"Spike! You really are ali—not dead. I mean, not gone. Okay, uh ... you're also naked."

"Yeah, 'cause I'm at home. An' you're on other side of the planet talkin' to me on the phone—" He waggled the handset at her in disgust. There was a disconcerting echo when the person on the other end of your call was suddenly standing in the same room with you.

"But you said it was urgent." Willow pressed the off button on her sat phone, ending their call, and stowed it in her pocket. "I've perfected this great spell that pinpoints the mobile signal, so I can teleport right to—and you so don't care. What's happening? Where is he?"

Spike tossed Xander's mobile back into his bag. So much for the day's grace he assumed they'd have, before Xander's real friends reclaimed him. So much for getting back into bed, his formerly lonely bed, warmed now by someone who, at least for the moment, said he wanted him.

So much for round two.

"In there." Spike gestured towards the bedroom. "Sleeping."

Willow glanced, but stayed put. Surveying him. She seemed to be over her discomfiture; her gaze swept him from head to toe. Not exactly a hostile gaze, more: assessing.

At least she looked impressed.

"Sleeping! Oh. I guess that's good. Is that good?" She spoke in a loud whisper. "If he's in trouble, he must be tired. So, ah ... here you are, not buried in the rubble. Which—is—good. Isn't it? You look good, Spike."

"You always were a terrible liar, pet."

She ambled sideways towards the bedroom, her eyes still fixed on him. "So—" Glanced in, then stopped. "Uh—curioser and curioser. Xander is naked too. He's in your bed. You and Xander are both naked at the same time. In the same place." She frowned, like this was too hard to figure out.

"Don't worry yourself 'bout that. Point is, he's hurting, he needs his old friends to look after him now."

"You ... you were looking after him?"

"For a bit, yeah. But it's not really my job, is it?"

"Not your—" Willow blinked. Despite her teleporting skills, she was perpetually a step behind. How had things stretched so thin between her and Xander that she didn't know what was going on with him? It made Spike sad.

Sadder.

Still, she was the one. The right one for this. Xander's oldest friend. With the thick and the thin. He'd talked her down from destroying the world, and now she would talk him down from ....

"Gonna grab my clothes out of there an' then I'll leave you in possession of the field."

"Leave—?"

"Give you a bit of room. So you an' he—"

Willow's brow was still furrowed. "Spike, wait a minute. What's happening here, exactly?"

"I'm evil again—just turned Harris, an' now I'm goin' to let him eat you soon's he rises."

"Spike, be serious! Tell me—what's this trouble? And why is he here? I thought he was in London. And are you two—I mean—is this a one-time thing, or is there—is there—a thing?"

"You want to get some food in him. There's a Chinese that delivers, menu's on the counter."

Of course it was broad daylight, so he had to take the sewers to get to the bar. Ordered a beer, and sat well away from the other clientele, sipping, cradling his chin in one hand so he could inhale Xander's scent from his fingers.

Was bloody hard, all around, not to have a bit of leeway. Time to chat a bit more. To get Xander something to eat. He'd rather fancied the idea of seeing him eat a bit.

But that was Willow. When she did a thing, she did it to the hilt.

When the bottle was empty, he thought about phoning home—checking on the situation. But that seemed like a fussy girlish thing to do, and anyway he didn't have a phone, and didn't know the number of Xander's. So he ordered another round—a boilermaker this time. Which he downed in a single manly gulp.

But that did nothing to dispell what was definitely coalescing into a bad feeling. Regret.

He could've waited a while. There'd have been time to call for the cavalry the next time Xander dozed.

Bloody soul. Was like lying on a bed of nails. No matter which way you turned, it was always what you rested on, could never forget it.

He wasn't thirsty anymore. It was his flat, he had a perfect right to go back to it. Back he'd go. See that things were all right. See Xander reunited with his best friend. Say—say—something.

But when he arrived, the apartment was empty.

Xander was gone ... home ... where he belonged.

For a few days he stayed inside. Thinking that if Xander returned, he mustn't find no one there. Of course, Spike didn't expect a return. Willow had certainly poufed him off to a safe place, where all the people who knew him, who'd always loved him, would rally round to his aid. Safe as houses he was now, and certainly regretting the glimpse of soft underbelly he'd given his old enemy. Probably cringed inside to think of it, thanked his stars he'd gone no farther than he had.

That's how it always went. Because of all of that lot, Xander was the one who'd really loathe it. Knowing he'd broken down in front of Spike. Let himself be touched by Spike. Because unlike the others, Xander truly hated him.

Between them, it was always personal.

Illyria didn't return either.

Spike tried to distract himself. But the TV and the XBox were wrecked. His volumes of poetry were too full of the inanity of hope, and the paperback mysteries he brought back from the laundromat just reminded him that everything was for shit.

All that left was beer, hot baths, and wanking.

He indulged freely in all three at once. Too damn bad he couldn't drown.

He was facing away from the stage where Sunshine was doing her indolent gyrations, contemplating his beer while he wondered if tonight was the night to do a little light breaking-and-entering, get a new TV, when he was jerked back by his jacket collar, punched to the floor, and roundly kicked in the ribs.

Two other patrons were already pulling his assailant off as Spike scrambled up; dragging him towards the huge bouncer striding towards them between the tables like a mighty Orc.

What the fuck. This wasn't a fighty kind of club. It was a get-half-stoned-and-gawk-at-the-girls place. So everyone craned to watch the progress of the bouncing, and eyes widened when the guy getting bounced shouted, "You lied to me, you skanky undead bastard!"

Spike closed the distance in a flash, plucked at the bouncer's sleeve. "Here, let him go."

"He's out, and so're you if you start anything. You want to retaliate, do it somewhere else."

Orc-man shoved Xander out onto the sidewalk; Spike shot forward and caught him before he stumbled.

Harris was sloppy drunk. Reeked of it, and of blood sweat and tears besides. He was bleeding from the knuckles—hadn't washed in ... a while. And his eyes were wild. Well, the blue one always had a wildness to it, that horror movie stare, but the real one too, leaking tears, stared in fury. As soon as Spike got him balanced on his feet again, he swung out.

"I'm gonna kick your lying ass! Stand still so I can punch you!"

"Am standin' still. You're the one's bobbin' and weavin'. Gonna make yourself sick."

As if suggestion was command, Xander stagged backwards, half turned, and hurled a lengthy spray of sludgy puke into the gutter.

Spike thought about holding his shoulders. Thought about pulling him away afterwards when Xander stayed hunched, hands on knees, gasping for breath with his face a foot away from his former lunch. But he just stayed where he was, watching.

They were always so damn beautiful when they came to him. Came with the best of themselves.

A couple of guys emerged from the club, stared, and walked on by before Xander managed to right himself, and turn.

He raised an admonishing finger, opening his mouth. But all that came out was a loud hiccup.

"C'mon," Spike said, grabbing his elbow. "Gettin' you out of here."

Should've let them pitch him out and not interfered. Or should've punched Harris down himself—wasn't he allowed to be angry, after the way Xander laid all his pain on him and then fucked off without so much as leaving a bread and butter note?

How many times in his unlife was he going to stand still for that? Just because ... just because it was part of a pattern he'd begun when he was a slip of a boy at school. Didn't mean a bloke couldn't change. Stand up for himself a bit. He'd been Champion To The Slayer, once upon a time. That ought to get him a bit of respect.

Spike worried these thoughts like gristle between his teeth while, through the closed door and over the rush of the shower, he heard Harris muttering and coughing. The kettle boiled then, adding its shrill whistle to the melange of noise. Putting enough leaves in the brown pot to make tea black as witches' eyes, Spike brewed up. Just as the tea had steeped enough, the shower cut off. Opening the door a crack, so the steam curled out into Spike's face, redolent of Xander's particular smell, he thrust in the brimming cup.

"Drink up, Harris. Time to be sober."

More muttering, but after a moment the cup was taken, and Spike pulled the door to again.

He still couldn't figure why Xander was back. Like the cat in that maddening song.

"Took you no time to be on your way. Thought I'd seen the last of you." Spike wanted to sound cool. Absolutely neutral.

But he knew he'd failed by the way Xander glanced up, quick, sharp. The eye, that brown eye with its amazing depths, fixed on him. Narrowed for a moment. Like there was a camera inside, capturing him.

"Fuck you. You were the one in a tearing hurry to get rid of me."

"Think so? Then what're you doin' here now?"

Xander rubbed the bridge of his nose. He was slumped on a kitchen chair, wearing nothing but a damp towel around his waist, another slung around his neck. His wet hair, still short but marginally longer than last time, stuck up all around.

"I don't know. I've got nowhere else."

"That's bollocks. You've got your friends—hidin' from them wasn't doin' you any good—"

Xander scrunched his face. "If you didn't want ... why didn't you just say? Christ. You are a shit. You haven't changed. You couldn't even wait for me to wake up. You had to get rid of me in my sleep." He scrubbed at his hair, grimacing. "You should've just eaten me! I'd feel better!"

"You think I was tryin' to—barkin' up the wrong tree, Harris. Called for help. Thought she'd fly in, didn't bloody know she'd arrive like the Ride of the Bloody Instant Valkyries, did I? But just goes to show how much she cares for you. You an' her, you're friends. Anyway, you went off without so much as—"

Xander started out of his chair, which tipped over with a crash. "You brought her here and you left me alone with her!"

" ... yeah. Wanted to give you two a bit of space, without me hornin' in on—"

"You're the most boneheaded vampire that ever walked! You told me I could stay! But no, you fucking liar, you summon Willow the minute I doze off, and she conjures me halfway round the world before I can open my mouth! And then—and then—" Xander slammed the table so the tea things jumped. "Why am I even talking to you? Where are my clothes? Gimme my damn clothes!"

"Harris—"

"Shut up!"

Xander tore around the room. Spike leapt up, caught him. It was like catching hold of a cut power cable, fifty thousand volts slashing the air. Xander was wild, he was insane. With a cry he shoved Spike, knocking him down, and bolted again, a buzzing fly dashing itself repeatedly against a window.

From the floor, Spike said, "Clothes're in the bathroom. You took 'em off yourself, remember?"

"Oh God." Xander was frozen now, in that half-hunch that accentuated his air of desperation. Then he sank down, landing—though by sheer chance—on the coffee table, where he didn't seem aware that he was sitting on the remote. "Oh God." He dropped his head between his knees. He was breathing like a winded racehorse.

"Harris." Spike scrambled up. "Didn't lie to you. Was tryin' to get you some real help. You told me yourself, that you still had your friends. I thought you should have 'em by you, 'stead of ... instead of just me."

"You said I could stay."

"You belong with them. They care about you, they—"

"You said I could stay."

The cuts on his knuckles were open again, Spike smelled the blood. He went into the bathroom, grabbed up the pile of dirty clothes Xander had discarded, his shoes. Brought them to him. Xander didn't take them, didn't move, so Spike laid the pile beside him on the table and backed off. After a minute Xander glanced at them, laid a hand on the jeans and held them up. "You're so fucking helpful. So fucking helpful when you want to show me the door." Slowly he got up, hitching the dank towel higher on his waist. "What's the matter? Wasn't I a good fuck? You'd rather have that scrawny blue chick? I don't think she could get you off the way I could. She doesn't know you like I do. Anyway, she's gone, isn't she?"

Know him? Spike repressed a snort. Ah, the Scoobies, the Scoobies. The liberties they took. "Look, Harris—"

Xander began to laugh.

"I know, I know, go back to my friends! The friends of my bosom! They're the universal panacea! You know what's crazy, Spike? I'm in the club! Not—not—Buffy isn't in it. But the others ... Will. Giles. Andrew. Faith. My An. It's the Killed A Man club. You know. I've been jumped in. It should be so cozy with them now. I was the only one without a notch—how pathetic was that? But now I'm in like Flynn." That laugh again that reminded Spike of what Xander said, about the hyena. Why a hyena? Maybe he'd seen some in Africa. They were the sort of animal that stuck with you.

"You're not responsible for what you did when they took your will."

Xander waved a hand. "Oh, that's what they all say."

"They may say, but I know."

"Yeah? So you don't fret about those people you ate on The First's watch? You leave them out of the count. Not that I see you wearing a hair shirt. You're more of the Exotic Dancers Writhe For My Atonement school."

"You're not even makin' sense anymore. Time for you to go to bed."

"What, so you can call the Harris Police to come back and arrest me again? You think I'd go to sleep anywhere near you? Fool me once, shame on—"

"Shut up. You're becomin' hysterical. C'mon, before I change my mind."

This time when he touched Xander's shoulder, it was like grasping a cadaver. Cool and clammy, limp. The fight was gone out of him in a breath. He let Spike steer him towards the bedroom.

"Get some rest. You need anything, I'll be on the sofa."

Xander paused in the doorway, surveying the neatly made bed. "I don't have a phone anymore," he announced. "I threw it in the ocean."

"Wise move. Now lie down 'fore you fall down."

"Spike ...."

"I'll be on the sofa."

