"The Lesser of Two Evils"
Rated: ADULT
Xander stood on the top of the cliff, studying the rocks below. The wind stung his eye, making him squint as looked across the gray sea to the distant horizon which shimmered in the light of the full moon. He'd survived longer than he'd ever expected... over a decade. A decade of demons and prophesy and apocalypse and magic. Nearly everyone he knew had tried to kill him at least once, and now it was time for Xander to finish the job that vampire and demons and bears... oh my... had never quite gotten around to doing. Caleb had come closest, but other than the missing eye, Xander had come through it all with remarkably few physical injuries.
"No time like the present," Xander said as he stepped right up to the edge and peered down. With only one eye, the view had a surreal two-dimensional look to it, like he was seeing a painting of the breaking waves crashing and rearing their white heads. Fear scrambled in his stomach, desperate to force him back, but Xander was long used to ignoring fear. He inched closer to his own death.
One more. And then one more. And one after that. He crept toward death in tiny increments that just drew out the pain, the uncertainty. His brain swirled around all the versions of the afterlife he'd read about. Would his soul be swept up as a warrior for the light? Would he be reincarnated? Would he end up in hell for all eternity for killing himself because technically he was. Xander's mouth was dry as he forced his muscles to just keep inching forward.
"What the bloody fuck are you doing?" a familiar voice demanded, and Xander found himself flying backwards through the air, his hands flailing as he tried to catch himself. He couldn't. He ended up flat on his back staring up at a cloudy night sky as the tall grasses swayed around him.
"Hey, Spike. Nice to see you back in town. Thanks for stopping by. Feel free to fuck off any time now." Xander sighed as he stared up at the stars.
"What the fuck is wrong with you, Harris?" An angry face poked into Xander's range of vision, and Xander tilted his head to better focus on Spike.
"You so don't even want to know. Look, Spike, just take a hike."
"Wot? So you can kill yourself? So you can leave the bints to cry and wonder what the fuck they did wrong to drive you 'round the twist?" Spike demanded, and Xander sat up, angry for the first time. He understood Spike's motives here, but how dare he suggest that Xander would ever hurt the girls like that.
"Why the hell do you think I picked a cliff, you moron?" Xander demanded. "Hello! No depth of vision, night, cliff... what do these things spell to you?" Xander pushed himself up and closed in on Spike. Yeah, the vampire could kick his ass any day, but no way was Xander backing down to him now. That just wasn't happening, especially not when Xander was right.
"M-O-R-O-N." Spike counted off the letters on his fingers.
"A-C-C-A-D-E-N-T!" Xander snapped back. Spike frowned at him for a second, and then closed his eyes in that expression he got when he was really fighting the urge to say something he shouldn't. He got that look a lot around Xander and Willow's newest girl. "Spike, just go away. Pretend you didn't see me."
"Right, so you can fling yourself off the cliff," Spike said with more than a little derision in his voice.
"Um, I'm actually trying to slide off it, you know, make the edge crumble a bit or something," Xander shrugged.
"You—" Spike just stopped and stared at Xander for a long minute. "That's it. Bloody rubber room time for you, mate." Spike reached out and grabbed Xander's wrist as he headed back toward the rambling old house Xander had been sharing with Willow and what's-her-name and a half dozen baby slayers.
"What? No. Spike, dammit, stop it!" Xander fought as Spike dragged him across the ground. Xander even tried sitting, but vampire strength trumped even Xander levels of stubbornness. "Fine, wait, let me explain. If you're not ready to chuck me off the cliff yourself, I'll go back with you and agree to the whole rubber room thing," Xander finally relented as he stopped fighting Spike and instead clung to the vampire's arm. "Please, Spike, just let me explain. Please."
Spike stopped and considered Xander with a doubtful expression. "I promise, no fighting if you listen to all my reasons and you still think I should go back to the house," Xander begged. Why not, he didn't have that much dignity to start with, and life was quickly chipping away what little he'd managed to save up.
"Fine, you've got thirty seconds," Spike relented as he let go of Xander and crossed his arms over his chest.
"I’m infected with Unji eggs," Xander blurted. "And hey, that's way under thirty seconds."
"You're what?" Spike grabbed Xander and bowled him over so that once again Xander was on his back in the grass, only this time, Spike was pushing his shirt up and laying his head against Xander's stomach.
"Whoa, bad touching alert. Back off there, bloodbreath."
"Shut up, Harris."
