Don't Go Solo : Part 13 - Space That They Belong

[waddis]

Title: Space That They Belong
Series: Don't Go Solo
Pairing: N/A
Rating: PG-13 for references to violence and sex
Setting: post-He's No Jack Sparrow and post-Introspect, Brazil
Word Count: 3,725 words

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer was created by Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy. All characters, places, and events are the property of the aforementioned and Twentieth Century Fox.

Summary: They're a long way from where they started. They're a longer way from where they're going. It's the small moments that make the fight worth it, even if it's for vastly different reasons between them.

He had learned, in Africa, to take his change of clothes with him into the bathroom when he wanted to shower.

It wasn’t like he expected bombs or gunmen or any manner of assassins to be waiting for him when he stepped out of it now. He wasn’t quite so paranoid as that, and he could recall the birth of the tendency with a certain amount of objectivity.

Really, it was just a thing he’d started doing.

So he was fully dressed when he slipped out of his bathroom and saw Buffy sitting on the edge of his bed.

She smiled at him, and bright as it was, it didn’t detract from the fact that she looked worse than he’d ever seen her. Bruises all over-and the slayer healing had them already yellowing-scrapes and cuts and burst blood vessels that looked like red-and-purple cracks under her skin.

He fought down the urge to go into awkward hysterics-who was he, Willow?-and managed what he could only assume to be a sympathetic grin.

“Buffy,” he said, “you forget the safe word?”

She giggled.

“That’s what Faith said,” she muttered, not quite looking at him and smiling a little drunkenly. “She’s funny. You, too.”

“Sometimes,” he said, narrowing his eye just a little and crossing the room. She quickly made room for him next to her, but he circled around the bed and sat down on the opposite side, letting the small wave of nostalgia wash over him when she settled back and mimicked the move next to him.

There were no crumblies in this ceiling, but they looked up at it together, nonetheless.

“So,” he said after a minutes’ silence, “what happened?”

“Demon,” Buffy huffed, more vibrantly than was necessary. “Big one. One of the-” She stopped, like she was searching for a PC term. “-people in the car summoned it. Big demon. Naked demon. I fell off the car and it beat me up.”

He glanced over at her as she raised one arm, indicating the patches of red where her skin had been scraped away. Deep gouges had been cut into her arms, and her knuckles looked like they’d been bruised beyond recognition.

Xander knew that, in two days, he wouldn’t even be able to tell that she’d been in a fight.

“Plus Willow gave me a painkiller about the size of one of those peanut M&Ms,” Buffy went on, giggling again. “Hey, do you know why they’re so much bigger than regular ones?”

“Painkillers, or M&Ms?”

“M&Ms, silly, pay attention.”

Xander blinked, and it was hard not to enjoy her state of presence just then. He had only ever seen her drunk once, which had also been accompanied by a hop back by about one hundred thousand years of human evolution. Now she was just loopy.

“One would imagine they’re larger to accommodate the presence of the peanut,” he said in his best Giles impression, plucking imaginary glasses from his face so they could be imaginary-polished.

It was worth it for her laugh. Almost made him forget Michelle, and that other slayer with the gun.

“I think it’s ‘cause people would have a fit if they had to have less chocolate just to get the peanut in there,” she said, and Xander didn’t mention that that was a pretty logical conclusion based on what he’d already said. She rolled toward him and fixed him with eyes that were surprisingly focused, considering how far from lucid she seemed.

He blinked, waiting for her to say whatever it was that she was going to say, but instead she just stared at him.

When she got this close, it tended to only go one way, and it wasn’t like he was striving to take that possibility off the list, but he wasn’t sure how he felt about visiting that particular venue when, first, she was high as a kite and, second, when she was so covered in injuries that he didn’t think there was a hand-sized spot on her body that wouldn’t hurt from contact.

He wasn’t getting that vibe, though. Not quite-though he didn’t doubt that it was part of her being here. It bothered him that he didn’t know the word to describe what it was they were doing-not now, but the thing that they had been doing, first in Egypt and then now in Brazil.

Sex, yeah, that was one word. But he was far from her boyfriend, and she far from his girlfriend.

Friends with benefits? No, because they’d been more than friends for years now, and even that was something he didn’t have a word for.

Complicated was a good word for it, though.

“Everything okay?” he asked when the staring didn’t stop, and she blinked like she’d forgotten he was there.

“Sorry,” she said, rolling back and staring at the ceiling. The giddiness was gone. Gone like a light switch, and it was hard to believe that, just seconds ago, they’d been joking about painkillers and M&Ms. He could tell her stories-or rather, she could probably tell him stories, because between the two of them, it had usually been him that require pharmaceutical aid in combating the hurts of the fight.

