Pairing: Spike/Xander
Warnings/Squicks: M/M relations (way later) and human boys (for now)
Rating: NC-17 (or MA 15+ or R?) There is violence and sex and vampires, and boys.
Summary: Saving both of them had a bizarre set of implications – not least of which was the chance to start again.
Disclaimer: Characters are the concept of the wonderful Joss and Co. Don’t make money from the writing etc etc.
PART 8
Willow all but peeled Trent and Blanche from the boys. Mistress assisting the daughter to standing but Trent was unwilling to release hold of either son.
William and Alexander were still a little disorientated… their lives… all their lives… and unlives… had fully integrated with their joining…they could still taste… her and had been sent blinding images of what they had to do on their return – along with the hypothetical consequences if they failed. The dimensional push made both feel a little ill as they came too but then Papa Trent was there and crying, and Blanche was hugging… Strangely when Alexander felt distress William felt it also – as though it were his but as yet neither man was able to truly command their limbs.
In the end High Mistress Willow knelt and gently asked that the others might carry the boys to his partner’s sick room. A still tearful Trent, the normally so strong and loving father eventually gave a simple nod, his boys were lifted into safe arms and he was helped up to follow the group to Charlotte’s sick room.
As Willow walked beside the semi-conscious figure of Alexander being carried in the powerful arms of Trent’s best friend Levi, she noticed how very like the healthy twenty four year old Xander of Sunnydale he appeared, and there was more. He ‘prickled’ and, she noted, had been bitten. She looked over to William, knowing that he must have been turned by some… thing, but was surprised by the spacing of the puncture wounds and the marks of human teeth between the main holes.
As the two were laid out on two beds in the infirmary beside their mother, Alex roused and fought his kind attendee insisting, “No!! With William… please! With Will!”
The hubbub was resolved when the two were both placed on a single narrow bed, and no one missed that the two men immediately pulled together into a tight hug that definitely included touching every part of two nude bodies and finding each others’ necks. To Willow's relief, however, there was no biting, simply licking and semi-conscious petting in an attempt to reassure and comfort.
Willow began to worry as the two seemed to relax into sleep once more – Poppie was fading – and fast!
It was a given. The only known way to rid their of the Old One attempting to manifest in Poppie’s body (if the records from Angel and Spike’s first venture to the Deeper Well were accurate) was to return the essence to its container in the Well – and in the process everything in its airborne wake would be infected. According to legend the sarcophagus would return with the Old One but hundreds of thousands of humans – probably millions - would die in the wake of the venture. But now, according to the prophesy, they possibly had one other option. William and Alexander were apparently capable of returning the Old One, the Consort, to Illyria’s realm.
Just as Willow worried that the two would not wake, William sat bolt upright and glassy eyed, all but chanted, “Mistress Willow, we have been instructed in what must be done, please take us to the site of the Old One’s Consort’s current host.”
William swung his legs and stood, followed by a seemingly barely aware Alexander who did likewise. The boys, clad in aught but their birthday suits, paused in unison to look at their unconscious adoptive mother for a moment, then followed Willow and the coven group down the long corridor to the room where Poppie lay dying.
It was obvious that their pretty sister was being ‘prepared’, just like any host of an Old One, her human body was being hollowed out to become a shell that would contain the essence of an original demon, and every one of her human organs was currently at the point of failure.
Had it not been for near fatal levels of sedation and the extraordinary efforts of the coven to ensure she was enveloped in a ‘bubble’ of chanting for her wellbeing, she would already be dead.
William did not pause as he entered the room. With Alexander but a step behind, the group of chanting wiccans tending Poppie parted, allowing the brother to kneel at his sister’s bedside, apparently to pray. Then all (including Willow) gasped as a game faced, fully vampiric William rose in a flash and dove on the pretty young woman’s neck.
Willow and other coven members were about to move but were stilled by Alexander who growled (!) at them, flashed orange tinged eyes and elongated canines, then turned to his brother and now partner in all things.
