The Fabulous Ladies Night Club (1/8)
Title: The Fabulous Ladies Night Club
Author: ubiquirk
Rating: R
Genre: genfic: action-adventure, humor, drama
Word Count: ~14K
Character: Xander
Disclaimer: Not mine; no money.
AN: Set between S3 and S4 of Buffy. Written for spring_with_xan. Lots of thanks to my lovely beta, firefly_124. There’s a Spanish Glossary to have open in another tab for easy reference.
Summary: The road trip that wasn’t. After graduation, Xander only makes it to Oxnard before his car breaks down, and he finds himself washing dishes at The Fabulous Ladies Night Club. Forty miles to get back home might not seem that far, but sometimes, it can take a lot to cross.
Award winner - details here.
1.
Xander’s fingers finally touch metal as he roots around to pull out a plate made heavy by the resistance of water. It’s the first time he’s felt the bottom of the sink since his shift began five and a half hours ago.
A bead of sweat tickles down the back of his neck, and he flinches, skin longing to twitch like a horse shaking off flies. He learned early on that slapping with wet hands made both greasy and sudsy never really works out. And what’s up with that anyway? I mean, how could water be both greasy and still have suds? He shakes his head. It’s a problem for Willow and her big scientific brain, but the real problem is that Willow’s forty miles and forty billion ego points away from Oxnard and Xander.
Squirming in the damp heat of the kitchen, he scrubs and rinses, bemoaning that tomato sauce has once again begun staining the chips around the edges. Looks like another bleach bath the next slow night, or Doris will start checking on his work again. And Doris in the kitchen translates as pinches on the ass. He sighs. The life-altering road trip really wasn’t supposed to be a quick and dirty lesson on the disturbing side of being a sex object. If I ever see Cordy again, I’m not going to stare at her cleavage - not even if she wears that one really low-cut red thing with the little straps and the … Oh, crap, who am I kidding? I’ll look. I’ll just feel bad about it now.
As he sets the last plate in the drainer, he dries his hands and stops to lean against the sink, weight against hipbones relieving lower back. At least it’s relatively quiet. The kitchen stops serving at eleven, and Gino never sticks around long after he’s dumped the dirty pots and pans onto the hard metal sink board beside Xander, the loud clatter and clang seemingly purposeful when matched to the smirk the man always wears.
Or quiet for a little bit.
Jorge bangs through the swinging doors with enough force to rattle the glasses on his tray, small, sharp snaps of sound. He twirls into the kitchen, tilting the tray at an angle to keep the glasses on it, hips gyrating to the bass beat coming from the club proper, his red shirt flapping unbuttoned enough to show off a smooth vee of bronzed skin.
“Yo, watch out!” Xander lunges for one glass that’s finally given into centrifugal force, flying off at an angled vector. “You so don’t want Doris taking that out of your paycheck … or anything else for that matter.”
“No worries, man. I’m her best waiter.” The tray hits the counter with a rattle of clinks.
“You’re her only waiter.”
“I’m her best waiter, and she knows not to hurt the merchandise.” Jorge grabs a pole on the corner of the kitchen’s island and swivels his ass out, pouting at the refrigerator as if it were an audience.
“In your dreams.”
Jorge straightens, smoothing a hand over his already perfectly coifed black hair. “You’ll see. Any day now, it’s going to happen, and I’ll be up on stage with all the chicas screaming for me and pawing and throwing of their money.”
“Right, and Scotty’s going to beam me up for adventures on the Enterprise.”
Jorge waves away Xander’s negativity. “I’ll be even better than Martin, muy caliente. And you should see the way this one chica is looking at him tonight, man. Like she wants to suck the chrome right off his Cadillac.”
“Really?” His voice hits a high note on the second syllable, and Xander clears his throat with deep, manly sounds. The only time anyone’d really looked at him like that was because of that spell, but he can still imagine …
Jorge just grins and grabs hold of Xander’s upper arm to drag him to the double doors. Flipping off the kitchen lights, he opens one side halfway and extends his right arm out in a line that intersects with the crowd a little to the left of the stage.
