Chocolatey Goodness

Part 17: Pillow Fighting

rated NC-17 (R for this section, but the whole chapter.. oh wait, you figured that out?)

__________________________

Not too long ago, as reckoned by a vampire -- even one who can't decide exactly how old he is on any given night, depending on how cheesed off he is with his Sire -- Spike fell. Hard and fast and all those other romance novel cliches, for a sniping, infuriating, holier-than-thou loser whom he'd once detested -- and should still, if Spike were any kind of a decent evil bastard. That descent into madness, though, had ended in a roll on the basement floor and a mind-blowing fuck, and had left him with the unexpected gift of a warm, corruptible boy who licked chocolate peanut butter off Spike's face and snored in his ear.

Now, he was falling for Xander again. On the whole, if Spike could have concentrated enough to remember it, he would've preferred the first experience. This time, there wasn't any chocolate.

He plummeted, arms flailing, scrabbling for purchase on wet gray nothing that slid cold through his fingers, misted on his skin. Nothing to touch, nothing to see -- just endless twilight and wobbling imaginary shapes behind his eyes, that disappeared when he tried to focus on them. He could have been falling for seconds, or hours, or years, with nothing to pass the time there in the fog. He called something -- a name? His own or another? Or was it something else -- a question? Who, what, when, where, why... Even himself. They all flew from his lips. Gone. Sucked into the void.

He did remember...something. There had been fire. Fire and light and screaming, he remembered. He'd known that feeling, that pain that had screeched in his skull, but a thousand voices had shouted back at it. Not fair! Didn't do anything! Didn't hurt anyone! Just wanted to touch! Laughter, high and musical, familiar as the pain, though older -- then silence. No real answer, not that he'd expected one, but the electric torture had finally faded out, to be replaced by something even worse: nothing at all.

The emptiness, the silence, drowned out everything, even his own familiar mental gadflies. Couldn't hear himself think, couldn't think to wonder why. It terrified him, because it meant the smart-arsed little voices that lived in his mind had nothing to say to him, or they were gone entirely-- burned out of existence. Alone even inside himself... Jagged bolts of panic up and down his spine as he continued to fall. He almost welcomed the fear, because it gave him something to concentrate on.

Without warning, that fear was gone. No room for it in the space of shit! and whoosh and shudder as he hit bottom. Couldn't see, could barely feel, but he just knew he was spread out all over the ground -- smashed flat as a vampire pancake, and gooey with it, blood like chocolate syrup running out and away.

But he wasn't, he realized after a moment. Not pancake-smashed. Not smashed at all, except maybe cider-smashed, fourteen sheets to the wind as he scrambled to his feet and swayed. Saw nothing beyond the sudden swirling colors in front of his eyes, heard nothing beyond the ringing in his ears and the silence in his head, but he was still alive. Undead. Whatever. He would have kissed the ground if he had a clue where his lips were.

*****

Slap and splash of feet on wet pavement, and what a surprise-- Xander's running.

Damn, but he's good at this -- something to be proud of, yeah? Kept his ass alive on more than one occasion. Maybe even saved Buffy's, Willow's, when he's run to someone else for help, or for weapons, or to spread the word: "Badness on its way," so they could all deal with it together. He's not an athlete, could never be, can't pace himself, just runs until he falls -- but it's meant something in his life. More than just yeah, Harris is a pussy, like we didn't already know.

Not here, though.

This is the nightmare-place, which he dimly knows, and he's never saved anyone here, not even himself. This place is feet on road and heart in mouth, with the taste of stale vomit at the back of his throat. This is thinking he should stop and laugh, soon, at Miss Scary Thing 2000 and her dead-fish smile and her 'I think you'd better run now,' like she's the be-all-end-all compared to some of the shit that's chased him in the past. Yeah. He'll do that. 'Cause it's funny, right? He'll stop and laugh. Maybe a little later, like after he's dead. Then he'll have plenty of time.

This time could be different, though. He might get away, no matter that he never has before, on this road. He might find a place to hide. He's big now. He's a grown up. He's a man. No little pj-wearing boy-legs here-- they're long and strong, scattered with dark hair. And he really is good at this; he knows running, knows his feet and hands, knows lungs and stretch and sweat and how long he can go without doubling over and clutching his stomach and gagging on his own breath. Knows everything, so well that he can run with his eyes closed, lost in this rhythm of fear and flight.

Flee or fight? It's never been a question, not in this place -- but this time he might just be fast enough. He might win.

He knows he's lying, but he runs anyway, head down, wet hair flopping in his face. He doesn't need to see what's up ahead -- there's never anything new.

*****

Just when balance had returned to Spike, when he'd begun to sense rock beneath his feet, rain pattering on his skin, sentences beginning to form in his mind complete with subjects and predicates, it happened. Wham! Something slammed into him, hard, and he was swaying again.

It wasn't that falling, screaming terror of being alone, come back to get reacquainted -- this was real. Real as the ground, real as blood in his mouth, real as the echo of pain in his head. Something touched him, flesh to his flesh, and in that instant, everything changed.

Everything. Changed.

Everything... changes.

Warmth against him, behind him. Body. Muscle. Bones. Skin. Not alone, and there's a faint cheer from within his skull. Not alone inside, then, either. The other, the not-Spike, presses against him, hands scrabbling at his shoulders. Scratchy chin against the side of his neck. Wide chest at his back. Stomach, hips, thighs, hot and hard down the length of his body.

