lit_gal | Kin of the Heart

Two days, two posts. Read 'em in order folks. Now, back to answering comments.

In this universe, Xander challenged Angel right up front--called him a pedophile to his face. And from there, everything changed.

Previous parts:
Part one: Bumbling to a Save
Part two: Family Ties
Part three: Devil in the Details
Part Four: Bad Karma
Part Five: Rust Upon Iron
Part Six: Mending Fences... or tearing them down
Part Seven: Quiet Waters Mirroring Undistorted
Part Eight: Bait, Swindle and Self-destruct
Part Nine: Deaf, Dumb, and Destiny-blind
Part Ten: The Road Not Taken
Part Eleven: Full Circle on the Lesson
Part Twelve: The Care and Feeding of Humans
Part Thirteen: A Little Brutal Honesty with Tea
Part Fourteen: A Slippery Leash
Part Fifteen: Flesh and Blood and Heart

Part Sixteen: A Slender Thread of Sanity
Part Seventeen: The Enemy of my Enemy
Part Eighteen: The Best Laid Plans
Part Nineteen: The World Turns

Part Twenty: Faulty Logic

"Olly, olly all in free," Spike called as he pushed the door to Xander's apartment open and walked right in. He nearly stumbled right back out as the wailing music ran down his nerves like fingernails down a chalkboard. "Oi, what is that shite?" he demanded as he walked over and hit the volume button. "Bloody hell, you are not allowed to buy your own music," he complained as he took the tape out and flung it at the wall where it made a satisfying crunch. "Should be getting CD's anyway. Sound quality is better."

Spike dropped down onto the chair and flung one leg over the arm as he stared at Xander. The boy did look about ready to fall over with heart failure.

"So, I hear you got your end off with Faith. Good on you, boy. Not many your age can brag about bagging a slayer... well, except for that wanker at your school. Seems like Slutty did a right good job of shutting him up, though. Try not ta brass Faith off enough to get shoved in a toilet. It's hell on the plumbing, pet."

Spike pulled out a cigarette and twirled it in his fingers as he listened to Xander's racing heart slowly calm down. Angel might have his head up his arse a good chunk of the time, but he'd been right about Xander. The little twit had really thought Spike would hurt him. Sometimes Spike figured the whole world would be a good sight saner if someone just ripped all the souls out of everyone.

"I... uh... " Xander turned an alarming shade of red.

"Right then. You ready to get shit-faced drunk and get your first tattoo?" Spike asked with a wiggle of his eyebrows. "You a man now?"

"I... um..."

"Articulate as ever." Spike smirked, and elements of anger flavored the scent of humiliation.

"Yes, that's me, articulate boy, only less with the articulate. Thank you for the ever-so-odd congratulations, but I think I need to go to bed," Xander said without moving off the couch.

Spike raised his eyebrow. "Is there something wrong with Faith that ya need to be ashamed of having bedded her?"

"Bedded?" Xander choked on the word. "There were no beds involved."

"With Faith, there usually aren't," Spike agreed, smiling and running his tongue just inside his lower lip as he lost himself in memory. They'd had sex on tombstones, graveyard hills, school halls, floors, a bathroom at the courthouse while spying on the mayor, and in Angel's apartment. That last one had inspired Angel to near-Angelus levels of retribution. He would definitely be encouraging that sort of delinquency in Faith again in the very near future.
"Okay, that is just a majorly disturbing look," Xander complained.

"I thought it was sexy," Spike offered with an eyebrow wiggle, but Xander didn't rise to the bait at all. He just sighed and smelled even more miserable.

"I can't believe you're congratulating me on getting thrown down and devirginized by someone other than my girlfriend. Okay, actually, this would still be creepy if it had been Cordelia out there in the cemetery, not that Cordy would ever have sex in a cemetery."

Spike cocked his head at Xander and sat up in the chair. "Bagging your first girl is a rite of passage, mate."

"A disturbing one. I never should have slept with Faith," Xander said softly as he slumped down. "You're a soulless vampire, and I bet you wouldn't have gone cheating on your girlfriend. And being less ethical than the soulless crowd... not really something to brag about." Xander dropped his head down and hid it in his hands. Spike was left with a view of the top of Xander's head and dark curls.

