Author's Notes: One day I will write a story where Spike is actually Spike-esque and not completely out of character. …today is not that day. Sorry. Also, sorry about the absurdly dense text. I admire to the point of adulation people who are sparing with their prose, who write beautiful things in few words but… I'm not one of them.
I would like to point out before we begin that this is indeed a work in progress. For more on that subject, please see my pitiful explanatory note. Many thanks to my friend Navin, who has been absolutely FORBIDDEN from reading this, but who has nevertheless put up with my constant stream of yammering on the subject and occasional questions like "Do you think they have camp stoves at Walmart?" and "What do you use to cut heroin?" This man is my hero.
And because that's quite enough from me, let's get started:
It was good horror movie weather. Or would have been if Xander's life was anything but a horror movie. Life was wet and the Bates motel was right around the corner. The hellmouth didn't see too many rainy summer evenings, but when it rained it poured, and his girlfriend had just broken up with him for the umpteenth time – maybe.
Anya was funny about human relationship rituals; it was one of the things he adored about her (who else would drop her dress off her shoulders and ask to interlock?) but also the thing that most annoyed him. She hadn't grown up with years of stupidly sappy television relationships to take her examples from; instead, she had a millennium of twisted vengeance-causing break-ups to call to mind. They broke up, they got back together, they broke up, they had sex, they got back together. It felt like something new every other week, something he had or hadn't done had irked her and she took it out on him, he explained (not always reasonably) that she was being overdramatic, she threw vengeance stories in his face, they fought, they broke up, they had sex. It was exhausting.
The week before last she'd flipped her lid over their song. Or rather, the fact that Xander didn't remember 'their' song - it was like TV drama had infected Anya's brain and hijacked their relationship for the three days that Anya refused to talk to him. Somewhere in the back of his head Xander knew that these were things Anya needed to work through, breaking points she'd seen as a vengeance demon where couples had genuine problems beneath the frippery of favorite songs. He knew it, but her antics were no less infuriating. When he did finally get her in the same room for long enough to ask whether or not they even had a song she'd gone suspiciously quiet, blushed bright red, and muttered something about "Well we should."
Xander was so tired of being needled about the little, inconsequential almost-human spats that he just couldn't deal with the real ones. Like the one about 'do you really love me, or have I made it too easy on you?' or the one where Anya kept asking 'why can't you move out of your parent's house for me?' Relevant questions that he couldn't bring himself to take seriously because this was the girl that insisted he learn to make her favorite dessert or she'd break up with him. Anya - a thrill a minute, and no one could live like that for long. Sometimes it was like living inside a tornado.
Or possibly that was the water pouring down on him. He didn't think tornadoes got this wet – this was a monsoon. Water was sluicing off the buildings in great sheets that drenched the sidewalks and splashed back out of the rapidly forming puddles until even his ankles were drenched. Handily thick socks that looked warm on a night where all of Southern California was expecting torrential downpour just trapped the water in, siphoning it into his shoes which squelched with every step he took. Everything about tonight sucked, from the socks to the B-movie weather, to the fact that Anya had thrown him out of her apartment with an ultimatum: me or the basement. It wasn't as though he even wanted the basement. Sure, real estate in Sunnydale was hardly a tough market; nice places went for dirt cheap because the landlords were so desperate for people not to remember that the previous tenants had been disemboweled in the kitchen. He could even afford it if he worked some overtime to scrape together a deposit, or first months' rent or whatever, but as much as he didn't want the basement he wasn't positive he wanted Anya either.
He should have said something to her, been upfront about it and explained that he was a twenty-one-year-old guy looking to get his first apartment and wasn't positive he wanted his slightly-insane mostly-girlfriend to move in with him and dream about white picket fences and hijack his life any further than she had. She'd once told him he was a good boyfriend, and he wanted to be a good boyfriend, but sometime over the summer it had occurred to him that maybe he would rather be a good ex-boyfriend. That he didn't want to tie her down; that he didn't want to be tied down because she thought the boy she dragged to the senior prom would be good life-partner material. The thought scared the bejeezus out of him and he had to tell her - maybe he'd use zany, zany was better than slightly insane, right?