Hardness of more than muscle -- stiff, insistent cock slides in the rain-slick cleft of his naked buttocks.

Naked. He's naked. Like Adam with the fruit in his mouth, he knows it for the first time, and calls it good, echoing a first-father long cursed into memory. Naked. God. Skin against skin. Wet skin against his back, his arse, ticklish backs of his knees, and God, are you there, did you give this to me? This warm body against me, this breath on my neck? Warmer than anything in the cold rain. Sweet, familiar, strange and sharp. Is he mine?

Rapture. Someone once told him, years past believing, about the Rapture, and he had laughed, and scraped her mouth with his fangs, and said it was over, long over, and they were all that was left on the earth. She'd believed him, had whispered a bloody novena into his kiss, but he knew nothing, then. This. This is it, this warmth, this man, this the holy terror, and he could stand here forever, leaning back into this touch.

But there's no forever, there's only now. Panic -- sudden, fast, furious. Screaming fear and shame and cold air on his neck where there was warm, and none of it belongs to Spike. Sparks tzot-tzot the length of his spine again, goosebumps knobble his skin -- all from the outside. The other. He can feeltastesmell it pouring from whoever is pressed against him, naked skin shivering, shaking, building until he wants to scream, until he thinks that body will knock him over just to get him out of the way.

Instead, the world explodes. Or perhaps the world stays still, and he explodes. Flies apart, pieces of him shooting off like shrapnel -- then pulled back together. Sucked whole and solid into one quivering, thrumming body, no sign of the other one to be found. Lost in the dark? Pushed on past him? Gone, yet not, his skin still warm from the presence, and then...

He's running. Abrupt and awkward from a standing start, but fast as he can, fast as that body had been moving when it slammed into him. Running blind with something hard beneath his feet and big, cold raindrops splatting on his head and the scuff in his ears of soft-soled shoes on asphalt. No time to question why he's suddenly clothed; only time for running, mindless as a hunted fox.

Footfalls ring out behind him, louder than his own. Loud as thunder, loud as breaking bones or bootheels on stone, and it just now occurs to him why the one who hit him had run so fast.

It's coming...

Words and thought and the knowledge of his own name Spike, my name is Spike, once it was Will, but not now... return with the realization, but so does fear, and this time it's his own. Bad. Wrong. Worse than anything. Worse than a cold bed. Worse than falling. Worse than silence in his head. That silence is gone, anyway. A single mind-voice chants its counterpoint to the footfalls in the distance -- an endless litany of bugger and fuck and bloody sodding hell, gotta run, it's gonna touch me. If it touches me...

Spike runs, and behind him, something laughs. He almost thinks he knows it.

*****

BANG! Bang-thud-a-bang.

Tara sat up with a start, her heart thudding almost as loudly as the sound she'd heard. She realized with a flare of guilt that she'd fallen asleep, sitting in a chair by the sliding doors, watching the rain. Maybe it was thunder? Willow was still clacking away at the keyboard, so maybe she hadn't heard anything after all.

After Willow's weird little laughing jag, she'd returned to the computer with a vengeance. All of her nervous energy had faded away, leaving behind it a calm, focused drive to search for answers. The photos she'd found in Spike's jacket had disappeared into Willow's pocket with not another word spoken about them.

She has to have figured it out, Tara had thought, but she hadn't dared to break Willow's good mood by asking -- and it scarcely mattered, at the moment. Instead, she'd tried to help with the research -- but a few moments of watching those fingers fly over the keys was all it took for Tara to realize Willow was in her own groove. She'd called Wesley a few times on the cell-phone, early on, and asked Tara to run though the list of dream-related spells she knew, but after that, it was back to typing and clicking. Willow didn't need anybody hovering over her shoulder, no matter how politely she insisted that Tara wasn't a distraction, so Tara had taken a seat by the window, to wait.

The sky on the other side of the water-streaked glass had been gray as the thing that surrounded Xander, though far less disturbing. The rain had glowed a misty silver with the city lights behind it, and she'd thought absently how different it was from home. There, twilight would have been long gone, the house far enough from town that the dark just swallowed it up when the sun went down. The patter of the raindrops was the same, though, that old lullaby against her bedroom window, soft and low. Eventually her eyelids must have drooped as she watched and listened, as they were drooping again now.

Thud-bang-thud-thud-thud!

Tara blinked, and saw Willow jump in her seat. She hadn't imagined it -- somebody had knocked on the door, and now they were pounding. Willow must have been so into her rhythm that she hadn't heard it at all, the first time.

"I'll get it." As if she could make up for her dereliction of doing-nothing-helpful duty, Tara rose to her feet and hurried over to open the door.

In front of her stood two dripping-wet people and one dry one, with a folded umbrella over his wrist and a stack of books in his arms.

"What took you guys so long?" Cordelia pushed past Wesley, then Tara, without waiting for an answer, and walked directly over to Xander's bed, peering over the rolled wooden footboard at him.

"I was just gonna ask you that," Willow responded, standing up and stretching. "It's been forty-five minutes since I talked to you last. I was about to call again just to make sure you hadn't run off the road."

"Sorry," Wesley held up the pile of books as he walked in. "We had to stop at my place, as well as Cordelia's." Willow was across the room to take them from him in seconds. Tara ducked out of her way and into the bathroom to raid the towel rack. Wesley was still apologizing as she came out. "The traffic was horrendous, as well. People in Los Angeles drive like idiots, in the rain. It's a wonder more of them don't get killed on the freeway than in the alleyways."

