Protocol Charity Fic: Xander and Spike
Mar. 16th, 2005 11:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thebratqueenGot another charity fic done! This one is for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
leeannaray, who requested "a story about Spike and Xander in the Protocol!verse. I would love to know how they got together, if that's at all possible."
So for that, I bring you...
Previous parts of Protocol can be found here.
Other charity fics can be found here
(Timeline-wise this takes place sometime before Randy and Zhanna show up)
***
Xander didn't know how he had become the go-to guy for Angel's junior high school attempts at communicating with Wesley. If he had been asked - which, for the record, he had not - he would have said this was Willow's job, since she and Wes seemed to enjoy their own strange language of magic and potions and things that might cure you and just might kill you and best not to try any samples until one of them remembered to tell you the difference.
Gunn was another name that suggested itself. Not that he and Wesley were best buddies and drinking pals, but they talked on a regular basis and that had to count for something in the realms of information gathering, right?
Or, for that matter, Xander might have pointed out that this was *Angel's* job, what with being *married* to Wes and all.
Oh, wait - Xander had pointed that last one out. It hadn't done any good. Angel had just gone all uncomfortable and pathetic and stammery, and Will'd given him one of those evil eyes that suggested that dire things, such as pictures of clowns being placed in prime locations, would be in the offing if Xander kept on being, as Willow called it, a poopy-head.
Plus there was, you know, the family thing. Such as it was. Stupid Spike. Stupid vampires and their stupid fake family trees which created stupid senses of obligation between Xander and a dead guy who had really stupid hair.
So Xander agreed to do it. But not before making sure it was firmly understood that he was not, under any circumstances, going to talk with Wesley about his sex life. At least not again. Or at least not if he could help it.
This, of course, had earned him one of Angel's irritated looks.
"I'm not asking you to give him a *blow job*, Xander."
"And thank God for that," Xander had replied. Bad enough to have to talk about it, bad enough to have talking lead to mental pictures.
"Just *ask* him, okay?"
"You know one of these days I'm going to force you to actually pass him the note in gym class," Xander said.
Angel's jaw did that tightening thing. "It's not my fault the Council's made up of idiots."
Xander had to admit that Angel had a point with that.
***
Searching through various parts of the fortress - at times his steps slow with the desire to delay the agony as long as possible, at other times fast so it could be gotten over with quickly - eventually brought him down to the greenhouse. Which was annoying as that had been Xander's first guess of where to check, but he'd dismissed it as being wrong about Wesley's plant fixations had given Angel the exact leverage needed to foist this errand on him in the first place.
Wes was buried - not literally - amongst the vegetables. He was walking past pots filled with tomatoes, peppers, and even the corn that had taken Willow five tries to figure out how to actually make stuff they could eat. Occasionally he held a hand out, as though checking the passing leaves for a pulse. Which hey, in their world was not entirely impossible.
Xander hung back. The truth of it was that he didn't have anything against Wes per se, but talking to him wasn't something Xander would rank high on the list of things marked "easy". Wes had this way about him that made you feel like you were failing a test that you didn't even know you were taking, but Wes was too polite to mention it to your face.
Which, Xander supposed, was better than Wes *not* being polite about it, but in a strange way that made it even worse. Like Wes didn't think enough of you to even pin his hopes on you someday knowing what fork went with what salad and which way to hold your pinkie while drinking milk directly from the container. Or maybe Xander was confusing Wesley with every teacher he'd ever had because doing that was easier than trying to figure out a way to start a conversation with him that wasn't more awkward than all of this already had to be. Tough call.
An opening - or what was good enough to pass for an opening - presented itself when he saw Wes frown, then squat down to look at something at the base of a clump of string beans that turned out to be a ball of grey fur with legs and eyes.
"Didn't know it was kitten picking season already," Xander said, sauntering up in what he hoped was a non-chalant manner.
Wes looked up at him, scooping his cat with the impossible to pronounce name into his hands. There was a moment of pause, as though Wes wasn't sure how seriously to take Xander's comment. Finally he offered, "He seemed ripe."