So Xander had wanted to tell her what had been on his mind lately. He wanted her opinion, and he knew that it might be risking breaking her heart and bringing vengeance down on his head from someone that was very experienced in the field, but he needed her to know. He'd never gotten the chance. Anya had a romantic evening set up in her apartment, candle light, roses, soft music, "a seductive mood" she said, none of which Xander needed to be seduced but he appreciated her sweetness. They made love in the candle light, miraculously not toppling any of the wax pillars, and then she'd dropped a bombshell on him when he was least inclined to listen. She couldn't be with a man who had no motivation, she said, she couldn't be with someone who couldn't make his way up in the world, who was content to live in his parents' dingy basement for absurd rent. She couldn't be with a coward too afraid to leave his nest, no matter how damaged it was and their romantic evening had been about trying to convince herself that Xander was worth trying to change. Evidently she'd decided he was, and Xander decided in that moment that it would be frighteningly easy for Anya to control the rest of his life.
His lack of response to her heartfelt attempts at serious conversation had pissed her off. The truth of it was that Xander was fighting himself for control, fighting his fears about Anya's presence in his life and struggling against the urge to run away like a little girl. He hadn't liked the conversation, Anya didn't like the deer-in-headlights look on his face, and she became hurt and angry by the time he'd rallied himself to respond. It wasn't pretty, the resultant fight had Anya's next door neighbors pounding on their walls, and she'd kicked him out. Crying, blotchy faced, and hurt by him; she told him she couldn't stand the sight of him just then and thanks all the same but she'd see him in two days time at the Scooby gathering when they'd both calmed down. Xander hadn't even given her that much, just swept up his ineffectual jacket and marched out into the pouring rain.
Real fights and the unreal ones swirled together in his mind as Xander trudged home to his parents' dingy basement that they both detested. He hated to be blindsided. It wasn't as though he enjoyed being a useless lump on society's ass, it was just that with the way things were it was easier to go out and fight demons and never have to imagine improving himself. Time had been standing still in Sunnydale for long enough that they'd all gotten complacent, knowing that nothing would ever really change, and so Xander didn't ever feel inclined to affect that change. Except just now, in this precise moment, change didn't sound like such a bad thing after all - but anybody squelching uncomfortably through the worst rain storm all summer would probably feel the same. He might as well be swimming.
The rain continued to pound down on him, causing the gutters to swell over the sidewalks and the water sucked at his pant legs trying to drag him down. There was one advantage to rain like this: not many demons appreciated being out in it either. Except for the demons that frequented the storm drains of course.
Even as the thought crossed his mind Xander felt a chill crawl up his spine that had nothing to do with being soaked to the bone. It was an old familiar feeling, being caught out in the open and being watched, a feeling he knew intimately having grown up on the hellmouth. It was just after two in the morning, the Slayer was probably tucked up in bed, and Xander realized with a resigned certainty that he had forgotten a weapon, but he couldn't not know. He couldn't not look. Steeling himself against what he might see Xander slowly and carefully turned around. There was nothing behind him, only the sheeting water and the drowning fluorescent "closed" signs from the shop windows lining the street.
Feeling like a moron for not having the sense to come in from the rain, he spun around again with the intent of scurrying home and suddenly there was the demon he'd feared. Xander felt a jolt race through his heart and he fell on his ass, landing in a puddle but it didn't really matter because he was soaked through anyway and the demon was laughing at him. "Fucking... Spike, you scared the hell out of me!"
"Really? I'm flattered." The vampire returned with an infuriating grin that made Xander want to strangle him. Apparently Spike didn't have the sense to get out of the rain either, just stood with his hand carefully cupping a soggy cigarette, trying to get it to light with a sputtering Zippo. Xander had never been much of a smoker but even he knew a lost cause when he saw it, and after a moment the vampire discarded the cancer-stick with a curse. "That a comfy puddle?"
