Gray
AND THE END These are the 4th and 5th chapters today. This is the end of Xander's story, but the epilogue will return to the universe of Benny and Dean and Sam.
Gray
After having her world destroyed by the Winchesters, Eve wanted to rebuild her family. She claimed a soul with his own dark power and his own moral gray. He would be her champion. Hopefully. Xander just wanted to go home, preferably before the hunters Sam and Dean Winchester caught up with him.
Chapter ONE :: Chapter TWO :: Chapter THREE :: Chapters 4+5 :: Chapter SIX :: Chapter SEVEN :: Chapter EIGHT :: Chapter NINE :: Chapter TEN :: Chapter ELEVEN : Chapter TWELVE :: Chapter THIRTEEN :: Chapter FOURTEEN :: Chapter FIFTEEN :: Chapter SIXTEEN :: Chapter Seventeen :: Chapter Eighteen :: Chapter Nineteen :: Chapter TWENTY :: Chapter TWENTY-ONE :: Chapter TWENTY-TWO : Chapter TWENTY-THREE :: Chapter TWENTY-FOUR :: Chapter TWENTY-FIVE :: Chapter Twenty-SIX :: Chapter Twenty-SEVEN :: Chapter Twenty-EIGHT :: Chapter Twenty-NINE :: Chapter Thirty :: Chapter THIRTY-ONE :: Chapter Thirty Two :: Chapter THIRTY-THREE :: Chapter THIRTY-FOUR :: Chapter THIRTY-FIVE ::
Chapter THIRTY-SIX -- Saturday
Chapter THIRTY-SEVEN -- Sunday Morning
Chapter THIRTY-EIGHT -- Sunday Afternoon
Chapter THIRTY-NINE -- Sunday Evening
And these are from late on Sunday...
Chapter Forty
Another day, another hotel, another call home. Xander would have felt guilty about the paint on the carpet, but honestly, witchy runes in white house paint could only improve the décor of the motel they were in. This one was done up with horses. Horse wallpaper. Horse carpet. Bits and bridles for towel hooks even. Someone in this universe had offended the god of motel decorating and that pissy little shit was still getting even.
Spike finished the spell and the air shimmered as it made contact with the others back home.
“Red, you there?” Spike asked.
“Spike! Oh Goddess, I was worried when you missed the last check in. Is Xander okay?”
“Fine and fit and mostly not tripping over my own feet,” Xander offered.
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Spike said as he looked to the wide patch of spilled white paint where Xander had accidentally kicked the can over. But again, Xander wasn’t feeling guilty because it actually made the room look better.
“Good news,” Willow said, her voice warbling a bit as the spell struggled to maintain the connection. “Well, mostly good news, with a pinch of potentially bad news depending on your definition of bad.”
“Red…” Spike definitely made that sound like a threat.
“Right. Okay, so I have a spell. And I think Xander might actually fit through it, but it doesn’t work from that dimension to this one.”
“Um, Willow, that’s a problem,” Xander said, “because I’m in this dimension and I’m trying to get to that one.”
“Yes, but you didn’t go straight there.”
“Purgatory,” Spike said with a sigh.
“Exactly! Purgatory! And if you can get to purgatory on your side and I can get there on my side, then I think I can open a portal between the two purgatories, and you can come home.”
As good as that sounded, Xander’s gut was still uneasy. “Willow, where is the pinch of potentially bad in this?”
She took a second to answer, which was never a good thing. “The magical rules in purgatory are way different, so I’m almost sure that getting pulled from one side to the other won’t strip off your powers, but I can’t be sure.”
Spike flashed into gameface, even though she couldn’t see him.
Xander dropped down to sit cross-legged next to Spike. If he didn’t sit, he was about to fall down because he knees had definitely gone weak. “Willow, if this is an excuse to depowerfy me, that is a monumentally bad idea. The powers are part of me, and I really want to stay me. You have got to make sure that I’m coming through without missing bits or I’m not going to try,” Xander said firmly.
“Xander!” Willow sounded shocked.
“Red, I’m seconding that,” Spike said firmly. “The boy has changed too much to go back, and if you try, you’ll kill him. If you can’t make the spell stable enough to get all of him through, then we wait.”
The pause at the other end made it pretty clear that Willow had been scheming, and Xander was guessing Dawn, Buffy, and Andrew were probably her co-schemers. Great. They wanted him to go back to being the helpless guy who drank his problems away and hid in his room… or in the nearest bar. God, he’d been turning into his father-minus the unwanted child.
“They mean well. They don’t know how things are, luv,” Spike said softly. He reached over and ran his fingers over Xander’s neck. Xander shivered and leaned closer. Spike’s arm reached around his waist, holding him tightly, and Xander relaxed into that grip. He kept screwing up, and he knew it. He didn’t know how to be the person who didn’t, so until he could get himself back on an even keel, he was going to let Spike handle this instead of screaming about how the others always tried to run his life for him. And how weird was it that he was okay with Spike running his life?
“Are you still there?” Willow called.
“Yeah, we’re here,” Spike agreed. “We’re still not going through with this unless you can bloody promise me that he’s coming through in one piece. I’m not bringing him through just to go to his funeral.”
Willow’s gasp was audible across the spell. “We would never put him in danger.”
“Maybe not on purpose, but you can’t separate him from this power any more than you can separate my soul from my vampire.”
“Right, no separating Xander from the power,” Willow agreed. “As long as you’re coming through purgatory, that’s possible.”
“Better be, Red,” Spike said with a growl in his voice. It was odd, hearing Spike be all protective of him, especially when Xander knew he’d never been great at protecting himself from his friends. He got bossy and shitty and passive aggressive, and sometimes he even got drunk and meanly honest, but he wasn’t good at protecting himself.
“He’s our friend. We wouldn’t hurt him.” Willow was definitely getting offended now. Spike, however, didn’t seem to care.
“You wouldn’t mean to, and you’d be sorry after. However, he’d still be dead. Now how do we get into purgatory from here and when do you need us to go?”
“I’m sending a spell. It’s going to require you to kill something evil.”
“Evil or inhuman? Or both?” Xander asked. He wondered how long they’d all used evil and inhuman interchangeably. A long damn time.
“Both,” Willow said. “I’m sending a spell, but you can’t use it until after the paper turns red.”
“And if we use it too early?” Spike asked.
“Um…we won’t be ready on this end, so you’ll be stuck in purgatory waiting for us to catch up.”
“Right. We’ll wait,” Spike said firmly. A scroll burst into existence, and Xander’s ears popped. “We’ve got the spell,” he said, reaching in to grab the paper.
“Okay. So…”
“We’ll see you soon,” Spike said, and leaning down, he blew out the candle that was part of the spell. Willow’s voice just vanished. Spike glanced over, and then seemed to take a second look where he really studied Xander. “How are you doing?”
“Me? Hey. I’m great. We’re going home. That’s… great.” Xander frowned as he tried to come up with any other word he could use to describe it.
“You lie about as well as you walk.”
“You don’t have to get all insulty.”
Spike stood and pulled Xander up with him. Then he tugged on Xander, forcing him to turn until they faced each other. “Do you want to stay here?”
“Here kind of sucks, Spike. In terms of universes, this is one of the shittier ones.”
“I’m not disagreeing. But you don’t seem exactly thrilled with going back.”
Xander chewed on his lower lip as he thought about it. It was simpler here. If they went back, he was going to have to face his friends and hopefully do it without turning into his father or accidentally breaking them with his new powers.
“We can stay here, pet,” Spike offered with way more sympathy than Xander expected. Xander felt like cobwebs were all tangled up in his brain cells and he couldn’t think right.
“What are we doing?” he asked.
“I thought that’s what I asked you.”
Xander reached up and grabbed Spike’s wrists. “What are we doing? You keep dropping all these hints like maybe we don’t hate each other anymore, and I don’t know exactly where you’re going.”
Spike’s eyebrows rose all the way up. “Do you need a bloody roadmap?”
“Yes,” Xander said firmly.
For a second, Spike blinked at him. “Okay then,” he finally said. “You’re a trusting bugger, and I like that someone finally trusts me enough to let me lead without always reminding me of every soddin’ mistake I ever made. And I want to point out that my plans did work until I ran into you lot. I thought I disregarded rules, but I’m a paragon of conformity compared to you.”
“I almost understand what that means,” Xander said.
Spike rolled his eyes.
“Does this have anything to do with me being strong?”
“Some,” he admitted.
“Yeah, the idea of sex with humans is actually creeping me out a little. They break,” Xander said, wrinkling his nose.
That made Spike laugh. “That they do, luv. You shag a human and either you need an iron control over yourself or you’re breaking them. Dru always tried to keep her human pets alive, not that it did much good.”
