Eldorado I-- Once in a Lifetime

by MustangSally and Chase

EMAIL: MustangSally78@juno.com & Chase0820@yahoo.com

SUMMARY: After the dramatic destruction of Sunnydale, Xander Harris heads to the idyllic Eldorado, Texas in search of a new life. Events conspire to give him far more of a life than he ever expected, including a wife, a dog, a house, a job, a collection of strange in-laws, and the assorted denizens of the town of Eldorado. But when Faith and a resurrected Spike show up unexpectedly in Eldorado, he discovers that his life might not be quite what it seems.

SPOILERS: BtVS Season 7 up to the bitter, bitter end. AtS, thru Season 4

RATING: NC-17 for adult language, violence, nudity, and use of controlled substances. This means shoo, kiddies.

PAIRINGS: Xander/OC for now; others in later episodes.

DISCLAIMERS: Now that BtVS is no more, Joss told us all to go write fanfiction. We're just following orders.

NOTE: This series is AU. Really AU, branching off from the final episode of BtVS, "Chosen", and the Season Four finale of AtS, "Home." What follows will be a short HBO-style season spread over one year in the mythical town of Eldorado, featuring Xander, Spike, and Faith, with all the sex, violence, and naughty language you've come to expect from that fine network. What you shouldn't expect is much in the way of Buffy, aside from a few necessary cameos. So, if you're looking for Buffy and Spike settling down happily with a white picket fence and a minivan, look elsewhere. If you're looking for Buffy and Spike slowly working their way back to each other after much pain, anguish, and doubt, look elsewhere. In fact, if you're looking for Spuffy at all, these stories are not for you. This isn't her world: it belongs to Xander, Spike, Faith, and the numerous goofy and (hopefully) endearing original characters they gather 'round them. Complaints about this state of affairs may be addressed to that brick wall over there.

SPECIAL THANKS: Heather and Sara, for essential early beta; Herself, Lori, and Rivka T., for invaluable comments and suggestions on later drafts; and all our friends at LiveJournal, for months of encouragement, support, and judicious nagging when the occasion called for it. Virtual chocolate- covered Spikes go out to you all.

Once in a Lifetime

Part One: Under the rocks and stones

Even Hell didn't want Sunnydale.

Before the week was out the crater was filling in again, the Hellmouth spewing forth great chunks of the town with the zeal of a Hollywood starlet vomiting up a Spago entree. The geologist guys on CNN had a good excuse for it, something about the elastic quality of the earth. But Xander didn't believe one word of it.

Even more unbelievable was how much of the outlying areas of town had survived more or less intact. True, the surviving neighborhoods bore a striking resemblance to London after the Blitz, but at least the burned-out buildings were still recognizable as such, and the deserted streets navigable by someone with enough determination or stupidity to brave the piles of charred rubble, downed power lines, and National Guard patrols.

After the last few years, Xander Harris wasn't one to be fazed by a little mass destruction, or some green college kid with an AK-47.

Shattered glass crunched and crackled like Rice Krispies underneath the soles of his boots as he slowly picked his way among the remains of what had been, not so very long ago, a very nice apartment. His apartment, to be precise, full of his things, the first and most tangible evidence that Xander Harris had indeed made it out of the dim dark basement of adolescence and embarked on something approaching a workable adult life. A real life, with a serious job and serious responsibilities, the kind of life you weren't ashamed to own up to when you ran into old classmates at the mall or the Espresso Pump or your high school reunion.

Xander stopped in the middle of the piles of broken plaster, splintered wood and shredded upholstery that had once made up his kitschy, comfy living room and smiled humorlessly to himself. The symbolism was painfully perfect: his carefully constructed life, the one he'd tended and mended like Buffy's living room windows, was gone. Made sense that the apartment was gone, too. Of course, most of the classmates who might have been impressed by the apartment or the life were also gone, as was the mall, the Espresso Pump, and the latest incarnation of Sunnydale High School. In the midst of so much death and destruction, maybe it was stupid to worry about your nice apartment, to mourn your vintage orange Barcalounger or wonder if, against all odds, your collection of Babylon 5 limited edition plates might be buried intact somewhere in the rubble. But in the midst of so much death and destruction, maybe it was worry about things like that, or go mad.

A flash of color in the brownish-grey devastation catching his eye, Xander ambled over to a section of the ruins that corresponded, roughly, with what had been his kitchen area. He stooped down to make a closer inspection, and saw to his astonishment a curve of red glass twinkling in the sunlight streaming through the half-fallen ceiling. It was a single intact bulb from the chili pepper lights he'd strung around his kitchen cabinets in a post-first-paycheck decorating frenzy. Thinking he was old enough and solvent enough at that point to actually decide on an aesthetic plan other than "things my parents were too lazy to throw away," he'd been going for a retro/tex-mex look to the place, a Restoration Hardware meets Chili's kind of flair.

"All those red lights make this place look like a Cuban brothel I used to frequent for business purposes back in the thirties," Anya says sharply, wiping a dusty hand across her forehead and crossing her arms in classic pissed-off girlfriend pose. After an entire weekend of moving in, with much fetching and carrying and cleaning but no sex, she's grumpy and spoiling for a fight.

But he's too psyched about his new job and his new place to get into a sparring match. Standing up from the outlet where he's plugged in his latest acquisition, he steps over and grabs her by the waist, pulling her to him forcefully. "Come on, Ahn, you say brothel like it's a bad thing," he says, his lips against her sweaty neck. She smells like lemon disinfectant and frustration. He runs his hands down her slender hips and cups her taut, jeans-clad bottom meaningfully. "Think of the lights as. . .inspiration."

"Like I need it," Anya snorts, but the edge in her voice has softened, and she's leaning into him in that boneless melty way that always sends his blood rushing due south. Whether it's the lights or just three days of pent-up frustration she definitely is inspired that night, the strings of scarlet bulbs adding a rosy glow to her peach-satin skin as she--

Xander stood up abruptly, leaning against the half-collapsed wall and trying to take deep breaths until the iron hand that had closed around his heart decided to stop squeezing.

