The Cost of Butterfly Kisses

[lit_gal]

The Cost of Butterfly Kisses, Part 34
Fandom/Pairing: BtVS, Spike/Xander
Rated: ADULT

Summary: Geez... when will this story finally END...

Anyway, now you get to see Xander well and truly lose it.

( Chapter One... )  ( Chapter Two... ) ( Chapter 14 . )

Chapter 34

Spike stepped back, letting Xander hit the door first. This was Xander's battle-if Spike tried fighting it, he was going to bloody eat Rupert. The man had bollocks the size of a bloody bull to try that trick, and Spike's first instinct was to rip them off.

"Honey, we're home," Xander called as he walked in the door, bellowing like a sitcom father.

"Xander. Oh thank god," Giles said. Giles' smile vanished when Spike followed.

"Evening," Spike said, narrowing his eyes in warning. He wanted to kill, and Rupert needed to understand that the soul wouldn't stop Spike-not when he faced an enemy. As far as Spike was concerned, putting Rupert down would be a favor to Buffy and Xander.

"Spike." Giles' voice was utterly devoid of emotion.

"Funny thing happened on the way to the forums," Xander said with a mock cheerfulness that reminded Spike eerily of Angelus, "and now it's time for all the little Watchers to get the hell out of my house."

"What?" Willow had been sitting in Spike's chair, a huge book in her lap, but now her head snapped up like a poppet's.

"Giles here is getting out of my house," Xander repeated. Giles appeared rather gobsmacked, but Spike could practically smell the aggression from Willow. She'd been keeping a low profile since her flirtation with power, but the boy had hit a nerve.

"Xander, what are you talking about?" she demanded. Witch wasn't happy.

"I assure you, I am not going anywhere. So, has the vampire killed Robin?"

"Robin? Robin Wood?" In a split-second, Willow went from aggressive to confused. Spike walked over to the couch and dropped down, dangling a leg over the arm of the couch as he settled in to watch the floorshow.

"No, he's not dead," Xander said. "He is, however, going to be in the hospital for a really long time. Considering that he tried to kill both me and Spike, that's actually not a bad outcome for him."

"He… what? Why would he do that?" Willow wrinkled her nose.

Oh, Rupert knew. "I assure you, our concerns centered around Spike and his growing influence over the group. I never intended for you to get involved, Xander, nor do I believe that Robin would have done you any harm." Rupert stiffened his backbone at that, but Spike couldn't tell if the git honestly believed what he said.

"Yeah, well thanks for being totally wrong on that one G-man, because he handcuffed me to a pipe and then used Spike's trigger to drive him batty, and I'm pretty sure there's a whole basement full of vampire dust that suggests that Wood was trying to make me dead."

"Xander!" Willow was out of her chair and holding Xander's injured wrist in the blink of an eye, and Spike had to rein in a wave of jealousy as he watched her concern. Harris wasn't seriously injured, but Spike disliked both Willow's proximity and the excessive fussing that suggested Xander was ready to drop dead from a raw and bleeding wrist.

Bloody hell, he really was love's bitch. Oddly, though, of all the lovers he'd taken and family he'd had, some willing and many not, Xander was the first being since his mother to claim any love for Spike in return. With Drusilla, he'd loved her with every ounce of his being. He would have died for her, and she had feelings in return, but none had been love. She'd needed him, controlled him, commanded him-she'd wanted him and lusted for him and wished he was Angelus. They'd had a complicated and passionate relationship, and he had devoted himself to her, but she hadn't loved him. Not only was Spike love's bitch, but the old lady had a wicked sense of humor.

"Giles, he's really hurt. Tara!" Willow yelled.

"It's just bruising," Xander said. "I'm way more unhappy about Giles helping someone try to kill me."

Tara came running up from the lower level just as Xander made his announcement, and she stopped dead in the middle of taking a step.

"There's no need for exaggeration," Giles said. "I never wanted you hurt. I attempted to call you back when I saw you foolishly going with Spike."

Xander pulled his wrist away from Willow, the broken handcuff rattling as it dangled from his reddened wrist. "Try yelling, 'Xander, it's a trap and the crazy guy is going to try and kill you two.' Trust me, I would have listened."

