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Title: The Resolute Urgency Of Now
Author: Emelye
Pairing: Spike/Xander
Rating: Mature
Summary: "Dru gave me a hundred years of grand passion. What she never gave me was one chance to be first in her affections. Five minutes with you and I feel like the only man in the world. I'd trade ten lifetimes with Dru for ten more minutes with you."
Disclaimer: Not mine, all theirs.
Warnings: None.
“Xander, get back inside.”
Xander watched as Spike tilted his head slightly to the left and back.
Huh, Xander thought. That’s what the hyena used to do when…
“WHAT? No!” He grabbed Spike’s head and forced it upright.
“Bloody hell, do as I say, whelp!” Spike shouted, shoving Xander behind him and exposing his throat once more.
“I’m not going to just leave you to—would you stop that!”
Xander had hold of Spike’s head and was struggling to keep Spike from prying his grip loose.
“I bloody well will not! Let go of my head!” With a mighty shove, Xander flew backwards into the shrubs. He scrambled to his feet and watched as Spike once more resumed the submissive posture.
“Oh hell no!” he cried, running up the front steps to stand between Spike and the Master.
Who was laughing.
As Spike shoved Xander behind him, the Master’s soft chuckle turned into an outright guffaw. His voice, when he spoke, was barely raised above a whisper and suggested bourbon and several lifetimes spent in warm, smoky rooms.
“You are William. But who is your servant? Tell me in whom you inspire such loyalty.”
Xander wanted to respond that he was nobody’s servant, but the elbow in his diaphragm seemed to indicate otherwise.
“Master Henri De Sauveterre, Alexander Harris,” Spike introduced.
“Nice to meet you,” Xander responded, no longer forcibly mute. “Spike, can I talk to you for a second?”
“We must talk of many things and there’s little time before the others will arrive. Would your servant show us inside?” Henri prompted.
“Yes, of course. Xander, would you kindly invite Master Henri inside and show him to the parlor?”
“ARE YOU INSANE?”
“Xander…”
“No! I did not get dumped by Anya to spend a week haggling with teamsters for a pile of dust!”
“Young man, I mean your Master no harm. You have not to fear from me.”
Xander couldn’t believe what he was hearing. With one last look at Spike he threw up his hands.
“Fine. FINE. Come on in! The parlor is through the doors to your left. Can I get you anything to eat? We’re fresh out of virgins but I’ve got some O positive in the kitchen.”
Spike looked at Xander like he’d grown another head.
“No, thank you, Xander, that will be all,” Spike managed through tightly clenched teeth.
“Super. Well if that’s everything, I’ll just be upstairs huddled in a dark corner with a crossbow, loaded for bear and waiting for your scream.”
As Xander ascended the staircase he heard Henri say,
“Your servant seemed a little hysterical.”
Spike sighed.
“No, he’s always like that.”
Xander slammed the door of the empty second bedroom and slid down the wall to sit on the floor by the vent. Spike might not have wanted him in the room, but he’d be able to hear what they said just the same.
“So am I to understand this is merely a social call?” Spike asked. Xander noticed his accent changed slightly when he spoke to the Master.
“As you say. You and I,” the Master began, “are the same. We were made different. You love, William. I love too. It makes us strong. Stronger than the others of our kind. You will have your victory here, and when you do, you will have an ally in the Master of New Orleans, if you wish it.”
“I’m listening.”
The master’s voice was quiet but Xander could make out the slow, heavily accented words.
“As a slave, I had a wife. Children. My Sire bled us all, but they were not turned. Their deaths taught me pain. What it is to truly feel it. How to cause it. But even in death, I never lost my love for Marie or the little ones. Many years later, when I saw my beautiful girl, I knew what I felt was more than a memory. I took the city for love of my consort. And Manon is the reason I hold it still. For whom do you claim Sunnydale, William? For whom will you keep it?”
Spike’s response was equally soft.
“For the Slayer. For Buffy.”
WHAT? Thought Xander. Spike likes Buffy? Spike LIKES Buffy? Then again, he thought, that does explain the piles of cigarette butts by her house. Jeez, what is it with these stalker vamps. What happened to ‘not a bloody masochist’?