"Yeah, nice comeback. Look, you mind just backing off with the weirdly inappropriate touching?" Xander asked as he shoved ineffectually at Spike's head. He truly hated vampire strength. Eventually Spike sat up with a slightly nauseous expression. Did vampires get nausea?
"Bloody hell, they're about ready to hatch," Spike said as he stared at Xander's pudgy stomach, but then Xander was preggers with six to twelve demons, depending on which version of the Unji's reproductive biology you read. Unfortunately, all of the versions agreed that after nine to ten years, the buggers ate their way out of the host killing it. If Xander had an incurable demon infestation, he at least wanted to go out taking the flesh eating spawn of hell with him.
"I started getting the munchies last week," Xander admitted. "Most of Giles' books say that comes about a month before the hatching, so tonight is the last full moon before I become demon kibble. I don't know, I just thought this should end under a full moon." Xander shrugged. The moon didn't matter as much as the him dying part, but he hated having to explain any of it to Spike. Really hated.
"What did Red say?"
Xander snorted. "Oh yeah, like I'm going to tell her. When I first got bit, she was just the sweet girl who really didn't need to hear about intestine-eating demons... especially not right after we'd lost Jesse. Now she's the potential world-ending mighty witch, and you know Unji are resistant to all magic, so she's just going to frustrate herself trying to save me, and a frustrated Willow is a thing which all living creatures should fear," he pointed out. Even Spike had to admit the logic in that.
"Fine then, what did Rupert say?" Spike asked as leaned closer. Funny, if Xander had a choice he'd be running away from the guy whose guts were about to explode like the victims from Aliens.
"That first year, Giles was still in English stick-up-his-ass mode, and when I tried to talk to him, he pretty much blew me off. Okay, so I didn't exactly tell him that it was an emergency, but I told him that something bit me on patrol, and then Buffy was off on how it went all slimesville when she slayed it, and the biting just got forgotten. When I tried to talk to him later, he just said I shouldn't go on patrol if I was going to complain about every injury. I didn't find the information on the Unji for about..." Xander thought about it... "uh, I guess it was two years later because it was during all the weirdness with the mayor. Only when I found the Unji entry, it was pretty clear that the only cure for Unji eggs was this stuff that had to be taken in the first week. And I was way past that deadline. So, I missed my chance for an abortion, and now we're doing this the messy way. So, either chuck me off the cliff to save me some time and effort, or just take a hike until I can get up the nerve to go off the edge on my own." Xander shoved at Spike again, and this time the vampire moved back far enough for Xander to stand up.
"You bloody.... I don't even have a word for it. You've been dying all this time, and you don't think of telling anyone?" Spike asked.
"We're all dying," Xander pointed out. "Or most of us are dying, some of us are dead and therefore have the dying part out of the way, but you get my point."
"Then you get my point, you prat. There's another cure."
"What?" Xander stopped so suddenly that Spike collided with him, and Xander would have crashed to the ground if Spike hadn't caught him. For a second, Xander couldn't even catch his breath as he stared at Spike's profile in the moonlight. Hope and pessimism clashed in his brain until he didn't think he could even make sense of the words Spike was saying. "Okay, Spike, if this is a joke, just don't. Because I've had a lot of years to try and deal with the whole death bit, and I'm not really feeling like this is a ha-ha 'screw with Harris' moment. I mean, I read everything ever written on Unji, and it all pretty much says I'm a dead man."
"And it was all written by bloody humans, moron. Demons might have a few tricks up their sleeves. But you're not going to like this."
"Spike, my alternative is throwing myself off a cliff. I don't care what this cure is, I’m going to love it," Xander insisted as hope started edging out pessimism. Spike sighed and started pulling Xander back toward the house.
"We need to go and make a little visit then, and I might need to explain a few things to you."
"Explain away," Xander invited him, and he felt almost giddy. A cure. Spike had a cure. Oh yeah, Xander was loving this already.
* * *
"Spike, I hate this," Xander hissed as he fought an urge to cross his arms in front of his chest and try to cover some part of him. It wasn't like he was in the best shape with the Unji demons inside, and his stomach poofed out, the skin stretching over a round belly that caused Willow's girl to make disgusted faces at him when he snagged a second helping of mashed potatoes. And now Xander's belly was on display as he walked around wearing nothing but a skirt and a leash.
"And I hate wearing a skirt," Xander hissed.
"It's a shendyt kilt."
"It's a skirt," Xander argued. It was. And it was a short skirt with no underwear, and his dangling bits were dangerously close to publicly dangling. And this was so feeling like a really nasty practical joke, and all Xander needed was the high school football team to show up and he'd pretty much be in hell. Spike tightened the leash and Xander was forced to move so close that his shoulder brushed against Spike's back.
