Dirt and Dust...
May. 28th, 2003 11:59 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
jenoofer.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
xandrewSorry for making everyone wait for the final installlments of this fic - this certainly wasn't planned. The delay was caused by my dad killing our computer instead of fixing it like he promised, and I'm now without Internet access at home and am having to use work computers during the day. So please don't do anything interesting until I have my computer back!
Anyway, here's chapter seventeen of 'Dirt and Dust...' and the epilogue.
There is no alarm telling him he has to be at work in an hour. There is no early morning kitchen bustle. There is no birdsong.
Xander thinks there should be something. A morning like this deserves something more than a slow drift into waking that is entirely uneventful. The morning after should not be so easy.
There’s no red-letter-day flutter in his belly. Then again, there’s no sinking, ‘what the hell did I do’ sensation either. There’s just Andrew, snoring lightly and laying on Xander’s left arm, cutting off the circulation and making his fingers tingle.
Memories of the previous night do not make him want to run to the bathroom and scrub every square inch of his skin until he squeaks. Xander decides this is a good thing.
When he shifts his head, he feels something brush against his temple. Raising his free hand, he finds that his patch has slipped free and is resting on his hair. It’s only since Andrew’s been sleeping beside him that he’s stopped taking it off at night. A faint impression of panic rumbles inside him as he struggles to pull it back into place. His one-handed fumbling causes the bedsprings under his shoulder to creak, and the motion rouses Andrew into near-waking. He burrows his head further into the pillow, and Xander can hear the unspoken, ‘five more minutes, mom’ as he tries to find sleep once again. A few moments more, though, and he’s rubbing at his eyes and shifting against Xander’s chest. Xander waits patiently for Andrew to look back at him over his shoulder, watching the uneasy smile of recognition that edges across his face.
“Hi,” he whispers.
Andrew blinks a few times, then his smile drifts into something a little more relaxed when it becomes clear that Xander is not about to shove him out of bed and send him away. He mutters a “hey” of his own before dropping his head back on to Xander’s arm, settling more comfortably against him. And that seems about the extent of his conversational abilities. Xander’s too, evidently, since he can find nothing else to add.
For almost a minute, there’s nothing but the sound of their breathing, his chest rising and falling against Andrew’s back until they achieve a kind of synchronisation that could almost lull him back to sleep.
“Xander?” Andrew’s voice is muffled and barely penetrates the drowsy haze around Xander’s head. “That was just a comfort fuck, wasn’t it?”
His first thought is how strange ‘fuck’ sounds in Andrew’s lazy, hesitant voice. The actual sense of the words takes a moment to reach him.
“I don’t know.” His voice is flat. He thinks he should be confused, or possibly worried, but all he can manage is dulled contentment. Outside, the city sounds are rumbling by as though they never stopped, as though they don’t care what’s happening here. Xander is just barely grateful for this little pocket of calm.
“You were thinking about Anya, weren’t you?” Even as he speaks Andrew is lazily stroking a fingertip along the inside of Xander’s forearm.
He thinks about this for a moment. Really thinks.
“No,” he answers eventually. “No, I wasn’t.”
“But it wasn’t about me.”
So long, little pocket of calm. Xander eases his arm out from underneath Andrew’s shoulder so that he can move back enough to see his face. Andrew obligingly rolls on to his back, but does not look up.
“If you’re so convinced it wasn’t about you,” Xander asks, exasperated and frightened by this broken boy, “why’d you do it?”
Andrew peers up at him.
‘Oh yeah,’ Xander remembers. ‘That’s why.’ He ponders this for a moment, then thinks, ‘Shit.’ Wonders what Andrew must think of him now.
“It was about you,” he cuts in before Andrew can say anything. “It was about…” He knows there are reasons, valid Andrew-related reasons for what he did last night, but putting them into words, actually saying them out loud – that’s where it gets hard. “It was you,” he finishes lamely, hoping it’s enough.
