A/N: Decided to post this chapter just a few hours after the first one since Chapter One was getting read. Please, review, though - I'd appreciate it.
Chapter 2
The night was fairly eventful. Buffy fought and killed two vamps, with Xander and Willow looking on from a safe distance. Xander did his absolute best to keep an eye on the perimeters at all times. They had been patrolling for a good three hours and had hit almost all the graveyards in town (a rather magnificent feat in itself), and he felt pretty sure that this was not the night that Angelus was going to make any kind of move. With a little bit of both reasoning and wining, Willow and Xander were able to convince Buffy of that, too.
Making their way out of the current cemetery they were in, Xander continued to keep a look out for any menacing jack-in-the-box creatures. He soon realized that this was the same place he had been the night before. Recalling that he should probably learn to differentiate between all these dark places that they've been patrolling the last two years, he took a mental note to remember the name of this particular graveyard. Pleasant Fields. This is the one closest to Willow's house. It's the one with that big twisted scary oak tree at the east entrance. It's the one with the crypt with the weird gargoyle-like heads. It's the one with the very well kept lawn. It's the one with Spike. Spike? Xander squinted his eyes to his right and, sure enough, there was Spike, smoking a cigarette and sitting on the same tombstone where Xander had found him last night. They were a good sixty or so yards away from him, but he could tell that Spike was sitting on a headstone, looking in their direction. It was odd that Spike would choose a hair color that was so stand-outy. Weren't most creatures of the night supposed to blend into the scenery. I'll have to ask him about that someday. What?! Ask Spike about his hair care habits? Ok, file that under the category of 'most bizarre and random thoughts.
It crossed Xander's mind only briefly to call out to Buff and Will, who had already shifted out of patrol-mode and were talking about their weekend plans. He dashed the idea quickly, though. Spike obviously wasn't coming after them and Xander was kinda tired anyway and ready to be at home. He mentally shrugged Spike away and continued following the girls.
Feeling mostly safe as the three of them walked toward Willow's house to drop her off, Xander gave his mind permission to think about his own issues for a little while. As images of his past few months with Cordelia flashed through his mind, a wave of loneliness washed over him. He looked closely at the two women walking a few paces ahead of him. They were chattering on about something Oz-related. He had never seen Willow so happy. She had an honest-to-God boyfriend for the first time ever, and she was basking in the joy. Oz was a good guy, too, aside from the whole three-nights-a-month-I'll-kill-you-if-you-get-anywhere-near-me-no-matter-who-you-are werewolf thing. But, hey, we all have bad days. Xander hadn't found much in common with him yet, but there was a potential friendship possible. Maybe he could even talk to Oz about this Cordy thing someday.
Cordy thing? There's a Cordy thing? That I need to talk about? Pretty straight forward, isn't it? Cordy dumped me. It sucks. I'm a little lonely. And there are my friends. Walking in front of me with happy thoughts of Oz and sad thoughts of Angel, and yet nobody has asked me anything about Cordy.
Sure, this morning they were all, "Oh, Xander, I'm so sorry, Are you okay, What can we do for you, She's an idiot (well, more of an idiot than usual) for not wanting you, blah, blah, blah." But that was it. Not one more mention of it since then. He knew he was putting on the I'm-over-it-face, but they were supposed to be his friends. They couldn't see through that? It had been a day. One freakin' day, for God's sake!
What is wrong with you people? He found himself shouting at them in his head. He let a soft sigh escape his lips. Yeah, there's a Cordy thing. That I need to talk about. Damn.
A few minutes later, with Willow safe at home, it was just Buffy and Xander walking toward his place. Xander draped his arm across her shoulders pulling her closer to him.
"How ya doin'?" He asked her.
"Hangin' in there." But it sounded too forced. They were silent for a while longer and she slipped an arm around his waist and leaned into his shoulder. "Thanks for coming out tonight. I feel better with you guys close by."
"Hey, that's what we do. We're here for each other. Through everything. Good days, bad days, passing grades, failing grades, demon lovers, demon killers, new relationships, breakups…"
"Yeah. Don't know what I'd do without you." Buffy kept her head on Xander's shoulder the rest of the way to his house. When they reached his front door, she separated from him and gave him a peck on the cheek. "Thanks for tonight. Get some sleep, you look tired."
Xander closed the front door quietly behind him and leaned his back against it with his eyes shut. What would I ever do without my bestest friends, Willow and Buffy?
"You're late."
Xander's eyes shot open and spotted his father sitting in the worn yellow-but-wasn't-it-once-cream-colored recliner near the TV.