“She is quite a woman, this Buffy. I hear many things about her in my city.”
“Seeing her is like watching the sunrise. Burns in you. She fights like no slayer ever.”
Xander restrained the urge to pout. And what the hell is that about anyway? What, I’m jealous now because Spike thinks she’s a pretty girl who kicks major ass? That’s just factual, stupid, and it’s not like you want her that way anymore.
“You wish to call her as second?”
Xander’s heart skipped a beat and he swallowed heavily. I’m not jealous of Buffy. I’m NOT.
“If she’ll have me. Probably end up with my grandsire, though.”
Xander thought back to Angel and Buffy’s argument in the Magic Box and suddenly the thought of Buffy backing Spike up against the Masters was almost too disappointing to deal with. And the really stupid thing about it was all he could think was how much Buffy would make it about her and wouldn’t have Spike’s back at all and wasn’t it insane how much that worried him?
“Angelus is here? And he allowed you to fight?”
Xander snorted.
“Not exactly. There was a bit of a dust up between him and Buffy’s mates.”
“Explain. I have heard this slayer does not work alone, but I would not expect Angelus to be so easily swayed.”
Spike laughed a little.
“Wasn’t nothing easy about it. Harris upstairs came about this close to getting his throat torn out. Got a brass pair on him, he does. Only person I ever knew, vamp or human, to take on Angelus and live to tell the tale.”
Xander’s unconscious grin strained the muscles of his face as he struggled to assimilate this information.
“That is impressive. I can see why you would desire him in your service.”
“Yeah, he’s a brave one all right. Dumber than a post, but a good sort.”
“Hey!” Xander protested, forgetting himself. Clapping his hand over his mouth he waited to see if they’d heard.
The answering silence was damning.
“Xander,” Spike called.
“Um, yeah?” he answered, grimacing.
“Come down here.”
Xander sighed heavily.
“Be right down.”
Spike wore a smirk to shame the devil when Xander walked in. Henri smiled pleasantly enough. Xander had a feeling his eavesdropping wasn’t a huge surprise, but neither vamp looked like they were expecting an apology, which just served to make him feel like an even bigger boob.
“Gason, William tells me you have built this beautiful house for your Master,” Henri praised him.
Xander’s smile was tight.
“Thank you, but I didn’t build it, really, just fixed it up a little, is all.”
“He is modest, William.”
“That he is,” Spike answered conversationally, pouring two fingers into three glasses from something caramel colored in a decanter on the drinks cabinet and handing them around. “You know he did all this in a week? I made one remark about Dru an’ I in Chicago back in ’27 an’ he does the whole place up like something out of Fitzgerald,” Spike crowed with a knowing smile in his direction.
Spike was laughing at him and Xander thought he should just go out and get himself a goddamned bra because this really shouldn’t be getting to him like this.
Xander took a bracing sip of whiskey while thinking of what his father would have said on the subject and would have missed the rest of the conversation had Henri not asked about his training.
“Oh, um, I don’t really have any. I work construction for J&S. Carpentry mostly,” he answered, distractedly, staring into his glass and praying for a sudden aneurism.
Henri stared at Spike.
“He’s the only one of ‘em doesn’t have an education, but he’s got more brains then all of them put together,” he said seriously.
Xander looked up into Spike’s guileless face.
If it was a lie, it was an awfully good one.
“Thanks,” he said, still suspicious but hating himself for how much he wanted it to be true.
After a brief tour of the house during which Henri nodded thoughtfully and praised Xander’s craftsmanship, receiving answering murmurs of agreement from Spike that Xander still couldn’t quite bring himself to believe were completely sincere, Spike saw Henri out with an open invitation.
“The other’s will be here in two days and you have no minions. Are you certain you would not like me to send someone to help you?”
“Thank you, Henri, but I think we’ll be all right.”
“If you are sure. Bon chance, William.”
“Thanks, I’ll need it if Buffy doesn’t fall in.”
Xander thought he caught Henri appraising him a moment before he said,
“Maybe that would be better. I think maybe you have a stronger human here.”
Xander was mortified.
