“Knife, strife, life.
All fucking rhymes,
Grab my crotch,
Laugh it off,
Stains like vintage wine.

Perfect pattern of words,
Economy of prose,
See I’m quite clever,
Only nobody knows,” Spike sang, strumming a few chords that didn’t fit, stopping to get angry at the guitar and to pretend to be angry with Xander when he laughed.

“It’s funny. I can believe your name is William,” Xander said after a while, thoughtful look as he narrowed his eyes and peeled away the layers, gave Spike darker, softer curls and a pair of glasses.

“Well I can’t believe your middle name is Lavelle,” Spike replied, grinning when Xander threw a pillow at his head.

“Call me that again and I’ll call you Willy,” Xander threatened.

“Could make a lewd comment there, but it’s too easy,” Spike laughed, setting down the guitar.

“You’re too easy,” Xander shot back, laughter of his own, not noticing when Spike’s expression moved and shifted into something else.

“Love you. Keeping you,” he muttered, moving up the bed and running his finger’s through Xander’s hair.

*

“If you start singing Come fly with me, I’ll kill you and say the voices told me to,” Xander said, jokes and misdirection because he really didn’t want to hear this again.

“Why aren’t you saying yes? We could be fucking now if you had,” Spike replied, tight smile that was just this side of snapping. Xander looked out the window, watched the traffic, wondered if when Spike watched the traffic he contemplated playing in it.

“I’m not saying yes because I don’t have a passport …”

“We’ll smuggle you in,”

“Because I have to get back before someone files a missing person’s report …”

“You’d be famous – your face on every poster and milk carton. Better publicity than we’ve ever had,”

“And because you’re only asking me now because you’re high and bored,” Xander finished, list of convincing points that were logical and well thought out. He knew this, because he’d practiced them at least four times in the cracked mirror in the bus’s tiny bathroom, lipstick smeared across the walls and a cockroach named Pete.

“I’m not high, I’m wired. Big difference, that. And anyway, I planned on asking you the very moment I lay eyes on you in that club back in LA,” Spike said, grin a little easier now, hot wet heat against Xander’s mouth as he traced patterns of languages he couldn’t speak with his tongue, twisted his hips sharply so that it almost hurt. Xander pulled back, swallowed, too a breath.

“You were high in that club in LA, too,” he said. Spike’s grip tightened, his gaze intense.

“Not the point, Xan,” impatient now, petulant child gone, replaced with someone Else with chilled eyes and bruising touches.

“Ask me tomorrow,” Xander said eventually, words quiet and pleading, though he wasn’t entirely sure what he was pleading for. The bus made a sharp turn and Spike was thrown against his chest, Doyle’s ‘fuck you, too’ and groans of fellow band members grabbing them out of the odd quiet. Spike didn’t move from his place in Xander’s arms, chin tilted up, odd streak of innocence framed in bleach and sheathed in leather.

“Will you say yes tomorrow?” he asked. Xander didn’t answer. Spike pulled back, face changing as he turned away, ice cold betrayal. Xander realised then that earnest, almost childlike anger scared him far more than that of a man’s.

*

“Argument with blondie?” Gunn asked when Xander heaved an amp out of the bus and pushed it onto the van with a little more force than necessary.

“Yeah,” Xander replied, no attempt to elaborate. Gunn didn’t ask, either.

“He’s an ass most of the time,” he said eventually, plucking on his bass, dark brown fingers moving like heavy liquid over the strings.

“Yeah. I kind of picked up on that,”

”What do you want from me? All or nothing, remember? All or fucking nothing,” his voice was too loud and his hands making sluggish circles in the air, ash from his cigarette trailing across the bed. “You act more like a woman that Dru ever did,” he added, nasty smile when Xander swallowed and slammed the door behind him. Didn’t tell Spike to put his cigarette in case he fell asleep and set the bed on fire. Put his fist through a bathroom stall because he knew he’d feel bad about that later.

“He asked me to come with you guys to Germany,” Xander muttered, tasting the words, seeing how they sounded in air heavy with rain. Gunn glanced up, eyebrows raised. Clearly, he hadn’t expected that. Well, fair enough, neither had Xander.

“Man, seriously?” he asked. Xander shrugged, kicked a bottle cap across the gravel. “You should. It’d be cool to have a guy to have drinks who can’t kick my ass at pool,” he said finally. Xander snorted, shifted his weight, didn’t look up. “And …” Gunn looked slightly uncomfortable and he started fiddling with cables, “You’re good for him. He’s better since you’ve been here,” he said. Xander laughed. It was ugly and fit in perfectly with the tarmac slick with grease, and the yellowish smog that hung in the air.

“You mean he drank, got high and messed around with groupies more before I arrived?” and wow, he sounded more bitter there than even his mother could have aspired to.

“Hey,” he whispered, wet words soaked in booze, lipstick on his collar, “You’ll always love me, eh?” hot huffs of breath on Xander’s face. Xander pretended to be asleep.

“No,” Gunn admitted haltingly. “But he comes home to you. He used to drift around in his head, look for a fight or and throw himself into danger like he had to impress himself – like he had to prove who he was over and over to convince himself he was real or something. But he comes home, now. To you.”

Xander didn’t reply and they played pool. He coughed up the ten bucks he owed Gunn and asked him what he had to do to get a passport.

Note: The lyrics are written by the fic's author, and the song is called "Cunning."

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