Cost Benefit Analyzing 5/5
Title: Cost Benefit Analyzing
Genre: Vague Slash, Angst
Warning: Nothing specific, but references to torture.
Pairing: Angelus/Xander (and not in the fuzzy, warm Angelusy way)
Rating: Hard R
Part: Five of Five
Summary: Long after the fall of the partners in LA and the closing of the Sunnydale Hellmouth, Xander wakes up to find himself in the hands of a man determined to change the balance of power... and willing to use Xander as the pawn he needs to get his way.
Part One: HERE
Part Two: HERE
Part Three: HERE
Read Four: HERE
Walking down the street, Xander hurried past the open door to a parking garage, and he could almost feel the eyes on him. He so hated being bait. Seriously hated. Needed to have his head screwed back on for volunteering for this mission type hated. Okay, volunteered might have been the wrong term. What was the term when other people wanted to protect you and you refused to tell them where a soul was, escaped from federal custody, and went out on your own? The word stupid was coming to mind, but it just didn't seem to cover it. Not having to fake the fear, Xander broke out into a run, the calm that came from four hundred years of memories fading as the animal instinct for survival took over.
He could hear scrambling in the building, and Xander detoured to stay in the sun as he aimed for the last hotel where Faith had been staying. Angelus was nothing if not predictable, and the vamp had been haunting Faith's hotel and bragging to everyone he could that he had taken the oldest living slayer. Xander wondered how long it would take the demons to figure out he had taken the last living slayer.
And hopefully Angelus would be Angel before that bit of news got out because Angelus' celebrations tended to cause serious blood, pain, and death. Xander reached the seedy motel and dashed up the stairs two at a time. Pounding on the door to Faith's empty room, the word 'stupid' became a mantra in his head as he considered all the things that could go wrong. The demons might just kill him. Angelus might gag him before he could whisper the right words. Hell, Angelus might rip his tongue out, and why had *that* never occurred to him before? What the hell use was it having the memory of living for four hundred years if you couldn't think of this stuff beforehand?
Living longer was not a guarantee of being any smarter, but then Angel had already proved that one. Oh yeah, Xander was going to hold on to the Angel hate as long as he could, even if he knew what it felt like to cradle Angel through a nightmare and to sit and drink beer with him as they watched a sunset. Even if he knew what it felt like having all that strength so totally focused on you and protecting you that Xander suddenly understood why Buffy had fallen so hard for the over-gelled one. And if Xander ever met his future self again, he was kicking the old man's ass. Okay, so he'd get in one punch and future Angel would pound him into the ground, but it would be worth it to get one punch in. Memories of caring about Angel were doing the freaky on his brain.
Yep, Xander might have memories of being older, but he was definitely not smarter. Rethinking the whole getting himself captured plan, he decided to get himself back to Riley's base. He'd teach Riley the spell and let Riley play sacrificial goat. Soldiers were paid to do that shit. Xander turned and started walking quickly down the walkway. Okay, he had time before sunset. He could do this.
Xander started running, because he knew full well that the second he decided he could do something the universe had a personal interest in proving that he couldn't. And he really needed to come up with a world-saving technique that wasn't suicidal. This made three times that his big move to save the world included just standing at ground zero and refusing to move, and it really wasn't the brightest. Nope, not even a little bright.
Xander was jogging past the parking garage when a man stepped out from one of the offices. And when Xander said man, he meant that in the general sense of two arms and two legs. The whole tail sticking out from the bottom of the trenchcoat kinda suggested that it wasn't actually human.
Stopping so fast that he almost tripped himself, Xander stood in the middle of the road and eyed the figure strolling casually toward him.
"Hey, why don't you go your way and I'll just go... somewhere else?" Xander asked hopefully. Maybe this was just a random demon, not someone hunting him. Yeah, and maybe Angelus was going to wear a purple hat and dance a jig.
The demon didn't answer as he kept walking, and Xander did the first smart thing he'd done all fucking day-he turned and ran. The impact of a heavy body into his and the sound of his own skull smacking the pavement were the last two things Xander noticed before the world went dark.