"Especially when they let some people drive who have no concept of what the phrase 'Angel, for God's sake, pick a lane' means," Cordelia said, turning around to face them. Her tone was light, but her face was pale beneath the California tan, her eyes clouded. She accepted a towel from Tara with a distracted, "Thanks," and carefully wrung out her long hair into it. Then she flicked the wet ends in Angel's direction. "I mean, just because you could walk away from an intimate encounter with a Mack truck doesn't mean the rest of us wouldn't suffer from severe tire damage."

"He was...er...passing, Cordelia," Wesley said. He gave a worried look in Angel's direction, as if he didn't quite believe his own explanation.

"Uh-huh. That usually involves signaling. Or so the DMV guy said, the first three times I took the test. Ooh, for me too? Thanks again." Cordelia grabbed the second towel from Tara's hands, the one she'd meant for Angel, and wrapped her hair up in it. Then she moved to the chair where Tara had been sitting, and flopped down into it. "This...sucks. Why couldn't the Powers-That-Can't-Just-Send-An-E-Mail have bopped me with a vision? Preferably before Xander decided to sleep with the enemy? I wouldn't even have bitched about the headache, this time."

She was staring beseechingly at Angel, as if she thought he knew the answer, but Angel said nothing. He just stood there, water dripping from his leather jacket and the wilting brown spikes of his hair. Wesley had already bent over Willow's computer, studying the screen with great interest, but Angel stood silent in the middle of the room. Tara started to offer him a towel as well, but he shook his head. Not really at her, she realized a second later, but like he was just waking up. He walked over to Spike's bed, and gazed at the still, pale form with an intensity that she could feel, though she couldn't begin to guess what he was thinking.

Then a hand on Spike's arm, and she could have told Angel it wouldn't work. Neither would shaking Spike, or yelling his name, or shifting his own face into demon-mode, as liquid as the rain outside, and growling at him -- though Angel tried them all in the next few minutes. Everyone in the room turned to watch, when they heard the half-animal growl.

No reaction. No movement. The same as it had been for an hour and a half, now. Until Xander kicked at his covers again, and Spike's still-booted foot jerked in perfect synchrony. Angel started, bending closer to look at Spike's face, then over at Xander. It wasn't illumined in a flash of lightning, or anything so dramatic, but as Tara looked at the gold eyes, half hidden under the folds of his vampiric brow, she knew. He knew.

Then Angel straightened to his full height and turned fully around to face them, and something like lightning did spark in those yellow irises. Tara decided she definitely didn't want to be around if he ever did turn evil again. But the strange planes and furrows melted away, and his face looked more human than any of them, for a second. Confused, like he hadn't really believed anything Willow had told them on the phone, until he'd seen it himself, and now...

It was gone as quick as it came-- but there was that spark, again, in brown human eyes. He was suddenly all business, glancing back and forth between Willow and Wesley, who stood there with books in their hands, now.

"Are they in danger?"

"They might be," Wesley answered with a nod. "We can't be sure."

Angel nodded. "What do we do?"

"We...um..." Willow looked at Wesley, who nodded -- then she took a deep breath and looked back to Angel. "We wait."

*****

Spike's running.

It's not the running that's the problem. He's chased down hundreds of victims foolish enough to think they had a chance, that they could hide from something that sees in the dark -- that they could travel faster than the dead, and yes, the dead do travel fast, Mr. Stoker. They've been wrong, and he's been happy to prove them so. He's even chased Dru, games of tag in the forest or the jungle or down a windy London street, her laughter floating back to him mixed with snatches of nursery rhymes. 'Run, run, as fast as you can, can't catch me, I'm the gingerbread man...'

But this is different, because he's running from something-- only he doesn't know what. Just that if he slows down, it'll get him. If he looks back, it'll get him.

It's not right; William the Bloody doesn't run from anything, except demons at least five feet taller or three feet wider than him, or have more teeth than he can count in a single glance, or... He's got a list of rules, somewhere. Unwritten, like his lengthy essay on how to bollocks-up conquering the world in two easy steps, or his treatise on why a real man would never bleach his hair with anything that doesn't burn your nose hairs off when you sniff it. But the rules exist all the same, and nowhere do they say 'Run like your head's on fire and your arse is catching, from something you haven't even seen.'

So why can't he stop? He's back to himself; he knows his name and his current hair color and the fact that he once tried to justify using 'blancmange' as a rhyme for orange, when he was quite, quite drunk and writing limericks on a wall in Marseilles. The panic's still there, still burning his throat, but he can swallow it enough to think, so-- Why. Can't. He. Fucking. Stop.

Why are his legs pumping, feet splashing in puddles on the road, as he runs towards something in the distance, just slightly brighter than the gloom that surrounds him? He can finally hear, finally see, not that there 's bugger-all to hear or see but road and dark and that light in the distance.

It's not exactly safety, but it's something. It draws him, and he runs faster-- though not on purpose. His body just moves more quickly, jerking him along with it. Heart pounding, blood rushing through his veins, pulse echoing in his temples. Breath in short gasps, as if his lungs are conditioned to running from things, and...

Bloody hell. Lungs. He's breathing.

