Payless

Title: "Payless” Prologue

Author: Metaforgirl

Rating: NC-17

*********************************************

Prologue: “After the Deluge”

The desert opened its mouth and breathed out heat like an invisible dragon breathing clear fire. The wave of it rolled with a subliminal roar over earth salted with broken glass and the silt of asphalt. Heated air soaked miles of unremitting sagebrush, stones, and highway debris. Across the desert floor what lived moved cautiously under the dragon’s breath. In the center of the abyss, a ribbon of cool darkness opened over the ground like a gray mouth. Appeared to drool forth some small pink spittle, and closed.

The naked and bleeding man rose shakily to his elbow, gasping air into still burning lungs. Rolling onto a bruised side, he shaded his eyes with his hand against the searing sun. “What the bloody hell?”

***************************************

Percy Broughton was driving back from his weekly grocery trip along the stretch of road that had once passed by Sunnydale. He wondered, in a vague and confused way, where the town had gotten to. There was a gray feathered feeling at the edge of his brain where the memory of the town had once rested. Even now, he found himself unable to remember what he had been wondering about. In the pool of light that shimmered over the heated desert floor, he blinked at an apparent wave of something. It was startling enough to make him stop his truck.

Percy sat for a moment regaining his senses. Out there something was moving. Thinking perhaps another poor dog had been abandoned to the elements, Percy pulled his truck further onto the shoulder and stepped down from the cab to check it out.

***************************************

Xander hadn’t realized how often he thought of her. It was like a pattern set up by the synapses of his brain. A series of switches, programmed to flip over when prompted by any one of an innumerable number of stimuli.

He had been singing in the school bus for over an hour, in a daze, as it rushed down the desert road. As he came to himself, the first thing that caught his attention was the frayed and unused seatbelt dangling from the seat across the aisle from him. He braced himself for Anya’s predictable dispassionate observations about the deaths of school children in bus accidents. One of the girls, in a shocky, giggly voice, started singing “Magic Bus” and, of course, he began formulating explanations for Anya's inevitable questions. He couldn’t stop anticipating her. As if the reflexive part of his brain had not yet been told. She was dead.

The bus was speeding away from a hole of nothing that had been his entire life. Signs flew by advertising the new, now extinct, mall. That his former employers had built. The synapses in his brain began their happy journey to the pride and excitement he was accustomed to feel regarding his employer. Former employer. They had moved out of Sunnydale with the rest of the emigration, of course. Outside, sped by billboards and lawn posters, urging votes for Mayor of something that no longer needed government. All of the waving tentacles of the Sunnydale octopus still jerking madly in the sea around the missing body. Xander felt like one of those tentacles. He fingered the torn edge of his jacket, smeared with the ‘blood’ of Ubervamps, and thought he should go home and change. Then remembered that the home and the change of clothes it contained no longer existed. He found himself considering mournfully his favorite old pair of sneakers, and recalled the time he had dug them from the trash, yelling at a confused Anya about the sanctity of a man’s shoes. He tried to stop the thought of Anya and felt his brain skitter skip stop and redirect itself jerkily to a series of new switches.

He twitched in his seat, his car keys, which had worn a concave little home in the lining of his pocket, swung against his hip and he remembered his car. Not much. Just a car. But then, Xander didn’t have much. An apartment, some furniture, a car, a job. Those meager possessions that gave a man a feeling of fitting and self-worth. He began patting down his pockets in a sudden moment of panic before he found his wallet. Relaxing somewhat when he found his ID. At least he could still prove who he was. He remembered how persistently Anya had yearned for a driver’s license. But he had adamantly refused to allow her behind the wheel of his car. Xander suddenly bitterly regretted refusing to teach Anya to drive. The regret reared up like ‘The Blob’ of an old horror film, and Xander firmly directed his mind elsewhere. His mind fought him, shuddering, as if he were trying to shift the gears on an old truck.

Xander knew the shock was wearing off and tried unconsciously to curl around himself a bit. On the inflexible green vinyl of his bus seat, he felt his emerging emotions laid as if on a platter. Too exposed.

He lurched out of his seat and walked down the aisle to the back of the bus, grabbing seat backs to steady himself as the bus leapt erratically from side to side.

