filtered in, a steady beep like a truck backing up, and the tinned bark of someone's voice on a loudspeaker. "We're at the airport in Salt Lake. Which is not much like your ear. Flight's delayed so I thought I'd call."
Willow was smiling. She could tell by the stretchy ache in her cheeks, a good ache, the kind you got when... Oops. Sexy thoughts. "I'm glad. Glad you...called. How was the gig?"
A thoughtful pause. "Well, apparently they have vampires here too. The lighting guy at the club tried to get a bite in. I told him I was seeing someone, but he pressed."
"Did you stake him?" Across the room, Buffy looked up from her homework, attention drawn.
"Oh, no. I was going to, but then we got into this whole discussion about self-control and the concept of abstinence as a spiritual tool. He got kinda upset...and then he just took off before I could grab him. He gave me this interesting pamphlet, though. Apparently I can save my soul in six easy lessons."
"Okay. That's good, I guess." It wasn't, really. But the fiction of Sunnydale demanded that they treat such anecdotes lightly, fodder for casual phone chats. Just another encounter that raised all kinds of troubling questions about vampires and the world outside city limits, and even about Oz himself. But Buffy was obviously still listening--to be fair, she couldn't help but overhear--so Willow kept it light.
"Are you alone?" Oz asked, his voice sultry. Could men have sultry voices?
Could they ever.
"Um, Buffy's here." Willow flashed a smile as Buffy glanced up again.
"Say hi for me," she instructed around a suck of lollipop.
"Buffy says hi."
"I say hey."
"Oz says hey," Willow informed her, then lay belly-down across her bed, chinning her pillow in a way that turned the conversation more private.
"So, damn." Oz's voice was matter of fact, but somehow he conveyed in even his most bland and ordinary tone a touch of sexiness. "Too bad you're not alone. I was going to say inappropriate things to you."
She got excited by this development, almost giddy, her body unrolling one long flush and her ear tips burning with self-consciousness. She didn't disapprove. "You were? Like what?"
"Nahhh. Better not. You might spontaneously combust, ignite the drapes, trap dozens of students in a crucible of fiery death." A thoughtful pause. "I need to tone down my scenarios. This may explain why I killed my sims."
"You deprived them of food!"
"That too."
"No pet hamsters for you, mister."
There was a comfortable silence in which she could picture Oz's tiny smile, and then he said, "I miss you. That thing with your nose, where you pretend to be Samantha...I miss that."
Oh, she thought, as she entered the city limits of Swoonyville. Oh oh oh. "I miss you--I miss your nose too!" Delighted at their mutual want and need and nose-appreciation, she wished she could send a breath to him through the phone, a kiss of warm air in his ear, and immediately wondered if there was a spell for that. Distracted, it took her a moment to track his words as he said,
"They're boarding. I have to go. Um. We may stay over in L.A. with Devon's brother, drive up tomorrow."
"Okay," Willow said, with a pang of disappointment. "I'll see you soon. Be, be careful, okay? Stay away from the stewardesses."
"Why--demons?"
"Well, you never know. Strapped in at twenty thousand feet, you don't want to antagonize the spirits of the air. They may look perky, but their bosomy carapaces conceal hearts of blackness that doom mortal men."
"Wow," he said with a note of subdued respect. "One might think you're a little jealous there. It's good, I like it. You've got that redheaded thing going for you. But...you know I'm with you, right?" The way he said 'with you' made it firm and deep, like a promise.
She felt a pang of embarrassment at her own transparency, and her voice lowered and softened. "I know. It's just that, sometimes I think of you with someone else and even if you're just making eye contact...they're not my eyes. And if you're smiling, it's not at me. And I think maybe you'll see something in them that you don't see in me, and you'll look at me differently the next time we're together."
"Willow, when I look at anyone...all I see is you."
~*~*~*~*~
"...so I wound up in Oxnard, and let me tell you, until you've seen Oxnard by moonlight in a car with no engine, you haven't lived."
Derek chuckled--and no, you couldn't call it a full laugh, you had to call it a chuckle--and Xander felt a flush go through him. He wasn't sure if it was attraction or discomfort, or some weird, malfunctioning valve that might cause both. It was nice to be laughed at, when you meant to be. And Derek, objectively speaking, was an attractive guy, which made it that much better. He was tidy and smart and personable too, like someone who might help you pick out a new stereo at Radio Shack, and he was wearing khakis. Xander tried to picture Spike wearing khakis. It broke his head.
"You've had a lot of adventures," Derek said.
"You don't know the half of it." Xander nearly bit his tongue after the casual remark, hoping it wouldn't invite questions, but Derek just smiled some more, then shifted his gaze to watch the band for a moment, which allowed Xander to watch him. Examine him. There was nothing to find fault with. He had a nice neck, showing signs of a recent hair cut under the ears. A mole at the jawline, small and ordinary. Very, very tan skin. When Derek turned back to catch his eye, Xander manufactured a smile automatically, but it had real, wholesome ingredients. He wasn't unhappy to be here. It had been a good idea, a healthy decision, to call Derek and get out. Do human-type things for a change, which--because he often drank and yakked and shot pool with Spike, too--he defined merely as 'things done with humans'.
"I'm glad you called," Derek said, then ducked his head almost at once, making a sheepish face as he played with his beer. "Man, that's a corny thing to say."
"It's not. Besides, I don't really have a big problem with corn. Creamed, cobbed, popped. Corn bread, corn pone--" Aware that he was entering Bubba Blue territory he pulled out fast. "What is a pone, anyway? I've always wondered."
"Uh, I'm not sure. A kind of cake?" They gave this a moment of mutual reflection before Derek took a deep breath and said, "I'd ask you to dance, but..." He shrugged one shoulder toward the herd of couples on the dance floor, where girls danced with guys, and guys with girls, all of them giving off a young, nervous animal vibe that didn't invite homosexual deviance.
"It's all right." Xander twisted a straw between his fingers, knotting it. "Tuesdays are a good night to come, if you want to dance."
"You like to dance?"
"I've been known to cut a rug." Sweet fancy Jesus, he hadn't just said that, had he? "Actually, I've more often been known to mangle a rug." Derek laughed, encouraging Xander's bad wit, making him feel he could get lucky. What would that be like? How disturbing was it that he didn't know how human men fucked, what they tasted and smelled and felt like? Was Spike anywhere near the norm, or was he more likely smirking at it from a great distance?
And then there was a lull. Flag on the play, as they both fumbled with drinks and napkins and whatever else was handy. Time enough for Xander to flash back to high school and think about how much had changed, and how little. Now he was a nervous goof with guys instead of girls. It wasn't what you'd call progress.
"Do you want to," Derek began, just as Xander said, "So what do you do--" And they both stopped and laughed and went through the equivalent of a Japanese bowing routine as each of them tried to get the other to go first.
"Well, isn't this cozy," came a well-known drawl just as Derek, mouth open, was gearing up for round two in their Special Olympics conversation.
Xander tensed in his seat, throat locking up, jaw tightening, a vein in his temple beginning to throb, and none of these symptoms comparing in physical distress to the sudden plunge of dread in his belly. He made himself look at Spike, who'd manifested by their table like an inopportune violinist, and found himself staring chest-level at a dark blue silk shirt. His own. The shirt, in fact, that he'd almost worn tonight, but it had seemed too dressy. Silk shirt, faded jeans: one vampire, dressed to kill. Bastard. The sheer nerve of it floored Xander.
"Spike. What are you doing here?" He kept his tone casual for Derek's sake, saving the sharp bite for his gaze.
"Just dropped in for a drink." Spike raised his beer pointedly, then uncurled one finger from its neck to point at an empty seat. "Mind if I join you?" His question was directed to Derek, who nodded back in a startled way before turning an uncertain look on Xander.
He was ready to protest, but it was already too late. Spike slid his ass onto the chair, sitting close enough for Xander to get a dizzying breath of soap and laundry detergent. The scents you knew well held a kind of magic, carrying messages you couldn't resist, and for one topsy-turvy second Spike's presence was weirdly homey and reassuring, as if he were coming to Xander's rescue. Then sanity returned, and Xander wanted to smack him.
"Hi," said Derek. "I'm Derek Chapin." He stuck out his hand, and Spike looked at it, then shook it in a mocking way that Xander wasn't sure Derek caught.
"Hello, Derek." Spike's voice was all poncey marmalade. "I'm Spike."
Hi there, I'm fucked. It was enough to make a man contemplate heavy drinking, relocation, and homicide. Xander didn't quite put his head in his hands, but he came precariously close, and then thought fuck it, and girded his loins with the determination to thwart Spike's thwartiness.
"So," Xander said, raising his brows at Spike's beer. "You're drinking again. I thought that you were on the wagon after your...treatment."
Derek's gaze dropped in social embarrassment while Spike processed the remark--confusion, amazement, and then a keen, dark look of respect, delivered with a head tilt that made Xander want to dry-hump his leg through sheer Pavlovian response. His cock stiffened, and he shifted in his chair. Bastard.
"I'm a slave to the bottle," Spike said with affected resignation, and then his voice lowered to hurt. "I didn't think you'd bring that up. Not in front of someone else." He turned to Derek in a confiding way. "I've tried so hard for him, y'know. Settled down, given up the best years of my life. Made a home for him."
Brain shorting out with horror, Xander cursed the decades of low-brow daytime television that had honed Spike's nefarious talents. The tone of pained sincerity he'd twisted his voice into had Derek looking green around the gills. "I should go," the other man said.
"No!" Xander glared at Spike, games forgotten. "You. Get lost."
