Spike stood on the narrow pavement and inhaled deeply. The scent was a shock to his enhanced senses, rather like when he and his mother had moved to London in the first place, and it had been all new and strange. An adventure. He snorted. It was a bloody good thing he didn't *have* to inhale now -- this wasn't really the sort of smell he wanted to get used to again. Still, it did bring back memories -- not all of them were good, of course, which was probably why he'd waited several days to get around to showing Xander this part of town.

He pointed to a side street. "That's where I ate Dirk. He was an annoying bloke, used to work for his daddy's firm, acted like it made him all important that his father had bribed the constabulary to let him run a whorehouse out of the warehouse." He found Xander looking at him with that long-familiar expression of doubt. Was Spike joking, or was he serious? Xander didn't seem able to decide which would be scarier; Spike wasn't about to help him. "Oi! And over there, that street? S'where I ate Candice. Now *she* was a tasty treat... Shame, really. I could'a liked her if she hadn't been such a bitch."

"Spike? Are any of these trips down memory lane going to involve something other than people you killed?"

Spike looked over at Xander, suddenly realizing that Xander might not actually be appreciating the stories; despite Spike's domesticated status now, he *had* once helped kill his way across Europe. He recognized the look of resigned amusement, though, and figured he wasn't in any serious trouble.

Not like last night, when Xander had sat in the corner and pouted -- at the *wall* -- for ten minutes before letting Spike make it up to him. Spike really *hadn't* known the chambermaid had slipped into the room to fetch the trays, right when he'd got Xander's trousers where they belonged: around his ankles. Still, might be a good idea to show him that London held something besides memories of people he'd killed, annoying politicians, and high-priced department store/sex shops.

He tried to think of some. There was the tower, of course, if they headed back to the traditionally touristy part of the city. But that was apparently still in use for its original purpose around here -- prison-cum-execution-chamber -- and wasn't open to tourists. Ditto Windsor Castle, and of course, Buckingham Palace.

Not only had the Queen been vamped, so had all of her millions of children, and most of them had stayed in the country instead of being married off and happily spreading hemophilia throughout the crowned families of Europe, so they were all unliving in the royal residences. You could walk around the outside of the buildings -- which they hadn't bothered to do yet, as there didn't seem to be much potential for mischief in it, even if Xander pretended that wasn't why he didn't want to go -- but that was about all.

So what sort of creative tourist thing could Spike find for Xander, that wasn't utterly vampified? This whole city was meant to be a tourist trap, but for *vampire* tourists, not humans. Something that didn't have to do with death. Right. Xander was looking at him again.

"Er... wanna see where Dru killed me?" Yeah, that would do it. Spike suppressed a groan.

Xander was giving him 'you're insane' expression Number Five. But then he laughed, took Spike's arm, and nodded. "Sure." Spike looked at him suspiciously. Was it *his* fault vampires only enjoyed killing, eating, sex, and football?

"We could go see Big Ben, " Spike suggested, finally thinking of something they could do that wouldn't make Xander think about dead people. "And don't ask who he is, please. It's-- "

"It's the big clocktower. Dork. I'm not that uneducated. I may've graduated from Sunnydale High, but I did have a British librarian."

"Bad Rupert, if he taught you that. Big Ben's not the tower, it's one of the bells. The clocktower's just... the clocktower. But it's the only bit of Parliament the smarmy gits haven't managed to burn down, and since they don't meet there anymore, it's open to tourists. Wanna head over that way?"

"Nah, I wanna see where Dru killed you. You can tell me about that party, and I can get all righteously indignant and think about how cute you were with long hair and glasses."

One of which, Spike remembered, he had *now*. Right now. He started to suggest they go back to the hotel and he could stand there in *just* his long hair and let Xander admire him, but Xander was frowning, and shaking his head.

"Later, Spike. We've stayed in our room for the last twenty four hours. We agreed - every other day, we get out and sight-see."

"Like there's not enough sights to see in our room?" Or backs to soap, or toes to suck, or skin to lick? There was plenty to keep them busy.

"I've got the rest of your life -- until I kill you for putting your hand there after I've told you not to, so take it away now, Spike -- to see *those* sights. How often are we gonna be in Victorian London together? Come on, let's go see where Dru played kitty c'mere with you."

"She did *not*," he protested, but he led Xander down a side street, then an alley. "I was just sitting down on a nice comfy bale of hay so I could have myself a private think about how long I should wait before I beat bloody heck out of George Halliwell and every mindless wanker at that boring excuse for a party..." He realized as he said it that they were just crossing the street below Halliwell's house, the scene of said infamous party. Which meant that little alley with the stables in it should be right round the corner.

