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Second Hand
by Kita
RATING: R for imagery and sexuality
PAIRING: Spike/Connor,
and the dragon.
"Beware the Jabberwock, my son
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch."
-Lewis Carroll, Jabberwocky
Second Hand
Crackle of sunrise wakes him; stench of burning tar, demon flesh. Face
down in an alley with a fistful of bone and bent metal. His hands are bleeding,
broken. He tried to brace himself.
He's alone.
He doesn't remember falling.
**
He's falling and it's endless. Electricity and dark majiks under his fingernails;
he can taste them on his tongue when he gasps and his hands fly up to cover
his face (human instinct, some things never die). Then he hits the concrete
forty stories down and all he can taste is his own blood. It tastes like
old smoke and grave dust, like useless things that linger on. It tastes like
failure.
Blessed dark and silence for a heartbeat, (or two. He can't count them,
his heart doesn't beat, and hers is too far away to hear) then the sound of
screaming. Little girl voice, high and shrill (sounds like that used to get
him off, used to make him hard) and he knows why she's screaming even before
he turns his head.
Crunch of bone in his chest when he shifts, but he has to see, has to know
- her fall seems faster, somehow. Halfway to him now, he can see that Buffy’s
eyes are closed, he can listen to her breathing as it quickens. He can hear
exactly when it stops. Ten of her heartbeats (wet and glorious, suspended
over all of them; he fell, but she flies). Then silence.
She bounces once when she hits the concrete, leaves her mark in broken
wood and shattered glass.
Later, they will pull the splinters out of her chest. They will wash the
blood off her face, and brush her hair. Willow will say that she was dead
before she hit the ground. Spike will not correct her in front of Dawn.
Now, Spike watches the portal close (blue and gold, it winks and is gone,
it waited first for her to die). He watches the dragon as it circles, once,
twice, three times. When it opens its mouth Spike feels the sound it makes
at the base of his skull, in his tailbone, in his gut. The curve of its
wing blots out the stars. Higher than the tower now, fifty stories, sixty,
but Spike can still see all of its teeth. (What do monsters fear?)
He swears the fucking thing is laughing at him.
**
Spike shuts the radio off in the Viper, rubs a hand over his face. Artificial
silver lights flickering along the highway, last pink shine of the evening
crawling toward him from across the world. Brief thought of putting the
top down (less than a moment, less than a heartbeat), of letting it swallow
him whole.
Because that night wasn't the end (just the end of everything) but daylight
is the bitch who always comes back. Because Angel is (was) a godamned fool,
and his call to glory was just another pointless battle in a war older than
them both. Because all Spike is left with now is more blood and bone staining
concrete, the familiar scent of dust on his hands, and the knowledge that
he gets to fight the next one alone. The next morning and the next battle
will always come, and maybe death won't change any of that, but at least
it's *quiet*.
Ten miles from Stanford, he runs his fingers over the dragon tooth in his
coat pocket, and turns the radio back on.
**
"Did you see the dragon?" Dawn asks him. Her breath is baby soft by his
ear, stirs all the small hairs at the back of his neck.
"Yea," Spike whispers back. Punctured lungs; if he doesn't need to breathe,
he still needs the air to speak. A whisper is all he can manage about now.
(And if he makes himself small enough, maybe they'll forget he's here, forget
how he fucked up. Maybe they'll let him stay. He can't face his crypt, can't
imagine spending the day surrounded by a death that isn't hers.)
"What do you think's gonna happen to it?"
Spike shrugs. Winces when the action reminds him that his right shoulder
blade is in more pieces than it used to be. "Suspect it'll kill a few people."
Dawn nods. The front of Spike's shirt is soaked. His blood, her tears.
He breathes, and bits of himself re-align inside of him. The rest of the
children and Giles are in the other room, discussing where they will keep
Buffy's body while they decide on burial arrangements. They can't smell
it yet, but she's already decaying. Ten feet away, Spike is holding her
sister. And his corpse is healing.
"Sorry, Bit," he says, squeezing Dawn's hand in his. "Shoulda told you
someone was gonna kill it, yeah? It's Sunnydale, after all, bound to be
some kinda prince or dragon slayer about."
Dawn leans back, rests her head on the floor next to him. Closes her eyes.
"There's no such thing as fairytales, Spike," she says.
Ain't that the fucking truth.
**
Well lit campus, well manicured pathways, and the dorms are easy to find.
Crowd of boys outside, all loud and loose limbed, scent of beer and junk
food. Under a tree, a girl in a pink mini skirt tilts her head so that her
boyfriend can drop kisses onto her neck. She presses against him on the tips
of her toes, then lifts one foot off the floor behind her. She is both coy
and poised, a ballerina or a flamingo, something beautiful and breakable
and alive. Her bones would snap like hard candy. Under the fluorescent lamps,
her skin is paler than Spike's own.
