Payless

Chapter Two: “Sometimes I Forget to Breathe”

Percy’s truck was parked in front of the store again. As Xander pulled his car onto the gravelly surface, he worried briefly about what he would say to the garage owner about his return. He had pretty much settled on a plausible explanation as he pushed into the shop. The front was as empty as it had been the last time. Cash register closed however, Xander noted, peering around. There was a noise from the back and he turned patiently, waiting for Spike to emerge.

More noise, but no one came forward. With a weird sensation climbing the back of his neck, Xander made his way towards what now had become a recognizably repetitive sound. Something slamming against a wall, accompanied by quite a bit of rattling. There was a swinging door in the back, with a little round glass window set into it.

Xander was about to look through the window, when he heard a man’s voice cry out. He stopped dead, feeling a hot rush of nausea all over his body. Before his mind could acknowledge what the rest of him already knew, he saw his hand flat against the door, shoving it open hard.

Xander’s brain reported the information before his eyes in weird little staccato snapshots. As if he could not take it in as a whole moment. He saw Percy’s face, wet and shaking with effort, his eyes clenched shut. His upper torso jerking hard. The rhythmic noise was the protest of the shaking metal cot below him. His arm was pushed forward holding himself up, holding something down. Xander’s mind blinked and tried to shutter what Percy held down, but he couldn’t stop the image from entering his brain. His body fought against it, bringing him into the room, reaching for the man, anger and fear and panic as his mind registered the fat knuckles clenched in the wheat colored curls at the back of the slender white neck.

Spike’s face was buried in the mattress, involuntary grunts erupting from him. Percy ’t e’t even see Xander before a fist with a mind of its own connected with the side of his head.

“Get OFF him!” screamed Xander.

Percy was shoved into the wall by the force of Xander’s assault, then he fell forward and off the side, with a garishly open mouth and staring eyes. Xander saw the fat hand open and release the golden head. Spike didn’t seem to be reacting. Percy howled and Xander felt his body react again, kicking violently at the half-fallen torso as it struggled from the cot.

“Fucker! You fucker!” screamed Xander, his fists and feet connecting randomly with parts of Percy’s body.

His mind could not catch up to his body’s action, but he saw Spike now struggling up off the cot, registered his nakedness, some kind of mark on his face, eyes enormous, hand reaching toward Xander, shouting something.

“Stop. Xander, stop!” Spike was yelling. He came forward and Xander had to stop his assault of Percy because Spike was between them, holding his arms, his torso blocking Xander’s kicks. Xander found himself gasping for air, as he placed his hands between them and shoved back. Away from Spike, away from the awareness that was leaping at him now. A semi-naked man curled on the floor, blood poured from his nose, bloody hands protecting his head. Hoarse screams coming from his mouth.

Spike’s hands were strong and hard on his biceps. Spike’s face was blanched and strained. He yelled in Xander’s face again. “What the fuck? What the fuck are you doing?”

Xander gestured, “He was…” he struggled to breathe, “he was raping you?” he said, almost pleading with Spike not to deny it.

Spike shoved him violently back and turned away. “Shove off, Harris,” he said, hoarsely. “Go home.”

Percy was struggling off the floor now. He spoke through broken lips at both men. “Get out of here,” he demanded of Xander, then he rounded on Spike. “You too. Get out! You’re fired. Get out!” Spike stood unsteadily in the middle of the floor looking at him.

“Percy…”

“Get out!” screamed the man, spitting blood.

“C’mon, Spike.” Xander reached for his arm, but Spike jerked away. He stood irresolutely gaping at Percy, then rounded on Xander.

“Fuck you, Harris,” he said venomously and grabbed a pair of jeans from the corner, started jerking them on.

“Get out!” shouted Percy again, hysterically, crying and wiping bloody snot across his face. “Get out before I call the police!”

Xander’s mind was gaining control of his body again. He looked around the tiny room. A cot, a dresser. A small television propped up on an aluminum tray. A lamp. Spike was jerking on the cotton shirt. “Those clothes are mine,” said Percy in an angry, little boy’s voice. Spike stopped dressing, dropped his hands to his sides, staring at Percy helplessly.

“Oh, fine,” said Percy, in that same voice, “But leave the watch.”

Spike pulled the watch from his wrist with a shaking hand. He placed it carefully on tray ray next to the television.

“Spike,” said Xander hesitantly.

“I’m sorry, Percy,” Spike said. He didn’t acknowledge Xander.