"Not for eating, I hope," Xander capped this off with a strained yet somewhere in the neighborhood of friendly grin.
Wes quirked one of his eyebrows, managing to encapsulate more suaveness and sophistication in a half inch of movement than Xander held in his entire body. "Do I look like a cat-eater to you?"
"I'm happy to say I have no idea what one of those looks like," Xander stuck his hands into his pockets, rocking on the balls of his feet as though surveying the land around him and proclaiming it good. "You learn to appreciate the small blessings in this mixed-up, crazy world of ours."
Wes stood up all the way. "Can I help you with something?"
The curtness suggested wanting Xander to go elsewhere, but Wes's demeanor suggested he didn't mean it to be as rude as it sounded. Occasionally Xander had to admit that it wasn't entirely Angel's fault that he couldn't get a read on the guy.
Speaking of Angel, that was Xander's cue. He'd been given a line that Angel felt fairly certain would keep Wes from sending Xander away before he could get the job done. At the time Xander had told Angel he was being an idiot to make him repeat it back over and over as though this were actually some kind of spy mission with code words. Now Xander couldn't remember half of it. This meant that he'd twice now agreed that Angel was right while he was wrong, and this created a kind of itchy sensation that Xander imagined Spike was probably more than familiar with.
Wes was staring at him. Oh, yeah, words.
"I'm supposed to - uh - " Xander fumbled, and sure enough there was Wes's too polite look. Not that it held malice or anything, but it didn't help with the memory. "Angel said he thought you might need some help."
Wes shifted his cat from the crook of one arm to another. "My lord believes I cannot serve him without aid?"
That was another reason why talking with Wes was just *odd*. Nice guy and all, but Xander couldn't wrap his brain around somebody - anybody - calling Angel by nothing but a title. Angel was *Angel*. Except when he was Angelus and then it wasn't so much titles as it was stakes and/or running. But the doofy vampire with no communication skills and a penchant for brooding and melodrama? Well... okay, take out the doofy part and that was Angelus too. But point being neither one of them was a title kind of guy. It just felt weird. Sure, Xander got that that was part and parcel of the Angel keeping as many of the good guys alive as was vampirically possible gig, but it was still odd. He'd have felt the same if somebody suddenly started calling Faith a queen, or himself a duke. Then he wondered what exactly you *called* a duke. Then he realized Wes was still staring at him.
"No, no," Xander waved his hands, trying to dispel any uncertainty. "Nothing bad like that. He just thought, you know, you might like some company. Besides the cat."
"All right," Wesley said. He kept on staring.
"So.... I could help," Xander offered. "With the kitten picking, or whatever it is you're doing."
"I was going for a walk," Wesley said. "Unless my lord needs me elsewhere?"
"Nope, walking's fine," Xander gestured for Wes to keep going. "I can walk with the best of them."
Wes looked like he didn't know what to make of this. "It's very kind of my lord to think of my needs."
"Actually Angel wanted us to talk," Xander said.
More staring.
"No, really, he did," Xander said. "You know, family bonding, togetherness, enjoying the company of.... okay he wanted to know why you didn't like the plants."
Both eyebrows went up now. "I beg your pardon?"
"The plants, the flowers," Xander said. "Angel got you flowers based on my idea and you didn't like them. He wanted to know why."
"You were the one who told my lord to give me flowers?" Wesley's face was that of a man who had a puzzle piece but not one that fit into the puzzle in front of him.
Xander swooped his hand to indicate the greenery around them. "You like being here. He wanted to know what you liked. I figured it was a matchy situation."
The cat crawled up higher on Wes's chest. Wes settled it against his shoulder. A smile played about on his lips. "My lord wanted to know my likes?"
"Yeah, apparently you're not too chatty about those," Xander said.
"I like my lord," Wesley replied, and this seemed to be a heavy thing, a thing with meanings beyond the obvious ones, and Xander had no way of translating them.
