360

by Wirrrn

"So how do we know who's human?
...If I was an imitation -a perfect imitation-
How would you know it wasn't really me?"
-JOHN CARPENTER'S THE THING

"He was a filthy child murderer before he died.
After he died....he became something worse...."
-NIGHTMARE ON ELM ST 3:DREAM WARRIORS

"I had heard of the beauty of celestial beings,
now I saw it; Only this beauty,
with all its awful loveliness and purity,
was *evil*...
-H RIDER HAGGARD, "SHE"

- - - -

The Magic Store was wet. This was one Shoppe in need
of a Moppe.

Soaked it was, not just in authentic witchy ambience
but now in authentic witches too, and fluids that were
normally to be found in the walls of the human vein,
not *on* those of a dwelling place (even one such as
this, set aside for commerce).

In places, that which was not rust, despite the dry
flakes, the colour, the smell of old metal, came up to
the high-tops of Xander's hightops. Less Potter, more
Blotter, he thinks, then grabs hold of his mind as it
makes a break for insanity-land, trying to join the
flotsam and jetsam of his friends in their new and
interesting experiment with bisectsuality.

The day had started off so nicely too.

A baker's dozen of nights (drunks, reprobates and
homophobes aplenty, but no triskadecaphobes in the
Harris Household) spent in LA had seen Sunnydale's
favourite slacker catching up with its most famous
ex-pat, the seraph in name and face, he who makes up
in a soul what he lacks in underarm hair.

(Buffy said she was fine with the two of them being
best friends, peas and pods rather than chalks and
cheeses- but then she says she's fine with the whole
Angel and Spike thing too, and the corner of his eye
still catches her sometimes looking sideways in the
air- perhaps watching for Anyanka, back from the world
tour and shuffling universes again like monopoly
money, or a Stellar Quellar come to take her insanity
To Infinity And Beyond).

And of course he also vists Spike, out of necessity
really, as Sire and Child are joined at hips and lips-
Eng and Chang with Fang. Spike, who has let his hair
grow back to its natural Dawsonesque length and colour
again ("Now that I'm peachy with peaches again,
there's no need ter advertise, mate" he purrs, a grin
on his pale Van Der Beak). Strange to think that the
last time your friend's historical follicles were this
colour, he was 200 years younger and turning heads in
only a figurative sense, those pallid pigeon pectorals
pumping in and out with the belaboured bellows of
bronchial british breathing.

Goodbyes and see you soons all round (even a kiss on
the cheek from Angel, to the surprise of both smoochee
and smoocher) and Xander's doing his bit for the Beat
Generation because he's

(wait for it)

On The Road

(Childhood nights spent booze-bruised in your
room-gloom with only a photo of Jesse and Willow and
your books to talk with do wonders for the
imagination, even if it's only visualising patricide-
your father underneath the wheels of Kerouac's truck,
handsome Jack smiling at the gristly-sounding BaWHUMP!
of Harris Senior beneath his axel as William
Burroughs' old-leather-and-honey voice burrs "Run the
fucker over again for Xan, Jackers; the boy dated a
bug once and I've taken a shine to him")

Yes, Xander's on the road this morning, the Road to
Sunnydale, paved with asphalt and the occasional Gila
monster rendered 2D by traffic in lieu of good
intentions, but he always feels like going there in a
hand-basket nonetheless, amazed as ever that the
Sunnydale Siren has managed to woo him back yet again
with her sweet-throated lies, even now that he knows
of the claws that snick beneath the manicure.

And he's not tied to a mast so he goes right back into
town, right as rain, even a rain of toads, and ready
to return to his place in the Scooby Gang (at last
check, his place was somewhere just upwind of Buffy's
Scorn- take a left turn at Tara's Pity, reverse out of
Willow's Fake Perkiness and do a three point turn
between Riley's Absence and Giles' Disdain) and his
place, much more clear and welcome, in Graham Miller's
bed.

Thoughts turn to certain young ex-commando he's called
boyfriend for the better part of two years now

(skyclad eyes crinkling laughter as Xander tries to
grate cheese on his belly)

and Xander's own chocolate orbs flick to the back
seat, where the contents of a black-wrapped black-op
package smelling faintly of licorice await deployment
-reconnaissance of muscled hills and abdominal mesas
once the property of Uncle Sam but now claimed under
the flag of Alexander Lavelle Harris (and Graham, ever
the patriot, still knees before that flagpole each
day).