“You just don’t seem too thrilled about it.” Andrew offers a weak, self-deprecating smile that wrinkles his odd little squashed nose and hits Xander like a punch to the gut.
Before he has any time to stop and think about it, he’s brushing his thumb over Andrew’s cheek, wondering how to smooth away the worry-lines creasing his forehead.
“I just got a lot to think about right now,” he explains. “Questions to answer.”
Like how come he’s still not freaking out about laying here naked with another guy who also happens to be naked, after doing interesting naked things with said guy. Or how come Andrew knew how to do those interesting things.
He props himself up on one elbow. Andrew tugs on the blanket, apparently unsure whether to pull it further up or shove it away.
“You want me to go?” Without warning Andrew tries to sit up, the blanket slipping precariously low. “I mean, if you wanna be alone to think or…whatever.”
Xander imagines Andrew getting out of bed, getting dressed, leaving the room. Imagines being by himself to think.
“No.” It’s the one thing he’s entirely sure about right now. “Well, how am I supposed to figure this out if the person it’s about isn’t here?” He manages not to wince at his own cheesy dialogue.
“Really?”
Xander moves to sit up too, bringing him eye-to-eye with Andrew. Free of gel, his dirty-blonde hair feathers around his face, giving him an innocent look that lies so convincingly about the things he did the night before.
“Really,” Xander assures him.
There’s another turn, another change in the pattern. Andrew shifts, leans in a little towards Xander and damn, where did he learn *that* look? Xander tries to remember that he’s the older one here, the one who’s been at least part way around the block, but Andrew’s pinning him in place with a look that says, ‘that was *so* the right decision’. And suddenly he’s the insecure teenager held immobile under the predatory stare, and there’s no way to resist when Andrew moves in to kiss him.
*****
Epilogue
*****
It’s hot. Too hot to be wearing a suit, and Xander has to remove his jacket and sling it over his arm before he can walk any further. The last thing he needs right now is to show up for his interview looking like he just ran a marathon.
But that’s the way it is here. It’s not like the comforting T-shirt warmth of Sunnydale. This heat has nothing to do with the sun and everything to do with the people. Everywhere’s a sardine can: subways, stores, even the streets, where the concrete bakes under the friction of a million footsteps and the smell of countless inhabitants rises around him like someone’s just pulled off the lid.
He decides he likes the can metaphor, as he rounds the corner and almost bumps into a twin-setted woman marching along behind two identical terriers. She blusters at him in unaccented words that he ignores as he moves on resolutely. Can’t be late. Can’t be late.
This one could be it. Or near enough. Either way, it’s better than stacking shelves, which is what he’s been doing for the past four weeks. The carpentry gig was supposed to have brought him beyond that: he’d hoped to never wear a supermarket uniform again. But pride is nothing when you need money.
It’s not that there’s a lack of good jobs here: if it’s possible, L.A. has more of a demon destruction problem than Sunnydale, and there are always construction crews to be seen in and around the city. It’s just that potential employers seem wary of guys who can’t judge the distance between the plane and their fingers.
But there’s other stuff he can do. He has other skills. People skills. Hence the management job he’s interviewing for in…he checks his watch. Fourteen minutes. He’s not late yet. It’s a paperwork-heavy job, but there’s also site stuff that’ll get him out of the office and let him meet people. He’ll get used to it.
There’s been a lot to get used to lately, so he’s had plenty of practise. Buffy’s gone: a sabbatical in England, just as he expected. Willow’s staying with her folks, but she’s promised to visit soon. Giles has permanently relocated, and though there’s been the odd phone call, Xander doesn’t expect to see him in America again.
He has a whole new team to work with now. Wesley and Angel are faces he knows, and even though Angel’s just as broody as he remembers, Wesley’s whole ‘to hell and back’ makeover means Xander kind of likes being around him now. There’s still a big Giles-shaped whole that’ll never be filled, but Wesley’s not a bad substitute. And there’s Gunn, who’s turning into a great buddy, and Fred who’s always friendly even if Xander doesn’t understand a word she says half the time.
