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Pairing: Spike/Xander
Rating: NC-17 overall
Notes: Post BtVS "The Gift." Set during the summer after Buffy's death, Xander struggles to come to terms with the resurrection spell in light of the reality of Buffy's death and his changing feelings for Spike.
'Cause there's something in a Sunday that makes a body feel alone.
And there's nothing short of dying, half as lonesome as the sound
Of the sleeping city sidewalks - Sunday morning coming down.
PART ONE
Xander concentrated on the rumble of the lawn mower beneath his hands, using the vague grey outline of the headstone to guide him in the near darkness. Mowing after dark was not on the list of safer things he’d done, but safety seemed to be a concept that had little meaning anymore.
He edged as close as he could to the hard grey stone, not concerned about doing too neat a job, since pulling the few weeds that grew at the base would give Willow and the girls something mindless and comforting to do when they came here tomorrow.
He shut the mower off and listened as its soothing, mind filling noise died away, bringing back all of the thoughts it had muffled. He leaned down and picked up the t-shirt he had tossed aside, using it to brush off most of the grass and dirt that clung to his chest and arms. He flexed his shoulders, feeling the sticky itchiness of grass and sweat on his back and half-heartedly swiped the shirt between his shoulder blades, knowing he was stuck with the discomfort until he went home and showered.
Still, he lingered for a minute, looking at the area around the grave with a detached appraisal. He poked at a pile of grass with his sneaker and then made a decision, dropping the shirt and walking back over to the car to pop open the trunk and pull out a rake. Job worth doing’s worth doing well, he reasoned.
He had just started to rake the grass into a neat pile when he heard it. He stopped, easing up to lean his weight against the rake as he spoke into the darkness behind him. “Might as well come on out, Spike.”
He heard a quiet cough and then the rustle of leather as he turned to face the vampire that strolled out of the darkness.
Xander smiled humorlessly at the look of irritated confusion on Spike’s face. “Yes, I knew you were there,” he said, watching as Spike smoked and affected a bored stance. “My super-human skills alerted me to the flicking of the biggest lighter known to man and then my spider-sense really started tingling as the cloud of smoke drifted over my head.”
Spike shrugged, not meeting his gaze, so Xander turned back to his task, neatly arranging the rest of the pile and then using the rake and the edge of his shoe to push it toward the base of the tree.
“Looks good,” Spike said abruptly.
Xander nodded briefly, his hands clenching on the wooden handle. “I guess.”
“Why’re you doin’ this at night? Seems it’d be easier when you can see. Get the witches and demon girl to help out.”
Xander shook his head, keeping his back to Spike. “It’s easier for me to come after I get off work.” He stopped, still toeing the grass at his feet, crushing it into the earth. “Anyway, I like to do it before the girls come out here. It’s just something I need to do…by myself.”
He cast a glance back at Spike and saw the other man nodding slowly, his gaze still on the ground, the cigarette poised at his lips. “Come here a lot?” Xander asked quietly.
Spike grew even more still, staring at the cigarette in his hand. “A bit.”
Xander cleared his throat. “But never with us.”
Spike chuckled darkly. “Well, sunny Sunday mornings aren’t good for me.” He met Xander’s surprised look and shrugged again. “That night…flowers are always fresh,” he finished simply.
Xander looked back down, seeing the faded lilies from last week and knowing that Dawn would replace them tomorrow, that tight little line of concentration on her forehead, as if arranging them right was the most important thing she’d ever do.
His fingers tightened on the rake handle, feeling the harshness of the wood digging into calluses and fresh blisters, and taking comfort from the pain. He knew what he was going to ask, felt the words rising in his throat even, but saying them would mean hearing them. Hearing them would make them real and real required an answer, and that answer could destroy all that was left of the black and white of good and evil.
“Did you really love her?” And that was his voice, dark and sort of trembling, but the words were out.
“Did you?”
