For Giving
Love the smell of that Sunnydale night air. Garbage and carnage, and carfumes and carnage, heightened by the Hellmouth vibe into something that allures me despite my human soul.
So I like to cruise the streets, sniffing for trouble. And then eliminating it, of course, but I like the way it smells.
And the whiff of trouble is wafting down the streets towards me now, smells as if someone´s been soaking in a long, luxurious blood bath. It´s rich in the air, tempting. I see a largish lumbering shadow and I´m expecting it to be a satisfied vamp in a post–party daze, whom I can sniff and stake and then drive off again, faster than you can say hit´n´run. But instead it´s a human, stumbling and blood–soaked. I can´t believe any vamp let something this juicy and delicious go, but then again, it´s Alexander "I may be a moron but I do hang out with the Slayer" Harris so I figure the vamp got staked. Still, if he walks around smelling like that he´ll draw more vamps to him any second. In fact he already has–– but hey, I´m the soul man. Despite what he thinks and what I sometimes want, I´d never actually hurt him. Much.
Pulling up beside him. "Get in."
He looks at me and shakes his head. I feel familiar irritation.
"You can´t walk around like that, every vamp in Sunnydale´s going to be drawn to the smell." I cruise beside him.
"I´m near home," he says, trying to dismiss me, and I realise this is true; it´s his street. Realise something else as well.
"You´re walking in the wrong direction." I wonder for a second if he´s dazed or concussed by whatever attacked him. But that´s not confusion flickering on his face, just a mirror of my own irritation–at–the–stupid–guy.
"Home happens to be not where I´m going," he says.
"Where are you going? And what attacked you?"
"I don´t know. Maybe I´m going to Willow´s."
"You´re going to *die*. You smell–" delicious? irresistible?– "of blood."
"Turning you on, is it?" he leers at me. "You want a taste?"
Trying to get me to leave him. Not going to.
"Oh go on," he watches my eyes. "No one will *know* it was you. It can be just a random vamp attack when they find my body. In fact if you don´t do it it *will* be just a random vamp attack. And why should the other vamps get all the nummy blood just because they´re evil?"
Fuck, he´s annoying me. He´s suicidal and I just feel annoyed.
"Something attacked you in your home," I say carefully. He freezes, still. No sarcastic babble, which I´m momentarily glad of even though his silence stems from trauma.
"Were your family hurt?"
Wide–eyed look, then, and a flash of flat humour in his eyes. He laughs at the night sky.
"Yeah, I think my dad has seriously injured his karma."
It takes me a second to work that one out, exhaling an irritated hiss when I get it. Poor little Xander, so fucked up and abused he can´t answer a simple question with a straight answer. "Get in the car," I say, considering patting him on his head, or shoulder or somewhere sympathetic, but I don´t think he´d like it and anyway, I don´t really want to. "I´ll take you to Willow´s, she can go with you to the hospital."
"I don´t want to go to Willow´s," he says, but now he´s pleading, like a little child. "It´ll hurt her to see me this way."
"And it´ll hurt her less to see you dead?" I´m gruff.
"I won´t have to see her face then."
"That´s pretty selfish, you know."
"No," he says."Me dying, I´ll hurt her once. Me living, I´ll hurt her lots of times. Do I have to wait till she despises me before I can kill myself?"
He turns his eyes to me at the end like a huge question mark, but he wasn´t really looking at me during the speech, it must be an argument he´s had with himself many times before. And I´m all out of arguments, and I know he won´t be accepting comfort from anyone tonight. I wonder if I´m going to have to hit him to save him.
"Then come to my house. I´ll clean you up, we don´t have to tell anyone." He looks at me, I can see a thousand objections surfacing behind his eyes. But he´s tired too and just nods dumbly, climbing in beside me.
It´s mostly heavy bruising on him; he has tender flesh that looks as if it bruises well and he´ll be an interesting array of colours tomorrow. There are lacerations all down his back as well though, glass embedded.
"There was a bottle broken on the floor," is his only offered explanation for any of it. The back of his scalp´s bleeding too, it´s been slammed into something. I can see faint old scars on his back, making grooves for the new blood to flow in.
I´m cleaning him with cotton–wool, soaked in alcohol, and it´s hurting him. Better to lick him with my vamp–tongue, really. More healing and it´ll get the tiny glass fragments out better. Might even prevent scars. Also better for me, to taste the blood instead of wasting it. I guess that´s why our mouths evolved these healing powers in the first place: for those rare occasions when we´re weak– or ensouled– enough to have to resort to symbiosis.
