Bewitched, Chapter 7
May. 16th, 2009 10:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thismazTitle: Bewitched, Chapter 7
Pairing: S/X
Rating: Back to PG-13 with this chapter.
Summary: When Valentine's Day arrives, Dru dips her finger in the brew and gives it a stir.
Word Count: 2,160
Betaed by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sparrow2000 and DJ, with many thanks. Thanks also to Sparrow for her help with conflabbing on plot twists and forms.
Comments: Are greatly appreciated, loved and cherished.
Disclaimer: here.
Some dialogue borrowed courtesy of http://www.twiztv.com/scripts/
Prologue here, with a link to the other chapters, or you can find the whole thing, in reverse order, in tags.
Chapter 7
The morning dawned bright and far too early, for Xander. He'd managed to sneak into the house without being noticed and escape to his bed, but his mind had been in turmoil. After what felt like hours of tossing, turning and staring blindly at the ceiling, he'd pulled out his headphones and eventually fallen asleep to the music of confusion, which was a bit like the music of pain but less depressing and much louder. Pink Floyd shouting about all the things that were just another brick in the wall seemed to have been what his Idiot Jed brain needed for it to take over and switch off all thinking functions, hopefully leaving his Yoda brain to sort out the mess that was his life.
While Xander’s mouth often went off the rails and never censored itself, usually with unfortunate consequences, his feet regularly tripped over anything in their path and his intellect seemed to spend much of its time cowering in a corner with its hands over its head, gibbering, Xander had come to think of his Yoda brain as something to be trusted. True, it could be trusted to wander off, whistling, but it could also be trusted to come back, having sorted out his everyday crises without his conscious involvement. As long as his mouth and feet hadn't got him into too much trouble in the meantime, he usually found that, given time, his Yoda brain knew how to make his problems go away, or at least make them manageable.
Not on this occasion, though. And not with this particular problem. When he woke up and looked at the day ahead, it seemed like his Yoda brain had failed him, because he was still a mass of confusion and his dreams had been full of soft touches and pale skin.
The idea of facing any sort of inquisition was more than he could bear. He knew, with a deep seated dread, that with one good look at his face his father would be able to sense exactly what he’d done the night before. It had to be there – the knowledge that he couldn’t erase of how a vampire's touch had set his body on fire. A shiver formed deep in his gut as memory conjured an almost physical sensation of smooth hands touching him.
For the hundredth time, Xander forcibly stomped that thought train into the ground. Then he stamped the earth down on top of it and finally dropped a huge boulder on the spot. He was not going to think about it! He was not going to remember! That way led to confusion. Confusion led to fear. Fear led to anger. Anger led something else. And so it went on and none of it was good. His Yoda brain would sort it out, if he just gave it time. Xander had great faith in his Yoda brain. He had to; it was his only hope. It would work everything out, eventually, and tell him what to do about the fact that he had gone totally stark raving crazy and had sex. With a vampire. A male vampire.
He briefly considered spending the day hiding in his room, but with his luck his mom would come in and find him, and he couldn't risk meeting his dad. Plus, the chances of Willow noticing were too great. Facing the Willow inquisition into his absence from class was almost scarier than the thought of facing his parents, although in a totally different way. And there was also the urgent need to talk to Buffy.
Slipping into the hall, Xander tiptoed towards his parents’ room. Their door was ajar and he peered through the gap, breathing a sigh of relief when he saw two inert lumps under the covers. Turning away, he went to the kitchen to rummage through the fridge for breakfast and something to take with him for lunch.
The good thing about school, Xander discovered over the next few hours, was that everybody seemed as eager to avoid seeing him, as he was to avoid being seen. The bad thing was that the same thing apparently applied to his best friend. When he finally tracked Willow down and tried to apologise, she turned her back on him. Oz gave him a sympathetic look and a shrug, before turning away with her, his arm around her shoulders.
Xander was still gazing after them when Buffy joined him. "Why so morose?" She asked.
He slowly turned his head to stare at her. "Morose?" he asked.
Buffy shrugged. "Hey, it's a thing." She looked slightly embarrassed.
By mutual consent they started walking in the opposite direction from the way Willow and Oz had gone and away from his next class. "A thing?" Xander asked.
"Word of the week," she replied, almost making it a question.
"Right. And you started with morose?”
"Seemed sort of appropriate. So, how're you doing?"
"I seem to be back to being incredibly unpopular."
Buffy smiled, slightly. “It's got to be better than everyone trying to axe-murder you.”