Veering into the parking lot behind the Magic Shop
(bike rack instead of broom rack, but you gotta start
somewhere) and parking amidst a revving of engines, a
honking of horns ("Merry-Go-Round Broke Down"-it's not
just for wabbits anymore) and a rapid turning off of
stereo systems (as a singer, Russell Crow is Odious to
the Maximus) as he vaults from the car laden with
packages, his own package also laden thanks to
thoughts of Graham. What the hey- Buffy won't notice,
Giles won't comment and Willow won't care.

Through the door we come again then. Xander sees the
aforementioned gore that crawls the walls, and damn if
that don't just bring him right down off Cloud Nine
fastr than the sin of Pride in Heaven. He's heard of
surprise parties but this is ridiculous, or would be
if the head sticking to the ceiling was an errant
helium balloon (though to be fair, Giles *does* look
surprised) and the intestines once housed in the belly
of your-guess-is-as-good-as-mine were just streamers,
not steamers, draped as they are still warm from the
viscera they were yanked from and dumped over the
chill glass-top counter

(beneath a sign labelled "everything this shelf
half-off", so at least they're a bargain).

Xander's own digestive system is still in its original
packaging and is by now screaming at him to throw all
gears into full reverse

("I cannae hold 'er much longer, Cap'n")

But he manages to keep his dinnerds in his innards for
a moment more, slumping against a wall then
un-slumping real quick-like as the wall grabs stickily
at his shirt. He finally loses the battle with
antiperistalsis when he has to *peel* off the wall,
the sound of his wet shirt back ripping away from the
clinging juices of his friends

(SSSSsssssssssSSSSSSSSSSSccccCCCCCHHHHHHHHhhhiiiccCCCK)

Sending him to his knees coughing wetly. When he opens
his eyes, he's looking right at Willow

//Oh God, Wills//

although she's not looking back at him, she's not even
a Weeping Willow

//"If thine right eye offends thee..."//

as both of those activities

//"thou shalt not suffer a witch to..."//

are kind of difficult to perform

//"Ding-Dong, the witch is..." //

without a face.

He reaches out to stroke dried-stiff hair that, whilst
always coloured copper, now smells like it too. The
lack of a facial expression to read meant that he
could almost fool himself into thinking she hadn't
suffered, but he can plainly see her tiny,
white-knuckled fingers wrapped around the pommel of
the jagged Healing Crystal

(Heals all trauma or double your Aura back! [Hellmouth
Related Homicide Not Included])

that had been rammed through her stomach. So sorry,
Xander, but if she died trying to pull it out then she
was awake when it went in.

Odd, he thinks, not to see Tara here with her, doing
the Thelma and Louise Ending, sans car and cliff. If
he had been whacked -no disprespect to Larr- during
the Great Graduation Herpetology Massacre, he would
have liked to think that Angel

(Summer Romance: Long story, and don't tell Cordy-
hysterical laughter causes wrinkles)

would have taken a moment to strip the Ceremonial Gown
from his broken body

(no way was he dying in a frock)

and screamed his loss to the Heavens in a
Why-Him-Oh-Why-My-Beloved-Xander-ish kinda way before
staking himself with a piece of chair soaked in
Xander's deathblood lifeblood, or perhaps the 2B
pencil he flunked Remedial History with.

And even now, he could easily envision Gra-

//OhJesusGrahamwhatshappenedtoGrahamishedea-//

But he can't think about that, he won't think it, and
so he jerks his head away, whipping it around on his
neck, bird-like

(short, stotting scans as made by a curious gull which
always reminds him birds are descended from dinosaurs)

in order to dislodge the thought- and then he sees the
fine layer of powder ochre on the powder pink of
Willow's sweater, the pointed stake-stick fallen
beneath the broken one of her other arm, and in her
lap -where the dust is thickest- is Tara's wristwatch,

(Mickey's hands have stopped at Midnight and his face
is angonised, like he'd just taken a double glove-full
of Warfarin after finding Minnie fisting Goofy)

and so he knows not only that the girls did die
together but who put the Healing Stone through his
best friend- and it wasn't a muppet, Gelfling fondness
for crystal shards not withstanding.

Shock aside, finding Buffy is an anti-climax; indeed
to prove it, come spurts backwards out of his balls
and reverses up his vas deferens to pool in his
seminal vesicles.

