Title: World Without Shrimp
Authors: Rabbit and Kassie (impudent_guttersnipe@hotmail.com
& ethros@go.com)
Summary: Xander, alternate universe ala The Wish- enough
said.
Distribution: If you have something that wrong with you that you would want
this, mail us.
Disclaimer: We own nothing but the semblance of a plot and the actual words
here. Mutant Enemy and Joss own the characters we abuse and butcher.
Rating: NC-17
Notes: This is AU . This is a serious departure for the
two of us, read it with a sense of humor. We wrote it while giggling. If you
want to string us up for this one, um, we had a purpose in mind to writing it,
but, uh, we won’t tell about that.
Dedication: To Lar, Sam, Katie, Criss, and Olwen, we
worship you all for putting yourselves through the hell that was betaing for
us.
Spoilers: Mid-S5
Improv: ragged--decade--invent--cascade
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
World Without
Shrimp
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Xander sits on his
bed amidst of the detritus of his recent life.
Photos, folded napkins, take-out menus with little messages scribbled
between the lines, a chicken foot on a string, a homemade, pink valentine, a
birthday card. His head aches from the
crying bout he just finished. Eyes feel like sandpaper as he focuses on a
snap-shot of Anya with her head thrown back in a full-throated guffaw, her hair
catching a stray beam of sunlight from the window, sparkling in gold. His chest constricts when he can't push the
memories of this afternoon out for even thirty seconds.
//Off work early
and can't wait to get to Anya's to surprise her. Maybe a movie. She wants to
see Bridget Jones, and he refused, but thinks he can endure it for her. Gotta work at things sometimes, he reminds
himself. Make this relationship last. Even in the lulls, because that's what
adults do. They ride-out the down-swings in the love-o-meter, because one
morning he'll wake up, and his chest will be bursting again for her. Yeah, he
knows how that goes.
Uses his key in the
front door, tries to be quiet since he knows she likes to take naps in the
early afternoons to off-set the nightly research sessions and late-night love
making. Rips the tags off the bouquet
of flowers he bought and tip-toes into the short hallway that empties into her
bedroom. The black and white photo of Paris catches his eye ~you should have
seen it before the war, Xander, there hasn't ever been anything like it~ her
voice echoing in his ear as he takes in the Eiffel tower. A breathy sigh
catches his attention, and he pulls back from his daydream about fighting in
the Resistance. Takes three or four more steps towards the cracked door of
Anya's bedroom and pushes it open enough to see through the gap.
Clutches his
fingers around the bouquet so tightly he can feel the stems crushing, a green
smell trying to fight for his neglected sense, smell. Sight is occupied by the
vision of Anya on her back, neck arched, pushing a man's head between her legs.
Sound is overwhelmed by the strangled whispers she's making as she begs him to
shift up just a little higher. Copper tang assaults taste when he accidentally
bites the inside of his cheek. And touch is ridden by a phantom Anya he can
feel under his own lips.//
Two hours later, in
his own apartment with all of the items he scrounged intending to create a
small bonfire in the metal garbage can by his legs, he's just too spent to do
it. Can't bring himself to part with the stuff he was so positive in his rage
that he never wanted to catch sight of again. Hates himself for not seeing the
signs, for having absolutely no concept that this could be happening, and he
feels the tear ducts he imagined permanently dry starting to well over. Can't
piece together what he did exactly to make this happen. Knows it must have been
him somehow, something missing from him, something he didn't do, did do that
was wrong. He just has no clue as to what it was, aside from just being a
loser. Doesn't want to spend the night alone. Thinks of calling Buffy and
commiserating but is afraid she might try to kill Anya. Knows he wouldn't stop
her at this point. He's so ashamed that the first person, always the first, who
he thinks of helping him through this he hasn't tried to call yet. Ashamed that
he was such an idiot. Ashamed that when the time came to choose, he actually
considered putting Anya ahead of her. It might have been fleeting, but it was real
and burning. Replaced Willow at the top of his hierarchy of love for even one
split second, and now he knows that guilt will be worse than the pain at Anya's
cheating; one will fade with time and new loves, but the other will remain
until he draws his final breath.
He stands and walks
to the kitchen. Rummages under a week's worth of mail for the portable phone
and hits two on the speed dial //another reminder of the priorities, Harris//
"Hello?"
"Wills...are
you busy?"
"Xander,
what's wrong, you sound like it's major. Are you ok? At the emergency
room?"