Fortunately, he didn't have to. "Well that's nice, what with the marriage and all."
Wes started to walk. "Did my lord wish to know anything else?"
"Anything you wanted to share," Xander settled into step beside him. He kept his eyes on the ground so no hoses could trip him. "Or not. You know what they say about curiosity killing the vampire."
"Is that actually a saying?"
"No," Xander admitted. "But I suppose it could be. Maybe if we got holy water or wood involved."
"You have very strange feelings about vampires," Wesley said.
"I feel vampires are very strange," Xander replied.
"You're in love with one."
"Love is such a *strong* word."
"Is it an inaccurate one?"
Xander cleared his throat. He muttered an answer which wasn't "yes" and hoped, however foolishly, that Wes couldn't keep track of double negatives.
Wes didn't seem fazed by Xander's lack of enthusiasm for the topic. "Have you and Spike been together long?"
"Long enough," Xander thought about it. "Three years? Maybe four?"
"You don't mark anniversaries?"
"Do you?" Xander asked.
"The date I am given to my husband is very important to me," Wesley said. "It is the beginning of the life I was destined for."
"Spike and I aren't destiny guys," Xander said. "Other people get those. We're more the lending a hand and offering a snappy comment types."
Wes had a studious look, as though reading answers off of Xander's face. "Is that why you are together?"
"Something like that," Xander shrugged.
"How did you meet?" Wesley asked.
"It's not a great story," Xander held his hands up in a square, as though framing a picture. "If my life were a movie, this is when we'd smash cut to a flashback of something really boring, like me walking down a hall and bumping into Spike and one of us saying 'Hey! Out of the way!' and the other one replying 'Bite me'."
"You don't remember?" Wes seemed surprised.
"Told you: no destiny," Xander dropped his hands back down to his sides. "No violins playing, no burst of Heavenly light. What can I say? I was busy, he was one of a whole lot of vampires."
"But he has a soul," Wesley said.
"Problem is that's not actually something that you can see," Xander said. "At least, not on their face."
The kitten was fast asleep on Wes's shoulder, but Wes petted it as though it was upset about something and needed to be calmed down. The kitten sneezed in response to that, and continued sleeping.
"I was raised to hate vampires," Wesley said.
"Join the club," Xander replied. "Demons too."
"Some demons are friendly," Wesley said.
"I've learned that," Xander inclined his head in acknowledgement. "Vampires too, which is all new levels of weirdness and wrong."
Wesley stopped. He stood in front of Xander, his face shadowed by a climbing vine that dwarfed him. "But you love one."
Xander gave a rolling shrug of his shoulders to that. "Yeah."
A pause stretched out between them. It was long enough that Xander heard a patch of sprinklers cycle on, then off. Wes clearly had a question on his mind. Xander readied his answer, expecting Wes to open his mouth and ask "Why?"
Instead Wes came at him with: "How?"
"What?" Xander shook his head. Two more and they could complete a newspaper article, a trivial factoid that Xander blamed Willow for shoving into his brain sometime when they were kids and she jerry rigged her own printing press. "I don't - huh?"
"How did you know?" Wesley asked. "He was once unremarkable, now you love him. How did you know?"
Xander was taken aback. Quite literally, as his brain supplied him with the flashbacks he joked about earlier: being unaware of Spike; becoming aware of Spike as the vampire Angel was related to; fighting with Spike; not getting along with Spike; not getting along with anyone, because there was death and destruction and the loss of people he'd cared about and it hurt too much to try caring again.
Spike being a bastard; Spike being an asshole; Spike dealing with, as Xander would find out later, his own losses, and deaths, and pains that he still couldn't understand or contemplate, because his soul was shiny new compared to Angel's and he reacted to pain with a childlike lack of understanding, looking out at the world with the same confusion and betrayal that a child looked at a parent who hit them for the first time.
And what was it, in all of that, that had done it? What one moment had stood out, made Xander look at Spike in a new light? Made Spike, for that matter, look at him? Had it been fighting side by side against the kinds of demons and vampires they didn't let past the front door? Had it been during the downtimes, when a tired night spent with friends and beer brought out more bonding than anyone had expected?
