BtVS Fic: Outside Pride (Spike/Xander, 8/10, PG-13)
And with a few minutes to spare, here’s the last chapter for the day. There are still two more chapters in the story (which need to be written! *g*) but I feel this chapter will be a satisfying way to end my posting day for spring_with_xan - and hope you’ll agree! Oh! It’s a longer chapter than usual too! Special thanks to the best betas a girl could ask for: savoytruffle and spookymonkey. I so appreciate them going out of their way to help me with this chapter today! Also thanks to apreludetoanend whose support and encouragement is a huge reason I actually finished chapter eight! *hugs*
Title: Outside Pride
Author: cordelianne
Chapter: 8/10
Pairing: Spike/Xander
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1,831
Feedback: Comments will be very encouraging. Concrit is very welcome by email.
Disclaimer: Sadly not mine, Joss own them.
Summary: AU set at a summer camp.
“This is all my fault.” Buffy slouches in her chair and casts a guilty glance around the room. “No, no!” Willow catches Xander’s eye, then sighs. “Okay, so you and Angel making with the smoochies probably inspired this particular video session, but they always have nights like this. You just gave them the opportunity. So it’s really more like you did them a favor.” “Teenage hormones plus no parents equals sex on the brain,” Xander says. “Not that I’m speaking from experience or anything. Purely hypothetical of course.”
A/N: Thanks to the completely awesome and wonderful savoytruffle and spookymonkey for their invaluable pre-reading, betaing and support. Any mistakes are mine.
Previous chapters here.
Outside Pride
by Cordelianne
CHAPTER EIGHT
“This is all my fault.” Buffy slouches in her chair and casts a guilty glance around the room.
“No, no!” Willow catches Xander’s eye, then sighs. “Okay, so you and Angel making with the smoochies probably inspired this particular video session, but they always have nights like this. You just gave them the opportunity. So it’s really more like you did them a favor.”
“Teenage hormones plus no parents equals sex on the brain,” Xander says. “Not that I’m speaking from experience or anything. Purely hypothetical of course.”
Buffy nods. “Of course.”
Xander slouches further into his own chair in the hopes that he won’t be able to see the TV around Cordelia. Surprisingly her head isn’t that big.
"So I'm guessing this isn't going to be like Sex Ed?" Buffy's eyes are on the door, looking for Angel, no doubt. Not that Xander's in the same boat. Sure he's on the same river, but he’s floating on an old raft that’s slowly sinking - and that’s an entirely different thing than a boat.
“If by Sex Ed, you mean uncomfortable sex talk that doesn’t give us any more info than we already had? Then yes.” Xander whips his head around, away from the door and back to the front. Spike’s here.
“Of course, what was I thinking?” Buffy has a huge grin on her face. Angel’s here.
“Tara!” Willow’s smile is as big as Buffy’s, plus there’s bouncing when Tara joins them.
“Oh!” Buffy sits up. “Think they’ll do the condom on a banana thing? I’d pay my whole summer’s wages - which, okay, aren’t much - to see Wesley do that.”
“Uh, Buffy?” Xander leans forward and clasps her hand, a sorrowful look plastered on his face. “You know they’re all about the abstinence here, right?”
“Abstinence.” Buffy frowns. “So, that’s like the no sex thing?”
“As in just say no. Not to be confused with absinthe,” Xander says. “Just as scary, but way less fun and decidedly unsexy..”
“Think Seventh Heaven,” Willow says in a low tone. “You know, where they have to talk about sex all the time just so you don’t forget how bad it is. Especially if you’re a girl. I mean, you do realize, Buffy, that no matter how nice and sweet he seems now, even Angel would become a total monster after... you know.” She waves her hand in the non-verbal equivalent of you know.
Buffy raises an eyebrow. “Melodramatic much?”
Tara leans over. “Trust me, this is nothing. My family’s way more, um… intense than this.”
Xander gestures at the television up in the front. “Would they make our good Doctor James Dobson look like Rosie O’Donnell?”
“Xander!” Willow glares at him. “That’s not very sensitive.”
“It’s okay.” Tara smiles. “And I wouldn’t say Rosie, Schwarzenegger maybe.”
“That sucks,” Buffy says, her attention on Angel.
“How can you even suggest this’ll suck?” Jesse flops down beside Xander. “We get to see if Dobson’ll go for the blue sweater three-peat. I mean, what’ve we got around here that’ll top that?”
