Title: Life Could Ever Grant Me
Author: Emelye
Pairing: Spike/Xander
Rating: Mature
Summary: Sequel to The Resolute Urgency Of Now, and Such A Part Of You.
Disclaimer: Not mine, all theirs.
Warnings: None.
A/N: Artwork by the lovely![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
katekat1010
Xander woke at five to the sound of birds chirping. The morning breeze tossed the white gauze curtains across the wood floor. He tucked the blankets around Spike’s shoulders to keep in the heat and watched him curl around his pillow without waking. Xander stretched and scratched and threw on the robe draped over the foot of the bed. He padded on bare feet across the rug. Xander looked back over his shoulder. Spike snuffled and mumbled something in his sleep then turned over. Xander stepped out of the room and gently closed the door behind him.
There was just enough light to see by as he made his way quietly to AJ’s room. He slowly turned the doorknob and peeked in. His baby, who wasn’t such a baby anymore, was breathing deeply, mouth slack, sound asleep. He’d kicked his covers off in the night again, but the room was warm. Xander resisted the urge to tuck him back in, knowing it would most likely just wake him up. Double-checking that his clothes were laid out for the day, he closed the door.
Sunlight was dappling the windows in the kitchen. Xander opened them to let in the breeze and held his breath for a moment to watch a hummingbird perched on the trumpet vine just outside. It flittered away as he started the coffee pot. He turned on the radio. Leaving the coffee to drip, he walked through the silent foyer to the front door and brought in the newspaper from the front stoop.
He poured himself a mug of coffee and stirred in a liberal amount of sugar. He scanned the obits for the usual barbeque fork fatalities and wild animal maulings. He glanced at the sports page and grimaced. Xander read the funnies and set aside the crossword for Spike. He heard the click of Anne’s key in the door.
Xander stood and took the copper teakettle off the stove and began filling it as she hung her coat in the closet.
“Good morning, my dear,” she greeted. Xander bent down and kissed her cheek as she took the kettle from him and turned on the stove.
“Morning, Mum. So did the wind keep you up last night?”
“No, no, I had Alvaro take care of that low branch yesterday. I’d say I slept like the dead, but I think we both know I likely slept better. Did he get in before dawn?” Anne asked.
Xander nodded into his mug. “I brought him home after patrol last night.” Anne nodded, pleased, and measured tea out into the pot from the canister on the counter. Xander finished his coffee, checked that there was blood in the fridge. There was. “We’re low on milk,” he noticed. “I’ll bring some by on my break,” he remarked over his shoulder.
Anne chuckled. “Not at all a convenient excuse to check up upon us,” she observed, wryly.
Xander feigned ignorance. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Anne’s laughter followed him up the stairs to the shower.
Spike woke at nine, registered the presence of the small, warm body tucked under his chin and pressed a kiss into the light brown mop of hair. He took a deep breath, surrounded by the comforting scents of his child and his mate. He rolled over and found a note on his bedside table.
Good morning my beloved husband, father of my child, and probable basketcase. In case you have any ideas about giving your mother, my mother, Alvaro, Angel, Willow or anyone else planning to drop by a hard time today, let me leave you with this thought:
Four uninterrupted hours.
Xander
Spike snorted and felt AJ stir beside him.
“Daddy?”
Spike sighed deeply, melancholy already beginning to creep in around the edges of his mood. AJ turned toward him, fists rubbing sleep from his eyes.
How many more days like this, he wondered, before my baby is too grown up to crawl into bed with me of a morning?
AJ yawned. “Can we have pancakes?”
“Oatmeal.”
“Pancakes.”
“Blood.”
AJ screwed up his face in disgust. “Ewww!”
Spike retaliated by blowing a raspberry on his son’s stomach, leading him to roll off the bed and run downstairs, taking for granted he would be followed. Spike once again groaned and lamented his inability to sleep like a normal vampire or even a normal human and launched himself off the bed after AJ, snagging Xander’s robe as he went.
AJ was animatedly describing something involving dinosaurs and racecars to a captive audience using the salt and peppershakers as visual aides. Angel nodded indulgently in all the right places, having spent more than his fair share of mornings in their kitchen. Buffy seemed taken aback by so much energy in someone so small so early in the morning. She wordlessly accepted the cup off coffee Mother gave her. Tony grunted a greeting from behind the paper as Jessica handed Spike his blood.
“You’ve been invaded,” she announced, sympathetically.
“Who’s invading?” Asked Willow entering the kitchen and dodging around Spike and Jessica to set her books down on the island. Tara followed close behind her. Sorry, she mouthed to Spike. “I bring doughnuts!” Tara announced gaily.
The salt and peppershakers clattered to the tabletop. “Doughnuts!” AJ cried gleefully, jumping up and down.
Angel vacated his seat at the table and gestured for Spike to sit. “I have to be going anyway.”
Spike glared at him and sat down in his usual spot. “I’ll just bet you do.” Glancing down he saw the crossword half finished, a blood ring obscuring the clues for 53 across and 29 down. He looked up, wounded. “You did my crossword?”
Angel cut his eyes away guiltily.
“But I always do the crossword! Xan always leaves it for me. Everyone knows that. You’ve ruined my whole morning!”
Buffy gave up her seat to Tara, patting his shoulder sympathetically as she stood. “I have to run by the Alibi later to get intel. I’ll let you bring thumb screws.”
Tempted, he couldn’t conceal his enthusiasm. “Really? I haven’t had a proper spot of torture in ages.”
“Hey! Little pitchers!” Willow chastised. AJ climbed into Tara’s lap with a fist full of doughnut, giggled and started to sing about little pitchers, short and stout.
Spike glared at Willow. “Don’t you have university today? Post-modern survey of bent basket weavers of the 18th century, or something?”
Temporarily reprieved, Angel ruffled AJ’s hair and took his leave. “Slán agat, a stóirín.”
“Slán leat, Daideo!” said AJ, mouth full, to Angel’s retreating back. Spike felt a tick start in his jaw.
Willow grinned widely. “Tara and I are taking a personal day.”
Spike theatrically dropped his head onto the table.
“We thought maybe we could help,” Tara explained. Spike lifted his head from the table to find AJ three inches from his face, grinning broadly through a mug full of powdered sugar. He gave Spike a messy kiss on the cheek. Spike melted a little before vamping out and snarling at the boy. AJ squealed in delight and ran out of the kitchen. Spike sighed resignedly, wiping used doughnut off his cheek. “It’s just as well. Going to be bloody useless today.”
Tony chuckled into the paper from his perch at the island as a happy shriek echoed in the foyer. “Daddy! Daddy! Lookit!”
Spike rose from his chair to see what had AJ so excited. Tony grabbed his arm as he passed. “Don’t worry, it’s easy enough to take down. There’s a storage tub for it under the stairs.”
Curiosity peaked, Spike leaned his head out of the kitchen before slowly walking out, in awe of what he found.
“Daddy look!” AJ called from the top of the gallery, as he released a toy car onto the peak of a large wooden track, sending it racing and careening around the foyer up and over trestled hills and valleys. “It’s a rollercoaster!”
“That it is,” he said, standing in the midst of the track and looking up at his son, before grinning and bounding up the stairs after him, settling down beside him and dangling his legs through the rails over the edge of the gallery. “Well, give us a turn!”
AJ reverently placed a sleek, red car in his hand from the Sterilite tub of Matchbox cars beside him.
Spike set it atop his father-in-law’s engineering marvel and watched the car swiftly drop a story, bend, curl and dip around the track before coming to a stop near the bottom of the stairs.
AJ grinned up at him expectantly.
Spike regarded the track with open admiration.
“Well, this is just…neat!”
Xander was standing beside the water cooler and staring at the clock through the window of the foreman’s trailer. Jeff Lindstrom, a big, blond Viking of a man clapped a hand on his shoulder.