"Trust me, pet, you have a lot more ethics than I do," Spike laughed as he moved over to the other end of the couch so that he was sitting close enough to slap Xander on the back. "Ya got more than me and Peaches put together."

"And yet, this is me not believing that." His voice was weary, but at least he looked up. "I mean, I think I probably still have more morals than Liam did because I'm not out there sleeping with all the girls, but that might not be exactly accurate because Liam's days of whoring did not include whoring when he had a girl at home who thought he was off being loyal while he was really having sex with a slayer on a hill in the middle of a cemetery."

Spike narrowed his eyes as he tried to figure the logic of that one.

"Seriously, Spike, the man you were before you got turned, you never would have gone and cheated on a girl you really liked, would you?" Xander asked as he turned to face Spike.

Normally Spike vetoed discussion that touched on William. It hardly seemed fair to let the boy suffer, though.

"I was in an arranged betrothal for about six months. Family found out that melancholy ran in my da's family, and they cut it off. But I went to the whore house during those months," Spike said as he thought back on those very distant memories.

"Whoa. Really? She didn't want to, I don't know, put arsenic in your pudding or something?" Xander leaned back and really focused on Spike, which was better than having him focus on his own misery.

"Not like anyone told her, luv," he pointed out. "Besides, she probably assumed I'd been going to 'em. You couldn't spit in London without hitting a half-dozen of 'em."

"And you weren't with the guilt at all?" Xander asked with a deep frown.

"Not really, pet. I lost my virginity at fourteen because my mum was worried I might be an urning." Spike chuckled at that old word. He hadn't even thought about that one for almost a century. "Now there was word polite people only whispered in dark corners. My mum, grand lady my mum, she had one of my uncles take me to a boarding house down in Blackfriars. A woman who smelled of apples and who must've been older than my mum lay down and gave me point by point directions on exactly how to engage in a little slap and tickle." Spike grabbed his crotch as a visual aide.

That almost got a smile out of Xander. "You make it sound like school with the directions and the old lady teacher."

"Not far off, pet. I visited the house a few times a year, even during my ill-conceived betrothal." Spike shuddered. "She looked like a horse, pet. Trust me, a well-used whore who treated sex the way a school marm treats figures... that was an improvement over the long-faced shrew my da tried to fix me up with."

"Creepy, but okay. And really, I am not one to be talking because Faith was more than a little teacherish and directionish herself. Except she was definitely the one on top."

"Yeah, she does like to ride a man raw," Spike agreed with a smile. In a lot of ways, Faith reminded him of the pre-Prague years with Dru. Faith knew what she wanted and she wasn't afraid to just bloody lay it on the line and demand it.

"We are approaching new levels of freak," Xander sighed. "And what's an urnsing?"

"An urning, luv. People believed men's sexuality was more evolved. Sometimes a man might be born who had the body of a male, but the embryo just didn't quite evolve far enough so he had the sexual appetites of a woman."

"Whoa. Your mom thought you were gay?" Xander sat up straight.

Spike thought about that for a second before shrugging. "Might have. I enjoyed the whores well enough, though. Don't rightly know if my mum and uncle ever talked about it after the one time I overheard 'em. I figure he did something to let her know I could play my part well enough because she stopped making unhappy noises about me needing to find a wife." Spike thought back to the way his mum had been so happy when he had started seriously courting Cecily. He had no intention of ever sharing that bit of humiliation, though. "She might have just assumed I was a virilized urning," Spike said as he really thought about it.

"Virilized? Like virus?"

"Like virile, pet. What the bloody fuck to you learn all day at school?" Spike asked with disgust. He had no idea why Angel insisted the boy keep attending other than it allowed him access to the other slayer and the watchers. Boy wasn't exactly good spy material, though. He almost never brought home any juicy details.

"Trust me, we learn nothing that would relate to this whole situation."

"Real life never happens in school, pet. Once you're through with this rot, Peaches and I will start teaching you the way the world really works."

"And somehow I think I've been taught enough to last a lifetime. Nope, my brain is full."

Spike frowned at the sudden scent of humiliation. He considered lighting the cigarette just for the familiar scent of nicotine and tar to buffer the bitterness. Rather than risk another lecture from Angel on the joys of lung cancer, he shoved it into a pocket unlit. "Right then, what did she teach you that has your knickers in such a twist?"