"Wakey, wakey, Xander. You have some explaining to do, boy." The little slaps across his face made Xander struggle to lift heavy eyes. Leather pants. Tight leather pants. Tight leather pants with a serious hard-on. Oh yeah, Angelus was already thinking about all the ways to make his little pet suffer. Xander's groans were for the evidence of his coming torture as much as for the twelve-piece band pounding away in his head.
"Oh my boy. Running was stupid, but getting caught..." Angelus tsked. "I'd be upset about Tion damaging your brain with that tackle of his, but you don't have many functioning brain cells to begin with, so it couldn't have done you too much harm."
Xander felt hands at his body, ripping clothes off so violently that Xander knew he was going to be a beautiful mass of bruises tomorrow. At least Angelus would think they were beautiful. If Xander couldn't get the potion into Angelus and say the spell, then he was going to spend tomorrow draped over Angelus' knee as the vampire alternatively stroked the bruised flesh and dug his thumbs deep into it.
"I'll teach ye better than to run," Angelus whispered, and that soft baroque scared Xander more than any threat. The little crack monkey in his brain wanted to curl up and start begging. His lizard brain wanted to fight, even knowing that fighting Angelus was more stupid than... well, than any stupid thing Xander could remember doing before, and he was a man who left an ex-vengeance demon at the altar when there were current vengeance demons in the audience. Hell, fighting Angel wasn't all that bright, but fighting Angelus was stupid on a grand scale.
Pushing both instincts aside, Xander closed his eyes and tilted his neck to the side in a silent offering. Angelus chucked and stroked a thumb down the stretched muscle of Xander's neck. "Won't save you from your punishment, boy. The slayer's dead, you know."
"I figured," Xander said softly as he kept his neck bared. Just bite already. And the universe was really doing freaky things to his head if he wanted to get bitten. Old Xander might remember the bites of Spike and Angel as being sensual and way, way too good, but Angelus biting did not lead to addiction so much as running away screaming in pain.
"I won't have you run."
"I didn't want to run," Xander said, and the huge hand on his neck paused long enough for fingers to wrap around his throat in warning. Lying bad... yeah, Xander had learned that one already. "I wanted to die. Her and Buffy, I asked them to kill me," Xander said truthfully. Angelus didn't move for a second, and then the hand around Xander's throat pushed him back onto the bed.
Xander yielded, allowed Angelus to shove him up onto the bed on his back before Angelus straddled him. "You always were the weak one," Angelus said with a sneer, and Xander didn't argue as he again tilted his head and bared his neck. Angelus struck, teeth sinking deep into Xander's neck so that he had to strangle a scream. And with Xander's blood, Angelus also drank the potion that was in Xander's blood.
"Vor," Xander called out, and he really hoped the goddess of vows was listening because this whole trying out a new soul spell was seriously scaring the crap out of him. "Líkami og sál að eilífu," he carefully pronounced. A wind tore through the room, ripping the blanket off the foot of the bed and for a second, the flapping fabric looked like a sheet of feathers. Angelus stiffened and sucked harder until Xander couldn't hold back a pained scream. Large hands gripped Xander's arms so tight that for a second, Xander feared he might have new breaks. And then the wind stopped, the blanket crumpled to the ground, and Angelus slowly sagged.
"Okay, I'm seriously hoping that means something happened," Xander said quietly as he tried to not move. Angelus was still draped over him, his hands clutching Xander's shoulders and his weight pinning Xander to the bed, suggesting that trying to move would be a really bad idea.
Angelus groaned. Slowly, he moved his hands to either side of Xander and pushed himself up, and the confused look on his face was pretty much enough to tell Xander that Angelus had left the building... or Angelus had been shoved into the basement might be a better description.
"Xander?" Angel asked as he looked around and blinked owlishly. His gaze stopped at his own clothing, and Xander could almost see the moment at which the memory returned.
