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Why yes, it is an appocalypse. Actually I'm just trying to make sure no one forgets me ;)
Title: Learn to be Lonely Chapter 11/?
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
chocgood84
Rating: NC-17 for brief violence and sexual content
Pairing: BtVS Spike/Xander
Author’s Note: Yes, I am aware that the timeline is a little screwed up and that Giles didn’t own the Magic Box until after Adam and after Dawn arrived. But in my reality, who’s Dawn? Adam what? Also, a huge spanking thanks tokitty_poker1 for being my official L2BL beta.
Disclaimer: These character’s aren’t mine, never were; I don’t get any profit for this hobby, so don’t sue – Thanks.
Warning: Brief violence, nudity, and hetero and homo sexual content and situations. And some h0t man-luvin.
Xander and Spike fought the crowds to get into the Bronze – unusually busy for a weeknight. A younger crowd at that, people who didn’t appreciate what the Bronze was, didn’t understand it. My fucking childhood here, gone.
“You get the drink; I’ll steal a table,” Spike shouted over the din of drunken frat boy catcalls and high school cheerleader gossip. He pointed over his shoulder towards the furthest billiards table, where two something-teen boys were trying to look cool by lining up their shots from beneath an upturned visor.
Xander nodded, making his way across the room to the bar and frowning. With only two bartenders in the cage, the line was four or five people deep in places. Mentally growling, he fished out his wallet and pulled out the first bill he saw – a 50 – and rolled it up into his hand to be ready to pay, should he get there before dawn.
He’d been standing and shuffling in line long enough for the guy beside him to smoke two cigarettes, and was still two heads away from ordering. The club had gone from heavy metal death to pop-ier tunes, and one 90’s diva song faded into another and another. Xander wasn’t really listening but he registered everything that was playing, remembering this song or that song from his days at SD High.
After a couple more songs, he was only seconds away from getting his chance at the bar when the lights over the dance floor stopped their sweeping, shifting down to pour over the crowd moving gracelessly to some Brittangulera something or other. The colors melted from reds and oranges to blues and violets, and the entire club seemed to dim as the notes dropped and a single piano strummed out a few chilling chords. Xander knew the song, and knew it well. But never before had he really thought about it. The couples on the dance floor knew it too, because their thrashing and jumping became swaying and holding…
I'm so tired of being here…suppressed by all my childish fears. And if you have to leave, I wish that you would just leave…‘cause your presence still lingers here. And it won't leave me alone…
“Hey, buddy, you’re holding up the line. What do you want?” growled a gruff voice from somewhere near Xander. Shaking the blue lights out of his eyes, he stepped up to the bar to order the usual – as much Jack and as much coke as he could get for the money he had. The bartender rolled his eyes and gestured for him to wait a minute while he ‘helped out this chick first.’ Xander shrugged, trying to block out the song again.
… When you cried I'd wipe away all of your tears. When you'd scream I'd fight away all of your fears…
“S’matter, Harris?” someone asked, slapping him on the shoulder and rousing him from another stare-down with the lightshow over the dance floor.
“What? Oh, uh, nothing –“ he stuttered, turning to find Spike eyeing him suspiciously.
“Bullshit, Xander,” was all Spike would say.
“It’s just…I’m not feeling much like being here right now, after all,” Xander admitted, avoiding Spike’s stare and avoiding looking back towards the floor.
“Okay...” Spike said, his tone as suspicious as his gaze. “How 'bout another bar, then?”
… You used to captivate me by your resonating light. Now I'm bound by the life you left behind…*
From somewhere inside, Xander could feel a ball of fiery acid roll through him. All at once, he wanted to cry and scream and throw up and run until he couldn’t feel his legs anymore. He finally settled for the latter, turning and cutting his way through the throng of people standing behind him. Stumbling and tripping over flip-flopped feet and stiletto heels, getting snagged in UCSD hoodies and fake suede jackets, he made it to and through the door, where the bouncer gave him an unconcerned grunt goodnight.