"No. The thing is ... I was too scared."

"What?"

"I wanted to ... but I was too scared."

Somehow Spike understood what Xander couldn't bring himself to say. That he'd tried to off himself, and lost his nerve.

"That's as it should be. Now shut up an' sleep it off."

When Xander moved into the room, Spike pulled the door shut before he could give him an abject come-hither look, or say anything else.

This just beat all. Bloody Harris comes after him in the first place, keeps coming back, gives him the deluxe tour of his personal hell, and then when Spike does the responsible thing, the All Souled Up Now So Not Taking Advantage Of The Wounded thing, somehow he's the liar, the betrayer.

"Didn't ask for this," Spike muttered at the closed bedroom door.

Didn't ask, didn't expect, but then ... couldn't say he wasn't gobsmacked either. Sure, he'd hinted that things on the old home front weren't exactly hunky dory recently, that there was distance. Like what happened to Buffy in those last few months, as the stress and impossibility of it all mounted, and she withdrew from everyone around her. But he'd never thought Xander would scrabble away from Willow like an abused rat in a cage.

Or that he'd come back here, seek him out again.

As the slightly softer alternative to actual suicide.

'Course if what Xander wanted was to be his snack, he'd be disappointed.

Spike heaped the tea things in the sink, started washing. Would be disappointed no matter what, because ... because it was simply crazy, him coming back here. And he was crazy, taking him in again.

Not my job, he'd said to Willow. Not my place.

He put the things away. Nothing he had here was nice—it was all plain stuff picked up here or there out of the garbage or from the Goodwill. But he'd always valued tidiness. Couldn't think amidst disorder—which was a laugh, given how much he'd used to relish the creation of disorder, with himself at the heart of it. But not at home. At home—and he'd always had a home, of some sort—he liked things just so.

What to do now? Obviously getting back in touch with Willow was out of the question. He wondered about Buffy. Surely Buffy and Xander couldn't be on the outs? Was she still in Asia? There didn't seem to be any way he could track her down.

Listening through the door, Spike could hear that Xander was asleep—the deep sleep that came off a bender. He'd been on a big one, fueled by booze and rage and adrenaline. He'd be out for a while. Might as well have something on hand for Harris to eat when he awoke.

After leaving a note—I'm not a wanker, not that way anyhow—Spike locked up and took the stairs that led up to the building's lobby, which was largish and dusty and though the building was fully occupied, always deserted.

There was a woman on the step outside, face framed by two hands against the glass of the outer door, trying to see in past the vestibule and the inside door. It was that kind of neighborhood. Full of transients, lots of random teenies and slackers scouting around for their street-corner pals.

None of his business.

Except that, seeing him approach, she began to knock on the glass, and then to jump up and down.

It was the jumping that placed her.

He almost gave in to his urge to dart back the way he'd come, exit through the alley and the sewers. But she'd seen him, and anyway ... he was seized with a sudden fierce need to see her.

He opened the door and Dawn leapt into his arms. "Oh my God—Spike! You really—you are—" She was laughing, and then crying, hugging him hard. "I can't believe it! I can't believe it!"

He couldn't quite believe it either. The last time he'd seen Dawn she was cold-shouldering him with all the preternatural force of a resentful teenager.

That seemed to be all forgotten now. Her embrace would've smothered a breathing man. Then she went back at arm's length, taking him in. Looking delighted. Was all he could do not to glance over his shoulder, seeking whatever she was really beaming at, because no one ever smiled like that at him.

"You look exactly the same. It's so good to see you."

"An' you're still a beauty. All grown up now."

Her eyes shown. She was beautiful. Just like always.

"I'm glad you finally came out, because—you don't have a doorbell, Spike." She pointed at the rows of buttons on the intercom, most of which had no names beside them, and some of which—including his, though it wasn't marked as such, were broken off altogether.

"Better for a fellow like me."

"I've been out here for like forty minutes. This isn't a nice neighborhood." Her smile gave way to an uncertain frown.

Ah, now they'd be getting down to business. But he wasn't going to be the first to broach the subject. "You on your own?"

She nodded. "Spike ... as great as it is to see you again—and it is—I'm not just here to visit you."

Big surprise there. "No?"

"Is Xander with you?"

Ah, the direct approach.

"Willow dispatch you?"

Dawn shook her head. "They had some kind of big blow-up. I didn't know he was back in London until he was gone—I didn't even get to see him! Now Xander is missing. And I'm so worried."

"Missing, huh?"

"Willow said he was here, that you called her because he was in trouble, and that when she brought him home he wigged. I've been in LA for days now. He never answers his phone. I come by at different times, hoping I can get into—this is a weird building, Spike."

"Reckon so. How's your sister? Haven't heard news of her in a long long while."

"She's okay. She's not around much. She was resting for a long time, but all she does lately is slay. Listen, I'm really worried about Xander. We ... we used to be in touch all the time. Even though he was in Africa and I'm at Cambridge—we texted, we emailed, we talked. But then he sort of fell off the planet, and that's never good, and then I did see him a little in London, this was months ago, and he was ... he got sick out there, but he was also just off. All distant and pissed off and not Xandery at all."

Listening to her yammer, it hit Spike, with a pang he didn't want to examine, that the Bit was in love with Harris. Not exactly a bolt from the blue—in those last couple months in Sunnydale he'd noticed signs she was sweet on him ... and he on her too, though he was trying to make things right with Demongirl at the time, and probably still thought of her as a child.

Dawn was no longer a child—she was a tall, coltish young woman, lush of body and direct of gaze.

"Do you know where Xander is, Spike?"

The question direct. In her gaze he saw all the frankness and trust she'd shown him that summer after Buffy's leap. He'd lived up to that promise—it was the making of him. That her trust in him was still intact, after everything ... was a testament to ... something. The goodness of the Summers women. Goodness that never died.

Spike put a hand on Dawn's shoulder.

He still wanted to be good to her. Always.

But someone else had gotten there first.

"No, pet. Haven't seen him since he took off with Willow."

Was touch and go for a moment—he had to endure the big-eyed pout, the anxious stare in the middle distance—but Dawn accepted his lie.

Then she insisted they get coffee, get caught up. She slipped her arm through his as they walked.

"You have to tell me how you survived. And why didn't you call us! That's criminal, mister! Buffy and I were so sad afterwards, we missed you. I was sorry I never made up with you before ... I think you knew Buffy forgave you, but so did I. Only I didn't tell you and that was wrong. I'm telling you now. I want us to be friends again. Can we be friends again?"

It warmed him to hear this, though he couldn't quite get his credulity stretched far enough to cover Buffy being sad over his death. In the greasy spoon around the corner, he quickly got the subject off of him and on to her—got Dawn chattering about her studies, her friends at university, her ambition to be head of research at the Watcher's Council some day.

Though she talked readily enough about herself, she always brought the conversation back to Xander. Or really, back to herself and Xander: how could he worry her like this? How could be just drop out of contact, when they were so close?

It didn't sound like she knew much about the disarray and low morale at the Council. Her understanding of Xander's ordeal in Africa was that it was very bad but that he'd walked away from it in one piece. And it was excusable that she didn't find that extraordinary, because you couldn't grow up the way she had and not start to take it for granted that the incredible was real, and the unspeakable could be ... could be transcended. Overcome and laughed about later on. As concerned as she was about Xander, Dawn clearly didn't know the extent of what he'd suffered, or just how wrecked he was.

The minutes ticked by, and Spike wondered if he'd make it back before Harris woke up. Though he'd left a note, he didn't want him left alone. He might bolt.

It pissed Spike off, that he cared about Harris, about any of them, anymore. The ones he did care about, Angel, Fred Burkle, Charlie and Wes, were all dead. None of them had exactly clasped him to their bosoms—well, Angel clasped, but sentiment was something they kept a firm rein on—but they'd treated him like a team-member, and not a second-class one at that. Gave him something to do every day, a purpose.

Everything with a soul needed a purpose. And now all the purpose he had was, apparently, Harris.

Better be getting back.

"We're you stayin'? I'll find you a cab."

"I have a car. I'm staying with the family of one of my school friends. In Malibu. Here's my phone numbers, and my email." She had the info already written out on a notecard that she fished from her purse. "Will you please call me? In fact, I'd like to take you out to dinner. Somewhere nice, where we can relax and talk some more. I still haven't heard about you. How about tomorrow night? There's this restaurant near—"

"Can't tomorrow night, Sweet Bit."

"Well, the night after. Don't tell me you have a whole social calendar, because—well, maybe you do. Maybe you have lots of friends and work to do and I don't know you at all anymore and I'm so presumptuous assuming you have nothing else on but waiting on me."

This made him smile. "All right, night after. Be glad to."

"Yes!" She named the place, and the time, and made him swear he'd call if there was any hold up.

As he held the door for her to precede him back onto the street, Dawn glanced back at him. "Spike, one thing."

From her expression he feared she was going to say she knew he was lying, demand he come across with Harris.

But it wasn't that. "Do you want me ... Buffy doesn't know yet. About you. Do you want me to tell her? Or—or—I could give you the number of her sat phone."

"Better not, pet. Not yet anyway."

"But, aren't you—"

"All that's in the long-ago. No need to distract her now from what she's doin'."

Dawn looked like she wanted to debate this further, but she closed her mouth, biting the lower lip, and was silent.

When they said goodbye beside her borrowed car, she kissed him on the mouth. Didn't even need to go up on tiptoe anymore—she'd grown taller than he.

"My friend," she said, engaging him with a firm, no-nonsense look, a squeeze of the hand. "Say it."

"Yeah."

"No, Spike. Say it."

"Friends. You an' me. Thank you, Bit."

He stood there as she pulled out, until the red convertible turned a corner and was gone from sight.

Maybe Dawn would be able to help Harris. Maybe it should be her.

Except that there was so much about him she didn't know. Harris was miles ahead of her, and maybe there was no closing that gap.

Still. Wasn't for him to say.

Stopping off for a big sack of Chinese take-out, Spike hastened back.

Xander was splayed out on the sofa, wearing one of Spike's clean teeshirts and a pair of his jeans, staring into space with a beer at his lips.

"Hey—don't start up on that again," Spike said, dropping the food, going to pluck the can from his hand.

"Thought I told you last time that I'm not your patient."

"No you're not. I don't know what you are. 'Cept an unpleasant drunk."

"I may be an unpleasant drunken freak, but I have rights! I—"

"Shut yer gob. There's food, come eat some."

Xander staggered up. Apparently it hurt to move, no surprise there. As he shuffled towards the table where Spike was unpacking the ubiquitous white cartons, he held his head, squinting.

"... why ... why're you being so decent?"

"You took me in a time or two when I was in extremis."

"But never of my own free will," Xander pointed out, putting some of his old zzzt into it despite the hangover.

"Aimin' to fuck you again. That self-serving enough for you?" Spike intended this as just another snappy riposte, but when the words were out, he was acutely aware of the tug of his desire. Not just desire to fuck him like any warm body, though the warm bodies were pretty few and far between for him anymore, but for him. To find again that thread of kindness they'd spun between them. Before he fucked it up by summoning help Harris didn't want.

Spike longed to sleep with him, and have him there when he woke up. Even though rage and pain pulsed through Harris like electricity in a defective machine, likely to zap you to ash if you touched it wrong.

Wanting Harris made him feel sad—worse than sad, lost. Here he was again, swamped with the urge to take care of someone bare and broken, someone with the power to rip him to shreds.

He could laugh himself to scorn. Why didn't he go out into the world and look for Drusilla? Stood to reason that if she was still around, he ought to try to reform her before anything else. Now he was the world's damn goodie two shoes.

Was unfinished business there, too.

Broken raptors, my specialty.

Xander, either out of avoidance or tact, didn't answer him. He was prying open all the cartons, coaxing the green and brown glop out onto a bed of rice with the inadequate plastic spoons.

Spike went to where his clothes still lay heaped on the coffee table, fished the wallet out of the jeans, and helped himself to twenty dollars. Harris didn't seem to notice he was being robbed, so Spike took out another twenty, and let the wallet drop.

Hung over or not, Harris was practically feeding himself with both hands. Spike put the kettle on. Usually that kind of salty greasy people-feed made him peckish, but something held him back from grabbing a plate and tucking in.

He wasn't quite ready to just break bread with Harris.

Harris who didn't seem to notice that Spike wasn't eating, wasn't sitting, wasn't really engaging.

"Eggrolls—eggrolls were invented by the gods."

Spike wanted to tell him he wasn't charming when he spoke with his mouth full, but the kettle was starting to rattle.

"You making tea? I could use some tea."

"Tea, sure."

"That's the English thing, cuppa tea, cuppa tea, cuppa tea. Every five minutes. I thought Giles was obsessed but then I got to London. The whole town's steeped." Xander followed his movements as he took the solid brown teapot down again, and thumbed opened the tea caddy. "Hey, what're you doing? We've got tea bags right here, from the Chinese."

"Those're shite. Anyway, you been to Albion, should know bags're are strictly for foreigners."