Was it that summer Connor had been hurt, and Angel had gone batshit insane, and there'd somehow been the silent understanding that between the both of them Xander could take care of Connor and Spike could take care of Angel and in a weird, fucked up way, the whole thing kind of worked and made a family?
Or maybe it had been later, much later, when Xander had realized that for a couple of guys who lived their lives by color commentary, the amount they said in quiet to each other completely outlapped things they said out loud to everyone else.
Xander thought about it, and thought about it, and finally said, "I don't know. It just... happened."
The barest flicker in Wes's eyes indicated that wasn't the answer he was hoping for. "There was no sign? No indication?"
"Nope, sorry," Xander raised a shoulder, dropped it. "I wasn't, then I was. Not that I tell him that, mind you. We're not what you'd call large with the flowery declarations."
"But how did you - " Wes looked insistent for a moment, then it vanished like a light switch being turned off. Or, better still, like a curtain had fallen, or a mask had gone up. "All right. I see."
Something welled up in Xander's chest. He was surprised to discover it was pity. "Maybe if you rephrased the question?"
"I have things I need to do," Wesley said, and for a second, just a second, Xander saw the pre-curtain him again. He looked... oddly like a vampire. Xander didn't know why until he realized it was the eyes. Wes was young, maybe even younger than he was, but his eyes were old. Too old. Like he'd had more experiences than Xander, but none of them had been the kind that you liked. "Obligations to my lord. If you'll excuse me, Xander?"
Xander knew a polite request to get the Hell out of there when he heard one. "Yeah, sure. Sorry to keep you."
"You didn't," there was a tight, quick smile at that. "Thank you. I enjoyed our time together."
Then Wes was gone, leaving Xander with the feeling that only one third of Wes's final statement had been true.
He felt bad. He didn't know what Wes had been going for with his question, but he knew for certain that in no way had he answered it.
Then he realized, belatedly, that Wes had never answered his question either.
End.
leeannaray, who requested "a story about Spike and Xander in the Protocol!verse. I would love to know how they got together, if that's at all possible."So for that, I bring you...
Previous parts of Protocol can be found here.
Other charity fics can be found here
(Timeline-wise this takes place sometime before Randy and Zhanna show up)
***
Xander didn't know how he had become the go-to guy for Angel's junior high school attempts at communicating with Wesley. If he had been asked - which, for the record, he had not - he would have said this was Willow's job, since she and Wes seemed to enjoy their own strange language of magic and potions and things that might cure you and just might kill you and best not to try any samples until one of them remembered to tell you the difference.
Gunn was another name that suggested itself. Not that he and Wesley were best buddies and drinking pals, but they talked on a regular basis and that had to count for something in the realms of information gathering, right?
Or, for that matter, Xander might have pointed out that this was *Angel's* job, what with being *married* to Wes and all.
Oh, wait - Xander had pointed that last one out. It hadn't done any good. Angel had just gone all uncomfortable and pathetic and stammery, and Will'd given him one of those evil eyes that suggested that dire things, such as pictures of clowns being placed in prime locations, would be in the offing if Xander kept on being, as Willow called it, a poopy-head.
Plus there was, you know, the family thing. Such as it was. Stupid Spike. Stupid vampires and their stupid fake family trees which created stupid senses of obligation between Xander and a dead guy who had really stupid hair.
So Xander agreed to do it. But not before making sure it was firmly understood that he was not, under any circumstances, going to talk with Wesley about his sex life. At least not again. Or at least not if he could help it.
This, of course, had earned him one of Angel's irritated looks.
"I'm not asking you to give him a *blow job*, Xander."
"And thank God for that," Xander had replied. Bad enough to have to talk about it, bad enough to have talking lead to mental pictures.
"Just *ask* him, okay?"
"You know one of these days I'm going to force you to actually pass him the note in gym class," Xander said.
