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Living Dangerously
by Andraste
Summary: Andrew does some baking, and comes to a realisation.
Rating: PG-13
Author Notes: This is for Rossi and MC (who betaed it) and everyone else
who put up with my Andrew-themed babbling during the weekend before I
wrote this story. My friends are much better at accepting my geekiness
than people usually are at tolerating Andrew, and for that I'm eternally
grateful *g*.
Story Notes: Set somewhere between 'Storyteller' and 'Dirty Girls'.
Disclaimer: Nobody in this story is mine, although if Joss wants to give
Andrew away now he's done, I'd be willing to offer him a good home. I
promise to feed him properly (unlike certain other people) and walk him
every day. Oh, and I'm not making any money out of this fanfic.
Andrew Wells is a man on a quest.
It's not so much a quest with monsters and dungeons and magic items,
suitable for roleplaying. It's more ... an inner journey. Eastern. Zen.
He's cultivating the art of patience, here, leaning against the kitchen
counter flipping through his comic (only the latest issue of 'Uncanny',
nothing too valuable to risk) and waiting for the timer to buzz. Like
Luke's trip to Dagobah, only with different utensils.
The funnel cake project has been temporarily abandoned after an accident
with the deep fryer - so not Andrew's fault - that ended with Buffy
confiscating any appliances that could be classified as deadly weapons.
This pretty much leaves him with spoons and blunt knives, but muffins
don't require heavy gear. He's lucky that Buffy hasn't seen as many
inventively violent movies as Andrew has, or she'd probably just throw him
out of the kitchen entirely. For somebody who once decapitated a vampire
with a nailfile (at least according to legend) she's surprisingly blind to
the possibilities.
His aunt taught him that anyone can do muffins, and after some practice
he can whip up a batch in even less time than it takes him to beat Dawn at
'Tekken'. That doesn't mean it's easy, though, as he was trying to tell
Buffy while they were out shopping for food and more kinds of feminine
hygiene product than Andrew knew existed. A muffin is only as good as its
ingredients, and you're never going to achieve the same results with
frozen blueberries that you'd get with fresh. When Andrew explained this,
Buffy rolled her eyes and asked him if he had to be a complete and total
geek about everything, but she still humoured him. He considers this a
victory. Even if nobody else notices the variations, they'll enjoy the
results more.
Andrew sometimes wonders how he ended up spending this much time in the
room with all the hot things. He's always had a phobia about being burnt,
which he puts down to seeing 'Temple of Doom' at a vulnerable age. Now
that he's a reformed supervillain who's managed to make the Ultimate Evil
mad with him, though, fear of muffin preparation seems kind of lame even
by his standards. He's found more important things to be scared of.
Kitchen time is also time to think where he won't be interrupted every
nanosecond. Andrew hated being alone when it was his constant state of
being, but he's not used to this many people and this little privacy. He
once thought a house full of attractive women would be really cool, too,
but in his head it was more about the lingerie and pillow fights, and less
about people barging in on him in the bathroom.
He's been living in a perpetual slumber party - although of course the
Trio never used the words 'slumber party' to describe hanging out at the
lair - for what feels like forever, but the atmosphere here is that of an
alternate reality. There's the same gladiatorial combat for control of the
remote (although Andrew's chances of winning have fallen to absolute
zero), the same neglect of basic nutrition, the same arguments about who
spilled something sticky on his 'Promethea' HC. But there's nobody to
present a serious challenge to his mastery of the games console, nobody
who enjoys dissecting the nuances of 'Enterprise' as much as he does, and
nothing is like it was this time last year.
The smell is all wrong. It's not like he was in love with the way
Jonathan always left his laundry on the floor, or how Warren never turned
on the fan before firing up the blowtorch, or the haze created by large
quantities of takeout nuked in a tiny space. But the combination was
somehow ... homely. He can't talk about this with anyone, but back then
Andrew thought he'd found his evolutionary niche. Late at night - when
Warren was fiddling with his next shrink ray or whatever, and Jonathan had
dozed off in front of the widescreen TV - he would sit in the lair
pretending to read, just listening to the little sounds they made. At
times like that he'd feel in total harmony with the cosmos. Part of
something bigger than himself.
Even after everything that happened, he misses it. Misses Warren and
Jonathan both. Sometimes when he wakes up after one of the nightmares he
doesn't share with anyone anymore, he gets pissed with them for being dead
and leaving him here with all these girls and a crappy dialup connection.
Before he can get too depressed (or start planning his campaign to get
DSL installed) the buzzer goes off. Andrew dons his trusty oven mitts and
reaches inside for what looks like a good batch. Once he's turned them out
onto the rack, he waits impatiently for them to get cool enough to sample.
As always, temptation defeats caution before five minutes are up and the
first bite burns his tongue - if he keeps doing this, Andrew will have no
tastebuds left at all.
Still, there's a good reason to take that chance. Once the scent of
baking starts to waft through the house, the ravening hordes will descend
and soon after that there will be no muffins for the muffin master.
