A while back I noticed a ‘challenge’ to write a Spike / Xander fic that involved Spike allowing Xander one hour to do anything he wanted, to ‘get him back’ or take revenge for all the wrongs he’d felt Spike had done him.
I
change POVs without warning, since I have the attention span of a tsetse fly.
****************************************************
“Y’know
what? Just don’t anything.”
“You
think I want to be here, you bloody git?”
Spike mumbles under his breath, and Xander doesn’t quite hear it, but
turns anyway.
“Oh,
I’m sorry, are the rent-free accommodations not to your liking, sir? Shall I fluff your pillow or turn down your
sheets? Did the maid forget the
complimentary chocolate?” Xander is
practically red-faced as he stands in Spikes face shouting out his sarcasm,
taking out frustrations he couldn’t vent in the face of the implacable
Hurricane Buffy.
“Back
off.” Spike mutters warningly.
“Or
what?” Xander retorts, still looming
over Spike threateningly, “You’ll think of punching me and go into a kibbee on
my floor? Maybe drool a little while
convulsing?” He stops, raising and hand
and backing away anyway, wiping a bit of spittle from his own lip with the back
of his hand, “Go ahead, actually. There
isn’t anything good on TV tonight anyway, and it could be fun to watch…”
“You’d
like that wouldn’t you? See me in pain,
all helpless and punished. Remind you
of home, wouldn’t it?”
“Shut
up!” Xander’s face is definitely
bright-red now, “God, I hate you.” He
turns away, muttering and Spike can hear the words, ‘not worth it, not worth
it,’ before he begins talking more loudly, “I can’t believe Buffy wants you to
stay here.” More softly, “I can’t
believe I agreed to it… I’m such a
dumbass.” Barely audible, to someone
who isn’t a vampire, “Pathetic.” He is
standing in the doorway to the kitchen, er, kitchenette, leaning against the
doorframe with his head bowed, shoulders slumped, looking tired. Looking defeated. Spike has seen that look before, worn it too many nights himself
in the last few years.
Spike
crosses, feeling a tiny twinge of sympathy, hand outraised, not sure what to
say, not sure if somehow a kind word, a gesture, helping someone else, just one
person, will let him sleep tonight without the parade of faces that he can’t
remember, only that they all looked the same when he was done with them.
Before
Spike can make up his mind what to say, Xander turns and looks at him, eyes
red, face cold, regarding Spike, trapped with his hand reaching out. Xander seems to realize what Spike was
thinking and his face is beyond furious.
“Don’t. You. Dare!”
He is almost trembling with rage as he backs into the kitchen, “Nobody
could possibly ever need pity from you.
You’re useless. You always will
be, no matter how many souls you cram in there.” He points at Spikes chest with
a shaking hand, before pushing by him and entering his bedroom.
The
door closes gently, with a soft click, somehow this is ten times more jarring
than if it had slammed…
*********************************************************
The
next few days are quiet. Xander ignores
Spike, except that his idea of ‘ignoring’ seems to include sarcastic commentary
to the thin air, random verbal abuse, slamming things around, dismissive
gestures and other random signs of complete and utter contempt.
Spike
is just about fucking sick of it and would like to shove him headfirst into a
wall. Then he feels guilty for thinking
this. The only reason he hasn’t risked
a chip-fire acting on this fantasy is because he can’t help but think that this
is the least he deserves, that Xanders comments really don’t matter, since the
only person in the world that hates him more than Xander is himself, and at
least while Xander is muttering about him he doesn’t have to hear an internal
monologue muttering even worse things about himself.
Finally
it comes to a head, when Spike tries to microwave some blood while Xander is watching
television. It seems that any time
Spike leaves his ‘closet’ while Xander is home, he can feel the eyes, feel the
contempt, hear the muttering begin, even before it starts, the things Xander is
thinking, testing out on his tongue, preparing to say. It’s gotten this bad, that Spike can hear
the words without Xander even having to say them.
“We
can settle this.” He says softly,
behind Xander. Xander ignores him,
turning up the television, to drown out the sound of Spikes voice. “I told you not to hover behind me when I’m
watching TV. Go read something, if you
know how.” A pause, “Just not anything
of mine.”
Spike
throws his mug of blood at the wall next to the entertainment center so hard
that it embeds in the drywall, blood exploding around it like a flower and then
running down the wall like rain. Very
artsy, in an Andy Warhol sort of way.
Xander
is not an art critic, or perhaps he is.
“What the hell!” He is on his
feet, Corona tipped over and spilling off of the coffee table, “You stupid fuck! Get out!”
“No.” He’s not sure the mechanics of his voice
sounding soft and firm at the same time, since it sounds like a contradiction,
but there it is. He’s always been a
contradiction. Looking into Xanders
face, twisted in fury, fury that he recognizes, since he knows it’s as much
about Xander himself as it is about Spike, he feels calm. Not the ‘calm before the storm’ calm, more
the, ‘we who are about to die, say “fuck you!”’ calm.
Xander
is speechless. He can see his fists
clenching, the working of his throat.
