bright eyes
"It just... he made me feel..."
"Like a man?" she raised an eyebrow.
"Yeah, well, I forgot. You know, when Buffy died that time. Not that one time, that made me feel very heroic and life-savey. The other time."
"I couldn't blame you. Oh! I don't mean, you know, I don't mean I wouldn't blame you for not feeling manly, Xander," Willow frowned. "You know what I mean."
"You still do that. Like you're a little girl. Kind of like we're both still there. You know?" Xander reminisced. "More scotch?"
She shook her head and un-frowned. "You sound like Giles. How did it happen?"
Living in a town with extradimensional hazards had its perks. For one, there was the quarterly Missing Persons Auction. Little known fact: in addition to lowering property values, the high fatality rate in Sunnydale left a lot of abandoned vehicles. Every March, July, October, and December, the police department auctioned off a few cars whose owners had gone to the other side and not come back to claim them. This is my year, Xander decided. He got a promotion at the yard, and driving his uncle's 10-year-old Buick didn't seem like a step up in the world.
Of course, abandoned vehicles also provided hours of entertainment for the undead. And species of demon with prehensile limbs. If you were willing to go uninsured (and the undead generally were) coming to Sunnydale could get you eternal life and a hot set of wheels. Especially while a robot was filling in for the Slayer. Sunnydale cops hesitated to stop erratic drivers at night. They lost more officers that way.
So that was the day, or the night before, when they were done with patrol and there was nothing going on at the site the next morning, and Xander was as excited as Christmas Eve-more so, since his family wasn't involved. It was the happiest moment he had since... He had gotten out of bed, made his daily visit to her grave, and wandered all the way to the lot. With one hand gripping the chain link fence, and the other in his front pocket, sweating through his full wallet, he tried to pull himself up to see the silver one near the entrance to the station. The one he wanted. He named it Suzie.
"Nice package, bright eyes."
"Spike. No, go ahead, the night before I have everything I need in life is almost complete," Xander said, not turning back to the familiar voice.
"Pawing over your pocketbook and looking for toys, at this hour? Shouldn't you be plotting my demise?" Spike smirked, coming to lean against the fence right next to Xander. He lit a cigarette.
"I think I'll let the black lung disease finish the job slow and painful-like." He stepped back from the fence, with his hand still in his pocket. Then he knew it was coming.
"Immortal," Spike said, blowing smoke into Xander's face. "And I rest my case. Maybe if you spent more time knowing thine enemy, you wouldn't find yourself alone and ambushed by strange vampires in the middle of the night. And trust me, black lung disease is no shot of courage, I've seen it. You ought to listen to me, I could tell you things. All kinds of things, you'd be surprised."
Xander coughed, a little theatrically. "Spare me. What are you doing out here, besides the obvious?"
"What's that?"
"Stalking me? Trying to intimidate me with your kinder, gentler impotence? I know, you're looking to get pissed or go tub thumping or something British. Considering you killed all your demon friends."
"Wrong, and wrong. Hey! I didn't kill Clem. Have you met Clem? Lightweight, that one, can't hold his kittens."
Xander started to walk away. Why did Spike have to come and ruin his perfectly solitary moment of anticipation? He was so happy, just watching his soon-to-be new slightly used car... sleep, or whatever it is cars do when they're not being driven. Unlike Anya, who sometimes talked about money in her sleep. And elbowed him when he snored, which must have been for attention since he'd never heard himself snore before she came around.
"Hey, now, where you going? I didn't mean it," Spike said. "I came here for a good reason."
"You mean you are stalking me? What, did you... did you smell me?" Xander said, definitely walking away.
"Vampire, it's what I do," Spike started after him. "I know what's happening tomorrow, and I just wanted to help a bloke celebrate. Have some male bonding, or whatever it is you all claim you're doing these days."
