Author: Kay Tee
Feedback: 'Course, send to maybeshedoes@yahoo.com
Rating: PG-13, totally tame
Spoilers: Tiny ones for 'Older and Far Away' and 'Carpe Noctem,' but you'd have to have seen those eps before you'd recognize the spoilers.
Summary: Xander thinks about stuff and Angel.
Distribution: Take it, but tell me where so I can visit.
Disclaimer: In my dreams I'm Joss, but during the day I have to face the cold hard truth--I'm a hack who steals characters. But I'm not giving them back! Or I am, just don't sue me, all I have are speeding tickets and student loans.
***
Angel wears the ages like a second set of clothes. Wakes up as a man from the fifties, jokes about McCarthy and watches Charlton Heston movies. He used to be more subtle about it, used to keep himself-- all himselves-- a secret.
Xander didn't know about the Charlton Heston movies, but he still saw the ages in Angel. Some nights the vampire would walk into the Bronze as a man from the fifties, something subtle in his movements that was just so anachronistic, and Xander *knew*, even if he couldn't tell that it was 1955 Angel was stuck in rather than 1959 or 1945, Xander *knew* that this was an immortal in front of him, and Xander was afraid. And Xander was in awe.
He started reading history books just to get a better idea of what he was seeing when he looked at Angel. Was startled by how easily his sight cleared up, how *obvious* Angel was about everything.
When he was comfortable it was always the mid-twentieth century. Angel would walk into the library just *draped* in the Depression. 1934.
Xander thought about where Angel might have been in 1934, what he was doing, why he seemed so comfortable wearing that era.
But really, 1934 was a time when the *world* was hungry and desperate, America coming off that post-war power high and falling back to Earth, sinking right down into the muck of Earth. Of course Angel was comfortable during the Depression, he must have fit right in.
Xander could almost see the patient worry lines and dirt streaks on Angel's face. 1934. At least someone was having a good year.
Sometimes it was the forties. Angel would have been comfortable then too. The beginning of a second world war? The Bomb in development? The end of the world coming and there was no way it was Angel's fault and no way he could have stopped it? Angel would have been comfortable then too. So when Xander saw him wearing the forties, Xander knew the vampire was feeling okay.
Xander tried to get Willow to notice once. Angel shifting about uncomfortably, 1762 all but stamped to his forehead, and Willow just couldn't see it, had no idea what Xander was talking about. She asked him to point out one thing, any one specific thing that made him think that Angel was acting like a man from 1762, but Xander couldn't do it. He never was very good at explaining things.
His favorite Angel-time was the nineteenth century. Saw it mostly when Angel was fighting, which Xander didn't actually get to see very often, usually because he was fighting-- or ducking blows at least-- at the same time.
But after the fights were over, Angel still had 1846 or 1891 or anytime in that whole beautiful century tattooed all over him.
Xander tried to picture Angel-- Angelus then-- in the 1800s. The vampire would have had long hair... Xander just couldn't see that, couldn't picture Angelus with a neat ponytail swept back at the base of his neck like the men in the pictures Xander found in his history books.
No matter how hard he tried, when Xander pictured nineteenth century Angelus, he could only see the long hair that must have been there as loose and wild; Angelus wearing it like a lion's mane. Xander wanted to reach out and touch it, stroke the hair that used to be draped around Angel's face, run his fingers through it. That urge just made Xander curl in on himself more, snap at the vampire a little, anything not to reach out and...
Xander still thinks about Angel almost every day. He wakes up in a room full of the vampire, walls and ceiling wondering along with Xander-- What era has he woken up in today?
And Xander's not obsessed, not at all. He has a perfectly healthy interest in the vampire, that's all.
He's even told Anya about Angel. Told her about the way Angel looks like someone who died in the twenties, the thirties, the 1800s, when he really died sometime in the mid-1700s.
Anya listens to everything Xander tells her, sits by patiently while he tears his subconscious open, desperate to show her... something. Something very important about him and Angel. He doesn't understand it, doesn't know where his fixation comes from. He had thought that it was all about Buffy, but while his desire for her eventually faded, his curiosity about Angel has only increased over time, even with the vampire's absence.
The obsession transferred to Spike for a little while. Xander studied the blond surreptitiously, but he was too different from Angel. Spike had only three modes: Victorian, Punk, and Modern.
Mostly he was just Punk. If Xander had seen Spike only briefly while on patrol with Buffy, he would have assumed that the vampire had died in 1977 and simply not noticed the changes in fashion and music. But no, Spike was a friggin' *Victorian* when he died. He'd simply adopted the seventies, put them on and liked how they fit, so he never bothered to move on from there.
Every once in a while Spike would let his guard down, his accent would soften a bit, and he would be the Victorian.
Xander saw the young vampire that Spike must have been then, the vamp that picked such a ridiculous name, a name that even non-college, non-psych-class-takin' Xander understood to be overcompensating for something, though Xander could only guess what. Spike seemed pretty sincerely nasty to the Scooby, and that one time that Xander had walked in on Spike in the shower had provided just enough of a view to let Xander know that Spike had nothing he could possibly be ashamed of below the waist.