Percy shook his head, wiping at his face and struggling slowly to sit on the mattress. “Just get the fuck out,” he said.

Spike turned and pushed Xander to the side as he strode from the room. Xander gathered his wits for a moment. Percy cast him one more frightened and wall eyed look as Xander backed out the door. He spun around in time to see Spike slamming out of the shop, heading across the driveway towards the road.

“Spike, wait!” Xander ran after him, only just now realizing that Spike was angry with him, that perhaps he had not wanted Xander to interrupt whatever had been happening in that small room. “Spike!” He caught up to him and stopped. He didn’t feel that he ought to take the man’s arm just now. The hostility was popping off him in almost visible sparks.

“I’m sorry,” said Xander.

Spike cast him a quick, malevolent look. He turned and started walking down the black highway. Facing backwards, his thumb extended. “How many times do I have to tell you to fuck off, Harris,” Spike asked the night in front of him.

“Let me give you a ride, at least,” said Xander, following him. “Tell me where you live.”

That stopped Spike for a minute. He gathered himself and resumed his hitchhiking, still addressing the night instead of Xander. “We just left it. You beat up my landlord.”

Xander flashed again on the pantry sized room. The few bits of furniture. The tv. He had a sudden image of a closet in a long buried apartment. It was too wrong. He snarled, “What, were you just now paying the month’s rent?”

Spike swung out at him in a quick, vicious white rage. His fist caught Xander so hard he was hurled backwards in an arc before he hit the ground.

Xander’s head snapped back and he felt his neck wrench as his elbow contacted pavement, hard. He slid sideways in the gritty dark mud and just lay sprawled, staring up at Spike.

“Fuck!’ screamed Spike at the night. He stood there breathing loudly while Xander lay on the ground before him.

Xander’s jaw throbbed. “Well,” he spoke carefully around the ache in his face, “I guess I deserved that.” He rolled and pushed himself up from the slimy grit, facing Spike. The man’s face was hidden in the dark, his body turned half away from Xander, but in the dimness, Xander could still see the slender figure in the short-sleeved cotton shirt shaking as the desert night wind picked up and blew across them.

“Spike,” said Xander reasonably. “Let me give you a lift. To wherever you want. Look at you, you’re freezing.”

Spike looked down at his body as if it were mystery he had just discovered. He scanned the flat plain around them, nothing but the constant hiss of the desert wind and stars pressing down on endless blackness. He sighed. “Yeah. Sure, Harris.” He turned back towards the parking lot, utterly defeated.

They climbed into Xander’s car in silence. Xander wisely didn’t ask Spike if he needed to go fetch any belongings. As they pulled out onto the main road, Xander noticed Spike’s head lift and turn just once to look back at the gas station. Just a twitch, and then he slumped down into his seat, facing forward.

Xander shifted into gear and drove away. It was something he and Spike had always had in common, he thought. They were both pragmatists. They both just got on with it.

Spike was silent through the entire trip. Just once, Xander had asked him if there was anywhere in particular he wanted to be taken and Spike had shrugged and slouched down further in his seat, looking out the side window.

Xander took that as a big, “No, you fucker, I have nowhere to go,” and finally just drove them both back to his own apartment. When he reached up to the visor and pressed the garage door mechanism, Spike glanced at him briefly and shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Xander waited until he had parked the car.

He contemplated his keys and offered, “I have a decent couch. Bunch of leftover pizza in the fridge, probably.”

He felt Spike’s eyes on him. He couldn’t imagine the expression that might be on that face, and he didn’t want to find out. He climbed out of his car and opened the door to the apartment, noting his own relief when he heard the passenger side door slam shut and Spike come shuffling up behind him.

Xander flicked on the kitchen lights and gestured vaguely. It was pretty sparse, ad tad to admit to himself, because he barely made the rent and the basics every month, and hadn’t a lot of extra scratch for other things. But it was clean. Xander was a guy who liked to keep his place clean. And it suddenly seemed spacious compared to the back room of a gas station.

He had a small pine kitchen table and a couple of folding chairs. He walked through to the living room and indicated the couch. He had bought it new, and now was pleased that he had bothered to purchase something relatively comfortable. He stood for a moment contemplating the nubbly textured upholstery.

“Only have one set of sheets,” he mused.

“Don’t matter.” Spike spoke for the first time in over an hour.

“Well, yeah it does.” Xander went off into his bedroom and began pulling apart his bedding. He stomped back, carrying the top sheet. “Don’t want you leaving a bunch of drool marks all over my new sofa,” he said, snapping the sheet crisply over the couch.

