Fanfiction: Three Fights
Climbing the stairs, Faith was surprised to see a spear of light slanting across the hall carpet. One of the potentials, no doubt, had left the bathroom and forgotten to flip the switch. Buffy was after them all the time about this kind of crap, the wasted money. It had made her grin to think how much like Joyce Buffy sounded. Faith approached the half-opened door, reaching for the light switch, when she stopped short.
Xander was sitting on the edge of the tub in boxers and a tee shirt, one leg stretched out parallel to the floor, his foot braced against the sink cabinet. He’d removed the bandage and was peering intently at the knife wound, his fingers carefully probing the area around it.
“You’re up late,” she said.
He roused himself, turning toward her. From the way he moved, she guessed he’d been sitting there for a while.
She took a step inside, leaning to look at his thigh. “I’d say it’s healing pretty well.”
“Then you would be wrong.” His voice like a slap.
“Yeah?” she said, neutrally as possible. “Then why don’t you tell me how it is.”
His dark eyes fastened on her, but didn’t take her in — the filth and bruises, none of it. “Something’s not right.”
“Got that. Waiting for more.” And she waited. “An emergency-room something, or doctor’s-office-in-the-morning something?”
“I — Fuck. I dunno.”
“You in pain?”
“Not exactly.” Ah. Must be why he was so angry with her.
Faith washed the grime from her hands and dried them, then put a hand to the flesh near the cut. “Doesn’t feel inflamed.”
He smacked it away. “Forget it, then. I must be wrong, it’s just my leg.”
Jesus, she was too tired for this. “Xander, I’ll do whatever you need, just —”
He grazed her thigh with two fingers, there and gone. “Do you still get horny after the slaying?”
Christ in a sidecar. “Are you in a position to do anything about it?”
His eyes sparked with aggression. “Any position you want.”
“What the fuck happened to Gandhi?” Anya, in fact, should get a load of this new, improved Xander.
He blinked, gave his head a shake. “I fell asleep before the end, but Willow said he got shot.”
The absurdity of this exchange yanked a laugh from her, which completed his transformation back to some Xander she recognized.
“Sorry. Sorry. My head’s been in a really weird place tonight.” He touched her hand. “Maybe some kind of rebound from the pain meds. I can’t sleep at all.”
Her fingers twitched with the desire to push them through his hair, but she held back. “Probably means it’s time to stop sleeping during the day. Or start doing something to get yourself tired.”
Xander’s mouth quirked up in a grin. “Any ideas?”
His hand brushed her thigh again, and she hated the electric tingle that buzzed straight to her crotch. “Screw you!”
“I second that motion. The floor is now open for discussion.”
She’d let him have the floor, all right. She got him flipped onto the tile, somehow managing without hurting his leg. “You’ve developed a taste for the hostility fuck, Xander? Let’s go, then.”
“Wait.” He stretched out his arm, trying to reach the door, slap it shut. “Let me—”
Faith seized his wrists, pinned them to the floor. “I like it just where it is.”
He squirmed free of her grasp, batted at the door until it clicked shut. Where the wrestling match left off and the coupling began wasn’t easy to tell. She met Xander’s aggression with her own, and since he didn’t slow his pace even when he cursed or yelped from a jolt of pain, she held nothing back either. Sounds were amplified by the small tiled space: harsh rasp of breath, their mingled grunts, the soft slap of flesh on flesh, sharp knock of a knee or elbow making contact with wall or floor.
But it changed for her in a flash. She understood that this, ragged and animal, signified his return to life — and that the aggression was where he poured his own anger and fear at watching the life bleed out of him with every heartbeat. Faith let this knowledge course through her body, moved from flinging his hostility back at him to absorbing it, dispelling it. At last they both collapsed against each other, limbs tangled, gasping.
“Faith.”
She turned her head toward him. The gaze that met hers was fully Xander’s, aware, troubled. This time she did let herself touch his hair.
“Not hostility,” he said. “Never that.”
She wasn’t sure she believed him. Hostility could ride on so many other emotions, even love. Faith decided it didn’t matter. “I know,” she told him. “I know.”
What she knew was this: sometimes you had to get down and dirty to fight the demons.
Slowly they came to their feet, got their clothes back in order, and then she and Xander limped together down the hallway to bed.
end