"Spike is a danger to us all. He compromises-"

"Hey!" Xander cut him off. "Let's play Jeopardy. For one hundred dollars, the idiot who got a soul and then spent a century doing absolutely nothing because he was a giant poop head without enough ethical sense to want to help anyone?"

"Who is the poof!" Spike answered happily. What a tosser. Xander smiled at him.

"Ding, ding. And yet despite Angel's moral lacking and Angelus' habit of torturing you, you never tried to kill him. Actually, I would be way more okay with killing him." Giles opened his mouth, but Xander just plowed ahead. "Bonus round… the vamp who got a soul and immediately tried to help us?"

Spike raised his hand.

"Shut up," Giles said.

"Oh no," Xander said, stepping forward and getting right in Giles' space. The boy stunk of fear, but he didn't show it. "You don't get to tell people what to do. And hey, here's a Double Jeopardy question for you. This person is the only one who knows Spike's trigger."

Willow answered in a whisper. "The First."

Xander made a buzzing sound. "I'm sorry, but answers must be in the form of a question. The correct answer is 'Who is the First'? So, if Wood suddenly knows the name of the song that drives Spike 'round the twist, would anyone like to guess who he's been talking to?"

Giles shook his head. "No, while I admit that his motives might not be entirely pure…"

"Get out, Giles. Consider this an eviction… an invitation to get your shit and hit the street… consider this my last nerve failing under the pressure of you being a back-stabbing, back-turning, tea-drinking abandoner of ships."

"Xander!" Willow gasped. Tara's eyes were large, but Spike guessed that she would come down on the side of forgiveness. Thank god the boy wasn't that big-hearted. Xander had a streak of unforgiving bigger than most demons when it came right down to it.

"He's out. Out, Giles. Like get your stuff together now or I'm going to start drop kicking things into the front yard." They all stared at each other, Giles and Xander chest to chest, Willow clutching her hands like the classic 1940s bint, Tara with her wide eyes, and Kennedy and the newest potential peeking from the basement stairs. It was better than the telly. Considering Bonnie had her mother's sense of hearing, Spike was guessing that she was getting to see her father in full 'head of the clan' mode. Looking back, it was soddin' ridiculous how many times Spike had overlooked the boy, not noticing when he came up with the plan that brought the slayer back to life or destroyed the Judge. Spike stretched and watched all the little humans. Yeah, they'd all done the same thing-they'd assumed that Xander didn't use his backbone because he didn't have one. The boy was schooling people today.

"This is not the time-" Giles started to say, his voice taking on the calm of a man who'd just figured out he was two feet from a volcano ready to blow.

"OUT. Go back to the counsel, or actually, scratch that since they're all dead, but go haunt Wesley in L.A. or something."

"They aren't in L.A., pet," Spike offered.

That made everyone turn toward him, and Spike suddenly realized that the rest of them didn't know about the move. Bloody hell, Spike had lived before the telephone, and people still managed to keep better track of each other using the soddin' post. "The Powers finally went too far, putting his rugrat in the middle of some soddin' prophecy. I could have bloody told them that Peaches does tend to fly off the handle once he decides to move his fat arse. He gave Cordelia free rein to pick a new home, and they packed up and headed for upstate New York. Sorry, luv, but they confiscated your van for their little desertion."

Xander's mouth was hanging open. "They… what?"

Spike shrugged. "Wesley and Jonathan were on the fourth or fifth murder plot before Angel blew, and when he did, apparently he ripped through a whole group of lawyers, a couple of seers and some bloke who wanted to cut off their scientist's head and use her giant brain. Don't you lot have email?" Spike asked them all. From the blank expressions, they didn't.

"Bloody hell, get with the times, people." Spike rolled his eyes at the lot of them, Xander included.

Giles was the first to recover. "We can talk about this when Buffy returns."

"Yep, we can," Xander agreed, "but you will be talking from a place other than my house."

"I call dibs on Giles' room," a voice called from the stairs. This was better than Faulty Towers, this was. Spike was smirking before Xander even managed to get the first word out.

"My house. Mine. What part of that do you not understand? There is no dibs."