"My knickers do not twist. I have straight knickers. The straightest." Xander set his mouth in a stubborn line.

Spike didn't even need vampire senses to spot that bit of deceit. "You lie about as well as you use the English language."

"That's sounding insulty."

Spike snorted. "Look pet, anything she taught you past the standard thrust and groan, she picked it up off me. She may have been used a whole lot, but there weren't many who stuck around to teach her the finer points of enjoying the human body."

"Used?" Xander looked over.

Spike shrugged. "Yeah, seems like just about everyone from her Da on used her. That might be why she's so fond of being on top."

Xander sighed and hid his face in his hands again. "I slept with a rape victim. I'm so going to hell."

"Oi, sounds more like she slept with you," Spike pointed out. He was truly getting frustrated with the whole conversation. At this point, chatting up Dru about her dolls and soddin' stars made more sense than this rot. "And I thought we were talking about whatever she had taught you that had your knickers all in a twist."

"Nothing, absolutely nothing. Nope. Nada." Xander sounded near hysterical.

"Pet, you can tell me, or I can sit on you until you tell me," Spike warned, wishing that he could just torture the boy a bit. It's not like he would break the boy, but sometimes a little fear and pain was a nice motivation. However, like usual, Angel just had to overreact all the bloody time. He'd gone from wanting to torture every poor sod that crossed his path to being obsessively opposed to any torture at all. Wanker.

Xander turned dark read. "It was..." he squeaked and fell silent when Spike stood up. "She did things with her hands," he blurted before Spike could do something. Spike frowned down at him, still confused.

"And?"

"Naughty things." Xander whispered the words, and while Spike could smell the shame, he still felt as though he were talking to a male version of Dru and he just didn't have the right words to translate the nonsense into anything that approached logic.

"Pet, if she was doing it right, she should have been doing all sorts of naughty things with her hands."

"Not with my ass!" Xander blurted out in protest, and then he really did turn an alarming shade of red.

"Oi, you mean where she reaches in and strokes the prostate while sucking you off?" Spike asked. "Bloody hell, that woman has a mouth that kings would declare war over. Fuck Helen of Troy. One of Faith's blowjobs would make any man toss the hag out with the trash." Spike dropped down on the couch next to Xander again, but Xander was just staring at him blankly. "Wot?" Spike demanded.

"You like it when she..."

"Bloody love it, mate. Fuck, it doesn't get better than that."

"Oh shit. I really am gay." Xander closed his eyes and just sort of shank into the couch.

"Wot? Pet, Faith is a girl. Havin' sex with girls doesn't generally make you gay... unless you are a girl. Want me to check out your parts for ya to be sure?" Spike teased. Normally Xander reacted with an almost violent panic at any offer of touching, but now he didn't seem to have the energy for it. If Angel didn't set Faith straight, Spike was going to be having a very long and brutal discussion with her about not breaking the boy again. Next time, he was bloody supervising because Faith was not to be trusted with the human members of the clan.

Xander's voice was so soft that Spike had to concentrate to catch every word. "I enjoyed something going up the down chute. That is gay. As proof, I cite you who is clearly gay and who clearly enjoys things going up the down chute."

Spike cocked his head in confusion. "But Angel likes it, too. He bloody goes off like a cannon when..." Spike just stopped because Xander was staring at him with a look of horror so intense that Spike actually turned around to check for open sucking vortexes or slime monsters.

"Wot?" Spike demanded when he looked back.

"You? You and Angel? But you're dating Faith... oh god. Faith was being all vengefully by sleeping with me after you slept with Angel, wasn't she? See, that actually makes sense, way more than the idea that she just woke up and decided, 'hey, I'm going to sleep with Xander today.' No one ever just decides that."

"Pet, breathe," Spike ordered firmly. "And there's no vengeance going on. If she slept with ya, it's because she wanted to, luv."

"But you and Angel," Xander objected.

"Yeah? What about it? You knew that he loved it when I gave him a blow job. Actually, you threw a wobbly over it back before I even had an invite into your place."

"I knew... past tense. Actually, I knew that the blow jobs were past tense, not the me knowing being past tense because the knowing is present tense and the blow jobs were past tense." Xander considered that for a second. "I thought," he added.

