Listening and Lies: One
by daedreams
Summary: Non-slash story about an unusual bond between two men who have more in common than they think.
Setting: Season 2; starts on Valentine’s Day at the beginning of Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered; spoilers through Passions; exceptions: no Amy in this story.
A/N: Please Review!
Part 1
Prologue
“…Call Buffy - I'll be there as soon as I can!” He slammed the phone down and ran into the library cage. He flung open the doors of the metal weapons cabinet and grabbed a small battle axe and the crossbow and arrows. He took a moment to load one arrow into the crossbow, then ran out of the library.
He was almost to the exit, when a noise near the student lounge stopped him. He looked to his left, up the staircase, and there was Angel, standing on the mezzanine landing of the stairs. He was in vamp face and looking up toward the top of the stairway and suddenly, there was Miss Calendar. She stumbled down the stairs quickly and screamed when she landed in Angel's arms.
"Sorry, Jenny. This is where you get off," Angel put a hand on her chin and one on the back of the teacher's head.
Now, now, now! Xander's brain was screaming at him. With shaking hands, he lifted the crossbow toward the two on the stairs. He aimed, and fired…
~~~~
Chapter 1
Five days earlier…
Xander Harris kept his hands buried deep in his pockets. He knew that walking around alone after dark was a special Hellmouthy Sunnydale no-no, but perhaps he had a little bit of a death wish this night. Valentine's Day. There's nothing like February 14th to get your heart stomped on. He should have known. What was I thinking, trying to actually date Cordelia. It's not like nobody saw this coming. Buffy knew. Willow sure as hell knew. And he knew. Deep down.
"Bitch!" he said to the night air, hoping to convince himself to hate her. But he didn't somehow. In the short time they spent together, Xander saw a side of Cordy that he was sure no one else knew about. Sometimes when they would go parking in her dad's car, they would get in the back and she would lean against his chest and stretch her legs out across the seat. He would wrap his arms around her and they would just sit like that. At times, this would get kinda boring, but most of the time, he would just wonder what she was thinking about. She would get so calm. Every once in a while she would let a small sigh escape, and he would squeeze his arms around her just a little tighter. She would fall back into him a little more, making Xander feel more like a man than ever before - just knowing that he was there to protect his girl from whatever she may be fearing.
So, was he wrong? Was he wrong about seeing something special in her? It was obvious why she broke up with him. Her friends were giving her a hard time. He knew she was shallow when they started, but he thought that somehow she wouldn't be shallow about him. Don't really know why.
Xander shook himself out of a daze and found he had wondered into a cemetery.
Oh, primo move, genius. He reached into the inside breast pocket of his jacket and took out a small wooden cross he had stashed there. Since Buffy came to town, he knew not to go anywhere without a cross. It suddenly occurred to him that he didn't know which cemetery he was in. Once you were in the center of them, they were pretty hard to tell apart. They all had the same grass and trees and tombstones and crypts. How the hell did I get lost in my own dumb town? Next time - breadcrumbs.
He knew he was walking west when he came out of the Bronze so he continued to do so. His house was this direction, anyway. After he had walked about fifty yards, he heard a low voice mumbling something he couldn't make out. He stopped to listen for which direction it was coming from (wanting to make sure to go the opposite way). Sounding like it was to his right, he started walking straight again, until he heard a loud clank and painful wail. His protection instinct took over and he ran to find out who needed help.
Xander was stunned by the display he saw in front of him.
It was Spike. There was no second guessing that. Even in the dark, the platinum blonde hair was pretty easy to spot. The vampire was by himself and on the ground. A string of curse words were coming from him, most too British to understand and some so vulgar that they were actually making Xander start to blush. Surveying the scene, it wasn't too difficult to figure out what happened. Spike was propped up on one hand with his back toward Xander. His other hand was clutching the top of the tombstone he was facing. His legs were sprawled out in a rather ungraceful manner, and Xander noticed a wheelchair a couple of feet away that was tipped over on its side.
