Childe of my Heart ~ Chapter Twenty-five
by Shanyah
 

He could be mowing Ms Johnson’s lawn to earn extra pocket money. Ms Johnson’s grandson stays with her some weekends. He’s old, at least seventeen. The other weekend, Bradley Johnson was staying over and they did the garden together. Bradley shook his hand afterwards and said, “you’re a hard worker, kid.”

He’s hasn’t washed his hand since that weekend.

He could be shaking hands with Brad Johnson, but he’s here, under her bed, watching her put together the Social Studies project that they don’t have to hand in for another forever. He can’t figure out how she gets him to do things he doesn’t want to do.

He bugs his eyes out and shines the flashlight into his wide open mouth, says, “you’re a geek,” without moving his lips or closing his mouth.

She pushes his shoulder, “stop with the monster faces. It’s childish.”

He waves the light beam in his face. “You should see the monsters in my basement. They’re not childish. They eat children.”

“I’ve been in your basement. No child eating monsters there.”

He puts the flashlight down and pulls the bowl of popcorn closer. “They come out at night, and I’m the only one sees them.”

“Scary huh?” She says.

He shrugs. “I keep weapons in my room in case they invade,” he says, chewing popcorn.

She’s got her thinking face on and he doesn’t like it. Jabbering usually comes after the thinking face. “Your plan’s got holes, it’s holey,” she says. “Suppose – just suppose – they invade your room, lock you inside with them and you can’t get out? You’d be dog food for monsters, Xander flavoured monster munch.”

The chewed popcorn won’t go down his throat.

“It’s like the first rule of safety Xander, you gotta get out before the monsters come in.”

He forces the popcorn down. “What’s the second rule?”

“Find somewhere safe,” she says.

“Yeah? Where’s safe, dumbass?”

“You’re the dumbass with your dumbass Lightsaber. It was dumb back in second grade and it’s dumber now,” she says.

“You looked under my pillow?”

“Don’t get huff-puffy, I have an idea.” She takes out all the stuff she’s been putting into her Time Capsule: newspaper clippings, movie ticket stubs…a photo of her dad wearing bell-bottom pants.

“Your dad’s defining the Stone Age. We’re supposed to capsule things that define the Nineties,” he says.

“He’s defining my embarrassment with that big hair. Oh, he’s getting buried, going into ground and out of my mind.”

“Yes,” he looks at the picture again, “I feel your shame.”

She laughs and leaves him alone with the popcorn and the empty Tupperware box. “Hey, I was gonna use a shoe-box for my capsule,” he shouts after her. “I didn’t know we had to use Tupperware.”

“Tupperware’s worm, earth and water proof. Using Tupperware will get you an A and using a shoe box will get you a D minus.”

“That’s okay, I’m comfortable with D minus,” he says.

She comes back under the bed and she’s brought bandaids, two candy bars, a whistle, a penlight and like ten dollars in change.

“Who’d you rob?” He asks.

“My piggy bank,” she packs the things she’s brought into the box and tells him to hold the flashlight still so she can write her phone number on a notepad.

“I’m not completely braindead, I know your number,” he says.

“The only thing you’ll know when Darth Vader’s chasing you is where the door is. You’ll wish you had my number written down somewhere then.”

“Like you can beat The Vader,” he says.

“We can beat him together and if you tell me the phone numbers of other safe people, there’ll be a gang of us. We’ll be the Against-Darth Squad,” she says.  

That’s how come he’s under her bed, because she cares what happens to him.

“Anyone else, Xander?”

“No.”

“What about Jesse?”

“I guess. And Grandma Harris. Tony pisses his pants when you say her name.”

She writes Jesse’s number down. “What’s Grandma Harris’ number?”

He doesn’t know it. Tony always dials and stays in the room the whole time they’re talking. He gives Grandma’s address, remembers it from the Christmas package to her.

When the emergency phone list is in, she puts the lid on the box and jams it down tight. “Say howdy-do to your Safety Capsule. You run to it supersonic fast when you’re in trouble.” She smiles then she looks at him close. “Xander, you should find an actual weapon if the monsters are actual.”

Maybe monsters aren’t so scary when there’s an actual place to run to, he thinks. “There’s no such thing as monsters,” he shines the flashlight on the bedsprings over her head. “But there are such things as spiders, big ones.”

She rolls out supersonic fast and he laughs.

*    *    *    *

A breeze combed the leaves, letting through spots of sunlight that dazzled Xander. He missed the Supersonic Redhead. He flopped his head to the side, sighing complaint when the hammock swayed to a standstill.

