Fanfiction: Sunnydale Calling
Though she was exempt from regular kitchen duty because she trained the potentials, Faith volunteered most evenings anyway. She liked it, she told Xander, and when he got off the job site early enough, he wandered into the kitchen first to see if she was there, and if she was, he’d help out.
Faith could hack through heads of lettuce and several pounds of carrots and potatoes in no time. “This? This is nothing,” she’d said the first time he marveled at her work. “I’m used to dinner for four thousand.” She’d flourished the knife she held. “Sweet! It’s not chained down.” They all managed to sit down to dinner by seven or seven-thirty now rather than nine or ten. Under her tutelage, Xander was getting pretty handy in the kitchen himself.
He worked at her side because the kitchen was where she sang. She got caught up in the rhythm of her work, and first she’d start humming, then she’d lift her voice and Xander’s breath would catch. It was always a gospel song; she said they were the only songs she knew. Faith told him the kitchen lead she’d worked with, Marquita, had sung them as they moved seamlessly from making one meal into the next. Marquita had been the one who’d brought her into the choir.
The potentials grew a little less eager for KP duty with Faith than they’d first been; he wasn’t sure if it was the flashing blades that made them nervous or the churchy music. Willow, Spike and Anya, he had his theories about. Maybe they thought she was going to start proselytizing at the first conversational lull. Buffy’s hackles rose whenever she got near Faith, singing or not; she kept her distance. She had other things on her mind anyway.
Xander didn’t care. The two of them could do as much work as six potentials, in less time. And there was always an opportunity to slip out onto the back porch for some, well, neckless necking. That was all they’d managed in the week she’d been here. With training, patrols and kitchen duty, her waking hours were full, and there was nowhere on the premises with even a splinter of privacy. He contented himself for now with her voice and their quiet teamwork.
Xander found Buffy at one of the campus picnic tables, a trayful of dubious cafeteria offerings before her. “I hope you didn’t wait for me to start in on that,” he said. “Really your only chance with the goulash is that first too-hot, tastebud-searing bite.” He set his lunch pail and hardhat down and sat on the bench across from her. “I’m glad you called. This is nice.”
“I’m glad I caught you in time. It’s really been forever since we’ve done this.”
He looked around them at the high schoolers packed along the other tables or spread out on the grass with their brown bags and cafeteria trays. “Yet strangely the same,” Xander said. “The cool kids still won’t sit with us.”
She grinned. “Now more than ever. So whatcha got in the silvery lunchpail?”
He flipped the latches. “The silvery lunchpail is why guys like me get into jobs like mine. It’s all about the silvery lunchpail of goodness. Silvery lunchpail guys do not trade lunches, so get that out of your head right now.”
Xander felt it coming on like a migraine, another of those conversations that spun out endless banter like threads of cotton candy. Jesus, it depressed him. He hated having them with his friends — they were a sign that things had changed, or else that things needed to change but were stuck. Exchanges like this exhausted him, but were in some way easier than moving past them and talking about something real. It seemed lately he had these the most with Buffy.
He unwrapped his sandwich. “Roast beef. On some kind of peasant bread. Faith placed a permanent ban on squishy white bread.”
She took a bite of the goulash, made a face. “You guys seem to be getting pretty tight.”
His first reaction was relief. A split second later, the Captain Kirk in his head ordered shields thrown up at full power. Xander shrugged. “Turns out I like the cooking. There’s kind of a rhythm to it, a flow. Like my work here, when it goes well.”
“You guys seem to be getting pretty tight.”
“Yeah, you said that. Is this one of those counseling techniques? Are we here to talk about some problem I have?”
“Xander —”
“Sorry. Sorry. Defensive. Yeah, I’ve spent some time with her. Mostly just kitchen duty. She’s part of this fight, Buffy. At our request. What are we going to do, lock her in a closet until it’s time to train the girls, or fight, or die? She’s been locked up.”
“For good reason.”
“I’m well aware of that. Look, you’ve got your history with her. I can respect that. She and I have our own history, and that’s all I can take into account when I decide whether or not to move beyond it.”
Buffy shoved her tray aside. “I can’t believe this. Have you forgotten what she did to me? She dug her hooks into everything that was mine. Angel. Riley.” She cast a glance around at the students nearby and lowered her voice. “She took my body. All Faith wants is to take something else that belongs to me, and she doesn’t care what.”