"But, Xan--"
"It's okay," Derek said, getting to his feet, expression terribly earnest. "You two should talk. Xander, give me a call later." A quick smile passed across his face and he held Xander's eyes for a beat with more understanding that Xander had expected to see there. "I'll be up late."
They sat in silence as he left, Xander rolling unsaid words around in his mouth, all of them tasting angry. "Congratulations," he said at last. "You made short work of that."
"Oh, your puppy'll be back for more kicks." Spike leaned back, shoulders flaring in silk. "Long as he's got your bone in sights, he'll come running when you call, wagging his cute little tail."
Xander scowled. "Our deal did not involve you barging in on my date and making a big vampy nuisance of yourself." As soon as the words left his tongue, he felt the atmosphere between them change, or maybe it was only his comprehension as he took in the evidence of Spike's mercurial eyes, his borrowed shirt--the very fact of his presence. "You're jealous," he realized aloud.
"Bollocks." Sneer and scoff and Spikey scorn.
"Open relationships must be hard on a territorial master vampire. Never mind that you spent all summer screwing anything that moved. Once I start looking elsewhere, it's a different story, isn't it?"
Mouth tightening, Spike stared at him while Xander stared back. It was a stare-down of epic proportions. "Don't worry about me," he said finally, his voice hard and cold. "I can snap my fingers and find a hundred just like you, all hot and juicy and eager to please."
It hurt, as it was meant to, but it was poker, and Xander didn't know what else to say but, "Be my guest."
With dark and dramatic flair, Spike shoved off from the table and stalked through the club with a sexy hip-roll, on the prowl for his victim of the evening. Watching him buddy up to a beefy guy with a raw and scary display of charm, Xander felt the weight of dysfunction threaten to shove him face-forward into beer. His parents had set the bar for fucked-up misery--set the bar, hell, they'd stocked the bar--and equipped him to continue their work into the next generation. It should be no surprise then that he was acting out a lifetime's worth of issues with one of Satan's own minions.
He kind of missed the days when men were men, and vamps were vamps, and slayers wore short little skirts. Things had been simpler back then.
Of course, before that there had been cookies and nap time. He really never should have left kindergarten.
~*~*~*~*~
In the library, the floors had been finished and the workers had promptly tossed down sheets of plastic and rigged a table using the old stand-by of plywood laid across orange sawhorses. Giles absently pushed aside a clutter of tools to make room for the boxes he'd found. 'Celia Graydon, Misc. 1920-25' was scrawled across the side of the larger, and he blew dust from its surface as he undid the flaps. With an archivist's caution he lifted out the contents layer by layer, glancing at each item as he laid it aside, and finally unearthing a plain brown ledger that caught his attention. Its cover was inked with the word 'Diary' in simple copperplate.
Giles opened the book near the end and worked back from the blank pages until the same neat handwriting appeared, and then began reading backwards. Around him, the house creaked and shifted as if moving restlessly on its haunches, a thought that made Giles pause in flipping through the book and cock his head at the room with nervous distraction. On the far wall, the fireplace was a dark mouth that light couldn't fathom, and the high shelves might have held any number of things just out of visible range. They were empty, of course, he reminded himself with firmness. There was no need to get flighty.
When he'd satisfied himself that nothing was going to immediately manifest, he went back to poring across the pages of the hen-scratched diary he'd found, trying to determine what might be relevant to his investigation.
"'January 14, 1921'," he read to himself, drawing some reassurance from the sound of his own voice. "'Ada's temper worsens, and she will speak to none but me for days on end. Her rages like blustery storms steal her rest and mine, and allow no solace--I will not leave her side when she weeps, for fear of the harm she may turn upon herself or upon other folk. I have a terrible foreboding of what is to come.'" He paused a moment, gaze skating over less relevant lines of text, then turned the page. "'I wish for faith that it is God's Holy Will all things happen, but fear the tide of a darker messenger--'"
A series of heavy, rhythmic bangs from upstairs broke Giles's concentration and nearly made him drop the book he held, even though they weren't particularly surprising. "Yes, thank you," he said, raising his voice to the house. "Your point is taken." Annoyed, he tried to find his place again, only to have the diary yanked from his hands by an invisible force and flung across the room into the fireplace. "Oh, really," he tutted with exasperation, circling to retrieve it. "You're not the first possessed house I've seen in my time, and as yet you've offered nothing new to the annals of paranormal study." He picked the diary up, dusted it off. "You'll get no footnotes off doughnuts, you know."
Lights flashed on and off, and the room's doors banged open and shut several times in a rather petulant way. Giles ignored the clamor as best he could, along with the chill gathering at his feet and working its way up his body. The diary had fallen open on its back, pages splayed, and he resumed reading at the new entry which had been revealed almost as if by design. "'We went to the cemetery for Stephen's funeral this morning, despite squalls of snow that stung our eyes and continued unabated as our hearts grew ever more forlorn of hope. I feel to my knees to pray as I never prayed before, to no avail...' Oh, dear," he murmured, all levity draining away as he read silently now, gripped with a rising sense of concern.
The book was ripped from his hands again and dashed against the far wall, where it hung in defiance of gravity, pages fluttering like the wings of a bug dying on a windshield. Swallowing, Giles decided it might be time to leave and seek help. He edged toward the hall doors, one eye on the diary in case it took flight, and so it wasn't until he'd nearly reached the exit that he saw the presence hovering there, barring his way. Rooted to the spot with alarm, he cursed himself for not preparing a spell, however small and generic, against the possibility of demonic spirits. A crucifix he had, but it would be useless to defy...whatever this was. Not a ghost. He'd been very wrong in his classification, even though all the evidence had pointed to a haunting.
The creature flickered at the edges of both comprehension and physical sensibility, teasing the peripheral vision with serpentine lines of light. When Giles stepped back, the thing moved with him, counterclockwise. That gave him pause, then he took another careful step toward the open door, and as he did, the thing moved again too, mirroring Giles and allowing him closer to the exit. Unsure what to think, Giles continued circumnavigating away until he was at the threshold. They were still face to face, except this had no face...
...or did it?
Giles stared mesmerized as something began forming from the void, threads knitting together with features almost recognizable while the figure itself coalesced; dark feathers smoothing the head into shape, wings lifting from the back and spreading out on either side.
"Who are you?" Giles asked, voice low and measured and wary. "I-I know you."
The presence crystallized as the doors slammed shut behind him, and he felt himself knocked back to meet them by a lashing force of darkness. He gasped but lacked air, hands coming up by instinct as he struggled to remove the coil wrapped around his throat, succeeding not at all and feeling its grip tighten as the thing drifted in, filling his vision like a black fogbank. Consciousness thinning, he let one hand drop to his pocket, dragging at the flap to reach the crucifix he always kept there, and he could have wept in frustration at how his fingers fumbled, though it hardly mattered, it would be a mere trinket in its uselessness--
and this might be his last sight, the sword rising above him in a golden arc--
and he could have sworn for one asphyxiated, hallucinatory moment on the edge that he heard a wolf growl--
and then there was nothing.
~*~*~*~*~
"Xander."
Turning his head, he saw Buffy and Riley and Willow clumped at his shoulder, audience to the social trauma of a Xander Harris night on the town. Perfect. Angling for calm, he said, "Hey, guys."
"Are you here by yourself?" Willow asked, surprised, managing as best friends so often did to zero in on the painfully obvious in under five seconds.
"More or less," he acknowledged.
"Well, we'll join you," Buffy said brightly, taking the seat that Spike had recently vacated and setting down a fat, freakish purse shaped like a goldfish that Xander couldn't tear his eyes away from.
"Drinks?" Riley asked, being go-to guy.
"Something fizzy," Buffy said.
Willow echoed this with a nod. As Riley headed off to the bar, she settled her butt across from Xander and smiled. "Staggin' it at the Bronze? It's like old times."
She didn't seem aware of the implications of loserdom this carried, and she was so cheerful that he forgave her. About to reply, it dawned on him belatedly that she was fishing--inquisitive note, quirked brows. Clearing his throat he said, "Actually, I had a date." He gave Buffy a glance. "You just missed him. Derek."
"Xander, ohmigod, that's great!" Buffy leaned forward, all cherry lip-gloss and perfume. "Are you guys going to see each other again?"
"I don't know." Unable to help himself, he let his gaze swivel toward the interior of the club and searched the crowd for Spike, finding his electric-white head tipped up at shoulder level to the beefy guy he'd been courting previously, who was now laughing down at him. How the hell he'd pulled off that maneuver without getting his ass kicked, Xander had no clue. His hand clamped more tightly around his glass as his temper began to surface.
"Do you like him?" Willow asked, with a gentle curiosity.
Distracted, Xander said, "Huh?"
Willow twisted to follow his overly obvious gaze before he could collect himself. "Hey, is that Spike?"
Shit. He took a breath. "Yeah. Just ignore him. He's trying to make me jealous." Saying so gave him an intense satisfaction when nothing else did. These were his friends, and they'd accept his side of things.
"Oh!" Willow uttered, startling a confused look from him. She'd nudged out her lower lip just a little. "That's so sweet!"
"Will!" Buffy seemed ready to slap her friend's wrist. "It's not sweet. It's bad and wrong and--and stalker-like."
Riley came back and set down drinks just as Buffy finished speaking. "Are we talking about Spike again?" He sounded unthrilled.
"No," Xander said.
"Spike's hitting on some guy to make Xander jealous," Willow shared as if narrating the plotline of a favorite soap, "because Xander had a date with Derek, and now they're all vibey with the spurning and ambivalence and stuff."
The blankness that settled over Riley's face suggested that big gay love-spats fell low on his list of conversational topics, and who could really blame him?
