Far From Perfect 1/1
Title: Far From Perfect 1/1
Rating: R
Warnings: some het
Pairings: Xander/Jesse, Xander/Cordelia, Xander/OFC, Xander/Spike
Notes: Written for lunabee34, because I luff her.
Summary: Xander's experiences with a girl, a boy, a woman and a man. Told in four ficlets.
Far From Perfect
The Boy
It starts off with Cordie, as most things do when Jesse is around. Jesse sits with his feet on the couch, hands around a beer bottle he balances on his knee - he swiped it from his dad’s mini fridge. Brought Xander one too but Xander’s has grown warm and he’s barely had a sip. He doesn’t like the taste.
“And then I’d just, like …” Jesse mimes grabbing a face, sticks his tongue out and wiggles it just to make Xander laugh.
“You’d probably get a whole 2 seconds of tongue before Cordelia goes Mortal Combat on your ass,” Xander snorts.
“Yeah, but she’d still be touching me,” Jesse shrugs. “Oh, man, this is the best bit!” He nods to the screen, grimacing when Frankenstein rips a girl’s heart out her chest - in the very literal sense.
“For a movie with swishy English people and lacy shirts, this is pretty cool,” Xander concedes, wincing when Dead Hot Girl has her hair set on fire by a falling candle.
“Told you, man. Ms. Pete nearly passed out when she showed this to us in English class - she thought it was one of those “thee and thou” flicks. But …” he moves to reach the video player in front of them so he can forward the tape but he loses his balance (lanky 15 year old, still getting used to folding his long legs) and grabs Xander’s leg to steady himself.
“You know what’ll suck?” he asks, nervous laugh as he straightens. His hand doesn’t move. Xander is horribly aware that his skin is growing hot beneath it. “Even if I do manage to get Cordelia to see the light and kiss me, I won’t know what to do with her. Not much practice,” he turns his head, his jaw tight and cheeks flushed. His smile is lazy, too slack to be anything but fake, and his eyes are concentrated on the wall beside Xander’s face. Xander blinks. Swallows over the nervous laughter that bubbles in his breath.
“You know - we could … I mean, not in a gay way, just for … to practice for the hot mamas, you know?” and the words feel like they’re getting caught in his teeth, stuttering over his lips and is he even speaking in English?
“Yeah,” Jesse says vaguely, nodding as though Xander was making sense. Which, he was pretty sure, he wasn’t.
Before Xander could inform him of this, Jesse had leant forward and there’s more weight on Xander’s thigh. And then boylips, dry and soft, are brushing over his mouth. It should be harder than this but (terrifyingly) it isn’t. Because this is Jesse. Xander’s stubble scratches over Jesse’s skin and it sounds like their bodies are whispering when Jesse finally opens his mouth, runs his tongue over Xander’s lips.
The beer in Jesse’s left hand sloshes onto the carpet when he lifts his hand to Xander’s neck. “Shit!” he mutters, panic colouring his voice as he pulls away. “Mom is going to kill me!”
Xander tries to catch his breath as he watches Jesse desperately try to clear up the mess, make sure it didn’t leave a stain.
They watched some more ‘Frankenstien’ when he was done and continued their scathing commentary - everything’s pretty much the same as it was before the ‘practicing’. Except now, Xander avoids using the word ‘swishy’.
The Girl
“Jesus, Cordie …”
Xander gropes for a shelf to steady him, hopes the creaking is the wood he’s backed up against and not the bones in his knees because how mortifying would it be if he collapsed onto his not-girlfriend during his best ever (first ever) blowjob?
He doesn’t dare to look down because seeing her will push him over the edge - hell, he’s lasted a whole 30 seconds, he doesn’t want to jinx it now. He’s aware that his eyes are rolling back in his head, that the muscles in his face are pulling his features and rearranging them so he closely resembles … blowjob in the school supplies closet with the hottest girl in school, oh God he can’t think … something really ugly.
He hears something squeaking. Hopes it’s the shelf. Knows it’s probably him.
And then, just like that, it’s over. Cordie rocks back on her heels, squawks when her hair gets stuck in Xander’s zipper.
Afterwards, they kiss awkwardly, messy and shivery hot, before she smiles and opens the door. The cool air (which, yay, doesn’t smell like sex and bleach) slips down Xander’s throat and punches life back into his lungs.
