shadowscast

I've been working insane hours for the past couple months, and this week I've had insomnia on top of that. And yet, this week I've also started writing again. It feels good. It feels like I've reclaimed something important.

I finally managed to start the next Fragments story, which I'd been totally blocked on since finishing "Before the Dawn of Time." It feels like it's really happening this time (there have been multiple false starts which have never made it off my hard drive).

I know I shouldn't post this yet. It's the start of a long story and I'm not 100% sure where it's going. It's 1500 words written in a state of total exhaustion, un-betaed, and I can't guarantee that all the sentences start and end in the same dimension, if you know what I mean. It's not even a chapter—it ends at an okay place, I think, but it's not a chapter ending (the scene continues after what I've written here).

But I have to put it on my LJ anyway, 'cause that's my only way to back it up in case of disastrous computer failure. And, well, I could put it in a private post, but, uh ... man, I've been feeling so cut off from fandom for the past few months. So I justify this to myself, saying: my LJ is like a workshop! It doesn't have to be polished until I post to communities/my web page! ... Speaking of which, anyone willing to beta read future bits?

Anyway, here's the info:

Title: That Good Night
Rating: Who knows? Maybe NC-17, maybe just R. Probably not PG.
Summary: Another addition to the Fragments 'verse; immediate sequel to "Before the Time of Dawn." A year or more post-NFA, Spike and Xander are together and working for the Watchers' Council. Spike is human, and it's causing him some problems.
Warnings: Important! First of all, given my RL situation there's a higher-than-average probability that I'll go weeks and weeks without updating. Also, as I said, this is a first draft. So, if those things turn you off, you should definitely just wait until it's done and on my website; I'll post when that's the case, don't worry! Also: it's going to be dark. Possibly kinda depressing. Definitely angsty, h/c with lots of hurt. Character death will most definitely be threatened, and I'm not prepared to say what comes of it.

ETA: Now I have a beta (

yourlibrarian), so my chances of making this work just went up!

Part One

Airports, Xander decided, didn't quite inhabit the same reality as the rest of the world. They were pocket dimensions—lesser hell dimensions, maybe—labyrinths filled with blank-faced desperate people, incomprehensible signage, and a pervasive stink of floor polish, stale cigarettes and sweat.

Or maybe he was just tired. That could very well be it. He hadn't really slept since 1999.

***

That last day in 1999 had been exhausting enough on its own, what with the late-night rerun of the battle with the Sisterhood of Jhe, followed by the trip out to the desert and back, Spike's asthma attack, and the ER confrontation with everyone they'd been trying to avoid in Sunnydale. By the time they'd sorted it all out, ensured the safety of the timeline and made it back to LA, Xander had been awake for going on twenty-four hours.

As soon as they'd made it back to the present, they'd taken Giles out to the desert to collect the Sisters. And okay, yeah, Xander had dozed a little in the car during that two-hour drive, but that didn't really count—not against the kind of exhaustion he was dealing with here.

Giles had arranged beforehand for passage to Australia by container ship—it was the fastest way to get three very conspicuous demons across the Pacific Ocean to the Brisbane Hellmouth. Spike and Xander had gone with him down to the port, planning to drive the car back to the hotel and collapse into bed once they'd seen him off. It had been a good plan.

They'd been literally walking into their hotel room when Xander's cell phone had rung. It had been Kennedy, with frantic news: Willow was in labor, and it was going very wrong somehow, and she was asking for Xander.

Eighteen hours later, here they were in Sao Paulo.

Specifically, here they were in the Sao Paulo international airport, standing in line for customs. The line they were in was moving at the pace of a badly crippled snail. The line to their immediate left was moving at the pace of a healthy, athletic snail, but a look at the stern security guards at the front of the room killed Xander's fleeting thought of ducking under the cordon. Xander had learned a thing or two the hard way in the past couple years, and never mess with airport security was a notable example.

God, he was tired. So tired that he kept forgetting why the hell they were in Brazil—or where they were at all, for that matter, not to mention what year it was—and then he'd remember, and get scared all over again. They hadn't heard anything about Willow since that one call from Kennedy. Xander had tried Kennedy's cell as soon as the plane had landed, but she wasn't answering.

He glanced over at Spike, mostly to reassure himself that he was still okay—or, anyway, still upright. Xander was worried about him, too. It had been maybe twenty-four hours, relative time, since the terrifying asthma attack that had landed him in Sunnydale General. He'd had a minor attack in Miami, too, while they were switching planes, but he'd controlled it easily with one dose from his inhaler. At that point Xander had suggested borrowing one of the airport wheelchairs. And, well, that conversation had ended when an exaggeratedly polite security guard with a Southern accent had asked them to please stop shouting at each other, as they were scaring some nearby children.

