Suki Blue Fiction

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Chapter 12

Huh. Who knew this ceiling was so dirty? I wonder if Giles knows

Xander lay sprawled on his back on the floor of the library. He pondered the meaning of life, the state of the ceiling, the rising price of groceries and the utter pain he could feel in every single part of his body.

“Too hard?” Buffy asked from above.

That girl is slipping, Xander thought. There was a time when Buffy would never even have considered coming to school looking so blurry.

Xander raised his arm and put his thumb and index finger together. “Little bit.” His arm was grabbed and pulled and, hey, he did still have legs. Working ones, too.

“Sorry, Xand. You know how it is when you’re in the zone.”

Xander rolled his shoulders and checked that his elbows were in the right place. “I certainly do. Zone equals pain and bruising. For me. For you it’s glory, glory, stab and poof.”

“Poof?”

“Vamps. Poof. Dust.”

“Oh. Gotcha.”

“So, Giles,” Xander said. “How’d I do?” Buffy had put in a request to Giles from Xander for Slayerette training. He’d needed some coaxing but, after some Buffy shaped pouts and three well timed sulks, Giles had agreed.

It was day one of his training and Xander was definitely thinking he’d been a little hasty in his request. Training versus going home after school and watching TV? Decisions, damn decisions.

“Hmm, not bad, Xander. Not bad,” said Giles.

Xander beamed. “Really?”

“Absolutely.” Giles smiled.

Xander was pretty sure it was a pity smile. His own dropped. “Really?” he asked again.

Giles hesitated. “Well, yes. For your first time, of course.”

“Ah. Of course.”

“And I’m also considering that perhaps Buffy wasn’t the best person for you to spar with at this stage.”

Xander put a finger in the air and waggled it. “Interesting. I see what you’re saying.”

“Which is what?” Giles asked, just to be sure because you never could quite tell if Xander was on the right track or on a bus to Venus.

“That I should spar with Willow.”

A long mop of red hair swished as Willow looked up from her book and regarded Xander with very wide eyes. “Me? Sparring with me? With…fists?”

“Actually, Xander,” Giles said, “I was thinking more along the lines of you training with me.”

“With you?” Xander narrowed his eyes. Giles was stuffy, wore far too much tweed and, to all appearances, was an easy target. But Xander wasn’t so sure. Something was suspicious.

“Yes.”

“But you’re old,” Xander pointed out. An insult was better than admitting that you were kinda scared of the stuffy British guy.

“Older, Xander. Both feet firmly outside the grave, thank you very much.”

“But…”

Giles raised a hand. “No, I’ve made up my mind. You’ll be training with me from now on.”

“Don’t look so worried, Xand,” Buffy said, clapping him on the back. “I’ll tell him to go easy.” She winked and picked up the two bottles of water at her feet.

Xander took one and didn’t bother to hide his dismay. He could always blame it on the lack of Buffy to grope and tackle. But the real truth was, Buffy he knew and he trusted her beyond reason, but Giles was still somewhat of an enigma. What did they even know about him apart from the fact that he was British, a Watcher and had a tendency to get flustered at any mention of anything that wasn’t Slayer related?

Yeah, there was so much to know about so many things, and Xander fully intended to change his name to Holmes and find out. “What about Willow?” he asked, pointing directly at her.

“Me?” Willow said again. “Um, I know I should, and I will, but at the same time I won’t. Yet. Because of the…books. I have to study.”

“Willow,” Giles began, “you really should participate, for your own good. It would be very sensible if you’re to continue helping Buffy to at least know a few basic defense moves. Really, I don’t know why I didn’t think of teaching you and Xander before.”

“Well, you’re a busy man, Giles, we can all see that,” Willow said.

“Yes, well, it’s no excuse. I should have begun training you and Xander much, much earlier. If only I…”

Giles blabbered on and Buffy and Xander rolled their eyes at each other and silently communicated the need for a soda break. Sometimes, most of the time, water just didn’t cut it.

**

“I really wish Willow would agree to the training thing.” Buffy sighed and leaned against the wall. She was giving Xander three more chances to shake/kick/insult the soda machine and then she was stepping in, Xander’s pride be damned.

“I think she’ll cave,” Xander said, “once I’ve whispered a few encouraging words in her ear. A little bit of the Harris charm and she’ll melt like butter.” He paused. “Does that make me sound like Pervy Guy?”

