InsaneJournal

FIC: "Landslide", gen, FRT
Oh, look, I wrote gen? how did that happen? I suppose because I wrote it for the Drunken!Giles ficathon. Giles gets an unexpected visitor on the longest night of the year.



The sun was just setting for the longest night of the year, and Giles was already into his third whisky. He wasn't counting the wine he'd had with lunch; wine wasn't really *alcohol*, after all, and it had gone down with the fettucine. Possibly the only thing keeping him still standing at this point.

He wasn't sure what was keeping him standing at the window, looking out into the night. Some deeply buried, atavistic urge to watch the sun sink, perhaps, and wonder if it would ever rise again. Or some drunken, despairing wish that the coming night would indeed never end.

The knock at the door startled him so badly that half his remaining drink sloshed over his hand. Who the hell could that be? He wasn't expecting anyone till Christmas Eve at the earliest, and that was three days hence. He hadn't even bothered to decorate yet, wouldn't bother if it weren't for Xander and the children coming....

Wiping his hand and hoping he didn't reek too badly, Giles went for the door. The cold air rushing in smelled of cigarettes and frost.

"Spike."

Of all the people to show up on his doorstep... bloody hell. Spike managed something like a friendly smile and held up a bottle of brandy. "Hullo, Rupert. Care to let a passing stranger in for a bit of Christmas cheer?"

Giles tried not to sag where he stood. "You're no stranger to me, Spike, and it isn't Christmas yet."

He started to close the door, but Spike stopped him with the bottle. "It's good stuff. Paid for it, even. Adds a little something to egg nog or cocoa." He shuffled his feet as if the chill bothered him, which of course it did not. "And don't try to pretend you haven't been tippling already. I could smell it on you half a mile away."

Giles sighed, wondering for which of his many sins this visit was punishment. "Do come in, Spike."

The vampire crossed his threshold and began shedding his coat like a proper visitor. Gone was the old black leather duster, which must have disintegrated at last; Spike was wearing a wine-colored Burberry and a rather rakish black hat. Underneath the hat, which he tossed neatly onto the coat tree, his hair was still the same fragile bleached blond it had been when Giles first saw him, and his face was as pale, as smooth, as sharply angled. Even three whiskys on top of half a bottle of wine couldn't dull the hurt Giles felt. Buffy was dead, Joyce, Tara, so many others, his bones ached without ceasing, and Spike had not changed.

Under his sober coat and hat, Spike was actually wearing an equally sober suit. How long had it been since Giles had seen Spike? He seemed to be changing his image.

Spike, in turn, was studying Giles, the pink tip of his tongue thrust between his teeth. "You're drunk already, aren't you?" he said at last.

"Yes," Giles said, and drained his glass.

"Well, you let me in. The least you can do is ask me to sit down and offer me a glass of something."

"I haven't any blood," Giles said, enunciating crisply. "Do sit down, William."

Spike refused to be baited by the use of his Christian name. He sat down near the fire, clasped his hands between his knees, and looked around with undisguised interest. Giles examined his stock of whisky, considered his own state of intoxication, and decided that adding some of Spike's brandy to the eggnog he'd made last night was, in fact, a viable suggestion.

He handed Spike a glass, ignored the murmur of thanks he got, and dropped into the armchair facing Spike. The creamy taste of the eggnog mixed with the brandy it held and the whisky coating his mouth and blurred everything like frost. "So. Spike. What do you want?"

Spike, slurping at his own drink, raised his brows over the rim of the glass. "A drink. Place to sit for a few hours." He took another sip, eyes watchful. "And to see how you were. Where's the old gang?"

The question came too quickly for Giles to dodge. "Coming over in a few days. Willow on Christmas Eve. Xander and the twins fly in Christmas Day." He stopped himself before he named the other friends who'd been invited to the Boxing Day dinner.

"Good." Spike gestured with his free hand. "So why isn't the place decorated yet? Fa la la and all that."

Despite the mellowing effects of the eggnog, Giles was angry enough to snap. "What the bloody hell do you care, Spike? Hoping to bite someone under the mistletoe?"

Spike did not bristle. He met Giles's glare with a level look and said, quietly, "I miss her, too, Rupert."