"Huh. So what's in the tin? Some super-sekrit speshul demon blend?"

"They were fresh out of that as it happens, so had to fall back on Darjeeling. Or there's good black Pekoe, if you like that. Was Illyria's, but she's left it behind."

"Darjeeling's good." Xander gestured at Spike with a sparerib. "Never saw you drinking tea before now. Booze, blood. Not very British of you, really."

"Wouldn't have done my Big Bad image any good, would it, if you lot saw me brewin' up all the time." Spike said, as the kettle began to bang.

"So now—? You don't care about your image anymore, Bleachboy?" Xander gnawed his bone. "Man, look at you, all domesticated." A mean grin split his face. "Where's your cardigan and—"

Ribs and rice went flying when Spike snatched him up, snarling, and hoisted him in the air, to hang precariously over slavering fangs.

"Whoa, whoa whoa! Okay, I get it!"

"You get it?" He kept the tone conversational. The menace was elsewhere. "What is it you get?"

Harris scrabbled at his arm, kicking, but it was no trouble to hold him this way, straight overhead, no strain at all. No strain to peer up at him through devil eyes, to breathe in his odor of alarm and breathe out in growls.

"Uh, water's boiling!"

"What is it you get, pet? Do tell a fellow."

"You're a demon—a—big—bad—hella strong—demon. Who takes tea in the manliest of ways."

"And—?"

"There's an and?"

Spike gave him a little shake. "Must be."

"And—and—and—you're not domesticated. Nothing soft about you, no sir! You're—hard." Xander squirmed, but he'd stopped struggling. "...And you're making me hard."

"Is that a fact?" Spike let him down, but didn't release him. Pulled him in instead, to catch Xander's breathless mouth against his own. He could feel Xander's pulse pounding in his lips; his swarming tongue was hot.

The kettle shrieked.

"This what you come back for then, Harris? What you hate. You crave it. The interview with the vampire."

"You want it. What disgusts you, what terrifies you. You like lookin' it in the face. You like takin' it up your arse. An' the more trauma you absorb, the more shit you slog through, the more you need it. It thrills you."

"No—lemme go. I'm not gonna—we can't—LET ME GO!"

Ricochet Harris. Okay then. Spike released his shirt-front. Xander snatched the kettle off the burner, cutting it off mid-shriek.

"Scared you little too much? You are a pussy, Harris."

"Not scared. What I am is someone who isn't into fucking Cousin It. Why do you call yourself that?"

"Huh? Not exactly a tiffin party here—were about to play cobra an' mongoose on the floor. Who cares who's it?"

Xander rubbed his hair with one hand, his face momentarily slack. Then he was back, his brown eye snapping. "Because I didn't come here for any kind of it. I came here for you. Spike. William The— What is your name, anyway? What is your real name?"

"Spike."

"No, your real—"

"Spike. Okay, so first you get your nasty digs in, an' then when I react you want to teach me a lesson about bloody self esteem?"

Xander shook his head. Deflated. "No. No, I really don't. I just wanted to hang out here. With you. Not cobra and mongoose. Christ, I'm on my last shred here. I came back because you're the only one I can—fuck."

"Well, yeah. Fuck." Now it was Spike who found himself grinning, perversity in full flower, making his fangs itch. He reached for him, but Xander twisted out of the way.

"I'm talking here! That was an I'm frustrated fuck, not a let's fuck."

I knew that. Just didn't care. Spike folded his arms. "So talk."

Xander paced, gesticulating silently while his back was turned. Looked like he might burst. When he turned, he reminded Spike, oddly, of Giles. Giles when he was being peremptory. "I don't get you. Why do you run yourself down like that?"

"Yeah, seems silly, doesn't it, now you're here to do it for me."

Xander pinched the bridge of his nose. Headache was back, apparently. "Look, I'm sorry. For— I'm sorry you thought I walked out on you."

"Didn't think that," Spike said, though of course he had and they both knew it and they both also knew he was in full out perversity mode now. Like a little boy screaming out of exhaustion that he didn't need a nap.

"Because not so much with the walking. Jeez, Spike! You tell me we're cool, I go to sleep with you. And then you're gone and she's there."

"Thought I was reuniting you with a friend. Didn't know she'd abduct you. If that's what happened."

"I've had my fill of my friends. I told you that."

"Not exactly the reliable narrator, are you Harris? Rosenberg definitely didn't get the memo about you two bein' kaput. She showed up for you." Bit too fast, but that was just a detail.

Spike thought about Dawn. Her earnest seeking. Had Xander had his fill of her? Or was he forgetting about her, putting her out of mind, because he didn't want to mix her in with the filth that filled him up, that overflowed every time he opened his mouth, every time he moved, or dreamed?

Xander sighed. "God I'm thirsty. Could we have that tea?"

Spike's hands shook a little as he resumed measuring out the leaves. He was still in game-face, his cock straining behind his fly, visions blooming in his mind of bending Xander over the table, fucking him dry and hard and fast, fangs sunk in his neck. Swallowing down his fevery blood, coming as he died. Not turning him, just leaving him there, face down in the moo goo gai pan, and getting the hell out of here forever.

The fantasy didn't disgust him as much as it should.

Didn't trust Harris an inch. Harris could be conciliatory, pretend to care how Spike treated himself, but all that meant was that he was creating an opening, an opening into which he would drive the shiv.

He was quite the streetfighter now. Quite the mindfucker. A hyena, like he'd said.

Had to respect that, really.

He'd make a hell of a vampire.

The water, still hot, boiled again quickly; Spike poured some into the pot, swirled it around, poured it out. Threw in the loose tea, and began to fill it.

Then Xander was right up against his back, his arms stealing around Spike's. Taking the hot kettle, setting it aside. Reaching to brush the backs of fingers against one ridged cheekbone, breathing quietly against the back of an ear. "I like it that you called me on my shit. You're amazing when you're angry. Fierce. Ten feet tall." The other hand felt its way, lower down. Pushed in where Spike's middle was pressed against the edge of the counter, to brush over the swollen fly. "That you get hard for me ...." Nimble fingers undoing the buttons. Xander drew him halfway around as he freed his cock. "... that knocks me out, y'know?" Spike's erection was in his hand now, the palm hot and dry but the thumb brushing over the slit, spreading the wetness around the crown.

"Thought you were thirsty."

"I want to suck you off. I want your big cock in my mouth. Pumping across my tongue. Not it. You." Xander knelt, nosing him first, taking deep whiffs of his pubic hair, his balls—poking his tongue out to taste. Hands on his hips, curling around his ass. Cheek so warm against Spike's thigh.

And Spike wanted just to drive into his mouth and choke him with it.

Jerked back, so his cock swung, spattering pre-come on Harris's face. Forced it back into confinement, though it ached for release. But kept the fangs on. Because there was no way those would go down. Not yet.

"Don't want you here."

"Spike—"

"You don't go, gonna hurt you!"

Xander got to his feet, but without hurry. His heart beat, fast enough to fuel his own excitement, didn't ratchet up into panic.

He smiled. "Know what? I just realized what's going on here. Why it's so fucked up, and why we need each other, too."

"Mistaken there. Don't need you. And I'm done bein' your bloody grief counselor, git. Get out."

"No, no, listen! Because it's really pretty funny! I remind you of you. Don't I? Maybe I always have, in a way, but now I really ... And you remind me of myself. Now that I'm shoved full of—I see what I've become, when I look into that face."

That face. Spike forced the demon down. Forced himself to match Harris's smug smile. "You're not this pretty, and you never were."

Xander sobered. "Spike. Please don't turn me out. I don't know where else I'd go. Where else I'd feel safe."

Safe? He repressed a laugh.

Could send him to Dawn. Dawn who adored him. She could soothe him with her little girl love, pure and strong as sunlight. Bake the evil right out of him.

If he didn't ruin her first with the filth that oozed out every pore. Even Harris's aura was filthy.

Harris was no fit company for Dawn Summers. Not anymore.

About the only company he was fit for ... was the company he'd sought.

Tormented soul to tormented soul.

This time when Harris dropped to his knees and tore open his fly, Spike just grabbed his head and rode on in.

"Since when d'you have such a yen for cock?"

"Turns out, since always. But I never admitted it to myself until Sunnydale was buried. All my past went down with it, and then stuff that seemed important before ... not so much anymore. And vice-versa."

"Cock's important," Spike said.

"Wouldn't have thought you'd say so." Xander was sitting on the floor now, between the splayed legs of Spike, who'd dropped into a kitchen chair. A little while ago he'd come in Xander's mouth like a runaway stage coach, but his erection was reviving again, as Xander played with his prick and balls, with his right hand, while wanking himself slowly with the left. The bottle of cooking oil stood near Spike's floppy ankle.

"Cunny's important too. Neither's better than the other, it's ... it's about who's attached to 'em. It's about—" He stopped. Wasn't going to say the 'L' word to Harris.

"Heat," Xander supplied. "Life."

Should be my line, Spike thought. Wasn't about to point out that he had neither, and it was quite possible that Xander was oblivious to the irony, as he stared with languid hunger at Spike's engorging penis.

"You raise wood on a dime. How do you do that?" Xander mused. "I guess it's all part of the possessed-by-an-impure-thing thing. Damned for all eternity, but with orgasms a-go-go."

"Somethin' like that." Spike laid a hand on Xander's head. Combed the hair through his fingers, drawing it forward in a mass, then back. It was nice hair, but there wasn't enough of it, for Spike's taste. Harris ought to let it grow. Should have something to soften his boneyness.

He leaned into Spike's caress like an animal. Rested his neck against Spike's denim-covered thigh. His breath warmed Spike's shaft. The whole arrangement, cock, balls, and patch of pale brown hair, was framed and thrust upward by the strained edges of denim flies. The jeans were pulled down just enough to be a semi-restraint. Xander had pushed his teeshirt halfway up his chest, too, in order to lick the latticework of muscle around his navel. Now, circling it with thumb and first finger, he slowly stripped Spike's cock, so that each movement flicked a dab of pre-come onto Spike's belly.

"Where'd you pick all this up, ducks? You've had practice."

"I sucked my first cock at a truckstop in Nevada. The slayer bus broke down and we were short of funds. All those hot teenage girls there, but the mechanic winked at me. After that I've never had a problem getting it when I look around. Learned all the ins-and-outs of real buggery in London, though. They invented it there, right? Le vice anglais. But once I was sent to Africa, was feast-or-famine. When I thought it wouldn't kill me, I'd get all I could."

Was a picture to contemplate, Harris's international rites of initiation. Spike continued to pet his hair, and Xander continued to administer his slow, enthralling tease. "Anyone special?"

"Still haven't met up with the One Cock In All The World."

And do you expect to? Spike didn't ask.

He thought of Angel then, how his sire liked to sit as he was now sitting, with his Will on the floor before him, eye-level with his splitter.

Afterwards Angel would tip his face up, lean down and kiss him.

He was generous, at the end, with kisses. It was one of those surprising little things about Angel, and a differentiator from Angelus, how willing he was to give necking its proper due. Maybe that was a residue of his time with the Slayer. That's what teenage girls liked, after all. What they permitted. Nicely-brought-up girls like Buffy, anyway. Miles of kisses and not much else. (At least until she finally surrendered the pink and they all paid and paid.)

But Angel wasn't Angelus, and Angel loved to kiss. Knew how to give them gently, how to build slowly, with restraint, so that by the time he was fucking Spike's mouth with his tongue, he was half out of his mind, and his cock still in his jeans.

Spike leaned down, tipping Harris's chin up, and did what he was thinking about.

Xander's mouth was pliant, the lips a little chapped, rubbery from stretching around his girth. When Spike began to withdraw, he grabbed his hair, to keep him. And then crawled up, onto his knees, and higher, moving to straddle Spike's lap, kisses deepening. They held each other's heads. Harris's breaths were short and hard. Then one hand dropped; he clasped their cocks together, rubbing the slick heads, shivering with it.

"We'd better fuck," Harris whispered, his tone coaxing, almost sweet. "Fuck me, Spike."

Harris's good eye was humid with need, and there was nothing in his expression, his flush, his grip, to suggest that he was concealing a sting.

Still, Spike couldn't help but be wary. Harris was playing quite tame, but he'd still called him, a few minutes ago, an impure thing. A remark tossed off with such casual confidence that Spike was sure, despite the ad hoc lessons in self-esteem, of Harris's ultimate disdain.

Convenient. Buffy's voice rose up out of the jumble of memory that always ran in the back of his mind. They came to him, awash in grief and desire, on the sly. Denied him when they were done.

"Say I do. What d'you think's goin' to come of it?"

"I'm gonna shoot like Old Faithful?"

"I get you so fucking hot. So crazy. See that right well. But—"

Spike was afraid, because he was starting to care. Hell, he'd started way before this, started when he first saw Harris in that bar, weeks ago. By now his caring had reached an exquisite pitch like tooth-ache, only temporarily numb-able. This sparring, this sexing, it was involving, it kept the boredom at bay, but the caring was making it impossible. He was too vulnerable. Whether Harris realized it or not. Spike wasn't sure which was worse, that Harris be aware of his power to hurt, or so wrapped up in his own shit that he was oblivious.

