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dragonyphoenixTitle: The Thin Line Between Hell and Heaven
Fandom: BtVS
Characters/Pairing: Spike/Xander
Rating: R eventually, for sex, but PG for adult themes in this chapter
Concrit: Please, in comments
Disclaimer: They aren't mine, not yet, but the will be once I've taken over the world. Bwah-ha-ha.
Summary: There's a thin line between love and hate...
Notes: This is a reworking of my drabble, Don't Get Caught, which was inspired by forsaken2003's Weekend Stuck Together.
Notes: This story came out very Season 4 episode heavy: this chapter, "Doomed"
Masterlist
As the key scratched against the lock, Spike's gaze darted around the room, past the water pooling on the floor, past the musty furniture, looking for a place to hide. The basement held a surprising amount of junk but nothing that would keep him hidden for long, even from a casual glance.
“Oh no,” he heard. “Spike, the place looks worse than when I left. You didn't even fix the drip.”
Yeah, that was the human he'd come to know, focused on the minutia. “Don't turn around,” Spike said, he voice chilling even to his own ears. Maybe the boy wouldn't, maybe if he sounded like the Big Bad the boy would leave, staying away until night had fallen, giving him time to get out and nick some new clothes. Of course not, Spike thought as Xander turned toward him.
The git had the nerve to laugh. Hating to admit he'd shrunken his own clothes, Spike turned his head away. The Big Bad should be able to do anything, not that it really met his image to do laundry, and where had his point been going? Maybe he'd feel better if, no after, the human brought him some new clothes and some fresh blood.
Xander didn't cooperate. “I hate to break it to you, oh impotent one, but you're not the big bad anymore.” Damned git didn't even bother to capitalize it. “You're not even the kind of naughty. You're nothing but a waste of space, my space, and as much as I always got a big laugh watching Buffy kick your shiny white bum, and as much as I could give you a little bum kicking myself right now, I'm here to tell you something.” Xander stepped in closer. “You're not even worth it.”
Xander's words reminded him of Dru, how she hadn't thought he was worth killing. What a waste of a Childe he must have been. “I'm outta here,” Xander added, turning and heading up the stairs. Spike stared at him, watching him leave, just like Dru had left him. A boy, a mere child who delivered sodding pizzas for a living, he thought Spike was beneath him? Oh, life really wasn't worth living.
* * *
Spike had screwed the stake – one useful thing about living with a Slayer's minion, at least if you wanted to off yourself that is, plenty of stakes – to the coffee table, pointy end up. Standing above it, he held his arms out, stretched to either side. “Goodbye Dru. See you in hell.”
Just as he'd started to fall forward, the door from the garage flew open. “What are you doing?”
Twisting in mid-air, Spike fell through the table, missing the stake completely. “Bloody rot, can't a person knock?”
Again Willow asked what he'd been doing, and Xander added, “You were trying to stake yourself.”
One point to the boy: quicker to figure it out than Red. “Fag off. It's no concern of yours.”
“Is to,” Xander said. “For one thing, that's my shirt your about to dust.” Oh yeah, care more about your ugly shirt than the vampire, go right ahead. “And for another, we've shared a lot here. You should have trusted me to do it for you.” That stopped Spike cold. Dru, his Sire, wouldn't kill him, but this sorry excuse of a human was offering?
“What?” Xander was asking Willow. “He wants to die; I wanna help.”
While Xander gathered weapons, Willow, in trying to cheer Spike up, merely emphasized how pathetic he really was. Spike tried to convince the kids to leave him behind, certain he could find another way to off himself before they got back, but Willow dragged him out of the room. They boy did give him a bit of cheering up though. “If we don't find what we're looking for, we're facing an apocalypse.”
The museum had been a waste, no Word of Valios, whatever that was, to be found, although it had been interesting to see how quickly Xander could pick a lock. Spike hadn't realized the boy had any skills, much less something useful. But as they left the cold, impersonal building looming behind them, the two kids were making it clear Spike wasn't a threat to even a kitten, much less to an incompetent pair of humans. And the killer part? They didn't even know they were doing it. If they'd been attacking him on purpose, that would have been one thing, but this incidental abuse, well that just wasn't going to stand. He couldn't hit them, but that didn't mean he couldn't take them down. “I should think you'd be glad to greet the end of days. I mean neither of you is making much of a go at it. You,” he said, nodding toward Xander. “Kids your age are going to university; you've made it as far as the basement.” Spike, ignoring the voice that pointed out he was mooching off of the guy in the basement, changed his target. “And Red here, you couldn't even keep dog-boy happy.” Turning back to Xander, he added, “Just like you with that demon-girl.” Waving a hand at Xander's clothes, even if they were noticeably better than what he had on, Spike added, “No wonder you don't have a bird to call your own.”