Ms. Friedman gives him an F for his Geography project, Buffy calls him a spaz and Jerry With A Retainer And Bad Breath tries to trip him up in the cafeteria.
Best. Day. Ever.
The Woman
“It pains you?” she asks, brushing her fingers over the patch gently.
“Not much,” he shrugs - he’s trying not to squirm under her scrutiny, but it isn’t easy. People in Africa are way more upfront about things than he’s used to. Giles had said it was the language barrier but Xander wasn’t so sure. In a continent that where the heat is an enemy in itself, where power is taken and life is cheap, nobody has the energy to beat around the bush. Xander kind of likes that. Respects it, even. It makes life a lot easier when he doesn’t have to look for hidden implications because God knows he isn’t exactly quick on the uptake when people try that whole ‘subtle’ thing.
“I see?” she asks, though it’s more of a formality than a question because she’s already lifting the patch before he can reply. She tilts her head to the side as he tenses beneath her fingers. He’s never felt more naked. In the not-fun-naked sense. Hayaat wrinkles her nose and Xander’s already reaching up to cover the dip of his eyelid. She frowns at him, grabs his hand in hers. “Your eyebrows are very big,” she says, a smile teasing her lips. Xander pauses for a moment.
“Charming,” he mutters, though he can’t quite hide his snort of laughter. Hayaat beams, takes his chin in her hand and moves his head so he’s looking straight at her.
“Very beautiful,” she decides. She moves a little closer with one elegant shift of her hips.
“Right back at you,” Xander says. He means it. Hayaat’s expression changes, ripples into something that makes him absently wonder if maybe his luck has followed him to Libya, that maybe she’s a demon because human women never gave him that look.
“My daughter, she is happy now she goes to the slayer school?” Hayaat asks, an utter non-sequitur here and that’s usually Xander’s thing.
“Um, yeah. She made a lot of friends at the academy - you really did the right thing in letting us take her,” he tells her, wondering if it were appropriate to be talking about a student when you were having seriously NC17 thoughts about her mother.
“I know it was the right thing,” Hayaat shrugs, “because now, I meet you.”
Her hands are tattooed with reddened henna and when they wind across his skin, they look like pieces of art.
The Man
“I don’t remember you ever being quiet,” Spike observes from the passenger seat. His boots are up on the dashboard, warmed in the sun.
“I don’t remember you ever being alive,” Xander replies, not looking away from the road. Things have changed over the years, a lot of things, but his driving skills aren’t one of them.
A silence follows and this one is heavier than the one before it. Spike switches the radio on, taps out the tune on his thigh and tries not to look out the window - the lampposts and fields whirling by make him feel ill.
“You look like you haven’t had a good bonk in ages,” he says, mostly to needle Xander into starting something. Best cure for boredom, that.
“Thanks,” Xander replies dismissively.
Spike blinks. “Right. Sod this,” he mutters. He looks out the window, watches sheep blur into the green as the world hurtles past them. Never made him feel sick as a vampire so it doesn’t make sense that it does when he’s human. Feeling car-sick is probably just one of those human weaknesses easily overcome by a bit of perseverance and positive thinking.
Spike had never been one for perseverance.
He remembers this when he tells Xander to pull over with a tightness to his voice that he can’t control.
“Sure you’re not dead?” Xander asks with an eyebrow raised. Spike looks several shades north of ‘corpse’.
“Shut up,” Spike hisses, shutting his eyes and trying to control the swirls in his stomach.
“Hey, are you alright?” Xander sounds concerned (though reluctantly so) and he gingerly touches Spike’s arm. “Maybe we should stay here for a while - I don’t want to have to get over the smell of ex-vampire vomit on the new upholstery.”
“I’ll try and aim for your shoes,” Spike assures him. Xander rolls his eyes and opens the windows before he switches off the engine.
Xander isn’t sure how they go from threats of projectile vomiting to making out on the backseat within a period of 27 minutes, but they do.
Spike’s too bony and his heart flutters just under his ribs, skin stretched across them thinly, so thinly that Xander’s almost afraid that if he presses to hard his hand will go straight through. Spike’s elbows are too sharp in the small space the car provides, so they often end up jammed into Xander because his shoulders have broadened and he’s just too big under Spike. There’s little finesse, it’s really a matter of rutting and gasps, fingers dragging across skin and lips crushing against flesh, scandalising the local sheep population. It’s far from perfect.
