Spike leapt off the bed. Riley remained still for a long moment. His eyes, peering out through the stretched cotton of his shirt and into the darkness of the room, made out what he could. Spike was gone, at least, from the room, and Riley slowly pulled his shirt back down, not noticing that there was now a soggy hole revealing the middle of his chest. His breath came in ragged gasps and he tried to calm himself down, holding his fingers to the pulse in his neck, counting. He sighed as the pace of his counting - the pace of his heart - slowed.

".tired of living like a blind man."

The music still blared, but over it, or somewhere inside it, a scream rose. The scream was sustained. It ran as long as there was a trace of air in the lungs it came from, lungs that didn't need to breathe. Riley sighed again as he pulled his hand down from his neck, coming to rest, folded with his other hand, over the hardness in his pants which was quickly becoming less than turgid. The scream finally ended, or paused, Riley thought, then resumed accompanied by the crash of what could only have been Riley's television and then the music seemed to explode and dropped away completely. The screaming continued.

"."

Riley continued to sit on the bed, his hands folded, and all he could think of was - two years to tenure, just two more years. If I can just live through this, I can get to that. I won't have to. just two more years. Dissertation is dead and gone, tenure is all that's left, and. what's. that? A radio, somewhere else, parking lot, maybe or the trailer across the way.

".I've seen fire and I've seen rain."

The vampire's profile emerged from the edge of the doorframe of Riley's room. Spike stared forward, into the wall, into nothingness, coming no further into the room. Riley cocked his head slightly and caught just a little bit more of the edge of Spike, but what he saw, what he could see there, was the hardness that still jutted out in front of Spike, and Riley wondered what exactly it was for, and who, and if it was for her, and if he would have it in his mouth again. One of his hands went to his chest, and he found the hole that Spike had breached on his way into Riley's mouth. He tugged at the edges of the hole, jagged, the kind of tear that only teeth could really make, but without any specific kinds of tooth marks. He pulled on it harder, suddenly the hole in the shirt was, and it was only, what it was. Somehow, symbolic, he began to knead the hole into a large shape, while Spike stood in the door, hard, staring, and Riley got the shirt as big as it needed to be, and Riley stopped. His hand left the hole and returned to his neck and the counting, the speed of which slowly increased again until he was breathing almost as hard as he had been, before.

".I've seen sunny days that I thought would never."

Spike's head never turned. Riley hadn't know that this vampire - this rageaholic, this drunk, this coward and calculating and impatient vampire - could be so still. Riley blinked, and in the space of a blink, not even a brief moment of shut eye, not even eyes closed, just a blink, Spike's eyes set on him from nearly beyond the doorframe, from nearly through the wall. His counting stopped.

"How bloody broken are you, Riley?"

167. That was how many times he counted his heart beat in the minute following the question. 167 throbs of a heart that didn't know it had the will to live. 167 beats that were prayers to keep on beating. 167 treatises on psychology and its effects on the central nervous and cardiovascular systems. 167 pulses of an emergency guidance system teetering perilously close to the edge of.

"Do you hear me? Do you know what I. What I've done to you? To myself?"

Spike's feet shifted, and it pushed his hips forward, into plain sight, but he didn't seem to notice. Riley's eyes betrayed the moment, locked there, lingered just too long for either of their comforts and by the time Riley batted his eyes away Spike had flipped on the light switch and was standing over Riley on the bed, glaring down as if his hunger and his sobriety were going to crack him in two if he didn't feed one or the other of them. Spike's hardness was inches above his head and Riley's expression was still. He laughed.

"You've made a cuckold of me." Riley waited. "Is that what you want to hear?"

Spike growled. He didn't move, he was looking down, past himself to Riley's upturned face which no longer looked hungry, even if his heartbeat sounded it.

"I don't know what you've done to yourself, Spike. I don't even know you. I never did. What do I know? I will never stop loving her. And you can't stop. So, you're here, taking some kind of solace."

"Solace, what do you know from bloody solace?" Spike's voice rose, cut off the former soldier who retaliated.

