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Okay then, here we go. Part five. And i'm gonna take a posting break over the weekend since a lot of you are probably doing 'stuff' - at least my 'Merican flist probably is - and i need to wriiiiiiiiite.
Yes, i've been slacking. Plus i'm going to have company on and off over the weekend, i think. If they show up. Who knows! Heh.
Now for a little self-pimp. Another Supernatural ficlet, just a sort of...moments in the lives of the Winchesters. Spoilers for the finale but nothing else. It's over in![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
supernaturalfic, right here. 'Brightness Falls from the Air'
And of course, even though i didn't say - thank you thank you![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
reremouse and darkhavens for help with *both* fics. You guys are like - the wind beneathe my wings.
*snerk*
Previous parts are here.
When Spike woke up Xander was just finishing off the last of a bowl of cereal. He watched Spike's eyelids flutter and his eyes sort-of focus almost instinctively on the TV. His gaze was dazed and bloodshot, the lids only half way open. Xander got up and carried his bowl and spoon and cereal box into the kitchen - got a glass of juice and a bottle of water and walked back to the couch. Spike was shuffling his legs and arms in a random sort of way, as if he wanted to get up but couldn't quite figure out how.
"You need something?" Xander asked and Spike flinched - looked up at him and blinked a few times, his mouth a thin, tight line until he recognized who was standing over him.
"Need to piss," Spike said - wiped the back of his hand over his mouth and got his elbow up onto the couch, levering himself slowly to his feet. He gave a low growl of sound when his hurt foot touched the floor. "Fuck, fuck..." He got himself into a sitting position on the edge of the couch and then sat there, looking down at his foot, his hands white-knuckled on the edge of the cushions. "Don't think I can walk," he said finally.
Xander sighed and put his glass down on the end table. He wasn't exactly surprised. "You're such a fucking pain. Here." He shoved the water into Spike's hand and hauled him up, Spike's arm over his shoulder, Xander's whole body just too fucking close to dirty ex-vamp. They shuffled awkwardly to the bathroom, Spike doing his best not to touch his foot down. Once there, Xander turned him loose and got out. Spike could do the pissing thing on his own.
He went into the kitchen and ran the faucet until the water was good and hot - filled a big plastic tub halfway full and poured Epsom salts into it. He carried it out to the living room - went back for an old towel and a plastic grocery bag and the sticky latex gloves he had tucked into the back of the junk drawer. In a Slayer household, medical supplies came right in with the paper towels and gallons of milk. Xander hadn't bought any in a long time.
He settled back on the couch, flipping through the last few pages of Spike's journal. It wasn't very coherent. Long, rambling sentences about the taste of the night air and the scent of the wind interspersed with latitude and longitude and details gleaned from the clippings, coded with numbers and letters that were copied in shaking hand on the fragile newsprint. It meant nothing at all, at first, but there was something there. Some weird pattern Xander thought he could almost see. He looked up at a thump and saw Spike leaning on the stair rail, lip caught in his teeth.
"Fucking hurts."
"Come over here and I'll fix it," Xander said, and watched Spike inch across the floor, reeling sideways across the empty expanse where there was nothing to hold on to, his swollen big toe just skimming the planks as he tried to hop without touching down. He fell heavily against the back of the couch and then hitched himself over, slithering down into a heap on the cushions. He was pale - sweating - and his lip was bleeding. He saw the journal in Xander's hands and reached for it, eyes wide.
"Harris, give it back!"
"I'm not hurting it," Xander said. He leaned away from Spike and put the journal on the far end of the couch - slipped down to his knees, picking up the gloves. "Gimme your foot," he said, and Spike looked at the journal and then down at his foot, licking his lips. Uncertainty in his expression but mounting pain, too. Too much of it.
"Don't poke at me, Harris," Spike muttered, but he held his foot up and Xander found where the bandage had been clumsily tied - undid the sodden knot and then unwound the stinking mess into the plastic bag. The foot that was gradually revealed was swollen, the red skin shiny and hot. The cut across the bottom was open, sutures broken and the edges curling back white. The raw flesh underneath was angry and oozing. All of it - all of Spike that Xander could see - was streaked with filth.
"Jesus, Spike! Did you just - roll in the dirt? Find a few dead dogs to kick around?" He peeled the gloves off carefully, turning them inside out and dropping them on top of the bandage.
"Fuck you," Spike said, but his voice was cracked - a little breathless - and he was looking down at the wreck of his foot with something like horror. "Christ, that's fucking - disgusting." He took a sharp breath - coughed hard, his shoulders shaking and his voice going a little high - a little hysterical. "It's rotting."
"It's infected. Here - you're gonna soak it." Xander laid the towel out and then dragged the tub over - positioned it so Spike could put his foot right down into it.
