thismaz | Bewitched, Chapter 11

This is really late. My internet has been playing up, all week, because some neighbour has put in a new router on the same channel as ours. That's the problem with these Victorian terraced houses - they're big and have thick walls, but my computer can detect seven other wireless networks in the area. We didn't want to change the channel, because that is such a pain to do, so we moved the router instead. So now we are probably giving our neighbour the same grief I've had all week. I, however, have my lovely fast connection back... for now *g*

Title: Bewitched, Chapter 11
Pairing: S/X
Rating: This chapter PG-13
Summary: When Valentine's Day arrives, Dru dips her finger in the brew and gives it a stir.
Word Count: 3,185
Betaed by

sparrow2000 and DJ, for which, many thanks. Thanks also to Sparrow for her help with conflabbing on plot twists and forms.
Comments: Are greatly appreciated, loved and cherished.
Disclaimer: here.

Prologue here, with a link to the other chapters, or you can find the whole thing, in reverse order, in tags, or in the correct order, in memories. There's a menu of links on the right hand side of my main journal page.

Chapter 11

Giles didn't come in to work that week and although Xander took a detour on his way home, every afternoon, and walked past Giles' apartment building, he never quite managed to summon up the courage to knock. What would he say? What could anyone say, in such circumstances?

When he expressed his sense of helplessness to Buffy, she advised him to give Giles some space. "He needs a bit of time," she said, "he'll come around," and for a moment he wanted to punch her, slayer or not. But he noticed the tightness of her lips and the crease between her brows, so he kept his mouth shut and his hands in his pockets.

For a few days everything was quiet, as if the Hellmouth had decided to give them time to mourn, but quiet was a relative term in Sunnydale and each morning there was still a fresh pile of cigarette butts on the ground in Xander's backyard. He didn't bother to tidy them away any more. If his mom saw them, she'd assume it was his dad. And his dad? He wouldn't notice.

The advent of stalker-Spike had required that the girls be told a slightly censored version of the truth about the night of the spell and as a result, Xander was being escorted everywhere he went. Buffy walked him home, each evening after patrol. Willow rang to check that he got there and Xander endured the confinement.

Then Buffy got sick and it was Xander who, marvelling at how small and light she was, ended up carrying her to the hospital. He staggered in with her prone in his arms, calling for help, and the staff immediately jumped into action. A nurse directed him to a trolley and then shooed him away. The doctor took one look at her and rushed her into Trauma 1, which sounded ominous, Willow went to call Mrs Summers and Xander was left to hover helplessly in the corridor.

They waited. It was a huge relief when Mrs Summers arrived and the doctor would finally give them the news - Buffy was going to be okay.

Once the paperwork was completed and Buffy was settled in a proper bed, in a room off the ER, Mrs Summers took Willow home. Xander promised Willow that he'd call a cab, but he ducked back into the hospital, instead, to sit vigil outside Buffy's door. He had a bad feeling and if he'd learnt anything in the time he'd known Buffy, it was to take notice of his feelings.

Angelus arrived minutes later, looking like any innocent visitor, with his bunch of white roses. Xander took a deep breath, stood, and blocked his passage. He was both shaking with nerves, and also strangely calm and resigned.

"Visiting hours are over," he said.

Angelus smirked and gave a casual shrug. "Well, I'm pretty much family."

Gathering himself, Xander called upon his reserves of wit. "Why don't you come back during the day?" he suggested. "Oh, gee, no, I guess you can't." So, okay, his wit had failed him, but he wasn't going to back down from this bastard.

Still playing the part of the concerned friend of the family, Angelus smirked. He stepped up close, crowding Xander. "If I decide to walk into Buffy's room," he asked quietly, his voice heavy with menace, "do you think for one microsecond that you could stop me?"

Xander looked around for support and realised that there was some. "Maybe not," he admitted, facing Angelus again. "Maybe that security guard couldn't either. Or those cops... or the orderlies..." His voice got firmer with each addition to his list. "But I'm kinda curious to find out," he finished. "You game?"

