FIC: The Reason (Spike/Xander, Spike & Dawn, R, 1/1)

Hey all -- today’s my day at summer_of_spike. Thanks so much for the mods for putting together this project for the second summer in a row, and for allowing me to participate and whip up some Spike-y goodness.

I have two things to share with you. The second will start in a little while (*rubs hands together in anticipation*), so keep a look out for that.

The first offering is this story, set during the summer after season five of BtVS. I hope you enjoy it.

Title: The Reason
Author: EntreNous (entrenous88)
Pairing: Spike/Xander, Spike & Dawn friendship
Rating: R
Complete: Yes -- this is part 1/1

Summary: “They’ve found that one of them attempting to look after Dawn isn’t nearly as effective as two.” During the summer after season five, Spike and Xander have something in common for a reason.

Notes: 3, 362 words. Thanks to darkhavens for looking at an earlier draft of this fic.



***************
The Reason
By
EntreNous
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It’s another one of those long summer nights, made longer by the piss-poor television shows that Xander and Dawn insist that they watch. And of course it’s made longer still by Spike’s uncomfortable sense that pronouncing himself through with whatever dull plans the others have chosen is no longer an option.

He’s got responsibilities now. He can’t go anywhere.

Xander finishes off the last piece of pizza while Dawn picks the pepperoni off her one slice, making faces at the greasy red circles as she piles them on the side of her plate. When Spike cocks an eyebrow at her, she sighs and finishes the crust. That’s something at least. Somehow Xander has gotten her to drink a glass of milk already, and Spike doesn’t want to know what sorts of threats or promises he had to levy to get that to happen.

Sometimes he thinks watching her on his own would be more bearable. But they’ve found that one of them attempting to look after Dawn isn’t nearly as effective as two. She’d gotten herself into some tricky spots early on, the kinds of things that are better handled with two of them forbidding and crossing their arms. When he caught her talking to a boy who had climbed up the roof to sit outside her window, he’d sputtered out indignant words while Dawn turned red and the boy nearly fell down and broke his neck in his haste to get gone. Dawn had cried for much of the next day, insisting that her social life might as well be over, and that she hadn’t done anything at all, just had been talking to him. Besides, as she pointed out, she hadn’t done anything that Buffy hadn’t done at her age. That was when Spike had left the room, and he and Dawn didn’t exchange more than a word for the next three days.

Willow had foisted Xander on him then. “You can’t really . . . deal with her, if you’re not talking to each other,” she’d said gently, and he jerked his head in reluctant agreement at that.

The next time, when Dawn had lied, saying she had a sleepover and instead going to the drive-in theater with a gaggle of other girls, it was both him and Xander asking her what the hell she’d been thinking. Spike had to admit it was easier.

Once he might have heard about her little attempts at rebellion and grinned, thinking she was well on her way to being a proper troublemaker. Those days are long gone now.

Funny, but for all the years he’s seen, until this summer he’s never felt truly old.

* * *

So double-teaming for the Dawn-supervising it was. Willow and Tara were an obvious choice for team one. And with Anya having left soon after the final battle with Glory, he was stuck with Xander, apparently for all of eternity or at least until he could convince Willow to switch them off once in a while.

The fourth or fifth time the two of them had covered watching Dawn together, Xander whispered that he didn’t know how Buffy had done it all by herself, along with patrol and Glory and everything else like making lunches, doing laundry, and curtailing phone time.

Spike had just grunted. They were there for one reason, and he wasn’t about to pretend it was to make small-talk with a carpenter. It wasn’t just rudeness, though that had been a bonus. He was counting on his silence to discourage Xander from ever saying Buffy’s name aloud again to him. He didn’t want to hear it from any of them, not Giles, not Red, not even Dawn. But Xander was the one he saw the most, so somehow it was from Xander that he wanted to hear it the least.

Of course it wasn’t so easy to disregard the boy entirely, not when they had to make sure that Dawn kept up with her classes. The summer school issue had been point of contention enough with the Niblet. Willow had tried to explain that Dawn had no choice but to attend the make-up classes because she’d missed so much after -- but then no one had been able to finish that thought, whether it was after her mum died or after Buffy died. Before Willow could say anything else, Dawn fled the room in tears.