"You shouldn't do that. Whole place is about to come down on our heads as it is."

Xander whirled, grabbing for the large dagger he'd clipped to his belt before starting out on this futile salvage expedition. The Hellmouth might be closed, and all the ghoulies sent back to wherever ghoulies came from, but he wasn't taking any chances. It would be the supreme irony of his life to survive seven years next to an active portal for all things evil, making it through the apocalypse that shut it, only to get taken out by a random straggler a few days after the fact. It was just the kind of cosmic sick joke the universe seemed to enjoy playing on him.

"Hey--peace, man. It's me. Remember me?" The man standing in the doorway was of medium height, dressed very much like Xander, in jeans and heavy work boots. The faded blue t-shirt stretched across his broad barrel chest read "Plumbers Do It Under the Sink." His blunt, pleasant face was wearing a small, worried smile. He had a large, wrinkled paper bag clutched in one work-roughened hand.

Xander blinked a couple of times, until his sticky mental Rolodex coughed up the appropriate name. "Tito?" he said uncertainly, still keeping his fingers wrapped tight around the dagger.

The man ran a nervous hand over his prematurely balding pate. "Right, you know, the prince of a guy who's been lendin' you quarters for the Coke machine for like, two years now? Who fixed your hot little girlfriend's plumbing for ten percent above cost?"

"Buffy's not my--" Xander said, the response so ingrained and automatic that it was halfway out of his mouth before he remembered that Tito already knew the score, Buffy-wise. You had to hand it to Tito--most people wouldn't have stood their ground and joked with a one-eyed man holding a razor-sharp dagger. Xander shook his head to clear it, sliding the dagger back into the belt clip at the same time. "Sorry man, I'm a little jumpy today. Must have something to do with standing here in the ruins of my life."

"No biggie," Tito said off-handly, but the tense set to his shoulders relaxed, and he took a few steps into the room. "Just come from my place--or what's left of it--up the street. I'm feelin' a little ruined myself right now. Condo's gone, boat's gone, had all my savin's down at the local credit union and since their buildin' and their mainframe computer's at the bottom of a bottomless crater, I can't access a dime of it. I currently got $12.72 cents to my name." He reached into the paper bag and pulled out a few shards of shiny black plastic, his placid expression darkening for the first time. "And my vinyl collection's fucked. Where the hell I'm gonna get another copy of the '78 Dutch import of Abbey Road in mint condition I have no idea."

Tito, besides being a master plumber and one hell of a nice guy, was also the only person Xander knew who had (or once had, he supposed now) a more extensive record collection than Giles. He suddenly felt a little better about his grief over his lost collectibles. But that realization didn't answer the main question on his mind. "What the hell are you doing here, anyway? I thought you got out of town days ago."

"I did," Tito said, packing the broken record back into his keepsake bag. "Headed down to L.A with Terri Ann--there was some New Age Oprah that'd set up shop there she wanted to meet, supposed to help her find her inner goddess or some such bullshit. I knew the whole thing was a steamin' pile before we went, but I figgered a break from Sunnyhell wasn't such a bad idea--vibes around here been weird all year. Stopped off in Camarillo for a couple days to see an old drinkin' buddy of mine, Terri Ann naggin' at me a mile-a-minute all the while, scared she was gonna miss out on her chance to sit at the feet of the Great Mother and elevate her mind. Sure enough, by the time we got to La-La Land, Blossom or Dewdrop or whatever the hell she was callin' herself had already skipped town. You know how these guru types are--she'd prob'ly picked all her followers clean and is kickin' it in the Caymans right now. But Terri Ann didn't see it that way. Ditched me a few days later for some ponytailed geek she picked up at Trader Joe's."

"Wow, uh, sorry." It seemed weird, commiserating with a buddy over getting dumped, the kind of thing you'd normally do over pretzels and beer in a nice seedy bar somewhere, when all the pretzels, beers, and bars within a ten-mile radius had been reduced to so much debris.

Tito shrugged carelessly. "Things ain't been good with us for awhile. Far as I'm concerned, I'm well shut of the crazy Irish bitch. Don't know why I ever followed her out here in the first place." He surveyed the destruction surrounding them with a rueful shake of his head. "This is what I get for thinkin' with the wrong head, I guess. Whole goddamn town looks like Tokyo after Godzilla stomped through it. I came back here to see what I could salvage, but what the 'quake didn't get the scavengers did." His face darkened again.

"So what are you going to do now?" Xander said gently, ready to offer him a room if he needed one. At last count, the Scooby Gang still had something like two dozen rooms at their disposal, even with all the surviving slayers to house until their flights home could be arranged. The Hyperion was a little the worse for wear, but anything was better than pitching a tent in the ruins.

"I'm gettin' the hell out of the State of California, that's what I'm gonna do," Tito said, his downhome twang sharpening a little. "Hmmph--State of Insanity's more like it. Earthquakes, eclipses that last for days, utility bills that look like the GNP's of small Eastern European nations. I'm goin' home to Texas, see if I can get my shit together. Who knows? Maybe Rosa'll even be willin' to give it another go--my brother e-mailed me a couple weeks ago and said she dumped that chiropractor she was all hot and bothered over when I went to see our boy at Christmas. Work's no problem--they got housin' developments springin' up like mushrooms out there. Man who knows his way around a worksite can write his own ticket."

"Sounds good."

"Dude, it is good. Weather's great, people are friendly, and you can order a plate of ribs without some goddamn PETA freak lookin' at you like you're Charlie Manson. Soon as my folks wire me the cash, I'm gone."

"I guess you've got it all figured out," Xander said, not quite able to keep a wistful note out of his voice. Even if he'd had the type of parents he could turn to in a crisis, Anthony and Jessica Harris, like so many Sunnydale citizens, had been missing since everything went boom a week ago. No refuge there.