Turning away from the pain in Xander's eyes, not sure why it bothered him, Spike smirked to cover up his uncertainty. “You can take the losers out of high-school but...”
Willow babbled something behind him, but he didn't bother to listen. He did, however, let them drag him to Giles'. Apparently Willow was still worried he'd off himself. When they got there, Giles was on the floor, his face full of scratches. He'd been beaten by three demons and Spike had missed it. Story of his life.
But wait a minute: blood. Leaning in toward Giles, Spike took a good long sniff of fresh, human blood. “You wouldn't mind if I licked that up, would you?” Xander pulled him up and off of Giles. “What? It'd help with the clean-up. Do you know how hard it is to get blood out of carpet and clothes and, um, stuff?”
“Sit over there. Try not to get in the way.” The boy had dismissive down to a science.
Picking the most comfortable seat in the room, a brown leather recliner, Spike lounged back in the chair, not paying much attention, even when the Slayer came in, until they dragged him up, telling him they were going to the old high-school. “That pile of rubbish? Why?”
Buffy gave him a look. “Weren't you listening at all?”
Spike laughed. “To you lot? No.”
“We're going to stop the apocalypse,” Willow said, trying to appease everyone.
“Yeah, the one that's going to end your miserable existence.”
“Xander.” That bit was from Willow. Apparently too much truth bothered her as much as it hurt him.
The high-school was as demolished on the inside as it had looked on the outside, no surprise there. When Buffy asked if they were ready, Xander replied, “Let's rock and roll.” Spike sniped his words back at him, hoping to throw him off his game a bit. Xander's words that evening had been arrows aimed straight for Spike's heart. He was hoping to give the boy something else to chew over.
There were demon guts everywhere and then, once they'd gotten to the library, three guys chanting around a large hole. While Buffy and the others leaped into the fray, Spike moved off to one side, staying clear of the rubble. He couldn't even fight anymore. Life really wasn't worth living. Well, Willow couldn't watch him forever; she had school and such not.
He was watching Buffy get tossed around, which was always fun, when Willow threw him a bag of bones. One of the demons set its sights on him. “Right. Perfect.” The demon grabbed him, punching him in the gut and then again in the face. Spike got a firmer grip on the bag. No demon was going to get one up on him. As the demon grabbed his arm, Spike couldn't help himself: with a shout he hit back. Grabbing his head, waiting for the pain, he realized his head didn't hurt. What? “No pain.” The demon got up. He punched it again. “I can hurt a demon.” He took out all his frustrations on it, losing track of the bones.
When he'd had enough fighting, at least for the moment, Spike threw the demon down the hole. Willow and Xander were shouting at him, he wasn't sure what about. “What? I was helping.” And then the ceiling fell in, knocking him to the ground. Great, he finally got a chance to get back in the game and a bloody building took him out. But then Xander, loser boy of all people, dragged him up and out of the mess.
* * *
Spike, making a quick detour after leaving the Scoobies behind, nicked some new clothes on the way home. He could have gone out hunting on his own, but he figured he owed Xander for pulling him out of the wreckage and all. The boy and Willow were watching the telly. Honestly, Spike just didn't get humans sometimes.
“What's this?” Spike asked, positioning himself between them and the screen. “Sitting around watching the telly while there's evil still afoot? It's not very industrious of you.” Turning off the telly, he added, over their protests, “I say we go out there and kick a little demon ass.” He tried to encourage them, brining in saving the world, Christmas, puppies, and what a joy it was to punch the living daylights out of, well OK, he might have gone off on a tangent with that last bit.
After about five minutes, Willow got up to leave, telling Xander that Spike was his problem. At Xander's shouted “Hey,” she added that she had a test the next day – an obvious lie since she'd been ready to waste the night watching mindless sitcoms. Without Willow to back him up, Xander gave into Spike fairly quickly.
Xander glanced around the cemetery with a nervous look. “You know I'm only doing this to stop your pathetic ramblings, right?”
“What? Scared now that your precious Buffy isn't here to save you? I can protect you just as well as she can, better maybe.”
“Which you'd do why?” Xander asked. “Oh God, and why am I here again? You don't have to kill me; you could just stand around and watch some demon eat me. Is that why were here? To turn me into demon chow?”