Buffy was looking out of the window with a bemused expression. Her hands lay limp beside her on the seat cushion, palms up and open. She looked more relaxed than he had ever seen her. Xander heaved himself into the seat beside her. He found he had nothing to say. The synapses in his brain kept trying to follow their old paths, then slamming against the facts like a bruising hard wall of wrong. Some small stimulus and the process would back up and try again. Xander felt great hiccupping sobs starting deep in his chest. He fought against them as hard as he could. Buffy’s gaze wandered over to him and she absently took his hand. She had a clear, puzzled look. As if some alien had just dropper inr into this place and she had no reference point.

“Are you okay, Xander?”

Xander shook his head helplessly and drew his hand hard over his eye. The patch caught at his palm and he shook it off irritably. The sobs hurt; they slammed up from under his ribs , every few seconds, with a shock, as that cement mixer hit the wall again and again. Buffy stroked his hand. Xander leaned towards her, and she wrapped her arm around him obediently. He felt Willow sit down beside him and fold her arms around him from the other side. And for a while they embraced him. But their affection couldn’t reach the pain, and Xander couldn’t stop the sobs. He rubbed miserably at the patch and felt the stinging of the eyeless tearduct. Even the blind may cry, apparently. After a time, Kennedy came and took Willow away. Buffy slowly sank back into her oblivious place and Xander pulled back and pressed himself into the tall seatback. Clenching his muscles to control the sobs.

He tried to focus on things without thinking of anything. Counting heads. Amanda was missing. A couple of other girls. Spike. His head swiveled in surprise towards Buffy.

“Spike?”

Buffy turned those beautiful expressive eyes on him. “He didn’t make it.”

“Oh my god,” breathed Xander, distracted from his own grief by his friends’ loss. “What happened?”

“The amulet,” said Buffy, “it burned all the Ubervamps. It burned him, too.”

“Amulet?”

“Angel brought an amulet. I gave it to Spike. Somehow it activated and it burned all the Ubervamps. That’s what closed the Hellmouth.”

Xander stared at her, stunned. “So Spike killed them all?”

“Yes.”

“We didn’t have to be there? Anya…” he choked, and couldn’t let the thought go any further.

“We didn’t know, Xander,” said Buffy quickly. “Angel said it was dangerous, but…”

“Angel,” interrupted Xander harshly. “And you.” He tried to breathe. “Where is he now?” he asked in a thick voice.

“Angel? I sent him back to Los Angeles.” Buffy watched Xander, puzzled. “Why?”

Xander felt his only eye was bulging from its socket. He thought of Andrew and Anya, two humans, standing against a swarm of superstrengthed demons. He stared disbelievingly at Buffy. “We could have used a little help?” he managed to get out. “Perhaps?”

“I needed him out of it,” explained Buffy.

Xander grabbed hold of the armrest and pushed himself out of the seat. Made his way, lurching and grabbing at things to steady himself, to the front of the bus. He plunked down into one of the front seats, next to a “potential” whose name he had never learned.

Giles sat in the driver’s seat, completely involved in controlling the enormous, bizarre vehicle.

“We need to stop,” Xander told him.

The Watcher did not even glance at Xander, but shook his head violently.

“I am not stopping this bus until I have to, Xander. You’ll just have to control the car-sickness. The next town is five miles from here.”

Xander felt the hammering pain catching up with him. It felt like a cement truck ramming repeatedly into a wall. He twitched angrily in his seat, trying to divert his thoughts again, but now his muscles were remembering. It was so very painful; he wished he could cry again just to relieve the stress.

Willow scooched onto the seat next to him, wrapping her arm around his t ant and laying her head on his shoulder. “Are you okay, honey?” she crooned. Xander grit his teeth and dug his fingers into his thighs. It helped. “Anya.” He managed to choke out. That word somehow completely inadequate and yet articulating all of his loss.

“I know.” Willow looked up at him with those big sympathy eyes of hers. And he knew Willow felt badly for him. That she would do anything to make him feel better (except restore his eye with magic, of course, the angry child in his brain spat out furiously but all he could think was that she did not know. Willow still had her life. She had her power, her role to play, and she had Kennedy. Kennedy who was a Slayer, yet had stayed to protect a powerful witch, instead of the simple humans … Xander turned his head away from her and leaned forward towards Giles again.

“When are you gonna stop this fucking bus?” he said through gritted teeth.