"Yep, it's like I'm seein' things clear for the first time in awhile. But then it's hard to make stuff out when some little blonde thing's got you by the cojones." Cocoa brown eyes narrowed at Xander appraisingly, taking in his pensive mood. "You know, the place I used to work for, it's one of the biggest outfits in those parts. They're always needin' people, quality people. If you're lookin' to make a change, I could put in a good word for you." He paused, twisting the bag in his hands awkwardly. "Uh, your eye, is that a, um, permanent thing?"

"No," Xander said shortly.

"Great, great," Tito said quickly. "Prob'ly wouldn't have been a problem even if it was, but the bossman at O'Shea Construction's the kinda guy who likes to have all the facts, if ya know what I mean." His broad, blunt features again relaxed into the placid smile that was his habitual expression. "Whaddya say, Xan-man? It's the Land of Opportunity out there."

"Thanks, but I don't think I'm ready to make that kinda decision right now. I'm sorta still at the stage where picking out socks in the morning is a major achievement."

Tito nodded understandingly. "You need some time to get your head screwed on straight, that's cool." He rummaged in his pocket for a minute, pulled out a pencil stub, then tore a piece from the paper bag. "This is my parents' number in Texas," he said, scribbling quickly and passing the paper to Xander. "You decide you've had enough of the Golden State freaky-deaky, gimme a call. I'll hook you up."

Xander glanced down at the grimy scrap in his hand. Below the name and number for Tito's parents was a single strange word, in all caps and underlined.

"Eldorado," he read slowly. "What's that?"

"Not what, where. That's the name of my hometown--means 'City of Gold'. It's from an old story about a magical place of fabulous power and riches where you'd live happily ever after if you could only get there." He gave another one of those careless shrugs, looking a little embarrassed at his brief flight of fancy. "We do have a really nice mall."

Xander grunted non-committally. In his experience, there was no such thing as happily ever after--the only thing real about the old stories were the monsters. Still, it was nice of Tito to make the offer. He wrapped the piece of paper around the chili pepper bulb and put them both in his pocket.

"You got some place to stay tonight, man?"

********

Oddly enough, it was a pedicure that ended up changing Xander's mind about Eldorado. Buffy breezed into the Hyperion with it late one afternoon in early July, looking relaxed and cheerful after spending the holiday weekend at her father's place. Xander supposed that the utter destruction of Sunnydale had somehow jump-started Hank Summers' paternal instincts: Dawn had already moved into his snug Westwood bungalow, and Buffy had spent more time there in the last month than in the previous five years combined. Like many reformed absentee fathers, Summers was making up for lost years with his pocketbook, and Buffy always returned from their quality time a little blonder and better dressed than when she left.

Xander and Willow had spent most of the afternoon in the inner courtyard, collapsed on one of the worn wooden benches scattered there. They had made a few sporadic attempts at conversation, but mostly just sat staring at the thick summer sunlight throwing patterns on the vine-covered walls, and listening to the wave-like whooshes of the cars going by on Wilshire Boulevard. Other than the ever-present sound of traffic, a layer of quiet as thick as the dust in the corners had gathered around the old hotel in the past few weeks. The actual owners of the building were almost never there, busy as they were with settling into swanky new offices downtown: Angel Investigations had apparently succeeded beyond anybody's wildest expectations. Xander hadn't so much as laid eyes on his surviving ex-girlfriend, Cordelia, who was, according to Angel, very much occupied with some sort of special project for the firm.

Giles had long since packed off the remaining new slayers to their respective homes, with strict orders to keep the slaying simple until they received further instructions from him. Wood and Faith had gone to his adopted father's place a few days after they'd arrived, hoping to buy time until Giles had a chance to marshal the Council resources on her behalf, figuring that Beverly Hills was the last place the police would search for an escaped convict. Andrew had been the last of the assorted hangers-on to leave, heading out to his grandparents' in Bakersfield the previous Thursday, taking his endless chatter and bundt cake recipes with him. Overall, the entire building had a pervasive air of overness about it, that feeling of almost suffocating finality that invades places like the Coliseum or Gettysburg, sites where bloody, exciting, important things once happened, but never will again. Willow and Xander had spent days rattling around in the oppressive atmosphere like two lonely ghosts.

When Buffy bustled into the courtyard, bronzed bare arms hung with enough shopping bags to test even slayer strength, every inch of her was as sleek and polished as a showroom Corvette. She was like a ray of sunshine stabbing right between the eyes when you've already got a blinding headache.

"Guys, look at these," she said, pointing down at her immaculately buffed feet, which were clad in woven platform sandals interlaced with small silver beads.

"Nice," Willow said patiently, with barely a glance downwards. "But we saw those when you brought them home last week. You were going through this whole big dilemma, remember? Is the stylishness and comfort of Sam & Libby straw espadrilles worth the stinkiness if you get them wet down at Venice Beach?"

Buffy rolled her eyes dramatically, flashing them her gleaming Mentadent smile. "Not the shoes! My toes! Look at my toes!"

Xander and Willow leaned closer, peering at the objects under discussion, which were wriggling excitedly. Each had been lacquered a bright peppermint pink, the big toes then embossed with a hand-drawn design in red.

"Wow, cherries," Willow said, sounding anything but wowed. "That's cute, Buffy."

"'Cute'?" Buffy exclaimed, her slight form sparkling and rustling with mock-indignation. Xander's eye--what little there was left of it--itched underneath the patch. "Seventy-five bucks outta buy me more than 'cute'! I was thinking more along the lines of 'stunning' or at least a good old-fashioned 'awesome.'"

"Lemme get this straight. You gave someone seventy-five dollars to paint fruit on your feet?" Xander asked disbelievingly.