So, weird as it still seems sometimes, Andrew’s the familiar face, the one who makes it all seem vaguely normal. And he likes normal.
Normal is the tired ache after a day’s work. Normal is making dinner in the microwave and eating it while stretched out on the couch. Normal is sitting down in front of the TV with Andrew, which feels also vaguely familiar. It’s not something they ever really did, but it feels like something they might have done, once. Should have done.
He knows he doesn’t know nearly enough about Andrew. Sometimes he finds himself wondering what Andrew was like before he was evil. What he did after school. What he wanted to do with his life.
Finding out isn’t easy. For all his inane chatter, Andrew doesn’t say much about things past. A couple of weeks ago, Xander had asked if he’d thought about tracking down his folks to see where they’d gone after Sunnydale. Andrew had changed the subject. Xander hasn’t mentioned it since.
Sometimes it seems better like that. There are things that are easier to ignore. This is his life now. It wouldn’t help to interrupt his readjustment. There are a lot of things to adjust to.
Like living in the hotel, which isn’t permanent because soon he’ll be able to afford his own apartment, but sometimes it’s still strange to think about all those empty rooms, just abandoned to dust and spiders. Or like knowing that no one will think any less of him if he takes Andrew’s hand, or if they come down to breakfast together wearing matching tired smiles, or if they’re caught kissing on the dusty red sofas in the lobby.
Some things take a lot of getting used to. But Xander’s decided that’s half the fun.
END
Anyway, here's chapter seventeen of 'Dirt and Dust...' and the epilogue.
There is no alarm telling him he has to be at work in an hour. There is no early morning kitchen bustle. There is no birdsong.
Xander thinks there should be something. A morning like this deserves something more than a slow drift into waking that is entirely uneventful. The morning after should not be so easy.
There’s no red-letter-day flutter in his belly. Then again, there’s no sinking, ‘what the hell did I do’ sensation either. There’s just Andrew, snoring lightly and laying on Xander’s left arm, cutting off the circulation and making his fingers tingle.
Memories of the previous night do not make him want to run to the bathroom and scrub every square inch of his skin until he squeaks. Xander decides this is a good thing.
When he shifts his head, he feels something brush against his temple. Raising his free hand, he finds that his patch has slipped free and is resting on his hair. It’s only since Andrew’s been sleeping beside him that he’s stopped taking it off at night. A faint impression of panic rumbles inside him as he struggles to pull it back into place. His one-handed fumbling causes the bedsprings under his shoulder to creak, and the motion rouses Andrew into near-waking. He burrows his head further into the pillow, and Xander can hear the unspoken, ‘five more minutes, mom’ as he tries to find sleep once again. A few moments more, though, and he’s rubbing at his eyes and shifting against Xander’s chest. Xander waits patiently for Andrew to look back at him over his shoulder, watching the uneasy smile of recognition that edges across his face.
“Hi,” he whispers.
Andrew blinks a few times, then his smile drifts into something a little more relaxed when it becomes clear that Xander is not about to shove him out of bed and send him away. He mutters a “hey” of his own before dropping his head back on to Xander’s arm, settling more comfortably against him. And that seems about the extent of his conversational abilities. Xander’s too, evidently, since he can find nothing else to add.
For almost a minute, there’s nothing but the sound of their breathing, his chest rising and falling against Andrew’s back until they achieve a kind of synchronisation that could almost lull him back to sleep.
“Xander?” Andrew’s voice is muffled and barely penetrates the drowsy haze around Xander’s head. “That was just a comfort fuck, wasn’t it?”
His first thought is how strange ‘fuck’ sounds in Andrew’s lazy, hesitant voice. The actual sense of the words takes a moment to reach him.
“I don’t know.” His voice is flat. He thinks he should be confused, or possibly worried, but all he can manage is dulled contentment. Outside, the city sounds are rumbling by as though they never stopped, as though they don’t care what’s happening here. Xander is just barely grateful for this little pocket of calm.