"What the fuck good is that? Probably got fucking - m-maggots in it -"
"It's too cold for maggots, Spike, for god's sake! Stop being such a fucking pussy." Xander grabbed his ankle and yanked his foot closer - wrinkled his nose at the stench and shoved down.
"Fucking hell!" Spike tried to jerk away and Xander grabbed his knee and pinched, viciously hard. Spike yelped but froze, shivering. Spike's leg was thin and bony - trembling under Xander's fingers.
"Fuck, fuck - that sodding well hurts, Harris! Jesus, it burns -"
"It's just Epsom salt and hot water. If you're lucky it'll draw some of the infection out. Just sit still." Xander pinched again and Spike jerked - clawed at the back of his hand.
"Get off me!"
"Just do what you're fucking told," Xander snapped, jerking his hand away from Spike's leg. He tied the grocery bag shut and knelt up - lobbed it hard toward the kitchen. It hit the floor and skidded and came to rest a few feet from the trash can. *Damn, almost.* Xander pushed himself up onto the couch and retrieved the journal and Spike stopped fidgeting around and went still, his fingers sinking into his thighs. His nails - what there was of them - were filthy again.
"That's my private stuff, Harris," Spike said. But his voice was uncertain - laced with pain. With exhaustion. Xander patted the cover of the journal and snapped the handful of rubber bands back around it - tossed it into Spike's lap. Spike snatched it up, holding it close.
"I know. I figure you owe me." Xander leaned for his juice - Spike must have left his water in the bathroom - and took a swig. "What is it?"
Spike stroked the cover of the journal - ran a finger slowly down the side, ruffling the edges of newsprint that stuck out. "It's... It's kind of..." He looked up suddenly, eyes going narrow. Staring at Xander with a look Xander recognized from...before. A sizing-up look, narrow focused and calculating. "If I tell you, you tell me what the fuck is up with your eye - with you. Deal?"
*Was going to anyway,* Xander thought, but he'd let Spike have this one. "Fuck. Yeah, okay."
"Right." Spike almost smiled - looked back down at the journal and sighed instead. He leaned back on the couch, his head going back and his throat stretching taut and white, scarred just under his chin where Xander could see. Crooked slash of silver in the flickering light of the TV. "It's for - I started keepin' it about - six months after..."
"After you turned real?"
"Was already real," Spike snapped, shooting Xander a fierce look. "When the bloody Powers decided I was their golden boy. Fuckers. I never signed on to their bloody crusade. Just wanted -" Spike waved a hand, vague gesture that meant...everything.
"Andrew told us about - what happened. The amulet and stuff."
"Lying fuck; he promised he wouldn't," Spike said, but there was no heat in his voice. "Angel was tryin' not to be a total fucking wanker, brooding about not getting the prize. Some bloody prize." Spike shifted, sloshing the water in the tub a little and hissing in a sharp breath. "Went back to that bloody hotel of his and started up with the same helping the helpless or the hopeless or whatever shite he'd been doing..." Another shift and Spike's eyebrows were drawn down in pain - his lip between his teeth. "Said you were gonna fix this, Harris."
"Huh? Oh. Here." Xander pulled his pill bottle from his pocket and pressed an Oxycontin into Spike's hand - watched him dry-swallow it and grimace. "Want some?" he asked, holding up his juice.
Spike rolled his head on the back of the couch and looked at the bottle. "Fuck, no. Don't you have any beer?"
"You're a fucking pain," Xander said, but he got up and got them both beers and Spike drained half of his in long, gulping swallows - gasped for air and then sat there, staring at the ceiling. Xander took a gulp of his own. "So...Angel, LA, doing...stuff. And you're alive and...?"
"And I'm doing - stuff - too. Helping him save people so bloody stupid it's a wonder they remember to breathe. Killing demons and vamps and all that -" A wave of the beer bottle through the air. "All that shite. Then there's these demons...can't remember what kind. Big and ugly and scaly. And we're fighting and I...kinda forget."
"Forget - what. That you're fighting?"
"That I'm fucking human. Woke up in the hospital, my leg fucked six ways from Sunday and Angelus all broody at the foot of the bed. Tellin' me my fighting days were over, I needed to think about really living, maybe finding some bint -" Spike's voice choked off and he lifted the bottle to his lips, clattering the glass against his teeth. "I told him he was out of his bloody mind. Fighting and fucking, that's what livin's all about." Spike drank again and then was silent and Xander drank his own beer - watched Spike's right hand rub a worn spot on the journal cover, a slow circle that looked so habitual as to go unnoticed. The silence stretched out, thin and stiff.