"Nope, Marcie did," Buffy said with a smirk. "She's all worried about coming off like the wicked stepmother with Dawnie and me, you know, so yesterday she took us for a day of beauty and bonding at The Paint Shop in Beverly Hills. It was unbelievable--they have this amazing process where they use melted white chocolate and hazelnuts to pumice your calluses. It's like a sundae for your feet." She looked down at her toes with the smug air of a girl who's sold her favors to the enemy for lipstick and nylons and doesn't regret the transaction one bit.

"Well, I guess it beats Marcie feeding you poisoned apples or leaving you in the woods with a loaf of stale bread," Willow said drily.

"As long as I don't have to talk to her too much, yeah," Buffy replied. She dropped the shopping bags by the stone steps and perched on the ledge of the dusty fountain, long, tanned legs swinging girlishly. "So what'd you guys do this weekend? Bet it wasn't nearly as much fun as getting melted chocolate poured over your feet."

"No, not really," Willow said, with a careful glance in his direction. "We went to Sunnydale."

Buffy sighed impatiently. "A gorgeous Fourth of July weekend in the City of Angels, and you spend it stompin' through the ruins out in the sticks. Again." She shook her head sadly. "I don't know what I'm gonna do with you two."

"I hear there's a salon in Beverly Hills that gives Grape Nehi enemas," Xander said. "Maybe that'll show us the error of our ways."

"I'm serious," Buffy replied, hearing the humor in his comment but not the contempt. She folded her hands in her lap and fixed them with a concerned counselor expression that made Xander's eye socket throb with anger. "You guys should be moving on, making plans, not spending every day moping around this gloomy old hotel or hanging out down at Ground Zero. 'Today is the first day of the rest of your life' and all that." She delivered this last bumper-sticker sentiment with a lack of irony that would have had the old Buffy popping her bubblegum with derision.

"Sounds like you have plans, Buffy. I'll bet you're just dying to tell us all about them." Xander's voice came out entirely more bitter than he would have wanted.

Buffy flashed that brilliant white Barbie Doll smile again. "You bet I do. The Watcher's Council--Giles is calling it that these days because he's sick of Council of Watchers being abbreviated as CoW--they're gonna send me to school to finish up my degree. A pension-y stipend-y, 'thanks for all the help' thingie. The whole Slayer deal kinda sent my education into a big old roadblock, so I think they outta foot the bill to train me for something in the real world."

"When did this get decided?" Xander said. "I thought Giles was getting the fallout from the slayers-in-training cleaned up before he worried about you and Faith." After arranging transportation home for all the newly-minted slayers who'd survived the apocalypse, Giles had spent the last few weeks flying all over the world, determined to meet personally with the parents of every girl who hadn't been so lucky. It was certainly more sensitive than a telegram starting off "The Watcher's Council regrets to inform you. . ." especially since in most cases there wasn't even a body for the bereaved families to bury. But Giles returned from every journey a little greyer and hollower than he'd been before, each countless mile he'd traveled since last Thanksgiving etched into his careworn face.

"I pinned Giles down about it this weekend. Caught him on his cell when he had a forty-five minute layover at Heathrow on his way to Hong Kong. Couldn't sit around here forever waiting for him to finish obsessing--I had application deadlines to meet."

While Xander sat there speechless at that last statement, Willow jumped in again.

"Do you know where you're going?"

Buffy brightened and pushed her newly platinum-streaked hair out of her face with a casual gesture.

"Northwestern, where I wanted to go four years ago. I'm negotiating to transfer there as a second-semester sophomore in the fall. That means I have to declare a major almost right away, and I really liked working with the kids at the high school, so I'm thinking adolescent counseling. I'll get to use everything I learned dealing with the Sunnydale kids and the slayers-in-training. Can't live with that many teenage girls and not learn something other than melted peanut butter on popcorn is pretty good."

Melted peanut butter on popcorn had been Molly's favorite, and Molly had been one of the first ones to die. Gutted like a fish by that bastard Caleb.

"Northwestern's in Illinois, right? Sweater country," Willow said, shooting Xander a covert pleading look.

"Yup, it's outside Chicago, right in the buckle of the snow belt," Buffy chirped. "And my whole sweater collection's somewhere in Hell being worn by demons." She held out one small be-ringed hand and inspected her glistening French manicure critically. "So I'm thinking that the next Hank and Marcie Summers guilt payment is going straight into the winter wardrobe account. Saks should have some great pre-season sales come August."

"A good and worthwhile thing," Xander said between clenched teeth.

"How's Dawnie feel about the move to the great white North?" Willow said quickly.

"Oh, Dawn's not going," Buffy said, rubbing at a microscopic bubble in her nail polish. "Now that Dad's remarried and all about the domestic blissfulness, he wants her to stay here and finish up high school in L.A. She'll even be going to Hemery, my old stomping grounds. After seven years, we figure they've gotten over the whole Summers-inspired gym-burnage and everything." She gave what could have been interpreted as a slightly guilty shrug. "She wasn't thrilled at the idea of following me all the way out to the Windy City, anyway."

The throbbing behind Xander's eyes had reached near-intolerable levels. "Wow, acceptance at a Big Ten school, conscience cash from Giles and Hank, and now no little sis cramping your style. Isn't it great how everything worked out for the best?" he said, putting his hands to his temples. He was expecting a small Greek goddess to break out of his skull any second now.

"You know, I'm getting a little of the hostile here, Xander," Buffy said, looking up from her fingers. "And I don't appreciate the 'tude. What's your problem?"

"Hostile? Me? Why would I be hostile?"

"Duh. That's what I'm asking."

"Buffy, I don't think this is where you want to go right now," Willow warned.

"It's okay," Buffy said, her eyes giving him a cool challenge from across the flagstones separating them. "I think Xander knows by now that he can tell me anything."

For a moment, Xander wasn't sure if he was seeing Buffy or the First Evil wearing her face again.

"Tell you anything?" he asked.

"Sure. After all we've been through together, I think I can handle it." She tilted her chin up with a little flare of the old Buffy feistiness.

"Can you handle this? Fuck you, Buffy."