"Why haven't
you gotten caller ID? I mean, don't you think it would be of the good, what
with all the demons who I'm sure know how to operate a phone, and ..."
"Ok, not at
the hospital, but babbling, and sounding bad. What happened?"
"I can't talk
about it like this."
"I'll be there
in fifteen minutes. This is a non-Tara thing, right?"
"Pretty
much."
"Alright,
Xander. Stay there."
"Nowhere to
go."
"Uh, ok. Hold
on until I get there. Bye." *click *
"Love
you."
************************
Lying in bed with
all the stuff he'd drug out scattered on the floor and the sheets ripped off
the bed so he wouldn't have to smell her perfume or soap, Xander hears the
front door open and Willow's light tread coming his way. He tilts his head up
when she comes into the room and tries to smile, but knows it's more scary than
anything by the stricken look on her face.
She crawls from the
end of the mattress up to lie next to him, sharing the pillow he's using.
"What
happened, Xander? Did you get fired or something?" Allows him to wrap his
arm around her and draw her into his chest.
"I wish.
No...today, I got off early, and I was gonna take Anya to the movie, out to
dinner, I don't know, something. I went over to her place...and..." His
throat constricting, and his face burning,
so embarrassed, he feels like a complete idiot in the way he hasn't
since...since Anya came into his life.
"It's ok, Xan.
Did you guys have a fight? Just nod or shake your head. You don't have to say
it out loud. OK?" Small bob from him as she props herself on his chest to
watch his movements.
"Was it a
fight?" Shake. His eyes clamped so tight they wrinkle up like an old
man's.
"Not a
fight...ok, did she hurt herself and you were scared?" Shake. Willow tries
to puzzle this out. She was sure it was some knock-down drag-out when Xander
called. They'd had several lately, that she knew of, ranging from Anya being
livid that Xander refused to let her use a strap-on on him to Xander getting
pissed at Anya for telling everyone that they had sex while she was on her
period and that he seemed to like it.
"Did Anya do
something mean to you?" Nod. Willow suppresses the triumphant smirk that
flutters onto her mouth at that. She knew it was gonna happen all along.
"Was it
something you might break-up over?" Another nod. She can't really take
pleasure in that, the hurt she feels by proxy too significant.
"Was it about
sex?" Nod, but she knows it couldn't be anything else between these two.
"Did she try
to, you know...um, that thing? You know the one..." Xander's eyes pop
open, and the pain fades slightly. She grins at him, the special one that's
always just for him. He draws a ragged
breath and just lets it all cascade out.
"I caught her
having sex with someone else." Both hands fly to her face, one covering
her mouth, the other on her right cheek.
"Xander, oh my
god. Did you send the guy to the hospital? Wait, was it a guy? What happened?
What did she say? I'm so sorry." She throws herself down on top of him and
holds on for dear life. He feels her tears against his neck and her narrow
thigh between his, her arms clutching at him.
"I didn't do
anything. I left." Words spoken into her hair, both his own arms now
holding her to him as he breathes in the scent of baby-powder and incense.
"I'll kill
her, I mean, something, not kill, but maim, yes, maim. One handed Anya, toeless
Anya." Doesn't pull back, just mumbles into his throat, and Xander feels
vindicated somehow. Here is one person who would always love him, no matter
what else lay between them, other loves, other pursuits. Willow would maim for
him.
"Maybe you
should look out for your karma and let me get up the courage to at least talk
to her first." Sliding down slightly, Willow raises her head up to look
him in the eye.
"Xander, I
learned a few spells that might help you. They're for easing of heartache. I
could make you this tea-like stuff, it tastes like flowers, but you can hold
your nose. It helps, I promise. I tried to slip some to Buffy, but she
noticed." Her hair sticks to the left side of her face, and her cheeks
shine scarlet.
"I don't know,
Wills. Not that I don't trust you, but pain's part of the package..."
Narrowing her eyes, she cuts him off.
"I can see
through you. Why do you try to lie to me? Are you going to hurt yourself? Tara
and I could come and stay with you until you feel better, or you could move in
with Buffy and Dawn..."
"Oh, what a
fun bunch that would be. No, I won't hurt myself. Physically. Not really my
style." She lets him pull her back down, and Xander listens to her
heartbeat. He falls asleep with her pressed along his body, entwined with him
as he pretends the rest of the day never happened, and Willow won't leave to go
home to Tara.
He wakes to her
voice. "Xander, wake up." Slowly, he lifts his lids.
