full 3/4 1/2   skin light dark       
 
Fumbling Towards Ecstasy by TalesofSpike
 
Chapter 2.01
 
<<     >>
 

Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting
Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting





Note: Thanks to my beta t_geyer for her unending patience, perseverance and support.



SECTION 2 - ANOTHER SUITCASE IN ANOTHER HALL

So what happens now?
(Another suitcase in another hall)
So what happens now?
(Take your picture off another wall)
Where am I going to?
(You'll get by, you always have before)
Where am I going to?
(Don't ask anymore)



(Barbara Dickson, Lyrics and Music by T Rice and A Lloyd Webber
[I know. I know. I'm eternally sorry but the lyrics kind of fit.])







Chapter 2.01
Thursday, May 16th, 2002

Xander hovered anxiously outside the bathroom door for several seconds before he turned on his heel, picked up his apartment keys and headed out. He got as far as turning the handle of the front door before he broke and turned back.

"Ahn, honey, don't cry. Please don't cry."

"Why?" Anya's wail couldn't quite be muffled by the door. "Isn't that allowed when a woman's husband leaves her?"

"Ahn! I'm not leaving you." Xander gave an exasperated sigh. "Why would you think I'm leaving you?"

"Oh, that's right. I suppose you'll be kicking me out instead."

"Anya, what are you talking about?" By now Xander stood with his ear to the door trying to catch what his wife was saying between sniffs.

"She's not gay, you know. She says she is, but you don't just grow up being all attracted to men and then suddenly, whoosh attracted to women instead. She might prefer sex with women, and be more inclined towards finding a female partner but if she were totally gay instead of bisexual, she would never have been attracted to you and Oz in the first place. I hope you'll both be very happy."

"Alright, Anya, this is getting surreal. Would you please come out of the bathroom so we can talk about this."

"No."

Xander looked heavenward and muttered a plea for patience. "Why not? We obviously need to talk and I'd much rather be able to see your face while I do it."

"No, you wouldn't."

"Yes, I would. I love your face."

"Not when it's all red and puffy."

"Even when it's all red and puffy. Please, hon, come out. Come talk to me."

"So that you can tell me how much you like Willow again?"

"No, so you can tell me why you think I would ever leave you."

"You hate me." Anya gulped through what were obviously more tears.

"Ahn, I don't hate you. Why would you think I hate you?"

"You hate demons. You said you would be nice to my friends, so I brought Evie home, but you were just like normal. You can't help it. You just hate us all, and now that Tara won't be staying with Willow, I guess you two will be free to do all the footsie stuff you haven't done yet."

"Anya, Willow might be free. She might or might not be gay. I'm kind of inclined to think she might actually know her own mind on that one. I'm not and I don't want to be."

"Well, if you were gay you wouldn't be leaving me for Willow, you'd be leaving me for one of the guys on your construction crew or Spike. You were attracted to Spike."

"I was never attracted to Spike. I meant I'm not free. I'm not free. I'm married to you, and if I'm very lucky I will be until I die."

Another loud gulp came from beyond the door. "Then why did you lie about being nice to my friends?"

"I didn't lie. I-."

"You said you would be nice to my friends."

"Yes, but-."

"And you weren't. So you lied. I think you were worried about being left all alone, but now you don't need me because you'll have Willow, till she ages herself to death at least."

"Now, see, that's why I wasn't nice to Evie. I don't generally sit and have a beer with people who want to kill my friends."

"Pfft! If Evie had wanted to kill Willow you'd be ordering flowers for the funeral already. She's never been one for the kill. More the embarrassing situations and stuff. That's why she was so tee-ed off at Willow and her more powerful than thou attitude."

"Look, Ahn. Why don't you unlock the door, come on out and explain exactly what happened from the beginning? Please... Maybe once I know what's going on I'll be giving you a nice big apology."

"And maybe, we'll just argue about it all over again."

Xander played his trump card. "Or maybe I'll admit I was totally wrong and we'll have make up sex. The kind where I prove again and again exactly how sorry I am."

"And you'll write a full letter of apology to Evie and invite her over for dinner or something?"

"If I'm convinced that I made a mistake."

"Really?"

"Really."

"And you're not just saying that?"

"I'm not just saying that."

"And next time you have to choose between Willow and me or Buffy and me, you'll choose me as if you were really my husband?"

"Ahn. That's not-." The stony silence from the other side of the door made him shut him up before he could protest about the unfairness of having to give such a guarantee. "I am really your husband." Xander changed tack, sounding puzzled as the second half of what Anya had said sunk in.

"Then, you'll back me up like a husband should? Like I deserve? Instead of treating me like my opinion's worthless. We get to have a proper marriage? Because right now you act like you're the chief executive and Willow and Buffy are the junior partners and I'm just the stock boy. You never listen to me."