Xander remembered Buffy telling the Scoobies that she had seen Spike a few weeks ago in that very wheelchair. At the time he thought that was pretty funny. A master vampire confined to a wheelchair. And put there by the very Slayer he could never kill. Of course, Spike being alive at all was pretty dangerous. He would heal eventually and no doubt be coming after Buffy for what she did to him.
This scene, though, was neither funny nor dangerous. It was actually kinda sad. Spike had apparently tried to walk. Not being completely healed, though, he had fallen and kicked his chair over. Xander continued to watch as Spike stopped cussing and just hung his head down. Xander felt a kind of pity start to rise up in himself and he contemplated whether or not to go help him.
Just then, Spike's head whipped around and Xander's pity was instantly replaced with fear. Spike's eyes pierced through Xander and the blonde let out a deep growl and transformed into his vamp features - ready to strike. For a moment, Xander was paralyzed, his fear consumed him. Then, bit by bit, he came to realize the he had the upper hand. Laying before him was a vampire who was immobilized. What was Spike really gonna do - spit at him? That realization seemed to hit Spike at the same time. Xander let the tension fall from his shoulders and started to grin a little. Spike pulled back his game face but kept the evil stare for a moment before slumping his shoulders as well.
"Bloody hell," he mumbled and let his hand fall from the tombstone to the ground. He shifted until he was in a sitting position and used his hands to adjust his legs straight out in front of him. He leaned back on his palms and looked at Xander again.
"So, boy, where's your Slayer friend?" Spike hissed. "Come here to put me out of my misery? Well, the timing couldn't be better, could it? Not gonna be putting up much of a fight."
"Sorry to disappoint, Spike. It's just me." It was strange to feel so relaxed around a brutal killer. Almost felt like doing a little 'nah-nah-nahnah-nah' dance. He took a moment to look the vampire over. Aside from his useless legs, Spike had other visible signs of his near death (re-death?) experience. Most notably, a nasty burn mark on his right cheek. That must have been pretty awful for it not be healed by now.
"Don't know if that makes my night any better or not," Spike responded. They stared at each other for a little while longer before Xander started bouncing on his toes.
Such a cute pathetic evil little monster, Xander thought. Should I pat him on the head and feed him goldfish crackers? Instead he said, "Okay, then. Guess I'll be headin' home. Good luck with the whole…getting up…thing." He turned around and walked off.
~~~~
Spike sighed. If only it had been the Slayer. A good stake through the heart would feel pretty good right about now. He didn't think he could take any more humiliation. First being confined to a wheelchair by that bloody Slayer when she caused the entire organ wall of a church to fall on his back. Then having Drusilla have to bring him puppies and kittens to feed on. Don't see why she couldn't at least bring home a human baby or something. He always brought her full grown food who had the decency to be afraid of them. At least when Dru was sick, he never treated her like a child. Him being stuck in this bleedin' chair was causing the mommy to come out in Dru. There was nothing worse than having his Dark Princess lover think of him as nothing more than one of her dolls to be fawned over. Take that back - one thing worse. Having that same Dark Princess lover shagging her bloody sire right under his nose.
Then this. That doltish kid that followed the Slayer around practically laughing at him. The timing was just too perfect, wasn't it?. Spike had to come here to see if he could just force his legs to start working again. It had been weeks. Why wasn't he mended yet? He just had to get out of the house, didn't he? Well, yeah, he did. Couldn't listen to the two of them at it again. They didn't even care that Spike could hear every groan, pant, and scream. Never did care.
"Arghhh!!" Spike yelled out into the sky. It was every bleedin' night! Every night Angelus would caress Dru's body and talk dirty in her ear - right in front of him!
Spike put up with it in the old days. Had to. Angelus was his grandsire and Dru's sire, and she was putty in his hands. Whatever Angelus wanted, Angelus got. Back when Dru first turned Spike, it took him quite a while to come to terms with the fact that he had to share her with him. She was Spike's destiny, sire, mother, lover. But Angelus had been away for a hundred years. Spike had gotten used to it being just the two of them. And Dru fell right back into the ponce's arms like no time had passed. Like those hundred years had meant nothing. Like he had meant nothing. And here he was. Putting up with it - again.
