S/X fic
Fandom: BTVS (and some Angel mixed in later)
Author: i_luv_trees
Pairing: will be Spike/Xander, and minor pairings sprinkled in
Rating: R for some language and a tiny sexual reference
Summary: thinking about life
Note about cannon: totally up till Joyce's death, and then I'm going to parallel the rest of season 5 until Buffy's death, my story will be 'off-camera' mainly, until Buffy's death,*except* for changing the scene where Xan proposes to Anya.
This is the beginning of a story (still untitled) I’m working on, have been working on *forever*, the story is unfinished, but I will have more time to work on it now so I’m going to dive back in. I don't think I've ever put this out, but if I have my apologizes. It's new and improved, now!
Unbetad for the moment, please bring any mistakes to my attention.
Prologue Part One, Early evening November 18th, 2001
He walks slowly through the cemetery, the pain in his left leg eased a little from walking on springy grass for a change instead of hard man-made surfaces. He wonders idly about the caretakers of these cemeteries, if they buy lawnmowers with a special blade set for some rigid-regulation grass height in cemeteries, but it fades quickly. The evening sun is warm on his face as he turns away from the paved path he's been walking beside, his feet turning and taking him left automatically after passing Martha Benderman's headstone. Some of the headstones he passes are still decorated with wilting flowers and showers of fallen petals, one or two with leftover pumpkins from Halloween visitors, and others by more personal tokens left by the living. A few people are lingering, standing or kneeling in front of headstones, some talking quietly and others with their heads bowed in silent communion. Some looking sad and lost, not sure what they're doing here, or how they’ve been left behind. Shadows chasing shadows.
He hears children's voices and his head turns toward the sound, pulled from the sadness to the innocent sounds of play. A blonde girl and boy are running from another boy wearing a red shirt near a car parked to the edge of one of the car paths. A little slice of living among the death. A normal cemetery on a normal Sunday evening in a normal town. Xander doesn't know if he should be amused or angry or just sad that for him this ‘normal’ scene is the weirdness.
He's more used to walking here during darkness, smelling instead of seeing the flowers left on the graves, stepping from one pool of light to another and trying not to trip over anything, mostly his own feet. A crooked smile tips up a corner of his mouth. Especially trying not to trip while either running for his life or going toe-to-toe with the latest demon. One of the unmentioned perks of living on your very own Hellmouth: obstacle course training. He decides he likes the daytime version of the cemetery more, even though he knows the nighttime one much better.
His slight limp is his latest souvenir from demon fighting, and yet another reminder of why the regular humans should stay as far back as possible and leave the demon-killing to the super powered humans. The thought pulls up the other side of his mouth into a full power sheepish smile. Especially the extra-big, extra-fast demons with extra-long claws. The bruises on his side where he had connected with a headstone (after the claw swipe to his thigh had continued upward into a shoving and throwing motion from said extra-everything demon) were mostly faded four days later, but still left his ribs a little tender. Damn demons that just have to show off by tossing the humans around. Why can't there be more witty banter during fights, instead it's all 'Ugh' and 'Arg' and claws and the throwing of people. Stupid demons.
But the bruises don’t show, and other than the slight hitch in his step from the scabbed-over claw marks he blends in nicely with the other late-Sunday visitors, right down to the flowers he’s carrying in his left hand for his visit. Except for the fact that when he speaks to his dead loved one it will be a two-way conversation.
Hopefully.
It is funny how a cemetery bathed in bright sunlight looks... wrong to him. Too open and bright, no hint of the things that happen here when you change just one basic component, the time of day. Instead of kids laughing, they would be screaming in terror, and the game of tag being played during the day would be deadly serious at night. No standing still and missing your loved ones, just standing frozen in hope of avoiding the monsters prowling around. Movements seen out of the corner of your eye are birds, or flowers waving in the breeze instead of an arm tipped in claws coming out of the shadows. Butterflies following invisible crooked lines instead of moths bouncing from invisible strings around the few bright lights. The loud nighttime humming of electric signs and streetlights is replaced by the daylight traffic noise that usually drowns them out. All the hidden things that only are seen and heard and felt when the sun was gone.
