Disclaimer: Not my characters, Joss Whedon’s. Never owned ‘em, never will. No copyright infringement intended. This is, as ever, femfanfic, impure and simple. I should note this was written in the early summer of 1998 after the events of Becoming, Part II but well before the premier ep of season three, Anne aired.
Warning: Not only is this not for those under 18, this is not for the fainthearted. "We’re talking…adult content here," as Buffy said in WTTHM. The warnings are meant to keep the underaged and those who might be offended from this page. If you somehow managed to circumvent the warnings before your 18th birthday, or if you are uncomfortable with explicit material, Turn Back Now!
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..on the Highway of...
or
Spike and Buffy Redux
part3
Time: June 1998
Xander Harris had moved, over the course of little more than a month, from worry to fear, to gut-wrenching terror. And from uncertainty to corrosive, devouring guilt. Buffy had saved the world, and had survived. The note she left for Joyce Summers attested to that, however little else it attested to. But she had left her home, and her friends had concluded she was long gone from Sunnydale, as well. Despite Willow's initial hopefulness that the curse had worked in time to restore Angel's soul before he could release Acathla, the fact that Buffy hadn't sent a word of reassurance, that she was still missing, spoke for a darker ending to that tale.
And Xander knew, with absolute conviction, that she had been forced to kill Angel after his soul was restored. She knew, therefore, that the message Xander had given her that fateful, desperate day, was not the message Willow had sent. He had lied to her, and he was certain she had not forgiven him that lie.
Buffy's friends had quickly established that she had not gone to her father in L.A. So what they were left with was a hurting, isolated teenage runaway, who believed herself pursued by the law. A girl with no marketable skills and no more than a few hundred dollars in her backpack. She had been gone for weeks, long enough for the money to run out. Long enough to become hungry, and desperate and lonely.
But not desperate enough, or hungry enough, or lonely enough to call her friends for help.
For the first few days, Xander had been able to tell himself that things would be okay. That Buffy just needed some space, some time, to regroup. That maybe she had had to kill Angel before the curse worked, so that she need never know about his betrayal.
But as the days stretched out into weeks, he couldn't keep lying to himself.
It was his memory of military training, from Ethan Rayne's Halloween curse, that saved him. At first, Xander simply decided to hang out summer evenings at a dojo, where Tae Kwan Do was offered, to take his mind off of his worries. His preternatural memory told him that the discipline of martial arts could calm him, could help him think, maybe find a solution to the mystery of the missing slayer. But he quickly realized that he needed more than a place to hang out and practice someone else's vocation, so he enrolled in the first class...and was quickly moved to advanced standing.
Xander discovered that his sorcerously generated recollections could provide more than general knowledge. If he focused on them, he found that he had the skills, or at least the beginnings of them, already inside him. So he began to hang at the dojo during the day, as well, training, practicing, transforming those skills from something borrowed to something owned. When he did find Buffy, he would be ready to take things to the next level, to stop being the clown she had to protect and become the partner she could learn to trust.
If he could get her to forgive him for the betrayal he had already made. If he could win back her trust once again. If he could find her to do either one.
Willow was still recovering from her injuries, and the fact that Buffy had gone missing depressed her. She spent all her time researching spells and hanging with Oz, hoping to find a clue to Buffy's whereabouts on the one hand, taking comfort from her own boyfriend for her failures on the other. Rupert Giles had firmly warned her that she must go carefully with the spells, and had set up strict guidelines for her to follow in her experiments. But the Watcher wasn't always with her, and Xander had the uneasy suspicion that Willow, who would never before have dared to defy Giles strictures, was now blithely ignoring them.
But Rupert Giles had little time to worry about Willow. Buffy's disappearance, her continued absence, her failure to send a message, made him frantic. He had contacted other Watchers, trying to bring those scholars in to the search for the missing slayer, but so far nothing had turned up.
And Cordy, Xander's reluctant girlfriend, watched Xander train, and worry, and grow away from her.
Xander tried to treat her well. He didn't understand his feelings for Cordy at all. He didn't like her, or at least, he didn't like the shallow, self-centered, vapid air-head she had been. She was changing, slowly, gradually, into someone he thought he might eventually come to respect. But if he had a choice, he wouldn't be with her at all. Trouble was, he didn't have a choice, not just because the women he did love, --both Buffy, and, when he finally realized it, Willow-- were already spoken for, even if one of them belonged to a ghost. But also because his attraction to Cordy was at some deep, atavistic level of his psyche that he couldn't control, only yield to. Xander didn't love Cordy, but he needed her the way he needed air to breath and water to drink.
Almost as much as he needed Buffy.
Things with Cordy were not going well, however. When Xander started to pay closer attention to his acquired memories, one of the things he found he knew a lot about was sex. He had a soldier's appreciation for hot, hard, animal lust, and a soldier's memory of "good girls" who could be kissed, and maybe fondled, but never really touched until after you married them. Xander found he knew what women, at least bad women, liked in bed. He even "remembered" what it felt like to do those things. But he hadn't actually done them with anyone, and with his new, borrowed, experience, it seemed unfair to try to do them with Cordy.
Unlikely as it seemed, Sunnydale's biggest tease and most popular babe had made it out of her Junior year with her virtue intact. Cordy was a virgin, as was Xander, technically, himself. Xander might be a hormone driven, lust-infested teenaged boy, but he had enough respect for Cordellia to feel that she deserved to have her first time with someone who loved her. Not with someone eaten up with worry and jealousy and grief for another woman.