And somewhere in his mind, Angel was laughing at him, Xander thought. He knew what Spike meant. Not ‘she was my best friend, loved the hell out of her,’ but loving her. The love that had been tangled up in five years of trying to fight at her side, walking in her shadow, intertwining in wistful glances and taking all he could get out of lingering hugs. The love that even he dared not name and never examined; lost in Patsy Cline songs he didn’t play anymore and giving the dreams he’d had of it to another blonde.
But did he want to share any of that with Spike? Getting at best a knowing smirk or at worst a pitying glance and the offer to cry over it into a beer. “I loved the idea of loving her,” he suddenly heard himself say. “She was…” he smiled at the grass stained toe of his shoe. “Just this amazing girl. This brave, pretty, and funny girl who wanted to hang out with me - with us. She was there in between me and Willow, you know? Not keeping us apart, but,” he sighed, “keeping us focused on something besides the way Will felt for me that I couldn’t feel back.”
He shrugged. “She was a distraction and a purpose and to us, a kind of savior, I guess,” he glanced over at Spike to see if he was laughing, but the vampire was just a dark outline and a glowing ember. “But to her we were just…her friends. And that’s all she ever needed us to be. But she was more. More than I could be for her, so I just…gave in. Wrapped it all up in the memory of a first day smile, a flash of blonde hair and a tight little ass.” He smiled as he heard Spike chuckle softly. “So yeah, I loved her. In the only way I ever could.”
They stood there silent for a moment, and then Spike fumbled inside his jacket pocket and pulled out a flask, tipping it to his lips and then cocking his head and offering it to Xander.
Xander started to wave it off, and then reconsidered, feeling the coolness of Spike’s fingers brush against his as he took it from him. He sipped carefully, the burning liquid filling his throat and doing nothing to cool him off or ease his thirst, but nodded his thanks to Spike as he handed it back.
“I get that, Harris,” Spike said, walking over to lean against the hood of Xander’s car as he steadied his flask and lit another cigarette. “But what I can’t suss out is why you can’t bloody see…” he sighed, dragging deeply on the cigarette and then waving the flask out with a short laugh. “Why you, white knight, Slayer’s stalwart, stupidly brave champion could follow blindly behind her and not feel good enough for her while I…” he paused, looking back up at a silent Xander and then glancing away.
“Why none of you could see it was real. Not you, not her, not the bleeding lot of you. Oh, that’s right,” he said, reaching up to tap against his temple. “Evil here, must have some nefarious plan for the Chosen One. Not just seeing something in her, feeling something from her, or wanting to see.”
He smoked quietly for a moment, wondering why, even after Xander had answered the question he’d offered as a distraction, he was telling him, of all people. Maybe because the Watcher saw him only as the means to an end, the witches would just squirm uncomfortably and maybe pat his hand before easing quietly away, and Dawn, well, the less said to her about the Slayer, the better.
“I offered to stake Dru for her, you know.”
Xander felt his throat tighten, not wanting to care about that. Not wanting to believe that vampires could love, because that made them more than monsters, and they had to be…
Xander fiddled with the handle, thoughts occurring that shouldn’t be considered. Could he have killed Willow for Buffy? Even an evil, soulless Willow? That time, that one time he’d believed Buffy had put Angel before them, before Willow, he’d said, God, he’d told Buffy he’d kill her… “Would you have?” he asked quietly.
Spike shrugged, dropping the cigarette and grinding it beneath his boot. “Dunno. Thought I could, but seeing Dru, looking between them…Buffy brought things out in me I didn’t want to see, and don’t want to be there. And then there was Dru, giving me release from all the…fucking light and,” he sighed. “Yeah, for her, I could have.”
He looked back at Xander, knowing the boy was hearing him, seeing him for maybe the first time. “Doesn’t matter now, Harris. Doesn’t fucking matter. Not to you, not to me. And not to her. And I don’t care if you want to wrap her up and tuck her away in some special place inside where you think I can’t touch and won’t ever sully. Because I did, you know. Doubt the stars are fire, doubt that the sun doth move, doubt truth to be a liar,” Spike looked into Xander’s eyes, seeing the confusion at the unfamiliar words as well as the grudging realization in them, “but never doubt I love.”