And somehow, Xander knows he’ll find himself here again.
End
Rating: R
Warnings: some het
Pairings: Xander/Jesse, Xander/Cordelia, Xander/OFC, Xander/Spike
Notes: Written for lunabee34, because I luff her.
Summary: Xander's experiences with a girl, a boy, a woman and a man. Told in four ficlets.
Far From Perfect
The Boy
It starts off with Cordie, as most things do when Jesse is around. Jesse sits with his feet on the couch, hands around a beer bottle he balances on his knee - he swiped it from his dad’s mini fridge. Brought Xander one too but Xander’s has grown warm and he’s barely had a sip. He doesn’t like the taste.
“And then I’d just, like …” Jesse mimes grabbing a face, sticks his tongue out and wiggles it just to make Xander laugh.
“You’d probably get a whole 2 seconds of tongue before Cordelia goes Mortal Combat on your ass,” Xander snorts.
“Yeah, but she’d still be touching me,” Jesse shrugs. “Oh, man, this is the best bit!” He nods to the screen, grimacing when Frankenstein rips a girl’s heart out her chest - in the very literal sense.
“For a movie with swishy English people and lacy shirts, this is pretty cool,” Xander concedes, wincing when Dead Hot Girl has her hair set on fire by a falling candle.
“Told you, man. Ms. Pete nearly passed out when she showed this to us in English class - she thought it was one of those “thee and thou” flicks. But …” he moves to reach the video player in front of them so he can forward the tape but he loses his balance (lanky 15 year old, still getting used to folding his long legs) and grabs Xander’s leg to steady himself.
“You know what’ll suck?” he asks, nervous laugh as he straightens. His hand doesn’t move. Xander is horribly aware that his skin is growing hot beneath it. “Even if I do manage to get Cordelia to see the light and kiss me, I won’t know what to do with her. Not much practice,” he turns his head, his jaw tight and cheeks flushed. His smile is lazy, too slack to be anything but fake, and his eyes are concentrated on the wall beside Xander’s face. Xander blinks. Swallows over the nervous laughter that bubbles in his breath.
“You know - we could … I mean, not in a gay way, just for … to practice for the hot mamas, you know?” and the words feel like they’re getting caught in his teeth, stuttering over his lips and is he even speaking in English?
“Yeah,” Jesse says vaguely, nodding as though Xander was making sense. Which, he was pretty sure, he wasn’t.
Before Xander could inform him of this, Jesse had leant forward and there’s more weight on Xander’s thigh. And then boylips, dry and soft, are brushing over his mouth. It should be harder than this but (terrifyingly) it isn’t. Because this is Jesse. Xander’s stubble scratches over Jesse’s skin and it sounds like their bodies are whispering when Jesse finally opens his mouth, runs his tongue over Xander’s lips.
The beer in Jesse’s left hand sloshes onto the carpet when he lifts his hand to Xander’s neck. “Shit!” he mutters, panic colouring his voice as he pulls away. “Mom is going to kill me!”
Xander tries to catch his breath as he watches Jesse desperately try to clear up the mess, make sure it didn’t leave a stain.
They watched some more ‘Frankenstien’ when he was done and continued their scathing commentary - everything’s pretty much the same as it was before the ‘practicing’. Except now, Xander avoids using the word ‘swishy’.
The Girl
“Jesus, Cordie …”
Xander gropes for a shelf to steady him, hopes the creaking is the wood he’s backed up against and not the bones in his knees because how mortifying would it be if he collapsed onto his not-girlfriend during his best ever (first ever) blowjob?
He doesn’t dare to look down because seeing her will push him over the edge - hell, he’s lasted a whole 30 seconds, he doesn’t want to jinx it now. He’s aware that his eyes are rolling back in his head, that the muscles in his face are pulling his features and rearranging them so he closely resembles … blowjob in the school supplies closet with the hottest girl in school, oh God he can’t think … something really ugly.
He hears something squeaking. Hopes it’s the shelf. Knows it’s probably him.
And then, just like that, it’s over. Cordie rocks back on her heels, squawks when her hair gets stuck in Xander’s zipper.
Afterwards, they kiss awkwardly, messy and shivery hot, before she smiles and opens the door. The cool air (which, yay, doesn’t smell like sex and bleach) slips down Xander’s throat and punches life back into his lungs.