Christmas BA- Before Adam- and Giles had given him
three of the Watcher Diaries, wrapped in The Times
instead of giftwrap

(He'd claimed this was because they were valuable and
the newspaper would deter thieves. Xander however
suspected that on his way over to the basement to play
Santa, the G-Man had realised he'd forgotten to get
Xander anything, and the Diaries and newspaper were
the only things he'd had in the car)

Anyhoo, to spite Giles he'd actually read the things

(and coloured in all the woodcuts and drawn jaunty
handlebar moustaches on all the Slayers- the handy
"Dictionaire L'Infernale" contained in one tome even
meant he could tell Giles which Devil made him do it)

and he'd discovered that one of the Slayers, this one
from Iceland- Snowydale instead of Sunnydale, mayhap-
lived to the amazingly old slayer-age of 23 before
meeting her own comeuppance

(unfortunately, the Icelandic words for "Surrender to
me that blasphemous book the Necronomicon, for I am
the Slayer" and the Kandarian for "Come forth from
lost R'lyeh, great Cthulhu, and accept this humble
sacrifice" are phonetically identical)

so, all things considered, Xander isn't surprised to
be looking down at the decomposing Slayer. Right now
she's more Puffy than Buffy.

He *is* surprised though, when the closet door Buffy
is hanging from

(never let it be said that the human appendix is
*entirely* useless)

bursts open and Joyce Summers, her bruised fruit
flesh not ripe enough to fool the hundreds of maggots
mining her dead veins for ores of yaws, leaps out of
the closet in a heartbeat, or at least the place her
hearttbeat would normally, nominally occupy.

(and to think it had taken Xander five years to leap
out of his)

She snarls at him through piano-key teeth all
Sunnydale's graveyard invertebrates have been playing
concerts on and treats him to a backhand that sends
him flying across the room, a goodly portion of
soupbone-grade Joyce-stock flying with him.

Xander crashes into the far side of the room, next to
the refrigerator. Looks like Joyce wants him for her
kitchen-buddy again, and if she wasn't a man-eater
before then by God she sure is now.

Late Summers storms at him again and runs forward even
before Xan hits the wall -looks like she's an Early
Summers too- and is therefore surprised when, rather
than hitting it and falling stunned at
what's-left-of-her-feet, the boy absorbs the impact
with twitching catfish leg muscles and rechannels the
energy into a flip. His high-tops leave footprints two
incongruous metres up the wall and make a sound not
unlike

BappaBAPWOOM BappaBAPWOOM

Only a pitch lower than the one you're thinking, and
with more testosterone and rubber. Xander pushes off
the wall with his legs and does a human fly-by,
Summers-saulting over Joyce to land on nimble and
numble toes behind her.

-he'd like to credit Buffy with teaching him the move,
but truth be told in 5 years she'd never even shown
him whether stakes are held under or overhand. Angel
had taken Xander under his metaphorical wing after
taking him into his metaphorical heart and not so
metaphorical thrusting naked hips, and he'd filled the
rest in thanks to combat training and multi position
fuckings with Graham Miller (coupled with repeated
viewing of CROUCHING TIGER HIDDEN DRAGON.)

So Xander whirls around, tensed and waiting to see if
Summers will Spring and make him Fall into Winter, but
no, she's still looking at the wall, sniffing at it, a
puzzled expression on what's left of her face.

Quick dip into voluminous pockets and he's got a stake
with Joyce's name on it

(actually, it's got NIGHTHAWK engraved into the hasp,
but let's not be pedantic)

and he moves to plunge it into the thing's unwary
back, but he just can't because it's *Buffy's Mom* and
okay some part of him knows it's not anymore but still
he owes her this and so he softly calls to her.

Joyce swings- a roar would be on her lips if she still
had them. Turning, she transcribes a perfect circle
like some sort of demonic mathematical compass

(one of those twin-pronged school supplies Xander had
always felt better suited to tracheotomy than
trigonometry)

Shrieking again, Joyce-juice drooling and pooling from
her erased face place. Bent over, not just double
trouble but triple dipple, her head only an inch and a
pinch from the gore on the floor,

(the chin bone's connected to the linoleum bone,
apparently)

so the malignant highways the tumour cut through her
motor cortex have clearly been found, trafficked and
throughly gridlocked by those white, wriggling
poster-children of decomposition. She's a hermit crab
ripped free from its carapace, meticulously crushed
and shoved back into the shell any which way.

-Better make that a spider crab actually, as the Joyce
thing suddenly vaults ten feet onto the kitchen
counter, then leaps and kicks him in the face,
toenails painted fire engine red by both the severely
chipped polish put there by by a mourning Dawn (now
traveling the globe with Anya, so at least she's
spared surviving Glory only to be ripped apart by
mother gone monster) in the funeral home so many
yesterdays ago, and a small bracket fungus spreading
crimson fruiting bodies beneath the cuticles.