Doubt the stars are fire…but never doubt I love is from
Hamlet, Act II Scene II
PART TWO
Anya turned the jeweler’s box over and over in her hands, unconsciously rubbing her thumb against the velveteen. Her fingers tightened around it, her nails digging into her palm. She rose from the couch and looked out the window again.
Xander had eaten dinner and changed clothes after work. She had glanced at the clock as he left. 7:09. Ten minutes to get from their apartment to Buf…the Summers' house to pick up the lawn mower. Five to ten minutes there if he stopped to talk to Willow, which he certainly had, she thought with a brief flash of irritation. Twenty minutes from there to Breaker’s Woods. Five minutes to unload the lawn mower. Ten minutes to mow. Ten minutes more to do that obsessive grass clearing and flower re-arranging. Twenty minutes back to the Summers'. He never stayed to chat after, so ten minutes back to their apartment. Roughly an hour and a half from start to finish, meaning that Xander should walk through the door, sweaty and glistening, at 8:39.
She looked toward the door. It was 9:05.
Anya glanced again at the phone sitting on the table. It was centered exactly, as if someone had picked it up and put it back several times. Her fingers twitched toward it and then she could hear Xander telling her that calling to check on him every five minutes was needy and clingy and not what normal girlfriends did.
Anya wasn’t sure if that was true or not, but it seemed to be borne out by the few female acquaintances she had. Willow was always with Tara, so no need to call there. Buffy had always seemed surprised and belatedly happy to see Riley show up somewhere; as if the thought of calling to check his location had never occurred to her.
But Xander was thirty minutes late and that was really late. Sunnydale call-the-morgue late. Her fingers twitched again. She wouldn’t call him. She frowned in frustration. She should have been using this time to plan what she was going to say. So far she had, Xander, we need to talk, followed by shoving the ring box in his face in case he had questions about the topic.
Xander had proposed in May. It was now almost August. They had buried Buffy, guarded the Hellmouth, kept the Slayer’s death quiet in the demon community, and tried to give Dawn a normal home with two lesbian witch foster-mothers, three cajoling uncles and wacky Aunt Anya.
Xander worked, Giles worried, Willow and Tara spelled, Spike skulked, Dawn grieved and Anya…waited.
As each day passed, their lives had crossed further and further back into normal. Anya had looked at the ring box on the dresser every day, hoping that one day it wouldn’t be there and there would be a suspicious lump in Xander’s pocket. But still it sat there every night, just getting dusty. Anya had tried scooting it closer to Xander’s side of the armoire, but he’d seemed not to notice.
So tonight she was going to ask him. If he was waiting for the right moment, she was going to make the moment. But he was late. Her fingers were cramped painfully around the box and then they were opening and reaching for the phone.
Xander unlocked the door and stepped inside, his t-shirt slung over his bare shoulder, his chest, arms, shorts and legs flecked with grass. He smelled warm and sweaty and like dirt and grass and…whiskey?
“Xander, I was worried,” Anya said, dropping the hand with the ring box behind her back. “It should have been 95 minutes but it was 120 minutes and that’s an increase of twenty-one percent, and I didn’t call, Xander, did you notice I didn’t...”
Xander had his head ducked, toeing off a tennis shoe and shaking it out onto the floor mat. His socks followed, rubbed green around the ankles, and then his hands were at his waist, unbuttoning his shorts and pushing them over his hips and down his legs. Naked, he scratched absently below his navel, brushing off the line of grass that had worked its way beneath his waistband.
Anya stood looking at him for a moment as he piled his grass stained clothes together and stepped over them. “Xander,” she said softly, reaching up to loop her arms around his neck.
He jerked back from her slightly, grabbing at her hands. “Ahn. I need a shower,” he said shortly, backing away. His eyes met the hurt, uncertain look in hers and he smiled tightly. “I’m sorry, sweetie. Sweaty. Gritty. Grumpy. Just let me get clean, okay?”
He turned away from her and walked toward the bathroom, pausing at the door to toss her an apologetic smile.