Currently Xander has nothing to top that. And that’s probably a sign he needs to get a life. He glances over at Spike who has his head back and eyes closed and still manages to look cool. Xander’s not deluded enough to think that if he were doing that he would look anything other than dorky.
“See what you’ve been missing in your Doctor James Dobson-less existence, Buff?”
Buffy shakes her head. “I’ve been so deprived.”
Wesley stands up and clears his throat. Jesse elbows Xander and hisses, “Ready?”
The video starts with soft music and Doctor James Dobson wearing his trademark sweater. “Let me explain why sexual abstinence is so important to marriage and how it’s related to the process of bonding.” Xander rolls his eyes at Buffy, who leans back in her chair as if that’ll give her distance from the good ‘doctor’, who is leaning into the camera.
“But how does this bonding occur and why is it missing in so many relationships?” He pauses as if expecting someone to jump into the shot with the answer. Xander picks at the bandage on his finger. “Today I’ll be chatting with you about the twelve steps which will lead you through courtship and the early years of marriage. These stages represent a progression of physical intimacy from which a permanent commitment often evolves.”
Jesse coughs and Willow rests her head on Tara’s shoulder as the ‘chatting’ continues. “I’ll be explaining to you how you begin with Step One, Eye to Body, and methodically proceed through the steps until you reach Steps Seven and Eight, Face to Face and Hand to Head, which are expressions of your emotional closeness. Of course the final steps are sacred and reserved for after the marriage ceremony, so these will only be discussed briefly.”
Blue sweaters and sexless sex talk. What a life.
***
“Guys,” Buffy says in a hushed tone. “I’ve skipped steps.”
“No!” Jesse backs up, clasping his hand to his chest. “But we’re talking about the sacred bonding between a man and a woman.” He shakes his head. Willow and Tara giggle.
Xander places an arm around Buffy’s shoulder. “It’ll be okay because you’ve seen the error of your ways. From now on, though, you and Angel better slow down and take it one step at a time. It doesn’t pay to rush through the Twelve Steps to Marital Bonding.”
“Wait, does this mean that Angel and I have to get married now?”
“Only if you’ve passed step eight.”
“Wait, what's step eight again? Touching Below the Waist?
“That’s step eleven, Buff,” Xander says.
Buffy looks worried.
“Xander!” Willow points at his arm, her voice high - there may have been excess amounts of sugar consumed. “You’re skipping steps!”
He jumps back, hands in the air. “I can’t believe it. How’d we get to step number five already?”
“Because you’re an idiot.”
He swivels around to face Cordelia who’s frowning at him, arms crossed. Harmony, never far from Cordelia’s side, quickly crosses her arms to match.
“Hey Cordelia.” Jesse sidles over, hands in his pockets in an attempt at casual, but it’s clear the jury isn’t buying it.
Cordelia rolls her eyes. “Could you all have missed the point of the video any more?”
“We could try.” Xander places a hand on his chin and nods slowly. “We could think we’re supposed to be counting down from twelve to one. Like a rocket launch.” He replays the image in his head. “That came out more sexual than I’d intended.”
“You’re deranged.” Cordelia tosses her hair. “Seriously.”
Harmony tosses her hair. “Seriously!”
They march off, still managing to swish their hips and leave Jesse hypnotized.
“Okay, I think we’ve reached my excitement threshold for the night,” Xander says. “Seriously.”
***
It feels farther to his cabin tonight, which is weird. Shouldn’t it feel closer now that he has it all to himself while his campers are off on their canoe trip hopefully not drowning? Maybe it has something to do with the way he’s trudging along, watching his shoes squish down the grass for that second each foot hits the ground.
Squish, squish.
There’s movement to his right so he drags himself out of his daze. He stops dead when he sees Spike standing there, watching him.
“Trouble walking, mate?”
“What? No.” Xander pulls himself up to his full height and looks Spike in the eye. “Anyway, what do you care?”
Even though that came out harsher than he expected, Xander stops himself from apologizing. Not that he’s spent a lot of time imagining what he would say to Spike the next time they talked or anything. Okay, maybe he has, but even so he’s totally not up for admitting it and he’s more of a go-with-where-his-mouth-takes-him kind of guy, which mostly doesn’t make him the impressively-smooth-and-suave-articulate kind of guy.
Spike just raises an eyebrow, hooks a thumb in his jeans pocket. “Who says I do?”
“You know what?” Xander takes two long strides toward Spike, till there’s just a foot separating them. “I don’t see where you get off thinking it’s okay to be a jerk to someone and play with someone’s feelings. If you don’t like someone you should just say so instead of looking at him, I mean, looking at that person all the time. And then there’s the somehow always showing up when the person least expects it. What’s with that? It’s very confusing to - to someone.”
