Xander slipped silently under the surface of the water in his bathtub, not quite sure when it had come to this, to him finally giving up in some crappy hotel room in some even crappier hotel in Africa…all alone with nothing—no one—left to live for.
Oh, he had Willow, of course…except, these days she spent so much time on other planes of existence, or locked in a bedroom with Kennedy in some South American country that she hadn't been able to find a minute to return his calls for months.
And sure, there was Buffy and Dawnie, but there again, they had their life—in Italy, of all places—and international calls were expensive, so it was understandable, really, that they hadn't called him in a while either.
Giles was so busy putting the Council back together that he only had time for hurried calls, the express purpose of which were to give Xander the name and last known location of the latest suspected slayer in Africa…not that he and Giles had ever been phone buddies, but still. Several years saving the world together deserved at least ten minutes of awkward conversation once in a while, didn't it?
Andrew was the only one who gave him the time of day, even though most days he was busy being Giles' protégé. And how fucked up was it that even Andrew had more of a life than he did?
But there it was. He was all alone; no friends, no bright exciting future to look forward to, just more crappy hotels in crappy towns, recruiting slayers who weren't always the happiest at finding out they had a mystical destiny. He used to be the heart of the Scoobies but now he didn't have any heart left, and no one to give it to anymore if he had.
Xander blinked under the water, staring at the ceiling as it shimmied and shimmered above him. Weird. The water didn't seem like it was moving at all, but the ceiling looked like a blanket rippling in a soft breeze. Huh. He hadn't noticed that back in Sunnydale, when the poltergeist had tried to drown him in Riley's frat house. Of course, then he'd been struggling and trying to save himself, so yeah. Understandable, really. Too bad, though. If he'd just stopped struggling back then….
But he hadn't. Instead, he'd fought it, and he and Anya had ended up spending another painful year and a half together before calling it quits. Anya. He wondered where she was now. What plane of existence she lived on since dying on the Hellmouth. Maybe Willow knew. Maybe they ran into each other all the time and Anya had given Willow a message she'd forgotten to give to him. Something like:
Hi Xander,I just wanted you to know I'm in a much better place now. There's lots of orgasms here, and people understand the value of a dollar, and the men don't wimp out and leave the love of their lives at the altar. Maybe I'll see you some day…or maybe not. Have a good life.
Anya
Except, Xander hadn't left the love of his life at the altar, had he? He'd left a woman he had wanted to be the love of his life there. Big difference. The love of his life…was buried somewhere under Sunnydale, nothing but a pile of dust under the Hellmouth.
Spike had never known that, either. Xander had never let on. How could he when the man—vampire—he'd realized he had feelings for was chasing after Buffy? A slayer. A super strong bombshell…complete with the female bits Spike seemed to prefer. Bits Xander didn't have, not to mention the whole super strength thing.
Xander wouldn't have stood a chance. He'd known that and that had been why he'd stayed silent…except for the jabs and wall of false hatred he'd needed to erect between them for his own sanity's sake. And really, it wasn't like Spike hadn't given him ample ammo to use. Spike gave as good as he got in the insult department, and he'd had no qualms about letting Xander know he thought he was useless.
And the whole attempted rape thing. That was the ammo to end all ammunition stockpiles. Xander could have kept that wall strong and solid between them for a good long time if Spike hadn't gone and proved his soul had made him different, had made him able to love Buffy so much he had willingly died for her. Although, really, Spike had been soulless when he'd loved her enough to get the soul for her, so maybe he would have died for her in that Hellmouth anyway, soul or no soul…ignoring the fact that the amulet needed a soul to work.
Huh. Funny. Xander had heard that oxygen deprivation made you euphoric just before the end, but he hadn't heard anything about it making you delusional. Yet, there Spike suddenly was, looking down at him through the wall of water, his face shimmying and shimmering the way the ceiling had been.
Xander squinted slightly and realized Spike's mouth was moving. Xander could vaguely hear his voice, but it sounded far off and he couldn't make out the words over the roar of his heartbeat in his ears.
It figured. He couldn't even manage to have a good hallucination, one where Spike pulled him out of the water and held him in his arms and told him what a git he was and how much he loved and needed him, and, oh yeah, how he wasn't a pile of dust scattered inside the collapsed Hellmouth. No, Xander had to have a fucked up hallucination where he could barely see him for all the spots popping up in front of his eyes, and he couldn't understand him and, really, how much more did he have to put up with before….
Next thing Xander knew, hands were grabbing his bare shoulders, yanking him up out of the water, and the far off voice was now very loud and very near. Xander coughed and coughed as he felt himself being shaken.
"What the hell's the matter with you, Harris? You trying to kill yourself?"
Xander coughed again and blinked at the hallucination glaring at him. He hadn't known delusions could be corporeal. Too bad he wouldn't be living long enough to share that revelation with anyone else. Or maybe—and much more likely—it was all part of the fantasy. Yeah. He was still under water, possibly sucking in gulpfuls of water by now, and he'd entered the euphoric part of the drowning process.
"Well?"
Xander blinked again. Well? Oh yeah. Was he trying to kill himself…that had been the question. In a raspy voice, he answered, "Well…yeah."
The look he got was somewhere between worry and confusion. "You…were? Why?"
"Because you're dead," Xander croaked.
That look was definitely bafflement. Xander couldn't help the hysterical giggle that bubbled up from his throat. This was much better than the whole life flashing before your eyes, light at the end of the tunnel thing most people got stuck with when they were on the verge of death.
"Because I'm…. This some sort of sick joke? It is, isn't it? Andrew couldn't keep his gob shut, had to tell the lot of you I was still among the undead, and you decided to get back at me, right?"