That made Angelus pause. He looked around and took in the number of people who could legitimately claim it was their job to prevent disruption. "Buffy's White Knight," he sneered. "But you're still Spike's toy. He told me how easy you were. How you squirmed and begged for it. Soon as he's up and walking, he'll come for you." He stroked his chin thoughtfully. "Might give you a try myself, once he's broken you in."

Suddenly Xander was more furious than scared. "You're gonna die," he snarled. "And I'm gonna be there."

Laughing, Angelus slapped the roses against Xander's chest. "Tell her I stopped by," he said, before turning on his heel and walking back outside.

Xander shuddered and covered his mouth with a shaky hand, feeling the gorge rise in his throat. He swallowed convulsively, followed by a huge indrawn breath of relief, and collapsed back into his chair.

Giles arrived, soon afterwards, all businesslike and watcherly. Willow had called him, when she couldn't raise Xander at home. He was both relieved to find Xander still there and horrified when he heard about Angelus's visit. He shrugged away Xander's stumbling attempt to offer sympathy, demanding the details of Xander's exchange with Angelus and concentrating on that, to the exclusion of any other concerns.

Once he'd got all the details, he stuck his head around Buffy's door and confirmed that she was sleeping soundly. Apparently satisfied that all his charges were likely to survive, he sat down and told Xander to go and phone Willow, to apologise for worrying her. They spent the rest of the night alternating guard duty and dozing, until the sun rose and he sent Xander home.

Xander was out of the loop for the next few hours. He slept away the morning and most of the afternoon, returning to the hospital just in time to indulge in some breaking and entering of the records room. It turned out that there was either a demon or a mad doctor preying on the children's ward. But it took a child to give them the clue.

So, Willow used her sciency genius to stop Buffy from killing herself with the flu, Buffy slew the demon and Xander got the kids out of the danger zone.

When Giles dropped him home from the hospital, it was late, but Xander was still too hyped to sleep. He stood at his bedroom window, gazing out at the dark yard and thinking about children and what they saw that adults didn't. He thought of Jesse and how, when they were trick or treating one year, he'd loudly envied the monster costumes of a group of other kids. Was it Xander's imagination that he remembered being embarrassed when the kids obviously overheard Jesse's comments?

They'd been 13 that year and felt very grown-up. A few years earlier they'd both run in terror from a man who approached them on the street. The light had caught his eyes oddly, that's what Jesse's mom said, when they ran sobbing into her kitchen.

Kids believed all sorts of stuff, but the last year had taught Xander that the adult rationalisations he'd come to accept were the bigger lie, although who profited from their continuation, apart from the vampires and all the other monsters, he didn't know and couldn't imagine.

But the anger he felt didn't care about big pictures. It was focused on the specific monsters that hurt his friends and turned his life into virtual house arrest.

Movement caught the corner of his unfocused eye and a shadow detached itself from the general blackness of the fence. Spike slowly wheeled himself across the grass and stopped next to the stump of the old apple tree. Xander took a step away from the window.

Leaning back in his wheelchair, Spike reached into his pocket and pulled out a flask. He raised it in salute to Xander's window and although Xander couldn't see his face clearly, he was willing to bet that Spike was smiling. He watched Spike lift the flask to his mouth and tilt his head back to drink. And he had a flash memory of watching the same action, in the back of a car. He imagined the long length of Spike's throat and the jerk of his Adam's apple as he swallowed, and he shivered at the memory of Spike's skin against his lips.

Another memory arose and his involuntary flush of desire was swept away by mortification at the thought of what Spike had said to Angelus. A sweat broke out all over his body, making his skin prickle.

Spike lowered his head, shoved the flask back in his pocket and placed his hands on the arms of the chair. As Xander watched, he very deliberately lifted his feet, one after the other, off the footrests and placed them on the ground. He stood, giving the chair a casual kick as he did so, so that it toppled onto its side. Facing the window, he stretched his arms straight out from his sides, in an obvious 'here I am' display, before sketching a deep and decidedly courtly bow, his eyes fixed on Xander the whole time.