"Xander. God, I'm sorry," Angel immediately offered, his voice low and pained. And then he scrambled off the bed and stood standing on the far side of the room looking like a deer caught in the headlights. "Buffy?" Angel looked around as though expecting her, and Xander felt that familiar ache in his heart for a girl who he had his own part in helping to kill. Angel closed his eyes, and Xander was caught between sympathy and anger. "I killed her," Angel said, and the pain in his voice tipped Xander over into sympathy. Yeah, Angel had killed her, but it was Xander's lame plan to try and fix the world by wiping out the slayer line. A Xander's idea, anyway. The fact that future him had made the plan didn't make the current Xander feel any less guilty.
"You had help," Xander said as he pushed himself up. Okay, naked in front of Angel was weirdly bothering him way more than naked in front of Angelus. Xander grabbed for the blanket and draped it over his waist. "I need to tell you a story."
"I need to leave," Angel said, and Xander had a near heart attack as Angel went for the door. With that look of guilt on his face, no way could Angel pass as Angelus. Xander leapt for the door himself, dropping the blanket and colliding with Angel in the middle of the room. With a wordless cry, Angel pulled away as though burned and retreated to the far corner again.
"Geez, way to overreact, Deadboy," Xander said as he turned and grabbed the blanket off the floor, wrapping it around his waist.
"I'm sorry. I know how you must-" Angel stopped, and Xander was glad because if the vampire said he knew how Xander felt, there were going to be stakes and dust in the near future. "I should leave."
Xander snorted. "Oh yeah, Angelus with a guilty expression darting away from his favorite boy toy without so much as an hour of playing. That's not going to look suspicious," Xander pointed out as he dragged a chair across the floor and parked it in front of the door before sitting down. The minute his butt hit the wood, Xander could feel the panic start and the crack monkey in his brain start screaming in terror. He wasn't allowed on furniture.
Cold fear held Xander so tight that for a second, all he could do was breathe and focus on another memory, one that wasn't his. What he'd suffered at Angelus' hands wasn't anywhere near to the suffering future Willow endured in the other future. His Willow was safely dead. His Dawn was still alive, and his Spike was waiting to come back home just as soon as Angel had finished some undercover work. It was worth the price he'd paid. Now he just had to convince himself to not have a heart attack every time he sat on the furniture.
"Boy t...?" Angel echoed Xander's last words, only he choked on them and looked ready to be ill. And really, this was seriously bad for Xander's ego. Okay, so he'd looked better in his life, but it wasn't like he was some ugly troll. He wouldn't approach Uncle Max levels of trollishness for a couple of hundred years, and wasn't that just a freaky thought.
"Just listen," Xander snapped, and Angel frowned for a second. The expression just about drove Xander to the point of running out of the room himself, but he just tightened his grip on the arms of the chair. "Imagine a future world. Buffy is coordinating a few hundred slayers, there's some weirdness with Amy, Willow figures out that you and Spike and Ilyria got trapped in a void dimension and pulls you out, and all seems to be good except for where the big bads keep getting bigger and badder. People die, more people die, slayers get called up faster and faster. Buffy and Dawn get kidnapped by Nylt demons who..." Xander stopped. He couldn't say it.
"Xander?" Angel asked, his voice quiet and more than a little confused.
Holding up a hand to ask Angel to be quiet, Xander took a deep breath and kept going. "Ilyria did a spell to juice up my blood, and I started feeding you and Spike. More big bads came through. A hellmouth went kerflewy, and the whole demons secret was pretty much out after that, which led to open war. Willow got stuck in the hellmouth trying to close it again. Spike died. Hell, everyone died. It was down to you and me, Deadboy, and that's mostly because I didn't fight so me getting dead wasn't really likely. We opened a portal and evacuated as many people as we could to another dimension-one that turned out to be the remains of a wish-verse, only with shrimp."
With a deep breath, Xander risked taking a look at Angel's face. Yep, that would be a confused look. "So, it's you and me and a couple of thousand strangers, and the bad keeps right on coming. People can't have kids in perfectsville, so you try to find another dimension and nearly get dusted. I find a way to contact Willow, and she's always aging, her body literally falling apart, but she can't die."
"What are you talking about?" Angel finally interrupted.