"Okay, the not talking about him works better when we don't actually talk about him," Xander pointed out testily, earning an apologetic look from Willow.
"Right. Not talking about the blond, chippy vampire who shall remain nameless and who, uh, is headingthiswayrightnow." Willow lowered her head and busied herself sipping from the straw of her drink.
"The Four-H Club meets," Spike greeted them as he reached their table, then with random animosity tacked his gaze on Riley, who happened to be closest, eyeballing his striped shirt as if it were some kind of freakish demon skin he'd found hanging on a tree. His eyes were on level with the bigger man's shoulder, and Riley peered down at him with an almost amiable dislike.
"Spike. Out trading on your good looks, I hear." Riley paused. "What's that worth in food stamps?"
Glaring up with a nasty smile Spike said, "More than you can afford, you massively repressed loaf of Wonder Bread."
Repressing a shudder at where his thoughts went, Xander tried to distract Spike before Riley lost his cool. "What happened to that giant man-mountain you were climbing?" he asked, hating how he sounded in front of his friends but unable to file the edge off his voice. "Guess being Spike's Peak came runner-up to a rousing night of hair washing."
This was sinking to the level of a Will & Grace cat-fight, but every hard stab of Spike's eyes was making Xander hurt in the good place, the bad place, the naughty place.
Man, he was twisted.
"Oh, my enormous friend has just gone off to drain the snake--or, by looks of things, the mighty python." Spike smirked, so shameless he could make dogs curl up and cringe, and Riley ducked his head away in an appalled reflex.
Xander stretched back in his chair, suddenly experiencing one of those floaty, happy moments when the booze kicked in and things stopped mattering so much. "Let me guess--you inveigled him with promises of porn, probably some hot girl-on-girl action, and now you plan to take him home, get him drunk, and molest him."
The smile was replaced with a scowl. "Think you're a right Miss Cleo, don't you?"
"No, Spike, you're just predictable, like a bad sitcom." And then a thought struck him out of the blue, like a baseball whomping his gut in a not unpleasant way. It was a thought that said: Wait. Hold up. How is this predictable? Of course, Spike had that pride thing going, which was less a gay parade and more a perverse one-upmanship mixed with lunatic braggadocio, but when you got down to it, how strange was it that a guy who'd swanned around with Our Lady of Lunatics for a hundred years--a doll-carrying dingbat, a nightmare in frilly dresses--would suddenly start chasing dick just to tick one Xander Harris off? If he was going to such lengths, didn't it mean--
Buffy overrode his thoughts and Spike's voice just as he'd been forming a reply. "As entertaining as this is, guys--"
"Oh, you're all here, thank god," Giles said, materializing non-literally by the table with a frown and a sigh of relief.
"Nooo," Buffy groaned with theatrical resentment. "Not on date night." Then she blinked and drew herself up in her chair. "On second thought, it's good to see you. End of the world?" A note of hopefulness had entered her voice.
"Something far worse."
"Worse than the end of the world?" Anxiety dug into Willow's face, deepening the creases of her brow.
"Too right. It's my bloody house." Giles laid a book on the table with a thump. "I'll tell you, I won't surrender it without a hell of a fight," he said in a rough voice, then cleared his throat and glanced at Buffy's glass. "May I?" He chugged the soda as if carbonated strawberry juice were something he drank everyday, while they all stared at him with frank fascination. When he tilted his head back, livid marks were visible at his throat.
Xander was the one to ask, "Giles, man, what happened to your neck?"
Setting the drink down, Giles grimaced and exercised his mouth with exaggerated distaste like a dog that had just eaten a bee. "Good god, what is that? It tastes like fruit tart boiled in aspic."
"Giles!" Buffy said impatiently.
"Right. Yes. Sorry." Giles touched his neck gingerly. "The manor is possessed."
"Oh," Buffy said, while Willow's shoulders slumped in a way that suggested anticlimax.
"Possessed how exactly?" Xander asked. "Are we talking Poltergeist, Amityville Horror, House, The Haunting...?"
"Like it matters." Spike somehow managed to loll while standing. "If it's like any of those flicks, we'll just lay waste and have a tea-party, won't we?"
Xander bristled at the dismissive tone. "What are you saying?"
"I'm saying they're not scary."
"Uh, excuse me--Poltergeist? Not scary? Not scary when the slab of raw meat crawls across the counter, and the guy peels his own face off? That movie is directly responsible for a year of nightlights and vegetarianism. And how about that scene in House when the nice blonde lady turns into a bloated she-beast? Classic childhood trauma, pal."
"Key point being that you were five, you pansy-cheeked git. I suppose you wet your jammies when that old bastard popped out of his coffin."
"That was House II: The Second Story, dumbass."
Spike rolled his eyes.
"If you're both quite finished," Giles interrupted acidly, "perhaps we can focus on the problem at hand, which bears no meaningful resemblance to any film as in fact the menace is quite real, and not fictional." Having silenced the table, he laid his hand on the book he'd placed there. "The behavior exhibited so far does suggest a haunting--telekinesis, minor mischief--but my encounter was with something rather different."
"Different how?" Buffy asked.
"I'm not entirely sure. I-I don't know quite what it is, or even how I got away, really." Giles had a bemused expression that Xander associated with recent head injury, and he wondered not for the first time how many licks it took before your average librarian started speaking in tongues and forgetting his own name. "One moment I was fending it off, the next--it had vanished."
Willow frowned. "What did it look like?"
"Like a rather large...nothing." As if faintly embarrassed, Giles took off his glasses and polished them. "I remember a void," he said more or less to his handkerchief, words slowing with his recollection. "Surrounded by mist. Darkness, and then...illumination."
Well, that was staggeringly unhelpful, Xander thought, meeting Buffy's eyes across the table. She seemed to be thinking the same thing. "So what's with the book?" she said. "Does it have a spell against this nothing-thing?"
"No, it's a diary." Giles, glasses returned to his nose, held up the book. "It belonged to Celia Graydon, one of the house's previous tenants. I thought it might shed some light on the type of possession we're facing. However, so far the clues are vague at best." Passing the book across to Willow he said, "Perhaps you'll find something more. I'd like you to research this angle further while the rest of us investigate the manor. Perhaps your friend--er, Tara--can help."
Buffy shifted to sit up straighter in her chair. "Giles, this thing attacked you. Do we really want to go back before we know what it is?"
"I can think of no alternative, Buffy. Renovation and repairs must continue, and the crew will be in danger if this presence remains."
Scratching his jaw with one fingernail, Xander thought about Giles's words. He felt there might be a flaw in that logic somewhere. A fly in the soup. Too bad he'd finished his drink or he might have been able to figure it out, though even one-hundred percent sober he wasn't exactly Logic Boy. He left abstract thought to Willow. He was good at self-preservation and common sense, though, and common sense was tugging at his sleeve and telling him--
"Okay," Buffy said, the first to stand up. "Do we need weapons?"
"I have some in the car."
As they rose from their chairs, a new voice said, "So, whassup--we headed to a jamfest?"
Everyone turned to look at the hulking stranger who'd casually integrated himself into their social circle, hands in pockets, apparently ready to hitch a ride to whatever kegger he imagined lay in wait. It was Spike's pick-up. Oh goody, Xander thought.
The vampire brushed him off. "Take a rain check, mate."
"Actually, Spike, we don't require your help this evening." Giles gave a cool and abbreviated smile that didn't reach his eyes, the polite British way of saying fuck off.
"Oh, I'd be glad to see you lot get your asses kicked, but this one," a thumb jerked at Xander, "owes me a C-note, and he's not gettin' out of it on account of being dead."
"You did not win that bet, Spike." His surface anger couldn't entirely ice the undercurrent of pleasure he felt at this sign of Spike's loyalty. Mercenary, callous, admittedly unreliable--it really was a sickening dice roll every time, but maybe that was why the pay-off when it came could be so intense.
"Come along then," Giles said to them, resignation making him sharp. "We don't have all night."
Of course, that could just mean that they'd die quickly, Xander thought, but after a while on the Hellmouth patrol, you learned that not everything had to be said aloud.
~*~*~*~*~
Tara's glance skittered around her dorm room to assure herself that the bed was neat, the clutter minimal, the arrangement of pillows and candles casual--cozy, but not intimate, not in that way. She didn't want to make Willow uncomfortable, and she feared giving off a creepy lesbo vibe that would frighten the other woman off. You had to be careful when you were around straight women--keep certain rules always in mind. If you're scoping out their clothes, make your glances brief, or they might think you're staring at other stuff. If you compliment a new hairstyle or sweater, don't linger on the subject. When they start to talk about sex or boyfriends, be supportive and nod as if you understand.
There was no way of knowing where straight women drew the line between social chit-chat and personal infringement, so it was better to stay away from certain conversations entirely.
"Thanks for letting me interrupt your study time," Willow was saying with an apologetic smile. She'd settled in at the table, mixing her books and papers with Tara's in a casual rearrangement of items. Friendships were so hard for Tara to negotiate, but Willow made it look effortless--though she often spoke as if hesitant about her welcome, she had a confident way of taking charge with gestures and body that Tara marveled at, especially because she didn't seem to think about it at all.
"No problem." Tara pushed her own smile out through a heavy veil of shyness. "Analyzing the religious and Freudian symbolism of 'Young Goodman Brown' doesn't seem so important when the world needs saving."
"Well, not the world so much as one big house, but if I'm stealing you away from Freud, I don't feel so bad." The words brought a blush to Tara's cheeks. "That big Viennese cigar-sucker gives me a headache."