(The fungi is found nowhere else but in the graveyard
earth around Sunnydale. Given the number of cemeteries
in the city though, the World Wildlife Fund isn't
holding the bake-sales just yet).

Taken by surprised by the strength still coursing
through this shambling mom-shape, Xander finds himself
flat on his back with a lapful of Joyce faster than
you can say "Comfortador".

Straddling his chest now, the Mother of All
Nightmares, Joyce is a Kinderstod that has traded in
the fedora from Freddy Krueger Fashions for a really
ratty bathrobe.

(and what does it say about Buffy that she allowed her
mother to be buried in threadbare flannelette? He's
glad she never got Cordelia killed, or his
ex-girlfriend would be doing some serious haunting).

Joyce's eyes flash as she leers down at him

(violet irises, not yellow- iodine instead of sulphur
for a change, so whatever's puppeteering her
nigh-rotted through strings isn't a local)

and Xander finds all the humour, those droll little
quips he uses to get through life on Beelzeebub's
Bridgework- has left him. The brook of his babbling is
a dry riverbed of heat-kilned clay cracked and baking
under a pitiless sun. For the first time in his
memory, he is speechless, because he finally realises
what evil is.

He used to picture evil as a clown with a cream pie in
one hand and a knife in the other. Evil beings are
interested in causing chaos, killing people and
raising the unholy undead, true, but when push come to
shove they're doing it all for fun as well as power.
Spike is a case in point-he *enjoys* the carnage he
brings to on the world around him, a song on his lips
to go with the fangs. Mayor Wilkins seemed beside
himself with glee whether corrupting Faith or
introducing Snyder to the miracle of the digestive
process; even Glory, the Goddess who could have ended
all things with a few glottal syllables in a long-dead
tongue, put that aside for the sheer heady thrill of
hands-on mayhem.

But looking into Joyce's eyes, aglow and yet dead like
the cold bioluminescence of a deep sea fish, he
realises just how wrong he was. Evil isn't about
cracking a corny joke before sticking your
razor-fingers into a teenage victim, or gleefully
stalking women with mobile phones and pop-culture
terrors.

-Look into those empty embers peering down, and *here*
is True Evil- mindless, motiveless and void of all
thoughts, all passions. She wasn't killing him because
he was *Xander*-he doubted she even knew who he was.
No, she was killing him simply because he was here,
now and if he wasn't, she'd be killing someone else.
It was nothing personal, there was no malice in her
actions- indeed no feeling at all.

*This* is Evil- this terrible lack of heat, this
absence-causing death and destruction not for a reason
or a cause, but simply because you could.

And Joyce's horribly bland expression never changes,
even as she bends down to lap at his neck and a moment
before the few teeth left in her head

(long and snaggled and with slugs and leeches clinging
to the grey-white palate, fungal hyphae turning the
tongue into a roadmap of Hell)

tickle his throat her face is still slack, even as she
suddenly stiffens and starts to sit up then explodes
into rotten-egg smelling ash that covers him from head
to foot

(and the odour means he'll finally take Cordelia's
advice and burn his clothes)

Joyce-detritus blowing away on the convection currents
created by the putrefaction of Slewnerettes all
around him, this thing that once lived and mothered
and fussed and let him stay in the spare room

(that would eventually be Dawn's)

for a whole month when his father had bashed him so
hard not even the baggiest and luridest of his
wardrobe could hide the marks, and he'd lain in his
room listening to Buffy and Angel making out and he
suddenly knew it wasn't *Angel* he was jealous of and
he cried then when he hadn't under the fists of the
man he called "Dad" and Joyce had been passing the
room and had come in and rocked him for an hour
without saying anything at all, and Angel's in LA now
and Joyce has gone forever and the thing that she
became rains down upon him and through the curtain of
dust and his own teary snot he sees Graham there
standing handsome and whole, dropping the crossbow to
the red floor

(the weapon makes only a quiet PLISH as it hits, so
the floor must finally be coagulating)

and Xander makes a great sobbing sound as somewhere
inside his mind the picture of his boyfriend's corpse,