Both Spike’s eyebrows are raised now. “What are you -?”
But Xander’s on a roll and he’s going wherever his mouth takes him, and he means that in a very clean way. “And another thing. Why would you say someone can kiss you and then say it’s a mistake? That’s just…” He fumbles around his brain for the right word but all the words are clearly on strike after being made to work overtime. So he just crosses his arms, in a hopefully manly non-Cordeliaesque manner and stares at Spike.
A smile spreads across Spike’s face. “You’re cute when you’re mad.”
“What?” Xander’s never boggled before but he’s pretty sure he’s doing it now. “What’s with the totally clichéd line? Does that actually work on people? Were you even listening?”
“Yeah.” Spike grips Xander by the hips and pulls him into the shadows beside his cabin. “Someone’s upset. Guess I’d better do something about it.”
And if Spike thinks kissing Xander is doing something about it then… Xander sighs and kisses back, savoring the feel of Spike’s lips against his. Maybe he should always go where his mouth takes him because this is a very good place. Like he’s at the top of a rollercoaster, every part of him ready for the rush of the fall.
In the back of his head he can hear Doctor James Dobson lecturing about how important it is to move systematically and slowly through each step, but when Spike’s hands slide lower and rest on his ass, pulling him closer it feels too good for this to be anything but exactly what he should be doing. And besides, he rationalizes as he kisses Spike back harder, wasn’t Dobson talking about men and women? He never said two guys should follow his rules. Of course there’s probably a reason for that and …. and….
He gasps when Spike bites his neck. “Got your full attention now?” Spike breathes in his ear.
“Uh huh.” Xander nods. He tries to form words, “Just… the video, the steps, the guy-guy thing…”
Spike runs a hand up Xander’s back. “Forget all that rot. Pretend we’re somewhere else.”
He nods again. “Do you - we could, um, my campers’re on a trip.” Spike kisses the place where he bit a few seconds before. “Want to come inside?”
Spike doesn’t answer, just propels Xander through the cabin door so quickly that everything blurs. Makes it easy to imagine they’re somewhere else.
Another country or another continent.
Anywhere but here.
Continues here.
References: I did not make up the Twelve Steps of Bonding, and you can read all the steps and more about them here.
Doctor James Dobson (the author of the steps) is real and if you so desire you can read about him here.
It should be noted that much of what Dobson says in the chapter is quoted from the Twelve Steps of Bonding.
Title: Outside Pride
Author: cordelianne
Chapter: 8/10
Pairing: Spike/Xander
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1,831
Feedback: Comments will be very encouraging. Concrit is very welcome by email.
Disclaimer: Sadly not mine, Joss own them.
Summary: AU set at a summer camp.
“This is all my fault.” Buffy slouches in her chair and casts a guilty glance around the room. “No, no!” Willow catches Xander’s eye, then sighs. “Okay, so you and Angel making with the smoochies probably inspired this particular video session, but they always have nights like this. You just gave them the opportunity. So it’s really more like you did them a favor.” “Teenage hormones plus no parents equals sex on the brain,” Xander says. “Not that I’m speaking from experience or anything. Purely hypothetical of course.”
A/N: Thanks to the completely awesome and wonderful savoytruffle and spookymonkey for their invaluable pre-reading, betaing and support. Any mistakes are mine.
Previous chapters here.
Outside Pride
by Cordelianne
CHAPTER EIGHT
“This is all my fault.” Buffy slouches in her chair and casts a guilty glance around the room.
“No, no!” Willow catches Xander’s eye, then sighs. “Okay, so you and Angel making with the smoochies probably inspired this particular video session, but they always have nights like this. You just gave them the opportunity. So it’s really more like you did them a favor.”
“Teenage hormones plus no parents equals sex on the brain,” Xander says. “Not that I’m speaking from experience or anything. Purely hypothetical of course.”
Buffy nods. “Of course.”
Xander slouches further into his own chair in the hopes that he won’t be able to see the TV around Cordelia. Surprisingly her head isn’t that big.
"So I'm guessing this isn't going to be like Sex Ed?" Buffy's eyes are on the door, looking for Angel, no doubt. Not that Xander's in the same boat. Sure he's on the same river, but he’s floating on an old raft that’s slowly sinking - and that’s an entirely different thing than a boat.