Ignoring Xander's comments, Spike, busy scanning the cemetery for a demon to kill, absentmindedly asked, “Don't you love me anymore, Xander?”
“Huh? Love? Oh no, there is no love lost between us,” Xander stammered. “And how did we veer off from the 'not letting Xander get eaten' part of this little talk?”
Spike turned, tilted his head, and stared at Xander, a slow smile spreading across his lips.
“What?” Xander looked around.
“Tell you what,” Spike said, grabbing his crotch. “You let me eat you, and I'll keep you safe from the other demons.”
“You want to what?” Xander shrieked.
“Come on,” Spike said, stepping closer. “All those hard muscles, that sexual tension. You don't want all that to go to waste, do you?”
Xander stumbled back, his eyes wide, and fell to the ground right on top of a grave. “Yes, yes, waste is good. And I mean no, no eating, no touching.”
Spike turned away with a sigh, which turned to a smirk once the boy couldn't see his face. More than one way to wind the lad up, although that bit about the muscles hadn't been that far off. No, he didn't care how good the lad looked. He had standards: he wasn't about to shag a human.
* * *
“Stop staring at me,” Xander said from the bed.
“I'm not.” Spike, tied to the chair again, had been staring at Xander, wondering why the boy had saved him back there in the high-school. Granted, it wasn't like being buried alive would kill him, but he could have been hurt, badly. They weren't allies, not really, or, OK, they were allies but only temporarily. As soon as he got the damned chip out, all bets were off. So why had Xander saved him? He must be up to something. Spike just needed a way to figure out what.
The next morning, after Xander had released him, Spike's stretch, as he worked the kinks out of his muscles, raised his shirt up above his jeans. Glancing over, he saw Xander's eyes peeled to the patch of skin that showed itself between shirt and jeans. Not believing it, Spike stretched up a bit more, shifting his hips seductively. Xander leaped up and made himself very busy in the kitchen.
A slow smile spread across his face as Spike worked out how he could use this to his advantage. The boy thought he was straight, Spike knew he did. All Spike had to do was make him see that he wasn't. Upheaval all around, especially when the chickies found out, and he'd make sure that they did, and then Xander would be too busy to mess with him. Spike would be safe from whatever the lad was up to.
Fandom: BtVS
Characters/Pairing: Spike/Xander
Rating: R eventually, for sex, but PG for adult themes in this chapter
Concrit: Please, in comments
Disclaimer: They aren't mine, not yet, but the will be once I've taken over the world. Bwah-ha-ha.
Summary: There's a thin line between love and hate...
Notes: This is a reworking of my drabble, Don't Get Caught, which was inspired by forsaken2003's Weekend Stuck Together.
Notes: This story came out very Season 4 episode heavy: this chapter, "Doomed"
Masterlist
As the key scratched against the lock, Spike's gaze darted around the room, past the water pooling on the floor, past the musty furniture, looking for a place to hide. The basement held a surprising amount of junk but nothing that would keep him hidden for long, even from a casual glance.
“Oh no,” he heard. “Spike, the place looks worse than when I left. You didn't even fix the drip.”
Yeah, that was the human he'd come to know, focused on the minutia. “Don't turn around,” Spike said, he voice chilling even to his own ears. Maybe the boy wouldn't, maybe if he sounded like the Big Bad the boy would leave, staying away until night had fallen, giving him time to get out and nick some new clothes. Of course not, Spike thought as Xander turned toward him.
The git had the nerve to laugh. Hating to admit he'd shrunken his own clothes, Spike turned his head away. The Big Bad should be able to do anything, not that it really met his image to do laundry, and where had his point been going? Maybe he'd feel better if, no after, the human brought him some new clothes and some fresh blood.
Xander didn't cooperate. “I hate to break it to you, oh impotent one, but you're not the big bad anymore.” Damned git didn't even bother to capitalize it. “You're not even the kind of naughty. You're nothing but a waste of space, my space, and as much as I always got a big laugh watching Buffy kick your shiny white bum, and as much as I could give you a little bum kicking myself right now, I'm here to tell you something.” Xander stepped in closer. “You're not even worth it.”
Xander's words reminded him of Dru, how she hadn't thought he was worth killing. What a waste of a Childe he must have been. “I'm outta here,” Xander added, turning and heading up the stairs. Spike stared at him, watching him leave, just like Dru had left him. A boy, a mere child who delivered sodding pizzas for a living, he thought Spike was beneath him? Oh, life really wasn't worth living.