He walks across a gravel footpath and detours to a familiar, well-placed, bench near it. After an automatic check of the sunlight he sits, the louder-than-usual sound of his backside hitting the bench mostly masked by the old-person-sitting-down grunt that escapes involuntarily. Another familiar thing for demon-fighting members of the Scoobie gang, the pain of sitting down. He stretches his right arm out over the back of the bench, gripping tightly for a moment as he shifts around, easing some of the pressure on his ribs, before relaxing and letting the flowers in his hand come to rest gently beside his aching left leg.
Now that he's sitting still instead of concentrating on walking with as little pain as possible his thoughts turn to his destination, and the witty banter he hopes to throw around with one certain non-clawing demon. He closes his eyes and tilts his head back, feeling his blood rushing a little faster, hope and fear driving it harder through his veins. Memories flash and chase one another behind his eyelids, seemingly disconnected images following a straight line in time to this particular spot on this certain day. His chest heaves slightly as he relaxes and gives into his memories.
Life is all about your choices, and god knows he's made some odd ones. Most sane people would have turned around and ran the other way as fast as they could after coming face to face with honest-to-God vampires, but nope, not him and Willow. And just why the hell hadn't they, after seeing the real monsters that lived in the dark? Why hadn't they ran? Buffy was the one with the calling, the sacred duty and destiny bit. Chosen One with the superpowers. Not two normal teenagers with human clumsiness and human bones. Okay, so maybe Willow wasn't so much with the normal now, what with the whole witchy power thing, but back in the beginning it was just two old friends holding on with sweaty hands as hard as they could to each other and trying their best not to die or freak out between homework, terrified glances and insane acts of bravery. What had made them make the choice to embrace the crazy and keep coming back for more?
Choices. He shifts, strained muscles protesting before relaxing again. Good, bad, stupid, hard, spur-of-the-moment, all fifty-one flavors and combinations. Okay, honestly, for himself it had partly been about his dick of course. Teenage boy, cute new hottie, that was a no-brainer. But here he was a few years older (and hopefully wiser) and it was still partly about following his dick. To a totally different hottie of course, but still. Hormones are strange and powerful things, dammit.
A lot of the choices hadn’t been ones they had a say in. Jesse dying as a vampire. Joyce dying of a brain aneurysm. A ball of energy sent to the Slayer as a sister. But some of the others… Dating a thousand-year-old demon that had spent most of those thousand years cursing the male species. Joining souls to form a super-duper-Slayer-killing-machine. Sleeping with a cursed vampire. Killing the mayor of your town at your high school graduation. Sleeping with an uncursed vampire. Bringing back someone from the dead. The Scoobie gang had dealt with, and done, some pretty strange stuff over the years. All seemingly inevitable and the right thing to do in the moment, but when you looked back at some of it…just plain insane.
But he had made a choice today, chosen to walk back down this, his own personal path of good and bad choices, and reclaim something he had lost. Let go of. Been stupid enough to fuck up. He knew what the first step on this path had been, could trace every single one of them all back to one night on the front porch of Buffy's house, right after Joyce had died. Talking with Willow about their mothers, and then harsh words exchanged with Spike when he’d shown up, until they’d pissed him off enough to throw down the flowers he’d brought for Joyce and leave. Xander remembered standing there, feeling slightly smug and a lot self-righteous, until Willow said the words that would end up tilting his world and eventually change everything, bringing him to this day, walking back on this path. "There's no card, Xander."
The warmth has faded a bit when he lifts his head back up and opens his eyes to a quieter, more familiar scene. He'd walked this path a million times during the fading hours of sunlight over this past summer, going to meet up with an ally turned friend turned lover, before it all came apart. As he tries to sort through the emotions floating in his head, he realizes that he feels like that first day he'd walked it, only then the flowers were on his mind instead of in his hands. Fear, uncertainty, a slight sense of shame, some hope mixed in and over it all. But now he has about nine months worth of history coloring his current state of mind, where before it was all a new path, unimaginable that he would end up where he was now, and those same emotions were because of totally different reasons. Fear, of rejection instead of humiliation. Hope, for a renewal instead of a beginning. Although there was still shame for his actions, now it was about lying instead of harsh words. Only the uncertainty was the still the same.