Oh God he knows. He knows and he’s pitying me.
“You might not be far wrong,” Spike said, sharing a conspiratorial smile with Xander and nudging him gently with his elbow.
The hell is he playing at? Xander thought.
“Bon nuit, Henri.”
“Bon nuit, William.”
The door latching shut echoed through the front hall, underlining the sudden heaviness in the air between them. Perhaps Xander wasn’t enlightened enough to shed every vestige of bullshit, male stoicism, but even he had his limits and it was suddenly very important to know if Spike was jerking his chain.
“You mean all that shit you said tonight?”
“No, I bounce around like a fucking tweaker over at the crypt too, you just never saw cause the only light in there comes from a shitty lamp I salvaged from the dump and not from sixteen antique Tiffany windows.”
Huh.
“You really think they’re Tiffany? Cause I asked Willow and she didn’t…”
“Mate, you’ve got to learn to take a bloody compliment.”
“I don’t think it’s so much the complements as who’s giving them,” Xander told him seriously.
Spike cocked his head and Xander felt himself being sized up for the umpteenth time that night.
“Okay, seriously, what?”
Spike smiled that horrible, mischievous, wicked smile and Xander knew whatever was going to come out of his mouth wasn’t going to make him feel like any less of a fool.
“I think Henri was right.”
Which was the point when Xander’s ego decided it wasn’t built for that kind of violent shifting and his transmission dropped. With a roar, Xander pushed past Spike and made for the door.
“Fuck you, Spike. I don’t need this.”
“I’m serious,” Spike said, reaching out to stall his exit. Xander looked down at Spike’s hand on his bicep. His fingers were narrow and delicate looking despite the chipped black polish on the nails. Kind of small. Pale. “Look, the truth is I need someone at my back I can trust. Angel wants to run the show an’ that ain’t gonna look good no matter how I spin it. Buffy…” Spike bit off the name with a pained expression Xander recognized only too well.
“Buffy’s got her own agenda.”
“Yeah, summat like that. Thing is, even hating me you did all this.” Spike gestured broadly at the room.
Do I hate him? Xander wondered.
“It really wasn’t that big a deal, and I’m pretty sure the staining is uneven on the paneling.”
Spike growled and grabbed two fistfuls of bleached blond hair.
“Christ, Harris, are you this much of a woman at work?”
Xander sighed in frustration and rubbed his eyes, trying not to give in to the hysterical laughter that wanted to bubble up from the deep wells of irony.
“No, I’m not. Because I don’t have to rack my brain there to figure out what’s going to make a 156 year old vampire feel powerful enough to take down Village of the Damned rejects and undead Nazis.”
Spike stiffened, and Xander thought, What the hell, in for a penny…
“I don’t usually get to put this much of myself into my work, Spike. You got everything I have to give all around you and I gave it to you. You think maybe I’m feeling a little, I don’t know, exposed, here?”
Spike squeezed his arm not unkindly.
“I’m not exactly someone you need to explain artistic insecurity to, pet.”
Xander laughed at that.
“No I don’t guess I do. So what, then, does this mean ‘you like me, you really like me’?”
Spike snorted.
“Yeah, Sally, ‘spose I do. An’ whether you like me or not—”
“You might be growing on me,” he confessed. He’d walked several miles in Spike’s shit-kickers that week to get the job done and Xander just wasn’t the kind of guy who could be unaffected by something like that, apparently.
Spike smiled, but kept on.
“—I need a second who knows how to not be first all the time.”
Xander nodded understandingly, and took a moment to listen to the house creaking around him before his brain caught up with what Spike was asking.
Second? He wants ME to be his second?
“What about Buffy?”
“Oh come on, Xander, you know you’re the only girl for me. Such a nummy treat an' all...”
He knew he was grinning stupidly, but he couldn’t bring himself to care.
“So this is the part, then, where I should probably make my token protest that I am human and therefore superior, and in no way second, to any vamp.”
Spike looked like he was going to be offended until he finally registered Xander’s words.
“Token?”
Xander shrugged with exaggerated nonchalance.
