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Hallowe'en offering
Notes: One overlong Hallowe'en story, coming up. Not actually very scary. Thanks to everyone who's been sending stories. I haven't had a chance to read many yet, but will dive in over the weekend. You guys rock.
Title: The Loving Dead
Spoilers: None for AtS; picks up after S7 BtVS (AU)
Rating: PG for language
Spikeage: Negatory
The loving dead
There's a wind in the tops of the trees. The sky is November afternoon white, the tree limbs black and wet with a few leaves smudged up there, shaking silently. Down at ground level, it's still. He brings the grocery bags inside in two trips, leaving the back of the Explorer open while he's inside. He's never lived anywhere you can't leave your car open for a few minutes while you unpack the frozens. He hopes he never does.
The machine is blinking: three calls. One from Dawn, checking up. One a hang-up. One from Ned, about making a new schedule because Ryan's girlfriend is still in the hospital after the C-section. Everyone's pitching in for restaurant coupons, if he's interested. He is. He should call Ned back and get the thing worked out, call Dawn and tell her he saw her friend Kelsey at the Biway, hi from Kelsey. All is cool. Patrol on Tuesday, maybe a movie next weekend.
He goes back to the open front door, stands on the step, points the remote key at the Explorer. and watches the parking lights flash obediently. High up in the air, the tops of the trees are swaying. He stands there for a minute or two, his arms wrapped around his chest for warmth, gauging the distance.
It's been over two years, and he thinks he's pretty much made it through the Kübler-Ross flowchart intact. Anya's gone. His folks are gone. There's stuff he still needs to figure out, stuff that still needs to be drunk through or cried through, with his remaining ducts. Crying with the glass eye in feels weird, as if there are muscles in the back of the socket, a little fist squeezing the marble. Crying with it out feels worse. Like he might just bust a gasket and, God, start to seep.
They've all had a rough couple of years, but he's got to a place where sometimes it all seems freeing. All those years. They were good whistlers, but mostly it was misery. Like wearing leg irons. So much pain, the world always flashing its rotten underbelly, and it was always up to them to plunge in elbow-deep and try to yank out something good. In some ways it's a relief that all that's over now. You can walk away from it, it turns out.
He misses the Bronze. The annual extermination-day drinks, the Dingoes murdering Roger Whittaker, cherry Cokes. He misses Revello Drive, the upstairs bathroom faucet he replaced when Joyce was still alive, the windows he boarded over and over, the clean white soup plates in the cupboards. He doesn't miss the apartment he and Anya had together, which is funny. When he dreams those dreams and wakes up with tears on his face, he's always been back in the basement of his parents' house.
Anya's gone. His folks are gone. Spike's gone, which is sometimes the least believable of all. How many times did he itch to stake Spike, and how astonished was he when Spike actually died? How astonished was he to learn that he had to do a little grieving for Spike, too? Well, it was all grieving, all the time. For a while.
He's through that part now. They all are. And they've all changed. They're quieter, more self-contained. When Buffy calls, she's loud and chatty and increasingly exasperated, he can tell. He'd like to be bluff, hail-Buffy-well-met, but he doesn't have that in him anymore. She thinks they're sad sacks, when really they're just in Cleveland. And she's in San Francisco, dating a turtleneck named Nils.
He wakes up and the clock says something incomprehensible—three o'clock. In the afternoon? No. It's dark. Where is he?
The laurel brushes against the window and everything turns sideways and resolves, and he's in Cleveland, in his own house, not in Sunnydale. He'd been in the basement, under the bed, lying very still. Waiting. He's not there. It doesn't even exist anymore.
He reaches out into the darkness and clicks the bedside light on. He's cold and sweating, which is weird; it wasn't a nightmare. He was just waiting. Still, his fingers shake.
The ceiling creaks, and he looks up at it. The bedside lamp casts an small orange circle; he keeps meaning to put a stronger bulb in. While he sits there, looking, there's another creak. A slow step across the attic floor above his head. A soft foot.
He sits there thinking, raccoon, thinking about the holes he covered with small-mesh wire when he bought the place, thinking about 1937, when this house was built, and how old houses settle. They settle in winter, like old bodies assessing, one last time, what there is to get through. It's settling, is all.
The soft foot covers the floor from over his head to the far wall, and then there's silence. He sits there staring at the ceiling, his hands lying palms-up on the sheet, thinking about a change in the weather.
It snows the next day, first snow of the year. He's at work, deep in unrolled plans, the weather reports coming in over the radio on the windowsill. The east coast is getting hit hard; it's the start of winter, for real. Construction's going to sleep for a while.