“What time is it?” he asked, taking a cup from the dispenser and filling it.
Xander continued watching the seconds tick off. “Eleven thirty-four.”
Jeff took a dainty sip of his water. “And what time are you taking AJ to school?”
Xander flinched. “Seven.”
Jeff nodded. “I remember Becka’s first day of school. Longest fucking day of my life. Sarah called me twenty times in three hours. Spike called you yet?”
Xander shook his head. “Nope. But everyone was going to be at the house today to keep him and AJ from driving each other crazy.”
“Going home on your break?”
Xander finally turned to Jeff and smiled, ruefully.
Jeff smirked into his Dixie cup. “Such a fucking woman, Harris.”
Xander laughed and followed Jeff back to the site.
When the whistle blew, Jeff waved him off to go home, taking charge of securing his tools and handling clean up. Nate Billings slapped him on the ass as he climbed down from his ladder.
“Plant one on that sexy vamp for me, Harris.”
“Hey how come Harris gets to take off for a nooner?” Manny complained with a shit-eating grin.
“Because if Spike ain’t happy—” Jeff began.
“AIN’T NOBODY HAPPY!” the others chorused, laughing.
Xander’s ears were burning as he smiled up at Jeff. “I’m going to tell him you said that.”
Jeff clutched his chest and fluttered his eyes. “Oh no, save me! The Master’s gonna be so mad at me!”
Xander threw a work glove at him. “Hey, next time a Grundhreller is digging up Sarah’s flower beds, you can explain to her why you’re not calling us to take care of it.”
The men ‘oohed’ dramatically. Jeff smirked. “Tell him Sarah wants the recipe for the wings he brought to the picnic.”
Xander narrowly missed the turn into the Seven/Eleven parking lot, remembering suddenly his need to pick up milk. He waved to Rachel, graduate of Sunnydale High, class of ’99 behind the counter and made his way to the coolers. The bell above the door rang behind him as a middle-aged woman and her two kids came into the store. Xander picked through the choices, eventually grabbing the gallon of hormone free, 2% despite his continued insistence that he survived just fine on the regular, hormone laden, store brand moo juice as a kid.
As he came to the counter he saw the woman struggling to gather her brood. He smiled sympathetically as she hurried the children along and waved her ahead as he overheard her chide the youngest for making them late to the eldest’s violin lesson.
“Three year olds operate on their own clock,” he offered, kindly as she gave him a harried smile.
“I’ll say,” she replied, placing several containers of juice on the counter. “You must have children.”
Xander grinned and produced his wallet-sized portrait from last Christmas. Spike held AJ on his hip, Xander standing just behind them. “AJ. He’s four. Starting pre-school tonight.”
The woman looked up, confusion evident. “And that’s—”
“My husband, Spike,” Xander offered easily. Rachel beamed at him behind the counter.
The woman’s expression closed and she smiled tensely before accepting her change and sweeping her items off the counter.
“I’ll be praying for you,” she said coolly. Xander’s jaw dropped in momentary confusion as she hurried out of the store with her kids. He turned back to Rachel, feeling like a kid whose friends just saw him get spanked. He didn’t meet her eyes as she slid a carton of cigarettes over the counter to him.
“She’s a bitch. Tell Spike hi for me.” Xander nodded stoically, grabbed the milk and smokes and wearily made his way back to the car.
Spike looked up from the Tale of Peter Rabbit when he heard the backdoor slam. AJ shot out of his lap and ran for the foyer at the sound of Xander’s boots on the tile before Spike had even registered that Xander had come home for lunch.
He found AJ being slowly crushed in his father’s arms, a telling crease between Xander’s brows, eyes screwed shut as he held the boy. Spike frowned.
“Why don’t you go get your toys put away, lovey, and I’ll send your daddy up to finish the story before your nap, eh?” Xander lowered AJ to the floor.
“Grandpa built a rollercoaster and I got to put my cars on it and they went really fast and you wanna see?” he asked Xander, excitedly.
Xander smiled tiredly. “How about when I get home tonight, kiddo. You need to take a nap so you’ll have all this energy later when you go to school.”
AJ’s jaw clenched and his lower lip jut out.
“None of that, pet. Go on now. Da and I will be up in a mo.”
With a profound sense of the dramatic, AJ stomped up the stairs. Spike waited to see if he’d slam his door, but evidently his last dressing down on the subject had made an impact and the door closed politely behind him. Spike turned back to his mate and found him missing.
In the kitchen Xander put away the gallon of milk and wiped the sweat from the container on his pant leg. The carton of cigarettes went above the refrigerator, out of sight and mind. Spike watched him from the doorway, the lines of his back tense as he turned on the faucet and stuck his head beneath the running water. Spike came up beside him and handed him a dishtowel. Xander emerged and took it, drying his face and finally allowed Spike to see the pain etched there.
“What’s wrong, Xan?”
Xander threw the towel on the island and sat roughly on one of the stools.
“Remind me again why we don’t let the ignorant fucks of this town get eaten?”
“Who do I need to bite?”
Xander dropped his head into his hands and scrubbed at his face. “Nobody. Just…why do people have to be such assholes?”
Spike took that to be a rhetorical question and instead applied himself to releasing the tension between Xander’s shoulder blades. Thumbs attacking the offending muscle, he ventured a guess. “This is a ‘we’re’ not like other families’ thing, isn’t it.”
Xander made a miserable noise and Spike dug in harder.
“Xander—”
“I know it shouldn’t matter.”
Spike huffed and dropped his hands, moving beside Xander so that he could see his face. “You’re too sensitive, love,” he told him, stroking his hair, gently.
Xander snorted. “My father doesn’t care, my crew doesn’t give a shit, nobody that matters has a problem with us. Everyone loves AJ.”
Spike bristled, “And why shouldn’t they?”
Xander sighed. “It’s easy to forget sometimes. Stupid woman caught me off guard today, is all.”
Spike nodded. “Could find out who she is. Shag on her front lawn.”
Xander laughed and slid the stool back, standing. “Could we? Because I’m frankly amazed there’s anyone left in town that hasn’t seen us fucking.”
“I’ll put Vern on it. He’s a sneaky bastard.”
Xander exploded in laughter. “Vern? The eight-foot tall, transvestite Chaos Demon? He’s the stealth option?”
“Oh, yeah. He does his antlers up with moss, camouflage mini-dress—very effective.”
Xander was still laughing as Spike took his hand and began leading him up to AJ’s room.
It was a wrench letting AJ go into the classroom with a hesitant little wave. Spike and Xander stood shoulder to shoulder with the other parents, human and demon, all watching their little ones more or less immediately forget their apprehension in the face of new toys and new friends to play with.
Xander’s throat felt tight as Spike squeezed his hand and tugged him off toward the car.
“He’ll be fine. Hell, he’s had playdates with half the kids in there. Gary’s girl is in there, yeah? He’ll be fine,” Spike assured him. “Vetted the teacher myself, didn’t I? What’s there to worry about?”
Xander looked at Spike, catching the glint of unshed tears in his eyes, lip as stiff and upper as Giles had ever managed.
Xander pulled him into his arms. Spike took a deep, shuddering breath and began sobbing into Xander’s Polo shirt in the middle of the YMCA parking lot.
Most of a bottle of bourbon later, Spike was less maudlin and more willing to allow Xander to distract him with more carnal pursuits.
Spike was abandoned, desperate, and needy. Xander focused his not inconsiderable know-how on driving Spike to complete distraction, masterfully ridding them of their clothes before plundering his mouth, hot hands spanning the cool skin of Spike’s back. Spike pulled Xander down on top of him, hands scrabbling for purchase in his hair, along his back, atop his ass, while Xander slowly and deliberately fucked his mouth with his tongue.