Kennedy's face poked out from the shadows of the basement stairs. "I'm oldest, and-"

"And I don't care!" Xander exploded. "I don't care if you're oldest or if you're rich or if you have the hots for Willow or for Tara, actually I do care about that. I'm creeped out by that. Seriously creeped out. Beyond the creepiness, I don't care. Newsflash: you aren't better than anyone else here. You're a potential, nothing else."

"At least I-" She got cut off as Xander really got going.

"If you're oldest, that just means you're most likely to be passed over because the Slayer magic goes to young girls, so that doesn't make you better. And all the crap about your houses and the wings on your houses and the beach place just makes you sound like an entitled bitch, which, quite possibly, you are. So, if we're having a fight about life and death, how about you not stick your nose in because you want something. I don't care what you want. If you have a roof over your head and no one currently trying to kill yourself, back off," Xander warned. Kennedy's mouth was open, and she might have kept trying to fight, but Tara slid over to her side, her hand reaching out to touch Kennedy's shoulder.

"Your childish antics are simply proving that you do not understand what is required to win this war." Giles drew himself up, and the second he did, Spike knew the man had made a tactical error. The scent of Xander's fear vanished under pure, unadulterated aggression.

Xander whirled on him. "Hey, I'd way rather be the childish one than the one who co-conspired with the First to kill two of the people in this room. Right now, I'm not even sure I can trust you, Giles. I mean, it was bad enough when you were thinking of killing Dawn-" Xander stopped when a loud gasp came from the stairs. There was a rearranging of bodies on the stairs, muffled thumps and the sound of shoving and then Dawn pushed her way up into the room.

"What?" Her eyes shone, and Spike hated that this worthless git had hurt one more person Spike cared for.

"Luv, he was a scared little man going up against a god. If he'd have tried it, I would have gutted him, chip or not," Spike promised. He and Dawn were still struggling to regain their relationship after Spike's failed attempt to rape Buffy, but at least she didn't reject his comfort.

Giles had turned a dangerous shade of white, and he was glaring at Xander. "You know nothing," he said, his voice a rough whisper.

"I know Anya was one hell of an eavesdropper. I know that when she came to me saying that the plan didn't sound half-bad, I sat down and explained human morals and right and wrong until I'm pretty sure I taught a former demon why we don't ever turn on our own. Either that or she just didn't want another lecture on the issue from me." Xander's mouth twisted unhappily. "Either way, I really don't trust your morals, Giles, and this is my home with my daughter. What would she done if you'd managed to get both me and Spike killed?"

"And I have repeatedly said that I would never put you in danger," Giles snapped. "We shall wait for Buffy."

"Spike," Xander said, "dump all Mr. Stickuphisass's clothes out on the lawn. In fact, dump it all. I don't want a single reminder that he was ever in this house."

"Happily." Spike gave Giles a sadistic grin before heading for the man's bedroom. If Spike were still chipped, Rupert would have challenged him, but now that Spike had his bite back, Rupert just watched with barely contained fury as Spike pulled an armful of clothes out of Rupert's closet and headed for the front door. Xander walked over and opened the door for him.

"Xander," Willow said softly, "I really think we should just sit down and talk about this. I know that you're angry. You have every right to be angry." She shot Giles a confused look. "But let's just sit down."

"Will." Xander stopped and just stared at her for a long time. Spike made another trip for Rupert's antique radio and took special pleasure in throwing it at the pavement. "Willow, do you remember when I said 'vampires, bad'?" She nodded, her face solemn. "Actually, I was more like 'demons, bad' but I grew up, Willow. You used to talk to me about how I should give Angel a chance because he had a soul. You were right, and I was wrong. I mean, I still hate his guts, but killing him is not good. Giles was willing to kill Spike, soul and all. He was working with someone who had the inside track with the First. He put me in the middle of Spike's insanity and a madman who can't get over the fact that a vampire killed a slayer. Newsflash-slayers and vampires have been killing each other for at least a thousand years."

"And Spike's sanity is still in question. He's not safe," Giles said, flinching when Spike sent the good scotch flying through the door.

"Actually, he worked through his trigger," Xander said.

"And you trust him?" Giles' tone of voice made it pretty clear that he considered Xander an idiot.