"What do you know from what you've fucking done to me? What the fuck do you care? What makes you think this is any more important than any other fucking one night stand I've ever had?" Riley said.

Spike laughed, long and loud and stepped back and away from Riley. Spike sat on the edge of the bed, at Riley's feet, facing away from him. He would have been vaguely impressed if the prematurely middle aged professor wasn't stupid enough to believe that nothing had happened in the din he hadn't heard through. Spike knew too much to be impressed now and his laughter continued. It slowly abated and Riley slipped his hand through the hole of his shirt, rubbed his chest and pulled his hand out.

"What?" He asked.

Facing the wall. "I'll be staked for this. Sure enough, when - they, he, she, all of the bloody Delilahs - realize what I've done. I dunno how I ended up in your bed after all. It's, god, it's so funny."

Riley couldn't understand just then, and he didn't try, but the talking continued.

"Cut off the bloody hair and all the strength goes away, and she cut off the hair. Shaved away, took the last thing that was mine. Lost dignity decades ago, lost breathing years before that. I mean, sure, yeah, I've still got fags to smoke and pints to drink, but. I." Spike turned to Riley. "I don't know what to say. Bloody brilliant."

It was the moment, the one that, had happened, but hadn't happened before. It was the moment where a hole in the shirt became fully symbolic, a hole over a heart, pumping and Riley crabwalked down the bed until his legs were on either side of Spike and his arms slid under Spike's arms around wrapped around the vampire who sat there limp, still turned as if to talk to a Riley that was still across the bed from him, and just then, nothing that had happened mattered and there was comfort seeping into the vampire and back into the human for delivering it and Riley looked up, met Spike's eyes and Spike started to turn his head more, and their lips started to touch, less than a kiss and the phone rang and Riley's head immediately jerked toward it. It rang again. Riley looked back at Spike. It rang again.

"Spike? No one calls me," Riley said over the ring.

"I know that."

"Why would someone be calling me?"

It rang again.

"I don't know."

It rang again.

"How could someone get this number?"

"."

"Spike? Spike. No one calls me."

"."

The ringing stopped.

"So, then, you've done what while I was, what? Sucking you off? You've called someone? Pissed off an ex-girlfriend? Maybe they actually bothered to use that wacky star-sixty-nine business. This is so."

Riley's pulse was pumping faster, but he held fast onto Spike, didn't let go, didn't withdraw. Riley just hung on for one more long slow minute, Spike faced forward, Riley tattooed across Spike's back, before he pulled away, a tattoo shredded from skin, scar damage visible only in the eyes.

Spike cried.

* * *

"No one answered, Buffy," Anya said. "What was that?"

Buffy's eyes were glazed extra thick, the pall over her features the greatest yet of all the sad expressions on her face since she returned suddenly sans Xander. She grabbed the phone from Anya's hands without a word and disappeared up the stairs and into her room.

She dialed nine of ten numbers and hung on the last one, waited as long as she could, then punched it in. She sat through the rings on the other end in silence and dreaded the moment she knew was-

"Angel Investigations. We help the."

"Screw the helpless. I need to take care of some shit. Where's Angel?"

"Buffy?" Cordelia's voice was bright, if concerned, through the faint static of the landline. "What's going on? Not another apocalypse."

"Did you know that your ex-boyfriend is called Alexander the Great in the demon world? You'd think they'd add a 'the second' onto that title as it's already taken, but they don't. Nope, some of them apparently think your ex-boyfriend actually is the Alexander the Great. What d'you think of that?" Buffy took a breath, "Sorry, Cord, where's Angel?"

"Malibu, there's, a thing, with some traditionalist Catholics. You know Mel Gibson? That whole thing? Yeah, apparently his church is actually built on satanic ground. Did you know there was satanic ground?"

Buffy grinned. "No, I didn't, but that's interesting. So, wait, Mel Gibson is evil?"

"Apparently so. Rumor has it that 'Man Without a Face'? Yeah, not so much make up as, say, 'Braveheart' was."