* * *
Spike had screwed the stake – one useful thing about living with a Slayer's minion, at least if you wanted to off yourself that is, plenty of stakes – to the coffee table, pointy end up. Standing above it, he held his arms out, stretched to either side. “Goodbye Dru. See you in hell.”
Just as he'd started to fall forward, the door from the garage flew open. “What are you doing?”
Twisting in mid-air, Spike fell through the table, missing the stake completely. “Bloody rot, can't a person knock?”
Again Willow asked what he'd been doing, and Xander added, “You were trying to stake yourself.”
One point to the boy: quicker to figure it out than Red. “Fag off. It's no concern of yours.”
“Is to,” Xander said. “For one thing, that's my shirt your about to dust.” Oh yeah, care more about your ugly shirt than the vampire, go right ahead. “And for another, we've shared a lot here. You should have trusted me to do it for you.” That stopped Spike cold. Dru, his Sire, wouldn't kill him, but this sorry excuse of a human was offering?
“What?” Xander was asking Willow. “He wants to die; I wanna help.”
While Xander gathered weapons, Willow, in trying to cheer Spike up, merely emphasized how pathetic he really was. Spike tried to convince the kids to leave him behind, certain he could find another way to off himself before they got back, but Willow dragged him out of the room. They boy did give him a bit of cheering up though. “If we don't find what we're looking for, we're facing an apocalypse.”
The museum had been a waste, no Word of Valios, whatever that was, to be found, although it had been interesting to see how quickly Xander could pick a lock. Spike hadn't realized the boy had any skills, much less something useful. But as they left the cold, impersonal building looming behind them, the two kids were making it clear Spike wasn't a threat to even a kitten, much less to an incompetent pair of humans. And the killer part? They didn't even know they were doing it. If they'd been attacking him on purpose, that would have been one thing, but this incidental abuse, well that just wasn't going to stand. He couldn't hit them, but that didn't mean he couldn't take them down. “I should think you'd be glad to greet the end of days. I mean neither of you is making much of a go at it. You,” he said, nodding toward Xander. “Kids your age are going to university; you've made it as far as the basement.” Spike, ignoring the voice that pointed out he was mooching off of the guy in the basement, changed his target. “And Red here, you couldn't even keep dog-boy happy.” Turning back to Xander, he added, “Just like you with that demon-girl.” Waving a hand at Xander's clothes, even if they were noticeably better than what he had on, Spike added, “No wonder you don't have a bird to call your own.”
Turning away from the pain in Xander's eyes, not sure why it bothered him, Spike smirked to cover up his uncertainty. “You can take the losers out of high-school but...”
Willow babbled something behind him, but he didn't bother to listen. He did, however, let them drag him to Giles'. Apparently Willow was still worried he'd off himself. When they got there, Giles was on the floor, his face full of scratches. He'd been beaten by three demons and Spike had missed it. Story of his life.
But wait a minute: blood. Leaning in toward Giles, Spike took a good long sniff of fresh, human blood. “You wouldn't mind if I licked that up, would you?” Xander pulled him up and off of Giles. “What? It'd help with the clean-up. Do you know how hard it is to get blood out of carpet and clothes and, um, stuff?”
“Sit over there. Try not to get in the way.” The boy had dismissive down to a science.
Picking the most comfortable seat in the room, a brown leather recliner, Spike lounged back in the chair, not paying much attention, even when the Slayer came in, until they dragged him up, telling him they were going to the old high-school. “That pile of rubbish? Why?”
Buffy gave him a look. “Weren't you listening at all?”
Spike laughed. “To you lot? No.”
“We're going to stop the apocalypse,” Willow said, trying to appease everyone.
“Yeah, the one that's going to end your miserable existence.”
“Xander.” That bit was from Willow. Apparently too much truth bothered her as much as it hurt him.
The high-school was as demolished on the inside as it had looked on the outside, no surprise there. When Buffy asked if they were ready, Xander replied, “Let's rock and roll.” Spike sniped his words back at him, hoping to throw him off his game a bit. Xander's words that evening had been arrows aimed straight for Spike's heart. He was hoping to give the boy something else to chew over.
There were demon guts everywhere and then, once they'd gotten to the library, three guys chanting around a large hole. While Buffy and the others leaped into the fray, Spike moved off to one side, staying clear of the rubble. He couldn't even fight anymore. Life really wasn't worth living. Well, Willow couldn't watch him forever; she had school and such not.
