7-11
Part1: Xander
They're all out of Tatertots again, and apparently this constitutes some kind of crisis.
My suggestion that the skinny one with the pigtails improvise with some actual root vegetables goes down like a ton of bricks, and now they're all looking at me like I just told them rock and roll was the devil's music. I try to act like they don't make me feel like some middle-aged spaz in a kitchen full of hard-eyed, sharp-tongued post-pubescents but I'm guessing that, Chosen as they are, they can all smell the fear coming off me in waves.
I can't pretend they don't make me nervous as hell, because they do. Which is kinda odd when you think that over the last six years I've been working on a relaxed attitude to pretty much everything, and when I say everything I mean the kind of crazy shit that even John Constantine would run screaming from. Not that I'm comparing myself to him. I'm not. For starters, he's British and he has this whole silent, ice-cool, casually-lethal thing going on, all of which leads me to question yet again why they'd even think about Keanu Reeves for the role. I'm mean, just on a purely physical level he's all wrong, plus no one should ever have to listen to him do that accent again. Dick Van-Dyke made a more convincing Cockney.
Wait, what was it I was saying before? Oh yeah, that I'm not comparing myself to him in any way. Constantine, not Dick Van-Dyke. Although, I think I'm safe in saying that, these days, the Xanman is phased by very little that walks, lumbers or slithers.
Teenage girls are another thing entirely. They're all looking back at me and I try like hell not to let my eyes drift over to the left, where I'm almost sure one of them is hovering in the doorway in nothing but a pair of baby-doll pyjamas.
"O.K. Tatertots. Anything else?"
As I reach into my back pocket to check my wallet, I'm not holding my breath for anyone else to help me out. The other Scoobies aren't exactly bringing in the big bucks these days - what with the forcible unemployment, student loans and the extra-crispy place of business. They say they feel bad, that it's just temporary, that they'll pay me back somehow, but I don't care so much. Supplying the basic needs has become kinda my role in the team, and although sometimes it bugs me, I don't resent it. We all do our part.
That's the team: the hard core. The Potentials I'm having a harder time seeing as part of that yet. For one, they keep dying on us and for two - they're all pretty much still kids, in mind at least. Most of them are almost the same age as Dawnie, but hearing them talk about stuff they think they understand they sound a whole lot younger. Plus as far as being pains in the asses about simple stuff like chores, official lights-out and keeping the house tidy, they pretty much have her licked.
Listening to them, I can hear the ugliness starting to kick in and the headache that's been lurking around the base of my skull all day starts to make serious trouble. They're searching around the cupboards for more things they can add to the scrawl that already covers two sides of a notebook, and I know that itd be pretty pointless to mention to them how hard I work for this money. That there's my own rent to come out of my pay check, plus utility bills and a car to run and could I sound any more like my old man?
One of them, the one who doesn't seem able to keep her mouth shut when she breathes, says,
"Mr. Harris, can I get some Hohos? Like a whole shitload? Because when I'm on, they're like all I can eat."
I close my eyes for a moment and hear Rona tell her to shut up - that I don't want to hear stuff like that. I thank her. Silently. I like Rona.
They scribble a couple more things and Dawn says,
"Oh, and we need something to clean the oven. Put down oven-cleaner."
She smiles at me sort of painful and apologetic as she says it though, and I try to remember she'd not one of them. I also try to forgive her the $8 or $9 I know that'll probably cost.
"It was Amanda's turn to make dessert last night and it kinda exploded."
"I think it was banana-cream pie."
"Whatever. She's cleaning it up."
No fair...Shannon's on clean-up today.
I swapped with Kennedy for Friday!
Mid snark, they're distracted and it seems like I good time to make a break for it. I grab my keys and I'm already half way out the door when Buffy appears from behind all the Potentials and grabs my sleeve. Her hair's all bright and bouncy around her shoulders, but her eyes look somewhere between apologetic and plaintive. I try not to feel pissed that she wants to add something else to the list.
"I know Buff. You need laundry detergent. I got it."
"Oh, yeah...thanks."
She smiles at me, and it's like a widescreen version of Dawnie's earlier expression: contrition with a side of wary. She lowers her voice just a fraction and turns us away from the others so they can't hear.
"Xan, can I ask you a favour?"
What with my new role as personal shopper and concierge for eleven teenage girls, I'm pretty much au fait with the feminine hygiene aisle these days. I'm about to tell her that that's OK too - that I conquered that particular Everest a while ago - but then she just blurts the next sentence out.
"Will you take Spike with you?"
Still surrounded by tiers of panty-pads my brain smacks up short, and I have to take a step back into the room just so I can be sure I actually just heard her say what I think she said. She doesn't repeat it though, she just does that thing with her eyelashes that once when I was pretty drunk I told her no red-blooded man on earth could ever hope to resist. I have to say that now I'm a little pissed at her turning it back on me.
"No...what?! No!"
She gives me another kind of look, a lot less seductress and a bit more soft and pleady, but I'm still not caving. The memory of the last time I had to ferry that creepy, death-smelling jerk across town is suddenly coming back to me in waves, and I feel kinda nauseous at just the thought of spending even half an hour sitting across from him in the kind of complete silence that isn't even broken with breathing.