“Yeah, I’m just not feeling it tonight. You complemented my grout work and frankly, being chosen over Buffy for anything is kind of flattering, so I’m skipping to the solemn handshake.”
Xander held out said hand, which Spike took and used to pull Xander in.
“Whoa, we’re hugging now?”
Spike shrugged and grinned.
“You’re my second. Seems right. S’okay, ain’t it?”
Xander cast his eyes heavenward then laughed and hugged him back.
“Yeah, Kimosabe, we’re good.”
One of the things that stuck with Xander after the majority of the soldier’s memories had disappeared from whence they came was the quote describing war as “long periods of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror.” It resonated with the soldier’s experiences, but Xander remembered it because it also perfectly summed up the majority of Scooby meetings.
“He said he wishes to form an alliance with you; those were his exact words?” Giles asked Spike.
“Said he’n I were one’n the same and offered me his minions.”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand—”
Xander saw Spike grip the edge of the table and surmised he was rapidly loosing patience.
“Giles, it’s like you thought—he’s not interested in the Hellmouth. He wanted to give us a heads up and offer his help.”
“But are we sure he can be trusted?”
“No, Watcher, we can’t be bloody sure, but if he decides to have a go at me, there isn’t a bloody thing any of us here are going to be able to do about it.”
“We’ll see about that,” Angel said.
“Oh, not this again,” said Buffy.
“Angel,” Spike began.
Angel pointed a warning finger in Spikes direction.
“If you care about these people at all, you won’t—”
“I’m not,” Spike told him.
Angel nodded gravely.
“Thank God one of you sees reason.”
“Xander’s agreed to be my second.”
And just like that Angel rebuilt his head of steam.
“What? How? Why?”
“I asked him last night and he said yes,” Spike explained slowly and deliberately. “As for the why, seems like that’d be obvious. He’s managed to hang around you lot for years without getting dead, an’ he makes me look good.”
Xander wasn’t quite sure how to take that.
The others looked at Xander with varying degrees of disbelief.
“Xander, is this true?” Giles asked.
He shrugged, resigned to whatever lecture was forthcoming.
“Pretty much.”
“He’s not strong enough to protect your turf,” Angel protested.
Suddenly, everyone’s objections appeared to die on his or her lips.
“My turf?” Spike asked, grinning.
“Is there gonna be a rumble?” Asked Buffy quietly, choking back a laugh of her own.
“How’s your dance-fighting, Harris?” Spike asked in mock seriousness.
“Peachy keen, Daddy-O,” Xander replied with a wide grin.
Willow giggled.
Out of nowhere, a fist connected with Xander’s jaw.
“Angel, what the hell!” Buffy shouted.
Spike tackled Angel to the floor, and began pounding him viciously. Xander nursed his jaw as Buffy struggled to pull Spike off of Angel who was almost unrecognizable beneath a mask of blood.
“Spike!” Xander called out, horrified.
Spike stopped and fled to the back counter before he took up pacing behind Xander’s seat while Riley and Buffy helped Angel to his feet.
“You think this is a joke?” Angel asked through a mouth filled with blood. “They are coming here to kill you. You are going to get the boy killed!”
Spike looked coldly at Angel.
“If you touch my second again, I will dance in your ashes.”
“William…” he growled.
“Get out,” said Spike, everything in his demeanor conveying the utter seriousness of his threat.
Angel looked at Buffy.
“I think you’d better not be here right now, Angel,” she said coldly.
As he left, Buffy turned to Spike.
“I hope to hell you know what you’re doing,” she told him angrily, before following Angel out of the shop, Riley close on her heels. Xander saw Spike deflate almost imperceptibly making him look suddenly much, much older.
“I really need to be studying,” Willow said, gathering her things and clearly looking to do the avoidy thing until such a time as she could process the idea of her best friend pitting himself against more than the usual compliment of evil. Xander let her go. It was her way.
“Me too,” said Tara, apologetically.
“Be careful,” Dawn said, pecking both men on the cheeks before following the witches out.
Giles said nothing, simply shook his head and retreated into his office.
Xander winced when the door slammed, and looked at Spike.
“Well,” he said with false cheer.
“That went well.”