Giles sighed wearily. “Look, Xander, we’re almost at the city limits,” he nodded ahead of them. A sign very much like the Sunnydale welcome sign hung in the wavery road heat ahead of them. Xander sat back, his hands clenched at his thighs. He stiffly ignored Willow.

When Giles pulled into the first gas station, Xander leapt down the stairs and out the door. No one commented. Xander headed for the men’s room. Right up until the last moment, he thought he was going to the john. Maybe hit a couple of walls. Have a rant in the mirror. But he found himself passing the door, walking on around the back of the station towards the alley that ran behind it. Xander turned randomly right and just kept walking.

He never looked back.

***********************************************


He was lucky that he had carried his identification with him. His atm card was crap, he realized as he stood sullenly at the cash machine. He stared at it with some perplexity for a while before the numbers on it clicked in his brain and he realized it was drawing against a non-existent branch. He wondered briefly how long it would take for all the rest of Sunnydale to disappear and felt a moment of world tilting panic when he thought that, by leaving the bus, he might have become an unnecessary Sunnydale fringe. He stood watching his shaking hand for a full minute, to see it go slowly transparent, like something from a Twilight Zone episode. When, after a while, he didn’t evaporate, Xander came back to the matter of cash.

He still had a credit card. He drew it from his billfold and clearly saw the stack of unpaid bills on his desk. It had been almost a month since he had had the money to pay any of them. He smiled at the thought of the Water and Power guy gaping at the empty hole of Sunnydale when he came to turn off Xander Harris’ gas. He inserted the card in the slot, fully expecting shredded plastic to be spat out at him, and instead was able to withdraw the remaining credit balance. Feeling definitely evil using credit when he had no job, Xander nevertheless pocketed the cash with some relief and went off to find a hotel.

In the back of his mind, a battered yellow bus sat at a gas station waiting patiently for its last passenger to re-embark.

He trudged down a street where he saw a large quantity of cars with out of state plates parked by the curb, and found an overnight motel. He saw the guy squint past the bulletproof glass and note the lack of bags.

“Cash,” he said flatly.

“Yeah, sure.” Xander peeled off the bills, already calculating how many day’s worth of hotel he still had before he slept outside. He sized the clerk up and down. “Nice town,” he stated.

The kid shrugged, watching the lobby television through the bulletproof glass. “Yeah,” he said.

Xander looked around the hotel lobby. Most of the objects were bolted to the wall. The magazine rack had a torn up ‘People’ and the remains of the daily paper. “You guys hiring?” he asked.

The boy gave him a wary look. “Nah,” he said definitely.

Thank god, thought Xander. “Know anyone who is?”

The kid appeared to shrug the question off, then tossed his arm lazily in a direction down the street. “They might be,” he said vaguely. His eyes wandered back to the television.

“Thanks.” Xander pocketed the keycard and headed in the indicated direction. In the back of his mind, Willow peered anxiously out the green tinted bus window, as Buffy stepped back on board shaking her head.

The ‘Help Wanted’ sign looked like it always did to the man of a million odd jobs. Like a bright beacon of a better future.

A tired man with a paper hat perched over his balding pate and a greasy cooks apron, shoved the application across the counter at Xander. He stood there wiping his hands on a dishtowel and watching him.

Xander gave the guy his cheerful you-wanna-hire-me smile and slowly filled out the form. He sighed as if at a difficult math problem when he came to the home address.

“We don’t hire the homeless,” growled the guy warningly.

“Sure you don’t,” said Xander nodding. He carefully wrote in his Sunnydale address.
The guy blinked doubtfully.

“Lotta people leaving there,” he observed suspiciously. “Most are just passing through.”

“Not me,” said Xander in an upbeat way. “No sir, I am here to stay.” He looked around the dark restaurant. The only customer, an elderly woman, slurped her noodle soup.

In the back of his mind, Buffy pushed a garage attendant up against a wall demanding answers, while a black eyed Willow marched through the town blasting telephone poles in her search.

“Putting down roots,” said Xander. He grinned and shoved the application back.

The man held the paper down with one large thumb, read it, and sighed. “Alright, you’re hired,” he said briefly. “Be here tonight at 4pm.” He looked Xander up and down. “Take a shower first.”