There was a definite shift in the room.

“I don’t drool, Harris,” said Spike with a growl, “I’m not a fuckin’ Labrador.”

“Which is why I’m letting you sit on the furniture, fangless,” teased Xander lightly. He turned and chanced a look at Spike. The man was appraising him with raised eyebrows, as if amazed that Xander had dared to use the old jibe. Then he grinned.

“See how fangless I am,” he said tauntingly. His stance shifted defensively, and he lifted his chin and smirked at Xander. Beckoned with his hands. “C’mon, Harris, give me your best shot.”

Xander’s face stretched into an evil grin. He took a couple of steps towards the other man, imagining Spike’s shock when his newly mastered roundhouse kick connected with the vampire’s jaw. Former vampire. Xander stopped and contemplated the smaller, lighter man. He shook his head. “Bet you get the snot beat out of you on a regular basis,” he said chuckling.

Spike immediately dropped his pose and turned his head away. Xander wanted to kick himself as he felt the mood slide back into the one he had endured in the car.

He turned in defeated discouragement back to the kitchen. “Well, I’m starving,” he said morosely, trudging out of the room.

He was standing at the fridge, contemplating the stacks of triangular aluminum foil there, when Spike wandered back in.

“Where’s yer microwave, Harris?” asked Spike dully.

“Don’t have one,” Xander said, “I’m poor, Spike, in case I haven’t mentioned it before.” He turned and switched the electric oven on. “Takes a little longer, but works fine.” He turned back to the fridge. “We’ve got pizza and …. pizza.” He sighed.

He heard the cupboard doors banging behind him and turned to see Spike pulling cans down and reading labels. “What are you doing?”

“You got any pans or stuff?” Spike asked. “Can opener?”

Xander pulled out a silverware drawer, kicked at a lower cupboard. “Some. Why?”

“Lemmee cook somethin’ decent.” At Xander’s non-plussed look, said, “Just sit and wait a minute, Harris. Get out of my way.”

“You don’t have to…” said Xander, sitting obediently nevertheless.

“Yeah I do,” sighed Spike, dumping tunafish into a bowl. “Man can’t live on pizza.”


They ate the bizarre tuna casserole Spike scraped together, using green peppers and tomatoes peeled off the pizza, as well as a few other odd looking ingredients from cans Xander barely remembered purchasing. It made a more satisfying meal than Xander imagined the pizza would have.

Spike insisted on doing clean-up as well. Xander had a strong intuition that Spike needed to do these small, useful tasks as a kind of payment, so didn’t argue or try to help. He took a shower instead, mentally dividing his towel supply in two.

He wrapped his drying towel around his hips and padded back into the living room with the remaining clean towels. He placed them at the end of the sheet-swathed sofa and turned to face Spike, standing in the doorway, staring with a startled look on his face.

Xander felt the blue eyes prick up and down his torso. Spike took a noticeable step backwards. Given the situation they had just driven away from, Xander didn’t think it was paranoid or conceited of Spike to wonder what motivated Xander to help him. Given the sudden weird tingle in his belly at the eye scan, Xander wondered himself for a minute.

“Just bringing you clean towels.” Xander felt belatedly that the explanation somehow made the unspoken fear more valid. He stepped back, a small gesture of his hands meant to indicate harmlessness. Spike nodded, still watching him. “There’s an extra set of old sweats hanging on the bathroom door,” Xander offered, casually dropping his gaze away from those wary eyes. Spike stepped up to the sofa, and Xander backed away, then slipped around him and down the hall to his bedroom.

He shut his door and sat down hard on his bed, suddenly overwhelmed by the vertigo. Spike was alive, he told himself in amazement. He was, at this moment, in Xander’s living room, breathing and sweating and very much alive. Xander went over to his dresser and sorted through the pile of pocket debris he emptied there every night. Found Buffy’s card. He tapped it thoughtfully for a few minutes, then carefully placed it in the box on the dresser where he kept his watch.

Xander could hear Spike in the bathroom. The toilet flushed and Xander had to sit down hard again on the bed. The entire day suddenly heaved itself up into his memory and he followed the recitation of it like he was watching a science fiction movie. The image of Percy and Spike in the pantry together rose up again in his mind’s eye, this time helpfully supplying those details his shocked brain had protected him from the first time. Xander twitched uncomfortably and leapt up, suddenly unable to think about any of it any longer. He changed into his customary boxers, then feeling unaccountably naked, grabbed a seldom used flannel robe from the closet.