"Yeah, I guess. Mostly. But Willow won't even talk to me."
Buffy shot him a sympathetic look, but she didn’t let him off the hook by making any false promises. "I know. She was on the phone to me last night. Is there any particular reason she should?"
Xander looked down at her, acknowledging the justice of her question. "How much grovelling are we talking here?" he asked.
Smiling, Buffy gave him a bump with her shoulder. "Oh, a month, at least. It would be longer, but I think Oz might manage to talk her around. She’s mega-embarrassed, but he seems to be strangely grudge free. The rest of us..."
Stroking his jaw and thinking about the power behind Oz’s punch, Xander grimaced. "You remember, huh?"
"Oh, yeah," Buffy agreed. She shot him another quick glance. "I remember coming on to you, I remember begging you to undress me... And then a sudden need for cheese. I also remember that you didn't."
"Need cheese?"
"Undress me."
Xander remembered the feeling of nausea that had threatened, as she stalked towards him in the library. It didn’t seem like a sensible move to admit to that, though. "C'mon, Buffy," he said, instead. "I couldn't... take advantage of you like that." Trying for a joke, he added, "Okay, for a minute there, it was touch and go..."
She interrupted his attempt at humour. "But you came through." Another shoulder bump, this time accompanied by a grin. "There might just be hope for you yet."
"Gee, thanks."
"It’s no trouble."
Stopping, he turned to look at her properly. "So are we good?" he asked.
She nodded decisively. "We’re good."
He smiled, feeling better than he had all morning. "Thanks," he said, meaning it. They started walking again. "So, having established the hope that I might be forgiven, in time, how are you doing?"
She shrugged. "Okay. It's been a weird week."
Remembering what he needed to tell her, Xander directed her over to the wall. He looked around, checking that no one was in earshot. "I, I saw Angelus last night," he said. "He grabbed me from your bedroom. Straight through the window. You need to be careful, Buff."
She didn’t react the way he expected. "My bedroom?" she asked, stretching the words out incredulously. "What on Earth were you doing in my bedroom?" Suddenly she grinned impishly. "If I'd known that last night..."
"No!" Xander held up both hands in front of her, warding her off. "Please, don’t go there," he begged. "I, I was hiding. With Cordy. From your mom."
Buffy’s face screwed up in an expression of disgust. "Eew! Thank you for that image." She cocked her head on one side as she considered him. "It does explain why Mom was looking particularly distracted this morning though." She stepped around him and started walking again. "Thanks for the heads up," she said. "I’ll speak to Giles.” They continued in silence for a few moments. "How’s Cordy?" She asked.
"I don't know."
"She won't talk to you either?"
"I don't know, because I haven't tried talking to her. She looked at me and that was enough." As they turned towards the staircase down to the first floor, he added thoughtfully, "This whole thing was... totally horrific, but it’s sorta put my Cordy obsession into perspective. I can't think why I was so..."
"Stupid?" she asked, when he trailed off. "I always said you could find someone better."
A fleeting image of who, or what, he’d found better flashed across Xander’s mind and he shied away from it. “Oh. But you don’t mean, better like you, do you?” he asked, more to distract himself than to tease her.
"God no!" Looking up at him, she grinned. "No offense."
Smiling back, Xander shrugged. "So not a problem. I remember when that reaction would have been insulting, but truthfully? I can't imagine wanting to date anyone for a long, long time. Possibly ever."
Casting him a sympathetic grimace, she obviously decided to avoid those potentially dangerous waters and returned to their earlier exchange, asking, "So, Angelus, huh? What happened? How'd you get away?"
Xander had known that this question would come up and the one thing his Yoda brain had done was provide him with a tactic to deal with it. He'd decided that telling the truth, if not the whole truth, was the least dangerous option, since it had allowed him to warn Buffy about Angelus. He just hadn't got as far as working out the exact words. "You won't believe this," he said, "but Drusilla saved me." He paused for effect. "Then Spike saved me from Drusilla."
Buffy’s eyes went round with surprise and her eyebrows rose up near her hairline. "You make it sound like a game of pass the parcel," she said, her voice hitching in a cross between a laugh and gasp, "with you as the parcel." The laugh won. "Did they try to unwrap you?" she asked.
That was a little too close to the whole truth, but thankfully she seemed to interpret his sudden choking fit as simple embarrassment, because she moved on before he had to find an answer to her question. "How did you get away?" she asked again. "Because you're here. With the safe and the living. Who saved you from Spike?"