"I want to listen to you now."

"And what happens if when I tell you what happened, you understand my viewpoint, but you don't actually agree with it?"

"Then I apologise for being a total boor instead of being an idiot. You still get the make up sex and your friend gets a slightly less grovelly letter of apology for me being rude, even if I wasn't wrong."

There was a click as Anya unbolted the door. Xander noticed as she drew the door open just a crack that she was right. Her face was all red and puffy. He didn't care a bit.

"Come here," he asked her softly, holding his arms wide. "You are my number one girl. You are the one I come home to. You are the one I hold in my arms before I go to sleep. You're the one I dream about. It's your face that I see when I wake up in the morning. It's your voice that makes me smile when you call me at work.

Willow and Buffy are important to me. I guess I'm kind of hoping, recent mistakes not withstanding that we'll always be friends, but you are my wife . Maybe I got cold feet first time around, but that was because of how seriously I take those vows that we made. If I was the kind of guy who could go into marriage thinking that if it didn't work out we could get a divorce somewhere down the line, then there would have been no reason for me to back out. I'm not. I made those vows for life, and I will do whatever it takes to make this marriage work. I love you. I may not show it very well, but if you can be patient with me when I do something stupid, I'll never stop trying to make things right."

He kissed her on the forehead; a chaste and reassuring caress. Anya tilted her head back and returned the kiss with an equally tender one on his lips before she led him through to the bedroom where they curled together fully clothed as she began her tale.

"I guess it kind of goes back to the meeting after the engagement party. You know, if you'd gone..."

Xander kissed the back of her neck. "I'll go to the next one, wherever it is, okay?"

"Well, we all discussed what to do about Riley and the Initiative listening in. It turns out that after we all talked it over and decided to wait, Willow decided she knew best, and that's sort of your fault because you always let her tell you what you should do, so she sent an email to Sam, instead."








"So, is it your turn to tell me what a bad witch I am?" Willow glared at her friend, who surprisingly found a wet, trembling nose pressing into her hand. It seemed that the dog might be scared witless by Willow, but she still wasn't prepared to leave any of her new "family" alone with the witch.

"No. That's not why I'm here." Buffy leant against the doorframe at one side while her other hand scratched the puppy behind the ears, trying to reassure the beast, who stood with her tail tucked right down between her legs.

"Then, why are you here? To tell me I lost out on a personality contest between me and a dog?"

"Will, you know that's not what happened."

"Isn't it? You're moving me out so that you can move the dog in."

"We couldn't just leave it to get picked up and taken back to the pound."

Willow affected a nonchalant shrug. "It's where it came from."

"I'd never have guessed," Buffy replied, Willow's hostility pushing her into sarcastic mode. "Look, I have to think about Dawn's welfare first and foremost. You have a tremendous gift, but right now you don't seem to be using it responsibly. I know, whether you live here or not, it doesn't actually make a difference. If you wanted to, you could wipe us all out with hardly any effort at all, but appearances are everything as far as Dawn feeling secure is concerned. She was only just starting to come 'round after the whole crash thing. This, on top of what happened, is just too much to expect her to put up with. She needs to feel this is a place where she can heal, where she isn't threatened in any way."

"And you're saying I'm threatening?"

"Not directly. I don't think you would deliberately set out to harm any of us, but people around you get hurt when these things go wrong. I can't tell Dawn that she has to share a house with you under the circumstances, or I should say that I won't."

"So, it's all for Dawnie's sake, is it?"

Buffy looked at her shoes. "No- No, it isn't. There are times I don't recognise you. Times, like when I saw this dog, that I don't think I know what you're capable of.

Spike said you would have had to kill a deer to get me back. I'm not sure the Willow I remember could have done that."

"Probably not. I guess we had to make some hard choices while you were dead."

"No harder than I had to make when I came back, or is it just coincidence that you got me back on the scene just as the money ran out?"

"Is that what you think? That I got you back to make life easier for me?"

"Well, you were certainly too busy wallowing in your own problems to even notice mine. You could at least have got me out the damn coffin. Do you have any idea what that is like? Forget it. There's no way to know unless you have to do it."

"I'm sorry. We didn't think..."

"Yes, and all your magic is like that lately, but it's not just the magic that's the problem. We discussed what we should do about the Initiative. We came to a decision as a group , to wait things out a bit. You don't have the right to decide you know better than everyone else. You seem to think you're equipped to run everyone's life for them, but I'm responsible for Dawn and her safety. If you wanted the job, you should have left me in the ground, but then you might have ended up having to work in a burger bar and quit college."