Spike groaned deep in his chest and it was all Xander could do to cursorily prepare Spike’s hole with a little spit and a lot of good intentions before he had to bury himself inside that silken vice and fuck him hard.
Spike was keening on every needless exhale of breath, with every brutal thrust that sent the mahogany headboard of their bed thumping against the wall. Xander felt his balls drawing up and knew there was no point in trying to slow down. Spike was bent nearly in half as Xander pounded into him before he felt Spike clench and coat his chest with his release. Xander shouted and came hard, shooting deep into his lover’s grasping channel.
They fell together, exhausted, onto the bed.
The phone rang.
“What the fuck,” Spike complained as Xander reached over for the handset.
“Yeah?” he answered.
“Hey, Xan, it’s Buffy. Bad time?”
“YES!” Spike bellowed.
Buffy laughed. “Sorry!” she yelled back.
Spike grunted something magnanimous into the pillow Xander threw over his face.
“What’s up, Buff?”
“Well firstly, I wanted to call and see how you guys were doing with the whole empty nest thing, but it sounds like you’re using your time effectively—”
Xander snorted.
“So we’ll just call that the supportive friend portion of the conversation…I mean, unless you need to talk, which I’d totally understand—”
“We’re good, Buff. What do you need?”
Buffy sighed. “Uropeks. I saw three, Giles is pretty sure they come in sixpacks. But they’re totally easy to kill.” She quickly reassured him.
“Metal allergy,” Spike explained. “Swords go through them like hot knives through butter. Wonder if balls of tinfoil would drive ‘em off, for that matter…” he continued, speculatively.
Xander looked at the clock. 8:30. “Can we get this done in a couple hours? AJ’s been looking forward to tonight all summer.”
“Absolutely. Meet at the park in five?”
Xander agreed and hung up. Spike lay silently beside him. Xander scrubbed a hand over his face in frustration.
“We’re not going to finish this in two hours.”
“Xander—”
Xander turned a look on Spike. “Every fucking time we’ve tried to plan anything, it never takes only two hours.”
Spike’s expression closed. “I cannot believe you’re bringing this up now.”
“AJ isn’t going to be four forever. He’s not going to be our resilient, forgiving little boy for much longer if we keep—”
“If I keep, isn’t that what you wanted to say?”
“Alvaro sees him more than we do!”
“No, Alvaro sees him more than you do. I’m here, Xander. Every damn day.”
“One of us needs a damn job, Spike.”
“And I don’t fucking work, is that it?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“No, of course that’s not what you meant. You never do. Never mind that I’m with him every goddamn day when I should be sleeping—”
“—And it’s all you can do to get out of the house the minute the sun’s down, isn’t it?”
“I’m the fucking Master of this town, Xander! What the fuck do you want from me? You worked so bloody hard to put me in this position, not so keen now when it takes away from your little domestic fantasy?”
“Fuck you!” He shouted over his shoulder, that barb hitting much too close for comfort.
“Yeah, that’s bout all I’m good for I reckon,” Spike shot back, angrily putting on his jeans.
Xander threw on his shirt. “Let’s just get this over with.”
Spike didn’t say anything in response but he followed Xander out.
An hour in and Sunnydale was still remarkably Uropek free. Xander was adamantly refusing to speak to him, choosing to stalk ahead with Buffy while Spike hung back with the witches. Angel and the Watcher were somewhere else, following a different lead. Growing irritated with the pointlessness of it all, he pulled out his phone and dialed Angel.
“You find anything yet?” he asked his Sire, impatiently.
“No. You?”
“Not a damn thing. Shall I put Buffy on?”
“Yeah, go ahead.”
Spike called “Slayer!” She turned and he threw her the phone. She caught it and began speaking. She was nodding agreeably with whatever Angel was saying when Willow pulled on his coat sleeve.
“You guys all right? What’s with the tense?”
Spike caught Xander looking at him before quickly looking away. He frowned. “Fine, pet.”
Willow didn’t look convinced. “Well when Tara and I are that ‘fine’ I’m usually sleeping on the futon.”
Spike glared and kicked a small rock out of his path, which unfortunately hit the back of Xander’s boot. Xander turned and leveled a glare at him. Spike’s eyes widened and his hands went up. He hadn’t meant to do it, of course, but Xander’s jaw clenched and he shrugged further into his jacket, eyes firmly on the treeline ahead. Spike sighed.
He was fighting a losing battle and he knew it.
They packed it in a short while later and he and Xander left to pick up AJ from preschool. It was a very quiet ride to the Y. They pulled in front of the building behind a minivan where a Cerhu, green and flat-faced was currently sweeping it’s little one into an enthusiastic hug. He tried not to notice the way Xander clenched the steering wheel at the sight. When the car door slammed behind him, Spike decided not to follow, as much as he wanted to see his baby happy and unharmed with his own eyes. Bad enough AJ was relegated to attending preschool with the demon and mixed kids of Sunnydale. He didn’t feel like throwing anything else in Xander’s face right now when he suspected he was fantasizing about taking AJ and moving somewhere where he could give him the normal childhood they’d promised and Spike had been unable to deliver.
Was it selfish of him not to send them on their way, knowing how much it was killing Xander not to be able to give AJ the kind of life he wanted for him?
AJ was bouncing up to the car, tethered by Xander’s arm as he grinned and waved at Spike. The door opened and he slid into the back seat, leaning through the partition to wave a piece of paper in Spike’s face.
“Lookit what I painted! We got fingerpaints like Mrs. Summers has!”
Xander was struggling to get AJ in his booster seat. He took the paper from AJ. “That’s brilliant, lovey. Sit back and let your da strap you in, now.”
AJ complied and a moment later Xander slid into the seat beside him. He looked at Spike strangely for a moment, then turned the key in the ignition and drove them to the park.
Spike cringed in his seat as they pulled up to the park shelter, lit with tiki torches, picnic spread laid out, their motley crew bustling around.
Spike loosed AJ from his restraints and watched him run for the playground at top speed. Xander was walking toward the shelter, already in conversation with Anya.
He lingered guiltily by the car for a moment, pretending to be looking for something in the backseat when he heard Anya scream.
Everyone was huddled in the shelter as birds began silently falling from the sky, apparently dead. A crow fell to the ground at his feet, eyes open and unblinking.
He looked, but AJ wasn’t in the shelter. He caught sight of him cowering under the slide with Buffy when he suddenly caught the overwhelming stench of death.
“Oh god, oh god, oh god,” came Anya’s terrified whimper. For a moment he felt the sting of betrayal when Xander’s arm came up around her shoulder until he heard Angel’s softly uttered, “Draugr…”
Spike’s blood froze.
He ran, screaming to his son. “CLOSE YOUR EYES! EVERYONE! CLOSE YOUR EYES!”
He heard hoofbeats, small, irregular, behind him. It was only a few seconds before he reached Buffy and his boy, scooping him into his arms and sprinting for the shelter, Buffy at his heels.
He put his terrified son into Xander’s arms. “Keep his head down, whatever happens, don’t let him look, understand? Don’t you make eye contact with it!”
Xander nodded and AJ’s soft cries were muffled by Xander’s chest.
The watcher, the mage and the witches were already chanting up a forcefield around them.
“It’s no good,” Angel confirmed, standing beside him. “It’s just going to wait.”
“Anyone got any iron?” Spike asked the group at large. Buffy nodded behind her arm, shielding her gaze from the demon at large. “Knife. In my boot. Can you get it?”
Angel knelt down beside her and lifted her pant leg to grab the hilt. “This all you’ve got?”
“Just the usual. Stakes, crosses, a couple of swords in Giles trunk,” she confirmed as Angel pressed the hilt into her hand.
“You hold onto that then. We’ll have to improvise,” he told her.