Willow calls at noon. "Our pipes burst. Can we use your shower?"
"Wills, you have to wrap them."
"No, Claire had to wrap them. Claire forgot." He can hear Claire in the background, something about the lawns. He loves her, but she's a flake.
"Okay, tell Claire to go turn the water off. No, wait—tell her to call a plumber."
"Done. Believe me."
"Okay. Any major losses?"
"One of Giles's books got wet." Ah—that would be the reason for her tone. Claire's silent in the background now. "It'll be fine. Just—I could use a shower."
"Sure. Hang out, watch TV. Feel free to snake the upstairs drain."
"Are you coming home soon?"
He looks at the spread of papers on his desk, then out through the blinds at the hard grey sky. "I don't think so, no. But maybe I'll see you tonight."
"We have meeting tonight."
"Right." Ned walks past the door of his office, glances in, and stops. Raises his eyebrows—good time? Xander nods, holds up a finger. "Okay, so tomorrow night, then?"
"Thanks, Xander."
"Mi casa es su casa."
He hangs up and Ned comes in with the envelope for Ryan's restaurant coupons. Sits on the corner of Xander's desk watching Xander fish for his wallet, yawns, and stares glumly at the radio.
"Gonna be a long winter," he says, watching Xander drop a twenty into the envelope. "When it holds off this long, it's always a bitch when it finally comes."
"Have I ever told you what winter means in southern California?"
"Fuck off. And take a look at those invoices, because I'm fucked if I can understand what we owe."
He spends the afternoon figuring out what they owe, then calling around with the news that isn't news to anyone: they're on hold for a while. The radio's talking about a series of small blizzards, one after another, lined up off the coast of Newfoundland and proceeding in an orderly fashion right across the country. They're looking at snow and more snow, and then probably snow. Enough to make up for a lifetime of southern California winters.
It's almost seven by the time he gets home, and he's wiped. He has takeout from Empress Taytu's, a warm, portly bag wafting garlic and cinnamon. There's a bottle of IPA in the fridge, if Willow and Claire didn't drink it. He might make it through half of Friends before he keels over.
Their car isn't in the driveway, but they left the porch light on for him. Willow did, anyway. Claire isn't the light-leaving-on type, God love her. Standing on the step with the takeout bag hooked over his wrist, snow spitting down onto his shoulders and the back of his head, sorting through his keys, he reflects that Tara would have remembered. She would have remembered about the pipes, too. He misses Tara.
He finds the house key, fits it in the slot, and glances down to bang the toe of his shoe against the step on the way in. Get some of the snow off, keep from tracking it all through the house.
The step is sheltered by the porch overhang, but there's been enough weather that a thin white layer of snow has blown in right to the doorsill. On the step right next to his right shoe, there's a footprint in the white. A small, bare footprint.
He stands there looking at it for a pair of breaths. It's the strangest thing—he feels like he recognizes it.
Then he shakes his head, wrestles the door open, bangs his shoes off, and gets inside.
"Did they decide on a name yet?" Dawn's tray is tipping, and he reaches over and rights it before she loses her pasta and chocolate milk. She gets her wallet out of her pocket with a final tug and frowns at the total.
"Uh—" He can't remember whether anyone's mentioned a name for the kid yet. It's a boy, eight pounds something, healthy and bouncing and a full head of hair. The digital pictures have made the rounds already. "I don't know, I think they're waiting until she's feeling better."
"If they need a babysitter," Dawn goes on, taking her change and dumping it onto her tray, "tell them to call me. Actually, I should give you my card. I'll just give you my card."
"Cards?" He turns and looks at Willow, who shrugs. "You have cards?"
"Yeah. I figured, why wait till grad school?" Her tone's equal parts excited and defensive, and she's already handing him one. A nice crisp white rectangle, with "Dawn Summers" in capital letters, and underneath, "Bachelor's Degree, Psychology (in progress)". He stares at it a second, automatically checks the phone number and email, and then slips it into his pocket.
"Hokay. I'll pass that on."
She's already turning away to look for a table, and he turns back to Willow and mouths Cards? again. She shakes her head, that fond it'd take too long— look on her face. "Not even you had cards in undergrad, Will."
"Actually, I did." She smiles guiltily. "I made them at Kinko's, and I put this little spell on them so the person I gave them to would really want to call—" Her face falls slightly. "Then Giles found them."
"Uh-huh. And suddenly he had this compelling urge to talk to you?"