William knew instinctively when Poppie was close to drained and could hear the already weakened heart failing as he drew just one mouthful more of her blood. Illyria had shown them mind pictures of what to do, but there were still no guarantees.
Illyria's consort, the Old One was in panic. If the body failed before he took over completely, then he would perish with the human shell.
Alexander put his mouth over Poppie’s as convulsions of the final death throws started, and the essence of the Old One ‘jumped ship’.
William pulled away from the neck and all but screamed, “Get her blood *now*!”, terrified that if he were to offer his own at this time it would turn her.
The attending coven nurse simply replaced the bag of fluid attached to the catheter. It would be some hours before all that had been taken might be replaced, but within minutes Poppie’s weak vital signs at least stabilized with the combination of blood and adrenalin.
But few noticed as the attention was on Alexander who was convulsing on the floor in his vampire brother’s arms.
None in the coven understood, and all a little gobsmacked as a fine pelt of fur seemed to erupt from the man they had all known as the jovial, generous *human* Alexander. His brother, *game faced* growled, “Red!? Be so kind as to *Open the bloody Rift*.”
Willow was at a loss – the dimensional rift had, in previous times, apparently opened of its own accord! “I… Um… That is… William we don’t know how!”
“Then call the bloody Powers That Screw You! It’s their idea the boy here an’ me get to do the hero thing all over – and he’ll end up dead as many times as yours truly if’n ya don’t hurry!” He turned back to his former brother in this life and held on as Alexander’s unconscious form convulsed violently, the Hyena spirit subsuming his human one to fight the Old One desperately for possession of the body, and within minutes, the soldier joined 'her' in her struggle against a far more powerful adversary.
Two hours later Poppie was on the way to recovery but Alexander was in severe trouble, his saving grace was the powerful hyena, and William, Spike’s, vampiric blood. Half way through his third serious convulsion, his canines had found William’s throat and they were now in a near endless cycle of exchange, so much so that the pulse of Alexander became the chant of love from William.
It bought the coven, and in particular Giles and his team, the time they needed to find a way to open the rift.
Chanting began again and the blue flash took the two yet again.
There was no guarantee of their survival, or their return, but there was no choice.
…………………………..
William was torn away from the figure under him just as he heard/felt Illyria’s command, “Return my Consort to me!”
Alexander’s form arched impossibly from the bed as a sickly grey cloud emerged from his mouth, then his body slumped and William sped to his side.
William cradled the larger unconscious figure as one might the most delicate and precious object in the world, as indeed he was in William’s eyes. The vampire opened his wrist and fed him healing fluids then listened as the heart beat and breathing slowed and evened.
William was just aware enough to register the small ceremony being conducted in front of them ‘You have done well. The Powers and Illyria are pleased with their champions. My Consort too, is in your debt. One we will pay in due course, but for now…”
William had just enough time to see what looked like an odd red and white pulsing toadstool being caressed and tickled under the ‘lip’ by Illyria’s multiple arms before giving in to the sickening tug that he had come to know as the dimensional shift.
……………..
Two days later, a very alive Alexander roused his partner with a warm begging tear dropping onto cool face. Seconds later his thoughts of worry and regret were stolen by a sinfully wonderful mouth containing a hint of vampire blood and much rubbing of manly parts before falling asleep again.
Poppie was recovering well, Blanche too after she lent all her energy to the effort that saw the boys propelled back into Illyria’s dimension.
Charlotte was allowed to visit her sons, having been lifted gently from her sick bed by Trent’s strong arms and carried the few meters to where her sons lay, just barely on the cusp of consciousness.
Charlotte felt the prickle of the ‘other’ coming from her boys, but the two were sleeping so peacefully entwined in each other that she could not imagine the changes described by her partner. He had already shown her the recovering Poppie, so she simply squeezed Trent’s arm, to which he tiredly replied, “Sure they’ll chat to you in the morning… now… bath?”