“This is a disturbing conversation.”
“And that’s something else I like. I don’t have to wonder where I am with you. You tell me. And even when you’re annoyed as a wet cat, you still listen.”
“You’re only about a hundred years older than me, and in case you haven’t noticed, I suck at running my life. You don’t panic or flail or do really stupid shit just because you can’t think of anything less stupid to do. And you’re loyal, so I know if you promise to stick with me, you will. And that’s kind of important because I’ve been on this whole screwed up mission to drive people away.”
“Willow,” Spike said.
“She wants me to be happy-happy all the time. Does she have any idea what I saw in Africa? I mean, people are not the nicest creatures in the world, and she wants me to brush all that off like it’s dust.”
Spike pulled Xander closer, his arms slipping around Xander’s waist. “No, she hopes, pet. She hopes you can brush it off and she’s afraid that they abandoned you. They were all so caught up in their own projects, they never thought about what it would mean for a human doing the work they asked you to do.”
“Giles asked,” Xander whispered. He closed his eyes and let himself feel Spike’s strength around him.
“Giles is a right git, but you’re the one who asked for a job.”
“He gave me Africa.”
“You turned down half the world before he landed on Africa.”
“How did…” Xander sighed. “Buffy ripped him a new one, huh?”
“Bloody right,” Spike agreed. “But you’re too like Dean, always hiding that pain so the others think you’re not feeling it, and then when the surface cracks and they see all that suffering all boiling over inside, they don’t know what to do with it.”
“I don’t do that,” Xander protested, but he knew Spike was right. He did do that.
Spike snorted his disgust with the lie. “Buffy goes out and fights. I do the same. Red will go and have herself a cry and do a little meditating. You’re the one who bottles it all up until you’re ready to blow.” Spike pulled back and caught Xander’s arm as he guided him back toward the bed. “You never have figured out how to let any of those feelings out, have you?”
“Sure. I drink. And then I’m drunk. Drunk lets it out.” Xander gave him a goofy grin.
Spike gave Xander a little shove so he sat on the edge of the bed. “Pet, if drinking worked, you would have been the mentally healthiest git in our universe.”
“So that’s a ‘no’ on drinking the problems away?” Xander nodded. “I mostly already knew that.”
Running his fingers through Xander’s hair, Spike looked down at him. “I always did fall for the loony ones.”
“Hey, I resemble that remark.”
Spike rolled his eyes. “Ya have to find a way to claw all that emotion out and let it go.”
“Easier said than done,” Xander confessed.
“I know how I like to do it.” Spike wiggled his eyebrows.
“I’m not chasing down a moira demon just so you can kick it to death.”
Spike blinked at him. “I’m making a pass at you, ya nit.”
“Oh. You are?” Xander tried to find more words, but honestly, they weren’t there. Sex. With Spike. Okay, the thought wasn’t bad, but there was a definitely lack of knowing what exactly that meant. “I’ve never, you know.”
“After a hundred years, I know a lot,” Spike said with another eyebrow wiggle, so Xander assumed that was more sex talk.
“I should be more weirded out by this.”
Spike ran his fingers through Xander’s hair. “You’ve been holding to me since I tied you to the bed, pet. I could have taken you then, and your demon would have been happy enough, even if the rest of you needed time to catch up.”
Xander frowned and thought back. “No, I’m pretty sure I would have totally freaked.”
“Bloody right you would have, but you would have enjoyed it. I can feel ya, luv. I can feel ya the way I might a minion I made, only the feelings are sharper. Maybe this is what it feels like to make a childe, but if so, Angelus is a right bastard for leaving someone he could feel like this.” Spike’s voice seemed to fade out, and his fingers stroked through Xander’s hair.
“You feel me?”
Spike sniffed and pulled his hand back before nodded. “Yeah, luv, I can. If you focused on yourself instead of running around trying to fix the rest of the world in some attempt to avoid yourself, you’d feel me too.”
Xander held his breath and tried to listen to his own thoughts. It was pretty much a failure because all he could feel was the stirring fears about going back, and the guilt about not helping Dean and a cold sort of desperation to do something that he couldn’t even identify.
“Kit off,” Spike said before stripping off his shirt and tossing it to one side. Xander’s mouth fell open and he just stared at Spike. Naked Spike. Beautiful naked Spike. Xander’s cock started warming to the idea right way, even if the rest of him was sort of frozen.
After sitting down on the edge of the bed, Spike pulled off his boots and put them next to the scroll Willow had sent through. While Xander’s fingers fluttered around his buttons, he struggled to get even one open before Spike sat back up. Xander could feel his face heat up, and he expected mocking. However, Spike gave him a soft smile and moved to stand in front of him. After batting Xander’s hands away, Spike took over the buttons.
“You’re alright, luv. Just breathe.”
“I don’t have to breathe,” Xander pointed out. He fisted his hands and wondered what to do with them. Reaching up, he rested them on Spike’s hips for a second before dropping them back to his sides.
“Yeah, but it will keep you relaxed. Just focus on not forgetting to breathe.”
“Easier said than done, Xander whispered as his cock started to ache and his skin itched. He wanted contacted. Needed it. Spike slipped Xander’s shirt off, his hands skimming over Xander’s overwarm skin. His brain whiting out a little, Xander reached up and caught Spike’s shoulders, holding tightly.
Spike chuckled and then pushed him back onto the bed. When he laid on Xander, his weight pinning Xander down, Xander thought he might come just from that. “You're mine, aren’t you, luv? I always take what’s mine.”
Xander groaned as Spike pressed his fingers deep into Xander’s shoulders. Then Spike kissed him. Hard. Demanding. Verging on painful as twin fangs nipped him. Xander thrust his hips up in a silent plea for more.
“Someone’s randy,” Spike teased.
“Someone’s Xander, and if you’re doing this with a Randy, I’m eating him,” Xander replied.
Spike laughed. “Someone’s got a jealous streak."
“Hell yes. Jealous, petty-” Xander might have kept going, but Spike said up and pressed the heel of his hand into Xander’s hard cock. His words vanished in a meaningless mewl. Only then did Spike start working on stripping Xander of his pants. While Xander tried to help, he was fairly sure that his squirming was more of a hindrance.
Xander shivered as Spike ran a possessive hand over Xander’s now-bare ass and down a thigh. He pressed back and wiggled in invitation.
"I’m going to enjoy this," Spike said as he stripped off his own jeans and underwear. Then he gave Xander a slap on the ass that made Xander gasp. Spike’s cock hung heavy between his legs as he stood there, and Xander reached out. He ran his fingertips over the soft skin, watching as it stiffened. This was odd, but Xander wanted it. He was hungry for it. Hell, he was about ready to beg if that’s what Spike wanted, but Spike stood there, looking down with this fond expression Xander didn’t quite understand.
“What do you want me to do?” Xander asked.
“Whatever you want,” Spike said, tilting his head to the side. Xander pulled his fingers back just a bit, and Spike caught his hand. Leaning closer, he brought Xander’s hand to his lips and kissed the inside of Xander’s wrist before sliding fangs into the flesh.
Xander cursed and thrust up into the air. Before he could repeat the futile gesture, Spike was there, his naked body pressing down into Xander.
Xander went wild, thrusting up as he tried to get the right friction on his cock to match the heat and tingling need that crawled up his arm as Spike fed. Spike slid his fangs free and gave Xander an evil smirk.
"Oi, someone's being all pushy." Spike grabbed Xander by the shoulders and physically shifted him farther up onto the bed before holding him down. Xander panted in need, but since he didn’t really know what he wanted, he waited for Spike to make the first move. Spike did that when he grabbed Xander's cock.
"Spike, please," Xander begged as he tried to thrust into the hand only to have Spike move with him, teasing him with the lack of friction. “Please.” Xander didn’t need dignity. Hell, he’d lost it so long ago he didn’t remember it anymore. He did need to come. Badly.
"My pace, luv," Spike said firmly. “Flip over.”
Xander hurried to do just that, and he got in one thrust against the sheets before Spike caught him by the hips and pulled him up so that his groin was above the bed. “Geez, Spike.”
“Get your knees under ya,” Spike ordered. Groaning with frustration and lust, Xander did that. Then he watched as Spike quickly locked cuffs around Xander’s ankles. The military had taken the ones Xander used to wear, and he’d forgotten how it felt to have leather pressing into his skin, reminding him that Spike felt this sense of ownership over him. Xander shivered in lust. Two more cuffs went around his wrist, and Xander waited for Spike to cuff his hands behind his back. That’s what Spike normally did. Instead, Spike clipped a short chain to Xander’s left hand and pulled it down until he could clip the other end to Xander’s left wrist.