Occasionally Spike would just be laid back, Modern Guy. Guy-who-was-born-or-at-least-died-in-the-last-twenty-five-years. Xander had no idea what that was all about, probably an attempt at seeming more human for Buffy, maybe win her affections that way. Angel had done the same thing when he and Buffy were just starting out.
Xander doesn't really pay much attention to Spike though. He gave the bleached-blond just enough of his time to see if Angel's way of wearing time was a vampire thing or an Angel thing. Xander decided it was an Angel thing and pretty much ignored Spike after coming to that conclusion.
Xander watches other vampires too, although obviously for much shorter intervals of time, since most vampires he meets are dust a few minutes later.
He wonders how old these vamps really are. Occasionally the gang comes across a vampire in period dress, and Xander always has to wonder: was that what the vampire was wearing when he died, or did he just really love the Napoleonic era, or what?
And if that's just the last fashion trend that the vampire happened to like a lot, then how old is he really?
Sometimes Xander feels that killing vampires is horrible and obscene. Oh, he pretty much has no trouble staking George the hot dog vender when he gets vamped, but killing the older vampires always feels a little wrong to Xander.
He looks at them and sees time, knows it to be a tangible thing.
He always looks them right in the eye when the stake goes in, always looks for that moment of recognition when the ancient unkillable thing realizes it's about to die. No amount rationalizing can make him not feel bad about the older ones getting dusted, which is strange, because a lot of the younger vampires that the gang hunts-- the ones just crawling out of their graves in the cemetery-- they haven't even fed yet. Sure, it's pretty much a given that the first thing they were gonna do was find someone to eat, but they never get the chance. They aren't killers when Buffy stakes them-- they're still innocent. They could be cursed or chipped or--
Better not to think about that.
Anyway, Xander doesn't really care about the young vampires; they don't show him any of the things he wants to see. They don't help him understand Angel better.
Sometimes, in the verydark of the apartment, when they're supposed to be going to sleep because they're done with the sex for the night, Xander keeps Anya up, talking about Angel. She never minds, just glad that it's Angel Xander goes on about instead of Buffy or Willow.
Sometimes, in the verydark of the apartment, Xander admits to his fiancee that not all of his thoughts about the dark-haired vampire are so clinical. Xander whispers confessions of fantasies, of secret ugly thoughts, of lust and greed and *want*. The want is so powerful in him some nights-- that ache of Angel.
Xander knows how pointless it is to have a crush-- a silly school-boy crush-- on the vampire. Even if he could get over his self-disgust and homophobia and even if Angel didn't live three and a half hours away, and even if the vampire had never met Buffy, or at least never fallen crazy in love with her, Xander would never have a chance.
Because Angel is *Angel*; this enormous, mysterious, quiet *force*. Not a person or a vampire so much as a force of nature (or a force of evil, or... And hey, this is usually where Xander segues into talking about Star Wars instead, because he needs to not talk about how much Angel would never even let the mortal touch him).
Anya always holds Xander through his horrible, shuddering confessions, and she whispers right back at him, silly since they finally have their own space where they don't have to be so quiet, where usually, they have been screaming only moments before, but the subject seems to demand a whisper.
Anya tells Xander it's all right, that he can want another man, can even *have* another man, and she won't mind as long as he lets her watch (and isn't Xander proud that he taught her so well the tension relieving effects of a little humor). Anya whispers of the times and places she has seen where homosexuality was acceptable and ordinary. She comforts her lover with history lessons, and he is always well comforted.
This is what Xander loves most about Anya; she is ancient too, it is the blunt woman's greatest charm. She is more ancient than anyone else he has ever known or touched. Much older than Angel. She is beautiful and wise, if not in the ways of humans, and she loves him anyway, loves *Xander*.
Her love is comforting, and he stops worrying, and allows himself to feel warm in her arms.
But after Anya drifts into sleep, Xander always lays awake and thinks about the thing he never told her about. He thinks about what the world will be like in a hundred years when they are both dead, and Angel is still alive. He wonders what Angel will be feeling on the days he walks around wearing 1998 like a cloak or a well worn leather jacket.
Sometimes Xander even lets himself wonder what would happen if he was turned. What kind of vampire would he be? What future era would he latch onto for comfort? Because the nineties have done nothing for him, and the early twenty-first century has just taught him to fake it a little better.
Sometimes Xander wriggles out of Anya's warm arms and lies on the cold part of the bed. He imagines that Angelus has turned him and taken him away.
But it's all a lie. The heat of Xander's body thaws the cool sheets so quickly, ruining the fantasy. So Xander rolls back to Anya, but he wishes, he *wants* those sheets to stay cool. He wants to be without body heat, wants to be ancient and eternal and cold like Angel-- with Angel, wants to understand all those things that vampires and immortals and, well, Anya seem to grasp so easily.
He wants to be worthy, worthy of Angel. Because he *will* have his chance with the vampire.
There is a venge- no, *Justice* Demon in town who has a soft spot for neglected children. A demon who obviously wants Xander out of Anya's life.
And Xander *wishes*.