"To say the least." She shudders and hands the cashier a twenty.
They make their way through the tables to Dawn, who's already started, and who checks her watch as they sit down. "I have study buddies at one."
"And when we say 'study buddies,' we mean buddies we study with, right?" Xander finds his fork under his plate and points it at her. "We don't mean it the way the kids these days all mean it, do we?"
Dawn gives him a cool look. "Xander."
"I'm just—" He lowers his fork. "Help me out, Willow. What am I, exactly?"
"Overprotective." She pops her milk open and takes a sip. "Overcompensating. Inappropriately parental. The usual." She pauses, swallows, and looks at him. "But, you know, in a good way."
"Changing the subject," he says quickly, "how was meeting?"
"Meeting was good. Meeting was productive. Meeting was an hour and a half of listening to Threnody talk about how she's learning to take every day as it comes and not use magic to shape her brows."
"I thought you said it was productive," Dawn says, an eyebrow cocked.
"I made a mental roster of bracket fungus decoctions." They all pause. "It needed to be done."
"Speaking of bracket fungus," Xander says, "what's with the barefoot-in-the-snow routine?"
There's a moment of silence, while Dawn opens her chocolate milk and Willow stares off across the room, preoccupied with fungus. He waves his fork. "Hello? Bare feet? On my porch?"
Willow wakes up and frowns at him. "What? When?"
"Last night. After you and Claire were there, and if this is some kind of fooling-around-and-getting-locked-out-wh
"You had bare footprints on your porch?"
"Yeah. Well, bare footprint. One."
She stares at him, wrinkling with confusion. "It's November, Xander. We weren't anywhere barefoot."
"Well, somebody was. Somebody small of foot, too."
"Dawn?" Willow looks over at Dawn, who gives an affronted shrug.
"What would I be doing on Xander's porch? In bare feet? In—" Her cell rings and she starts digging for it.
Willow looks back at him, a little worried now. "Are you sure?"
"Sure it was a footprint? Sure I was on the right porch? Yeah, pretty much."
"Well, I don't know what to say. It wasn't us."
He looks at her for a second, then shrugs and sits back to listen to Dawn make sushi plans.
Somehow, he managed to leave his bedside lamp on. Stupid. He clicks it off when he leaves the house for patrol.
Nights are longer here, and colder; it's a good thing there are enough Slayers to go around. Good thing he's not the one training them, too. The vamp takes a return trip, left to right, and almost whacks him en route. He takes a quick step back and bounces slightly, heel to toe, trying to stay warm.
"So, okay. Grab, yank, yeah, exactly, and then you stake." Nicole sounds a little tired; this new Karen girl isn't a quick study. She's about to plunge the stake in for real when Nicole grabs her arm and stops her. "Not yet, not till you get it right. Okay, pass him back. Again."
The vamp spins back, dishevelled and off-balance, and Nicole catches him neatly, traps his hands behind his back, braces a foot at the base of his spine, says, "Ready?" Karen licks her lips nervously and nods. "Okay." The vamp whirls by again, and Karen catches him, half-trips, fails to yank, and bursts into tears. The vamp gives her a confused pat on the shoulder and she stakes him.
"Karen—" Nicole takes a deep breath, turns away, and then turns back. Xander looks sideways at Willow. She's already looking at him, nibbling her lip.
"You've got things under control here," she says to Nicole. "We'll be in the—"
Nicole nods grimly and Karen gives them a teary wave. On the way back to the parking lot, Xander says, "Do you think there's any chance that when all that Slayer mojo got spread out, maybe it hit a couple of folks who weren't really Potentials?"
"I think it's a good thing Karen was never the warrior of the people."
"Truer words."
They get back to the Explorer and crank up the heater, then sit for a while watching what goes by. Basic training, mostly. Three new girls this month, chipper and cheerful and catching on fast. Slaying's a big sorority; all the cool girls are doing it. There's an association, a password-protected Website. The Council still hasn't recovered, it's all grass-roots sisterhood. It still amazes him, how smoothly it's going, how well matriarchy trumps patriarchy. Makes him wonder what'll happen once these girls are eligible to run for office.
"Remember when patrol used to be just the bunch of us—" he starts, and is interrupted by a tap at his window. It's Kelsey, grinning and bundled in a pink scarf, an orange wool hat, pointing for him to roll the window down. Oh boy. He buzzes it down and forces a smile. "Hey, Kelsey."