It did frighten Spike that he could actually follow that odd bit of not-logic. "Vampires are just different pet. I suck off Angel, I fuck Faith, you fuck Faith—as long as it stays in the clan, it's not like any of us are cheating."

"So if Faith decided to have sex with Angel, you'd be okay with that?" Xander asked disbelievingly.

"Sure, just as long as the git didn't try and keep her away from me. Course, if those two were in a bed and I didn't get an invite to join in, I'd be even more brassed off than I am now. I can't believe Faith didn't even invite me along for your grand deflowering," Spike smirked and looked the boy up and down salaciously. Rather than leap away or start stuttering, Xander just sighed.

"Why would she have..." Xander just stopped, and for the life of him, Spike was not tracking Xander's current lack of logic.

"Picked you?" Spike took a shot in the dark.

"Exactly. Why would she have picked me? I mean, I'm all Cordelia picked. I still sometimes have trouble believing how Cordelia picked I am, but I am definitely Cordelia picked." Xander got up and started pacing the room. Luckily, he'd actually cleaned it up recently, so he didn't have to go tripping over soda cans.

Spike watched the boy pace. The great pouf had actually been right this time around. "Ya really think your bird is going to leave you over this?"

"Oh yeah. Leave me in little, tiny, bloody, emotionally-crippled pieces," Xander laughed. Then he glanced over. "Which I mean metaphorically because there is absolutely no reason to go off all weird and do something out of a very strange desire to protect your sire's property."

Spike laughed at the sudden worry in Xander's face. The boy was just so adorable confused most of the soddin' time. "Bloody hell, I never get between a bird and whatever the hell she wants to do, especially when she's family, too. So Cordelia can metaphorically eviscerate you all she wants. I don't rightly understand why, but you lot with souls do seem to enjoy complicating something as simple as sex."

"Sex is not so simple. Seriously, why would she pick me?" Xander demanded as he turned large brown eyes on Spike.

"She probably likes the way you look, pet," Spike offered, and he seriously wished some monster of the week would come crashing in the door because he truly had no idea what he was supposed to say. However, sure as little green apples, if he broke Xander more, Angel was going to strip the skin from his back.

Xander was shaking his head. "She has you."

"Yeah, she does," Spike agreed. "Might be she wanted a little variety."

"For which she could go to Angel or pick up some guy in a bar."

Spike growled at that, his teeth elongating at the thought. "She picks up some random wanker, and she might as well put an 'eat me' sign on the git's back," Spike warned darkly. There was sharing with clan and then there was defending your honor and territory.

Xander frowned at him. "Okay, weirdly jealousy for a non-jealousy guy."

"It's about defending your territory, pet. I won't have her or you doing out and bringing home some wanker."

"But wanking within the family is okay?" Xander asked, still sounding more than a little confused.

"Well, yeah," Spike said, ignoring the flagrant misuse of the word wanking. He leaned back and sprawled out on the couch.

"Why me?" Xander returned to. Spike had no idea how to answer that because he was fairly sure he already had. Give him a chaos demon to kill any day of the week, but this dealing with souled beings was more than a vampire could take.

"Why didn't she ask me or stop and talk or even talk to me after?" Xander sank down against the wall until he was sitting on the floor. Spike leaned forward.

"She didn't ask?"

"That would be a big 'no' because I would have pointed out that I was Cordelia picked, not that I probably am anymore. When I tell her this, I will definitely be unpicked."

Spike thought about that for a second. If one vampire pushed another down and had sex, it was a definite status play, but Spike just wasn't sure how accurate that would be for humans. Then again, like Angel pointed out, Faith was a little closer to her demonic roots. "Maybe she was trying to prove her status. She gets right tetchy about not feeling like she belongs," Spike offered.

"She... what?" Xander looked up from his spot on the floor.

"Girl's gotten kicked out of more places than I have." Spike laughed. "And I've been annoyin' people for a good century longer than she has. Sometimes she's about green with envy that you have the pouf so soft on you that ya could do just about anything and he still wouldn't toss ya out."

For long seconds, Xander just stared at him, like he couldn't quite get his brain in first gear. "She's jealous of me?" he finally asked.

