Payless

Chapter One: “No Change for Laundry”


There was a long moment while the axis of the earth shifted and the story of his life turned a page to a wholly unexpected chapter.

“Spike?”

The man before him was frozen, apparently considering his options. The absolute fear and panic that had immediately appeared on his face removed the casual denial option. Xander could actually see him consider and discard this. The man’s weight shifted back, forward. The flight option was considered. Discarded. Then something climbed into the familiar face. A kind of shudder as the skin drew into a stiff smirk and the blue eyes narrowed disdainfully.

“Harris,” sneered Spike.

Xander stepped back involuntarily and came up hard against the counter. “S… Spike..” he repeated stupidly. “But you’re dead. Or…” An array of images, ideas, tumbled before his mind’s eye. For a horrible moment, he thought himself in the presence of a Master Vampire. He studied the uneasy, cautious being before him and relaxed a bit. “Buffy said you were dusted.” He said it like an accusation.

Something bent in Spike’s eyes. As if the light inside was suddenly caught in a crazy glass and refracted. Then the impression was gone. His eyes looked very blue and vulnerable. “She okay, then?” whispered Spike.

“Yeah. She’s…” This was all too much. Xander shook his head and turned away. Looking for somewhere to sit. He flailed a bit. Spike stepped forward, produced a plastic chair near the front window, shoved it forward. Xander sank gratefully into it, gripped the sharp seat edge with one hand and rubbed at his patch. He tried to sort things in his mind. “You didn’t dust.”

A quick inhalation of breath and a hiss. Xander looked up, startled. Spike was standing before him, gazing out the window. “Yeah,” said the vampire slowly. “Yeah, I dusted.”

“Then how?” Xander looked around the shop quickly. Something wasn’t right. Something out of place. How could he feel that when he had never been here before? Spike was still standing in front of him. His hand absently curling and uncurling. A watch hung loosely on his wrist. Xander thought he had never seen the vampire wearing a timepiece before. It was an old silver expandable type. Like an old man would wear. The hairs on his arm, wheat blond and white, floating above the gold skin, caught in its links, lighter colored skin peeking around the edge of the band.

“Spike?” whispered Xander slowly.

He looked up slowly as the vampire shifted his gaze from that distant point outside, back down to him. The light fell over one cheek and lay inside Spike’s right eye. A clear pool of blue, like the water on an untouched tropical island, sun shifting and dancing in its depths. Xander was hypnotized by that light.

“Spike,” he breathed, “you’re not dead.”

The man chuckled awkwardly. “Yeah. We established that, Harris. You feelin’ a bit dizzy from the heat?”

For some reason, Xander was suddenly enraged. He stood violently, throwing the plastic chair screeching back against the window frame, almost shoving himself up against Spike. “Don’t fuck with me, Spike,” he spat furiously into the startled man’s face. “What happened? What’s going on? Why are you alive?”

Spike took a step back. Moving out of the intimidation zone that held Xander’s aggression. “I don’t know,” said Spike simply, baldly. “I don’t know what happened.” That prism effect seemed to ride for a minute in his eyes again, then he blinked and shifted his glance away with a jut of the chin. “Woke up and I was breathin’.”

“Fuck,” said Xander, completely at a loss.

“Yeah. Definitely.” Spike laughed shortly, his head still turned at that angle that made his expression inaccessible. He turned, with a little lilt of his shoulders, back towards the center of the shop. “So. Ya need a phone? We ain’t got one, but I’ll give ya some change for the payphone.”

Xander stared. “Wait a minute.”

“Yeah, sure. Take yer time.”

“No. No, I mean.” Xander tried to grasp at some meaning here. Some rule. “You can’t just… I mean. Is that it?” He shook his head slowly and heavily like a big bear. “Spike, you’re alive!”

The man shoved the cash register drawer closed with a bang and plunked a handful of change down on the formica counter. He rested his hand lightly there and gazed at Xander challengingly. “Phone’s out back, Harris,” Spike pronounced carefully. “You want a mechanic? I might be able to help you. Rates are cheap.”

Xander gaped. “But … but we have to tell someone.” He looked around as if someone might manifest there on the spot. Maybe a television news crew. “We should call Buffy.”

“No!” Spike said violently enough to make Xander jump. “No,” he said more gently. “Look.” Spike came back around the counter quickly, holding his hand out in a placating gesture. His voice pleading. “Look, Harris. She’s okay now, yeah? Don’t need ol’ Spike around, right?” He bit his lip and the gesture made him look suddenly so young that Xander felt as if the image shimmered, as if someone else peered out at him for a minute. Someone very young and fragile.