Xander trudged back to his hotel room. Any minute now, the bus would come round the corner. Giles would open the door and wait impatiently for him to get in. Willow would … Xander looked down the street that was so empty and unmoving, it seemed to rise up out of nowhere and pitch off into the same nowhere.


Kennedy was having the post battle hormonal rush that usually consumed a Slayer’s body. Unlike Buffy in her early years, she had a willing vessel for all her sexual energy and was busily mauling Willow at the back of the bus. When the bus stopped for gas, Willow tried groggily to rise up from the green leather seat she had been pressed to. Her cheeks were pink and her sweater was rucked up, exposing one ruddy nipple.

“Gee,” she pulled at the shirt modestly. Kennedy growled and pushed the shirt back up. Using her strength to an unfair but hardly unappreciated advantage, she pushed Willow back down and fastened her mouth again to the same nipple.

“Hmmm,” hummed Willow. And “gah,” petting silky hair happily.


Buffy was staring out the window unseeing. The enormous sense of weightlessness and freedom so foreign it frightened her. The past so weighted with responsibility and guilt it overwhelmed her. She focused on the battle. Saw again Amanda fall, herself too late to save her. Saw Spike’s agony, the light burning through him as she ran up the stairs.

Buffy had had the gift of a life unexamined. Her calling had given her a role and identity.
What did it mean, she wondered with a kind of wild panic, that she was now free? And if it meant nothing, and this was the thought that had her staring blindly out the window as the bus pulled away from the gas station. If she now meant nothing, then why had they had to die?

*************************************************************

Xander stood in the hotel shower and felt the grief bearing down on him. It was too much. If he let it take over, it would be too much and he wouldn’t survive. He turned his face into the shower and grabbed the tiny bar of paper wrapped soap, scrubbing the Ubervamp Blood and the dust of Sunnydale away.


Grief’s a funny thing. Xander was a simple guy who dealt with things as they fell before him. Thinking about Anya, about the circumstances that had led to her death. Thinking about his friends, his feelings of betrayal and wrong, was too painful, too confusing. So he made himself stop. He walked the few blocks to his new job and when that bus appeared once more in the back of his mind, he turned his mind away.

Sometime in the evening the bus in his mind left the station. Xander was waiting for an order to appear on the warming bar when he realized with utter conviction that they had left town without him.

He stood in that foreign place, without a soul who knew him near, the orangey-yellow light of the warmers hot on his skin, the smell of the ammonia they disinfected the chrome with, the ketchup bottle sticky in his hand, and knew he was alone.

*****************

The sobs that came later that night would emerge again and again, as the weeks passed. Unexpectedly they’d wake him, or embarrassingly while wiping down the fountain at work or pulling clothes from the dryer at the Laundromat. He trained his mind away from the associative thoughts, but his body remembered.

And the grief, for everything and everyone he had lost, infected him. He could not be at peace, could not relax. He felt his muscles held a chemical that stiffened them until they ached.

Like an animal. His body grieved and craved. And Xander could not give his body what it wanted.

But like an animal, Xander survived. He showed up at his job. Smiled, gathered his tips, did his best with what he had been dealt. One-eyed men don’t work in construction; without degrees they don’t do much of anything. They wait tables, they laugh at the jokes. They make their way home at night, close the door with relief on their single flat and look forward to the game and a beer maybe. They don’t think hard about the future and never let themselves think about the past. Sometimes they wake in the night filled with rage. But Xander had always known he would be here one day. In the tiny room, on the lonely mattress, streetlights shining though the slits of the blinds.

It made the days pass easier, to think this was where he had always belonged. The ache and the loneliness swelling to overcome the grief he had never really expressed.

Some mornings he still woke in a bliss of forgetfulness, but more often than not, he woke with the now familiar muscular ache. He became familiar with the effort it took to live joylessly. He made himself get through it.

*************************************************************

It was several weeks later when Buffy showed up at the bar. She was seated at his station as he came up with a pad to take her order. He lowered his hands and just looked at her. She gazed back at him, and gave him a sorry little smile.

None of the speeches Xander had made to Buffy in his hotel room came readily to mind. “How’s Willow?” he asked automatically, then stopped, suddenly almost in tears at the memory of a shy little girl sharing sandwiches from a geeky lunchbox.