"Hey. Coffee for the alumni." She hands a tray of Starbucks through the window, and he takes it awkwardly, wondering if there's some way he can say No thanks, we're fine—, but Willow's already crowing delightedly and grabbing a cup.
"Kelsey, you're the best. It's freezing out here."
"Not so bad if you're moving around." She pulls a stake from her jacket and does a quick little demo, almost dinging his rear view mirror. "Sorry."
"No problem. Thanks for the coffee." He's still smiling inanely, and there's a pause while she smiles back and says nothing. Willow blows on her coffee. What the hell else is he supposed to say? "Cold tonight." Fuck.
Kelsey gives him a funny look, then puts the stake away again and shrugs. "That's why they call it Cleveland. So, Dawn said your friend had a baby."
"Yeah. A boy. He's great, they're all great."
"That's wonderful. Congratulations." She nods, then runs a finger along the mirror and coughs slightly. "So, um, I was wondering whether you might have any time to work with me on some of the defensive stuff? I mean, I'd ask Nicole but she's busy with the new girls, and Karen's really slow, and I was just wondering if you had any time on Friday maybe? And I'd be totally happy to, um, take you to dinner after to say thanks."
"Oh," he says. "Uh, this Friday?" She nods, looking serious. "I'm sorry, I'm booked already. But maybe Willow—"
"Can't," Willow says. "And your thing got cancelled, I meant to tell you."
"I know," he says. "But then it got rescheduled. Sorry, Kelsey. I'll talk to Nicole and see if she can fit you in."
"Oh." She stands there a second, finger still lightly touching the mirror. "Okay. Well, thanks."
"No problem." He tries to smile, taps the steering wheel like an idiot. "Thanks for the coffee."
"Sure, you're welcome. Thanks for...talking to Nicole." She waves, smiles weakly, and heads out into the cemetery. He buzzes the window closed.
"Jerk," Willow says, blowing on her coffee.
"Hey, now."
"You could go out with her once. It would kill you to go out with her once?"
"Willow, I'm not interested in Kelsey. She's eighteen. She's Dawn's friend. See reason."
"She's a wonderful person and she likes you."
"So does Ned. I should date Ned?"
She gives him a sidelong look. "I don't know. Should you?"
"Willow."
"I'm just saying, you haven't had more than three dates in two years, and that's just...wrong."
"Can we pretend we've had this conversation, and move on?"
"Why don't you want to try again, Xander?"
That's more direct than she usually is, and he glances at her in surprise. She's watching him somberly, waiting for some words. He has none. Instead, he does what he always does, uncontrollably: lifts a hand and rubs his marble eye.
He wakes up because it's freezing, so cold he feels like he must have kicked the blankets off, but he hasn't. It's just freezing. Did he leave a window open? He can't remember opening one, but he gets muzzily up and staggers through the rooms, checking. They're all closed. He stands in the hallway, where the thermostat reads forty-two degrees, and swears under his breath. Part of him's thinking of Claire—did she go down and mess something up? It's something she'd do, though he can't quite figure out her possible reasons right now. It's not like it matters. He grabs a couple of wrenches out of the red toolbox and heads down to the basement.
The house is cold; the basement feels subzero. He's shivering, and the metal of the wrenches is biting into his hands. He should be wearing another sweater, a hat, heavy socks. He's barefoot. The light down here is weak, almost blue. Another bulb he needs to replace.
The boiler's in the corner, upright and silent, like someone standing waiting for him since 1937. He calls it a bastard and gets the wrenches on the valve to bleed it. If it's going to start doing this at night, he's going to have to start pricing new boilers. Jesus. That's not going to be pretty.
"Why Cleveland?" he grits, trying to get the wrench to grip. His hands are cold and clumsy. "Why not Barbados? A nice Caribbean Hellmouth. Florida, even. Orlando. You're telling me that Disneyland's not an entrance to the underworld?"
Suddenly the basement is warm. He stops moving, stands still with his hands on the wrenches, still working on the valve. The air is warm. He can feel it working into his skin, into his joints. His earlobes, the tip of his nose. The floor's summer-warm under his feet.
Without thinking, he clamps the valve and turns it, and it turns easily, no hiss of air, no little spit of smelly trapped boiler water. Nothing. Wasn't blocked.
He closes it and steps back, his hands falling to his sides. The weight of the wrenches feels good in his hands, like something he can swing if he has to.
"Okay," he says. "Okay, was I just—did I dream that?"
The basement's silent around him. He swallows and turns around, tries to take everything in at once. It's all the same, just boxes and bicycle tires and piles of junk from two years of upgrading and replacing. Nothing moves. The air feels balmy now.