"I was in that bloody hospital bed for most of a month!" Spike blurted, eyes wide - horrified. Terrified. "Hospital and some bloody - half way house or some such, doing physical therapy. Pins and plates and all kinds of shite in my leg, weak as a fucking kitten... Angelus fucked off somewhere, left me a fucking note. Sold the hotel, dumped a chunk of money in a bank account and told me he wouldn't see me die again. Bastard." Spike drained the last of his beer and sat twisting the neck of it in his fingers, squeezing the glass like he wanted to break it.
"So, you got money, you've got a fucked up leg - I don't get it." Xander drained his own beer - sat forward, his hands laced together, dangling the bottle between his knees.
"Don't get what?" Spike asked. His ragged thumb nail scratched a line through the damp label on the bottle.
"I don't get why you're being such a fucking asshole," Xander barked, and Spike flinched.
"Fuck you -"
"No - shut up! So you're fucking human - big fucking deal. So are we all!"
"You are, I'm not -"
Xander let the bottle in his hands slide to the floor - reached over and grabbed Spike's arm, yanking it toward him and digging his thumb into the raw, red mess that was his inner elbow. Spike hissed in pain, trying to jerk away. "You're human too, Spike. Just like the rest of the fucking world and where the fuck do you get off just - just wasting your fucking life -!"
Xander's thumb dug harder, splitting skin, and Spike's lips pulled back in a feral snarl. He rammed himself forward, forehead connecting solidly with forehead. A burst of pain - light like sparklers exploding across Xander's vision and he reeled back, letting Spike go.
"Is that what this is? Some bloody - intervention?" Spike wiped the back of his hand under his nose - seemed to notice the bottle he was holding and flung it. It hit the stone surround of the fireplace and shattered and Xander flinched. Flinched again when Spike's hand clawed at his shirt and then twisted in it, yanking him close. "You think you know what the fuck this is? Do you?" Spike shoved Xander away and stood, somehow - the first graceful move he'd made in days and for a moment he was Spike. He was the hundred-year-old predator that had made Xander's life a misery once upon a time.
Then he twisted on his bad leg - skidded, because the cut and the limp were on the same side - and went down, bony ass and hip and elbow thumping down hard. The tub overturned and the milky, bloody water soaked the towel - ran in rivulets toward the fireplace and Xander let it, watching Spike kick the tub away and then just sit. His jeans were soaked to the knee and his foot was bleeding and he just - didn't move. Left leg out straight in front of him, right leg bent and curled under - head in his hands. From tiger to mongrel in seconds.
"Spike, you just -"
"You don't have a fucking clue, mate." Spike's voice was muffled - thick and wet. "You don't know what those bastards did to me."
"They gave you life -"
"They took it!" Spike roared. He gripped his hair in his fists and yanked - looked up at Xander with eyes that glinted gold-green in the firelight. "I was immortal, Harris! I was strong, and fast, and nothing could stop me and they took it."
"Sunlight could stop you, and a stake -"
"A bloody stake could stop you, you fuck." Spike wiped at his nose again - looked around and spotted his journal and dragged it over - wrapped his arms around it. "When the bloody powers decided to make me human they didn't resurrect the man I was, Harris. William Shaw didn't suddenly wake up and look out on the bloody world! They just - just made me fit in here. Pushed me in and - crushed me down until I -" He dropped the journal suddenly, his fingers were clawing at his chest - at the t-shirt until it tore and then at the skin underneath. Xander pushed off the couch and to his knees and grabbed at Spike's wrists.
"Stop it, Spike, that doesn't -"
"Doesn't help?" Spike's mouth twisted in something like a smile and he coughed out a choking bark of a laugh, his eyes glistening. "Of course it doesn't s-sodding help. Nothing helps! They cut off what didn't fit and sewed me in here forever and I can't fucking take it, Harris. I won't take it."
"Jesus, Spike, it's just - it's just stuff. I mean -"
"I was a vampire for close to a hundred and fifty years, you ass. You think I remember how to be human?" Spike twisted his wrists in Xander's grip a little and Xander felt the tendons flex - looked down at how his fingers over lapped his thumbs and how blue the veins in the backs of Spike's hands were. How skeletal his fingers looked. "At least when I'm fucked up...Nothing hurts. I can fucking walk without limping and - and I can fight and not feel the pain... I'm what I used to be, then. What I should be," he added, his gaze focused somewhere else - some when else.
Xander squeezed Spike's wrists a little tighter - watched him wince but not pull away - not even try. "I can't believe you're just - giving up. Can't believe this is beating you. When you got chipped -"
"Stop it, Harris. Just...stop it." Spike's voice was cracking now - going hoarse and low, as if he'd run out of energy to even talk. "You don't understand a bloody thing."