But when Spike was there to check that she got ready the night before the courses started, her book bag was already packed. And when Xander came by to pick her up in the morning to drive her to the school, she was sitting on the front porch, grim and silent, but ready.

* * *

Now the summer classes are customary, part of the schedule, and Spike supposes they’re all grateful for something to structure Dawn’s time. Something to shape the passing hot days besides the endless act of marking them off on the calendar, something to quiet the unspoken wish that the longer nights would arrive a little sooner and ebb away at the relentless sunshine they all shy away from now.

“Finished your math homework?” Spike asks in a weary voice.

“Yes,” Dawn says sharply. He gives her a look and she huffs at him as though he’s been nagging her for hours. “No. But I’ll finish it tomorrow morning before class. I have a study period. They have study periods in summer school. Did you know that?”

Her lips are set, her eyes fixed on her plate, and that alone makes Spike suspect that they do not in fact have study periods in summer school.

“Better do it now,” Spike says. “Then you can use your study whatever to get ahead and earn some extra credit. Want to go to a top university, don’t you?”

“What for?” Dawn asks bitterly.

“For . . . ” Spike pauses. He doesn’t have a good answer to that one.

“Well, there’s no point in trying. It’s not like any of us can afford to send me anyway,” Dawn points out.

“We’ll figure out a way,” Xander says under his breath. His eyes never leave the television set. Dawn glances at him in surprise, but then turns back to Spike, a smug look on her face.

“Xander didn’t go to college, and he’s fine. He’s got a great job. And I bet he hardly ever did his math homework.”

“This is true,” Xander says, stretching out his legs on the coffee table. “I couldn’t deny it if I tried. That stuff they’re teaching you is useless, not to mention way too hard. Still, you should do your homework, like Spike said. And you’ll go to college, because . . .” He pauses. “Because of the fun.”

Spike uses the remote to snap off the television show. “You think Harris’s done all right for himself, do you?” He leans forward, sweeping his gaze over Xander with derision before shifting his attention back to Dawn. “Please. Does nobody remember when the boy couldn’t hold down any one job for more than five days?”

Spike ignores Xander’s indignant “Hey!” and continues on. “It wasn’t so long ago, you know. When I was staying in that fungus-growing environment he was calling home sweet home, he collected new hideous polyester uniforms by the week. Sometimes he barely made it out of training for his burger-flipping-have-a-nice-day-ing before they tossed him back out to the streets. Don’t want that for yourself, do you? A life with no future?”

Dawn juts her little sharp chin outwards, but then her whole posture deflates. “No.” She reaches for the pile of miniature candy bars that Xander had brought over and unwraps two sullenly.

“I’m fine now,” Xander points out, clearly aggravated.

“If he’s fine now, it’s no more than a fluke,” Spike tells Dawn. “Sure, now he’s making money, but tomorrow he could be out of work like that and no one would bat an eyelash.” He snaps, and Xander flinches. “You need something to fall back on.”

“You know, that’s it,” Xander says loudly. “Just because you think I’m a failure, mister-never-succeeded-at-any-of-his-fiendish-plots-in-this-town, well, it doesn’t count for anything. I’ve had enough of you putting me down, and--”

“And what?” Spike sneers back. “Don’t know where you get off trying to tell anyone anything. You’d think that with the demon chit leaving you high and dry you’d start to understand that you know nothing about women. So I can’t see as how you’re one to give homework advice to teenage girls, because --”

“Fine, I’ll go upstairs and do my math homework!” Dawn shrieks as she jumps to her feet. The two of them look up at her in surprise. “I get it; you don’t want me to waste my life working at low paying jobs. But you don’t have to put Xander down. And Xander, you don’t have to be such a jerk to Spike.”

“But I didn’t --”

“But he started--”

Both of them start to speak at once, voices raised in defense of their actions, but she puts her hand out. “Just . . . stop it. You know what? I’d rather figure out geometric proofs than listen to you two yell at each other!”

She turns and runs, her small fists clenched at her sides as she pounds up the stairs.

“Wow,” Xander says with a shake of his head. “We suck at this.”

“We do not,” Spike says shortly. “You do.”

