The phone jolted him out of sleep. He groped for the handset. Defensively, his mind scuttled through lists of apt verbs to convey his complete lack of caring. Sleep was a rare commodity with the triple burden of patrol, work, and apocalypse averting and it made him cranky to lose any of it.
He performed the once-over mental inventory which he'd found he needed less and less as the years shuffled on. Xander Harris. Faithful friend. World-saver. Snappy dresser. Scooby-patroller. Master's bit—scratch that. Where was he? Burnt lint and bleach. Ah. The basement. Anya? Sleeping at her place. The aforementioned smells gave her headaches. Or was it the sounds of his parents' marital bliss (breaking china and tequila bottles) which did her in? The list ticked out to include prized possessions, most of which lined the walls of the damp basement in half-filled packing boxes. The boxes gave him the satisfaction of having one foot out of the door without actually having done any of the apartment-searching or money-saving that were generally prerequisite for leaving.
Sod 'em all, Xander finally concluded, painfully adopting the accent of The Mooch. He imagined the spiky-haired vampire delivering the line while tucked into Xander's red recliner, watching Xander's television, chowing down on Xander's box of Wheetabix--maybe not that last part, he conceded, striking that last offense off the list, full of the milk of human kindness.
His inner voice sounded a lot like the chipped wonder these days. It was no wonder. The Scoobies—more specifically, Giles--had decided to bunk the vampire in his basement over his heated objections. They blithely assumed he could take care of it; what was one more bloody annoying thing to do between a blissfully easy routine of Doublemeat Palace shifts and Restfield Pines patrols? And now the blonde vampire's sarcasm's had taken up residence in his brain like a doubly-unwanted houseguest. When he stopped to consider it, as he was trying not to do at this very moment, his life sometimes sucked beyond the telling of it.
Xander felt pretty pleased with himself as he grabbed the phone on the fifth ring and managed to sound like a reasonably nonchalant human being who hadn't been gulping air like a parched Laurence of Arabia. "Hello, Buffy? Something afoot?" he hazarded.
"Xander, Giles. I had some thoughts concerning Dracula," came the response. The nonchalant attitude he'd been forcing took a hit in its chalatant factor.
"Giles, I'm completely down with the stopping of evil at all hours of the day, but could we maybe avert this apocalypse in--" he checked the splashy green numerals of his digital clock radio. "Three to five hours?"
"Oh." A cleaning-the-glasses sized pause followed. "Well, the matter is a bit less urgent, considering Dracula is dead. M-more dead, that is, than he was previously."
"Did you bother to touch base with Pacific Standard Time before you thought up the wacky scheme of 'phone Xander with exciting dead people trivia'?" Under better circumstances, Xander might have thought this exchange a bit harsh. However, yesterday's activities as Dracula's bug-eater and man-bitch— neither of which he decided to mention ever again after this and maybe one more of Buffy's Dracula's dead, ask me how! conversations tomorrow—he'd hoped, had bought him one night's reprieve from Scooby-related all-hourness.
"Well, no," Giles said. There was only the barest hint of offense behind the words. "I'm sorry to have bothered you. We can discuss this in the morning, perhaps? I'm eager to pursue the recurrence of Dracula in the texts after several Watcher-reported stakings. There might be more work--"
"Okay, Dracula, re-animation, Good Lord!, books. Gotcha. Sleeping now," Xander's hand was sliding the handset back into the cradle as he heard a rather dry sorry to have bothered you and a good night Xander float his way.
"Sod 'em all," Xander muttered, aloud, to punctuate the deep meaning of the statement to the universe.
"Singin' my tune, are you now?"
A lighter clicked open. The small flame illuminated the form on the red chair—down to the detail of the duster—just as he'd seen in his head. Stupid head, Xander reproached, as though his thinking it had made it (very annoying) flesh and bone. Spike fiddled with the lighter as he puffed on the cig, but didn't kill the flame.
Xander was beyond dealing with the universe's crap. A drunken vampire was the second-to-last thing in the galactic rolls of the "shit Xander won't put up with" list. A pillow lanced across the room, aimed at Spike's head. It fell short and landed softly at the vampire's feet. "Out."
"Not even a threat for an old mate?" Spike fluttered a hand mockingly over his heart. Xander noted that he didn't sound weepy drunk like Willow had described to him years back. "I'm shocked. Right shocked. Disappointed, even. Time was, you would have staked me right and proper for crashing your dank little hellhole."