"Egyptian kings wore the fucking things, so you can too," Spike snarled. "Now shut it before you get us thrown out before we can get you your fucking cure."
Xander forced his lips together in a tight line and held his hands stiffly at his sides. Right, this was better than jumping off a cliff. This was better than jumping off a cliff. This was... fuck it, he was about to the point where the cliff looked good, Xander thought to himself as Spike led him through a door and into a room scattered with demons. Big demons. Big, brown tentacle demons with tiny spider eyes clustered in odd spots around their bodies. Widescreen televisions showed various football games and a few naked humans wandered the room, but mostly Xander noticed the demons.
"Vampire," one of them rattled in a deep voice. Xander might have give a good 'no duh,' but Spike chose that moment to jerk the leash in a signal for Xander to kneel, which Xander did with a silent promise to himself to lace Spike's blood with Tang.
"Yeah, but got a prezzie for trading," Spike said with a calculated smile at the largest of the demons.
"We have humans," the huge blob of tentacles and eyes didn't seem impressed, and Xander suddenly realized that he desperately wanted this to work. Yeah, this was squicky to whole new levels of squick, but this was a chance to survive. He held his breath as Spike seemed to study the room.
"Yeah, ya got humans, but I'm not offering to give my human up. I'm selling what he's got in him."
A couple of the smaller demons shifted closer, and Xander watched several sets of eyes slide around on the demons' bodies so that they aligned on Xander, and that was possibly the grossest thing Xander had ever seen, and Xander had seen a whole lot of gross in his life.
"You are uninteresting," the large demon announced as though uninteresting were the worst insult in the world.
"Oi! Unji are far from uninteresting. And in case you've not been keeping up with the news, I'm a good deal of interesting myself. Went and got dusted and came back, didn't I? Survived the bloody Black Thorn and Angel's endless brooding."
One of the smaller demons made a series of heavy grunts, and Spike gave one of his self satisfied smirks. "Bloody right I defied the odds. And I have a nice treat here. Boy's all fulla Unji eggs all ready to hatch. I'm estimating him at about two weeks out from the devouring, and you bloody well know it's hard to get humans to play host, and even when they do host, the buggers have a tendency to off themselves. When's the last time you had good, ripe, juicy Unji spawn to feed on?" Spike asked.
The room went silent for several minutes. The large demon grunted something as several more eyes slid around to the side facing Spike.
"Go on, pet, go give the nice demon a sniff," Spike said as he tugged on Xander's leash. Xander had to grab Spike's arm to help pull himself up and he walked forward with his stomach knotting in fear. Okay, the plan was to let this thing touch him. This was officially the worst plan ever. One tentacle slid up his legs and zeroed in on Xander's asshole while another drifted toward Xander's mouth. Oh, he so hated this part.
Xander opened his mouth and let the tentacle slide in. He wanted to choke, but the tentacle slipped down his throat so fast Xander didn't have time to. And the tentacle down his throat had temporarily distracted him from the one up his ass, which he was so feeling right now. Xander shifted uncomfortably and the damn thing wiggled, which was a whole new feeling of weird.
The demon made a slow purring grunt, and then Spike was standing there next to Xander. "You keep your feeding tentacles to yourself unless ya want 'em ripped off. Yeah, I told you the boy had a nice mature set of 'em in there, so are you willing to deal now?"
"How much?" the demon currently impaling Xander asked.
"$80,000."
Xander desperately tried looking in Spike's direction. No way would they pay that. And then Xander would be back to throwing himself off a cliff. The demons were silent, and then Xander felt the tentacles withdraw.
"Right then, come on, pet," Spike said as he reached down to grab Xander's leash. Xander opened his mouth, and Spike actually reached out and grabbed Xander's cock right through the damn skirt which was enough to shock Xander into silence. Man hand on his man meat, and that was just a big old no. However, when Spike started leading him across the room, Xander really didn't have much of a choice but to follow.
They were just out the door when a rough voice called. "Wait!"
Spike stopped, finally letting Xander's cock go as he turned and glanced back at the room. "Yeah? We got a deal?" he asked calmly. Xander glared. Spike ignored him.
"$20,000 cash, $30,000 casino credit," the demon countered. Spike strode back into the room so fast that Xander was left stumbling after him.
"That's a bloody insult," he snapped.
"$20,000 cash, $30,000 casino credit, and we fix its eye," the demon offered.