"You mean he's actually all burn-y looking? God, he didn't even come with good looking not fx-makeup face. Like, wait." Buffy frowned again. "Really, Cordelia, that was a nice distraction, I don't know if you knew that I needed it, but thanks for doing it, but."

"You said something about Xander, right?"

"Right, your ex-boyfriend."

Cordelia tensed and Buffy heard her start to crack knuckles, "Why do you keep saying it like that? 'Right, your ex-boyfriend,' like you're all jealous, or bitter or something. It's not like you to express romantic resentment toward my castoffs. Not counting Mr. Salty Goodness, who won't be back, um, for a while, at least not until he's pulled a 'Lethal Weapon' on the faux Aussie."

Buffy sighed, wanting to laugh again at the routine slayage banter, but she couldn't bring herself to do so.

"When he gets back, don't let him leave. I'm coming there. I need to talk to him. I need, to. tell you later, god, I have to go."

She hung up without another word and imagined Cordy standing behind the counter of the Hyperion with the phone stuck to her ear and her mouth drooping to her ample bosom.

She packed a bag, opened her window, tossed the bag out and jumped down to the ground below. She smiled at the trick, not having done it since high school, then frowned because she suddenly felt it was the only way she could go. That feeling, that fear of discovery, that she had fought tooth and nail to get rid of washed over her and as she strode away, a hundred pounds of supplies and clothes in the bag over her shoulder and her pace faster than any man twice her size would hope to manage with such a load, she heard her phone ring again and knew who it was and knew that no way in hell would she go back and talk to him.

She turned on the timer in her heart and mind that counted down the hours until Los Angeles and the moment of basking she would have before the world started spiraling and as she climbed on the bus, she cried.

* * *

He got out of the shower, wrapped a towel around himself, went to the phone. He picked it up, dialed, let it ring. He waited, each ring hollowing out a space in his mind, burrowing. He thought it would ring forever. He was surprised by the booming, trembling voice that answered the phone.

"Spike. What are you doing? What is the."

"Anya."

"Oh. My god. You're not Spike," Anya said.

"What's your point?" He said.

"I just thought. Do you know what's going on?"

"I'm just waiting."

"Well, get off your ass. Spike's, I guess, in Iowa."

"What's he doing in Iowa, Anya?" He said.

She was quiet for a moment and he missed the ringing. The silence was louder, and the stillness was ossifying.

"He's there. He's with, I mean, we heard. He called and there was moaning and. He was doing something to, with, Riley."

He gritted his teeth and his fists clenched. He wasn't surprised really.

"Buffy's. upset. I think she'll, do something."

"That's cool."

"Are you kidding? Spike's shacked up with her ex-orgasm friend and you think it's cool?"

"Doesn't matter."

"You're so far gone, Harris, there's not even words." She hung up.

He pulled the towel from around his waist and stood naked in the dark in front of the hotel room's mirror. Where he should have been was just an uninterrupted view of the bed.

He swung around, bent over and grabbed the bed, tossing it aside like so much paper, like so much nothing at all, and he cried.

*****
Part 12: Resting Places

"The sky is a beautiful thing when you're used to the dark, innit, love?" Spike's fingers twirled in and around Xander's.

"Yeah, I guess it is. But this isn't going to work anymore, Spike." Xander's fingers combed through Spike's hair, long, sandy colored hair.

"What's not going to work anymore, Xan? Runnin' from each other? Getting revenge on each other? Seems t'me it's all working just the way it always has."

"Does that make it right? Does it make it okay if we've been doing this forever? Forever is such a long time, Spike. I don't know if I have the patience."

"You'd be amazed what you have the patience for when you're not in a rush."

"But I am."

"What, patient?"

"No. In the deep end." Xander's hand left Spike's hair and played around his neck. "You made me this way. I have to take the consequence of that, Spike. I'm the one who never asked for forever."

"Neither did I."

"No, but you were happy with it. Forever's not supposed to be literal. Forever is supposed to be, 1980 to 2047. A life. A life is supposed to be forever. If there's more to it, that's great, you make do in between. Now in between has to be indefinite or there is definitely nothing more to it. If there's more to it than this, I'm pretty sure I don't want it, Spike, I have a soul."