He looks away.
The laughter around him makes him angry, makes his gums itch. Back to being
Mr. Step and Fetch It for Angelus, and he didn't ask for a return to this
gig, sure as hell never wanted it back after all this time. Still here he
is, looking for Angel's latest cast-off, another member of the human race
Angel has always been so keen to sacrifice himself for. Second verse: someone's
gone and fucked off, and Spike is left to pick up the pieces of their broken
toys, when all he really wants is a bellyful of whiskey and a long rest.
All eyes on him, as he climbs the cement steps leading to room 301. But
his clothes are clean, and he's pretty certain he washed the blood off of
his face yesterday. He lights a smoke and sticks the cigarette between his
teeth. Knocks once, loudly, on the wooden door.
A kid in a backwards baseball cap and a t-shirt that proclaims "Hooters!"
in big orange letters answers the door.
"Connor?" Spike squints.
The kid doesn't answer him, just turns around and hollers, "Hey, Connor,
some old guy's here for you!"
Ain't that the fucking truth.
**
Spike hears the wings over head at her funeral. Slow and loud, unnatural,
unreal; a thing too big to fly, defying gravity by sheer force of its will.
He raises his head, searches for the dragon in the fog over the hills, but
everything is watercolor, dripping muted and salty with grief.
He thinks he hears it roar (no, not roar, laugh, because it knows, it *knows*)
but no one else looks up, and he's been hearing that same damn noise in
his head for the past three days, anyway. Gets a glimpse of it, finally,
just as they put her into the ground. Green tail and black wings, staining
the night sky.
**
Spike is stomping the cigarette out under one boot heel when Connor comes
to the door. He's tall and lean, and there's a smile on his face. He looks
like any other kid Spike passed tonight on campus, young and pink and vital.
Maybe a bit drunk.
Until he sees Spike leaning on his doorframe.
Spike watches as something slithers behind his eyes (blue, his eyes are
blue. Darla's eyes were blue, Spike thinks). Rattles on tails and bright colors
that don't belong: a warning, a mark. There's a tremor in Spike's spine that
used to mean *Slayer*. He has to plant his feet hard not to take a step back.
Then Connor blinks, and says, "It's Angel, isn't it?"
And when he opens his eyes again, he's just a boy.
**
"Can we go somewhere tomorrow, maybe?" Dawn asks him. Another night, and
they are left alone again; left to their card games and their whispers while
the others do- whatever it is they do without the vampire and the Key.
"Sure, bit. Like where?"
Dawn shrugs, looks around. Her lipstick is very pink.
"What are you about?" Spike asks. Lights a cigarette, then two.
"I was looking some things up online, and I think I might know where the
dragon went."
When Dawn is actually nervous, her eyes crinkle up in the corners, just
like her sister's. Spike takes a puff, looks at her. She's a damn fine actress,
he has to credit her that much. It's a wonder she bothers, he hasn't denied
her anything since the day. The rest of the Scoobies find out she's got
a taste for Marlboro Lights now, they'll stake him in a heartbeat and find
another babysitter.
"That so?"
"Yea," Dawn says, inhaling, "next town over, there's been a rash of unexplained
deaths. By fire." She wrinkles her nose.
"So you wanna go and… what? Slay the dragon, save the town?"
"I dunno, I thought maybe we could just go and look at it." Dawn sets her
cigarette down in the nearly empty bowl of guacamole dip, the shiny white
tip is stained with her kiss.
When Spike says nothing, she continues. "It must be weird for it. Being
here, I mean. I wonder if it feels sort of... lost."
"The dragon," Spike repeats.
"Yea. It doesn't really belong here, does it? Doesn't really have a reason
to-"
"Dawn," he says, "it's offing the populace. Pretty sure all your friends
would insist that falls under the category of 'bad'."
"Duh. I know it kills people and all, but it's not you know, *evil*. It's
just doing what dragons do."
"There's a difference?" Spike asks.
"I think so," she says quietly, "yea."
**
"Yea," Spike says.
Connor swallows hard. Spike watches his throat move, watches the pulse
jump on the side of his neck as he turns his head and looks back over his
shoulder into his room. Then he pulls the door shut behind him soundlessly
as he steps outside. The porch light comes on overhead, and Spike stuffs
both fists into his coat pockets.
"When I didn't hear from him, I figured, but I wanted to think that maybe..."
Connor stops.
