Reaching out in the darkness

Chapter 3: Too much thinking and a monster crisis
***

"Spike?"

He set down the now empty teacup and moved to the door. "Yeah, pet?" Automatically licking the blood on the back of his wrist, Spike pushed the swinging door open and follow Dawn's voice into the dining room.

"Sit down, Spike, and let me....eewwww." She'd glanced up from the supplies in her hands just in time to see him lick his own blood off his skin. "That's disgusting, Spike."

"What, pet? Blood's blood to me, I'm a vampire. 'Sides, I taste pretty good if I don't say so myself." He put a massive dose of humor in his face and voice just to watch her react. Spike loved that little eyebrow arch she did when she wasn't buying his bullshit. Yup, there went the eyebrow and her lips twitched. *That's my skeptical girl.*

"Spike, you are one twisted vampire. Now sit down and give me your hand."

Settling onto a chair, he stretched his wrist across the table and grinned up at the brunette that had a real smile on her face. "Have I ever denied it, pet?"

Dawn just rolled her eyes and opened the disinfectant. Sitting, she dabbed at his bloody knuckles with the gauze. "Giles didn't say what happened to your hand, so what fool thing were you doing, Spike?"

He snorted, "You've been hanging around the watcher too much, pet, thinking I did something idiotic." Spike squeezed her fingers, watching her concentrate over the back of his hand. "Is that was you really think?"

"I think you're a guy. And all you guys do stupid stuff. Testosterone poisoning, I guess." Wrapping the gauze around his hand, Dawn quirked the corner of her lips at him. "Even Giles does stupid things. So what did you do, Spike?"

He ducked his head and rolled his eyes up at her, puppy dog like. "I had a go at the punching bag."

"And you didn't wrap your hands first." She smirked at him, setting his wrist back on the table. "And you're telling me it wasn't a fool thing to do. Men." Dawn reached out. "Let me see the other hand and don't even tell me the bag looks worse than you do."

Spike couldn't help the smile on his face. He loved it when Dawn would spar and joke with him. Stretching his other arm towards her, he hit the barb back. "Well, you should see it. The bag's bleeding sand all over the basement floor and I barely broke skin."

"Well at least you didn't get both hands bloody." Prodding the skin over his knuckles with her fingertips, she glanced up. “Just bruised. So what’s up with you guys?”

“We guys?” What had the watcher told her? For that matter what did the watcher know? Spike mentally shook his head. Unspoken confusion between people didn’t usually get relayed to a third party. Add in the English reserve and Spike decided he was jumping to conclusions. *Suspicious vampire.* “What’re you talking about, pigeon?”

“You and Giles.”

*So much for being suspicious.* Casual, no need to be obvious. Thought about what, he couldn’t or wouldn’t consider. “You’re not making sense, luv.”

Dawn squeezed his hand and shook her head at him. “Don’t act like I’m as blind as you’re trying to be. Have you and Giles even stayed in a room together for five minutes in the last week?”

Her hold on his hand seemed to somehow force his eyes to meet hers. Since when did the human girl have control over the vampire? “Well, of course we ‘ave.”

“Yeah, that’s why he left the kitchen so quickly and sent me back down to take care of your hand. Am I that prized for my ace-bandaging?” She tugged at his wrist, at the serviceable but certainly not stellar first aid job. “That’s why he sent me, oh-so-subtly, with your morning blood to suggest you move in. That’s why you, *Spike* spent half the night cleaning the kitchen and then beat up an innocent piece of training equipment. Yeah, now who’s not making sense.” Dawn stood up and stared down at the vampire who suddenly wouldn’t meet her eyes. “So when the denial wears off and you’re ready to talk, Spike, you know where to find me.” Brushing a kiss against his forehead, she moved to the door.

“Uh, Dawn?” Spike looked at her, waited for her to turn and face him. It was important to see her face right now. “Have you…have you talked about this to Giles?”

She smiled, compassion on her lips. “No, he’s deeper in denial than you are. “ There was only the smallest of quirks on her eyebrow. “Giles wouldn’t even know what I was talking about. Or he wouldn’t admit it.”

Spike helplessly watched the brunette leave the room before forcibly uncurling his fingers. Only the layers of gauze covering his palm kept his short nails from piercing his skin. It wasn’t easy to keep denying something when others insisted on confronting him about it, especially Dawn. She’d always been able to smack reason into him. Some blows were just harder to recover from than others.

*He’s even deeper in denial than you are.*

Spike blinked. It was also easier to lie to himself when he believed the object of his….confusions…didn’t feel a thing. But denial required something to deny. Giles had something to deny if Dawn was right. Giles might, just might, be feeling some of the same things Spike was.