"The future," Xander said quietly, but Angel was already shaking his head. Xander kept right on going. "Our future. Only once we'd made that future, we wanted to unmake it. Willow figured it out. The split slayer line let the First crawl into the world. But hundreds of active slayers... it was like opening all the doors to hell and leaving them open. The world wants balance so lots of good means lots of evil. Last showdown. Armageddon. Only now, we changed that. We closed the doors to hell by closing down the slayer line so now it's not so much Armageddon as a few really, really crappy years."
That drew an incredulous look from Angel. "Crappy years?" he echoed. "I-" Angel stopped again and sat down right where he was, which left him on the floor with his knees drawn up in front of him. The posture was so familiar that Xander had to stop an automatic urge to go sit next to him. Memories of being Angel's lover and Angelus' rape victim were definitely doing the clashy-clangy in the brain. Xander just sat still and waited as Angel breathed, which was a pretty good sign that he was way too emotional to actually listen.
"This isn't possible."
"Okay, if that's true, where did I get a shiny new soul spell? You know that's Willow-level magic."
"Willow's dead," Angel said softly, and Xander knew how much Angel cared about her. He didn't want to know, but he did.
"Yeah, our Willow is. She's safe in heaven where she deserves to be, but the alternate Willow from the timeline we can never completely erase... she's still stuck in a hellmouth and had a couple hundred years to figure out a new soul spell."
Angel looked up, obviously still confused, but Xander could see the faint beginnings of belief creep into his expression. Eventually, Angel nodded. "You must hate me." The words were soft and definitely weren't phrased as a question.
"Hate doesn't even touch it," Xander agreed. And he did... he was big with the hate, but the fact that understanding and guilt were in there too softened the edges a little. "But the blame gets shared here."
"No," Angel snapped as he exploded off the ground and started forward. "You were the victim, so you don't take the blame for this. You don't blame yourself. You don't blame Faith. You don't blame Buffy." Angel was angry, and angry Angel pretty much looked like Angelus. Xander flinched back, and immediately Angel was on the far side of the room again, blinking in surprise. "Xander, you need to get out of the room." Angel pronounced each word softly and carefully.
"Um, demons and random bad guys out there. I'm thinking that's a stupid plan," Xander snorted.
"Something's wrong. The soul.... it's not right."
"Yeah, Deadboy, it is. Willow cooked up a new spell, one without the clause. If your soul comes out again, it'll shred your body on the way out. So, no more Angelus."
Angel looked up in surprise.
"Oh come on, Deadboy. You've gone evil one times too many. Hey, I'm the first to say that everyone on the team gets a 'first evil' free card, but you've played yours a little too much. The Willow I met from the future just wanted to make sure you couldn't go all evil again."
"From the future?" Angel still wasn't totally with the believing it plan, but then he didn't have four hundred years of alternate memories shoved into his head, and Xander truly had to call himself a manipulative bastard for that trick.
Leaning forward, Xander spoke slowly, like he was talking to someone of questionable mental stability. "Everyone died. Everyone was tortured and then they died. The wonky slayer spell gave evil a 'get out of hell free' card. You and me survived. We changed the past and now not everyone is dead."
"Not everyone is dead? Xander, make sense," Angel said with more than a little annoyance.
"Okay, you're pissing me off now." Xander crossed his arms and glared.
"Careful, boy." Angel said the words, and then immediately jerked back so hard that Xander could hear his head hit the far wall.
For a second, Xander studied Angel, wondering just how good the new spell really was. Willow was so sure that this would work, but Angel was definitely not up to his normal brooding best... either that or Xander just naturally brought out the evil parts of the vampire's soul. "Okay, honesty time," Xander finally said. "You scare the shit out of me, so I can either be scared or angry, and no fucking way am I going to let you see me scared."
From the look on Angel's face, that surprised him. "I'm sorry," he offered again.
"So am I," Xander sighed. "The old man who took your soul-the one turned you into Angelus and then sent you here so you could do all sorts of terrible things and then remember every single one. What do you remember about him?"
"What?"
"Humor me," Xander said as he struggled to not yell. "I put up with three years of torture and rape, the least you can do is answer a question or two." The way Angel flinched away, Xander was willing to bet he could get a whole lot of mileage out of the last three years. He probably could make the broody one wear a purple hat and dance a jig. "What did the old man look like?"