When Spike repeated it on the other side, connecting right wrist to right ankle, Xander found his face pressed into the mattress with his ass up in the air. The helplessness made him groan with need, but Xander couldn’t do anything about it because his cock was hanging free.
"Such a pretty demon." Spike stroked his ass, pinching it when Xander least expected it.
"Spike, please," Xander found the words to beg.
“Do you feel me?” Spike asked, and Xander tried to nod, his cheek rubbing against the sheet.
“Really? Do you really feel me?” Spike laid his body across Xander’s back, and Xander could feel the faint press of power, a sense of ownership, a pleasure in watching a lover squirming and a hot need.
“Spike?”
“There you, luv.” Something wet and soft ran across his asshole. Xander groaned as the feeling of warmth traveled up his spine and radiated through his body. Spike moved, and something was inside Xander. A finger, he realized. Spike had put a finger in him. Xander pressed his forehead to the mattress and groaned in need.
“Someone’s ready to get buggered,” Spike teased.
“Yes and yes,” Xander agreed. The pressure in his ass grew, and muscles stretched in delicious ways. The beautiful pain shifted to a growing heat as Spike spread his fingers.
Spike reached inside and the pressure against Xander’s prostate made him cry out in need. He needed to thrust, to come, to move, to get fucked or do something, but Spike kept moving in slow motion. This was torture. Spike was torturing him.
Spike chuckled. “So impatient.”
"Impatient?" Xander demanded. “It’s sex. We’re men. Impatience is mandatory.”
“Someone has a lot to learn.” Spike shifted and Xander moaned in distress as his fingers pulled out. “Tell me if it hurts,” Spike said.
“It hurts,” Xander immediately answered. His cock was so hard and heavy and hot that it did. He needed to come so much that it was like he had itching powder in his shorts and he was sitting in the middle of math class. It was torture.
“Nancy boy.”
Xander didn’t answer because he could feel something huge pressing against his ass. He pressed back, desperate for more, and Spike grunted as he pushed in. The friction burned the way Mexican night at the Bronze burned his tongue. It verged on pain and made his eyes water, but he wanted to gobble up more and more. Xander moaned
Spike started tiny rocking motions, sinking deeper each time. Xander tried to push back and impale himself, but Spike held his hips and continued his own slow assault. Each thrust was longer, and now the pressure against Xander prostate came and went like waves that washed Xander's brain cells away with the tide. Gasping in both pleasure and pain, Xander fisted his hands and arched his back as Spike pulled out and then slammed in again. Finally Spike stopped, his cock buried all the way in Xander, and Xander wailed.
“Problem, luv?”
Xander would have been offended, but he could hear the edge in Spike’s voice. The vamp was barely holding on himself. Xander tightened his ass around Spike’s cock, and a low growl answered him.
The thrusts came harder. Their bodies slapped together so hard that it sounded like a slap fight. Xander cried out as he started coming and suddenly the heat eased as Spike came, and his come lubed Xander’s ass so he slid in and out easily. The new sensation sent pure pleasure crashing through Xander’s core. He panted, all his thoughts scrambled.
That’s when he really felt it. Spike’s pure satisfaction and warm possessiveness, yes. But he also felt Dorsey. He was hunting, moving warily and sending his senses out into the night. Benny was with Lizzy, his fears and needs raw as they talked. He could feel them. Lizzy and Willow were more distant whispers in his mind, but they were all there, connected to him. His children. His lover. His family.
Spike unhooked the chains from the ankle cuffs and Xander flopped down onto the bed and let Spike’s need for family wash through him. Family. Clan. Beings that would walk through eternity with him. The need had been a sharp edge of glass that Spike had never escaped.
“It’s why I could never walk away from Angel,” Spike said as he settled down next to Xander, his arm around Xander’s back. Then Spike slipped his leg between Xander’s leg and used his knee to press up into Xander’s sore ass. The little aftershocks of pleasure made Xander gasp.
“You feel me,” Xander said.
“Always have, since that first night you woke up tied to my bed. Felt you like a minion at first, but the sense kept growing.”
“But… I’m not a minion,” Xander said.
“Nope,” Spike agreed. “You’re not even a vampire, but when I saw what you did with Dorsey, I figured it out quick enough. You never were one for being alone, so any creature built out of your needs would want a partner. Need one, even.”
“So, this is me? This connection is because of what I am?”
“It’s what it means to be a slayer in this world. They need a partner.” Spike sighed. “We need to find another name or Giles is going to throw a wobbly.”
“That sounds like a good reason to keep the name,” Xander said. Yeah, it was a petty and shitty thing to say, but Giles hadn’t come to his wedding. And Giles had given him the job in Africa. And Giles had locked him up and chained him to a bed, although that was another Giles.
“Our Giles is not going to like me being demonified,” Xander pointed out.
“Fuck ‘em,” Spike said. “So, what about being called a hunter demon? There isn’t really a group that calls itself hunters in our world.”
Xander thought about it. “If we use hunter demon, you know people are going to ask what I hunt.”
“Wot? You plan to stay home and make dinner while I hunt the baddies?”
Xander pushed himself up enough to really look Spike in the face. “You want me to hunt with you?”
“Bloody hell, yes! I’m finding the biggest, baddest bugger we can find and waving him under your nose like a big piece of chocolate. Demons happen to like death and destruction.”
“Huh.” Xander dropped back down onto the bed. “The girls had exiled me from hunting, and that’s pretty much what caused my whole funk and the telling off of Willow right before Eve grabbed me.”
“Not their choice now, is it? You’re my hunter demon.” Spike kissed Xander’s shoulder before sliding his fangs into the flesh. Xander groaned as he felt the heat and pleasure of being fed upon and felt the growing warmth and satisfaction of feeding that flowed to him from Spike. Oh yeah. He did like his powers.
Chapter Forty-One
“Ready?” Spike asked as he pushed the shapeshifter to its knees. The monster cursed at them through its gag.
“Ready,” Xander said firmly. He really hoped they could get through purgatory without running into Eve, but the closer they came to this moment, the more he doubted it. He could feel her like an itch under his skin.
The shapeshifter screamed as Spike thrust a silver knife through its heart, and then he started chanting. The wind started to howl as a portal slowly opened. The shapeshifter got sucked in, even though Xander could still see the body lying on the ground.
“Time to leave,” Spike said, holding out a hand. Xander grabbed it and hung on tightly as they both jumped into the void. They fell a good twenty feet to the ground in that still forest that looked exactly like where he’d found Eve. Of course, it was possible that all of purgatory looked the same.
The shapeshifter jumped to his feet and growled, but then Eve appeared from nowhere and held out her hand. The monster blinked and looked at her like he couldn’t figure out what was going on. She wore the same white dress that flowed around her even though there wasn’t any wind, and she raised her hand to rest it against the shapeshifter’s cheek. “Go, play with your brothers and sisters, my child,” she said gently.
The shapeshifter looked around, his eyes empty of any sort of awareness before he ran off toward the thickest of the trees.
She turned to toward them at that point, and Xander scrambled back while Spike fell into a defensive pose. At that point Xander started praying. Earnestly praying. They needed Willow to open that second portal, and fast.
“You are not my child,” Eve told Spike in that same kind, freaky voice. “But my youngest has chosen you and you are worthy.”
“Good ta hear,” Spike said, but he kept his defensive pose and retreated wary step by wary step. Xander made sure to stay behind him, even as he could feel the growing need to go to Eve’s side.
“My son. My child. You have given me grandchildren.” She smiled at Xander.
“Not the sort you wanted,” Xander blurted out. Spike glanced over his shoulder, and even though Spike hadn’t said a word, Xander definitely had the feeling that he’d just been called an idiot and told to shut up.
Eve smiled. “No, not the sort I expected. But then our children often choose paths we don’t expect. We have to love them until they come home to us. And if someone tries to kill all of them-to commit genocide on the entire race-we have to destroy the threat so totally that no one will ever cross us again,” she said. She might be talking about death and destruction, but she still sounded faintly like Mr. Rogers. Or Mrs. Rogers, anyway. It was slightly terrifying.
“We plan to pass through, so we’re not looking for trouble,” Spike said in a tone of voice that reminded Xander of the way he talked to Dru.
She smiled at him. “You’re a good friend, and you’ll keep my boy safe. Now that he has given me grandchildren, he is free to come and go from this place as he can. I may not open the portal for him, though. This is where my children come to rest, and I have lost the key to the nursery long ago.”
“We brought our own keys,” Spike said.
She kept smiling, and Xander could feel that pull. He took a step forward, and suddenly Spike’s hand caught him.
