Refugees (1/1), and the fluttering sadness of earth
Yeats is my new literary hero, by the way.
had fun and adventures of the more detached, amusing sort today, what with enjoying thoroughly the Dublin Writer's Museum (I would be remiss were I not to attend), reading poetry, and having a long, philosophical and religious conversation/debate with a street evangelist who surprisingly enough was not after money, and had a very clever way of visually presenting his information and using lots of fun plays on words. I think it was my smirk of intellectual entertainment as he finished his speech that got him talking to me. I'm wearing my Delirium t-shirt, so he called me "delirium" the whole time we were discussing the synoptic gospels. Then he and his crew rescued me from the crazy homeless lady and her twenty-minute, Dickensian tale of woe by offering her a pamphlet.
sign of the day, from the side of a Dublin building: "Sick & Indicent Roomkeepers Society"
Much fun.
Wrote this last night and typing it directly into LJ, so forgive any typos I might miss correcting. Or point them out, so's I can correct them!
Refugees (1/1)
by Bella Temple
Disclaimer: The characters still don't belong to me, but I might just have to start contacting sources regarding that Xander-with-an-Axe. This was inspired by a very long plane flight, and by my mom's stories of volunteering for the Red Cross this weekend in Fairfax.
Summary: Two refugees find comfort with each other. A B/X friendship tale with hints of future sparkage. Or at the very least, UST.
The first two mornings after the fall of Sunnydale, Xander woke up groggy, aching, and curled into a tiny ball around his pillow.
He always fell asleep stretched out across the queen sized bed. He never remembered the nightmares, thankfully, but by the look of restless exhaustion on Dawn and Buffy's faces in the mornings, they were doozies.
-
He still wasn't quite sure how he'd ended up sharing a double room with the Summers girls. The first night--everything from the battle to the next morning--was a blur. He remembered shuffling along, leaning against an equally dazed and exhausted Dawn, taking his room key, and then waking up in a fetal position to sunlight and the sound of the shower. When they'd met up with the others at the Red Cross checkpoint, feeling only slightly more human, no one had questioned the room assignments.
By all rights, it should have been Willow sharing with the girls, but Willow and Kennedy had claimed one of the two single rooms. Giles and Andrew shared the other. Later, Xander would blame that arrangement for Giles' choice of Andrew as his deputy/secretary. Andrew had obviously driven the poor man loony in the week they spent at the hotel, waiting for Robin to be well enough to check out of the hospital and to travel.
Faith would have been Xander's other choice for Summers roomie-dom, seeing as she was female and not a mini-slayer, as Xander had mentally dubbed the former potentials. Surprisingly, though, Faith spent her time at the hospital with Robin, rather than at the hotel.
Still, he and the other males of the species should be sharing the double, leaving Dawn and Buffy the single. Yet, night after night, when they broke off to "sleep", he was back in the girls' room.
One of the girls, all over again.
-
By the third night, Xander was determined to just not sleep. He didn't want to keep Buffy and Dawn up anymore. So he stayed in the Red Cross tent as long as possible, helping with any task they gave him, mostly serving food and delivering clothing to his fellow Sunnydale refugees.
Evacuees. The Red Cross insisted on that. "Refugee" implied you were from another country.
Of course, Sunnydale was like another country, and Xander was only just realizing it. He was astonished to discover that the medical tent could stay in operation well past sundown without getting attacked, and that 24 hour convenience stores and diners existed outside of the movies.
Despite the fact that the disaster relief was a 24/7 operation, Xander was eventually ordered to go "home" and get some sleep. Veronica, the very-non-Archie-comics-shaped volunteer coordinator, didn't think much of his hemming and hawing and protestations. She threatened to sedate him if he didn't go, and the thought of spending the night in the medical tent, helpless and unable to escape his dreams, sent him scurrying off. There were no vacancies in any hotel in town, what with the influx of Sunnydalians and volunteers, so if he wanted a bed that wasn't a cot in the midst of strangers, the hotel room was his only option.
-
Neither Buffy nor Dawn was there when he walked in.
It was past 2 am. For Buffy, he knew, that probably meant prime patrol hour, whether there were nasties to ki--to slay or not. But Dawn should definitely be in bed.
He was headed for Willow's room to pound on the door and demand a location spell, lesbian sex be damned, when he was stopped short by a series of horrifying shrieks from one of the two mini-slayer rooms.
Horrifying, not horrified. They were giggling. Xander flashed on an image of a pantied pillow fight, then shook it off. Now was not the time. He needed to find--
"Xander!"