"No, Buffy. No. He's a ...I don't want him in my car."
She shrugs; the small soft shrug, another one from the arsenal, and touches the back of my hand with the tip of a finger.
"Xan, he's a guy too you know."
Which is of course debatable, but I let that one slide.
"So what? What does that mean? Andrew's a guy...sort of...and you ask me to take him shopping."
"I think you may be a bad influence on him. He's ten times more annoying when you're around."
She's acting all jokey, but I know what she's trying to do. She's trying to get me to look at her, but I'm still mad about the whole eyelash batting thing.
"And Spike's going crazy cooped up here with a house full of teenage girls. Yesterday he...he ordered pizza just so he could talk sports to the pizza guy."
She gives me the last in her collection; the little, tiny, big-eyed smile, and I realise that at some point I'm going to have to concede defeat to her, although I refuse to be in any way graceful about it.
"Why doesn't he call Clem? Or that guy with the tusks? He could go down to Willy's, or trawl a sewer or two. There's got to be a pal crawling round out there for him somewhere."
"He doesn't fit in there any more Xander. You know that."
I'm still mad at her but it's starting to tail off, until I follow her gaze across the kitchen and see him slouched in the door frame looking at us. His hands are shoved deep inside the pockets of that filthy black leather he's taken to wearing again, and his expression reminds me eerily of a bullterrier my Dad once won in a bet.
Sparky.
He's taunting me, I know it. Not smiling exactly, but there's a trace of something on his lips, (other than the dried blood I mean), and I know what he's thinking. He looks at me in exactly the same way that Sparky did just before he jumped up and sunk his teeth right into my nuts.
"O.K." I say.
And I can hardly believe what I'm doing. I'd rather have a root canal than spend more than a minute in the guy's company, but seeing his pupils narrow fractionally as he hears me almost makes the sacrifice worth it. He might be all soul-having now, but I knows something about him that Buffy doesn't. He still likes to think we're all scared shitless of him. That part of him will never change; the demon part, and I'm guessing that's not something he'll ever share with Buffy during their late night cellar-chats.
She's smiling at me now, a real smile with her eyes all sparkly, and deep down my gut twists a little knowing that that's because she thinks this'll make him him happy. She jumps up to hug me, and I feel her lips brand my cheek with a brief candy-pink kiss.
"Thanks, big brother. I owe you one."
And that's me. Reliable, platonic ol' Xander. Always the big brother, never the dangerous, crazy-in-love-with, romantic lead. But never the one who leaves her either, never the one who breaks her heart. It's another role I play pretty reluctantly, but I know it's mine. I've accepted it, and maybe Spike could do with a few lessons in acceptance too.
Locking eyes with him across the kitchen I see that start of smirk die on his lips as he realises, for the first time since he got that government hardware chopped out of his brain, I'm not looking away. He thinks I don't know him, like he's all mysteriouso creature of the night', but I see him, I see right through him. Tilt my head to one side and narrow my eyes, then watch the little spark of irritation flare up as he slowly realises whose patented slouch I'm ripping off.
"Nosferatu. So are you coming or what?"
* * * * * *
It takes me exactly three minutes to admit that I was wrong, in which time I've thought of at least seventeen other things I could have done to prove he doesn't bother me.
Because he bothers me.
Especially now, in my own car, the one place I always feel completely safe and totally in control. Even with the windows rolled down and the air-conditioning turned up to drown out the oh-so-obvious sound of his lungs not working, it's like he's something caught in the corner of my eye. A great big black and white flake of crap that I can't get out.
Reaching around in the glove, I finally manage to find a tape and slap it into the machine. The few seconds it takes to spool to the start seem like an eternity, but then the opening bars of my current favourite song fill the silence and I feel my mood instantly mellow. Driving around at night with the volume turned way the hell up is my idea of heaven, and I've almost achieved complete denial of Spike's presence when he suddenly moves and reminds me that he's there.
This White Stripes'?
He clears his throat, and the sound is like fingernails down the chalky blackboard of my mind.
Yeah. New album.
I dart a glance to one side ready for the inevitable diatribe on modern music, but he's just leaning out the window staring into the dark.
He does a lot of that these days. Staring into space. Sometimes with his eyes focused way off on something in the distance, but more often just at his feet. It wouldn't bother me except that he never used to do that sort of thing, and if anything it's more unnerving than the talking - which was always far more irritating than scary. Although I'm pretty sure that's one of the main reasons he never managed to kill any of us. There's nothing he likes more than a captive audience.
Talking Spike was easier. Get him on an interesting subject, compliment his dress sense and you'd always buy yourself a few precious extra minutes. Silent Spike is harder to get a handle on and, looking back to the road, I realise that maybe that's what bothers me so much about being around him these days.
Not the fact that he's a vampire. The fact that he isn't quite one.