Spike's breathing. There's air. There's blood. Inside him. Pumping, not sitting still and doing its little magic vampire I'm-not-gonna-tell-you-how-I-keep-you-walking-and-talking thing. He'd stop still and stare at himself, if he could. But he can't make his legs stop moving, mouth stop holding that panic taste of copper and battery acid. He runs on towards the brightening light, because he can't stop running.

He can listen, though, to the alien beat of a pulse in his ears. Something he hasn't felt since he looked into Dru's round, mad eyes a hundred and twenty years ago in London, and saw them turn gold as she darted for his neck. He can feel that same pulse in his throat now, feel his chest rise and fall with the rhythm of his footfalls on the road.

Something's wrong with this. This isn't him. He's a vampire, and vampires don't breathe -- he's pretty sure it was in the manual. How? He can't concentrate on how. He can fight the streaks of pure fear that try to tell his mind not to think, to just run blind like his body, and he can conquer those, but it takes all he's got. No energy left for how.

The lights ahead glow brighter, and he can see outlines of a city, in the distance.

Nah, not really a city. Not like L.A. Not like London, not even the London of his youth. Just a town with delusions of grandeur. One main drag and a bunch of suburban neighborhoods clustered around the center, as if being close to the brightest lights can protect them from what walks down those streets at night-- or runs down them. The university off in the distance, and beyond it, the vineyards and the sea.

He can't see any of that, but he doesn't have to. He knows it. It's the shape in his head of the lights, the buildings. The battered and beaten metal sign looming out of the road ahead of him, that should have Rod bloody Serling standing behind it, telling him which way to turn, but instead it says 'Welcome to Sunnydale. ' Too bad he can't stop to run it over. Kick it down. Something. It's tradition.

Spike laughs as he runs past it, into the city, into the rain-misted lights and down empty, lonely Main Street. Laughs inside, since his body won't let him laugh for real. Laughs at the sign, laughs at himself. William the Formerly Bloody lives -- resides, rather -- in a town with a Main Street. In someone else's basement, with a warm human lover who no more belongs to Spike than the bed they sleep in or the cable they pirate.

He knows this much, just as he knows he shouldn't be here now, passing the Sun Cinema, dark and shuttered, the marquee as blank as his memory of where he should be, or how he got here. Spike laughs again, in his head, but it sounds hollow, and echoes too loudly in his skull. Or are the voices in his head laughing back at him? He feels his body shiver as he moves through the heart of town, the rain pouring down on him. Can still feel the terrifying pounding in his chest, his instincts telling him to wise up and ignore it, as if this stubborn body will let him. Need to look around -- check all the shadows.

Mustn't get complacent. Not safe just because it's familiar. How long ago did he learn that, at familiar hands? Familial hands. Not a human to be seen on the streets, like for once they all know something nasty's out and about. Much nastier than a pathetic crippled vampire who can't bite up anything worse than cartoon cereal. No hunting, no stalking, no riling up the townsfolk anymore, not for Spike -- and not smart enough to even lock himself in the basement and cower, like they're doing. No, he's out playing lamb to the slaughter, for something he can't even turn around to identify.

Wait! There! Someplace safe! his body screams at him. Run, thwap, rubber soles on asphalt, then on concrete, as he jogs up the sidewalk. Takes the front steps of the ruined Sunnydale High building two at a time, crosses the courtyard and he's standing, stopped, finally stopped, at the skewed front doors.

Safety? This is supposed to be safety? Running towards the Hellmouth? Body, what the hell are you thinking? Giggles in his mind, from the snarky little voices, and Spike thanks whatever gods look after insane demons that they haven't disappeared after all.

Still, he can't let them know he's actually glad to hear from them. Mind, what the hell are you thinkin'? We are vampire. We don't giggle. Especially hysterically. One of them snaps at him. We don't breathe, either, you thick-headed git. But he can't quite wrap his mind around what it's trying to tell him, or which one it is. Still-- whatever the thing that's chasing him is, it's out there, and it's not inside, which is reason enough to go in, as if he has a choice in the matter, when his body's already yanking on the doorhandles, and tumbling into chaos.

The doors slam shut behind him, and it's nothing like he expected. Brightly-lit hallway. Surrounded by laughter and shouts, swallowed up in a crowd of pushing, jostling bodies, moving along with them. Touch of warm shoulders and arms. Squeak of locker doors. Smell of students and teachers and chalk dust and teen spirit. Wrong, wrong, wrong, like all this has been wrong...

Not right-- these halls should be dark, burnt-out, should smell like fear and cordite and fried snake, which smells vaguely like chicken. Spike remembers this place -- dark and silent and the world was ending, and the sky had fallen on him, and somebody pulled him out from under it.

Now it's like that world's been turned on its head, and he's walking on that darkened sky, the earth above it bright and loud and teeming with life. The student-body is an animal unto itself, writhing its way through the halls, sweeping Spike along with it. An electric bell rings, somewhere in the ceiling.

"Hurry, we'll be late!" comes a young girl's voice from somewhere in the melee. It's familiar. Willow? He tries to shout for her, shout 'Red?' but nothing comes from his lips.

The crowd-snake thins out as it undulates further down the corridor, until it's only his own uncontrollable body that's pulling Spike along. There, at the junction of the next hall, a classroom door. Slightly ajar, and he hears the girl's voice raised in laughter, within. His body moves toward it, and the fear-shivers calm, just a bit.