"No more talking," Xander said, getting to his feet, tugging on Spike's hand.

Seizing Xander's quivering cock, Spike wrung it out with three sharp twists of the wrist, so he came with an affronted yip, splattering them both.

"What did you do that for? I wanted—"

"Everything isn't all about what you want. I still want to talk, an' I want you to mind me."

Harris pouted like a girl.

"What am I, here? Your time-out? Play-thing, 'til you make up your mind to go back to your friends, or off yourself for good? Can't be doing with this, Harris."

"You were doing with it just fine a little while ago when your boner was tickling my tonsillectomy scar. And you're not the only one with trust issues! You tell me you want me to stay, and then the minute I drop off, you—"

"You pillock, thought I explained that to you."

"Yeah, you explained it. You—shit." Xander went to pile of clothes on the coffee table, started putting them on.

"What're you doing?"

"What you want me to do. I'm getting out of your way. Returning was a big mistake. Just like coming here in the first place. Just me being Idiotboy for the emty-billionth time. After watching the subversion of the slayer ideal and surviving the big Magical Demonic Possession, I should've headed to Disneyland. But there's still time."

Does he think I'm gonna stop him? Spike pulled his own clothes together.

He didn't love Xander, so why ... why was it so hard to bear his anger, washing back at him through the stale air? Why so hard to watch him leave?

Wanker.

Xander slung his pack, was at the door.

"Wait."

Took him aback, how instantly he stopped. Turned.

"Wanna trust you, Harris."

"I trusted you. I—" His gaze dropped to the floor. "Yeah. Want that too."

Then Xander let the bag slide to the floor, and came back across the room. Came right up next to Spike, hands stealing around his face, kissing as he danced him slowly backwards towards the bed. Tipped over, still kissing.

"Oh man," Xander breathed, when Spike tore his clothes. "Oh maaann." Again when he entered him. One of Harris's legs on his shoulder, the other around his waist, and the rest of him splayed out on his back for easy viewing, easy access, each with a hand grappling his cock as Spike's own sank in to the hilt.

"Gonna take you nice and slow," Spike said. "Gonna make you feel it."

"Feel it," Xander babbled. "I feel it."

"Seein' you like that, makes me so damn hard."

"Fuck me."

"Yeah. Fuckin' you. But gonna make it last."

"Last—"

"This's all I'm good for, isn't it? But I'm bloody good. Aren't I? Aren't I, Harris?"

"No."

Spike stopped his slow stirring in mid-thrust. "No?"

"Not—not—all you're good for. You—Oh God—there's so much more—

"More what?"

"More—more—more to you—than—oh God—technique—and—and—and—amazing huge cock and—don't ask me to take inventory when I'm getting fucked!"

"But I'm a thing. Impure thing. You like gettin' filled up by an impure thing? Like doin' the slow grind with this?" He fanged out. Wasn't really sure why, why he was pushing like this, when Harris had come back. There was a shade, a tinge to this, of bathroom business at 1630, a memory he cringed away from whenever it arose.

But Harris wasn't screaming and crying.

Harris was struggling up onto his elbows. Harris was reaching for his neck, hauling himself up. Looking at him, with a new cast to his features. Something Spike had seen years ago, when Harris spoke to Dawn, to Buffy. But never never to him.

Especially when he was all bumps and ridges and slavering fangs.

"I do like it. And you're not a thing. You're a demon, and yeah, I like dancing with demons. But you're not just that, you're a person, and I—I'm drawn to you. I'm drawn to the man Spike, I want to know him. Like I said before, I ... I feel safe with you."

Spike opened his mouth, but Harris put a finger on his lips. On his hard distended game-face mouth, as if it was nothing, nothing but just his mouth.

"Lemme finish. I'm gonna try ... try to keep you from regretting that you let me in here. Okay? Because you deserve that. You deserve respect. And I'm not just saying that because getting boned by you with your fangs out is the biggest turn-on in my enormous pantheon of turn-ons."

He shivered as he said it, a full top-to-toe shiver and hard blush that made Spike's cock jump in its tight sheath, made his skin feel almost warm where Xander's pressed against it.

Harris waited, regarding him like he was looking into a cipher.

Spike waited too, but he didn't quite know for what.

Until Xander breathed against his mouth, and said please.

"Spill, mister. I want to hear all about it."

Spike was hinky enough about sneaking off for this meet with Dawn, without her saying stuff that startled him into thinking she knew what he was hiding.

But she didn't know. She just wanted to be friends with him—her idea of friends, which still felt like the teen-age way, giggling together over mochas. Sharing confidences.

Except he wasn't going to share with her that he'd arisen from a bedful of warm Harris to come to this restaurant in Malibu.

This was the first time in nearly three days that he'd been farther afield than the Chinese take-out two doors down, and he'd gone there in a dash, no socks inside his boots, shirt unbuttoned over a chest marked with love-bites.

Even when he saw him dressed up more than he probably ever had—decent black linen shirt, trousers not made of denim—Harris had been curiously, but conveniently, uninterested in where Spike was going this evening. Hadn't offered to come with. Showed no indication that he was ready to get up.

When they weren't fucking like bunnies, Harris slept. His exhaustion seemed deeper than what could be attributed to frequent bouts of sex. He was a noisy sleeper, but his nightmares, if he had them, didn't wake him. Instead, he was difficult to rouse; Spike could shake him for a long time with no response, or suck him off nearly to orgasm before he'd crack his eyelids.

He was a little feverish.

Spike liked that. Made it cozier, spooning him, and added a languor to their screwing that was not at all unwelcome.

Liked too how polite Harris was. No more calling him a "thing". Ever since that first please escaped his lips, he was all pleading and thank-yous.

Thanked Spike for fucking him. For running his bath. For fetching in hot food.

Even thanked him once for holding him in his sleep.

Scares me sometimes, he said, waking up alone. So this is good. You're good to me.

Now he was seated opposite Dawn, on a terrace overlooking the ocean, surrounded by twinkling lights. The breeze played with Dawn's pretty hair as she told him to order anything he liked, told him to have a drink, lots of drinks if he wanted them. Her treat. Should they get a bottle of champagne? To celebrate, she said, that they were both here, friends again?

Spike didn't want any champagne, didn't feel like celebrating. But to refuse this would've been to disappoint her.

This was an event for her. She wore a new dress. More low-cut than he'd have liked—wasn't she still too young for that, and all the make-up?

She prodded again, after their order was taken, so he told her, in the G-rated Cliff Notes version—the story of his year at Wolfram & Hart. Dawn leaned towards him, her elbows on the table and her chin in her hands, listening with all the attention he remembered from his crypt-days, when she'd visit him after school to be regaled with tales of modified mayhem.

He didn't like filling her ears with that stuff anymore. Telling her about Angel's team, about how they all messed up, and suffered, and died ... made him feel like a Bad Rude Man. And like a man who'd been robbed. Because he shouldn't have survived. Not survived where Angel didn't.

Even when he was deep inside Harris, and knew that Harris was lost in him, he thought of Angel.

There were certain things—not many—about Xander, that evoked him. His broad shoulders, seen from behind in the dark, where the different skin color was less obvious. The disorder of his black hair.

And a few hours ago, when Xander fucked him from behind, his face buried in the pillow, he'd had the privacy to imagine it was his Sire again, riding him, using him. He spent with a sob.

Dawn asked about Xander again. "I mean, I know you'd have told me right away if there was anything ...."

"Sorry love." Spike was glad humans lacked the sense of smell he enjoyed; though he'd showered, he still reeked of Harris. But Dawn couldn't know that.

"I have to go back to Cambridge tomorrow. I've put it off as long as I could—hols were over last week. But I really thought ... I hoped ...."

"Bet he's all right, wherever he is," Spike said. "Harris's nothin' if not resilient."

"Oh, I know." She frowned. "Even if he's all right ... I'm not. I have this big hole in my life, where he used to be. And it's not fair, that—but I don't want to be selfish."

"S'not selfish to miss someone."

"I used to think. To ... wish—but not in the bad wish way!—that eventually Xander and I might—I mean, he's really not that much older than I am. Now I'm almost twenty—"

"Sure, pet. Only ..." Spike felt he was stepping out onto thin ice. "... might not be such a good idea, to fix your sights on someone who's known you since you were a little girl. Once a fellow thinks of you that way, can be hard to change."

"People do it all the time!"

"Just sayin'."

After that, the conversation was stilted, and they still had appetizers and entrees to get through.

Spike hadn't spent much time in the last decade in places like this. In the old days, before Dru was hurt in Prague, they'd gone everywhere and done everything. Managed, wherever they were, to insinuate themselves into whatever company seemed most intriguing. Got invited to the right parties, the right clubs. Dressed the part and made the scene.

But all of that was so long ago.

Dawn broke his reverie. "So when are you going to come back?"

"Back?"

"To us. To ... to the Scoobies."

"Didn't think there was a Scoobies as such anymore."

"To the Council, then. We could totally use you on the team. And I know you and Giles weren't exactly seeing eye to eye, but I'm sure you could work all that out."

"Maybe so. But I'm stayin' here. An' I don't want you campaigning on my behalf either, you hear? We agreed, you'd keep schtum with your sis."

When he mentioned the slayer, Dawn looked furtive, her gaze dropping to her plate. She took a long swallow of wine. "You know, Spike. About Buffy. I think ... I really think if you were to call her ...."

"That ship's sailed, 'Bit."

"But that's what I mean. I don't believe she'd think so. Her gangplank would still be down. For you. If she knew you weren't dead."

"Well, I'm sorry for that, but I 'spect you're wrong. Anyway, it can't be helped."

"So you're just going to stay on here all by yourself?"

"Reckon so."

Her eyebrow quirked up. For a second she looked so much like her sister—whom she ordinarily barely resembled—that he was spooked. "Spike. What aren't you telling me?"

"What?"

"You must have something going on. Someone?"

Better, he decided quickly, to let her think so. "Loose lips, an' all that, Platelet."

Her smile was half worried, half hopeful. "Something good? Someone nice?"

"Could be. Anyway, aim to stick around. So don't you worry about me. Go back to Cambridge, an' do your studies, and once in a while you can write me a letter. If you still know how to stick a stamp on an envelope in this digital age."

"I can figure it out."

He declined dessert, and they parted in the parking lot, with an awkward hug that Dawn put too much into, and he not quite enough.

When he returned, with a bag of groceries and a couple sacks of beef blood, Xander was in the bath.

He'd bathed, in the last three days, six times. Spike got the sense that it wasn't the fug of their fucking he wanted to wash off, but something else, something not susceptible to lashings of hot water. But he didn't ask. Xander would tell him, sooner or later, what had happened with Willow, and what it was that made him, after fleeing Africa, flee London as well. Or he wouldn't. Either way, Spike wasn't going to press.

"Bought some eggs and what-not, could do a big fry-up if you fancy it."

"You don't have to fix everything for me," Xander said. "I mean, it's nice, but it's getting a little weird. I'll cook us something. Just give me a few more minutes here." He turned the hot tap with his toes.

Spike put the kettle on, put the things away. Glanced around the room when he was finished. The place smelled now of Xander, of sex and wok-fried food. He couldn't say the flat was any less bleak.

Or that what he and Xander were doing felt any less transient.

The water boiled, and he made tea.

Xander emerged from the bathroom, yawning, moist, nude. "You want eggs?"

"Not now," Spike said.

"You were gone a while." He prowled towards the fridge, looked inside, then checked out the other things in the cabinet, on the counter top, before selecting an orange from the bag. When he broke the peel with his thumbs, the sharp sweetness of citrus filled the space.

"Had an engagement to dine with a lady."

"What's that a euphemism for? Maybe I don't want to know." Xander dropped pieces of peel into the empty grocery bag. Dug his fingers into the fruit. "Are you a callboy, Spike?"

"Couldn't be, could I? Got no phone."

"That's right." Xander shrugged. "So much for that theory." He tore the orange into sections, trailing slowly towards the sofa, where he dropped down alongside Spike. Began, matter of factly, not quite looking at him, to feed him, and himself, with orange slices. When their mouths were slippery with juice, Xander seized the back of Spike's neck, pulled him in to kiss.

"We could use a TV," Xander remarked. "A better sofa than this hard piece of junk." His fingers dug into Spike's nape. "A bigger bed."

"Could use a few things," Spike echoed, thinking We? Not asking: Are you really staying that long?

"Shopping doesn't take much time, though," Xander continued. "After that, what'll we do?"

"What do you mean, do?"

"Council's still paying me. I'm on disabled leave. But I'm thinking I might see if I can work construction. Seemed like there was a lot of building going on around the city, and I never let my union membership lapse. Wouldn't mind the fresh air. It's good to do a day's work and be tired at the end of it. And the likelihood of demons at a building site in broad day is usually pretty low."

