shadowscast | Fic update: How the Light Gets In (9/?)

I have another chapter to post. This will be the last of the vacation posts; after this I'll be back at work and back to writing veeerrrrrry sloooooowwwwly.

Of course if I had any impulse control, I'd keep this post under my hat for a week or so while working on the next chapter, so that I could post them at more regular intervals. But, of course, I don't! So I continue to subject you to my binge/purge writing schedule.

New this post: I'm putting a "Previously, in the Fragments 'verse" summary before the chapter, to help you with the keeping track.

So, here we go!

This is part of my Fragments series. It's a sequel to "Late Night Porn Store Blues," which is in turn a prequel to "Human Frailty."

Rating: R for the language at the moment. There might be some sexual content later.

Warnings: Spoilers for all of BtVS and AtS. The whole series was originally just an excuse to indulge my hurt/comfort kink. Somehow a plot crept in too (funny how that happens!) but expect lots of hurt/comfort still to come. My Spike's kinda broken, and my Xander's got problems of his own.

Previously in the Fragments 'verse: In "Late Night Porn Store Blues," Giles sent Xander from Rome to LA after hearing rumors of an undetected Slayer there. Xander found the girl, but it turned out to be Illyria, erstwhile god-king and currently roommate of Spike. Xander found Spike working in a porn store and suffering from a migraine, but it wasn't until Angel intervened that Xander realized Spike was now human. Spike was wounded superficially in a fight and also took an overdose of painkillers, so Xander took him to a hospital. Then, the next day in "How the Light Gets In," Giles asked Xander to recruit Spike for the new Council. Xander went and tried, and in the course of his interaction with Spike he found out that Cordelia was dead. Xander, in turn, informed Spike of Anya's death. The two of them got drunk and mourned together, and there may have been some drunken cuddles but they didn't talk about that in the morning. After sleeping the sleep of the drunk on Spike's couch, Xander had a morning cigarette in the kitchen and unfortunately triggered an apparent asthma attack in Spike. Note to Xander: don't smoke around Spike. Meanwhile, Xander tried to recruit Illyria for the Council but it didn't seem to work. Then Xander decided to solve some of Spike's problems by getting him fake I.D. Something Giles said on the phone made Xander start to worry that Spike was suicidal, so he confronted him about it. They had dinner together, and Spike managed to convince Xander that he was too afraid of hell to kill himself. The next day, they went to a gay bar together to buy a CD for Andrew (who is, by the way, gay). At first Spike danced with a stranger while Xander watched and Angel lurked outside and worried about Spike being up past his bedtime, but then Spike got laid in the bathroom and Angel and Xander had a nice conversation and finally Xander got to dance with Spike, and kiss him. The next day Giles called up with a crisis: he needed Spike to translate an Ancient Greek text so they could stop someone from turning into stone. So Xander pulled Spike out of church, they got printouts of the text, and Spike slightly crashed Xander's rental car while driving to the UCLA library for a dictionary.

Chapter 9

After Xander dropped Spike off at his place with the sheaf of papers and his Greek-English dictionary, he headed for the rental place to deal with the car. Since he couldn't exactly tell them that he'd loaned the car to a guy who didn't have a legal identity, let alone a driver's license, he ended up telling them he'd run into a telephone pole. And yeah, that was going to look fantastic on his driving record, thanks very much Spike.

He was still pissed at Spike when he went to bed, and then he couldn't sleep. Instead, he obsessed over all the ways he'd screwed up in the past twenty-four hours. He should've made Spike take a cab. He should've made up a better story for the rental company. He should've told Giles this was a stupid idea in the first place—there must be someone else they could call on to translate Ancient Greek—anyway, Spike obviously didn't know it very well if he needed a dictionary. Hell, Xander could probably translate it with a dictionary.

He shouldn't have danced with Spike last night.

The phone rang.

"Hello?"

"Hello Xander. Terribly sorry to disturb you at this hour." It was Giles, and he sounded tired. It would be morning in Rome, and he probably hadn't slept all night.

"No problem," Xander insisted quickly; not like he'd been asleep anyway. "How's it going?"

"Not very well," Giles confessed. "The text is written in a particularly dense style, and my progress is slow. Paramita and the others have lost all sensation in their extremities, and I fear time is running out. I wanted to check on Spike's progress, but when I tried the number you gave me all I got was a recorded message stating that the number I'd dialed was not in service."

"Have you got the right number?" Xander flicked on the bedside lamp, nearly knocked over the whiskey bottle sitting beside his wallet, then managed to find the right slip of paper. He read the number to Giles.

"That's what I have here," Giles confirmed. "Why don't you try from your end? Let me know as soon as you raise him."