"Yeah, only the finest damp patches for my posterior, thanks." Xander groused as he pushed himself to his feet, rubbing his sore back side. Spike hadn't offered him a hand up, which didn't surprise him in the slightest, but he did crack a smile that was quickly doused by a sneer and eye roll combination move. "What the hell are you doing here anyway? All the bars are closed."
"Only for the last few minutes. Bunches of folk makin' their ways home, I'm just seein' if I can't scare up a little dosh."
"Doesn't hurt that they're probably all wasted frat boys." Xander said knowingly. It wasn't that he condoned Spike's actions but the beer incident of a few months ago still hadn't vanished from his memory completely and, well… Xander was all about evening the playing field. Besides, it was funny when all those super-smart, wealthy, annoying college boys screamed like little girls and ran away. Spike was nodding his agreement, "Well fangless, you have fun with that."
Xander was off again down the street before he remembered to hate Spike especially violently for the whole ADAM fiasco. But he was wet, and tired, and figured it could wait until the next time he ran into the bleached menace. That was the thing about Spike, he popped up when you least expected him and by the time you'd gone your separate ways you'd forgotten why you were so angry with him in the first place, though usually because he'd given you something else to be pissed about. Xander had seen him several times over the summer, just hanging around town, wandering around in the graveyards on patrols, and grabbing a drink at the only place in town - their meetings were surreal and Xander was always left trying to figure out why he didn't feel the good old Scooby vampire resentment.
For a month or so after Spike's betrayal, such as it was, Xander had been pissed at him; he mentally staked a voodoo doll of Spike every time the vampire's name came up, but that irritation didn't last, and looking back he found it a little entertaining. Spike hadn't so much thrown a spanner in the works as fixed the mechanism. The vampire had inadvertently given the Scoobies exactly what they needed to succeed against ADAM and the Initiative, and Xander couldn't help but find that entertaining. Down right funny, in fact, because only Spike could screw something up that badly. For the first time since Anya kicked him out he chuckled darkly in the rain.
Xander spent another soggy fifteen minutes making his way back home, taking the route his feet knew best despite there being shorter pathways through Sunnydale. His feet knew the way better than his brain at this juncture, which was a good thing because the rain was pouring down so quickly it seemed to be blurring the lines of reality - buildings were runny and indistinct, the sidewalk was a river. The construction company he was working for had a site along this route and the thought of rain washing out his job tomorrow made him sigh with satisfaction. It was just a sign of how strange his life had become that he was grinning like a loon as real trouble finally appeared. Xander giggled a little hysterically at the sight of an eight foot demon glistening in the dim streetlamps - it wasn't enough that his girlfriend threw him out in the rain, or that he appeared to be smack dab in the middle of another Biblical Deluge – he had to walk straight into a demon looking for dinner.
The demon was massive; it looked sturdy enough that not even a tank would damage it and thankfully it hadn't noticed Xander yet. He wanted to avoid a confrontation if possible, take his happy ass home and call Buffy when the sun came up so he was trying to think his way around backing down the street and around the block to get home when he noticed that the demon wasn't alone. It had apparently already found dinner in the form of a woman in her late twenties, it had her with one massive hand buried in her hair and was dragging her closer to the management trailer where there was an over-hang which would keep him dry during dinner. Work would definitely be called tomorrow if they found a dead woman mauled on their site, and Xander felt a sudden stab of guilt for even briefly considering leaving the woman to her own devices. She was clearly terrified but fighting the monster with everything she had - the expression tooth and nail came to mind - even as the demon tore a chunk of her blonde hair out and she began whimpering in pain. Xander would never be able to live with himself if he left her to die, that was what being a Scooby was all about. And he was nothing if not a Scooby.