He was watching Buffy get tossed around, which was always fun, when Willow threw him a bag of bones. One of the demons set its sights on him. “Right. Perfect.” The demon grabbed him, punching him in the gut and then again in the face. Spike got a firmer grip on the bag. No demon was going to get one up on him. As the demon grabbed his arm, Spike couldn't help himself: with a shout he hit back. Grabbing his head, waiting for the pain, he realized his head didn't hurt. What? “No pain.” The demon got up. He punched it again. “I can hurt a demon.” He took out all his frustrations on it, losing track of the bones.
When he'd had enough fighting, at least for the moment, Spike threw the demon down the hole. Willow and Xander were shouting at him, he wasn't sure what about. “What? I was helping.” And then the ceiling fell in, knocking him to the ground. Great, he finally got a chance to get back in the game and a bloody building took him out. But then Xander, loser boy of all people, dragged him up and out of the mess.
* * *
Spike, making a quick detour after leaving the Scoobies behind, nicked some new clothes on the way home. He could have gone out hunting on his own, but he figured he owed Xander for pulling him out of the wreckage and all. The boy and Willow were watching the telly. Honestly, Spike just didn't get humans sometimes.
“What's this?” Spike asked, positioning himself between them and the screen. “Sitting around watching the telly while there's evil still afoot? It's not very industrious of you.” Turning off the telly, he added, over their protests, “I say we go out there and kick a little demon ass.” He tried to encourage them, brining in saving the world, Christmas, puppies, and what a joy it was to punch the living daylights out of, well OK, he might have gone off on a tangent with that last bit.
After about five minutes, Willow got up to leave, telling Xander that Spike was his problem. At Xander's shouted “Hey,” she added that she had a test the next day – an obvious lie since she'd been ready to waste the night watching mindless sitcoms. Without Willow to back him up, Xander gave into Spike fairly quickly.
Xander glanced around the cemetery with a nervous look. “You know I'm only doing this to stop your pathetic ramblings, right?”
“What? Scared now that your precious Buffy isn't here to save you? I can protect you just as well as she can, better maybe.”
“Which you'd do why?” Xander asked. “Oh God, and why am I here again? You don't have to kill me; you could just stand around and watch some demon eat me. Is that why were here? To turn me into demon chow?”
Ignoring Xander's comments, Spike, busy scanning the cemetery for a demon to kill, absentmindedly asked, “Don't you love me anymore, Xander?”
“Huh? Love? Oh no, there is no love lost between us,” Xander stammered. “And how did we veer off from the 'not letting Xander get eaten' part of this little talk?”
Spike turned, tilted his head, and stared at Xander, a slow smile spreading across his lips.
“What?” Xander looked around.
“Tell you what,” Spike said, grabbing his crotch. “You let me eat you, and I'll keep you safe from the other demons.”
“You want to what?” Xander shrieked.
“Come on,” Spike said, stepping closer. “All those hard muscles, that sexual tension. You don't want all that to go to waste, do you?”
Xander stumbled back, his eyes wide, and fell to the ground right on top of a grave. “Yes, yes, waste is good. And I mean no, no eating, no touching.”
Spike turned away with a sigh, which turned to a smirk once the boy couldn't see his face. More than one way to wind the lad up, although that bit about the muscles hadn't been that far off. No, he didn't care how good the lad looked. He had standards: he wasn't about to shag a human.
* * *
“Stop staring at me,” Xander said from the bed.
“I'm not.” Spike, tied to the chair again, had been staring at Xander, wondering why the boy had saved him back there in the high-school. Granted, it wasn't like being buried alive would kill him, but he could have been hurt, badly. They weren't allies, not really, or, OK, they were allies but only temporarily. As soon as he got the damned chip out, all bets were off. So why had Xander saved him? He must be up to something. Spike just needed a way to figure out what.
The next morning, after Xander had released him, Spike's stretch, as he worked the kinks out of his muscles, raised his shirt up above his jeans. Glancing over, he saw Xander's eyes peeled to the patch of skin that showed itself between shirt and jeans. Not believing it, Spike stretched up a bit more, shifting his hips seductively. Xander leaped up and made himself very busy in the kitchen.
A slow smile spread across his face as Spike worked out how he could use this to his advantage. The boy thought he was straight, Spike knew he did. All Spike had to do was make him see that he wasn't. Upheaval all around, especially when the chickies found out, and he'd make sure that they did, and then Xander would be too busy to mess with him. Spike would be safe from whatever the lad was up to.