winterlive | Chiaroscuro

Hey, folks.

Last time we left Chiaroscuro, the boys had parted. I am informed it was something like Casablanca, as Spike/Ingrid Bergman took off to do what was necessary, and Xander/Bogart reluctantly watched him go. Well. I can't explain where this came from, since I'd fully intended to leave it exactly like that, but nonetheless, I give you:

Chiaroscuro
Epilogue - Many Years Later

Smoking is a filthy habit. Smells bad, tastes worse, and you're guaranteed a painful death by lung cancer. There's only one reason to do it, really – to remember something... someone you miss. Someone you want to be with. Someone who lingers in your mind like ash and nicotine linger in your clothes after four hours at the bar, drinking and burning five bucks into an ashtray.

Xander crushed out the stub with a peculiar mixture of regret and satisfaction, just like always. Outside, people hurried by the pub's window, hunched against the cold. It was winter in Boston, which meant sharp wind and gray clouds scudding sullen overhead. It wasn't his town – but then, after Sunnydale, what would be? He kept a house here, anyway, and that was close enough. He drained off the last of his beer and signaled for his check. It wasn't closing time, but he was losing the last of the light, and after that, he never really hung around.

Behind the bar, Anya nodded in a friendly way, letting him know she'd seen him. This was her bar, and the two of them had history. When Xander had first arrived in Boston two years ago, a burned-out drunk who barely sketched, let alone painted, they had become an item. In it for the worst reasons, both of them, and they had honestly cared for one another, but soon realized they were just using each other to cope and let the relationship go. Now they were close friends, and they understood each other in the way only those who've loved and lost can. He'd listened to her ramble for long hours about the glory days with her beloved D (honestly, who names their kid D'Hoffryn?) and she... well, she knew about Giles.

Four years had passed, and he still couldn't think Giles' name without feeling sucker punched.

Anya understood that, and she fed him and kept him from drinking too much. He did the same for her, on rare occasion, and they were comfortable with each other. He smiled, staring out the window at the people rushing by, just thinking of it.

The subtle tick of the credit card plate against his table drew his attention, and he turned to tell Anya about the new painting he'd started, one about going on in the face of grim circumstances, about hope in the face of darkness. She'd appreciate it, and she always loved to hear when he was painting.

The words died in his throat. The fingers resting on the black plastic were not Anya's, carefully manicured and familiar. Instead, they were grim, tough fingers, blocky and mannish – except for the fingernails, which were painted a fresh, shining black. Xander'd only ever encountered one hand like that up close. He had only just, as he did in unguarded moments, been thinking about the person it had belonged to. His breath was caught in his lungs, every bit of him frozen, believing it impossible, but not wanting to look up and prove the wild hope wrong.

Spike.

"Been a while," came that rough accent, impossible, can't be, "but I figured you'd remember me."

Carefully, Xander allowed his gaze to crawl up the arm (black leather cuff), to the shoulder (so familiar) and then, in one quick upswing...

"Spike," he breathed. And it was. Impossible, certainly, but it was Spike, pulled whole from Xander's memory. It had been more than twenty years since he'd seen this face in person, but it was impossibly the same. Still, the smooth features. Still, the platinum hair and eyes the color of the Mediterranean sea in the sun. Still, the ridiculous cheekbones that many, on viewing the painting, had pronounced inhuman. All unchanged.

"How...?"

"Took some doing. You're not the easiest man to find."

"Next time I'll take out an ad in the Times."

Spike smiled – beautiful, so beautiful. It seemed to galvanize Xander into action, made his legs remember how to stand up and then prance around awkwardly trying to decide if he could hug without being too forward. Spike solved the problem for him by leaning in and gently drawing him in, holding him close for a moment and then releasing him, all with the deliberate care of one who feels very fragile, and knows that the person in his arms does too. Xander let out a shivering breath, noticed Spike do the same, and laughed. Spike laughed too, and they sat down at the booth together.

Xander risked a glance at Anya – she had noticed, obviously, and was busily doing something behind the bar that probably didn't strictly need to be done. There was a time when she'd have immediately come over, plonked herself down beside Xander in the booth and demanded introductions. She was over it, and Xander was grateful to see one of the other waiters headed to their table. He unobtrusively set two ice waters on the table and disappeared.

Spike took his and sipped it.

Xander stared.

Spike watched the people walk by and pretended not to notice.

Finally, Xander broke the silence. "Do you know," he asked, as Spike turned to pay attention, "that for a while I thought you weren't real? That I made you up?" There was an amused/surprised look, and Xander continued. "There wasn't any evidence, y'know? I mean, there was the painting. But I got the sheets cleaned and emptied the garbage and opened the window, just like all the time, and before I knew it... you were gone. Before I even knew I had to prove anything." Xander's agent swore he'd hallucinated it, and had pressured him for months to get off drugs he wasn't on.