"What? You want to bond with me? You're not human, Spike, I don't need to-"
"Put a stake in it, bright eyes. I'm talking about you. I know what you do. Every night, after you patrol. You visit her grave. I smell you. I see you. I'm there," Spike said. It stopped Xander before he could decide whether he was going back to bed... or back to the graveyard.
"And again, why are you smelling my tracks all about town? What, am I just smelly in my grieving?"
"You need to do something about it," Spike said, "or you won't even start to get over it. Have a laugh, have a drink, burn a garment factory with some seamstresses trapped inside..."
"Is this how you deal with your losses, Spike? Torturing other people-and me, by talking about it? 'Cause I've got a soul and all."
"And I've got a chip," Spike pointed to his head. "But I got a proposition for you."
"This better involve a million dollars..."
Spike took the flask out of his jacket pocket and handed it to Xander.
"Bright eyes? Like a pet name?"
"Shut up."
"He gave you a pet name? Like, on purpose? That's so..."
"Gay. I should have known."
"What did you call-"and she was used to being interrupted.
"Let me tell it!"
"Bartender? More scotch, for this one." She grinned.
The other benefits to living in a demon-wracked town, especially with an off-duty Slayer, were the very special zoning laws that allowed some bars to operate according to their own rules. Those were mostly a debt to the late Mayor Giant Snake Monster. Spike tried to convince Xander of this until they were in front of Willy's, when it became apparent that he didn't really need much convincing. He was waiting for a chance to test those rules.
"If you're sure," Xander said, taking another swig of whiskey.
"What, afraid they're gonna send Buffybot after you?" Spike teased.
"I've never done anything like this before," Xander said. "And I've never been arrested."
"That's what it is," Spike pointed a finger into Xander's chest, and then grabbed his head and fell to a crouch. "Ow! You need to... ow... be bad."
"You can't even make emphatic gestures without that thing shocking you? Man, I should have thanked Riley when I had the chance."
"Shut up and go in there. Just follow my lead. I've done this loads of times."
Xander opened the door and gestured for Spike to go in first. "I'm not going in there face first like a tasty human treat," he whispered to Spike. "You go."
"You'll still be my tasty treat," Spike said, turning back toward Xander as they descended into the bar. Xander smiled big, thought he might have been blushing. Then he pushed Spike down the stairs and let him fall backwards a few feet.
"Hey! Not supposed to be doing that yet!" Spike complained. A few vampires turned toward fallen Spike and grumbled. He always came in and started trouble, what with his ability to do damage to his fellow not-man. He had other plans tonight, but the crowd was sparse and there was no Big Bad in town to worry about. Things were going as planned.
"Willy!" Xander called, sounding authentically drunk. "I'm driving Spike home tonight and I'm not a vampire, got something less on the bloody side?"
Willy was at the end of the bar, and Xander stepped over Spike to move closer and get his attention. The bartender nodded and reached behind him for a bottle of whiskey. "Hey, always willing to help out a designated driver. You know, friends don't let humans drive drunk... on uh, blood at least."
"Right... you da man, Willy. Get something for my floor-bound friend here, too," he pointed to where Spike had been, but he was already leaning against the bar, making menacing faces at the table where the grumbling had come from.
"Hey, I thought I was the man!" Spike said, abruptly. He picked up the shot of pig's blood Willy had placed on the counter for him and slammed it down when he was done. "Get us another, then? I just found bright eyes a new car and this is the way he treats me? It's enough to drive a vampire to drink, I tell you."
"You what?" Xander asked, puzzled about what the plan was. Spike had convinced him they would have a few, "accidentally" pick a fight with one of the regulars, and dust someone for the sake of frustration and Buffy's good name. "You didn't find me a car, I was just... hold on a minute-"
"What's the matter?" Spike said. "Look at this, this one's had too much, I think he's had enough already, Willy. Can't hold his liquor, human, you know. Better put that bottle away."