And he did have a new emotion in the mix. Arousal. He could honestly say that the arousal was absent during that first walk. But, again, the nine months made a difference, especially when it came to that. Damn hormones.
So... the flowers in his hand catch his attention and the smile blooms again. Flowers. The choice he made to walk down this path and start this crazy thing could really be followed back to some flowers without a card. Not the most manly beginning, but an honest one. His entire life changed by flowers. The smile slips into a full-fledged grin. How many other men can claim to know about the ‘secret’ language of flowers, circa 1880. Probably a pretty unique talent for this century. But he has to admit even in his head that his whole life is pretty damn unique.
He had wondered about that sometimes, lying awake at night. Wondered what would have happened if he had just ignored the hot rush of shame that flooded him when Willow's words had penetrated the fog of self-satisfied rage he was in. "There's no card." It didn't compute at first, but when it did he had looked in the direction the angry man had stalked off in, wondering why a demon would bother with flowers. The moment of realizing that maybe, just maybe, he had been telling the truth. "I liked the lady." No ulterior motives (for a change), just a gesture of respect to a nice lady that passed the time of day with him. And in with the confusing shame for the Xan-man.
What could have changed if he’d ignored that shame, hadn't chosen to walk this path that first time, not knowing exactly why, only knowing he had to. If he had never apologized for his harsh words? Maybe Buffy would never have died? Maybe he and Anya would be married now? Maybe he would never have had to question his way of looking at the world, seeing just how gray most of the black and white really was?
On the other hand, he and Cordy might never have become good friends again. Buffy might not have survived her resurrection. The unresolved feelings he had about killing Jesse might still be trapped inside, haunting him. He might have never felt his unborn child moving underneath his hand, making his heart feel like a balloon bouncing around inside his chest.
God, he might have never had to deal with Angel-broody-pants again. Well, damn it. Can’t win ‘em all.
And he might have never known that kissing Spike would make fire run up and down his spine and his dick harder than it had ever been before.
He closes his eyes again and thinks about that. Choices and hormones and flowers.
Eyes wide open, he stands up slowly and continues walking down the path.
Thank god for unmanly flowers and crazy hormones.
*************************
Author: i_luv_trees
Pairing: will be Spike/Xander, and minor pairings sprinkled in
Rating: R for some language and a tiny sexual reference
Summary: thinking about life
Note about cannon: totally up till Joyce's death, and then I'm going to parallel the rest of season 5 until Buffy's death, my story will be 'off-camera' mainly, until Buffy's death,*except* for changing the scene where Xan proposes to Anya.
This is the beginning of a story (still untitled) I’m working on, have been working on *forever*, the story is unfinished, but I will have more time to work on it now so I’m going to dive back in. I don't think I've ever put this out, but if I have my apologizes. It's new and improved, now!
Unbetad for the moment, please bring any mistakes to my attention.
Prologue Part One, Early evening November 18th, 2001
He walks slowly through the cemetery, the pain in his left leg eased a little from walking on springy grass for a change instead of hard man-made surfaces. He wonders idly about the caretakers of these cemeteries, if they buy lawnmowers with a special blade set for some rigid-regulation grass height in cemeteries, but it fades quickly. The evening sun is warm on his face as he turns away from the paved path he's been walking beside, his feet turning and taking him left automatically after passing Martha Benderman's headstone. Some of the headstones he passes are still decorated with wilting flowers and showers of fallen petals, one or two with leftover pumpkins from Halloween visitors, and others by more personal tokens left by the living. A few people are lingering, standing or kneeling in front of headstones, some talking quietly and others with their heads bowed in silent communion. Some looking sad and lost, not sure what they're doing here, or how they’ve been left behind. Shadows chasing shadows.
He hears children's voices and his head turns toward the sound, pulled from the sadness to the innocent sounds of play. A blonde girl and boy are running from another boy wearing a red shirt near a car parked to the edge of one of the car paths. A little slice of living among the death. A normal cemetery on a normal Sunday evening in a normal town. Xander doesn't know if he should be amused or angry or just sad that for him this ‘normal’ scene is the weirdness.