"Sounds like you being a fucking pussy to me."
Spike lifted his drooping head and stared at Xander, some emotion smoldering there. But not enough. "I got sick, the first month I was human. Sick with some - 'flu or something. Felt so fucking awful...had to go to doctors and take all this...shite... And then it came back, or something like it. Every fucking month, every fucking day. Some bloody thing or other."
Spike pulled away finally and Xander let him go - watched him rub at his wrists in a distracted way and then gather up the journal again. "I can't see, Harris, you know that? Was okay at first but it's getting worse all the time. Can't hear a damn thing... My fucking bones hurt, in the cold. It's why I was down in that godforsaken place, trying to follow summer. Bones and joints feel like they've got fucking glass in them..." Spike lifted the hem of his t-shirt and wiped his eyes - wiped his nose, leaving a dark spot. Xander stared at the hollow of his belly - the scar that cut across from rib to navel, thin and curved.
"Spike -" he said. And then nothing. Nothing would come. *I'll sound like a fucking Lifetime movie no matter what I say. Jesus. And he's right. I don't know...anything.*
"Yeah, Spike. William the Bloody only I'm just another fucking human, aren't I? In a defective fucking body."
Xander sighed - looked around at the mess and stood up, dragging the soaked towel and the tub with him. "Jesus, Spike, I... I don't...I'm sorry, okay, but, fuck - you're gonna kill yourself if you don't quit with the damn drugs."
Spike laughed, a tearing sort of sound, looking up at Xander and then away, shaking his head. "I forgot, you're a D.A.R.E. kid, aren't you? Just say sodding no. Grew up on that shite, yet here you are, all pain pills and whiskey and hypocrisy."
"It's not the same thing," Xander muttered, and Spike laughed again.
"Course it is. It's exactly the same thing. The world's rubbing you raw - getting under your skin one fucking razor-edge at a time and you need something to make it...less. Make it bearable."
"No, I -"
"If you're gonna lie to me, Harris, just fuck off. I'm too bloody tired to listen to your lies." Spike looked tired - tired to death. Shoulders bowed down and his skin like a thin parchment over his bones - his gaze as dead and lifeless as a doll's painted eyes.
"Fine. Whatever, I'm a drunk, who cares? It's not going to kill me."
"You sure about that?"
Xander strode into the kitchen - shoved the towel and the tub into the sink and came back to Spike, scooping up the journal and laying on the couch. "Yeah, I'm so fucking sure it'd make you laugh. Right now, though, you need a shower. You stink - again. And you need to soak your foot some more or it really will rot off."
"Oh god." Spike rubbed his hand over his face, soft scrape of bristles across callused palm. "I fucking hate this, I hate it, I just want -"
Xander crouched down beside Spike, putting a hand tentatively on his shoulder. "You'll feel better when you're clean. Clean clothes. I'll even - I'll help you cook up again, okay? You look like shit."
"Yeah? No - fuck." Spike winced as Xander got an arm under him - hauled him upright and got him moving toward the bathroom.
*He doesn't weigh a fucking thing,* Xander thought and it hurt, to realize that.
"Harris, you still owe me -"
"No I don't. You went into segue-land and forgot all about the journal." Spike looked for a moment as if he would argue but then he nodded tiredly and Xander sighed. "Pay tomorrow, okay? Enough fucking gut-spilling moments for one night."
"Wanker," Spike muttered, but he let Xander half-carry him to the bathroom. Let Xander fuss around with the water temperature and towels and put one hand on Xander's shoulder, one on the sink while Xander worked the damp, filthy jeans off him. While Spike leaned on the wall of the shower, face turned up to the spray, Xander shoved his stuff into the hamper and dug out sweats and a thermal and a washed-soft flannel, faded blue and grey and white.
*Invalid's clothes. Fuck. He's never getting better...* Spike was on the floor of the shower mostly passed out when Xander came back, but Xander was okay with that. He'd bathed bodies so debilitated by dysentery and malnutrition they'd been walking skeletons - bodies in the final stages of AIDS. He knew the tricks - he knew the easiest ways. He knew the feeling of death under his fingertips, and it made his stomach curdle tight inside him. "I've got you, Spike, just lean on me..."
When Spike was tucked up onto the couch, throw over his body and a pillow under his head, Xander swept up the broken glass and carried various cups and bottles to the kitchen. Cleaned up and did some laundry and took his own shower. It was almost three in morning but Xander wasn't tired. He sat down with a hoarded bottle of gin - left over from some god-awful party or other - and drank and re-read the journal and tried to find that elusive pattern. Tried until dawn, and fell asleep over a weirdly beautiful sketch of a dead woman, her throat torn and open like wings, her eyes smudged jade.