“Kinda.” Buffy frowned. “You might wanna be careful with that, Xand.”

“Huh? Hey, I may do the odd pervy thing here and there, but there are guys in this school far more perved-up than me. Take Mikey and his big bag of treats, for instance.”

“I didn’t mean…can we come back to that last part later?”

Xander nodded.

“Good. I mean, you need to be really careful what you say to Willow. Those hots she’s got for you? They’re at 7800 degrees Fahrenheit.”

“I love that Album. Bon Jovi rock.”

Buffy raised a disapproving eyebrow. “Point, Xander.”

“Oh, yeah.” Xander ducked his head and whispered a curse to himself. “I kinda got the feeling today that she was upping the tempo, or the ante. Or the anti-tempo.”

Buffy smiled sympathetically. “She couldn’t stop talking about you all weekend. And speaking of which, where were you, by the way?”

“Uh, I was…elsewhere? With stuff, you know, to do – elsewhere, uh, with it.” It was probably best to avoid the truth of, ‘I went on a date with an evil vampire that kills people and oh, FYI, he’s a damn good kisser and I spent the rest of the weekend thinking about him and jacking off.’

Wisely, Buffy chose not to pursue that particular line of questioning. “I think you’re gonna need to say something to her.”

Deflated and suddenly feeling very tired, Xander stared sadly at the soda machine. “Why does everything have to be so complicated?”

“And you’re asking me that?”

“You think it’s us?” Xander asked. “Because sometimes it feels like it’s us.”

Buffy shrugged. It would be easy to say comforting things, to lie and say that these things happened to other people too. But how many people dated a vampire with a soul? How many people had a best friend who was in love with them? How many people were responsible for defending the world from unspeakable terrors? How many other people had split ends the size of the San Andreas Fault?

“It feels that way to me, too,” she said eventually.

Xander looked at her and couldn’t resist the urge to smile. Buffy was perfect, beautiful, kind and generous. She didn’t deserve a life that was sheathed in darkness, and she didn’t deserve the pain she got from being with Angel.

A vampire and a Slayer.

Maybe it was poetic, but it also sucked great big monkey balls. Abruptly his smile vanished and he lashed out with both palms to strike the soda machine hard enough for it to bang the wall behind it and split the plaster.

Buffy admired the crack. “Wow. Impressive. And slightly schizoid. You okay, Xand, or should I be taking you down before you assault the candy machine?”

Xander closed his eyes and ran a shaking hand through his hair. One damn evening with Spike and he was already starting to lose his sanity. “How do you do it?”

“What?” Buffy asked.

“You and Angel. How do you…get past it all?”

“I don’t really know. I guess I have to.”

“Why?”

“Because.”

“But I don’t get it. Do you know what he did? I mean, everything?”

Buffy nodded. “Pretty much. I just have to get past it. I love him, Xand. It doesn’t matter what he did before. He’s good now and he wants redemption for what he did.”

Xander suddenly grinned. “Redemption. I bet you never used that word before you came to Sunnydale.”

“Nope.” Buffy grinned back. “Or atonement, or vampires. Or ‘Run for your lives, the demons are coming!’”

Xander laughed then quickly held up his hand in sudden fear. Or the fake kind, anyway. “They’re not actually, right? Coming? They’re standing right behind me, aren’t they?”

Buffy shook her head. “You’re a loon. Come on - soda. Thirsty for sugar and things that are bad for me.”

“Actually, Buff? You and Angel, while we’re on the subject…” Xander paused and tried to think out in his head what he wanted to say. He didn’t trust Angel, not by a mile, but maybe he did have some understanding now of how Buffy was feeling.

It was hard when you knew in your heart that you shouldn’t.

He wanted to say that to Buffy. He wanted to communicate that in any way possible that didn’t involve actually having to apologise, and he was dangerously close to that right now.

“Uh…I wanted to say…” Oh, god, so very close. Evasive manoeuvres! Shields up! Go to red alert!

Then suddenly he noticed his fairy godmother. She was in the form of five cans of sugary delight. “Hey, look at that.”

Buffy looked down to where Xander was pointing. “Five cans? Wow, that really was one hell of a tackle.” She took two of them and left Xander to carry the other three.

“See? The training is paying off already. And before you ask, no, I don’t feel bad about stealing because it isn’t stealing.”

“It isn’t? How so, freakishly-strong-Xander?”