He's more used to walking here during darkness, smelling instead of seeing the flowers left on the graves, stepping from one pool of light to another and trying not to trip over anything, mostly his own feet. A crooked smile tips up a corner of his mouth. Especially trying not to trip while either running for his life or going toe-to-toe with the latest demon. One of the unmentioned perks of living on your very own Hellmouth: obstacle course training. He decides he likes the daytime version of the cemetery more, even though he knows the nighttime one much better.
His slight limp is his latest souvenir from demon fighting, and yet another reminder of why the regular humans should stay as far back as possible and leave the demon-killing to the super powered humans. The thought pulls up the other side of his mouth into a full power sheepish smile. Especially the extra-big, extra-fast demons with extra-long claws. The bruises on his side where he had connected with a headstone (after the claw swipe to his thigh had continued upward into a shoving and throwing motion from said extra-everything demon) were mostly faded four days later, but still left his ribs a little tender. Damn demons that just have to show off by tossing the humans around. Why can't there be more witty banter during fights, instead it's all 'Ugh' and 'Arg' and claws and the throwing of people. Stupid demons.
But the bruises don’t show, and other than the slight hitch in his step from the scabbed-over claw marks he blends in nicely with the other late-Sunday visitors, right down to the flowers he’s carrying in his left hand for his visit. Except for the fact that when he speaks to his dead loved one it will be a two-way conversation.
Hopefully.
It is funny how a cemetery bathed in bright sunlight looks... wrong to him. Too open and bright, no hint of the things that happen here when you change just one basic component, the time of day. Instead of kids laughing, they would be screaming in terror, and the game of tag being played during the day would be deadly serious at night. No standing still and missing your loved ones, just standing frozen in hope of avoiding the monsters prowling around. Movements seen out of the corner of your eye are birds, or flowers waving in the breeze instead of an arm tipped in claws coming out of the shadows. Butterflies following invisible crooked lines instead of moths bouncing from invisible strings around the few bright lights. The loud nighttime humming of electric signs and streetlights is replaced by the daylight traffic noise that usually drowns them out. All the hidden things that only are seen and heard and felt when the sun was gone.
He walks across a gravel footpath and detours to a familiar, well-placed, bench near it. After an automatic check of the sunlight he sits, the louder-than-usual sound of his backside hitting the bench mostly masked by the old-person-sitting-down grunt that escapes involuntarily. Another familiar thing for demon-fighting members of the Scoobie gang, the pain of sitting down. He stretches his right arm out over the back of the bench, gripping tightly for a moment as he shifts around, easing some of the pressure on his ribs, before relaxing and letting the flowers in his hand come to rest gently beside his aching left leg.
Now that he's sitting still instead of concentrating on walking with as little pain as possible his thoughts turn to his destination, and the witty banter he hopes to throw around with one certain non-clawing demon. He closes his eyes and tilts his head back, feeling his blood rushing a little faster, hope and fear driving it harder through his veins. Memories flash and chase one another behind his eyelids, seemingly disconnected images following a straight line in time to this particular spot on this certain day. His chest heaves slightly as he relaxes and gives into his memories.
Life is all about your choices, and god knows he's made some odd ones. Most sane people would have turned around and ran the other way as fast as they could after coming face to face with honest-to-God vampires, but nope, not him and Willow. And just why the hell hadn't they, after seeing the real monsters that lived in the dark? Why hadn't they ran? Buffy was the one with the calling, the sacred duty and destiny bit. Chosen One with the superpowers. Not two normal teenagers with human clumsiness and human bones. Okay, so maybe Willow wasn't so much with the normal now, what with the whole witchy power thing, but back in the beginning it was just two old friends holding on with sweaty hands as hard as they could to each other and trying their best not to die or freak out between homework, terrified glances and insane acts of bravery. What had made them make the choice to embrace the crazy and keep coming back for more?
Choices. He shifts, strained muscles protesting before relaxing again. Good, bad, stupid, hard, spur-of-the-moment, all fifty-one flavors and combinations. Okay, honestly, for himself it had partly been about his dick of course. Teenage boy, cute new hottie, that was a no-brainer. But here he was a few years older (and hopefully wiser) and it was still partly about following his dick. To a totally different hottie of course, but still. Hormones are strange and powerful things, dammit.