"You waited up," Xander said in a voice that sounded much more hopeful then he meant it to. His dad made a grunt-like noise, brought a bottle of sickly brown liquid to his mouth and took a deep swallow. He's not even bothering to put it in a glass anymore.
"You weren't waiting up," he answered himself too quietly and closed his eyes again. He continued to lean against the door listening to this dad-like shaped figure take a couple more gulps from the bottle.
"Don't mind me," Xander whispered to the room and slipped back out the front door.
~~~~
Spike put his last cigarette between his lips, crumpled the pack into a tight ball, and flung it over his shoulder. He slowly brought his chrome Zippo up to the fag and drank in the sounds. A light clang when the lid flicked open. Tiny clicks as his thumb spun the tiny wheel. A small hiss as the acid-scented liquid accepted the spark. A minute whoosh when the flame escaped. Spike drew in a short breath and heard the crackle of paper and tobacco. He closed the lighter quickly and stuffed it back in the pocket of his jeans.
The sounds were all around him. The leaves, the insects, the rodent scavengers, the wind. All providing a symphony of sound in the silence. It was easy to drown in. Spike had no idea why he had never noticed the silence before. From the moment he crawled out of his grave and for the next hundred and twenty years, all he heard was noise. It was always deafening and always bouncing in his brain trying to find a home. Never quite landing anywhere and eventually just taken over by some other noise and on and on and on. Wasn't it supposed to be that way? The noise was part of it, right? That's why the enhanced hearing. You need to know what's going on around you. Always moving. Always hunting. Relishing the screams. This was good. All good. But the silence. This is good, too. Better? Probably not. But good. Definitely good.
An owl. Wind in the trees. A very distant car. The paper/tobacco crackle. A firefly buzz. Footsteps in the grass. Footsteps in the grass? Quiet footsteps. Slow. Not the footsteps accompanied by the annoying Slayer and her posturing pals gabbing away through his private symphony. Determined footsteps. Coming toward him.
Harris. Spike could smell him before he saw him. The kid's own essence of sweat and chocolate and Ivory soap. Plus something else. What was that? No fear. None. Not even the tiny bit that was coming off of him last night. No pity either. The kid was lucky for that. Spike would have found some way to rip him open if he continued to exude that sickening scent of pity. Still, though, there was something else. Despair?
The kid strolled to a headstone about ten feet in front of Spike. He sat on top of it and wiggled around a little to get comfortable. He looked up and stared directly into Spike's eyes. The vampire was dumbstruck and pissed off. The only humans that have ever not shown any fear around him were the Slayers he fought (killed two 'em - he reminded himself to stroke his ego). This boy, this insignificant boy, has the balls to just sit there. Sit there and stare. What's he playing at?
"My girlfriend broke up with me, yesterday," Harris said casually. Spike raised an eyebrow at the kid. "I know, you're thinking, 'well, duh, cause who would go out with you?', but it was a bit of a shocker for me. I mean, I know it shouldn't have been, but I thought we were really starting to have something. I thought it was really starting to click, you know?"
The boy has gone completely 'round the bend. What is he talking about? "What the hell you doing here, kid?"
"And that's the part that really gets to me. That fact that I actually thought we were starting to click. I mean - Cordelia! What was I thinking? Sure, when we're alone in the car or the broom closet or whatever, she can't get enough of the XanMan, and really, who could blame her, but if she has to admit to her friends that she might actually like hanging out with me, then it's bye-bye lovin', hello pain and humiliation."
"It's torture, right?" Spike ventured. "The Slayer told you to come here and slowly torture me with mindless drivel." He flicked away his cigarette. "This is ridiculous." He shifted on the stone toward his wheelchair that sat just within reach to his left. Just before he was able to lay a hand on one of the back handles, the chair was suddenly pulled away. Spike's head darted up and saw the kid dragging it back to the other tombstone and sitting back down, the chair neatly parked next to him now.
"Ah, ah, ah, no-no, Spikey," the fucking kid was grinning. "I'm going to sit here and talk, and you are going to sit there and listen. When I'm done, if you're nice, I'll think about giving you this chair back."
Spike slipped quickly into game face and hissed and spit and growled. "I'll rip your fucking throat out!" He leaned forward as far as he could and almost lost his balance.
Harris threw his head back and laughed. "It's a lot like watching the angry chimpanzees at the zoo. Next time I'll remember to bring little monkey snacks."
Spike let his demon fall back but continued to glare with gold speckled in his blue eyes. "You know I will kill you, right? The moment I'm mended, I was going to go after the Slayer, but she just got pushed to runner-up. Congratulations, kid, you just won the FA-fucking-Cup."