Shirt off and feet in flip-flops, Spike sat on a stool between the tubs, tackling this week’s washing. He’d said they’d all do their own washing, but that’s not how it had panned out. Spike sat in the sun and did his and Xander’s laundry every Friday afternoon and then he sunbathed on the butcher’s block until sunset. He’d get hot to the touch, but he didn’t tan, which was great for the tan-line problem. Spike was all one colour. He, Xander, was bronze man with the white hindquarters. Weird, how the same sun couldn’t bronze Spike, but bleached his hair, streaked the short blond curls platinum.

Spike hassled an indigo sheet out of the soapy water, swivelled on his stool and dumped the sheet into the rinse water. He pounded his fists into the sheet when it bobbed up for air.

“Easy Tigger,” Xander murmured.

Spike glanced then did a double take at him. “That sappy grin’s enough to make a vampire hurl.”

Xander laughed softly. “We buried a box-”

“We?”

“Willow, me. We filled this box with emergency supplies and buried it under a cedar tree…god, we were so young. We could strike down the evil empire with Tupperware boxes and toy swords.”

“Good old days?”

“Better days came when Buffy started at Sunnydale High,” Xander turned body to follow side-flop of head. “She gave me the nerve to trade up from plastic to actual weapon.”

“Otherwise known as watching the action from behind the Slayer’s micro-mini,” said Spike, signature rising of the scarred eyebrow.

“Hey don’t knock safety,” he jabbed a finger Spike’s way. “Safety bequeaths a mouse the balls of a lion. Channel pre-vamp you and maybe we’ll be at the same starting point.”

Spike killed the sheet twice with his pounding fists. “I don’t channel the pre-vamp loser. He’s dead – mostly. Got himself slayed, the twat. November 3, 1873. Two nights after his twenty-sixth birthday.”

“Oh, oh!” Xander jerked to sitting, “Your birthday! November 1,” he grinned, triumphant.

“No you git, his birthday was November 1. I’m not him.” Spike lifted the sheet from the water and brought it to the hammock. “He, like you, also had a toy sword, a pen dipped in black ink. Fancied he could conquer all ill with his rhymes. Sod couldn’t lyricate to take his mother’s mind off the slow death of consumption. Grab that end.”

Xander grabbed the sheet end Spike dripped over his lap, holding on as Spike walked backwards from him.

“Other blokes used worldly-wise bullshit to pull the birds, William zonked out writing ditties that could empty a football stadium at first line,” Spike stopped, the sheet stretched taut between them.

“He’d wake up with paper stuck to his cheek, specs lost in his curls. Shock horrored at the rude mess on his crotch,” he wrung the sheet counter-clockwise to Xander, his smile coiling as tight as the sheet and his toes curling under the deluge of rinse water. “Good heavens,” he said, “I do not desire Cecily in so base a fashion. Poncy mama’s boy. Best thing ever happened to William was Drucilla.” Flustered Oxbridge accent flowed into amused Londoner in the same effortless way that Spike reeled the sheet in hand over hand, drawing Xander to him.

“Dead mostly…?” Xander paused at the crack in his voice and cleared his throat. He was feeling a surge of sympathy for the mostly dead poet. “There’s a dead partly?”

Spike’s lips quirked upwards. He looped a length of sheet around Xander’s wrists as he talked. “Put his heart and his weakness on a scale and they balanced. See, once William got an idea into his heart he wouldn’t leave go of it. He may have been a fool but those high society boys couldn’t love the way William could. He’d have parted with his soul for a woman. Did, as it happens. So he could glow for heavenly Cecily, be who she wanted.”

The sheet was now wound around Xander’s forearms, and Spike gathered the ends of it, making a bulgy knot on the crook of Xander’s elbows.  “That kind of heart doesn’t die, Xander,” he said.

Xander’s old perspective worked fine, he didn’t want a new one and great sex having was really no reason to go losing his religion. “Love and soul are a twin set,” he said. “Sorry but no soul, no love. It’s in the Watcher’s Diaries in plain black and white, bold type too.”

Spike placed a hand dead centre of Xander’s chest and using him as leverage, swayed back. He stood for a beat that way, his hand still, his forearm muscles delineated under the supple skin.

“A quarter’s twenty five cents. Flip it heads or tails it’s still twenty five cents,” Spike spun and vaulted onto the butcher’s block.

“You lost me,” Xander said.

Boredom etched on his face, Spike leaned back on his palms, thighs splayed and legs swinging. “Name someone you’d give up your soul for, not die for - that’s a doddle for you knighted sorts. Someone you’d live soulless for, name them.”