She didn’t typically get this beat up, and he couldn’t recall the details of every night after a big fight, when he’d been riding waves on what he’d told Dawn had been aspirin, if only because he couldn’t pronounce the real name.

“You don’t need to apologize,” he said, beyond confused now. She flashed him a small grin, but she didn’t take her eyes off the ceiling.

“I-” She blinked, cleared her throat, and winced when the action moved the muscles in her bruised throat. At his look, she seemed like she got something that made her feel better about talking. “I didn’t come here for-” She swallowed again, before gesturing down south.

It was such a ridiculous thing to be embarrassed about that he couldn’t stop himself from laughing. Her frown only lasted a few seconds before she joined him with a barely concealed chuckle, and he matched her stare on the ceiling.

“You don’t have to beat around the bush,” he said. “You can call it what it is. Actually, could you tell me what it is? I’m still a little lost.”

Her laugh was a little more forced this time, and any hope that he’d had that they could break through the awkward and put together something remotely resembling dialogue on the subject.

“Ditto,” was all she gave him. It was a little like playing the you hang up first game.

“So,” he said, back on awkward and kind of wishing she back to being kinda high. Stupid slayer healing. “What, uh-what’d you wanna talk about?”

Buffy didn’t look at him, just raised one hand as she traced an invisible pattern in a ceiling that couldn’t possibly have enough points to make one. Maybe she was just drawing-his eyes were a little more drawn to the signs of injury. It was weird, because he knew firsthand how soft and delicate she could feel, but looking at her when she was like this only made her seem rough, hard, and callous.

He knew otherwise. Knew it. Knew how much she hated that front she had to use, that soldier’s mask that protected everyone except everyone from getting hurt when she had to be cold.

“Willow,” she finally answered. He noticed for the first time that, aside from looking like a well-tenderized steak, she looked exhausted. It was hard to tell whether the circles under her eyes were bruises or conditioned, but he could guess.

“Oh,” he said. Well, if she wanted to talk about Willow, then maybe she ought to start talking about Willow. He wondered if she was waiting for him to establish some venue for her to make an attempt at the conversation, but his last attempt at that had only succeeded bringing back the awkward.

“I’m worried,” Buffy went on after another beat of silence.

“About her?”

“Um-yes?”

That didn’t sound like a “yes” so much as it sounded like a “maybe.” Or probably an “I have no idea.”

It bothered him a little that he was getting so fluent in Buffy-speak. His experience with women didn’t lend much help with it, so much as trying to wade through their collective crazy to approach something similar to common ground did.

It occurred to him that, even beyond the presence of power, they were opposites in almost every way.

“She’s-She’s being weird,” Buffy said. “Really weird. Giles weird.”

“Giles is weird?”

“No, just-remember when Giles changed?”

Xander swiveled his head to look at her, thought to point out to her that Giles had never changed, so much as her perception of him had changed. Somehow, she couldn’t see the similarity between the man who had turned his back on the Watcher’s Council when it had asked too much of her and the man that would have been willing to let Dawn die to save the world.

She had never seen him as a man who could make hard decisions for the greater good, rather than she had seen him as a man who could make hard decisions for her.

Xander almost envied the man for that. It was one way that he, himself, wasn’t turning out like Giles.

“Yeah,” Xander said. “Yeah, I remember.”

“It’s kind of like that,” Buffy went on, awkwardly pressing her fingers together above her chest, like they lacked the coordination for thumb-twiddling. “Some of the things she does-or doesn’t do, I guess. I’m worried.” He opened his mouth. “Yes, about her, Xander.”

“That’s not what I was going to say.”

“That’s so what you were going to say.”

It was awkward. He hated the subject matter.

It was still a warm moment.

“I haven’t noticed,” he said, and even though a smile was still tugging at the corners of his mouth, he couldn’t help the little cold spot that was growing in his stomach. “I mean, she’s been-” He thought back to the day before, when Willow had let herself into his room. Asking him if he was mad at her, which he wasn’t and told her as much. Asking him if he was okay, which he wasn’t and lied to her about. “-weird.”

“That’s pretty much exactly what I said.”

“But not your weird. My weird. She won’t let it go, you know?”

Buffy turned to him again, pushing back against one of his pillows so she could sit up half-way. She winced with the motion, and he could imagine the cloth of the pillowcases dragging a painful line against skin that had to be sensitive.

He didn’t think about the fact that, if it had been him, he would have died.

“She won’t let what go?” she asked, even though he figured she knew. Well, humor the girl, at least, she’s on medication.

His response wasn’t much more than a gesture at himself. Even so, Buffy misinterpreted.