For the first time, Spike could see a small crack in the pain and confusion that had surrounded Xander like a fucking cloud.

"Bloody hell yes. Just yesterday, she was asking what I would do if we all split up and went our own ways. Would I follow her or Angel or you?"

"You'd follow Angel," Xander said immediately.

"Fuck, yeah. The rest of you lot are fun and all, but it's not like you're sane. Well, actually Peaches isn't sane either, but he's family. Dru wasn't a paragon of sanity herself, so I'm just more used to it than most. But like I said before, Peaches would follow you wherever you went, so there wouldn't be much actual splitting up. We'd just be a bloody parade with Peaches trailing after you and me tailing Peaches."

"Where would that leave Faith?" Xander asked with a frown.

Spike shrugged. "Wherever the fuck she wanted. She could come with me or go shopping for some swank or bloody go on a crime spree."

"But," Xander looked at him strangely before pushing himself up off the floor. "You were all ready-to-eat-Wesley vamp over him being stupid with the patrols."

"Still bloody am," Spike snorted. That was another one of Peaches' brilliant plans. Yeah, give the git time to make his own mistakes. Like as not, one or both of the slayers were going to end up dead before that git bulled his giant head out of his arse.

"But wouldn't you want Faith with you?" Xander asked, and now confusion had almost drowned out the shame of earlier.

Spike scratched his stomach. "Course I would, pet. She's a bloody good fighter and a good shag, as you found out. But if she wanted to go her own way, that's her choice."

Xander looked lost. Standing in the middle of the living room looking around at his own stuff, he looked suddenly lost.

"Pet?"

"I want to hate her," Xander whispered.

Spike leaned forward again, bracing himself for another detour into complete illogic. "Pet, I know you aren't intentionally annoying the piss out of me, but ya have to explain this in words that do not include the concepts 'guilt' or 'soul'."

"Or love?" Xander asked as he looked at Spike intensely.

"I loved Dru. Nearly walked in the sun when she gave me the boot. I love Angel, too, but if you bloody tell him, I'll eat one of your internal organs."

Rather than even pretending to be intimidated, Xander walked over and sat on the arm of the couch nearest Spike and tucked his feet up onto the cushion. Spike looked up at the boy curiously.

"I'm not totally sure because girl-logic is worse than math-logic," Xander said slowly, "but I'm really mad because I think Faith just made it impossible for me to have love with Cordelia because the whole vampire theory of sleeping with family members is not a theory cheerleaders believe. It's definitely not what Cordelia believes."

"So, she's going to react the way I would if ya slept with someone other than Faith, Cordelia, me or Peaches?" Spike guessed. Xander frowned at him.

"Disturbo, but yes."

"Right then, let her and Faith have at it, and then you can make it up to her." Spike smiled. He was actually good at this human rot once someone explained it in terms that made any sense.

Xander gave a laugh that very nearly turned into a sob. "But I should have stopped Faith because I knew ahead of time that I had to pick between Cordelia love and Faith sex, and the little head picked Faith sex."

"What did the big head pick?"

"The big head was not picking much of anything." Xander cleared his throat. "The big head was busy being hijacked by the little head which really did not have much experience with anything other than the right hand." Xander lifted his right hand and waved the fingers at Spike.

"I bloody well know that. These walls are too fucking thin for vampire hearing," Spike pointed out. "So, if your brain wasn't actually functional, the bitchy cheerleader can't blame you if you got all your common sense hijacked."

"Oh, she so can," Xander said, his eyes going unfocused for a second. "I'm a dead man walking."

"Because of Faith," Spike said with a frown. He wondered whether Faith had understood what a mess she had made for Xander, and if she did, she had more of a sadistic streak than Spike had ever guessed.

Xander nodded. "And I want to hate her for it."

"Nothing wrong with that." Spike still hated the chaos demon who had bloody stolen Dru's love, so he could understand it if the boy never wanted to see Faith again. Spike had the perfect apartment in mind for Faith on the other side of town. He could claim her apartment here and split his time between the two places.

"But what she did was because of her own issues, wasn't it?" Xander asked, his voice suddenly firm. Spike looked at him in confusion. He wasn't even bothering to try and keep up with the conversation at this point. "You said she was jealous because Angel and I are like family." Xander looked at him, clearing looking for some sort of confirmation.