Xander named no-one. He’d be nothing without a soul and would rather have died many grisly deaths protecting his soul than live a single day without it - and the unwanted point of view socked his grey matter. Spike felt the same way he did except in reverse, was that what he was saying? That a vampire was nothing with a soul? Human losing a soul or a vampire gaining one, the cost was the same: twenty-five cents.

“You can’t, can you? But I,” Spike stabbed a finger in the centre of his own chest, “the soulless and heartless undead who’s incapable of love or sacrifice can come up with a name.”

Whatever else he thought of Spike’s claim to love, he knew Spike committed, was the long haul guy. And Spike obsessed, kept an honorary pillow for Buffy in their bed. Xander had known all this from the start, but also, strangely, he hadn’t. He hadn’t known in the believing kind of way that a dead heart felt.

Spike looked away from him, spoke so softly he could’ve been speaking to himself, “Christ, Xander, is it that bloody hard to believe?”

Talking cleared the air, right? If only. Their parley had turned the black and white to gray fog and he believed it was risky to change direction in foggy conditions. The hitch was he’d heard foghorn loud the emotion behind the word Spike hadn’t said, the R word, and he related to it like Giles understood syntax. Spike didn’t need sex unlimited, he needed time-out to face up to the Rejection that had driven him to regain his soul, and a friend would give him time-out. Xander wanted to be a friend, but he also had the worst difficulty leaving safety. Spike was safe places and safe people.

Moulding his palms together as in prayer, Xander brought his hands close to his lips. Water leaked from the sheet, wetting his chest and the bulgy knot shifted in his elbows. That knot was about the same size as the one in his throat.

He trained his gaze on the snarled sheet and approached Spike. “Untie me,” he said. “Cut me loose.”

Spike walked his fingers up the stiff backs of Xander’s hands, crested the steeple and crowned it with his laced fingers. Extending his forefinger, Spike stroked a path from Xander’s straining Adam’s apple to the under side of his chin and sighed, a world of complication in that gust of breath.

“Untie you then what, luv? Close my eyes when you smile, plug my ears when you laugh?”

Turmoil happened in Xander’s chest region, a welling up. An overflowing. Spike bent his head, touching their foreheads together, sun-heated skin warming a spot on Xander’s brow. “Spike,” he whispered, angling closer, “I’m trying to be wise.”

“Me too,” Spike did his share of angling and then they were kissing.

Spike’s lips were saying unwise but beautiful things to his and he must have said something beautiful back, because Spike groaned and cupped his face in both hands, mouths joined in talking kisses. The sheet was an obstacle, stopped him from returning Spike’s touches and dampened progress in more ways than one.

“Spike, Untie me,” literally and not symbolically meant. “Now please, now,” he tugged to free his forearms, “Spike.”

Spike deftly uncoiled the sheet, dumped it on the counter and grazed his thumb along Xander’s jaw. “You okay?” He frowned.

“I, yeah, just not the way I like to use sheets.” Xander pretended to smile, breathless from the minor but ill-timed freak-out. “Are you going to Main Floor later?” he asked, clumsy change of subject.

Spike glanced down to where Xander’s hips were snuggled between his thighs. “Don’t see how I can go anywhere, less you back up a tad.”

Xander backed up, his smile no longer pretence.

Spike slid off the butcher’s block, took the sheet to the clothesline and spread it out. “Thought I’d hit the Fifth Ranking market for a cross-bow. Fancy showing me around? You’re more familiar with the layout up there.”

The freak-out reappeared and took on major proportions, dizzying Xander.  “I should get dinner started,” lame excuse. He hated the Dutch ovens and Spike was aware of this hatred.

“Won’t keep you long. An hour, tops.”

“I really should get dinner started,” he said. Then he nodded, thanking the invisible cheering audience as an invisible person passed him the Dim-Wit Award.

Spike ducked under the line. “There’s a problem?”

Nerves frazzled by Spike’s cocked head and silent foot-falls, Xander rubbed his wrists and snapped, “lighten up. You wanna go shopping, we’ll go shopping.”

*    *    *    *

Boots and duster on, Spike lit a cigarette and through a haze of blue smoke appraised Xander. Last he’d listened, hearts did not kick into frightened lub-dubbing at the mention of a jaunt on the town. Harris reckoned he could hoodwink a seasoned trickster, did he? He’d have to set the boy straight.

He dropped the fag end and ground it under heel. “Let’s go then.”

CHILDE OF MY HEART ~ CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

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