Life (or Unlife) Goes On

Title: Life (or Unlife) Goes On
Author: AddictedtoBuffy
Rating: R
Pairing: A/X/S
A/N: Hope these notes make sense I'm of the drunken persuassion right now (Christmas parties gotta luv them) but I finished this chap when I was sober and wanted to get it out. If I've forgotten something please forgive me. Thankyou for everyone who reads and I love getting reveiws
Reveiws:
Sandre - Thankyou for reveiwing, I'm glad you like
Amy: Glad to hear from you again, good idea about the buddy up I'll see what I can do. Hope you enjoy this chap
Christine - Thanks for all the support, its appreciated. IXander condition is concerning. And Angel only has to explain to Lorne, Gunn and Faith the others are in bed


Chapter Twenty

Angel’s POV

I catch Xander before he hits the floor and am not surprised by how light he is. It is obvious that so many of his recent meals have been liquid. Maybe Willow has the right idea of not letting him leave the hotel. However, first I need to talk to the others, whatever happens it will need to be a team effort. Hopefully, they didn’t catch or understand his last comment. I look up and sigh, no such luck, all three are staring at me intently. My only luck is that the others have all gone to bed.

“Okay Angel, you going to confirm the beans our unconscious friend has spilled.” Lorne stares at me searchingly. I sigh again.

“In Sunnydale as Angelus, I took the boy.” Gunn gasps but Faith looks smug.

“I knew I wasn’t his first but shit Angel Xander wasn’t gay that means you...”

“Actually Faith technically, if we are talking ‘bout another person helping him find release, I wasn’t his first either, Jessie was.”

“Jessie?”

“Willow and Xander’s friend, Darla turned him. Xander staked him, the first vampire he ever dusted. Jessie is also the reason Xander never approached another guy, he didn’t want to cheat on Jessie’s memory but I took that away from him. Now I’m going to put him to bed, does anyone know where Willow put his stuff?”

“Angel, you can’t just walk away, explain man.”

“Gunn, let him go for now.” Lorne tries to calm Gunn back down, which I’m thankful for because Gunn looks like he wants to stake me unless I explain some more but I can’t.

“I know which room Willow gave him,” Faith brings my attention back to the present and the young man in my arms. “I’ll help you take him there.” I follow Faith while carrying an unconscious Xander who has somehow managed to keep a hold on the bottle of Vodka he was drinking out of. If my life wasn’t complicated enough with Spike, Thyme, Drusilla, Nina staying here, Buffy, Connor and Wolfram and Hart trying to kill us all, I now have to look after a Xander Harris who seems to have totally lost all hope and direction. A boy I feel guilty about but would also like to jump and that just makes me feel guiltier about what I did and the fact that it should be Spike I want right now. Which I do . It’s just… Maybe its good that we had the argument this morning, was it really this morning? A little hurt now is better than a huge hurt later on. We walk into a room that the others must have prepared earlier. I gently place him on the bed. His hair needs a cut to get rid of split ends and he is very gaunt with shadows under the one eye showing. I couldn’t believe it when I heard about what happened to his other eye. Spike told me, Buffy didn’t even mention it when I saw her in Sunnydale before the final battle. I step back and look around the room spotting his bags. Faith takes the remains of his shirt off. It is hard to reconcile Xander Harris vampire hater to the image of the desperate, tired man in the middle of those two vampires. Faith stares at him and I know what she’s thinking.

“We’re going to have to. He could do serious damage to himself if it is left on til he wakes up and we have no idea when he put it on.” She sighs

“Yeah I know. You find some PJs while I do it, I think out of the two of us he hates you more.” I don’t argue with that logic, I don’t think Xander wants me anywhere near his bound cock. Instead I start to go through his bags looking for some boxer shorts. I don’t find clothes in the first bag and I’m halfway through the second before I find a pair of sweat pants that will do for the moment. I give them to Faith and she just looks at everything I pulled out of his bags.

“He needs our help.” Faith is right we need to do something drastic, now.

“I think its time for an intervention.” I state looking at the assortment of alcoholic drinks, drugs, smokes, toys, flamboyant clothes and one small box which is dented but regularly used containing pictures of a boy I assume is Jessie, Anya who I met once, the girl with her arm around Willow must be Tara, Cordelia in her cheerleader days, Joyce Summers even Harmony and a number of other people whose faces I can remember seeing around Sunnydale High. “Willow gave me a spell before she left we can use it to make sure that Xander cannot leave the hotel.” I pick up the smokes lying on the ground.

“Sounds like a good idea, why don’t we get everyone to meet at four this afternoon, he won’t be up before then. Angel why don’t you get some sleep, its been a long day and night for you, its daylight outside, I’ll take the drugs and alcohol and get rid of it.”

“Thanks Faith, I do need some sleep, there is just one more thing I need to do before I turn in.”

