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Title: Not Fade Away Author: Wiseacress Pairing: NB/Spike Rating: R A/N: I am aware that this is in the worst possible taste, an infringement of privacy, and um, bad. Also, it's not really a Trailerverse story. In that there are no ducktails, Daisy Dukes, shotguns, or tornadoes. For all of that, I humbly apologize. When Nick wakes up, he's somewhere pitch black and silent, and for a second he thinks, Oh, good. I'm dead. Death is warm and undemanding, and overall pretty peaceful. Death's okay. Then he floats up to the next level of consciousness, and sounds start to filter in. He can hear kids in the distance—yelling and cursing, which is…okay, do kids know those words? Jesus. The cussing pulls him up and up, fighting every step of the way, until he can taste the sour, flour-dry tongue in his mouth, and he can feel that both of his eyes have been extruded and replaced with shrimp forks, tines in. His head's pulsing, like a turned stomach. He's going to puke. He levers himself up and a bunch of stuff—pillows, blankets—topples off his head and hits the floor. It's still dark, but he can see vague outlines. He's somewhere small and boxy, there's a bed and a floor with a cheap, thin carpet and where the fuck is the door, he needs the bathroom— His foot hits something hard and smooth, and he leans over and throws up on it. After a few heaves, he can see it's a trash can. And that's what guardian angels are for. When he's done puking he braces his hands on his knees, takes a shaky breath, and wipes his eyes and mouth. Wonders if he's going to pass out right here. His head feels like one giant burst blood vessel. The last thing he remembers is walking out of Serenity Meadows, thirty days under his belt. Tressa on the phone, caught in traffic on her way from a reading. Just wait for me, Nicky, I'll be right there—. All the way over on Alameda, and he said sure, no problem, I'll wait. He waited in the bus station until the weather turned bad, and then he started walking, figuring he'd hail a cab. No cabs, so he just kept walking, knowing the whole time that this was stupid, it was the sort of thing they told you not to do—your addict will do anything to get a drink, don't trust it—and pretty soon he was in a business district and passing bars, and it was dark enough outside that he could see the people and what they were ordering. He started getting pissed with Tressa for being late. For putting him in this position. Then he started thinking about rehab, and how his heart hadn't really been in it in the first place, and about what he really needed, which was a complete do-over from the age of twenty-three, a college degree and a ticket out of Cali, better parents and less Kelly and a double scotch, no rocks. Next thing he knew he was ordering just that. Ask for what you want, they said. The universe will provide. The universe provided him with four scotches and four beers and then he lost track. He smoked an entire pack of healthy American Spirits, and played some shitty pool and got asked to leave when he put D'yer Maker on the jukebox six times straight. Then there was another bar, and another one after that, and then— Blank. He stands there with one hand over his mouth, his other hand seeking out the cruddy particle-board wall and bracing against it. His whole body feels clammy, and he's shaking. Where the hell is he? What the hell did he do last night? Something moves behind him in the darkness, and he jumps and almost knocks over his can of puke. God, he's almost naked. He hadn't even noticed that yet. He's got his boxer briefs on, and the T he walked out of Serenity in. Did he… Oh Christ, did he fuck someone? Someone who isn't Tressa? He might throw up again. "Uh—" That's all he can get out; if he says anything else, he's going to stutter. He knows it. His voice sounds thin and weedy, like a kid in fifth grade. The covers on the bed shift again, and then a pale hand emerges from under the blankets. What the— "Take that out," Spike says, pulling the pillow briefly off his face. "It stinks." The pillow drops again, and he's gone. Nick just stands there, totally vacant, feeling the last string of the reality kite jerk itself out of his hands and sail up into the blue. He wedges himself into the bench seat at the tiny fold-down kitchen table, and studies his thumbs while Spike makes coffee and bacon. For some reason he's feeling very submissive. Maybe because he's hallucinating, and you never know what hallucinations are going to do to you. Bark in your face, club you with a hot spatula. Or pour you a cup of coffee and put it in front of you, alongside three extra-strength Tyenol. "Breakfast of champions," Spike says dismissively, and turns back to the hot plate. Nick stares at the coffee for a few seconds, waiting for it to turn into…what would Joss think of? Blood? Too obvious. Maybe some kind of, uh, scrying device, and in a minute he's going to see Aly with the Bad Willow contacts, stripping skin off his sponsor in some church basement. That doesn't happen, so he finally just drinks the coffee. It's instant. "So," Spike says, not turning to face him. "What brings you to my crap abode?" Nick doesn't answer. It seems like the safest thing to do, or not do, depending on your point of view. He's still trying to figure out what