Continued here.
Yes, i've been slacking. Plus i'm going to have company on and off over the weekend, i think. If they show up. Who knows! Heh.
Now for a little self-pimp. Another Supernatural ficlet, just a sort of...moments in the lives of the Winchesters. Spoilers for the finale but nothing else. It's over in
supernaturalfic, right here. 'Brightness Falls from the Air'And of course, even though i didn't say - thank you thank you
reremouse and darkhavens for help with *both* fics. You guys are like - the wind beneathe my wings.*snerk*
Previous parts are here.
When Spike woke up Xander was just finishing off the last of a bowl of cereal. He watched Spike's eyelids flutter and his eyes sort-of focus almost instinctively on the TV. His gaze was dazed and bloodshot, the lids only half way open. Xander got up and carried his bowl and spoon and cereal box into the kitchen - got a glass of juice and a bottle of water and walked back to the couch. Spike was shuffling his legs and arms in a random sort of way, as if he wanted to get up but couldn't quite figure out how.
"You need something?" Xander asked and Spike flinched - looked up at him and blinked a few times, his mouth a thin, tight line until he recognized who was standing over him.
"Need to piss," Spike said - wiped the back of his hand over his mouth and got his elbow up onto the couch, levering himself slowly to his feet. He gave a low growl of sound when his hurt foot touched the floor. "Fuck, fuck..." He got himself into a sitting position on the edge of the couch and then sat there, looking down at his foot, his hands white-knuckled on the edge of the cushions. "Don't think I can walk," he said finally.
Xander sighed and put his glass down on the end table. He wasn't exactly surprised. "You're such a fucking pain. Here." He shoved the water into Spike's hand and hauled him up, Spike's arm over his shoulder, Xander's whole body just too fucking close to dirty ex-vamp. They shuffled awkwardly to the bathroom, Spike doing his best not to touch his foot down. Once there, Xander turned him loose and got out. Spike could do the pissing thing on his own.
He went into the kitchen and ran the faucet until the water was good and hot - filled a big plastic tub halfway full and poured Epsom salts into it. He carried it out to the living room - went back for an old towel and a plastic grocery bag and the sticky latex gloves he had tucked into the back of the junk drawer. In a Slayer household, medical supplies came right in with the paper towels and gallons of milk. Xander hadn't bought any in a long time.
He settled back on the couch, flipping through the last few pages of Spike's journal. It wasn't very coherent. Long, rambling sentences about the taste of the night air and the scent of the wind interspersed with latitude and longitude and details gleaned from the clippings, coded with numbers and letters that were copied in shaking hand on the fragile newsprint. It meant nothing at all, at first, but there was something there. Some weird pattern Xander thought he could almost see. He looked up at a thump and saw Spike leaning on the stair rail, lip caught in his teeth.
"Fucking hurts."
"Come over here and I'll fix it," Xander said, and watched Spike inch across the floor, reeling sideways across the empty expanse where there was nothing to hold on to, his swollen big toe just skimming the planks as he tried to hop without touching down. He fell heavily against the back of the couch and then hitched himself over, slithering down into a heap on the cushions. He was pale - sweating - and his lip was bleeding. He saw the journal in Xander's hands and reached for it, eyes wide.
"Harris, give it back!"
"I'm not hurting it," Xander said. He leaned away from Spike and put the journal on the far end of the couch - slipped down to his knees, picking up the gloves. "Gimme your foot," he said, and Spike looked at the journal and then down at his foot, licking his lips. Uncertainty in his expression but mounting pain, too. Too much of it.
"Don't poke at me, Harris," Spike muttered, but he held his foot up and Xander found where the bandage had been clumsily tied - undid the sodden knot and then unwound the stinking mess into the plastic bag. The foot that was gradually revealed was swollen, the red skin shiny and hot. The cut across the bottom was open, sutures broken and the edges curling back white. The raw flesh underneath was angry and oozing. All of it - all of Spike that Xander could see - was streaked with filth.
"Jesus, Spike! Did you just - roll in the dirt? Find a few dead dogs to kick around?" He peeled the gloves off carefully, turning them inside out and dropping them on top of the bandage.
"Fuck you," Spike said, but his voice was cracked - a little breathless - and he was looking down at the wreck of his foot with something like horror. "Christ, that's fucking - disgusting." He took a sharp breath - coughed hard, his shoulders shaking and his voice going a little high - a little hysterical. "It's rotting."
"It's infected. Here - you're gonna soak it." Xander laid the towel out and then dragged the tub over - positioned it so Spike could put his foot right down into it.