Trying to sound offended, Xander asked, "And you assume I didn’t manage to escape on my own?" He frowned at her. "He is in a wheelchair, you know." Their eyes locked for a moment. Buffy’s lips twitched and Xander capitulated. "Yeah, okay. Actually, I have a feeling it was Giles. He broke the spell, didn't he?"
Buffy nodded. "Yeah, he did."
A frown formed and Xander suddenly, and rather belatedly, recognised the huge hole he'd left in the logic of that explanation. He broke into her thoughts before she could chase it down and question him further on why breaking the spell would help save him from Spike. "Whenever I try to get a love life, it tries to kill me," he said. "I'm thinking, monastery. An all-man monastery. Where there are no women. Ever." She looked up at him sceptically and he shrugged again. "Yeah, you’re right," he acknowledged. "I don't think I'd last a week, either."
He shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans as they started down the stairs and Buffy slipped her hand through his arm. "I never said that," she protested. "But I don't think you need to run away to a monastery. Willow will come around, eventually, and someone else will do something totally stupid and this will be forgotten."
"Gee, thanks. I feel much better now" He looked down at her with a smile, to show his offended tone wasn't serious. "I don’t know though," he said. "If looks could kill, Cordy would already have me sliced and diced." He paused in thought. "Hey, remember that idea I had, where we go out on patrol and use me as bait?"
Dropping the game, Buffy pulled her arm free from his and swatted his shoulder. "Xander! It's not that bad."
By this time they’d reached the bottom of the stairs and she stopped. The library was ahead of them, half way down the hall. "Have you seen Giles yet?"
Xander shook his head. "I'm sort of heading that way now."
She tucked her hand back through his arm. "Want company? Moral support?"
"Someone to hide behind?" He shook his head again. "Nah, I need to face him and get it over with. Its not like he's going to eviscerate me, is it?"
Buffy grinned and stepped back, releasing him. "I have Chem lab, now," she said, "but I'll be back later, to scoop up the pieces. I promise to give them a decent burial."
She turned on her heel and Xander watched her walk off with a swing in her step. How she’d managed to forgive him, he didn’t know, but he was intensely grateful that she had. Taking a deep breath, he squared his shoulders and headed towards the library.
Next Chapter
Pairing: S/X
Rating: Back to PG-13 with this chapter.
Summary: When Valentine's Day arrives, Dru dips her finger in the brew and gives it a stir.
Word Count: 2,160
Betaed by
sparrow2000 and DJ, with many thanks. Thanks also to Sparrow for her help with conflabbing on plot twists and forms.Comments: Are greatly appreciated, loved and cherished.
Disclaimer: here.
Some dialogue borrowed courtesy of http://www.twiztv.com/scripts/
Prologue here, with a link to the other chapters, or you can find the whole thing, in reverse order, in tags.
Chapter 7
The morning dawned bright and far too early, for Xander. He'd managed to sneak into the house without being noticed and escape to his bed, but his mind had been in turmoil. After what felt like hours of tossing, turning and staring blindly at the ceiling, he'd pulled out his headphones and eventually fallen asleep to the music of confusion, which was a bit like the music of pain but less depressing and much louder. Pink Floyd shouting about all the things that were just another brick in the wall seemed to have been what his Idiot Jed brain needed for it to take over and switch off all thinking functions, hopefully leaving his Yoda brain to sort out the mess that was his life.
While Xander’s mouth often went off the rails and never censored itself, usually with unfortunate consequences, his feet regularly tripped over anything in their path and his intellect seemed to spend much of its time cowering in a corner with its hands over its head, gibbering, Xander had come to think of his Yoda brain as something to be trusted. True, it could be trusted to wander off, whistling, but it could also be trusted to come back, having sorted out his everyday crises without his conscious involvement. As long as his mouth and feet hadn't got him into too much trouble in the meantime, he usually found that, given time, his Yoda brain knew how to make his problems go away, or at least make them manageable.
Not on this occasion, though. And not with this particular problem. When he woke up and looked at the day ahead, it seemed like his Yoda brain had failed him, because he was still a mass of confusion and his dreams had been full of soft touches and pale skin.
The idea of facing any sort of inquisition was more than he could bear. He knew, with a deep seated dread, that with one good look at his face his father would be able to sense exactly what he’d done the night before. It had to be there – the knowledge that he couldn’t erase of how a vampire's touch had set his body on fire. A shiver formed deep in his gut as memory conjured an almost physical sensation of smooth hands touching him.