“Okay,” Anya said softly, nodding to herself as Xander closed the door behind him. She spun the box between her hands. “Xander, we need to talk. Xander, we need to talk…”
Xander stood under the shower spray, the water as hot as he could make it, watching blades of green puddle at his feet and swirl down the drain. His head throbbed with that ache that came when you’d had enough hard liquor to feel it but quit before you got drunk.
He felt a little weak and empty, too, like after a hard cry. He hadn’t cried, though. He’d given Spike a look inside the mind of Xander Harris, but he hadn’t given him that. He’d seen Spike cry, once, the day that Buffy had fallen. They’d all seen it, but they’d turned away from him and to each other, because it had been, well, embarrassing. Embarrassed to think that he cared that much and they hadn’t known, and embarrassed for the vampire at having to reveal that much in front of them.
Xander closed his eyes tightly, letting the water fall full on his face. He’d shared warm and fuzzies, well, more like cold and bitters, with Spike. Sat on the car, talked about the ‘old days’ and shared a flask. Like two guys. He hadn’t felt like calling him 'Fangless' once. And when Spike left, he’d said, “All right, then…Xander.”
Xander turned off the water and stepped out of the shower, wrapping a towel around his waist. He opened the door and walked into the living room to find Anya sitting on the couch, with the ring box cupped in her hands.
Xander cleared his throat. “Um, Anya, I’m just gonna head to bed, okay? It was a long day and we have to be at Dawn’s early tomorrow and -”
“Xander. We need to talk.”
Xander tucked the towel in tighter and edged back toward the bedroom. “Not tonight, okay, Ahn? Tomorrow, I promise we’ll - ”
“Xander, ask me again.”
Xander stopped, his hands tightening on the towel. “What?”
“Ask me again. You promised. You’d ask me again, when the world didn’t end. So, I’m asking you to, Xander.” She looked at him, her lips trembling, but her gaze firm. “Ask me again.”
“Not…just not now, Anya. I…”
“Well, when, Xander? When the Hellmouth opens? When you finally decide that I’m the best that you’re ever going to do? When Willow says it’s okay to?”
“Okay – A? Willow is not the boss of me.” Xander paused. “Not as far as you and I are concerned, anyway. And second? You know I love you, Anya. You are the best. There’s just so much…with Buffy, and patrolling and Dawn.” He couldn’t quite meet the glare in Anya’s eyes. “But soon, I promise.”
Anya shook her head, standing up to cross the room until she faced him. “I’m sorry, Xander. But there’s always going to be a ‘something and a someday.’” She pressed the ring box into his hand. “So I’m telling you it’s now. Ask me.”
Xander looked down at the ring box in his hand, flashing back to the day he had picked it out, brought it home and hidden it. To the day in the Magic Box when everything seemed to point to this and all the answers seemed so easy. To the moment when he looked at Buffy’s broken body on the ground and felt everything he’d ever believed tilt. To the look in Spike’s eyes tonight, that seemed to reflect everything in his. He looked back up, seeing the hope and the fear in Anya’s eyes, and knowing only one of those was in his, and not the one she needed to see. “I’m sorry, Anya. I can’t.”
Anya nodded slowly, her movements jerky as she turned and grabbed her purse and started silently toward the door.
“Anya, wait!” Xander started after her, catching her as she stepped out into the hallway. Anya turned back, her look expectant. “Where…where are you going to go?”
Anya’s face closed and she shook his hand off of her arm. “I doesn’t matter anymore, Xander. Not to you.” She walked quickly away and Xander started after her, feeling his towel slip down his hips.
“Damn it!” he jumped back into the apartment, holding the towel in front of him. He looked around and then walked quickly back into the bedroom, jerking on a pair of jeans and pulling a t-shirt over his head. Dressed, he shoved his feet into shoes and grabbed his keys.
He had to figure this out, had to talk this out, no matter what it cost him or how much…stuff he had to share. His drove carefully through the Sunnydale night, calling himself an idiot the entire way. Even as his hand reached up to knock, he told himself to just let it go, that everything had been said and there was nothing left but to deal with it.