Spike looked around and caught sight of the utility access door of the shelter. “Angel, those hinges…reckon those might be iron. Give me a hand.” A shriek from his mother alerted them that the Draugr was in sight. “Keep your heads down!” He reminded them. “Don’t look it in the eyes!”
On the count of three, he and Angel kicked the padlocked door off it’s hinges. Buffy scrabbled at one hinge as his fingers pried up the other and managed to wrench them free.
“Don’t reckon these are going to do much but buy us a little time,” he told her.
“How do we kill it?” she asked.
“You can’t,” Anya explained, miserably. “You have to wrestle it back to it’s grave.”
Spike took a good look out of the corner of his eye at the thing pacing in front of the shelter.
Its formerly human flesh was blue-black with death and disease, mouth in a death rictus grin. It sat perched atop a half rotted deer carcass.
“We can’t bloody fight that thing back to the damn fjords. How about a little hokus pocus?” He asked the magic users.
Willow wrung her hands. “Maybe. But I don’t have anything here. In the car—”
“Absolutely not!” Tara yelled. “You’re not going out there!”
“It could very well be our only hope of getting out of here alive. The draugr will wait until we all die of thirst if need be. And we’ll all rise like that. A plague of revenants,” Ethan argued.
“Tara,” Willow began firmly. I can do this. Buffy and Spike can hold it off long enough for me to get our things. We can send it back to Norway—”
“—Hell would be a better choice, I think,” added Giles.
“Or hell!” Willow allowed. “Baby, please,” she pleaded.
Tara let out an angry breath. “All right. Go.”
Willow took Tara’s face in her hands and kissed her hard before drawing herself up and joining the others, hand shielding her eyes. Under her voice, she asked them, “Um, what exactly happens if I look at it?”
“Remember the birds?” Angel asked. Willow swallowed hard and nodded. “Instantaneous madness, probable demonic possession. You’ll likely bludgeon yourself to death on whatever’s handy.”
Willow made a small noise of terror. Spike glared at Angel. “Not that that’s going to happen,” Spike insisted, “Because you’re going to keep that hand up where it is, we’re going to keep the bugger off you and you’re going straight to the car and back as fast as your sticks will carry you.”
“Right,” Willow agreed bravely.
Everything after was a blur. They emerged from the shelter at speed. Buffy slashed blindly at the beast that appeared unperturbed by her efforts, grin never wavering like one of those thrice damned Gentlemen. Angel and Spike, immune to the possession of the draugr, but wary of it’s necromancing abilities, focused on driving it back, away from the shelter and the others. Unfortunately, when cornered, it frequently dissolved into mist only to reappear behind them.
“It’s just playing with us!” Spike complained.
Angel grunted as he attempted to fake out the pestilent abomination and only caught the edge of the iron hinge on a wisp of fetid air.
He heard Willow’s feet pounding the ground back to the shelter at the same time as the draugr. With never-to-be-repeated prescience, Spike threw himself into the path of the devil, allowing himself to be trampled under its mount’s rotted hooves as he thrust the edge of the hinge up into the maggoty belly of the deer.
The beast reared back with a deafening, ultrasonic screech as Willow reached safety. A taloned hand shot out and scored a deep slash across his face. Blinded by his own blood he was momentarily helpless as it drew nearer. Desperately clearing his vision, he found himself staring into the face of the draugr.
For a brief moment the world was lost to him. His mind was a silent abyss and he felt himself moving independently of his will when suddenly a crack like thunder rent the air and he was falling to the ground and everything—
went—
black.
There was something warm and wet bathing his face when he awoke.
Xander’s face loomed above him, upside-down. Spike blinked and Xander removed the flannel from his forehead.
“Spike?” he asked, voice wavering.
“AJ? Are you all right? Is the baby—”
“We’re fine,” Xander interrupted him, gently. “He’s right here.”
Spike lifted himself onto his elbows and found he was still on the ground in the park. Hadn’t been out long, then, he wagered. AJ stood just behind Xander, looking wobbly lipped and terrified. “Come here, baby,” he said, opening his arms to the boy.
AJ rushed into his lap, sobbing. “Shh…” he quieted him. “It’s okay. Everything’s all right now, you see? I’m here, lovey. Shh, It’s all right.”
When he’d calmed down some, Xander helped them to their feet, and Spike found everyone else watching with expressions of concern. Spike turned back to AJ.
“Sorry about your picnic,” he said, quietly. “You want to try it again another night?” he asked. AJ shook his head no.
Spike wanted to die of remorse.
“Whaddaya mean, no?” Xander asked. “Why not?” AJ clutched Xander’s leg and hid his face. “Not scared are you?” AJ tightened his grip. As Spike looked on in horror, Xander knelt down beside their son and looked right at Spike.
“Hey, who am I?” he asked their son.
“Daddy,” AJ said, reluctantly being drawn into conversation.
“That’s right and I’m a human, like you. And who’s that?” Xander pointed at Spike.
“Daddy,” he answered a bit easier.
“And what’s daddy?”
“Vampire,” answered AJ obediently.
“And are you scared of vampires?” AJ shook his head. “Why not?”
AJ looked at Xander as if he asked something profoundly stupid. “Cause the bad vampires can’t get me an’ daddy will get them if they try to.”
Xander smiled. “That’s right. And not only the bad vampires. Your daddy is the big bad, you know what that means?”
AJ shook his head. Xander grinned. “It means no matter what, your daddy is bigger and badder than any demon or bad guy out there. Nothing out there is scarier than your daddy. So you shouldn’t be scared either.”
Xander looked at him with such perfect love on his face as AJ looked up at him for confirmation. Spike didn’t give a toss that he was crying like an utter git. He just nodded and put a little swagger in his voice. “S’right, lovey.”
AJ was clutching him then and Spike almost missed the whispered, “You got hurt,” from AJ. Spike held him tighter, but Angel hadn’t missed it either.
“You don’t think something like that was going to take out your da? A little old draugr? Only one creature ever got the best of your dad,” he added with appropriate gravitas.
AJ looked up at Angel in awe. “What?”
Buffy knelt down beside him and whispered, “My mom.”
AJ looked up at Mrs. Summers in shock, clearly not buying it. “You?”
She nodded. “Me. And since I kind of like you, I think I’m going to let your dad off the hook.”
AJ nodded reverently. “Kay.”
“So what do you think, kiddo? Want to try it again another night?” Xander asked, looking right at Spike.
Spike swallowed the lump in his throat and took Xander’s hand in his. Xander gave it a little squeeze as AJ answered, “Yeah, but can Jarah come because she has glow in the dark legos and she said I could play with them.”
Spike looked at Xander. “If it’s okay with Gary, I don’t see why not.”
Hand in hand, they walked back to the car, the others packing up and following behind them. AJ ran ahead.
“Can we get ice cream?” He asked.
“It’s midnight,” said Xander.
“Hot chocolate?”
“Blood,” offered Spike.
“Ewwww!”
In the car, Xander eventually agreed to the hot chocolate, but by the time they got home, the boy was fast asleep.
Xander made some for Spike anyway.
Chapter Eight
Author: Emelye
Pairing: Spike/Xander
Rating: Mature
Summary: Sequel to The Resolute Urgency Of Now, and Such A Part Of You.
Disclaimer: Not mine, all theirs.
Warnings: None.
A/N: Artwork by the lovely
katekat1010Xander woke at five to the sound of birds chirping. The morning breeze tossed the white gauze curtains across the wood floor. He tucked the blankets around Spike’s shoulders to keep in the heat and watched him curl around his pillow without waking. Xander stretched and scratched and threw on the robe draped over the foot of the bed. He padded on bare feet across the rug. Xander looked back over his shoulder. Spike snuffled and mumbled something in his sleep then turned over. Xander stepped out of the room and gently closed the door behind him.