the hell's going on, and it's not like he knows the answer to Spike's question. And that's one thing, that's the starting point—it's not Jim. The person standing there flipping maple-flavored strips of pork is not Jim Marsters, and here's how Nick knows. One: this person has hair. Bottle-blonde greaser hair, and Jim shaved all his off two weeks ago on Ryan Seacrest. Tressa taped it and delivered it personally, saying, "He does the tongue thing. Like you wouldn't believe." Jim's a cue ball these days. Nick finds he can't look away from the hair, and even though Spike doesn’t turn around, Nick's somehow certain it's no secret between them that he's looking. Two: the accent. It's real. Jim's was always kind of hit-or-miss, depending on how much time he'd spent hounding Tony and watching Coronation Street. Some days he'd come in and sound Australian. And it was a good thing Xander wasn't supposed to be Southern or anything, because God knows Nick wasn't King of Accents, but still. Jim made bank. He could hire a freaking coach. This accent? Is real. Three: It's Spike. It just is. Somehow, and Nick couldn't say how he knows this, any more than he could say how he got here or where his socks are, but it's so. It's so so. So very, very so. He's in Spike's kitchen, drinking coffee and waiting on bacon, and he puked in Spike's trash can and showered in his teeny shower, and apparently Spike lives in a trailer. Nick takes another sip of the coffee. Sadly, there is no brandy in it. "You're Spike, right?" he asks, after making the effort to swallow. Spike doesn't respond directly. He flips the bacon around, snaps a hand back from a spatter of grease, and picks up his cigarettes. "What do you think?" "I think I'm still drunk." He doesn't actually—he can tell drunk from not drunk. Unless he's gone so far past drunk that he's reached a new level, one where there is no "drunk" per se, but only varying degrees of lunacy. That actually sounds plausible. "I think you're a hallucination." "Where do you think you are, then?" Nick looks around. "Hard to say. But if this dump is my happy place, I'm in serious trouble." "Hey." "Hey, what? I'm a crazy drunk guy, I can say what I want." Spike lights his cigarette and forks some bacon onto a plate, then turns and slides the plate in front of Nick. He doesn't even have to take a step to do it; the kitchen's that small. Nick looks at the bacon, then lowers his head and sniffs it carefully. "Not going to bite you," Spike says. "This is my hallucination, Spike. I can be overcautious if I want." The bacon doesn't bite, and if it's all a Jossian metaphor for castration he doesn't want to know about it. He just wants bacon, all of a sudden. Salty and crispy and not like real food at all. Not like the crap they served at Serenity. Thirty days of canned corn and cheesy mac. He dropped ten pounds, easy, from refusing food. Well, that and the not drinking. He's digging into the bacon, not paying attention to much else, and Spike slides into the other bench, his hands around a mug of his own. Nick lifts his head just enough to see into it. Yup. Blood. "I'm insane," he says, and drops his head to his own plate again. "Yeah, but at least you've got benefits," Spike says morosely, and ashes onto the floor. "So let me get this straight," Nick says, staring at the ceiling. He's lying on Spike's bed, because it's the only place in the trailer to lie down, which was why they were both in there in the first place. It's a relief to realize there was no hanky-panky, even of the hallucinatory, fictional variety. He's already stood Tressa up at Serenity, relapsed, and gone insane—there's no need to cheat on her too. "You're living in a trailer because you can't afford anything else now that the show's off the air." "Just for a bit," Spike says, from his position on the folding chair by the doorway. "Just till I sort out my options." "And when you say 'options', you mean—" "Could still be a movie, yeah. Have to be soon, though, Marsters isn't getting any younger." "You can say that again." Nick rubs a hand across his eyes and feels a strange, swoony dip in his consciousness. Poor Spike. "Didn't you have, like, an agent or something?" Silence, and when he raises his head, Spike's looking at his own fingernails, a little shamefaced. "Had one, yeah." "What happened?" Spike mumbles something quickly and looks away, prying the venetians open with two fingers and then shaking them hard when the sunlight catches them. "Spike?" "Ate him." "You ate your agent?" "Well I didn’t have a bloody soul, did I?" He looks momentarily outraged. "Didn't get a soul till season seven, for all intents and purposes, and by then it was too late, nobody'd come near me." He sucks his burnt fingers. "He was a wanker anyway." "I hear you." Nick rolls his head back and stares at the ceiling again. "So, okay, does this mean there's a Xander wandering around out there somewhere, collecting welfare?" "Fuck, no." Spike goes from outraged to half-bitter, half-admiring in the blink of an eye. "He's doing all right for himself, got a sweet deal on royalties. And that Watcher boy's investing it all. Hand over fist." Nick blinks. "What Watcher boy?" "Andrew. Little twit's a stockmarket genius, can put money in Eskimo freezers and takes back a profit." "What's Tom—I mean, Andrew got to do with it?" "They're an