The door opened and a suspicious, hurting gaze met his. “Spike. Can we talk?”
Continued
Rating: NC-17 overall
Notes: Post BtVS "The Gift." Set during the summer after Buffy's death, Xander struggles to come to terms with the resurrection spell in light of the reality of Buffy's death and his changing feelings for Spike.
And there's nothing short of dying, half as lonesome as the sound
Of the sleeping city sidewalks - Sunday morning coming down.
PART ONE
Xander concentrated on the rumble of the lawn mower beneath his hands, using the vague grey outline of the headstone to guide him in the near darkness. Mowing after dark was not on the list of safer things he’d done, but safety seemed to be a concept that had little meaning anymore.
He edged as close as he could to the hard grey stone, not concerned about doing too neat a job, since pulling the few weeds that grew at the base would give Willow and the girls something mindless and comforting to do when they came here tomorrow.
He shut the mower off and listened as its soothing, mind filling noise died away, bringing back all of the thoughts it had muffled. He leaned down and picked up the t-shirt he had tossed aside, using it to brush off most of the grass and dirt that clung to his chest and arms. He flexed his shoulders, feeling the sticky itchiness of grass and sweat on his back and half-heartedly swiped the shirt between his shoulder blades, knowing he was stuck with the discomfort until he went home and showered.
Still, he lingered for a minute, looking at the area around the grave with a detached appraisal. He poked at a pile of grass with his sneaker and then made a decision, dropping the shirt and walking back over to the car to pop open the trunk and pull out a rake. Job worth doing’s worth doing well, he reasoned.
He had just started to rake the grass into a neat pile when he heard it. He stopped, easing up to lean his weight against the rake as he spoke into the darkness behind him. “Might as well come on out, Spike.”
He heard a quiet cough and then the rustle of leather as he turned to face the vampire that strolled out of the darkness.
Xander smiled humorlessly at the look of irritated confusion on Spike’s face. “Yes, I knew you were there,” he said, watching as Spike smoked and affected a bored stance. “My super-human skills alerted me to the flicking of the biggest lighter known to man and then my spider-sense really started tingling as the cloud of smoke drifted over my head.”
Spike shrugged, not meeting his gaze, so Xander turned back to his task, neatly arranging the rest of the pile and then using the rake and the edge of his shoe to push it toward the base of the tree.
“Looks good,” Spike said abruptly.
Xander nodded briefly, his hands clenching on the wooden handle. “I guess.”
“Why’re you doin’ this at night? Seems it’d be easier when you can see. Get the witches and demon girl to help out.”
Xander shook his head, keeping his back to Spike. “It’s easier for me to come after I get off work.” He stopped, still toeing the grass at his feet, crushing it into the earth. “Anyway, I like to do it before the girls come out here. It’s just something I need to do…by myself.”
He cast a glance back at Spike and saw the other man nodding slowly, his gaze still on the ground, the cigarette poised at his lips. “Come here a lot?” Xander asked quietly.
Spike grew even more still, staring at the cigarette in his hand. “A bit.”
Xander cleared his throat. “But never with us.”
Spike chuckled darkly. “Well, sunny Sunday mornings aren’t good for me.” He met Xander’s surprised look and shrugged again. “That night…flowers are always fresh,” he finished simply.
Xander looked back down, seeing the faded lilies from last week and knowing that Dawn would replace them tomorrow, that tight little line of concentration on her forehead, as if arranging them right was the most important thing she’d ever do.
His fingers tightened on the rake handle, feeling the harshness of the wood digging into calluses and fresh blisters, and taking comfort from the pain. He knew what he was going to ask, felt the words rising in his throat even, but saying them would mean hearing them. Hearing them would make them real and real required an answer, and that answer could destroy all that was left of the black and white of good and evil.
“Did you really love her?” And that was his voice, dark and sort of trembling, but the words were out.
“Did you?”