Xander shook his head confusedly. “You don’t want to tell her. But I would have thought…”

“No,” said Spike sincerely. “Please.”

Xander looked at him and felt a glimmer of recognition. “No more,” he said.

“Yeah,” said Spike, watching him carefully with eyes both innocent and full of a kind of fluttering, like startled pigeons. “No more. That’s right.”

“Alright then.” Xander spaced the words out slowly. “So. You can recommend a cheap mechanic?”


************************************************************

It was weird. Xander’s vocabulary was completely unequal to the task of describing what it was like to sit next to Spike, in the lowering dusk, in an old Ford pick-up truck. Driving down a two lane country road. So that’s the word he thought. This was weird.

Spike. Xander wondered if the vampire had changed his name now. Like Angelus had changed his name to Angel. But Spike hadn’t changed his name when he got the soul, hadn’t made that distinction. Only now did Xander realize that and wonder at it. The man next to him didn’t look at all like a Spike. The hard shell waxed bleached hair was gone. Spike’s wheat colored hair, with the black roots, was short and tufted, framing his face in a halo of gold and toast. It looked like the kind of haircut young boys got at Super Cuts. He was wearing an oversized cotton short sleeved shirt. fad faded, the light blue and white checked pattern was barely discernable. There was a lightness about him. As if the wind blowing through the open window could easily pluck him out and toss him onto the road. His name didn’t suit him.

“So what do you call yourself now,” asked Xander casually.

Spike’s expression didn’t falter. “Spike.”

“Surprised to hear that. Don’t you guys usually change your names?”

Spike didn’t answer. He drove with one hand at the top of the steering wheel. His arm muscular but graceful in a golden arc of lightly tanned skin, bleached hairs blowing slightly, freckles at the bulge in the forearm.

“You freckle,” said Xander, almost to himself.

“Yeah,” said Spike absently. “Fair skinned English bloke, you know. Burn easily.” The words strummed in Xander’s ears. He looked at Spike carefully. The former vampire was still gazing steadily at the road in front of him.

“That it up ahead?” asked Spike, nodding at the windshield.

“Yeah. That’s my baby.” Xander winced. “Oh fuck, I can’t look.”

“Well, avert yer eyes then, Harris,” said Spike, turning his truck onto the shoulder with an easy swing of the wheel. “Looks like the vultures been at her.”

They had stolen the wheels, the battery and the factory installed radio. Really not that bad, or not as bad as Xander had learned to expect from the vagaries of fate.

Spike brought two doughnuts out of his truck and raised the wheelless end up on the tow. As they rolled back to the station, the sun setting behind them, he explained that Xander could get the work done if the ‘owner’ agreed.

“Who’s the owner?”

“Bloke I work for. Name’s Percy.”

“Oh. You’re not the owner.”

Spike rolled his eyes at him. “Don’t even have an identity, Harris. Sure as hell ain’t gonna own a business.”

“Well.” Xander thought. “I’m a bit strapped right now. Think the credit’s had it. Place I work at might give me an advance. D’you think the guy would let me come back tomorrow with the cash?”

Spike was quiet for a minute. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea, Harris,” he said after a bit. He was silent, thinking. “I’ll talk to him,” he said finally. “Maybe we can work somethin’ out.”

“Thanks, Spike,” said Xander slowly. The words fitting odd in his mouth.

“No problem. What friends are for,” said Spike absently. He was focused on the road ahead of him and didn’t notice Xander’s quick, startled look.

They drove the rest of the way in silence.


***********************************************************

Xander called the bar when they got back to the station, and made his excuses for the shift he would miss. When he came back in, Spike was missing. He wandered out into the garage and saw the former vampire leaning over his car.

Spike stood without sensing Xander. He had pulled off his shirt and climbed into a pair of greasy overalls. They were worn, oversized and hung on worn straps from his lean frame, cuffs rolled at the bottom. They had obviously been originally purchased for someone else. Grease up to his elbows, Spike rested a rather large sprocket wrench against one leg and gazed at Xander’s engine, biting his lip.

Xander had always assumed that Spike’s grace and strength were part of the whole vampire package. But the man adjusted the heavy wrench and reached down into the core of the engine with it, twisting his body in one fluid motion, as the muscle in his arm bulged from wrist to shoulder. He lifted his elbow, revealing the dark underarm hair and a tight muscle wrapping his ribs and disappearing into his waist. Xander ran a hand up through his hair, his pinky jutting slightly to check his patch. It was his newest nervous habit. He cleared his throat.

