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Notes: Dark AU, Spander with Wesley.
The Assistant part 6
"There's a great deal I don't understand about this process," Wesley says later, when he and Spike are sitting at the long table in the library with the bottle of whiskey between them. Library rules are a thing of the past--Spike smokes over ancient manuscripts and Wesley doesn't blink. Somehow he can't bring himself to care about sole copies anymore. And they both need the whiskey.
"There's almost nothing you understand about this process," Spike corrects him, but his tone is muted now. They're both exhausted, which is part of it. But they've also had some time apart, a few hours to shower and eat and think in private about what's happening. Wesley's abandoned a few more of his certainties, and Spike appears to notice and appreciate that. It makes things easier.
"Xander's weakness," Wesley says, as a for-instance. "Why isn't he stronger?"
"Half-starved. And still leaking when we found him. He'll be better tomorrow, with that blood in him."
"Will he be hostile?"
"Would you?"
"What I mean is, will he be dangerous? Is it safe to keep him in the cage?"
Spike shrugs. "Don't go walking in covered in shaving cuts, but he should be all right. The cage'll hold him."
Wesley thinks about that for a while--Xander testing the cage, trying to escape from it. It's a bizarre, horrible image. Xander still looks like a friend, after all. You can't see the demon unless he lets you.
"Why isn't he bound to Angelus? I thought that when a vampire sired a person, there was a...link of some kind. Like family."
Spike gives him that level, blue-eyed gaze, the one that says, You are not very bright. "You get along with your father, Wesley?"
Wesley purses his lips. "I understand. But...I have obligations to my father. Don't you?"
"Don't have a father." Spike smirks without enthusiasm, and spins his glass with his thumb. "But if I did, I might consider that my obligations ended when he ripped my throat out."
"Indeed." Wesley takes his glasses off and rubs his eyes. "He seems...well, he still seems very much like Xander Harris."
"Bingo," Spike says. "But from now on, you don't go near him unless I'm there too."
At four a.m., Wesley admits his limits and goes to bed for a few hours. At seven he wakes up in a cold sweat. He goes to his office and checks the security cameras. Nothing is amiss. They've cut the staff to skeleton, in order both to keep prying eyes out and to protect as many people as possible if Angelus returns. The cameras show empty hallways and cubicles.
The camera on the cage shows two bodies in the bunk, spooned and still.
Wesley studies the image in silence for several minutes. He's not sure what to make of it--he can't shift his paradigms fast enough to keep up. A week ago, the sight of Xander and Spike in bed together would have been laughable, inconceivable. But there it is in front of him. Idly, his brain wonders whether he's seeing simple comfort, or something more. Idly, his brain tells him that of course it's something more. It's whatever dead men have in common, once they've passed through that gate and met on the other side.
Finally he turns away from the computer and goes to find a cup of coffee, because his brain is still idle but it won't shut up, and he doesn't want to hear any more about the twain never meeting.
"And then what?" Wesley is sitting in a metal folding chair, the crossbow discreetly laid behind him on the floor, trying not to feel sick. He could use a cigarette, but he's the only one here whose lungs still actually need to function, so he's the only one who doesn't get to smoke.
"Then he beat on me some more." Xander takes a long drag on his own cigarette, as if he knows what Wesley is craving, and wants to rub it in. "Messed up that carpet something fierce."
"Arizona," Spike says, just to clarify. "You're sure."
"Saw the phone book on the bed, yeah."
"Why the hell was he in Arizona?"
Xander shrugs. "Voted number one state to be a bug-fuck psycho asshole in?"
Wesley frowns. "He was buying time, that's all. Drawing it out."
"Or that," Xander says mildly, flicking ash to the floor. "He got some pretty serious joy out of calling you guys up every other day."
"Like I said," Spike says. "He's a psychopath."
"And he's loose," Wesley reminds them. "Xander, anything at all that you can remember--"
"About being tortured, murdered, and turned into a vampire? Let me plumb a little deeper, yeah."
"Don't be a dick," Spike says.
"I'm a dick? Me? I'm the guy who got abducted doing his homework, remember? You want to talk about a dick, let's talk about the guy I worked for, who left me manning the desk alone with a psycho on the loose--"
Spike reaches over and smacks Xander across the mouth with the flat of his hand. It's not that hard, but it's sudden and sharp, and Xander shuts up. He sits giving Spike a sullen look, one hand massaging the corner of his lip.
"And don't be a poof, either," Spike says. "Barely touched you."
"Dick," Xander mutters. Spike ignores him.
Wesley realizes he's sitting on the edge of his chair, his muscles tight and strained, his hands in fists. It bothers him that Spike's in the cage with Xander, even though he has no doubt that if Xander tried anything, Spike could easily squash him. The blood's brought Xander around a great deal, but he's still weak. He's also a brand-new vampire, and Wesley knows from experience that new vamps are mostly show. So it's probably safe enough that Spike's in there, but it still makes Wesley nervous.
He has the distinct sense that of everyone in the room, he is the one with the least understanding of what's going on. It's not a pleasant sensation.
"We may have to accept," he says, "that Angelus left no clues. Or at least none that Xander can provide us with."
"So, what?" Spike leans back in his chair and puts his feet up against the edge of Xander's bunk. He's acting, Wesley realizes, as if nothing has changed. As if Xander is still a mutual friend, a colleague, a drinking partner. No, he's not. He's acting as if Xander is something more than a friend. Something far more familiar and intimate than a friend. "So we give up looking?"
"If we have no clues," Wesley says, "we have no way even to begin looking."
"Locator spell?" Xander says. "Hello?"
"We tried that immediately. When he took you from the library, he also took a codex with a large number of wards in it. He must have used one."
"Shit." Xander smokes moodily, still thumbing the corner of his mouth. "Where's Willy when you need him, huh?"
"Too right," Spike says, and the two of them share a brief, rueful smile.
It's ridiculous for Wesley to ask who Willy is. It's also ridiculous to feel left out of Spike and Xander's conversation, when it so clearly doesn't figure. In fact, it's ridiculous for him to be there at all, so he picks up his crossbow and goes back up to the library and tries again to find the answer. To anything.