Eventually, they had one fight too many, and Cordy told him not to call her until he could say two consecutive sentences that did not contain any references to either Buffy or Willow. Admitting the justice of her remarks, Xander didn't try to sweet-talk her out of her anger. He just headed for the dojo and worked out with nunchucks.
It was a few days later, when Buffy had been gone more than a month, and Giles had started to consider adds in the newspapers of major cities, that Xander came across someone he realized could help. He ran into Amy coming out of the bookstore that was a few doors down from the dojo. Neither of them were looking where they were going, Amy intent on her parcel, Xander intent on his thoughts. So he knocked the parcel out of her hand, splitting the brown wrapping paper as it fell.
"Damn, I'm sorry Amy," he said as he stooped to retrieve the book. But when he set his hands to it, he could feel the suppressed energy it contained, and when he pulled the wrapping wider, to read the title, he had to laugh.
"'Cereddyn's Cauldron'" he read aloud. "Okay, Amy. Why do I get the feeling you aren't looking up brownie recipes here?"
"Give it back, Xander," the young witch said, reaching for her volume.
"Down girl," he said, flipping through the pages. What he saw was not reassuring.
"Didn't you learn your lesson after the last time, when you almost got me killed?" he demanded. "'Bespelling an Enemy?' 'Charms of Seeming?' 'Englamouring Your Beloved?' 'Finder of Lost--' Hello!" Xander stared down, incredulous, at the description of the spell written before him. It was, the book claimed, a way to find not lost objects, but lost souls. A way of tracking down those whose own despair had caused them to abandon hearth and home. Using it, the spell could lead one to lost family, lost friends.
Lost loves.
"Oh, Amy," Xander said slowly, not quite able to believe his eyes. "This is your lucky day. You've got some new spells to try out, and guess what?" The smile he gave her was fierce, dazzling. "I'm going to help you cast one."
She wasn't too reluctant to help when he told her who he was looking for, and as much as he could about why. Amy contented herself with warning him that the spell would likely take him out of town, and that he'd have to deal with his parents on that score, then shrugging, she set to work gathering ingredients and preparing incantations. Meanwhile, Xander paid a visit to Joyce Summers. It took some misdirection and an involved excuse, but Xander walked out of the house with a silver ring. It was one of several he had found in Buffy's bedroom, and it was an odd looking thing. But when he had seen it nestled in the center of a trinket box, something in his gut made him pass over the birthstone ring he remembered seeing her wear almost daily, and for which he had been reaching, and pick this one up instead. As soon as his hand closed over the cool silver, his gut told him that this was what he wanted. He brought it to Amy to use in her casting.
That night, he and Amy sneaked into the school gym to perform the ritual. They had both been through this before, but that had been blackmail and reluctance. Amy had no reluctance about this time, and was confident in her own abilities. For his part, Xander went into it with the purest motives he had ever had in his life: the need to save someone he loved.
When Amy finished, when she threaded the ring on an ensorcelled silver chain, and delicately handed it to Xander, he knew what to do. Amy went to her backpack, and got out her maps from last year's geography class; a detailed one of the state, and a larger one showing the whole country. Xander devoutly hoped they wouldn't need to turn to the globe he had brought with him. He held the ring, suspended by the chain, over the map, just over the tiny spot for Sunnydale. The ring shot away from it as if propelled by a catapult, almost pulling the chain out of his hand as it settled over another, larger spot on the state map. Xander laughed without humor, thanked Amy, and slipped the chain over his neck, hiding the ring beneath his shirt. He helped Amy pack everything up, walked her home, then walked home himself, trying to figure out the best way to get his parents to let him visit his Uncle Pete in L.A.
A phone call to his favorite, slightly irresponsible uncle, made collect from a public phone, helped. An hour after their conversation, Pete Harris called his elder brother and asked him if he could take Xander off his hands for a few weeks to house sit while he went on a business trip. An elderly gardener would provide a modicum of parental authority, as would a housekeeper who came in three times a week. Xander's parents decided he had shown enough maturity recently to allow the trip. They sent him off at the bus station with a few hundred dollars in pin money, an earful of good advice, and a silver ring, burning, burning against his chest, where he wore it for safekeeping beneath his clothes.
He hadn't told the others what he was up to. His silence was instinctive, a gut-level reaction that told him he did not want Willow's fears or Giles' caution to stop him. He understood that what he was doing was dangerous, although he wasn't sure why. But he trusted his gut and went his own way. All his uncle knew was that he had followed a girl he liked out to the city, hoping to make time with her before their senior year exposed her to too much of his competition.
Guided by the ring, he found what he was looking for the first night.
The closer he had gotten to L.A., the less he needed the map, and the more he could rely on the ring itself. The spell made him sensitive to the pull of the ring, as it strove to be reunited with the one who owned it. All Xander had to do was follow that pull. That night, he had borrowed his uncle's car, and driven through L.A., starting with the exclusive section in which Pete Harris made his home. It did not surprise Xander that the part of the city he ended up in was a lot less exclusive and a lot more dangerous. For the first time in his life, he felt unintimidated by that danger, prepared for it, able to deal.
A sudden jerk on the chain about his neck, as the ring seemed almost to leap forward, told him when to park the car, alongside a well lit bar on a street heavy with neon. The burning ring told him to walk past the bar and head toward the small cross street behind it, and it told him that he was close, very close, to finding what he sought. Xander picked up his pace and some well remembered sounds came to him over the loud, raucous noises of the city at night; the grunts of combat, the crash as bodies landed against trash cans, or up against the wall.