"Or as some would have it, namely Angel and Dru, you were either a) crying like a baby-man -- which phrase I know he picked up from Cordy-- or b) all shining eyes and glistening seas of silver tears, with the heart in you burning like a baelfire." Xander's impression of Drusilla was more than uncanny, and made Spike wonder if perhaps they'd been spending too much time together unsupervised. "Also, there was something about baby fish, which I'm hoping she made up, otherwise she's even freakier than I thought."

"I was not crying," he objected, on sheer principle. Xander was *his* husband, which meant he was supposed to believe whatever *Spike* said - not listen to Angel or Dru. Right? He was pretty sure that was in the marriage contract, somewhere.

Xander shook his head. "Uh-huh. I have pictures."

"You don't. Nobody around with a camera." Spike turned the corner, and saw the alleyway. Hadn't changed a bit -- he was surprised, though, how seeing it hit him. He realized he hadn't ever gone back, since they'd left, a week after he'd died.

"Angel drew pictures," Xander was saying. Then his hand slipped into Spike's, and he said nothing.

Spike remembered sitting right over there, trying his best not to break down. He had *not* been crying. At least he hadn't been by the time he'd sat down and been approached by Drusilla. He'd just been...lost. Bewildered, then bedazzled. He'd had no idea what he'd been saying yes to. Then Xander's words registered. "Angel drew pictures?"

He looked back to find Xander smiling at him, something soft in his gaze vanishing as soon as Spike turned around until he was only grinning, happily, as he teased Spike. "Yup. A whole series called 'The Birth of an Infuriating Vampire'. He's even done one in colour."

Spike sniffed. "Made it up out of his own head, he did. *He* wasn't here. Well, he wasn't here when she turned me. Wasn't there until I woke up."

Eyes opening slowly to let in light, like the first light in the world. Like he'd never seen light, like he'd been sleeping since he was born. Dru's face hovering above him, smile as wide and red as remembered blood. Angelus staring down at him as well, caught between a grin and a glare, not sure what to make of this blinking sputtering thing that was being softly cooed over and petted by Drusilla. And somewhere out of his line of sight, Darla's voice, asking, "Is he awake, then? Good. You can bring him along. I'm hungry; I have a taste for society girls tonight."

"Spike?" Xander's voice drowned out the echo of Darla's, and Spike blinked at him, as if he were just waking up again.

"Angel took you up to his room to show you his etchings, did he?" Spike managed to put enough of a leer in his voice to convince his own ears that he really was awake, and in the twenty-first century with his twenty-first-century husband, no matter how much the familiar alleyway tried to trick him into thinking otherwise.

But instead of whapping him on the head, or even leering back at him, Xander was putting his hand under Spike's chin. His fingers were warm -- burning, really, against the cool night air and Spike's own undead skin. Then there were was more burning, as lips touched his, and a kiss as soft as it was determined. Spike opened his mouth involuntarily -- helpless, despite the habit he loved of kissing Xander, and feeling Xander's tongue press against his own.

Then Xander pulled away, and gave him that same, barely seen smile as before. He wanted to demand to know what Xander was thinking, that made him look at Spike that way. But he didn't, and he wasn't entirely certain it wasn't at least partly due to fear. Not that he was afraid of his glurble...husband -- but there were very few people who had the power to get inside Spike's heart, much less what passed for his soul. Xander was one of them, and he could do the most damage simply by loving Spike.

"Where'd you go after you woke up?" Xander asked, dragging Spike's attention away from kissing, and back to the past that lay all around him, real as life -- or death. He wasn't sure he wanted to tell Xander, though, about that first night. The killing, the feeding...it had been a frenzy, a dark and powerful thing he hadn't understood, had only been able to feel as it pulled him along in its wake. Besides which, if he was going to not talk about death, there wasn't much he *could* say.

"Not to Disney World," he finally managed to utter.

"Well, duh. There wasn't any, and anyway, I can't see Darla in Mickey Mouse ears. So..." Xander stopped. "Oh. Right. Blood and gore and a fun time was had by all."

"Well, no, not everybody," Spike responded a bit lamely.

It wasn't as if Xander didn't *know* what he used to be like. What they all used to be like, what Dru still was like, though she was more or less under control around 'my boys and my daddies and the babies and all the people I'm not allowed to bite or they'll be cross with me.' But that first night, when he really had felt new-born... It was something else entirely. Changed in an instant, changed as thoroughly as he'd been in these seven or ten odd years of Xander and chip and too many silly people Dru wasn't allowed to bite.