She’s easy to spot, even in a group of women, as they all seem somehow less, pennies dulled by patina compared to her shiny copper brightness. And Xander thinks she might be perfect, or at least his idea of perfection, because it’s as if someone fused Cordy and Willow for him: the lushness of Cordelia’s body painted over with Willow’s rich red hair and pale skin that glows in the reflected lights of the stage.
It makes her deep red lips riveting.
Lips that quirk in the most playful of smiles, offering and teasing, and enough to drive a man crazy when combined with eyes blazing bright in the intensity of their focus.
Even Martin, the club’s most experienced dancer, isn’t immune. He works her side of the stage almost exclusively, and Xander wonders what Doris will have to say about that. But then, Doris lets them go where the money is, and the woman crooks one finger at Martin to call him over, slowly stuffing a dollar into the front of a g-string already bulging with bills, hands lingering longer than officially allowed, teeth biting at lower lip.
But Martin just smiles and shimmies faster instead of raising one arm over his head to signal trouble, and the bouncers stay by the door.
“Do you see what I mean?” Jorge’s voice holds a note of longing that not even loud music disguises.
Xander can only nod.
The cycle repeats three times, the redhead’s eyes never once leaving off from devouring Martin, Xander’s eyes never once leaving off from devouring her, when he’s jerked from his vicarious dreams by Doris.
“Boys, that’s enough of that!” She pushes past them, tray in hand. “Close the door and get those lights on. I’ve got a business to run.”
Efficiency. Xander always looks at Doris and thinks efficiency.
Like now, how she uses one hand to slide Jorge’s tray over while setting hers down and simultaneously looking around the room to check on the state of things, short, black curls bobbing as her head moves.
She’s tiny, but she carries her strength through solidity, the hard, compact muscles of a professional dancer. Her movement reminds Xander of Buffy - that self-assurance that nothing can stand in her way, that she won’t let it.
“Jorge, tables five and twelve look like they could do with another round. Get on it.”
“Sí, Señora.” He sweeps into a bow, rising and pivoting in one fluid move to blast through the doors.
“Show off.” But her voice is affectionate, and she watches him go with a small smile. A smile that widens as she turns to Xander. “Xander, Carlita’s running out of the chopsticks I ordered for the bar. Seems the new Shanghai Slammer is a real winner. Wash these quick as you can.” She points at the long cylinders of wood on her tray.
“Those are washable? I mean, they’re not the little tear-apart ones, but …”
“Xander.” Her tone serious, all smiling gone. “I’m getting a new business going here, and that means I have to make business decisions. Besides, alcohol kills germs.”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
Doris grins, eyes sparking and crinkling, and walks up to pat him on the cheek. “I just love it when you call me Ma’am.”
She’s pretty and smells really good, but Xander hasn’t exactly forgotten how the whole Mrs. Robinson thing went for him with Ms. French, even if his biology has. He swallows.
Laughing, she walks for the doors. “Just get those chopsticks out stat.”
He turns towards the sink, grimacing as he plunges one arm into the greasy water that’s somehow even more disgusting now that it’s grown tepid. The suds are all gone, and he wonders if that qualifies as an answer to his earlier conundrum - grease and suds can coexist, but it won’t be for long.
As the old drains away, Xander soaps up his scrubber to clean the sink out before refilling it. The glasses are going to require it, and he figures the chopsticks that were never meant to be reused, porous surfaces soaking up whatever they come in contact with, deserve fresh water as well.
Muscle tightens across his hamstrings and quadriceps as he leans far forwards, left hand braced on the sink while the right scrubs, and he raises his right arm briefly to make a muscle. Not bad. Not bad at all, Harris. He remembers the redhead’s teasing lips. All this manual-labor crap does a body good.