He can even feel the heat coming off of him. He wonders how the boy has survived this long, he looks like he’s
about to bust a vessel. This thought
makes him smile, of Xander just gurgling and falling over dead, and the smile
seems to infuriate Xander anew.
“Oh
yeah, we can ‘settle this.’” Xander
says, turning abruptly and crossing to a wall, where a decorative woodcarving
thing of a flower-decorated white picket fence turns out to be composed of
nicely hand-turned wooden stakes. Huh,
decorative and functional. Hard to
believe he’s walked by that a dozen times and not noticed it before.
“So,
what air freshener do you recommend to mask the smell of vamp-dustage,
Spike?” Xander says conversationally,
moving over to put the daisy-adorned white stake to Spikes heart. “You’ve killed lots of your own kind, and
that smell is pretty rank.”
“One
hour.”
“What?” His voice is almost hysterical,
higher-pitched. His eyes are wild.
“One
hour. I give you one hour to do
anything you want. No guilt, no shame,
just give me what I deserve. For
everything I’ve done to you. To
her. You get one hour to make me feel
it, make me feel how much I’ve hurt you, hurt your friends, the people you
love.”
The
stake just sort of sags. It would be
comical, but not at the moment. Xander
looks confused, deflated somehow, as if it had taken him this long to work up
the nerve to defy Buffy and now he has no idea what to do, no idea how to get
the anger back. That must be nice, to
have the anger just go away.
“This
is insane.” Xander mutters. The stake drops to the floor and he doesn’t
even seem to notice. He turns and sees
his Corona, spilling its last drops on the carpet, and emits this strange
bitter broken laugh. More of a bark
than a laugh. In the day we would have
called it an ejaculation, but with the spilling beer and all, probably not a
useful word here.
He
turns and goes to his room. Again, the
soft click. Final. Inscrutable. He always runs away and hides.
Tries to be quiet when he’s upset, so no one will hear. Learned that at home, I guess. Something else not to bring up.
****************************************************
The
next afternoon he comes home from work.
The bloody mug is still sticking out of the wall, and the beer has left
a stain on the carpet. The TV is even
still on.
Wordlessly
he cleans it up. He can hear Spike
standing in the doorway to his closet, not offering to help, since ‘help’ is
some alien four-letter word to vampires.
Or it should be, anyway. He
looks at Spike and Spike, miracle of miracles, looks away. Wow, could he be ashamed? Nah, he’s not a person, can’t happen.
“So,
one hour?”
Spike
looks startled, then wary, as if he had forgotten the offer, or perhaps hoped
that pathetic loser Xander wouldn’t have the balls to take him up on it.
“Yeah. You get one hour. Then you stop treating me like someone tracked shit on your rug.”
“Fine. Saturday.
Clear your busy social calender, I’ll tell you when the hour starts.”
He
leaves after changing, already late to meet the girls for dinner. He doesn’t shut the door deliberately, just
lets it swing shut with a loud thud. He
wonders if Spike knows the difference, and what it means.
***********************************************************
Saturday
is nerve-wracking. Xander wakes up in
an inexplicably good mood, inexplicable not because of the impending vengeance
thing, but because Friday had sucked so hard.
Spikes wakes to the smell of bacon and sits quietly, knowing that Xander
prefers him to stay out of sight and not drink blood around him until he’s done
eating. Instead he gets a knock at the
door and Xander pokes his head in, grinning inanely. “Breakfast sleepy-head.”
Checking his watch, “Well, brunch, technically.” He then looks sideways at Spike and Spike
can hear the insults forming. Instead,
“Wow. Do you starch that hair? The rest of us get bed-head, you actually
leave dents in the pillow…” He then
smiles again and wanders out.
He’s
whistling. God. He couldn’t carry a tune with a forklift…
Spike
sits gingerly at the table, as if relaxing enough to let his back touch the
chair will get him a spanking from the mother superior or his knuckles whacked
with a ruler. Or in this case, his hand
stabbed with a fork, which almost happens once when he reaches for the same
pancake that Xander is reaching for. He
looks up and Xander is smiling. Again
with the smiling. Make it stop! Xander then spears the pancake and drops it
on Spikes plate, taking the next one for himself. “More syrup?” he asks.
Spike’s
not sure if the torture has started, but syrup would be an inspired addition.
After
breakfast, Xander pushes him into the kitchen and has him dry the dishes as he
washes them, babbling all the while about the stuff that happened yesterday and
stuff at work and stuff that Dawn said about what’s been going on with that
R.J. guy, who is still looking for his coat…
Spike
has no idea what to say, hmm-ing and heh-ing at appropriate sounding intervals.
Xander
then pulls out some tapes that he rented the night before, apparently, and
starts a Black Adder marathon (seasons two and four, which are bloody
brilliant), spending the rest of the afternoon sitting with Spike on the couch
(having practically pulled him down, since Spike isn’t usually allowed ‘on the
furniture’ while Xander is around) after pulling the shades to keep the living
room dark and vampire-friendly. Spike
absently notes that he’s hung a Rocky Horror Picture Show poster over the
mug-shaped hole in the wall.