"It wasn't like that," Willow protested. "We just didn't realise."

Buffy gave a sigh. "This isn't what I wanted to say."

"No, but it explains why you haven't been talking to me all this year. Maybe you should have said it all sooner. Got it out in the open? So that you didn't have to pretend to be my friend any more."

"That's not it. I wanted to tell you that I agree that we had no option but to ask you to move out, but I do still want to be your friend. I don't know how exactly we can make that work yet, but when you cool down and you have time to think, I want you to call me."

Willow continued to glare back at Buffy, but the slayer couldn't tell whether her hostility was genuine or just a surface patina that she kept up as a form of defence.

"Yes, I guess I have issues about last summer and it probably would have been better to have a rant and clear the air, but I knew you'd take it personally and I figure a lot of it is post-grave paranoia... But we've been friends for six years now. I don't plan on giving up on you if you'll stick with me."

This time Buffy didn't wait for a reply, she simply backed out of the door, her canine "protector" coming with her all too gladly.








Xander froze in position when the phone rang. Anya moaned in protest. "Don't stop. God! Don't stop."

The carpenter threw back the sheet, which had been covering him, and crawled up his wife's body, stopping to plant kisses on his wife's abdomen and chest then finally neck and face as he explained. "It's late, hon. No one would be ringing after eleven if it wasn't something important. I've got to answer."

He picked up the receiver by the bed just after the answering machine message had kicked in, cutting it off in mid-sentence.

"Hi. We're here." He paused to pull a stray hair from his mouth as he listened to the person on the other end of the line.

"No... I'm really sorry, but I can't. We're kind of busy... Well, yes . We were, if you must know... No, it is not. There is far more to Anya and me than our hormones, and that's exactly why I can't come and you can't stay here... No, Willow... It just happens that the one thing that is more important to me than our friendship is my marriage and since me and Anya have already had one major row about this whole thing tonight, there is no way I'm doing anything that's going to lead to another... Yes, well, we were until you rang. Why don't you go to your parents?... They did, huh?... What about your bed and all the other stuff from your room?... The basement?" Despite himself Xander couldn't prevent a small smile as he remembered Willow's comment, at around the time she'd split up with Oz. 'You live in a basement? That's dire. ' It sounded like that particular chicken was coming home to roost.

"Look, Will. I get that you don't want to turn up on their doorstep at this time of night. Why don't you go to a motel? The one I went to after the BLF, as you called it, is kind of a dive, but it's cheap, and if you don't have the cash I could ring up and book you a room using my credit card... Well, I guess I could probably run to wherever Giles is staying, for one night, if you let me know which one it is, but how come if Spike already offered you a ride, you were wanting me to come out?... You think this whole thing is because Spike's turning Dawn and Buffy against you?" Xander gave Anya an enquiring look, to which his wife emphatically shook her head.

"Look, I admit I don't know the full story. What say I come over between when I finish work and when Anya shuts The Magic Box tomorrow? Then, we can talk... Yes, Willow that is when I can fit you into my busy schedule, but if you would prefer me not to come, at all, then just say so... Fine, if that's how you want it, but don't forget I offered." Xander returned the phone to its cradle.

"Where were we?" he asked his wife, kissing her first on the lips and then down the side of her neck.

"You were just about to give me an orgasm, but I think saying no to Willow was even better. You really chose me."

"I really did, and unless you're way in the wrong I'm going to try to make a habit of it. Okay?"

"Well, obviously, I wouldn't expect you to compromise your integrity."

"I have integrity?" Xander asked in a teasingly incredulous voice. "Then, I guess I better live up to that promise I made earlier.

"Which promise was that?" Anya asked.

"The one about making you scream so loud we'll get complaints from everyone else in the building."








Willow packed an overnight bag, throwing in her laptop, the phone that Buffy had given her, an oversized T-shirt that she used as a nightshirt and some clothes for the next morning.

She couldn't believe that they had all betrayed her... Even Xander. Goddess, were they fickle? And both of them with their crumbs as if she should be glad to take the scraps of friendship that they offered. Well, maybe she was better off. Amy would understand. She'd been so holier than thou, sending Amy away, but of all of them Amy was the one she could trust to know how she felt.

Well, for now, it would have to be a motel, She really should have let Xander cough up for Giles' hotel before she told him he was offering too little too late. She couldn't change that now, though.

She picked up her bag and made her way downstairs, before dropping it on the floor and waiting in the hall. The dog's growl informed everyone that she was there and the chatter that had been coming from the room fell silent. Spike came through and picked up the bag, carrying it for her as they made their way silently to the car. Giles followed him out, taking the front passenger seat. No one else in the room spoke to her at all.
 
<<     >>