"Bloody hell, 'sat what this is about? We've all got bloody souls, love. Ask Angel, he'll be the first to tell you, we're champions, that's the point, right?"

"I don't feel like a champion." Xander felt his hand in Spike's pulled up and Spike put his lips there, not kissing, not pressing, or tracing or ghosting, just hand on lips.

Spike spoke, "Why don't you feel like a champion, pet? You're bloody heroic is what you are."

Xander couldn't think of anything to say. Instead he moved his hand back to Spike's hair. The sky sparkled, there were stars in the light blue sky, like glitter in the sunlight.

"What? You think because you're sitting in, where are you anyway? You're sitting there, in a hotel in the middle of nowhere, the sun set, what, an hour or two ago there? And you're still asleep, waiting, and you think you're less of a champion because you're not hunting down the dawn? I know about heroism, love. I know a bloody lot more about antiheroism. What I know? I know you're not above killing what needs to be killed. You're not above putting a bloke down. 'Sat make you less of a champion? I don't think so, least not mostly. I think it makes you human, and even with a soul, that's a commodity you can never discount. I don't care if you're the Master of the Order of Aurelius, Adam of the Initiative, or bloody fucking Medusa of the Gorgons - all they want is humanity. They want to eat it, they want to study it, they want it in shackles. Why do they all want it?"

Spike paused for the drama, put Xander's hand back down, let go of it and adjusted himself to face Xander.

"Because they can never have it."

Xander smiled, "I think you're the champio."

Xander jerked, felt cold porcelain and metal on his head, he opened his eyes to the glare of the hotel bathroom and fought back the urge to cry again. Then he realized why he woke up. A man, tall, with a shotgun barrel in his face, stood in the bathroom doorway and was screaming at him.

"Wait, wait, wait. What?"

The man shut up, "So you can talk, fucking redneck piece of shit. What the fuck's going on in here?"

Xander rubbed his head, "Nothing, nothing man, why? What's going on?"

"The room is trashed you sack of shit."

"Which is it?"

"What?"

Xander grinned, "Piece or sack? Think fast."

The man blinked and Xander moved. Out of the tub, he grabbed the shotgun and kept the man's finger on the trigger, pointed the barrel at the man's head. Xander pulled him out of the doorway and into the hotel room proper. Xander surveyed the damage without letting up a grip on the man. A lamp was broken, the bed was on top of the small table and chairs by the window.

"I'll put the bed back together, the room's paid for, I assume, by the man who checked me in? I'll throw in fifty bucks for the lamp, and you, sir, will fuck off."

Xander released the man. "Strong."

"You say something, man? I got trouble waitin' right here in my mouth."

The man turned around to find Xander in full gameface.

"You hear me, man?"

"Yeah, bed, bucks, fuck off. I'll just be." The man started toward the door, but moved really slowly, still not sure what was happening around him. He opened the door while Xander glared and shifted back into human fa�ade.

"You decide?"

The man stopped, but didn't turn, "Whahuh?"

"Piece or sack? You decide?"

"Uhm" The man started shaking, literally, in his filthy boots.

"I've always through of myself as more of a pile, really. Some fucking Jurassic shit."

And the man scrambled out the door, slamming it behind himself while Xander set to correcting the room.

"Nothing like a dream to make reality one big pile of shit," Xander said.

* * *

"You're actually right about something, Iowa," Spike said.

"That was her, wasn't it? Why did you? What could I have done to make you? Or was it her? But you love her, you wouldn't, why would you?"

"You what? Teach? Psychology, right?"

Riley nodded. They were sitting opposite each other at the kitchen table. Riley was purposely sitting with his back to the living room. He avoided the scene in there at every turn.

"Well, I'm fucked, good professor, perhaps you'd like to fix me?"

"I don't practice, Spike. I'm just, not even tenured, just. A teacher."

"So, then you're not sworn to fix me up right and proper? That's good then, you'll just listen."