He saw her, finally, in the distance. Buffy was dressed in jeans, platform heels, and a short-sleeved top that left her ribcage bare. Her hair was different, and he couldn't make out the details of her face, but he knew it was Buffy. Had he any doubts, the fact that she had a stake in one hand and was taking on three vamps at a time would have reassured him. A fourth figure waited in the shadows. It showed no inclination to join the fray, and she didn't seem concerned about it. Before Xander could cross the street and race down the ally to her assistance, it was over. One vamp turned to dust as she spun into him, and thrust through his heart. Without stopping her forward momentum, she knocked a second in the gut, bringing her down. When the third leaped for her, she kicked out, sending him flying into a wall. Her stake found their hearts before either regained their feet. Then she stood up, and turned toward the fourth figure, who emerged slowly from the shadows.
Xander's heart leaped into his mouth. He couldn't believe it. No doubt exhausted from her bout with the three other vampires, Buffy was facing her most deadly enemy. Knowing he couldn't possibly get there in time to stop whatever was going to happen, that he might simply be providing Spike with dessert for the meal he would make of Buffy, Xander nevertheless broke into a run, dodging traffic to cross the street.
Buffy approached her nemesis, the stake held almost negligently in her right hand. Spike laughed and reached out for her, doubtless to try to snap her neck in two, but no, wait, he was pulling her in too close, he must be going to try to bite her but she was reaching up to stop him, and Xander skidded to halt halfway down the alley, unable to believe what he was seeing when Spike bent not to her throat but to her lips and Buffy's arm slipped around his neck to draw him closer, not push him away, raising her face to his, letting herself be kissed by that murderous, scum-sucking, vicious bastard.
The words that Xander found coming from his mouth were not the words he had ever expected to say to her, certainly not when he had only just found her alive.
"You goddamned treacherous bitch," he screamed. Startled, Spike and Buffy, if they didn't exactly spring apart, at least turned away from each other and toward him. Without thinking, Xander launched himself at the Slayer, worry, grief and remorse changed in an instant into unalloyed rage.
His initial rush took her down, but she sprang back to her feet before he did, standing in a fighter's crouch above him.
"You've got nerve, Harris, calling anyone else treacherous after what you did to me," she told him while she waited for him to get back up. She didn't have long to wait.
"I tried to help you fight a monster, Buffy, despite your 'feelings' for him," Xander said, brushing himself off. "And you ran away, without a word to anyone, and I find you sucking face with an even bigger sleaze than Angelus was. What are you, queer for vampires?"
Buffy started to spring for him, but Spike intercepted her, holding on to her. "Easy," he told her. She glared at him, but he must have seen something reassuring in her eyes, because he let her go, and she stayed still. "Well, children," the vampire drawled, "entertaining as this family reunion might prove, I would like to point out that we are in a bit of a public place. Shall we move this indoors?"
"Who the fuck asked you?" Xander growled. Spike's good mood evaporated.
"You'd do well to keep a civil tongue in you head, mate. Before I rip it out."
"Spike," Buffy said warningly, but the vampire wasn't soothed.
"If you don't want him hurt, get him to back off," he said, instead.
"She isn't going to get me to back off," Xander said belligerently, anger pushing aside any feelings of fear generated by being this close to a vampire as deadly as he knew Spike to be. "She isn't going to get me to do anything."
"Then why the hell are you here?" Spike asked with annoying logic. Xander drew up, at a loss.
"We have things to settle between us, Spike," Buffy told him. "Can you give me a few hours?" The vampire nodded.
"But not the futon," he said, giving her an ironic smile.
"What?" Buffy responded, confused, as was Xander. Spike surprised them by chuckling.
"Doesn't matter. I can give you 'til dawn, if you need it," he said, and faded back into the shadows of the night.
"He can give you 'til...What, are you living with a goddamned vampire?" Xander demanded.
"Shut up, Xander," Buffy said coldly. She turned to face him. "Now this is only going to go down one of two ways. You either come with me and we get it all said, all out of the way, or you go the hell back to Sunnydale and you stay the hell away from me. For good."
He stood looking at her, unable to believe her, unable not to. The girl before him was...different. Harder. Colder. Older. In some way he could not define, some way that went beyond the change in her hair color or her clothes, Buffy looked like a young woman of about twenty, not a teenager of seventeen. He nodded, feeling his anger ebb to manageable proportions, if it did not drain completely away.
"I'm parked in front of the bar," he told her. She nodded, and they both turned and walked, unspeaking, in the direction she had indicated. The car was still there, for a miracle, and in one piece. Buffy got into the passenger side, and gave him the terse, blunt directions needed to get them to the loft where she and Spike lived. Xander parked in an underpass where the car would be less of a target, and followed her up the concrete stairs.
Xander cast his eyes around the vast space, noting some combat weapons stacked against a wall, the lack of furniture. And the obviously solitary bed.
"You bitch," he said again. She turned and slapped him.
"You bastard," she said. "This way, Harris. We'll have more room out on the floor."
She tossed her purse and stake onto the small wooden table. Xander stripped off his outer shirt and threw it over on of the chairs, hesitated a moment, then pulled the ensorcelled chain over his head, tossing chain and ring onto the table beside her purse. Then he followed her out to the open space at the other end of the loft.