A lot of the choices hadn’t been ones they had a say in. Jesse dying as a vampire. Joyce dying of a brain aneurysm. A ball of energy sent to the Slayer as a sister. But some of the others… Dating a thousand-year-old demon that had spent most of those thousand years cursing the male species. Joining souls to form a super-duper-Slayer-killing-machine. Sleeping with a cursed vampire. Killing the mayor of your town at your high school graduation. Sleeping with an uncursed vampire. Bringing back someone from the dead. The Scoobie gang had dealt with, and done, some pretty strange stuff over the years. All seemingly inevitable and the right thing to do in the moment, but when you looked back at some of it…just plain insane.
But he had made a choice today, chosen to walk back down this, his own personal path of good and bad choices, and reclaim something he had lost. Let go of. Been stupid enough to fuck up. He knew what the first step on this path had been, could trace every single one of them all back to one night on the front porch of Buffy's house, right after Joyce had died. Talking with Willow about their mothers, and then harsh words exchanged with Spike when he’d shown up, until they’d pissed him off enough to throw down the flowers he’d brought for Joyce and leave. Xander remembered standing there, feeling slightly smug and a lot self-righteous, until Willow said the words that would end up tilting his world and eventually change everything, bringing him to this day, walking back on this path. "There's no card, Xander."
The warmth has faded a bit when he lifts his head back up and opens his eyes to a quieter, more familiar scene. He'd walked this path a million times during the fading hours of sunlight over this past summer, going to meet up with an ally turned friend turned lover, before it all came apart. As he tries to sort through the emotions floating in his head, he realizes that he feels like that first day he'd walked it, only then the flowers were on his mind instead of in his hands. Fear, uncertainty, a slight sense of shame, some hope mixed in and over it all. But now he has about nine months worth of history coloring his current state of mind, where before it was all a new path, unimaginable that he would end up where he was now, and those same emotions were because of totally different reasons. Fear, of rejection instead of humiliation. Hope, for a renewal instead of a beginning. Although there was still shame for his actions, now it was about lying instead of harsh words. Only the uncertainty was the still the same.
And he did have a new emotion in the mix. Arousal. He could honestly say that the arousal was absent during that first walk. But, again, the nine months made a difference, especially when it came to that. Damn hormones.
So... the flowers in his hand catch his attention and the smile blooms again. Flowers. The choice he made to walk down this path and start this crazy thing could really be followed back to some flowers without a card. Not the most manly beginning, but an honest one. His entire life changed by flowers. The smile slips into a full-fledged grin. How many other men can claim to know about the ‘secret’ language of flowers, circa 1880. Probably a pretty unique talent for this century. But he has to admit even in his head that his whole life is pretty damn unique.
He had wondered about that sometimes, lying awake at night. Wondered what would have happened if he had just ignored the hot rush of shame that flooded him when Willow's words had penetrated the fog of self-satisfied rage he was in. "There's no card." It didn't compute at first, but when it did he had looked in the direction the angry man had stalked off in, wondering why a demon would bother with flowers. The moment of realizing that maybe, just maybe, he had been telling the truth. "I liked the lady." No ulterior motives (for a change), just a gesture of respect to a nice lady that passed the time of day with him. And in with the confusing shame for the Xan-man.
What could have changed if he’d ignored that shame, hadn't chosen to walk this path that first time, not knowing exactly why, only knowing he had to. If he had never apologized for his harsh words? Maybe Buffy would never have died? Maybe he and Anya would be married now? Maybe he would never have had to question his way of looking at the world, seeing just how gray most of the black and white really was?
On the other hand, he and Cordy might never have become good friends again. Buffy might not have survived her resurrection. The unresolved feelings he had about killing Jesse might still be trapped inside, haunting him. He might have never felt his unborn child moving underneath his hand, making his heart feel like a balloon bouncing around inside his chest.
God, he might have never had to deal with Angel-broody-pants again. Well, damn it. Can’t win ‘em all.
And he might have never known that kissing Spike would make fire run up and down his spine and his dick harder than it had ever been before.
He closes his eyes again and thinks about that. Choices and hormones and flowers.
Eyes wide open, he stands up slowly and continues walking down the path.
Thank god for unmanly flowers and crazy hormones.
*************************