[Sunnydale High School, the day after Valentine's Day]
I walk absent-mindedly down the hall, still a little bit dazed by Angelus' most recent gift. I decided last night that the best thing I could do was talk to Giles about the incident...he has to have something in one of his books that might give me a clue as to what is coming. Angelus is building up to a big event...I just don't know what that event might be.
Out of nowhere, it seems, a hand lands on my arm, and I hear the words, "Buffy" and "you will not believe..."
"Xander?" I ask, looking at him. "What do you want?" I realize how nasty I must have just sounded, and wish that I could take back the harsh words. I know all about his nasty break-up with Cordelia. Willow told me the news last night.
"God! Sorry...I didn't mean to bother you," he says, backing away from me. "Gee, maybe Willow will dump me now, too." He begins to walk the opposite way down the hall.
"Xander, stop!" I yell, and a couple of people turn around and look at me. I giggle self-consciously, and then run and catch up to him. "Xander?" Still, he doesn't turn.
"What?" he asks, his voice thick with anger.
"I'm sorry..."
He growls low in his throat, coming up with is best impression of a ticked-off grizzly bear. Then, his mouth opens into a wide smile. "It's alright. I'm in a bad mood today. I wonder why?" he asks, rolling his eyes at the same time.
I smile back. "Uh-huh--I heard about what went down last night at the Bronze. I really am sorry, Xand. I know that I was really teasing you about giving Cordy that locket--but I honestly didn't expect this to happen."
"Neither did I," he says, his voice growing soft. "Hey, though--how are you?"
My smile dissolves immediately. "Oh, whoa...I said the wrong thing, didn't I?" Xander asks me.
"No--not the wrong thing. Not exactly, anyway. I thought that maybe you might already know--I guess you didn't talk to Willow last night?"
"Uh, nope. I went home, ate about seven Hershey bars, and went to bed," he tells me.
I giggle a little. "I thought only women were dependent on chocolate!"
"Hey--I would have eaten an armadillo if it had been hanging around in my room! I needed something to take my mind off what had happened...and eating can take my mind off of just about anything. What about you?" he asks.
"It was Angel...as usual..." The bell rings, interrupting me.
We watch as all the leftover kids slam their lockers shut and dash to class, but we do not follow them. Xander gives me a questioning look, and I guess at what he is thinking. "I'm not really up to going to class today--are you?"
He shakes his head. "Can we just get out of here?"
"Sure," I tell him. "Mom will be at work for most of the day...and knowing her, most of the night, too. We'll have the house to ourselves, alright?"
"By 'ourselves' I am assuming that you mean me, you, and some major snack food?" Faintly, I hear his stomach growl.
"Sure...we have cabinets -full- of that kind of stuff. Let's go."
The most important order of business when I get home, I decide, is to change into something more comfortable. When I'm going to school, I dress for style--but when I'm staying home, I dress for comfort. I go through a stack of recently washed and folded workout clothes, and choose a pair of old sweatpants and a T-shirt. As I am leaving my room, I accidentally trip over my book bag, and a bunch of loose paper tumbles out. "Dammit," I swear as I pick up the papers and stuff them back into the bag. Among the papers, I find the card that came with Angelus' flowers, and I tuck it into my pocket. For safekeeping, maybe. Or proof...either one.
After practically cleaning out my refrigerator, Xander and I both take a glass of soda and go into the living room. We sit on the sofa, facing one another with our legs crossed Indian-style. We are both quiet--not up the usual banter, given all that happened yesterday.
I decide to try to get him talking: "Valentine's Day is supposed to be wonderful and romantic, but every year, it only seems to get worse. Of course, this year pretty much topped every other year..."
"You can say that again! I was really hoping that things would go well yesterday...can you believe what she did to me?" he asks, suddenly filled with anger.
"Not really, Xander. I mean, I believe you, but...from what you've been saying, things were really looking up for you and Cordy, and instead, well..." I try to think of a way to say it tactfully, but I can't come up with a thing.
"Go ahead--you can say it. She dumped me. Cordelia Chase dumped me!"
"I know, Xander," I say softly. "She really hurt you, didn't she?"
"Yeah...she did. Up until last night, I thought that the whole thing was just about physical attraction--but when she said that she wanted to break up with me...I don't know. It hurt. It just hurt, and I didn't expect it to." He leans back against the arm of the sofa, his eyes closed. I realize that he is fighting the urge to cry, breathing slowly, forcing himself into a rhythm.
"Hey," I say, reaching over and clasping his hand in mine. "Hey--I know how you're feeling, Xander. And I'm not going to tell you all of the old stuff, like: 'you're better off without her,' or 'it's her loss.' You already know all that garbage, so it's not going to help much."
"Thanks, Buffy," he says, squeezing my hand. "So, now that you know the basics of the Great Cordelia Disaster...why don't you tell me about what happened to -you- last night?"
"Angel...uh, Angelus...paid me a visit," I tell him.
"He didn't try to come in, did he? I mean, your mom was home, right?" His forehead creases in concern.
