it's like a buddy movie (only without the buddy part)
Chapter Seven: Another Book, Another Beer
Xander looked down at the bottle Spike had just handed him while the vampire went over to the Table o' Research.. Beer? Now? With a new demon in town and magical weirdness going down?
What the hell.
Xander twisted the cap off and took a drink. Hey, anything to get through a Wednesday, this one being worse that your average garden variety. He went to stand by Spike, and both stared blankly and the overstuffed shelves of books at the back of the shop.
Spike broke the silence first. "Where d'you think we get started?"
"Honestly? I was kinda hoping you'd know. I mean, you're the guy who knows this antler demon."
"Knows ABOUT, Harris. And yeah, I'm familiar with this kind of bloke, but I leave the research to you lot. Far too boring, that."
"Yeah, well, prepare to be bored. But where to start... the way this usually works is that Giles or Willow gives me a book and tells me what to look for. Then I look. But which book has what we're looking for? No clue."
The two men stared at the bookshelves again. After a few seconds (and another swig of his beer), Xander thought aloud, "Y'know, what would really help is some kind of 'Demons for Dummies' book."
Spike chuckled. "You'd've worn out a book like that several times over." At Xander's answering glare, Spike held up his hands. "Hey, you can't 'spect me to keep up the truce when you make it so damn easy!"
"Point." Xander noticed a couple of familiar books and grabbed them off the shelf after taking yet another swing of his beer. He hated to admit it, but the beer was tasting just about perfect right now. "But until they do come out with a book like that, these'll have to do.
"What, d'you have your very own copy of 'Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Demons But Was Afraid to Ask'?"
"And you keep getting less funny. No, these are some of the books Giles gives us to look through when even he has no clue what we're dealing with. Good a place to start as any, I guess."
"So are these the most boring book ever in the history of civilization, then?"
"In the running. But there's some here that're even worse."
"Then let's get this over with." Spike took one of the books from him and took a seat at the table, opening a beer and leaning back. Xander swung around to the other side of the table and grabbed a seat for himself.
Chaos demon... Chaos demon... Xander rubbed his head with his hands. Okay, yes, he needed to research right now. Big badness in town and all. But one thing kept popping into his head: that he'd broken his self-imposed First Rule of Wednesdays.
He'd talked about Buffy. To Spike.
He could talk about her - kind of - to Willow or Giles or Dawn when they brought her up. Not so much with Anya, but she didn't really want to talk about her either, so that worked out okay. But bringing her up to the vampire who was obsessed with her? Wouldn't help things at all.
Xander knew that he still was dealing with this himself - and a lot of the dealing was by not dealing - but it didn't change the way things were. Buffy was gone. Didn't matter what magic theories Willow kept talking about every week with him and Anya and Tara when they all met for Scooby meetings. The reality of the world now was that she was gone. Period. They all just did the best they could without her.
Xander reached for his beer (past time to drown this line of thought) and found the bottle emptied out. Had hadn't realized that he was so thirsty. He reached for another bottle, but Spike interrupted him. "Here. That swill doesn't rate as anything more than a warm-up. Drink something decent this time 'round." Spike reached into the bag and grabbed a can of Guinness. "This'll do you a little better."
"What's the difference? Beer is beer is beer." Unless it was cursed, but that was a whole other subject.
Spike rolled his eyes. "Hardly. Guinness is far superior to that yellow water most of you drink over here."
Xander felt a little offended by this. Maybe he should throw in a "Go USA!" or something. Or not. "C'mon, our beer isn't that bad."
"Just try it, Harris. Call it part of the truce if you like. Look, I might not be able to taste much as a vampire, but I can taste this. The Irish can annoy a bloke - take, for example, that git Angel - but at least they know how to make a decent sort of beer."
"Angel's Irish? Oh, wait, I think I remember being told that a while back. Not that I actually cared. Hold on - how come you still have your fancy accent, but he just sounds all normal American-ish?"
"Never quite understood that. Never asked. Could care less, m'self. Either way, he spouts the same rubbish. He sounds like a wanker no matter how he talks."
Xander nodded in agreement with Spike's description, even though he still didn't quite get the actual definition of "wanker." He just knew that it was something way less than nice, and that was good enough. There was one subject he knew he and Spike actively agreed about, and that was Angel. Or more like how much they both hated the guy. It was the only common ground they'd admit to having.
Another book from the shelves, another beer, and the hours dragged by. Mostly wasted. They weren't finding much that they didn't already know. Smart, chaos-liking, decent at doing magic, didn't mind getting all social with other kinds of demons (Spike seemed pretty stuck on that whole part of it), but not much that qualified as helpful. Spike was keeping to his truce thing, weirdly enough, and was passing him up as far as books reviewed... which meant that he either wasn't half bad at this research thing, or he wasn't actually reading most of the books he was looking at. Even though he thought that the latter was totally possible, something told him that Spike wasn't as un-book-ish as he thought.
After a while, Xander surprised himself with the words that came out of his mouth. "Shouldn't have brought her up earlier." There wasn't any question about who he was talking about.
Spike looked at him, then looked back down at the book he was studying. "'S all right. Her being gone... not easy for any of us, I'd wager."
Xander took a deep breath. "And that's what I'd call a massive understatement."
The two men looked at each other, and an understanding about how much Buffy's death... well, about how much it completely and utterly sucked seemed to pass between them.
Must be the beer.