It's my 6th Spanderversary! Also, Fic: Five Things Spike Gave Up...

It really doesn't feel like six years since I read my first Spander, Alexandria Brown's Waiting Here. Now, six years and countless fandoms later, I've never been happier and had so many wonderful friends. *smooches you all*

And so I celebrate with fic. :D

Author: darkhavens
Title: Five Things Spike Gave Up After Getting Involved With Xander Harris
Fandom: Pairing: Buffy: Spike/Xander
Rating: R for grue
Words: 560
Concrit: Please. If you spot a typo or a grammar glitch, feel free to tell me in comments.
Disclaimer: Not mine, never will be. No harm, no foul, no money made.
Warnings/Squicks: **non-graphic reference to possible alcoholism; non-graphic reference to possible child abuse; non-graphic reference to child murder; eyeballs in a bowl; non-graphic reference to turning Xander**
Summary: Some things are worth the sacrifice.
Notes: Written as a sister set to Five Things Xander Harris Gave Up After Getting Involved With Spike. Also as part of my participation in mini_wrimo and findyourwords (count for the year so far: 41,205/50,000).


Five Things Spike Gave Up After Getting Involved With Xander Harris

1. Smoking in bed. It's one thing for him to inhale lungfuls of tar and nicotine and assorted carcinogens after a good shag, but the first time Xander reached over and took the cigarette from between his lips, inhaled, hacked and then handed it back, that was it.

The daft git is squishy enough as it is – so easily broken and slow to heal. There's no way Spike is helping him find new ways to shorten his lifespan. So, no more post-orgasm fags. Seems, any other time, Xander has more sense than to play with coffin nails, but when he's just had his brain fucked loose, he's much too impressionable and easily led.

A devious vampire could talk him into all manner of things…

2. Knocking back bottles of whisky like it was pop. Not that it's a regular occurrence, mind, or that a bottle – or two – would do all that much to someone with a vampiric constitution, but Xander gets this bruised look in his eyes when he thinks nobody's watching, and knowing he's responsible for dredging up what's obviously painful history for his boy makes Spike burn inside.

No one has the right to hurt what's his, no one. And bugger anyone who says his protectiveness can't be retroactive.

3. Collecting trophies. A bloody awful, not to mention downright stupid, idea anyway, really, but he picked it up from Dru. His dark princess, with her dollies and toys and hanks of hair all neatly braided and tied up with ribbons from whatever pretty little thing she'd most recently had for lunch.

The eyes were the worst. That bizarre collection didn't last long, thank god, but while it did…

How's a bloke supposed to be at the peak of his form with his girl while there's a cut glass bowl full of eyes floating in gin staring up at him from the bedside table? Some things are beyond creepy.

So. No trophies.

Except for the weapons that catch his eye, of course – who doesn't need an arsenal on the Hellmouth?

And taking trinkets and gadgets and stuff to sell is something else entirely. He's not going cap in hand to his boy or the Watcher any more, demeaning himself for pennies to buy fags and booze and blooming onions. He's better than that, smarter than that. He no longer needs the protective coloration of looking weak and helpless, dependent.

4. His one demon, on again, off again crusade to torment the great Poof out of his decades-long broody blue funk.

Now it's a one demon, one human on again, off again crusade, and the human element is showing a decidedly Machiavellian side to his persona that Spike has not previously encountered.

He likes it. It shows his boy has real promise.


5. His favored status as the youngest of the fading, once grand Aurelius line. Oh, there was that submariner get of Angelus's, back in World War Two, but he doesn't really count, being more of an expedience than an actual member of the family.

And he'll be damned before he counts any of Dru's creations either, short-lived maddening and maddened mongrels that they were.

No, when he passes on the distinction of being the youngest, favored heir to the house of Aurelius, it will be to his Xander, his wicked, wide-eyed wondrous boy.

And it will be soon.