No, HE was Xander. He was looking for Dawn. who'd just cheerfully called his name from the slumber party doorway.
"I was just going to leave a note! I'm going to crash with Vi and the girls, tonight."
He took a second to look her up and down. Not in a sexy way, just in a friendly, "making sure the jail-bait-who's-like-a-sister-to-him isn't too over-extended to enjoy a sleepover" way. She had cotton balls between her toes. Her bright pink toes. She looked happier than she had in a long time.
He nodded, smiling tiredly. "Sounds good, Dawnie. Have fun."
She grabbed him in a hug. "You'll tell Buffy?"
"Sure."
"Thanks!" And she vanished back into the room for her sleepless night. it would be a sleepless night of fun, at least, not a sleepless night of stress and worry. He headed back to the room, thinking that at least one of them ought to be having fun.
-
He woke into darkness, halfway to ball-hood, a whimper caught in his throat. A warm, female body had wrapped itself around him from behind.
"Anya?"
The person let out a non-Anya breath. Of course. Anya was dead.
"Buffy."
She pulled back slightly. "Sorry, Xan. I . . . couldn't sleep."
"S'okay." He tried to uncurl and roll over, but she just clutched him tighter. He relaxed into her embrace.
"Do you dream about her?"
He closed his eye, reveling in the feeling of her against him. Not in a sexy way--okay, not ENTIRELY in a sexy way--but in a "another person is here" kind of way. Another refugee. "I don't know."
"I don't dream about him."
He didn't ask who. It didn't matter who. "It's okay."
She pressed her face into his back. His undershirt was wet. It was worth repeating, so he said it again. "It's okay."
She was quiet for a long time, except for brief, hitching sobs. He tried to roll over again, but she held him still.
"Good night, Xander."
"Night, Buffy."
And it wasn't quite, but it was a better one.
-
The third morning after Sunnydale, Xander woke up rested. He was half-curled in a pool of sunlight with his best friend watching his back. The sheets were still with salt, but her eyes were clear when he rolled over.
"Good morning, Buffy."
Her lips bent ever so slightly upwards, and she brushed her fingers through the hair under his patch. "Yeah," she said. "Let's have one of those."
had fun and adventures of the more detached, amusing sort today, what with enjoying thoroughly the Dublin Writer's Museum (I would be remiss were I not to attend), reading poetry, and having a long, philosophical and religious conversation/debate with a street evangelist who surprisingly enough was not after money, and had a very clever way of visually presenting his information and using lots of fun plays on words. I think it was my smirk of intellectual entertainment as he finished his speech that got him talking to me. I'm wearing my Delirium t-shirt, so he called me "delirium" the whole time we were discussing the synoptic gospels. Then he and his crew rescued me from the crazy homeless lady and her twenty-minute, Dickensian tale of woe by offering her a pamphlet.
sign of the day, from the side of a Dublin building: "Sick & Indicent Roomkeepers Society"
Much fun.
Wrote this last night and typing it directly into LJ, so forgive any typos I might miss correcting. Or point them out, so's I can correct them!
Refugees (1/1)
by Bella Temple
Disclaimer: The characters still don't belong to me, but I might just have to start contacting sources regarding that Xander-with-an-Axe. This was inspired by a very long plane flight, and by my mom's stories of volunteering for the Red Cross this weekend in Fairfax.
Summary: Two refugees find comfort with each other. A B/X friendship tale with hints of future sparkage. Or at the very least, UST.
- Their motionless eyeballs of spirits grown wild with mysterious thought,
Watched her those seamless faces from the valley's glimmering girth;
As she murmured, 'O wandering Oisin, the strength of the bell-branch is naught,
For there moves alive in your fingers the fluttering sadness of earth. . . .'
--"The Wanderings of Oisin", by WB Yeats
The first two mornings after the fall of Sunnydale, Xander woke up groggy, aching, and curled into a tiny ball around his pillow.
He always fell asleep stretched out across the queen sized bed. He never remembered the nightmares, thankfully, but by the look of restless exhaustion on Dawn and Buffy's faces in the mornings, they were doozies.
-
He still wasn't quite sure how he'd ended up sharing a double room with the Summers girls. The first night--everything from the battle to the next morning--was a blur. He remembered shuffling along, leaning against an equally dazed and exhausted Dawn, taking his room key, and then waking up in a fetal position to sunlight and the sound of the shower. When they'd met up with the others at the Red Cross checkpoint, feeling only slightly more human, no one had questioned the room assignments.