Xander makes a strangled sound in the back of his throat and drops his head back to rest against the back of the couch. A few moments of angry silence pass.

“Least she’s doing her homework now,” Spike offers. “Can hear the pencil scratching away.”

“She could be writing in her diary, you know,” Xander mutters. “About what a couple of mean guys we are.”

Spike stretches out his own legs on the coffee table and says nothing. After a moment Xander gets up and heads into the kitchen. Spike’s jaw tightens. One little tiff and the boy’s just going to turn tail and run, is he? Hardly seems worth the borrowed breath.

But a few minutes’ later Xander tramps back in, two open beer bottles in hand. He hands one to Spike, and they sit on the couch and drink almost companionably until the bottles are empty.

“We’ll figure out a way how?” Spike asks suddenly.

Xander blinks. “What was that?”

“Figure out a way to send Dawn to college how?”

“Oh,” Xander says uncomfortably. “Well, she’s got a few more years of school. I have some money saved up for . . . well, it was supposed to be for the wedding. And now, it’s just . . . I thought maybe I could ask some of the guys at work about investing some of it.”

Spike nods. “She’s a smart little thing, too. Should get some sort of scholarship or whatnot. Probably won’t need to spend all of your saved up dosh.” Why he cares what Xander does with his savings he has no idea, but it seems the thing to say.

“I hope so,” Xander says with a shake of his head. “Her dad doesn’t seem too interested in helping out, so we can’t count on him. But Dawn, she could really make something of herself, you know? And . . . Buffy would have --”

“Don’t,” Spike says sharply. Don’t say that name, he wants to say. But Xander stops, so he does as well.

“So what do we do now?” Xander asks after a pause.

“Throw all this away,” Spike says. He gives the pizza box a kick, and accidentally knocks Dawn’s uneaten candy bars onto the rug. “Expect Willow won’t want to face this when she comes by after Dawn’s classes tomorrow.”

“No,” Xander says emphatically, and that’s different enough that Spike turns to look at him. “I mean . . . what do we do now? With Dawn? With all of us pulling parenting in shifts? With the hellmouth without a slayer? With Buffy --“”

Spike’s bottle breaks in his hand when he clasps it hard, but he hardly feels the glass cutting into his skin. “I thought I made it clear before --”

“No,” Xander says, and now his voice is loud, adamant. “You don’t get to be the one to say whether we talk about her or not. You’re not the only one that misses her.”

If he could, he’d draw his fist back, hit Xander hard in the face until the blood from his glass-mangled hand was mingled with someone else’s blood and bruises. Until it all mixed, until the red he saw wasn’t just the flare of the sharp ache in his chest or the anger clouding his vision, but the ooze of hurt and pain made substantial in torn flesh and broken bone.

Can’t of course. Chip in his head and all that. Xander knows that too, and right now Spike hates that knowledge more than anything.

So instead he stands, dragging Xander up with him by the collar, backing them both against the wall. Everything in him is thrumming as he bites out “I don’t just miss her. Can’t you get that through your skull? I loved her.”

Xander’s eyes widen, but for the moment he makes no move to shake Spike’s hold on him. “So what? You think you’re the only one who did? You think Dawn doesn’t love her, that Willow and I don’t spend every day thinking how empty everything is now that she’s gone? You think you cornered the market on sad?”

If he could, he’d put Xander’s head through the plaster.

Can’t of course. Chip.

From the way Xander’s eyes are flashing at him, the thought rushes through his brain that maybe Xander would like to do the same to him. Crush his face, transfer all that throb of lack that Buffy’s left behind in all of them into tearing Spike down, making him bleed.

He won’t, though. Too good for it. Well, not actually too good, but the boy thinks he is, and that’s what’s staying his arm right now.

All of it -- what Xander knows, what Xander says, the ways that Xander is right, the way Xander fancies himself too noble to pummel Spike good and bloody -- all of it is making the rush of fury come ever thicker and faster, and Spike curls his fingers into the fabric of Xander’s shirt harder and harder until he feels his nails just starting to bite into flesh. The blood seeping from the glass cuts on his hands into the cloth isn’t much, but he’ll take whatever he can get right now.

“Let go of me,” Xander says, voice low.

“Make me,” Spike shoots back.