Xander narrowed his eyes at Spike; he was a little excited at how unpredictable someone could be without a soul. "Are trying to start something with me?" he asked, under his breath, and finished his shot.
"Hit me," Spike mouthed.
"What?"
"You guys going to be paying cash?" Willy said, a moment before Xander made good on a few years of idle fantasies and gave Spike a right hook to the chin. He was tough, though; it only sent him off the stool he was leaning on. He hit him again, in the stomach this time.
"Like that?" Xander whispered, half-holding Spike who was still unharmed, but making a good show of it now.
"Yeah, now try him," Spike said, pointing over Xander's head. One of the vampires who had been eyeing them when they came in was standing behind him.
"You human? We don't take kindly to you coming in here and scrapping with one of us, even if it's this blond trade," he said, and loomed a little more.
"Trade?" Xander said, before Spike rolled out of his grip and tackled the vamp at the knees. The tumble sent Xander to the floor, too. By the time he was up, stake in hand, Spike was straddling the interested vampire's chest, punching him in the head repeatedly.
"Cool," he said to himself, and waved to Willy to pour another drink, which he did, calmly. "Anybody else want some?"
"So we did that for, you know, a little while. But it got old-and dusty, if my addled memory serves, after we staked three of them and Willy gave us the tab," Xander said, pushing his almost-full glass toward Willow.
"Is this what gave you the idea to bring Buffy back from the dead? Hanging out having bar fights and man-talk with Spike?" She pushed it back.
"No, no," Xander waved off the question, or the scotch. "I mean... we hung out, just that one night."
"And you're not getting to the sex with Spike part," she reminded him. "That's kind of the part I'm here for. Don't make me go all 'reveal' on you."
Xander sighed. "Well, he did help me with the car thing."
Somehow, they stumbled back to the parking lot, outside the police station, where the evening had begun. They headed that way because Xander didn't really want to go home at that point, and Spike claimed he had trouble remembering where his crypt was.
"In the graveyard?" Xander tried. He was a little too intoxicated to remember exactly where that was, but he knew crypts were in graveyards, especially in Sunnydale. Now they were leaning on each other for support, what with the drunkenness and the bruises-at least Xander knew he got bruised. He wasn't sure if Spike had.
"No, no, we've been there, and then you came here and I said, 'I have a proposition for you.' Remember?" Spike said.
"No. Hey, look that's gonna be my car! By this time... four hours from now."
Spike pushed Xander against the chain link fence, nudged was more like. It was painless, since he didn't mean him any harm by it. Yet. "Remember when I hit you?"
"What? You can't hit me, you can't even kill bugs. Can you even fight plaque?" Xander protested, speaking through the fence and away from Spike, whose face was just next to his ear.
"I did, in the bar. Just back there," Spike said, quietly, into Xander's ear. He was standing behind him, against him, while Xander was looking mostly at the car.
"Yeah, in the bar. Good times. You hit me? I find that hard to believe. And not just 'cause I've had a couple... few... dozen."
"I have another proposition, if you're so sure."
"Shoot."
"I want to bite you."
"You can't bite me. I mean, hey, bite me."
Spike's fangs were right against Xander's ear this time. "Prove it. I bet I could bite you if you wanted me to," Spike said.
Xander sobered up a little, or at least felt a sudden chill along with the mostly room-temperature Spike-torso that covered most of his spine. It felt a little... novel, but he didn't want him to move. "What are you talking about, Spike?"
"Call me William."
"Bite me, William," Xander said, half-joking.
"You mean it?" Spike asked, with his fangs now behind Xander's ear but not quite close enough to sink in. He felt a dull ache in the back of his head, probably because he was poised to do violence, but depending on Xander's answer, he hoped, he might find a way around it.
Xander lifted his hands and gripped the fence, with both arms extended away from his body. He swallowed. There was definitely a chill, maybe because Spike seemed to be moving higher against his back. But he felt something. Something good. A chill, a wave. He shut his eyes.