“Because the machine gave them to us.”

Buffy wasn’t going to argue. Xander-logic was often weird and twisted, but if you listened very carefully, concentrated hard and believed in its wisdom, it actually made a whole lotta sense.

Sometimes.

**

Spike wasn’t quite sure what to do with himself. He was sure that if he’d still been human his heart would have been thudding out of his chest and bouncing down the street by now. “Come again?”

“I found her.”

Spike searched Angel’s face for any sign that he was kidding, or for signs of dementia. “Yeah? How’d that happen, then?” His voice wobbled slightly and he hoped to Christ that Angel would choose this moment to be a half-decent Grandsire and ignore it.

“I have some contacts in LA.”

Apparently that was supposed to explain everything because Angel stopped right there.

“Right, and…?!?” Spike’s tone hitched up a notch. “What’s going on? What do you know?”

With an expressionless face, Angel lifted his arms from his sides and dropped them again. “I don’t know. I just know where she is. Roughly.”

Not impressed, Spike tutted in his most menacing manner and paced the length of the room and back. “Bloody typical. Ask someone for help and they do a half-arsed job of it.
Charming, that is.”

Angel exhibited the beginnings of a frown. “What else were you looking for, Spike? I did what you asked.” He turned his back and began walking away. “Now get out of my life.”

Spike put his hands on his hips and jutted his chin in defiance. “No!”

That bulky body stopped in the doorway, large shoulders lifting up and falling down as a pained sigh took over. “Dare I ask why?”

“Yeah, well, you should bloody well dare! In fact, how very dare you?!?!”

Angel turned and stared disbelievingly at Spike. “What is your problem, Spike? We had a deal, yes? Now, I’ve done my part…”

“Oh, I bet you have, you tosspot.”

“Meaning?” Angel asked.

“Meaning, you’re trying to set me up!”

Angel opened and closed his mouth a few times. A man of few words, he suddenly found himself with even fewer.

“Yeah, right, don’t even have an excuse, do you?” Spike snapped. He growled and his eyes flashed between blue and gold. “So, what was the actual plan, then, eh? Just to make me look like an idiot when I turned up to see no-one, or were you gonna just have me bumped off, nice and easy? Well? Fucking answer me, you ponce!!!”

Angel backed up before he could check himself. It had been decades since he’d seen Spike this angry. There was something in his Grandchilde’s face that, even with his human features firmly in place, made him look like every bit the demon he was.

The light from the one lit lamp in the room cast a somewhat eerie ambience over the room that Angel was entirely comfortable with. But as Spike crossed its soft beam and it highlighted just half of his presence with a glow that made him look beautiful and deadly and, god, so very hot, Angel thought it might be time to consider overhead fluorescent illumination. Nothing said, ‘I really don’t want to sink my fangs and my cock into you’ like bright neon lights.

“Spike…” Angels’ throat was dry. He coughed and tried again. “Spike, I don’t know what you think I’ve done, but I haven’t.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know? I just fucking told you!”

“Spike…”

Nose to nose now, or rather forehead to chin, Spike spat blood onto the floor from where he’d been chewing the inside of his mouth and faced Angel with a sneer that would have broken a normal man. “Yeah? That’s my name. Got anything else to say?”

“I’ve found her, Spike.”

Blue eyes searched brown for a millisecond, searching for truth, searching for something other than… “I don’t believe you.” He walked away, his demeanour changed back to the usual swagger and cocky attitude. “Too quick, mate. Should have waited longer and I might have fallen for it.”

And without another word, he left.

**

“Giles?”

The man in demand peered over his glasses, his pen ceasing its scritch scratch on a thick pad of paper. “Yes, Xander?”

“Not meaning to interrupt the very important research. I mean, I can see you’re busy and stuff, which is great! Except, well, it isn’t because busy usually means bad and…”

Giles removed his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Tell me what you want and get it over with.”

“Oh, okay, um, but can we keep it hush hush?”

Regarding Xander with much suspicion, Giles placed his glasses on the table and leaned back in his chair. “Well, that depends on what we’re being hush hush about.”

“Right, sure.” Xander took a deep breath and prepared to be laughed at. At least Buffy and Willow weren’t in the room to join in. Not that any of them actually would laugh, but they would sure as hell give him the sympathy look. “I wondered if maybe I could borrow some books.”

Giles stared blankly at him. “Certainly,” he said.

“Really?”