“You mean the sexing we’re doing?” she asked, looking more confused than he’d ever seen her. When he snorted, her expression told him that that might not have been the best reaction. Still, it was the most direct reference she’d made to it other than that whole thing where they were actually doing it.

“I meant the stuff that-” He waved one hand, hoping she’d get it. When she didn’t, he groaned and settled back again, folding one arm behind his head. “You know. I’m not exactly-”

“I know.”

He looked at her. She did know. Firsthand, in fact, so maybe that was why he didn’t panic when she was around, because it wasn’t like she’d be surprised by anything she saw if she looked deeper than the skin. If she were going to judge anything she saw in him, she’d have already done it.

With Willow, the walls felt a little safer.

“She’s just worried about you,” Buffy said, and he didn’t mention the fact that what Buffy felt for Willow and what Willow felt for him were probably fundamentally similar. Just like he didn’t think too deeply on the fact that what he was doing to Willow was probably pretty similar to what Willow was doing to her.

And maybe to him. She acted the same as she had before he’d left for Africa when she was around him. That same manner of worrying about him and the air around him, even when he’d proven he could take care of himself. Almost so much so that he couldn’t believe the possibility that she was acting enough like the cold, scary version of Giles that Buffy would mention it.

Willow, though, was that last little piece of the Xander he couldn’t remember being, slipping out of his hold. If she looked in-if she knew what he was now, what he’d done-

“I didn’t mean to make you mad,” Buffy said, and he could only wonder what his expression was that made her say that. “I just-I needed to talk to someone about it. And Willow’s a little off the list right now, you know?”

“Michelle was killed by a slayer.”

Buffy didn’t answer.

He didn’t know why he’d said it. He hadn’t told Willow, because Willow was Willow and she was doing in Brazil with a little more help what he’d tried to do in Africa. And it killed him that there were slayers who had chosen a side that wasn’t their side, so he couldn’t imagine what it must have been like for her, because she’d actually gotten to know all the slayers she had found and saved. He had Radhi, and Noelle, and Callie, and then there were the forty-something other slayers he’d managed to pull out of the fire.

He hadn’t learned their names. Hadn’t wanted to learn their names, because not all of them would have survived the fight they were going to be joining.

Buffy made a small noise in the back of her throat, and when he looked at her, she looked like she’d forgotten how to talk.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” he said. “Any of you. I know it’s important, but I-” He cleared his throat of the block that had started to form. “-I wanted to look into myself first. Try and figure out why it happened.”

“Did you?” Buffy asked surprisingly quickly. “Did you check on it, I mean?”

“Not yet,” he said. “I’m still kinda, you know-” He flexed one arm, wincing at the pain it caused. Still lingering from the highway chase only days ago. “Still a little battered here.”

“Then why’d you tell me now?” she asked. A cursory glance at her told him that she wasn’t eying the ceiling anymore, instead intently looking at him. Looking at him, even, but it was hard to tell what kind of special looking this might be under all the bruises and cuts and bandages and ouch.

“I don’t know, Buff,” he said. “Maybe I want your help. Maybe I want you to know why I don’t want your help.” He laughed at his own hang-ups, so far into self-deprecation that it wasn’t even funny anymore. “I don’t think I’ve got anything figured out yet.”

Buffy watched him for a little while longer, and he could see out the corner of his eye the tumult of expressions ghosting behind the mask she was half-wearing. Not all of them had names, like a lot of other things in his life, but he wasn’t going to begrudge her for being hard to read.

Not with what he was doing to Willow.

“I think-I think there are a lot more slayers here than Willow suspects,” Buffy said diplomatically. “I don’t know, maybe they’ve learned how to keep from being discovered with magic. Tonight we-”

She stopped. Like she didn’t want to explain whatever mission Willow had dragged her and Faith along on. Instead, she cleared her throat and hit him with a chipper tone that caught him off-guard.

“Did you know Callie was here?” she asked, like it was some precursory note to whatever point she was trying to make. He recognized it as a distraction, but maybe it was one that he didn’t mind being distracted by.

“Uh, yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I-I know.” Buffy was quiet again next to him, obviously waiting for elaboration, and he was far from wanting to go through their song and dance of hide and seek just then. “Saw her in the cafeteria yesterday.”

He couldn’t help the small smile that went across his face.

“She looks good, doesn’t she?” he asked. The fingers that were still twiddling above Buffy’s chest came down, and he felt her hand against his. He took it without thinking, felt her fingers slip familiarly between his own.

“She does,” Buffy answered.

More than Radhi, and more than Noelle, Callie was their girl. Xander had found her the same day Buffy arrived, and both had had a hand in trying to shape the girl into the slayer she could become. Guidance and advice and love and care had gone into. Part of it was the idolization he knew himself to possess-there was no greater thing in the world than a slayer. Part of it was the responsibility he knew she possessed, because she had turned the key that set off the bomb that made a world full of girls with that power.