For a second, Xander didn't think Angel would answer, but then he slowly offered up a description in a confused voice. "Curly hair, Caucasian, about ninety years old. Brown eyes, starting to go blind. Xander, what's the point here?"
"Think about what the old man would have looked like when he was twenty," Xander suggested. Immediately, Angel got a frown on his face.
"Um, yeah, that would be why I'm sorry, too," Xander quickly pointed out. "Future me decided that if good had to get its wings clipped to avoid Armageddon, then Angelus was just the demon to do it."
"You set yourself up to be raped and tortured?" Angel asked.
"Yeah, not the brightest, am I?" Xander shrugged. "Zombies want to blow up the school, I just stand there with the bomb and offer to go up with it. Willow tries to end the world, I offer to be victim number one. There's a really disturbing pattern here which probably indicates a need for serious psychological counseling. Oh, and if Riley gets his hands on me, I will probably be in mandatory counseling paid for by the government for a good long time. The whole resouling plan was supposed to be his only I went and decided to play sacrificial lamb again."
"You ripped my soul out. You turned Angelus loose on-" Angel really was not doing good with the finishing sentences today, and Xander made a mental note to get a reference for a therapist who could work with Angel on anger management issues because that was not a happy vampire face.
"Yeah, I know."
"No. No, you don't. I have to live with the memories of all those deaths, and you're going to sit there and tell me 'you know'?"
"Yes, I do know." Xander stood up and tried to ignore the fear as he faced off against Angel. "I turned you loose. And yeah, that was a future me, but it was me. So every person you've killed, I have my own guilt for that. And more than that, when I went back to that dimension, I went and I shoved my old guy memories into my young guy head, so it's not like you're the only one to do raping. And having brain raped myself... that is something that not even therapy is going to fix. And the worst part is that I *still* think it was the best solution. The slayer line was holding open the door to evil."
"So you took it upon yourself to close it? You made that decision for the rest of us... for me?"
"Hey, I don't make a decision about pizza toppings without asking for input, so Willow and me and you all made that decision together. You, Deadboy. You decided that remembering three years of murder and mayhem was better than letting Buffy and Dawn be raped to death by demons making porn. You decided to carry the guilt of being a murderer rather than let Willow stay trapped inside a hellmouth. I'm not the only one with a serious case of martyrdom."
"There must have been another way." Angel's whole body was tight with a need to deny the truth. Xander could understand that too. It was weird remembering going through all these stages with Angel once already.
"Kettle calling pot, come in pot," Xander teased as though calling Angel on a radio. "You're the one with the dumb-ass plan for taking down Wolfram and Hart. In fact, my plan looked a lot like your plan."
"My plan just about ended the world. Why would you copy my dumb-ass plan?" Angel asked with resignation.
"Your plan did end the world," Xander said quietly but firmly. "Those of us in Sunnydale tipped the scales by adding too many champions for good. You idiots in L.A. tipped the scales by removing champions for evil, and between us, we ended the world."
That stopped Angel. The anger and tension drained from him and he took a short step to the bed where he sank down.
"And now you're thinking about crawling in some hole and pulling the dirt up over you," Xander said knowingly.
"Don't assume you know me, boy." The words were sharp, but the tone was exhausted.
"Oh, I do know you." Xander tapped his head. "I have four hundred years of knowing you in this brain. I know that you actually do like human food, but you won't eat it because it reminds you of all the other parts of humanity you'll never have again. I know that Spike annoys the piss out of you, but when I tell you he's waiting for us to do some cleanup work before he comes back, you're going to be relieved." Sure enough, Angel's head came up and had such an expression of relief that Xander had to sigh at the raw need and grief in the vampire's face.
Getting up, Xander tightened the blanket around his waist and picked a corner of the bed far from Angel to sit and watch the broody one brood. "I know how you worked your way across the Atlantic once by sitting in a hold eating rats and winding keckle around ship cables."
"Keckle's a verb, not a noun," Angel said softly.