He leans on the cement wall, arms covering his chest, hair covering his
face. Spike can't see his eyes. Camouflage and cobwebs, things that lay in
wait. Connor's fingers wrap around his own upper arms, leave creases in his
blue polo shirt.
"M'sorry," Spike says, holding the sealed velum envelope out in front of
him. Connor takes the letter without looking at it. His hands are bigger
than Spike's.
They stand there for a moment, and Connor looks Spike over from head to
heel, just once. Licks his bottom lip and blinks, like he's trying to puzzle
out some optical illusion. Like he knows he's seen Spike before, but somehow
can't make him fit into the here and now. Out of context, out of time.
"Tell me what happened," he says.
Tell me.
Right, there it is; Spike's fucking mission, his sole purpose as sole survivor.
Spike the vampire bard, keeper of handed down tales no one else wants. He's
damn sure no one spoke sonnets over his non-existent grave when he saved
the world last summer.
But here's this kid with Darla's eyes and Angel's hands, only he smells
human. Like pizza, and new soap. Like the beginnings of grief. Because they're
dead, but Connor is alive.
And if Spike can't do this now, then he's never going to be able to stand
in front of Buffy later and say:
"Dragon."
"An actual dragon?" Connor asks, loosening his grip on his elbows and leaning
forward a bit from the wall.
"Yea."
“Did anyone else-"
“No.”
Connor sits down slowly on the top step, and folds his arms over his knees.
Stares out over the grass. Spike follows his line of vision to where a group
of kids are mock wrestling. They're drunk and clumsy on cheap alcohol and
the certainty that they're immortal. They move like prey.
He lights two cigarettes, hands one to Connor, who stares at it for a moment
before taking it. He doesn't smoke, just dangles it in his right hand, letting
it ash on his shoes. He folds the letter carefully, and puts it into his
back pocket, unread.
Spike slides down next to Connor on the step and puts his cigarette between
his lips. It's been three years, two lovers and one soul since his last
attempt at comforting someone this way. He hasn't gotten any better at it.
**
Spike doesn't actually take Dawn dragon hunting. She's fourteen, she has
a new obsession every other day, and he's smart enough not to pander to
the one that's gonna get her killed.
He tracks the thing though. Follows Dawn's lead, and follows the trail
of mystery fires via news sites online. He prints out the pages, stores
them under his bed in a box that contains faded hair ribbons and scraps
of silk doll clothes, blonde wigs and satin panties. He is older, his obsessions
die harder. And he doesn't find his own death to be quite as frightening
to contemplate.
Near summer's end, the reports of dragon sightings and unexplained fires
come far less frequently. Two days before they bring Buffy back from the
dead, the reports stop altogether.
Spike keeps the papers.
Later, she will burn his crypt down, and he will watch while all of his
obsessions are swallowed in a single flame.
**
Orange and blue sparks in a half moon, dying out before they hit the concrete.
Connor steps on the cigarette, carefully, methodically, grinding it into
the ground.
"Right then," Spike says, rising to his feet. Done his bit for dead Sire
and country, time to get back to (empty rooms, dead friends, a past that
won't return his calls). "Right," he repeats, tossing his own cigarette down
after Connor's.
"No," the kid says, shaking his head. There's a moment when his hand moves,
almost touches Spike's arm as he's climbing down the last step. Then the
hand is back in his lap, curled into a fist.
"No, what?" Spike says. "Gave you the letter. That's all I got." It's a
lie, he knows, he *knows*: The boy wants poetry, wants the song of his father
versus the evil dragon. But Spike chokes on rhymes these days, and there's
no such thing as fairy tales. And it's time to go.
He's reaching into his pocket for his car keys when Connor's hand is suddenly
on his arm. (He moves like a vampire. Of course he does.)
"I'm going back with you to LA."
Spike's eyes narrow as he glances down to the fingers wrapped round his
coat. "There *is* no LA." He looks back up at Connor. "When we tried- look,
it's pretty much a demon dimension now, or what's left of one. No place for
a kid."
Connor drops his hand. Smiles. There are serpents and sea water in that
smile. There are nightmares older than that. "Yea?" he asks, "You ever been
to a demon dimension? 'Cause it just so happens I actually grew up in one."
"Great. Your Scouting From Hell badge is in the mail," Spike says, brushing
the invisible fingerprints off his sleeve. "And I'm not taking you back
to LA."
Silence for one heartbeat. Two.
Then. "Ok," Connor says, walking out into the parking lot. His shoes are
silent against the pavement, but Spike has to sprint a bit to catch up.
"What the hell are you doing?"
"I'm going to LA." Connor's voice is low, and he doesn't bother to turn
his head and look at Spike.
"You gonna walk there?"
"If I have to."