"Is there anything I should know?" he asks, and waits for an answer.
No answer.
When he goes upstairs, there's condensation on all the windows. Cool grey droplets, and when he touches them he leaves an empty black space behind.
He's preoccupied the next day, shuffling papers numb-assed in his office while snow taps like wet feathers at the window. The heater hums, kicks out, hums some more. There's two feet on the ground and more on the way, and he's the only soul who's made it in.
His brain won't settle on the columns of figures, keeps bouncing off and away to other things. To Kelsey, handing coffee through the window with a hopeful smile. To Willow calling him a jerk. To the basement of his parents' house, a long time ago, the musty smell of twice-flooded carpet and dryer sheets and all the stuff in storage. Every time he thinks about the night before, the cold that turned suddenly warm, his brain veers off and hovers over something else. Anya muttering bunny— in her sleep. The slow collapse.
When the phone rings, he jumps a foot and answers it with his hand over his heart, his mouth dry. It's Ned.
"Sometimes when it snows we take days off, California."
"Yeah, I just—" He thinks about his house, empty and warm and silent, and swallows. "I just wanted to get some of this stuff done and into the mail."
"Ryan called. Anita's back in the hospital."
"Ah, fuck." He leans back, staring at the long lines of meaningless numbers. "Is she okay?"
There's a pause that's too long to be good news, and then Ned says, "Well, we'll see."
"Are we—is there something we're doing?"
"Nah. He's up at University, camped out. Got the baby with him."
"Jesus."
"Calling him Edward, actually." There's a pause while Carol says something in the background, and Ned grunts, unimpressed. "We're going up in an hour, take him something to eat."
"Should I—"
"Stick him back in the schedule, on office stuff, for the next couple of weeks."
"Is he going to be able to—"
"Then go home."
"Right."
After he hangs up he sits staring at the phone for a couple of minutes. So his house is cold sometimes. So what.
When he gets home there are four messages flashing on the machine. Willow, saying hi. Dawn saying hi and calling him a jerk for turning Kelsey down. Two hangups. He erases them all, stands for a minute in the empty hallway with snow dripping off his coat, just listening. The house is silent, all the way up and down. No settling, no soft foot.
Maybe he dreamed the whole thing. Maybe he was disoriented by sleep. After the collapse, the flight east, with all the deaths still fresh and the sick giddiness of that much sudden loss, he had some weird nights. Woke up in the hallway, woke up on the porch, woke up because he'd just slammed a baseball bat down on the kitchen table. He had some pretty disturbing dreams. Relatively speaking, a dream about lying down under the foldout in his parents' basement is nothing much.
His eye aches and he's tired, so he hangs his coat over the banister and flops out on the couch. Toes his shoes off and considers the television, can't be bothered, glances at the magazines on the coffee table and can't be bothered. Dawn's business card is lying on top where he dropped it the other day. He smiles, picks it up, reads it again. She's insane. And she's going to be a therapist.
He didn't see Anya die. He just got the report from Andrew, and was too stupid and shell-shocked to do anything but feel inanely proud. Like she'd done something clever and endearing. It took a long while to realize that what she'd actually done was die. And she would never come back, and she would never marry him.
He closes his eyes and lets Dawn's card fall onto his chest. He's tired. He needs to sleep.
The phone jerks him upright. It's dark, the room is dark except for a faint reflected glow through the window, snowlight, more snow falling. He can't breathe. He was under the bed, silent and still, waiting.
The phone rings again and he stumbles to his feet, bumps into the coffee table, fumbles for the lamp. His night vision is terrible now. Magazines slide off the table. His fingers are cold and wet. He clicks the light on and walks fast over to the phone.
"Hello?"
There's a pause, and for a split second he knows it'll be her.
"Xander?"
It's Ned. He can't make his mouth work to reply. Finally he says, "Yeah?"
"We're up at University. Anita died." Pause. "Carol wants to know if you can bring diapers."
He gets a lot of smiles, walking down the halls with the package of Pampers Newborns under his arm.
"Boy or girl?" a nurse asks.
"Boy," he says, and finds a papery smile to give her in return.
He finds them by following lines painted on the floor, and then by following Edward's tiny wails. Carol and Ned are sitting together on a lavender bench seat, silent, his hand on her knee. Xander can't remember ever seeing Ned touch his wife in public before. She's wearing a soft white turtleneck and a cross, and sitting very straight.
