Hold Me Thrill Me Kiss Me Kill Me

“What happened?”

Xander looked down, toying with the bracelet Spike had given him, and let the girls talk around him. While he was glad that Giles had made it to the hospital, he wanted Spike.

“Okay, so like we're on patrol, because Buffy had that flu thing, and I still think it's the demon flu...”

“Willow, there is no demon flu, just the regular flu.” Cordelia rolled her eyes and Xander smiled slightly at that.

“Whatever. Anyway, we were on patrol, ran into Buffy, Xander and I tried to convince her to go home. Then Angelus popped up, he and Buffy fought, Buffy fell or something, I put my coat over his head while...”

Cordelia broke into Willow's stream of babble. “Long story short, Angelus got away but none of us are dead and Buffy passed out. The doctors are still looking at her. I called her Mom, Willow called you, no one will tell us anything. Are we all caught up now?”

Xander flushed, and made a mental note that he owed Cordy yet again. She kept Willow from mentioning the part where Xander had tried to hit Angelus and had nearly dropped to the ground from the psychic backlash. Cordelia, of all people, had jumped in and saved him.

Spike was going to shit kittens.

“Xander? Are you okay?” Giles voice was soft. Thanks to some legal wrangling, which Xander didn't even want to know about, Giles had been appointed his legal guardian until his eighteenth birthday. The authorities had been upset with the fact that Xander had been on his own for the past few months at first but had mysteriously dropped the issue. Yet another thing Xander didn't want to know about, but since no bodies had shown up he suspected Ethan and Giles more than Spike.

Xander shook his head. “Where's Spike?”

Giles gave him one of those looks. “He heard a rumor about Angelus' future plans and was out tracking it down, as you well know. Ethan is trying to find him.” Giles took off his glasses and fiddled with one of the arms. “Xander...”

“Where is she?” Xander gave a sigh of relief. Saved by Mrs. Summers.

Giles stepped forward. “She's still in Accident and Emergency, I'm afraid. The doctors are with her now.”

“I want to see her.”

Cordelia looked up. There was an expression on her face that Xander couldn't place. “They won't let us in there.”

Joyce stopped as a doctor came through the waiting room. They all stood up, and Xander held his breath.

“Mrs. Summers?”

“Yes?”

The doctor held out her hand for Joyce to shake. “I'm Dr. Wilkinson.”

“I'm Buffy's mother. Is she okay?” Joyce was wringing her hands and the doctor looked serious. Still, Xander didn't see any blood so that was good, right?

“We were able to stabilize and...”

“Is she okay?”

“She's going to be fine.”

Joyce's shoulders slumped in relief and Xander could hear Cordy’s and Willow's relieved sighs. Joyce rubbed her face with her hands before looking at the doctor. “Thank you.”

Ten minutes later, Xander felt himself pushed to the side, feeling useless. They were giving Buffy sedatives to keep her in bed. Her mother was trying to comfort her and Xander felt a twinge. He wasn't sure if he was upset because his mother was dead, or if it was because his mother had never done anything like that for him. Maybe both.

“I wanna go home.”

“Listen, Buffy, you just have to stay here a little while, just until your better. It's going to be okay, I promise.”

“Don't make me stay here! Please...” The orderlies wheeled Buffy down the hallway and her cries seemed to echo.

Her mother was visibly shaken and Cordelia had her arm around Joyce's shoulder. Joyce tried to reassure Buffy even as her daughter was being rolled away from her. “It'll be okay, sweetie, I promise!”

Finally, Buffy was out of view. Everyone just seemed to stand there, uncomfortable with seeing the Slayer so frightened. At least, Xander knew he was. “That was a new experience...”

Joyce shook herself out of her daze. There was still a slight shadow on one side of her face where Angelus had hit her and it made her looked yellowish in the hospital lighting. “Buffy just hates hospitals. Ever since she was a little girl.”

“What happened?” Willow didn't notice the glare Cordelia was sending her and Xander was starting to wonder what the hell was going on. He felt like he was missing something obvious.

No one else seemed to notice anything. Joyce tried to peek through the small window in the door to the ward where the nurses had taken Buffy. “When she was eight, her cousin Celia died in a hospital. Buffy was the only person with her at the time.”

Cordelia shuddered. “God...”

“Yes, they were very close.” Joyce peeked through the window again. “It looks like she's asleep. I'd better go call her father.”