But Spike would bet his canines that Giles hadn’t been thinking about, imagining, the things he had. How a kiss or a touch would feel, taste. About the touch of hands over his skin, a voice whispering in his ear. Giles couldn’t have been imagining that….could he?

Spike remembered the way Rupert had tugged his robe closed in the kitchen, the way he’d pulled away so abruptly in the cemetery, the way he’d avoided looking Spike in the eyes. Had Giles pulled back for the same reasons Spike had, a fear of just how much he wanted to get closer?

“Cor, I’m losing my bloody marbles.” Shaking his head, Spike tried to shove everything back down inside and lock it up. Alcohol would make the lid close so much easier and there wasn’t enough sunlight in the whole world to keep him in this house. Nodding sharply to himself, Spike grabbed his trench, pulled it up over his head and sprinted out the front door to the nearest sewer entrance. His body took the tunnels to a demon bar on autopilot. The brain wasn’t allowed to think at all right now. It couldn’t be trusted.

***

Giles stood before the bathroom mirror and tilted his head back. There was a faint bruise coloring the skin over his Adam’s apple. And from experience he knew it would get darker before it started to fade.

Closing the top few buttons of his shirt, Giles sent up a little thank you that he no longer had a job where they might ask him about his regular injuries. No one to joke with him about an abusive girlfriend…or boyfriend.

In his mind, he felt Spike’s eyes hot on the skin of his throat, felt his own hands opening the collar instead of closing it, felt cool lips and the sharp sweet pain of a new scar…..felt his back hit the wall as he jerked away from the mirror and out of the image. “Sweet mother of god…” One hand lifted up to cover the pounding heart beat in his neck. To cover the bite mark he could feel even though it wasn’t there. Or maybe he was trying to hide the pulse pounding through more than just his neck, trying to tell himself that it was fear that made his heart race like it did.

“No, I did not think about anything. No, nothing at all.” Straightening his collar, Giles pushed a door in his head shut and locked it, with maybe a heavy silver cross on it for safety. “Why, I think the attic could use a good cleaning. Right then, there’s work to do.”

Hours of constant movement and activity later, he wiped a dusty hand over a sweaty forehead and sat back on his heels. Giles had moved, restacked, and strained his knees lifting every box in this attic. And all he could say was it wasn’t enough, his mind was still fiddling at the chained door.

And he knew that Joyce had known how to pack a mean box. Heavy too.

But the lock on that damned door was still rattling and that simply would not do. So there must be more to do, more work somewhere. The basement?

….pale skin and paler hair bare above white sheets. Those chains still embedded in the wall above the cot….

*NOOO, no no no no, not the basement. Never the basement.*

His face brightened as an idea hit him. *The den.* When Giles have moved in, he’d brought all his research books. They were scattered all over what had been Joyce’s office. The den could use a good librarian’s touch and right here was a good librarian just dying to get his hands on something… the lock rattled… just dying to get busy with his hands…the cross rattled…uh…just needing not to think right now.

Carefully rising to his feet, Giles moved down the folding stairs in the attic floor and crept into the den. *Ah,* The familiar musty scent of books started releasing the tension in his shoulders. *Demon lore will save me, demon lore always saves me.* Over the years, research had been the place he’d buried all his emotional crises and now was no different.

Three blissfully mindless hours later, afternoon was half way to sunset and the chaos inside the den was interrupted by a familiar voice calling his name, Dawn’s.

“Giles, come here!”

Opening the door, he poked a smudged face into the hallway. “What is it, luv? Uh, Dawn.”

“Something on the news that you should see, Giles, hurry up.”

Giles shook his head at himself, he’d been hearing ‘luv’ and ‘pet’ on his own lips more than he’d ever admit, even to himself. He stopped in the living room doorway. “You’re watching the news.” asn’asn’t a question, but the amazement in his voice turned her eyes from the TV screen.

“Hey, I live in Sunnydale. Some big bad goes on a murderous rampage every 60 days. cou course I watch the news.” Dawn rolled her eyes and smile softly. “And there’s nothing else on. But back to the point. Scooby emergency on the news.”

Giles’s eyes followed hers back to the screen as he sat down and draped an arm around her shoulders. “Demons, vampires, zombies, what’s the underworld’s special today?”

“I can’t tell, but it’s big. And violent.”

“They always are.” But even Giles’s eyes widened as two cops flew backwards out of the building, luck landing them on the grass instead of the cement. He tightened his arm around her, pulling her closer against his side protectively. “Very violent. Have they got a good look at it yet?”

“Just a scaly, clawed hand in one of the windows. Definitely a Scooby case. What should we do, Giles?”

“Research first, I should think. Dawn, fetch Spike from the basement, maybe he’ll recognize it. Scale you said? I’ll get the reptilian demon books.” He was on his feet and two steps from the couch when Dawn caught his wrist.

“Uh, Giles?”