"You do that, though, an' you'll be sleepin' while I'm awake."

"Well yeah, there is that. Would cut into our prime fucking hours."

Our. We.

"What were you planning, Spike? Any ideas?"

"Wasn't planning anything until you showed up."

"Right. You were babysitting your blue god. You were drifting. How long did you think you could keep that up?"

Xander's hands smelled strongly of orange. One still rested on Spike's neck, but with the other he was beginning to caress himself. Spike stared at Harris's cock. It was such a good one, hefty and pretty, and in just a few days he'd developed a powerful fascination with it.

Spike sighed. "Dunno. New telly, right bloke warmin' my big new bed ... could drift a while, an' not notice."

"We could patrol. Something we could do together. And I don't mind sleeping while its light out. It's still fresh air and honest physical exertion."

This was startling. "Thought you were done with all that."

"I don't think I'll ever be done with it. I'm done with Africa. I think I'm done with slayers. But, present company excepted, I still hate vampires. And besides a hell of a righteous indignation, I've got all these skills now, and knowledge, and you've got a soul and a powerful right arm."

"No," Spike said. The enormity of his resistance astonished him.

"No?"

"I get that you're experienced now. But you're still just a man. I'd have to watch your back every second. And if I flubbed it, if somethin' happened ... couldn't take that. Just ... no."

Harris was looking at him now, seriously. Hands off his cock.

"You don't want me on your conscience."

"That's right."

"Will me reminding you that I can take care of myself make any difference?"

"Harris, that interestin' scar on your hip is testament to the sad fact that no matter what, you're vulnerable. S'not for me to wrap you up in cotton wool, but on the other hand, don't feature playin' at Batman and Robin with you either. If I wanted to be out huntin' down vamps, I'd've been doin' it all along. Fact is, people in this city who get chomped on by street vamps usually deserve it. S'nature's way of culling the herd. Getting rid of the defectives."

"You're a pig, Spike."

"I'm a vampire, berk. And present company sometimes excepted, I don't think much of the human race except for entertainment purposes."

"Entertainment, huh?"

"That's right."

"You're a damn liar, Spike."

"Not changin' my mind here, Harris."

Xander pressed now on the back of the Spike's neck. Urging him down towards the prick that, as he resumed stroking it, rose up towards his belly.

"Entertain this," Xander said.

Spike took it in his mouth.

"No no and no."

"I think it's a little late for no." Xander leaned against the brick wall, hands on knees, huffing for breath. But laughing. A few feet away, a rat scurried up into a dumpster.

"Told you—"

"I staked three of them. You saw that, right? One even came at me on my blind side, and still—"

"Your blind side! Right. You have a blind side. So fightin' vamps is such a good idea."

"I didn't start it, you'll recall. They jumped us."

"'Cause you insisted on short-cuttin' through an alley."

"C'mon, you can't say that wasn't fun. You were having big fun, I saw you."

"Doesn't matter. We're not doin' this again."

"What, never? But next Saturday they're screening The Devil In Miss Jones."

"Didn't mean we're never goin' to Classic Porn Night at the Palace. I meant— Look, Harris, are you forgettin' what happened to you in Africa?"

"Uh, lemme think. Gee, no. Power-mad slayers made me their butt-monkey." He'd stopped laughing. "Again."

"You really believe streetfightin's the best way to deal with it?"

"Who died and made you Freud?"

"Fucking hell. Don't want to argue with you. Only—"

"Hey, ever think it's you that's lost the mission! Or maybe you never really had the mission. What you had was Buffy. Or what you wanted, anyway. Now she's not in your life, you're content to just sit on your ass night after night and—"

Xander didn't finish his point because he was too busy struggling to stand up, which wasn't quite easy when he needed one hand to staunch the blood pouring from his nose.

"You shut up about me an' the mission! You don't know what I've done since Sunnydale. You think Buffy's got aught to do with anythin' anymore, you're out of yer mind!"

Xander had no further thoughts on the subject.

That night Spike took the couch.

Awoke to the gush of running water, and beneath that, the suppressed sound of another kind of water, trickling.

Xander was hunched at the bathroom sink, shoulders trembling, dabbing at his bruised nose, where the blood was flowing again. His reflection showed the tears dropping down his cheeks.

"Lemme see that."

"Leave me alone."

"What happened? How'd it start bleeding again?"

"I don't know! Leave me alone. Shit. It won't stop."

"Did you have a nightmare? Cripes, Harris, don't ... don't cry."

When Spike started to take him in his arms, Xander hit out. Distraught though he was, he could still land a punch. Spike fell backwards, hit the door jamb. But Xander's face was all crumpled, and he shook like he wasn't going to stay upright for long. Spike tried again.

"Hush, pet. S'all right, innit? You're not on your own. I'm here."

Water still gushed from the tap. Spike wet the corner of a towel, brought it slowly up to Harris's nose. The blood smelled wonderful; filled him with an urge to lick it off.

"I'm not yours," The words burst out of him like a refutation. He didn't pull away, but went rigid, as if with disgust. "Willow said the last thing I needed was to be anywhere near you." Snatching the towel from Spike's hand, he pressed it against his nose himself. "She said what people like us need after ... after we totally fuck over any chance we'll ever be right with ourselves and others ever again ... is to stay among good people."

"What happened to you in Africa's nothing like what she did, an' it's like her arrogance to imply it is. She went dark. You—you were taken into the dark against your will."

"Do you really think that's possible, though? I've been dark before. It was fun. I loved being hyena-boy. What made me such a good zombie-murderslave, if not that part of me wanted to do all that?"

"Harris, you're not makin' sense."

"You think Buffy could've been taken over that way? Made to maim and murder? No way. Dawn? Never. They'd die first. But I didn't try to die. I got filled up with all that magic static and I did what they pointed me at. I did it to the goddamn hilt." He wasn't looking at Spike, or at anything, as he spoke, and his whole body trembled harder and harder. "I'm a worse monster than you. Hell, when you ate all those people in Sunnydale, and turned them—you didn't torture them first, did you? You just—picked 'em like fruit off the vine. I bet it barely hurt at all. Maybe it was sexy, even. You're one sexy beast."

"Harris—"

"I made it hurt. Oh, yeah. That's how Twinkle wanted it, she loved seeing her watcher perform. I just gave and gave."

Spike wondered if Harris had lied at first, when he said he didn't remember most of the details of what he'd done until the possession spell, or if his mental barriers were crashing now. "What was the worst one? Tell me what haunts you most."

Xander shook his head. He was leaning on Spike now, forehead on his shoulder.

"Then come back to bed. It's barely six. Kip a bit more."

"I can't be there alone."

"I'll come with you. I've got you, Harris. It's all right."

"Nothing is. Nothing is, Spike. You know that, buddy. That's why I came to you."

That's why I came to you.

Well, yeah. Not like that came as any sort of surprise. And shoved full of a hunka burnin' soul, Spike was all about the bleeding heart for anyone who had terrible things on his conscience.

And fuck, it was hard to think of Xander carrying all this—all God knew what—in his fragile human self. Was one thing when you were a demon, and had been alive for a hundred and a half years.

He was asleep now. Now that Spike was spooning him, holding him in his temperatureless arms.

How far far off was Xander, that he could only find some rest with him.

It got so they had a reputation. Of course, it didn't take much to build up a rep in the demon world—three weeks of nightly stakings, a few nests in abandoned buildings burned to the ground, and the names Spike and Harris were a local legend—they were five storeys tall and had stakes for hands.

Harris had indeed come a long way from the summer after Buffy's death, which was the last time they'd patrolled together. The skills he'd bragged about were there. Along with the very streak—miles wide—Spike most dreaded. He was freakily brave, in a don't much care about the outcome way. Spike had to rescue him a few times from almost certain maiming or death—rescues that made Harris laugh like he was high, and which usually led to frantic acts of sex in public places.

But not to talking.

He wanted to think all the slaying and mayhem was doing Harris some good.

The fevery glow was mostly off his flesh.

He bought a set of barbells.

After a pack of vamps tracked Spike home early one evening from an innocent grocery run, and fell upon him with the viciousness of the betrayed, they had to move to a different flat.

Xander had enough funds on tap, as it turned out, to rent a one-bedroom place in a somewhat nicer neighborhood. No more basement—they put up black-out blinds.

"Now we're living," Xander said, flopping onto their new sofa—gently used leather snagged off Craigslist.

The next night they met a little posse of slayers. Two of them separated Spike out of a demon puppy pile, just as his attackers were about to play at corkscrews with his head.

Expected the girls to slay him—he was in game-face, and they were bristling with weapons, their eyes shining with the jollity of the brawl. But they laughed instead.

"Hey, he is real."

"Whaddaya know? Andrew doesn't make it all up."

Xander stayed in the shadows. The girls didn't see him, but Spike could hear his heart beating, feel his irritation.

He was going to thank them for saving his bacon, and fade off into the shadows too, when the third slayer, done with the last straggler a hundred feet away, let out a little shriek of delight and came running at him. "Spike! Oh my, it's really you! Spike, don't you remember me?" Before he knew it, he was folded into her hug.

"Sure I remember you, Vi. Where's that little hat you were always sportin'?"

"Hat? Oh no, I forgot about that! It was so long ago. Wow, it's amazing to see you. Maria, Yoko, Spike's the first vampire I ever saw. Before I was called. He taught me everything I know."

"Buffy taught you. Faith taught you. All I did was growl a little."

"But you saved us all." She beamed at him, this pretty little orange-haired Vi, like he really was a savior.

"Someone else here you'll be glad to see." He wasn't at all sure this was the right thing to do, as he turned to glance where Harris was secreted. "Better come out now."

But he wasn't there. He'd gone.

Getting away from the slayers wasn't too difficult—Maria and Yoko, having slayed, seemed eager to go get on the outside of some hamburgers. Vi insisted on giving Spike her number, and talked about maybe teaming up sometime.

Once they were gone, he tried to follow Xander's trail by scent, but this was harder to do in a big city, over so much terrain. He'd left the warehouse, but after a couple of streets Spike lost the trail.

Okay, it was dumb, putting him on the spot like that. Assuming that because he knew Vi from before, he'd want to come out and chat up the slayers.

Except it was hard to wrap his mind around the way Harris saw slayers now. Okay, the ones in Africa were one story, a terrifying one, the inevitable outcome of too much magic, except that the inevitability factor always seemed to escape the Scoobies until it was too late. But this was LA, and these girls weren't like that. Vi was one of the original band, she knew Buffy and was in at the apocalypse; she was all right. And the other two were like her—they hadn't rushed to judgment on him, had they? They were nothing if not good-natured.

In fact, the whole encounter had buoyed Spike's spirit immensely, right up until he realized Harris had bolted.

Probably he'd be at home.

He wasn't. Spike tried his cell phone—they both had phones now, though they were hardly ever apart and had no one they cared to call except each other. It went straight to voicemail, which meant he was either talking to someone else, or had shut it off. And what were the odds he was talking to someone else?

Okay, he'd gone walkabout. Spike knew about that. He'd probably show up around sun-up, drunk and maudlin, or drunk and angry. Either of which Spike could deal with.

He'd wait up.

But sun-up turned to noon, and then late afternoon, and no Harris.

Could this be it? One stupid little encounter with some perfectly tame slayers, the thing that would make Harris go jump off a bridge? Spike kept the TV on all day, switching among the various news channels, watching the crawls, but it wasn't necessarily a given that a suicide would even be reported on. Harris wasn't famous and if he was going to off himself he was unlikely to do it in a way that involved innocent bystanders.

When dusk came, and Spike could open the blinds to look down into the street, he knew what the next step was.

The phone book yielded a number of listings for occult bookshops, but being in a hurry, Spike headed to the first one—AAAAAA Occult, Curious & Rare Books Open Noon 'til 4 a.m. Best Collection In Western U.S. Convenient Downtown Location.

It was just six blocks away. Leaving a note in case Harris turned up, Spike headed out.

AAAAAA Occult, Curious & Rare Books was housed in what passed in LA for a quaint old storefront, on a stretch that included three Asian restaurants and a tattoo parlor. It was picturesque, with the name painted in gold on the windows, which were filled with forbidding volumes, some open to display dark, suggestive woodcuts. And inside the floor-to-ceiling stacks bulged with heavy leather-bound books. No popular demon compendiums and paperback love-spell books here, this was serious stuff, like Giles used to keep in that locked cage in the high school library. The shop smelled more than musty—as he stepped in onto the first of a series of threadbare persian rugs, Spike inhaled the residue of other places and dimensions, of expired or latent magicks.

The smoke-stained ceiling was pressed tin in a oblique design of vines and tendrils that seemed to move when Spike glanced up; green-shaded lamps burned here and there. There wasn't much light—probably because so many of the books were fragile. Browsing would take too long. Spike stepped right through to the back, where the counter was. An open door gave onto a dark flight of stairs descending to the basement. He found no clerk, but a bell, which he rang.

Footsteps crossed below him.