The night air was crisp, cool. After the heat of the crowded club, it was almost cold enough and clean enough to hurt. A cloudless, moonless night full of stars and blackness hovered above Xander as he ran through the streets of Sunnydale. His shoes made a slap-tap rhythm as he pounded across the town. He didn’t even know where he was running to, or why he was running. Didn’t know if he would ever stop running, because something in his head, in his chest, and in his legs told him that if he kept running, just kept his legs pumping and his arms swinging, he wouldn’t have to feel this way anymore. If he didn’t stop, he wouldn’t be able to think about it, wouldn’t be able to miss Anya and the way things used to be. He could just keep running forever, and that would be okay…then he would be alright. So he ran. He didn’t think about where, didn’t think about why, didn’t think about what lay behind him. He just ran.
His ankles started aching as he swept through downtown, and his legs began to feel bruised and broken by the time he’d passed into the residential district. But he didn’t stop, not even when his lungs felt like they were going to blister and burn away to nothing and his heart seemed to be beating so fast it was one continuous pump of blood.
The streetlights eventually faded behind him, and the two lane road turned into one. The asphalt turned to gravel, turned to grass, turned to sand beneath his feet. In front of him there were only stars, and as he looked down the sand became the sea and he was waist-deep in the midnight surf, wading out into the ocean, into the night, his legs still kicking and pumping, his arms flailing and thrashing in the warmth of the water.
Until finally, finally, his limbs couldn’t move anymore and his chest could pump neither air nor blood and he fell gasping into the black water, giving into what he knew he could never fight. He had just enough strength left in his body to roll onto his back and keep his body from sinking beneath the surface.
He was surrounded. The ocean’s song was deafening in his ears. Above him, all he could see was a canvas painted black and blown with glitter. The tide he was resting on was pulling him back towards the shore, he knew. Pulling him back towards thinking, towards feeling. The moment that knowledge struck him was the moment the stars above him blurred, and he realized he was crying. Exhaustion and acceptance wrung the tears from him like water from a sponge. Depleted as he was, he couldn’t fight it anymore – couldn’t stop the tears, couldn’t stop the pain that ripped through him like a brushfire, igniting every memory and every cell until it felt like there was nothing inside him that wasn’t burning, wasn’t being destroyed.
Sometime later, he found himself lying on the beach, washed up and still staring straight above at the sky. The internal burning had ceased; the tears had stopped. But still there was something inside him that hurt – it was the coal that had started the fire, one single ember that still burned and ate away at him, that still threatened to flare up again.
He lay there for a time, just staring at the night sky, feeling his body come back to him, feeling the breath re-enter him, feeling the ember inside him subside to just a dull pulse emitting no spark or heat, only pressure. And he became aware of someone beside him.
“I know it hurts,” Spike whispered. “I know it feels like you want to take a knife and rip open your chest and find that thing inside you and tear it out.”
Xander said nothing; he didn’t need to.
“The only problem is, you can’t,” Spike continued. “Because that thing that hurts so much, that you hate so much, is the only thing that makes you human, that makes you a good man. It’s the only thing keeping you from being a walking corpse, from being the living dead.”
Xander turned to look at Spike, finding him lying beside him and gazing upwards as well.
“Not the kind of living dead that I technically am, Xander. The kind of dead where there’s nothing – no happy, no sad, no love or hate. Those kind of people don’t dream, they don’t live. They just breathe, and eat, and sleep. They just function. They remember that at some time they were happy, but they don’t remember exactly what that means. And believe it or not, Xander, we both know that’s not what you want. It’s not what you’re meant for.”
They were both quiet for a while, lying beside each other in a world that seemed their own.
“When will this stop, Spike?” Xander choked on the words, afraid of the answer.
“Can’t say, can I?” Spike replied after a moment. “Some days it seems like it never will, other days it feels like it stopped forever ago. The point is – you don’t want it to stop, because if it ever really stops, it means you’re no longer alive.”