Angel's jaw did that tightening thing. "It's not my fault the Council's made up of idiots."
Xander had to admit that Angel had a point with that.
***
Searching through various parts of the fortress - at times his steps slow with the desire to delay the agony as long as possible, at other times fast so it could be gotten over with quickly - eventually brought him down to the greenhouse. Which was annoying as that had been Xander's first guess of where to check, but he'd dismissed it as being wrong about Wesley's plant fixations had given Angel the exact leverage needed to foist this errand on him in the first place.
Wes was buried - not literally - amongst the vegetables. He was walking past pots filled with tomatoes, peppers, and even the corn that had taken Willow five tries to figure out how to actually make stuff they could eat. Occasionally he held a hand out, as though checking the passing leaves for a pulse. Which hey, in their world was not entirely impossible.
Xander hung back. The truth of it was that he didn't have anything against Wes per se, but talking to him wasn't something Xander would rank high on the list of things marked "easy". Wes had this way about him that made you feel like you were failing a test that you didn't even know you were taking, but Wes was too polite to mention it to your face.
Which, Xander supposed, was better than Wes *not* being polite about it, but in a strange way that made it even worse. Like Wes didn't think enough of you to even pin his hopes on you someday knowing what fork went with what salad and which way to hold your pinkie while drinking milk directly from the container. Or maybe Xander was confusing Wesley with every teacher he'd ever had because doing that was easier than trying to figure out a way to start a conversation with him that wasn't more awkward than all of this already had to be. Tough call.
An opening - or what was good enough to pass for an opening - presented itself when he saw Wes frown, then squat down to look at something at the base of a clump of string beans that turned out to be a ball of grey fur with legs and eyes.
"Didn't know it was kitten picking season already," Xander said, sauntering up in what he hoped was a non-chalant manner.
Wes looked up at him, scooping his cat with the impossible to pronounce name into his hands. There was a moment of pause, as though Wes wasn't sure how seriously to take Xander's comment. Finally he offered, "He seemed ripe."
"Not for eating, I hope," Xander capped this off with a strained yet somewhere in the neighborhood of friendly grin.
Wes quirked one of his eyebrows, managing to encapsulate more suaveness and sophistication in a half inch of movement than Xander held in his entire body. "Do I look like a cat-eater to you?"
"I'm happy to say I have no idea what one of those looks like," Xander stuck his hands into his pockets, rocking on the balls of his feet as though surveying the land around him and proclaiming it good. "You learn to appreciate the small blessings in this mixed-up, crazy world of ours."
Wes stood up all the way. "Can I help you with something?"
The curtness suggested wanting Xander to go elsewhere, but Wes's demeanor suggested he didn't mean it to be as rude as it sounded. Occasionally Xander had to admit that it wasn't entirely Angel's fault that he couldn't get a read on the guy.
Speaking of Angel, that was Xander's cue. He'd been given a line that Angel felt fairly certain would keep Wes from sending Xander away before he could get the job done. At the time Xander had told Angel he was being an idiot to make him repeat it back over and over as though this were actually some kind of spy mission with code words. Now Xander couldn't remember half of it. This meant that he'd twice now agreed that Angel was right while he was wrong, and this created a kind of itchy sensation that Xander imagined Spike was probably more than familiar with.
Wes was staring at him. Oh, yeah, words.
"I'm supposed to - uh - " Xander fumbled, and sure enough there was Wes's too polite look. Not that it held malice or anything, but it didn't help with the memory. "Angel said he thought you might need some help."
Wes shifted his cat from the crook of one arm to another. "My lord believes I cannot serve him without aid?"
That was another reason why talking with Wes was just *odd*. Nice guy and all, but Xander couldn't wrap his brain around somebody - anybody - calling Angel by nothing but a title. Angel was *Angel*. Except when he was Angelus and then it wasn't so much titles as it was stakes and/or running. But the doofy vampire with no communication skills and a penchant for brooding and melodrama? Well... okay, take out the doofy part and that was Angelus too. But point being neither one of them was a title kind of guy. It just felt weird. Sure, Xander got that that was part and parcel of the Angel keeping as many of the good guys alive as was vampirically possible gig, but it was still odd. He'd have felt the same if somebody suddenly started calling Faith a queen, or himself a duke. Then he wondered what exactly you *called* a duke. Then he realized Wes was still staring at him.