"You can't bite me unless I want you to?"
"No one else wants me to bite them, I figure. It's safe, if that's how this bloody chip works. I'm just trying to prove a point," Spike said.
"Come on. Just do it," Xander said. "Wait was that out l--"
The next thing Xander remembered was an unusually high-pitched shout, the kind he didn't think he could make, but then he had never been intentionally bitten by a vampire-and then he realized it wasn't coming from him. he let go of the fence and whirled around to see Spike rolling on the ground.
"Ow! Sorry, sorry," he heard, between sharp gasps.
"Oh, man," Xander said, and smacked himself in the head. "I can't believe you almost bit me! What, did you think if you accidentally hit me in the bar that meant I was playing along and you could just... get to second vampire-base with me?"
"No... ow... I never hit you in the bar, I was just seeing if I could... ow... fool you... bloody hell," Spike winced. For the first time, Xander really felt pity for him. He held out his hand to help him up.
"Here," Xander said. He pulled Spike to his feet and shook his head. "What am I going to do with you? Buffy's probably rolling over in her grave. She's going to ruin the flowers I put there."
"Sorry," Spike said. "Just... it's been a while."
"Well..." Xander started to get an idea. But it wasn't a very Xander idea at all, so he thought it might have secretly been Spike's idea, except in his head. It had been a very confusing night. "I don't know what you thought was going to happen, but... we could still..."
"What?"
"Well... I was thinking, and this might be the violence making my body say things the whiskey would never do, we could climb that fence, break into the backseat of my new car that I'm going to buy tomorrow, and... male bond... some more. Because I am a little..." Xander said, and then he remembered to breathe. Spike looked agape at him. Xander blinked. It must have been a long blink; he heard the distinct swoosh of Spike's coat behind him and turned to see him bounding over the fence. "Right. Vampire."
"Right. You need a hand?"
"Not yet," Xander said, and started to get a foothold at the bottom of the fence. He got over in a minute or so and let himself fall onto Spike on the other side. The Sunnydale police department would open in about two hours, at 6 am. With no one in custody, most of the cops were too scared or too lazy to actually police the streets at night. Emergencies, they left to the fire department. So a vampire and a construction worker had their pick of six cars to be auctioned off the next morning, and had no trouble jimmying the lock open on the one they had been watching all night, and crawled into the backseat and pulled off leather coats and boots and tennis shoes and wondered what to do next.
"Why are you wearing this in the middle of summer?" Xander said, shoving Spike's coat over the front passenger seat.
"No body heat," Spike said, and promptly whipped Xander's belt off in one motion.
"Whoa! How did you..." Xander looked down at his own not-belt, only now conscious of what was going on down there. He looked up at Spike. "Do vampires always bite when they..."
Spike was silent, and quick, and almost naked. Xander decided to dispense with the questions and follow his lead. Spike couldn't bite him. So if vampires were all about blood and sex then whatever they did wasn't sex, since there wouldn't be any biting going on, and since this wasn't his car yet, it wasn't like he was having sex with a vampire in the back of his car. A boy vampire.
"Is that..." Xander felt the bulge in Spike's jeans. "If you don't have a heartbeat, how do you..."
"How do you?" Spike asked back, unzipping Xander's jeans and wrapping his fingers around him.
"Oh... nevermind, not really important." Spike's breath smelled like cigarettes, and metal, and... breakfast? Pig's blood, and yet, none of the things he'd expect the first time he kissed a man. He let Spike's other hand pull down his jeans from behind, lifted himself up to make it easier, and tried to get Spike's unreasonably tight pants off with his mostly trembling, blind fingers.
"Can't-your pants are unreasonably tight," he noted. "This isn't the best place to be doing this."