Spike’s POV

At about three in the arvo I give up trying to sleep and get up to have a shower. After coming to bed last night I passed out for a couple of hours but since then I have been tossing and turning, I miss having another body in bed. I got up half a dozens times ready to go beg before turning around again knowing that I can’t do that. Anyway enough brood time, I open my door to go out and notice a carton of smokes on the ground with a letter. I grab them and go back into my room, the note reads

Spike,
I’m so sorry, I’m not a very good Sire am I?
Look I know things are screwed up between
us probably for good but could you just hang
around and fight the good fight with me like
you did last year, please. Sire and Childe
working together as equals, I’d really like that
Thankyou Angel
PS. Xander is in a bad way we are staging an
Intervention at four. If your staying please be
there, I could do with your help

I wasn’t planning on going. Where the hell would I be welcome? Could always get Rupert to give me a job but wherever he’d send me I’d be mistrusted because of my vampire status and I’ve had enough of that. I move downstairs and find everyone else is already there. I can feel Angel in the basement with Thyme and with Kennedy gone we only have one resident sane, well mostly, Slayer, Faith. That doesn’t mean much though as out of the ten living here less than a third don’t have super powers of some kind. I go sit down on Charlie boys bed next to him and Lorne. I think he will be able to move into a room upstairs soon, I am sure he is looking forward to some privacy.

“So what did the whelp do to warrant an intervention?” Lorne quickly fills me in and I’m shocked but not surprised. Always knew that one day the boy would explode from hiding his true orientation. Harris had too many secrets as it was, I think that’s why he hated me so much because I knew them all. I knew about him and Angelus, I knew about him and his childhood friend and I also knew about the abuse he suffered from his so called father figure, something that the others never clued in to. Just then Riley comes in.

“I’m not to late, he hasn’t come down yet has he?” I just look at him puzzled, why is he in on this.

“Faith rang me early this morning. Xander knew about my addiction before you Spike. Well he didn’t know it was vampires but he knew I was on something and he gave me a few home truths. The boy could always perceive and see more than others, it’s the least I could do to try and return the favour.”

“That’s what Caleb said right before he took out the whelps eye, that he sees what others don’t.” I still hear his scream in my dreams, if only I was a little faster, I could of stoped it, I was the closest to them.

“You stop it. I’d like to read Xander at some point.” Lorne says, I always forget that he can pick up a little without a person having to sing. Angel walks out from the basement but I avoid looking at him, its easier this way. I need to get used to the fact that we are over for good. If only there was a buffer between me and him when we get like we did the other morning but now I just need to get back to throwing insults at him.

“Fuck.” Is yelled from upstairs and I see Faith who is lounging against the bench smile.

“I guess someone has noticed that his stash is gone.”

“Did you get rid of it?” Angel asks her

“Nah its here I just thought it would be harder for him to deny if we confront him with the evidence.” We all hear a door being slammed shut and then footsteps coming downstairs. The only people not down here now are Thyme who is being watched over by Illyria and Nina who I can smell down in the basement, must be getting ready for tonight. Xander comes stomping down the stairs looking a right mess. So skinny and tired, he definitely hasn’t been looking after himself. He is dressed in tracksuit pants and a turtleneck sweater both the worse for ware.

“Deadboy what gives you the right to go through my stuff. Its my personal fucking property so give it back or I’m outta here and I don’t give a damm what Buffy says.” He truly looks awful, Faith just pours three plastic bags worth of stuff onto the check-in desk in front of her.

“I don’t think so Xander.” I hear Oz gasp and Andrew looks really sad. He stalks over to her and as he goes past I catch a whiff of his scent, shit. I stand up.

“Take off your jumper Xander.” He turns to glare at me. “You heard me, show them what you’ve turned into, what you have let yourself become. You need help, your too decent a human being to go down this road and if I’m saying it about you, it has to be true.”

“What's he talking about Xander, man, what have you done?” Riley asks, it never occurred to me that they could be friends ‘cos Riley is such an ass.

“Look my life is none of your business, any of you, now I’m going out to get some more liquor.”

“C’mon Xan, we are only trying to help you like you have for all of us at some point or another.” Oz speaks quietly but even an agitated Xander listens to him.

“Help me! I don’t need your pity fest or charity. Poor Xander the one-eyed Zeppo is finally cracking up. Well maybe you can deal with apocalypse after apocalypse while everyone you ever cares about dies and no one else notices but I can’t.” He stands in the middle of the room staring at the floor looking so sad and dejected that I just want to sweep him up into my arms.

“Xander we all feel it, we just all deal with it by ourselves.” Robin tries to be the voice of reason but Xander just shoots him a dirty look and goes back to his floor staring. Robin should stay out of this. He hasn’t been through all the things this male Scooby has.

“Yeah Xander the hellmouth has gone, you should be happy and come celebrate with me.” I roll my eyes could Andrew be any thicker?

“Yeah the hellmouth is gone, too bad it was my bloody home, its all gone and my parents and the school we blew up, then rebuilt, all those reminders have gone, reminders of everybody who died, do you know how many people out of my graduating class is still alive?” Xander’s voice is getting louder and louder and he is visibly shaking. I am scared he is going to shake apart. “ Eight, there are eight people and back before our graduation Buffy was given the class protector award by someone you killed incidentally because we had the lowest mortality rate of any graduating class. We saved all those people for what so that they could be killed later on. They still don’t get a full life and we die trying to save them so Andrew tell me What the fuck are we fighting for? Why fight? What is this whole fucking thing about?”