Chapter Five
Author: Emelye
Pairing: Spike/Xander
Rating: Mature
Summary: "Dru gave me a hundred years of grand passion. What she never gave me was one chance to be first in her affections. Five minutes with you and I feel like the only man in the world. I'd trade ten lifetimes with Dru for ten more minutes with you."
Disclaimer: Not mine, all theirs.
Warnings: None.
“Xander, get back inside.”
Xander watched as Spike tilted his head slightly to the left and back.
Huh, Xander thought. That’s what the hyena used to do when…
“WHAT? No!” He grabbed Spike’s head and forced it upright.
“Bloody hell, do as I say, whelp!” Spike shouted, shoving Xander behind him and exposing his throat once more.
“I’m not going to just leave you to—would you stop that!”
Xander had hold of Spike’s head and was struggling to keep Spike from prying his grip loose.
“I bloody well will not! Let go of my head!” With a mighty shove, Xander flew backwards into the shrubs. He scrambled to his feet and watched as Spike once more resumed the submissive posture.
“Oh hell no!” he cried, running up the front steps to stand between Spike and the Master.
Who was laughing.
As Spike shoved Xander behind him, the Master’s soft chuckle turned into an outright guffaw. His voice, when he spoke, was barely raised above a whisper and suggested bourbon and several lifetimes spent in warm, smoky rooms.
“You are William. But who is your servant? Tell me in whom you inspire such loyalty.”
Xander wanted to respond that he was nobody’s servant, but the elbow in his diaphragm seemed to indicate otherwise.
“Master Henri De Sauveterre, Alexander Harris,” Spike introduced.
“Nice to meet you,” Xander responded, no longer forcibly mute. “Spike, can I talk to you for a second?”
“We must talk of many things and there’s little time before the others will arrive. Would your servant show us inside?” Henri prompted.
“Yes, of course. Xander, would you kindly invite Master Henri inside and show him to the parlor?”
“ARE YOU INSANE?”
“Xander…”
“No! I did not get dumped by Anya to spend a week haggling with teamsters for a pile of dust!”
“Young man, I mean your Master no harm. You have not to fear from me.”
Xander couldn’t believe what he was hearing. With one last look at Spike he threw up his hands.
“Fine. FINE. Come on in! The parlor is through the doors to your left. Can I get you anything to eat? We’re fresh out of virgins but I’ve got some O positive in the kitchen.”
Spike looked at Xander like he’d grown another head.
“No, thank you, Xander, that will be all,” Spike managed through tightly clenched teeth.
“Super. Well if that’s everything, I’ll just be upstairs huddled in a dark corner with a crossbow, loaded for bear and waiting for your scream.”
As Xander ascended the staircase he heard Henri say,
“Your servant seemed a little hysterical.”
Spike sighed.
“No, he’s always like that.”
Xander slammed the door of the empty second bedroom and slid down the wall to sit on the floor by the vent. Spike might not have wanted him in the room, but he’d be able to hear what they said just the same.
“So am I to understand this is merely a social call?” Spike asked. Xander noticed his accent changed slightly when he spoke to the Master.
“As you say. You and I,” the Master began, “are the same. We were made different. You love, William. I love too. It makes us strong. Stronger than the others of our kind. You will have your victory here, and when you do, you will have an ally in the Master of New Orleans, if you wish it.”
“I’m listening.”
The master’s voice was quiet but Xander could make out the slow, heavily accented words.
“As a slave, I had a wife. Children. My Sire bled us all, but they were not turned. Their deaths taught me pain. What it is to truly feel it. How to cause it. But even in death, I never lost my love for Marie or the little ones. Many years later, when I saw my beautiful girl, I knew what I felt was more than a memory. I took the city for love of my consort. And Manon is the reason I hold it still. For whom do you claim Sunnydale, William? For whom will you keep it?”
Spike’s response was equally soft.
“For the Slayer. For Buffy.”
WHAT? Thought Xander. Spike likes Buffy? Spike LIKES Buffy? Then again, he thought, that does explain the piles of cigarette butts by her house. Jeez, what is it with these stalker vamps. What happened to ‘not a bloody masochist’?