Spike looked up, startled, that flock of seagulls in his eyes again, and Xander thought it must be weird to not have super senses after over a hundred years. And even more weird that he, Xander Harris, had just frightened Spike.

He nodded apologetically, indicated the car. “What’s the verdict?”

Spike chewed at his lip for a minute, unconsciously tossing the wrench easily from one hand to the other. “Where the hell did you find this piece of shit, Harris?”

Xander grinned at himself. “Guy said it belonged to a little old lady from Sunnydale.”

“Hell, Harris.” Spike shook his head.

“Is there hope?”

“There’s always hope,” said Spike with a sigh. “But it’s gonna cost you.”

“Yeah, well.” Xander crossed his arms and nodded. “It always does.”

Spike flicked him a look.

“So, Spike.” Xander sidled up to the man cautiously. He felt like he was talking to a stranger. “When did you learn to fix cars?”

Spike snorted. “Always knew how. Wanker. What’d you think, that old Desoto ran ‘erself?”

“I kinda just figured you intimidated poor garage mechanics into fixing it.”

“NEVER fuck with your mechanic, Harris.” Spike emphasized his words with a couple of emphatic beats of the wrench in the air before him. He grinned and looked down, rubbed at his chin with the back of a greasy hand, leaving a streak of black. He fiddled with the wrench and leaned back into the car engine.

Xander didn’t know how to react to this being. He leaned awkwardly against the car. His hand rubbing back and forth across the cracked vinyl roof.

“Umm, so, Spike.”

Spike turned quickly and began sorting through tools in a dolley truck behind him. He made quite a bit of noise doing it. Xander almost felt that he was being shut out. He pushed away from the car and wandered around the periphery of the garage a little, as Spike clattered away.

“You want a beer?” Xander had to shout.

Spike continued busily working, he shook his head. “Nah. Help yerself though. There’s some in the fridge that’s paid for.”

Xander found the indicated mini-fridge and pulled a cooled American brew from a full six-pack inside. He leaned back and watched Spike work. To Xander’s eye, Spike seemed to shape shift. One minute a simple young stranger. Helpful, reticent. Grace and simplicity of movement of a natural athlete. His tow head and able hands would have marked him as some Midwestern farmboy. The next moment, Spike was still the potentially violent creature of Xander’s memory. A quirk of an eyebrow. The flat handed way he slammed the hood down on the car. A muscle tensing in his jaw, just before he spoke. And especially the occasional mild expletive that he muttered, all had Xander back to that place where Spike was dangerous.

Spike cleaned the grease off the hood carefully. He cleaned the tools with equal care and stepped out of the coveralls. As he stood at sin sink, lathering and scrubbing the grease from himself, leaning over into the spray, Xander caught his eye traveling to the hollow of his back, where it dipped into the waisband of the denim jeans. He jerked his gaze away. Spike stood and rubbed a towel over his face and arms. Xander swallowed beer and studiously gazed out the door.

“So where is he?”

Spike turned and looked a question. “He?” he asked uneasily.

“The owner,” said Xander. He looked back at Spike, taking great care to keep his gaze on his face. The man was looking down, however, fingering the cotton of his shirt. He pulled it up one arm, turning away from Xander.

“Ah. He’ll show up some time,” Spike said vaguely. “Maybe tonight.”


Spike didn’t appear to have much to do around the station. He wandered back and forth, occasionally straightening items on shelves. No customers came by. The new location of the Interstate having removed the station from all but local traffic. But Spike could not remain still.

Xander sat in one of the plastic chairs, perusing a very old copy of Playboy and surrepticiously watched the man prowl up and down. He wondered if Spike’s edginess was due in part to the unspoken questions that he must be holding in abeyance. Xander understood the dread, somewhat. Finally, he set down his magazine and sighed loudly. Spike looked up at him with those wide, sky blue eyes.

“So how come you aren’t travellin’ with yer crew?”

“Not my crew any longer.” The silence lapped at the edge of that statement for a minute. Xander watched Spike try out a number of questions. But in the end all he got was a grunt and a nod.

“So aren’t you going to ask me about her?” said Xander baldly.

Spike leaned on the counter and toyed with a bit of torn paper there. “Don’t need to. Know she’s safe. The bit’s okay, yeah?” He tilted his head up and peered at Xander anxiously.