"Need a refresher on a basic locator spell," Spike called out, as the tread began on the stairs. "And need it double-quick."

"For someone who was going to live forever, you always were in a tearing hurry."

The voice went through Spike like a bolt. He froze.

The speaker took the last couple of steps—he didn't speed up—and materialized out of the dark doorway.

"And I see that hasn't changed. Hello, Will."

Spike stepped around the counter, reaching, expecting his hand to pass right through the massive shape—because certainly this was a trick. The return of The First? Some kind of glamour? Something out to get him anyway.

But the hand connected—thin cashmere sweater, the bump of shirt buttons underneath, and ...

The beating heart.

There was a beating heart in this man's chest.

Spike jumped back like he'd been burned. Slipped into game-face so he could see more clearly.

His sire obliged him by switching on the desk-lamp. Which illuminated him from below, his great head like an Easter Island idol.

"Fucking hell! Thought—thought you signed away the shanshu."

"So did I." He didn't seem particularly happy about it. He was stern, still. Wary. Spike wasn't used to reading his emotional signature in the air the way he did Harris's. But it was there now—radiant warmth, a steady pulse.

And a distinctive physical odor, much stronger than what he'd ever given off as a regularly-bathed vampire, but which set up an immediate and absolute assocation for Spike: Angel. This was Angel. The real thing, the man. It was all he could do not to reach for him again, not to pull him close and take deep breaths of him, feel the low steady tremble of life thrumming in his body. It was astonishing. Overwhelming.

"So you've been here, since—?"

"Since May of five, yeah. But for quite a while, I didn't know that I'd ever been anywhere else."

"What d'you mean?"

"This new ... identity ... was given to me by the Powers. At least, I've got to assume so. I had no memory of anything else. Being undead, being so old, none of it. I was always who I am right now. Then little by little, the knowledge of what I once was ... filtered back to me. First in dreams, and then when I was awake. Made me think I was going insane at first. But then I understood. It's how they chose it to be for me. So I'd get settled. Into my place."

"Your place?"

Angel shrugged in a way that indicated their surroundings, the books. Spike's eye fell on a business card holder on the desk, next to the lamp.

Liam O'Connor

Dealer in Occult, Curious & Rare Books

"Did you know about me?"

"No. I was able to find proof of Wesley's death, and Gunn's. They were both John Does, interred at the public expense. But I tracked down the records. Identified the remains."

"No way to identify my dust, I guess."

Angel shook his head. "I couldn't really believe ... it seemed too much to hope."

"Illyria rescued me, in the end. Managed to open a portal, shunt most of 'em off into it. We were together for a good while afterwards, but she's scarpered."

"That what you want the location spell for?"

"No. Not for her." This incredible reunion had knocked the anxiety about Harris right out of his mind, but it roared back now.

"Just as well," Angel said, heading towards one of the stacks with a purposeful stride. "Putting together a spell to find an interdimensional being like her would take a lot more power than you're ever likely to muster. If it's a human being you're after, I've got what you need right—wait a minute." He stopped. Looked at Spike with a frown. "How do I ... how do I know this isn't your lunch you're tracking down?"

"What, you think I'm evil again? Can't you tell—"

"I'm only human," Angel said, half turning away to run a finger across the spines. Spike couldn't quite parse his tone.

"Still got my white hat, don't I? I'm trying to find a friend. He might hurt himself on his own. Which is why the hurry."

"A friend."

"Don't remind me that I haven't got any. I do have."

"All right. Here." Angel took down a volume identical to one Spike recalled seeing in Giles's hands, and Willow's, many times in Sunnydale.

"Yeah, that's the one. Just need to double-check the—"

But Angel held the book against his chest. "This friend. Anyone I know?"

"If it was anyone you knew, wouldn't you know about me?"

Again Angel wouldn't quite look at him.

"You haven't told anyone? That you're here?"

Angel flipped the book open. "Do you have the materials? You need—"

"Buffy? You haven't rung her up?"

"—something that belongs to your friend, and a good map, and—"

"Why not? You're bloody human! You're—"

"Spike. Do you want my help, or shall I just ring you up and send you on your way? This particular volume is $250, but I can give you 10% off because you're in the trade."

"In the trade! I like that!" Spike had to snicker. "How the mighty have fallen! Here you are, Angelus—in trade. S'a laugh, really. Darla always despised tradesmen."

"When you're done having your little taunt, would you like to find your friend?"

"Yeah, all right. Need to get this goin'. I brought something of—of his. You got the other stuff on tap?"

"Yes, I can pull it together." With the book under his arm, Angel headed back towards the stairs.

As he clattered down, Spike was stuck at the top.

"You live down there? In the basement."

Angel glanced back. A dry chuckle escaped him. "Hard to believe ... I forgot. Vampires have to be invited. Well, come in, Spike."

The apartment was a basement, but it wasn't bad for all that. It was as big or maybe bigger than the shop floor above, and broken up into discrete spaces though there were no interior walls. Rather like that first place he'd had in LA, in that old office building. Walls and floor of brick, good solid wooden columns holding up the ground floor above. Nice old sturdy furnishings—Sire always did insist on his luxuries. Framed paintings and drawings hanging here and there. Lots more books—Spike couldn't tell if they were overstock or Angel's personal collection. One corner held a rack of free weights, a bench, an elliptical trainer. In another a table had art supplies neatly laid out in trays and bins—an easel held a half-completed painting. A landscape, wide and low, all in greens, with a glimpse in the distance of what might've been sea, though it was too early to tell. Spike glanced around the room again. The windows were tiny, and covered in shades. The whole flat was so dark. Hard to imagine working on such a thing in a dank place like this. About as far as you could get from plein air.

"It comes from here," Angel said, touching his temple. "My memory."

"That your home place?"

"Yeah. A view I liked when I was a lad. Spent so much time with it, so many years ... it's burned on me."

"You always did like to draw. But was always people, wasn't it? Usually those you were about to eat, or had eaten already."

"And now I like to paint. But not my supper. Come this way, Spike, we'll get started."

Though he'd meant to return home to do the spell, Spike had plucked a pair of Harris's clean socks from the pile of laundry they hadn't yet bothered to put away. He took them from his pocket as Angel spread a map of LA and environs out on the kitchen table.

He looked at the socks, and crooked an eyebrow at Spike.

Who waited for him to comment on the identity of his companion, which he would surely scent by the—except not.

Angel no longer had his predator's sense of smell.

He was like Harris now. Couldn't tell anyone's identity by sniffing their clean laundry.

Which was a world of disquieting.

"Never you mind," Spike blustered. "Was easiest bit to grab in a hurry. Let's get on with it. Time's wasting, and he's in trouble, wherever he is."

"I need his name for the incantation."

"I'll do the bloody incantation!"

"So would you like me to leave you to it? So you can keep the secret of your paramour's identity?"

"Who said anythin' about a paramour?"

Angel shrugged. "I know you, Spike."

"It's Harris."

"Harris?"

"Xander Harris. You must remember him. Think you're the vampire he hates even more than he ever hated me."

"—was the vampire—"

"Whatever, yeah! Get on with it! Berk is suicidal, an' if he offs himself on my watch, I'll fucking well feel it!"

Angel's brow rose again, but otherwise he let this pass without comment, bringing out the pendulum, and the herbs in a little metal bowl. Sliding the book across to Spike. "You've done this before?"

"A time or two. Not lately. But I've seen it done. S'not difficult."

"Mind your Latin. Mess that up, and—"

"I know, I know. The person can disappear more than they already are. But who took a first in Classics? Wasn't you, Liam."

"I've forgotten more Latin than you ever knew, you puppy."

Spike darted a fist towards him, but Angel ducked. "Thought you were in a hurry."

Dropping a lit match into the herbs, Spike took up the pendulum and began.

"Bloody fuck. He's not in LA. D'you have a bigger map?"

"A wider-ranging spell requires blood."

"Hell, I'll give blood. He's—"

"Your friend, yeah. Which I don't exactly buy, but okay. Except it won't work with undead blood. Has to be alive."

"Well, one of us is alive. Or are you all squeamish 'bout that now your digestive system works?"

Without replying, Angel fetched a more extensive map—the westernmost states with parts of Canada and Mexico, and a sharp kitchen knife.

"If he's farther away than this, there's nothing else I can do about it. You'd have to consult an actual witch."

"Let's hope it doesn't come to that, since the only witch I've got on speed dial scares the feckin' crap out of me."

"And you wonder why I haven't made that phone call," Angel murmured. Holding his hand up, he ran the knife into the fleshy part of the palm. The smell and sight of his blood—live blood!—made Spike instantly tense, and hungry. His cock stirred in his jeans; he leaned against the table, hoping Angel wouldn't notice. There was so much confusion, boiling up into what was supposed to be his single-focus on finding Harris. Angel wasn't gone. Wasn't dead.

The blood spell produced nothing but a little singeing at the edges of the paper.

"Looks like your dear friend Xander has lit out for the territories," Angel said. "Couldn't get away from you fast enough, hmm?"

"S'not a joke."

"He must really be suicidal, otherwise what would he be doing with you?"

"Dunno! Couldn't have anything to do with what you got from me, in your fancy bed in your fancy digs! You wouldn't know anything about that!"

Spike would never have thought the old man could blench—he'd always been so pale. But the color drained from his face, and he turned away.

"Right," Spike said. "You weren't goin' to be first to mention that, were you? Now you're all cleansed an' blesséd."

Angel walked away. Spike heard him fussing around with something on the other side of the flat, but didn't follow. Just stood where he was, staring at the map. California, Oregon, Washington. Xander wasn't anywhere nearby. Either he'd gotten on a plane, or ... he'd done himself in.

There was no handy spell to test for that.

Would be nice to be able to think he'd had an epiphany, and was on his way back to England. That in a few hours he'd be finding his way through a foggy morning to Dawn's Cambridge quad, climbing the ancient stone stairs to knock on her door.

But that wasn't likely. That was about the least likely thing of all.

Bloody fucking Harris must've done something rash.

Angel was coming back towards him now, with a card in his hand.

"If you still want to find him, this person can probably help. She's very powerful. And expensive."

"Ta." As he reached for the card, Angel thrust it awkwardly towards him. Their hands touched. Angel's skin felt red-hot. They both flinched. Spike looked at the name on the card, which meant nothing to him, thrust it into his pocket. "Right then, I'm off."

"Let me ... let me know what happens."

"Will do, yeah." Spike was already on the stairs. Was there enough Jack Daniels in LA to blot all this out?

Only way to find out was to find out.

He couldn't find out.

Not that there wasn't plenty of Jack, or that a good deal of it didn't find its way down his throat.

But somehow Spike just couldn't get blotto.

Couldn't stop thinking about Xander, who wasn't there.

And Angel, who so improbably was.

Spike was drinking at home. While not pleasant, it felt preferable to drinking at any of the few thousand licensed establishments in the city, because he didn't want to have to talk to anyone. Or see anyone.

Or smell anyone.

And he didn't call the witch whose name was on the card, because what was the point? Either Xander had fled him, in which case he'd be a total prat to try to reel him back in. Or he'd killed himself, in which case he was dead and gone.

And here he was, in a flat with Harris's name on the lease, and all he had to show for their—what was it? Affair?—was some clean laundry and an aroma clinging to the bed linens that gave the illusion there was someone else there.

The illusion that everything alive didn't flee from him, sooner or later.

Except it was always sooner.

Spike strode towards the counter.

When he got there, he set down the bottle of wine.

Angel wasn't so fond of JD; he preferred good French vintages. This was a $50 bottle of red. He didn't need to know it was nicked.

Nicking the wine made Spike feel a little less disgusted with himself for showing up here at all.

But Xander had been gone more than 24 hours, and there was no damn point sitting in the flat waiting for him.

Angel might as well have been waiting for Spike. There was no one in the shop when he stalked in shortly after nightfall. The old man was seated behind the counter, reading.

"Why d'you live like that? Underground, with the shades drawn?"

"It's how I like it. What are you doing here? Find your friend?"

"You know I didn't. Got a corkscrew? Let's drink this."

"I'm working."

"Looks a lot like sitting."

"I'm minding the store. Responsibility, Spike. You should look into it some time."

"Keep meanin' to, but something always comes up. Why don't we go out for a bite, an' you can tell me all about it."

"I said, I'm minding the store."

"Don't you have a clerk?"

"No."

"Ad said you were open six days a week from noon to four in the morning. You tellin' me that all that time it's just you here?"

"It's how I like it."

"But wolfgirl comes over, right, nights she's not so hairy? Cooks for you, messes you about a bit in bed?"

"Spike, if there's nothing you need, then get out. I'm trying to run a business here."

"Looks like you can run it and have a drink at the same time. Punters not exactly battering down the door, are they, to buy up the mystical mumbo jumbo. I'll go find the corkscrew."

Without waiting for permission, Spike vaulted the counter and went for the stairs. Angel didn't move, but as Spike started down, he called out, "Drawer next to the kitchen sink."