And somewhere in his mind, Angel was laughing at him, Xander thought. He knew what Spike meant. Not ‘she was my best friend, loved the hell out of her,’ but loving her. The love that had been tangled up in five years of trying to fight at her side, walking in her shadow, intertwining in wistful glances and taking all he could get out of lingering hugs. The love that even he dared not name and never examined; lost in Patsy Cline songs he didn’t play anymore and giving the dreams he’d had of it to another blonde.
But did he want to share any of that with Spike? Getting at best a knowing smirk or at worst a pitying glance and the offer to cry over it into a beer. “I loved the idea of loving her,” he suddenly heard himself say. “She was…” he smiled at the grass stained toe of his shoe. “Just this amazing girl. This brave, pretty, and funny girl who wanted to hang out with me - with us. She was there in between me and Willow, you know? Not keeping us apart, but,” he sighed, “keeping us focused on something besides the way Will felt for me that I couldn’t feel back.”
He shrugged. “She was a distraction and a purpose and to us, a kind of savior, I guess,” he glanced over at Spike to see if he was laughing, but the vampire was just a dark outline and a glowing ember. “But to her we were just…her friends. And that’s all she ever needed us to be. But she was more. More than I could be for her, so I just…gave in. Wrapped it all up in the memory of a first day smile, a flash of blonde hair and a tight little ass.” He smiled as he heard Spike chuckle softly. “So yeah, I loved her. In the only way I ever could.”
They stood there silent for a moment, and then Spike fumbled inside his jacket pocket and pulled out a flask, tipping it to his lips and then cocking his head and offering it to Xander.
Xander started to wave it off, and then reconsidered, feeling the coolness of Spike’s fingers brush against his as he took it from him. He sipped carefully, the burning liquid filling his throat and doing nothing to cool him off or ease his thirst, but nodded his thanks to Spike as he handed it back.
“I get that, Harris,” Spike said, walking over to lean against the hood of Xander’s car as he steadied his flask and lit another cigarette. “But what I can’t suss out is why you can’t bloody see…” he sighed, dragging deeply on the cigarette and then waving the flask out with a short laugh. “Why you, white knight, Slayer’s stalwart, stupidly brave champion could follow blindly behind her and not feel good enough for her while I…” he paused, looking back up at a silent Xander and then glancing away.
“Why none of you could see it was real. Not you, not her, not the bleeding lot of you. Oh, that’s right,” he said, reaching up to tap against his temple. “Evil here, must have some nefarious plan for the Chosen One. Not just seeing something in her, feeling something from her, or wanting to see.”
He smoked quietly for a moment, wondering why, even after Xander had answered the question he’d offered as a distraction, he was telling him, of all people. Maybe because the Watcher saw him only as the means to an end, the witches would just squirm uncomfortably and maybe pat his hand before easing quietly away, and Dawn, well, the less said to her about the Slayer, the better.
“I offered to stake Dru for her, you know.”
Xander felt his throat tighten, not wanting to care about that. Not wanting to believe that vampires could love, because that made them more than monsters, and they had to be…
Xander fiddled with the handle, thoughts occurring that shouldn’t be considered. Could he have killed Willow for Buffy? Even an evil, soulless Willow? That time, that one time he’d believed Buffy had put Angel before them, before Willow, he’d said, God, he’d told Buffy he’d kill her… “Would you have?” he asked quietly.
Spike shrugged, dropping the cigarette and grinding it beneath his boot. “Dunno. Thought I could, but seeing Dru, looking between them…Buffy brought things out in me I didn’t want to see, and don’t want to be there. And then there was Dru, giving me release from all the…fucking light and,” he sighed. “Yeah, for her, I could have.”
He looked back at Xander, knowing the boy was hearing him, seeing him for maybe the first time. “Doesn’t matter now, Harris. Doesn’t fucking matter. Not to you, not to me. And not to her. And I don’t care if you want to wrap her up and tuck her away in some special place inside where you think I can’t touch and won’t ever sully. Because I did, you know. Doubt the stars are fire, doubt that the sun doth move, doubt truth to be a liar,” Spike looked into Xander’s eyes, seeing the confusion at the unfamiliar words as well as the grudging realization in them, “but never doubt I love.”