Buffy's lipglossed mouth opened in a perfectly round O, then closed again, like a goldfish. If he hadn't been so angry and in so much pain, the sight would have amused him.

"While you were out getting foot sundaes and nagging Giles on the Nokia, Willow and I spent the Glorious Fourth looking at rotting, dismembered corpses, trying to see if any of them resembled my parents."

Buffy had gone very pale beneath her new tan.

"It took awhile," he continued relentlessly. "One pile of meat in a bodybag looks a lot like any other, you know? Finally recognized Mom from the enamel bracelet she bought off QVC last year. We figured there couldn't be that many people in Sunnydale who liked jewelry designed by Joan Rivers. Decided the other remains found near her must be Dad. Couldn't be sure, though--there wasn't much left, and Tony Harris was never much for accessorizing. I may very well have just ordered the cremation of the neighbors' Great Dane, Chippy."

Buffy put one hand over her heart, touching the silver lavalier dangling there as if for reassurance. "Jesus, I'm sorry, Xander." And in that moment she really did look sorry, all her blinding brightness dimmed down by the horrors she'd just heard. Xander felt the pounding behind his temples ease a bit.

"Why didn't you call me? I would have come along, I would have helped." And then it was all about her again, and he was just as sick as before.

"I. Didn't. Want. You. There." He spoke slowly, deliberately, lobbing the words at her like hand grenades.

Buffy's tinted, carefully shaped eyebrows drew together in confusion. "I don't understand." He could see she really didn't. The idea that someone, anyone, wouldn't want Buffy Summers around just didn't register in her worldview.

"I had enough to deal with without watching you picking through the ruins, trying not to mess up your nails, and pretending to care."

"Pretending?" The furrowed brows had been joined by the Pursed Lips of Deep Thought. She was really trying now.

"Come on, Buffy. From the day we got here, the most angst I've seen from you is over those sandals you're wearing." He tried to keep his words calm, strong, but the bitterness kept leaking in, streaking his whole voice like ink drops in water. "Fine--you got out of Sunnydale smelling like a slightly singed rose. Goody for you. But as someone who actually got bitten by the Hellmouth, I really don't feel like listening to your pseudo-sympathy and yet another inspirational speech."

She was now clutching the necklace like it was a talisman. "I lost things when Sunnydale went down. Lots of things." Her voice had taken on the trembly, wounded quality that would have had him on his knees and begging for forgiveness when he was sixteen. Now he just wanted to put his hands around her throat and squeeze till the trembling stopped.

"What did you lose?" he shot back. "A job you'd already been fired from? A falling-down house that was fully insured anyway? A bunch of teenage strangers whose names you couldn't remember half the time? Don't try to tell me you're crying into your pillow at night over Anya and Spike. You were ready to take her out yourself a few months ago. And as for him--"

"You don't know what I feel about Spike," Buffy interrupted sharply, all her fluttery confusion gone. Her face had taken on the stony, secretive look it always got whenever anybody brought up her relationship with the vampire.

"Oh no?" Xander said jeeringly. "The last time your demon ex-lover died to save the world, you disappeared for three months and almost got yourself white-slaved to a hell dimension. This time, you're painting cherries on your toes and talking about sweater sales. Either your coping skills have greatly improved in five years, or you never gave a shit to begin with."

"How dare you sit there and judge me," Buffy said in a low, flat voice. The stoniness of her expression had spread to her entire body, a deadly stillness that made the tiny hairs at the back of his neck prickle. For the first time in weeks, he saw the predator beneath the princess. "I lived with death every day for seven years. I faced it alone every night, all those times you guys were too busy with dates or homework or just didn't feel like showing up." Her voice had started to tremble again. "I came back from it, twice, the second time against my will." Her words were speeding up, taking on a slightly hysterical quality. "I know death, I've got a goddamn Ph.D. in death, and I don't need you to tell me how to handle it!" Buffy was on her feet, hands clenched into fists, her whole tiny, shiny body shaking with sudden rage. Xander felt Willow tense beside him, out of the corner of his good eye saw her make a slight, protective gesture in his direction, like she was ready to start flinging the mojo at any second if Buffy made one false move. He wondered, not for the first time, what it was about him that pulled so many powerful, dangerous women into his orbit. He was like a moth surrounded by flames.

Perhaps correctly interpreting Willow's movement, Buffy unclenched her hands, though she remained standing. She took a deep breath, and when she spoke again her tone was quieter, calmer, and the icy set to her features had thawed. "You've lost a lot lately, Xander, and I'm sorry about that. I'm sorry about everything that's happened, to everybody." He saw a flash of that secretive look again. "But I'm not going to plop myself down in the rubble and cry about it for the rest of my life."

"A week or two would have been nice."

"And what good would that do? Would it bring anybody back? Make anybody who's survived better off?" she asked, her voice as sharp as cut glass. "I spent all last year in mourning, Xander. Mourning my mom, mourning my life, God, even mourning my death. And it nearly killed me, again. It nearly killed you guys, too, or don't you remember when Buffy flew over the cuckoo's nest last spring? I can't do a repeat performance of all that."

She turned and began gathering up her shopping bags, rustling mylar tissue paper from an expensive boutique on Melrose throwing strange lights on her face. "I've had enough of darkness and sadness and death--I want bright things, happy things, alive things," she continued in that same brittle voice. "After seven years as the Slayer, I think I deserve them." She headed towards the steps, clearly signaling that her part in this conversation was over.

"And what about the rest of us? The ones who weren't the Slayer, who weren't chosen. The people who were just trying to help out a friend all these years," Xander called after her, standing up to watch her retreating back. "What do we do deserve?"

Buffy paused with one well-shod foot on the top stair. "I don't know," she sighed. "I can't be your general anymore. From now on, I'm not making life and death decisions for anybody but myself." She shrugged again, but this time there was nothing guilty about it. "If you want my advice, as a friend, you'll get the hell away from Sunnydale. It's a dead place, Xander. Live things don't belong there." And with that pithy piece of wisdom she was gone, trailing clouds of Eternity for Women behind her.