Before he can get there, though, a flash of silver. Dark blur out of the corner of his eye, and Spike's feet stop moving. If he could control himself, he'd be frozen by what he thinks he saw, but can't have -- as it is, his head turns towards the wall of its own accord.

To see the hallway and its contents reflected in the scratched-up depths of a full-length mirror.

Reflected. He stares at it, transfixed by the image before him. It blinks when his eyes decide to close and open. Runs a hand through sweaty rain-drenched hair as he feels his own hand making the same motion. Straightens his button-up shirt. But it isn't him.

Dark eyes, big enough to suck him into the mirror, muddled with uncertainty. Dark hair, long and falling in his face, water dripping down his skin. Blue and green print shirt, the collar open a few buttons down to show the tanned throat beneath. Stubborn chin above it, and thin lips twitch nervously, though they look full enough when he pouts or frowns or sucks on his own finger-- or someone else's cock. Not that he's doing any of those things, but Spike has seen them all before.

Just never echoing Spike's own motions in a silvered surface that he's never expected to get any use out of, ever again. But then, it isn't him.

Spike studies himself in the mirror. Not himself. Xander. Xander in the mirror.

Not even the Xander he knows, not quite. Something wrong with the body before him; tall enough, but too slender. The hair too long in the wrong places, the paisley print shirt an older sort of loud than the tropical ones the boy wears now. The brown reflected eyes are soft and huge, like somebody's just let him know Bambi's mum doesn't make it to the end of the flick. And there's something else...

There, on his forehead, where the sweat-damp hair is sticking. Something written there, stamped red on his skin. It tickles Spike's memory even as his hand -- Xander's hand? -- reaches up to rub at the letters.

V-I-C-T-I-M ...

Xander in the mirror frowns back at him, when his scrubbing motions do nothing but make them stand out more. Red letters against pale skin, still wet from the rain, or from the sweat dripping down from his long bangs. "I'm not..." Spike hears, as Xander tries to comb that fringe of hair down to hide the marks. The lips in the mirror move. Spike's lips move -- but the voice is Xander's. It cracks on the last word.

What is this? Which of us am I? Is this the Red King's dream, or mine? And all of a sudden, as a soft nineteenth-century voice starts misquoting Alice at him, he knows. This isn't real, though it's real as anything, at the same time. The working lungs, the beating heart, the uncontrollable limbs -- it makes a lunatic sense. It's a nightmare. He's dreaming he's sharing Xander's body, like the hero of too many bad B-grade sci-fi movies -- or one of old Rod's little half-hour monochrome mind-fucks. He's trapped inside his lover, who can't even hear him trying to shout. Be a good flick, if he were curled up with Xander watching it, bowl of M&M's on the armrest between them -- but he's not.

If he's dreaming, he should be able to wake up, yeah? He tries. Thinks really hard at the mirror. My name is Spike. I'm dead, but still kicking. My hair's peroxide-blond, I've got cheekbones to die for, and I'd sell my left tit for a good hot fudge sundae. I'm dreaming, and I want to wake up.

Nothing, except Xander looking back at him, young and scared and far too edible. Hot fudge indeed. Needs to find a vampire to protect him. Be the only one to eat him up. He can't tell what part of him is thinking it. Which voice. The demon, the man, the peanut gallery. Such a little boy, in this big scary world.

"I'm not," Xander's voice says again with Spike's throat, with Spike's tongue, and Spike thinks, Not what? Edible? Oh, yes, believe me, you are. But Xander shakes his head, brushing his brow with his fingers, frowning.

"You should leave the narcissism to those who possess something worth studying in a mirror, Mr. Harris. Don't you have a class to get to?"

A little dash of panic again, because the body knows this voice. Spike finds himself spinning around to face...a bald head bobbing a few inches under his nose. It's a troll, he thinks at first. Not like Heimarr, the towering Norse buffoon he met in that bar in Copenhagen -- but an honest to god Three Billy Goats Gruff troll, the tiny sort that hides under bridges and snaps you up, snip snap snuff, with its sharp little teeth. A troll in a suit.

"Don't you have a tombstone you're supposed to be rotting under, Snyder?" he hears, feels Xander say, defensively brave.

Snyder... I know that name... Snyder... Xander's voice in his memory: 'I should introduce you to Principal Snyder.' Night air rushing past them on the way to Giles's flat to play Quiz-Kids and eat pizza with the Scooby Gang, Spike concentrating on keeping his demon and its territorial rage in check, barely hearing his lover try to make conversation. 'No, wait, he's dead. But then, so are you. You could do lunch and discuss my dreary home-life...'

The little man snorts. "Somebody's gotta keep things in order around here. It's not as if he could handle it."

He points down the hall. Another man, taller, stout, stands next to a row of lockers, playing with a strange yellowish dog-creature that jumps up energetically to lick his nose.

"He says it followed him to school. There are rules about that. Rules!"

The tall man pats the laughing dog-thing on the head; laughs along with it. "Down boy! That's a good doggie..."

It rips his head off. In one gulp. Spike's impressed. The blood fountains from the man's carotid artery, spattering the floor. Strangely, it doesn't make Spike hungry, in his dream of Xander's body, of what Xander would be thinking; he just finds it aesthetically pretty.

"See!" Snyder says. "That's what tolerance and understanding get you. It's no way to run a school. Now I'll have to get a custodian to come clean that up, and you can never find one when you need one..."