Son of a bitch really is Angel's get. "Oh, for fuck's sake, get in the
car."
**
"Personally, I kinda wanna slay that dragon," Angel says.
Spike looks up.
It's circling the tallest building, talons extended, looking for a place
large enough to land. Spike can see the color of its eyes. They're gold,
flat and dull, coins in an old man's pocket. Its mouth is open. Spike hasn't
heard that sound in almost three years. It still makes him want to bite his
own tongue.
"No way," he says, hefting his sword and looking at Angel, "that son of
a bitch is *mine*."
Angel twirls his own sword around in his hand a bit. "Tell you what, we
get through the forty-thousand sons of bitches between us and it? We'll fight
for it."
"You're on, old man."
So they're both grinning like idiots when they step out side by side into
the middle of the rain and the forty thousand, and Spike should have known
right then it was all gonna go arse over tit.
**
“There’s nothing here,” Connor says, over-turning another garbage pail
in the alleyway, sending more rats scurrying toward the street. All too
familiar, this scene; the smell of rising frustration and sweat, hands curled
into fists, and disapproving, blue eyes staring at Spike, waiting for answers.
Spike glances down at the pile of dead demons beneath Connor’s feet. He’d
snapped their necks with an edgy sort of grace, took out all three of them
before Spike could get a hold of one. Then he’d stared at the ridges and
slopes of Spike’s own demon face before turning away and wiping his hands
on his khakis.
“No.” The rats run across Spike’s boots, heading for higher ground as dirty
water sweeps past them in a rush. “Some kind of portal opened, after the
dragon died. Took most everything around us, dead or alive.”
“Leaving the demons and the rats?”
“And the fires. Flood. Kinda biblical, I suppose,” Spike says.
“Isn’t that a bit damnation and brimstone, for you know, a vampire?”
“Yea. It’s a pretty recent interest.”
“You have a soul.” Connor says, tilting his head. It sounds like an accusation.
“Like my father.”
“I have a soul, yea.”
“So, what, you’re trying to tell me that you’re *not* like Angel?” Connor
begins walking toward the hotel.
He looks relaxed, but his eyes never stop scanning the dark. (Predator
vision, he’s still tracking, he’s still hunting). There’s a difference between
the boy in this alley, and the one who rode back to LA with Spike for four
hours in total silence. No armor, no shift of bone or teeth, but still a
metamorphosis. The air around Connor quivers, buzzes about like insects,
choosing fight or flight. Makes Spike’s demon scratch at him from beneath
his skin.
“I’m not *trying* to tell you anything. You’re the one who wanted to come
with me.”
“You’re a vampire with a soul, who kills other demons,” Connor says, stopping
again to look at Spike. “Only difference I can see is that my father died
doing it, and for some reason, you’re still here.”
**
Another day-before-the-end-of-days, but this time Spike holds something
golden and precious in his hands.
Buffy still tastes like Angel’s kiss (memories and melancholy, old ghosts
too stubborn to die). But her arms are around Spike now; she is curled against
his body, trusting and asleep, and the amulet in his palm says she chose
*him*.
He tests the weight of it, lighter than love, heavier than faith. Small,
shining, unexpected things. He runs his fingers over the smooth circle of
glittering stone, over the soft curve of her hand. Beautiful, deadly things.
He will sleep a while holding tightly to them both. He’s smart enough to
know how this ends.
He dies laughing, with the amulet of a champion around his neck, and her
hand strong in his, and the sun brighter than he ever remembered it on his
face.
He will come back screaming.
**
No one’s tried to breach
the hotel since Spike dragged himself into its lobby four days ago. Spike
figures it for some sort of spell, maybe Angel’s doing. Before. The place
smells of him. And Wes. Fred. Charlie.
Connor stands in the doorway for a moment, just breathing.
Then he’s up the stairs.
Spike stands in the lobby, listens to doors being flung open and slammed
shut. Furniture being upended. Boxes thrown about. Windows being smashed.
There are other rituals in the wake of death, but Spike has forgotten most
of them.
From upstairs, the distinct shatter of glass bottles.
“Hey! Hey, Junior, hands off my stash.”
Connor’s sitting on a bare mattress, surrounded by what precious little
remains of Spike’s possessions.
“Where is it? Where is everything?”
Spike walks into the room slowly. “Which everything is that, mate?”
“Everything that’s *mine*,” Connor says, tossing another bottle of 200
year old scotch at the wall. Spike winces. “This is- this was *my* room.
I remember it.”
“Right, then you went off to college and Uncle Spike got his ass kicked
and had to move in for a while. There was nothing in this room when I got
here.”
“Then where is it?” Connor demands again, throwing the mattress onto
the floor. His fists are clenched.
