Title: Animal

Rating: PG13 (aka "Teen" or whatever they're calling it now)

Words: 300

Pairing: S/X

Warnings: Dark, much with the angst. And also slash.

This has been sitting on my hard drive for a long time half-finished. I fixed it up to post at bloodclaim (a lj community) this evening. It's un-beta'd, so reviews and crits are loved.


Spike was an animal. He was a monster, he was a vampire, he was not human. Xander was trying hard to remember this, but it became difficult when the yellow reptilian eyes turned grey-blue, ringed with tiny green flecks you couldn't see unless you were close enough to die. It was hard when his face un-crumpled like a car accident in reverse, when his nose flattened out into the smooth classical arch that Xander was more used to seeing on sculptures than on people. When his teeth were blunt and white, bared in a smile instead of a snarl, or scraping gently down Xander's jawline- sometimes he'd forget for a moment that those teeth should not be anywhere near his throat, no matter how pretty the hicky would look in the mirror. But the worst …

The worst times were those rare quiet minutes spent bathing together in- well, something resembling the afterglow, when he looked at Spike's face and caught glimpses of things so terrifyingly human that he refused to identify them, even in his own mind. Things he knew, during his more lucid moments, that Spike could not possibly feel.

He was a chameleon, he was a golem, he was anything but a person, was a demon so advanced it could convincingly imitate every detail of human existence without comprehending the experience.

It wasn't a man who'd let him win at pool, just so he could get a blow-job in the bathroom of the Bronze.

Not a man, draping his duster over Xander's shoulders when it rained, scowling and muttering about fragile humans all the while.

Not a man whose eyes were sometimes a little too scared, waking up from dreams that made him whimper and twitch.

Not a man Xander could let himself love.

Not a man.