Anger gripped Xander, displacing the embarrassment of a moment before. He crossed back to the window and pushed up the bottom pane. It was almost impossible to express his outrage, while keeping his voice low, but, "Get out!" he whispered fiercely. "Leave me alone. I'll call Buffy."

Spike laughed. He walked across the grass towards the house, with a distinct swagger in his step and his voice was gently teasing when he asked, "Xander, pet, can you hear yourself?"

Xander took a half step back into the safety of his room. "I'm not your pet!" he retorted, realising that he'd raised his voice only after he'd spoken. He cast a fearful glance towards his bedroom door. His mom had gone to bed, but his dad was still up, watching some late night show. A burst of canned laughter from the living room reassured him that he was safe. He noticed Spike notice his move and stepped forward again, to stand between the window and the door, being careful not to get too close to the window.

"Yeah, I know," Spike sounded momentarily subdued, but then the smirk was back and his voice was mocking again. "I'll call Buffy," he said, in a high pitched parody of Xander's voice, before reverting to his normal tones. "You sound like a girl."

This time Xander managed to keep his voice to a harsh whisper. "I do not! Go away! I am not your pet! I am not your toy! I am not your anything! You will never 'have' me! And nor will that monster you live with! So go away and don't come back! Buffy's my friend, as well as the slayer."

Spike laughed again at the start of Xander's tirade, but by the end he was frowning. He rested his forearms on the outside sill, like a neighbour settling in for a chat across the back yard fence. "What did Angelus say, pet?" he asked. "Because I never said anything to him."

"So how did he know who I was, huh?" Xander replied scornfully. He reached for his telephone and began to dial.

Spike pouted theatrically. "Alright, alright. I'm leaving. You're no fun tonight." He let out an equally theatrical sigh. "Let the slayer get her beauty sleep. She needs all the help she can get." He stepped back from the window, turned with a swing of his coat and swept away, around the corner of the house, his exit only slightly marred by the fact that he came hurrying back a few moments later to reclaim his chair, before leaving for a second time.

Xander put the telephone down, relieved that Spike hadn't called his bluff. He wondered if he would have called for real, if Buffy were not still in the hospital. She would have come, but would he have called her? She had enough troubles, without him disturbing her when she was snug in her bed. He puzzled over the question for a short while, before dismissing it from his mind.

He didn't sleep well that night. His dreams were full of morally reprehensible and confusing images of warm water and bubbles, his hands on naked flesh and long pale fingers trailing over his skin, touching him in places that no one but he had touched before.

When his alarm clock dragged him back into consciousness, he felt like he'd not slept at all, but he supposed that he must have done, for it to have woken him up. He rolled out of bed and staggered to the bathroom.

A hot shower went some way to clearing the fog and he was thankful to see that his mom was already up and making coffee, when he entered the kitchen. He didn't usually drink coffee, but on this morning he made an exception. Sitting down opposite her at the kitchen table, he told her the story he'd worked out during the early hours - that a guy at school had a grudge against Xander and had called in his elder brother, who was a criminal, to back him up, so she needed to be careful of any punks with bleached hair, who might pretend to be his friend. She looked concerned and asked if he was okay, whether he needed her to phone the school to complain. Xander reassured her, saying that he'd manage his problems his own way, and he felt better when she promised not to let any strangers in. Xander considered warning his dad, but since he never got up to answer the door, even when he was alone in the house, Xander decided he could afford to avoid that exchange. He'd get a lecture about standing up for himself on the mean streets of Sunnydale High and he already knew that script by heart.

He was on his way to school before it struck him that he'd never felt the need to warn his parents about the danger of Sunnydale night life before. The fact that Spike was walking again had obviously freaked him more than he'd realised. He wondered, for the hundredth time, what it was like to be Buffy, not only unable to tell, but also in real danger every night, both as a hunter of monsters and as a potential trophy target for the more ambitious. He'd be glad to see her home, where the disinvite spell could at least ensure she was safe, whilst asleep.