For the hundredth time, Xander forcibly stomped that thought train into the ground. Then he stamped the earth down on top of it and finally dropped a huge boulder on the spot. He was not going to think about it! He was not going to remember! That way led to confusion. Confusion led to fear. Fear led to anger. Anger led something else. And so it went on and none of it was good. His Yoda brain would sort it out, if he just gave it time. Xander had great faith in his Yoda brain. He had to; it was his only hope. It would work everything out, eventually, and tell him what to do about the fact that he had gone totally stark raving crazy and had sex. With a vampire. A male vampire.
He briefly considered spending the day hiding in his room, but with his luck his mom would come in and find him, and he couldn't risk meeting his dad. Plus, the chances of Willow noticing were too great. Facing the Willow inquisition into his absence from class was almost scarier than the thought of facing his parents, although in a totally different way. And there was also the urgent need to talk to Buffy.
Slipping into the hall, Xander tiptoed towards his parents’ room. Their door was ajar and he peered through the gap, breathing a sigh of relief when he saw two inert lumps under the covers. Turning away, he went to the kitchen to rummage through the fridge for breakfast and something to take with him for lunch.
The good thing about school, Xander discovered over the next few hours, was that everybody seemed as eager to avoid seeing him, as he was to avoid being seen. The bad thing was that the same thing apparently applied to his best friend. When he finally tracked Willow down and tried to apologise, she turned her back on him. Oz gave him a sympathetic look and a shrug, before turning away with her, his arm around her shoulders.
Xander was still gazing after them when Buffy joined him. "Why so morose?" She asked.
He slowly turned his head to stare at her. "Morose?" he asked.
Buffy shrugged. "Hey, it's a thing." She looked slightly embarrassed.
By mutual consent they started walking in the opposite direction from the way Willow and Oz had gone and away from his next class. "A thing?" Xander asked.
"Word of the week," she replied, almost making it a question.
"Right. And you started with morose?”
"Seemed sort of appropriate. So, how're you doing?"
"I seem to be back to being incredibly unpopular."
Buffy smiled, slightly. “It's got to be better than everyone trying to axe-murder you.”
"Yeah, I guess. Mostly. But Willow won't even talk to me."
Buffy shot him a sympathetic look, but she didn’t let him off the hook by making any false promises. "I know. She was on the phone to me last night. Is there any particular reason she should?"
Xander looked down at her, acknowledging the justice of her question. "How much grovelling are we talking here?" he asked.
Smiling, Buffy gave him a bump with her shoulder. "Oh, a month, at least. It would be longer, but I think Oz might manage to talk her around. She’s mega-embarrassed, but he seems to be strangely grudge free. The rest of us..."
Stroking his jaw and thinking about the power behind Oz’s punch, Xander grimaced. "You remember, huh?"
"Oh, yeah," Buffy agreed. She shot him another quick glance. "I remember coming on to you, I remember begging you to undress me... And then a sudden need for cheese. I also remember that you didn't."
"Need cheese?"
"Undress me."
Xander remembered the feeling of nausea that had threatened, as she stalked towards him in the library. It didn’t seem like a sensible move to admit to that, though. "C'mon, Buffy," he said, instead. "I couldn't... take advantage of you like that." Trying for a joke, he added, "Okay, for a minute there, it was touch and go..."
She interrupted his attempt at humour. "But you came through." Another shoulder bump, this time accompanied by a grin. "There might just be hope for you yet."
"Gee, thanks."
"It’s no trouble."
Stopping, he turned to look at her properly. "So are we good?" he asked.
She nodded decisively. "We’re good."
He smiled, feeling better than he had all morning. "Thanks," he said, meaning it. They started walking again. "So, having established the hope that I might be forgiven, in time, how are you doing?"
She shrugged. "Okay. It's been a weird week."
Remembering what he needed to tell her, Xander directed her over to the wall. He looked around, checking that no one was in earshot. "I, I saw Angelus last night," he said. "He grabbed me from your bedroom. Straight through the window. You need to be careful, Buff."
She didn’t react the way he expected. "My bedroom?" she asked, stretching the words out incredulously. "What on Earth were you doing in my bedroom?" Suddenly she grinned impishly. "If I'd known that last night..."
"No!" Xander held up both hands in front of her, warding her off. "Please, don’t go there," he begged. "I, I was hiding. With Cordy. From your mom."