Knowing all too well that he was about to do something monumentally stupid, Xander crept onto the construction site, trying like hell to remain inconspicuous despite encroaching on the demon's personal space. He was only fifteen feet away from the dumpster where he'd been forced to trash a load of rebar because of a warehouse fuck-up, twenty feet from the demon which he could now see was armed with teeth and claws that looked like they were made of smoky-black glass. Praying that somehow Buffy would pop out of a manhole and rescue him, or that some magical force would make the demon melt into blackberry jelly with the strike of the iron Xander rushed the dumpster, snagging the first piece he found, and let momentum carry him to the demon with a war cry that was probably more terrified than terrible.
The thing didn't seem to care that he'd been whacked on the back with a steel rod. It turned around curiously and gave Xander an uncomfortably close look at its long, jagged teeth and fierce face. Xander could hear a dark growl rumble from the demon's chest as he backed away and it regarded him with curiosity that was slowly becoming rage. He heard himself swallow, heard the woman still held by the demon moan in fear, he felt frozen and the rebar in his hands was an undisputable certainty - he definitely had the demon's attention now. "If you get a chance," Xander rasped at the woman still squirming in the demon's grip, trying to stay calm even as he readjusted his grip on the rebar. "Run."
He wasn't Buffy, he wasn't Spike, he wasn't even Giles, he was just a guy trying to rescue a damsel in distress; and as he sent a quick prayer up to whoever was listening. Xander figured that at least this would get him out of breaking up with Anya. He charged again, his trainers thudding against the wet concrete with ridiculous slaps as the demon was suddenly right there and the rebar was skittering off its skin, leaving a long gouge that oozed with oily dark ichor. It let the girl go and she bolted, legging away on high heels and adrenaline without a single glance backwards. Now it was just Xander and the slavering monster, vaguely reptilian, fangs that dripped with saliva - he was so screwed. The demon swung a fist, surprisingly fast and just as powerful as it looked, Xander whipped the rebar around to block, but it was caught in the meaty claw.
Xander let go quickly as the rebar was dragged away from him, skidding backwards instead of being drawn into the demon's grasp. There was growling behind him, a low snickering rumble that sounded horrifyingly familiar, but he didn't dare turn to look, just hoped that it wasn't a second tall-grey-and-ugly because he was busy enough with this one. "Okay… okay…." Xander was sliding away as fast as he could, trying to avoid the growl and the slavering demon while his feet slid around familiar piles of construction detritus and clods of dirt. "Sorry I interrupted your dinner… I'll just be going now."
"It was a sacrifice to her magnificence." The thing responded venomously, and Xander was confused enough to wonder 'it can speak English?' before the terror struck again. "You must die to appease her." Three steps backwards, he was twenty feet away then running full speed ahead straight towards the busy street and apparent safety when the rebar came back, thrown by the demon in a whistling arc and he was flung to his knees, gasping.
The pain was startling for its insignificance, and he slumped backwards to sit on his feet, dragged back by the weight of the bar; cold with sudden shock, hands clasped desperately around the piece of rebar protruding from his gut. Liver. His brain provided helpfully while his fingers slipped in the blood-slick fabric of his shirt - he had liked this shirt. But that was no concern because he was dead - knew it like he knew what his birthday was, or his shoe size. Dead and that hurt, even if the rebar didn't. He stared at it, rusty and dark - never thought he would die of something so ridiculously human.
There were sounds in the distance that didn't make sense, dull cracks and thuds, feral sounds and Xander tuned them out, head swimming. Someone was calling his name from miles away, but the cold starkness of his mind did not extend to his ears, and he could feel the world shrinking with every breath he took. Mere seconds. There was his name again, frightened on the breeze, and then there was pain. Immense, explosive, bursting through his spine and out his chest; the second piece of rebar hit him in the chin as it flew through him, bowling him forward into the gathering pool of blood.
"Xander!"
"Your fight is not over, vampire."
The world slid away into blackness, inky and opium rich, and that was the day that Alexander Harris died.