“I guess that makes sense…” Xander thought for a moment before saying more. “You know this isn’t just about Anya. Yeah, that’s a part of it, I’ll admit, but the truth is that I knew it was over long before she left me.”
“I’d believe that. Sometimes we try to hold on to something we don’t have a right to anymore. Because without it, we might not be the same person.”
“I think that’s what it is. Everything’s changing…and nothing’s right anymore. My friends - my family - aren’t who they used to be. I’m not who I used to be, and yet we all try to pretend that we are. And it seems like the harder we try to be who we were, the more we lose it…I don’t know if that even makes sense.”
“Doesn’t have to,” Spike murmured. “Whether you want it or not, I’m going to give you my two cents. I’ve been in this world a lot longer than you have. Not because I’m immortal or because I’m a good fighter or even because I’m so damned pretty. I’ve stayed alive, such as I am, because I’m lucky. Just like you or Red or Buffy. Life is about luck and, if you take it for granted, eventually that luck’ll run out. So it seems pretty foolish to me to go about wasting that luck on things that aren’t there anymore. This isn’t Neverland.”
Xander understood what Spike was saying, knew what he meant. It wasn't that Buffy and Willow and even Giles weren’t there anymore, it was just that they'd been able to move on…evolve. And if he was ever going to do the same, he needed to let go of what once was and allow what was coming to come.
He sighed heavily, which turned into a yawn, which turned into a tremble.
“Spike?” he whispered around quivering lips.
“Yeah?”
“Why are you being so nice to me?”
“Three reasons, actually,” Spike admitted. “Number one being that you keep me in house and blood. Number two being that the more I see of you, the more I realize you’re not the pompous prick you pretend to be, and that there just might be something worth salvaging in you.”
“What’s the third reason?” Xander asked after a moment.
“That’s an explanation for another night – the sky’s starting to get light and you’re freezing to death. C’mon, now, let’s get back to the crypt – I mean, basement – before you catch pneumonia and I catch aflame.”
“Spike?”
“What?”
“Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it. Ever.”
* Lyrics are by Evanescence, and the song is “My Immortal.”
Title: Learn to be Lonely Chapter 11/?
Author:
chocgood84Rating: NC-17 for brief violence and sexual content
Pairing: BtVS Spike/Xander
Author’s Note: Yes, I am aware that the timeline is a little screwed up and that Giles didn’t own the Magic Box until after Adam and after Dawn arrived. But in my reality, who’s Dawn? Adam what? Also, a huge spanking thanks to
kitty_poker1 for being my official L2BL beta.Disclaimer: These character’s aren’t mine, never were; I don’t get any profit for this hobby, so don’t sue – Thanks.
Warning: Brief violence, nudity, and hetero and homo sexual content and situations. And some h0t man-luvin.
Xander and Spike fought the crowds to get into the Bronze – unusually busy for a weeknight. A younger crowd at that, people who didn’t appreciate what the Bronze was, didn’t understand it. My fucking childhood here, gone.
“You get the drink; I’ll steal a table,” Spike shouted over the din of drunken frat boy catcalls and high school cheerleader gossip. He pointed over his shoulder towards the furthest billiards table, where two something-teen boys were trying to look cool by lining up their shots from beneath an upturned visor.
Xander nodded, making his way across the room to the bar and frowning. With only two bartenders in the cage, the line was four or five people deep in places. Mentally growling, he fished out his wallet and pulled out the first bill he saw – a 50 – and rolled it up into his hand to be ready to pay, should he get there before dawn.
He’d been standing and shuffling in line long enough for the guy beside him to smoke two cigarettes, and was still two heads away from ordering. The club had gone from heavy metal death to pop-ier tunes, and one 90’s diva song faded into another and another. Xander wasn’t really listening but he registered everything that was playing, remembering this song or that song from his days at SD High.