“She’s great, Xander,” said Buffy calmly. “She and Kennedy are doing really well. And she’s not afraid of her power anymore.”

Xander blinked. This missive so much unlike what he had expected to hear.

Buffy smiled at him compassionately. “You didn’t have to leave, Xander,” she said.

He looked at her without comprehension.

“I still need you,” she said in an encouraging voice.

Xander stammered over his words. “Wha .. what d… do you mean?”

“You don’t have to feel useless now. Now that we’ve beaten the First.”

Xander couldn’t find a reply.

Buffy patted the seat next to her.

“I’m working,” Xander managed, shaking his head.

“But Xander, so much has changed. So much is better,” said Buffy enthusiastically. “I’m not the only Slayer anymore. I’m free now.”

“That’s nice,” said Xander dully. “Can’t stand around,” he said indicating vaguely. “Customers.”

“I can be anything I want. Do anything I want.”

“Wow, that’s great, Buffy.” Xander could feel the anger mounting, it bled sarcasm into his voice. “Really. Good luck with that.”

Buffy blinked, as if catching a hint of his mood, but she went on. “I’m free,” she repeated vaguely.

“Good for you,” said Xander, his voice sharp. “So, you gonna go cure cancer now or something? Or go shopping? Something important?
Per
Perfect half moons of silver tears appeared in those beautiful green eyes. “Xander?”

Xander wondered how it would be to be able to cry at will. To cry without one’s whole rib cage lurching, pain trying to break out of one’s chest. “No more, Buffy,” he said harshly. “Not my problem.” His words appeared to push some button. Buffy got that look in her eye. That ‘I’m so gonna tell you how it is’ look that always foretold another long speech. Xander began to turn away.

“So is this how you handle things now, Xander? Just walk away?” Buffy’s words pulled him up short. “You walk away from me, like you walked away from Anya?”

The injustice of this hurt was so staggering, Xander could only gape at her for a minute before responding. “You really shouldn’t try to analyze people, Buffy,” he said in a voice that was only a low approximation of the rage he felt. “You’re a little too stupid to do it well.”

Buffy straightened a bit and a steely arrogance tilted her chin aggressively. “I’m not stupid, Xander. I see what’s going on with you very clearly. You’re scared,” she sneered desperately. Xander could see the hurt and fear in Buffy’s face, but his anger and grief were stronger than his compassion.

“Nah, Buffy,” he said as viciously as he could. “I just got tired of you. Everybody leaves you, eventually,” he added. “You ever wonder why that is?” He turned away before he could see his words lash her face.

“Xander!” Buffy gazed at him with amazement. How could he not know where he belonged? “I miss you!” Buffy said, in that plaintive voice.

Xander gripped his order pad and pencil. “So what?” he managed to say. He could feel her eyes on his back. He couldn’t turn around.

“Xander.” Buffy’s voice was soft now. She looked at the stiff, wounded back sadly. He would come around. He would get over this. After all, what could be so terrible? “Xander, you don’t belong here.” He didn’t move to face her. She saw him carefully rearranging the condiments on a table in front of him.

“Here’s my new cell number.” She drew something from her handbag and put it on the table. Slid out of the seat and stood. “Call anytime,” she said gently. “When you’re ready to come back.” She walked out.

Xander turned to the next customer. He had expected some snap as the last fiber broke between them. But he didn’t feel that. Didn’t feel the finality. He vaguely finished out his shift. And when he cleared the table for the next customer, he pocketed Buffy’s card.


******************************************************

Xander’s body that evening moved more stiffly than usual, like he was injured or old. One of the bartenders, a guy named Bill, noticed it when they were closing together.

“Rough night?”

“Yeah,” sighed Xander.

“Guessed that.” Bill dragged some boxes back from the kitchen. Xander helped him with the door. Bill paused and asked carefully, “You been in the war?”

Xander thought, ‘God, you have no idea.’ But he didn’t answer. He shrugged.

Bill hesitated again. “So how’d the eye thing happen, Persian Gulf or somethin’?”

Xander decided to let Bill think his reticence was due to bad memories and not a desire to hide the truth. “Something like that,” he finally admitted.

“Tough break,” said the man sympathetically. He grabbed the towel from Xander’s hand and tossed it into a sink for him. “My old man was in the war,” he said, “used to tell me stories. Why don’t you lemme make you a drink. Tell me about it?”