Spike shook his head clear. Couldn't do much about the situation sittin' here on the ground. He took in a deep unneeded breath and started crawling toward his capsized chair. When he reached it, he was able to right it with no trouble (upper body strength didn't seem to be problem). He situated himself directly in front of the chair, grasp both arms and pulled himself up. When he made a move to twist his body around to get into the seat properly, his center of gravity suddenly shifted and he lost his balance. Just when he was about to hit the ground again, he felt two hands catch him underneath his arms.
He looked up and saw the Harris kid standing there holding him up. That was the last straw.
"Get your bloody hands off me!" Spike growled.
"Fine," the boy answered. But instead of letting him fall to the ground, which Spike expected, he lifted him all the way into the chair and dropped him into the seat. Spike watched confused as the kid walked away again.
"Hey!" Spike called after him. Harris stopped and turned around.
"What?"
"Uh…," Why did I call out to him? He could think of absolutely nothing to say. The boy stood there for moment longer than turned and continued on. Spike was left alone again, and he started to wheel his chair through the short grass back toward the factory he called home.
~~~~
The next day, Xander sat in History class tapping his pencil on his open book. His gaze was fixated out the window. He'd had some pretty crappy days in this high school, and, aside from all the near-death scare-a-paloozas, this was definitely the worst. Thanks to Ms. Cordelia Chase's beautifully ironic breakup-on-Valentine's-Day-in-the-middle-of-the-crowded-Bronze extravaganza, the entire school was snickering at him behind his back. God, that wasn't even true. It was entirely in front of his back.
Xander had completely accepted his loserdom status at school. It allowed him to fade into the background and crack his little jokes and people would laugh and then forget about him. It used to bother him, but now he had such a wonderful tight knit group of friends, that he didn't care what outsiders thought of him…well, not too much, anyway (plus he had the gleeful secret knowledge that he had helped save all their sorry asses from an apocalyptic doom last year).
But all this attention given to him today - it was unbearable. Random guys punching him on the arm saying, "Way to get dumped, man." The girls just out-right laughing at him. Plus it just plain hurt. Cordy was hanging with her holier-than-thou gang again like the past few months with him didn't even happen. Like he didn't even matter.
This morning, Willow and Buffy were trying to be nice and supportive. But he could tell they were being complacent and thought he was better off without Cordy anyway. He found himself suddenly missing Jesse. He hadn't really made another close male friend since Jesse died last year. Jess was a good guy. An idiot sometimes, and, sure, he usually thought with his dick, but hey, so did Xander most of the time. Jesse. Great, his brain had to go there. Now his depression got to go to a whole new fun level. Heartbreak depression was entirely different from killing-your-best-friend-because-he's-a-vampire depression. Blah! This day sucked!
Oh, goody. Now his thoughts had drifted from Jesse to vampires. Then to Spike. That was an unusual scene to be cast in last night. Xander was still trying to figure out what it was that possessed him to go back after he had started to walk away. Must have been that scream. Not the kind of noise he expected to hear from Spike. Xander had heard many different kinds of screams in the last couple of years. There was the startled scream, the panic scream, the blood-curdling pain scream. But the one coming from Spike last night was none of the above. It was something a little more…what?…personal? It had some kind of personal pain to it. It sounded something like…heartbreak. Huh? Was Spike's heart broken? Well, that's just the most absurd thing I've had ever thought of.
The bell rang. Xander gathered his book and empty non-note-taking notebook, and took off swiftly down the hall in search of Buff and Will, trying desperately to ignore everybody else in the hall. He found his girls huddled around Buffy's open locker and tried to put on his 'hey-look-at-me-I'm-totally-over-this-whole-getting-dumped-thing' face. Wow…didn't even know I had a face for that. Good…more depression material. Welcome to Xander's Happy Fun-Time World of the Seven Levels of Misery - Wednesdays are double coupon days - bring the kids!
"Ladies, ladies! What's with all the low-talking? Is there mystery afoot? Big Baddies abound? Apocalypses abrewin'?"
"Angel," Willow stated bluntly.