“Yeah, yeah, Dawn’s fine.”“Wat“Watcher and Red, they made it?”

Xander nodded, he studied his hand.

“Your demon chit doing okay?”

Xander took a deep breath. It was the first time anyone had asked him about Anya since her death. He opened his mouth to say the words, and found them horrible and thick on his tongue. Like old hamburger. “Sh .. she’s dead,” he ground out, still staring at his hand.

“Shit, I’m sorry, Xander,” said Spike softly. Xander miserably felt tears rising to his eyes at the unexpected sympathy. He looked down at his beer and struggled to keep the muscles of his face still as they tried to scrunch up. To his horror, he heard the other man coming across the floor to him now. He couldn’t think why.

A bottle of beer was thrust at him and he gratefully grabbed it. Washed the taste of the words out of his mouth and finished shakily, “one of the Ubervamps…”

He sat struggling with himself, staring at the bottle of beer as he rolled it between his hands. After a while he was able to speak. “Good beer,” he said finally, squinting sideways at the man standing attentively beside him.

“Hide ‘em at the back of the case,” Spike explained gruffly without looking at Xander. “Hey, there’s an old set in the garage, wanna watch the game?”

Xander gratefully took another slug of the beer and rubbed his thumb along the damp, cool glass. “What’s playing?” he asked weakly. He jumped out of his skin when Spike laid a palm lightly on his shoulder. He looked up, startled, into glistening blue eyes. Prisms of light broke and regathered there. Xander thought for a moment that Spike had tears in his eyes for Anya, but shook the impression off.

“Fucked if I know, Harris,” said Spike, “sport’s sport. Wanna watch?”

*******************************************************************


They watched the television. Xander let his mind relax a bit in the fluffy bosom of sport, wondering only why anyone would name a hockey team after a Disney movie. He felt that something stiff and toxic had been squeezed from his cells. The taste of grief was still there, but for the time being the beer was adequate to drown it. Beer and the static of an inadequately received television signal on a cheap set was all Xander wanted to think about at the moment.

Spike was still restless; he wandered around the shop, picking up bits of trash and straightening tools.

“Only decent American sport is this hockey,” he commented finally.

Xander could have this conversation. This conversation was not disturbing. “How would you know decent sport? You think that a bunch of guys standing around in their suit pants wacking at a ball with a two by four is sport.”

“Cricket is beyond the meager intelligence of you Americans to appreciate.”

Xander made a derisive snort. He felt it adequately refuted Spike’s statement.

Spike stopped suddenly and took a deep shaky breath. He bent a little at the waist, one hand reaching to a work bench for support.

“You okay?” asked Xander, half coming out of his seat.

“Yeah. Yeah.” Spike waved him off. He bent over the rest of the way, picked up something from the floor and tossed it into the wastebasket. “Sometimes I forget to breathe.”

Xander sat back into his chair. So much for the non-disturbing conversation.


************************************************************


It was well after sunset when a truck pulled into the gravelly parking space in front of the garage. The lights from the shop fanned a small arc across the ground and Xander could see a big, middle aged man decending heavily from the driver’s side. He glanced at Spike who rose from his chair, his face expressionless.

“’S him,” he nodded.

The man opened the shop door and stood in it, waiting. Spike switched off the set wordlessly and left the garage through the vehicle entrance. Xander followed, and Spike pulled the door down behind him. As he and Xander filed past Percy into the store, Xander suddenly felt like he had stayed out past his curfew. Percy glanced at Xander. His eyes did a quick sweep head to toe, then he looked back at Spike.

“Harris here’s got car troubles,” Spike said gruffly. He hooked his thumbs in his jeans pocket, rocked forward and back on his feet. Obviously nervous.

Percy looked back at Xander. He had that watery eyed and suspiciously resentful look of the eternally behind.

Xander pulled out his crooked smile and stepped forward with a hand offered. Percy took it, still watching him suspiciously. “Thanks,” Xander said, smiling as hard as he could into that hostile face. “for letting me hang out, for towing me back.”

Percy nodded an acknowledgment and looked back at Spike. “It’s not free,” he told them both. Spike nodded and looked around, rubbing one hand against his hip. He appeared to be at a loss.

“Didn’t you ring it up?” asked Percy, moving towards the cash register. He shot a dark look at Spike, “write out an estimate?”