item." Spike sounds bored. "Pair of poofs. You didn't know?" "Xander and Andrew are—" Nick frowns. "Xander's gay?" Spike just snorts. When it gets dark they go for a walk around the trailer park, which Nick realizes he's probably supposed to think of as a mobile home community, or possibly an estate. Spike's trailer is in a back lot, flanked by woods and a sluggish little brown river. There's a welcome mat under his front door, made of Astroturf, with little yellow plastic flowers around the edge. Nick stands looking at it while Spike turns lights off. "Do I want to know how you got this place?" he asks. Spike gives him a blue-eyed, level gaze and says nothing. They lock up and go for a stroll. "So what's it like being fictional?" Nick asks, firing up one of Spike's Marlboros. The kids are still playing on the other side of the lot, screaming and threatening each other, bursting into tears. The other trailers are lit up with mosquito zappers, Chinese lanterns, Tiki torches. Long grass and amber light and the quiet roar of television explosions. It's kind of pretty, actually. "What's it like being a drunk?" Spike asks, with an edge to his tone. Nick flinches. "Okay," he says. They walk the big paved loop around the park, just a couple of guys out for an evening amble, under the slitted and watchful eyes of the rest of the park. Either trailer folks aren't as friendly as you'd think, or Spike's gained a reputation. They pass a fat old woman sitting in a lawn chair by the door to her trailer, a longneck in her hand and a crucifix suddenly swinging from her fingers. "Hi," Nick says. She hisses something under her breath, and makes a gesture he doesn't quite catch. The hairs on the back of his neck prickle up. "Old country," Spike says, by way of explanation. "Spike, tell me something. In this alternate reality, what season is it?" Spike gives him an inscrutable look and says nothing. "Were you ever really chipped, or did you just play chipped on TV?" "No such thing as a chip," Spike says, and lights another cigarette. They walk in silence for a while, Nick's palms getting wet with sweat, and his stomach grinding unhappily away on its diet of booze, bile, bacon, and now fear. "Don't be an idiot," Spike says finally, as they round the bend by subdivision C. "If I'd wanted to eat you I'd have done it already." "What if you just wanted to taunt me first?" "Well. Point." Spike doesn't say anything else, but somehow Nick feels a little comforted by the exchange. Spike must have a soul now, he tells himself—that's canon. That's how the show ended. Of course, it also ended with Spike burnt to a crisp, so maybe you can't believe everything you see on television. The walk around the park takes less than ten minutes, but somehow, unbelievably, Nick's tired by the time they're back home. The place is quiet now—just the sound of the river and a few crickets creaking away. Nice. If you overlook the woman's cork-heeled sandal lying half-buried in the tall grass by Spike's front door. "You staying?" Spike unlocks the trailer door and stands there with his hand on the latch, and for a minute he looks almost…bashful. Like he wants to ask Nick in, but isn't scripted that way. Nick drops his cigarette butt and grinds it under his shoe, until he's sure it's really out. Dying in a trailer blaze isn't his idea of a good way to spend a hallucination. "I have no idea where I am," he says honestly. "And no idea where I'm supposed to be. So yeah, I guess I'm staying." Spike gives a good enough kind of shrug, and swings the door open. "Make yourself at home," he says. "I'm out for a bite to eat." Sleeping in a vampire's bed is more comfortable than you'd think. Especially after a few mugs of Jack Daniels, courtesy of the vampire's tiny liquor cupboard, up top of his tiny refrigerator. Everything in the trailer is wee, including the television, which is one of those shoebox-sized sets that rich people put in their kitchens. That Jim Marsters probably has in his bathroom. So he can watch himself do the tongue thing in slow motion on the Ryan Seacrest show. "Fucker," Nick says, and falls asleep with his shoes on Spike's blankets. He wakes up because someone's crawling over him. Tressa, his brain thinks, and he reaches up and feels right away that his brain is wrong. Thin bony body, skinny ribs, worn T-shirt. Jeans. There's a smell of cigarette ash and salt. Spike. Right, he's in Spike's bed. He's insane. He'd forgotten, for a second. "Didn't think you swung that way," Spike says somewhere in the darkness above him, sounding amused. "Shut up," Nick says, and rolls away. Spike settles down in the space between Nick and the wall, and makes a few wet mouth sounds that are either pokes at Nick's ego or the remains of Spike's dinner, caught in his teeth. On the far side of the park, someone's playing John Cougar Mellencamp and talking. "What time is it?" Nick asks, and promptly falls asleep. The next time he wakes up, he's spooning Spike. Completely, thoroughly, and without inhibition. His arms are around Spike's waist, his leg is over Spike's hip. His mouth is pressed to the back of Spike's neck, and he's breathing hot post-booze breath down Spike's shirt. He lies there for a while, drifting in and out of sleep, realizing slowly that he's getting hard. That he's raising his hand and letting the flat of his palm