There was just enough light to see by as he made his way quietly to AJ’s room. He slowly turned the doorknob and peeked in. His baby, who wasn’t such a baby anymore, was breathing deeply, mouth slack, sound asleep. He’d kicked his covers off in the night again, but the room was warm. Xander resisted the urge to tuck him back in, knowing it would most likely just wake him up. Double-checking that his clothes were laid out for the day, he closed the door.
Sunlight was dappling the windows in the kitchen. Xander opened them to let in the breeze and held his breath for a moment to watch a hummingbird perched on the trumpet vine just outside. It flittered away as he started the coffee pot. He turned on the radio. Leaving the coffee to drip, he walked through the silent foyer to the front door and brought in the newspaper from the front stoop.
He poured himself a mug of coffee and stirred in a liberal amount of sugar. He scanned the obits for the usual barbeque fork fatalities and wild animal maulings. He glanced at the sports page and grimaced. Xander read the funnies and set aside the crossword for Spike. He heard the click of Anne’s key in the door.
Xander stood and took the copper teakettle off the stove and began filling it as she hung her coat in the closet.
“Good morning, my dear,” she greeted. Xander bent down and kissed her cheek as she took the kettle from him and turned on the stove.
“Morning, Mum. So did the wind keep you up last night?”
“No, no, I had Alvaro take care of that low branch yesterday. I’d say I slept like the dead, but I think we both know I likely slept better. Did he get in before dawn?” Anne asked.
Xander nodded into his mug. “I brought him home after patrol last night.” Anne nodded, pleased, and measured tea out into the pot from the canister on the counter. Xander finished his coffee, checked that there was blood in the fridge. There was. “We’re low on milk,” he noticed. “I’ll bring some by on my break,” he remarked over his shoulder.
Anne chuckled. “Not at all a convenient excuse to check up upon us,” she observed, wryly.
Xander feigned ignorance. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Anne’s laughter followed him up the stairs to the shower.
Spike woke at nine, registered the presence of the small, warm body tucked under his chin and pressed a kiss into the light brown mop of hair. He took a deep breath, surrounded by the comforting scents of his child and his mate. He rolled over and found a note on his bedside table.
Good morning my beloved husband, father of my child, and probable basketcase. In case you have any ideas about giving your mother, my mother, Alvaro, Angel, Willow or anyone else planning to drop by a hard time today, let me leave you with this thought:
Four uninterrupted hours.
Xander
Spike snorted and felt AJ stir beside him.
“Daddy?”
Spike sighed deeply, melancholy already beginning to creep in around the edges of his mood. AJ turned toward him, fists rubbing sleep from his eyes.
How many more days like this, he wondered, before my baby is too grown up to crawl into bed with me of a morning?
AJ yawned. “Can we have pancakes?”
“Oatmeal.”
“Pancakes.”
“Blood.”
AJ screwed up his face in disgust. “Ewww!”
Spike retaliated by blowing a raspberry on his son’s stomach, leading him to roll off the bed and run downstairs, taking for granted he would be followed. Spike once again groaned and lamented his inability to sleep like a normal vampire or even a normal human and launched himself off the bed after AJ, snagging Xander’s robe as he went.
AJ was animatedly describing something involving dinosaurs and racecars to a captive audience using the salt and peppershakers as visual aides. Angel nodded indulgently in all the right places, having spent more than his fair share of mornings in their kitchen. Buffy seemed taken aback by so much energy in someone so small so early in the morning. She wordlessly accepted the cup off coffee Mother gave her. Tony grunted a greeting from behind the paper as Jessica handed Spike his blood.
“You’ve been invaded,” she announced, sympathetically.
“Who’s invading?” Asked Willow entering the kitchen and dodging around Spike and Jessica to set her books down on the island. Tara followed close behind her. Sorry, she mouthed to Spike. “I bring doughnuts!” Tara announced gaily.
The salt and peppershakers clattered to the tabletop. “Doughnuts!” AJ cried gleefully, jumping up and down.
Angel vacated his seat at the table and gestured for Spike to sit. “I have to be going anyway.”
Spike glared at him and sat down in his usual spot. “I’ll just bet you do.” Glancing down he saw the crossword half finished, a blood ring obscuring the clues for 53 across and 29 down. He looked up, wounded. “You did my crossword?”
Angel cut his eyes away guiltily.
“But I always do the crossword! Xan always leaves it for me. Everyone knows that. You’ve ruined my whole morning!”
Buffy gave up her seat to Tara, patting his shoulder sympathetically as she stood. “I have to run by the Alibi later to get intel. I’ll let you bring thumb screws.”
Tempted, he couldn’t conceal his enthusiasm. “Really? I haven’t had a proper spot of torture in ages.”
“Hey! Little pitchers!” Willow chastised. AJ climbed into Tara’s lap with a fist full of doughnut, giggled and started to sing about little pitchers, short and stout.
Spike glared at Willow. “Don’t you have university today? Post-modern survey of bent basket weavers of the 18th century, or something?”
Temporarily reprieved, Angel ruffled AJ’s hair and took his leave. “Slán agat, a stóirín.”
“Slán leat, Daideo!” said AJ, mouth full, to Angel’s retreating back. Spike felt a tick start in his jaw.
Willow grinned widely. “Tara and I are taking a personal day.”
Spike theatrically dropped his head onto the table.
“We thought maybe we could help,” Tara explained. Spike lifted his head from the table to find AJ three inches from his face, grinning broadly through a mug full of powdered sugar. He gave Spike a messy kiss on the cheek. Spike melted a little before vamping out and snarling at the boy. AJ squealed in delight and ran out of the kitchen. Spike sighed resignedly, wiping used doughnut off his cheek. “It’s just as well. Going to be bloody useless today.”
Tony chuckled into the paper from his perch at the island as a happy shriek echoed in the foyer. “Daddy! Daddy! Lookit!”
Spike rose from his chair to see what had AJ so excited. Tony grabbed his arm as he passed. “Don’t worry, it’s easy enough to take down. There’s a storage tub for it under the stairs.”
Curiosity peaked, Spike leaned his head out of the kitchen before slowly walking out, in awe of what he found.
“Daddy look!” AJ called from the top of the gallery, as he released a toy car onto the peak of a large wooden track, sending it racing and careening around the foyer up and over trestled hills and valleys. “It’s a rollercoaster!”
“That it is,” he said, standing in the midst of the track and looking up at his son, before grinning and bounding up the stairs after him, settling down beside him and dangling his legs through the rails over the edge of the gallery. “Well, give us a turn!”
AJ reverently placed a sleek, red car in his hand from the Sterilite tub of Matchbox cars beside him.
Spike set it atop his father-in-law’s engineering marvel and watched the car swiftly drop a story, bend, curl and dip around the track before coming to a stop near the bottom of the stairs.
AJ grinned up at him expectantly.
Spike regarded the track with open admiration.
“Well, this is just…neat!”
Xander was standing beside the water cooler and staring at the clock through the window of the foreman’s trailer. Jeff Lindstrom, a big, blond Viking of a man clapped a hand on his shoulder.
“What time is it?” he asked, taking a cup from the dispenser and filling it.
Xander continued watching the seconds tick off. “Eleven thirty-four.”
Jeff took a dainty sip of his water. “And what time are you taking AJ to school?”
Xander flinched. “Seven.”
Jeff nodded. “I remember Becka’s first day of school. Longest fucking day of my life. Sarah called me twenty times in three hours. Spike called you yet?”
Xander shook his head. “Nope. But everyone was going to be at the house today to keep him and AJ from driving each other crazy.”
“Going home on your break?”
Xander finally turned to Jeff and smiled, ruefully.
Jeff smirked into his Dixie cup. “Such a fucking woman, Harris.”