"Dank hellhole with garden-view. It's in the brochure," Xander said dazed now and convinced (very ha-ha funny) that this was dream Xander having an almost civil conversation with dream Spike. "A ceiling fan would be nice. Or, cabana girls with big leafy palms. Cabana girls, that's the ticket."
"Seeing that you've gone completely starkers, I'll quit with the chit-chat." Spike's tone shifted, almost imperceptibly, Xander noted, except that the months around the layabout vampire gave him some insight into the many moods of Spike: hungry, annoying, (blood)thirsty, television, (booze)thirsty, violent, serious(ly violent). "I heard you nonces took care of Drac last night—"
"Again with the Dracula! Dracula is dead. Very dead. Beyond dead. Dust! See for yourself! Better yet, you're in my head—shouldn't you just know this already? Unless you're a part of some subroutine that the Mas—Dracula—stuffed in to make every corner of the rest of my life miserable," Xander blathered on, quite unable to stop himself. "Maybe if I just think you away, you'll shut your trap and a man could get some rest around here."
Spike snorted. "Yeah—right."
And then he stood.
Spike wasn't at all the dark figure of Angel, or even the quietly impressive cut of Dracula. Completely lacking the imposing bulk of Riley, or the quiet command that Xander sometimes glimpsed behind Giles' faintly ungathered exterior, the wired figure held only the promise of violence—a promise that still, underneath all of the rationalized he's chipped, he's helped, motherfucker's slept on my couch touched a raw core of the black-and-red clad vamp who crashed his death squad through the school windows on Parent-Teacher Night. The light danced along the sharp corners of Spike's face and in it, he saw himself as he could have been that night. A dead, used-up thing. A dead, used-up not dreaming in the least thing.
"Look MapQuest, just point me the right direction to Drac's castle and I'll leave you to your deep-south cabana boys."
"Cabana girls." The verbal sparring came natural, at least. "Can't you vamps just sniff each other out like nasty little mutts?"
"Ponce flies, don't he?"
"Does that make a difference?" Xander found himself deeply wanting to simply answer the vamp's question and move him along, but this prolonged torture couldn't be helped. The inexorable logic of the verbal battle proceeded …inexorably. His internal monologuing, more than rusty of late. "Is poor Spike not even half the vampire that Drac is, needs the human touch to get it done?"
The lighter snapped shut. Everything, the chair, the duster, the boxes, the lovely basement décor, dark. The sudden flood of black turned out not to be the relief he thought it'd be. The possibility of Spike's chip malfunctioning at this very moment seemed a very real possibility with Xander's winning luck.
"East, along the hills." Xander swallowed. "Eighth and Rio Bravo, near the old Rotterdam Church."
There was a grunt of acknowledgement. The lighter sparked.
Just as he said it, the opening salvo of rationality: haven't you pissed off the sociopath vampire enough for one night to die in a fire—but too late: "Planning on nicking Drac's stuff, are ya? Lovely habit you vamps have. No respect for—"
"—You're damn right—"
"—the dead"
The flap of the duster and the stillness in the basement that followed after the gentle whoosh of the outer door said it. Spike was gone.
Xander retrieved the pillow. He tossed it onto the fold-out couch, but he didn't slip back under the covers. Lingering at the edge of his bed, his mind started playing connect-the-dots with the night's assorted weirdness. Giles. The Master. Dracula's castle. Spike. Nicking objets d'art, or whatever one vamp nicked from one's dead betters. Buffy's decision to stay behind in Drac's chamber for that extra beat before they shipped off back to Scooby Central. Research. Books. Research. Something Giles said.
"Spike knows something you don't know," Xander's brain sang out as his eyes cleared. This wasn't a Spike's drunk-off-his-ass moment. "Universe, I'm up, I'm up," Xander groaned as he clawed for his muddy work boots pushed under the bed.
He nabbed a few stakes from the packing box marked NECESSITIES at the lip of the door and tucked them snug into the pockets of his leather jacket. Out on the street, he hesitated between choices, east or west. East took him straight towards Rio Bravo, more or less, with no more than a couple wending detours around the scenic Hills of Sunnydale. After a little reflection, and not completely unaware of the irony, Xander struck out west as he followed the strong smell of tobacco hanging heavy in the night air towards the heart of town.