"I have to go.
Buffy asked me earlier to watch Dawn tonight, but why don't you come? We can
play cards and eat too much, you can even get anchovies on the pizza!"
Smiling again, attempting to look as chipper as possible as she rolls over and
stands up.
"No, Wills. I
don't think I can deal with the Dawnster tonight. Too much energy, and if I
started that unmanly crying hysterically thing, well, my rep would be
ruined." He sits and swings his feet over the edge of the bed.
"I can't let
you be alone! Tara has a night class, she gets out at 10:30. Look, why don't
you take a shower, change your clothes, all that, and I'll call her to come by
when she's through. You guys can watch tv together or something. Would that be
ok?" She's being so earnest, wanting to help so badly, Xander can't brush
her off.
"Yeah, sure.
Tara is good. We can watch wrestling. She likes the Rock." Willow laughs
at his lop-sided smile and lifted eyebrow.
"Sure she
does." He follows her to the door, and she gets in one last full-body hug
for good measure.
"Don't do
anything, you know, crazy before Tara gets here." Over her shoulder as she
walks down the hall, but Xander sees the slight smile she draws up.
"Right.
Nothing crazy." He closes the door behind her and proceeds to get down to
something seriously crazy. No intent for it, but like almost everything in
Xander's life, events sort of find him, and today is eventful.
He walks back into
the bedroom and starts collecting the miscellaneous items he'd tossed on the
floor earlier. Picks the phone up on the way and hits one on the speed dial
before he knows he's doing it. Hangs up after the first ring and does it all
again. Gets as much as he can in his arms at once and lugs it back into the
living room with the garbage can and the phone pinched between his neck and
shoulder. The physical mementos of his
last year and some fade from his vision as his inner voice, Sam Kenison
version, whips up the 'This Is Your Life' diatribe.
Rejected, trust
built up only to be torn down. Life seeming to be going along fine, perfectly
in fact, and some cosmic fist slams into your gut and says //Ha ha fuck face,
you thought that was happiness? Well it was, but that's not the path for you
boy. Here lies your future: a
trailer, a fat,
useless gut hanging over a scuffed, leather belt and a nearly empty bottle that
you can't remember when you last put down. Nature? Nurture? Don't count those
genes out of the race yet son; it took eons for the amoeba to crawl out of the
slime. Did you think you were going to do it in a year? Think again. Twenty
years of being beaten down not enough for ya? Want another helping? Do you want
the rundown of why an incredibly beautiful woman with the sex drive of a horny,
teenage boy would want to move on? Why a Harris would never be enough to
satisfy her? Look around, and don't forget the mirror while you're searching
for answers.//
He runs his hands
through his hair and pulls, like he'll yank it out in handfuls, but instead slides
his hands down over his face, pressing the palms against his eyelids. But he
can never really block out the world, no matter how hard he presses.
Feels that stinging
in his eyes and the throat constricting, getting harder to breathe again, and
as always, there's his father's voice //What are you crying about now, you
pussy?// Xander knows it's not actually his father's voice, the man hasn't
spoken directly to him for what, two years? He speaks through Xander's mom, or
the air //I wish some fucking deadbeat moocher kid around here would get a
fucking job already.//
That's why he never
introduced Anya to his father. She'd been suspicious. //Are you embarrassed of
me because I'm not as pretty as Cordelia?// No, he'd wanted to spare her,
wanted her to be the rung of the evolutionary ladder that pulled him out of
this mess, but
she ended up being
what planted him more firmly where he was destined to rot.
And couldn't she
even have the decency to just pack her shit and leave him? No, she had to make
him a part of the oldest cliché there is: dumb, blue-collar worker with the
heart of gold, comes home to find his girl with someone else's cock filling
her. Nice, thanks for that.
Starts to feel the
rage filling the void that his tears left him with. Rage that Anya with one
careless choice could reduce him to the person he was at sixteen. Worse even
that that, because at least then he had hope that if he loved enough, tried
with all his heart, that he could be more, that the cycle could be broken.
Notices the lone, red hair stuck in the weave of his shirt. Willow. Raises his
head and squints as he plucks the strand between thumb and index finger. Holds
it up and stares at it, lesbians never had this problem did they? Willow would
never spend the afternoon on her back beneath the mailman-mailperson? Tara
didn't know how lucky she was. He didn't know how lucky he could have been.