Xander turned to Giles with a barely contained fury that made Spike bounce on his feet. "Should I trust the man who has protected my daughter, kept my secrets, and fought through a bloodlust rather than killing me-or should I trust the man who left town when we needed him, who showed up without warning us ahead of time that the world was ending, and who almost got me killed? Tell me Giles, who should I trust?" Xander's voice had a deadly calm that sucked all the air out of the room. Spike watched gleefully as Rupert lost every bit of color in his face. Willow and Tara moved silently closer to each other, and Dawn stood with her back to the wall, slow tears slipping down her cheeks. Soul or not, Spike wanted to rip Rupert apart-he wanted to make him pay for every bit of pain the man had caused everyone in this room.

Spike felt Buffy before he saw her. Spiders ran up his arms, and his cock twitched in memory of all those days when the twinge of slayer preceded wild, demonic sex. However, when she stepped up the porch steps and stood in the open door, she didn't look demonic or wild. Her shoulders drooped heavily.

"Redecorating?" she asked, her voice deceptively cool because Spike could smell the emotion rising from her.

"Giles is moving out," Xander said. The nervousness returned to his scent, but his voice was steady.

"Because of Wood," Buffy said.

"Buffy...I-I understand your anger." Giles focused on her. "Please believe me, we did what we needed to in order to win this war. What I told you is still true. You need to learn-"

"No, I think you've taught me everything I need to know."

Spike blinked, shocked that she had sided with Xander. Bloody hell, all the rules really did change when the boy was in the mix.

"Buffy?" Willow asked softly.

"Does anyone want to say anything to me? Really?" Buffy demanded, crossing her arms. "I come home and find you're all fighting your own war. Giles decides to take out strongest fighter, Xander splits our forces. Willow is too afraid to use magic. I've been carrying you-all of you-too far, too long. Ride's over. I'm the slayer. I'm the one with the power."

Spike raised an eyebrow. "The way I see it, we have plenty of power in this room, luv." Between the witches' magic and Xander bloody habit of just not dying, Spike was starting to think they had more power than he'd rightly understood until recently.

"Then why aren't you using it?" Buffy demanded. "I use the power that I have. Spike, you just sit in that chair and wait for us to fix you. Willow, you and Tara won't even try magic-"

"The First wants us to use magic." Tara's voice might be soft, but it was steady, without even a hint of the stutter that sometimes made it so hard for her to get her words out.

Buffy threw up her hands. "The rest of you are just waiting for me."

"Well, yeah," Xander agreed, "but only because you kinda told us to. You're our leader, Buffy, as in 'follow the'."

"Well, from now on, I'm your leader as in 'do what I say'." Buffy's words shocked Spike. She'd never been one for power and shoving her minions around. When he'd first seen her, he'd thought that was the weakness he needed to destroy her. He'd been wrong.

"Ja wohl!" Xander snapped. The lines of power were straining, and Spike closed his mouth and just tried to let the others fight it out. It didn't matter what he said here, he was going to end up in the wrong, and he knew it. Bloody hell, he was starting to feel like he was back in France, caught between Darla and Angelus. Xander crossed his arms. "But let's not try to forget, we're also your friends."

"And you're all here because you're here because you're scared. That's fine. Be as scared as you'd like, just be useful while you're at it."

Willow twitched at that accusation, but then the witch wasn't exactly doing a whole lot to help lately. "Come on, Buffy. You know everyone here's doing everything they can," she said softly.

"By trying to kill Spike? By turning Giles out of the house? By doing a whole lot of nothing?" Buffy turned on each of them in turn. The First knows what we can do, and it's laughing."

No way was he taking this. Spike looked at Xander curiously, not sure which side of the boy was going to show up next, but he was just standing with his shoulders drooped as he took every hateful word like a whip. Spike turned and headed for the front door.

"Where are you going?" Buffy demanded.

"Out."

Buffy raised her voice, calling after him as he left, "Fine. Take a cell phone. That way, if I need someone to get weepy or whaled on, I can call you."

With a snarl, Spike whirled on the room. "If you've got something to say-"

"Just said it. You keep holding back. The old Spike never would have sat in that chair for a week. You never want to train with the girls. So, if you plan to keep holding back, you might as well walk out that door and not come back."

