Emelye (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
emelye_miller) wrote2009-09-06 10:04 am
emelye_miller) wrote2009-09-06 10:04 am
Entry tags:
Such A Part Of You - Prologue
Title: Such A Part Of You
Author: Emelye
Pairing: Spike/Xander
Rating: Mature
Summary: Sequel to The Resolute Urgency Of Now "Dying for someone you love is easy, it's living for them that's hard."
Disclaimer: Not mine, all theirs. Artwork by the lovelykatekat1010
Warnings: None.
The air was still and smelled of pressed flowers and sickness. A clock on the mantle ticked loudly, keeping time with the labored breaths of the room’s lone occupant. She’d lain in her sickbed for hours waiting for surcease that refused to come, her son having disappeared hours or days earlier, she couldn’t be entirely certain. Pain and fear completely altered her perception of time. Minutes felt interminable during one of her episodes. Other times, the laudanum would take effect and she would wake in a cold sweat, unable to remember falling asleep but perceiving that a great deal of time had passed while she floated in and out of opiated dreams, listless and untethered.
The swirling eddy of light that appeared at her bedside was a new entry for her catalogue of fever dreams, but rather pretty and not nearly as frightening as some of the visions she’d witnessed under the influence of her medicine. Nevertheless, she was startled to see the man appear from the midst of the vortex, and cried out for her son, though her voice was weak.
“William!” Immediately she was sent into a paroxysm of coughing, damning her handkerchief with blood.
Shh… The man whispered, though his mouth never moved and the sound appeared to come from everywhere at once.
“Are you an angel?” She asked, wondering if perhaps this celestial visitor meant to bare her to her rest. The man (for his features, those she could perceive, were certainly masculine though most of him seemed made up of light itself) smiled and extended his hand.
I will take you to your son, she heard and immediately felt a pang that her son, her dearest boy, was most certainly dead, but the angel’s smile was so warming and his manner so sure, that she smiled a little in return and accepted his hand. Warmth traveled the length of her arm from where they touched. He drew her effortlessly from her bed, and without a second glance Mrs. Thomas H. Pratt passed with him into the light, her feet never touching the ground.
Spike heard the front door slam and put his book down, listening for the heavy clomping of Xander’s boots on the stairs. He waited patiently for the bedroom door to open and kept his peace while Xander muttered and huffed and stripped down angrily to his underpants before falling into the chair and fixing Spike with a pleading expression.
“Please tell me we don’t have anything to do tonight.”
“We don’t have anything to do tonight,” he replied obediently, trying to lighten the mood.
Xander rubbed his hands over his face and whined a little. “What do we have to do?”
Spike looked over at the clock and tried to figure whether or not they had time for a quickie before they were expected. “Research. Weird lights popping up around town. Watcher thinks someone’s playing with dimensional portals.” Xander sagged pitifully and Spike sighed. “Come here, you.”
Xander groaned, stood, and walked the three feet to the bed before collapsing face down. Spike chuckled at his lover’s sense of the dramatic before grabbing a leg, shifting a foot into his lap and pressing a thumb into the instep.
“Oh, sweet merciful Zeus…” he moaned. “Don’t you dare stop doing that.”
Spike rolled his eyes. “Does it feel like I’m stopping?”
Xander grunted in response. “If I ever, ever, tell you I’m going to my parent’s house for dinner again, could you please have mercy on me and just club me over the head and chain me up in the bathtub?”
Spike laughed. “That, love, is the most sensible thing you’ve said all day. Alvaro! Get the manacles!” He shouted, tickling the bottom of Xander’s foot. Xander howled with laughter and shoved him while trying to cover his mouth, allowing Spike to get his waist in a scissor hold.
“Stop that, he’ll hear you!” He hissed, though Spike could tell he wasn’t half as embarrassed as he let on. He let Xander up before pulling him down beside him on the bed, running his hands through thick, sable hair and tugging slightly as he brought them face to face.
“Why do you still bother about them, love?” He asked. Xander sighed and started combing the ceiling for answers, the typical weary and beleaguered expression on his face that only his family could bring about.