All those years
that Willow and he had been friends. He'd known that there could have been
more, didn't acknowledge the possibility that flittered briefly when they were
wrestling or sprawled in a tangle of limbs, watching movies on her couch. The
possibilities that had scared him at the time because she was Will, his best
friend, the only thing that kept him sane in the travesty that was his life
after Jesse bit the dust, literally. And now even that was gone.
Not that she'd
abandoned him, far from it. Willow was loyal to death, and beyond. But now, a
part of her belonged to Tara, and she had to divide her time between friends
and lovers. She wasn't exclusively for him, like it had been when three
unpopular nerds stood against the world. He'd always have a piece of her, but
not *all* of her. And *he'd* thrown that away; *he* was the one who had let it
go. And see how well that choice had turned out.
He'd gotten Anya.
That was a pretty consolation. Seemed so much more than pretty, gorgeous and
unreal. The unreality giving over to the bliss that here was his * thing*, his
prize for the shitty life, the striving to be more. Now he sees it was as brittle as every other shiny thing he'd
ever grasped at. Place filler in Anya's quest to be human.
He'd gotten
Goddamn-fucking Anya. Snapping back to the here and now, he starts scraping
together the pathetic remnants of their life, tossing them in the garbage can
so roughly he
scrapes his
knuckles against the edge. Not that he cares, he doesn't feel it, doesn't
notice the blood as it drips down his fingers, mingled with her writing on the
love notes, the silk of her panties, spattered across her smiling face with a
spot that makes it look like her neck had
exploded -gruesome
vision of Hiroshima-like violence.
Like war, that's
what it was.
Half empty bottle
catches his eye. Everclear. And isn't that just what he needs right now? Ever.
Clear. //Better than perpetually muddled, forever fucked up.// Unscrews the top
and upends it, shaking every drop out of the thin neck, wiggles it rapidly
until nothing else falls.
The lighter comes
out, click, and the flame catches the corner of one pink square of paper, 'I
love you' curling as ash quickly replaces loops of script, a fine, bold line of
blue ink. That flaming torch is lowered and alcohol soaked memories return to
what they once were, ethereal thoughts that can't be felt or held. They're all
ideas that can't be proved, just imagined.
"I know you'll
get what's coming to you, and I don't even care. I just want you to be as far
the hell away from me as possible. I want back everything you stole from me:
hope, trust, loyalty. The chance to love and not be squashed in its wake."
When the flame
burns his fingers, he drops the note into the can and sucks the wounded flesh
into his mouth, gets a wisp of red hair wrapped around his tongue. He pulls it
off and flicks it. It lands in the can, curling against the heat.
A soft slither of
scale, dry whispery hint of...something that can't quite be defined pricks at
his awareness. He notices the surface
of the wall waver and then birth a figure. In the shimmery glow he knows all to
well as Hellmouthy *something *. And he can't find the shock in this bizarre
scene. Desensitized to the insanity.
"You'd think
she'd know better, being a former vengeance demon." Blackened lips push
the words past a row of broken teeth with a hiss of indignation that hits too
close to home. "You know how this ends."
"I do."
Thirty-seven ignored messages on an answering machine, if she just would have
picked up once, just one, then maybe it all could have been another way. He
never would have gotten this worked up and set everything on fire. Never would
have accidentally set this all in motion. Accidentally. Like everything. Always
with him.
He scrapes his eyes
over the beast before him and has to suppress a shudder. This was the true face
of what had been taken from him? Flaps of skin hanging because Vengeance has
decided to go with the leprosy poster child?
Never saw Anya's demon face, tries to picture the flesh before him
imposed on her features, and he just can't bring the image to his mind.
Broaching the
distance between them, the male incarnation of Vengeance gives him a grin
filled with bloody gums and teeth intended for rending rather than chewing. He
transfers his necklace to Xander's neck, human-like hands tipped in three inch
claws pat his shoulder as they withdraw. "I know the wish. Say the words
and I will make it so."
That power so
close, the ability to rewrite everything and all it takes is a few words, an
affirmation of intent. "I wish I'd never met Anya...but no worlds where
I'm a vampire. Just something simple, where I at least have the possibility of
happiness."
"Hmn,
possibility."
Blue light starts as a pinpoint between Xander's fingers as he holds the
bauble at the center of the beaded necklace; spreads outwards until it
encompasses everything like a self-destructing nova, and there's nothing left
but the light that washes over *everything* and feels like it's burning his
eyes from the retina out. And he curses himself, should have mentioned a world
where he's not blind.
***********************************************************