All I Need...

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Part 20

“Okay,” he said slowly, settling himself as comfortably as he could on the couch against the wall of Giles’ office while Spike helped himself to some of the Watcher’s very good scotch before joining him, “Where do you want me to start… Dad?”

If there was a sudden and small tear in his eye, Giles chose to ignore it, just as the other men did.

“I suppose I should ask about your… hyena, Xander. However, I must admit to a certain… nearly macabre interest in how… this happened,” he said carefully, gesturing back and forth between the blond and the brunette. “I’m not saying that I object. In fact, I can honestly say that at this juncture, I quite approve of your… romantic choices. For the most part. However, in all honesty, I simply… wouldn’t have imagined the two of you together. I seem to recall you as being rather…”

Xander chuckled softly at Giles actually being at a loss for words. “Heterosexual? Straight? Firmly on the ‘Oooo-gah! Titties!’ train?” he teased, his hand resting lightly on Spike’s thigh.

“ ‘ey!” the vampire joined in, enjoying the look on Rupert’s face, “Don’t care what ya do, Xan, I’m not wearin’ pasties an’ a g-string!”

The brunette pretended to consider that then leaned closer, whispering into Spike’s ear. “No… no pasties, baby. Don’t want them covering up your nipple rings. The g-string, on the other hand, we’ll talk about.”

“I don’t have nipple rings, ya git!” the vampire said loudly, his eyes wide and shocked at the murmured ‘not yet, you don’t’ he heard.

The Watcher sighed exasperatedly. “Honestly, Xander, I’m beginning to think that I need to separate you two if I want to get any information from you.”

Xander blinked and shook his head, turning a sheepish gaze to the older man as the hyena cackled inside him. ‘Theirs’ was going to look perfect with his nipples pierced.

“Sorry, Giles,” the man said with a small smile. “I got… distracted. Where was I?”

“Th’ Oooo-gah-Titties train, luv,” Spike provided helpfully, already deciding what size rings he wanted.

“Right… thanks, Spike…” Xander murmured, giving the strong thigh beneath his fingers a soft squeeze. “Yeah, the… orientation. See, it’s like this…”

“I know I told you about what happened in Africa, Giles. Most of it, anyway. Hell, I even filed reports when I could. But… okay, I don’t know if you’ll remember this, but… I’d been in Sudan for a few months when I saw my first massacre. Only it wasn’t done by demons, or even humans. It was disease, Giles. Do you…?”

The man nodded sadly, removing his glasses to pinch the bridge of his nose. “Yes, I… I was so afraid for you, Xander. Your report sounded so… despairing. I was tempted to recall you, you know, however… your next communication was less… broken and so I left you there. Perhaps I shouldn’t have.”

Longish brown hair swayed as Xander shook his head. “No, it… well, I can’t say it wasn’t a life-altering experience, but… Hell, Giles. I grew up in Africa. In more ways than I can even explain.”

Giles sighed sadly but nodded. It was true, after all. No matter how many things the boy had seen that he wished he’d never had to deal with, it had formed him, shaped him into the young man sitting just a few feet away. “Please, Xander… go on.”

“Well, after that first village, I sort of… fell apart. Abasi was the one who helped put me back together.”

“Abasi? My Watcher Abasi? That Abasi? But… he’s married!”

Spike couldn’t help snorting. “Yah, Rupert… an’ ya don’t know a single, solitary bloke even here in jolly olde what’s got a family at home an’ a bloke or two on th’ side, right?” His hand slid a few inches, settling over his Xan’s larger, tanned one, pressing it lightly between his palm and his leg.

Xander blushed. He couldn’t help it. As much as he trusted Giles and loved him like a father, there were just certain things he wasn’t going to go into detail about with the man.

“Anyway… he reminded me that I was alive, you know? And that there were pleasures, even while surrounded by death and despair. He… he showed me that it was alright not to let sorrow swallow me whole.”

“Yah, because that’s my job. Th’ swallowin’, I mean,” Spike murmured, grinning when the words pulled the hoped for smile from his Xan.

“So basically, Giles, without going into any more details, I… well, I found out a few things about myself, and lets just say that the tittie train still rides the rails but I’ve taken the option to… disembark at will. Okay, and am I the only one who’s finding this metaphor kinda… freaksome?”