Xander looks down at the blood on his shirt, looks up into Spike’s eyes, and for a moment, just a moment, Spike thinks that he’s going to give him what he wants.

Then they’re kissing, if it can be called kissing when it’s more teeth than lips, more frantic bite than sweet slow slide. He hears Xander’s t-shirt ripping instead of feeling it coming apart in his hand. The sound of the tear it makes matches the sharp intake of breath that’s left Xander’s mouth and passed into Spike’s.

They back away from each other just for a beat before they hurl back into a lock of arms that can hardly be called an embrace. Xander pulls Spike’s t-shirt off him in one swift, harsh move, separating the devouring kiss only for the moment when it goes over Spike’s head. Rip and shred, and what’s left of Xander’s shirt is on the floor, and the two of them are chest to chest, angry sounds reverberating back from one of them to the other as Spike pushes Xander harder against the wall and Xander matches the motion by jutting back against him and gripping Spike’s shoulders tight enough to bruise.

“That’s it,” Spike growls out, and even to his ears it’s hard to say whether he’s announcing that he’s putting a stop to this or saying that this is exactly right. He says it again, still unsure, but Xander’s mouth covers his once more and the words are muffled.

No time to think about it more than that before they’re dropping to the floor with grunts, pushing and pulling at each other and rolling one atop the other. Whether one or both of them is doing it to make the gain of position or feel the weight of the other on top of him, Spike’s past caring even to guess.

Belts are unbuckled, zips yanked down, and for the first time in what seems like forever he’s not set on what’s over and done or dreading the nothing that’s ahead. He just is -- on top of Xander, feeling the full body burn of dragging himself and Xander into a steady rhythm, digging his fingers into Xander’s hair and swallowing the cries from his mouth.

Once more, twice more, then Spike just stops counting, because it feels so good, because Xander feels so good, because he feels this. Back and forth, clawing and biting, grunts and smothered sounds until Xander’s body is a bow beneath his and they’re riding it out together.

Xander’s breathing is harsh, and his heart feels like it could thump right out of his chest. Spike lies on top of him for as long as . . . well, as long as Xander will let him, listening to the blood rush through his veins and feeling that pumping heartbeat slow itself back to steady.

Another minute passes, and Xander clears his throat awkwardly. Spike rolls off of him rather than give him the chance to speak. When he gets to his feet, Xander seems as though he’s going to say something, but instead he shakes his head and heads upstairs to the bathroom.

Spike stands up and listens to the distant sounds of Xander splashing water on his face. But then when he hears the bathroom door knob turn, he grabs his t-shirt off the floor and pulls it back on.

When Xander walks back down the stairs and into the room slowly, Spike is sitting on the couch again. Two new bottles of beer, cold and damp with condensation, sit on the coffee table in front of him. After a pause, Xander walks over, still bare-chested, and picks up one of the bottles.

“I don’t like you,” Spike says in a low voice. “This doesn’t change that.”

Xander snorts into his beer, and then examines the label. “Yeah. Like this is the first time I’ve ever had sex with someone who didn’t like me.”

“You’ll stay until morning,” Spike says. It isn’t a request.

“I always do,” Xander says simply. He tips his head back to take another swallow of beer, and Spike follows suit with his own.

Neither of them looks up the stairs towards the reason they’re both supposed to be here in the first place.

* * *

“Did you guys kiss and make up?” Dawn asks sardonically.

It’s the next morning, and Spike’s watching her eat almost half of the bowl of cereal he’s fixed her. More than she ate yesterday, at any rate.

He thinks about asking her what she means by that, but he isn’t sure he wants to know the answer. Instead he says, “Something like that.”

A tap of a horn outside lets them know her ride to school is here -- some friend and her mum. Spike takes the bowl and cereal away. “Come on then. Off you go.”

“No more fighting with Xander then,” she says as she shoulders her book bag and backs out of the room.

“Can’t promise you that, pet,” he says, and she rolls her eyes at him.

“Whatever. Just . . . be nice to him. He’s nice, and he’d be nice to you, if you’d just let him.”

“Right.” Spike’s mouth is dry suddenly, and he jerks his head towards the door. She sighs and finally leaves the house.





*~*~**The End**~*~*