Spike found it, and a pair of glasses. Opened the fridge to see what might go with a good lashing of red, something meaty, cheesy, salty. Found nothing but some uncooked chicken parts, a few salad vegetables, skim milk and some apples. No beer, no cheese, no ice cream. The cabinets were similarly bare: half a packet of Ryvita. A box of raisin bran. Hell, he didn't need to eat, and his larder was better stocked than this.

Spike walked slowly around the space, taking good hard whiffs here and there. Oil pigments and turpentine. Hair gel. Cleansers. Old paper and leather. Reek of sweat by the exercise equipment, which wasn't dusty—he used it every day. The bed smelled only of Angel; no one else had ever lain in it with him. The air was generally musty and still, not dirty, but it was obvious that the sun never shone in here, the windows, tiny as they were, were never thrown open.

"You come back to glorious life an' you feed yourself like some timid old bint. What's that about?"

"It's—"

"—how you like it, right."

Angel scowled. "If I ate what I wanted, I'd be a whale. Took me a year to lose the sixty pounds I put on in the first three months after the shanshu. Go ahead, Spike, laugh it up."

Spike didn't laugh. Sure, the mental image of the old man all bloated up and slack-bellied was pretty damn hilarious, but it wasn't funny to think of Angel living such a purposefully restricted life. He was a man now, his soul firmly fixed. He should be free to indulge himself.

To be happy.

Spike uncorked the wine. Poured a bit into one glass and pushed it across to Angel. "M'sieur approves?"

Angel gave him a lowering look from beneath his brow, but tasted the wine, and nodded without comment. Spike poured them each a generous portion, and raised his glass.

"To livin'."

Angel wouldn't return the toast. But he knocked back the wine in one gulp, and held his glass out for more.

Angel wouldn't talk much. Spike needled him—brought up Drogan's death, asked if he'd ever heard anything since about Lorne. Angel just shook his head.

"Don't tell me you haven't looked up wolfgirl."

"I'm not telling you."

"Nina really fancied you. Would think you bein' a real live boy would be right up her street. Could marry her an' have cubs. Though wonder what happens with a pregnant werewolf. Is the fetus a werewolf too? That could be inconvenient. Go into labor on the wrong night an' the exit's more like Alien."

Angel didn't rise to this, just shook his head again.

"Don't you like kiddies? Thought all the Irish did. Though never could imagine you dandlin' a baby. Least, not when it wasn't to shut it up 'fore you ate it."

"Gonna shut you up if you don't change the subject."

"Change it, then. Tell me your adventures. Must have plenty, in a place like this." Not.

Spike emptied the second bottle—he'd gone out for two more—into Angel's glass. He'd kept the old man company glass for glass, but wine was like cherry pop to a vampire—didn't even give him a buzz.

Angel though was properly stewed. Slurring just a bit, moving even more slowly, not that he was moving much at all, just to bring the glass to his lips.

Spike opened the third bottle. "Drink up while this breathes."

"Breathes. Like you know anything about wine."

"I don't. But I know 'bout beer, rock'n'roll, an' taking someone pretty to bed so you can rut up a storm. How about you?"

Angel kept his eyes on his glass.

"Gotten a good sunburn yet? Sand up your foreskin, salt water up your nose? Gotten the clap? Nothin' like a good dose of clap to know you're alive. But you've probably still got the clap you had when Darla turned you. You must've been riddled with it back then. Should see a doctor, Liam. Good dose of penicillin'll clear those 18th century bacilli right up. And then out you'll go and find yourself a nice little blonde."

Angel growled, but the sound was more like a cough. He'd lost the facility for snarling when he got the heartbeat back.

Slowly he rose. Pushed his glass away. "You should go, Spike. While you're sitting here, your friend might—"

"He isn't!" Spike cut him off. Didn't want to be reminded, not right now, that after all the seeming progress they'd made together, Xander fucked off without a word or a look. "There's nowhere else I need to be."

"How'd that happen, anyway? You and Xander?"

This was the first sign of normal human curiosity Angel had exhibited, so instead of sniping at him, Spike explained. How Harris had gone to Africa, and had a superlatively bad time there. How they'd run into each other, and one angry fucked-up thing led to another.

"... you fell in love with him," Angel said. "You always do that."

"No," Spike said. "No. Not ... not yet." Not now. Ship's sailed. No, scratch that. Sunk.

"Is that what you tell yourself? You've always loved broken toys."

"Guess you'd know, since it was usually you who broke 'em."

Angel sneered. "Go away, Spike."

"Typical. Drink up all my good wine, an' throw me out."

But as he turned to leave, Angel came out from behind the counter, laid a hand on his shoulder.

"I've thought about ... about your good wine."

Spike closed his eyes. He could see behind his lids what they must look like; the big man's supplicating hand, reaching out across an enormous—unbridgeable? infathomable?—gap, full of a nostalgia without real regard. Habit, and sadness, and something stirring out of the stillness he'd fallen into. Reaching. But not into the light. Reaching for more darkness.

The hand was warm, he felt its pulse, felt the stirring of desire for what was alive that always arose in him when touched. And then the further yawning desire because it was Angel. Desire he didn't want to feel. I have mourned you and missed you so much. Loved my memories of us so much. None of what we did would've happened if you didn't know, however unknowingly, that soon you'd be separated from me for good.

Spike thought, Better teach myself to be alone. Better school myself in solitude. Better than this, over an' over. Better.

"All right then." He turned back, laying a hand on Angel's fly. Folding to his knees.

But Angel stepped back. "No. That's not what I meant. Will you come to bed?"

Was the same mistake Lot's wife made. Shouldn't have looked. If he just hadn't looked into Angel's face, didn't see the expression that went with that voice, he'd have been able to walk out.

Will by name, willin' by nature was what Angelus used to say, before turning him upside down and fucking him until he tore the carpet through with his fangs.

Spike was pretty sure, as he undressed and slipped between the crisp sheets of Angel's too-cool bed, that this was the first time his sire had shut up shop when it wasn't four of a morning. He heard him overhead, locking the door, moving about making things secure. When he'd touched him, Angel was hazy-heated with arousal, the kind of reined-in hot-eyed need Spike had never associated with him before. But his tread was still measured, unhurried. He took the stairs slowly, evenly. Paused at the bottom to remove his shoes and socks. Wended his way towards the bed with that same quiet, pulling his sweater off as he came, letting it fall on the back of the sofa.

Watching Angel disclose his body made Spike's eyes sting. He resisted blinking, determined to keep that to himself. So he just lolled back, watching Angel open his belt, drop his trousers and step out of them. Pushed the sheet down so Angel could see him take himself in hand, wank slowly as he stared.

Angel was not entirely the same, but he was still beautiful. Maybe more beautiful, because now every one of his living cells was rushing towards its destruction. Satiny skin breaking down. Everything getting older even as Spike eyed him. Twenty-six-year-old brooding hottie made out of an animated corpse. Snatched out of life, then plunked back in.

Spike was glad it wasn't him. Much as he'd pretended otherwise—or not pretended, but wanted it only because the change was supposed to be Angel's—the shanshu didn't seem like much of a prize. Not when you were accustomed to the perks of being immortal.

God, Angel was warm. Warm, and ... sticky. As he lowered himself to the bed, he broke into a verdant sweat. A sharp salt stink escaped his arm pit as he reached towards Spike.

And while Harris had plenty of earthy moments, none of which repulsed Spike in the slightest, this was different, because it was Angel. Angel who always mastered him without a thought—or with all the thought in the world, intention so collected and focused it could burn diamonds. But now his heart was racing, and when Spike pulled him in he groaned, a helpless groan as if he'd lost his footing, as if he was falling.

"Ah, Christ. Christ!" Suddenly they were grappling, struggling.

Spike realized he wasn't sure what Angel wanted, and that his instinct was to take him from behind. Head-down, no eye contact, no kissing, easy access.

But Angel resisted.

Resisted with a lot less force than he was—or used to be—capable of.

Spike let him go. Held up his hands. "Not gonna hurt you."

"That what you do with Xander? Just push him down and—no wonder he left."

"No—well, yeah, sometimes, only—look, dunno what happened there. Begin again."

Angel gave him a sidelong look, a sort of dirty look. But behind it Spike thought he saw all the uncertainty he could feel in Angel's elevated heart rate, his seething breaths.

He wasn't sure what it was—compassion?—that made him clamber to the floor, to kneel at Angel's feet with head bowed. "Sire."

"Goddamnit. That isn't going to work." Angel rose. His heavy cock was still limp. Sweat drying, leaving trails of aroma in the air as he moved. Spike rose too, stepped in his way before he could head off away from the bed.

"Dunno how—what did you have in mind, exactly?"

Angel shrugged, eyes averted, and for a moment Spike was sure he was going to shove him aside and that would be the end of that.

He wasn't what—who—Angel really wanted. Even as Angel drew him close and began kissing him, mouth and tongue warm and wet and hungry; even as he pulled Spike's hand down to his rising cock. Angel didn't know it, wasn't admitting it to himself, but it had to be true. Spike felt certain.

"Will. Did you miss me at all?"

You sodding fool. Still, it was his own fault for plying the old man with wine. Drink made Irishmen sentimental, and even Angelus had harbored a sentimental streak he sometimes unleashed to disastrous results.

Spike didn't want to tell him how he'd missed him. How, knowing for sure that he was dead, Spike had wanted him. Reconstructed every minute of their intimate time together, over and over. Getting off to it, shedding tears.

How he loved him.

People were easy to love when they were gone.

"You shouldn't keep so much to yourself," he said, working Angel's cock slowly in his fist. "No reason anymore for you to keep yourself apart."

"You don't know—"

"Guess I don't at that. You a prisoner of this place? Can't cross the threshold?"

"Don't be stupid."

"Can't help it, can I?"

"Don't analyze me, Will."

"There's a whole world out there of people who don't even know vampires exist. Go find yourself one of them. Live this life they gave you."

Angel caught Spike's mouth with his, jerked him around by the shoulders. "Shut. Up."

Spike let himself be guided backwards, toppled over. Angel's kisses were fierce; his grip would leave bruises.

Not that Spike ever stayed bruised for long.

The whole thing was over very quickly. Spike guessed it was about two and half minutes from lubing up to shooting, Angel sunk into him at an awkward angle he didn't bother to protest, then rolling off, huffing hard, to stare at the ceiling.

"Ah, love's young dream. Well well. Always wanted to know what it was like to go with a drunken Dublin shirtlifter, an' now I do."

"S'been a while."

"But you've forgotten how?"

"Spike. Not helping."

"Oh, is that what I was meant to be doing? I thought we were havin' a fuck."

"I think you'd better go after all."

"Yeah, you'd like that, wouldn't you? Could blame this whole farrago on me. Nuh-uh. You asked me to come to bed, an' we're goin' to do our bed business good an' proper."

"I don't ... I can't ...."

"Right. Not what you used to be. But then, you never were."

"Nothing is the same."

"Yeah, but you're twenty-soddin'-six. Just like Harris. Harris managed three goes at my ass in a night, an' so can you."

"And the mental image of Xander in the nude is really gonna make that happen."

"What, you never fancied him? He was always a tasty morsel. Got a bit pudgy for a while there before I sacrificed myself for all mankind, but you should see him now. Probably wouldn't recognize him. And he's got an admirable todger."

"If all you're going to do is talk about your other man, then I'll go."

"He's not my—" Funny, how this worked. How he could be minding his own business, say running his mouth off in his ex-Sire's bed, when whoomp! it clocked him: Harris had gone. Harris, whom he used to despise and whom he still didn't exactly love but whose snarky remarks, warm hard body, and generous sexual favors he'd grown to ... okay, yeah. He loved all that. Who wouldn't?

Couldn't bear it if all that was gone. All at once he was picturing Harris wandering off into the dark alone, finding some lonely place to destroy himself. All the kinds of violence he could do to snuff himself out. The fierceness of the pain that could make him—who had always been so monumentally brave—unable to go on.

Shit. Spike's erection, and his will to badger Angel, wilted. He laid an arm across his eyes. Maybe the old man would fall asleep and he could just sneak out.

"Oh God. Oh God. Oh God. Spike—there—there—Oh God."

"See? Told you any man's better for gettin' his arsehole properly rummaged. An' you're no exception."

"Shut up and fuck. Oh God. FUCK. This is—"

"—more like it. Yeah. Oh you're lovely. Nice an' hot an' tighter than a gnat's esophagus. What a sweet lay you turn out to be, our Liam."

"Eat it."

"No."

"Eat it, Liam."

"Spike, I can't."

"An' I say you can."

"I'm full. Really. I already—"

"Not goin' to watch you bloody deny yourself while I'm here. Eat the last one 'fore it congeals."

Angel took the barbecued spare rib Spike was thrusting at him, and bit into it. "When did you develop this weird mother hen thing? You weren't this bad when we were at Wolfram & Hart."

"Dunno. Hate everybody, but that gets boring, so I try an' take an interest."

Angel looked up then, squinted at him across the stained take-out cartons.

