Reditum ad se

Summary: Buffy comes to her senses after a year in Rome.
Rating: NC-17 (mostly for explicit sexual descriptions, and some language)
Pairings: Buffy/Xander. Or should I say Xander/Buffy, since it’s really about Xan? There might be some Dawn/Spike implied, not sure how long this one will go.
Feedback: Yes, please. I just started posting my fic, so try to be gentle, please.
Betas: I could use one!
Archive? Ask me first.
Disclaimer: I don’t own them…I’m just borrowing them, since Joss isn’t using them anymore. If I were making money from this, I would have a much better laptop!

Chapter 4

Still sitting on the sofa, Xander stared dazedly after Buffy. Finally lowering his gaze to the melted tubs of ice cream sitting on the coffee table in front him he sighed, “Okay, maybe it wasn’t worth it after all.” Picking up the nearly empty cartons, he stood and shuffled wearily into the kitchen to throw them away.

As he washed the sticky mess off his hands, he glanced up at the darkened window over the sink. “Oh shit!” He swore, quickly adjusting his eye patch to cover the corner the corner of his sunken eyelid. He hated when it shifted like that. Suddenly, anger filled him, as he realized that Buffy must have run away from him because she’d seen it, too. Glaring at his reflection, he muttered, “‘I could never do that! Not with you!’ You hideous freak!” He shouted, slamming his fist into the offending image and shattering the glass.

Screaming from pent up frustration and rage as much as the pain in his bleeding hand, Xander crumpled to his knees on the cold marble floor.

When Buffy raced into the kitchen a few moments later, she found Xander curled up on his side, sobbing and screaming incoherently. Spotting the broken window, she immediately dropped into a defensive stance. “Xan…what was it? Did it get inside?” She asked as she moved to his side, keeping her senses alert for signs of his attacker. “Xan? Oh baby, are you okay?” When he didn’t respond and just continued to scream, she began to panic. “Oh god! Xander? Xan, please, tell me what it did to you! Do you need an ambulance? Where are you hurt?” She questioned him frantically as she grabbed his shoulders and carefully rolled him onto his back, pushing his legs down slightly so she could examine the wounds she assumed were on his stomach. The moment she touched him, he immediately stopped screaming and went limp, staring blankly off to the side to avoid her gaze.

Finding no injuries other than his bleeding fist, Buffy frowned. “Xan? What happened?” Realization struck as she spotted a tiny piece of broken glass sticking out of one of the deeper gashes on the back of his wounded right hand. Looking over at the window, she could see that it had been broken from the inside, not the outside as she had initially assumed. Relaxing slightly from her defensive mode, she grabbed Xander’s head in both hands, forcing him to face her. Her eyes welled up with tears when she saw the abject misery in his expression. “Sweetie, why did you do this to yourself?” She whimpered, running her hands soothingly through his hair. Still getting no response, she grabbed a dishtowel from a nearby drawer, folded it up, lifted his head from the floor and slid the makeshift pillow into place. “Xan, I’m gonna go get the first aid stuff out of the bathroom so I can fix you up. I’ll be right back, okay, baby?”

Xander moaned pitifully and murmured under his breath as she stood up, and Buffy froze. “Ugly? What’s ugly?” She frowned in confusion. Glancing over at the jagged hole in the window, she noticed her broken reflection in the glass at its edge. “No!” She let out a horrified sob. Dropping back down at Xander’s side she yelled, “No! You hear me, Xander Harris? I know what you’re thinking, and you are not ugly! How could you…are you insane?! God! You’re beautiful, you big idiot!” After a short, thoughtful pause, she amended this declaration with a small giggle. “Well, I guess ‘handsome’ would be a better word, huh?” Lightly ruffling his hair, she rose again and quickly retrieved their first aid kit, which would have been serious overkill in any home but a Slayer’s.

Returning to the kitchen, she frowned at Xander’s still-dazed expression. Making up her mind, she spun around and left the room, returning almost immediately without the first aid kit. Kneeling beside the nearly catatonic brunet, she gently lifted him into a sitting position and then slipped his uninjured arm over her shoulder. Wrapping her arms around his waist, she pulled him to his feet and proceeded to half walk, half carry him down the hall to her bedroom, which had an attached bathroom and would be a much more comfortable location for her patch up his hand.

When they shuffled into her room and she began to lay him down on the bed, Xander finally began to show signs of life...in the form of struggling to get away from her. “No…I’ll bleed on your pretty bed…” He muttered inanely.

Buffy snorted, “Oh, like I’ve never bled on it? Please, I’m very good at picking bedding that hides stains. And, oh my god, I so meant all of that in a wounded Slayer way, not a gross, TMI girly way!” Laughing nervously, she pushed him back down on her flowered comforter. When he finally gave in and laid back against her pillows with a resigned sigh, she smiled and ran her fingers through his hair again. “Do you want to talk about it now? I mean…we are so going to talk about it, but we can put it on hold for a bit if you want.” Buffy moved around the room, getting a basin of clean water and some towels from the bathroom, and placing them on her nightstand.

“I’m sorry about the window,” Xander mumbled, refusing to look her in the eye.

“Pfft! Like I care about the window. I happen to know an excellent carpenter. He can fix anything…and he kinda owes me a window,” She said with a wink. “Lemme have your hand.” She requested, motioning for him to roll on his side, facing her, as she placed the bowl of water beside him on the bed. “This is probably going to hurt.” She said apologetically before easing his hand into the water.

Xander hissed in pain and clenched his fists instinctively; which caused him to yelp loudly as the movement caused the broken glass embedded in his knuckles to cut further into his flesh. “Shit!”

“Shh…try not to move it, sweetie,” Buffy ordered gently. Squinting at his hand as she lifted it from the water, she reached blindly into the kit beside her and pulled out a large pair of tweezers. “Hold on, I’ve got to get all this glass out,”

Xander clenched his jaw and closed his eye tightly as she carefully removed the small shards and placed them on a towel she’d spread on the bed underneath the bowl. “Fuck, that hurts!” He whimpered as she pulled out an especially large piece.

“Well, maybe now you’ll learn to quit hitting poor, innocent buildings! The wall of Will and Tara’s dorm was bad enough, but this is…a mess!” She frowned. “I think you might need stitches.” She added, gazing critically at the deep gash the larger piece of glass had caused.

“No! I hate hospitals! Just use the adhesive stuff, okay?” Xander pleaded. He’d always hated hospitals, and had avoided them like the plague since losing his eye the year before. “Please.”

“I’ll try it, but if it doesn’t hold, you’re getting stitches!” Buffy muttered, dabbing at his cuts with clean gauze to try to stop the bleeding. “I think all the glass is out now,” She murmured, thinking out loud, “but this deep cut won’t stop bleeding, and the adhesive won’t work if the skin isn’t dry…”

"You're just saying that 'cuz it's $50 a pop," Xander chuckled, and Buffy rolled her eyes at him.

“Sounds like you need some vamp spit,” A soft, tired sounding voice commented from the doorway, causing them both to whip their heads around and stare in shock at the battered figure leaning heavily against the wooden frame.

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Author's note: Yeah, vamp spit has coagulating powers in this story. I know it's lame, but for some reason my muse wanted Spike to lick Xander, so I had to go with it. ;-)