The hot water seems to splash into the sink in time with the beat vibrating up through the floor, and the smell of fake lemon rises from the suds of cheap detergent.
Xander stops the water when it’s only a foot deep, thinking it’ll be easier to find the chopsticks that way, but he needn’t have bothered. The first handful flung in all float, stuck in the bubbles, the wood light and insubstantial as if it’s been transmuted into that other traditional Chinese element, air. And I can’t even remember why Giles told me about those. He shakes his head.
He’s still fighting to push them under to soak when Jorge bangs back through the doors. “Carlita needs those chopsticks like now, man. And if I don’t get them to her, she’ll say something to Doris, and you know how that’ll go.”
“Yeah.” Xander scoops a bunch out of the suds and rinses them under the tap before making a futile effort at drying them.
“Don’t worry about that. They’re going right back into liquid, and the chicas are already flying from the drinks and the men.” He bares his teeth in something grin-like. “The tips, they are starting to get good.”
“That’s cool.” The towel bunches under his anxious fingers. “And … uh … about later, do you think …”
“Hey, man, I told you it’s cool.” Jorge gives a small, self-deprecating laugh. “My car, she is auto de mierda, but at least she runs.”
“Which is better than mine, which is just plain old mierda.” He looks down at his hands. The bus gets him to work, but stops running by the time he’s done at three in the morning. “I appreciate the ride.”
Jorge claps him on the shoulder and points in mock sternness. “You do this every night, Xander. From now on, I will only give you a ride if you do not ask. Comprende?”
Xander looks up. “Comprende.”
“Don’t be so serious. We have our three days off starting tomorrow, and you and I are going to go to La Cocina for tamales and cervezas again one of those days, sí?”
Smiling at the thought of hanging with Jorge instead of watching crappy TV on a crappy TV in a crappy rent-by-the-week motel room, Xander nods. “Hell, I’ll go all three days if you want.”
Jorge laughs, a flash of white truer than the kitchen’s fluorescent lights. “That’s what I mean, man. That’s how to live.”
Feedback appreciated.
Part 2
Author: ubiquirk
Rating: R
Genre: genfic: action-adventure, humor, drama
Word Count: ~14K
Character: Xander
Disclaimer: Not mine; no money.
AN: Set between S3 and S4 of Buffy. Written for spring_with_xan. Lots of thanks to my lovely beta, firefly_124. There’s a Spanish Glossary to have open in another tab for easy reference.
Summary: The road trip that wasn’t. After graduation, Xander only makes it to Oxnard before his car breaks down, and he finds himself washing dishes at The Fabulous Ladies Night Club. Forty miles to get back home might not seem that far, but sometimes, it can take a lot to cross.
Award winner - details here.
1.
Xander’s fingers finally touch metal as he roots around to pull out a plate made heavy by the resistance of water. It’s the first time he’s felt the bottom of the sink since his shift began five and a half hours ago.
A bead of sweat tickles down the back of his neck, and he flinches, skin longing to twitch like a horse shaking off flies. He learned early on that slapping with wet hands made both greasy and sudsy never really works out. And what’s up with that anyway? I mean, how could water be both greasy and still have suds? He shakes his head. It’s a problem for Willow and her big scientific brain, but the real problem is that Willow’s forty miles and forty billion ego points away from Oxnard and Xander.
Squirming in the damp heat of the kitchen, he scrubs and rinses, bemoaning that tomato sauce has once again begun staining the chips around the edges. Looks like another bleach bath the next slow night, or Doris will start checking on his work again. And Doris in the kitchen translates as pinches on the ass. He sighs. The life-altering road trip really wasn’t supposed to be a quick and dirty lesson on the disturbing side of being a sex object. If I ever see Cordy again, I’m not going to stare at her cleavage - not even if she wears that one really low-cut red thing with the little straps and the … Oh, crap, who am I kidding? I’ll look. I’ll just feel bad about it now.