It was clear that she intended to finish the fight he had started on the street. But if Buffy Summers thought she could take him, she was in for a rude awakening, Xander thought angrily. He wasn't who he had been when she last saw him, either. He had been tempered by anger and worry, had trained himself to be something more than the not-quite-suave school-boy who'd spent the past year and a half mooning after her. When they reached a cleared area, Xander stood his ground, ready for whatever she had planned.
Buffy turned to face him, and all the anger and grief she had felt for seven weeks came to a boil. She threw a punch. He dodged it. He was quicker than he used to be, she realized instantly, and went on guard. Watching how he circled her, watching the expression on his face, one of concentration and calculation, rather than uneasiness and fear, Buffy realized that he had been training as well. Not that it mattered. She doubted he was a match for a Slayer.
This battle was a little more frenzied than her combat practices with Spike. Both she and Xander had a lot of rage to work out. He surprised her, landing a few blows, but none of them serious enough to discommode her. She started to pull punches, quickly realized she didn't need to, and relaxed, allowing her grief and anguish full play. He got up the first time she knocked him down, and even the second. But fifteen minutes into their private war, she landed a blow that knocked him to his knees, then followed up with another that bowled him over. Buffy stood over him for a moment, bent forward, hands on her knees, recovering her breath. The rage was gone, but not the bitterness or the pain. When he seemed ready, she reached down a hand to help him up. Ignoring it, Xander got to his feet on his own.
"What the hell do you think you're doing, Summers?" he threw at her, when they could both speak. "Why are you shacking up with a guy who's been trying to plant you six feet under for most of the past year?"
"What do I think I'm doing?" she retorted angrily. "I'll tell you. I think I'm recovering. I think I'm learning to fight again. I think I'm learning to trust again. And if I'm getting help in some unexpected quarters, well, I got a lot of grief from some unexpected quarters, so I guess things even out." She walked away from him, heading back to the living space.
"I didn't do it to hurt you," he said, his voice low.
"No?" she laughed bitterly, turning back to him. "What did you do it for, then? No, not to hurt me. Just to make sure I'd kill the man I loved before Willow could save him. And that wasn't supposed to hurt me, how? In what universe, in what Xander-filled reality was that not supposed to cut out my heart?" Her eyes were brilliant with tears that weren't falling. Her suffering got to him. Corrosive guilt swept over Xander, but he reminded himself that he had acted for her own good.
"He wasn't a man. God, couldn't you see that? Angel wasn't a man. He was a murdering, ravening beast who slaughtered innocents, not even to feed, but just for the fun of it." Buffy backed away a step, and turned her face aside, not willing to hear the home truths he had for her. Xander moved toward her. "He was evil incarnate, trying to bring Hell to earth, and you wanted to hold his hand. You wanted your boyfriend back, and you didn't care who had to pay the price for that."
Stung by the unfairness of his comments, Buffy flung back at him, "I paid the price for it, Xander." She met his eyes once more. "Every minute, I paid the price. Since I let him, no, since I convinced him, to make love to me, and from the moment he lost his soul, I paid in my own pain for every thing he did. And I went into that battle knowing, knowing that I could kill him because the Angel I loved wasn't there." Buffy stopped for a moment. Xander's eyes fell away from hers. She could see that he was still angry, that she still hadn't made him understand. She began again, her voice low, intense. "He was resting in the aether, and I could hope and pray to God that if there was any mercy, any justice, someday my soul would rest right along side his. And, God, I wanted that day to be soon." Her tears were beginning to spill over. How many times did she have to relive this? How often would she have to pay penance for one priceless moment of love? She needed Xander to understand exactly what he had done to her, so she went on.
"And then we fought. Do you remember that fight, Xander? Because you were there. You were there when I staked the other vamp while Drusilla fought Spike, who, incidentally, was trying to help me save the world. I was hovering over the vampire as he turned to ash, because I hated the fact that once I stopped, I'd have to see my lover's face on that monster. And it was in that moment that Angelus pulled out the sword." She realized he wouldn't understand the rest, that he didn't know about Whistler.
"I'd been warned, never mind by whom, that if Angel used his blood to pull out the sword, only spilling Angel's blood and sending him into Hell would close the gate before it swallowed the world. So, now killing him wasn't enough. The gate was opening and I had to close it." Her breathing grew ragged as memories assaulted her. Buffy fought for calm, knowing she had to make Xander see what she had endured. "So I fought him, and he nearly killed me, but I wouldn't let him and I fought back until I had him on his knees and it didn't matter that I was about to send Angelus to hell, because Angel was safe."
She stopped, gathering breath. Xander wanted to speak, but didn't have words for her. After a moment, she continued, and her voice was different, not angry anymore, but so sorrowful, so soft, so plaintive. He wondered how he would stand it, knew she had stood even more.
"But then he wasn't Angelus anymore, he was Angel. Do you know how I felt when I saw that? Because it was too late. He had opened the portal to Hell, and the only way to close it was to drive my sword into him and send him into eternal torment." Buffy stepped in close to Xander, and looked up at him, letting him see her grief, her despair. Her voice softened even further.
"Do you know what it's like, Xander, to look someone in the eyes, to tell him not to worry, to tell him that you love him, to tell him to close his eyes so that you can stab him in the heart? Don't turn away from me!" she demanded, anger renewed, as he began to pull back. Xander forced himself to meet her eyes again, to listen as she continued. "Do you know what it's like to watch, as he stands there in pain, not understanding why you just betrayed him, not knowing what is about to happen, only knowing that he still loves you?" Buffy could see in his eyes that Xander was beginning to understand. Good. She needed that from him. Buffy delivered the final blow. "You should, because it's just about what you did to me." She didn't try to keep the bitterness from her voice. "You told me a lie and let me walk in there with my eyes closed. You sent me into hell and I have been in torment every waking moment since."