Ms. Friedman gives him an F for his Geography project, Buffy calls him a spaz and Jerry With A Retainer And Bad Breath tries to trip him up in the cafeteria.
Best. Day. Ever.
The Woman
“It pains you?” she asks, brushing her fingers over the patch gently.
“Not much,” he shrugs - he’s trying not to squirm under her scrutiny, but it isn’t easy. People in Africa are way more upfront about things than he’s used to. Giles had said it was the language barrier but Xander wasn’t so sure. In a continent that where the heat is an enemy in itself, where power is taken and life is cheap, nobody has the energy to beat around the bush. Xander kind of likes that. Respects it, even. It makes life a lot easier when he doesn’t have to look for hidden implications because God knows he isn’t exactly quick on the uptake when people try that whole ‘subtle’ thing.
“I see?” she asks, though it’s more of a formality than a question because she’s already lifting the patch before he can reply. She tilts her head to the side as he tenses beneath her fingers. He’s never felt more naked. In the not-fun-naked sense. Hayaat wrinkles her nose and Xander’s already reaching up to cover the dip of his eyelid. She frowns at him, grabs his hand in hers. “Your eyebrows are very big,” she says, a smile teasing her lips. Xander pauses for a moment.
“Charming,” he mutters, though he can’t quite hide his snort of laughter. Hayaat beams, takes his chin in her hand and moves his head so he’s looking straight at her.
“Very beautiful,” she decides. She moves a little closer with one elegant shift of her hips.
“Right back at you,” Xander says. He means it. Hayaat’s expression changes, ripples into something that makes him absently wonder if maybe his luck has followed him to Libya, that maybe she’s a demon because human women never gave him that look.
“My daughter, she is happy now she goes to the slayer school?” Hayaat asks, an utter non-sequitur here and that’s usually Xander’s thing.
“Um, yeah. She made a lot of friends at the academy - you really did the right thing in letting us take her,” he tells her, wondering if it were appropriate to be talking about a student when you were having seriously NC17 thoughts about her mother.
“I know it was the right thing,” Hayaat shrugs, “because now, I meet you.”
Her hands are tattooed with reddened henna and when they wind across his skin, they look like pieces of art.
The Man
“I don’t remember you ever being quiet,” Spike observes from the passenger seat. His boots are up on the dashboard, warmed in the sun.
“I don’t remember you ever being alive,” Xander replies, not looking away from the road. Things have changed over the years, a lot of things, but his driving skills aren’t one of them.
A silence follows and this one is heavier than the one before it. Spike switches the radio on, taps out the tune on his thigh and tries not to look out the window - the lampposts and fields whirling by make him feel ill.
“You look like you haven’t had a good bonk in ages,” he says, mostly to needle Xander into starting something. Best cure for boredom, that.
“Thanks,” Xander replies dismissively.
Spike blinks. “Right. Sod this,” he mutters. He looks out the window, watches sheep blur into the green as the world hurtles past them. Never made him feel sick as a vampire so it doesn’t make sense that it does when he’s human. Feeling car-sick is probably just one of those human weaknesses easily overcome by a bit of perseverance and positive thinking.
Spike had never been one for perseverance.
He remembers this when he tells Xander to pull over with a tightness to his voice that he can’t control.
“Sure you’re not dead?” Xander asks with an eyebrow raised. Spike looks several shades north of ‘corpse’.
“Shut up,” Spike hisses, shutting his eyes and trying to control the swirls in his stomach.
“Hey, are you alright?” Xander sounds concerned (though reluctantly so) and he gingerly touches Spike’s arm. “Maybe we should stay here for a while - I don’t want to have to get over the smell of ex-vampire vomit on the new upholstery.”
“I’ll try and aim for your shoes,” Spike assures him. Xander rolls his eyes and opens the windows before he switches off the engine.
Xander isn’t sure how they go from threats of projectile vomiting to making out on the backseat within a period of 27 minutes, but they do.
Spike’s too bony and his heart flutters just under his ribs, skin stretched across them thinly, so thinly that Xander’s almost afraid that if he presses to hard his hand will go straight through. Spike’s elbows are too sharp in the small space the car provides, so they often end up jammed into Xander because his shoulders have broadened and he’s just too big under Spike. There’s little finesse, it’s really a matter of rutting and gasps, fingers dragging across skin and lips crushing against flesh, scandalising the local sheep population. It’s far from perfect.
And somehow, Xander knows he’ll find himself here again.
End