“I don’t know,” Spike says, dropping his voice. Connor smells like tears.
“That’s not good enough, it’s not enough, it’s not- “
The plaster shatters around Connor’s fist, old, weak, impermanent. He smashes
the wall four five six times, and now all Spike can smell is the blood:
It’s malice sweeter than church incense (There’s no belonging or deserving
anymore. You can take what you want but nothing is yours) and madness thicker
than communion wine (Oh, I see you. I see what you want. Do you want it?)
It’s his ruin and his renaissance, and if Spike closes his eyes, it’s all
right here.
And-
Buffy. Which is impossible, but enough, finally, to make Spike blink.
Connor hits the wall again, brings down more bits of hotel around them
both.
“Damnit, quit.“ Spike tugs on Connor’s wrist and can’t quite figure out
how that breaks his nose.
“Son of a bitch,” he mutters. Connor’s brain bounces inside his skull,
wet and thick, when Spike hits him back.
Connor growls like a demon, but he looks like an orphan from a folk tale.
Lost in some snowy woods without his porridge, and trying to understand
why someone else has been sleeping in his bed.
“Listen,” Spike starts, quiet voice, quiet steps to the side (years of
cosseting Dru after Angelus left them in Romania, months of waiting for
someone to do the same for him after he left Africa. No one came for Spike.)
Connor drops his fist, but he’s still shaking.
They stare at one another for a moment. Then Spike holds his hands up,
palms out. “You want a drink?”
Connor blinks, looks down at his own knuckles. His laugh is panic; tremors
and afershocks, the ground shifting beneath them both. He looks back up
at Spike, then tucks his hands behind his back.
“Oh God, yea,” he says, sinking onto the mattress.
**
Tinkling of bottles- bells, her laugh.
Tied to the bedboard, arms over his head while she rides him. Red fingernails
in his chest, sunshine crucifix on a chain in her other fist. She runs it
in slow circles over her breasts, down her belly. Leaves pink marks she
will want him to follow later with his tongue. It will still burn.
She leans over him, presses her fingertips to his forehead. “Father,” she
says.
He bucks his hips, but she is stronger, she pins him with words and teeth
and cunt. “Son,” she says, tapping his ribs.
“Drusilla-“
“Shhhhhhh, no talking in church.”
A wriggle of her hips and he is still, as her fingers land on his left
shoulder. “And the Holy-“
“He’s gone, Dru,” Spike says. “He’s gone and he’s not coming back this
time.”
“Ghost,” she finishes, tapping his right shoulder. He shudders, superstition
and borrowed fear dancing inside his bones, and she leans in, bites his
cheek hard enough to draw blood.
She licks her lips as she grinds down harder on his cock. He groans.
“Don’t be such a silly, Spike,” she says. Her smile is indulgent, a princess
to her knight. “Angels are always watching.”
**
He wakes to a heaviness in his chest. To the taste of whiskey, bitter in
his lungs, and the ache in his skull that tells him it’s been a very long
drunk. He doesn’t remember falling asleep.
He opens his eyes to Connor kneeling over his waist, palms bearing Spike
down into the mattress hard enough that Spike can feel the diamond shaped
grooves digging into his back. Connor’s face is flushed and pink, his breath
is sweet. Alcohol and innocence.
“You smell like him,” Connor says.
“It’s the hotel,” Spike says, trying to focus.
“No,” Connor insists, leaning closer, bending Spike beneath him with the
weight of expectation. “It’s you. Did he kill you too?”
“What?”
“My father. Did he make you? Sire you, whatever.”
“No,” Spike says. “Yes…No. It’s complicated.”
Connor shakes his head. “None of you can ever give me a straight answer.”
“What exactly was the question?” Spike asks.
“You are,” Connor says. “You, and him. All of them, and you’re the only
one that’s left now. There’s nothing else. So how do I know any of this was
ever even real?”
Spike blinks again. He wants to rub the film of sleep and misery out of
his eyes, but his arms are pinned to the bed. Connor doesn’t appear to be
exerting much of an effort to keep it that way. He’s silent and still, staring
down at Spike, watching the pulse on his neck that doesn’t beat.
“Still haven’t told me what it is you want from me.”
“I just wanna understand.” Connor says. His hair is long enough to brush
Spike’s cheeks when he leans forward.
His kiss is clumsy, desperate, and without breath. His fingers dig into
Spike’s biceps, his teeth into Spike’s shoulder, leaving marks that will fade
before the next light. It’s a pitiful attempt to hold his head above water.
Connor’s mouth is soft as a girl’s.
His skin is softer still, bare and rubbing against Spike’s chest, while
he fumbles with buttons and belts. “Show me,” he says, again and again, eyes
pressed shut, praying Spike naked and compliant.