"Great, and now your English professor side comes out. I know how you like Christopher Marlowe more than Shakespeare. I know how you secretly read Chaucer even when you all you talk about is how he used crude language. Which is the only reason I like him," Xander admitted with a shrug. "Or rather, I like him when you read it out loud to me because stories told in poem form are really not my thing. I know that I got you interested in Tony Hillerman and you were always sorry that we gave the world to demons before you could see the Grand Canyon. See, four hundred years of knowing you, all up here."
Angel glanced at Xander, and the suspicion and the hope were pretty much balanced. It was weird the way Xander suddenly understood Angel's expression, or maybe not so suddenly since he had the whole Vulcan brain download.
"Come on, do you really think I'd know the word keckle on my own?" Xander pointed out. Angel stared at him, his frown deepening until finally he sighed.
"No."
"Exactly, saved by my own famous lack of paying attention in English."
"That's not a word you'd learn in English," Angel pointed out. "That's a word you'd learn working on a boat in the nineteenth century."
"Which I can safely say I've never done. Furthermore, I am officially voting 'no' for any plans that require more time travel. My brain is full, so all future, current, and past me's are hereby ordered to keep their brains to themselves and their bodies in their own time periods."
"Xander?" Angel asked, and Xander knew that tone too. That was the tone Angel'd used after he came home nearly dust after trying to find a new dimension. That was the lost tone that Xander couldn't help but respond to, and part of Xander really wanted to rip Angel's lungs out for sounding so much like the man he'd loved... the man from his memories who would never exist in this dimension because they had stopped the Armageddon... hopefully. "What are we doing now?"
"Um, pretending to have sex so your minions don't kill us?"
Angel glared, and Xander relaxed since that was an expression he knew how to handle. "Okay, I see the upgraded soul spell did not come with the sense of humor accessory," Xander snarked. "But the plan is that you find excuses to kill one of two or maybe even three or four big bads before they figure out you've gone all soul boy. With the doors closed between earth and hell, new big bads won't be able to come through and take their place."
"Xander, it's gone too far for one or two demons to make a difference," Angel said wearily.
"No, it really hasn't. Until you've seen my memories, you have no idea how far it can go before it goes too far. We still have Dawn, and she's researching, so she may come up with some neat ways to take out a few. Riley has a whole team, and once he doesn't have to deal with a supercharged Angelus, he can focus on some other bad guys. And Spike is fine. He was just caught in the same void with you, so as soon as you've done your undercover bit, he'll come back and the two of you can have demon hunting parties and your pissing contests about who kills more demons."
Xander watched Angel, and debated telling him that this was a temporary assignment. In three years, a new slayer would be called, and Angel would have to get out of the champion business. He would have to give up the idea that he could do some act so good that it erased all the evil he'd done. But watching determination slowly take the place of despair on Angel's face, Xander decided that conversation could wait for later. That conversation could wait until he had Spike and a whole lot of whiskey to back him up.
"So, we just have to put things right," Angel said more firmly.
"Except not so right that we make it all go wrong again because I'm not up for a repeat performance of the grande finale. There is a..." Xander started counting on his fingers. The Master, Acathla, the mayor, Adam, the First, the weird guys when Spike figured out he could hit demons, the sisterhood of weird things when the zombies tried to blow up the school, veiny Willow, Wolfram and Hart, the current mess... "There is a ten Armageddon limit on this sidekick."
Angel kinda blinked in surprise at that.
"Seriously. The whole good and evil mutually assured destruction arms race? I am so ready to call it done. So let's disarm the other side's nukes without trying to give ourselves an advantage, okay?" Xander asked.
Angel looked at him seriously. "You're sure?" he asked.
"Nope, but Willow is, and I always listen to Willow," Xander pointed out. That seemed to reassure Angel a whole lot more than Xander's declarations. "So, goal one. Riley has a potion that can make me invisible for an hour. Any chance you could go and get it from Riley so that when your cover is blown I don't end up being vampire kibble?"
Angel shook his head. "I'm getting you out tonight."