"$70,000 cash and you fix its eye."
"$30,000 cash, $30,000 credit and we fix its eye."
"$60,000 cash and the eye." Spike looked like he was having way too much fun with this, and Xander wondered where the eye stuff had come from. He'd firmly vetoed the whole magical eye replacement argument. He'd heard enough Lindsey/evil hand stories to know that things that were too good to be true weren't good at all.
"$30,000 cash, $40,000 credit and the eye, or I get one of mine infested and just wait the decade," the large demon said, and now his whole front on the top half was crowded with little tiny spider eyes. Spike stopped and made a show out of thinking that over.
"Deal," he finally agreed with a smile.
"Deal," the demon echoed and then Xander watched as two huge tentacles detached themselves from the demon's body. Right, this was the plan. This plan sucked... Xander almost choked on the irony there because the plan did suck. Those tentacles would suck the Unji right out of Xander's digestive tract where they'd lodged, only it was getting those tentacles into Xander's digestive track that Xander really didn't want to think too much about. Because the sucking part of the plan really sucked.
"Go on then," Spike said impatiently as he gave Xander a push. Tottling forward on shaky legs, Xander flinched when the thick tentacle slid up his leg and pressed against his asshole. Oh, this was going to hurt. But it would hurt less than the moment when his body hit the rocks at the bottom of the cliff, he reminded himself resolutely. Xander opened his mouth as the second tentacle came to his mouth, thinning already. Spike had promised him that these things didn't kill people... well, not unless the people in question reneged on gambling debts and then they tended to hire humans to do the killing, but Xander still shivered as his mouth filled with tentacle.
Like before, it slid down his throat so fast that Xander didn't have time to choke, but his stomach did made an attempt to throw up. Xander could feel his stomach muscles gather for a second attempt when the tentacle at his ass pushed in. Xander tried to yelp as the muscles stretched much further this time, but he couldn't make a sound with that thing down his throat. All he could do was flop his arms... and he did. Strong tentacles wrapped around his wrists, and Xander was yanked forward until his body was pressed against the demon, which gave Xander a nice up close look at several tiny black eyes.
Xander closed his eye as his stomach tried to vomit again. Okay, picture yourself somewhere else, he silently ordered himself as the tentacle in his ass thickened and bulged, stretching the muscle until it burned and Xander squirmed.
A tentacle brushed against his cock... and then it kept brushing against his cock and Xander's eye popped open. Oh no. No, he signed up for straight sodomy and Unji eating. He tried to turn his head to catch Spike's eye, but a tentacle wrapped gently around his head and pulled him close so that he couldn't do more than twitch. Xander gasped through his nose as the tentacle slowly wrapped around his soft cock and started pulsing.
Okay, the universe hated him because tentacles should not feel that good. With nothing else he could do, Xander just closed his eye again and waited for this whole nightmare to be over so he could start repressing it. The tentacle around his cock started sliding up and down the shaft, and Xander would have moaned if he could, but instead he could only twitch as cool shivers ran up his spine because damn that felt way better than it should.
The tentacle in his ass did something and suddenly Xander couldn't breathe fast enough as his cock hardened in record time. The pressure behind his cock sent him twisting as he tried to thrust into the tentacle around his cock, but Xander couldn't. He could barely move at all, and now tentacles wrapped around his upper thighs, pressing him deep into the demon's bulk. Xander started panicking when tentacles tickled his nose, and now his helpless wiggles were in panic as threadlike appendages crept down into his lungs leaving Xander trying to sneeze.
The demon rumbled something, and the vibrations sank through Xander, making his muscles loosen in sheer pleasure, and suddenly his nose was totally blocked. It took Xander a few seconds of pure unadulterated panic before he realized he wasn't suffocating. Okay, it felt weird to not be taking breaths, but his body seemed to think it still had air. Xander opened his eye and found himself plastered to a chunk of demon with about a million beady little eyes. All of the eyes looked back at Xander and then the demon chuckled and again the vibrations filled him and made this whole weirdness... okay, it was just as weird, but it was a less-than-horrible weird.
Letting his eye close again, Xander didn't fight as the demon tugged his legs farther apart and the tentacle in his ass thrust further in. The sudden urgency to thrust came back, and Xander strained helplessly, desperate until the tentacle around his cock start stoking him faster. Then Xander just strained in pleasure. The pressure in his butt increased, and Xander decided he officially loved his prostate gland. Why hadn't he let Anya use that strap on? Oh god. He spasmed as the tentacle around his cock explored the head and tightened just below the crown before something wet slid over the slit.