Spike had showered. He sat in the sweats Xander had offered him, his chest bare and still damp in the low room light. He had the tv on and was flicking through the channels lazily. With his wet hair slicked back against his head he looked, for a moment, so much like the Spike of old, that Xander forgot himself. “Hey, hey, my place my TV,” he leaned over and snatched the remote from Spike’s hand before the man could react, “my remote.” Xander pointed and clicked.

Spike didn’t rise to the bait. “Okay,” he said. He hugged his upper torso and just sat there. Xander dropped his arm and offered the remote back again.

“Just fooling around, fangless,” he said, trying to find the levity from before. “Here. Switch it back.”

Spike didn’t take the remote; he leaned sideways onto the sofa arm, still hugging his bare torso. “Nah. Tired anyway.” He shivered.

Xander jumped. “Oh, fuck. Sorry, Spike.” He went down to his bedroom and dug around until he found an old blanket, snagged one of the throw pillows from his bed. “Hey, here.” He re-entered the living room and tossed the items onto Spike’s figure. The man vaguely plucked at the blanket, pulling it around his own shoulders. He sighed.

Xander tsked and jerked the blanket away from Spike. “Like this,” he said and spread it evenly over the former vampire’s body. He began tucking the blanket in behind him, shoving it carefully under Spike’s legs and feet.

A strong hand grabbed his arm and stilled it. “Thanks, Harris,” said Spike firmly. “I’m good.”

Xander jerked back. He stood, embarrassed. “Yeah. Well. Goodnight.” He turned and practically ran from the room.


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


Xander woke to the sound of a high pitched, continuous scream. He thought, for a moment, that one of the ancient appliances which had come with the apartment, had finally broken down. Concerned that electrical sparks and fire were imminent, he forced himself out of bed, half awake. Clad only in boxer shorts, but still bothering to find and drag on his eye patch, he followed the sound to its source.

By the light of the hallway, Xander could see Spike curled in a corner of his living room. The lamp was debris all around him, blood all over his arm and smeared across the floor. He had his head shoved into the corner, clawing at the wall with the unbloodied arm. His legs scrabbling against the floor as if he was trying to push himself through. He appeared to be still asleep, his eyes squeezed shut, his face contorted as he continued to wail. Xander leapt forward and dragged the smaller man back from the wall. Spike was unbelievably strong in his delirium and he fought against Xander. The two men tussled and fell back against the sofa, it scraped across the floor and Xander could imagine the pleasant awakening the other residents of the building were having just now.

“Spike!” he said loudly, his mouthed pressed up against the other man’s ear. “Wake up, Spike.” He wrapped his own arms around Spike’s arms and chest and hung on as the former vampire bucked up against him.

Spike gasped loudly, shouted, and jerked awake. He blinked for a moment into Xander’s face then began struggling wildly again. Xander immediately let him go, clapping a hand over his patched eye and holding the other one out as if to show himself harmless. Spike backed into the couch, gaping groggily.

“Don’t bleed on the furniture,” said Xander, only half joking.

Spike pushed himself away and looked down at himself. He was covered with blood. He held out his arm, staring at it. Xander’s alarm at the sight of Spike’s arm temporarily relieved his own self-consciousness. There were shards of glass there still jutting from the , an, and blood mixed with dirt and some debris Xander couldn’t identify.

“We have to wash that out, Spike.”

Once in the bathroom, Xander examined Spike’s arm again in the bright light and tsked with concern, “This is gonna fucking hurt.”

“Think I can take it, Harris,” Spike said dryly.

Xander glanced at him. The man’s eyes were tired and red-rimmed. He urged Spike onto the toilet next to the sink, laying his bloodied arm across the basin, before running the warm water. He opened the medicine cabinet door, searching for tweezers.

“What the fuck was that, Spike?” he asked as he opened his medicine supply box.

“Nightmare.”

“I’ve had nightmares. Don’t usually wake up lying in a pool of broken glass.”

“This is sort of the Mother of All Nightmares,” said Spike raggedly. He drew a deep breath, and rested his head against the porcelain. Xander paused. He wondered if he’d ever adjust to the sound of Spike breathing.

“Did you have nightmares,” he asked, “before? You know, before..”

“Yeah, vampires dream,” said Spike in a tense voice. “Dream of electric sheep and blood,” he said sarcastically.

Xander gave Spike a sharp look. “It’s never wise to snark at the man with the tweezers, Spike.”