“You were thinking about Anya, weren’t you?” Even as he speaks Andrew is lazily stroking a fingertip along the inside of Xander’s forearm.
He thinks about this for a moment. Really thinks.
“No,” he answers eventually. “No, I wasn’t.”
“But it wasn’t about me.”
So long, little pocket of calm. Xander eases his arm out from underneath Andrew’s shoulder so that he can move back enough to see his face. Andrew obligingly rolls on to his back, but does not look up.
“If you’re so convinced it wasn’t about you,” Xander asks, exasperated and frightened by this broken boy, “why’d you do it?”
Andrew peers up at him.
‘Oh yeah,’ Xander remembers. ‘That’s why.’ He ponders this for a moment, then thinks, ‘Shit.’ Wonders what Andrew must think of him now.
“It was about you,” he cuts in before Andrew can say anything. “It was about…” He knows there are reasons, valid Andrew-related reasons for what he did last night, but putting them into words, actually saying them out loud – that’s where it gets hard. “It was you,” he finishes lamely, hoping it’s enough.
“You just don’t seem too thrilled about it.” Andrew offers a weak, self-deprecating smile that wrinkles his odd little squashed nose and hits Xander like a punch to the gut.
Before he has any time to stop and think about it, he’s brushing his thumb over Andrew’s cheek, wondering how to smooth away the worry-lines creasing his forehead.
“I just got a lot to think about right now,” he explains. “Questions to answer.”
Like how come he’s still not freaking out about laying here naked with another guy who also happens to be naked, after doing interesting naked things with said guy. Or how come Andrew knew how to do those interesting things.
He props himself up on one elbow. Andrew tugs on the blanket, apparently unsure whether to pull it further up or shove it away.
“You want me to go?” Without warning Andrew tries to sit up, the blanket slipping precariously low. “I mean, if you wanna be alone to think or…whatever.”
Xander imagines Andrew getting out of bed, getting dressed, leaving the room. Imagines being by himself to think.
“No.” It’s the one thing he’s entirely sure about right now. “Well, how am I supposed to figure this out if the person it’s about isn’t here?” He manages not to wince at his own cheesy dialogue.
“Really?”
Xander moves to sit up too, bringing him eye-to-eye with Andrew. Free of gel, his dirty-blonde hair feathers around his face, giving him an innocent look that lies so convincingly about the things he did the night before.
“Really,” Xander assures him.
There’s another turn, another change in the pattern. Andrew shifts, leans in a little towards Xander and damn, where did he learn *that* look? Xander tries to remember that he’s the older one here, the one who’s been at least part way around the block, but Andrew’s pinning him in place with a look that says, ‘that was *so* the right decision’. And suddenly he’s the insecure teenager held immobile under the predatory stare, and there’s no way to resist when Andrew moves in to kiss him.
*****
Epilogue
*****
It’s hot. Too hot to be wearing a suit, and Xander has to remove his jacket and sling it over his arm before he can walk any further. The last thing he needs right now is to show up for his interview looking like he just ran a marathon.
But that’s the way it is here. It’s not like the comforting T-shirt warmth of Sunnydale. This heat has nothing to do with the sun and everything to do with the people. Everywhere’s a sardine can: subways, stores, even the streets, where the concrete bakes under the friction of a million footsteps and the smell of countless inhabitants rises around him like someone’s just pulled off the lid.
He decides he likes the can metaphor, as he rounds the corner and almost bumps into a twin-setted woman marching along behind two identical terriers. She blusters at him in unaccented words that he ignores as he moves on resolutely. Can’t be late. Can’t be late.
This one could be it. Or near enough. Either way, it’s better than stacking shelves, which is what he’s been doing for the past four weeks. The carpentry gig was supposed to have brought him beyond that: he’d hoped to never wear a supermarket uniform again. But pride is nothing when you need money.