Xander laughed and followed Jeff back to the site.
When the whistle blew, Jeff waved him off to go home, taking charge of securing his tools and handling clean up. Nate Billings slapped him on the ass as he climbed down from his ladder.
“Plant one on that sexy vamp for me, Harris.”
“Hey how come Harris gets to take off for a nooner?” Manny complained with a shit-eating grin.
“Because if Spike ain’t happy—” Jeff began.
“AIN’T NOBODY HAPPY!” the others chorused, laughing.
Xander’s ears were burning as he smiled up at Jeff. “I’m going to tell him you said that.”
Jeff clutched his chest and fluttered his eyes. “Oh no, save me! The Master’s gonna be so mad at me!”
Xander threw a work glove at him. “Hey, next time a Grundhreller is digging up Sarah’s flower beds, you can explain to her why you’re not calling us to take care of it.”
The men ‘oohed’ dramatically. Jeff smirked. “Tell him Sarah wants the recipe for the wings he brought to the picnic.”
Xander narrowly missed the turn into the Seven/Eleven parking lot, remembering suddenly his need to pick up milk. He waved to Rachel, graduate of Sunnydale High, class of ’99 behind the counter and made his way to the coolers. The bell above the door rang behind him as a middle-aged woman and her two kids came into the store. Xander picked through the choices, eventually grabbing the gallon of hormone free, 2% despite his continued insistence that he survived just fine on the regular, hormone laden, store brand moo juice as a kid.
As he came to the counter he saw the woman struggling to gather her brood. He smiled sympathetically as she hurried the children along and waved her ahead as he overheard her chide the youngest for making them late to the eldest’s violin lesson.
“Three year olds operate on their own clock,” he offered, kindly as she gave him a harried smile.
“I’ll say,” she replied, placing several containers of juice on the counter. “You must have children.”
Xander grinned and produced his wallet-sized portrait from last Christmas. Spike held AJ on his hip, Xander standing just behind them. “AJ. He’s four. Starting pre-school tonight.”
The woman looked up, confusion evident. “And that’s—”
“My husband, Spike,” Xander offered easily. Rachel beamed at him behind the counter.
The woman’s expression closed and she smiled tensely before accepting her change and sweeping her items off the counter.
“I’ll be praying for you,” she said coolly. Xander’s jaw dropped in momentary confusion as she hurried out of the store with her kids. He turned back to Rachel, feeling like a kid whose friends just saw him get spanked. He didn’t meet her eyes as she slid a carton of cigarettes over the counter to him.
“She’s a bitch. Tell Spike hi for me.” Xander nodded stoically, grabbed the milk and smokes and wearily made his way back to the car.
Spike looked up from the Tale of Peter Rabbit when he heard the backdoor slam. AJ shot out of his lap and ran for the foyer at the sound of Xander’s boots on the tile before Spike had even registered that Xander had come home for lunch.
He found AJ being slowly crushed in his father’s arms, a telling crease between Xander’s brows, eyes screwed shut as he held the boy. Spike frowned.
“Why don’t you go get your toys put away, lovey, and I’ll send your daddy up to finish the story before your nap, eh?” Xander lowered AJ to the floor.
“Grandpa built a rollercoaster and I got to put my cars on it and they went really fast and you wanna see?” he asked Xander, excitedly.
Xander smiled tiredly. “How about when I get home tonight, kiddo. You need to take a nap so you’ll have all this energy later when you go to school.”
AJ’s jaw clenched and his lower lip jut out.
“None of that, pet. Go on now. Da and I will be up in a mo.”
With a profound sense of the dramatic, AJ stomped up the stairs. Spike waited to see if he’d slam his door, but evidently his last dressing down on the subject had made an impact and the door closed politely behind him. Spike turned back to his mate and found him missing.
In the kitchen Xander put away the gallon of milk and wiped the sweat from the container on his pant leg. The carton of cigarettes went above the refrigerator, out of sight and mind. Spike watched him from the doorway, the lines of his back tense as he turned on the faucet and stuck his head beneath the running water. Spike came up beside him and handed him a dishtowel. Xander emerged and took it, drying his face and finally allowed Spike to see the pain etched there.
“What’s wrong, Xan?”
Xander threw the towel on the island and sat roughly on one of the stools.
“Remind me again why we don’t let the ignorant fucks of this town get eaten?”
“Who do I need to bite?”
Xander dropped his head into his hands and scrubbed at his face. “Nobody. Just…why do people have to be such assholes?”
Spike took that to be a rhetorical question and instead applied himself to releasing the tension between Xander’s shoulder blades. Thumbs attacking the offending muscle, he ventured a guess. “This is a ‘we’re’ not like other families’ thing, isn’t it.”
Xander made a miserable noise and Spike dug in harder.
“Xander—”
“I know it shouldn’t matter.”
Spike huffed and dropped his hands, moving beside Xander so that he could see his face. “You’re too sensitive, love,” he told him, stroking his hair, gently.
Xander snorted. “My father doesn’t care, my crew doesn’t give a shit, nobody that matters has a problem with us. Everyone loves AJ.”
Spike bristled, “And why shouldn’t they?”
Xander sighed. “It’s easy to forget sometimes. Stupid woman caught me off guard today, is all.”
Spike nodded. “Could find out who she is. Shag on her front lawn.”
Xander laughed and slid the stool back, standing. “Could we? Because I’m frankly amazed there’s anyone left in town that hasn’t seen us fucking.”
“I’ll put Vern on it. He’s a sneaky bastard.”
Xander exploded in laughter. “Vern? The eight-foot tall, transvestite Chaos Demon? He’s the stealth option?”
“Oh, yeah. He does his antlers up with moss, camouflage mini-dress—very effective.”
Xander was still laughing as Spike took his hand and began leading him up to AJ’s room.
It was a wrench letting AJ go into the classroom with a hesitant little wave. Spike and Xander stood shoulder to shoulder with the other parents, human and demon, all watching their little ones more or less immediately forget their apprehension in the face of new toys and new friends to play with.
Xander’s throat felt tight as Spike squeezed his hand and tugged him off toward the car.
“He’ll be fine. Hell, he’s had playdates with half the kids in there. Gary’s girl is in there, yeah? He’ll be fine,” Spike assured him. “Vetted the teacher myself, didn’t I? What’s there to worry about?”
Xander looked at Spike, catching the glint of unshed tears in his eyes, lip as stiff and upper as Giles had ever managed.
Xander pulled him into his arms. Spike took a deep, shuddering breath and began sobbing into Xander’s Polo shirt in the middle of the YMCA parking lot.
Most of a bottle of bourbon later, Spike was less maudlin and more willing to allow Xander to distract him with more carnal pursuits.
Spike was abandoned, desperate, and needy. Xander focused his not inconsiderable know-how on driving Spike to complete distraction, masterfully ridding them of their clothes before plundering his mouth, hot hands spanning the cool skin of Spike’s back. Spike pulled Xander down on top of him, hands scrabbling for purchase in his hair, along his back, atop his ass, while Xander slowly and deliberately fucked his mouth with his tongue.
Spike groaned deep in his chest and it was all Xander could do to cursorily prepare Spike’s hole with a little spit and a lot of good intentions before he had to bury himself inside that silken vice and fuck him hard.
Spike was keening on every needless exhale of breath, with every brutal thrust that sent the mahogany headboard of their bed thumping against the wall. Xander felt his balls drawing up and knew there was no point in trying to slow down. Spike was bent nearly in half as Xander pounded into him before he felt Spike clench and coat his chest with his release. Xander shouted and came hard, shooting deep into his lover’s grasping channel.
They fell together, exhausted, onto the bed.
The phone rang.
“What the fuck,” Spike complained as Xander reached over for the handset.
“Yeah?” he answered.