Slip of thigh between his legs, and Spike grabs the back of Connor’s head.
Tugs. Gets a blue-eyed stare, shadows and scowls, the curve of a lip Spike
recognizes from the inside. Connor never drops his gaze.
“Show me,” he says. His dick is hard against Spike’s side. Spike pulls
him back down, and sinks his teeth into Connor’s bottom lip. Groans around
the taste of inevitability and boysweat when Connor bites back.
And none of this is really Spike’s, he knows that. It’s all second hand:
someone else’s need, someone else’s bed, and someone else’s son. But he’s
long been used to owning nothing, and this is far from the first time he’s
traded sex for sanity. Strong hand curving around his neck, around his cock,
so he doesn’t have to think about could haves and might have beens. About
necklaces that should have killed Angel and dragons that Spike should have
killed. Doesn’t have to think about a godamn thing at all.
When he drops his hand between Connor’s legs, Connor throws his head back
like a whore. He bends too easy and he spreads too wide, Spike sliding inside
of him on just spit and sweat, but Connor cants his hips up, and makes a
noise that is not pain.
Licks the blood off his own bottom lip, and swallows. (Tribal masks, true
faces worn under the animal, power handed down from fathers to sons ever
after.)
“Show me,” he says again, fingers closing hard around Spike’s throat. “Show
it to me.”
Arching under Spike, fucking like anger and tasting like hurt, Slayerdemonlittleboy,
full of venom and sweets. Spike lets his fangs drop, lets the blood haze
settle over his vision, looks down at Connor with yellow eyes. Connor thrashes
beneath him, slams his head back into the headboard. Spills all over Spike’s
hand.
“Damn you,” Connor’s voice shudders, nearly breaks, but the fist connecting
with Spike’s chest is precise. Closed, and empty, and right above Spike’s
heart. “God damn you.”
Then he closes his eyes and bares his neck, and Spike comes so hard his
ears ring.
**
“Spend the day like it’s gonna be your last, because it probably
will be.”
There’s poetry and drink, and just as he’s falling unclothed into bed,
there’s Angel. Dark and imposing, scribbled out of the shadows, stinking
like need.
Spike sits up. Sarcasm is thicker than the whiskey he can still taste in
his throat, but Angel cuts him off before he can make his quip about carnal
last rites.
“I have a son,” he says. And he holds out a fully addressed envelope. “You’re
the only one I can- if I die tomorrow, you’ll get this to him.”
Angel is out the door before Spike can reply.
So he will lay awake for hours, staring at the familiar handwriting on
the envelope, thinking about family and blood, trust and respect, circles
and turns. Lost in the epic of it, wistful and stupid.
He won’t actually *get* it until he’s face down in this same damn alleyway.
Later, when he’s crawling back into the shadows of the hotel, some silent
movie blood sucker escaping the first rays of the black and white dawn.
That Angel didn’t trust him, he just trusted him not to die. That there
can be only one, or some such rot; prophecy-boy, real boy (Buffy's boy), only
one of them was ever going to walk away with the actual grail this time.
Only one of them was ever really the Champion.
Of course, that’s just as much bullshit. The way Spike sees it, (the way
Buffy will see it) the hero is the guy who dies in battle. And the one left
standing, well, he’s just the guy that's left.
**
Somewhere there’s a child crying.
Spike stumbles out of bed, finds Connor huddled in the doorway, cheeks
stained and wet, Angel’s letter bunched in his fist.
“Hey,” Spike says quietly, dropping down next to him, “you all right?”
Connor shakes his head. “Yea, it’s just,” He waves the letter. “My dad,
you know?”
Spike nods. “Yea.”
“He was such an idiot,” Connor says, wiping his nose on his arm.
Spike smiles. “Yea.”
Connor looks away. “Oh god, what if he didn’t know? I wanted to stay and
fight, but he sent me away, and I never got to tell him, and what if I could
have–“
The rest is muffled as Connor buries his head in his arms, and Spike murmurs,
“Shhh, shhh it’s ok.” It’s a lie, of course it’s a lie, nothing is ok, and
they both know it. But it’s what people say, Spike remembers that much because
he said the same to Dawn once. When he held her and she leaked tears and
snot all over his chest, and the stench of her pain made him ache. Made him
hard for her. He had no soul then, and he couldn’t help but think: I could
take all this pain away, I could take away all her grief and she could be
happy forever. Her blood would taste like family, like home, and neither
of them would ever have to be alone again.
Connor smells that familiar, he’s kin and he’s blood, the only one left,
and Spike would like to say that the soul prevents him from having those
kinds of thoughts right now. He would like to say that very much.