“Buffy? Hello?” Xander snapped his fingers three times in front of her face. “Tell me when the fuck I ever belonged to you. Because what I remember is practically tying myself up with a big red bow and presenting myself to you, and you couldn’t wait to head for the returns desk. Now that Faith might have an interest, I’m your property? Excuse me, but that’s just fucked up.”
“You’re my friend.”
“Am I? Sometimes lately I wonder if you even see me.”
“In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve had an apocalypse on my hands.”
Xander closed the lid on the lunchpail, snapped the catches. “In case you hadn’t noticed, I’ve been right here in the middle of the fight. Just like all the other apocalypses.” He shoved the waxed paper with his sandwich across the table. “Why don’t you take the rest of this? Like everything else, it’s yours.”
“Goddammit, Xander,” she spat, “don’t you show me up in front of these kids. I’m their counselor.”
“That’s bullshit. You invited me out here to lay this on me, counting on the fact that we were in public. Nice variation on the swanky-restaurant-breakup tactic, except I don’t happen to give a shit what these kids think.” He swung his legs over the picnic bench and stood. “You know, Buff, you’re all about redemption and forgiveness, as long as we’re talking about someone with a set of fangs and a body count in the hundreds. But anyone else can go fuck themselves.”
“You can anyway.”
Xander looked at her and nodded once. He snatched up his hardhat and lunch and stalked off to sling them into his truck. There’s your fucking real conversation, Harris. Though he felt like a juvenile asshole for doing it, he peeled out of the parking lot and rocketed into the street, headed away, anywhere.
Xander skipped dinner at Camp Scooby, heading to the Bronze to shoot some pool. He left after one game and a beer; the band sucked and the crowd was too young. After burning some time in aimless driving, he found himself again in the truck outside the house on Revello. The soundtrack was different this time — a cd he’d burned of Sonnyboy Williamson II, Howlin’ Wolf, Junior Wells and Little Walter. It was music that went down well with smoldering anger, and even better with each successive belt from the bottle he’d bought on the way home. He watched the upstairs windows darken by ones and twos, later tonight than most, because Xander hadn’t been there to impose order. Well, it was nice to know he served his purpose in the grand scheme of things.
Buffy, Spike and Faith would already be out patrolling. The past week more often than not, they went out together but Faith returned separately from Spike and Buffy. Xander didn’t know whose idea it was to split up, whether Faith was uncomfortable fighting by Spike’s side, or Buffy didn’t want her there. Or, he supposed, Faith could be staying out to let off some steam after a good fight. It had been her way back in wilder times.
He’d thought to wait for Faith’s return, but the Wolf’s lye-soaked growl made Xander too edgy to sit still. —Tell ol’ Automatic Slim, tell ol’ razor-toting Jim — Yeah, yeah, this was dangerous music made by dangerous men, another fitting soundtrack for the Scooby life. —We gonna honky-tonk till midnight, we gonna fuss and fight till daylight— That was it, man, and that was what the problem was here in the last bastion of vampire slaying. They needed to get out there, bring it like Buffy had said they’d do, but here they were, still waiting on the next move from the First. And while they waited, they ripped at each other, while the First popped in periodically with a Corpse-O-Gram to keep them at one another’s throats. Fuck that, fuck waiting around. Xander Harris could pitch a wang dang doodle that equaled anything Howlin’ Wolf could. Instead of sitting around in his truck, he’d go find Faith, finish her patrol with her. He rooted around behind the seats and came up with a stake and a knife — not as much use as a sword, but concealable — and started off in the direction of the cemetery.
It took a while, but he found her in one of the rougher alleys in town, announced by the clatter of garbage cans and produce crates as she fought a pair of biker vamps who would’ve given him pause even without the fangs. On a normal night. Faith kicked one of them across the face, and as he stumbled backwards, Xander caught him by his greasy hair and punched the stake through his heart. The other lunged at Faith, and after a left hook and an elbow to his head, she kicked his feet from under him and dusted him where he sprawled.
Xander looked around them. “All clear.”
She tucked her stake into the waistband of her skirt. “What are you doing here?”
“I haven’t patrolled for a while. Thought I’d look for you.”
Faith nodded.
“How’s it been out here?”
“Not a lot going on,” she said. “And just vamps. I haven’t seen any Bringers.”
He fell in step beside her as she walked out of the alley. “From beneath you it endlessly farts around.”
Faith cast him a bemused glance. “You’re in a mood tonight.”
“I came to a realization, that’s all. Less sitting around and waiting, more going out and making things happen.”
She stopped, grabbing Xander’s arm and jerking him to a halt. “Have you been drinking?”