“Hey, Xan, it’s Buffy. Bad time?”
“YES!” Spike bellowed.
Buffy laughed. “Sorry!” she yelled back.
Spike grunted something magnanimous into the pillow Xander threw over his face.
“What’s up, Buff?”
“Well firstly, I wanted to call and see how you guys were doing with the whole empty nest thing, but it sounds like you’re using your time effectively—”
Xander snorted.
“So we’ll just call that the supportive friend portion of the conversation…I mean, unless you need to talk, which I’d totally understand—”
“We’re good, Buff. What do you need?”
Buffy sighed. “Uropeks. I saw three, Giles is pretty sure they come in sixpacks. But they’re totally easy to kill.” She quickly reassured him.
“Metal allergy,” Spike explained. “Swords go through them like hot knives through butter. Wonder if balls of tinfoil would drive ‘em off, for that matter…” he continued, speculatively.
Xander looked at the clock. 8:30. “Can we get this done in a couple hours? AJ’s been looking forward to tonight all summer.”
“Absolutely. Meet at the park in five?”
Xander agreed and hung up. Spike lay silently beside him. Xander scrubbed a hand over his face in frustration.
“We’re not going to finish this in two hours.”
“Xander—”
Xander turned a look on Spike. “Every fucking time we’ve tried to plan anything, it never takes only two hours.”
Spike’s expression closed. “I cannot believe you’re bringing this up now.”
“AJ isn’t going to be four forever. He’s not going to be our resilient, forgiving little boy for much longer if we keep—”
“If I keep, isn’t that what you wanted to say?”
“Alvaro sees him more than we do!”
“No, Alvaro sees him more than you do. I’m here, Xander. Every damn day.”
“One of us needs a damn job, Spike.”
“And I don’t fucking work, is that it?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“No, of course that’s not what you meant. You never do. Never mind that I’m with him every goddamn day when I should be sleeping—”
“—And it’s all you can do to get out of the house the minute the sun’s down, isn’t it?”
“I’m the fucking Master of this town, Xander! What the fuck do you want from me? You worked so bloody hard to put me in this position, not so keen now when it takes away from your little domestic fantasy?”
“Fuck you!” He shouted over his shoulder, that barb hitting much too close for comfort.
“Yeah, that’s bout all I’m good for I reckon,” Spike shot back, angrily putting on his jeans.
Xander threw on his shirt. “Let’s just get this over with.”
Spike didn’t say anything in response but he followed Xander out.
An hour in and Sunnydale was still remarkably Uropek free. Xander was adamantly refusing to speak to him, choosing to stalk ahead with Buffy while Spike hung back with the witches. Angel and the Watcher were somewhere else, following a different lead. Growing irritated with the pointlessness of it all, he pulled out his phone and dialed Angel.
“You find anything yet?” he asked his Sire, impatiently.
“No. You?”
“Not a damn thing. Shall I put Buffy on?”
“Yeah, go ahead.”
Spike called “Slayer!” She turned and he threw her the phone. She caught it and began speaking. She was nodding agreeably with whatever Angel was saying when Willow pulled on his coat sleeve.
“You guys all right? What’s with the tense?”
Spike caught Xander looking at him before quickly looking away. He frowned. “Fine, pet.”
Willow didn’t look convinced. “Well when Tara and I are that ‘fine’ I’m usually sleeping on the futon.”
Spike glared and kicked a small rock out of his path, which unfortunately hit the back of Xander’s boot. Xander turned and leveled a glare at him. Spike’s eyes widened and his hands went up. He hadn’t meant to do it, of course, but Xander’s jaw clenched and he shrugged further into his jacket, eyes firmly on the treeline ahead. Spike sighed.
He was fighting a losing battle and he knew it.
They packed it in a short while later and he and Xander left to pick up AJ from preschool. It was a very quiet ride to the Y. They pulled in front of the building behind a minivan where a Cerhu, green and flat-faced was currently sweeping it’s little one into an enthusiastic hug. He tried not to notice the way Xander clenched the steering wheel at the sight. When the car door slammed behind him, Spike decided not to follow, as much as he wanted to see his baby happy and unharmed with his own eyes. Bad enough AJ was relegated to attending preschool with the demon and mixed kids of Sunnydale. He didn’t feel like throwing anything else in Xander’s face right now when he suspected he was fantasizing about taking AJ and moving somewhere where he could give him the normal childhood they’d promised and Spike had been unable to deliver.
Was it selfish of him not to send them on their way, knowing how much it was killing Xander not to be able to give AJ the kind of life he wanted for him?
AJ was bouncing up to the car, tethered by Xander’s arm as he grinned and waved at Spike. The door opened and he slid into the back seat, leaning through the partition to wave a piece of paper in Spike’s face.
“Lookit what I painted! We got fingerpaints like Mrs. Summers has!”
Xander was struggling to get AJ in his booster seat. He took the paper from AJ. “That’s brilliant, lovey. Sit back and let your da strap you in, now.”
AJ complied and a moment later Xander slid into the seat beside him. He looked at Spike strangely for a moment, then turned the key in the ignition and drove them to the park.
Spike cringed in his seat as they pulled up to the park shelter, lit with tiki torches, picnic spread laid out, their motley crew bustling around.
Spike loosed AJ from his restraints and watched him run for the playground at top speed. Xander was walking toward the shelter, already in conversation with Anya.
He lingered guiltily by the car for a moment, pretending to be looking for something in the backseat when he heard Anya scream.
Everyone was huddled in the shelter as birds began silently falling from the sky, apparently dead. A crow fell to the ground at his feet, eyes open and unblinking.
He looked, but AJ wasn’t in the shelter. He caught sight of him cowering under the slide with Buffy when he suddenly caught the overwhelming stench of death.
“Oh god, oh god, oh god,” came Anya’s terrified whimper. For a moment he felt the sting of betrayal when Xander’s arm came up around her shoulder until he heard Angel’s softly uttered, “Draugr…”
Spike’s blood froze.
He ran, screaming to his son. “CLOSE YOUR EYES! EVERYONE! CLOSE YOUR EYES!”
He heard hoofbeats, small, irregular, behind him. It was only a few seconds before he reached Buffy and his boy, scooping him into his arms and sprinting for the shelter, Buffy at his heels.
He put his terrified son into Xander’s arms. “Keep his head down, whatever happens, don’t let him look, understand? Don’t you make eye contact with it!”
Xander nodded and AJ’s soft cries were muffled by Xander’s chest.
The watcher, the mage and the witches were already chanting up a forcefield around them.
“It’s no good,” Angel confirmed, standing beside him. “It’s just going to wait.”
“Anyone got any iron?” Spike asked the group at large. Buffy nodded behind her arm, shielding her gaze from the demon at large. “Knife. In my boot. Can you get it?”
Angel knelt down beside her and lifted her pant leg to grab the hilt. “This all you’ve got?”
“Just the usual. Stakes, crosses, a couple of swords in Giles trunk,” she confirmed as Angel pressed the hilt into her hand.
“You hold onto that then. We’ll have to improvise,” he told her.
Spike looked around and caught sight of the utility access door of the shelter. “Angel, those hinges…reckon those might be iron. Give me a hand.” A shriek from his mother alerted them that the Draugr was in sight. “Keep your heads down!” He reminded them. “Don’t look it in the eyes!”
On the count of three, he and Angel kicked the padlocked door off it’s hinges. Buffy scrabbled at one hinge as his fingers pried up the other and managed to wrench them free.
“Don’t reckon these are going to do much but buy us a little time,” he told her.
“How do we kill it?” she asked.
“You can’t,” Anya explained, miserably. “You have to wrestle it back to it’s grave.”
Spike took a good look out of the corner of his eye at the thing pacing in front of the shelter.