I wonder how he´ll take to the suggestion. I decide not to suggest, just state, and press him down on the bed that bit more firmly.
"I´m going to lick your back now."
There´s no resistance, verbal or physical, just a tiny cringe. It´s as if he expected that and is resigned.
It annoys me, the way he thinks I´m a monster with no self–control. I´m a monster with a very great deal of self–control indeed.
"It´s for healing, Xander," I say. "If I wanted to drink your blood I´d have done it before now."
My contemptuous tone only seems to make him more submissive and he says
"Okay– thank you" in a near–whisper.
And maybe in vamp–mode I´m rougher with my demon tongue than I should be, and when he shakes and whimpers I hold him still with more force than he really needs, but I´m still doing the good–guy thing, and if I´m punishing him a bit too, well, he´s earned it.
I let him sleep then, naked and face down on my bed, his cuts healing unnaturally fast and exposed to the air. The touch of fabric on his back made him hurt, he said.
He still smells good– smells like he tasted. There´s so much sex and fear in his blood– in his mind– and what vampire doesn´t love those flavours? I think about him limp and submissive beneath my hands, about him asking me to drain him. About what life has to offer him and where he´ll go tomorrow. And yeah, I´m revelling in the power I have over him, but when you get right down to it, it´s a power I can use to help him or to hurt him, and I´m still a good–guy so I know what I´m going to do. I´m going to be a saviour and a Good Samaritan to the one person apart from me who´s never bought my good–guy act. Ponder whether I was built for unamusing ironies, like Xander is built for victimhood.
Xander´s naked in my bed right now, and there are cuts and bruises all over his pretty little ass. I feel an urge to add to them: to slap that ass, or bite it, or just fuck it bloody. To vent, or possibly to prove something, but the only thing I really want to prove to him is that no–thrust, (squeal)– in fact– slam in again, (squeal)– I´m not actually evil– thrust– you little bitch–slam– admit it! (no ,sob, sorry Angel, sob, pant, I see now you´re–whimper– good.)
Amuse myself darkly with that image for a moment. There´s possibly a better way to make that point than by raping him.
Although he´d actually let me fuck him, if I asked, in this mood. Just drop his eyes and submit, thinking maybe I´ll kill him if he´s good. I leave the room, bury my nose in a book.
He wakes up the next morning just as I´m thinking of going to bed to hide from the sunlight. My last night´s Good Deed, but this one comes with repercussions and emotional entanglements. Eucch. I prefer to rescue, stake and leave.
"Angel?" he says, naked in the doorway, cupping his groin. "My clothes?" "Are bloodsoaked and torn," I tell him. "You can borrow something of mine."
"Thank you," his voice wavers. "You´re being good to me."
"I´d do the same for anyone," I tell him.
"I know," he says quietly. "But thank you."
"OK" I dismiss him. "Shower´s that way."
He pads out of the room. I stare at his retreating butt and bruises and drift into a dream until I hear him rustling about in my wardrobe, post–soapy wetness.
When I walk in on him he´s holding up a pair of black leather pants, almost stroking them. He´s already wearing one of my few non–silk shirts.
The pants are obviously too big: I wonder what he´s doing with them. He needs something that can be belted and rolled up. Or I do, maybe.
"What are you doing with those?" I say.
"What are you doing with these?" he says. And then I realise. They´re– "The Leather Pants of Evil, Why didn´t you throw them out?"
"Why did you go *looking* for them?" I hiss.
And Smartmouth Harris should be able to answer that no problem, but he doesn´t, just looks down and says "Sorry."
I could get used to him like this. I pull a random black pair from the wardrobe and shove them at him.
"Er–boxers?" he asks me.
"Don´t have any," and his eyes flicker to my boxerless bits, and he´s suddenly concentrating hard on pulling up the pants, with his back to me.
"So, how are we today, Harris?" I say with brutal cheerfulness. It´ll work better than soft sympathy. Possibly. "Still suicidal?"
"I don´t know, I don´t want to die, don´t think I want to, but I´ve got..." he trails off, not wanting to admit to me how pathetic he is.
"Got what? A wasting disease and six months to live? Or no excuse at all?"
"Nowhere to go. That´s all. I don´t want to go home again."
"I thought as much. I have rooms free, here." I gesture around me at the mansion.
Wide–eyed again.
"I can´t pay you any rent. I haven´t got anything."
"I´m not asking for rent. I´ll even pay for your food. If you wanna pay me back you can do cleaning, and you can stay out of my way. Specially when Buffy´s here."