Instead, he sits watching Connor’s shoulders shake, rubbing the back of
his neck while he cries. Helps him up off the floor when he’s finished, and
leads him back to the bed.
“Did you have a grave?” Connor asks him, as Spike pulls the covers over
them both.
“Uh…the first time, yeah.”
“I don’t think I ever did,” Connor says.
Spike frowns, looks over at him, but Connor’s face is still turned away.
And he realizes that’s why Connor smells like Buffy- because they’ve both
died and come back. Like Angel. Like Darla. Like himself.
He reaches his hand out, and Connor rolls over, curls into him just a bit.
“Do you think maybe he’ll come back? He did before, right? Maybe he could
again.“
(We were all innocents once upon a time)
“I don’t think he’d want that, Connor.”
Connor doesn’t answer. He falls asleep sprawled out wide, as if he's the
only one in the bed. He twists and he flips, his right hand flung over his
head, his fingers twitching on an invisible bow or broadsword.
Spike climbs out from under the blankets, sits in the armchair under the
window, and lights another cigarette. The curtains are flimsy, he'll have
to put a sheet over the glass before morning. But now, through the smoke
and the fog, he can just make out the faintest shimmer of stars.
**
"I hate flying," Angel says. Four little bottles of Jack Daniels at his
feet, and his voice is mellowed even if he hasn't. Spike can taste his fury
in the air; it followed them onto the plane, and it sits, heavy and rank inside
the small cabin. Makes Spike's gums itch with the need to show his fangs.
"Course you do," he says, "you've never gotten out of the eighteenth century.
You can't even figure how to work your fucking pager."
Angel turns to look at him, shoulders straight, eyes narrow, anger raw
and sour. The posture, the scent, it could almost be Angelus sitting across
from him.
"I'm stuck in the past?" Angel says, "Look at yourself, boy, the hell was
the last time that hair was in style anyway?"
"Fuck you, mate. Punk look's served me well. Gets me laid more regularly
than you, that's for damn sure."
And Spike is standing, close up in Angel's face, mouth open, fists closed.
Even though it's not really Angel that's pissed him off right now, it's
as good an excuse as any. Their rivalry is old and simple, more a part of
them both than worn boots or leather coats. They’re both stuck, frozen in
the here, in the now. Clichés of themselves, ancient things who should
have died decades before Fred was even born. Of course they couldn't save
her, Spike thinks. They shouldn't even be walking the earth.
"Spike, don't fucking start with me, not now." The growl is Angelus' in
any case.
"Me? How the hell is this about me? You're the stupid motherfucker who-"
"Christ, you never could just. shut. up."
Angel's hand closing around Spike's throat, a shark grin slipsliding over
Spike's face, and it's deja vu, it's fucking destiny, it's a script they
no longer need to look at, because they wrote it a century ago and neither
of them have ever really forgotten it. Neither of them ever really forget
anything.
"You never could make me," Spike says.
This was always gonna end one of two ways, and they both always knew that,
too.
Angel's mouth is hard and wet like sex. Spike hears himself moan as they
slide down to the floor.
He's never liked Angel, but hell, he never much liked Angelus either, and
the last time he was under the man this way they were in a horse drawn carriage
being chased by some demon hunter or other. Nothing changes. He thinks he
said as much to Angel, once.
Spike kisses back with all his teeth.
It's frantic, basic, just cocks and the holes they fit in, cruel as memory.
Animals rutting, monsters mourning. Angel still sighs when he comes. They
tear and they drink; Spike's neck, Angel's thigh, and the blood is familiar
too, but there's no forgiveness in it, no comfort. It's just blood. It's
old and bitter, it tastes like someone else's death and their own regret.
They're both too fucking old to carry this much grief and this much hope.
Too old to drink and shag themselves into forgetfulness. Too old, finally,
to learn how to fly.
They will get off the plane in LA in an hour, and they will never mention
this again.
But for now, Angel rests with his head on Spike's shoulder, and Spike lights
a cigarette and watches him fall asleep. Watches the stars outside the window.
Watches Angel's sword hand twitch against his thigh.
**
Crackle of sunrise wakes him, slow burn beneath his bones. Grit of sex
and nostalgia. A hand on his shoulder.
“It’s morning.”
Spike opens his eyes, jerks his arm away from the small shaft of sunlight.
Dancing dust and pink shine against his skin. It won’t last.
He runs a hand over his face, blinks up at Connor who’s shrugging into
a shirt.
“It’s quieter out there,” Connor says. “No more sirens. People are in the
streets again.”
Spike can hear it: Cars and heartbeats. Resiliency.
