Chapter Six
It wasn’t that his invite had been lost in the mail, Spike told himself sarcastically. Even if his crypt had an actual address, he doubted they’d have honoured him with a postage stamp. Bloody bastard had just assumed he wouldn’t want to attend the glorious nuptials, despite having been the one to keep his neck in tact all summer. Since Spike and Buffy had come out into the open, he was buggered if he’d be left out. Even if he didn’t really care about him one way or another.
He cared about Buffy, though. And Harris was Buffy’s friend. And truly, it didn’t gall him at all that he’d noticed the distraction of the brunette that had steadily developed into full blown fright. It should have satisfied that deep-seated barometer of evilness inside Spike that the git was in way over his head. It should have…but it didn’t. Instead all he felt was worried, mainly that the groom-to-be was about to make the worst decision of his life and perhaps destroy a decent woman in the process.
Spike nursed his pilsener and kept to the shadows. Last thing he needed was for Harris to turn his beefy head and find himself under vamp surveillance. But as luck would have it, the lumberjack turned and caught Spike mid gulp-and-stare and instead of prancing over and attempting to lay it to him between the eyes, he nodded dejectedly and continued on his own liquid path of self-destruction.
It didn’t pique Spike’s relief at self-preservation more than it did his interest, and figuring he’d might as well go for broke, he stood, picked up his bottled beer and stalked his way to Harris’s lonely table. Pulling out a chair, he sprawled on it and stared intently at the one human he still had good dreams about killing.
“And what has the lonely carpenter so glum?” he began, figuring that stirring the hostility would get them both off this shaky ground neither of them had counted on.
Xander looked at him, his eyes troubled and nearly dead before he replied bitterly, “Nothing you’d understand, Fang Face.”
“Is that right?” Spike prodded, his voice filled with mock derision. Something about Xander and his lacklustre attempt at a putdown sparked Spike’s curiosity and he peered a little deeper at the glorified bricklayer. “Why don’t you try me? Not like I don’t have a century’s worth of observation at my disposal.”
Xander took his time acknowledging the remark, took longer to decide that though it was Spike seated opposite him rather than one of his friends, it didn’t seem to matter worth a damn. In fact, maybe having the vampire barge in on his lonely night was a godsend. He could unload and not worry about the massive pilings of guilt his friends would bang him on the head with. Not that the revelation itself felt any less crippling, particularly once it was out on the air and no longer bottled up in his own brain.
“I don’t think I want to marry Anya.”
The lack of a sarcastic jibe at his expense from the vampire who’d received more than his fair share from Xander’s own tongue, made the youngest male member of the Scooby gang itch. Feeling his skin tighten—almost as if a twitchy Willow were punishing him for something she didn’t even know—Xander stared intently at Spike with his breath held until it hurt.
The silence stretched uncomfortably, Xander breaking out in a fine sweat, ready to be blasted for the fool he knew he was. And then a closer look revealed Spike to be in shock and it was an expression the human had never seen on him before. With things already off-balance and confusion muddling his brain, Xander tensed, ready to run again from the fears that had been plaguing him for months. Ready to run from Spike—and if that image didn’t beat all. Running from a chipped vampire it would kill him to admit to still being afraid of.
“Don’t want to marry Demon Girl?” Spike questioned slowly. “Or just don’t want to get married?”
Two excellent questions and no matter how long Xander had allowed them both to tumble around in his head, he was no closer to working the truth out. Nor had beer made the dilemma any clearer, though perhaps that was exactly what it should have done.
He felt himself shaking even as he shrugged his shoulders in an attempt to show how little it really meant—that he wasn’t really serious—but then the forced laugh died in his throat as he truly looked at Spike and was stabbed by the most piercing stare of his experience. He felt scanned, dug into so deep that every false promise and hateful trick had been uncovered. What did Spike see when he peered so deeply into his soul? Or was it that Spike couldn’t sense its existence, being without that coveted prize himself? Was Xander deficient just like he’d been suspecting?
Swallowing hard, his gaze clashed once again with the table and he grabbed his brown bottle, threw back the remnants of his beverage and tried not to burp. It slipped past his lips despite his concerted efforts and Xander fought not to blush like a boy trying to impress his girl.
“I’ll take it by that manly belch that you either can’t be arsed giving me a reply, or you just don’t know the answer.” The vampire’s gaze narrowed as he took in the number of empty beer bottles scattered across the table’s surface, his lips tightening in annoyance. “Or maybe you can’t bloody see straight anymore and didn’t actually hear the question.”
“Asss riveting as it always is to talk to you,” Xander slurred unhappily, “I’ve got more important things to think about.” He was lost once again in the thousand-mile stare and he tried desperately hard not to blink. The smirk on Spike’s face distracted him, though, and he found himself groaning loudly at the failure.
“Yeah? What’s that then?” Spike prompted, his ass firmly wedged in his chair and his own beer taking precedence on the crowded table.
“Like…like,” the brunette tried defiantly until resignation hit him in the chest and he felt like buckling under Spike’s knowing stare. “Like trying to get out of a wedding without Anya killing me?”
Spike almost sighed in relief, feeling like he’d narrowly escaped falling far from his element and never regaining his feet again. But then something stalled his natural reaction of wanting to rub it in the git’s face and he stopped to think what Buffy would think when she found out he’d been right there while her mate had his little drunken meltdown. And then he pictured the ex-demon crying at being humiliated in front of everyone she knew and suddenly the situation didn’t seem so funny anymore.