Ryan's sitting in the lavender chair opposite them, holding Edward like an expensive tool he can't figure out. Edward's screwed up tight and furious. Ned's a ramrod. Ryan looks thin and tired and not quite there.
"Oh, excellent," he says, looking at the Pampers. "Thanks, man, I'll get you back."
"No need," Xander says, and for some reason that makes him feel stupid and awful and guilty. "Ryan, do you—"
"I'm just going to go change him," Ryan says, and stands up. Still holding Edward out from his body, balanced on his forearm. Carol makes a slight movement, as if she's about to get up, then stops herself. Ryan takes the Pampers and disappears into the bathroom.
Xander stands empty-handed, staring down the hall after him. Edward's still faintly audible.
"I just don't believe it," Carol says. When Xander turns back, her hand is over Ned's and she's squeezing hard.
He gets back home a little after midnight, stands in the front hall and stares at Dawn's business card, which is lying crumpled in the middle of the runner. He didn't put it there.
"Is there anyone here?" he calls, reaching into the hall closet and taking out the baseball bat. He has stakes in there too, but he's more worried about people than vampires. "If someone's in here, now's the time to speak up." Silence. "I'm really not in the mood, okay?"
Nothing. He goes room to room, methodically, the bat in his hand. His heart is fast, but not as fast as it should be. At some level, he doesn't expect to find anyone. He doesn't really think there's anyone there.
He falls into bed with the bat in his arms, his shoes still on. Falls into sleep like that, and doesn't dream or wake up until almost noon the following day.
There's a little silence, and then Dawn says, "Oh God, Xander. That's terrible."
He's got his head tipped against his window, the cool glass a comfort against his skin. In front of them, Slayers and vampires are flitting back and forth through the snow. Like a stage play, or a ballet. Kind of pretty.
"Does he have family here?" Willow asks.
"I think they're in Utah or something. He's staying with Ned and Carol for a while."
"I'm so sorry," Claire says, putting a hand around his seat to touch his shoulder. She's a flake, but she's a bighearted flake. Which reminds him.
"Did you mess with the furnace when you were over at my place?"
"Did I—no."
"You didn't try to bleed it or anything?"
"No." He sees her trade a glance with Willow. "Why?"
"Nothing." He lets his head fall back against the glass, watches Nicole drop a vampire into a plume of snow, stake it to nothingness. "I'd say we're pretty much done here, wouldn't you?"
He got hold of a vampire once, a few months after she died. It was during his Wild Bunch period, as he likes to think of it now, when he was fearless and suicidal and didn't give a fuck. He trapped it in a columbarium and asked questions through the grate, while it got later and later, lighter and lighter.
Dying, apparently, felt pretty much like passing out. You didn't know you were dying until suddenly you'd done it, and then there was very little going back. There was no white light, no choir invisible. Just grogginess and thirst.
It wasn't exactly scientific method, and for a while afterward he wondered if Spike would have been able to tell him anything different. After he got the soul back, when he was a little more forthcoming, less of a teenaged prick. Maybe, maybe not. Anyway, Spike these days is like a lot of other things: moot.
The eye bugs him when it's cold like this, and after an evening of rubbing it, getting more and more irritated, more and more disgusted, he finally takes it out and puts it in the case on the night table. He's becoming something obscene, something Giles would probably have had an entry on in one of his long-lost tomes: Xanderitus squalus. Desk-bound, one-eyed, probably crazy. If only Kelsey could see him now.
He sleeps and dreams that Anya is kissing him, sealing her lips with his. Snow is passing from her into him, filling him. It's cold and wet and white, and he feels his lungs fold softly, painlessly inward.
He wakes up to blackness, a faint rolling sound in the hall outside his room. It takes a few minutes of hazy figuring to work it out.
"Aw, come on," he says aloud when he finally gets it. "That's my eye."
The rolling stops. He goes back to sleep. In the morning, his eye is where he left it, polished bright.
He pauses outside the coffee shop, takes a deep breath, then goes in. They're over in the corner booth, no one on either side of them. Ryan's cradling Edward in his arms, close to his chest, his head bent as if he's studying him closely, or whispering to him.
"I'm with them," Xander says to the waitress, and she smiles and hands him a menu. It gives him something to do with his hands, at least.
Ryan looks up when he sits down, and in the milky winter morning light his eyes look bleached and lost. He hasn't shaved. He's still wearing his coat. For a second he doesn't seem to know who Xander is.
"Oh hey," he says after a beat, as if it were just a coincidental meeting. "Xander. How're you?"
"Fine," Xander says, shrugging off his coat and sliding into the booth. "How are you guys doing?"