"Oh, so not happening, Deadboy. This was our dumb-ass plan. You and me together survived the end of the world, and you and me came up with this suicidal idiocy, so you and me are going to see it through. That means I'm staying right here and feeding you the supercharged blood as long as you're undercover."
"It's not safe."
"Oh yeah, like my life has been all about being safe. I've never ended up in the middle of a demon war before," Xander snorted. "Okay, let's get one thing straight right now. Yeah, there's a big part of me that's screaming in terror in my head right now, but I also have memories of a whole other world, a world where I lived for four hundred years."
Angel sat up straight at that comment.
"Yep, Ilyria's blood, it's better than milk in terms of health benefits, and that means I'm not a kid to get pushed to the side."
"Xander, you've already..."
"I've already been a fucktoy for a demon trying to wipe out the human race," Xander interrupted, "which is really dumb considering vampires need humans for food and childer, but let's not go into how stupid you are right now. Right now, I'm telling you that I have a right to be one of the people fighting to pull us back from the edge of Armageddon. That means I'm here, and you're going to feed and I'm going to be part of you kicking demon ass."
Angel stared at him with a frown of concentration as though he'd never seen Xander before.
"Those who come up with dumb-ass plans are responsible for trying to make the dumb-ass plans happen," Xander pointed out.
Slowly Angel nodded. "I don't like this," he warned.
"Who cares what you like," Xander pointed out. Yeah, the crack monkey was about to stroke out, but for the first time, Xander was grateful for the memories his old self had given him. Four hundred years of life trumped a crack monkey of phobia in the brain. "We do this together. But when they figure you're all soulboy, and you and Spike do the street fighting bit, then I'm staying home and watching reruns of Star Trek because me and fighting are still not buds, super charged blood or not. Or maybe I'll stand in back and shoot a crossbow or something."
Angel gave Xander a concerned look, and Xander pretty much translated that into a sarcastic comment about the idea of Xander with a wooden weapon at his back.
"I'll even try to not hit you, Deadboy."
For a second, Angel looked startled, but then he nodded. "I trust you."
"No you don't," Xander shrugged, "but you will. We've got a few hundred years to get to know each other, so I figure we have time to make up for a lot of stupid shit we both did in the past." Xander leaned back against the headboard and watched as Angel's expression subtly shifted so fast that not even Xander could read it.
"Look, I'm tired. I'd say dead tired, but I really don't want to jinx us here. The fact is that I haven't exactly been sleeping well, and someone just took a little more blood than he should've so I'm dizzy and tired. And don't get your guilty face going because I'll be fine after about twelve hours of sleep," Xander said as he gave Angel a dirty look. He couldn't sleep with Angel brooding.
"Oh, and I'm not sleeping on your floor anymore. I call the right side of the bed, and if you put cold feet on me, I'm kicking you out of the bed altogether," Xander said as he pulled the blanket off him, and scooted under the covers. The sheets felt heavenly and Xander flashed on one of those nights when Angelus had used humiliation instead of pain, when the vampire had forced orgasms out of him and then taunted him, forced him to wear his own semen on his skin and clinging in flaky bits caught his curled pubic hair.
"Xander? Are you okay?" Angel asked.
"No, but I'm working on it," Xander answered as he pulled himself out of that memory and focused on the day they two of them had built the tree house for little Louisa, Angel's arm around his waist and keeping him from falling when a board cracked under his weight. Angel didn't answer, but he turned off the lights, and then the room was silent for a long time.
"It's going to be a long few weeks if you won't even sleep, Angel, just get in bed." Xander used his best aggravated tone, and within a couple of seconds, the bed tilted as Angel sat.
"Xander." Angel strangled the word. A couple of years ago, Xander would have called that Angel being patronizing. Now he thought it sounded more afraid.
"Just go to sleep, Angel. We'll figure it out tomorrow." Xander closed his eyes and listened as Angel got in bed trying not to move. He wondered how long it would take for Angel to revert to his true form and seek Xander's heat in the middle of the night. Right now, the vampire seemed pretty content to cling to the far edge of the bed. Well, whatever came, Xander figured they'd muddle through together. They always had. Pushing aside fears and uncertainty, Xander closed his eyes and went to sleep.