“Guess the terrorist attack is over,” Connor says, leaning down to tie
his shoes.
“That what they’re calling it?”
Spike can’t bring himself to ask what Connor might have heard about another
city in Southern California, last summer.
Connor nods, stands up, and hands Spike his pants. “I have to go home.”
Spike looks at him; dressed and clean, and once again the fraternity boy
Spike met in Palo Alto two days ago. Probably not yet twenty years old,
but somehow more comfortable with his skin and his secrets than Spike has
managed to become in six times as long.
"You find what you were looking for, then?" Spike asks.
"Not really," Connor says, shrugging. "Still, I’m done.” He winces. “And
hey, I’m really sorry I hit you.”
Spike grins, pulls his jeans on, looks around for his shirt. "S’all right,”
he says, “So, that’s it for you? Going back to university, no more monster
hunting?"
“I’m gonna leave all my monsters here,” Connor says.
“That’s…probably a good choice.”
“Yea, well I knew before I came back here this wasn’t my place anymore.
Angel took all the bad memories away for me, but I guess…I don’t know, I just
hoped there would be something left of the good parts that I could take back
home.”
Spike buttons his shirt. “M’ sorry it didn’t work out.”
Connor shrugs again. “Coming back here again will have to be enough.”
They walk down the stairs as Connor pulls on his coat. It's denim and worn,
unmarked, unremarkable. Spike notices for the first time that his tennis
shoes match his shirt.
“Daylight,” Spike says, nodding toward the front door. “I can’t get you
home.”
"It’s all right. I can find my own way," Connor says, hand already on the
latch. "Can I ask you just one more thing?"
"Yea, sure."
"My dad. Did he kill that dragon?"
**
He's falling and it's endless. He hadn't realized how high the fucking
thing could fly until it dropped him, and now, he can open his mouth and
swallow the clouds. They taste like dirt and old gods. Illyria is dead too.
They were all just a distraction anyway, just an afterthought; Hell had
come for Angel, and the rest of them had just gotten in its way. Not quickly
enough. (Fire, sunlight, stake through the heart, and beheadings, boy, say
it. All in that stupid brogue, and you'd think Angel would have remembered
that lesson, seeing as he was the one who taught it to Spike).
Angel gets in one good hit, before the fire. Death blow, first blood, straight
through the heart. But it’s still breathing and it breathes fire (sunlight,
William repeats).
Spike watches Angel die, the same way he died himself a year ago. Fire
to flesh to dust. Here, the rain washes all of it away.
He launches himself onto the dragon’s back, and slices at it's head with
his sword. (Beheadings, William repeats). It howls as it dies, falling,
graceless from the sky.
Then Spike is falling from the sky along with it (Lucifer and dead angels).
And he wants to laugh, only the ground is coming for him.
**
Once upon a time, Spike thought the soul would make everything better.
Turns out it just makes the ground harder every time he finally lands.
(Because he's fallen off an enchanted tower trying to save the princess,
and he's been baptized in holy wine and holier fire, and six nights ago
he slayed a dragon, but he can still hear the laughing.
Because Buffy died and he died and AngelFredWesleyGunn died, and how can
a man be a hero if every time he tries, he falls? What's the good in saving
the world if he can't ever seem to save his fucking family?
If he can't ever seem to save himself.)
Because now Connor is standing in front of him, staring at Spike with eyes
too wide and mouth too soft, another born again innocent, somebody else's
second chance. And he's asking, "Did he?"
Tell me Angel slayed the dragon.
Tell me my Daddy's a hero.
Tell me the story.
Spike nods. "Yea," he says. Clears his throat. "Yea, he did."
Connor smiles. A half smile that curls the corners of his eyes and makes
him look achingly young. Angel never smiled like that. No one Spike has
known for long has ever looked young.
Spike reaches into his pocket, rubs his fingers over ivory and bone. Pulls
the dragon tooth out and tosses it across the room. Connor's fist snatches
it out of the air. Snake strikes and lightening and quick deadly beautiful
things.
Connor stares at it for a minute, then closes his fist around it.
"Thank you," he says, looking up at Spike. "For everything."
Spike nods.
Another smile, straight and wide, human, as Connor slips out the hotel
door. Spike listens until he can no longer pick out Connor’s heartbeat,
until it’s just one more sound under the traffic, hum buzz of city, footsteps
fading.
He's alone.
(But Dawn is alive and Buffy is alive and he is. Alive. And maybe. Maybe.)
Spike stuffs his hands into his empty pockets, hunches forward. Stares
hard at the sunlight making its way toward him across the floor. Thinks
about the oceans and continents between choices and destiny. Waits for the
laughter.
But the morning is just silence.
-End
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