“If by Sex Ed, you mean uncomfortable sex talk that doesn’t give us any more info than we already had? Then yes.” Xander whips his head around, away from the door and back to the front. Spike’s here.
“Of course, what was I thinking?” Buffy has a huge grin on her face. Angel’s here.
“Tara!” Willow’s smile is as big as Buffy’s, plus there’s bouncing when Tara joins them.
“Oh!” Buffy sits up. “Think they’ll do the condom on a banana thing? I’d pay my whole summer’s wages - which, okay, aren’t much - to see Wesley do that.”
“Uh, Buffy?” Xander leans forward and clasps her hand, a sorrowful look plastered on his face. “You know they’re all about the abstinence here, right?”
“Abstinence.” Buffy frowns. “So, that’s like the no sex thing?”
“As in just say no. Not to be confused with absinthe,” Xander says. “Just as scary, but way less fun and decidedly unsexy..”
“Think Seventh Heaven,” Willow says in a low tone. “You know, where they have to talk about sex all the time just so you don’t forget how bad it is. Especially if you’re a girl. I mean, you do realize, Buffy, that no matter how nice and sweet he seems now, even Angel would become a total monster after... you know.” She waves her hand in the non-verbal equivalent of you know.
Buffy raises an eyebrow. “Melodramatic much?”
Tara leans over. “Trust me, this is nothing. My family’s way more, um… intense than this.”
Xander gestures at the television up in the front. “Would they make our good Doctor James Dobson look like Rosie O’Donnell?”
“Xander!” Willow glares at him. “That’s not very sensitive.”
“It’s okay.” Tara smiles. “And I wouldn’t say Rosie, Schwarzenegger maybe.”
“That sucks,” Buffy says, her attention on Angel.
“How can you even suggest this’ll suck?” Jesse flops down beside Xander. “We get to see if Dobson’ll go for the blue sweater three-peat. I mean, what’ve we got around here that’ll top that?”
Currently Xander has nothing to top that. And that’s probably a sign he needs to get a life. He glances over at Spike who has his head back and eyes closed and still manages to look cool. Xander’s not deluded enough to think that if he were doing that he would look anything other than dorky.
“See what you’ve been missing in your Doctor James Dobson-less existence, Buff?”
Buffy shakes her head. “I’ve been so deprived.”
Wesley stands up and clears his throat. Jesse elbows Xander and hisses, “Ready?”
The video starts with soft music and Doctor James Dobson wearing his trademark sweater. “Let me explain why sexual abstinence is so important to marriage and how it’s related to the process of bonding.” Xander rolls his eyes at Buffy, who leans back in her chair as if that’ll give her distance from the good ‘doctor’, who is leaning into the camera.
“But how does this bonding occur and why is it missing in so many relationships?” He pauses as if expecting someone to jump into the shot with the answer. Xander picks at the bandage on his finger. “Today I’ll be chatting with you about the twelve steps which will lead you through courtship and the early years of marriage. These stages represent a progression of physical intimacy from which a permanent commitment often evolves.”
Jesse coughs and Willow rests her head on Tara’s shoulder as the ‘chatting’ continues. “I’ll be explaining to you how you begin with Step One, Eye to Body, and methodically proceed through the steps until you reach Steps Seven and Eight, Face to Face and Hand to Head, which are expressions of your emotional closeness. Of course the final steps are sacred and reserved for after the marriage ceremony, so these will only be discussed briefly.”
Blue sweaters and sexless sex talk. What a life.
***
“Guys,” Buffy says in a hushed tone. “I’ve skipped steps.”
“No!” Jesse backs up, clasping his hand to his chest. “But we’re talking about the sacred bonding between a man and a woman.” He shakes his head. Willow and Tara giggle.
Xander places an arm around Buffy’s shoulder. “It’ll be okay because you’ve seen the error of your ways. From now on, though, you and Angel better slow down and take it one step at a time. It doesn’t pay to rush through the Twelve Steps to Marital Bonding.”
“Wait, does this mean that Angel and I have to get married now?”
“Only if you’ve passed step eight.”
“Wait, what's step eight again? Touching Below the Waist?
“That’s step eleven, Buff,” Xander says.
Buffy looks worried.
“Xander!” Willow points at his arm, her voice high - there may have been excess amounts of sugar consumed. “You’re skipping steps!”
He jumps back, hands in the air. “I can’t believe it. How’d we get to step number five already?”
“Because you’re an idiot.”
He swivels around to face Cordelia who’s frowning at him, arms crossed. Harmony, never far from Cordelia’s side, quickly crosses her arms to match.