“Of course. That’s what a library is for. You are allowed to take them out, you know?”

“Take what out?” Xander asked.

“Books.”

Xander coughed to clear his throat and shifted awkwardly in his seat. “Um, I meant could I borrow some specific books.”

Giles turned red like a very ripe, very red tomato. “Oh, I see, well, yes, we do have a selection of those books. Would you like…” He pulled a white handkerchief from his jacket pocket and quickly dabbed his forehead, “…me to help you pick one out?”

“Uh.” Xander thought about that. Something didn’t seem quite right. “EUWW!!!! Giles, no!! Not those books! I mean the demon books, the Watcher Diaries, the forbidden stuff that you don’t lend to the general student body!”

“Oh! I see!”

“Thank god for that,” Xander muttered. “That was way harder than I thought it was gonna be. So, can I?”

“Why the sudden interest?” Giles asked.

Xander shrugged. “I dunno. I just wanna know stuff. I wanna help. I wanna be book guy.”

The beginnings of a smile played on Giles’ lips. “That’s…”

Xander squeezed his eyes shut and waited for the words which would strike him down and render him a fool.

“…wonderful.”

Xander carefully opened one eye. “Say what now?”

“I said, that’s wonderful. I’ve been wondering when you’d start to take more of an interest.”

“You have?” The other eye popped open to join its compatriot. “You realise it’s me? Xander,” Xander enunciated.

Giles rolled his eyes and pushed himself up from the table. “I’m quite aware of who you are, and I’m also quite aware that you’re not nearly as stupid as you like to make out.”

“Was that a compliment?”

“It was indeed. Don’t tell anyone.”

“You keep my secret and I’ll keep yours,” Xander promised with a big grin.

“It’s a deal. Although I fail to see why you’d want to keep this a secret.”

“Well, you know,” Xander said, “Buffy’s the Chosen One and Willow’s smart…oh, not that Buffy isn’t…”

Giles put up a hand to stop him. “It’s okay, she’s not here and I know what you meant. So, where shall we start?”

“Actually, I was thinking of starting close to home. Some info on the Aurelius line would be a major plus.”

“I see.” Giles got that stern look on his face that made Xander want to crawl under the table and hide. “Xander, please tell me this isn’t some sort of ploy to split up Buffy and Angel.”

“Hey!” Okay, so he completely deserved that, and he couldn’t blame Giles for thinking it. “Look, I just wanna be part of the team. I wanna be more than vampire bait or the guy that has a hundred stupid theories before he hits the right one and then all his friends are dead and the world is burning in the fiery flames of hell because non-book guy didn’t get a clue earlier. You know?”

“Strangely, yes, I do know, but thank you for the flaming hot imagery.”

“Pleasure,” Xander grinned.

“Right, well, let me get you something to start with before Buffy returns from patrol. And Willow’s been a long time in the toilet, hasn’t she? I do hope she hasn’t fallen down it.” Giles laughed.

Xander didn’t. “Books?”

“Yes, yes.” Embarrassed, Giles scuttled off to the book cage, unlocked it and quickly rummaged through for a particular title. “Ah, here we are.” He returned to the table and handed Xander the tome. “This is fairly basic, as compendiums go, but it’s all written in English and covers most of the basic demon groups.”

“There are advanced demons groups?” Xander asked, taking the heavy book and flicking through the crinkly pages.

“The groups are almost limitless. This should give you a good idea of what I mean. Vampires, werewolves, spirits, pureblood demons, etcetera, and of course their environments. The Hellmouth, different dimensions and portals and there’s a marvellous section on theoretical time travel.”

“And the vampire stuff?” Xander asked. “I think that’s probably priority for now.”

“Absolutely. The second chapter is dedicated to vampire phenomena and, before you ask, yes, it does mention the Aurelius line. In detail.”

Xander swallowed. This was it. He held in his hands the key to hating Spike. “Famous vamps, huh?” There was a major part of him that wanted to burn this book, burn everything that mentioned any Aurelius and pretend that Spike was just a guy who gave him his first kiss, his first thrill at being caught and his first absolute confirmation that he was as bent as a lead pipe after Buffy had hit someone with it.

“Heads up, guys!” Buffy crashed through the library’s swing doors. She dragged with her a short weasel of a man with greasy hair and a white apron. “This is Willy and he’s got something to say about virgins and the vampires who sacrifice them.”

TBC…