7/46
AUTHOR: BmblBee
RATING: Adult entertainment due to m/m sexual activity
and language.
PARING: S/X
DISCLAIMER: This story is fiction. Conceived in the warped
hive of the BmblBee. She owns none of the characters
or products named and makes no money from their use.
WARNINGS: Character death. Boys playing with boys.
Vampire/human contact.
SUMMARY: Xander Harris is dead. Drained by a vampire in the
Longview Cemetery. When his body is discovered
his friends realize that no one has seen or heard from him
in the last five days. Willow comes up with a spell to send
someone back in time to find out how he ended up there
and possibly save his life. Spike is reluctantly recruited.
Thanks to Petxnd for the wonderful banner and patient preread.
3:00am Monday morning.
Xander Harris has 5 days to live.
Spike felt himself tumbling backward and threw his arms
about wildly trying to gain some purchase and stop what he
feared may be a bottomless drop.
"UH!"
Immediately his back hit solid ground. Damp, wet, grassy,
solid ground.
"Ha! Damn. And here I always heard that vampires were
like cats. Toss them from a building and they land on their feet.
Guess that's not always true. Ha ha. Your ass fell backward
off that tombstone slicker than Humpty Dumpty fell off the wall.
Good one Spike."
Spike immediately scrambled to his feet and looked around.
He was obviously in a cemetery, Long View probably, and
presently being taunted by.......
"Harris?"
The grin slipped from Xander's face and he cautiously stepped closer.
"Of course it's me. You o.k? You look like you just saw a ghost."
As everything flooded back to him, Spike regained his composure
and slipped into his big bad as smoothly as one slides on a mink coat.
He flipped a cigarette from a slightly squished pack and tucked it
between his lips with still shaky fingers.
"Course. Right as rain, I am. Say, boy, what time is it?"
Xander took a quick glance at his wrist, tapped it with his fingertip,
then looked again. Idly he slowly resumed his stroll, Spike
falling in beside him.
"I think it's about 3am, but this darn cheap watch. Can't always
be sure. Why? You got a bus to catch? Maybe a trip to Vamp
village on your schedule tonight? Or maybe you are up for an
episode of HGTV's Vacation Crypt search."
Spike frowned. No wonder some marauding vamp ate his arse.
Fuckin' boy was irritating as hell.
'Shit!' He thought. 'Let's do this fast. One trip and I don't need
to come back.'
"No, smart arse. Just need to keep an eye on the time's all.
You know, daybreak allergy. Sides the real question is what
are you doing out here all alone at this hour of the night. Nummy
treat like you can be a real demon magnet. I thought the Slayer
kept better track of her pets than to let one of them wander
off alone and helpless."
Xander stopped walking and stood with his hands on his hips.
"Fuck you Spike! I'm nobody's pet and what I do with my own
time is my own business. Why don't you just fuck off and leave
me alone?"
With that he turned down one of the worn pathways that wound
between the rows of headstones and he disappeared into the darkness.
Spike kicked a rock off a mound of fresh dirt and watched him go.
"Well, fuck. 19 hours and 45 minutes to go and I've already arsed
this whole thing up. Ought to just sleep away the day and weave
me a bit of a story when they tug me back. Fuck them. Fuck him.
HARRIS! Wait up."
Spike broke into a trot and followed the scent of the human, within
minutes locating him in the oldest section if the graveyard.
It was an area long over grown and forgotten. Most of the headstones,
made of wood, were rotted and one by one snapping off to lie and meld
into the earth.
It sat on the side of a gently slope and had a short, three foot
high wrought iron fence around it. A giant maple tree stood
guard as it had from the time the wind had blown the wayward
seedling to land in the spot it now grew, lived and thrived among
the place of the dead.
"This is one of my favorite places to be."
Xander spoke quietly, never looking up but knowing Spike was
standing close behind him. He pulled one hand out of his jacket
pocket and pointed to a square granite stone that read:
1890 - 1941
Here lies Pete Place
Caught cheating with an extra ace
Xander took a step to the side and smiled at the next one.
1840 - 1882
Maggie Muckus
Made her living by XXXXXXX
"The last part had been deliberately scratched out and defaced.
Probably by the good church folk of Sunnydale. Pity they
can't recognize good literature when they see it."
Spike had to chuckle. He had never spent much time in this
part of the cemetery and had never noticed these stones.
"Yeah, folks back then had a better attitude for the passin' of
a bloke from one world to the other. They knew it was all
just part of life. Now, everyone fights it. None of you want
to get old. Doctors dragging it out till yer lives are more
painful than yer deaths. Humans. Never did understand 'em."
Spike shook his head and walked on down the row. Most of
the stones were cracked, toppled over at the base, or consumed
by the overgrowth of vines and weeds.
"Hey, here's one."
Spike pointed down.
"Bobby Tilton."
Xander, who still stood several feet away called back.
"Hung as a horse thief in 1856."
Spike studied the boy standing off in the night and wondered
how much time he had spent in this forgotten graveyard, and why.
Easing his way forward, Xander finally stood along side the
vampire looking down.
"So if you are so philosophical about the great demise, how come
you have fought it off for so long?"
Spike shrugged his shoulders.
"Dunno. Been wondering' bout that meself lately."
Xander's eyebrows shot up in surprise. He had expected denial.
He had expected snerk with maybe a touch of disdain thrown in.
He would never have imagined honesty. Certainly not with the
subtle undertone of sadness.
Xander turned away from the ancient graves and vampire and
walked up the rise to the more modern, well kept section.
These were the newly, dearly departed. The ones with family
who still came to visit. Visit more often than when they still
breathed.
Reaching down, Xander snapped off a daisy from a fresh pot
of flowers that had been set there just hours before. He turned
and tucked it down in the top button hole of Spike's duster,
causing the vampire to smile at the totally unexpected gesture.
They stood so close, Spike could smell him. The sweet, rich,
heady smell of clean, honest, and pure untainted blood. He
smelled of warm oven baked cookies like his mother used to
make back in Victorian London.
He smelled of youth and life. It almost made Spike want to cry.
Stepping back, Spike intentionally blocked out all things Xander.
He had a job to do. He couldn't afford to get attached to a puppy
that was on it's way to the pound to be euthanized.
"Come on, boy. It's getting late and we both need to be on our
way. Speakin' o which. I'm kinda without a place to crash today.
You wouldn't happen to have a spot of floor that a vampire might kip
on would ya?"
Xander briefly considered the advisability of having a blood thirsty killer
hanging out with him and decided that if he could survive 19 years under
the same roof as Tony Harris, he could live with this."
"Sure, no problem. You don't plan on eating me in my sleep do you?"
Spike chortled.
"Hadn't really thought about it. Sides, it's Monday. You're safe
as houses."
Xander scratched his head at the riddle of that, but before he could
ask, he blew it off as just another one of the vampire's quirky puzzles.
"Insomnia."
"What?"
"You ask what I was doing out here in the middle of the night. I have
insomnia and the graveyard sooths me."
Spike nodded. Made sense.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Authors note: Tomorrow's chapter will be posted as usual then the Bee has
a plane to catch. Regular posting will resume on Sunday morning.
See you then.