“Cause they’re my parents? Because my dad is ultimately a product of a different time and a conservative, lower-class background and even though he’s a bigoted, alcoholic asshole he still taught me how to build model cars and he’s the reason my shop class birdhouses were always prominently displayed? I don’t know…”
“Shh…” Spike interrupted. “Don’t take on, love. Just don’t like seeing you hurt is all.” Spike explained, trying to pet Xander down from the plateau of frustration before he got himself too worked up to shag.
“I know. I thought about telling Mom about us tonight.”
Spike grew still, not wanting to let on to Xander how much he hoped he would. Their unspoken agreement not to talk about Claiming and coming out to parents and parental-type figures hung heavily between them. “Yeah?” he prodded carefully. Xander continued without missing a beat, unaware of the tenterhooks he’d left Spike hanging on.
“Yeah, you know how she is—half Jewish, half Catholic and dinner was the typical Harris family guilt-a-palooza…”
“Anya again?” Spike guessed. Xander tapped his nose by way of reply.
“I know she means well but she just couldn’t let it go, you know? And I thought for a minute about just saying ‘actually Mom, I have found myself a nice young lady to settle down with, only not so much with the lady bits, the youth or the niceness…’”
Xander trailed off and Spike guessed nothing had come of it. A familiar disappointment settled in his chest, though he told himself there was time enough for that.
Always time, for him at least.
“You ever plan to tell her?” He asked at last. Xander got a strange smile on his face as he considered it.
“I can’t decide how she’d take it. Either it’d be guilt about being gay, guilt about disappointing my father, guilt about the subsequent lack of grandchildren or, possibly, if she’s in one of her more understanding moods she might be happy she has something else to contribute to her general martyrdom. It’s a toss up.” Spike sighed, frustrated at his inability to find a simple solution to his lover’s family difficulties that didn’t involve murder, torture, or larceny, though he still reserved some hope for fraud.
“Anything I can do, love?” He asked. Xander smiled—the warm one that lit up his face—the one that Spike had longed for all night. It made the boy glow.
“Yeah, you can come over here and kiss me,” he said. Spike leapt into action but was suddenly waylaid by something Xander had said.
“Wait, your mum’s half Jewish? What in blazes is she doing with your father?”
Xander sighed.
“I have no idea.”
Chapter One
Author: Emelye
Pairing: Spike/Xander
Rating: Mature
Summary: Sequel to The Resolute Urgency Of Now "Dying for someone you love is easy, it's living for them that's hard."
Disclaimer: Not mine, all theirs. Artwork by the lovely
katekat1010Warnings: None.
The air was still and smelled of pressed flowers and sickness. A clock on the mantle ticked loudly, keeping time with the labored breaths of the room’s lone occupant. She’d lain in her sickbed for hours waiting for surcease that refused to come, her son having disappeared hours or days earlier, she couldn’t be entirely certain. Pain and fear completely altered her perception of time. Minutes felt interminable during one of her episodes. Other times, the laudanum would take effect and she would wake in a cold sweat, unable to remember falling asleep but perceiving that a great deal of time had passed while she floated in and out of opiated dreams, listless and untethered.
The swirling eddy of light that appeared at her bedside was a new entry for her catalogue of fever dreams, but rather pretty and not nearly as frightening as some of the visions she’d witnessed under the influence of her medicine. Nevertheless, she was startled to see the man appear from the midst of the vortex, and cried out for her son, though her voice was weak.
“William!” Immediately she was sent into a paroxysm of coughing, damning her handkerchief with blood.
Shh… The man whispered, though his mouth never moved and the sound appeared to come from everywhere at once.
“Are you an angel?” She asked, wondering if perhaps this celestial visitor meant to bare her to her rest. The man (for his features, those she could perceive, were certainly masculine though most of him seemed made up of light itself) smiled and extended his hand.
I will take you to your son, she heard and immediately felt a pang that her son, her dearest boy, was most certainly dead, but the angel’s smile was so warming and his manner so sure, that she smiled a little in return and accepted his hand. Warmth traveled the length of her arm from where they touched. He drew her effortlessly from her bed, and without a second glance Mrs. Thomas H. Pratt passed with him into the light, her feet never touching the ground.
Spike heard the front door slam and put his book down, listening for the heavy clomping of Xander’s boots on the stairs. He waited patiently for the bedroom door to open and kept his peace while Xander muttered and huffed and stripped down angrily to his underpants before falling into the chair and fixing Spike with a pleading expression.