(still beautiful, even drained, white and cold- an ice
sculpture carved by the Reaper's scythe)

that he would not allow himself to think about but
just *knew* deep in his reptile brain was waiting for
him in this building somewhere, perhaps in a back
room- evaporates into joy at Graham here now, healthy
now, and he runs into the commando's outstretched arms
and buries his salty face-flesh into the soft steel of
military-made muscles between neck and shoulder and
he's so relieved, so relieved so very relieved that at
first he doesn't register the coldness of the skin or
the lack of thrum-drum pulsebeat and when he does he
pulls back and looks his lover in the eyes, Graham's
beautiful eyes

-and they blink and the spring-sky blue darkens with
iris-storms to a deep scarlet-lavender

//...Lavender blue dilly-dilly, lavender green,...//

-crowned with glowing ruby veins

//...when I am King dilly-dilly....//

-and the dimpled smile beneath them reveals huge tusks
the size of the Mother Xenomorph in ALIENS

//...you shall be Queen...//

and in the moment before he passes out in the chill
vice of Graham's embrace, this polar-bear-hug, he
realises that he'd forgotten something in his little
post-modern analysis of Evil.

Evil is Beautiful.

* * * *

Xander groans as the dumb waiter containing his mind
finally hauls itself up to the Consciousness Floor
again. The groan cranks up a notch as light from a
nearby window slams into his optic nerves like a
photosynthesizing sledgehammer.

//Ow...neck hurts....*FUCK*//

Frenzied, frantic scrabble of long musician's fingers

(Our Xan's a buffoon on the bassoon, but knows his way
around an organ)

checking his throat for unasked-for-orifices and dents
of dentition. He knows before his hands find only
intact, warm Xanderskin that he has not been bitten;
his frightened heart is pounding madly against his
chest-flesh in a high panic,as though someone (perhaps
Richard Gere) had sown a small, frightened mammal into
his rib cage and it wants out *now*.

The relieved sigh at the back of his throat is nipped
in the bud before it blossoms from his brachioles when
he realises his neck is sore not from drinking, but
kinking; he's been lying unconscious in Graham's
embrace. The commando's strong arms cradle his head
against that marvelous torso, the corrugated contours
of aforementioned admirable abdomen causing the knot
in his kneck.

As too is gravity- Graham is cradling him, in a
sitting position, upside down on the Magic Shop's
ceiling.

Precariously positioned in more ways than one, Xander
looks Graham over. Some time had evidently elapsed
since he blacked out, as this thing that used to be
his boyfriend

(here he swallows against a hot ball of painful mucous
in his throat)

had stripped them both naked before performing its
salute to Lionel Ritchie

(Because they're "Dancin' On the Ceiling" and okay
he's *got* to get rid of Anya's CD collection)

Xander's chocolate eyes, now salty and stinging -cocoa
butter packed in brine- sweep over his lover's face.
Graham seems dormant, his features still and eyes
closed.

A faint crimson glow fogs out a millimetre or so from
between the lashes, and Xander flashes on an image of
the X-MEN, then veers away from the thought before his
mind can supply an image

//Graham fucking Cyclops whilst Wolverine watches//

and distract him from his predicament.

An eel-poke against his belly reveals the Graham-thing
is hard against him. Xander's own cock, unaware of any
preternatural changes in the dynamics of the
relationship, recognises only its favourite playmate
and immediately responds in kind. The plush, purple
head of his cock prickles deliciously against the
thick mass of cactus spine hairs at Graham's crotch,
and even as he thrills at the contact, he chills as he
realises that he may wake the creature wearing his
boyfriend's fac-

Graham's eyes snap open. Violet, beautiful and
terrible.

And Xander falls.

Face facing down and Xander sees the
friend-fluid-filthy floor rushing up, his crimson
reflection leaping at him with open arms from a
coppery pool of Buffy-leakage.

With a grace both beautiful and terrifying because of
its total silence, Graham slips long legs down and
around Xander's middle, lowering the youth gently and
safely to the floor before letting go of the ceiling
with his marble cold, marble strong arms.

The pair end up sitting on a

(relatively)

clean space of floor-space, Graham's erect cock meaty
against Xander mid-back, Xander's almost hairless
stomach still firmly caged between thickly haired
calves,two large feet curled neatly around his middle,
big toes meeting on the neutral ground of Xander's
belly-button.

A beat and Xander throws himself forward out of this
Heavenly hell, and whirls. Graham is staring at him,
features calm, human. He looks at Xander for a long
time, then picks up the stake from Willow's dead
branch hand, throws it at Xander's feet and puffs his
bare chest forward. His face is placid.

Xander picks up the stake, advances. "How?"

Graham's eyes, lightly shut, unlid again and watch
him.