“I don’t think so,” said Xander, slowly easing a stiff arm into his jacket.

The other man dipped his head in acceptance. “Yeah, sure, I get you. Lemme make you a drink anyway?”

Xander stopped his movements. He had the great, juddering sense of an old motor starting up. Like the feel of one of those big old ocean barges. He hadn’t hung out with anyone in so long.

“Yeah. Thanks.”

Bill opened the bar again and Xander sat on the side set for customers. Bill made the drinks. And Xander watched him, allowing himself to think about things for the first time in weeks. He thought about how he was a guy who needed this. Needed to hang out with someone and shoot the shit.

“Got some Glendenning.” Bill offered the quality whiskey grinning.

“Whoa. Yeah,” Xander smiled. He was a guy who knew his alcohol.

Bill splashed a couple of shots into a highball glass. “So you get one of those handicapped stickers for your car?”

“Don’t have a car, yet,” admitted Xander grimly. And he was a guy who always had a car, he realized. He thought about it. “But I’m not handicapped,” he said testily.

“Well, sure you aren’t,” Bill placated. “But you should get the sticker anyway. Get all the good parking spots.”

“Nah. That’d be wrong,” said Xander with certainty. He was a guy who did the right thing.

With a glass of good liquor in his hand, and in the wake of Buffy’s visit, Xander took a moment and studied the wreck that was his life. He reflected after a bit, that what was left of him was like the cinder block wall that that truck had slammed into when the grief was new. He was crumbled and full of holes, but still basically the same in structure. He was a loyal guy. A guy who believed in things. He knew that. Not an overly bright guy, but someone who saw the sense of things and called a spade a spade. He knew that. But there was a lot he didn’t know about himself. A lot that had been given to him by his friends without thought or inquiry.

Well, he was inquiring now.

Bill plunked his own highball glass onto the counter. “You grow up around here?”

“Sunnydale.”

“Yeah.” Bill tipped back his glass. “Lotta people been leaving there.”

“Eh,” said Xander, allowing himself a crooked, Harris-patented smile, “it’s just a hole. Nothin’ there.” He was a guy with a twisted sense of humor.

“I’ve heard that.” Bill toyed with his glass. “My boyfriend was from there.”

There was a pause as Xander absorbed this information, then watched it slide past. Apparently he was a guy who didn’t feel threatened by another guy’s sexuality. Interesting.

“So, what were you in, the army, navy? What was your job?” asked Bill.

“I didn’t do anything important,” said Xander. “I was just a sidekick.”


Over the next few months, Xander carefully began reconstructing his wall of self-identity. He felt himself tentatively sliding mortar blocks into place. Each new bit of information reconstructing, or building anew, that which was Xander Harris, after the Deluge.

He thought his body missed the sex, and so tried prostitutes. It wasn’t something he would have experimented with in Sunnydale, but now he had the anonymity of being a stranger in town. And the assurance that the girl wouldn’t suddenly grow a pair of fangs during the act. He was a little surprised to find that it didn’t work for him. The warm, soft limbs folding around him, the silky hair, only made the almost mechanical ejaculation feel lonelier and sadder.

Xander was a horny guy, and he wanted sex often. But he found himself only resorting to the whores when he became desperate and then only for a blowjob.

Happily, there was porn. Porn was fantasy pure and simple. There were no aching reminders of loss or the hollowness of sex without affection. And now, Xander could walk into the adult sections of the video stores without worrying about Willow seeing him. He discovered the abundant variety available with a kind of enthusiasm, and soon became an expert. Actually purchasing some of the classics for his personal ‘library’.

Apparently he was a guy who really, really liked porn.

******************************

Xander was a funny guy. He enjoyed kidding around with the customers and they enjoyed his attention. In time, he had regulars. One night, a group of guys invited him out after his shift.

They were skater boys, sort of like Oz and other kids in High School, so Xander wasn’t surprised when the pipe began passing around. He was ready with the automatic refusal and then paused. How did he know he wasn’t a guy who liked drugs?

Of course as soon as he began to hack and choke the guys knew he was a novice.

“Sorry,” he spat out amidst the irresistible coughing, “such a spaz.”