Giles stepped beside her and held her arm to guide her down the hall. “I'll show you where the pay phones are on this floor.”

Xander watched them walk down the hall. It was more than scary, seeing Buffy beg not to be left in the hospital. Part of him was glad that Spike wasn't there to see the Slayer so weak, but another part of him just wanted his lover. He turned to look at the door to Buffy's room. “Do you think she’s going to be okay in there?”

“Well, as for the doctors, I can only comment that they sadly lack in the plastic surgery department.”

Willow made a huffing noise. Xander could tell she thought that Cordelia was being shallow, but he didn't think that was it. Cordy was acting oddly, or at least he thought she was. Right now, Xander didn't think he could psychic his way out of a paper bag.

While he was off in his little world, Willow had gone into teacher mode. What Snyder was thinking of by letting an eleventh grade girl teach classes, Xander couldn't figure out. “...Angel could attack Buffy!”

“No. Angelus would be attacking Buffy. Not Angel. Same body, different fashion accidents.” Cordelia stopped suddenly in the middle of the hall. “I think we should stay. Here. Just in case.”

Willow nodded. “That's a good idea...but I have to get home. If I'm too late my Mom will have a cow.” Then Willow got her 'kicked puppy' look on her face and glanced at Xander. “Oh! I'm sorry! I...”

Xander just shrugged. “I'll stay with Cordelia. Spike will probably look for me here, anyway.” He really didn't want to talk about his Mother. On and off for the past week, Willow had been trying to get him to talk about his feelings. She'd been there at the short funeral service that Giles had arranged for him, and had cried more than he had and was worried that he was repressing all of his feelings.

But he wasn't. Not really. It was upsetting, but...well, he'd lost his parents a long time ago. Before Spike, even. They hadn't cared what time he was home for years. Looking back on his life, the last time his Mom had really worried about him was when he was twelve, right before his Dad had lost his job and had to start selling used cars for a while. After the alcohol had stopped being an occasional thing and had become part of every Harris dinner.

“Xander...”

“Hey, it's okay. We'll be fine. The coffee from the machines will probably get a chance to kill us before Angelus does.”

Willow had that worried look on her face, and Xander wondered when he’d stopped wanting to confide in his best friend. Things were just so complicated, and there was no way he could talk about his mother's death without talking about his father's and that would be bad because Willow would go after Spike and he'd kill her.

So Xander gave his best goofy grin and shrugged. “We'll catch up tomorrow, okay, Wills? And then you can take a turn at Slayer Sitting.”

After a few more protests, Willow left, leaving Cordy and Xander to sit out in the hallway watching over their friend. It was awkward in a way; Xander was just so disjointed after their confrontation in the graveyard with Angelus and he got the idea he was missing something, going on with Cordy.

Still, his brain felt like he'd looked into the sun too long or something. Getting that close to Angelus, trying to hit him to protect Buffy...

“You look like shit.” Well, Cordy's comment summed it up quite well.

“It's a matched set, since I feel like shit!” Xander snapped back. He really had been hanging around Spike too much.

“God! Who pee’d in your Cheerios?”

“Angelus, if you must know. Why couldn't we have managed to blow him up when Ethan was making with the Mojo Jojo act?”

Cordelia snorted, and it sounded weird to hear her do something like that. “Because that would be way too easy. Real life doesn't fix it's problems in half hours. And speaking of science fiction, what the hell happened to your shields, Deanna Troi?!”

Xander groaned. “Do you know how weird it is to hear you make Star Trek references?”

“Yeah, well, it's like any other foreign language; if I want to talk to a geek I need to learn geek. Now, spill it!”

Xander sighed and leaned back in his seat, the hard metal arms of the chair digging into his sides. “I, we, didn't expect him. Minions yes, but Angelus... See, minions are bad, but they don't, I dunno, it's like radiation. The minions only give off low levels of evilness but Angelus is like, Chernobyl levels of evilness and I wasn't ready for it. I think I burned something in my brain and I have the headache from hell.”

Cordelia gave what on Spike would have been a lecherous grin. “Poor baby. Guess you'll have to make Spike kiss it and make it better.”

That made Xander laugh but he couldn't let it go unpunished. “Cow.”

“Queerboy.”

“Bitch.”

“Necrophiliac.”