The laughing thing turns its face towards them, and Spike can see what it is. Not dog at all, but round-headed hyena, gold eyes flashing above a grinning, blood-drenched muzzle. 'I ate a pig once,' Xander confesses in Spike's memory. 'I was kind of possessed...' It laughs, in bubbling silver circles, faster and faster. He knows this laughter.

Spike blinks at the bulky, headless form that still stands somewhat forlornly in the hallway. Blinks again when Xander's voice says, "I didn't do it. I wasn't there. I never bit anybody's head off." He sounds like he's apologizing for something, all the same. The hyena still laughs.

The large man's body stumbles around for a bit, then drunkenly weaves its way down the hallway and out of sight, still trailing blood. The hyena turns around fully, apparently finished with that meal -- but it's licking its lips. Looking hungrily at Spike and the strange, short man, who gives a knowing look.

"You didn't do it, Harris?" He laughs, short, sharp, nothing like the crazy looping laughter of the hyena. "No, you weren't there, were you. Not your fault. Never your fault. You're just the whipping-boy."

"I'm not. You don't know me." Spike feels the surge of anger before it reaches Xander's voice. "You don't have any idea what I am."

"Don't I?" Flash of an image in front of Spike's eyes, almost too fast to focus on -- the faded blue of Xander's light summer blanket. Not like his own memories -- more like what he'd felt at Woodstock, second-hand acid-trip coursing through his veins. Barrage of sound, feeling, smell, all packed up into a second's worth of experience. Scent of fabric softener. Cramp in crabbed hands clutching the blanket. Denim under his naked stomach and a hard bulge against his side, his own as hard and hot beneath him. Cool air over his bare arse and a rush and SMACK and he's back in the hallway staring at the sneering, balding stranger. "Whipping-boy."

"It's not the same." Spike's head shakes from side to side, but he can't tell from the voice if Xander believes what he's saying. If he, Spike, that is, believes what... Whatever. Personal pronouns make no sense, so he discards the need to worry about them.

Especially with worse things to worry about -- the hyena gives a strange snarl, as if it, too, is unsure, then the sound changes. Of all the noises in the world, Spike can recognize that growl. The body is frozen, Xander's mouth uncharacteristically still.

Run, dammit, boy. You're bloody good at it when you have to be, dragged me along just fine on the way here, so do it now! This animal isn't what's been chasing them -- Spike can tell that, though he still has no idea what it was -- but that doesn't make it any less deadly. And he knows it's a dream, but... But if he can't wake up and it eats him-them-him, is he any less dead?

"Um... I think I have a class to get to..." Xander babbles abruptly, taking the body a step towards the classroom door. There's a sudden, bone-crushing grip on his/their upper arm.

"How fast do you think you can run, whipping-boy?" the little man asks. "Faster than that?" He points at the laughing animal, whose mouth opens to reveal rows and rows of sharp, white teeth. Too many. Spike's eyes, Xander's eyes, flick to the classroom door again.

"I don't have to run faster than that," Xander whispers.

Eyes close against his will, and Spike's trapped in darkness for a too-long moment, before the second rush of images comes. Running again. Running, running, through a cemetery, an arm heavy over his shoulder, someone's hand reaching around the body between them to clasp his free one as they all three run. Then... The weight gone, the hand in his, small, warm, still there, but nothing between them, and the sound of snarling in the night.

It's gone. His eyes open, and he swallows hard. "I don't have to run faster than the monster," Xander says. "I just have to run faster than you."

Snyder frowns, but his grip loosens, dissolves into mist. Spike's hand goes right through him as the body takes off running for the door at the end of the hall, the one with the frosted-glass window. The hyena's laughter echoes behind him, but he doesn't look back. He can't look back, because Xander chooses not to.

"Harris, you can't keep running forever!" Snyder calls after him over the chortling hyena, and something that sounds like the crunching of tiny troll-bones.

"Can too," Xander mutters as they slip in the back door to the classroom. "Can too, can too..."

The door shuts silently behind him, and the body crouches down. Walks, silly, like a duck, hiding below the level of the other students' heads. There are giggles. Someone hums "Be Kind To Your Web-Footed Friends."

It's insane. Insane to be trapped in some parody of Xander's body, that speaks to strange little Ferengi-like men in the hallway in Xander's voice, and runs from slavering hyenas with Xander's legs. Sneaks into Xander's classroom so the teacher won't catch them coming in late. Spike is already losing the clarity that he'd had moments ago. Forgetting that it's a dream. It's just him, in Xander's body, sharing this space. Trying to get to a seat, somewhere up ahead, without anyone grassing him out.

"Hey Harris -- walkin' kinda funny there. Rough night in the old basement? I think they sell a cream for that somewhere..."

His head whips around -- to shush the braying voice, hopefully -- but Spike feels his throat gulp at the sight of the large youth slumped lazily in the desk he's just passed. A sort of man-mountain-thing, with three cheerleaders draped over him, giggling and cooing. He's seen the kid before, somewhere. A photo. Pic of Xander and Jonathan the supertwerp, and this one, all decked out with weapons for the graduation party. But...

Spike and languages -- spoken, whispered -- gestured. Body language. Always good to know what's likely to get you beat senseless if you chat up the wrong sort of twelve foot demon because your bird fancies a threesome. A little faerie that whispers in your ear, Dru says. Gaydar, the humans call it. Spike thinks it's funny, since half the ones who say they have it couldn't tell if their own mother was bent or not.