"Um, so that's the diary?" Tara asked, letting her hair fall forward a little to curtain her hot face. She took it from Willow's hands as it was offered and began fingering through the pages gently. "Wow. Loopy."
"You found something already?"
"N-no, I just meant, beautiful penmanship." Tara traced the ribboning words. "All the loops and curves and arcs."
"Yeah. I guess before computers, neatness really counted."
But Willow didn't sound too interested, and Tara made herself pay attention to the meaning of the words, and not how they were written. As she skimmed the text, Willow was opening and logging onto her laptop, and within moments came the soft little clicks of her hands on the keys. "So this woman, Celia Graydon--she owned the house that Mister Giles bought?" Tara asked.
"Yeah. I'm looking her up in the Sunnydale historical archives to see if I can find out anything about the house, or her life. I was reading the diary on the way over--there was this whole rash of mysterious deaths in her family, and then the entries just stop. I think she must have died, too. Giles thinks the manor is possessed, so it may be the Graydon ghosts."
"And he went back there?" Tara felt confused, but then she still wasn't entirely sure how this whole watcher-slayer-Scooby-gang thing worked.
Willow smiled. "Well, we're adrenaline junkies and crazy rebels. It's this whole 'life on the edge' philosophy. Live fast, die young, leave a beautiful corpse. Or, sometimes, date one." Her smile stayed pinned on with reassuring ease. "Don't worry. Giles always knows what he's doing."
~*~*~*~*~
Riley followed Giles's erratically jerking BMW to the manor, Buffy riding next to him and making rude comments about cherry-red penis-mobiles and watcher midlife crises that she'd never have uttered in front of Giles. At least not without severe editing. She even surprised a few small laughs from him, and he wished that they were having a regular date and not another bug hunt with her gang of tag-alongs.
It was an ungenerous thought, but moodiness had dogged him for weeks and he couldn't shake it. And feeling her eyes on him, he knew she'd noticed. "I'm sorry for the change of plans," she said. "Hey, maybe tomorrow we can take off, just the two of us, drive down the coast, no cell phones, no creepy crawlies. Except maybe a few ants. I could deal with ants."
Her romantic streak always amazed him with its timing; toss a monster her way, and you could almost bank on her ability to distract herself with normal, girlish things--dinner plans, some new dress she wanted to wear for him. It was flattering to his ego, if he didn't examine it too closely. But again, there was the matter of timing.
"Actually, I'm cruising low on funds right now." His voice was more abrupt than he'd intended, and he busied himself fiddling with the rear-view mirror as a bar of street-light swept through the car and across Buffy's disappointed face. And as quickly as the light her disappointment seemed to pass off.
"Oh. Well, we can take a picnic out to the bluffs. Hide in the grass, get in a little sunbathing." She grinned like the sun then, and he ached for her, his hands tightening on the wheel as they took a curve and entered a passage of heavy trees.
"I don't know, Buffy." God, he sounded like his father, hedging about some family trip. But nights were one thing; days another. Buffy was in school; she could cut classes and waste time like any other kid her age. To him, those hours were dollars, and the thought of spending them so carelessly lodged in his gut. It was one more thing he couldn't bring himself to say aloud, like asking Willow to pay for her own drink. She'd think nothing of it--she could afford it, she'd paid before. She just didn't always remember. Pride and the habit of politeness often left him mute in front of a bunch of kids who, though they might save the world on alternate Tuesdays, still had the carefree attitudes of students bankrolled by parents. Except of course for--
"They say men have a twenty-four hour hormonal cycle," Buffy remarked, breaking into this thoughts. "We learned that in Psych, but...you knew that." Yes, Maggie Walsh had loved to share that tidbit in her dry, arch voice.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I'm just...this isn't the easiest time for me."
"Because testosterone levels rise in the evening," she said, affecting a bright, breezy tone that might have fooled a stranger.
He spared her a look before returning his eyes to the road. "I'm AWOL, Buffy. I'm in and out of work, I don't talk to my friends anymore. Every week my mom calls with questions I can't answer and I can--I can hear how confused and disappointed she is. What do I tell her? That I had to save a werewolf from vivisection by my own people?" He paused--his own people now meant Buffy and her people, but he wasn't quite ready to go there yet, so he pushed on. "My father...he won't even come to the phone."
From the corner of his eye he saw Buffy look down at her hands, folded in her lap. "You did the right thing. And it will get better."
Even she didn't sound too certain now, and that defused the worst of his anger. "Try finding a job when half your references are dead and the other half want to lock you up, and your social security number is red-flagged by the authorities--then tell me that, Buffy."
"Giles said he might be able to get papers--"
"I don't want to live like that!" He took a ragged breath. "I want my own name. I don't want to hide from the government I swore to protect. I'm supposed to uphold its laws, not break them." The car's wheels were bouncing over gravel as Riley turned the car onto the manor drive, tailing the BMW's headlights through the winding foliage.
"Right." The hard, false note of cheer warned him what came next. "Because it's totally lawful to build big Frankenstein freaks and run roughshod over the citizens. Your tax dollars for zombies: funny, I don't remember that election platform."
As if she'd remember any, he thought. As if she even voted.
He killed the motor, thinking things he was too well brought-up and tight-lipped to say, and they sat in silence as the engine ticked. Riley watched the others unfold from Giles's small car, Spike's hair picking up the moonlight as he bent his head forward to light a cigarette.
Riley reminded himself that his life wasn't a total write-off. I've taken out thirty-four hostiles personally, rescued one guitar-playing werewolf from lab experiments, and made the world one gay vampire safer.
Go, team me.
~*~*~*~*~
"Bit drab," Spike said, standing in the center of the foyer and eyeing his surroundings the way a prisoner might inspect his cell, despite the vaulted ceiling, paneled walls, and a marble floor that could garage four cars, easily. The only illumination came from a skylight far above; in its faint glow the vampire might have been a porcelain figurine. He glanced at Giles. "You thought about getting some furniture? Maybe a potted plant?"
Giles ignored him, and Buffy brushed past Spike with no attempt at gentleness. She'd have stepped on his foot if there'd been any point, but from experience she knew that not much penetrated those goth-ugly boots. She settled for bumping his shoulder, just to make it clear who was the dominant animal in the room, and didn't bother to look back to see what his expression might be.
"So where was this big, shiny nothing?" she asked, keeping her crossbow pointed floorward but ready.
"In the library." Giles moved to the sliding doors and pushed them open; they rolled along their tracks almost silently to reveal the dim interior. She noted the work table, the utility buckets, the stacks of paint-spattered rags. A drop-light hung from the ceiling by a long safety cord, swinging almost imperceptibly.
"What happened to the lights?" Xander asked.
Giles turned, eyes unreadable in the shadows. "The electricity went off."
Walking forward, Buffy assessed the room, her senses spidering out to all corners as the others stepped up to flank her; they formed a line at the threshold, and she could feel their readiness to back any play she might make, but nothing moved inside the library.
"There's probably a breaker box in the basement," Xander said. "I'll go check it out."
"A good idea," Giles affirmed absently.
"I'll go with you," Riley said.
As their footsteps retreated, Buffy strolled into the library, which looked far different by night than by day. Big and creepy and haunted. Giles sure knew how to pick them. "So when we find this thing, what do we do?" she asked, turning around for a full view.
"Well, it seemed to need corporeal form to attack." Giles wandered toward the work bench, gaze flicking like a raven's from point to point as if he suspected everything in the room to hold the potential for evil. It wasn't especially reassuring of him.
"Enemies that fall when you whack 'em upside the head--that's the kind I like," Spike opined, and Buffy had to agree, though she didn't have to tell him that.
The house was quieter than most graveyards she patrolled, which had crickets and wind and nearby traffic, not to mention the busy undead, who tended to yap a lot when they woke. Here, every movement of their shoes on the floor echoed in the oversized space, and at the same time the darkness seemed to absorb all sound. Nearby, Spike revolved in a tight circle to inspect the premises in an attitude balancing boredom and watchfulness, head tipped and eyes sharp. In his hand he gripped an axe. Buffy studied him a moment, something niggling as her gaze slid from his tense form to the tall, exaggerated shadow he cast on the wall behind him.
Which stayed right where it was as Spike wandered away.
"Hellooo," she said in a long breath, collecting the men's attention in a pair of synchronized head swivels. They looked where she was looking, while she stood unmoving, crossbow aimed at the hanging shadow.
"That it, then?" Spike asked, hefting his axe. "Doesn't look like much."
The thing floated forward and unfurled, expanding tentacles of darkness like octopus legs and spreading at the middle until it covered almost the entire east wall.
Spike inclined his head warily. "Okay. Bigger now."
Buffy tightened her finger on the crossbow, just short of release. "Was it that big before?"
"No, it wasn't." Giles took off his glasses and stepped forward, one hand in his pants pocket, studying it with watcher curiosity and insane calm. "However, it's fed."
"Fed," Buffy repeated, not understanding, and at the same moment that Giles turned and smiled at her the wall exploded, dark ropes shooting out to coil around her throat and Spike's. Instinct demanded that she drop the crossbow and try to free herself from the noose cutting off her air, but Buffy sent a bolt one-handed into her attacker. It disappeared through the form, clinking on something metal behind it--the interior of the fireplace. Gasping, she dropped her weapon and ripped at the tightening tendril; she didn't have much attention to spare, but she could see Spike in less throttled straits, trying to free himself.