“What, Dawn? Not sure it has scales?”

she didn’t look at him. What wouldn’t Dawn meet his eyes? It was bad that she looked away, wasn’t it?

“No, no it had scales, Giles…It’s just that, uh, Spike’s not in the basement.” Dawn glanced up at him to see the look on his face. Little to his knowledge, Dawn had a great many reasons to analyze his reactions. Not to mention a smaller amount of hope to find something in Giles that cold become…something more.

“What?” Giles turned, oblivious to her scrutiny. “Where has he gone?” His eyes automatically slid across the room to the coat rack by the front door, to the bare wooden hook that was usually covered by a signature leather trench. “In broad daylight, no less. Why?” Turning to her, Giles felt her eyes burning through the skin of his face.

“I don’t know, really.” The strangely blank but attentive expression on her face was oddly mesmerizing and he found himself unable to look away. Since when did Dawn have the power to hold a man’s ? “? “I wrapped his hand and we talked. Spike seemed upset and when I came back down after putting away the first aid kit, the front door was open and his jacket was gone.” Dawn’s head tilted to the side and her eyes remained locked on his. “Do you know what’s up with him?”

She could have nailed him to the wall in the silence after her question. Her eyes nearly did. *Do I know? * Giles saw that look in Spike’s eyes again, the panic and worry he’d thought he’d seen in those blue eyes, in the cemetery. He remembered the crack he’d thought he’d heard in Spike’s voice. He remembered the way those blue eyes had seemed to try to catch his over a flask of whiskey…*No, it couldn’t be that. * “No, Dawn, I don’t know what could be wrong with Spike.” Polishing his glasses, Giles managed to look away from Dawn’s eyes, trying to hide…something he couldn’t or wouldn’t name by turning his back. “Whatever the case, we’ll need his help. Dawn, you stay here in case he comes back. I’ll…” he reached out with one hand to grab up his coat. “and I’ll go look for Spike.”

Closing the door behind him, Giles didn’t see the smile on her face as he left.

Two seedy demon bars later, there was still no sign of the bleached vamp. Standing at the door of the third, Giles watched the last light fade on the horizon. Two bars searched that were full of smoke, beer and far too many eyes trailing him and his e the through the crowds. All for nothing. The third bar (yes, there were more than three exclusively non-human bars in town and he expected to get just as much attention in several more of them tonight) stood before him, and Giles sighed, pushing open the swinging door and bracing himself for the turning heads and other appendages.

Only this time, Giles felt one pair of eyes snap to him with the sudden speed of a gunshot, then just as quickly slink away. “Spike,” He stopped short, hearing almost a growl in his own voice as he turned towards the only eyes in roomroom that were turned away from his. His feet moved him across the room towards the blonde head lowered over a half-empty beer glass. Before Giles even realized it, his hands had grabbed the shoulders of a leather trench and jerked Spike to his feet and around to face him.

“What in the bloody hell were you thinking, man?” The growl in his voice kept the sound quiet but only accentuated the anger kept barely in check. “You left! In the middle of broad daylight, you left without a word, without a note!” The muscles in his arms tightened and loosened on their own, shaking Spike for reasons he couldn’t explain.

Spike raised both hands and broke Giles’s hold in his jacket, stepping back unsteadily. “What do you care, Watcher? You…. You haven’t looked at me for days? What do you care where I am?”

“Because…” Giles stopped. He couldn’t answer because the words that tried to climb up his throat could not be allowed out his mouth. Because then he would have to admit it to himself. “Because of Dawn!” That would work as a reason for his anger, protectiveness of Dawn. “You left her alone and now there’s a demon ripping up banks downtown. You left her unprotected and now I’ve had to search three bars for your undead arse!”

Giles watched the concern chase the drunken expression off Spike’s face from only a few feet away even as his body nearly tripped.

“She has been…hurt? I’ll kill that thing that touched a hair on that girl’s head.” Spike recovered from the trip with the slamming of one of his fists on the bar, stepping forward with protective rage written in the tensing of every hard muscle in that pale, lean body. That beautiful, pale body…. No.

Giles shook his head forcefully, trying to shove that visual image back behind the door with its silver chains and crosses. Realizing that his gesture was more to himself than to Spike, he searched his mind for the question he’d been asked and an appropriate answer. “No, the bot’s with her. She’s perfectly safe back at the house.” Giles looked away from the relief in thosee eye eyes, fingers wrapped comfortingly in the chain of the cross in his pocket. “But with a demon still on the loose, that could change.”

“So you came searching for the one man you need….me.”

The one man I need? …..No, I don’t need him. I don’t need Spike ….or anything from Spike. No need, no needing. “Uh, yeah.”

“So let’s go kill ourselves a demon ‘fore he makes a try for our niblet.”