Arriving at the library, he was surprised to find Buffy already there, talking to Giles. "They let you out?" he asked.

Buffy grinned. "I think they were glad to get rid of me. Seems like the hospital had a disturbance in the children's ward last night, so the doctor was called in early. She came to see me before breakfast and cleared me for discharge, so here I am. Happy to see me?"

"I surely am," he replied, returning her hug, grateful that she left his ribs unsquished.

They drew apart. "Have you seen Willow yet, today?" Buffy asked. "I am so glad to get out of that place. Because really... hospitals are bad enough, but that thing..." She gave a shudder, but she was smiling too.

For a moment, Xander hesitated, not wanting to break the mood, but this news was too important. "Spike can walk," he announced.

Buffy closed her mouth with a snap and Giles looked up from the book he held. "What?" he asked.

"Spike, he can walk. I saw him last night. He got out of his chair and stood up."

"Where were you?" Buffy reached out and took hold of his arm, as if she needed to check that he was really alright.

"Safe. I was in my room."

"Even so," Giles said, "He's a dangerous monster. And he's obviously fixated on you, Xander. You need to be even more cautious, if he can walk again." He put his book down on the table and ran his hand over his hair as he thought. Buffy and Xander waited. "This is very strange," he continued. "I've been doing some reading up on our friend Spike, in some of the old watchers' diaries. The fact that he's shifted his obsession from his long-term paramour, to you, makes me think that there might be yet another layer to Amy's accursed spell, which is operating on him."

Xander considered that. "Another?" he asked. "How complicated was this spell?"

Giles smiled grimly. "Yes, precisely. It went far beyond Amy's capabilities." He walked over to his office and disappeared inside, but continued speaking, more loudly so that they could hear. "The pendant, your blood... those were the charms that we've already unlocked." He reappeared with the familiar spell book open in his hands. "I've read this so many times, I almost have it memorised," he said, "and I recognise most of the ingredients, but there's one that isn't properly named. It's simply called the binder." He looked up. "I know we went over this before, but can you remember anything else about the spell?"

Something Giles had just said was tugging at Xander's memory, but it was elusive. He deliberately stopped thinking and allowed his Yoda brain to take over. And there it was - a tiny silver flask and Amy standing next to the Bunsen burner saying, 'It's the ingredient that makes the whole spell work properly.'

"There's one thing..." he said slowly. "There was one ingredient that Amy said was the binder... um, it sort of looked like blood..." He paused, allowing the thought to form. "And if it was my blood that made me go crazy..." He trailed off.

Giles nodded. "Yes," he agreed. "There would be a sort of awful symmetry to that. If that was Spike's blood..." he turned to Buffy. "We need a sample of Spike's blood."

Buffy stared at him, bug eyed. "Great," she said, flinging up her arms. "I'll get right on that. How about I knock him down and hold him, while you ask nicely for a donation?"

Her sarcasm obviously took Giles by surprise. It certainly surprised Xander. "Um, I... Well... I, I'm sure we'll think of something," Giles said weakly, although Xander thought that Buffy had pointed out the major flaw, already.

Immediately contrite, Buffy apologised. "I'm sorry," she said "That came out way harsher than I meant. It's just that I'm not back to full strength yet." She turned away and began to pace. "And even if I were, I can hunt him, but even if I win a fight, vampires don't leave much blood when they dust and -"

"No!" Giles interrupted her. "I apologise. I wasn't thinking. You're right. You should not go up against Spike, if he's back to full strength. We, we'll just have to figure out a way to get a sample through guile."

"Or if he dusts, then presto," Xander added. "The problem goes away, doesn't it?"

Buffy and Giles both turned to look at him, smiles forming as they realised what he'd said and Buffy came over and gave him another hug. "We'll find a way, Xander," she promised. "We'll find a way to kill him, for you."

Xander wondered why he didn't feel excited by the thought.

Some dialogue borrowed and adapted, courtesy of http://www.twiztv.com/scripts/

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