I risk another glance to the side. His face is calm and expressionless as he listens to the music, and for just a split second I actually consider asking him what he thinks of it, how it measures up to what he considers to be the classics'. But then he frowns, reaches up to pick something from between his front teeth and I remember.
Oh yeah.
Jerk.
* * * * * *
He's out of the door before I've even set the parking brake, and I see a couple of girls turn and watch him as he stalks past them, lighting a cigarette up as he goes.
I've seen them all do it, women twice my Mom's age and girls half Dawn's. Their eyes sliding off whoever they're talking to, to track him down the street. Part of me understands it. Not because I see it myself, just because I'm an intuitive heterosexual guy with many, many female friends. Spike's got something about him that naturally draws women's attention. If I could sum it up in an equation, I'm thinking it would go something like: hair + boots + coat x ruthless and pathological immortal killer = sexy. They also seem to like the abs.
Stepping out of the car, I can't help but notice the way the same two girls barely skim over me before returning their eyes like laser beams to his skinny disappearing behind. I snap open a box of orange tictacs and drop one in my mouth. Like I said before.
Undead.
Jerk.
* * * * * *
I grab a basket because of course he didn't take one.
As far as I remember, Spike's idea of shopping seems to consist of selecting items at random from the shelves, based on their colour or packaging design, reading the contents and then snorting loudly to himself at some private joke before shoving them back on a different shelf.
Avoiding even looking in his direction, I walk purposefully towards the frozen foods in search of Tatertots. A girl with long tanned legs and even longer tawny brown hair is standing staring through the glass of the chiller cabinet, and I lean past her to get some peas. As I drop them into the basket our eyes meet briefly.
Apparently these may contain nuts.
She smiles at me, and the lights seem to dim a little. She has eyes like melting chocolate drops and soft, glossy skin. I start to smile back, open my mouth to tell her how even packets of nuts now also have to bear that warning, and then I see him. A few paces behind her. Holding up five large blue packages. It takes me a second or two to recognise the Tampax branding. He raises an eyebrow questioningly, and I feel the smile freeze on my lips.
Girls wanted these.
He dumps them all into the basket. Drops in a bottle of Jack Daniels on top.
That's for me though.
* * * * * *
I wonder if anyone else has noticed that he's the only one here who doesn't appear in the windows.
I watch him as he moves along the next aisle, by the candy. A slim, not-so-tall, black leather-clad pillar of evil, stopping every now and then to pick something up, turn it over, put it back. The store is almost empty and the desk clerk is cleaning under her nails with a plastic fork, barely conscious that there are even customers, let alone that one is a non-reflective demon in a human shell. I look down at the bagels and wonder if Dawn meant cinnamon & raisin or onion.
My name sounds weird coming from his mouth. He says the Xan part Zhaan', instead of Xan. I look up and he's wearing a pair of sunglasses he's just taken from the stand at the end. He stares at me, and the jet black-lenses relect my face back at me. Tosses me a pack of Twinkies.
Will likes these.
He turns away, takes off the sunglasses and tries another pair, and I wonder if (with those famous vampire super senses of his) he can hear me gritting my teeth.
And since when did he start calling her Will'?
* * * * * *
Budweiser is like...a third of the price.
Yeah, for a reason. It's tastes like bloody water.
Tastes fine to me. Maybe something wrong with your taste buds.
Know what good beer tastes like, and that tastes fuck all like it.
Funny. I don't remember you minding when you living in my closet.
He glares, eyes narrowed to killer-cold slits.
Yeah well, beggars can't be choosers. Besides, I was insane.
Not so crazy you couldn't find the porn channels.
He snorts, and it's like a flash-frame of the old Spike. Raises his voice a little to make sure the guy in the plaid shirt looking at the blended whiskeys can hear him.
Didn't have a choice. Not as if there's anything decent hidden under that bit of carpet by your bed, grins, Not for blokes any ways.
* * * * * *
She'll never believe he started it.
And the fact that his nose is still oozing blood and I don't have a mark on me won't help matters. She'll take one look and assume the worst because these days he can't seem to do any wrong in her eyes. He has a soul now and that gives him a free pass. Just like it did for Angel. He's a person now'. He can be a good man'. Once I even heard her call him William' instead of Spike, and not jokingly either.
I shoot a glance at him as I finish packing the stuff into the sacks. He's scowling slightly, pressing a thumb to the side of his nose and I think I can hear a tiny barely audible little clicking sound as he moves the tip back and forth.
Sixty-two twenty.
Oh. Sorry.
Distracted, I turn back to the clerk, going into my back pocket for my wallet, and then his hand moves out in front. Slaps the money down on the counter.
Keep the change love.
It takes a moment or two to register, but when it does and I turn to look at him he's already halfway to the door, two of the paper sacks under each arm. The bottle of Jack Daniels is jammed into a pocket, pulling his coat down on one side, but somehow he still manages to walk with a knife-sharp swagger and a smoothness that draws the eyes of not only the clerk, but every living female in the store. The doors slide open with a swish, and he shoots a quick look back over his shoulder.
Fucking hurry up will you.
And like I said before.
Short.
Undead.
Jerk.
END OF PART 1