Xander was in so much pain for her that it hurt him to draw breath. He knew --God, he could hear it in her voice, see it in her eyes-- what that had been like for her. But her anger at him wasn't fair. He had been trying to protect her. His own anger rose up, and he decided he wasn't about to let her make him the one who was wrong. Not when, a few weeks after losing the man she claimed as the love of her life, Xander had found her in the arms of one of the undead slime-balls it was her sacred duty to destroy.
"Don't put this all on me, Buff. Don't tell yourself that it would have made any difference if you had known. The only thing that might have happened is you would have been too busy faking a battle to really fight Angelus, and he'd have taken you out and we'd all be paying for your little love affair."
She slapped him again. "Don't you dare say this was about my inability to fight. It was your jealousy over Angel that kept you from telling me. Nothing more. When it came down to it, I fought him and I won. When it came down to it, I sacrificed the one man I will ever love for a world that doesn't know what I did and couldn't care less what it cost me. So lie to yourself, Harris, if you need to think you were remotely interested in my own good. But don't lie to me."
Xander was shaking, whether from rage or grief she couldn't tell. Her own nerves were worn taut.
"That still doesn't justify...God, Buffy, how could you do that to Giles, to Willow, to your Mom? Even if you never wanted to see me again, how could you let them go on worrying about you? Couldn't you send a letter? Make a phone call? Are you so self-centered that you couldn't see past your own problems to what you put other people through?" She couldn't believe he would still defend himself, couldn't believe she hadn't made him understand. She started laughing at the irony, dashing away the last of her tears with the back of one hand.
"My own...problems? Let me tell you about my problems." She began to walk away from him, then paced back, renewed anger making her restless. Xander was reminded of a young pantheress he had seen at the zoo; sleek, deadly and ready to spring. He watched her warily as she continued to pace while telling her story. "Three weeks ago I was sleeping in a public park. I didn't know, or care when I had last eaten. I knew the guy stalking me was going to kill me, but I didn't much care about that, either. And when Spike came along and took the guy out before he could lay a finger on me, do you know what I did?" She stopped in front of Xander. "I didn't attack him, and I didn't thank him, either. I reminded him he had once said he would kill me without hurting me and I told him I wanted him to keep that promise." She started pacing again. "But Spike saved my life instead of taking it, and oh, by the way, he also saved the world. If he hadn't helped me against Angelus, even I couldn't have pulled it off alone.
"So if I'm not rushing to stake Spike in the heart, it's because I owe him, big time. And so do you, and so does everyone else on the planet."
"So, what, you're just going to give him a free pass to eat anyone he wants?" Xander raged at her, grabbing her arm to hold her still. "You know what he is: a killer. How can you justify not taking him out?"
"He's a killer, and so am I! Right now, we have a truce," she said, flinging off his restraining hand, though she didn't move away. "He doesn't kill anyone, I don't kill him. He breaks that pact, all bets are off."
"And in the meantime, you're sleeping with him," Xander said, his voice anguished. "God, how can you live with yourself?"
Buffy thought she finally understood. "That's what gets you the most, isn't it? Not that Spike and I have a truce. You tolerated Angel, you'd tolerate Spike if he came over to our side. But you can't stand the fact that you finally got your rival out of the way and it still didn't clear a path into my bed. I'm sharing that with someone else, and you hate that."
"You're sharing your bed with a murderer," Xander flung at her. "That's what I can't stand. You know what he is and you let him put his blood-covered hands on you. You would rather give yourself to someone who would just as soon see you dead than someone who loves you. Who's always loved you."
And that, finally, calmed her, draining away her rage and anger, if not, entirely, her grief. "You've always loved me," she acknowledged quietly. "And you've hurt me more than anyone else in the world. What's between Spike and me, it's solace and comfort and trust. There's no love in it. I don't have any love left to give, Xander. Can you understand that?"
"No. I can't," he said bluntly. "I won't." She nodded. And laughed, once, dryly, as Spike's words of an hour earlier came back to her, suddenly making sense.
"This isn't finished between us, is it?" she said. "It won't be, like this. So, I guess it's time." Buffy moved in closer to him, raising her face once more to his. "You think I have any love left for anything or anyone? Is that what you hope? Then show me," she told him and reached up to pull his head down, to bring his lips to hers.
For one frozen instant, Xander resisted, knowing that she still didn't believe him, that it wasn't love she offered him, but consolation. He wanted so much more from her than that. But when her mouth pressed against his, when he felt her soft full lips open and part beneath his own, a year and a half of waiting, of watching her fall for other guys --wrong guys-- and ignore everything he wanted to be for her, a year and a half of frustrated desire convinced him that he should take what she offered and use it to get her to acknowledge that there was more between them than she was ready to admit.
Xander opened his lips over hers and pulled her tongue into his mouth, greedy for the taste of her. Buffy felt his arms come around her, lifting her the short distance up to his mouth. He held her hard against his body, her feet off the floor, devouring her with punishing kisses, and it felt right, somehow. Again, she was struck by the difference between the way he kissed her, the way he moved and tasted and felt, and the way either Angel or Spike had been.
It was the first time she made love to someone who was still alive, the first time she found answering heat for heat, instead of contrasting cold.