Giles felt sheer relief at the eager violence on Spike’s face. Violence was, in its own odd way, safer than everything he’d seen or thought he’d seen on that pale face for days. “Right then, demon hunting it is. Weapons are out in the car. Let’s go.”

In the time Giles had been Spike-hunting, the scaled demon had moved from the buildings downtown to the empty streets near then docks, seeming to be quite fond of throwing around the large shipping crates like they were game dice.

“Demons,” Spike shook his head as the car swerved to avoid yet another falling shipping hazard. “All destructive violence, no creativity.” One pale hand braced against the dashboard as the car took another sharp curve, dark-painted nails digging into the vinyl.

A small, hidden, dark part of Giles’s mind felt those black nails raise light welts along the skin of his back as their lips were….//No, not thinking about a particular demon’s creativity.// Determinedly focusing on driving, he mentally fastened another cross on the closet in his head. Haphazardly parking in the relative safety under a balcony, Giles tore his eyes away from those hands, focusing instead on his own as he moved to the car trunk and its weapons. A shudder forced its way along his back as Giles felt Spike move up to his side. “You want the pike?”

“No, I’ll take the ax.” Giles hefted the familiar weight of his favorite ax into his grip, still determinedly looking away from the fluid movement with which Spike spun the long staff around his hands. Those strong, pale hands that could feel so go--… //No, we have a demon to fight. Task at hand.// Turning aside, he rested the flat of his ax on his shoulder, pacing hurriedly toward the crashing sounds around the corner of the building. Giles could still feel Spike mere feet away, walking towards the coming fight like violence wrapped in skin.

“Come on, Watcher, let’s kill ourselves a demon.” Swinging the heavy shaft attached to his blade, Spike stalked ahead of Giles, leaving him a particularly nice view of a muscular, leather-clad back. A view he pretended to ignore as the fighting started.

Dawn’s reptilian demon lifted yet another crate above its head. A mere second later the wood shattered against the ground between Giles and Spike, forcing the Watcher to finally focus on the demon just in time to see it snap the wooden length of Spike’s weapon in its claws and lift the pale vamp above its head and throw him.

“Spike!”

The thud of Spike landing on the far side of the demon got lost in the sound of Giles shouting his name, rushing the demon with ax raised. Slashing at the claws that reached out for him, he tried to see around the scaly wall of ribs to check on Spike. //Spike?// Trying not to hear the panic in his own head, Giles forced the demon back a step with a slice of the ax-blade througlayelayer of scales into flesh. Another swing of the ax, another small retreat of the demon and Giles hollered, “Spike!” around a scaly shoulder.

Then his breath stopped in his throat and his heart leapt in his chest as Spike stalked closer, a blade in one hand and black leather framing a pale, hard muscled chest. Bloody gorgeous. Before his eyes were willing to move away from the sculpted lines of that chest, a flash of green scales crossed in front of them and blackness quickly followed.

//Bloody hell, knocked unconscious again.// Forcing his heavy eyelids up, Giles tried to push a breath out through a constricted throat. “Spike?” He tried not to think about the level of emotion in his own voice, pretending it was just the roughness injuries always put in his throat.

“I’m here, Watcher.”

A pale face leaned over him and Giles choked back a sigh of relief. Spike wasn’t hurt. “And the demon?” Trying to prop himself up on his elbows, he gave up and laid back down. The bundle under his head shifted and leather pressed cold against the bare skin at the back of his neck. Spike’s trench. Which meant that it wasn’t on Spike’s body at the time. On their own, and in direct defiance to the repeated commands of his brain, his eyes followed the bare skin of Spike’s neck to the bare skin of his shoulders, arms, chest, and waist. //Such lovely skin.//

“Knackered. He won’t be waking up…well, ever.” Leaning closer, Spike wore concern on his face and touched fingertips to the edge of Giles’ temple. “How’s the head?”

Giles shivered at the light touch and turned away to avoid the emotion in Spike’s face and the matching feelings rising in his own throat. “I…I’m fine. Thank you.” Struggling to his knees, he almost fell back to the pavement until a lean body wedged itself under his arm. Spike’s arm tightened around his waist, reinforcing knees that were suddenly weakened for a e nee new reason, the feel of hard muscles and smooth skin under his hand.

“Not looking too f Rup Rupert. That demon knock more than blood outta your skull?” Pale fingers rose to the wound on his forehead then, red-tipped, touched Spike’s lips. A nimble tongue flicked out to taste Giles’ blood. And Giles felt every ounce of the blood still in his body leap involuntarily, his heart beginning to race at the sight of the pleasure on Spike’s face. Those gorgeous blue eyes locked to his, apparently waiting for an answer. But what Giles saw in them…terrified him and he looked away.

“It was just another head injury, Spike, I’ll be fine.”

***