By all rights, it should have been Willow sharing with the girls, but Willow and Kennedy had claimed one of the two single rooms. Giles and Andrew shared the other. Later, Xander would blame that arrangement for Giles' choice of Andrew as his deputy/secretary. Andrew had obviously driven the poor man loony in the week they spent at the hotel, waiting for Robin to be well enough to check out of the hospital and to travel.
Faith would have been Xander's other choice for Summers roomie-dom, seeing as she was female and not a mini-slayer, as Xander had mentally dubbed the former potentials. Surprisingly, though, Faith spent her time at the hospital with Robin, rather than at the hotel.
Still, he and the other males of the species should be sharing the double, leaving Dawn and Buffy the single. Yet, night after night, when they broke off to "sleep", he was back in the girls' room.
One of the girls, all over again.
-
By the third night, Xander was determined to just not sleep. He didn't want to keep Buffy and Dawn up anymore. So he stayed in the Red Cross tent as long as possible, helping with any task they gave him, mostly serving food and delivering clothing to his fellow Sunnydale refugees.
Evacuees. The Red Cross insisted on that. "Refugee" implied you were from another country.
Of course, Sunnydale was like another country, and Xander was only just realizing it. He was astonished to discover that the medical tent could stay in operation well past sundown without getting attacked, and that 24 hour convenience stores and diners existed outside of the movies.
Despite the fact that the disaster relief was a 24/7 operation, Xander was eventually ordered to go "home" and get some sleep. Veronica, the very-non-Archie-comics-shaped volunteer coordinator, didn't think much of his hemming and hawing and protestations. She threatened to sedate him if he didn't go, and the thought of spending the night in the medical tent, helpless and unable to escape his dreams, sent him scurrying off. There were no vacancies in any hotel in town, what with the influx of Sunnydalians and volunteers, so if he wanted a bed that wasn't a cot in the midst of strangers, the hotel room was his only option.
-
Neither Buffy nor Dawn was there when he walked in.
It was past 2 am. For Buffy, he knew, that probably meant prime patrol hour, whether there were nasties to ki--to slay or not. But Dawn should definitely be in bed.
He was headed for Willow's room to pound on the door and demand a location spell, lesbian sex be damned, when he was stopped short by a series of horrifying shrieks from one of the two mini-slayer rooms.
Horrifying, not horrified. They were giggling. Xander flashed on an image of a pantied pillow fight, then shook it off. Now was not the time. He needed to find--
"Xander!"
No, HE was Xander. He was looking for Dawn. who'd just cheerfully called his name from the slumber party doorway.
"I was just going to leave a note! I'm going to crash with Vi and the girls, tonight."
He took a second to look her up and down. Not in a sexy way, just in a friendly, "making sure the jail-bait-who's-like-a-sister-to-him isn't too over-extended to enjoy a sleepover" way. She had cotton balls between her toes. Her bright pink toes. She looked happier than she had in a long time.
He nodded, smiling tiredly. "Sounds good, Dawnie. Have fun."
She grabbed him in a hug. "You'll tell Buffy?"
"Sure."
"Thanks!" And she vanished back into the room for her sleepless night. it would be a sleepless night of fun, at least, not a sleepless night of stress and worry. He headed back to the room, thinking that at least one of them ought to be having fun.
-
He woke into darkness, halfway to ball-hood, a whimper caught in his throat. A warm, female body had wrapped itself around him from behind.
"Anya?"
The person let out a non-Anya breath. Of course. Anya was dead.
"Buffy."
She pulled back slightly. "Sorry, Xan. I . . . couldn't sleep."
"S'okay." He tried to uncurl and roll over, but she just clutched him tighter. He relaxed into her embrace.
"Do you dream about her?"
He closed his eye, reveling in the feeling of her against him. Not in a sexy way--okay, not ENTIRELY in a sexy way--but in a "another person is here" kind of way. Another refugee. "I don't know."
"I don't dream about him."
He didn't ask who. It didn't matter who. "It's okay."
She pressed her face into his back. His undershirt was wet. It was worth repeating, so he said it again. "It's okay."
She was quiet for a long time, except for brief, hitching sobs. He tried to roll over again, but she held him still.
"Good night, Xander."
"Night, Buffy."
And it wasn't quite, but it was a better one.
-
The third morning after Sunnydale, Xander woke up rested. He was half-curled in a pool of sunlight with his best friend watching his back. The sheets were still with salt, but her eyes were clear when he rolled over.
"Good morning, Buffy."
Her lips bent ever so slightly upwards, and she brushed her fingers through the hair under his patch. "Yeah," she said. "Let's have one of those."