This one makes Spike's little shoulder-faerie sing the Hallelujah Chorus. So why as many birds hanging off him as a hyena has fleas?

The hulking football player winks and leans down to look Spike in the eye. "Gotta maintain the image, bud. Got another two years before I get to come out." Then he sits back up and whispers something in one cheerleader's ear. Tinkerbell hand-waving motions in Spike/Xander's direction. She titters appreciatively.

"Don't listen to him," a familiar voice says softly. He looks up to see Tara, in a desk near the front of the room, motioning him up. "He's just here to confuse you."

Isn't everyone? Willow, sitting in front of her, is young -- far too young, hair down to her waist, parted in the middle. Tara shouldn't know her like that. Spike shouldn't know her like that, except for rifled photos in Xander's shoeboxes. The room is full of students, some Spike recognizes -- at least one he's positive he ate on parent-teacher night. They're chattering, tittering. They all seem to be laughing at him. The body moves on, though, stealth-crawling up the aisle towards her.

Tara's brushing Willow's hair, Long strokes, from the top of her head to the tip of the burnt auburn length. She motions him to sit across from her, and the body -- Xander -- complies. The seat ahead of Willow is empty, but a large piece of notebook paper has the word "SAVED" scrawled across it, and lies on the desk.

In front of Spike, of course, is the Slayer. She turns around and waves.

Willow chatters excitedly to Tara, occasionally glancing at him. " ... I threw holy water at one of them. And it worked, even though I'm Jewish-- I wonder what that's about? And then Buffy threw this cymbal at this one who had Xander and crash-bang! Poof! Slayer one, vampire none! You should've been there. Well, not really, cause, y'know, terrifying, but still..."

Spike feels himself tap Willow on the elbow. "Hey, Wills, I thought Library Guy was all about us not telling people Buffy's the Slayer." Xander's voice in his mouth. Still strange, and suddenly strange again, to be speaking to Red with it. As strange as Xander's name once felt on his tongue, back when it was all 'droopy boy' and 'donut lad.' Spike feels, hears it again: "Oops. Guess maybe I said that a little too loud myself, there."

She looks over at him and smiles. "No, it's okay. This is Tara. She's my girlfriend. She knows all about this stuff. Tara, this is Xander."

His eyes blink. His mouth speaks. "Your girlfriend ? But...um... what about me? I mean, what about Oz?"

Willow shakes her head at him, still smiling. "Oh, I've decided to give up on men -- they're too hairy. But boys are fine -- I'm gonna concentrate all my efforts on being a mom. Tara's gonna help me -- we've got a kitten together, and everything. We're getting married next week, and then we're gonna adopt you."

"Excuse me?" Spike feels himself frown. "I'm not a boy." Willow looks at him gently. "I'm not! Anyway, how are you gonna study for your PSAT's, if you adopt me and have to spend all your time ironing my clothes so they don't get all wrinkly from being out in the rain?"

"No problem. Tara knows this great spell. Works even better than irony. I mean ironing." Willow tilts her head and looks at his face. "See, he needs a mom, Tara. He's got something all over his forehead." She reaches into her knapsack and pulls out a tissue. Spits on it, and rubs it across Spike's brow. Xander squirms.

"It won't come off -- I tried."

"No, it's all gone, really, Xander," Buffy chirrups. Her nose wrinkles, then twitches, then starts to grow longer. Just a little bit. Almost enough to make it a real nose.

Xander's hand rubs Spike's forehead. "You don't have to lie to me, Buff. I know it's still there."

"Xander, it's gone -- honestly." Willow calls across the room, and Spike's eyes follow, so he can see someone he hadn't, before. Harmony, sitting in a desk by the window, putting on lipstick. The shades are pulled down, the whole length of the classroom, the only light coming from the overhead florescents. "Hey, Harmony, let me borrow that mirror, please."

"Excuse me? I think not -- you let your boyfriend be mean to me." Harmony snaps the compact shut, but holds it in her hand. Pouting. Spike knows that pout -- he's slapped it off her face a dozen times, and she's come back for more. But she's a child, now. Model's face rounded with baby fat.

"Hey, I dumped him, didn't I? And it's not like you need it anyway. You can't see yourself in it."

Harmony huffs and tosses that long blonde hair back over her shoulder. "I can pretend. I've gotta look good for my date tonight -- my boyfriend's taking me to France."

Spike has his doubts about that one. Willow does too, apparently. "On a school night?" She sounds older. Stronger. The Red he knows, though her face is still young and pale and nervous. "I bet you don't even have a boyfriend. Just give me the mirror, already."

"I do too. He goes to another school. You wouldn't know him." Harmony grimaces, but tosses the compact at Willow, who opens it and shows Spike his reflection. Xander's reflection. Same bruised dark eyes. Same suspicious frown.

Nothing written on his forehead, though he saw the word as plain as day, in the mirror in the hall.

"See? Mom-spit gets everything off."

You're not his mother. He has a mother. Though he might be better off with you, come to it.

She reaches into her purse and hands him a Hershey Bar. "Here -- eat this. Chocolate always makes you feel better."

Xander doesn't take the chocolate bar. "No. Um. No, thanks. Not always." Fingers rub at Spike's forehead. He can feel the word, still there, still burning on his skin. What's it mean? Whose victim? Not Spike's.

"I'm not ! Dammit, I'm not! Why can't he see?" He can hear Xander's voice saying it, but his own lips don't move. His own throat doesn't buzz. The sound just hangs in the air.