“Hey Cordelia.” Jesse sidles over, hands in his pockets in an attempt at casual, but it’s clear the jury isn’t buying it.
Cordelia rolls her eyes. “Could you all have missed the point of the video any more?”
“We could try.” Xander places a hand on his chin and nods slowly. “We could think we’re supposed to be counting down from twelve to one. Like a rocket launch.” He replays the image in his head. “That came out more sexual than I’d intended.”
“You’re deranged.” Cordelia tosses her hair. “Seriously.”
Harmony tosses her hair. “Seriously!”
They march off, still managing to swish their hips and leave Jesse hypnotized.
“Okay, I think we’ve reached my excitement threshold for the night,” Xander says. “Seriously.”
***
It feels farther to his cabin tonight, which is weird. Shouldn’t it feel closer now that he has it all to himself while his campers are off on their canoe trip hopefully not drowning? Maybe it has something to do with the way he’s trudging along, watching his shoes squish down the grass for that second each foot hits the ground.
Squish, squish.
There’s movement to his right so he drags himself out of his daze. He stops dead when he sees Spike standing there, watching him.
“Trouble walking, mate?”
“What? No.” Xander pulls himself up to his full height and looks Spike in the eye. “Anyway, what do you care?”
Even though that came out harsher than he expected, Xander stops himself from apologizing. Not that he’s spent a lot of time imagining what he would say to Spike the next time they talked or anything. Okay, maybe he has, but even so he’s totally not up for admitting it and he’s more of a go-with-where-his-mouth-takes-him kind of guy, which mostly doesn’t make him the impressively-smooth-and-suave-articulate kind of guy.
Spike just raises an eyebrow, hooks a thumb in his jeans pocket. “Who says I do?”
“You know what?” Xander takes two long strides toward Spike, till there’s just a foot separating them. “I don’t see where you get off thinking it’s okay to be a jerk to someone and play with someone’s feelings. If you don’t like someone you should just say so instead of looking at him, I mean, looking at that person all the time. And then there’s the somehow always showing up when the person least expects it. What’s with that? It’s very confusing to - to someone.”
Both Spike’s eyebrows are raised now. “What are you -?”
But Xander’s on a roll and he’s going wherever his mouth takes him, and he means that in a very clean way. “And another thing. Why would you say someone can kiss you and then say it’s a mistake? That’s just…” He fumbles around his brain for the right word but all the words are clearly on strike after being made to work overtime. So he just crosses his arms, in a hopefully manly non-Cordeliaesque manner and stares at Spike.
A smile spreads across Spike’s face. “You’re cute when you’re mad.”
“What?” Xander’s never boggled before but he’s pretty sure he’s doing it now. “What’s with the totally clichéd line? Does that actually work on people? Were you even listening?”
“Yeah.” Spike grips Xander by the hips and pulls him into the shadows beside his cabin. “Someone’s upset. Guess I’d better do something about it.”
And if Spike thinks kissing Xander is doing something about it then… Xander sighs and kisses back, savoring the feel of Spike’s lips against his. Maybe he should always go where his mouth takes him because this is a very good place. Like he’s at the top of a rollercoaster, every part of him ready for the rush of the fall.
In the back of his head he can hear Doctor James Dobson lecturing about how important it is to move systematically and slowly through each step, but when Spike’s hands slide lower and rest on his ass, pulling him closer it feels too good for this to be anything but exactly what he should be doing. And besides, he rationalizes as he kisses Spike back harder, wasn’t Dobson talking about men and women? He never said two guys should follow his rules. Of course there’s probably a reason for that and …. and….
He gasps when Spike bites his neck. “Got your full attention now?” Spike breathes in his ear.
“Uh huh.” Xander nods. He tries to form words, “Just… the video, the steps, the guy-guy thing…”
Spike runs a hand up Xander’s back. “Forget all that rot. Pretend we’re somewhere else.”
He nods again. “Do you - we could, um, my campers’re on a trip.” Spike kisses the place where he bit a few seconds before. “Want to come inside?”
Spike doesn’t answer, just propels Xander through the cabin door so quickly that everything blurs. Makes it easy to imagine they’re somewhere else.
Another country or another continent.
Anywhere but here.
Continues here.
References: I did not make up the Twelve Steps of Bonding, and you can read all the steps and more about them here.
Doctor James Dobson (the author of the steps) is real and if you so desire you can read about him here.
It should be noted that much of what Dobson says in the chapter is quoted from the Twelve Steps of Bonding.