“What makes you think —”
“I can smell it, for one. What the fuck, Xander? Are you trying to get me killed?”
“What the fuck right back at you. You’re making it sound like I’m drunk and got in your way. I just dusted that vamp. It was a textbook fight.”
“It was. And you felt bulletproof, didn’t you?”
“Well, yeah, I guess.” Come to think of it, he still did.
She shoved him back a step. “Goddammit, Xander, that is what’s going to get somebody killed. Me — or you — or somebody else.”
“Kids, kids.” A guy in a suit, definitely slumming in the bars along the strip, peered at them drunkenly. “I don’t know what you’re fighting about, but love is precious. Come on, now, buddy, buy that pretty lady some flowers.”
Hand still splayed against Xander’s chest, Faith turned toward the drunk guy and showed her teeth. “Look, Dr. Phil, why don’t you go wave down a cab while you’ve still got the arms to do it.”
Backing away, Suit Guy put his hands up in the universal hey, I’m harmless. He shot Xander a look of exaggerated sympathy. “You kids have a nice night. Taxi!”
Xander looked back to Faith, starting to grin. “Well, that was —”
She shoved at him again. “I’m not done. Dammit, Xander, I don’t have that many friends. I can’t afford to lose the ones I’ve got.”
They stood toe-to-toe in the wash of red neon, their breathing ragged. Xander felt a buzz of electricity move through him from where her hand pressed against his chest. It looped back into her and in the next breath they were kissing. No tender exploration like the other night, just heat and hunger and hands.
Faith pulled him back into the alley they’d just cleared. Her hands invaded his shirt as he ran his up her short skirt. He made her breath hiss and catch as they fumbled their way toward a padlocked doorway in deeper shadows. There she hitched her skirt up and unzipped his jeans, inviting him to catch the wave that she rode, rising and falling with her rhythms until they both fell back panting against the graffiti’d steel door.
Xander awoke to the warmth of sunlight on his skin. He inhaled a complex bouquet of stale air mixed with a vague suggestion of eau d’alley and the sharp scent of their mingled sweat. Disoriented, he blinked in the bright light and tried to determine where he was. Faith’s old apartment, in her bed, though he didn’t remember spending that much time there last night. She still slept beside him, her dark hair fanned out across the pillow.
He took an inventory of aches and bruises. The worst was a long floor burn on his forearm, though later it might get some competition from his left knee, which he’d managed to bang on … well, something. Everything else seemed minor, scratches mostly. Last night’s exploits made him think of an expression he’d heard the first time in the boys’ locker room at Sunnydale High. Back when Larry was still in the closet and working the overcompensation angle for all it was worth. A girl’s name would come up and Larry would boom, “Man, I’d like to tear off a piece of that.” Okay, that had freaked his shit right out. Even after he’d lost his virginity, even after exploring all 30 non-vanilla flavors with Anya, he’d never had sex that even remotely fit that description. Until now.
It had been about a 50-50 split as to who’d torn what off of whom, but looking at her now, Xander saw no physical signs of the night before. Eyes closed, face free of makeup, she looked impossibly young. Too pale, that was from her last few years in prison and would take some time. The change that moved him most was the vulnerability in her face. Gone were the furrows between her brows, the set of her mouth that marked her anger at what the world had done to her, her suspicion of what it would try next. Xander could spend at least three days watching her sleep like this.
What he got was another five minutes. There were none of Anya’s slow, catlike stretches as she awakened. Something just kicked her starter and her eyes flew open, wariness flooding back. Xander had a feeling his presence had something to do with that; he wondered if he was the first man who’d ever been allowed to see Faith unguarded and vulnerable, asleep.
“Hey,” he said, touching her arm. “Want me to run down, get a couple espressos?”
“No. Get dressed and get out.” She was halfway across the room by the time she finished speaking, grabbing up their tangled clothes, throwing his across at him. “Now, move!”
They were both only half dressed when the Bringers kicked in the door.
They swarmed her so fast and purposefully that Faith couldn’t even count them. She dove for the only weapons left in the apartment, her short sword and Xander’s knife, scattered with their clothes. A little too hand-to-hand for her comfort, but she was glad enough to have them. Right before her view was cut off by the convergence of dark robes, she caught a flash that was Xander vaulting the kitchen counter to disappear behind the work station. So much for bulletproof.
The Bringers weren’t carrying the battle staffs Xander had described to her. Just the wicked-looking curved knives. No abductions on the menu today, then. They were here for wet work.