So Xander tried calling Spike—but just like Giles had said, he got an out-of-service message.

"Fuck," he muttered, and started getting dressed.

Fifteen minutes later he was banging on Spike's door and feeling 80% righteously pissed off, 20% worried. The 20% evaporated as soon as Spike called out "Who's there?"

"It's me."

There was a short pause, then Spike opened the door. He was still wearing his church clothes, but now the shirt was untucked and its top two buttons undone. The faded remains of eyeliner made his eyes look hollow—or maybe he was just tired. "Haven't got it yet," he said, and he sounded tired—his voice was low and flat. "Still workin' on it."

"Yeah, Giles too." Xander felt his ire about the smashed headlight slipping away; they were facing a life-and-death situation here, and Spike was doing all he could to help. Xander stepped inside. "He wanted to compare notes, but your phone's not working."

"Hm?" Spike gave him a puzzled look for a second, then walked into the kitchen and picked up the phone. Xander followed. Spike listened for a second, then hung up. "Suppose that's what happens when you don't pay the phone bill for three months."

"Here." Xander pulled his cell phone out of his pocket. "Use this. Giles is 003 on the speed dial."

Spike started to reach for the phone, then got a funny expression on his face. He turned away from Xander and sneezed.

"Geisundheit," Xander responded automatically.

"Cheers," Spike muttered, taking the phone while he rubbed his nose with the back of his wrist.

The scanned copies of the ancient text were spread out over the kitchen table, Xander noticed, and there were notes scrawled over some of the pages in blue ink. The book from UCLA sat open, face down. There was a roll of toilet paper sitting on the table, too, and crumpled wads of tissue were scattered over the papers. With the phone tucked between his shoulder and ear, Spike grabbed the roll, pulled a few squares off and quickly blew his nose.

"Hi," he said a second later into the phone. "Vi? ... Yeah, it's me ... Well, yeah, I was dead, but I got over it. Look, I've got to speak with Giles, it's really bloody urgent." He turned the phone away from his mouth and turned to Xander. "There goes the cat, then."

"What cat?"

"The one that just got out of the bag. Everyone'll know I'm back now."

By everyone, Xander was pretty sure Spike meant Buffy—and probably Dawn, too. "They'll be happy," he said, trying vaguely to be reassuring. He really had no idea why Spike hadn't run to Buffy as soon as he corporeally could. "They like you."

Spike shrugged in a clear I-don't-want-to-talk-about-it gesture, then sneezed again.

Xander handed him the toilet paper roll. "You're getting a cold, huh."

Spike shrugged again the exact same way, shot Xander a quick scowl, and said into the phone "Hello, Rupert."

Xander pulled out a chair and took a seat. Spike followed his example a second later and started shifting through his papers while he and Giles talked. From the half of the conversation he could hear, Xander could tell they were skipping the pleasantries. "About thirty pages," Spike said, and "Not a fucking clue. How long do you reckon we have? ... Bugger."

Lacking anything else to do while he waited, Xander watched Spike.

Even with bleary eyes, a reddened nose and messed up hair, Spike somehow looked hot. He had really nice, round lips and those sharp cheekbones...

You sound gayer than Andrew, Xander's inner critic pointed out politely. And at the same moment, Spike raised an eyebrow at Xander, like he was asking 'What are you looking at?'

Xander dropped his gaze to the table and pretended to be interested in a page of Ancient Greek until Spike looked away.

"No, I'm using Liddell and Scott," Spike was saying, pinching the bridge of his nose with his free hand. "It's a bit weak on the mystical vocabulary, of course ... How do you spell that?" He picked up his pen and started scrawling something in a margin.

It was weird, he kind of sounded like Giles. Even the way he was talking, his accent, seemed strangely Giles-ey. Xander had been pretty skeptical this morning when Giles had told him what he needed Spike to do. Xander would believe that Spike knew how to hot-wire a car, maybe, or cheat at poker—but read Ancient Greek?

Spike is actually smart, Xander realized with a kind of shock. Book smart, like Willow and Giles. That was...cool. Mind-bendingly weird, but cool.

Meanwhile, Spike was saying good-bye to Giles.

"What now?" Xander asked.

"Giles hasn't found anything yet, no more'n me. Nothing for it but to keep going." Spike set the cell phone down on the table and massaged his temples wearily. "Best leave the phone with me, all right?"

"Yeah, sure." Xander hesitated; not like there was anything he could really help with here, when the only Greek he knew was the names of a few fraternities, but it didn't feel right to just walk out and leave Spike with all the work. "Is there anything I can do?"

"Wouldn't say no to a cup of coffee." Spike gestured vaguely towards the cupboards. "There's a jar of instant somewhere."