As he sets the last plate in the drainer, he dries his hands and stops to lean against the sink, weight against hipbones relieving lower back. At least it’s relatively quiet. The kitchen stops serving at eleven, and Gino never sticks around long after he’s dumped the dirty pots and pans onto the hard metal sink board beside Xander, the loud clatter and clang seemingly purposeful when matched to the smirk the man always wears.
Or quiet for a little bit.
Jorge bangs through the swinging doors with enough force to rattle the glasses on his tray, small, sharp snaps of sound. He twirls into the kitchen, tilting the tray at an angle to keep the glasses on it, hips gyrating to the bass beat coming from the club proper, his red shirt flapping unbuttoned enough to show off a smooth vee of bronzed skin.
“Yo, watch out!” Xander lunges for one glass that’s finally given into centrifugal force, flying off at an angled vector. “You so don’t want Doris taking that out of your paycheck … or anything else for that matter.”
“No worries, man. I’m her best waiter.” The tray hits the counter with a rattle of clinks.
“You’re her only waiter.”
“I’m her best waiter, and she knows not to hurt the merchandise.” Jorge grabs a pole on the corner of the kitchen’s island and swivels his ass out, pouting at the refrigerator as if it were an audience.
“In your dreams.”
Jorge straightens, smoothing a hand over his already perfectly coifed black hair. “You’ll see. Any day now, it’s going to happen, and I’ll be up on stage with all the chicas screaming for me and pawing and throwing of their money.”
“Right, and Scotty’s going to beam me up for adventures on the Enterprise.”
Jorge waves away Xander’s negativity. “I’ll be even better than Martin, muy caliente. And you should see the way this one chica is looking at him tonight, man. Like she wants to suck the chrome right off his Cadillac.”
“Really?” His voice hits a high note on the second syllable, and Xander clears his throat with deep, manly sounds. The only time anyone’d really looked at him like that was because of that spell, but he can still imagine …
Jorge just grins and grabs hold of Xander’s upper arm to drag him to the double doors. Flipping off the kitchen lights, he opens one side halfway and extends his right arm out in a line that intersects with the crowd a little to the left of the stage.
She’s easy to spot, even in a group of women, as they all seem somehow less, pennies dulled by patina compared to her shiny copper brightness. And Xander thinks she might be perfect, or at least his idea of perfection, because it’s as if someone fused Cordy and Willow for him: the lushness of Cordelia’s body painted over with Willow’s rich red hair and pale skin that glows in the reflected lights of the stage.
It makes her deep red lips riveting.
Lips that quirk in the most playful of smiles, offering and teasing, and enough to drive a man crazy when combined with eyes blazing bright in the intensity of their focus.
Even Martin, the club’s most experienced dancer, isn’t immune. He works her side of the stage almost exclusively, and Xander wonders what Doris will have to say about that. But then, Doris lets them go where the money is, and the woman crooks one finger at Martin to call him over, slowly stuffing a dollar into the front of a g-string already bulging with bills, hands lingering longer than officially allowed, teeth biting at lower lip.
But Martin just smiles and shimmies faster instead of raising one arm over his head to signal trouble, and the bouncers stay by the door.
“Do you see what I mean?” Jorge’s voice holds a note of longing that not even loud music disguises.
Xander can only nod.
The cycle repeats three times, the redhead’s eyes never once leaving off from devouring Martin, Xander’s eyes never once leaving off from devouring her, when he’s jerked from his vicarious dreams by Doris.
“Boys, that’s enough of that!” She pushes past them, tray in hand. “Close the door and get those lights on. I’ve got a business to run.”
Efficiency. Xander always looks at Doris and thinks efficiency.
Like now, how she uses one hand to slide Jorge’s tray over while setting hers down and simultaneously looking around the room to check on the state of things, short, black curls bobbing as her head moves.
She’s tiny, but she carries her strength through solidity, the hard, compact muscles of a professional dancer. Her movement reminds Xander of Buffy - that self-assurance that nothing can stand in her way, that she won’t let it.