"No, he didn't try to come in. I didn't even see him--just what he left for me: a dozen red roses."
"Roses? He must be changing his plan of attack."
I laugh a little, bitterly. "I wouldn't say that," I tell him, reaching into my pocket and pulling out the card that came in the box with the roses. I hand it to him: "Read it."
He does, and his eyes grow wide for a moment. "Soon," he states, reading from the card. "This is an obvious threat, Buffy."
"No kidding!" I exclaim, and then watch his face fall. "Wait...I don't mean to be snippy with you. Yes, it's a threat--I'm just going to have to be ready for whatever he is planning."
"How will you prepare?" Xander asks me. "I mean, what can you do, really?"
"I don't know, Xan. I was going to talk to Giles today--I'll give him a call tonight sometime and tell him what happened. You know Giles...he'll sit around and worry all night if I didn't get in touch with him." I force a laugh, trying to change the subject. I really don't want to talk about Angelus--it's too much, too soon.
"Sure. Good old Giles," he says nervously. "So, how did that card make you feel?"
"Giles drives me crazy sometimes," I say, avoiding Xander's question. "But I know that it's only because he cares about me."
"Buffy?" Xander asks. "I know how Giles is--now I want to know how you are."
"I'm fine," I say, brushing off the question. "Just peachy, thanks."
"You're not fooling me, you know," he tells me. "Things aren't right with you...but then, they haven't been right with you for awhile now. Not since your birthday, that is."
Willow said the same thing to me last night, I remember. I'm not fooling anyone...anyone but myself, that is. "Leave it alone, Xander."
"Hey...I told you about Cordy," he teases me, making a puppy-dog face. "Now it's your turn!"
"No!" I suddenly burst out. "No. I don't have anything to say."
"Yes, yo-ou do-o," he says in a singsong voice, thinking that I'm playing along with him.
"Just stop it, will you?" I say through gritted teeth. "Enough is enough."
"Not until you tell me what's going on with you," he says, his tone growing serious.
"What do you mean 'what's going on?'" I ask him. "Nothing is going on. I'm fine. Let it go!"
"C'mon...tell me the truth. What else are friends for?"
My anger finally makes it way to the surface, and I practically scream back at him: "Friends are -supposed- to be the kind of people who leave you alone when you tell them to."
"Those aren't very good friends, then."
"I would rather have those kind of friends right now," I say pointedly, trying to stare him down.
He meets my eyes with no hesitation. "Buffy, you know that you'll feel better if you just tell me what's going on."
"You aren't getting this, Xander," I tell him, my tone cold as ice. "Talking about this stuff is not going to make me feel better."
"What -will- help, then?" he asks. "What can I do?"
"Nothing. You can't do a thing for me."
"Try me, alright?" he offers.
"Try you? You can't do anything for me. Do you want to know what's really wrong?" I ask him, and then don't give him time to answer. "On the outside, I'm fine. No marks...no bruises or scars. Angelus didn't hurt me -that- way. He hurt me on the inside...and there is nothing that can fix that."
"Oh, you mean you got hurt when..."
"You aren't listening to me, Xander. Physically, at least for once, I'm fine. I can handle it when someone hits me or kicks me...but he hurt me on the inside," I repeat, still not making much sense.
"I'm sorry Buffy...I just don't understand."
"Things didn't go the way they were supposed to! It was supposed to be perfect...my first time. It was awful, though. Awful, and horrible, and terrifying. And something--some part of that terror--is still in me somewhere. It doesn't matter how much I think about it or try to rationalize it--I can still feel Angelus inside of me, and he's still hurting me. That's why I can't kill him. I try to do it, but I just can't."
"Oh, God," Xander says, nodding his head. "I think that I know what you're talking about now." He leans close to me and gathers me in his arms. I lay my head against his shoulder, murmuring the words: "He still has power over me. I just can't fight that power by myself."
Xander holds me in his arms, tracing a small circle on my back with the palm of his hand. "I know, I know," he tells me. I pull even closer to him and bury my face against the side of his neck, feeling his pulse as it rushes just beneath his skin. I am surprised by how appealing he suddenly is to me--his body is so full of life! He is a person, not a vampire. A human, not a demon. He is natural--while Angel was always some how unnatural. I didn't realize until just now how much I've missed the feeling of a warm body in my arms.
I snuggle even closer, and Xander chuckles a little, saying: "Buff? Soon, I'm not going to be able to breathe!" The words vibrate in his throat, and the vibration tickles my skin. Acting on an impulse that I do not really understand, I turn my head and press my lips to the base of his throat. Two or three kisses later, I catch myself and pull away a little, looking up at him guiltily. He looks at me dazedly and then leans forward, sweeping me into a romance-novel kiss. We stay locked like that, and I feel his hands running through my hair and brushing the sides of my neck. His hands are so warm...and I can practically feel them crackling against my cold skin.