Xander just continued to stand there for a minute, seeing his own pulse pounding before his fractured vision. His fisted hands were shoved deep into the pockets of his jeans, straining against the thick cotton as he gathered every bit of willpower he possessed to keep from stalking after her and pushing this ugly argument to an even uglier conclusion. Then his deadly focus was suddenly broken, pierced by a small, crunching sound. With a sinking feeling, he pulled a wad of Kleenex out of his left pocket and unwrapped it. He stared, heartsick, at the tiny fragments of red glass winking at him in the failing sunlight, all that was now left of the single chili pepper light he'd found in the wreckage of his apartment. For weeks, he'd been carrying this last memento of Sunnydale in his pocket, and now it was ruined too, broken like everything else in his old life.

Anya wrapped around him like the softest of blankets, fine features flushed and sleepy after two hours of christening their new living room sofa. And the Barcalounger. And the glass dining table. And the kitchen counters. "We're going to buy red lights for every room," she says in that soft, loopy voice only he gets to hear. "For inspiration. . . ."

He closed his own hand around the wad of tissue, feeling the tiny shards trapped inside slice into his palm.

"You okay?" Willow said, her voice as delicate as the glass fragments in his hand.

"So much that we've lost, Will. So much we can't ever get back. And she doesn't even care." The iron hand was back, squeezing his rapidly pounding heart until he thought it was going to explode out of his chest like an alien thing.

"She cares, she cares a lot. She just can't afford to admit it right now," Willow said sadly, laying soft, placating fingers on his shoulder and drawing him back to the bench. "It might not be how you or I would deal with it, but she's doing her best. If shopping and pedicures make her feel better, I say she should clean out Melrose and have her toes done twice a day. At least she's not trying to destroy the world, just buy it." The witch made a wry face, like the last words tasted rotten, but bad gallows humor was such a habit with them he barely flinched.

Her next words did give him pause, however.

"And what she said to you, about moving on. . .she's not wrong there."

Seeing his shocked, hurt expression, she rushed to explain. "I mean, she didn't have to be so Rosie O'Donnell about it, but. . .Sunnydale's gone, Xander. They can bulldoze the ruins and fill in the crater and rebuild everything, but it won't be the same." She pushed an errant lock of hair behind her ear nervously. "And even if it was, would you really want to go back there? Could you stand it?"

Xander stared at her, sudden realization dawning. "You're going too, aren't you?"

Willow nodded, a faint flush coloring her pale cheeks.

"Where?" His heart was no longer pounding. Now it seemed to have stopped altogether.

"Graduate school, NYU. They've got one of the best Neuropsychology programs in the country. If I've learned anything from everything that's happened, it's that how the brain works and what it can do is really the biggest mystery of all. I want to know why certain people can do magic and others can't. There has to be a biological reason behind all of it." The animation in Willow's voice and face was the first sign of life there that hadn't been forced in weeks. The sight of it blocked whatever feelings of anger or betrayal had been rushing in to fill the hollow in his chest. Still, he couldn't help being a little hurt at her lack of confidence in him.

"Geez, Will, how long you been planning this?"

"Grad school applications and GREs were probably created by the First Evil, so it seemed along the research-y line," Willow replied, with a spark of her old whimsy. Then she sobered again. "Seriously--I've been thinking about it for awhile, before I came back from England, even," she continued. "Sunnydale's never seemed right to me, not since. . ." she trailed off, staring pensively at the wavering jasmine vines.

Not since Tara, of course. Willow's battlefield romance with Kennedy seemed to be going strong even now that they were out of foxhole mode, the two of them talking on the phone every night since the oldest new slayer had left a couple of weeks ago for her family's place in the Hamptons. But Xander knew that for Willow, all the feisty private school girls in the world would never take the place of the gentle woman whose death had almost ended it.

"Why didn't you say anything before?"

"I didn't get the letter of acceptance till the day before I went to L.A. to find Faith, and after that. . .there never seemed to be a good time."

"There was lots of time, once we got here."

"I didn't want to look like I was doing the macarena all over Sunnydale's grave."

Willow had been lucky, or at least her parents had been. There were times when going to one of those mind-numbing academic conferences could be a lifesaver. Literally. Chez Rosenberg had been as flat as Chez Harris, only a higher quality of flat, and Willow had been able to pull some of her belongings out of the wreckage, whereas Xander could now fit all his worldly possessions in a backpack.

"Unlike some people."

"Xander--" Willow stopped mid-reproach, as if realizing there was no use denying the truth they both knew.

"She's not at all what she was, is she?" In what he was now realizing were the very last moments of his old life, that brief epilogue after the credits roll that almost nobody stays to watch, there was no pain, no anger, just an all-consuming exhaustion.

Willow just gazed at him for a moment, a sadly familiar expression in her big hazel eyes. He knew that look, saw it in his own bathroom mirror every single morning. It was the look of someone who's been staring into the darkness for so long, that they've finally begun to see what's hiding there.

When she spoke, she sounded almost as exhausted as he felt.

"Neither are we."

Xander called Tito that night.

Part Two: Water dissolving, water removing

A little more than forty-eight hours after the scene at the Hyperion, Xander was sprinkling his parents' ashes into the eternal expanse of the Pacific. Like many things they'd left unsaid, his parents had never mentioned what they wanted done with their bodies after they shuffled off this mortal coil. Even though they had been found as flattened as roadkill, Xander wasn't about to have them interred. Interment hadn't seemed like a permanent option in years. Even with the Hellmouth allegedly gone forever, he didn't want a chance post-mortem meeting to further disfigure his already ugly memories. Especially the memory of that night in early May, when he'd tried in vain to convince them that an extended vacation out of town was a good idea. If there was a memory he wanted surgically removed, it was that one.