Giles moved to Spike with something in his hand--her blurry gaze made out a vial--and thumbed an oily but invisible mark on the vampire's forehead, ignoring its gnarled uprising. After one last thrash, Spike went motionless. Buffy dropped to her knees, tracking Giles's approach. He came to crouch in front of her, his face warm and open, his eyes filled with cloudy darkness. The last thing Buffy saw was his hand lifting; the last thing she heard was him saying, "It doesn't hurt. And you'll be stronger than ever."
~*~*~*~*~
"There is a fifth dimension, beyond that which is known to man." Xander paused and slammed yet another closet door fruitlessly. "And clearly that's where the breaker box is."
"You know, pre-Sunnydale, figures of speech never seemed so scary." A flashlight beam came swinging up to peg Riley's face and he blinked and held his hand in front of his eyes. "What?"
"Pre-Sunnydale. I'm trying to wrap my head around that concept. And failing, which is okay, I guess, because to wrap your head around something, you'd have to peel it first, kind of like an orange, and boy, have I been hanging around Spike too long. My point--I've lived here all my life. What's it like to live someplace other than Hell?"
Riley thought about it as they wandered back through the basement toward the stairs, poking their flashlights at corners where anything might have hunkered in wait. "You had a childhood, when you didn't know about vampires. Other places are like that. Happily ignorant. But there are monsters everywhere."
"Right." Xander bounced his flashlight absently, drawing squiggles in the dark. "Hey, if this is the Hellmouth, you think somewhere they've got a Hellnose and a Hellass and a Hellbow?"
It was like him, to make light of what was terribly serious, but Riley understood the instinct. It was the same in the Army: you joked before missions to pump yourself up, and talked yourself down afterwards over a pitcher of beer and double shots, soaking your head in booze to soften the memories and blunt the worst you'd seen. Next to him in the dark, Xander moved almost like a member of Riley's old squad, picking his way with care through the basement's rubbish. It was a change from a year ago, when he'd more often than not bumbled and laughed too loudly and radiated a nervous energy that seemed to attract every predator within range--useful if you needed bait, but not for much else. He was still more sidekick than superhero, but there was a deliberateness to him now, and Riley had seen him turn on a dime from comic to violent when attacked. Rather disturbingly.
"I don't know," Riley said. "Most days I think we've got the full-body experience right here."
A hand was raised in front of Riley's chest and he took it as a signal to halt. "What was that?" Xander said, flashing his light toward a heap of shelves and dressmaker dummies and trunks. The hair on the back of Riley's neck prickled and lifted, and for a minute they both stayed still and breathed quietly, until a rat crept into the radius of light, twitched its whiskered nose in the air a few times, and padded off behind a hat box.
"Just a rat," Riley said, more in hope than in certainty.
"It's never just a rat." Xander sounded dark and cynical. "Probably an ex-classmate."
"Let's not get paranoid," Riley said dryly.
"Hey, I'm only saying--they're not all accounted for. By the time our ten-year reunion rolls around, we'll be lucky if we have enough left to fill a booth at the Doublemeat Palace. Man," Xander's voice veered sharply, "it's freezing in here. I think I just walked through the wall of cold."
Riley sighed as they reached the foot of the stairs without finding what they'd come for. "We should head back. I don't like leaving the others alone."
"I don't think it's them you have to worry about," Xander said. He tipped his flashlight up under his chin and its glow welled the curves of his face like a jack-o-lantern's, hooding his gaze and making his upturned mouth almost sinister.
"What do you mean?"
"Come on, Ri. A slayer, a vamp, a warlocky watcher--they're the original mod squad. But I'm no real back-up for you, am I? Not by grade-A military standards." A touch of mocking had surfaced.
Surprised and uncomfortable at being put on the spot, Riley could think of almost nothing to say. "Xander. Okay, I admit, maybe that was true once, but it's different now. You're..."
"Different?" Xander smiled, rearranging the Halloween shadows of his face.
"Yes. You've turned into a hell of a fighter." Riley put firm respect into his voice. It was the truth, and it cost him nothing to acknowledge it.
"Thanks to one persistent, unsouled vampire. Man, that must burn, huh." Denial lodged in Riley's throat, and he felt a weird kind of hurt that Xander would lash out at him for no reason. "And gay, too. Me, I mean. He's not really gay. He's...Spike." Xander smiled gently, something like fondness in his voice as he said the name. "I'm betting you didn't have any queers in the goon squad. Don't ask, don't tell--off the demons, don't get them off."
It was an ugly comment, utterly unlike Xander, and it left Riley stunned and at a loss. "Xander. Are you..." He shook off questions as pointless and poorly timed. "I think we should head back up."
"Good idea. See how they're doing." Xander smile took on yet another dimension. "They might need us to rescue them."
When they walked up the stairs, the unseen shadows trailed behind.
~*~*~*~*~
As they were exiting the cellar, Xander stumbled on the top step and grimaced, one hand rising to touch his temple where a small, sharp pain had lanced him. He'd been struck by twinges ever since they got to the house, which he'd put down to the unpredictable effects of drinking, but this last ouchie was bigger and not for the better.
"You okay?" Riley asked, his voice detached, a bit cool. He moved as if to take Xander's elbow, then pointedly didn't.
"Yeah, I'm all right." Unsure why he was so irritable or why he felt the sudden urge to brain Riley with his flashlight, Xander stepped into the hall and took the lead back to the library.
Inside, his gaze was drawn immediately to Spike, who was leaning against the fireplace, one leg bent at the knee and braced against the bricks in casual attitude as he ran a finger along the blade of his battle-axe. Xander gravitated in his direction, playing his flashlight across the vampire's face. Spike looked up with a flash of golden eyes, a snarl beginning in his throat, then recognized Xander and drew on a smooth smile instead.
"Hello, pet. Have a nice poke down there?" He glanced past Xander's shoulder toward Riley with narrowed eyes, still fingering his axe.
The tone more than the remark itself touched off a flare of anger in Xander, working nerves left abraded by the evening's games. "I've always admired your ability to turn an innocent comment into a complex web of innuendo and mischief, Spike. So maybe you'll tell me what the hell that's supposed to mean."
"Bit testy there." Spike straightened slowly, letting his axe rest along one leg. He cocked his head. "Now tell me you didn't go and get yourself all riled." He might as well have capitalized the last word, the way his tongue laced it with strychnine.
"Give it a rest, why don't you?" Leashing himself, Xander said, "We couldn't find the breakers." Xander looked over to where Buffy sat on the tool bench, swinging her legs. Across the room, Giles was crouched, easing himself step by awkward step along the outline of a large circle he was drawing on the floor with a piece of chalk.
"Are we casting a spell?" Riley wondered, directing his question more or less to Buffy, who was filing her nails with a cabinet rasp she'd picked up from among the tools.
"Yes," Giles piped up, his back to them as he roughed out the arc. "We're going to try and call forth the restless spirit--to communicate with it, and exorcise it if necessary."
"Whoa." Xander boggled at this blandly delivered plan, while Giles stood and dusted off his trousers. "An exorcism? Do we all remember last time--angry spirits, Angelus on puppet strings, getting our asses kicked by swarming wasps?" He stared at Buffy and Giles, who stared back with mild, unreadable faces. "Guys, this is big-gun stuff. We should at least wait for Willow."
"Oh, Willow," Giles lashed back in a voice so venomous that Xander's jaw unhinged itself for a moment. "Always Willow." He closed the gap between them in several quick steps and as he came into focus Xander saw the lines of his mouth sharpening with resentment. "I'll have you know I was casting spells that could rip your soul straight out of your skin, mate, long before that little witch was ever born."
"And that's something to brag about?" Xander retorted, stepping up to meet him without pausing to consider the oddness of Giles's reaction. "Because here I thought that raising Eyghon to piggyback-ride all your friends was a dumb thing to do."
Giles went still, eyes glinting out from behind his glasses. "I have more power than you'll ever know, you arrogant pup."
"Now, now." Spike's voice snaked low and silky into the crackling silence as he took a deliberate step forward. His axe smacked into one palm with meaningful emphasis. "Can't let you bulldoze my boy, there."
"Your boy," Giles said with a lip-curl of distaste, even as Xander was flushing in startled pleasure. "I always knew you had a public-school upbringing, Spike."
"Oh, and you didn't?" Spike had begun to circle Giles, who turned to keep an eye on him from under a slightly lowered brow. Compared to Spike he barely moved, but he seemed just as dangerous, and somehow scarier than Xander had ever seen before.
"Eton."
"Harrow."
"And then?"
"Where else?"
"Magdalen."
"Jesus."
"I'm not surprised." Giles smiled, not very nicely. "They've a long history of turning out intellectually undistinguished swots to fill the ranks of schoolmasters--or was it the civil service for you, William?"
Spike stopped in his tracks, facing Giles in an almost identical pose, both of them like dogs leashed and straining with animosity. "Let's not fight," he said in dulcet tones. "Or--hold up." Rolling his head, he flared into game-face. "Let's."
With a twist of shock in his gut, Xander said, "Spike, no! Your--"
The axe rushed toward Giles, only to be flung by some unseen power into the far wall, where it stuck and shuddered in the wood.
"--chip," Xander finished, blinking.
Snarling, Spike swept up one hand, palm and fingers outstretched toward Giles, who was lifted off the ground to slam back into the fireplace.
"Holy crap," Riley said, and then it was a confusion of movement--Riley coming at Spike with a short sword and a determined expression, Buffy hopping down off the table, Spike swinging around to grin with manic ferocity.
"Always wanted to take you on, soldier boy." He raised a negligent arm as Riley's sword descended--and the blade froze an inch away as if stuck in an invisible barrier. "'Course, not much of a match now."
"Leave him alone," Buffy warned. "Or you can fight me."