“Please tell me we don’t have anything to do tonight.”
“We don’t have anything to do tonight,” he replied obediently, trying to lighten the mood.
Xander rubbed his hands over his face and whined a little. “What do we have to do?”
Spike looked over at the clock and tried to figure whether or not they had time for a quickie before they were expected. “Research. Weird lights popping up around town. Watcher thinks someone’s playing with dimensional portals.” Xander sagged pitifully and Spike sighed. “Come here, you.”
Xander groaned, stood, and walked the three feet to the bed before collapsing face down. Spike chuckled at his lover’s sense of the dramatic before grabbing a leg, shifting a foot into his lap and pressing a thumb into the instep.
“Oh, sweet merciful Zeus…” he moaned. “Don’t you dare stop doing that.”
Spike rolled his eyes. “Does it feel like I’m stopping?”
Xander grunted in response. “If I ever, ever, tell you I’m going to my parent’s house for dinner again, could you please have mercy on me and just club me over the head and chain me up in the bathtub?”
Spike laughed. “That, love, is the most sensible thing you’ve said all day. Alvaro! Get the manacles!” He shouted, tickling the bottom of Xander’s foot. Xander howled with laughter and shoved him while trying to cover his mouth, allowing Spike to get his waist in a scissor hold.
“Stop that, he’ll hear you!” He hissed, though Spike could tell he wasn’t half as embarrassed as he let on. He let Xander up before pulling him down beside him on the bed, running his hands through thick, sable hair and tugging slightly as he brought them face to face.
“Why do you still bother about them, love?” He asked. Xander sighed and started combing the ceiling for answers, the typical weary and beleaguered expression on his face that only his family could bring about.
“Cause they’re my parents? Because my dad is ultimately a product of a different time and a conservative, lower-class background and even though he’s a bigoted, alcoholic asshole he still taught me how to build model cars and he’s the reason my shop class birdhouses were always prominently displayed? I don’t know…”
“Shh…” Spike interrupted. “Don’t take on, love. Just don’t like seeing you hurt is all.” Spike explained, trying to pet Xander down from the plateau of frustration before he got himself too worked up to shag.
“I know. I thought about telling Mom about us tonight.”
Spike grew still, not wanting to let on to Xander how much he hoped he would. Their unspoken agreement not to talk about Claiming and coming out to parents and parental-type figures hung heavily between them. “Yeah?” he prodded carefully. Xander continued without missing a beat, unaware of the tenterhooks he’d left Spike hanging on.
“Yeah, you know how she is—half Jewish, half Catholic and dinner was the typical Harris family guilt-a-palooza…”
“Anya again?” Spike guessed. Xander tapped his nose by way of reply.
“I know she means well but she just couldn’t let it go, you know? And I thought for a minute about just saying ‘actually Mom, I have found myself a nice young lady to settle down with, only not so much with the lady bits, the youth or the niceness…’”
Xander trailed off and Spike guessed nothing had come of it. A familiar disappointment settled in his chest, though he told himself there was time enough for that.
Always time, for him at least.
“You ever plan to tell her?” He asked at last. Xander got a strange smile on his face as he considered it.
“I can’t decide how she’d take it. Either it’d be guilt about being gay, guilt about disappointing my father, guilt about the subsequent lack of grandchildren or, possibly, if she’s in one of her more understanding moods she might be happy she has something else to contribute to her general martyrdom. It’s a toss up.” Spike sighed, frustrated at his inability to find a simple solution to his lover’s family difficulties that didn’t involve murder, torture, or larceny, though he still reserved some hope for fraud.
“Anything I can do, love?” He asked. Xander smiled—the warm one that lit up his face—the one that Spike had longed for all night. It made the boy glow.
“Yeah, you can come over here and kiss me,” he said. Spike leapt into action but was suddenly waylaid by something Xander had said.
“Wait, your mum’s half Jewish? What in blazes is she doing with your father?”
Xander sighed.
“I have no idea.”
Chapter One
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With Mrs. Pratt's "Angel" and those dimensional portals opening up all over town, it feels like Spike is in for a depressing visitor. Ah, family. They can be a trial.
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no subject
(Anonymous) 2009-09-06 05:32 pm (UTC)(link)no subject
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(Anonymous) 2010-06-19 03:35 pm (UTC)(link)no subject