Xander burst out laughing and Cordy followed, ignoring the glares from the hospital staff and other visitors. Part of it was because it was funny, but part of it was just a release from the tension he'd been feeling ever since failing to fight Angelus earlier in the night.

“Well, well, well. What have we here? Having fun while your precious Buffy lies all alone?”

The sound of Angelus's voice coming down the hall made both of them scramble to their feet. Xander clutched his fists and tried to put up every defense that Giles and Ethan had taught him, even falling back to Cordy's earlier comment and visualizing shields coming up around him, protecting him from Angelus.

Xander no longer doubted that Drusilla had been mad long before she'd died. Just being in Angelus's presence made him want to crawl into his closet back home and hide and, when Angelus looked at him and Xander picked up on a few of this thoughts, he thought he might puke. Xander wouldn't back down, though, not again. “Visiting hours are over.”

“Yes, well, I'm pretty much family, wouldn't you say, lad?”

Xander bristled. He knew for a fact that Angelus wanted Spike back, and that he wanted Buffy and Xander. It was just too terrible to think about. “Yeah, well, why don't you come back later? Say, around noon? Oh, gee, so sorry, you can't.”

“If I decide to walk into Buffy's room, do you even think that for one nanosecond you could stop me?”

Cordelia spoke up. “Maybe not, but I'm sure if I scream someone will be able to stop you. Say the nurses, the orderlies, the security guards. Wanna find out?” Then she grinned and Xander started to wonder just how much she'd been spending around Ethan and Spike. It wasn't a nice grin. “By the way, how are the testicles? Sorry I didn't get proper kick placement earlier tonight. But the next pair of pointed heels I buy, I'll be thinking of you.”

“Buffy's White Knights. Huh. I find it amusing that you two are the ones left guarding her. My Childe's piece of ass and the leader of the pep squad. I'm scared. Really.” Angelus thew the flowers he'd been carrying at Xander and he let them drop to the floor. Knowing Angelus, the thorns would be poisoned. “Tell Buffy I stopped by.”

Angelus turned on his heel and left but it wasn't until he'd been gone for five minutes that he and Cordelia relaxed. Still, Xander got the feeling that he'd be back.

*****

Spike turned into the parking lot of the hospital, the De Soto going up on two wheels as he made a sharp turn. He really needed to stop trusting Xander's little friends to keep him safe. Evidently, they were all trouble magnets. He swore as he swerved to avoid someone walking through the dark parking lot.

The night after the funeral for Xander's Mum, he'd caught a Rekya demon skulking around Willie's. Rekya's were a middle management type demon, always doing business for higher orders and Masters. Big kind of business and Spike had been trying to find out what that was.

Of course, the one night he'd left Xander, the boy would attract Angelus himself. Spike had long since discovered that Xander either had the worst luck or the best luck, he wasn't sure which, and evidently that luck had held up again. Spike screeched the car to a stop as he pulled into a parking space. He was going to kiss Xander stupid and then consider chaining the boy to the bed.

As he jumped out of the car, the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. “By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes... ANGELUS! Show your bloody arse!”

The first had been said under his breath, the sensation of being watched by his Sire bringing up the Bard's lines. He really wasn't surprised when Angelus stepped from between two cars. “William. Forgot to lock the gate and your pet escaped, did he? Thought I taught you how to take care of your belongings better than that. Guess I'll have to take care of it for you.”

Spike growled “Stay the fucking hell away from my Xander!” He didn't even wait for Angelus; he struck out with his fist, giving Angelus a glancing blow before the other vampire returned the favor. They traded blows repeatedly, neither one able to find a weak point in the other's guard.

Finally Angelus stepped back. “Well, my boy, I must say, you surprise me. You're spending precious minutes trying to beat me when you should be checking on your little pet to see if I left him with any blood.”

Spike was torn. It was true, he was worried about Xander. From what Giles had said, his lover had had a bad reaction to being around Angelus earlier and the thought of Xander getting in close quarters with the elder vampire made his skin crawl.

Then again, he wanted to rip off one or both of Angelus's arms and beat him to death with them. Just on principle. Never mind the fact that he was being a giant canker sore on Spike's arse.

Spike growled. Xander came first. He always would. “One day, you're going to get what's coming to you, Angelus. And I'm gonna be on the giving end.”

He spun around and left Angelus in the parking lot. He needed to find Xander.

*****