She kicked and slashed with both blades, dodging their feints. Four of them, she thought, but it was hard to be sure. Faith dropped to the floor and slashed at ankles, rolling out of their circle when the wounded Bringer gave way. It was harder for her to maneuver where she rose, but harder too for them to set on her at once.
The first who rushed her she met with a kick that sent him staggering backward into the kitchen work island. Another came at her from the side, and she slashed at him, drove him back. She cast a glance toward the kitchen area, waiting for the first Bringer’s next lunge, but he lay on the hardwood floor, hood yanked back. A long barbecue fork was sunk deep into his spine at the neck. Dead or not, he wouldn’t be getting up.
Faith snatched up a floor lamp, jerking its cord out of the wall, and thrust it at the next Bringer. It made an awkward weapon, too bottom-heavy to be effective, but she swung and jabbed to crowd the priest against the kitchen counter. Xander was ready; he swung a monstrous cast-iron skillet, and the Bringer dropped like a stone. Faith reached for the sword to run him through, but yet another of these assembly-line fuckers blindsided her, and they tumbled to the floor together.
He had his curved blade clutched in one hand, but Faith thrashed until he could not lift his weight from her to bring the weapon up. She writhed, cursed, kneed, spat, gouged, but neither of them could get enough distance to inflict any real damage. When the Bringer rose to his knees, it was because Xander had one arm around his neck, his other hand closing around the wrist of his knife hand. He peeled the priest off her, and Faith scrabbled for her own blade then plunged it into the folds of his robe.
Xander let him loose too soon, and the Bringer’s dead weight landed across her legs. She struggled out from under, turning the body to wrench her sword free. Faith crawled across the blood-slicked floor to take care of the one Xander had belted with the frying pan, and then turned back. Last one.
Xander was still on his knees, panting, reflexes leaden. She screamed his name as the last Bringer lunged. Xander pitched forward, sprawling in the Bringer’s path, bringing him down. Faith used the blade on him, then rifled his robes, coming up with nothing except an ornate sheath, empty. She took that and went on to the next body, stripping it of weapons.
“Get their knives,” she ordered. Faith pulled on her shirt and shoes and ran to what was left of the door, checking both ends of the hallway. “We’re clear, but we’ve got to get out of here.” When she turned back, he hadn’t yet risen. Jesus, the place was bloody, especially where he knelt in the midst of the fallen Bringers. “Damn, Xander. You fought like a motherfucker.” But move, she wanted to scream.
“Bleeding like one, too,” he said. His voice sounded vague, distracted. “Think I’m gonna need some help.”
He cupped his hands together over his left thigh, curling his upper body in toward it. Faith didn’t realize what she was seeing for a precious few seconds. “Jesus, no, Xander! Don’t pull it!” She skidded onto her knees before him, laid her hands on his wrists — so carefully, don’t make things worse — “No no no, Christ, Xander, leave it there —”
Bright blood slicked his hands, sprayed across Faith’s shirt and spattered onto the floor’s tacky surface. He looked up at her, confused, eyes beginning to glaze already. “But … it doesn’t—”
“We have to get to the infirma— the hospital. Now.” She ran for the closet and yanked the pink dress off the hanger. Took it in her fists and tore it straight down the middle. (“Nobody knows what you are. Not even you, Little Miss Seen-It-All.” You had that right, Boss. Who’d have seen this coming?) One half she knotted tight above the knife hilt; the other she tied below.
“Oh, great. Pink?”
“Not for long.” She hauled him upright, yanked the comforter off the bed and bunched it under her other arm as she helped him out of the apartment.
“My shoes —”
“Forget ‘em. We need to go.”
It was an agony waiting for the elevator, wondering if he’d be better off if she made him limp down the stairs. His fingers twitched toward the hilt. “I think I should get this out,” he said.
“No. Listen. You’ll bleed faster. Keep it in, it’ll compress the artery.” The elevator door rattled open.
“Artery?” Xander repeated. “That can’t be good.” He blinked. “Shouldn’t it hurt more?”
“It will.” If you’re lucky, you stupid sonofabitch. “C’mon, focus. We have to get to your truck. Can you reach your keys?”
He tried to slide a hand into his pocket, but his fingers might as well have been inflated rubber gloves. Faith slapped his hand aside and hooked the keys from his pocket. They made it to the street and she fumbled the key into the truck door.
“Lady, you need an ambulance.” Another fucking advice-monger. Sunnydale was crawling with them, worse than vampires.
“I need you the fuck out of my way.” She draped the comforter around Xander’s shoulders and settled him into the passenger seat, careful not to disturb the knife hilt.