“Let him come to his mother, Spike,” Eve said. Spike opened his mouth, maybe to argue and maybe not, but a huge crack of thunder rocked the ground, and Spike stumbled to the side. Xander took that moment to move forward. He felt dreamlike and disconnected from his body as she reached up to cup his cheek. Behind him, he could hear the angry growl, but he couldn’t find the energy to care as Eve petted him. “You gave me such strong grandchildren. I will honor them.”
“They weren’t what you expected.” Now Xander felt loss in his failure. Mother wanted more.
“No regrets, Xander,” she said, and his heart filled with joy as he realized she approved. “I cannot control my children, and you cannot control the direction of yours. The generations will show their true nature, one way or another.” Eve smiled, and Xander felt a distant rumble of fear as he realized what she meant. She’d chosen him to be evil, and he hadn’t been. He’d chosen Dorsey and Benny to be good, but he had no guarantees. And even if they were good, who knew who they would turn.
“They will be our bright children, and whatever path they choose, we will love them,” Eve said firmly. She dropped her hand, and some of the haze covering Xander’s consciousness evaporated. Behind him, he could hear the wind howl, and Spike hand a hand around his wrist. He was shouting, but the words were lost to the roar of the portal.
“Go with my love, son,” Eve said to him, and then the ground went out from under Xander’s feet, and he felt the pull of the portal as his body was flung roughly around. Spike held him, and Xander reached out blindly, finding Spike and clinging to him as the magic flung them across the realities. Willow might be powerful, but Eve definitely had the dimension travelling thing down better. Xander had no more than thought that, when he found himself falling. He crashed into the ground, blinking as he tried to focus his eyes.
He’d grabbed Spike’s ankle in the portal, and now he let go as they tried to untangle themselves, but Spike had a bit of a struggle because his coat had gotten wrapped around his head.
“Bloody hell. Hard landing there, Red.”
“Sorry. Are you okay?”
Xander looked up to see Willow kneeling beside a giant casting circle. Kennedy and Buffy were outside that, swords drawn, and Giles knelt next to Willow, holding two bowls.
“Will, maybe we should move faster. I’m getting the wiggins here,” Buffy commented.
Xander looked around, and the trees were gone. This purgatory had the same stillness, but the sky was gray and the land a barren sweep of nothing. No Eve. No exiled monsters. Nothing.
“I agree,” Giles said. “Willow, are you strong enough for the second spell?”
“Good to go,” she said, but her eyes looked heavy and her hair was streaked with white. She’d been pulling on magic hard, but the second her gaze locked with Xander’s, she smiled. “Hey, you. No more getting kidnapped, got it?”
“Got it.” Xander knee walked the few feet that separated them, and caught Willow up in a big hug. “No more strange dimensions or Armageddons without my favorite girls,” Xander vowed. He felt Spike’s hand on his arm, pressing into his shoulders, and a presence in his mind blocked him from embracing Willow fully.
Xander blinked and looked over at Spike as he realized that Spike had just stopped him from accidentally turning Willow into whatever the other Willow and Elizabeth had become. He’d nearly changed her without thinking, and the reality of that knocked him back so he rested his butt on his heels.
“Xander, are you okay?” she asked. She didn’t even know what he’d almost done.
“We’re find, luv,” Spike answered. “It was just a rough ride, and the boy’s a little shaken up. You have to remember, he’s new to his powers, and he loses track of his power levels easily.”
“Oh.” Willow’s face turned sympathetic. “I brought chocolate if you’re hungry. You said you could still eat human food so if you-”
“Chocolate. Give,” Xander demanded. She laughed as she reached for a bag.
“That’s our Xander, never too beat up for food,” Buffy teased him. Xander grabbed the first chocolate bar and ripped off the paper before shoving half of it in his mouth.
“And never one to mind manners,” Spike added. Xander put an elbow in Spike’s stomach and swallowed as fast as he could.
“Chocolate good,” he said, but he didn’t mention that it wasn’t quite as good as absorbing the energy of a demon. Xander stopped as he realized something. He turned to Spike. “Stolen energy, that’s what smells so good.”
“Took you long enough, pet,” Spike said dryly.
“You could have told me.”
“And have you argue? Not a chance. You can figure this shite out on your own.”
Giles carefully put the two bowls on the ground and stood up. “What about stolen energy?”
“It smells good,” Xander said. He totally had not meant to blurt that out in front of everyone.
Buffy moved closer. “Good as in I’ll wear a little of that behind my ear or good like, man, I could eat three more of those?”
“Um…” Xander grimaced.
“Great,” Giles said wearily. And sadly, that was still way nicer than the other Giles, but there was some connection missing there. Xander reached for that sense of Giles as the father figure, but all he could feel was Eve’s love. Okay, that was freaky, but clearly Eve had done a little rearranging.
“You like to eat stolen power?” Willow wrinkled her nose as she stood up. “You don’t think I smell good, do you?”
Immediately, Buffy moved closer. She lowered her sword, but she definitely had her fists ready to go.
Xander shook his head. “No. No, no, no and hugely with the enormous no. You don’t smell edible at all. Demons who steal power smell chocolately, and the other reality had these leviathan demons that eat pretty much everything, and they smell really good.”
“Leviathans?” Giles had his research voice on.
“World eating bad guys who the good guys accidentally let loose on the world,” Xander explained. Dean’s visions had filled in a lot of gaps, including some Xander really didn’t need to know. Alstair had not been a nice demon.
“Well that’s not good,” Buffy said. “Can we help?”
“It’s not our world,” Giles said firmly. “Willow, let’s finish the second spell and get home.”
“Spelling… on it,” Willow agreed. She knelt back down, and Xander carefully stepped out of the witch circle and backed away so he wouldn’t be looming over her. The whole time, Spike held his wrist.
“That’s new,” Buffy said softly as she looked down. Kennedy glanced over and gave them a quick thumbs up gesture before returning to watching the dead landscape for enemy.
“Better get used to it, luv,” Spike said firmly.
Buffy looked at Xander.
“What he said,” Xander added.
She smiled at both of them. “Okay, I can do that. I am, however, going to tease you about going there first.”
“Only if I can tease you about keeping him longer,” Xander countered.
“Ouch.” Buffy elbowed him hard enough to make him stumble a little, but oddly it didn’t hurt. He watched Willow and Giles work off of a page, and this felt right. It was home.
“So,” Buffy said, “you like to eat stolen power. Are we talking only demons or would you get the munchies for rapists and politicians?”
Xander blinked. “I don’t know.” Okay, that was creepy.
“We’ll keep him away from political rallies until we know for sure,” Spike said calmly. “And by ‘we’ I mean I will. The boy’s my responsibility, and I won’t have Rupert or Red or even you getting in the middle.”
“Oh.” Buffy blinked for a second and then gave Xander a worried look. “And is that alright with you?”
“Yep,” Xander agreed. “I am officially saying that I suck at having demonic powers, and Spike gets to be in charge of it.” He didn’t mention nearly turning Willow by accident. “If I had been like this when Willow went all dark, would I have wanted to eat her?” Xander stopped, not wanting to even think about it.
Spike tightened his arm around Xander’s waist. “Probably luv, but maybe you could have drained the stolen power out without finishing the job.”
“Disturbo,” Xander complained softly.
“Seconding that,” Buffy agreed, and now she looked grossed out.
Willow stood up and glanced over. “You two talk louder than you think, and I’m not disturbed. If I steal power, then I’m no better than a demon, and Xander has official permission, only please don’t ever call it eating me again, not unless you want to wake up with magically green hair,” she warned. “So, we’re ready. Everyone grab hands, and this time please put the swords somewhere that I won’t get poked in the boob,” she said with a nasty look in Kennedy’s direction.
Yep, this was home. As much as part of Xander missed Dorsey and Benny-as much as he wasn’t looking forward to the inevitable ‘Xander can’t do that’ fights-as much as his girls and Giles sometimes drove him insane-this was home.
“I didn’t know if we would be attacked before hitting the ground,” Kennedy said apologetically, but she slid her sword into its scabbard and clipped the leather strap over the end to keep it in place. “Besides, it might have been Buffy.”
“Oh no. You poked, you apologize,” Buffy said firmly. “I do not go accidentally poking people with sharp objects. When I poke people, I mean it.” Buffy put her own sword away before claiming Xander’s free arm so that he was sandwiched between Buffy and Spike. “Everyone grab a loved one and hold on tight because if you land in Siberia, you get to find your own way home,” Buffy said cheerfully. With her other arm, she grabbed Giles.
“I’m rather more concerned about landing in the void or being pulled apart at the atomic level,” he pointed out. But he reached out for Willow. Kennedy held a hand out for Spike, and he took it, completing the circle. With a quick chant and a dropped vial, Willow opened up the new portal that would take them all home. This time, Xander was determined to do things better, and if he screwed up, he was pretty sure Spike would be around to kick his ass. He felt the amused press of Spike’s mind in his. Spike would definitely be around to kick his ass when needed.