Sometimes he likes this kind of summoning better than the old kind - what
with the expensive magic stuff and disgusting fluids - but sometimes he
thinks that the demons were more appreciative. It was also way easier to
remember their names.
The early arrivals today are a random blonde and brunette, who pay no
attention to him as they make for the goodies, conversation in progress.
"... and she was totally making out with Willow in the living room.
Again! It's so gross! Why can't they get a room? Um," the blonde says,
glancing at Andrew, "I mean, no offence." She juggles her prize from hand
to hand and bites into it happily.
"Yeah. Not that there's anything wrong with that," adds the brunette.
"Are these fresh blueberries, or frozen?"
It takes Andrew a whole twenty seconds to figure out why they think he'd
be offended by them being offended, and if he didn't have a mouth full of
muffin he'd correct them. Just because he's standing here in an apron
doesn't mean he's some kind of ... of course he still looks at girls ...
whatever he felt for Warren, it was because he was Warren and not ...
... the way he insisted on sharing a bed with Jonathan in Mexico even
when they could afford better. The mysterious interest in carpentry he's
developed since meeting Alexander Harris. The way he's been slashing Spike
and Principal Wood in his head on a nightly basis. Not to mention how he
uses up an hour of his TV allocation on 'Smallville' every week even
though people always complain.
Just possibly the way he lost count of how many times he'd seen 'The
Wizard of Oz' before his tenth birthday should have been a clue.
That makes it officially official: Andrew Wells is the most oblivious
dork on the face of the entire planet. He deserves some kind of award, or
medal, or a parade in his honour, or ... The girls - who, like everyone
else who isn't him clearly worked out that he's ... that way, whatever way
it is ... several eons ago - are still eating their muffins as if nothing
has happened. Nothing has happened.
Nobody cares.
Normally that's a depressing thought, but now it's ... not so bad.
Certainly not surprising. The house is full of Slayers-to-be, the world is
maybe going to end, and they could all be dead by suppertime. Besides,
Andrew has always known that the only person who usually takes an interest
in who he wants to have sex with is, well, him.
He remembers to swallow, and tries to work out when this stopped being
scary. When Warren draping an arm over him stopped making him
uncomfortable and started to be exciting. When he started checking Spike
out instead of looking away in case he liked what he saw. When he admitted
that Krycek was pretty hot, too. It's not an epiphany like the one he had
in the school basement, just a shift in perspective. Like pressing the
zoom button or changing the camera angle.
Huh.
This technically makes him a member of an oppressed minority. Along with
Willow, Kennedy, that dead guy who used to be on the football team,
Apollo, the Midnighter and that British dude who played Gandalf and
Magneto. He hasn't seen a lot of evidence of a world that hates and fears
their kind since he graduated, though, and the assholes who used to beat
him up and call him a fag probably didn't even know that he's actually ...
Even if he does have it tattooed on his forehead in block letters, who
cares? His best friend and his ... whatever Warren was ... are dead.
Andrew will be dead soon. He probably deserves it. Those things dwarf any
lingering panic over his ... orientation.
Besides, he could probably interrupt Buffy's next big speech by coming
out and they'd all just tell him to shut up as usual.
Not that he's going to do anything like that. Whatever everyone might
assume, Andrew has a lot of thoughts that don't immediately come pouring
out of his mouth, and he doesn't need to share this one. At least not
before he has a speech of his own all worked out.
It's not like he's going to be making out with Xander where he might
squick someone anytime soon, outside of his rich and varied fantasy life.
As if Xander is a demon summoned by thought alone (... and has that
possibility ever occurred to anyone? That the reason Xander attracts so
many demons is that he's secretly the son of one, abandoned on a doorstep
to be raised by humans? ...) he appears in the doorway.
"Cool. Thought I smelled muffins."
He grabs two and stuffs one of them into his mouth in a single fluid
motion. Andrew likes watching Xander eat like that, as if he's some kind
of human anaconda. He wonders just how much the guy can fit in his mouth
... and that's a bad thought. No, not a bad thought. A perfectly OK and
potentially empowering thought. Just inappropriate right now.
"These," Xander says after managing to swallow, "kick serious ass. Maybe
you should graduate to brownies?"
Andrew isn't sure how Xander managed to taste anything eating at that
speed, but flushes at the compliment anyway. "I, uh, think I found the
magic formula. The key is not to stir them too hard."
"Well, any time you want to experiment, I'm your willing guinea pig."
Andrew's choking noises are covered by Dawn's timely arrival, and then
there's Willow and Kennedy, more interchangeable proto-Slayers, Anya, and
Buffy, who acknowledges that the fresh fruit was a good investment. Within
twenty minutes all the food is gone and Andrew is left alone with the
dishes and his rewritten thought processes.
Dawn promised to reserve the TV and Playstation later so he can beat her
at something new. Buffy is beginning to tolerate his presence. Xander
thinks that his muffins kick ass.
None of them are going to freak out because he likes guys.
It's not a bad place to wait for what happens next.
End
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