~~~~
It wasn't a surprise to Xander that he knew exactly where he was going when he left the house. Nor was it a surprise that Spike was still sitting in the same place that he saw him twenty minutes earlier. The plan was to just talk. To get it out of his head. Maybe if he could vocalize it, then it wouldn't be all jumbled up inside. He could make sense of it. He would feel better.
The big surprise, however, came when he saw Spike start to try and leave. It triggered some instinctual reaction in him that released a bit o' mean-Xander that he rarely let out to play. Most recently it had been Angel who had been tapping into mean-Xander (well, and that one time during the whole being-possessed-by-a-hyena fiasco), but if Spike thinks I'm going to let him just roll away from me like I don't even matter, then I'm gonna let out a little mean.
Now, Spike was emanating a constant low growl. What was it about this evil creature sitting in front of him that didn't scare him? Xander knew that he was a walking HappyMeal as soon as Spike was healed. And really, how much longer was that going to take? A couple months? Only weeks, maybe? But it wasn't important to think about that right now. Right now, he just had to talk. And somebody had to listen. So, over the sounds of Spike's vampire-fussiness, Xander continued.
“I’m not delusional enough to think that we had a big future with white picket fences and game night with the neighbors every third Saturday, but wasn’t it worth giving it a try? We had just started…”
Soon Spike stopped growling.
~~~~
He was going to keep talking, wasn‘t he? This just might be worse than Dru and Angelus. Maybe. No not really. Spike was eventually able to tune the kid out. It was surprisingly easy to do. The other sounds in the graveyard were much more interesting.
“…not like I was in love with her, or anything. It’s just that we had, like, I don’t know….potential. I’ve never exactly be a guy who, you know, finishes stuff. But I wanted to…with this. I wanted to see where it would go. I was ready. I think. But I never even got a chance to make that choice. She just decided it was over. It doesn’t seem…”
Okay, maybe the boy wasn’t tuned out completely. His voice seemed to be pretty easy to listen to. It’s not like he was actually saying anything to Spike, just kinda…near him. So Spike started hearing his symphony again. He let the boy’s words incorporate themselves into all the other noises, making his 60-piece orchestra sound more like an improvisational jazz band.
Pretty soon, the music started to become more hypnotic. Spike closed his eyes. He let the sounds engulf him like a wave. He wanted to be lost in it. All the world to go away and let it be just him and his sounds. They moved and danced and flowed and breathed and pulsated. Pulsated? What was that? What is that?
His little concert suddenly had percussion. Spike recognized the sound, but had never heard it beat so slowly before. He loved the sound, but he was used to it pounding in his head hard and fast when he knew there was heat and blood and fear. He was supposed to be the cause of that fear. Now it was just a quiet steady thumping. A bump-bump, then a pause. Bump-bump, then pause. Bump-bump.
He opened his eyes. The kid was still talking. Spike was fascinated. Not by anything he was saying, but by this heartbeat. This completely calm and rhythmic heartbeat. There was no fear, no anger, no desperation. Just bump-bump. Pause. Bump-bump.
It was more than a wave, it was an ocean. It was a cascade of breakers from an endless horizon and knowing that they would keep coming and hit him again and again and again. Each time pushing him under the water and the deeper he fell, instead of the quiet ocean darkness, the music would get louder and more colorful and poetic and the ocean was not cold but warm and there was the bump-bump, pause, bump-bump, pause, bump-bump…
The boy had stopped talking. Jazz became symphony again and still bump-bump, pause…
Spike brought his head up out of the water and saw Harris looking at him. It was an expression that he couldn’t quite read. Something close to irritation, but also a little bit of concern. Not really pity, though, just thoughtful concern. Odd.
The kid hopped down and dragged the wheelchair back over to its original position next to Spike. Instead of leaving though, he went back to the headstone and sat down again.
“You’re turn,” Harris said, his head tilted slightly and arms crossed across his chest.
“My turn, what?” What exactly is this Slayer-wanna-be doing, anyway? Sitting here, in the middle of the night, invading my private backroom concert with his smells and voice and heartbeat.
“Who hurt you?
“You know who did this - Slayer dropped a organ on me.” Okay, this kid was back to being really really annoying.
“I don’t mean that, and you know it. I talked, you listened. Okay, maybe you weren‘t really paying attention, but it doesn‘t matter. Now I listen. That‘s the way it works. That‘s what‘s fair.”
Spike leaned down toward his chair, put his left hand on the far arm and pushed himself off the tombstone and down into the seat in one quick motion (privately thanking the powers-that-be for not letting him fall in front of the boy again).
“Sod off,” he absently told the kid, and wheeled himself out of the graveyard.
To be continued...
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