Not breaking the kiss, Buffy moved her hands to pull his shirt loose from his pants, to slide her hands against his chest, and run it over his torso. Xander groaned in longing. She was sure now that he had indeed been working out. His body was as firm as that of either of her other two lovers, somewhat broader than Spike's, not as broad as Angel's. The comparisons were meaningless other than as a point of reference. Buffy ran her hands through his chest hair, finding his male nipples, caressing them into hard points. With another groan, Xander set her back on her feet, bending over her, not willing to surrender her mouth just yet. But she tugged his shirt free and made him break the kiss so she could peel it off him, and then she set his hands on her own top, inviting him to untie the bow at the bottom, undo the buttons and slide it off her shoulders. He did so slowly, almost reverently.
Then Xander gazed at her breasts in the black lacy bra, and bent his head to set hungry kisses on their firm tops. She held his head to her heart, savoring the heat of his tongue against her flesh, then guided his hands to the hook behind her back so he could free her of the unwanted constriction.
The knowledge of how to unhook a woman's bra came from his acquired store, and Xander had her breasts bared and vulnerable to his mouth in a moment. He spent another moment just staring at them, taking in the sight of their plump, ripe fullness, the rose-bronze nipples pebble-hard and begging for his mouth. He bent toward them again and gave them what they wanted. Buffy sighed in pleasure.
Buffy's legs grew weaker, her body becoming heavy and languorous, making her want to lie down, and stretch out, and offer herself. She drew Xander down to the floor with her, setting his hands on the belt of her jeans, helping him free the zipper, move her jeans over her hips and down her legs. She had already kicked off her shoes. He knelt over her nearly nude body, which he found more beautiful even than it had been painted in his mind's eye.
Xander's gaze moved to the pink cotton bikini panties that were her only remaining clothing, fastening on the dark shadow visible beneath the cotton. Xander forced his gaze from that tempting vista, back to her face. She was calm, willing. This was nothing like Valentine's day, when she had offered herself under the compulsion of a love spell. But she still wasn't offering him love.
Xander roughly pulled her panties down and off, tossing them away. He was so hungry for her, too hungry his "memories" warned. He realized he would have to slow things down, if the lovemaking he had longed for was not to become a farce of too-quick responses. He closed his eyes against the intoxicating sight of her, then breathed deeply, struggling for control. And then he knew what to do, and how, knowledge not born of what he had been given at Halloween, but of his own instincts. His own cravings. Xander wanted, simply, to touch and caress and kiss every part of Buffy, from her head to her toes. And he deeply feared that this might be his only chance.
Xander opened his eyes and smiled down into her questioning eyes. He moved over her, reaching to stroke her hair back from her forehead with one gentle hand. He bent to place tiny, tender kisses, not on her full lips, but on her brow, her temple, the curve of her nose, her eyelids and cheekbones and jaw. Each kiss was deliberate, slow. Whatever it cost him, he refused to rush things. He opened his mouth over her and tasted her skin, enjoying her gasp of pleased surprise. He pulled her to her side, and moved behind her, licking up her spine, from the top of her firm, plump buttocks to her slender neck, taking a detour over her shoulder blades that had her shivering with delight.
Only when he had tasted his fill did he allow her to lie supine again, and turn his attention to the other wonders her body held for him. Xander explored her lovingly, not only her full breasts, tiny waist and flaring hips, but the cream-smooth skin of her legs, and ribs and belly, the surprisingly sensitive arches of her feet, the bend of her elbow, the back of her knee.
Seeing the rapt expression in his eyes, feeling the deliberation of each kiss and touch of his mouth and hands on her body, the sweep of his tongue along her flesh, Buffy understood another difference between men. What had been, with Angel, an act of love, and with Spike an act of war became, with Xander, an act of worship, as he cherished her body with his own. Every touch and taste that he gave her told her that he loved her, adored her, that he wanted nothing more from life than to be allowed to love her.
She could almost weep, for both the beauty and the pain of it. He wanted the one thing that was forever beyond her ability to give: the heart that belonged to Angel. But she could give him everything else and if there were, truly, any mercy in the world, that might be enough.
The memories of a thousand phantom soldiers boiled up in Xander's consciousness, telling him what to do next, telling him what women liked. The information at first shocked, then appealed. His "memories" assured him that this could reduce women to quivering, submissive need, and he desperately needed Buffy to be reduced to that for him. He desperately needed her not to be control girl, which it seemed she expected to be; the experienced woman calmly instructing the male virgin. The image angered him. Buffy Summers, he decided, was in for a surprise.
Then he spread Buffy's thighs with his large, firm hands, parting them enough to accommodate his broad shoulders as he settled down to do something she had not expected of him.
There, his spell-imparted knowledge told him. He needed to touch her there. He needed to use his fingers to reveal her, needed to use his tongue in a slow and gentle caress. There would be salt and moisture and a rich female smell, and if he were clever, and if he were patient, she would give him more heat than he could handle. She would let him take his pleasure in any way he desired if he first saw to hers. Xander was determined to see to hers, and Buffy understood that when she felt the first firm caress of his tongue against her swelling clit.
"You don't have to...I'm ready for..."
"Shut up," he told her brutally and went back to tasting her. He could never have imagined the pleasure he would get in pleasing her. His adolescent fantasies of making love to Buffy had been about the things she would do to him, or that they would do together. Like any other eager kid, he hadn't thought about her pleasure in anything other than abstract terms. They would make love and it would be good for both of them because they would be in love.
But they weren't. He loved her with everything he was, with a clear, unquestioning passion that reduced his feelings for every other woman he met to mere affection. But her love was given elsewhere, and what she gave him was nothing more than desire and healing warmth.