Riley yanked his sword free just as Spike turned to meet her, but then the vampire yelled and arched as a blast of light enclosed him from behind, held him for a long, electrifying eternity, and winked out. Gasping, he folded to his knees, while Giles straightened his jacket and said coolly, "Or me."
"Okay," Xander said. "What the hell's going on?" Giles, Spike, and Buffy swiveled their heads to look at him with the eeriely uniform expressions of pod people and Xander groaned. "Oh, man. No, no, and no!"
"Oh yes, yes, yes," Spike corrected, still on his knees and gazing up at him sideways. At least that sly twist of smile was familiar. "Don't worry, pet. It doesn't hurt. Much." And then his eyes lifted as if seeking heaven, and Xander snapped his own gaze up just in time to see a blanket of dark energy unroll in the air above him.
A bolt of shadow shot out and snagged him by the throat as he was stumbling back, trying to evade whatever the hell was going to happen, no way could it be good, and oh man, bad, bad scene, choking to death, mist descending over the eyes like the black oil from the X-Files, blurring the world into a twilight haze through which he could barely make out Giles, one hand lifting to stroke Xander's brow, while a few yards away Buffy did the same for Riley, who was fighting his own empowerment...wait, his own what?
Power.
It was the body's demand for oxygen that kept Xander's mouth gaping as his faceless attacker reared back and struck, driving inside, down his throat, a supernatural blow-job gone horribly wrong--that was his dazed thought as the thing planted itself in his belly and blossomed out into every part of him, like a squid exploding black ink. It was cold and hot and terrifying, and as the darkness spilled through him and then ran clear in his veins, he could feel himself waking up and getting it. Like an all-over tattoo. Like religion.
He opened his eyes into a world of darkness. Worked a kink from his neck. Noticed Spike and Buffy and Giles watching him closely, then turned his head to see Riley rising from his knees in a smooth motion. Xander, recognizing a fellow soldier, relaxed a notch at the same time he felt a surge of resentment he couldn't quite identify. Like it mattered. No one could be trusted.
Keeping his feelings barely in check, he looked at Spike, who'd stood up and was smiling rather indulgently at Xander. "All better now?" the vampire asked, coming close.
"Oh, yeah." Xander smiled back with dark affection, then struck Spike in the chest hard enough to send him sailing back several feet, where he landed in a startled heap on the floor.
"That's for ruining my date," Xander said.
~*~*~*~*~
Research mode was a good, solid mode. Not the tip-top mode, but a respectable second. Magic was the best mode, of course, when you could open yourself up to the universe and feel it flow right through you like juice through a novelty straw, all twisty and bright. Fighting mode--not so much fun, what with the hitting and the falling and the cranial trauma. But research Willow could do, and do well. And it was comfortable. It made the supernatural seem safer and more accessible, like a school course where you just had to learn a language and crack a few books, and everything would fall into place, without blood and death and pain--assuming your teacher wasn't a bug woman or some strange spinal-tapping parasite.
Plus, it was cozy. Even working alone, you could have the companionship of a fellow scholar, and the smell of candle wax and cookies.
"I got something," Willow said, bringing up one of the archive's historical documents on her computer screen. "It says here that Celia Graydon committed suicide by leaping off the roof of her house, after her entire family died in a bizarre series of accidents and murders."
"That fits with what I've read so far," Tara said, looking up from the diary's pages. "Her brother Stephen was killed first, when a freak storm broke a window and flung a shard of glass into his neck--" Willow grimaced. "--and her cousin Ada died of strange burns blamed on a grease fire while she was cooking breakfast."
"Huh. Death by bacon is usually slower," Willow said, gaze still fixed to the screen. "And more, you know, arterial."
"The inquests certainly sound creative."
A smile passed over Willow's face before it was reabsorbed in an absent frown. She scrolled down the page she was on, rapt in her reading. "Oh, man." At Tara's inquisitive look, she slowly pieced out words. "The records say that when the family didn't come into town for a few days, the police went out to the manor and found bodies everywhere. All the adults and kids, even the handymen."
She met Tara's concerned eyes over the top of her monitor screen. "It's like they family-feuded their way to multiple homicides." She thought about Giles's sketchy description of the attack on him. "And now the injured spirits are restless and acting out." The realization that her friends were out on a murder site entertaining angry ghosts while she sat here larking about on the computer sharpened her need for answers and made her antsy.
"Maybe...except, there's some stuff here that doesn't add up." Tara sifted through a few pages. "Before all this started, they'd been digging up the basement and they found 'a trunk with odd bands and markings, of curiously wrought design.' There was nothing inside, though."
"Nothing they could see anyway," Willow guessed, mind working through possibilities. "You think something demony was trapped in there?"
"Stephen died the next day," Tara said by way of answer. "And a few days after that, Celia had a vision: 'An angel of great height and beauty came to me tonight, riding on a wolf and carrying a sword so luminous I could hardly bear to look on it, his face that of a raven, feathered and dark....'"
"A wolf and a raven? Wait, that actually sounds familiar." She switched screens and tapped keys quickly. "Let me cross-reference it in the demons database."
In Willow's peripheral vision, Tara blinked and raised her brows. "There's a database?"
Taking a brief moment to look up and smile, Willow said diffidently, "It's just this kinda side project I've been working on with Cordy and Wes."
"Your friends from L.A."
"Well, 'friends' is stretching it, but yeah. We swap monster sightings and vamp trivia--did you know there's a vampire church in Encino where they worship Catherine Deneuve?"
"Who wouldn't?"
"Oh my god," Willow said.
"I'm s-sorry, I didn't mean to--"
"It's Andras, demon of discord." Willow shifted and turned the screen so that Tara could see the image provided: a creature with a bird's head and an angel's wings, sitting astride a wolf and holding a sword over the heads of miniaturized minions. "The sixty-third spirit of the Goetia--he sows 'strife' among those who invoke him." She looked at Tara, anxiety ratcheting up. "Giles and the others are in a lot of danger, and they don't know it. A demon is way more serious than your average haunting."
"Except that he wasn't invoked," Tara said. "And demons don't usually hang around empty houses, waiting for visitors...do they?"
"I don't know. Hold on, Wes has some notes. Um. Okay. Possibly apocryphal historical accounts...sightings in Canada and the western territories...blah blah, thirty legions, blah blah, long-winded watchers..." Her voice trailed off into a mutter.
"Gist?" Tara said hopefully.
"Basically? I think he was trapped in a kind of demon lock-box and is trying to get out. But once he gets out, he needs a host. It says he can pour his spirit into 'vessels' but that to truly manifest, he needs to be invited through magical ritual."
"He must have tried with the Graydons," Tara said, face wrinkling as she worked it out, "but for some reason he couldn't manifest before they killed each other off."
Willow closed her laptop. "It was a different time--if they were religious, they might have been resistant to his influence, hard to control."
"Plus, they probably didn't know what to do. Your average person isn't equipped to call forth a spirit of unholy darkness."
Their eyes met as Willow spoke. "But certain watchers are."
~*~*~*~*~
A overlapping babble of arguments had broken out over nothing in particular, and the library was heating with angry words that threatened to boil over into violence.
"Okay, enough!" A double whammy from Buffy's hands froze all the men for several moments, mid-clash, and then she put hands on hips, a cheerleader surveying a fractious squad. "We're all on the same side for at least another fifteen minutes here. Our Dark Marquesse needs form, and if you're all broken and sticky, he's," she groped for a thought, "gonna be all broken and sticky too." A frown. "So stop your horseplay."
The men blinked at each other expressively without moving their faces, and then Giles thrashed free of his paralysis. With one cool look her way, he adjusted his lapels, then smoothed his hair back for all the world like James Bond. "Buffy is correct," he said to the others as they unfroze with spasmodic movements of shoulders and legs. "The sigils should help focus Andras's energy within us, strengthen our bond." As he spoke, Buffy touched her forehead, expecting a surge of power but feeling only a slight oiliness where he'd drawn the symbol. "But we must complete the ritual to bring him across and give him a host."
"I'm ready," Riley said calmly. "I will honor him."
Spike raised his brows, Giles withdrew a smile from its sheathe, and Xander just lasered Riley with dark, steady eyes.
"That's great, honey." Buffy patted him on the arm as he stared stolidly down at her. "I'm sure you'll get chosen."
"Oh, right." Spike's sarcasm held a blunt, sharp edge. "Like His Grace wants to wear some beefed-up yob for the rest of his unnatural days, all hormones and milk-fat. Probably still got the reek of Sunday services on him, too."
Giles's sarcasm, on the other hand, was stiletto fine: "Perhaps His Grace wants to get in touch with the," careful pause, "common man." The faintest shift of foot aligned him subtly with Spike, who twisted a rude smile Riley's way. There was something strangely alike in how the two men stood, gazes trained on the American as if he were something found in a muddy field, that they might shoot or give to the dogs. It made Buffy twitchy. Floating above them near the ceiling, the shadow of Andras rippled and expanded with dark filaments as if impatient.
"He'll choose whoever the hell he wants to choose," Xander said coldly, then turned his head to fix his eyes on Giles. "Except for the watcher." He flicked a dismissive look up and down. "Too old. Too soft."
"Too soft?" Giles asked, the word itself mild, but behind the inquiry Buffy could almost hear the high-pitched whine of something dangerous powering up. When his hand began to rise from its pocket, she raised hers faster. Blue fire swirled, a globe encasing her from the wrist down, and she aimed its threat, fighting an urge to simply shake it loose like a beaded water drop at the tip of a straw.
"We don't have time for this!" she said. "You all need to focus." She herself focused her rebuke on Giles, who'd brought them here, and who should be more in control, more adult. He glowered at her, then forced a nod, collecting himself again.