“She is quite a woman, this Buffy. I hear many things about her in my city.”
“Seeing her is like watching the sunrise. Burns in you. She fights like no slayer ever.”
Xander restrained the urge to pout. And what the hell is that about anyway? What, I’m jealous now because Spike thinks she’s a pretty girl who kicks major ass? That’s just factual, stupid, and it’s not like you want her that way anymore.
“You wish to call her as second?”
Xander’s heart skipped a beat and he swallowed heavily. I’m not jealous of Buffy. I’m NOT.
“If she’ll have me. Probably end up with my grandsire, though.”
Xander thought back to Angel and Buffy’s argument in the Magic Box and suddenly the thought of Buffy backing Spike up against the Masters was almost too disappointing to deal with. And the really stupid thing about it was all he could think was how much Buffy would make it about her and wouldn’t have Spike’s back at all and wasn’t it insane how much that worried him?
“Angelus is here? And he allowed you to fight?”
Xander snorted.
“Not exactly. There was a bit of a dust up between him and Buffy’s mates.”
“Explain. I have heard this slayer does not work alone, but I would not expect Angelus to be so easily swayed.”
Spike laughed a little.
“Wasn’t nothing easy about it. Harris upstairs came about this close to getting his throat torn out. Got a brass pair on him, he does. Only person I ever knew, vamp or human, to take on Angelus and live to tell the tale.”
Xander’s unconscious grin strained the muscles of his face as he struggled to assimilate this information.
“That is impressive. I can see why you would desire him in your service.”
“Yeah, he’s a brave one all right. Dumber than a post, but a good sort.”
“Hey!” Xander protested, forgetting himself. Clapping his hand over his mouth he waited to see if they’d heard.
The answering silence was damning.
“Xander,” Spike called.
“Um, yeah?” he answered, grimacing.
“Come down here.”
Xander sighed heavily.
“Be right down.”
Spike wore a smirk to shame the devil when Xander walked in. Henri smiled pleasantly enough. Xander had a feeling his eavesdropping wasn’t a huge surprise, but neither vamp looked like they were expecting an apology, which just served to make him feel like an even bigger boob.
“Gason, William tells me you have built this beautiful house for your Master,” Henri praised him.
Xander’s smile was tight.
“Thank you, but I didn’t build it, really, just fixed it up a little, is all.”
“He is modest, William.”
“That he is,” Spike answered conversationally, pouring two fingers into three glasses from something caramel colored in a decanter on the drinks cabinet and handing them around. “You know he did all this in a week? I made one remark about Dru an’ I in Chicago back in ’27 an’ he does the whole place up like something out of Fitzgerald,” Spike crowed with a knowing smile in his direction.
Spike was laughing at him and Xander thought he should just go out and get himself a goddamned bra because this really shouldn’t be getting to him like this.
Xander took a bracing sip of whiskey while thinking of what his father would have said on the subject and would have missed the rest of the conversation had Henri not asked about his training.
“Oh, um, I don’t really have any. I work construction for J&S. Carpentry mostly,” he answered, distractedly, staring into his glass and praying for a sudden aneurism.
Henri stared at Spike.
“He’s the only one of ‘em doesn’t have an education, but he’s got more brains then all of them put together,” he said seriously.
Xander looked up into Spike’s guileless face.
If it was a lie, it was an awfully good one.
“Thanks,” he said, still suspicious but hating himself for how much he wanted it to be true.
After a brief tour of the house during which Henri nodded thoughtfully and praised Xander’s craftsmanship, receiving answering murmurs of agreement from Spike that Xander still couldn’t quite bring himself to believe were completely sincere, Spike saw Henri out with an open invitation.
“The other’s will be here in two days and you have no minions. Are you certain you would not like me to send someone to help you?”
“Thank you, Henri, but I think we’ll be all right.”
“If you are sure. Bon chance, William.”
“Thanks, I’ll need it if Buffy doesn’t fall in.”
Xander thought he caught Henri appraising him a moment before he said,
“Maybe that would be better. I think maybe you have a stronger human here.”
Xander was mortified.