"What the fuck good is that? Probably got fucking - m-maggots in it -"
"It's too cold for maggots, Spike, for god's sake! Stop being such a fucking pussy." Xander grabbed his ankle and yanked his foot closer - wrinkled his nose at the stench and shoved down.
"Fucking hell!" Spike tried to jerk away and Xander grabbed his knee and pinched, viciously hard. Spike yelped but froze, shivering. Spike's leg was thin and bony - trembling under Xander's fingers.
"Fuck, fuck - that sodding well hurts, Harris! Jesus, it burns -"
"It's just Epsom salt and hot water. If you're lucky it'll draw some of the infection out. Just sit still." Xander pinched again and Spike jerked - clawed at the back of his hand.
"Get off me!"
"Just do what you're fucking told," Xander snapped, jerking his hand away from Spike's leg. He tied the grocery bag shut and knelt up - lobbed it hard toward the kitchen. It hit the floor and skidded and came to rest a few feet from the trash can. *Damn, almost.* Xander pushed himself up onto the couch and retrieved the journal and Spike stopped fidgeting around and went still, his fingers sinking into his thighs. His nails - what there was of them - were filthy again.
"That's my private stuff, Harris," Spike said. But his voice was uncertain - laced with pain. With exhaustion. Xander patted the cover of the journal and snapped the handful of rubber bands back around it - tossed it into Spike's lap. Spike snatched it up, holding it close.
"I know. I figure you owe me." Xander leaned for his juice - Spike must have left his water in the bathroom - and took a swig. "What is it?"
Spike stroked the cover of the journal - ran a finger slowly down the side, ruffling the edges of newsprint that stuck out. "It's... It's kind of..." He looked up suddenly, eyes going narrow. Staring at Xander with a look Xander recognized from...before. A sizing-up look, narrow focused and calculating. "If I tell you, you tell me what the fuck is up with your eye - with you. Deal?"
*Was going to anyway,* Xander thought, but he'd let Spike have this one. "Fuck. Yeah, okay."
"Right." Spike almost smiled - looked back down at the journal and sighed instead. He leaned back on the couch, his head going back and his throat stretching taut and white, scarred just under his chin where Xander could see. Crooked slash of silver in the flickering light of the TV. "It's for - I started keepin' it about - six months after..."
"After you turned real?"
"Was already real," Spike snapped, shooting Xander a fierce look. "When the bloody Powers decided I was their golden boy. Fuckers. I never signed on to their bloody crusade. Just wanted -" Spike waved a hand, vague gesture that meant...everything.
"Andrew told us about - what happened. The amulet and stuff."
"Lying fuck; he promised he wouldn't," Spike said, but there was no heat in his voice. "Angel was tryin' not to be a total fucking wanker, brooding about not getting the prize. Some bloody prize." Spike shifted, sloshing the water in the tub a little and hissing in a sharp breath. "Went back to that bloody hotel of his and started up with the same helping the helpless or the hopeless or whatever shite he'd been doing..." Another shift and Spike's eyebrows were drawn down in pain - his lip between his teeth. "Said you were gonna fix this, Harris."
"Huh? Oh. Here." Xander pulled his pill bottle from his pocket and pressed an Oxycontin into Spike's hand - watched him dry-swallow it and grimace. "Want some?" he asked, holding up his juice.
Spike rolled his head on the back of the couch and looked at the bottle. "Fuck, no. Don't you have any beer?"
"You're a fucking pain," Xander said, but he got up and got them both beers and Spike drained half of his in long, gulping swallows - gasped for air and then sat there, staring at the ceiling. Xander took a gulp of his own. "So...Angel, LA, doing...stuff. And you're alive and...?"
"And I'm doing - stuff - too. Helping him save people so bloody stupid it's a wonder they remember to breathe. Killing demons and vamps and all that -" A wave of the beer bottle through the air. "All that shite. Then there's these demons...can't remember what kind. Big and ugly and scaly. And we're fighting and I...kinda forget."
"Forget - what. That you're fighting?"
"That I'm fucking human. Woke up in the hospital, my leg fucked six ways from Sunday and Angelus all broody at the foot of the bed. Tellin' me my fighting days were over, I needed to think about really living, maybe finding some bint -" Spike's voice choked off and he lifted the bottle to his lips, clattering the glass against his teeth. "I told him he was out of his bloody mind. Fighting and fucking, that's what livin's all about." Spike drank again and then was silent and Xander drank his own beer - watched Spike's right hand rub a worn spot on the journal cover, a slow circle that looked so habitual as to go unnoticed. The silence stretched out, thin and stiff.