Willow, ever the good soldier, had offered to come with him to scatter the ashes, but he didn't want any company, not even his best friend. Instead, he went alone at sunrise to the Santa Monica Pier, site of one of his only happy memories of childhood that had anything to do with his parents. They'd taken him there for his seventh birthday, fed him hot dogs and cotton candy and Hawaiian Punch, then let him ride on the big Ferris wheel. His mother hadn't even gotten mad when he got motion sick and threw up pink and red all over her new white tennis shoes. His father, jovial after clearing a grand at the track the previous weekend, had won him a giant Huckleberry Hound at the Pitch-Til-U-Win. Tony Harris had carried both it and his tired, sticky, sunburned boy on his shoulders all the way back to the car that night.

Xander stood alone for a little while at the metal railing overlooking the water, remembering. Then, without further ceremony, he dumped their worldly remains into the choppy grey-blue water, along with the portion of a bottle of Smirnoff's that hadn't already gone down his throat. All the while, he felt an achy burn in his stomach that had nothing to do with the alcohol. It was a hot knot of emotion too big to be digested right away, made up of equal parts of grief, guilt, and something that felt uncomfortably close to relief. That was why he hadn't wanted Willow with him--not because he was going to break down, but because he was pretty sure he wasn't. Still dry-eyed after scattering the last of the thick greyish-brown ashes, he tossed both the cardboard crematory box and vodka bottle into the Pacific and headed back towards the shore without a backwards glance. It wasn't the most poetic of farewells, but the best he could do under the circumstances.

He wouldn't have the chance to make any kind of proper farewell to Anya. Her body had never been found.

He returned from the impromptu funeral in Santa Monica and almost immediately fell into a heavy, vodka-fueled sleep, not awakening until well after sunset. That night, like every night since he first came to Los Angeles six weeks ago, he ran. He ran the mean streets surrounding the art deco hulk of the Hyperion wearing sweats and shoes that he'd borrowed from Angel. It was strange to realize that he and Angel wore pretty much the same sizes. The vampire had always seemed larger than life--or more accurately, larger than death--to him. One more illusion shattered. He ran a couple of extra miles that night, until his lungs were on fire and the blood pounded in his ears like a ball-peen hammer, and he thought he'd be permanently lamed from shin-splints. He ran through the pain, because only when he was running did his mind clear of all the thoughts that jangled against one another like out-of-tune wind chimes. He ran and didn't think of Anya, of Spike, of Molly, of his parents, or any of the others lost to the Hellmouth. He ran and didn't think about Buffy--whom he hadn't seen since the fight--or of the future.

As always, Xander ran with a stake tucked in the pocket of his sweatpants. He tried to scan the streets as best he could by moving his head to compensate for the blindness on one side. But nothing had ever approached him since he'd started these nightly journeys, not a vampire, not even an aggressive beggar. Then again, who really wanted to start trouble with a man in an eyepatch? Really, he shouldn't have enjoyed it, the reaction he'd been getting when people noticed he had the patch. Xander knew it made him look like the badass he'd never be. For weeks, he had listened to Willow's daily reports on tracking down the strange and far-flung ingredients she needed for the eye-restoring spell with an odd ambivalence. (And precisely how things like the left horn of a Fyarl demon, the heart's blood of a she-goat, and seventeen ounces of Australian mandrake root were supposed to mix together and create a new left eye for him he didn't want to ask.)

The first call from Texas came a few mornings later, a brief, preliminary request for more information from a very young-sounding man with a terrible head cold, probably some underpaid, overworked intern. That afternoon, he dutifully faxed the resume Willow had whipped up on her laptop. It was a fine work of fiction, but even as he sent it through he considered it, at best, a haphazard roll of the dice unlikely to pay off. But the Human Resources Department of O'Shea Construction contacted him again the very next day. Xander took that call in the cozy office Wesley had made behind the reception desk at the Hyperion. He spoke for more than half an hour to a pleasant woman with a Texas drawl as thick as honey, all the while staring at the pages and pages of foreign language notes and occult symbologies that Wesley had left strewn over his desk the way another man might leave spreadsheets and invoices. Apparently the owner, one Clifford O'Shea, was looking for somebody to manage the day-to-day business of the Residential Division, something Xander's resume indicated he was capable of, though right now he felt anything but capable. Afterwards, other details of the conversation remained fuzzy, but going by the notes he'd scribbled next to Wesley's, he'd at some point agreed to fly to Eldorado, Texas on the O'Shea dime for an interview the following week.

According to the website Willow found for him, Eldorado was a rapidly-developing baby city in central Texas, with a population growing in leaps and bounds because of the high-tech manufacturing companies just outside the city limits that were taking advantage of NAFTA subsidies and cheap Mexican labor. It was four hours from the turquoise-blue waters of the Gulf, three hours from the bright lights of Houston, and a half-day's journey from the border of Mexico. There were two shopping malls, a regional art museum of good reputation, a small but well-respected liberal arts college, even a minor-league baseball team, the Conquistadors. Oddly enough for so obscure a place, Eldorado Regional Medical Center boasted a world-renowned facial deformities clinic. And according to Willow, nothing of any supernatural consequence had ever happened in Eldorado, other than the haunting or two mentioned in the Eldorado Examiner website archive as fluff pieces every Halloween.

Tito was right: Eldorado looked good.

It was no problem for Xander and Willow to borrow Wesley's SUV and go get Xander a suit for the interview, though his wardrobe budget was something of a problem. Most of his money was in the same post-disaster limbo as Tito's, and Xander flatly refused to take anything else from Angel & Co. To his surprise, the mirror in the dressing room at J.C. Penney, the swankiest store he could afford, showed him that physically, he'd lost more than an eye. Between the running and the fact that food tasted like cardboard, Xander had dropped enough weight that his reflection seemed downright gaunt. He now fit in sizes that he hadn't had close personal knowledge of since he was on the swim team. There were lines and angles in his face that he'd never seen before, and he looked far older than twenty-two. The weight loss was a good thing--in the last year, he'd heard more than enough about the bulk he'd put on since high school from both Anya and his mother--but he'd never suggest the Sunnydale Pain and Suffering Plan over Slim-Fast.