Oh God he knows. He knows and he’s pitying me.
“You might not be far wrong,” Spike said, sharing a conspiratorial smile with Xander and nudging him gently with his elbow.
The hell is he playing at? Xander thought.
“Bon nuit, Henri.”
“Bon nuit, William.”
The door latching shut echoed through the front hall, underlining the sudden heaviness in the air between them. Perhaps Xander wasn’t enlightened enough to shed every vestige of bullshit, male stoicism, but even he had his limits and it was suddenly very important to know if Spike was jerking his chain.
“You mean all that shit you said tonight?”
“No, I bounce around like a fucking tweaker over at the crypt too, you just never saw cause the only light in there comes from a shitty lamp I salvaged from the dump and not from sixteen antique Tiffany windows.”
Huh.
“You really think they’re Tiffany? Cause I asked Willow and she didn’t…”
“Mate, you’ve got to learn to take a bloody compliment.”
“I don’t think it’s so much the complements as who’s giving them,” Xander told him seriously.
Spike cocked his head and Xander felt himself being sized up for the umpteenth time that night.
“Okay, seriously, what?”
Spike smiled that horrible, mischievous, wicked smile and Xander knew whatever was going to come out of his mouth wasn’t going to make him feel like any less of a fool.
“I think Henri was right.”
Which was the point when Xander’s ego decided it wasn’t built for that kind of violent shifting and his transmission dropped. With a roar, Xander pushed past Spike and made for the door.
“Fuck you, Spike. I don’t need this.”
“I’m serious,” Spike said, reaching out to stall his exit. Xander looked down at Spike’s hand on his bicep. His fingers were narrow and delicate looking despite the chipped black polish on the nails. Kind of small. Pale. “Look, the truth is I need someone at my back I can trust. Angel wants to run the show an’ that ain’t gonna look good no matter how I spin it. Buffy…” Spike bit off the name with a pained expression Xander recognized only too well.
“Buffy’s got her own agenda.”
“Yeah, summat like that. Thing is, even hating me you did all this.” Spike gestured broadly at the room.
Do I hate him? Xander wondered.
“It really wasn’t that big a deal, and I’m pretty sure the staining is uneven on the paneling.”
Spike growled and grabbed two fistfuls of bleached blond hair.
“Christ, Harris, are you this much of a woman at work?”
Xander sighed in frustration and rubbed his eyes, trying not to give in to the hysterical laughter that wanted to bubble up from the deep wells of irony.
“No, I’m not. Because I don’t have to rack my brain there to figure out what’s going to make a 156 year old vampire feel powerful enough to take down Village of the Damned rejects and undead Nazis.”
Spike stiffened, and Xander thought, What the hell, in for a penny…
“I don’t usually get to put this much of myself into my work, Spike. You got everything I have to give all around you and I gave it to you. You think maybe I’m feeling a little, I don’t know, exposed, here?”
Spike squeezed his arm not unkindly.
“I’m not exactly someone you need to explain artistic insecurity to, pet.”
Xander laughed at that.
“No I don’t guess I do. So what, then, does this mean ‘you like me, you really like me’?”
Spike snorted.
“Yeah, Sally, ‘spose I do. An’ whether you like me or not—”
“You might be growing on me,” he confessed. He’d walked several miles in Spike’s shit-kickers that week to get the job done and Xander just wasn’t the kind of guy who could be unaffected by something like that, apparently.
Spike smiled, but kept on.
“—I need a second who knows how to not be first all the time.”
Xander nodded understandingly, and took a moment to listen to the house creaking around him before his brain caught up with what Spike was asking.
Second? He wants ME to be his second?
“What about Buffy?”
“Oh come on, Xander, you know you’re the only girl for me. Such a nummy treat an' all...”
He knew he was grinning stupidly, but he couldn’t bring himself to care.
“So this is the part, then, where I should probably make my token protest that I am human and therefore superior, and in no way second, to any vamp.”
Spike looked like he was going to be offended until he finally registered Xander’s words.
“Token?”
Xander shrugged with exaggerated nonchalance.