"Great," Xander said, standing up. "I can get back to my roots as the bringer of coffee and donuts."

Spike didn't reply; he was hunched over his papers, scribbling something else in a margin.

It wasn't so bad being Donut Boy, Xander reflected as he started opening cupboards, looking for the coffee. At least Donut Boy never hurt anybody. And all of a sudden he could swear he smelled gunpowder. He could see the girl slumping forward, the blood pooling in the dirt at her feet.

"You all right, Harris?" Spike's voice cut through the flashback and Xander saw the cupboard in front of him again. Empty. His hand ached from gripping the knob so hard, and he wasn't sure if he'd said anything or not.

"I'm fine," he said curtly, and tried the next cupboard.

He found the coffee, and by the time he'd spooned some into two mugs and plugged in the kettle, his hands had mostly stopped shaking. Spike seemed to ignore him, bent over his work and sniffling every few seconds.

Last night, Angel had been worried that Spike would get sick again. So there was probably an "I told you so" coming up in the near future. Xander wondered briefly where Angel was living these days, what he was up to besides hassling Spike. He hadn't seemed especially evil when they'd met in the porn store or behind the Eclectic Ballroom. Whatever the deal had been with Wolfram & Hart, it must be off since they'd left the dimension. Spike had seemed pretty hostile towards him, but that probably came from a thousand things in their history together. Plus, Angel's disturbing new manifestation as an overprotective old woman was obviously annoying the hell out of Spike. Christ, if Angel heard Spike had a cold he'd probably be at the door ten minutes later with a thermos of chicken soup. If he even knew about chicken soup, that is—being a vampire and all.

Wait a second. Thinking of food, it dawned on Xander that there'd been something wrong with the cupboards when he was looking for the coffee. As in, they'd all been empty. He checked again, including the ones he hadn't tried before. Spike had literally nothing but the coffee, a box of tea, and three packages of ramen noodles.

"What're you looking for?" Spike asked, looking up just as the kettle started whistling.

"Old Mother Hubbard."

"Hm?" Spike looked puzzled.

"But when she got there, the cupboard was bare, and so the poor dog had none. Come on, you're English—you must know that one," Xander said, pouring the boiling water into the two coffee mugs. He brought them over to the table.

"Oh. Yeah. Haven't really been shopping." Spike paused, cupping his hands over is mouth and nose. "ah...htchoo!" he sneezed, his shoulders hunching in.

Xander nudged the much-diminished roll of toilet paper towards Spike, who sneezed again before he managed to rip a piece off and blow his nose. He looked pretty fucking sick and tired, Xander realized—and he was about to pull an all-nighter. "Spike, don't take this the wrong way, but when's the last time you ate?"

Spike took a careful sip of the steaming coffee. "Church runs a soup kitchen out of the basement. I was gonna go after mass."

Well, at least that explained what he was doing at church. "Okay, but when's the last time you actually ate?"

After a couple second's hesitation, Spike sighed. "At the curry place with you," he admitted, looking like it pained him to say it.

"That was two days ago," Xander pointed out.

Spike's jaw tightened stubbornly. "Grocery money's tight, yeah, but I was getting by all right. You going to go all Angel on me now and tell me I'm going to starve to death?"

"Hey, I've seen people literally starving to death, and believe me, you're not even close," Xander said quickly, before Spike could get all offended and defensive again the way he had the time Xander offered to buy him dinner. Which was true, as far as it went—but going two days without food wasn't healthy, even Xander knew that, and it hadn't been his imagination before; Spike was thinner than he had been in Sunnydale. "But if you're buying hair dye and video games when you can't afford food, you're kind of a moron."

Spike straightened up in his seat, looking indignant. "The bleach was left over from before everything went pear-shaped, and as for the bloody video games—if you lived with a wild Siberian tiger, who would you feed first, it or you?"

Xander frowned. "Illyria? Is she that dangerous?" He lowered his voice. "Is she here?"

Spike shook his head. "She's out hunting. Probably be back soon. As for dangerous—she's a lot stronger than a vampire, and completely amoral. I haven't got a sodding clue what makes her tick. She likes fighting, the video games seem to keep her from going barking mad with boredom in between times—she doesn't sleep, you know—and I think...ah...etchoo!" Spike shuddered slightly after the sneeze, and reached for the toilet paper. "I think maybe she's lonely. I don't know that someday she won't decide my insides would look better on the outside, or such like—she threatens it often enough."

"What is it with you and violent women?" Xander asked, meaning it as a sort of joke, but he regretted it as soon as he heard the words coming out of his mouth. The question could really open up a whole wormy can of don't-go-there, not that Spike was likely to answer it anyway. And of course Spike didn't know that after Sunnydale, while Buffy was getting therapy and they all thought Spike was dust, Buffy had told Xander all about the fucked-up relationship she'd had with him after they brought her back from the dead.