“Hardly,” Giles admitted with a chuckle and a somewhat queasy smile. “Consider my question answered, then. And the hyena spirit? I trust… or no, I should ask. Is it the same spirit which inhabited you before or… do you believe it to be a different Primal?”

And that was a question he could answer without any qualms or embarrassment, Xander thought happily. “Oh, it’s the same one, alright. Just like this is the same eye I was born with, though I guess it’s a few years younger than the other one. Not that it matters.”

Brows arched as glasses were replaced. “And I suppose this is the part where you do go into detail, son. Because I’m afraid I must be entirely honest and say that I’m not certain of how much I trust the… trials you referred to in your letter.”

The blond frowned slightly at the subtle hardening of his Xan’s expression and moved his hand just a bit, fingers sliding between tense, thicker ones and flexing, holding the man’s warm hand tightly in a show of support. “ ‘s alright, Xan… ya can tell old Rupes, yah?”

Xander sighed and nodded, giving Spike’s fingers a small squeeze back as he closed his eyes, remembering.

* * * * *

He’d been traveling for almost two years and he couldn’t even recall the last time he’d bathed in anything other than a muddy hole, or a stream if he was lucky. Hell, he’d become very familiar with sand-baths. He’d never complain about sand in uncomfortable places again, he knew… assuming he ever made it out of Africa and to an American beach again.

The things he’d seen… the things he’d done… were so outside of what he’d known or expected that he honestly didn’t know how he’d managed to survive mostly intact.

This place, this ‘dark continent’ had taught him so much about ‘fair’.

Fair. That was a laugh.

He truly wanted to cringe every time he saw another body, another death, another child dying of AIDS contracted from its Mother’s breast. ~”I have nothing else to feed my baby, white man… he will die without milk and he will die with milk from me… what am I to do?”~

Fair.

Fair didn’t exist anymore. It was… an elitist conceit.

And yet a part of him missed it. Missed being able to whine and bitch and moan whenever something ‘bad’ happened. The way he’d carried on back in Sunnydale if his car broke down or he overslept or—God forbid—the mini-mart was out of Twinkies. ‘It’s not faaaaair…’.

No, fair didn’t exist and so he didn’t cringe. He didn’t cry. He didn’t let the enormous well of despair and hatred and self-loathing overwhelm him.

And not just because ‘fair’ was dead. But because of him. Spike.

It had taken him almost that whole two years to realize that the vampire had been the poster boy for ‘not fair’.

And Spike hadn’t whined, hadn’t carried on, hadn’t… Hell, Spike hadn’t even really complained.

He’d simply put on that stupid amulet and met his fate and God knew it had to have hurt but… he’d done it.

He’d done it for everyone, not just for Buffy. For all of them; even the millions of people he’d never met. He’d burned, turned to ash, gone up in a blaze of glory, and while Xander was sure Spike would have been happy to know that, the vampire was still the biggest example of ‘not fair’ that he knew from his old life.

They’d sort of been friends, although on reflection he’d come to the conclusion that ‘sort of’ didn’t really describe it. In the end-- before the end—they’d sort of… respected each other, he thought.

He’d found himself dwelling on the bottle-blond frequently, small snippets of rambling insanity coming back to him, then more lucid comments made when nobody was apparently listening and…

When he found himself in a place he’d never been, but still a place that seemed familiar, he’d known.

He remembered hearing about that tree… that rock—the one that looked like Richard Nixon. He remembered so many things the blond had said, and somehow he put them together in the proper order and… after brushing off his guide, he’d followed the clues, the landmarks, the ‘bloody awful bird in a box-ish balloon thing on the rise’ from the crazy days.

And he’d found it.

And he’d known what he wanted, too.

The only question was whether the demons would let him try.

* * * * *

As it turned out, they did. Something about his aura being ‘blessed’, they said, and being a child of the Hellmouth, Xander figured that meant all the demons and such—or maybe just the energy from the Mouth of Hell—had tainted him.

He didn’t care, though. Tainted, Hell-brushed… whatever. He’d have his days of testing and if… when he survived, he’d get back what he’d lost.

His friend. The one who’d been so brave and strong. The one who deserved so much more than the end he’d received… who hadn’t even really had a chance because they’d never really given him one.

It was that thought alone that made him hold on, that made him fight harder than he’d ever known he could.