"I was in that bloody hospital bed for most of a month!" Spike blurted, eyes wide - horrified. Terrified. "Hospital and some bloody - half way house or some such, doing physical therapy. Pins and plates and all kinds of shite in my leg, weak as a fucking kitten... Angelus fucked off somewhere, left me a fucking note. Sold the hotel, dumped a chunk of money in a bank account and told me he wouldn't see me die again. Bastard." Spike drained the last of his beer and sat twisting the neck of it in his fingers, squeezing the glass like he wanted to break it.
"So, you got money, you've got a fucked up leg - I don't get it." Xander drained his own beer - sat forward, his hands laced together, dangling the bottle between his knees.
"Don't get what?" Spike asked. His ragged thumb nail scratched a line through the damp label on the bottle.
"I don't get why you're being such a fucking asshole," Xander barked, and Spike flinched.
"Fuck you -"
"No - shut up! So you're fucking human - big fucking deal. So are we all!"
"You are, I'm not -"
Xander let the bottle in his hands slide to the floor - reached over and grabbed Spike's arm, yanking it toward him and digging his thumb into the raw, red mess that was his inner elbow. Spike hissed in pain, trying to jerk away. "You're human too, Spike. Just like the rest of the fucking world and where the fuck do you get off just - just wasting your fucking life -!"
Xander's thumb dug harder, splitting skin, and Spike's lips pulled back in a feral snarl. He rammed himself forward, forehead connecting solidly with forehead. A burst of pain - light like sparklers exploding across Xander's vision and he reeled back, letting Spike go.
"Is that what this is? Some bloody - intervention?" Spike wiped the back of his hand under his nose - seemed to notice the bottle he was holding and flung it. It hit the stone surround of the fireplace and shattered and Xander flinched. Flinched again when Spike's hand clawed at his shirt and then twisted in it, yanking him close. "You think you know what the fuck this is? Do you?" Spike shoved Xander away and stood, somehow - the first graceful move he'd made in days and for a moment he was Spike. He was the hundred-year-old predator that had made Xander's life a misery once upon a time.
Then he twisted on his bad leg - skidded, because the cut and the limp were on the same side - and went down, bony ass and hip and elbow thumping down hard. The tub overturned and the milky, bloody water soaked the towel - ran in rivulets toward the fireplace and Xander let it, watching Spike kick the tub away and then just sit. His jeans were soaked to the knee and his foot was bleeding and he just - didn't move. Left leg out straight in front of him, right leg bent and curled under - head in his hands. From tiger to mongrel in seconds.
"Spike, you just -"
"You don't have a fucking clue, mate." Spike's voice was muffled - thick and wet. "You don't know what those bastards did to me."
"They gave you life -"
"They took it!" Spike roared. He gripped his hair in his fists and yanked - looked up at Xander with eyes that glinted gold-green in the firelight. "I was immortal, Harris! I was strong, and fast, and nothing could stop me and they took it."
"Sunlight could stop you, and a stake -"
"A bloody stake could stop you, you fuck." Spike wiped at his nose again - looked around and spotted his journal and dragged it over - wrapped his arms around it. "When the bloody powers decided to make me human they didn't resurrect the man I was, Harris. William Shaw didn't suddenly wake up and look out on the bloody world! They just - just made me fit in here. Pushed me in and - crushed me down until I -" He dropped the journal suddenly, his fingers were clawing at his chest - at the t-shirt until it tore and then at the skin underneath. Xander pushed off the couch and to his knees and grabbed at Spike's wrists.
"Stop it, Spike, that doesn't -"
"Doesn't help?" Spike's mouth twisted in something like a smile and he coughed out a choking bark of a laugh, his eyes glistening. "Of course it doesn't s-sodding help. Nothing helps! They cut off what didn't fit and sewed me in here forever and I can't fucking take it, Harris. I won't take it."
"Jesus, Spike, it's just - it's just stuff. I mean -"
"I was a vampire for close to a hundred and fifty years, you ass. You think I remember how to be human?" Spike twisted his wrists in Xander's grip a little and Xander felt the tendons flex - looked down at how his fingers over lapped his thumbs and how blue the veins in the backs of Spike's hands were. How skeletal his fingers looked. "At least when I'm fucked up...Nothing hurts. I can fucking walk without limping and - and I can fight and not feel the pain... I'm what I used to be, then. What I should be," he added, his gaze focused somewhere else - some when else.
Xander squeezed Spike's wrists a little tighter - watched him wince but not pull away - not even try. "I can't believe you're just - giving up. Can't believe this is beating you. When you got chipped -"
"Stop it, Harris. Just...stop it." Spike's voice was cracking now - going hoarse and low, as if he'd run out of energy to even talk. "You don't understand a bloody thing."
"Sounds like you being a fucking pussy to me."