After a couple more songs, he was only seconds away from getting his chance at the bar when the lights over the dance floor stopped their sweeping, shifting down to pour over the crowd moving gracelessly to some Brittangulera something or other. The colors melted from reds and oranges to blues and violets, and the entire club seemed to dim as the notes dropped and a single piano strummed out a few chilling chords. Xander knew the song, and knew it well. But never before had he really thought about it. The couples on the dance floor knew it too, because their thrashing and jumping became swaying and holding…
I'm so tired of being here…suppressed by all my childish fears. And if you have to leave, I wish that you would just leave…‘cause your presence still lingers here. And it won't leave me alone…
“Hey, buddy, you’re holding up the line. What do you want?” growled a gruff voice from somewhere near Xander. Shaking the blue lights out of his eyes, he stepped up to the bar to order the usual – as much Jack and as much coke as he could get for the money he had. The bartender rolled his eyes and gestured for him to wait a minute while he ‘helped out this chick first.’ Xander shrugged, trying to block out the song again.
… When you cried I'd wipe away all of your tears. When you'd scream I'd fight away all of your fears…
“S’matter, Harris?” someone asked, slapping him on the shoulder and rousing him from another stare-down with the lightshow over the dance floor.
“What? Oh, uh, nothing –“ he stuttered, turning to find Spike eyeing him suspiciously.
“Bullshit, Xander,” was all Spike would say.
“It’s just…I’m not feeling much like being here right now, after all,” Xander admitted, avoiding Spike’s stare and avoiding looking back towards the floor.
“Okay...” Spike said, his tone as suspicious as his gaze. “How 'bout another bar, then?”
… You used to captivate me by your resonating light. Now I'm bound by the life you left behind…*
From somewhere inside, Xander could feel a ball of fiery acid roll through him. All at once, he wanted to cry and scream and throw up and run until he couldn’t feel his legs anymore. He finally settled for the latter, turning and cutting his way through the throng of people standing behind him. Stumbling and tripping over flip-flopped feet and stiletto heels, getting snagged in UCSD hoodies and fake suede jackets, he made it to and through the door, where the bouncer gave him an unconcerned grunt goodnight.
The night air was crisp, cool. After the heat of the crowded club, it was almost cold enough and clean enough to hurt. A cloudless, moonless night full of stars and blackness hovered above Xander as he ran through the streets of Sunnydale. His shoes made a slap-tap rhythm as he pounded across the town. He didn’t even know where he was running to, or why he was running. Didn’t know if he would ever stop running, because something in his head, in his chest, and in his legs told him that if he kept running, just kept his legs pumping and his arms swinging, he wouldn’t have to feel this way anymore. If he didn’t stop, he wouldn’t be able to think about it, wouldn’t be able to miss Anya and the way things used to be. He could just keep running forever, and that would be okay…then he would be alright. So he ran. He didn’t think about where, didn’t think about why, didn’t think about what lay behind him. He just ran.
His ankles started aching as he swept through downtown, and his legs began to feel bruised and broken by the time he’d passed into the residential district. But he didn’t stop, not even when his lungs felt like they were going to blister and burn away to nothing and his heart seemed to be beating so fast it was one continuous pump of blood.
The streetlights eventually faded behind him, and the two lane road turned into one. The asphalt turned to gravel, turned to grass, turned to sand beneath his feet. In front of him there were only stars, and as he looked down the sand became the sea and he was waist-deep in the midnight surf, wading out into the ocean, into the night, his legs still kicking and pumping, his arms flailing and thrashing in the warmth of the water.
Until finally, finally, his limbs couldn’t move anymore and his chest could pump neither air nor blood and he fell gasping into the black water, giving into what he knew he could never fight. He had just enough strength left in his body to roll onto his back and keep his body from sinking beneath the surface.
He was surrounded. The ocean’s song was deafening in his ears. Above him, all he could see was a canvas painted black and blown with glitter. The tide he was resting on was pulling him back towards the shore, he knew. Pulling him back towards thinking, towards feeling. The moment that knowledge struck him was the moment the stars above him blurred, and he realized he was crying. Exhaustion and acceptance wrung the tears from him like water from a sponge. Depleted as he was, he couldn’t fight it anymore – couldn’t stop the tears, couldn’t stop the pain that ripped through him like a brushfire, igniting every memory and every cell until it felt like there was nothing inside him that wasn’t burning, wasn’t being destroyed.