"Yeah," Spike agreed.

"And she's feeling all insecure about whether you want her..."

"I never said that," Spike protested as he sat up straight.

"Oh trust me, Spike, she is. If she asked you if you would follow her, she was so looking for reassurance. She is all issues-woman. It's like my father."

"It's what?" Spike was fairly sure Xander had lost his mind somewhere during this conversation. That wanker of a father had nothing to do with this. Hell, Spike didn't even like thinking about Harris, senior, especially since Angel had paid him off in exchange for partial custody of Xander. The payments had stopped when Xander turned eighteen, but it still rankled that the man had his hands on any part of their hard-stolen treasure. All that demon gold had been soddin' hard to drag out of that hole in the ground where they found it. Tony Harris never should have seen one penny of it.

Xander was off and running with his newly discovered insight, though. "I want to hate my father because he was never fatherish and now he's way too far inside a bottle to be anything other than an asshole," Xander explained—as if that made sense, which it didn't. "I want to hate him, but he has his own issues, and his issues are not my issues, so I should just let him and his issues go their own way until he decides to change or he drops dead, whichever comes first."

Spike raised an eyebrow.

"My therapist said that, well, most of that. I added the drops dead part because I'm fairly sure my father is never going to decide to change."

"I figured. Don't rightly know what your da has to do with any of this, though."

Xander threw his arms wide, and for the first time, he didn't smell of despair. Or at least, he smelled significantly less of despair at least. "This is so not about me. Whatever Faith did, she was being issues-girl, and I should just let her go her own way until she decides to pull her head out of her ass."

"There you go then," Spike said as he stood up. Whatever the solution was, he was just happy to be escaping from the conversation.

"Which will still not be helping on the Cordelia front," Xander added sadly as the energy drained from him.

"You could lie," Spike suggested, but Xander shook his head.

"As you pointed out, me and lying are not best with the buds. If Faith didn't go ratting me out, I would rat myself."

"Well then," Spike said as he tried to wrap his brain around warped human logic. "You could try the truth, pet."

Xander looked at him incredulously. Yeah, that's pretty much what Spike thought, too. He shrugged his shoulders and headed for the door. The boy wasn't happy, but he was dealing about as well as he dealt with any of the shite life threw at him. He'd be fine.

"Spike," Xander said when Spike reached the door.

"Yeah, pet?"

"Thanks for not eviscerating me," Xander said seriously.

Spike shook his head. "You are 'round the twist. The whole lot of you are 'round the twist."

"I know," Xander agreed with a crooked grin. "And I'm trying to be not-issues boy, which seems pretty hard when I keep having all these issues. Spike, whatever is going on with Faith, I can't help her with it. I can't really be in the same room with her right now without my issues breeding and birthing new issues. But maybe you and Angel can?"

Spike cocked his head at the request. Obviously, whatever harm Faith had done, it wasn't enough to break the clan bonds. Things got fucking messy when clan bonds broke between some clan members and not others. He'd been caught in the middle of that once when Darla had pushed him away but not Dru. It'd been a right mess until Darla finally just up and disappeared. Spike really hadn't wanted to be in the middle of another clan feud, so he was grateful that the boy had more forgiveness in him than a demon. "I'll look after her, pet," Spike promised.

Xander smiled at him. The boy had terrifying levels of forgiveness. Considering that Spike had killed the boy's friend, Kendra, he supposed he was grateful for that. Xander grabbed the remote, and Spike closed the door behind him.

Spike headed for Faith's apartment, listening carefully before he opened the door. No Faith, and no Angel. Now that was one conversation that Spike wouldn't mind eavesdropping on. Considering how worked up the boy had been, Peaches was going to be in a right state. And if Xander was right, Faith had her own reasons for being less than reasonable. Yeah, that conversation was going to be all sorts of fun. Spike headed for the stereo and switched it on before pulling out a cigarette and lighting it. Humans. They made a lot more sense when you ate them.

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

duskshadows.livejournal.com

hee! Xander-logic wins again.
love the conversation - have a feeling Angel and Faith's version isn't going to go so smoothly.
thanks for keeping this so reguarly updated! <3

From:

Kin of the Heart

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