The vampire's moved in now... Blonde hair spilling like so much ivory over sheets made dingy by its paleness. Night after night... Xander wondered when he'd grown so weak, so corrupted and stained. Anya had seen it, had sensed the blackness birthed in his soul. I can tell your morning cereal's lost a little of its bite... One morning they were bickering over the last drop of cream for their coffee, and the next, she was gone. Just gone, like the memory of warm summer breezes in January.

The next morning, Xander found himself arguing with Spike over the last square of Rice Chex. For several days, he was sure he was stuck in a very odd dream, wherein his now-absent fiancée was replaced by his least favorite demon-with-bleach.

I can hear them at the front door leaving, early morning around three... Spike. Xander used to think of him as just another vampire; cannier than most but still a demon driven by his cannibalistic, impulsive desires. Now, though, he knew differently. The blonde had escorted himself into Xander's life by dint of a carelessly thrown invitation, forgotten in the snowstorm of Buffy's death and rebirth. Once inside, Spike moved with the stealth of a glacier, surreptitious in his obviousness. From the door to the kitchen table, over the course of a day. From the table to the couch, in a series of achingly slow steps that took a month or more. Then the vampire was taking showers, but that was the following summer, wasn't it?

Buffy and Willow commented upon Spike's presence in Xander's apartment. Xander shrugged. Spike shrugged. After all, the vampire moved so slowly, no one noticed his clear trajectory. Summer gave way to autumn and Spike was borrowing Xander's socks, even as he was luring the young man away from the soft, inside-wet haven of his friends. No one noticed, no one ever noticed... Buffy didn't realize that Xander reduced his patrols from nightly to thrice weekly, so that he could catch a few more poker games with Spike and Clem. Don't you think I know why you're losing interest in me? Willow, still wrapped up in grief and existence-changing magicks, was relieved to see her clumsy friend protected by Spike--and to see Xander policing the morally crippled vampire.

I think I lost my place, long before I'd admit... And then one night, Spike's gentle footfalls didn't stop at the bedroom door. His hand strayed from Xander's shoulder, down to his waist and to places lower, less friendly and more loverlike. Somewhere between the doorway and the bed, Xander found himself crushed under the inexorable, icy force that was Spike--the glacier who had snuck up behind him while he wasn't looking, carving him up like the frozen earth at the base of a great sheet of ice. Xander saw his folly. He'd very wrongly thought he was strong, wary and wise in the ways of the Hellmouth. It seems I've seen his face before in the mirror...

But instead, he was willing clay in the hands of a cruel, sly master sculptor. Who was he now? He had no idea. What kind of Slayer's-companion bedded the enemy? He didn't even have Buffy's excuse. Spike had no soul, and the chip was as faulty as Xander's moral compass. The vampire could've easily killed them all, without lifting a finger.

The days are feeling short now... Winter was unusually harsh this year. Sunnydale was a barren place; no snow had fallen yet, but Xander wouldn't be surprised by its appearance. The cold and the dark weighed him down, almost as much as Spike when the vampire pressed him into their bed. Xander passively took what Spike gave him, at least until the vampire demanded that he respond. Can't find the time or the will to pick up the pace... Then, he was helpless to rebel, capitulating in a sweaty flurry of regretful cries and unwilling caresses.

Xander tried to work up the courage or the voice to ask Spike what he was doing, why he was taking Xander into his bed, twisting him into something he wasn't. When he finally found himself enough to inquire, Spike simply stared at him, hard, until Buffy showed up in the cemetery and the moment was broken. Xander never asked again; there was no point. Spike had said everything in that one moment. The young man had seen in Spike's eyes the irrevocable claim of ownership. In that gaze, Xander realized that he wasn't Spike's lover. The vampire hadn't eased his way into the human's bed. No, Xander was Spike's possession; the blonde had slid into Xander's soul like so much blood-sweetened poison, and Xander had let him. Now he belonged to the vampire, more useful than a cigarette lighter but still ranking somewhere below the sacred duster.

But now and then I catch you again and we trade dirty jokes... Xander was amazed that no one saw the brand of ownership tattooed on his forehead. Or, more likely, they saw and were resigned to it. Perhaps Buffy's vaunted Slayer senses picked up on the fact that Xander was comfortable in his darkness, that he'd grown accustomed to the sensual venom of Spike's presence in his life. Willow, of course, would see it straightaway, but Tara's death had changed her. Maybe she was willing to let Xander go. Perhaps she knew that he was irredeemable, lost forever in the perpetual dusk to which Spike had consigned him. Tossing back and forth the hot potato of who cares the most...