Gray
After having her world destroyed by the Winchesters, Eve wanted to rebuild her family. She claimed a soul with his own dark power and his own moral gray. He would be her champion. Hopefully. Xander just wanted to go home, preferably before the hunters Sam and Dean Winchester caught up with him.
Chapter ONE :: Chapter TWO :: Chapter THREE :: Chapters 4+5 :: Chapter SIX :: Chapter SEVEN :: Chapter EIGHT :: Chapter NINE :: Chapter TEN :: Chapter ELEVEN : Chapter TWELVE :: Chapter THIRTEEN :: Chapter FOURTEEN :: Chapter FIFTEEN :: Chapter SIXTEEN :: Chapter Seventeen :: Chapter Eighteen :: Chapter Nineteen :: Chapter TWENTY :: Chapter TWENTY-ONE :: Chapter TWENTY-TWO : Chapter TWENTY-THREE :: Chapter TWENTY-FOUR :: Chapter TWENTY-FIVE :: Chapter Twenty-SIX :: Chapter Twenty-SEVEN :: Chapter Twenty-EIGHT :: Chapter Twenty-NINE :: Chapter Thirty :: Chapter THIRTY-ONE :: Chapter Thirty Two :: Chapter THIRTY-THREE :: Chapter THIRTY-FOUR :: Chapter THIRTY-FIVE ::
Chapter THIRTY-SIX -- Saturday
Chapter THIRTY-SEVEN -- Sunday Morning
Chapter THIRTY-EIGHT -- Sunday Afternoon
Chapter THIRTY-NINE -- Sunday Evening
And these are from late on Sunday...
Chapter Forty
Another day, another hotel, another call home. Xander would have felt guilty about the paint on the carpet, but honestly, witchy runes in white house paint could only improve the décor of the motel they were in. This one was done up with horses. Horse wallpaper. Horse carpet. Bits and bridles for towel hooks even. Someone in this universe had offended the god of motel decorating and that pissy little shit was still getting even.
Spike finished the spell and the air shimmered as it made contact with the others back home.
“Red, you there?” Spike asked.
“Spike! Oh Goddess, I was worried when you missed the last check in. Is Xander okay?”
“Fine and fit and mostly not tripping over my own feet,” Xander offered.
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Spike said as he looked to the wide patch of spilled white paint where Xander had accidentally kicked the can over. But again, Xander wasn’t feeling guilty because it actually made the room look better.
“Good news,” Willow said, her voice warbling a bit as the spell struggled to maintain the connection. “Well, mostly good news, with a pinch of potentially bad news depending on your definition of bad.”
“Red…” Spike definitely made that sound like a threat.
“Right. Okay, so I have a spell. And I think Xander might actually fit through it, but it doesn’t work from that dimension to this one.”
“Um, Willow, that’s a problem,” Xander said, “because I’m in this dimension and I’m trying to get to that one.”
“Yes, but you didn’t go straight there.”
“Purgatory,” Spike said with a sigh.
“Exactly! Purgatory! And if you can get to purgatory on your side and I can get there on my side, then I think I can open a portal between the two purgatories, and you can come home.”
As good as that sounded, Xander’s gut was still uneasy. “Willow, where is the pinch of potentially bad in this?”
She took a second to answer, which was never a good thing. “The magical rules in purgatory are way different, so I’m almost sure that getting pulled from one side to the other won’t strip off your powers, but I can’t be sure.”
Spike flashed into gameface, even though she couldn’t see him.
Xander dropped down to sit cross-legged next to Spike. If he didn’t sit, he was about to fall down because he knees had definitely gone weak. “Willow, if this is an excuse to depowerfy me, that is a monumentally bad idea. The powers are part of me, and I really want to stay me. You have got to make sure that I’m coming through without missing bits or I’m not going to try,” Xander said firmly.
“Xander!” Willow sounded shocked.
“Red, I’m seconding that,” Spike said firmly. “The boy has changed too much to go back, and if you try, you’ll kill him. If you can’t make the spell stable enough to get all of him through, then we wait.”
The pause at the other end made it pretty clear that Willow had been scheming, and Xander was guessing Dawn, Buffy, and Andrew were probably her co-schemers. Great. They wanted him to go back to being the helpless guy who drank his problems away and hid in his room… or in the nearest bar. God, he’d been turning into his father-minus the unwanted child.
“They mean well. They don’t know how things are, luv,” Spike said softly. He reached over and ran his fingers over Xander’s neck. Xander shivered and leaned closer. Spike’s arm reached around his waist, holding him tightly, and Xander relaxed into that grip. He kept screwing up, and he knew it. He didn’t know how to be the person who didn’t, so until he could get himself back on an even keel, he was going to let Spike handle this instead of screaming about how the others always tried to run his life for him. And how weird was it that he was okay with Spike running his life?
“Are you still there?” Willow called.
“Yeah, we’re here,” Spike agreed. “We’re still not going through with this unless you can bloody promise me that he’s coming through in one piece. I’m not bringing him through just to go to his funeral.”
Willow’s gasp was audible across the spell. “We would never put him in danger.”
“Maybe not on purpose, but you can’t separate him from this power any more than you can separate my soul from my vampire.”
“Right, no separating Xander from the power,” Willow agreed. “As long as you’re coming through purgatory, that’s possible.”
“Better be, Red,” Spike said with a growl in his voice. It was odd, hearing Spike be all protective of him, especially when Xander knew he’d never been great at protecting himself from his friends. He got bossy and shitty and passive aggressive, and sometimes he even got drunk and meanly honest, but he wasn’t good at protecting himself.
“He’s our friend. We wouldn’t hurt him.” Willow was definitely getting offended now. Spike, however, didn’t seem to care.
“You wouldn’t mean to, and you’d be sorry after. However, he’d still be dead. Now how do we get into purgatory from here and when do you need us to go?”
“I’m sending a spell. It’s going to require you to kill something evil.”
“Evil or inhuman? Or both?” Xander asked. He wondered how long they’d all used evil and inhuman interchangeably. A long damn time.
“Both,” Willow said. “I’m sending a spell, but you can’t use it until after the paper turns red.”
“And if we use it too early?” Spike asked.
“Um…we won’t be ready on this end, so you’ll be stuck in purgatory waiting for us to catch up.”
“Right. We’ll wait,” Spike said firmly. A scroll burst into existence, and Xander’s ears popped. “We’ve got the spell,” he said, reaching in to grab the paper.
“Okay. So…”
“We’ll see you soon,” Spike said, and leaning down, he blew out the candle that was part of the spell. Willow’s voice just vanished. Spike glanced over, and then seemed to take a second look where he really studied Xander. “How are you doing?”
“Me? Hey. I’m great. We’re going home. That’s… great.” Xander frowned as he tried to come up with any other word he could use to describe it.
“You lie about as well as you walk.”
“You don’t have to get all insulty.”
Spike stood and pulled Xander up with him. Then he tugged on Xander, forcing him to turn until they faced each other. “Do you want to stay here?”
“Here kind of sucks, Spike. In terms of universes, this is one of the shittier ones.”
“I’m not disagreeing. But you don’t seem exactly thrilled with going back.”
Xander chewed on his lower lip as he thought about it. It was simpler here. If they went back, he was going to have to face his friends and hopefully do it without turning into his father or accidentally breaking them with his new powers.
“We can stay here, pet,” Spike offered with way more sympathy than Xander expected. Xander felt like cobwebs were all tangled up in his brain cells and he couldn’t think right.
“What are we doing?” he asked.
“I thought that’s what I asked you.”
Xander reached up and grabbed Spike’s wrists. “What are we doing? You keep dropping all these hints like maybe we don’t hate each other anymore, and I don’t know exactly where you’re going.”
Spike’s eyebrows rose all the way up. “Do you need a bloody roadmap?”
“Yes,” Xander said firmly.
For a second, Spike blinked at him. “Okay then,” he finally said. “You’re a trusting bugger, and I like that someone finally trusts me enough to let me lead without always reminding me of every soddin’ mistake I ever made. And I want to point out that my plans did work until I ran into you lot. I thought I disregarded rules, but I’m a paragon of conformity compared to you.”
“I almost understand what that means,” Xander said.
Spike rolled his eyes.
“Does this have anything to do with me being strong?”
“Some,” he admitted.
“Yeah, the idea of sex with humans is actually creeping me out a little. They break,” Xander said, wrinkling his nose.
That made Spike laugh. “That they do, luv. You shag a human and either you need an iron control over yourself or you’re breaking them. Dru always tried to keep her human pets alive, not that it did much good.”
“This is a disturbing conversation.”