Spike lifted his drooping head and stared at Xander, some emotion smoldering there. But not enough. "I got sick, the first month I was human. Sick with some - 'flu or something. Felt so fucking awful...had to go to doctors and take all this...shite... And then it came back, or something like it. Every fucking month, every fucking day. Some bloody thing or other."
Spike pulled away finally and Xander let him go - watched him rub at his wrists in a distracted way and then gather up the journal again. "I can't see, Harris, you know that? Was okay at first but it's getting worse all the time. Can't hear a damn thing... My fucking bones hurt, in the cold. It's why I was down in that godforsaken place, trying to follow summer. Bones and joints feel like they've got fucking glass in them..." Spike lifted the hem of his t-shirt and wiped his eyes - wiped his nose, leaving a dark spot. Xander stared at the hollow of his belly - the scar that cut across from rib to navel, thin and curved.
"Spike -" he said. And then nothing. Nothing would come. *I'll sound like a fucking Lifetime movie no matter what I say. Jesus. And he's right. I don't know...anything.*
"Yeah, Spike. William the Bloody only I'm just another fucking human, aren't I? In a defective fucking body."
Xander sighed - looked around at the mess and stood up, dragging the soaked towel and the tub with him. "Jesus, Spike, I... I don't...I'm sorry, okay, but, fuck - you're gonna kill yourself if you don't quit with the damn drugs."
Spike laughed, a tearing sort of sound, looking up at Xander and then away, shaking his head. "I forgot, you're a D.A.R.E. kid, aren't you? Just say sodding no. Grew up on that shite, yet here you are, all pain pills and whiskey and hypocrisy."
"It's not the same thing," Xander muttered, and Spike laughed again.
"Course it is. It's exactly the same thing. The world's rubbing you raw - getting under your skin one fucking razor-edge at a time and you need something to make it...less. Make it bearable."
"No, I -"
"If you're gonna lie to me, Harris, just fuck off. I'm too bloody tired to listen to your lies." Spike looked tired - tired to death. Shoulders bowed down and his skin like a thin parchment over his bones - his gaze as dead and lifeless as a doll's painted eyes.
"Fine. Whatever, I'm a drunk, who cares? It's not going to kill me."
"You sure about that?"
Xander strode into the kitchen - shoved the towel and the tub into the sink and came back to Spike, scooping up the journal and laying on the couch. "Yeah, I'm so fucking sure it'd make you laugh. Right now, though, you need a shower. You stink - again. And you need to soak your foot some more or it really will rot off."
"Oh god." Spike rubbed his hand over his face, soft scrape of bristles across callused palm. "I fucking hate this, I hate it, I just want -"
Xander crouched down beside Spike, putting a hand tentatively on his shoulder. "You'll feel better when you're clean. Clean clothes. I'll even - I'll help you cook up again, okay? You look like shit."
"Yeah? No - fuck." Spike winced as Xander got an arm under him - hauled him upright and got him moving toward the bathroom.
*He doesn't weigh a fucking thing,* Xander thought and it hurt, to realize that.
"Harris, you still owe me -"
"No I don't. You went into segue-land and forgot all about the journal." Spike looked for a moment as if he would argue but then he nodded tiredly and Xander sighed. "Pay tomorrow, okay? Enough fucking gut-spilling moments for one night."
"Wanker," Spike muttered, but he let Xander half-carry him to the bathroom. Let Xander fuss around with the water temperature and towels and put one hand on Xander's shoulder, one on the sink while Xander worked the damp, filthy jeans off him. While Spike leaned on the wall of the shower, face turned up to the spray, Xander shoved his stuff into the hamper and dug out sweats and a thermal and a washed-soft flannel, faded blue and grey and white.
*Invalid's clothes. Fuck. He's never getting better...* Spike was on the floor of the shower mostly passed out when Xander came back, but Xander was okay with that. He'd bathed bodies so debilitated by dysentery and malnutrition they'd been walking skeletons - bodies in the final stages of AIDS. He knew the tricks - he knew the easiest ways. He knew the feeling of death under his fingertips, and it made his stomach curdle tight inside him. "I've got you, Spike, just lean on me..."
When Spike was tucked up onto the couch, throw over his body and a pillow under his head, Xander swept up the broken glass and carried various cups and bottles to the kitchen. Cleaned up and did some laundry and took his own shower. It was almost three in morning but Xander wasn't tired. He sat down with a hoarded bottle of gin - left over from some god-awful party or other - and drank and re-read the journal and tried to find that elusive pattern. Tried until dawn, and fell asleep over a weirdly beautiful sketch of a dead woman, her throat torn and open like wings, her eyes smudged jade.
Continued here.
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Xander will be the White Knight to the end of time. That's somehow very comforting. :)
Hope your weekend is good, too!
:)