Sometime later, he found himself lying on the beach, washed up and still staring straight above at the sky. The internal burning had ceased; the tears had stopped. But still there was something inside him that hurt – it was the coal that had started the fire, one single ember that still burned and ate away at him, that still threatened to flare up again.
He lay there for a time, just staring at the night sky, feeling his body come back to him, feeling the breath re-enter him, feeling the ember inside him subside to just a dull pulse emitting no spark or heat, only pressure. And he became aware of someone beside him.
“I know it hurts,” Spike whispered. “I know it feels like you want to take a knife and rip open your chest and find that thing inside you and tear it out.”
Xander said nothing; he didn’t need to.
“The only problem is, you can’t,” Spike continued. “Because that thing that hurts so much, that you hate so much, is the only thing that makes you human, that makes you a good man. It’s the only thing keeping you from being a walking corpse, from being the living dead.”
Xander turned to look at Spike, finding him lying beside him and gazing upwards as well.
“Not the kind of living dead that I technically am, Xander. The kind of dead where there’s nothing – no happy, no sad, no love or hate. Those kind of people don’t dream, they don’t live. They just breathe, and eat, and sleep. They just function. They remember that at some time they were happy, but they don’t remember exactly what that means. And believe it or not, Xander, we both know that’s not what you want. It’s not what you’re meant for.”
They were both quiet for a while, lying beside each other in a world that seemed their own.
“When will this stop, Spike?” Xander choked on the words, afraid of the answer.
“Can’t say, can I?” Spike replied after a moment. “Some days it seems like it never will, other days it feels like it stopped forever ago. The point is – you don’t want it to stop, because if it ever really stops, it means you’re no longer alive.”
“I guess that makes sense…” Xander thought for a moment before saying more. “You know this isn’t just about Anya. Yeah, that’s a part of it, I’ll admit, but the truth is that I knew it was over long before she left me.”
“I’d believe that. Sometimes we try to hold on to something we don’t have a right to anymore. Because without it, we might not be the same person.”
“I think that’s what it is. Everything’s changing…and nothing’s right anymore. My friends - my family - aren’t who they used to be. I’m not who I used to be, and yet we all try to pretend that we are. And it seems like the harder we try to be who we were, the more we lose it…I don’t know if that even makes sense.”
“Doesn’t have to,” Spike murmured. “Whether you want it or not, I’m going to give you my two cents. I’ve been in this world a lot longer than you have. Not because I’m immortal or because I’m a good fighter or even because I’m so damned pretty. I’ve stayed alive, such as I am, because I’m lucky. Just like you or Red or Buffy. Life is about luck and, if you take it for granted, eventually that luck’ll run out. So it seems pretty foolish to me to go about wasting that luck on things that aren’t there anymore. This isn’t Neverland.”
Xander understood what Spike was saying, knew what he meant. It wasn't that Buffy and Willow and even Giles weren’t there anymore, it was just that they'd been able to move on…evolve. And if he was ever going to do the same, he needed to let go of what once was and allow what was coming to come.
He sighed heavily, which turned into a yawn, which turned into a tremble.
“Spike?” he whispered around quivering lips.
“Yeah?”
“Why are you being so nice to me?”
“Three reasons, actually,” Spike admitted. “Number one being that you keep me in house and blood. Number two being that the more I see of you, the more I realize you’re not the pompous prick you pretend to be, and that there just might be something worth salvaging in you.”
“What’s the third reason?” Xander asked after a moment.
“That’s an explanation for another night – the sky’s starting to get light and you’re freezing to death. C’mon, now, let’s get back to the crypt – I mean, basement – before you catch pneumonia and I catch aflame.”
“Spike?”
“What?”
“Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it. Ever.”
* Lyrics are by Evanescence, and the song is “My Immortal.”
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