Unfortunately, the others weren't so biddable. "Who died and made you princess?" Xander asked with undisguised resentment. "Oh, wait." He turned conversationally to Spike. "Wasn't her name India?"
"Seems I heard that."
"Still," Xander said, attention back on Buffy, "It's not like you're going to be pressed into service as the Dark Lord's host. Because," a glance at her tits, "hostess." Eyes raising again: "Cupcake. Guess you'll have to get over being special. But hey. A lot of women get ahead by marriage."
"If I'm consort, guess that rules you out as the chosen one."
"Let's not be hasty." Spike's voice had a sinuous curl. He slung an arm around Xander's waist and hauled him hip-closer. Distracted, Xander smiled as he was handled. "I've got no problem if the lad wants to make an honest woman of you," Spike mocked without looking Buffy's way. "Put you on a leash." His face tilted, playing itself close to Xander's, their lips nearly meeting. "Like a proper bitch," he murmured, and then they were kissing.
Furious, Buffy lashed out with both hands, sending firebolts across the room at them. The attack broke the men apart and sent them staggering, but the flames rolled off without any damage, water off well-oiled ducks. When Spike recovered--first checking himself over with alarm as if expecting to see only ash--he game-faced and growled at her. "Proper. Bitch."
As Buffy began another attack that Spike looked prepared to counter, Riley grabbed her arm. His presumption almost made her gasp, and she wrenched away. "Easy," he said in a sharp tone. "You were the one who said we should focus."
"And that means grab my arm when I'm in the middle of a fight? Way to get me killed."
Riley was more expressionless than usual. "You need to stand down."
It was incredible to Buffy to realize how long she'd tolerated that casual masculine arrogance, the way he loomed over her like a giant--a giant corn stalk--as if being taller and guy-shaped and penis-having made him the boss of her. "Don't you dare tell me what to do," she warned, hearing her voice waver as she fought for control. "I'm not one of your sheared sheep, or some zombie you can push around." As Riley's face tightened, she drove another jab home. "Besides, you're not in the Army anymore. Can't hold a job, can't take a girl out on the town. What good are you--just a meat sack for the Dark Master." Her eyes cut over him. "Though I'm beginning to think he could do better."
"Buffy," Xander chided. "Give the guy a break. Let him practice wearing the pants. Not like he's had much of a go before now."
"You should talk," Riley said. "That hundred you owe Spike--what's that for, how to walk like a man in ten easy lessons? Word of advice, you might want to pick a better male role model."
Xander leveled a gaze. "Well, it's not like I have a lot to choose from, is it."
"Excuse me," Giles broke in, sounding offended. "When you came along, attached to my slayer like some crass, yapping baggage, did I shirk the responsibility? I've taught you how to survive, how to contribute to a cause greater than yourself--all things far beyond the confines of my duty as a watcher." His voice rose to snippy, schoolmasterish tones. "You'd do far better coming to me than to Spike for life lessons. I mean, good lord, what have I done these past four years but give you the benefit of my wisdom and experience?"
There was a beat, and then everyone else began to crack up, Buffy covering her mouth with one hand, Spike half-keeling over and gasping, Riley chuckling. Xander tricked out a slow, lopsided grin at Giles's mounting anger. "I didn't know you wanted to be my daddy, Giles. Why don't you hold that thought. Maybe we can come to some arrangement."
Giles cursed, a word that Buffy couldn't quite make out, and moved in a fury, on Xander before anyone could react, sending the younger man flying across the room with a blow and following up with whips of spectral fire from his hands. Almost at once, Spike cast his own attack, a net of writhing shadow that Riley countered with invisible blades, and Buffy had no choice but to try once again to bring them under control. This time though, the forces were too wild and twisty to rein in; none of the men froze by her gesture, and when she cast fire, it simply poured itself into the lines of energy arcing back and forth across the room, binding the five of them together like the points of a pentagram.
It was overpowering them, and she didn't know how to stop it, and she wasn't sure she wanted to.
~*~*~*~*~
"Are--are you sure this is going to work?" Tara asked nervously as they walked up the dark, winding drive toward Graydon Manor. She was trying to fight distraction, but couldn't help but notice the spookiness of the manor grounds. Looming hedges might have hidden anything. Their footsteps crunched on gravel, but the sound seemed swallowed by quiet until somewhere in the dark tree-tops an owl hooted.
Walking next to her, Willow seemed unaware of the atmosphere, or even where she was going, head bent, red sneakers scuffing pebbles. She had a penlight trained on the spellbook she held and was soundlessly murmuring words as she read. The movement of her lips was cute, like a little kid's, but Tara wanted to notice that even less than she did the sinister shapes of the night.
"If they've become vessels for Andras," Tara went on, "they may already have powers they can't control. They could be dangerous." She might have been talking to herself, but it hardly mattered; every word from her mouth seemed obvious and unhelpful. It was tempting to think that Willow didn't even need her along. Tara didn't kid herself, though. They might be walking into something beyond both their abilities, and she intended to stay glued to Willow's side, no matter how unworthy she was to be there.
"They're still my friends," Willow said, resignation and rue in her voice. "I have to try and save them." She looked up from her spellbook. "You can still go. I'll understand."
Tara was shaking her head before Willow finished. "Adrenaline junkie here," she said proudly. "Though I'd like to defer the beautiful corpse part."
"You can be a beautiful ninety-year old corpse," Willow assured her.
They'd almost reached the house. In front of them were parked Giles's and Riley's cars, nose to tail along the curve of the drive. Just beyond, the front door of the house stood open, spilling a blue glow matched by light edging the covered library windows. The two girls exchanged a look to bolster their nerve, then climbed the porch steps and went in. Immediately to the right of the foyer a haze of light filled the library entrance, so strong that details were hard to make out. Tara could see five figures, but the rest was a blur of magical fire.
"Oh boy," Willow said.
Hastening into action, Tara pulled from her bag the materials they'd brought, while Willow opened her book. As she read, Tara drew a circle as quickly as she could on the floor around Willow, pouring a heavy stream of salt from its container. Willow's power-tranced friends showed no signs of noticing their presence.
"We call on the spirits of the equilibrium," Willow said. "We call upon Harmonia, Autonoe, Ino, Agave, Semele. This Circle contains the energy we raise and guards us against all evils--"
Abruptly the seams of fire stitching together the others broke and five bodies staggered against the release. "Look what we have here," Xander rasped, just as Tara completed the circle and stepped inside. She sat next to Willow on the floor, hands fumbling to light the ritual candles.
"Children of the earth and sky, creatures of light, come forth!" Willow read. "Aid and strengthen this sacred circle. So mote it be!"
"What's going on, Will?" asked Buffy, closing in on them. "Looks like you've got some Wicca workin' there."
"Harmonia, fill these creatures of Earth with your divine blessings," Willow said, ignoring her. "We bless and purify them. Deliver them! So mote it be!"
Spike growled and leapt for them in game face. With pure instinct, Tara yelped, lifting her arms to protect herself, but the vampire bounced off an invisible shield and tumbled aside.
"Crap," Buffy said. "We've got to do something. Giles!" She looked to him in supplication.
"They're weak," Giles said with a contemptuous tone, and Willow's voice faltered a moment before she rallied. "In the name of the goddess, we bind every evil spirit," she went on.
Giles came over and crouched down outside the circle, an unpleasant smile on his pleasant face. He was staring at Willow. Tara, unable to look at him for more than a moment, began preparing the binding box. "You think you can defeat Andras?" Mister Giles's voice was so cultured, Tara thought, unable to close her ears. So mild. "He'll tear your entrails from your body," Giles said gently to Willow, "while you beg for mercy. And then he'll feed you to his wolf, piece by piece."
Willow's own voice shook into a stutter that Tara empathized with all too keenly. "Let their p-powers take the form of this world, and be t-torn apart by the scorpion and snake. In the name of the mother, we command you to depart from these creatures! So mote it be!"
Giles made a hissing sound and struck at her, but the protective shield around their circle sent him flying back several feet. He lay there dazed, looking up at the ceiling, and then gasped and cried out harshly. Tara couldn't help but look, and then couldn't look away. A thin filament of darkness was unwinding from his body, and from the bodies of the others as they fell writhing to the floor. The strands rose into the air and snarled together, thrashing, as if several fishing lines had become entwined with the struggles of hooked prey or as if snakes were battling each other for dominance.
"We bind you by earth," Willow said, and Tara joined in her chant, crumbling a packet of grave dirt into the box. "We bind you by water." A sprinkle of holy water. "We bind you by air." The wave of a knife. "We bind you by fire," Willow said, and Tara worked a sage smudge back and forth over the box and let Willow continue alone: "We rebuke you and declare all your acts void in the eyes of the blessed mother."
"So mote it be," Tara whispered along with Willow's stronger declaration, and then gasped as the spirit's dark force was drawn into the circle and funneled into the box, which snapped shut sharply after its capture. She stared at it in amazement while Willow tried to catch her breath. "I think it worked," she said, touching the box with caution. Through her fingertips she could feel vibrations of trembling rage from the demon locked inside.
Willow looked anxiously outside the circle to where her friends lay. "Buffy?"
There was a groan as Buffy pushed herself up to her elbows and stared bleary-eyed at them. "Is the chicken done yet?" she asked in a small, bewildered voice.
With a giddy laugh of relief, Willow let her shoulders slump, and Tara exhaled a beat later, while keeping one eye on the box. They'd done it, they'd defeated a demon.
She wondered if that would be her someday.