Hamlet, Act II Scene II
PART TWO
Anya turned the jeweler’s box over and over in her hands, unconsciously rubbing her thumb against the velveteen. Her fingers tightened around it, her nails digging into her palm. She rose from the couch and looked out the window again.
Xander had eaten dinner and changed clothes after work. She had glanced at the clock as he left. 7:09. Ten minutes to get from their apartment to Buf…the Summers' house to pick up the lawn mower. Five to ten minutes there if he stopped to talk to Willow, which he certainly had, she thought with a brief flash of irritation. Twenty minutes from there to Breaker’s Woods. Five minutes to unload the lawn mower. Ten minutes to mow. Ten minutes more to do that obsessive grass clearing and flower re-arranging. Twenty minutes back to the Summers'. He never stayed to chat after, so ten minutes back to their apartment. Roughly an hour and a half from start to finish, meaning that Xander should walk through the door, sweaty and glistening, at 8:39.
She looked toward the door. It was 9:05.
Anya glanced again at the phone sitting on the table. It was centered exactly, as if someone had picked it up and put it back several times. Her fingers twitched toward it and then she could hear Xander telling her that calling to check on him every five minutes was needy and clingy and not what normal girlfriends did.
Anya wasn’t sure if that was true or not, but it seemed to be borne out by the few female acquaintances she had. Willow was always with Tara, so no need to call there. Buffy had always seemed surprised and belatedly happy to see Riley show up somewhere; as if the thought of calling to check his location had never occurred to her.
But Xander was thirty minutes late and that was really late. Sunnydale call-the-morgue late. Her fingers twitched again. She wouldn’t call him. She frowned in frustration. She should have been using this time to plan what she was going to say. So far she had, Xander, we need to talk, followed by shoving the ring box in his face in case he had questions about the topic.
Xander had proposed in May. It was now almost August. They had buried Buffy, guarded the Hellmouth, kept the Slayer’s death quiet in the demon community, and tried to give Dawn a normal home with two lesbian witch foster-mothers, three cajoling uncles and wacky Aunt Anya.
Xander worked, Giles worried, Willow and Tara spelled, Spike skulked, Dawn grieved and Anya…waited.
As each day passed, their lives had crossed further and further back into normal. Anya had looked at the ring box on the dresser every day, hoping that one day it wouldn’t be there and there would be a suspicious lump in Xander’s pocket. But still it sat there every night, just getting dusty. Anya had tried scooting it closer to Xander’s side of the armoire, but he’d seemed not to notice.
So tonight she was going to ask him. If he was waiting for the right moment, she was going to make the moment. But he was late. Her fingers were cramped painfully around the box and then they were opening and reaching for the phone.
Xander unlocked the door and stepped inside, his t-shirt slung over his bare shoulder, his chest, arms, shorts and legs flecked with grass. He smelled warm and sweaty and like dirt and grass and…whiskey?
“Xander, I was worried,” Anya said, dropping the hand with the ring box behind her back. “It should have been 95 minutes but it was 120 minutes and that’s an increase of twenty-one percent, and I didn’t call, Xander, did you notice I didn’t...”
Xander had his head ducked, toeing off a tennis shoe and shaking it out onto the floor mat. His socks followed, rubbed green around the ankles, and then his hands were at his waist, unbuttoning his shorts and pushing them over his hips and down his legs. Naked, he scratched absently below his navel, brushing off the line of grass that had worked its way beneath his waistband.
Anya stood looking at him for a moment as he piled his grass stained clothes together and stepped over them. “Xander,” she said softly, reaching up to loop her arms around his neck.
He jerked back from her slightly, grabbing at her hands. “Ahn. I need a shower,” he said shortly, backing away. His eyes met the hurt, uncertain look in hers and he smiled tightly. “I’m sorry, sweetie. Sweaty. Gritty. Grumpy. Just let me get clean, okay?”
He turned away from her and walked toward the bathroom, pausing at the door to toss her an apologetic smile.