Spike sighed then, knew that he would tell the whole story. Love, love lost, new love found, running away, time on boats, time in Sunnydale, time in the ocean, the betrayal he never expected - Buffy. Xander. Hard. Bodies. Fuck - and everything since.

".so, then we go to South America looking to stop another apocalypse, that woulda been three or four, as I recall, you stop one apocalypse you've kind of stopped 'em all. 'At's why the slayer doesn't like to brag, not many people can hold a candle to her apocalypse stoppage, just Xan 'n me and, well, that other bugger in L.A."

Spike stopped for a moment, he didn't know how long he'd been talking, but he still couldn't feel dawn around the edges of the windows, so it couldn't have been that long. He looked at Riley, saw the confusion and pain there, but also saw little glints of understanding and respect in the corners of his eyes.

"You following me, Riley?" Spike said.

"Yeah," Riley said, "is there more?"

"Well, I don't think I need to redescribe that blowjob from a minute ago."

Riley didn't even turn to look at a clock, "A little more than a minute ago, I think."

Spike chuckled. "You're probably right."

Spike laughed and Riley laughed and there was a moment where things were normal. There was no love here, they both knew it, at least, not the kind of love that their bodies had wanted them to work toward. Instead there was a trust that had been built. But now Riley knew more of Spike's recent history than anyone except for Xander, and Spike had intuited the details of Riley's life, and with all of this understood, there was something there, and Spike knew that he felt for the boy, but didn't feel toward the boy and Riley knew the same thing. Spike looked closely at Riley as the laughter faded slowly.

"One or both of them will be coming here. One or both of them will stake me. Or chain me in a field. Or feed me spaghetti boiled in holy water. I really don't know what fresh torture they'll dream up, but I doubt it'll be as simple as something I'd do with a railroad spike."

"Maybe you can. I dunno, explain it to them," Riley offered.

"Look, I understand. at least, I think I understand, what they did. 'S kinda one of my better gifts, understanding. That's what happens when you make a vampire out of a bad poet. Fortunately I've had the better part of a hundred and almost fifty years to actually get a hold of the English language so it doesn't run me quite as amok. But, there's no reason for this. There's absolutely no explaining how I ended up in your state, in your town, in your arms, Riley. I wasn't looking for you. I was looking for a way out. And you found me, or I found you, instead of the pointy end of a bloody stake."

"I get it, Spike. I understand everything that's happened. Well, actually, I'm kinda hung up on there was a little daughter of Willow and Xander and she made the world almost end so you had to make Xander a vampire, but not until after you weren't suddenly a human anymore - I mean, that part I'm pretty unclear on. but everything since then mostly follows. What I don't understand, well, honestly. Why sink the boat? Why not just, I don't know, stop them from, you know."

"Riley?" Spike said, rolling his eyes.

"Yeah?"

"You've had sex with the slayer, right?"

"I don't see why that's."

Spike cocked his eyebrow.

"Yes."

"It's like heroin. All that tightness, the wet. I don't even go in for that anymore, at least not since Xan and I did that warrior priestess in Liberia, but. Something about Xander. No matter what he said, or who he, and here I air quote, loved, even with me, even when destiny seemed to bind us together. He always loved Buffy, more than you or I or even sodding Angel ever could," Spike's words hung in the air for a moment. "I may hate him for getting his end in her, but I can't blame him. And I couldn't stop him. Least, I couldn't bring myself to."

Riley started to speak, but Spike cut him off, "And to his credit, I know this: He wanted to find me, but he never thought he would. And he never thought I would find him first. And I wouldn't have if it wasn't for that big bloody fish in the middle of the dark ocean. Strong blood that was."

"Spike?" Riley said, "After this, and I plan for there to be an after this, maybe I'll even. y'know, with that peculiar girl I used to love, but after this. When you survive and are back with your lover?"

Spike nodded.

Riley sighed and a tear fell down his cheek as he said, "Can we be friends for as long as we both shall live?"

Spike laughed and reached across the table, rubbing Riley's shoulder.

"Course we can, love. Don't even ask that," Spike smiled. "It's not even a question."

*****
tbc