Ryan nods, says nothing, and looks back down at Edward. Edward is sleeping, furled closed against Ryan's chest, impossibly small. Ryan just sits there, staring at him, as if he can't look away. The silence draws out.
After a minute or two, Xander says, "He's beautiful."
"Yeah he is," Ryan says immediately, automatically, with pride. He lifts a hand and carefully pulls Edward's stocking cap up an inch to show his black hair. Xander leans over the table for a better look, then sits back nodding. Ryan's nodding too, patting Edward's hat back down. His hands are huge, brown, bigger than Edward's head. He can drive a nail in three swings: set, bang, flat.
"He's eating okay?" Xander asks.
"Eats like his dad," Ryan says. "Like a farm boy."
"Better start a grocery trust for when he's quarterback."
"Yeah." Ryan laughs, glances up at Xander, then gets pulled back down again. "Yeah, he's going to be big."
"If he knows what's good for him."
The waitress brings coffee and they order eggs, toast, sausage. More food than they're going to eat, but whatever. After she's gone, Ryan lifts Edward up to his face, smells his head, and says, '"Thanks for coming."
Xander sits still for a second, not sure who Ryan's talking to. It probably doesn't matter. "If you need anything, I'm around. Just, you know, if you need a break or some babysitting or whatever—"
Ryan's rocking Edward in his arms, side to side, boat motion, and it strikes Xander that right now nothing could make him let go. Probably not even death.
"I just don't want to stay home all the time," Ryan says, still looking down at Edward, studying his face. "The house, it's all her. I need to get out."
"Yeah."
"It was infection. From the birth."
"I know."
"Who gets infected, nowadays?"
"I don't know."
"Fucking stupid." Edward shifts, his eyelids flutter, and Ryan leans down and kisses his forehead. "This little guy's going to be all-state."
"Yeah, he is."
"I'm going to be in the stands, yelling my fool head off. And he's going to lift me up."
"Yeah, he is."
Outside, it's started to snow again.
They're in the Explorer, sitting at a stoplight, on their way to get Claire and Dawn and catch a matinee. The streets are white; the plows can't keep up. People just keep driving, though. Snow doesn't halt Cleveland.
"Willow," he says, staring at the red light, the white flakes sifting past it. "I have to ask you something."
"Okay."
"And you have to not laugh."
"It's okay to be gay, Xander."
"I'm serious." He turns his head and looks at her, and her smile disappears.
"Okay. What?"
He looks back at the light, rearranges his fingers on the steering wheel, and considers letting it go. But he can't. "Are there—do ghosts really exist?"
There's a pause, and he turns to look at her again. She's studying him with a strange expression, serious and almost sad. They look at each other for a minute.
Someone honks behind him, and he turns back, puts it in first, and starts rolling.
"That depends," she says finally. "I was a ghost once. Remember?"
"Yeah. But... real ghosts. Do they exist?"
"I was a real ghost," she murmurs, sounding slightly miffed.
"Willow."
"Okay, sorry. Well—why are you asking?"
"I just..." He slows down more than he needs to for the corner, takes it very very carefully. "I just want to know."
"Well—" She pauses. "Ghosts aren't demons, Xander. There's no database."
"Yeah, okay. But they exist?"
She's quiet, and he glances over at her. She's staring out the window at the snowy streets, one fingertip resting on the glass. "Sometimes I think," she says, "it's just a matter of how far things can follow you."
He turns back to the road, watches the snow fly off the chains on the car ahead.
"And how much they want to find you," she says.
He nods and keeps driving. Carefully.
The movie was two and a half hours of total suck, and someday he'll want those hours back, but it's too late, Bruckheimer has them now. They go for Chinese afterward, and by the time the cookies come he's already forgotten everything that happened.
"At least the really annoying guy got blown up," Dawn says, pulling her cell phone out to check messages.
"Which annoying guy?" They were all annoying, as far as Xander could tell. Two and a half hours in a dark theatre is hell on the eye, and he's tired. Without depth perception, explosions aren't the draw they once were.
"The jarhead," Dawn says brusquely, and then: "Oh, it's Kelsey." She nods along with the message, gives Xander a sharp look, then starts hitting buttons. "She wants to go for pizza. I'm going to have to split."
"You just ate moo goo," Xander says, looking to Willow and Claire for support.
"She needs to talk," Dawn says, with heavy significance and another needling look, and he raises his hands in surrender. "Sometimes, Xander..."
He waits, but she apparently feels that's enough. "Sometimes...I'm a bundle of inexpressible joy?"