“Jorge, tables five and twelve look like they could do with another round. Get on it.”
“Sí, Señora.” He sweeps into a bow, rising and pivoting in one fluid move to blast through the doors.
“Show off.” But her voice is affectionate, and she watches him go with a small smile. A smile that widens as she turns to Xander. “Xander, Carlita’s running out of the chopsticks I ordered for the bar. Seems the new Shanghai Slammer is a real winner. Wash these quick as you can.” She points at the long cylinders of wood on her tray.
“Those are washable? I mean, they’re not the little tear-apart ones, but …”
“Xander.” Her tone serious, all smiling gone. “I’m getting a new business going here, and that means I have to make business decisions. Besides, alcohol kills germs.”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
Doris grins, eyes sparking and crinkling, and walks up to pat him on the cheek. “I just love it when you call me Ma’am.”
She’s pretty and smells really good, but Xander hasn’t exactly forgotten how the whole Mrs. Robinson thing went for him with Ms. French, even if his biology has. He swallows.
Laughing, she walks for the doors. “Just get those chopsticks out stat.”
He turns towards the sink, grimacing as he plunges one arm into the greasy water that’s somehow even more disgusting now that it’s grown tepid. The suds are all gone, and he wonders if that qualifies as an answer to his earlier conundrum - grease and suds can coexist, but it won’t be for long.
As the old drains away, Xander soaps up his scrubber to clean the sink out before refilling it. The glasses are going to require it, and he figures the chopsticks that were never meant to be reused, porous surfaces soaking up whatever they come in contact with, deserve fresh water as well.
Muscle tightens across his hamstrings and quadriceps as he leans far forwards, left hand braced on the sink while the right scrubs, and he raises his right arm briefly to make a muscle. Not bad. Not bad at all, Harris. He remembers the redhead’s teasing lips. All this manual-labor crap does a body good.
The hot water seems to splash into the sink in time with the beat vibrating up through the floor, and the smell of fake lemon rises from the suds of cheap detergent.
Xander stops the water when it’s only a foot deep, thinking it’ll be easier to find the chopsticks that way, but he needn’t have bothered. The first handful flung in all float, stuck in the bubbles, the wood light and insubstantial as if it’s been transmuted into that other traditional Chinese element, air. And I can’t even remember why Giles told me about those. He shakes his head.
He’s still fighting to push them under to soak when Jorge bangs back through the doors. “Carlita needs those chopsticks like now, man. And if I don’t get them to her, she’ll say something to Doris, and you know how that’ll go.”
“Yeah.” Xander scoops a bunch out of the suds and rinses them under the tap before making a futile effort at drying them.
“Don’t worry about that. They’re going right back into liquid, and the chicas are already flying from the drinks and the men.” He bares his teeth in something grin-like. “The tips, they are starting to get good.”
“That’s cool.” The towel bunches under his anxious fingers. “And … uh … about later, do you think …”
“Hey, man, I told you it’s cool.” Jorge gives a small, self-deprecating laugh. “My car, she is auto de mierda, but at least she runs.”
“Which is better than mine, which is just plain old mierda.” He looks down at his hands. The bus gets him to work, but stops running by the time he’s done at three in the morning. “I appreciate the ride.”
Jorge claps him on the shoulder and points in mock sternness. “You do this every night, Xander. From now on, I will only give you a ride if you do not ask. Comprende?”
Xander looks up. “Comprende.”
“Don’t be so serious. We have our three days off starting tomorrow, and you and I are going to go to La Cocina for tamales and cervezas again one of those days, sí?”
Smiling at the thought of hanging with Jorge instead of watching crappy TV on a crappy TV in a crappy rent-by-the-week motel room, Xander nods. “Hell, I’ll go all three days if you want.”
Jorge laughs, a flash of white truer than the kitchen’s fluorescent lights. “That’s what I mean, man. That’s how to live.”
Feedback appreciated.
Part 2