"No, no," Xander waved his hands, trying to dispel any uncertainty. "Nothing bad like that. He just thought, you know, you might like some company. Besides the cat."
"All right," Wesley said. He kept on staring.
"So.... I could help," Xander offered. "With the kitten picking, or whatever it is you're doing."
"I was going for a walk," Wesley said. "Unless my lord needs me elsewhere?"
"Nope, walking's fine," Xander gestured for Wes to keep going. "I can walk with the best of them."
Wes looked like he didn't know what to make of this. "It's very kind of my lord to think of my needs."
"Actually Angel wanted us to talk," Xander said.
More staring.
"No, really, he did," Xander said. "You know, family bonding, togetherness, enjoying the company of.... okay he wanted to know why you didn't like the plants."
Both eyebrows went up now. "I beg your pardon?"
"The plants, the flowers," Xander said. "Angel got you flowers based on my idea and you didn't like them. He wanted to know why."
"You were the one who told my lord to give me flowers?" Wesley's face was that of a man who had a puzzle piece but not one that fit into the puzzle in front of him.
Xander swooped his hand to indicate the greenery around them. "You like being here. He wanted to know what you liked. I figured it was a matchy situation."
The cat crawled up higher on Wes's chest. Wes settled it against his shoulder. A smile played about on his lips. "My lord wanted to know my likes?"
"Yeah, apparently you're not too chatty about those," Xander said.
"I like my lord," Wesley replied, and this seemed to be a heavy thing, a thing with meanings beyond the obvious ones, and Xander had no way of translating them.
Fortunately, he didn't have to. "Well that's nice, what with the marriage and all."
Wes started to walk. "Did my lord wish to know anything else?"
"Anything you wanted to share," Xander settled into step beside him. He kept his eyes on the ground so no hoses could trip him. "Or not. You know what they say about curiosity killing the vampire."
"Is that actually a saying?"
"No," Xander admitted. "But I suppose it could be. Maybe if we got holy water or wood involved."
"You have very strange feelings about vampires," Wesley said.
"I feel vampires are very strange," Xander replied.
"You're in love with one."
"Love is such a *strong* word."
"Is it an inaccurate one?"
Xander cleared his throat. He muttered an answer which wasn't "yes" and hoped, however foolishly, that Wes couldn't keep track of double negatives.
Wes didn't seem fazed by Xander's lack of enthusiasm for the topic. "Have you and Spike been together long?"
"Long enough," Xander thought about it. "Three years? Maybe four?"
"You don't mark anniversaries?"
"Do you?" Xander asked.
"The date I am given to my husband is very important to me," Wesley said. "It is the beginning of the life I was destined for."
"Spike and I aren't destiny guys," Xander said. "Other people get those. We're more the lending a hand and offering a snappy comment types."
Wes had a studious look, as though reading answers off of Xander's face. "Is that why you are together?"
"Something like that," Xander shrugged.
"How did you meet?" Wesley asked.
"It's not a great story," Xander held his hands up in a square, as though framing a picture. "If my life were a movie, this is when we'd smash cut to a flashback of something really boring, like me walking down a hall and bumping into Spike and one of us saying 'Hey! Out of the way!' and the other one replying 'Bite me'."
"You don't remember?" Wes seemed surprised.
"Told you: no destiny," Xander dropped his hands back down to his sides. "No violins playing, no burst of Heavenly light. What can I say? I was busy, he was one of a whole lot of vampires."
"But he has a soul," Wesley said.
"Problem is that's not actually something that you can see," Xander said. "At least, not on their face."