“And that’s something else I like. I don’t have to wonder where I am with you. You tell me. And even when you’re annoyed as a wet cat, you still listen.”
“You’re only about a hundred years older than me, and in case you haven’t noticed, I suck at running my life. You don’t panic or flail or do really stupid shit just because you can’t think of anything less stupid to do. And you’re loyal, so I know if you promise to stick with me, you will. And that’s kind of important because I’ve been on this whole screwed up mission to drive people away.”
“Willow,” Spike said.
“She wants me to be happy-happy all the time. Does she have any idea what I saw in Africa? I mean, people are not the nicest creatures in the world, and she wants me to brush all that off like it’s dust.”
Spike pulled Xander closer, his arms slipping around Xander’s waist. “No, she hopes, pet. She hopes you can brush it off and she’s afraid that they abandoned you. They were all so caught up in their own projects, they never thought about what it would mean for a human doing the work they asked you to do.”
“Giles asked,” Xander whispered. He closed his eyes and let himself feel Spike’s strength around him.
“Giles is a right git, but you’re the one who asked for a job.”
“He gave me Africa.”
“You turned down half the world before he landed on Africa.”
“How did…” Xander sighed. “Buffy ripped him a new one, huh?”
“Bloody right,” Spike agreed. “But you’re too like Dean, always hiding that pain so the others think you’re not feeling it, and then when the surface cracks and they see all that suffering all boiling over inside, they don’t know what to do with it.”
“I don’t do that,” Xander protested, but he knew Spike was right. He did do that.
Spike snorted his disgust with the lie. “Buffy goes out and fights. I do the same. Red will go and have herself a cry and do a little meditating. You’re the one who bottles it all up until you’re ready to blow.” Spike pulled back and caught Xander’s arm as he guided him back toward the bed. “You never have figured out how to let any of those feelings out, have you?”
“Sure. I drink. And then I’m drunk. Drunk lets it out.” Xander gave him a goofy grin.
Spike gave Xander a little shove so he sat on the edge of the bed. “Pet, if drinking worked, you would have been the mentally healthiest git in our universe.”
“So that’s a ‘no’ on drinking the problems away?” Xander nodded. “I mostly already knew that.”
Running his fingers through Xander’s hair, Spike looked down at him. “I always did fall for the loony ones.”
“Hey, I resemble that remark.”
Spike rolled his eyes. “Ya have to find a way to claw all that emotion out and let it go.”
“Easier said than done,” Xander confessed.
“I know how I like to do it.” Spike wiggled his eyebrows.
“I’m not chasing down a moira demon just so you can kick it to death.”
Spike blinked at him. “I’m making a pass at you, ya nit.”
“Oh. You are?” Xander tried to find more words, but honestly, they weren’t there. Sex. With Spike. Okay, the thought wasn’t bad, but there was a definitely lack of knowing what exactly that meant. “I’ve never, you know.”
“After a hundred years, I know a lot,” Spike said with another eyebrow wiggle, so Xander assumed that was more sex talk.
“I should be more weirded out by this.”
Spike ran his fingers through Xander’s hair. “You’ve been holding to me since I tied you to the bed, pet. I could have taken you then, and your demon would have been happy enough, even if the rest of you needed time to catch up.”
Xander frowned and thought back. “No, I’m pretty sure I would have totally freaked.”
“Bloody right you would have, but you would have enjoyed it. I can feel ya, luv. I can feel ya the way I might a minion I made, only the feelings are sharper. Maybe this is what it feels like to make a childe, but if so, Angelus is a right bastard for leaving someone he could feel like this.” Spike’s voice seemed to fade out, and his fingers stroked through Xander’s hair.
“You feel me?”
Spike sniffed and pulled his hand back before nodded. “Yeah, luv, I can. If you focused on yourself instead of running around trying to fix the rest of the world in some attempt to avoid yourself, you’d feel me too.”
Xander held his breath and tried to listen to his own thoughts. It was pretty much a failure because all he could feel was the stirring fears about going back, and the guilt about not helping Dean and a cold sort of desperation to do something that he couldn’t even identify.
“Kit off,” Spike said before stripping off his shirt and tossing it to one side. Xander’s mouth fell open and he just stared at Spike. Naked Spike. Beautiful naked Spike. Xander’s cock started warming to the idea right way, even if the rest of him was sort of frozen.
After sitting down on the edge of the bed, Spike pulled off his boots and put them next to the scroll Willow had sent through. While Xander’s fingers fluttered around his buttons, he struggled to get even one open before Spike sat back up. Xander could feel his face heat up, and he expected mocking. However, Spike gave him a soft smile and moved to stand in front of him. After batting Xander’s hands away, Spike took over the buttons.
“You’re alright, luv. Just breathe.”
“I don’t have to breathe,” Xander pointed out. He fisted his hands and wondered what to do with them. Reaching up, he rested them on Spike’s hips for a second before dropping them back to his sides.
“Yeah, but it will keep you relaxed. Just focus on not forgetting to breathe.”
“Easier said than done, Xander whispered as his cock started to ache and his skin itched. He wanted contacted. Needed it. Spike slipped Xander’s shirt off, his hands skimming over Xander’s overwarm skin. His brain whiting out a little, Xander reached up and caught Spike’s shoulders, holding tightly.
Spike chuckled and then pushed him back onto the bed. When he laid on Xander, his weight pinning Xander down, Xander thought he might come just from that. “You're mine, aren’t you, luv? I always take what’s mine.”
Xander groaned as Spike pressed his fingers deep into Xander’s shoulders. Then Spike kissed him. Hard. Demanding. Verging on painful as twin fangs nipped him. Xander thrust his hips up in a silent plea for more.
“Someone’s randy,” Spike teased.
“Someone’s Xander, and if you’re doing this with a Randy, I’m eating him,” Xander replied.
Spike laughed. “Someone’s got a jealous streak."
“Hell yes. Jealous, petty-” Xander might have kept going, but Spike said up and pressed the heel of his hand into Xander’s hard cock. His words vanished in a meaningless mewl. Only then did Spike start working on stripping Xander of his pants. While Xander tried to help, he was fairly sure that his squirming was more of a hindrance.
Xander shivered as Spike ran a possessive hand over Xander’s now-bare ass and down a thigh. He pressed back and wiggled in invitation.
"I’m going to enjoy this," Spike said as he stripped off his own jeans and underwear. Then he gave Xander a slap on the ass that made Xander gasp. Spike’s cock hung heavy between his legs as he stood there, and Xander reached out. He ran his fingertips over the soft skin, watching as it stiffened. This was odd, but Xander wanted it. He was hungry for it. Hell, he was about ready to beg if that’s what Spike wanted, but Spike stood there, looking down with this fond expression Xander didn’t quite understand.
“What do you want me to do?” Xander asked.
“Whatever you want,” Spike said, tilting his head to the side. Xander pulled his fingers back just a bit, and Spike caught his hand. Leaning closer, he brought Xander’s hand to his lips and kissed the inside of Xander’s wrist before sliding fangs into the flesh.
Xander cursed and thrust up into the air. Before he could repeat the futile gesture, Spike was there, his naked body pressing down into Xander.
Xander went wild, thrusting up as he tried to get the right friction on his cock to match the heat and tingling need that crawled up his arm as Spike fed. Spike slid his fangs free and gave Xander an evil smirk.
"Oi, someone's being all pushy." Spike grabbed Xander by the shoulders and physically shifted him farther up onto the bed before holding him down. Xander panted in need, but since he didn’t really know what he wanted, he waited for Spike to make the first move. Spike did that when he grabbed Xander's cock.
"Spike, please," Xander begged as he tried to thrust into the hand only to have Spike move with him, teasing him with the lack of friction. “Please.” Xander didn’t need dignity. Hell, he’d lost it so long ago he didn’t remember it anymore. He did need to come. Badly.
"My pace, luv," Spike said firmly. “Flip over.”
Xander hurried to do just that, and he got in one thrust against the sheets before Spike caught him by the hips and pulled him up so that his groin was above the bed. “Geez, Spike.”
“Get your knees under ya,” Spike ordered. Groaning with frustration and lust, Xander did that. Then he watched as Spike quickly locked cuffs around Xander’s ankles. The military had taken the ones Xander used to wear, and he’d forgotten how it felt to have leather pressing into his skin, reminding him that Spike felt this sense of ownership over him. Xander shivered in lust. Two more cuffs went around his wrist, and Xander waited for Spike to cuff his hands behind his back. That’s what Spike normally did. Instead, Spike clipped a short chain to Xander’s left hand and pulled it down until he could clip the other end to Xander’s left wrist.
When Spike repeated it on the other side, connecting right wrist to right ankle, Xander found his face pressed into the mattress with his ass up in the air. The helplessness made him groan with need, but Xander couldn’t do anything about it because his cock was hanging free.