The guy next to him, Sam(?) who wore sunglasses always, no matter what the time of day, whacked his back a few times and grinned good-naturedly. “No shit, Harris. Here,” he passed him another pipe. “Try this, it’ll go down smoother.”

Xander inhaled deeply on the minty pipe tobacco. There was a mini rebellion at the base of his lungs, but he quickly quelled it. He held the smoke in for awhile, as he saw the other guys doing, then exhaled through his nose like a pro, very pleased with himself. “Yeah,” he said, feeling the little sideways shift it usually took several shots of Tequila to accomplish, “much better. What is this?”

“Jest a little coke to smooth it out.”

“Ah.” Xander contemplated the pipe for a minute. Shrugged. Took another long toke. “’S pretty good,” he hissed through his teeth, holding most of the smoke in his lungs while he spoke.

Sam grinned, “You learn fast, Harris.” Xander handed the pipe back to him, but Sam waved it off. “No, that’s yours. You finish it.”


An hour later Sam and his buddies were seriously regretting their generosity. They left Xander outside the restaurant and drove off quickly.

Bill came out to find Xander sitting on the steps, a happy grin on his face. He was talking to himself.

“But what is with the must have eight hours? Like sleeping is mandatory. Why is that? It’s like a robot in one of those old movies ya know ‘must recharge battery’…”

“Hey, Xander, are you okay?”

Xander looked up at Bill, his whole face stretched in a smile. “Bill! Hey, Bill! You are here! Why are you here, Bill? I am here because I can’t sleep. I don’t know why I need to sleep, but I do and I can’t so I came here.”

He grinned at Bill, who crouched down next to him, looking at him carefully with some amusement. “What the fuck have you done now, Harris?”

“Nothin’,” Xander said, smirking like a little boy with a secret. He even folded his arms in front of him.

Bill laughed. “Shit, Harris, if you could see yourself. What did you smoke?”

“Minty fresh,” declared Xander happily. “So so so so …” he stopped. “Can’t remember,” he said sadly. He smiled again, “Bill!”

“Yeah, it’s me,” sighed Bill, standing. He reached down and encouraged Xander to stand also. “C’mon, you half-wit, lemme take you home.”

“Home? Home?” Xander shook his head. “Can’t go home, it blew up. Drowned or…” he looked vaguely off into the spaces beyond the parking lot. “Can’t go home.”

Bill saw the mood changing and grabbed Xander’s arm, yanking him towards his own car quickly. “Hey, Harris. How ‘bout ice cream?”

“Ice cream?” Xander cocked his head like a bird. “’Kay.” He was smiling a. “I. “I used to eat a whole gallon of ice cream by myself. In the garage,” he explained carefully, “usually on Saturday afternoons because my mom shopped on Saturday mornings and I would sneak in when she ‘lay down’ ya know and passed out. So I would always find the ice cream and a spoon, but sometimes I’d have Willow over and she always had to have a bowl, not much into the sharing saliva yet,” he sighed and cocked his head again. “Ice cream?”

“Christ, Xander, what’s with you?” Bill shoved the babbling man into his car.

“Just really, really, really have a lot to say right now.” Xander fiddled with the glove box. He fiddled with the stereo dials, he fiddled with the window mechanism. Bill shook his head and drove him home.

The next morning Xander Harris admitted to himself that he was a guy who really, really, really shouldn’t do drugs.


**********************************

On a whim, he signed up at a local Martial Arts school and found that, compared to other mortals, he kinda kicked ass. The first time his fist connected with someone’s mouth, though, and drew blood, he felt sick. Apparently he wasn’t into violence. Xander was amazed at how much he did not know about himself.

**********************************

He bought an old car. It came with its own set of worn tools, and that alone should have been a warning to him, but he had some idea that he’d fix it up. Xander soon sadly discovered that he was not a guy who was into tinkering with cars.

**********************************

He found a new place. He was a guy whose home environment meant something to him. Bill helped him move in.

They had brought the refrigerator in last, plugged it in and ceremoniously loaded it with two six packs of beer. Xander flopped down onto the sofa and groaned with relief.

“Geez, man. Thanks for helping me out,” he said.

Bill shrugged. “Sure.”

Xander wriggled on the couch. He had a beer and a TV. One of those boxes held his collection of porn videos, but he was too tired to unpack.

.

Bill handed him a slightly cooled beer and stood there for a minute regarding him.