The kitten was fast asleep on Wes's shoulder, but Wes petted it as though it was upset about something and needed to be calmed down. The kitten sneezed in response to that, and continued sleeping.
"I was raised to hate vampires," Wesley said.
"Join the club," Xander replied. "Demons too."
"Some demons are friendly," Wesley said.
"I've learned that," Xander inclined his head in acknowledgement. "Vampires too, which is all new levels of weirdness and wrong."
Wesley stopped. He stood in front of Xander, his face shadowed by a climbing vine that dwarfed him. "But you love one."
Xander gave a rolling shrug of his shoulders to that. "Yeah."
A pause stretched out between them. It was long enough that Xander heard a patch of sprinklers cycle on, then off. Wes clearly had a question on his mind. Xander readied his answer, expecting Wes to open his mouth and ask "Why?"
Instead Wes came at him with: "How?"
"What?" Xander shook his head. Two more and they could complete a newspaper article, a trivial factoid that Xander blamed Willow for shoving into his brain sometime when they were kids and she jerry rigged her own printing press. "I don't - huh?"
"How did you know?" Wesley asked. "He was once unremarkable, now you love him. How did you know?"
Xander was taken aback. Quite literally, as his brain supplied him with the flashbacks he joked about earlier: being unaware of Spike; becoming aware of Spike as the vampire Angel was related to; fighting with Spike; not getting along with Spike; not getting along with anyone, because there was death and destruction and the loss of people he'd cared about and it hurt too much to try caring again.
Spike being a bastard; Spike being an asshole; Spike dealing with, as Xander would find out later, his own losses, and deaths, and pains that he still couldn't understand or contemplate, because his soul was shiny new compared to Angel's and he reacted to pain with a childlike lack of understanding, looking out at the world with the same confusion and betrayal that a child looked at a parent who hit them for the first time.
And what was it, in all of that, that had done it? What one moment had stood out, made Xander look at Spike in a new light? Made Spike, for that matter, look at him? Had it been fighting side by side against the kinds of demons and vampires they didn't let past the front door? Had it been during the downtimes, when a tired night spent with friends and beer brought out more bonding than anyone had expected?
Was it that summer Connor had been hurt, and Angel had gone batshit insane, and there'd somehow been the silent understanding that between the both of them Xander could take care of Connor and Spike could take care of Angel and in a weird, fucked up way, the whole thing kind of worked and made a family?
Or maybe it had been later, much later, when Xander had realized that for a couple of guys who lived their lives by color commentary, the amount they said in quiet to each other completely outlapped things they said out loud to everyone else.
Xander thought about it, and thought about it, and finally said, "I don't know. It just... happened."
The barest flicker in Wes's eyes indicated that wasn't the answer he was hoping for. "There was no sign? No indication?"
"Nope, sorry," Xander raised a shoulder, dropped it. "I wasn't, then I was. Not that I tell him that, mind you. We're not what you'd call large with the flowery declarations."
"But how did you - " Wes looked insistent for a moment, then it vanished like a light switch being turned off. Or, better still, like a curtain had fallen, or a mask had gone up. "All right. I see."
Something welled up in Xander's chest. He was surprised to discover it was pity. "Maybe if you rephrased the question?"
"I have things I need to do," Wesley said, and for a second, just a second, Xander saw the pre-curtain him again. He looked... oddly like a vampire. Xander didn't know why until he realized it was the eyes. Wes was young, maybe even younger than he was, but his eyes were old. Too old. Like he'd had more experiences than Xander, but none of them had been the kind that you liked. "Obligations to my lord. If you'll excuse me, Xander?"
Xander knew a polite request to get the Hell out of there when he heard one. "Yeah, sure. Sorry to keep you."
"You didn't," there was a tight, quick smile at that. "Thank you. I enjoyed our time together."
Then Wes was gone, leaving Xander with the feeling that only one third of Wes's final statement had been true.
He felt bad. He didn't know what Wes had been going for with his question, but he knew for certain that in no way had he answered it.
Then he realized, belatedly, that Wes had never answered his question either.
End.