lie on Spike's belly, feeling the taut slim shape of him, starting gently to stroke. Spike's hair is soft at the back of his neck, where he hasn't caked it in crap. The skin of his forearm is smooth, when Nick runs his hand down it. He wakes up easily, without starting, and lies there accepting the touches. Like a cat, accepting attention. "You're not real, right?" Nick says into Spike's neck. His hand plucking at the hem of Spike's T-shirt, lifting it, and sliding beneath. Spike's belly is cool and smooth, just a little hair under the navel. Spike doesn't say anything, just turns around and offers his mouth. So Nick kisses him. Because this is Spike, not Jim. Not beautiful Jim Marsters, who's a friend and annoyance and object lesson, who's forty years old going on nineteen, who smells like cosmetics and can't do an English accent to save his life, who chases jailbait, who has more cheesy B-grade Hollywood shtick than you can shake a stick at. Who's sexy but also skeevy. Who's not someone you can really trust. This is Spike. The real Spike, the right Spike, who's beautiful like no other man on earth, who's been a part of Nick's life for five crazy years, who's funny and sad and noble and a bastard. Who tastes like blood and booze. Good, sweet tastes. Like Nick's own mouth, mid-bender. Right in the middle of something he knows he really shouldn't do. "You think I'm hot," Spike murmurs into Nick's mouth, sounding pleased with himself. "Yeah." Nick's busy. No time for sarcasm. "You always thought I was hot." "Yeah, I did." Spike gives a satisfied little laugh, and something about it makes Nick crazy, and also fills him with tender happiness. "Jerk." "Wanker." Spike wriggles closer, gets his dick in line with Nick's, and they're both hard, pressed against each other. It's a new thing—Jesus. Whoah. Nick's never felt anything like that before, and never wanted to. Well. Okay, maybe that's overstating. "I can't believe Xander's gay," he says, pulling Spike's shirt off and getting busy kissing him again as soon as it's gone. Spike laughs. They kiss, lose clothes, kick the blankets off the bed. After a while Nick finds himself on the bottom, staring up into the darkness with Spike's knees straddling his hips, Spike's hands on his wrists. "I can't see." Spike's weight shifts, and the venetians are twiddled open, and now he can see the faint outline of Spike overtop him. His pale skin cut with blue-black shadows, his head dipping down. More kissing. "Why did you come get me?" Nick asks later, during a lull. Spike's dick is prodding the hollow of his collarbone, and he's got his weight on his elbows, his arms curled under Spike's thighs. It's finally occurred to him to ask. "I didn't. You showed up." When Nick doesn't accept that answer and go back to sucking a trail up Spike's thigh, Spike raises his head and looks down at him. "In a taxi. Which I paid for, by the way." Nick rubs his cheek thoughtfully against the head of Spike's cock, then bumps his chin against it. It strikes him, in passing, that he's way too comfortable with Spike's body. They both are. Like they've been doing this for years, instead of hours. "How'd I know where you were?" Spike shrugs, and they look at each other for a minute, and then Nick drops his head and pulls Spike's dick into his mouth. Thick and slick and comforting as a shot of Glenfiddich. Spike moans. Later, it's Nick's turn, and it's weird, there's something about the fact that it's Spike that makes it not cheating. Because Spike's not someone you cheat with, like he's not someone you shop for khakis with. No matter how down and out he is, no matter what kind of shitbox he lives in, Buena Vista Estates or Mountain Lookout or wherever, he's not small enough to fit into that world. The world of being a depressed alcoholic, of relapsing the first day you get out, of not knowing what to do with yourself now that you're thirty-three and out of the only job you know how to do. Of not knowing if your wife's still going to be there when you get home. Of not knowing where the hell home is. Nick comes twice, the second time harder than the first, his fingers sunk into Spike's lower back and ass. Spike kisses him again, with a mouth that tastes of come. "You don't fit," Nick murmurs. They fall asleep with their backs pressed together: reverse spooning, reverse worlds. Early morning in the trailer park is quiet. Nick collects his clothes piece by piece, in no particular hurry, his whole body light and soft and absent. He twirls the venetians shut again before Spike can get fried in his bed. He kisses Spike's head and finds his coat and lets himself quietly out onto the Welcome mat. The crucifix lady's chair is empty, and the Tiki torches have all burnt out. Nick lights a cigarette and walks backward up the road toward the highway. Spike's trailer is small, crappy, shuttered. Once Nick crosses the small rise in the road, it's gone completely. He still has half a pack of Marlboros in his pocket, and the silver Zippo, which he stole. His mouth still tastes of Spike. There's a little early-morning mist in the green hollow of the picnic area. It'll burn off in less than an hour. Up the hill, trucks are passing on the freeway, heading to regular-sized places. One of which is where he belongs, and has to get to. He sets his shoulders and starts the long walk up. -End