Fallen 2
And then, there was Cleveland.
Once before, a third of Xander´s world had vanished, but Buffy had so quickly slid in that Xander barely had time to feel unbalanced.
And he leaned on her again, her and Willow both. He leaned so heavily that, if he had been thinking, he would have been overwhelmed by the strength they gifted him. But even as he struggled, staggeringly, upright, he knew they were no longer the ones. They could provide stabilization, but the construction worker in him knew that that was a far cry from stability.
They forced him to talk about Anya, because they knew how much it could help to remember, and because none of them would ever forget the sheer destructive potential in loss. So they reminisced about his beautiful, brash, beloved, and he learned to let go of the recrimination and guilt, and simply grieve.
They did not know about Spike, about him and Spike, about her and Spike, about three sated hearts sharing a pillow. It wasn´t a secret he was ready to give up, and so nobody forced him to talk about Spike. Nor was he ready to give up the thoughts that he took to sleep with him every night: two voices chatting above him, tied and gagged and blindfolded with nothing to do but listen when they started in on another round of, "When this is over..."
"When this is over," Spike said, "I´m gonna take you two to New York. A Klenteck demon I know there has a setup you wouldn´t believe. He´s got this levitation/suspension spell," Xander tried to concentrate on the words as fingers started massaging his inner thigh. "Hanging in mid-air, accessible from all sides," the fingers moved up and he clearly heard his lovers kissing. "You could take his front," Spike whispered, and Xander squirmed as a finger worked its way in next to the butt plug that filled him, squirmed again as he imagined himself surrounded on all sides by Spike and Anya. He was panting behind the gag even before both of their hands touched him...
Buffy and Willow saw him standing, talking, moving, coping, and labeled it progress. Xander supposed it was, and didn´t argue, not even when the split was proposed.