His lips press pleasantly to mine. He has unpracticed lips--unlike Angel, who has been with many women in his two hundred odd years. Xander's mouth tastes of sweetness and spearmint, unlike the salty, slightly metallic taste that Angel's mouth had sometimes had, even though he'd tried hard to cover it up for me. Just as blood never fully comes out of cloth, it never fully left his mouth. He could have gargled with Clorox for all it would have mattered--some tastes just stay with you.
The faint taste of spearmint finds it's way to my lips...his chapstick, or gum, or something--something that has moved from his lips to mine. His lips are very soft, nearly velvet, and they work gently against mine.
I sink comfortably into the kiss, snuggling into his body as though we've done this hundreds of times before. Just before the kiss begins to grow stale, I feel the tip of his tongue touching the corner of my mouth. A silvery shock runs through my body as he moves his hand from the side of my neck to the back of it, pulling my face closer and forcing my mouth open.
Then it feels as though his tongue is touching me all over, like cool drops of rain on my skin. Crisp and sparkling--and nothing at all like the death and darkness that existed in Angel's kisses. Xander's lips are full of late summer--hot and cold, smooth and sticky, hard and soft...all at the same time.
Soon, we both begin to run out of breath, and we force ourselves apart, our eyes cast downward.
Before I can look up at him, I feel him rise from the sofa and walk out of the room. "Back in a minute," he half-yells, and then I hear him taking a glass from the cabinet and turning on the faucet in the kitchen. I could use a glass of water myself, really, but instead I reach for the soda that I brought into the living room before. I hold the glass in my hands, but don't drink from it.
"Where did -that- come from?" I wonder out loud.
My heart is absolutely racing, insisting to my unwilling brain that something -very- big has just happened. Xander! I never knew that I wanted to kiss him like that. I never knew that I was attracted to him at all, to be honest. Maybe I had just been pushing that kind of feeling aside, though. After all, for so long, Angel was the big excitement in my life. From the moment that I'd met him, everything else had just faded away. Xander was just, well, my friend. Until now, of course. Friends don't kiss like that. I'm not in love with Xander. I know that much. I know that because, some how, I'm still a little bit in love with Angel. Still, something about Xander seems so real. For lack of a better explanation, Xander seems to be the direct opposite of Angel and everything that he represented in my life. Angel had been my excuse for danger, my explanation for recklessness, my reason for living as close to the edge as I had. I loved Angel. I -love- Angel still, even after everything that has happened. I had wondered, though, when we were making love, if he was only doing it to preserve some kind of power over me. Now I know that my suspicions were correct. Even if Angel hadn't realized it, Angelus had known the score, and had some how broken through the surface to take his control. He knew that if he did it to me once, I would always feel him in me. He'd had a motive--a plan. Sure, he may have loved me, but there was always the bonus of keeping me nice and subservient to him. With one kiss, Xander had been able to bring all of those old feelings to the surface. That had to mean something. It just had to. The truth smashes into me, and I nearly fall off the sofa. Xander has no motive. Xander has no evil running through him. Xander is pure. And he can make me pure, too. That was what my body responded to when he kissed me: his innocence. I can see past all of his usual bravado, and I know now that there is nothing to back it up. He has no experience at all. That is why my body--or really, that is I--want him so badly right now. All of a sudden! Angelus put his mark on me with his impurity...maybe Xander can erase some of that evil with his purity. Finally, I hear the water being turned off in the kitchen, and then I hear Xander shuffling softly back to me. Tentatively, he sits back down on the sofa, as though he is afraid of jostling me too much. My decision has been made already. I just need to wait for an opening now. "Uh, Buffy? What just..." I cut him off. "I know what it was." He gives me a half-smile and asks: "Well, can you tell me what it was then? I'm a little bit confused." "Don't be," I tell him, my voice soft. "It wasn't bad for you, was it?" "Oh Lord, no!" he exclaims, and then blushes just a little. "I mean...uh, I mean...I enjoyed it, alright?" "I'm glad, Xander. I enjoyed it myself." "Then I'm glad too, I guess," he says. "What now?" I lean forward and whisper to him, my voice wavering just slightly: "Now you can make love to me." "What?" Xander splutters. "What the hell?" I just smile at him in response, reaching out my hand and resting it on his thigh. Just then, he bursts out into loud laughter. "Great joke, Buff!" he tells me between giggles. "Wow, you really had me going there for a second!" I remove my hand from his thigh, hurt by his accusation. "I wasn't joking around, Xander. I am totally serious." His laughter fades quickly. "Then let me go back to my first question, alright?" "Your first question?" "Yeah...what the hell?" There is anger in his voice, and it makes me uncomfortable. "You know that I slept with Angel, right?" I ask him. He nods but does not speak. What is there for him to say, really? "It was a bad experience, Xander. I made a stupid choice. I thought that I was going to suffer for it forever...until we kissed just now." I gather my knees up against my chest and lean back against the arm of the sofa. "Okay. Well, I'm not sorry that we kissed, Buffy--but that was all it was: one kiss. It's not that I didn't love it..."