It’s not that there’s a lack of good jobs here: if it’s possible, L.A. has more of a demon destruction problem than Sunnydale, and there are always construction crews to be seen in and around the city. It’s just that potential employers seem wary of guys who can’t judge the distance between the plane and their fingers.
But there’s other stuff he can do. He has other skills. People skills. Hence the management job he’s interviewing for in…he checks his watch. Fourteen minutes. He’s not late yet. It’s a paperwork-heavy job, but there’s also site stuff that’ll get him out of the office and let him meet people. He’ll get used to it.
There’s been a lot to get used to lately, so he’s had plenty of practise. Buffy’s gone: a sabbatical in England, just as he expected. Willow’s staying with her folks, but she’s promised to visit soon. Giles has permanently relocated, and though there’s been the odd phone call, Xander doesn’t expect to see him in America again.
He has a whole new team to work with now. Wesley and Angel are faces he knows, and even though Angel’s just as broody as he remembers, Wesley’s whole ‘to hell and back’ makeover means Xander kind of likes being around him now. There’s still a big Giles-shaped whole that’ll never be filled, but Wesley’s not a bad substitute. And there’s Gunn, who’s turning into a great buddy, and Fred who’s always friendly even if Xander doesn’t understand a word she says half the time.
So, weird as it still seems sometimes, Andrew’s the familiar face, the one who makes it all seem vaguely normal. And he likes normal.
Normal is the tired ache after a day’s work. Normal is making dinner in the microwave and eating it while stretched out on the couch. Normal is sitting down in front of the TV with Andrew, which feels also vaguely familiar. It’s not something they ever really did, but it feels like something they might have done, once. Should have done.
He knows he doesn’t know nearly enough about Andrew. Sometimes he finds himself wondering what Andrew was like before he was evil. What he did after school. What he wanted to do with his life.
Finding out isn’t easy. For all his inane chatter, Andrew doesn’t say much about things past. A couple of weeks ago, Xander had asked if he’d thought about tracking down his folks to see where they’d gone after Sunnydale. Andrew had changed the subject. Xander hasn’t mentioned it since.
Sometimes it seems better like that. There are things that are easier to ignore. This is his life now. It wouldn’t help to interrupt his readjustment. There are a lot of things to adjust to.
Like living in the hotel, which isn’t permanent because soon he’ll be able to afford his own apartment, but sometimes it’s still strange to think about all those empty rooms, just abandoned to dust and spiders. Or like knowing that no one will think any less of him if he takes Andrew’s hand, or if they come down to breakfast together wearing matching tired smiles, or if they’re caught kissing on the dusty red sofas in the lobby.
Some things take a lot of getting used to. But Xander’s decided that’s half the fun.
END
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no subject
Date: 2003-05-28 04:10 am (UTC)*sniff*
Date: 2003-05-28 05:20 am (UTC)"Like how come he’s still not freaking out about laying here naked with another guy who also happens to be naked, after doing interesting naked things with said guy. Or how come Andrew knew how to do those interesting things."
So very a Xandery thing to say... and gah...
'“You just don’t seem too thrilled about it.” Andrew offers a weak, self-deprecating smile that wrinkles his odd little squashed nose and hits Xander like a punch to the gut.'
*heart melts* I've never noticed the nose before. Must look for it.
Gaaaaahhhh. This story makes me all happy and sad and incoherent.
*scurries off to read it all again*
Re: *sniff*
Date: 2003-05-28 05:29 am (UTC)Re: *sniff*
Date: 2003-05-28 05:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-05-30 04:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-15 11:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-03 03:42 pm (UTC)I figure you might like to know that people are still reading it. I saw this recc'd at http://viciouswishes.sliverofice.com/fic_recs/buffy_mmslash_ficrecs.htm and it's really hard to believe 5 years have passed since the end of the show.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-03 09:01 pm (UTC)Really lovely writing, great characterisation and a very satisfying plot progression and ending.