“Maybe he’s right,” Xander said as she climbed into the truck cab. “Ambulance might be faster.”
“I guarantee you it’s not,” she said, firing up the engine and pulling into traffic. “Plus one thing: I don’t give a shit if I run anyone down on the way.” She set about proving it, weaving through downtown traffic, across the yellow line and back, whatever it took. “Stay with me, Xander. Talk to me.”
“I just had this goddamn thing detailed,” he said. “Stupid, you know? From beneath you it devours, and I really need to spend two hundred for a sparkling-clean truck?” His words were starting to slur, space out. “This shit’s never coming out.”
“It was looking good, though.” She was desperate to keep him alert, engaged. “A nice ride back from prison. I appreciate that.”
“Oh fuck, the least,” he said. “The jeans are shot, too.” He reached toward the knife again. “This really looks wrong.”
She clamped her hand around his wrist. “Xander. Don’t touch that or you will fucking die. Which way up here? Right or left?” Faith knew exactly where she was going, but she wanted him to fight the darkness she knew was creeping around the edges of his vision.
“Left, right up here. Left right left right,” he chanted in an infantry cadence. “Did you know I was in the army one night? I had a good wife but she left, right! Only I was the one who left. And she wasn’t quite my wife. Would have been.”
“Who, Xander? Stay awake and tell me.”
“Willow, I tried so hard, I really did.”
Faith tightened her fingers around his wrist, dug in her nails. “No last words, goddammit!” She felt something tear in her throat, but pushed her voice out louder. “Do you understand me, Private Harris?”
He was half slumped over his leg, but made an effort to straighten. “Sir, yes sir.”
She saw the portico ahead, the big letters that would light up in neon red at night: EMERGENCY. The truck skidded to a stop at the double doors and she scrambled down to the pavement, screaming for a doctor. A pair of orderlies dashed out of the sliding doors, toward her, taking in her blood-drenched clothes. “In there, in there, inside the fucking truck! Knife wound, his leg, it got the artery.”
One of the orderlies ran for a gurney while the other opened the passenger door. Screw this, there wasn’t time. She shouldered the orderly aside and gathered Xander into her arms.
“Miss, you’re going to hurt yourself and him too —”
Fingers clamped on her shoulder, and Faith twisted back to bite them. “Back off.” She had Xander to the second set of doors when the other orderly met them with the gurney. She laid him on the crisp white sheet, taking up one of his hands — so cold — and running alongside as they wheeled him into an ER cubicle.
“Miss, what’s your relationship to —”
“Wife.” No one was going to hang her up in red tape; she was staying right here.
“Are you hurt?”
“No, take care of him. Please.”
“Can you tell us what happened?”
Jesus. What could she say? Once she was connected to those bodies in her old place, she’d be back in the joint so fast her head would swim. She suddenly realized she was being edged out of the knot of white coats at his gurney. “No. I need to —”
“We have to get him stabilized.” The nurse drew the curtain and panic knifed through Faith.
“No.”
She steered Faith to the cot next to Xander’s cubicle. “We’ll put you right here, and make sure you’re all right, and you can tell us what happened while we’re checking you out.”
Shut up, shut up. Faith couldn’t hear the terse exchanges behind the green curtain, except for isolated commands that meant nothing to her. “What are they doing?”
“Getting him fluids, typing his blood. We can help him better if you tell us what happened.”
God forgive her. “I think he took something. He talked about some guys being after him, but it was some kind of spooky shit, not just guys, but without faces, something like that. Then he cut himself.” Xander, Xander, I’m so sorry. I can’t talk to the police, not and stay with you.
“Do you know what it was he took?”
Faith shook her head.
“Does he use drugs occasionally? Regularly?” Why did everyone talk so loud in the ER?
“No.” Faith’s own voice was in tatters; she could barely speak above a whisper. “Never. He’s a real straight arrow. But he’s been — there were deaths in the family.” God, she hoped she wasn’t making things worse with this horseshit. “Please let me see him.”
They were about to take him up to the OR. Though his clothes had been cut away, the ceremonial knife was still sunk deep in the flesh of his thigh. He was half-conscious, but recognized her. “Not so much with the farting around now, at least,” he murmured as she took his hand. Xander seemed dreamy; they must’ve given him something, despite what she’d said. “We make a pretty good team.”
“Yeah, we do.”
They began wheeling the gurney away, and she kept his hand, walking at his side until they physically stopped her at the double doors of Surgery.