They
share beers, or an American knock-off of a Mexican attempt at beer, anyway,
along with little wedges of lime that at least make it interesting. They eat popcorn. They laugh at Baldric and resolve to never drink cappuchino. Every now and then Xander will go get them
fresh beers, or toss a piece of popcorn at Spike, almost playfully. He tries to watch Xander sidelong out of his
eyes, but Xander seems to be genuinely enjoying himself, although he is
glancing at his watch a fair amount and smiling to himself at odd times that
have nothing to do with the programming.
Finally,
he practically bounces off of the couch.
“Sun’s down! Get your coat.”
“Where
are we going?”
“Out. Movie, food, mall-walking, people-watching,
the surgical insulting of random passersby.
Shake it!” He has the relentless
enthusiasm of a small shivering Mexican dog who hasn’t been outside for ten
hours.
Exactly
why Adam Sandler is considered funny remains a mystery, but the movie didn’t
actually suck. Certainly not Animal
House or A Clockwork Orange, but as amusing as modern movies seem to get. Xander seems to find him amusing, and after
eating nothing but popcorn most of the day, a few greasy burgers hit the
spot. Not Double’meat’ ‘though. We agree on few things, but burgers without
meat are one of them.
His
wit is sharpened to a razor edge, and I think that his commentary on the lives
of several couples we see in the mall are probably far more interesting than
their actual lives. Loosening up, I
pick a few and let loose the predatory instincts within, note which women are
pissing all over their men, obviously afraid to lose them, which men are
aggressively territorial, and thus equally deeply insecure. For a second, we seem to find something in
common. The bachelors priviledge, to
crack the whip at the man who has been tamed, trying to pretend that we prefer
being alone.
Finally
we end up back at his apartment and clean up the mess we left from
earlier. It is almost midnight when I
finally ask.
“So
when does my hour start?”
He
looks almost disappointed, even puts his hands in his pockets, after it becomes
obvious that he can’t seem to find anything to do with them. “Yeah.
Guess it’s that time.”
He
looks at the clock. “It starts
now. But it won’t take an hour.”
“Today
was just a day for me. I’ve had this
day hundreds of times, usually with Willow in the old days, later with Buffy,
and then with Dawn and Anya and Tara.
The sleepovers, the mallwalking, the movie marathons, the meals
together, the laughing and joking and throwing food, all of it.”
“Giles
offered you a chance once, to fight the good fight, to be one of us. Willow was always a big softie for you, she
would have let you be one of us, and I couldn’t have stopped her, couldn’t have
faced her down. Neither could Buffy for
that matter. Tara never had a bad word
to say about you, or anyone for that matter.
Anya considers you an amateur.
I’d say something bad about you and she’d comment on how uncreative it
was and how she did something a hundred times worse centuries before you were
born.” He looks wistful, and also
somewhat embarrassed by the admission.
I hear the unspoken message, ‘if I accepted her, how could I not accept
you?’
“The
point is, you had a chance to be one of us, to be part of our life and to be
accepted as our friend. To be Buffy’s
friend. To be in her world and at her
side. Instead you threw that in Giles
face, you betrayed us to Adam, you chose to be alone, the proud mocking Big Bad
who didn’t need anyone. You tried to
drag Buffy into your world, because you didn’t want to be her friend, you wanted her to be yours, exclusively. Buffy is bigger than that. Bigger than me, bigger than you. You can’t have her. You have to share her, with her friends,
with her family, with her destiny. But
you were greedy, you wanted all of her, all for you and you lost, because she
doesn’t work that way. We don’t work that way. Giles, Willow, me. You had your chance to be part of it, to be our friend.” He seems outraged, and I know now that this
isn’t all about Buffy, it’s about him too.
The words ‘you’re beneath me’ ring in my head, and I know Xander can’t
hear them, but it’s like I said them to him.
“Instead
you chose to be alone. So you stand
there in your black, in your leather, wrapped up in your better-than-us
creature-of-the-night mystique,” his hands are waving around wildly now, as if
conjuring this ‘creature of the night’ he speaks of, “your shiny overprocessed
hair, your spanking new soul mocking us, belittling us, trying to beat us down,
and I laugh right back at you, because you’ve worked so damn hard to turn yourself
into the miserable brooding fashion victim you claim to hate. At least Angel got it right. He got Buffy’s love, he earned it. You’re just a sad copy, and while he’s off
in LA with friends of his own, a life of his own, you’ve got nothing. Out of some bizarre evil macho pride, you’ve
rejected everything you’ve been offered, and now you’ve got nobody.” He says this last with a chopping gesture, a
final dismissal.
Xander
looks at his watch. “Six minutes and
I’m done. I told you it wouldn’t take
an hour.” He finally looks up from the
floor and looks right at me, into my eyes, and his other hand comes out of his
pocket. I have this crazy idea that he
wants to reach out for me, like I tried to reach out for him before, and I can feel
how the pity must have burned him.
Instead he turns away, “It’s not going to last an hour, Spike. It’s going to last forever.”