He nodded at Xander’s perpetual bulge. “You want I should take care of that for you, too?” he asked lightly.

“What?” Xander almost drew his knee up like a girl.

Bill laughed. “You know, “ he gestured. “I don’t mind. Just relieve a little stress.” At Xander’s shocked expression. “Oh. Right. Sorry.”

It was funny how much he hadn’t known about himself. Xander parted his knees ever so slightly. He shifted imperceptibly on the couch. He stared at Bill, his eye gone totally black. “Never done that,” he whispered hoarsely. Bill gave him a knowing look and dropped easily to his knees in front of Xander. He touched the inside of his thighs, gently, lightly and Xander just let his legs sway open.

Bill looked up at him, a smirk on his lips and he reached for Xander’s fly. Xander helped him, his mouth slightly open, his gaze fixed on Bill. His erection popped out into Bill’s hand, and Xander was not surprised at all at how hard he was already. He watched, as the man’s mouth slowly took his penis in. And felt another block in the wall settle and grip the mortar.

Xander leaned his head against the sofa back and closed his eye as the warm mouth drew on him expertly. It seemed there was an awful lot he still didn’t know about himself.

*********************************************************


He was coming back together. Xander felt like he was sliding back into himself, as he would slide his hand into an old glove. There were places that rubbed, where knuckles no longer met the groove, thumb joints bending differently. But it was starting to soften. His life was beginning to wear back into itself.

There was shrapnel, though. Xander was a guy who stuck with things. There had been so much unfinished business in the past. He didn’t think about it, much, but it bit at him. He knew, som, he, he’d finally have to do something about it.

It was the old car that finally did it. He had decided to take it out on a short trip. Some shadowy, unacknowledged phantom that made him turn left on the main highway, back towards the pit that had been his home. He was a good half hour along, in the California desert at high noon, when the radiator gave out.

Xander subsisted on the lower economic level of the era he had been born into. Though conveniences existed, he couldn’t afford them. He didn’t have cable. He didn’t have a cell phone. He didn’t have triple AAA. He gazed morosely at the belching, hiccupping mess that was his radiator. Left the hood up with a note to the state patrolmen and a philosophical shrug goodbye to any part there that might have market value, and began trudging back towards what he hoped might be civilization.

He walked for some time without looking up. The sun had lowered until it was pitched at an angle that glared nauseatingly into his eye. When it set enough for him to see comfortably, he was standing in front of a lonely truck stop. It was all but deserted except for the cars up on blocks in the side yard, grass growing around their wheels. A faded blue building next to it was obviously vacant. “Laundry” barely discernable in the washed out paint. As he approached, he saw the metal and wire guts of torn away machines hanging from the walls.

Trash blew against the fence and trucks roared by on the distant main highway.

He walked up to the door of the station.

On the door, yellowed tape peeled from water-warped paper. “No Change for Laundry” in a messy scrawl. The entire surface of the door was covered with old cigarette ads. A sign in the corner near the door declared the establishment possibly “Open”. Nearby was another sign, “All Deliveries Here,” with an arrow pointing downwards. The section of the ground it pointed towards sprouted tufts of grass and a candy wrapper.

Xander pushed through the door. Its pneumatic mechanism was stiff and he caught his bag in it as he squeezed through. There was no one present. It was one of those tiny, seedy places. Shelves dominated by motor oil and porn. Candy bars and a well stocked freezer section. Xander walked up to the formica counter, hidden behind a rack of ratty maps, and pondered an open cash register. He looked around again.

“Hello?”

If he had any skin-crawly nerves left, they would have been activated by now. He nervously peered over the counter to be sure the owner wasn’t lying in a pool of blood back there. The cash drawer was still full, he noted, so there hadn’t been a robbery.

“Yeah, I’m coming,” called a deep male voice from somewhere behind him. Xander jumped and whirled.

“Hey sorry,” he backed away from the register. “Just looking for a phone. Or a mechanic.”

Thn can came around the shelves, apparently straightening the contents as he passed. “I might be able to help you,” he said in a strange British accent, then turned. His eyes met Xander’s and widened. He took one instinctive step back then froze.

Xander gaped and stared into clear blue eyes in an unmistakable face. But it wasn’t possible, was it?

“Spike?” he gasped.


TBC