"Sometimes you make me want to strangle you," she says, and gives him a quick kiss on the cheek, and is gone. He stares after her, then looks at Willow and Claire. Who are reading their fortunes with deep attention.
"So, does everyone at this table think I should be dating Kelsey, the eighteen-year-old friend of Dawn?"
"No," Willow says, dropping her fortune and reaching for his. "I think you should find someone who interests you."
"Or else die lonely and alone," Claire says thoughtfully, chewing a prawn tail.
Claire gets out; Willow stays a second.
"Are you all right?" she asks, studying his face by the dim roof light. He nods, pauses, and seesaws a hand.
"I'm—" He doesn't know what to say. "Something's going on, Will."
She pulls her door almost closed, just leaving it ajar so the light will stay on. The parking lights make the snow bank glow pink. "What is it?"
"It's—the house, I think. I don't know."
"Your house?"
"Yeah." He looks away up the street, at the delicate upper branches of the trees, loaded with snow. "I don't know what's going on, but it's something."
"Xander." Her hand is on his arm, and her face is white and serious. "You're scaring me. Is there something going on inside your house?"
He pauses, then shrugs and nods. "Yeah."
They look at each other.
"I'm coming over," Willow says.
"No, it's okay."
"Wait here while I get my books, and then I'm coming over."
"No, really."
"We need to know what it is—"
"I know what it is." He pauses, crosses his fingers mentally, and amends, "I know who it is."
She stares at him, blinks, and then her eyes start to fill and she looks away. He gives her a second. She wipes her face angrily and says, "It doesn't work like that, Xander. They don't come back."
"You said things could want to follow us—"
"Things, Xander. Not people."
"Well, who else would it be? Who else would want to find me?"
"Xander." She turns to face him, her mouth hard, lips trembling. "It's not her, Xander. There's no such thing. She's gone."
"How do you know?"
"Because we go, Xander. We just go."
"I don't see how you can—"
"The world doesn't work that way. She isn't here, and if there's something that seems like her, it isn't, it can't be her—" She's started to cry, and he realizes suddenly that she can't believe this, she won't let herself. He's an idiot. He puts a hand on her arm, and when she doesn't push him off, he leans over and hugs her.
"I'm sorry," he says into her hair. She smells of the same, good Willow smell. "You're right, I'm sorry."
They sit there like that until she stops shaking, and then he has to talk his way out of an exorcism before he can drive away.
He goes home, pulls up into the drive and then just sits there, staring at his house. His little interwar bungalow with the flaking front porch and the mortgage he'll still be paying when he's fifty. It doesn't look haunted from here. Maybe it's not; maybe he's just crazy.
When the breakfast check came, after Edward had woken up and was lying staring at the ceiling with big grey newborn eyes, Ryan muttered, "Why did she do this?" His brown fingers straightening Edward's stocking cap. There was no answer to that.
He gets out of the car and walks up his driveway, up his steps. The porch is a clean white page, apart from this morning's boot prints. Nobody's been walking barefoot today. He puts the key in the lock, hesitates, then opens the door. The hall is dark, warm, familiar. It smells like home. He stands on the step like a stranger, like he needs to be invited in.
After a minute he puts his hand on the frame and leans in, just a little. "Anya?"
He waits a while, not really expecting anything. Cars pass on the street behind him; he can hear the Explorer ticking as it cools. He wets his lips, steps inside, and closes the door.
"Honey?"
Nothing. He closes his eyes and leans back against the door. "Um...Tara?"
Silence. He opens his eyes, stares down the dark hall, and says tentatively, "Spike?" Nothing. Thank God.
So maybe it's all a mistake, maybe it's nothing. Willow says we don't come back, it doesn't work like that. Which is kind of funny, given all the ways it does work. How would she know?
He hangs his coat up and walks down the hall to the kitchen in darkness. His eye is tired. He runs a glass of water, stands against the sink drinking it. When he's done he says, "Anita?" Nothing.
So maybe Willow's right, and it's not people but things that follow. He has a feeling, though, that this isn't going to pass away anytime soon. Two years since the world fell through its own floor, and only now is he catching glimpses. Maybe it's a good thing. Maybe it's easier if it's in the world, physical, something he can point to from time to time—this is the shadow in the corner of my eye, this is what I can't describe. What I live with.
"I'm going to bed now," he says, and puts his empty glass in the sink. There's no response. "Good night."
He falls asleep wondering if this means he'll always be alone. Wondering what comes next.