Spike nodded gravely, once, and there was a pause while he thought about it. "You never came by the club again," he said, his voice understanding, his eyes regretful. He pushed his glass around the table with one fingertip. "I asked around."

"I know, I'm sorry." Spike waved his hand, tried to forgive, but Xander doggedly continued. "No, I really am sorry. I..."

He paused. This was a conversation he'd never had with anyone, ever, never thought he'd have to have. Again, the sucker punch feeling, seeing the headstone in his mind with that cherished name carved on it like an obscenity, and he didn't want to go here... but if there was one person who deserved the story, it was the one sitting in front of him. Spike had earned the truth.

"I couldn't come to see you because I was with a friend of mine. I mean, with him. And I'd have felt... this is weird, and dumb, but I'd have felt cheap if I came to see you and asked you to go for a cup of coffee."

Spike processed this, and nodded slowly, indicating that Xander should go on.

Xander swallowed hard, took a sip of ice water. This was hard, but now that that he'd started, he felt a pressure in his gut to keep going, to get it out. "The day after you were with me, I went to my friend's house to show him the painting. He was the one who taught me about... that stuff. So I figured he'd earned it. Plus, he was a close friend, and I wanted him to see... Well, you get it."

Again, Spike nodded.

"He told me I couldn't show the painting. He got really angry with me, told me it was pornography, and I was debasing myself, and a bunch of other crap that didn't make any sense."

Xander smiled now, remembering it. He hadn't understood until much later how deeply the obvious intimacy of Spike's portrait had affected Giles – the love and desire implicit in the brush strokes had underlined for Giles everything he'd denied himself for years, laboring under the misconception that Xander was uninterested. Giles had later apologized for having dealt with the resulting frustration badly, starting a fight, but the result...

"We fought about it for a while, and then he kissed me. I was totally surprised. I didn't know what to make of it, y'know, because he'd been my teacher in school and I'd always looked up to him...?"

Spike was nodding already, and Xander smiled. "Well. You get it. So, long story short, we got together. It was..." He still couldn't talk about how it'd been with Giles. It had been everything – good, bad, worse, best, heaven, hell. Simple as that.

"So... what happened, then?" It was said with sad sympathy, and Xander knew that Spike knew the worst. Choked up, he tried to continue.

"We lived in a bad town. I hated it, but Giles's job was there, and where he was... well. Anyway, there was this youth program he ran, Giles loved helping kids get a better hand than they'd been dealt, y'know? And one night he's coming home late..."

He stopped. It was too painful to go on. And then Spike was beside him, one arm around him, pulling him close. Xander leaned in, buried his head in Spike's shoulder and, as he had done so many times since that horrible night, silently allowed the tears to spill down his cheeks. Spike crooned to him, nonsense words of comfort, and rubbed a gentle hand along his back.

When the grief subsided, Xander pulled back and scrubbed his face with his hands. "Sorry," he apologized. "Didn't mean to go all weepy on you, there."

"'S all right," Spike said, mercy in his voice. "Might say it's what I'm here for."

"Might, hey?" Xander laughed, sniffed, pulled himself together. "Why are you here? I mean, oh, God, not that I..."

Spike smiled and shook his head until the nattering stopped and then looked at the table, idly picking at a flaw in the wood. He stayed silent for so long that Xander finally rephrased.

"What brings you by, Spike?" As if he lived next door. Xander rolled his eyes at his own inadequacy and decided that, as Spike evidently understood Xander-speak, that'd have to be good enough.

"Wanted to ask you a question," he finally said, low and soft, and Xander's eyebrows lifted.

"Couldn't have called? Maybe a telegram?"

"Wasn't one you could do with full stops, love."

"Oh." Xander filtered through possible questions in his mind and decided it was probably about money. Immediately, he had Spike's answer: yes. Absolutely. Anything he wanted. No questions asked. Expectantly, he waited.

Spike took a moment, then appeared to screw up his courage. "Remember the end of the night, when I was leaving? What you said to me?" Xander nodded. He'd always thought if he'd pushed harder, maybe Spike would have stayed, but he knew now that one wasn't meant to keep a creature like Spike locked up. He had to be free to do what he wanted, and men like Spike wanted danger, excitement, adventure...

"Was it a standing offer?"

Current Mood: peaceful

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From:

http://users.livejournal.com/indiana_jane_/

*wibble*

The ending of Chiaroscuro was very bittersweet in a Casablanca kind of a way. And as much as I'm happy with that this makes me even happier. And kind of misty-eyed. Because damn it no matter what way you give me these boys I want them to have a happy ending.

Lovely, just lovely.

From:

(but for who can endure it)

Chiaroscuro - Epilogue

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