Oh yeah, this was... this was the best sex of his life, and Xander couldn't even scream in pleasure as a tentacle gently explored the shape of his balls. His knees were bent and his legs pulled even farther apart as Xander's whole face was pressed deep into the demon. For a second, Xander strained against being swallowed, haunted by the idea of the demon pressing Xander so close that one of those bulgy spider eyes popped. However, Xander never could win against a demon, and soon he found himself tucked deep into the demon's flesh.
The rumble started again, and Xander shivered in pleasure at the feeling of the vibrations slithering into his body. The pressure around his cock tightened, and for a second, Xander tried to gasp, fighting the tentacles that blocked his airway and fed him oxygen, but he had to give up and just let the demon set the pace. The demon provided air and slowly sped up the delicious stroking on his cock. The tentacle in his ass undulated, and Xander was fairly sure he was going to pass out with pleasure. He would have come except the hold on his cock was suddenly tight enough that he couldn't, and that brought an edge of pain to the pleasure. And Xander was all full of surprise today because he enjoyed that edge of pain almost as much as he enjoyed the pleasure as the demon again started stoking him.
Tentacles skittered over his back and butt and the bottoms of his feet, the only parts of him still exposed to the outside air, and Xander pointed his toes out and then flexed his foot. And then the demon took away the only movement he had left by wrapping tentacles around Xander's feet so that he was completely helpless.
It was funny... being partially helpless made Xander fight more, but this total helplessness, this inability to move a single muscle, made him relax into the demon's care. He didn't have a choice. And that’s when the tentacles sped up their motion, pulling and teasing until Xander silently came. The pleasure rocked through him, leaving his muscles trembling, and Xander could only wait as the demon continued. Now Xander could feel the tentacle in his mouth pulsing and something was definitely deep in his guts making his stomach throb oddly, but Xander just waited in a sleepy half-awareness as the demon continued to press deeper and deeper into Xander's butt.
Vaguely, Xander worried about whether this made him gay now because he definitely liked having things up his butt. Or maybe he was just tentacle man now. No tentacles, no second base for you. But mostly Xander just lay in sleepy silence as he waited for whatever came next.
Eventually, Xander could feel the tentacles slowly pull back. His cock slipped free and then his legs were released. Luckily, the demon still held him up because Xander was fairly sure he couldn't carry his own weight at this point. The tentacle in his mouth got smaller and smaller and Xander felt like he was moving backwards. He was moving backwards and getting cold. It was definitely cold in here.
The tentacle slipped free of his mouth at the same time as the ones in his nose came out, and for a long second, Xander didn't remember to breathe as he still sagged groggily in the demon's embrace. And then the demon slowly pushed Xander back and released one tentacle after another. As Xander found himself on his own feet, he slowly sagged to his knees. It was easier to keep his balance on his knees, he found.
"Delicious," the demon rumbled. "We will record this encounter as a mutual win," he offered.
"Ta, mate. He always said he was moist and delicious." Xander blinked as he recognized Spike's voice, and then Spike was there with an arm around Xander's waist pulling him up to his feet. "You look well-shagged, pet."
"I'm gay," Xander announced as Spike got him turned around and started heading for the exit. "And I'm skinny," Xander said as he stared down at the unfamiliar body he was still struggling to coordinate.
"Yeah, need a bit of meat on you," Spike agreed. He cursed a bit as he tried to get Xander through the door, but one of Xander's legs kept sprawling out and getting in the way.
"You skinny looks good, but I think I need less skinny."
"I look good, huh?"
"Always have. Buffy thought I was sleeping with you."
"She what?"
Xander blinked up in surprise when Spike stopped in the middle of the empty hallway that led back out to Spike's car. The vampire was giving him a strange look, but it made perfect sense in Xander's head. "You were sleeping with the bot, but I thought you were sleeping with Buffy, so I told Buffy how hot you were and that I was okay with her sleeping with you, only she wasn't, and she thought I was sleeping with you because I thought you were hot."
"Bloody hell, you're stoned right off your head, aren't you?"
"Oh, yeah," Xander agreed with a smile. "And hey, I have two eyes," he suddenly realized as he squinted first one and then the other closed.
"This better wear off before we get back," Spike sighed.
"Spike?"
"Wot?"
"Thanks," Xander said as he laid his head on Spike's shoulder.
Spike sighed. "Whatever," he said. But his arm tightened around Xander as they started moving forward again.