Spike probably grinned, his lips were still pressed against Xander's. He took his hands away, which made Xander sad for about ten seconds, and then happy again. Even though Spike's hands weren't exactly warm, it felt much better to have him pulling up his shirt, propping himself up on one knee across Xander's hips, running his fingers through his hair, letting Xander's hands grip his ass and pull him down on top of him. Xander raised his hips to ride against Spike. He still had on underwear, whereas, here he found out vampires didn't so much wear them, but Spike had no problem being kind of hot-mostly from friction-and smooth and also running his dick up and down Xander's hip and brushing against his own inside the cotton, which was almost better.
"Can we not... tell anyone about this?" Xander said, opening his eyes. He lifted himself onto one elbow and put the palm of his other hand on Spike's dick. Felt like a pretty good position to get the answer he wanted.
"Course not," Spike said. "Just give me more not to tell."
"I don't really know what I'm doing," Xander confessed. He slid his hand along the length of it, let the heel of his hand pull the foreskin down, let his fingers grip it at the base. Spike wrapped his leg around Xander's and sat more of his weight on him as he rocked back and forth. He leaned down to kiss him again.
"Course you don't," Spike said. His fangs weren't really sharp, but noticeable, still. Like eating with a fork. It could have been dangerous, if you were stupid, but it sure made life easier. Xander reminded himself where his hand was and sped up his strokes. He moaned a little with Spike grinding against him.
"You do this a lot?"
"What, shag my enemies in the parking lot of police stations?"
"Yeah," Xander said, breathlessly. "You're not my enemy."
"I'm not your friend. I'd have my teeth in that hot neck of yours right now."
Xander opened his eyes wide. He smiled. He felt himself bucking against Spike involuntarily. He bit his lip.
"I have a hot neck?" he said, turning his head to the side. He could work with his hands with his eyes shut. He tried to maneuver out of the boxer briefs without them, though, which was harder to do. "Little help?"
Spike obliged. He put one hand under the waistband of Xander's underwear and the other on top of Xander's hand, helping him. He could feel Xander's dick roll free from the elastic and then against his own. He wrapped both their fists around the two of them.
"Okay," Xander was trying to encourage him. He looked him in the eyes. "Can you..."
"You enjoying yourself, bright eyes?"
"Why are you calling me that?"
"Shh."
It couldn't have been such a long time, Xander thought, but it felt like they'd never stop coming on each other. Xander thought it had started with Spike, and then he felt himself lose it, and maybe Spike lasted longer because he was a vampire and Xander felt himself get there again. And he didn't remember exactly what it felt like-it was hard to tell, was it cold, was it more or less because he was a vampire, or was it just that coming was the same thing for both of them so it felt like making Spike come meant he got to do it again. It was only a few minutes. But he knew it ended, and fortunately the police had left a box of the former driver's tissues under the front seat, and naked Spike sitting up on top of Xander gave way to Spike with pants again. And eventually, they decided to move. Talking didn't start to happen until Xander felt like he had his full lung capacity again.
"Should I call you William?" he said, possibly in earnest.
"Probably not." Spike reached for his coat, pulled out his cigarettes.
"Hey-don't smoke in my car. I still have to buy this, sometime, and the police might take it back as evidence," he warned. Definitely sober now. And tired.
"You're some kind of man," Spike said. He put the pack back in his coat pocket. "Been watching all this time, didn't know you had it in you."
"Yeah?" Xander said. He tried to put his hair into some kind of not-sex mess.
"Well, don't go telling everybody. Run along to the wife."
"Okay, Spike. I... thanks for tonight. I might have needed that-don't you go telling all your demon friends, either."
They locked the car doors. The sun would be up in an hour.
"And?"
"And we all lived happily ever after? Oh wait, until we brought back Buffy and almost ended the world and I didn't get married."
"And?" Willow prodded. Literally, with her fingers all pokey in Xander's side. "So you really... wow. Do you ever wonder where Spike is, what happened to him?"
"Whatever it is, it wasn't me. He got away with a lot of not-staking on account of that night," Xander added, "and he got me into my car a couple times when I locked my keys inside."