Buffy’s face screwed up in an expression of disgust. "Eew! Thank you for that image." She cocked her head on one side as she considered him. "It does explain why Mom was looking particularly distracted this morning though." She stepped around him and started walking again. "Thanks for the heads up," she said. "I’ll speak to Giles.” They continued in silence for a few moments. "How’s Cordy?" She asked.
"I don't know."
"She won't talk to you either?"
"I don't know, because I haven't tried talking to her. She looked at me and that was enough." As they turned towards the staircase down to the first floor, he added thoughtfully, "This whole thing was... totally horrific, but it’s sorta put my Cordy obsession into perspective. I can't think why I was so..."
"Stupid?" she asked, when he trailed off. "I always said you could find someone better."
A fleeting image of who, or what, he’d found better flashed across Xander’s mind and he shied away from it. “Oh. But you don’t mean, better like you, do you?” he asked, more to distract himself than to tease her.
"God no!" Looking up at him, she grinned. "No offense."
Smiling back, Xander shrugged. "So not a problem. I remember when that reaction would have been insulting, but truthfully? I can't imagine wanting to date anyone for a long, long time. Possibly ever."
Casting him a sympathetic grimace, she obviously decided to avoid those potentially dangerous waters and returned to their earlier exchange, asking, "So, Angelus, huh? What happened? How'd you get away?"
Xander had known that this question would come up and the one thing his Yoda brain had done was provide him with a tactic to deal with it. He'd decided that telling the truth, if not the whole truth, was the least dangerous option, since it had allowed him to warn Buffy about Angelus. He just hadn't got as far as working out the exact words. "You won't believe this," he said, "but Drusilla saved me." He paused for effect. "Then Spike saved me from Drusilla."
Buffy’s eyes went round with surprise and her eyebrows rose up near her hairline. "You make it sound like a game of pass the parcel," she said, her voice hitching in a cross between a laugh and gasp, "with you as the parcel." The laugh won. "Did they try to unwrap you?" she asked.
That was a little too close to the whole truth, but thankfully she seemed to interpret his sudden choking fit as simple embarrassment, because she moved on before he had to find an answer to her question. "How did you get away?" she asked again. "Because you're here. With the safe and the living. Who saved you from Spike?"
Trying to sound offended, Xander asked, "And you assume I didn’t manage to escape on my own?" He frowned at her. "He is in a wheelchair, you know." Their eyes locked for a moment. Buffy’s lips twitched and Xander capitulated. "Yeah, okay. Actually, I have a feeling it was Giles. He broke the spell, didn't he?"
Buffy nodded. "Yeah, he did."
A frown formed and Xander suddenly, and rather belatedly, recognised the huge hole he'd left in the logic of that explanation. He broke into her thoughts before she could chase it down and question him further on why breaking the spell would help save him from Spike. "Whenever I try to get a love life, it tries to kill me," he said. "I'm thinking, monastery. An all-man monastery. Where there are no women. Ever." She looked up at him sceptically and he shrugged again. "Yeah, you’re right," he acknowledged. "I don't think I'd last a week, either."
He shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans as they started down the stairs and Buffy slipped her hand through his arm. "I never said that," she protested. "But I don't think you need to run away to a monastery. Willow will come around, eventually, and someone else will do something totally stupid and this will be forgotten."
"Gee, thanks. I feel much better now" He looked down at her with a smile, to show his offended tone wasn't serious. "I don’t know though," he said. "If looks could kill, Cordy would already have me sliced and diced." He paused in thought. "Hey, remember that idea I had, where we go out on patrol and use me as bait?"
Dropping the game, Buffy pulled her arm free from his and swatted his shoulder. "Xander! It's not that bad."
By this time they’d reached the bottom of the stairs and she stopped. The library was ahead of them, half way down the hall. "Have you seen Giles yet?"
Xander shook his head. "I'm sort of heading that way now."
She tucked her hand back through his arm. "Want company? Moral support?"
"Someone to hide behind?" He shook his head again. "Nah, I need to face him and get it over with. Its not like he's going to eviscerate me, is it?"
Buffy grinned and stepped back, releasing him. "I have Chem lab, now," she said, "but I'll be back later, to scoop up the pieces. I promise to give them a decent burial."
She turned on her heel and Xander watched her walk off with a swing in her step. How she’d managed to forgive him, he didn’t know, but he was intensely grateful that she had. Taking a deep breath, he squared his shoulders and headed towards the library.
Next Chapter