So, no wheelchairs. Check. But they'd been standing in this fucking line for forty-five minutes, and Xander was sure Spike was paler now than he'd been at the beginning, and he'd been quiet for a long time too—that was never a good sign. Xander wished there were at least someplace for him to sit. Up and down the line, some other weary travelers were resting on their own suitcases, but Spike and Xander were traveling light—just one shoulder bag each, small enough for carry-on.

The line shuffled forward about six inches, and they moved along with it. Xander thought he saw Spike start to sway and then catch himself. His face was definitely paler now, Xander decided. His lips were tinged gray, apart from the bruised corner of his mouth where Xander had punched him under the Thesulac's influence. Fuck.

There was something wrong with Spike. It wasn't just the exhaustion of the past crazy week, or yesterday's asthma attack. He'd said something back in Sunnydale ... they'd been fighting about Faith, one of those not-really-about-what-it's-about fights, and Spike's frustration with his own body had boiled over in an angry rant. Xander had backed down from his own hurt over Spike's flirting with Faith and tried to make peace with some lame everything'll be better in the morning assurances, and that was when Spike had told him that no, it wouldn't.

I'll feel like shite in the morning, he'd said. I feel like shite every morning.

They hadn't talked about it since then, but Xander had had time to think, and his thoughts were going places that scared him. Because when he thought about it, he realized that he'd been noticing changes on a subconscious level for months: Spike got tired quickly these days. He slept a lot, and lately he had permanent shadows under his eyes. It hadn't seemed like a big deal, especially in the context of the rest of the health problems that had come along with his heartbeat. Xander was used to Spike getting sick frighteningly and dramatically—incapacitating migraines, asthma attacks, pneumonia. But now that he thought about it, he realized the difference: it used to be that in between crises, Spike was fine. He'd attacked life with a sort of wild energy: spontaneous all-night motorcycle rides across Europe, relic hunting with Illyria across India and Nepal, dancing till 3 a.m. at whatever club was hot that week in whatever city they were in. For the last two or three months, though, not so much. Xander had gotten used to Spike being the one to say "let's stay in tonight, watch the telly"—and hey, cuddling on the couch watching the new Battlestar Galactica? Definitely of the good.

I feel like shite every morning. He'd been watching Spike more carefully since then, and he'd noticed the way his body language changed when he thought no one was looking. Xander had come out of the shower quietly one morning in the motel room and watched Spike getting dressed—every movement slow and heavy, his jaw set tight against unspoken pain. And okay, yeah, that was after the vampire beatdown, but Xander was intimately familiar with the ginger movements of someone who was just plain bruised all over—having been a Slayer's sidekick for nine years and counting— and this was more than that.

"Luv?" Spike's quiet address and his hand on Xander's arm broke Xander out of his worried reverie. "You all right?"

"Huh?" Xander blinked, disoriented by the question. "I'm—sure, why?" He followed Spike's gaze to the line in front of them—oh. The line had moved again, leaving a good four feet between Xander and Spike and the person ahead of them. Xander shrugged and took a couple steps forward. "I guess I zoned."

Spike frowned. "You look like you're about to fall over."

Xander almost laughed. "I was thinking the same thing about you," he said, trying to make his tone light.

"At least I slept on the plane." Spike touched the side of Xander's face, just briefly. They never showed much physical affection in places like this where they weren't sure what the reaction would be. "We'll get to her soon, don't worry."

Willow. Xander actually shivered, remembering again. His fear for her was sharper, more acute than his worry for Spike—so terrifying that his brain kept shying away from it, but it had kept him awake in a miserable exhausted fugue state through the entire eighteen hours of international travel. "I know," he said, even though he didn't know anything at all. "If we ever get out of this airport. Fuck." He took another frustrated look at the faster-moving line to their left, and his gaze settled blankly for a moment on a petite blond woman in a short blue dress. It took him a good three, four seconds to register that he knew her, and then his mouth worked before his brain did. "Buffy!"

She looked up sharply, and so did Spike. Buffy's eyes widened at the sight of him, and she called out "Xander!" with a sort of desperate joy.

"Fucking hell," Spike whispered, and backed up a step to put Xander more thoroughly between him and Buffy.

Before Xander had any time at all to process the implications, Buffy was ducking under the cordon containing her line, dragging her absurdly large wheeled suitcase across the intervening linoleum, and throwing her arms around Xander in a bone-crunching hug.

Continued [here].