Its formerly human flesh was blue-black with death and disease, mouth in a death rictus grin. It sat perched atop a half rotted deer carcass.
“We can’t bloody fight that thing back to the damn fjords. How about a little hokus pocus?” He asked the magic users.
Willow wrung her hands. “Maybe. But I don’t have anything here. In the car—”
“Absolutely not!” Tara yelled. “You’re not going out there!”
“It could very well be our only hope of getting out of here alive. The draugr will wait until we all die of thirst if need be. And we’ll all rise like that. A plague of revenants,” Ethan argued.
“Tara,” Willow began firmly. I can do this. Buffy and Spike can hold it off long enough for me to get our things. We can send it back to Norway—”
“—Hell would be a better choice, I think,” added Giles.
“Or hell!” Willow allowed. “Baby, please,” she pleaded.
Tara let out an angry breath. “All right. Go.”
Willow took Tara’s face in her hands and kissed her hard before drawing herself up and joining the others, hand shielding her eyes. Under her voice, she asked them, “Um, what exactly happens if I look at it?”
“Remember the birds?” Angel asked. Willow swallowed hard and nodded. “Instantaneous madness, probable demonic possession. You’ll likely bludgeon yourself to death on whatever’s handy.”
Willow made a small noise of terror. Spike glared at Angel. “Not that that’s going to happen,” Spike insisted, “Because you’re going to keep that hand up where it is, we’re going to keep the bugger off you and you’re going straight to the car and back as fast as your sticks will carry you.”
“Right,” Willow agreed bravely.
Everything after was a blur. They emerged from the shelter at speed. Buffy slashed blindly at the beast that appeared unperturbed by her efforts, grin never wavering like one of those thrice damned Gentlemen. Angel and Spike, immune to the possession of the draugr, but wary of it’s necromancing abilities, focused on driving it back, away from the shelter and the others. Unfortunately, when cornered, it frequently dissolved into mist only to reappear behind them.
“It’s just playing with us!” Spike complained.
Angel grunted as he attempted to fake out the pestilent abomination and only caught the edge of the iron hinge on a wisp of fetid air.
He heard Willow’s feet pounding the ground back to the shelter at the same time as the draugr. With never-to-be-repeated prescience, Spike threw himself into the path of the devil, allowing himself to be trampled under its mount’s rotted hooves as he thrust the edge of the hinge up into the maggoty belly of the deer.
The beast reared back with a deafening, ultrasonic screech as Willow reached safety. A taloned hand shot out and scored a deep slash across his face. Blinded by his own blood he was momentarily helpless as it drew nearer. Desperately clearing his vision, he found himself staring into the face of the draugr.
For a brief moment the world was lost to him. His mind was a silent abyss and he felt himself moving independently of his will when suddenly a crack like thunder rent the air and he was falling to the ground and everything—
went—
black.
There was something warm and wet bathing his face when he awoke.
Xander’s face loomed above him, upside-down. Spike blinked and Xander removed the flannel from his forehead.
“Spike?” he asked, voice wavering.
“AJ? Are you all right? Is the baby—”
“We’re fine,” Xander interrupted him, gently. “He’s right here.”
Spike lifted himself onto his elbows and found he was still on the ground in the park. Hadn’t been out long, then, he wagered. AJ stood just behind Xander, looking wobbly lipped and terrified. “Come here, baby,” he said, opening his arms to the boy.
AJ rushed into his lap, sobbing. “Shh…” he quieted him. “It’s okay. Everything’s all right now, you see? I’m here, lovey. Shh, It’s all right.”
When he’d calmed down some, Xander helped them to their feet, and Spike found everyone else watching with expressions of concern. Spike turned back to AJ.
“Sorry about your picnic,” he said, quietly. “You want to try it again another night?” he asked. AJ shook his head no.
Spike wanted to die of remorse.
“Whaddaya mean, no?” Xander asked. “Why not?” AJ clutched Xander’s leg and hid his face. “Not scared are you?” AJ tightened his grip. As Spike looked on in horror, Xander knelt down beside their son and looked right at Spike.
“Hey, who am I?” he asked their son.
“Daddy,” AJ said, reluctantly being drawn into conversation.
“That’s right and I’m a human, like you. And who’s that?” Xander pointed at Spike.
“Daddy,” he answered a bit easier.
“And what’s daddy?”
“Vampire,” answered AJ obediently.
“And are you scared of vampires?” AJ shook his head. “Why not?”
AJ looked at Xander as if he asked something profoundly stupid. “Cause the bad vampires can’t get me an’ daddy will get them if they try to.”
Xander smiled. “That’s right. And not only the bad vampires. Your daddy is the big bad, you know what that means?”
AJ shook his head. Xander grinned. “It means no matter what, your daddy is bigger and badder than any demon or bad guy out there. Nothing out there is scarier than your daddy. So you shouldn’t be scared either.”
Xander looked at him with such perfect love on his face as AJ looked up at him for confirmation. Spike didn’t give a toss that he was crying like an utter git. He just nodded and put a little swagger in his voice. “S’right, lovey.”
AJ was clutching him then and Spike almost missed the whispered, “You got hurt,” from AJ. Spike held him tighter, but Angel hadn’t missed it either.
“You don’t think something like that was going to take out your da? A little old draugr? Only one creature ever got the best of your dad,” he added with appropriate gravitas.
AJ looked up at Angel in awe. “What?”
Buffy knelt down beside him and whispered, “My mom.”
AJ looked up at Mrs. Summers in shock, clearly not buying it. “You?”
She nodded. “Me. And since I kind of like you, I think I’m going to let your dad off the hook.”
AJ nodded reverently. “Kay.”
“So what do you think, kiddo? Want to try it again another night?” Xander asked, looking right at Spike.
Spike swallowed the lump in his throat and took Xander’s hand in his. Xander gave it a little squeeze as AJ answered, “Yeah, but can Jarah come because she has glow in the dark legos and she said I could play with them.”
Spike looked at Xander. “If it’s okay with Gary, I don’t see why not.”
Hand in hand, they walked back to the car, the others packing up and following behind them. AJ ran ahead.
“Can we get ice cream?” He asked.
“It’s midnight,” said Xander.
“Hot chocolate?”
“Blood,” offered Spike.
“Ewwww!”
In the car, Xander eventually agreed to the hot chocolate, but by the time they got home, the boy was fast asleep.
Xander made some for Spike anyway.
Chapter Eight
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This was just....wow.
More, please? Please?
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More to come soon, I hope. I doubt the next part will be as difficult as this one. The action all rolls down hill from here... ;-)
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Anyway, very well done, and thank you for not leaving it with a cliffhanger!
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Thank you very much. I almost included a cliffhanger but by the time I got to the end of it I just didn't have it in me to write one. more. word!
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It's TJ
Love it!
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Henri and Manon will reenter the story in the next chapter... ;-)
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I read the sixth chapter. And this one. And can i just say thank you for NOT making mpreg the whole point of the story? You always have stuff going on!
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I'm glad you're on board with this! I really appreciate your feedback!
Oh yeah, the mpreg is definitely not the crux of the story by a long shot. More will be explained in the next chapter. ;-)
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First, you make us wait almost 3 months for a chapter. Then all of a sudden you skipped 4 years of AJ's life?! How could you do that to us!! You. Are. Evol.
I am confused about one thing, though - why didn't Spike lose his mind when he looked at the draugr? Is it because he's undead?
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I'm sorry, maybe you were thinking the mpreg was the point of the story? Tip of the iceberg, my friend. Tip of the iceberg.
You misunderstand. The Draugr is a demon capable of possession. It drives humans and animals insane through possessing their bodies. Spike and Angel are already demons in possession of human bodies so there's just no more room for the draug. They are capable of falling prey to it's necromancing powers, however, being undead themselves.