Giles had to get up and walk away, turn his back on the vampire. He was not going to let Spike see him cry. He was not going to let anyone see him cry... except, perhaps, Willow. And Xander. Who remembered Buffy, and loved her, as he did.

Yet Spike, too, had remembered the date of her death. And landed on Rupert's doorstep, like a homing bird.

"It's the Watcher's curse," he said at last. "Always to outlive one's Slayer. Most of us don't bear it very well." He swirled the dregs of his drink, musing. "We go seeking vengeance on the thing that killed her... and if we're lucky enough to succeed, we die by our own hands, often as not."

"You couldn't even do that. Damned drunken driver. If I'd been there, nothing would've stopped me from taking a piece out of him."

Giles turned back to see gleaming eyes and bared fangs. Spike had not moved from his chair, however. At Giles's pointed look, he shook himself back to human appearance. "Sorry. Got a bit worked up, there."

"So I see." Giles pulled himself up. "More egg nog?"

"Love it." Spike drained his glass and handed it over.

As Giles refilled their tumblers, Spike got up and wandered over to the stereo. "How about some music, then? Give us a bit of atmosphere." He found the power button and fiddled the dial until he found what he wanted, which was choral music, apparently. The strains of a men and boys choir singing "The Holly and the Ivy" filled the room. Spike seated himself again with a satisfied nod. As the choir sang the refrain, Spike joined in with a respectable baritone, ending with the words, "... sweet singing by the queers."

Despite himself, Giles snorted laughter. "Didn't know you could sing."

"Was a choirboy once." Spike gulped nog. "Me mum sent me to a cathedral school." He cleared his throat and joined the treble soloist for the verse, warbling along in a squeaky falsetto.

Several hours later, a box of biscuits, and quite a bit more egg nog later, Giles was far too drunk to care that his arthritic fingers could no longer bar chords properly. They had progressed from listening to the radio to playing CDs, from Christmas music on CD to various flavours of rock on vinyl, and finally to Giles's getting the guitar out of the closet and tuning it up. His brain still knew the patterns of the old songs even if his fingers felt like sticks of wood and his voice was a cracked bell.

He shook out his right hand in frustration after a third try at B minor came out muffled and thin.

"Mind if I play us a tune?"

"She's strung left-handed," but Giles held out the guitar anyway.

"I'll manage." Spike cradled the instrument carefully and experimented with a few changes before setting pick to strings for a tune Giles hadn't heard in ages.

"I took my love and I took it down
Climbed a mountain and turned around
And I saw my reflection in the snow-covered hills
'Till the landslide brought it down...."

Spike fumbled through a few changes before going into the next verse.

"Oh, mirror in the sky - What is love?
Can the child within my heart rise above?
Can I sail through the changing ocean tides?
Can I handle the seasons of my life?"
I don't know.... I don't know...."

Despite the cracks in his voice, Giles cocked his head and harmonized with Spike on the bridge.

"Well, I've been afraid of changin'
'cause I've built my life around you.
But time makes you bolder, even children get older,
And I'm getting older too...."

Grinning, Spike took the last verse on his own.

"So, take my love... take it down
Climb a mountain and turn around
and if you see my reflection in the snow-covered hills...
well, the landslide will bring it down...."

His voice cracked a little on the high note of the final line.

"Oh, the landslide will bring it down."

The two men looked at each other. Spike set the guitar down against the couch, pick threaded between the strings.

"Well, I'm thinkin' I'll be off, mate. Want to walk about a bit, and I need me a smoke."

And a feed, Giles thought, but said nothing. Instead he got up, not refusing Spike's helping hand, took the dirty glasses to the kitchen, put his guitar back in the case, and offered the vampire his coat and hat with a smile, as if he had been an expected, even welcome guest.

"Thanks, Rupert. For the egg nog. And the company." Spike paused just outside the door. "How old are you now, Giles?"

He had to think. "Sixty-nine."

Spike nodded. He'd been turned in 1880, Giles remembered. In his late twenties then. Spike raised his head and took a whiff of the air. "Don't worry, Rupert. It won't be long now till dawn."