Maybe that was why he hadn’t mentioned the girl that killed Michelle-he didn’t know. If it had been him in Buffy’s or Willow’s shoes, though, he would have felt responsible.

“It’s not your fault, you know,” Buffy said. “What happened with Callie, I mean.”

“I know,” he said, even though he didn’t.

“The thing with Michelle, either,” she went on.

“I know,” he said, and that was a lie, too.

She knew he was lying. He knew she knew he was lying. Still, she didn’t call him on it, just squeezed his hand with hers and settled in a little more closely to him.

“What were you saying?” he asked. “About the thing tonight?”

“Oh,” Buffy said, sounding like she’d been caught stealing his leftovers from the fridge. “There, uh, there were more girls. And boys, too. Kids, though-a whole lotta kids. They’re the ones that Willow’s contact sent us after. Some kinda weird, crazy gang war between some jerk who I wish were a demon and-and a whole lotta kids. Some of them were slayers.”

“How do you know?”

“One of ‘em punched me,” Buffy said. “Hard.”

He grinned, despite how awful the idea was.

“I’m so sorry to hear,” he said. “What happened with the kids?”

“Willow didn’t say,” Buffy went on. “That was after my Knievel moment.”

“Ah.”

“Yeah.”

They were quiet again, the kind of silence that only awkward teenagers were supposed to be capable of.

“Michelle said something about traffickers,” he said. “I wonder if she had something to do with those kids.” Buffy shrugged.

“Maybe,” she said. “Maybe they attacked the club because she got killed. I don’t know, maybe that club’s got something to do with it. Maybe-” She stopped, brow furrowed, and settled her head against his shoulder. “I didn’t want it to be like this.”

His arm slid under her automatically to find her shoulder.

“I know,” he said, and this time, he wasn’t lying. “I didn’t, either. Neither did Will, for that matter.”

“There was a slayer,” Buffy went on. “Worked for the guy at the club as a bodyguard. Adalia. I think-I think she may have-”

“It’s all right,” he said, cutting her off as quickly as he could. He could remember that girl’s look after she realized that it had been Michelle, and not him, that she’d shot. That momentary look for horror, that had lasted only long enough for her to point the gun at him and fire off a few more shots. “We don’t have to talk about it.”

He felt a little like she wanted to argue. He felt a little like she may have been relieved. It was hard to tell with her sometimes.

“Thanks,” she finally said. “I-thanks.”

He was long past ever treating her like something fragile, because she could bench ten of him one handed. It would have been beyond chauvinistic, even if it were engrained on him by this point, so he just chalked it up to understanding.

Even if he couldn’t.

Adalia. So her name was Adalia.

Buffy shifted a little closer, so her head was fully on his shoulder. This wasn’t fragility-it wasn’t solace. It was sharing, maybe.

Yeah, maybe “sharing” was a good word for it.

It was a few minutes before he felt her lips against his neck. He could feel his pulse thudding faintly against them.

“I thought you didn’t come here for that,” he argued halfheartedly.

She pulled back only long enough to answer with, “Changed my mind.”

“Buffy?”

“Mmm?”

He tried not to think about how much he liked it when she made humming noises. The hand around her shoulder tightened a little, but he was far from trying to pull her away.

“You’re hurt,” he said instead. Her lips pulled back-tugged the skin of his neck for a second as they did so-and she reached across him. Kind of rolled into him to do it, so he could feel her pressed against him.

She wrapped one hand around his free arm, pulling it from where it was folded behind his head. His skin was still a little damp-tingly from the shower.

She laid his arm out across his torso, turning it over to reveal the huge bruise that ran almost the entire length of his forearm. One of the many points of battery that he couldn’t remember clearly.

Warm fingers trailed across the bruise, so feather-soft that it didn’t even hurt.

“So are you,” she whispered, her lips brushing his ear this time.

So he was.

She shifted again, and he didn’t argue this time.

That cold spot in his stomach went away for a little while.

To be continued.

I miss writing scenes like this one. There's a certain theme to these characters' interactions, and if you've read He's No Jack Sparrow, then you can probably recognize it.

The title's a reference to this charming song, which I think does a pretty good job of setting a mood for the scene. It's probably a weakness to rely on music to sell a scene, but I feel like it does more complementing than completing.

Little hiatus for this, though, 'cause I'm switching to the Willow/Xander piece I've been piddling over.

Hope you liked it.

All the best.

You look so defeated lying there in your new twin-sized bed.
-Death Cab for Cutie, "Your New Twin Sized Bed"