“Okay,” Anya said softly, nodding to herself as Xander closed the door behind him. She spun the box between her hands. “Xander, we need to talk. Xander, we need to talk…”
Xander stood under the shower spray, the water as hot as he could make it, watching blades of green puddle at his feet and swirl down the drain. His head throbbed with that ache that came when you’d had enough hard liquor to feel it but quit before you got drunk.
He felt a little weak and empty, too, like after a hard cry. He hadn’t cried, though. He’d given Spike a look inside the mind of Xander Harris, but he hadn’t given him that. He’d seen Spike cry, once, the day that Buffy had fallen. They’d all seen it, but they’d turned away from him and to each other, because it had been, well, embarrassing. Embarrassed to think that he cared that much and they hadn’t known, and embarrassed for the vampire at having to reveal that much in front of them.
Xander closed his eyes tightly, letting the water fall full on his face. He’d shared warm and fuzzies, well, more like cold and bitters, with Spike. Sat on the car, talked about the ‘old days’ and shared a flask. Like two guys. He hadn’t felt like calling him 'Fangless' once. And when Spike left, he’d said, “All right, then…Xander.”
Xander turned off the water and stepped out of the shower, wrapping a towel around his waist. He opened the door and walked into the living room to find Anya sitting on the couch, with the ring box cupped in her hands.
Xander cleared his throat. “Um, Anya, I’m just gonna head to bed, okay? It was a long day and we have to be at Dawn’s early tomorrow and -”
“Xander. We need to talk.”
Xander tucked the towel in tighter and edged back toward the bedroom. “Not tonight, okay, Ahn? Tomorrow, I promise we’ll - ”
“Xander, ask me again.”
Xander stopped, his hands tightening on the towel. “What?”
“Ask me again. You promised. You’d ask me again, when the world didn’t end. So, I’m asking you to, Xander.” She looked at him, her lips trembling, but her gaze firm. “Ask me again.”
“Not…just not now, Anya. I…”
“Well, when, Xander? When the Hellmouth opens? When you finally decide that I’m the best that you’re ever going to do? When Willow says it’s okay to?”
“Okay – A? Willow is not the boss of me.” Xander paused. “Not as far as you and I are concerned, anyway. And second? You know I love you, Anya. You are the best. There’s just so much…with Buffy, and patrolling and Dawn.” He couldn’t quite meet the glare in Anya’s eyes. “But soon, I promise.”
Anya shook her head, standing up to cross the room until she faced him. “I’m sorry, Xander. But there’s always going to be a ‘something and a someday.’” She pressed the ring box into his hand. “So I’m telling you it’s now. Ask me.”
Xander looked down at the ring box in his hand, flashing back to the day he had picked it out, brought it home and hidden it. To the day in the Magic Box when everything seemed to point to this and all the answers seemed so easy. To the moment when he looked at Buffy’s broken body on the ground and felt everything he’d ever believed tilt. To the look in Spike’s eyes tonight, that seemed to reflect everything in his. He looked back up, seeing the hope and the fear in Anya’s eyes, and knowing only one of those was in his, and not the one she needed to see. “I’m sorry, Anya. I can’t.”
Anya nodded slowly, her movements jerky as she turned and grabbed her purse and started silently toward the door.
“Anya, wait!” Xander started after her, catching her as she stepped out into the hallway. Anya turned back, her look expectant. “Where…where are you going to go?”
Anya’s face closed and she shook his hand off of her arm. “I doesn’t matter anymore, Xander. Not to you.” She walked quickly away and Xander started after her, feeling his towel slip down his hips.
“Damn it!” he jumped back into the apartment, holding the towel in front of him. He looked around and then walked quickly back into the bedroom, jerking on a pair of jeans and pulling a t-shirt over his head. Dressed, he shoved his feet into shoes and grabbed his keys.
He had to figure this out, had to talk this out, no matter what it cost him or how much…stuff he had to share. His drove carefully through the Sunnydale night, calling himself an idiot the entire way. Even as his hand reached up to knock, he told himself to just let it go, that everything had been said and there was nothing left but to deal with it.
The door opened and a suspicious, hurting gaze met his. “Spike. Can we talk?”