"Such a pretty demon." Spike stroked his ass, pinching it when Xander least expected it.
"Spike, please," Xander found the words to beg.
“Do you feel me?” Spike asked, and Xander tried to nod, his cheek rubbing against the sheet.
“Really? Do you really feel me?” Spike laid his body across Xander’s back, and Xander could feel the faint press of power, a sense of ownership, a pleasure in watching a lover squirming and a hot need.
“Spike?”
“There you, luv.” Something wet and soft ran across his asshole. Xander groaned as the feeling of warmth traveled up his spine and radiated through his body. Spike moved, and something was inside Xander. A finger, he realized. Spike had put a finger in him. Xander pressed his forehead to the mattress and groaned in need.
“Someone’s ready to get buggered,” Spike teased.
“Yes and yes,” Xander agreed. The pressure in his ass grew, and muscles stretched in delicious ways. The beautiful pain shifted to a growing heat as Spike spread his fingers.
Spike reached inside and the pressure against Xander’s prostate made him cry out in need. He needed to thrust, to come, to move, to get fucked or do something, but Spike kept moving in slow motion. This was torture. Spike was torturing him.
Spike chuckled. “So impatient.”
"Impatient?" Xander demanded. “It’s sex. We’re men. Impatience is mandatory.”
“Someone has a lot to learn.” Spike shifted and Xander moaned in distress as his fingers pulled out. “Tell me if it hurts,” Spike said.
“It hurts,” Xander immediately answered. His cock was so hard and heavy and hot that it did. He needed to come so much that it was like he had itching powder in his shorts and he was sitting in the middle of math class. It was torture.
“Nancy boy.”
Xander didn’t answer because he could feel something huge pressing against his ass. He pressed back, desperate for more, and Spike grunted as he pushed in. The friction burned the way Mexican night at the Bronze burned his tongue. It verged on pain and made his eyes water, but he wanted to gobble up more and more. Xander moaned
Spike started tiny rocking motions, sinking deeper each time. Xander tried to push back and impale himself, but Spike held his hips and continued his own slow assault. Each thrust was longer, and now the pressure against Xander prostate came and went like waves that washed Xander's brain cells away with the tide. Gasping in both pleasure and pain, Xander fisted his hands and arched his back as Spike pulled out and then slammed in again. Finally Spike stopped, his cock buried all the way in Xander, and Xander wailed.
“Problem, luv?”
Xander would have been offended, but he could hear the edge in Spike’s voice. The vamp was barely holding on himself. Xander tightened his ass around Spike’s cock, and a low growl answered him.
The thrusts came harder. Their bodies slapped together so hard that it sounded like a slap fight. Xander cried out as he started coming and suddenly the heat eased as Spike came, and his come lubed Xander’s ass so he slid in and out easily. The new sensation sent pure pleasure crashing through Xander’s core. He panted, all his thoughts scrambled.
That’s when he really felt it. Spike’s pure satisfaction and warm possessiveness, yes. But he also felt Dorsey. He was hunting, moving warily and sending his senses out into the night. Benny was with Lizzy, his fears and needs raw as they talked. He could feel them. Lizzy and Willow were more distant whispers in his mind, but they were all there, connected to him. His children. His lover. His family.
Spike unhooked the chains from the ankle cuffs and Xander flopped down onto the bed and let Spike’s need for family wash through him. Family. Clan. Beings that would walk through eternity with him. The need had been a sharp edge of glass that Spike had never escaped.
“It’s why I could never walk away from Angel,” Spike said as he settled down next to Xander, his arm around Xander’s back. Then Spike slipped his leg between Xander’s leg and used his knee to press up into Xander’s sore ass. The little aftershocks of pleasure made Xander gasp.
“You feel me,” Xander said.
“Always have, since that first night you woke up tied to my bed. Felt you like a minion at first, but the sense kept growing.”
“But… I’m not a minion,” Xander said.
“Nope,” Spike agreed. “You’re not even a vampire, but when I saw what you did with Dorsey, I figured it out quick enough. You never were one for being alone, so any creature built out of your needs would want a partner. Need one, even.”
“So, this is me? This connection is because of what I am?”
“It’s what it means to be a slayer in this world. They need a partner.” Spike sighed. “We need to find another name or Giles is going to throw a wobbly.”
“That sounds like a good reason to keep the name,” Xander said. Yeah, it was a petty and shitty thing to say, but Giles hadn’t come to his wedding. And Giles had given him the job in Africa. And Giles had locked him up and chained him to a bed, although that was another Giles.
“Our Giles is not going to like me being demonified,” Xander pointed out.
“Fuck ‘em,” Spike said. “So, what about being called a hunter demon? There isn’t really a group that calls itself hunters in our world.”
Xander thought about it. “If we use hunter demon, you know people are going to ask what I hunt.”
“Wot? You plan to stay home and make dinner while I hunt the baddies?”
Xander pushed himself up enough to really look Spike in the face. “You want me to hunt with you?”
“Bloody hell, yes! I’m finding the biggest, baddest bugger we can find and waving him under your nose like a big piece of chocolate. Demons happen to like death and destruction.”
“Huh.” Xander dropped back down onto the bed. “The girls had exiled me from hunting, and that’s pretty much what caused my whole funk and the telling off of Willow right before Eve grabbed me.”
“Not their choice now, is it? You’re my hunter demon.” Spike kissed Xander’s shoulder before sliding his fangs into the flesh. Xander groaned as he felt the heat and pleasure of being fed upon and felt the growing warmth and satisfaction of feeding that flowed to him from Spike. Oh yeah. He did like his powers.
Chapter Forty-One
“Ready?” Spike asked as he pushed the shapeshifter to its knees. The monster cursed at them through its gag.
“Ready,” Xander said firmly. He really hoped they could get through purgatory without running into Eve, but the closer they came to this moment, the more he doubted it. He could feel her like an itch under his skin.
The shapeshifter screamed as Spike thrust a silver knife through its heart, and then he started chanting. The wind started to howl as a portal slowly opened. The shapeshifter got sucked in, even though Xander could still see the body lying on the ground.
“Time to leave,” Spike said, holding out a hand. Xander grabbed it and hung on tightly as they both jumped into the void. They fell a good twenty feet to the ground in that still forest that looked exactly like where he’d found Eve. Of course, it was possible that all of purgatory looked the same.
The shapeshifter jumped to his feet and growled, but then Eve appeared from nowhere and held out her hand. The monster blinked and looked at her like he couldn’t figure out what was going on. She wore the same white dress that flowed around her even though there wasn’t any wind, and she raised her hand to rest it against the shapeshifter’s cheek. “Go, play with your brothers and sisters, my child,” she said gently.
The shapeshifter looked around, his eyes empty of any sort of awareness before he ran off toward the thickest of the trees.
She turned to toward them at that point, and Xander scrambled back while Spike fell into a defensive pose. At that point Xander started praying. Earnestly praying. They needed Willow to open that second portal, and fast.
“You are not my child,” Eve told Spike in that same kind, freaky voice. “But my youngest has chosen you and you are worthy.”
“Good ta hear,” Spike said, but he kept his defensive pose and retreated wary step by wary step. Xander made sure to stay behind him, even as he could feel the growing need to go to Eve’s side.
“My son. My child. You have given me grandchildren.” She smiled at Xander.
“Not the sort you wanted,” Xander blurted out. Spike glanced over his shoulder, and even though Spike hadn’t said a word, Xander definitely had the feeling that he’d just been called an idiot and told to shut up.
Eve smiled. “No, not the sort I expected. But then our children often choose paths we don’t expect. We have to love them until they come home to us. And if someone tries to kill all of them-to commit genocide on the entire race-we have to destroy the threat so totally that no one will ever cross us again,” she said. She might be talking about death and destruction, but she still sounded faintly like Mr. Rogers. Or Mrs. Rogers, anyway. It was slightly terrifying.
“We plan to pass through, so we’re not looking for trouble,” Spike said in a tone of voice that reminded Xander of the way he talked to Dru.
She smiled at him. “You’re a good friend, and you’ll keep my boy safe. Now that he has given me grandchildren, he is free to come and go from this place as he can. I may not open the portal for him, though. This is where my children come to rest, and I have lost the key to the nursery long ago.”
“We brought our own keys,” Spike said.
She kept smiling, and Xander could feel that pull. He took a step forward, and suddenly Spike’s hand caught him.
“Let him come to his mother, Spike,” Eve said. Spike opened his mouth, maybe to argue and maybe not, but a huge crack of thunder rocked the ground, and Spike stumbled to the side. Xander took that moment to move forward. He felt dreamlike and disconnected from his body as she reached up to cup his cheek. Behind him, he could hear the angry growl, but he couldn’t find the energy to care as Eve petted him. “You gave me such strong grandchildren. I will honor them.”