~*~*~*~*~
"I'm so terribly, terribly sorry," Giles said, sinking down one of the window seats across from Buffy. She was leaning against the far edge with Riley standing like a sentinel next to her, silent shamefaced. Discomfort thickened the air between everyone except for Willow and Tara, who had not been present for recent events.
"It's not your fault, Giles. What could you do against a demon?" Buffy's tone made the question more uncertain than it should have been.
"I don't know." Gaze lowering, he shook his head. "His aspect was familiar to me, though. If I'd recognized it even a moment sooner, perhaps I could have made my escape or resisted--"
"No use crying over spilt blood," Spike cut in, examining a wound on his hand with detached interest, apparently unaware of the irritable look Giles turned on him. "Just be glad you had a couple of witches in reserve."
Giles's expression changed again to one of embarrassment, and he glanced from under hooded eyes at Willow. "Yes," he said quietly. "I am grateful for that."
Willow offered them all a pleased smile.
"So all this time the house had a nasty jack-in-the-box," Xander said, still trying to work through what had happened. "Except, out of the box."
"It must have lain dormant all these years." Giles turned over the magical lock-box in his hands, fingers tracing its bands and markings. "Until the work on the house roused it." Distracted from his own remarks, he looked up with a frown at Willow. "This casket holds powerful charms for binding," he said. "Where did you get it?"
"Tara had it."
His gaze moved to Tara, who managed a nervous smile. "It--it was an heirloom," she said. "It belonged to my mother."
Giles's intrigued attention rested on her long enough to make her look down, then he seemed to put the puzzle from his mind, turning brisk and British. "Well, I'm glad it was on hand, otherwise we would no doubt be rending each other's flesh from our bones in an orgy of blood at this very moment." He ignored everyone's grimace. "I shall remunerate you, though I realize there's no way to compensate for the sentimental loss."
"No," Tara said quickly. "I mean, it's nothing. Please."
"Right," Spike broke into the pause that followed. "Let's not drag out the denouement, shall we?" His voice lowered to a mutter. "I need a drink." With a glance at Xander he said, "You coming?"
Xander tried to read the tone behind the words, behind blue eyes. He thought of Derek leaving the Bronze with a smile, and about being possessed by a demonic spirit in the short hours since then. Again.
"No," he said.
Spike stared at Xander for several more seconds, a lower set to his shoulders, a tightness to his mouth, then turned and left.
~*~*~*~*~
After Spike stalked off, the rest of them trickled out of the manor. As Giles went, he noticed the careful distance maintained between Buffy and Riley and felt a pang of shame, knowing that he'd contributed to that tension.
At the door, Giles's path intersected with Xander's. They both stopped to let the other go first, and after a few false starts had to meet each other's eyes to gauge intentions. Xander looked so embarrassed that Giles was moved to say something, despite how little he wanted to, but it was the other man who spoke first.
"About what I said..." Xander paused, and Giles made himself raise his eyes. "I didn't. Never said it, already forgot it, don't even know what I'm talking about right now." His tone was rising to a self-mocking lightness, and Giles felt relief.
"Nor do I," he answered. "I suspect that stress is causing you to babble."
One corner of Xander's mouth turned up, and in one moment he went from looking terribly, painfully young, to much older and more knowing. "Yeah. You know me. I'm a lightweight with the whole spirit possession thing. Hyenas, soldiers, demons. From now on, the no-vacancy sign is on. The only spirits welcome here," a thumb at his chest, "are beer and Christmas."
Apparently casual, he moved past Giles and onto the porch, but Giles's gaze sharpened. The words may have been joking, but the truth was, there were no such guarantees, and watching Xander, Giles could almost imagine for a moment that he saw the impressions left behind from all those unwanted visitors; animal, soldier, demon.
"You okay, Giles?"
And here was another child to shame him. Willow, her eyebrows raised questioningly, might as well have trapped him against the door, because he couldn't bring himself to move. "Yes. Yes, I'm fine. And I wanted to apologize again...to you."
Her face turned puzzled. "For what?"
"For what you were forced to do."
"You mean, put my life on the line to raise a powerful magic and battle the forces of evil that had devoured my friends?" She waved a hand. "Pshaw, it was nothin'."
Like Xander, she'd learned to joke about the unfunny, but unlike Xander, she seemed far more comfortable with the powers she channeled. At times, almost unnervingly so.
"It was far from nothing," Giles corrected, the words leaving his mouth in slow, irregular pulses, out of synch with his thoughts. "Did you wonder why I didn't bring you here with the others, to help raise Andras?" Her face said she hadn't, but that she was wondering now. Giles was aware that everyone else had descended from the porch to stand talking by the cars, out of earshot. "I was jealous. I resented your power. I knew that if you weren't here, I could guide the others. I meant to keep you busy elsewhere."
Conflicted feelings expressed themselves on Willow's face, then resolved to reassurance. "That was Andras. You couldn't help it."
"No. But those feelings weren't his, Willow." Honesty wasn't always friendly, but he wasn't just her friend; he was her teacher, and he needed to help her understand herself. "You are very powerful."
She shook her head a little, smiling up at him as if she understood more than he did. "Then if I'm so powerful, maybe you knew I'd figure out what was happening. And maybe that's why you sent me off to work on the diary. Because you wanted to stop Andras--deep down, where you were still Giles."
Her theory was offered easily, almost eagerly, but she'd missed the point. He'd been Giles, all the way through. He'd just been the worst of himself.
~*~*~*~*~
Waiting for Giles and Willow, Buffy leaned on Riley's car and studied her nails. She supposed they could simply have driven away, but it didn't feel right, leaving anyone alone with the house after what happened.
At the next car, Tara's and Xander's voices lapped back and forth as they made post-catastrophe conversation, while next to her, Riley stood with his hands in his pockets, in an uncomfortable, closed-off attitude. He had nothing to say, apparently, which left it up to her to kick off apologies. She didn't really feel like it--she felt stubborn, full of the resentments that Andras had stirred up--but it was what you did. It was the right thing to do, and she always did the right thing.
"I'm sorry," she said, at the same time Riley did. And then he smiled a little, and she smiled back in perfectly trained reflex. "I didn't mean what I said," she told him, though she had. She'd meant most of what she said. That was the worst thing about demons: you didn't invite them in, so they tricked the badness inside you into coming out.
"I know," he said, but Buffy wasn't sure if he did, or if this was a lie of kindness.
She moved closer and took his hands out of his pockets, freeing them up to slide around her, while she held onto his waist. Girlfriend moves, stolen from movies, but when you went through the motions enough, the gestures became real. "You'll find a job," she promised, and he looked down at her and smiled again. "And a life. And it'll be your life, Riley Finn."
But the adamant position he'd held earlier that night seemed to have eased. "Any life is a good life," he said. "As long as you're in it, Buffy Summers."
It was exactly what a boyfriend should say, and Buffy smiled for real.
~*~*~*~*~
This late, the dorm hall was empty of students and the doors were closed, but through a few of them Xander could hear the light thump of music and the sound of TVs laughing to themselves. The hall lacked personality, but he could imagine the cozy student nests inside the rooms, and he felt out of place. College was for people with grades, money, or a willingness to go into debt for the privilege of sitting in classrooms, none of which he had.
All the things he lacked made him hesitate outside room 405 with his knuckles raised and resting against the door. He stood there for five seconds, ten, maybe longer, then knocked in a parody of quick decisiveness and certainty. After a few more seconds, the door opened.
"Hey," Derek said in surprise.
"Hey." Xander hooked his thumbs into his pockets and tried to remember what he'd meant to say at this point. Failing that, he went for the tried-and-true technique of blurting whatever came first into his head. "I wanted to apologize for earlier. Well, for Spike." Precision was everything.
"Yeah," Derek said, accepting Xander's words, then mused, "He's kind of an asshole, isn't he?"
"In so many words...yes."
"You want to come in?" Derek stepped back and Xander entered the room, looking around for the ubiquitous roommate, who if luck held was probably a straight Baptist preacher's son with a big test tomorrow morning. But no one else was inside. "My roommate's at his girlfriend's." The door shut, and Xander turned to see Derek smiling. "For the night. He usually sleeps there."
"Oh, that's...a good arrangement."
"He'd move in with her, but he's on a scholarship and they pay for his housing, and why am I talking about him?" Derek ran a hand through his hair. "So, this Spike guy...you two serious?"
Xander hesitated. "You know that expression, 'serious as a heart attack'? It's kind of like that."
"Do you have one of those open relationships?" Derek said 'open relationship' as if it were something he'd heard about on Oprah, or a quaint concept picked up from his parents' groovy old self-help manuals. And it was funny for Xander to remember that he and Spike had been using that exact same phrase earlier in the evening, eons ago.
They were standing maybe a yard and a half away from each other, and Xander sensed they could stand there all night depending on his answer, but he couldn't be less than honest. "Open, yeah. Like with a hole in the hull. More like a sinking relationship. I mean, I guess we're staying afloat, but--" He broke off as Derek stepped closer, swallowed once. "--but some days I feel like I'm drowning."
"That sucks." Derek moved his hand to rest just above Xander's belt, and as if magnetized, all the blood in his body poured there to meet it. "You deserve better."
"I do?" Xander felt dazed. He was afraid to let his eyes drop, but as Derek's hand slid lower, he drew in a sharp breath and closed them briefly. "I do." His eyes opened again just in time to see Derek kiss him, and he kissed back. And everything he'd come looking for was pressed right up against him--breath and pulse and life and heat, all incredibly normal, as comforting as pizza.
And they kissed until everything else Xander had been worrying about faded out, behind closed eyes.
tbc?
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