Spike tries to frown, though the body is already doing so. Why couldn't who see? Blind as a bat, you are, his mind-voices taunt. Wonder whatever happened to those spectacles you won't admit you ever wore?

There's a cough from the front of the room, and Buffy tugs on his sleeve.

"Keep it down, Xander. You want big-ears to hear us from the library and make us go fight things? I just wanna be a kid, today." She's suddenly dressed in teen-sized Osh-Kosh B'Gosh overalls, fluffy hair in two pigtails. "I don't like to kill things."

"Not like some people..." Spike hears a voice say softly in his ear. Not Xander's, but familiar. So familiar. No one seems to hear it but him. Is he losing it, more than usual? His eyes flick left and right, as if his body has the same idea. "Paranoid. You are crazy, Xander..." the voice whispers at him. "Just as crazy as Dru."

And what's wrong with that? Crazy's good, crazy's fine. Crazy's... Wonderful, when you're not cradling him in your arms and hoping you've not lost him... Shut up. Shut up. Sod off.

"I'm not." Xander says again.

"You know, if you keep talking English, the teacher's gonna yell at you," Buffy tells him. Pokes him on the arm. "You have to speak French. Like me. Veuillez permettre aux poissons de continuer de danser. Je suis très attiré à lui."

Something about a fish? The teacher would rather they talked about waltzing fish? A glance from the Xander-body around Buffy at the person sitting up front. A smooth dark head of hair, bent over a book.

Then she looks up. "Oui, Buffy. Tres bon." Sparkling insect eyes, and waving antennae. Her head descends again.

Spike's Xander-head bends low, whispering. "She's not the French teacher. She's the biology teacher!"

"She's subbing. And her name is French. Work with me, here." Buffy rolls her eyes, and turns to Willow. "So... do you think he'll be here? He's always late." Only she says it in questionable French: "Le pensez-vous serez-vous ici? Il est toujours en retard."

"I don't know -- he had a big night on Friday, what with the staking and all. But I can't believe he wouldn't show up today. I mean, it's all anybody's talking about!"

"Who's he ?" Xander asks with Spike's mouth. "And I am not a retard."

Tara frowns. "What do you mean, who's he?"

Harmony laughs from her seat by the window. "Everybody knows who he is. What are you, new?"

"He's only the coolest guy in the school," Cordelia says. She sits across the aisle, on the other side of Willow, and snatches Harmony's mirror away. "Which would explain why you don't know him, of course." Two tiny red dots on her neck, and Xander blinks when Spike would have. Recognizing them for what they are, though neater than most would be. She accentuates them with a skinny lip pencil, until they're huge, though still perfectly round. "There -- now everybody can see the hickey he gave me on Friday."

"Oh, as if he's even interested in you," Buffy tosses her ponytails. "He walked me home on Friday night, after the Harvest."

Harvest. The word rings a strange tingling bell in Spike's head. Nothing he's ever associated with Sunnydale, specifically. Something old. Angelus, blathering on about his grandsire. Some half-crocked prophecy that had Darla running home to the Master for three years to help research, and in the end, slinking back to them. Tossing her hair the same way Buffy had just done, saying he was off his nut and she'd much rather travel to places with clean sheets and a decent skyline.

"But who is he?" Xander's voice, Spike's mouth.

"You know him, Xander. We talk about him all the time. He's our best friend in the world. Besides you, of course," Tara says. "Don't you remember?"

"But I really don't..."

"Maybe you're crazy..." the whisper that no one hears. "Maybe you forgot him. Can't be that everybody else did. Has to be you."

Spike looks at the empty seat, because his head turns that way. 'SAVED.' For who? He'd never heard of any best friend of Xander's, besides Willow and the Slayer. No accounting for taste there.

"Shh..." Willow says to Tara. "Xander's got...problems. We don't... Ohmigod, there he is!" She squeals and points to the front door of the classroom, just to the left of the bug-teacher's desk.

A tall shadow outside it. The body blinks. Spike can feel his heartbeat get faster. "No," Xander whispers. "Dammit, you can't come here. Buffy's here."

Whatever it is, Spike's suddenly shaking in his seat. Something bad. Something he doesn't want to see. Something that makes him want to run, now, but he's petrified by Xander's immobility.

And there's a knock.

"Oui, je sais que vous êtes là." The teacher answers without looking up from her book. "You're late. Do you require an engraved invitation?"

"Well, kinda, yeah..." A young male voice, nothing special about it.

"No-- don't let him in!" Xander jumps up from his desk. Spike can feel the tension singing in his too-tall, not-quite-balanced-right body.

"Xander, what's wrong with you? He's your friend! You go bowling with him, remember? Xander?" Willow pulls at him, but Xander is standing. Backing away from the door. Looking at Buffy, who's grown smaller and smaller, until she is a child, in her blue overalls.

"You can't let him in."

"En français, Xander."

"I don't know the French. But you can't let him in!"

"But she doesn't have to." The whisperer is back. High and almost whining. Silver. Rainy, like the rain he can hear pounding on the shaded windows. "You'll let him in yourself. You always do."

"No," Xander whispers back. Spike's throat muscles clench. Teeth grind, then bite at his lips. "No." But it comes. Pouring forward from his mouth, like everything in him is being sucked out, in this one sound. Spike knows that feeling, knows the loss and the weakness and the letting go.

"Come..."

No.

"In."

The lights go out.