“Yeah, I’m just not feeling it tonight. You complemented my grout work and frankly, being chosen over Buffy for anything is kind of flattering, so I’m skipping to the solemn handshake.”
Xander held out said hand, which Spike took and used to pull Xander in.
“Whoa, we’re hugging now?”
Spike shrugged and grinned.
“You’re my second. Seems right. S’okay, ain’t it?”
Xander cast his eyes heavenward then laughed and hugged him back.
“Yeah, Kimosabe, we’re good.”
One of the things that stuck with Xander after the majority of the soldier’s memories had disappeared from whence they came was the quote describing war as “long periods of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror.” It resonated with the soldier’s experiences, but Xander remembered it because it also perfectly summed up the majority of Scooby meetings.
“He said he wishes to form an alliance with you; those were his exact words?” Giles asked Spike.
“Said he’n I were one’n the same and offered me his minions.”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand—”
Xander saw Spike grip the edge of the table and surmised he was rapidly loosing patience.
“Giles, it’s like you thought—he’s not interested in the Hellmouth. He wanted to give us a heads up and offer his help.”
“But are we sure he can be trusted?”
“No, Watcher, we can’t be bloody sure, but if he decides to have a go at me, there isn’t a bloody thing any of us here are going to be able to do about it.”
“We’ll see about that,” Angel said.
“Oh, not this again,” said Buffy.
“Angel,” Spike began.
Angel pointed a warning finger in Spikes direction.
“If you care about these people at all, you won’t—”
“I’m not,” Spike told him.
Angel nodded gravely.
“Thank God one of you sees reason.”
“Xander’s agreed to be my second.”
And just like that Angel rebuilt his head of steam.
“What? How? Why?”
“I asked him last night and he said yes,” Spike explained slowly and deliberately. “As for the why, seems like that’d be obvious. He’s managed to hang around you lot for years without getting dead, an’ he makes me look good.”
Xander wasn’t quite sure how to take that.
The others looked at Xander with varying degrees of disbelief.
“Xander, is this true?” Giles asked.
He shrugged, resigned to whatever lecture was forthcoming.
“Pretty much.”
“He’s not strong enough to protect your turf,” Angel protested.
Suddenly, everyone’s objections appeared to die on his or her lips.
“My turf?” Spike asked, grinning.
“Is there gonna be a rumble?” Asked Buffy quietly, choking back a laugh of her own.
“How’s your dance-fighting, Harris?” Spike asked in mock seriousness.
“Peachy keen, Daddy-O,” Xander replied with a wide grin.
Willow giggled.
Out of nowhere, a fist connected with Xander’s jaw.
“Angel, what the hell!” Buffy shouted.
Spike tackled Angel to the floor, and began pounding him viciously. Xander nursed his jaw as Buffy struggled to pull Spike off of Angel who was almost unrecognizable beneath a mask of blood.
“Spike!” Xander called out, horrified.
Spike stopped and fled to the back counter before he took up pacing behind Xander’s seat while Riley and Buffy helped Angel to his feet.
“You think this is a joke?” Angel asked through a mouth filled with blood. “They are coming here to kill you. You are going to get the boy killed!”
Spike looked coldly at Angel.
“If you touch my second again, I will dance in your ashes.”
“William…” he growled.
“Get out,” said Spike, everything in his demeanor conveying the utter seriousness of his threat.
Angel looked at Buffy.
“I think you’d better not be here right now, Angel,” she said coldly.
As he left, Buffy turned to Spike.
“I hope to hell you know what you’re doing,” she told him angrily, before following Angel out of the shop, Riley close on her heels. Xander saw Spike deflate almost imperceptibly making him look suddenly much, much older.
“I really need to be studying,” Willow said, gathering her things and clearly looking to do the avoidy thing until such a time as she could process the idea of her best friend pitting himself against more than the usual compliment of evil. Xander let her go. It was her way.
“Me too,” said Tara, apologetically.
“Be careful,” Dawn said, pecking both men on the cheeks before following the witches out.
Giles said nothing, simply shook his head and retreated into his office.
Xander winced when the door slammed, and looked at Spike.
“Well,” he said with false cheer.
“That went well.”
Chapter Five