And the last time Xander had tried to rebel against Spike's silken chains, he'd come face to face with the depth of the abyss in which he now dwelled. One night, he lingered at work until the sun set. Then, he struck out for the Bronze, knowing that Spike expected him to be home, naked and in their bed. He found Buffy and Willow in the club and joined them for a drink and some casual conversation. Their words were flat and distant, no more intimate and friendly than what was shared between a policeman and the town drunk. I think I lost my place, long before I'd admit...

Every word was like swallowing needles, but Xander persevered. These women were his life; sister-mother-lover-daughter in two rail-thin packages wrapped in rayon and denim. He still saw their steel and whipped-cream forms, but what did they see? It seems I've seen his face before in the mirror... Xander wondered--until Spike arrived. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled just before a slim, cool hand wrapped around his neck. Buffy and Willow didn't even blink as Spike led Xander away, through the teeming masses of writhing young bodies.

Long ago when I saw you standing with him, I almost cried... Xander wanted to scream, to beg them to protest, to say anything. Didn't they even wish to say goodbye? The vampire who controlled him might have been leading him to his death, but they said nothing at all. Their silence was damning. It was also the fuel Xander needed to ignite a furious blaze of words. He smoldered all the way home, walking through the darkened streets of his hometown.

Xander asked Spike what he thought he was doing, dragging him away from his friends. The vampire stood by silently as the young man raged, screaming out obscenities laced with pleading questions. Why did he continue to linger in Xander's life? What was he doing, leading Xander on as he did? Did Spike have any idea what he was doing? Finally, after a few seconds that stretched like hours, Xander fell silent and Spike took up the cacophony. You whispered in my ear, "I'm on your side."

Truer words had never been said.

Buffy and Willow faded further from view--or maybe it was Xander who got more transparent and victim to the vagaries of sunlight. Contact grew more remote, less frequent. Sunnydale itself faded away as Spike consumed more and more of Xander's existence, until the casual comment that work was superfluous seemed rational. After that, Xander had even more time to devote to Spike, and devote he did. Every waking moment was spent wrapped around the vampire's body, seeking out answers in flesh what he could not find in his heart.

The vampire's moved out now, and with him you'll go... The glacier returned one fateful autumn, years or months after Xander found himself quite literally far from home. He and Spike were holed up in a warm cabin somewhere to the south and east, where it never snowed but the rain more than made up for it. That night Xander fell asleep and never quite woke up again, although his eyes stayed open and ever vigilant.

Vampirism wasn't what Xander thought it would be. He didn't feel an insatiable desire to kill anyone, to track down his worthless family and make them pay. No, he was vaguely annoyed that he couldn't go out in the daytime, and wished that fewer people wore cheap goldtone crosses. Spike opened up to him more once he was turned, if opening up meant getting graphic instruction on just how much better sex was between vampires. Did it turn out the best for us both? I guess we'll never know... Xander was grateful, though, that vampirism meant that he didn't regret being turned.

Late at night when I hear the trains moving on out of town... They traveled more now, hitting cities both large and small. The Eastern seaboard was a new experience for the California-raised Xander. He figured that his ever-watchful Sire was avoiding his even-more-watchful Sire, Angel, who would be rather unimpressed with his childe's newest plaything--not because Spike had taken a childe, but because it was Xander, whom Angel felt was little more than a carbuncle on Buffy's otherwise-flawless posterior. I hear 'em talking, whistling, time to get down...

Now and then, Xander pondered the road that he'd walked down so willingly. He was man enough to admit that he could have turned back, but it had been so easy. So very easy... I think he lost his face, but at least it's getting clearer... His life had been lived unexamined, a precious canvas left unprotected. Spike, being a crafty son of a bitch, had walked up with a new palette, changing the picture to fit whatever passed for whimsy in the mind of a demon. Lived so fast, so long it all seemed a blur...

But such things did not weigh down Xander now. The only thing that pressed against him was Spike, and Spike did not worry about how he'd torn Xander into ten thousand pieces, but rebuilt him from only six or seven. Now and then I forget you again, and I wonder how we're doing... Why should he? The glacier doesn't stop to consider the land it has carved and gouged; it simply moves on unencumbered by morals and ethics, a force of nature greater than anything that would stand in its way. Each new yesterday seems like tomorrow...