He would show her that she was wrong. He would make love to her until she broke down, until he reached through the walls of her flesh to the walls she had put up around her heart and took it for his own.
Xander licked slowly down the wet furl of her body, tasting the beginnings of her passion. She sighed softly and gently lifted her hips toward his mouth. Xander slid his tongue inside the honeyed entrance, amazed at how good she felt, how delicious she was. He explored as much of the tight, sleek passage as he could, and had the satisfaction of hearing her begin to moan as she responded to him. Her hips rose and fell in a soft, slow rhythm. He fell into the pattern with her, thrusting with his tongue to meet her, pulling back, but not completely, when she drew away. He allowed his hands to stroke upwards, over the feminine curve of her hips, along the silken flesh of her belly and ribs, up to the tempting swell of her breasts. He filled his hands with them, caressing and stroking them in tandem with the strokes of his tongue into her body. She arched her back, pressing her breasts into his hands.
He had waited so long for this, ever since he had first seen her. No; he had been waiting his whole life, not just to have sex, but to make love. To her. Although his body urgently needed to be sheathed inside Buffy's, Xander fought back his own cravings, needing, even more than he needed physical satisfaction, to take his time, to savor every moment and to make it last.
Ever since she had rescued him from the She-Mantis, Buffy had known Xander was as virginal as she herself had been before Angel. And although she knew he and Cordy were dating, she had also known that they had not become intimate. So where had he learned to use his mouth so skillfully? Where had he learned the things a woman liked, and how to prolong her pleasure? This hadn't been what she expected; there was nothing clumsy or awkward or in the least virginal about the way Xander was making love to her. Instead, there was confidence and a prowess that quickly took its toll on her.
Buffy felt her pleasure building, and knew she was close to crisis. But that wasn't how she wanted to be for what she knew, despite his inexplicable skill, would be Xander's first time.
"Xander, please, you have to stop," she whispered. And he did. Just long enough to tell her, "I haven't even started." He brought his mouth back down on her, sucking her swollen clit into his mouth, laving it with his tongue.
"Nooo," she gasped. "No, Xand, I don't...I don't want to come in your mouth..."
That was too damned bad, he thought angrily, and used his teeth on her, if not hard enough to hurt, hard enough for her to notice.
"Xander!" she cried out. Not in pain. "Please, Xander. I want to come with you inside me."
It was the one plea that could be effective, the image of her coming under him while he lost himself in her flesh burned through Xander's brain, and he was jolted by a wave of pure lust. He stopped the play of his teeth and tongue on her intimate flesh and pushed himself to his knees, looking down at her.
Buffy looked dazed and wanton, her body rosily flushed, her breasts full and turgid, her lips parted, her green-brown eyes soft, slumberous. She lifted her arms, reaching for the belt of his pants. She had to sit up to work the buckle loose. Xander offered no assistance, reaching instead to fondle her lovely breasts once more.
Buffy slid his zipper down, reaching inside, setting her hands on his stiff, swollen cock. Xander threw his head back, closing his eyes, savoring the feel of the touch he had longed for.
Buffy marveled at the hard, solid feel of him in her hands, at his reaction to her touch. She reluctantly let him go, but only so that she could strip off his pants as he had earlier stripped off hers. He pulled off his boots to make things easier, and when he was as gloriously naked as she was herself, he moved to push her back down on the floor so that he could cover her with his beautifully muscled body and take her at long, long last.
But she decided it wasn't time yet.
"Wait," she said, pressing a hand against his surprisingly hard, flat abs.
"You're kidding, right?" he said.
"No. And you have been working out, haven't you?" Her tone was appreciative, but he was not in the mood to discuss his fitness routine.
"Buffy," he growled warningly.
"Trust me," she said with just a hint of the old playfulness that had been shattered between them, and pushed harder against his abs, until he was the one who lay back on the floor. Buffy moved with him, bending over him, staring at his body as he had earlier stared at hers. He was long limbed and narrow hipped, dark hair curling across his chest, growing sparser across his belly, then thicker again, surrounding the prize at his groin. Xander's cock rose thick and hard and straight from his groin and Buffy moved her head slowly down toward it.
She kissed the tender flesh at the tip of it, and was rewarded by his stifled gasp. She smiled, and licked out with her small pink tongue, bringing her hands forward to caress the base of his shaft, the delicate sacs beneath it, then opening her mouth wider to take just the head of his cock into her mouth. She sucked on him, making him a little crazy, a little desperate, his hips bucking to push further into the hot wet cave of her mouth. Buffy obliged him, sucking him deeper into her throat, using her tongue to caress and swirl along the shaft, even as her hands fondled his balls.
Xander groaned in earnest. Not even his preternatural "experience" had prepared him for the actual feel of Buffy's wet, silky mouth, her knowing tongue and clever hands on his manhood. Too knowing. The realization that --unlike his-- her knowledge was born of her own experience came to him, damping the pleasure slightly. But only slightly. Buffy moved up on his shaft, until only the tip of his engorged cock was within her mouth, and she used her tongue and lips and teeth to drive him mad.