Finally, a voice. That familiar dusty burr, wound
through with the sly coils of a Southern twang.

"Riley". The pain in the voice makes Xander stop, but
the face is a blank mask, as always.

"He came back from Belize, Xander. But he didn't come
back alone. Something was in him."

"*Riley* did all this?"

The beautiful face blurs as the head shakes from side
to side slowly. "No. You saw Joyce. He dug her up
brought her back somehow. They did it together."

"I couldn't kill him Xan. It was *Ri*. I Just.
Couldn't. Do. It. He bit me, killed me. I wanted to
help stop them but I couldn't...couldn't resurrect
myself in time. I could only watch- I died with my
eyes open. When I could move again, they were all
dead. I couldn't help them..."

"And Riley?"

A jerk of the head to one side. Xander looks, sees
Riley's dust-covered clothes and taser over in the
fireplace. The taser phut-phut sputs erratically.

Both of them say the same word at the same time-Xander
as a question, Graham as an explanation.

"Buffy".

Graham breathes a breathless breath. Finally there is
an emotion turning in the roiling blue depths of those
eyes. Sadness. Pain. Regret. There was a time when
those eyes looked at Xander with nothing but love and
happiness. Eyes close again. Graham puts his hands by
his sides.

"Do it, Xan. End me. It's good that you're here. It
should be you that does it."

//You always hurt the one's you lo...//

Xander looks at the thing before him, but can no
longer see it. All he can see is the human man he fell
in love with almost upon their first meeting. That
man, resisting the thing inside him, screaming against
its bestial appetites, regretting not being able to
assist the Scoobies, mourning his dead friend in an
all-too human fashion. He remembers his thoughts
earlier. There is no emptiness, no lack, in those
eyes, far from it. Graham might have wanted to help
the Scoobies, but he clearly would like to have killed
Buffy himself as revenge for her dusting Riley.
Perversely, the thought gives Xander hope.

He puts down the stake.

Impatient, Graham has opened his eyes again. "What are
you doing, Xan? finish this! I got them killed!"

A shake of the head. "No you didn't".

"-I'm dangerous. I could kill you."

Xander pauses, an image of Graham holding Riley in his
arms as his friend turns to dust- of howling in
rage,in grief for his friend.

"No" Xander says, finally. "No, you won't."

"I...I'm a monster" But Graham's tone is soft. He sees
the resolve in his lover's eyes.

"No. You're Graham."

Graham's gaze is wet with tears that spill down his
face. Salt and blue depths. Xander thinks of the
ocean.

"Dammit, Xan!"

Both of them leap for the taser still sparking in the
fireplace. They both leap at the same time.

//We do still know each other then...//

Graham trying to pull the barrel towards his own head,
Xander trying to pull it away.

"You're not doing this, Gray- I love you..."

"I *am* doing this, *because* I love you Xan."

Graham's strength- whether commando or vampire, who
can tell- eventually wins out, and he pulls the
trigger, at the same time Xander yells in both panic
and triumph

//triumph?//

and thumbs a switch on the back of the handle.

Graham is surprised when, instead of crackling arcs of
blue white fire delivering him into the void, there is
a loud twanging noise and a pain in his forehead like
a pin being pushed through the bones of his skull. It
still fogs his vision over with darkness, though, so
he surrenders to it all the same.

* * * *

Graham wakes, some unknown time later. The moon is
out, so it is night. He is surprised to not be dead,
but not really surprised to see Xander looking down at
him, a hopeful look on his face.

Graham's forehead throbs. He raises a large
commando-hand to it and rubs, then looks at Xander.

"You over-rode the electricity."

"Yep."

"Shot me with the neutralizer instead."

"Yep."

"I have a chip in my head. Like Spike's."

"Yep."

Graham's eyes start to blur into ruby red, then seem
to think better of it and return to blue.

"I should break your nose for you."

The shy smile broadens. "I'd like to see you try,
neuter-boy."

"Asshole." But the words lack heat.

Graham reaches out an arm, and Xander helps him to his
feet. They kiss for a long time, before Graham speaks
again.

"This is crazy, you know that? You still wanting to be
with me? You're nuts."

"...So I've been told."

Graham looks at him, the corners of his mouth trying
very hard not to twitch up into a smile.

"How are we going to make this work, Xan? how can we
possibly go on like before?"

"...That's on a need-to-know basis, Soldier, and you
don't need to know."

They kiss again, link hands, and walk out of the shop
together, into the night.

************************END*******************************