He winces a little at that. And again with the whispery "OK." He pauses.
"Are you sure? Cos I know you prefer your own company, well you prefer it to mine, and at a rough guess you´d rather have a cockroach infestation that a Xander in your home. I mean, I´ll find something, I can look after myself, not like I´m even going to graduate high school anyway, you don´t have to do this for me.."
"Xander," I interrupt. "You can´t look after yourself. You´ve got Kick Me written all over you–" he looks down at himself, as if he thinks I´m being literal– "in a secret code that only bullies and demons can read. You won´t last five minutes in grown–up land. Now, I´m willing to help you, but I´m not willing to beg you to let me help you. So– the offer stands. Take it or leave it."
"I accept. Thanks."
He´s wounded and ashamed, but not arguing. "I´ll show you to your room."
It´s at the other end of a long corridor from my room. Completely bare of all furniture. No bed, even: I´ll have to get one for him.
"Wow, it´s really– nice. It´s got walls and a ceiling and everything!" Xander looking round, he´s switched back to Sarcasm Mode, and then he looks at me afraid. "Sorry, I didn´t mean to be ungrateful. Maybe I should just not speak in your presence."
I ponder that. Xander is shrinking away from me and he smells afraid. Reacting to me almost like humans used to react to Angelus, if they got to spend much time in his company. I should feel guilty, and do a bit. But he does annoy me, as I may have already said. And– my silence means something to me. I search for truths in silence. "You can talk. Just not– all the time."
That must have come out forbidding.
"I´ll stick to silence," he says.
I look at him, considering "I don´t mean– I don´t want to crush you," I offer. Though– that would be easy. I could take his wrist in my hand, squeeze it into an interesting crunchy jelly texture. I could crush him, listen to him scream when his bones break. I don´t want to though: I feel sick at the memories and fantasies that have just welled up in me. And if it makes me feel sick, revolted– and it does– that means I secretly want it, right?
Fuck this. I knew I should have eaten Freud when I got the chance. And Xander is looking hard at my face, frightened and for some reason puzzled.
"You don´t want to crush me," he says, slowly. "Do you want *anything* from me?"
And, oh, *that´s* what´s frightening him.
And I suddenly see the flaw in my abstract and oh–so–noble desire to save the world, make it better. See it right there in Xander´s eyes. And how much would it hurt him, if I said "no" right now? Or even the politer lie that "I want you to be happy, feel good about yourself again" with its subtext of (and then get the fuck out of my life). I don´t know how he´ll feel about the truth. But I can´t invent a lie that´ll save him.
He wants me to want him, would rather be crushed than ignored. And who wouldn´t? And maybe my desire to beat him bloody is kinder, more honest and true, than my moral obligation to save him from himself. From myself. Because pain is a connection and a communication after all. And I wonder in an Angelusy moment whether it´s better to touch someone´s heart literally than not to touch it at all.
So I speak the truth. Say things I´d never say, even to Buffy.
"I *want* to hurt you, Xander. Make you cry. I want to cut you open and know what it feels like under your skin. And you know that, and you want it too, you keep bringing it out of me. And so I hate you."
He´s so aroused, so terrified. And delightfully, he´s honest too. There´s no shame now, no mumbled "sorry".
"Do it then," he looks me straight in the eye, his heartbeat pounding loudly in my ears.
I´m on him in one stride, seize his shoulder with one hand and the hair on the back of his head with another. But I don´t hurt him, just angle his head and kiss him, and I let go of his head when I realise just how rough and greedy he is, kissing me back.
And just for a second, I think about Buffy, but fuck Buffy, she doesn´t understand, and I can´t be that good shiny person that she thinks I am, that better–than me that I´m always trying to be for her. She´s my aspiration, my symbol of possible redemption: I´m her illusion, thinking every moment she´ll wake up and see through me. Give me someone who sees the dirty truth and can still *laugh* at it, still want it– and I sink to my knees in front of the gaping, panting Xander, wrapping my arms around his waist for a moment as I realise this comfort thing could cut both ways.
I unzip him and he´s so tense, ass clenched, remembering my promises of pain. "I won´t hurt you today," I mutter, and he relaxes a little, and there are tears in my eyes for the first time since Hell, *good* tears for the first time – possibly ever. Cos he´s there, a human who made me feel so *dirty*, who annoyed me as much as my conscience, and something has just shifted, somehow, between us, and now I feel... I´m being forgiven.