She plunged downwards once more, and established a rhythm of exquisite torment. Xander gave himself up to it, relishing the sensual torture. And it was torture; slow, sweet, delicious torture. It raced along every nerve in his body, making him forget anger, or jealousy, their long history together, their shaky future, making him forget that the world contained anything but Buffy. But when she grew bolder, when she added slight, teasing nips to the more gentle caresses, he realized he was close to something, something that would leave him spent and sated and without the urgency he felt to be inside her. No more than she had did Xander want their lovemaking to end that way. He reached up for her hair, burying his hands in the soft mass of it, gently tugging her mouth away from his prick, pulling her upward along his body until she lay stretched full length upon him and he could bring that wickedly knowing mouth to his own.
He tasted himself on her lips, and returned the favor, tongues meeting and melding in a slow, sensual dance that presaged the dance in which they would soon be entwined. Xander moved his hands from her hair to her back, wrapping around her. And then he rolled over, taking her with him, until he was where he had longed to be; holding the woman he loved, naked, in his arms, his body crushing down on hers.
"I love you," he said. He did not expect an answer, nor did she give one. Buffy said nothing, but parted her thighs for him, inviting him to take the final step.
It wasn't going to be the way he had dreamed it, he realized. He had always imagined taking her with a kiss, that their lips would already be mated at the moment he entered her body. But he found that he wanted to watch her, wanted to see her eyes when she felt him move within her, wanted to see in her expression how it felt for her.
Wanted to be looking at her when she finally lost control.
Xander reached between their bodies, tracing his hand lightly through the thatch of curls at the apex of her thighs. He touched the sweet bud of flesh that he knew governed her pleasure, but didn't linger long, moving on to the silky wet cleft of her body, finding the portal he hungered for. He guided himself into her, not moving quickly, still needing to savor and remember every detail.
Buffy drew in her breath, again amazed by Xander's skill. And grateful for it. He felt so good inside her, stretching her, filling her. And if he did not complete her, as Angel had, he was making the emptiness in her heart easier to bear. She reached up, wrapping her arms around his neck, pulling him down to taste his lips on hers. Xander gave her one devouring, possessive kiss, and pulled away, locking his gaze on hers. There was love in his eyes, but also a remaining touch of anger. For some reason, he needed not only to feel her body's responsiveness to his, but to watch it. Buffy didn't understand, but she could not object. Not when what he did to her felt so good. She let her hands fall back to her sides.
He moved inside her, still slow, but none the less powerful. Buffy sighed and arched toward him, her hips rising to meet his thrusts. He matched her rhythm faultlessly, taking control of it, restraining the urgency she began to feel, forcing her to endure every intoxicating moment with him.
Buffy had thought she would have to lead, to guide him, but she found herself following instead. Xander knew, it seemed, what would please her, how to use his body inside her own for her enjoyment. He was stroking firmly, steadily, deeply into her, and she was losing the ability to think, to stay in control. But then, she really didn't need to be in control, anymore, did she?
With a groan Buffy surrendered to everything Xander wanted to do to her, to do for her. She moved her arms around to his back, holding him closer, but it didn't bring him close enough. She lifted her legs, wrapping them around his waist, sighing in satisfaction at how much deeper that allowed him to come into her. Xander's soft moan, the way he momentarily closed his eyes, told her that he felt the difference, as well.
But when he opened his eyes, he looked almost angry. She was startled, but before she could lose the mood, he did something that set her body aflame once more. Xander reached between their bodies to find the swollen pearl of flesh he had tasted earlier. His fingers stroked over it, gently, at first, and then with increasing firmness. It drove her wild. Buffy's breathing grew more ragged, her head tossed from side to side, she arched up into his body, and he heard the first of her breathless, needy cries.
It was better than he had ever dreamed it would be, Buffy's flesh gloving him perfectly, her body accommodating him completely. She was giving herself to him unreservedly, wet for him, hot for him, responsive to him. Xander felt savage triumph. It was all going to happen the way he wanted it to. She was going to lose control, surrender to him, give him the satisfaction he craved with soul-deep longing. And he was going to give her pleasure, unendurable, unending pleasure, and when she came for him, she would forget that she had ever given herself to another man.
Then maybe he could forget it, too.
She was already losing control, breathing in soft gasps, uttering plaintive, needy cries. Xander felt himself swell even further, drove himself even deeper inside her. She moaned and lifted against him, opening herself farther for him. It was enough, finally, and certain of his ultimate victory, Xander allowed himself to sink closer to her, claim her lips with his, and thrust his tongue into the sweet wet cave of her mouth.
Buffy kissed him back, her tongue drawing him in hungrily, even as her body drew in his. Her soft breasts crushed against his chest, her arms wrapped about his shoulders, clinging to him like he was her sole refuge from the storm about to take her. Buffy's legs wrapped tighter around him, her hips rising against his own, grinding her clit against his skilled, ruthless fingers.
When it began, he knew that he couldn't hold out any longer, and that he didn't need to. Xander felt her inner muscles begin to contract around his shaft, and knew she was reaching her crisis. The exquisite sensation was the last straw in his own struggle, and he felt himself begin to let go. It made him mindless, caused him to drive into her yet harder, yet more ruthlessly. She answered every move.
Passion peaked for them, drawing them together until they could not tell where one ended and the other began. The storm of desire which had swept them culminated, shaking them to the foundations of their souls, holding them suspended for long moments of ecstasy, then shattering through them with intolerable pleasure.
Buffy felt the spurt of hot seed as Xander lost himself inside her, and she found herself greedy for every thrust of his hips, every last drop of his essence. Xander heard, though muffled by their entwined tongues, her deep cries of satiation as she came for him, and he poured himself into her hot, liquid depths. The crisis held them for moments that seemed endless. And then it ebbed, leaving them locked together, unmoving, on the floor.