Spike shook his prone head sorrowfully. “Yeah, yeah, sorry,” he said.

Xander brought a stool over and sat at the sink. He ran his hands under the faucet, then sprayed anti-bacterial spray on them for good measure.

“I don’t remember you screaming in your sleep before,” he commented, studying the bits of glass. Some were slipping out as he gently pressed Spike’s arm into the warm spray. Some seemed firmly wedged. “Just wondered.”

“Yeah, this one’s new,” admitted Spike, his head still down, “new and pretty fucking real.”

Xander held Spike’s wrist lightly and carefully fastened the point of the tweezers to a jutting shard. “Say shit,” he said.

“Shit,” gasped Spike obediently, as Xander pulled the sliver from his arm.

Xander studied the bloodied bit of glass with a careful eye. “You know, I can’t be sure I’m pulling out the whole thing,” he said worriedly.

“Not going to the doctor, Harris.”

“Oh, you bet. That’s a given. I’m assuming you haven’t got insurance, and I sure as hell can’t pay for an Emergency Ward visit.”

Spike was silent. He twitched a bit. “Just pull out the damn stuff, Harris,” he finally said grimly. “I’ll soak it and we’ll just hope fer the best, right?” He looked up at Xander’s worried face and his expression softened into something else.

“Thanks for this, Harris,” he said tentatively.

Xander felt a warm tingle in his belly. It felt new and yet familiar. He grinned. “Oh, it’s my pleasure, former deadboy,” he said with exaggerated glee, “I just hope I don’t hurt you too much.” He gripped the tip of another shard. “Say shit.”

“Shit,” yelped Spike.


It took a couple of hours and they were both completely exhausted by the time Spike was back on the couch, white gauze wrapping his arm and a container of orange juice on the floor beside him. For the blood loss.

“Night, then,” said Xander tiredly, he nodded at the prone man. “Am I gonna wake up to more screaming and smashed stuff? Cuz I’m thinking of moving the TV.”

Spike looked worried and Xander wanted to kick himself again. “I’ll replace the lamp, Harris,” he said.

“Fuck, Spike, I don’t care. Just … are you gonna sleep okay now?”

“Yeah, I think,” said Spike slowly. “Usually don’t have it twice in the same night.”

“This a routine then, huh?”

Spike’s worried expression deepened. “Yeah.” He looked up at Xander, his eyes troubled.

Xander took a deep breath. There was something in Spike’s expression, some vulnerability. “It’ll be alright,” he assured him automatically.

A very cynical expression crossed Spike’s face. He looked like a little boy who had been assured his father wouldn’t hit him again. “Yeah, Harris. Thanks.”

Xander felt for the hundredth time that evening that he had said the wrong thing. But cynical Spike seemed preferable to frightened, weak Spike. “Night,” he said dully, turning towards his bedroom.

He sat for a long time in his room, staring at the box that held Buffy’s card.

Once, his mother had owned a parrot. One summer afternoon, when Xander was still quite young, the exotic bird had just flown through the kitchen window. His mother had trapped it and lured it into an old parakeet cage, where she had attempted, for a few devoted days, to care for and feed it. And get it to talk. After a while, the novelty wore off for her and she merely shoved food and water into the cramped cage, barely noting the bird at all.

Xander had been enraptured by it. Its glowing colors, weird, round, black encircled eyes, occasional bizarre vocalization, had all spoken of a world beyond his own. A world of mystery, beauty and passion. Things the young boy yearned for without even knowing they were possible. He watched the beast, hunched over in its inadequate housing, picking at food undoubtedly wrong for it and knew somehow that they ought not to have it. That it was wrong of them to keep it, yet he couldn’t bear the thought of losing it.

In time, the bird pined and became obviously ill. His mother was irritated by the inconvenience of a sick animal and would not discuss a veterinarian. Xander wandered once into a pet store, and asked vague questions about the feeding of parrots, but was intimidated by the shop owner’s specific and technical questions and left, feeling stupid. He watched helplessly as the bird faded. And woke one morning to find its body, a stiff curve of gorgeous colors, on the bottom of the cage. When he lifted it, tearfully, finally from its prison, one wing spread open and for the first time he saw the complex and gorgeous patterning that had been hidden by the cage’s constraints.

Xander sat on his bed and thought of calling Buffy. He knew he couldn’t keep Spike here. He was a miracle that had flown through the window and it was wrong of him to try. But his heart ached for something, and he lay back against his pillow and turned out the light. Promising himself that if things began to go wrong, he’d call.

TBC