"And that works for you? I mean, no one sticks around with you when the going gets tough, do they? Dru threw you over, Buffy abandoned you in the hellmouth, and your friend Xander seems to have preferred suicide over your company."

"You may say that. But meanwhile I've been gettin' more trim than you seem to be before tonight."

"Before ... you said you loved me."

This was the kind of non-sequitor he didn't associate with Angel. But then this whole situation was pretty fresh. "I know you're new to catchin', so a word in your ear: whatever a fellow says when he's shooting, best not to hold him to it."

Angel appeared unabashed. "Except I think you did mean it. Before the battle, when we ... I know you were involved, Spike." He took a breath. "We were involved."

Angel rose, came around the table. Grabbed Spike by the biceps and pulled him out his chair, so he could speak right into his ear. His warm breath tickled as he murmured, "I'm feeling some renewed involvement now."

"Feeling it, or wantin' to feel it?

"Both."

"That a fact?"

"Come back to bed, Will. Like you said, I find there's more where that came from."

"It's not enough. Nothing's enough anymore."

"You're alive." Spike licked Angel's jism off his fingers. Warm. Still couldn't get over that.

"It's all ... everything moves too fast. Everything's over before I can even get started. Eating, sex. Or else it seems to take too long—I watch The Seven Samurai but all I can think is how I'll never get that two hours back. My body ... things cramp, ache. I get tired. My eyes get bleery. I lift weights for two hours a day every single day, and I'm ... weak. I get a cold every three weeks. Last winter I had the flu for a month. I remember, with my whole body and mind, how I felt before, and now ... it's like I'm cut off at the knees. But what I was before was unclean. I've been purified and forgiven and set free, so why ...."

"Why aren't you happy? Oh, it's a puzzle."

"I'm ... confused."

"So it seems."

"You think I like admitting this to you? You're the only one who ... the only person who knows me."

"First of all: not a person. Big bad vampire, here. Second of all, you're forgetting there are people who know you. They reside on different continents, that's all. There's this new-fangled invention though, that—"

"That's out of the question."

"Right. So brings us back to: make some new friends. Just don't ask me how, because we all know I've never been an expert in that field. Though fairly sure that involves leavin' the flat. Or at least gettin' on the internet."

"Maybe ... maybe you turning up now means something. I mean—here I am with all the knowledge at my fingertips, and here you are, with the—"

"Fabulously buff body."

"Well, that too, but I was referring to the mission. Maybe this is supposed to be about resurrecting Angel Investigations. You know, we help the helpless. My role would have to be different, but ...."

Not working for you, ponce."

"Angel and Spike Investigations, then. Fifty-fifty."

"You proposin', lover?"

Angel sat forward, rubbed his eyes. Acting all nonchalant, but Spike could hear his heart, could smell that this was important to him, even though the idea may have just occured. Enormously important—he trembled, waiting for an answer.

And really, what would be the point now of saying no? The Harris interlude was just that: an interlude. He certainly wasn't going to go knocking on the Council's door asking for a job. But ongoing existence required purpose—required marking something in the positive column so his benighted soul would let him enjoy his beer and his wanks and his XBox.

Or, given what Angel was really asking for—enjoying a partnership of expediency—albeit sexy expediency—with his ex-sire.

This was a nice flat. And already all vamp-safe. Convenient, that.

"Yeah, could do. Go ahead an' order the business cards."

When Angel looked at him now, there was a light in his eyes Spike hadn't seen before. He looked like ...

... he'd been rescued.

"I think this is how it's meant to be. And it'll be good, Will. Upstairs, and down here. You'll see."

"Gives us a kiss then, to seal to the deal."

Angel kissed him, and went on to break the Harris record. Spike promised himself he wouldn't think of Harris anymore.

Fate had led him here.



When he awoke, Spike could smell the sunset. He was alone in the bed. But he could hear Angel upstairs, moving around. Was he imagining it, or did his tread sound different? Lighter, quicker?

The apartment smelled like fresh coffee. Spike poured a cup. Looked in the fridge, but of course there was no blood there. He'd have to go out—go home—for some. Could use some fresh clothes too.

When he came upstairs, Angel was actually talking to a customer. A quite normal looking man who was seeking an old tome only tangentially related to demonics.

He gave Spike a glance, a quick smile, as he went on with his conversation.

Look at you, all suave an' professional, Spike thought. "Goin' out for a bit."

Angel nodded.

Might as well start to pack up—he wouldn't need to keep the other flat. As he walked back towards it, Spike took a mental inventory of what he'd take and what he'd leave. There wasn't much he cared about besides his clothes—the XBox, maybe the stereo, a couple dozen books.

He'd just leave the furniture for the landlord. Didn't want anything to remind him of Harris. Best to put that firmly in the past, along with his other dubious conquests.

Partnering up with Angel wouldn't be so bad. Might look up Vi, see if they could work some sort of slayer's auxiliary thing. Plenty of work for everybody within the city limits, right?

Not bad at all.

Letting himself in, Spike headed straight for the fridge. After all that fucking, he was famished.

"Spike. Man, where have you been?"

Xander rose from the kitchen table so fast that his chair overturned with a crash. Closed the space between them in two bounds, reaching for Spike's arm.

But his hand fell away before making contact. He stood stock still, mouth half open, like he'd been hit with a freeze-ray.

He looked—exactly the same. Enough stubble to suggest a real beard. Maybe a little more tan, if that was possible. Hair a micron longer. He smelled sourly of unwashed sweat, adrenaline, and beer—three empty bottles stood on the table, their labels peeled off and shredded into bits.

He'd only been gone for the inside of a week—not even—but he might as well have been brought back from the dead.

"Where've I been? Where'd you sodding go?"

"I'm sorry. I—it's hard to explain. I will explain. If you—I mean, if you still give a shit. You're probably going to throw me out, and that's perfectly understandable, because I've done nothing but jerk you around from the beginning of this—this—whatever it is we have. Or had. Because I dunno if we still have it anymore. I think I've blown it this time. So maybe I should just go."

He jerked into motion, dodging around Spike, who had to move vampire-fast to block the kitchen doorway. Xander stopped just short of colliding with him.

No touch.

"Don't go. Fucking hell, I thought you were dead." Every one of Spike's nerve ends was singing, a chorus of relief and anxiety—Harris was alive, Harris had come back, but it might still all be wrong, and Harris might yet leave again. It was like ants marching beneath his skin. He had to restrain a powerful urge to vamp out, as if somehow that would relieve the unbearable emotional itch.

"I almost was." Xander backed up to the table, dropped into a chair like his strings had been cut. Cradled his head in both hands. "Shit. I really almost was."

"What happened?"

"God, Spike. When I got back here and you were gone ... I didn't know what to do."

Slowly, Spike came towards him. Xander looked up. His eyes, the real one and the false one, were both glassy with tears. It felt wrong that he should stand over him, so Spike dropped into a crouch.

When Spike laid a hand on his thigh, a thrill ran through Xander, almost a spasm.

Under the tan, he was pale, the corners of his mouth quivering and ticcing. "You should probably tell me to leave. I'm all fucked up. I'm ... I'm sick. Probably not such fit company for a soul-carrying do-gooding vampire."

Spike answered gently. As wrought up as he was, he knew he had to conceal that, had to keep Xander calm. He was brittle as a dry stick. "What makes you say that?"

"It's my fault. It's totally my fault. You didn't want me to do it. The patrolling thing. That was bad. Bad."

"Seein' the slayers."

"Spike, I wanted to hurt those girls. I wanted to kill them. I mean, not just in the 'oh, I could so kill you' way. In my head, I was hacking them up. I ... I know what it feels like. To hack a person to death. I've done it." Xander touched his own upper arm, pressed on it, gingerly. "What it feels like to raise the machete, the heft of it, the blows, you feel it here, in the muscle, the resistance and how the flesh gives way and then how the knife drags as you pull it out. How the blood splatters your face. The sounds." He winced, as if splashed by something hot and wet. "Oh God. It was so vivid, it was like I was doing it all over again."

"So you ran."

"I can't ... I can't be around them. That power they have, that thing, I don't even know what to call it, but I feel it now, the way I never did back when it was just Buffy and Faith. You must know what I mean, but I kinda hope you don't, because no one should have to feel that. No one."

"Harris—"

"I had to get away from there. Watching you talk to Vi, like she was just a friend ... I couldn't stand it. But I couldn't get away from myself."

"Where've you been, then?" Spike laid his hand again on Xander's leg. Again he felt that deep tremble, like it was all Harris could do not to shoot up and run.

I went up the coast. There's a place that has cliffs over the sea. I wanted to jump. I could see myself getting dashed to pieces on the rocks and that seemed like the best thing left for me. The right thing for me. I couldn't get there fast enough."

Xander took up one of the beer empties, turned it in his hands. "I spent a whole night out on that edge. Listening to the ocean, looking down. There was a moon, it was so bright, I could see everything. See those sharp rocks that were going to take me out of myself. The water crashing against them, over and over, the white spume flying up. All I had to do was sail." He swallowed hard. Set the bottle firmly down. "I really thought I needed to die. To just ... stop. Because they, those slayers in Africa, ruined me, and I am ruined, and no good for anything anymore." The tears ran down his face, into his beard stubble, though he didn't seem to feel them. "I was going to jump. But then. I realized something."

"What's that?"

"I thought of you. How ... how far you've come. How kind to me you were for no good reason I could think of, because I've been nothing but shit to you even after you changed. And I knew, even though it felt so hard for me to believe. That if I didn't come back, you would suffer. And I didn't want you to suffer, on my account."

Harris turned then in the chair, turned to face Spike head on, and slipped down, onto the floor, level with him. The one brown eye looking at him, regarding him with a wild bewilderment, like a tormented dog.

"Remember how grossed out we always used to be when you'd say you loved Buffy? Because monsters can't love, they shouldn't, their love is foul, the whole idea is obscene and disgusting. No one wants to hear it. No one with a soul, wants to know that some unclean .... You don't want to hear it."

"Hear what, pet?"

"... that ... that when it came to throwing myself onto those rocks, I couldn't do it, because ... I thought it might hurt you more for me to disappear, than if I came back and told you. Even though you really don't want to hear ... hear that I'm in love with you."

Spike wanted to ask him to repeat this. So he could be sure he'd really heard what the ants inside him, the ants singing beneath his skin, were already sure of. But there was no chance to ask a question, because the question now was whether Harris was going to spring up and hit the ceiling, or heel over and vomit. But when Spike pulled him in, Xander's arms went around him tight, his body rolling with hard choking spasms. In another moment they were sprawled half under the table, and Xander was moving against him in a way that wasn't sexual but seemed to be some approximation of climbing inside. Xander bit hard into the tendon at the base of Spike's throat, as if every part of him was hanging on against being ripped away.

It hurt, but the pain was good, it helped clear his head.

Kept him from being washed away into some sympathetic agony, as Harris writhed and groaned.

When Xander finally went limp, Spike could feel blood trickling down into his shirt. The bite wound smarted.

"It's all right now, Harris. Did the right thing. No cliff, no rocks."

"The right thing?" He sounded whoozy, like he was emerging from ether.

"Comin' back to me."

He wasn't going to hold Harris to his mad declaration.

But it was good ... so damn good ... to hold him.

"You don't need this, though. You don't need this."

"What, a beautiful dark-eyed half-crazy hysteric? Been too long since I had one."

Xander raised his head. He touched Spike's neck, turning his jaw a little to see better. "God, look what I did. I bit you." Then he looked closer. "What's all ... you have these marks all around your neck. Have you been fighting? What made these?"

"Have a bit of a tale of my own to tell, pet, won't lie. But it can wait a bit."

"When I came back and you weren't here."

"Yeah?"

"I thought you left. I was sitting here thinking my last chance was gone."

"When did you get back?"

"I ... I don't know. A few hours. I thought I'd never get to tell you, to try to show you—"

"Was just out for a bit. That's all."

"I feel sick."

"You're thirsty an' could use a wash. C'mon."

"Why're you so nice to me?"

"I'm not. Just want to make you fat an' complacent so when I tear out your throat, you'll taste extra sweet." Spike drew Xander out from under the table. Poured him a glass of water, which he swallowed as if it was a thimbleful, then took a blood bag from the freezer. As he moved to put it in the microwave, Xander stopped him.

"Let me."

Spike watched him pop the microwave door, set the bag inside. "All those years of watching cooking programs on cable," Xander said, pressing the buttons, "finally pay off when you can fix a nice meal for the object of your oh-so-twisted affection."

This wasn't entirely flattering, and Harris looked like utter hell, but that he could still venture a joke made Spike's dead heart swell with gratitude.

While the blood heated they both leaned on the counter, a few feet apart. Xander drank more water, and stared at nothing.

But when the microwave dinged he moved first, retrieving the bag, slitting it open, pouring the blood into a mug.

"You look like you're hungry."

"Am, yeah."

Spike drank it down quickly, because he was empty, and because Xander looked like he'd topple in another moment.

Spike guided him, lurching, tow