"Buffy!" Xander's head snapped up and he took several strides closer to them.

Spike stepped up to her. "Holding back? You're blind. I've been here, right in it-I think your boy Wood would have something to say about whether I'm holding back."

"Exactly. Wood. You went after Wood."

"Wood went after us," Xander said, but Buffy kept right on talking, ignoring everything he said.

"You went after someone who was on our side, a human without half your strength, and yes, clearly he was an idiot on our side, but he would have fought against the First. While you were home tied to a chair and moping about your guilt, he was out there fighting with me, killing vampires."

"Sorry that my agony put a crimp in your style luv," Spike said coldly. Part of him still loved Buffy-her strength and her ability to survive. However, her sharp angles and wicked tongue were starting to sound a little too much like Darla for his comfort.

"You were a better fighter before the soul." Buffy's words were like napalm on the conversation. The whole room went silent. Tara's mouth was a shocked 'o'. Willow turned stark white. Xander, in contrast, turned brilliant red. However, none of them could find words to break the silence that fell after Buffy's statement.

Out of fear that his anger would roar out of control, Spike whispered, "I did this for you. The soul, the changes-it's what you wanted."

"What I want is the Spike that's dangerous. The Spike that tried to kill me when we met."

"You're about to bring him out," Spike warned. Rage was like a hungry beast in his chest. He knew the taste of Buffy's blood-he knew the sharp zing of the power that lay under her skin. She had willingly cut into herself and offered him a taste of that power in the animal's blood he fed on, and his demon suddenly demanded more. He wanted to drink her dry and drop her limp body on the ground. He wanted to break her and leave her begging. And still, he loved her. He loved her with the same passion he still loved Drusilla-irrationally and completely.

Instead of recognizing the danger, Buffy looked at him with contempt. "I'm nowhere near him." She turned her back on him, and Spike's gameface came out involuntarily.

"Okay, you need to stop before you say something that can't be unsaid," Xander warned, holding his hands out toward her in a placating gesture. Spike was pretty sure that time was past, but Xander kept trying to play peacemaker.

"I'm saying what needs to be said… what I should have said a long time ago. Giles was wrong about Spike, but he was right about one thing: this is war."

"Which is pretty much like every other time we've gone to war," Xander said, but Spike figured that there wasn't a soul in the room who believed that, including Xander. The sour expression on his face made that pretty clear.

"Do you want to know what I see?" Buffy asked, her voice dangerously soft. "Do you want to know the dreams I have every night now? I see death, Xander. I don't see one uber-vamp, I see thousands flowing out of the hellmouth, their hunger consuming millions. I see demons crawling out of a hole and the world ending. Every night, I see that over and over, so no, this is not like every other time."

"Oh good lord." Giles sat down on the couch, a marionette with its strings cut.

"Then we get help," Xander said firmly.

"Who? I'm the slayer! The council is gone. Who do we call, Xander?"

Xander stiffened. "Riley. If you're right that humans are about to lose the earth, then we give humanity a chance to fight for itself."

As much as Spike hated the git, that didn't sound like a half-bad plan. However, Buffy was already turning away, a sneer on her face. "I'm the slayer. I'll fight this battle. And I will win it, but not if you people can't get one simple rule in mind-I am the general. Spike, put Giles' things back in his room. Giles, you are not to tell Wood any of our plans from here on out. Girls, I need you to use your magic-you find out what the First is up to, and you find me a way to close the hellmouth once and for all, and I don't care what the price is."

Without waiting for an answer, Buffy turned and headed toward the basement stairs. Potentials scrambled on the steps, bodies flinging themselves out of the slayer's way. The rest of them were left just looking at each other.

"Are you-" Giles started to say.

"Sod off," Spike answered, heading for the basement himself. Part of him wanted to find Buffy and offer himself to her, which wasn't the most rational response considering that he was bloody pissed, but then love never was rational, and Spike truly wasn't good at falling out of love.

When he got to his bedroom, he threw himself stomach down on the bed with his arms sprawled out. He was soddin' exhausted. He hadn't been this bone-deep weary since Prague. Funny how every moment of utter despair in his life was tied to love. His door opened, but Spike could smell Xander's musk, so he didn't bother moving.

