Life
Author: Mkatsi
Rating: PG
Pairings: Spike/Xander
Feedback: Yes Please
Disclaimer: The boy's aint mine.
Distribution: Please ask and let me know where it's going.
Summary: Xander see's Buffy talking to Spike in the basement and decides something needs to be done. Buffybashing warning.
Xander watched from the shadows as Buffy approached the vampire, he'd taken to following the blonde slayer when she insisted on seeing Spike- so he had a soul? Fine, fine by Xander but he was crazy too, and some how crazy vampire who had tried to force himself upon his best friend did not equal good news in Xander's books- but then again maybe that was his insane Xander-logic talking.
He hated this basement, it had been a nightmare to build in and an even worse place to try and maintain after- Xander had known all along of course it was smack on top of the hellmouth but what his contractors paid for he got built- he couldn't understand how Spike had found his way down here to live, even in his crazy state surely the instinct would have been to go to his Crypt even after the miracle that made the vampire even find Sunnydale again and not get dusted on the way. Maybe that's what it was even, real basic instinct, the hellmouth must call to demons. Must call to evil.
And that's another thing Xander hated, he knew Spike was evil no matter what, knew it but somehow curled in a corner like that trembling, with hair too-long hanging lack to his too-thin face made him look every bit the victim. Spike wasn't a victim, he was the predator, or at least the attacker. So Xander came, and watched, and waited for the vampire to make a wrong move. Watched from the shadows with a stake gripped firmly in his fist at all times just waiting to use it.
So why hadn't he? Why hadn't Spike done anything but whisper pleas and apologies to the girl he had wronged? And why did that sweet girl have a way of making Spike seem more the victim than that girl ever was?
It was in the way she stood, towering over him, in the way she spoke bluntly and sharply, matching the coldness in her glare, in the way that she seemed to get harder with every apology that came her way. In the way that she refused to crouch in front of him, on his own level, refused to see him as anything than an annoyance and tonight- the way she told him that was it- that he would move or she would never come again, leave him to die or starve or kill himself, one less job for her Xander guessed, the way in which, when he looked at her with hope she all but spat on him, the way she told him that he was pathetic and worthless and was needed only to fight because he was expendable, the way she told him he was beneath her and always had been, and somehow Xander knew that meant more than it sounded like, felt it in the change of air, heard it in the silence, saw it in her eyes- and his, the only moment of real clarity he had seen and it had been more painful than he wished to know.
The girl left, and somehow Xander couldn't bring himself to follow her, kept his eyes fixed on the creature before him as it, in turn, kept his eyes on the girl, until she was long gone, and the darkness seemed to close in around him, and he closed further in on himself, Xander could almost see something taunting him in the prison of his mind telling him that everything she ever said was true, he was evil, a killer, a murder, a rapist, worthless, useless, forgotten.
And that hurt, Xander could feel it, see it, smell it, acrid on the stale air, not enough of anything in this place- of warmth or reality- or anything at all and suddenly he finds himself crouched in front of the creature pulling at his arms and leading him away, anywhere away from this place that was dark and lonely and maddening and sickening that folded the darkness back in places they had stood that let the demon slip away in the grasp of a man who felt too much of everything and that nothing understood.