‘Spike… Spike could come back, and God please don’t let him be mad if I’m pulling him from Heaven like we did to Buffy, but God, he deserves so much and I don’t really think he’s in Heaven because… that would be fair and fair doesn’t exist, fair is dead so let me give him a chance, let me try to make it all up to him because we treated him like crap and he deserved… deserves so much better and…’

And he found himself standing tall, balanced on one leg because of the demon-talon broken off in his other thigh.

His face was bloody, but not as much as his hand which he had somehow managed to slam between rock-like ribs, through sandpaper skin and around what passed for a heart.

The burns on his chest ached slightly. So slightly he barely even noticed them until after he’d dropped the oozing heart to the dirt at his feet and then… then his entire body screamed, protesting the abuse he’d put it through, the extreme efforts he’d demanded of it.

He had only a vague recollection of collapsing beside the dead form of the last demon he’d killed, his suddenly weak fingers slipping in his own blood as he tried to pull the claw from his leg.

‘Wow,’ a voice said, shining gold flashing into his blurred vision, ‘that was—you’ll pardon the phrase—one Hell of a show! Stop… stop,’ the voice continued, fading in and out as blackness rose at the edges of his consciousness. ‘You won, human… and you’re safe. Nobody will hurt you now.’

He felt one smooth, almost metallic-feeling hand brush over his forehead, down to cover his eyes.

‘You have regained that which you lost… now, rest. You’ve earned it.’

He couldn’t have fought that voice even if he’d wanted to. His eye closed, body falling into a stupor so deep that he didn’t even feel it when the empty socket filled. He was gone so far and deep that the return of the hyena he’d known so briefly years earlier didn’t even cause a twitch.

He also didn’t move as Chip returned the other things he’d lost over the course of his short, human life.

* * * * *

Rupert Giles found himself weeping freely as he stared at the boy—the young man—wrapped in the vampire’s almost desperate hold. He’d never known, had no idea…

And Xander Harris had fought for days to pull Spike from the Hell he’d thought him in while the vampire had even then been in Los Angeles, which was possibly another sort of Hell, but still…

“Oh, my poor, dear boy,” Giles sighed, unable to find any words of comfort for what the brunette had been through.

“It… it’s n-not… all bad, Giles,” Xander finally said, his voice shaky and slightly muffled by Spike’s shirt. “I mean, I get to drive again, right? Two eyes and stuff. And I got control. I actually had some once, before the Scoobies and all that, so I got that back. Thus the no rampages and things. Took me until recently to figure that part out, though.”

He swallowed hard and pulled away from Spike slowly, one hand rising to cup the vampire’s cheek. “I… thanks, baby. I’m better now.” He smiled slightly, meeting the suspicious blue eyes. “Really. I just… I’ve never talked about it before, except to you. It was kinda… rough. But I’m okay.”

Spike’s lips compressed for a moment as he stared deep into the still-damp brown eyes. It bothered him more than he could ever explain to see his Xander upset like that. Finally, though, he nodded and relaxed a little, pressing a slow, deep kiss to full and emotion-swollen lips.

“Alright, pet… but maybe we should skip th’ party, yah? Go find us a hotel an’ just… rest.” Because the last thing he was ever going to do was ask the bloke to snuggle. He was a vampire, not a six year old chit, after all.

Xander shook his head, tongue slipping out to taste Spike on his lips. “If we don’t get it out of the way, we’ll just have to deal with it tomorrow, right? I don’t know about you, Spike, but I don’t want that hanging over my head.”

And Xander was just as resilient as he’d always been, Giles thought, wiping his eyes quickly and forcing a smile onto his face. “Right, then,” he offered, standing up, “I’ll just tell the girls. Half an hour, gentlemen?”

“ ‘ey! Watch who you’re callin’ a gentleman, mate!” Spike called after him, pulling his Xander close again once the door closed with a solid-sounding ‘click’. He could do an awful lot of things in thirty minutes, and at least one of them was likely to take his bloke’s mind off the past.

It was a plan… and this one would work. He just knew it.

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(A/N: Thanks so much to TheShadowCat, nulinka, Windssong & RedSharpie for the lovely reviews! *grins* Sorry it took me a few days between parts, but as we all know, 'work' is a four letter word. *grumps*

Glad you guys liked, and I'll TRY to have a new part up by Tuesday! :D)