"Was it...." Xander trailed off, and his lightly begun question faded into a curious, but unsure expression. Spike figured Xander couldn't decide if he wanted to know -- *really* know, or not. It was one of the things they had an unspoken agreement about, things you didn't ask about, or mention: drunken uncles, vampiric feeding frenzies, missing IRS forms, Cordelia's nail polish, and Angel's shoes in their closet.

He wasn't surprised Xander was starting to ask, now, though. Surrounded by what was essentially Spike's own past - his world as a vampire, the years when he was a new-born, the things that formed him as much or more than any of the travels and experiences he'd ever had, since. Not even loving a mortal could change how much he'd loved killing them. But it could make him regret that he didn't have anything better to say.

"Why don't I show you where Manfield lived," he began, changing the subject to something he could talk about that wouldn't bother either of them. A bloke he'd known as a human, who hadn't been so outright mean to him that Xander wouldn't go all protector on him. Not that there was anything wrong with Xander being in his 'protect Spike' mood. It just would have looked a bit out of place with the strip of blue velvet on his throat.

Xander's expression faded from unsure, to something Spike couldn't read at all, to blank, then back to his usual silly, gentle smile. As if he'd never asked the question. "Why don't you show me where *you* lived?" he asked. When Spike didn't respond immediately, still trying to puzzle out what he'd missed or thought he had, Xander twined an arm through Spike's. "Unless you don't want to. That's cool. Not like we go touring past the scene of *my* twisted youth on a regular basis, anymore."

"I lived in your basement; it doesn't get any more twisted than that." It was a reflexive statement, part of a years long pattern of parry and thrust that -- aside from putting sexy fencing images in Spike's head -- gave him a chance to collect his thoughts and consider Xander's suggestion.

It wasn't like he had any particularly *bad* memories of his house. He hadn't seen it since the night of the party. Since *before* the party. It was one place he hadn't returned to on those nights of blood and night-winds and hunger. No reason, beyond he hadn't wanted to see it again, so far as he knew. No special need to go straight home and eat every member of his family; he'd leave that sort of Oedipal bollocks to Angel, the old poofy perv.

Did he want to see it again, though? If he never looked, it would always be just the way he remembered when he'd walked out, notebook in hand, thinking... yes. Perhaps tonight, after all, I'll tell Cecily... If they went to look at it now, would that change his memory of it?

Xander was watching him, and Spike realized in an instant what a moron he was being. No matter how much it *looked* like his London, this wasn't. It was just a place that was something like, that he could show his husband round, and say, as he was saying now, "Yeah, fine. Show you the window where I wrote my first godawful poem. Whereupon I blew the candle out, went to bed, tossed off for ten minutes, and felt horribly guilty for the next two days." He grinned and tugged on Xander's arm. "It's this way."

"You *must* have changed," was all Xander said, after he'd trailed alongside Spike for several steps. Spike almost stopped to glare at him, before he realized he wasn't sure exactly which bit Xander was talking about.

"You're not saying my poetry's got better?" he asked, dubiously.

Xander looked at him, with a very composed expression. Yep, Spike knew what he was about to say. "Spike, I love you dearly, but I will never, ever think you're a clever poet. Just a heart-felt one."

"You liked my naked Angel limerick," he pouted, and began pulling Xander down the sidewalk again.

"I laughed. It's not the same thing."

"Then how'd I change?" he asked, before it occurred to him that asking might be about *that* -- the killing and bloodlust and things they didn't really talk about.

"Guilt? Hello, Mr. I Want To Shag You In Public? Feeling guilty? Did I wake up with the wrong sexy vampire this evening?"

"Dunno. Not sure you ever *did* wake up." Spike lead them past Manfield's house, and around a corner onto a street that looked stunningly not a thing like what he remembered. He relaxed, slightly. Maybe his house wasn't even there. "Took me long enough to prop you upright and get you into your underclothes." He gave Xander a stern frown, the one he'd stolen from his schoolmaster when he was fourteen.

"Um? That was because you were trying to pull my underwear *down*."

"Cos you had 'em on wrong."

"On my ass is not *wrong*, Spike."

"It is when I'm trying to suck you off," he said logically. "Anyhow, I got over feeling guilty about little thinks like wanking, about the time I had my first taste of just what the Poof meant by family togetherness," Spike explained, while they walked past houses that began to look vaguely familiar.

