Things You Keep
This is my attempt at getting back my writing mojo.
Title: Things you keep
Author: yessire
Rating: Pg
Fandom: Angel/Buffy
Pairing: Angel/Xander.
Disclaimer: I don’t own the pretty boys, in fact I own nothing except my dog, and she never does what she’s told.
Summary: Sometimes the things you throw away define you as much as the things you keep.
Setting: Two years after Angel goes to LA.
Feedback: Please or you could always send candy…lots of candy.
He did this twice a year. Always he said the same things that he would get rid of more sale it or trash it. This was the first time he’d brought someone along though and his lover bounced with excitement asked questions and touched everything.
Angel found himself making confessions about this or that, giving the accounts of how he came into possession of a set of gold candle sticks or the rug that caught Xander’s eye. It took more time than he thought it would but then everything did with Xander.
In the end there was a pile too big to fit into his car of things Xander wanted to take back with him, all of Angel's art work, the gold candle sticks stolen from the cathedral in Nepal and the rug woven in china that he’d taken from under the feet of an English nobleman three years after he was turned. He tried to explain to his lover that these things were reminders of his past meant to stay here to ground him remind him of the things he’s done not to be brought out into the light for all to see.
Xander had agreed and said that yes they were remnants of his past but that they represented defining moments in his life that just because he locked them away, gave them to others or trashed them the past wouldn’t and couldn’t be changed or forgotten.
Only one thing wound up in the trash a black box inside there was a silver cross he remembered giving it to her, remembered it coming back to him in the mail with no note. Angel was sure he’d loved her that they would find some way to be together but now this was just a reminder that he was wrong and now it was time to let it go.
Xander would never let go of anything he’d given him. One day three months ago that’s when he knew that this time was forever he’d found it, a green box under their bed with every little thing Angel had had ever given him from dried flowers to the silly little rock the Xander was sure looked the Marvin the Martian in profile. Xander would never give up any connection they shared because some things are destined to be trash and some are meant to define your life and you didn’t give them up or send them back in plain brown wrapping you hold onto them even if to everyone else it looks like trash.