“They weren’t what you expected.” Now Xander felt loss in his failure. Mother wanted more.
“No regrets, Xander,” she said, and his heart filled with joy as he realized she approved. “I cannot control my children, and you cannot control the direction of yours. The generations will show their true nature, one way or another.” Eve smiled, and Xander felt a distant rumble of fear as he realized what she meant. She’d chosen him to be evil, and he hadn’t been. He’d chosen Dorsey and Benny to be good, but he had no guarantees. And even if they were good, who knew who they would turn.
“They will be our bright children, and whatever path they choose, we will love them,” Eve said firmly. She dropped her hand, and some of the haze covering Xander’s consciousness evaporated. Behind him, he could hear the wind howl, and Spike hand a hand around his wrist. He was shouting, but the words were lost to the roar of the portal.
“Go with my love, son,” Eve said to him, and then the ground went out from under Xander’s feet, and he felt the pull of the portal as his body was flung roughly around. Spike held him, and Xander reached out blindly, finding Spike and clinging to him as the magic flung them across the realities. Willow might be powerful, but Eve definitely had the dimension travelling thing down better. Xander had no more than thought that, when he found himself falling. He crashed into the ground, blinking as he tried to focus his eyes.
He’d grabbed Spike’s ankle in the portal, and now he let go as they tried to untangle themselves, but Spike had a bit of a struggle because his coat had gotten wrapped around his head.
“Bloody hell. Hard landing there, Red.”
“Sorry. Are you okay?”
Xander looked up to see Willow kneeling beside a giant casting circle. Kennedy and Buffy were outside that, swords drawn, and Giles knelt next to Willow, holding two bowls.
“Will, maybe we should move faster. I’m getting the wiggins here,” Buffy commented.
Xander looked around, and the trees were gone. This purgatory had the same stillness, but the sky was gray and the land a barren sweep of nothing. No Eve. No exiled monsters. Nothing.
“I agree,” Giles said. “Willow, are you strong enough for the second spell?”
“Good to go,” she said, but her eyes looked heavy and her hair was streaked with white. She’d been pulling on magic hard, but the second her gaze locked with Xander’s, she smiled. “Hey, you. No more getting kidnapped, got it?”
“Got it.” Xander knee walked the few feet that separated them, and caught Willow up in a big hug. “No more strange dimensions or Armageddons without my favorite girls,” Xander vowed. He felt Spike’s hand on his arm, pressing into his shoulders, and a presence in his mind blocked him from embracing Willow fully.
Xander blinked and looked over at Spike as he realized that Spike had just stopped him from accidentally turning Willow into whatever the other Willow and Elizabeth had become. He’d nearly changed her without thinking, and the reality of that knocked him back so he rested his butt on his heels.
“Xander, are you okay?” she asked. She didn’t even know what he’d almost done.
“We’re find, luv,” Spike answered. “It was just a rough ride, and the boy’s a little shaken up. You have to remember, he’s new to his powers, and he loses track of his power levels easily.”
“Oh.” Willow’s face turned sympathetic. “I brought chocolate if you’re hungry. You said you could still eat human food so if you-”
“Chocolate. Give,” Xander demanded. She laughed as she reached for a bag.
“That’s our Xander, never too beat up for food,” Buffy teased him. Xander grabbed the first chocolate bar and ripped off the paper before shoving half of it in his mouth.
“And never one to mind manners,” Spike added. Xander put an elbow in Spike’s stomach and swallowed as fast as he could.
“Chocolate good,” he said, but he didn’t mention that it wasn’t quite as good as absorbing the energy of a demon. Xander stopped as he realized something. He turned to Spike. “Stolen energy, that’s what smells so good.”
“Took you long enough, pet,” Spike said dryly.
“You could have told me.”
“And have you argue? Not a chance. You can figure this shite out on your own.”
Giles carefully put the two bowls on the ground and stood up. “What about stolen energy?”
“It smells good,” Xander said. He totally had not meant to blurt that out in front of everyone.
Buffy moved closer. “Good as in I’ll wear a little of that behind my ear or good like, man, I could eat three more of those?”
“Um…” Xander grimaced.
“Great,” Giles said wearily. And sadly, that was still way nicer than the other Giles, but there was some connection missing there. Xander reached for that sense of Giles as the father figure, but all he could feel was Eve’s love. Okay, that was freaky, but clearly Eve had done a little rearranging.
“You like to eat stolen power?” Willow wrinkled her nose as she stood up. “You don’t think I smell good, do you?”
Immediately, Buffy moved closer. She lowered her sword, but she definitely had her fists ready to go.
Xander shook his head. “No. No, no, no and hugely with the enormous no. You don’t smell edible at all. Demons who steal power smell chocolately, and the other reality had these leviathan demons that eat pretty much everything, and they smell really good.”
“Leviathans?” Giles had his research voice on.
“World eating bad guys who the good guys accidentally let loose on the world,” Xander explained. Dean’s visions had filled in a lot of gaps, including some Xander really didn’t need to know. Alstair had not been a nice demon.
“Well that’s not good,” Buffy said. “Can we help?”
“It’s not our world,” Giles said firmly. “Willow, let’s finish the second spell and get home.”
“Spelling… on it,” Willow agreed. She knelt back down, and Xander carefully stepped out of the witch circle and backed away so he wouldn’t be looming over her. The whole time, Spike held his wrist.
“That’s new,” Buffy said softly as she looked down. Kennedy glanced over and gave them a quick thumbs up gesture before returning to watching the dead landscape for enemy.
“Better get used to it, luv,” Spike said firmly.
Buffy looked at Xander.
“What he said,” Xander added.
She smiled at both of them. “Okay, I can do that. I am, however, going to tease you about going there first.”
“Only if I can tease you about keeping him longer,” Xander countered.
“Ouch.” Buffy elbowed him hard enough to make him stumble a little, but oddly it didn’t hurt. He watched Willow and Giles work off of a page, and this felt right. It was home.
“So,” Buffy said, “you like to eat stolen power. Are we talking only demons or would you get the munchies for rapists and politicians?”
Xander blinked. “I don’t know.” Okay, that was creepy.
“We’ll keep him away from political rallies until we know for sure,” Spike said calmly. “And by ‘we’ I mean I will. The boy’s my responsibility, and I won’t have Rupert or Red or even you getting in the middle.”
“Oh.” Buffy blinked for a second and then gave Xander a worried look. “And is that alright with you?”
“Yep,” Xander agreed. “I am officially saying that I suck at having demonic powers, and Spike gets to be in charge of it.” He didn’t mention nearly turning Willow by accident. “If I had been like this when Willow went all dark, would I have wanted to eat her?” Xander stopped, not wanting to even think about it.
Spike tightened his arm around Xander’s waist. “Probably luv, but maybe you could have drained the stolen power out without finishing the job.”
“Disturbo,” Xander complained softly.
“Seconding that,” Buffy agreed, and now she looked grossed out.
Willow stood up and glanced over. “You two talk louder than you think, and I’m not disturbed. If I steal power, then I’m no better than a demon, and Xander has official permission, only please don’t ever call it eating me again, not unless you want to wake up with magically green hair,” she warned. “So, we’re ready. Everyone grab hands, and this time please put the swords somewhere that I won’t get poked in the boob,” she said with a nasty look in Kennedy’s direction.
Yep, this was home. As much as part of Xander missed Dorsey and Benny-as much as he wasn’t looking forward to the inevitable ‘Xander can’t do that’ fights-as much as his girls and Giles sometimes drove him insane-this was home.
“I didn’t know if we would be attacked before hitting the ground,” Kennedy said apologetically, but she slid her sword into its scabbard and clipped the leather strap over the end to keep it in place. “Besides, it might have been Buffy.”
“Oh no. You poked, you apologize,” Buffy said firmly. “I do not go accidentally poking people with sharp objects. When I poke people, I mean it.” Buffy put her own sword away before claiming Xander’s free arm so that he was sandwiched between Buffy and Spike. “Everyone grab a loved one and hold on tight because if you land in Siberia, you get to find your own way home,” Buffy said cheerfully. With her other arm, she grabbed Giles.
“I’m rather more concerned about landing in the void or being pulled apart at the atomic level,” he pointed out. But he reached out for Willow. Kennedy held a hand out for Spike, and he took it, completing the circle. With a quick chant and a dropped vial, Willow opened up the new portal that would take them all home. This time, Xander was determined to do things better, and if he screwed up, he was pretty sure Spike would be around to kick his ass. He felt the amused press of Spike’s mind in his. Spike would definitely be around to kick his ass when needed.