"That was… uncomfortable," Xander said softly. Spike snorted. "Spike?" Xander asked, and his voice was so serious that Spike rolled over to one side so he could look at the boy. Xander wandered closer and sat on the edge of the bed. "Buffy has demon in her, doesn't she?" he asked.

Spike blinked as he thought about that. He didn't really think of a slayer as demonic-they were more on the side of the angels, they were. But now that Xander had asked, Spike could see some evidence. The blood had a slight taste to it that wasn't human. Oh, it gave him a buzz, no doubt. In China, he'd been delirious on slayer blood for a good two days, which is why he'd passed on a quick lunch after killing Wood's mother in New York. That city had entirely too many baddies for Spike to risk a two-day bender on slayer blood. And their speed certainly wasn't human-or their strength, for that matter.

"Probably," he agreed.

Xander nodded, but Spike could tell from his body language that the boy wasn't done yet. Boy. Age-wise, he was certainly younger than Spike, but under that façade, he had more than just frogs and snails and puppy-dog tails. "There are demons that don't live very well together, right?"

"Like what, pet?" Spike pushed himself up so he was leaning back on the headboard, and Xander scooted farther back onto the bed, turning to face him.

"Vampires. If there are a lot of vampires together, and you guys don't know who's in charge of who, that's going to lead to ungoodness, isn't it?"

"It's going to lead to dust," Spike agreed.

"Could slayers be like that?" Xander blurted the question out.

Spike thought. "Could be," he agreed. It might explain why the slayer had been so rough on her little pals lately.

Xander's face fell, like he'd been expecting some other answer, and Spike tilted his head at him. With a sigh, Xander shrugged. "I was hoping you were going to say 'no'. I kind of want Buffy to be right and the rest of us to be wrong, because then the world make sense. I'm supposed to be the one who's wrong."

"About Finn?" Spike guessed. Mutely, Xander nodded. He smelled of misery. If he were a demon, he'd be celebrating a crack in the defenses of someone above him, springing at a chance to prove he was stronger and smarter in order to claim a better position. Instead, he stunk of sorrow and pain. "As much as I hate Finn, I reckon you're right that the sod should know he's about to get dropped into hell."

"Decapitation killed the uber-vamp…. How many do you think a tank could dust? How many would a nuclear bomb kill? I mean, we're talking about losing a war when we're fighting with stakes and swords, Spike. Tell me I'm imagining things and that I should just stay out of it."

Spike snorted again. "You're the only one who doesn't have his head up his arse, luv, and I'm including myself in that number."

"So, I should call him?"

"Might be best to at least warn him to be ready for demons pouring out of the hellmouth like rats off a sinking ship," Spike agreed.

Xander sighed and let himself fall backwards so that he was lying across Spike's legs. "That's not the answer I wanted to hear," he whispered. "I mean, the Initiative tried to fight demons, and it turned out that stakes and swords were way better than trank guns and tracking devices. So maybe I'm just all twisted around." It sounded like he was quickly talking himself out of making the call, and Spike studied him. Maybe Xander wasn't as hard to understand as Spike had thought. Unless he missed his guess, Xander was a dominant, someone who took charge and did what he thought right and simply expected others to follow or not-their choice. However, he was a dominant convinced that he lacked the skills to lead. The fact was, he did lack physical skills; he'd never be able to compete with a slayer or a vampire in terms of sheer strength. However, this wasn't about strength. This decision came down to whether Xander trusted himself.

"Luv," Spike said, waiting until Xander looked up at him. "You saved the slayer from old Heinrich by doing what you knew was right, even when Angel and Giles were acting like tossers. Don't second-guess yourself now when you have even more on the line. If your gut tells you to call Finn, then call him," Spike said firmly. It wasn't something he would do-hell, he'd rather cut off his own bollocks than ask Finn for an inch of shade in the middle of the day. However, if Xander's instinct was to call Finn, Spike could respect that.

"Right. So, call Riley?" Xander rolled his head to the side so his cheek was resting on Spike's knee. Spike nodded.

"Call Riley."