Spike did tilt his head, giving Xander a quick, puzzled look, but then he just shrugged and said "Illyria hasn't hurt me since I turned human. Anyway, I have to get back to work. Ta for the coffee."

"Okay. I'm going to go out and get some food." Xander stood up.

"I don't need—"

"You're working for the Council," Xander interrupted him. "Therefore, we feed you."

Spike blinked, maybe surprised at the forcefulness of Xander's tone. "I suppose I am, at that," he agreed hesitantly. "Just on a temporary basis, like."

Xander tried to smile. "So, anyway, good luck. I'll be back soon."

***

Outside the apartment building, he immediately lit up a cigarette. He leaned against the new rental car and took a long drag, waiting for the nicotine hit.

A guy coming along the sidewalk eyed Xander in a edgy sort of way, then crossed to the other side of the street and kept going. The guy was black, looked maybe seventeen or eighteen, close to six feet tall and dressed in gangsta style. Xander watched him go, darkly amused, and rubbed his chin. Maybe I should shave....

As soon as he was finished his smoke, he got in the car and went looking for someplace to get food at midnight.

Things with Spike were getting confusing. Okay, first of all—he was human. It was taking a while for that to really sink in. He'd known it intellectually ever since he'd found Spike's pulse in the back of the porn store, but he seemed to keep forgetting it on a gut level whenever he was with him. Spike just didn't seem different from before. Xander had known people who got vamped, and there had always been pretty fucking significant differences in their before and after personalities. It stood to reason that getting unvamped should mean a big change, too.

Of course, he couldn't wonder about that without thinking about souls, too. Nothing they'd learned from Angelus about the effect of a soul on a vampire had seemed to apply to Spike. Other than his insano basement period, Spike hadn't seemed much different after the soul insertion. So maybe Spike's personality was like the speed of light, a universal constant.

Only, Xander was starting to get the feeling that Spike had to work at it these days. At the club last night he'd seemed almost exactly like his pre-chip self, enough so to send shivers down Xander's backbone....but he'd put on the look like a costume in the bathroom while Xander was waiting for him.

And maybe he was different, in some way Xander couldn't quite put a finger on...because fuck, Xander was starting to like him. Part of it was sympathy pains for the crappy job and the money problems; he kind of felt like taking Spike out for a beer and telling him about the Fabulous Ladies Nite Club in the I've been where you are spirit. And, let's face it—part of it was the fact that Spike was fucking hot. Now that Andrew had succeeded where Larry had failed and got Xander to admit that yeah, sometimes guys did turn him on, he could admit to himself that he found Spike attractive. More so when he wasn't directly plotting Xander's own death, of course...but that second time they'd lived together, sometimes Spike had walked around the apartment after a shower with just a towel around his waist, and Xander knew perfectly well that his sarcastic comments about Spike's lack of body hair had been cover-up for his own accelerated heartbeat.

I wonder if Spike's chest is still all smooth like that, or if it was just a vampire thing.

Naked Spike was a happy thought, actually, but Xander pushed it aside for now and kept his eye peeled for an open takeout place. It was hard enough driving one-eyed at night in an unfamiliar city without sending all his blood down south away from his brain.

It was nice, though, having those thoughts. After everything that happened in the Congo he'd pretty much lost interest in sex. Xander half-smiled, imagining telling Giles 'I'm doing so much better now, I want to have sex with Spike!'

Yeah, that would be a good way to get himself sent for involuntary psychiatric treatment. He laughed quietly, picturing Giles's expression.

Anyway, there were complications. Illyria, for one; Xander hadn't realized before that Spike was scared of her. Or, maybe not scared exactly...but not as much in control as he'd seemed to be. Angel, for another, wherever he was lurking right now. If Xander finally managed to convince Spike to come to Rome, they'd probably both want to tag along. That would sure be interesting.

Xander spotted a KFC with its lights on, and pulled into the parking lot. Get food. Keep Spike from passing out before he finds the cure for the demon snake bites. Figure out the rest later.

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julia-here.livejournal.com

Plus, Angel's disturbing new manifestation as an overprotective old woman was obviously annoying the hell out of Spike.

Yup, that's Angel: wanting to do the right thing but uniquely able to piss people off while doing it.

Xander half-smiled, imagining telling Giles 'I'm doing so much better now, I want to have sex with Spike!'

Love that line- and the look on Giles' face would be... instructive.

Julia, feeling like giving this fic a nice rich dessert and a blankie

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Fic update: How the Light Gets In (9/?)

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