“So we’re back to the original question. Which is it? You don’t love the girl? Or you’re just too young to be tied down to someone? Not that I can blame you for that last. Never could work out why you humans were always in a rush to hitch yourselves to someone else when…” His brow furrowed. “Hmmm, all right, I guess you don’t have loads of time. Definitely not an eternity to spend with someone getting on your nerves, betraying you every time you’re broken back is turned, dumping you for a preferred shag with oozing secretions adding to the experience. Why marry a perfectly good girl who loves you—not that I can work out the how or why of it—when you’ve got all of nothing to look forward to?”
Xander watched as Spike chugged back some more of his beer, a self-satisfied smirk lifting the corners of his mouth. He had sudden images of that mouth puckered and plastered to Buffy’s—those memories were far too recent for his liking—and he shuddered.
“Okay, what just happened here? Was that your demented way of telling me I’d be making a mistake by not marrying Ahn?” He waited, not buoyed with confidence when Spike seemingly choked on his mouthful and then glared as he swiped the runaway liquid from his lips.
“Yeah, that’s what I meant. Of course I did.” The affirmation was filled with enough intent—and Xander was feeling the effects of too much alcohol in his system—that he happily took the vampire’s word for it. Having someone care about what had occupied the greater part of his life for the past months was somehow freeing and Xander settled in to unload all his insecurities. He was suddenly unreasonably confident that Spike might actually help him put it all into perspective and he could reach that final decision that he’d been grappling with for too long.
“It’s not like I had a great role model for this kind of thing.” He didn’t need to add anything as Spike’s knowing nod seemed to confirm how much he’d really seen those days he’d been tied up in Xander’s living space.
Spike relaxed back in his chair and waved his hand in the air for a refill, miserably resigned to seeing this out. He had a suspicion that Buffy had no clue how much her friend was struggling with this commitment the silly twit had set into motion in a second of panic, and he felt he owed it to her to try and sort it all out—even if that put him in the thick of their little maladjusted group.
“Look, if there’s one thing I’ve learned in a century, it’s that everyone makes mistakes. There’s no crystal ball that points it all out, tells you if you’re going to be a fuck up as a husband and father, or whether you’re going to be the new mayor. Nothing is a sure thing and if you back out of this now because you’re afraid of being the kind of husband your father is, then you’re a bigger berk than I gave you credit.”
Spike wasn’t surprised to see the tears in the boy’s eyes. But he was annoyed by it. He sighed exasperatedly, “Look, do you love her?”
Xander flinched, acting dumb in order to buy some time. “What?”
Spike growled before slamming his hands down on the table, making the bottle collection skip across the surface, and leaned forward into Xander’s face. “It’s not bleeding rocket science. Do you love the girl or not?”
He felt so uncertain that a clear answer wouldn’t form in his head. Making a motion between a nod and a negative shake of his head, Xander gave up and let his head fall forward until he was banging it on the table.
“Okay, obviously that’s extended your brain tissue too far. How about something a little less easy? Are you going to be happy when you’ve jilted her on the day that’s meant to be the happiest of her life and she’s so damaged by it she decides to take D’Hoffryn up on his offer to return to her vengeance days and she curses you to suffer boils on your cock for the rest of your natural life?”
Spike sat back and crossed his arms over his chest, his expression nothing but smug as the reality of it ticked over in Harris’s brain.
“So…what you’re saying is…if I cancel this wedding because I’m terrified I’ll hurt Ahn by being a shitty husband and a father from hell, she’s going to go back to being a Vengeance demon and make my life a misery?” Xander hated it, but what Spike said had the ring of truth. He didn’t have any trouble at all visualising a destroyed Anya collapsing into the comforting arms of her former boss and becoming once again the thing that he and his friends killed.
Could he live with that?
Could he live with being the reason Anya turned her back on humanity, embracing evil again because of the broken heart he gave her? One motivated purely by fear rather than certainty?
Spike rolled his eyes, clasped his fingers together and flexed, glorying in the crack of his knuckles and Harris’s flinch at the sound. “You really are being an idiot tonight, aren’t you? The whole point of marriage—and why is an undead creature of the night the one who has to thump this into that thick head of yours?—is to make sure you spend the rest of your appallingly short existence with the one person you can’t get through life without. Now, as nauseating as it is to see you with your little sex bunny, anyone with eyes can see you’re devoted to her. A bit abrupt and intolerant of her perhaps, but we all have our faults.”
The speech ended and Xander found himself concentrating harder on what Spike had said than he had on anything he was meant to listen to at school. He did love Anya. He’d loved her with everything he had and when their lives—hell, their world—had been threatened by Glory, it had terrified him to know they could die and she wouldn’t know how much he loved her. He loved her enough to propose, and now he was a man wearing the responsibility of his impetuous haste.
He loved her, and if he backed out on her now, he’d lose her for good. Was going through with the wedding so bad if the consequence of turning his back losing her was completely? Losing her forever?
Even as his mind was gelling on the revelation, Spike was asking him something else and he felt a glimmer of resentment that the one he’d often thought as nothing more than a pest, had known him well enough to be sure his attitude could be turned around, bounding onto the next topic with barely a concern for capturing the affirmation of the first.
“What?”
“Bloody hell, Harris. You need to cut back. Booze is eating your brain. I said, where’s your mates? This is a bleeding lonely send off.”
“Ahh,” Xander said, nodding in belated understanding. The fact of it was, all his buddies had been eager to treat him to a debauched time out on his last night of singledom, but he’d balked at the finality of it. Now he was regretting that decision, though for the first time in history he had to admit that spending time with Spike wasn’t so bad. Particularly if the choice had been to spend his last, lonely night as a free man completely alone. Relief flooded through him and with a wide grin, he vowed to make his night one he’d hopefully remember. “Wanna play some pool?”
And that was something Spike never refused.
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