Anticlimactic

"You know, Spike. Sometimes, the weird is when it's not weird."

Spike looked up at Xander in silence, and they watched each other. "I hope you realize I'm waiting for you to explain yourself, pet."

"In today's paper. It's kind of a cool story. This family in Toronto's holding a funeral for their dad after he was hit by a commuter train in Newfoundland, right? They're getting ready to load the casket and his daughter gets a call. She totally loses it cause it's from her dad."

"Let me guess. He's a vamp? She turns up the next day with mysterious neck contusions, that's what they often say, ain't it? Wild dogs, maybe?"

"Nah. That's the weird part. Guy wasn't even the one hit. He read his obit in the newspaper, called, and it makes international news. That's gotta be weird. Make the second funeral anti-climactic or something like that."

"Well, pet, been there, you know. Or suppose I would have been if I'd had a funeral."

"You didn't?"

"Nah. Nobody noticed I was missing till I turned up dead, did they? And my Dru was never one for the consecrated ground." Spike looked almost embarrassed. "Woke up in a flower bed."

Xander made a sound not unlike a duck being quietly and efficiently strangled. "You're kidding."

"Wouldn't admit it if it weren't true, like. Spent my first few minutes of unlife picking tulips and jonquils out of my hair and wondering why I'd come over all lumpy. And once I'd got it sorted, my mum didn't even realize I was dead till I had my fangs in her neck." Spike pointed at the newspaper. "So don't go telling me from anticlimactic deaths." His shoulders slumped, and then he sighed, letting the last of the borrowed air from his lungs, and settling down onto the couch, head back on Xander's lap.

"If it's any consolation, your afterlife has been pretty impressive," Xander said, attempting to card his fingers through Spike's hair, then giving up, muttering about gel and petting him instead.

"Really?" Spike turned so quickly that Xander's hand landed on his forehead this time.

"Really."

"Not just saying that?" Smooth skin wrinkled beneath Xander's palm, then smoothed away with his stroking.

"Not just saying that. Reading up on you gave me nightmares all through Junior year?"

And if that didn't make the lights come on behind Spike's eyes. "It did?"

"Major heebie jeebies," Xander confirmed. "Emphasis on the heebie."

Spike snuggled down. "Well, then. Suppose that's a bit of all right. Thanks, pet."

"Any time, sweetheart. You want someone to confirm how freaky scary you were pre-chip? I am so your man."

"Mmm."

"Spike?"

"Yeah?"

"Are you purring?"

"Vamps don't purr."

"You are purring over the fact that you scared the shit out of me in high school?"

"Good times, luv. Good times."