Xander didn't answer. He decided that as long as he was delusional, he might as well make the most of it. Reaching out with a wet, dripping hand, he touched a finger to Spike's chiseled cheekbone. When Spike didn't jerk away or warn him off, Xander cupped Spike's cheek in his palm and gasped.
"You feel so real."
"Of course I… Xander? What's going on? This is a joke, yeah?"
Xander shook his head slowly. "No joke. Just my delusion."
A strong hand gripped his wrist but Spike didn't use the hold he had on him to pull his hand away from his face. Instead, he held Xander's hand to him and turned his face into it a little more. "Not a delusion, git. I'm real and you're not dying, or whatever it is you think you're doing."
Xander began to snap out of the strange trance he'd slipped into and started to shake his head again, his eyes widening. "But…I have to be. You're dust."
Spike let go of Xander's wrist and pulled his face back a few inches, severing the contact between them. "For a bit, but then someone dug up the amulet and sent it to Angel. It was a whole thing. Was a ghosty for a while, played a bit of piss off the ponce to keep from going 'round the bend, but now I'm back, solid as ever. Was sent off on a mission to retrieve you since my hands are still healing. Peaches is playing protective grandsire for the first time in a hundred years and decided retrieving you was the safest thing for me to be doing." A heartbeat, then, "Andrew really didn't tell you?"
"No." Xander paused as the enormity of the situation hit him. "Holy fuck. You're not dead. You're here. And I just said…and…and…oh shit. Just go and let me finish what I started, okay? You can tell whoever sent you that you got here a minute too late or something."
"What are you on about? And what's the real reason you were trying to off yourself, anyway? That's not the Xander I knew."
Xander snorted and crossed his arms over his chest, suddenly self-conscious of his poorly hidden nudity under the clear water now that he was starting to consider the possibility that he wasn't delusional.
Bitterly, he said, "The Xander you knew died on the Hellmouth."
Spike was silent for a heartbeat, then said, "Bollocks. Just having a bit of 'oh woe is me'. You'll bounce back, always do. Was always one of the things I admired about you, tell the truth."
Xander shot Spike a look, then laughed humorlessly. "Okay. For a minute there, I started to doubt that this was a hallucination, but that right there proved it is."
"What?" Spike asked, brow scrunched up.
"You complimented me. Worse, you said you admire something about me. The Spike I knew would have never done that."
Spike stared at Xander intently. "The Spike you knew died on that Hellmouth too."
Xander shot him a doubtful look and Spike went on. "When I came back, I was in a…kind of limbo for a while, what with not being corporeal. Had a lot of time to reevaluate things. One of them was why I took so many jabs at you all the time. Want to know what I worked out?"
Xander considered shaking his head no, but in the end he was too curious to do anything but shrug.
Taking that as his cue, Spike continued, "Right, then. Part of it was because you were the only one who could give as good as you got and part of it was because I envied you most. You had no powers to speak of, yet you kept fighting. The slayer admired you for it. That cut the deepest. She may not have always shown it, and there were times she took you for granted, but she also looked to you and how you kept fighting for her and hers, whenever she was feeling overwhelmed."
Xander, for the first time in his life, was completely speechless. After several moments of silence, he finally managed to ask, "You're serious, aren't you? And this is real? Not a hallucination?"
Spike rolled his eyes. "'Course I'm serious. But don't go getting all puffed up over it. I haven't had anyone worthy of matching wits with in a while now, so don't expect me to walk around wearing my heart on my sleeve. Fuck knows, Angel's no match. Pouf's too easy to wind up. Starts spluttering and growling and then there's fists involved and that bothers Fred and I don't like upsetting her much."
Xander laughed then. The first real, true laugh he'd felt well up in him in a damn long time. It felt good. More than good. Spike smiled at him and eventually Xander's laughter died off and they sat smiling at each other, Xander naked in the tub, Spike fully dressed and perched on the edge—minus his duster, which Xander noticed was lying on the bathroom counter.
Spike suddenly stood and looked around, breaking the moment. He grabbed a towel off the bathroom counter and tossed it in Xander's direction, waiting until Xander caught it to say, "Dry off and get your kit on, drippy. We've got another apocalypse to avert and Angel needs your military expertise since he either fired or killed all the blokes on his security team who had any kind of armed forces training." Spike paused as he grabbed his duster off the counter and shrugged back into it, then continued, "Mind, the ponce probably won't admit it to your face once we get there, but he did send me to get you, so keep that in mind when he starts strutting around wearing his superior attitude like a peacock wears its feathers."
With that, Spike turned and walked out of the bathroom. Xander stood and stepped out of the tub, dried off, and wrapped the towel around his waist. He started out of the bathroom on somewhat shaky legs, headed for his suitcase of clothes in the other room, but hesitated. Turning back to the tub, he stared at it for a moment as the water rippled back and forth, the weight of how close he had come to dying—by his own hand—settling somewhere in the pit of his stomach like a lead ball.
Spike's voice—suddenly nearby again—broke through Xander's budding wiggins. "Hey, you never told me why you were trying to do yourself in."
Xander turned away from the tub to find Spike standing in the doorway, looking at him with an expression somewhere between curious and concerned—and wasn't that cause for a wiggins in itself? Before answering, Xander turned back to the tub, walked over, and pulled the stopper out of the drain.
Facing Spike again, Xander listened to the sound of the water being sucked out of the tub and said, "Later. Right now, I want to hear about this apocalypse Deadboy needs me for."
~ Finis
Slipping Under: Death Became Him (alternate version)