Just... they seemed smaller, Spike realized. It was silly; it wasn't as if he'd grown any, since he was turned, but the houses seemed lower to the ground. Dingier -- and this hadn't ever been the street of streets, even back then. Fading gentry and fourth youngest sons who married tailor's daughters. Stable owners. Young businessmen who hadn't made it yet. Good enough, just not quite good enough *enough*.

"So which one of these is it?" Xander asked, looking at the more prosperous side of the street. Spike tapped him on the chin and directed his gaze the other way. "It was..." He studied the two identical brick houses jammed up against each other, and tried to remember which one was which. The one with the green flowerboxes, or the one with the tortoiseshell cat in the lower front window, where the woman in the gray dress was struggling up the steps with an armload of shopping bags, about to lose one of them?

"Er, that one," he said, pointing somewhere on the middle. Xander, however, was already sprinting across the street to help the woman pick up the tins and boxes that had just tumbled out of the bag she'd dropped and were rolling down the steps. Spike followed, thinking things about white knights and how tight their arses looked when they were bending over to help ladies in distress. He was glad he'd made Xander get a short coat to wear with those trousers.

It was when the woman stood up, saying, "Thank you, dearie," that he froze. She turned to look at him, and it had honestly taken that long for it to hit Spike, though he'd recognised the walk, the plump, middle-aged shape. His mother. Alive. Staring at him with eyes that he thought he'd forgotten, but now could see clear as day in his memory, looking at him from the front step as he walked away.

That same small smile asking him if he'd remembered to wear clean knickers, because he didn't want to get hit by a carriage on his way to the party and be found with dirty underwear when they dragged him to hospital, did he? Shocked, he'd scolded, "Mother!" and she'd just laughed...

Spike shook his head. Not his mum. Not even alive. He could feel the lack of body heat from here -- the only one around here giving off any physical warmth was Xander. Who was looking at him too, apparently concerned for his alleged sanity.

His mother gave Xander a lovely smile, then she glanced over when Xander looked at Spike. "William! You've...come to visit me?" His mum's voice shook, ever so slightly, as she spoke with sheer amazement.

Xander immediately looked back to her. He kept looking, from her, to Spike, and back, obviously realizing how much Spike resembled his mother -- even his doppelganger's mother. Then Spike wondered just how often his brainless wanker of a doppelganger *visited* his mum, to make her look at him with such touched disbelief. He stepped forward and said nervously, "Sorry, I'm... Xander and me're visiting here, from another dimension. M'not your William."

She blinked a few times, and quickly hid the disappointment -- which was quickly replaced by curiosity. "You're Xander?" Spike's husband nodded, politely. "You're human," she continued, sounding puzzled.

"Well, for the moment," Xander agreed, smiling in that way that charmed everybody's mother, everywhere Spike had ever gone with him.

For the moment? What did that mean-- that he thought he might be replaced by a pod person any minute now? Spike shook his head. No danger there -- what alien would want to share a flat with a vampire who couldn't do dishes and left his dirty socks all over the bedroom floor? Translating Xanderspeak was interesting at the best of times, and Spike was still fairly flambangled, after his one fumbling attempt at speech. He just stared at the woman in front of him, lost in memory.

"Sorry," Xander said to Spike's not-mum. "I'm sure you raised *your* son up right, but this one was born in a barn. Introduce us, dimwit," he said to Spike with a corresponding whap.

"Er, uh, mum, s' Xander Harris... Um...can't remember the rest of it. Got a lot of names, took 'em when we married. Xan, this is my mum." He knew he was babbling like an idiot. He was, and there was really no help for it.

His mum looked at him like maybe he'd been whapped one too few times, growing up, to knock any sense into him -- then she smiled, and held out her hand to Xander. "Adelaide Witherspoon," she said to him, and it occurred to Spike that Xander knowing his last name might be a disadvantage, later. But right now he was watching Xander's face break into a delighted smile, and seeing his husband take his mother's hand and give her an un-self-conscious peek on the cheek.

"My pleasure, Mrs. Witherspoon."

She sniffed, and grinned like a girl. "Call me Adelaide. Or -- well, I'm not, really. But...you're welcome to call me mum, as well. Won't you boys...come inside?"

There was another echo of doubt in her voice, that she knew this wasn't her son, despite however much she might be seeing him in Spike's face. But they could pretend, for the space of a few hours. They could have something they'd neither of them had in a very long time.

Spike returned her smile. "We'd love to, mum. Here, let me get that." He bent down to get the last of the bags, and hefted it.

*****