"Oh." Okay, depression, Xander told his psyche, time to take a back seat and be support-o guy for the Buffster and her mucho grando psycho ex-boyfriend's head-trip of the week.
Buffy leaned back against the open locker. "He gave me a warning last night in the guise of a joyful little romantic gesture. Giles told me that I need to lay low for a few days, but I just can't do that. Not while he's out there killing people." She let out an exasperated sigh. "I was hoping you guys would back me up on patrol tonight? He always tends to surprise me out there, and I could use a couple extra sets of eyes."
"Of course," Willow said.
"You know were there for ya, Buff," Xander added.
"This is actually pretty dangerous, guys. I just need you there for eyes, not for fighting. If he shows, you guys are gone. Understand?"
"We get it."
"Gone," Xander agreed, "like the wind, you betcha." He put an hand on Buffy's shoulder and she covered it with her own. The weak smile she gave him melted his heart. As much as he didn't deserve the public humiliation brought on by his ex-girlfriend, it was absolutely nothing compared to Buffy not deserving the constant death-threat fear brought on by her ex-boyfriend.
~~~~
"Arghhhh!" Spike slammed his hands against his ears and pressed as hard as he could. Again! Why can't that pompous eviler-than-thou poofter keep his bloody hands to himself?!
He sat there in the central room of the factory with his head down, gripping its sides. With his eyes squeezed shut tight, he concentrated on trying to drown out all the sounds that his vampire hearing insisted on picking up. He tried with all his might to think of anything besides his sire and grandsire naked and tearing at each other and what the fuck is he doing that makes her make that cooing noise? But his mind went nowhere. Those sounds just kept filling his head. It only brought back all the memories of when he shared his bed, not only with Dru, but with Angelus and Darla as well. The four of them had gone everywhere together and done everything. But that was more than a century ago. Things had changed. Angelus' claim over Dru was gone. Wasn't it? Shouldn't it be?
She's mine. She's mine, now! Spike screamed at Angelus in his head. I won't let you have her. I can't. But he knew he would. He always had. Spike could tell himself anything he wanted in his head, but in the end Angelus always got his way. Always.
Spike opened his eyes and removed his hands from his ears. It was pointless. The sounds and thoughts weren't going away, so that meant he had to. As he began to roll his wheelchair toward the door, his eye caught something glimmer on the floor under a chair at the main table. He moved toward it and leaned down to discover it was the ruby necklace he had given Dru the day before, Valentine's Day. It was laid out on the floor where it had obviously been cast off absently. He had sent their last minion out to get it a few days before (minions were growing scarce nowadays with the Slayer seemingly coming out of every woodwork in town). Spike saw the necklace about a week ago in a store front window, when he was rolling about the streets trying to get away from the Dru/Angelus everlasting sex sounds…again. Dru loved shiny things, and it didn't matter that the necklace was stolen, she would still know it was expensive. She had mewed over it when he had presented it to her in a lovely velvet lined box, only to then start purring over Angelus' gift of a dripping human heart slapped unceremoniously on the table.
And there was the necklace. On the floor. Forgotten under a chair. No doubt torn off Dru's neck by the ponce in a not so subtle attempt to strip Dru of all things Spike. Just because Angelus' soulful counterpart, Angel, had staked his own sire last year, did not give him the right to steal Spike's sire. It just wasn't fair.
Fair. Now that was a concept Angelus never understood. Angelus always went after the weakest of victims. And if they weren't weak when he discovered them, he would make them that way - through slow torture, usually involving the death of loved ones. It was what he did to Dru. It was what made her insane. And it wasn't fair.
Spike stretched down toward the necklace and managed to lean far enough to grasp it with the tips of his fingers. Sitting back up, he flipped it lightly into the air a couple of times before flinging it hard against a nearby iron pillar. The rubies smashed to dust instantly and filled the room with an odd red glow for a few moments before settling on the ground to mix with the more common dust and debris.
As Spike continued to wheel himself outside into the welcoming darkness, his mind gifted him with a joyful image of Angelus exploding into that same kind of fateful and pointless dust.
To be continued...
Please, please review! I have six more chapters to post and would like to know what you think so far.
Thanks!
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