Spike folded his arms around himself and shook his head. Xander was suddenly excruciatingy embarrassed for him.

“You’re so stupid, Spike,” said Percy. He almost smiled as he drew a thumbed yellow pad out from under the counter. “You can’t remember anything,” he declared slapping it down. “Now come over here,” he said with an exaggerated sigh, “and let me show you how to do it again.”

Spike shuffled over. The muscle worked in his cheek and Xander was suddenly reminded of Spike throwing him violently up against a tree once in a rage. He waited for the outburst.

“Sorry, Percy,” said Spike softly, and took the proferred pencil with a careful hand.

He filled the form out slowly, following Percy’s instructions. The other man obviously enjoyed the process. Speaking to Spike as if he were simple or a child. Spike dociley entered the required information. He didn’t look at Xander when he was finished.

Percy tore off the copies and handed Xander his. Xander glanced at the figure and over-reacted on purpose. “Whoa, more than she cost to begin with,” he joked. Spike looked at Percy and ran his hand over his hair hesitantly. “Xander’s an old mate of mine, Percy,” he said slowly. “Mebbee we could fix it fer him and take his word that he’ll pay?”

Percy made a great show of thinking about this, then shook his head. “Nah, as a business man,” he said, “I have to consider the precedent.”

“He’s good for it, Percy.” Spike said. “I can vouch for him.”

Percy considered Spike. He smiled. “You’ll vouch for him?”

“Yeah, Percy,” said Spike eagerly. “I guarantee he’ll pay you back.”

“Well, Spike,” said Percy slowly. “If you guarantee it.” The expression he showed to Xander shared how foolish they should both think Spike to be.

Xander bristled at being supposed to think like this man. “I’ll bring the cash in the morning,” he said promptly.

Percy looked a little confused and disappointed as his game deflated. But then he nodded slowly. “In the morning then.” He looked around the shop, master of his domain. Looked back at Spike. “In the morning,” he said warningly, “I’ll be back.” He walked importantly from the shop.

After he left Xander leaned against the counter, laughing. “Shit. Terminator much?” His smile faded at Spike’s look. “What?”

Spike shrugged and crumpled a register receipt, tossed it expertly into a trash container five feet away. “Shouldn’t fuck with Percy.”

“He’s an ass, Spike.”

Spike didn’t look at Xander. “He helped me out. Gave me a job. Fed me, gave me clothes. I couldn’ a made it without him.”

Xander considered the subdued man before him. “I’m sorry, Spike,” he said quietly, “I didn’t know. None of us knew.”

“Hey,” shrugged Spike, “I didn’t know neither. Or I probably wouldn’a done it.” He turned back towards the garage. “I got t oft of used tires back here that should fit your car,” he said walking away, “they’re crap so Percy should let you have ‘em cheap.”

Xander followed, considering. “Spike?” The former vampire ignored him, but Xander was determined this time. “Spike, what happened? I mean, all of Sunnydale collapsed. How did you make it out?”

Spike heaved a worn tire from a stack in the corner. He set it on the ground and rotated it carefully, running his hands along the sidewalls, bouncing it a bit.

“Spike,” insisted Xander, “how did you end up here? Why didn’t you try to call anybody?”

Spike rolled the tire towards Xander’s car. He rested it against it, and turned to lift a jack from the rack mount on the wall.

“Spike?” Xander was exasperated.

Spike looked at him once. His eyes were bright and torn across the middle with the reflection of the shop’s fluorescent lights.

“I dug myself out, Harris. Just like the last time I died. Only this time when I broke the surface I wasn’t a magical being with supernatural strength.” He threw the jack apparatus to the ground with a heavy clang and dropped to his knees, shoved the lug wrench against the rims and began jerking hard at the nuts. “This time I was just a naked bloke, blisterin’ in the sun,” he gritted out between efforts. “This time I was nothin’.”

*****************************************************************************


Xander unhappily drove away from the station when Spike had finished putting the temporary tires on his car. Spike had banged around the store, heated a frozen burrito in the microwave and made a meal of it, leaning against the counter, his back to Xander. Xander had repeated his promise that he would return in the morning with cash in payment, but Spike seemed not to care.

Xander had obediently left. Now, speeding through the seamless darkness, reflective road dots his only distraction, he couldn’t let go of the feeling of wrongness. He was an hour away from the gas station, when he impulsively pulled onto the shoulder and u-turned back the other way. He pressed his car to speed, not even sure why, or what he would say to Spike when he arrived.

TBC