There were seven Target stores in the greater LA area, and he and Willow finally got un-lost enough on the freeways to find one of them and finish fitting him out to go to Texas. They started with a generic black nylon suitcase and proceeded to fill it with all the little things he'd lost and been doing without for the last six weeks. Trundling down the clean and brightly-lit aisles of Target, a Muzak version of "Penny Lane" playing softly in the background, was a surreal experience. Clearly, they were both pretending that life as they knew it hadn't just been shot to hell, that they didn't have dead friends and lovers, and that neither of them had much to talk about.

"I'm thinking black or blue socks, not both. Both is just asking to show up wearing one of each," Xander said, peering at the rack.

"Live dangerously. Consider argyle."

"What does argyle say? 'Hi, I'm a complete geek who wears weird socks,'" Xander said with a frown.

"Argyle says, 'I'm adult and mature and comfortable with the choices I've made in socks.' Oooh, here's some blue with flecks, which are kind of sexy."

"Socks are not sexy, and I'm not going to Texas for sex. I'm going for a job interview."

"Hey, Texas is known for its hospitality. You never know. Maybe you'll get offered sex and the job."

"Hard as this is to believe coming from me, Xander Harris, founding member and two-time president of the Horn Dog Club for Men, I'm taking some time off from the whole sex thing. Possibly decades. I'm joining the 'My Ex-Girlfriend is Dead, Right After We May or May Not Have Gotten Back Together' Club."

"I founded that one, I think." Willow said, tossing two pairs of the blue-with-cream-flecks socks into the shopping cart.

"So when does it stop hurting?"

"It doesn't. You just get used to the hurt and it turns into background noise. Then you don't remember not having the hurt."

"I miss her the way I miss my eye," he said, rubbing his patch, which continued to irritate his skin despite all the strange and expensive moisturizers Willow and Buffy kept around the Hyperion.

"Stop that. It's going to be tricky enough growing your eye back without the skin around the socket being abraded."

"Speaking of which, is Eldorado going to be introduced to my dashing Nick Fury look, or are we working the mojo before next Friday?"

"The mandrake is supposed to be here tomorrow. After I steep it in the yak's milk for twenty-four hours, we'll be ready to go."

Believe it or not, I think I'm going to miss the patch," Xander said, stopping in front of a mirrored display unit and examining himself critically. "Ya know, in the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king."

"You'll just have to settle for being a two-eyed peasant in the land of the sighted," Willow said, giving him the Determined Face. "We're fixing you on Sunday. I just hope the monkey glands don't turn before then."

Xander's stomach gave a queasy little shudder at that last statement. He noticed that mirror-Xander didn't seem too thrilled at the prospect of drinking or smearing or otherwise having Willow's strange brew introduced into his system, either. "Seems like a pretty complicated spell, Will. Sure you're up for it?"

Willow blinked at him, an odd mixture of pride and self-disgust on her pale face. "I just made, at last count, 67 potentials into slayers. I took a bullet out of Buffy's chest last year. I almost single-handedly ended the world right after that. Yeah, I think I can handle putting your eyeball back in your head."

There was a brief, awkward silence. They both looked through an aisle display of off-brand running shoes on sale.

"She'd be happy to know that," Willow said after awhile.

"Who'd be happy to know what?"

"Anya. That you miss her. That her sacrifice wasn't for nothing, and you'll still think about her even now that she's gone."

"Yeah, Anya's luckier than some."

Because it was still a little too raw, Xander examined a rack of short-sleeved shirts with pseudo-Asian designs. He found one with Tiki heads that he kind of liked.

"Will, did Buffy actually say anything to you about Spike?" he said eventually. "I mean, like she might have felt bad? Even Angel seemed to be upset when we told him. He blinked and frowned. That's a big reaction in Angelville. On a par with falling to your knees and sobbing."

"He blinked three times. Verge of hysteria, really," Willow said, skimming through the rack absently. "But Buffy hasn't said anything, no. Case you hadn't noticed, she's not been one for the caring and the sharing for quite awhile now."

"Let me just say, and if you ever quote me I'm going to give you the wedgie to end all wedgies, that I actually miss Spike. How weird is that?" Xander asked, throwing the Tiki shirt into the cart.

"'Of all the souls I have encountered in my travels, his was the most--human.'" Willow quoted offhandedly.

"Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan," he said automatically. But he wasn't going to be distracted by their name-the-movie-from-the-quote game, however clever the reference. "Doesn't it bother you? We're her best friends, or we were, anyway. If anybody has the 411 on her, it should be us."

"If I got angry every time Buffy held out on me, I'd be angry all the time."

"'And we wouldn't like you when you're angry.'"

"Hey! I'm the only one who gets to make jokes about Darth Rosenberg," she said mock-angrily. "Anyway, that's too easy--we just saw The Incredible Hulk again yesterday."

"Think we should've invited Buffy? She'd have really gotten off on the whole beauty-and-the-beast subplot."

Willow sighed and shook her head, pushing the red plastic cart forward with an exasperated shove. "Go to Texas. Eat barbecue. Get a cowboy hat. Leave Buffy alone to get through this in her own way, like she always does."

She stopped in front of a wall of men's underwear. "Have you ever thought about switching from boxers to boxer briefs? They're way better looking. Boxers look like diapers," she said, not-so-subtly changing the subject.

"No offense, Will, but your lesbian-ness kinda ruins your street cred as an arbiter of what's attractive in men's underwear."

But he grabbed the briefs.

"Are you and I still going to be friends?" he asked. "If I move to Texas and get cowboy boots and a hat."

He got a big, beautiful Willow smile in return, as she linked her fingers through his. "'I have been, and always will be, your friend.'"

"Hey, no fair quoting twice from the same movie," he said, and knew his smile was wobbly.

"Since when do we follow the rules?" Willow said, quirking an eyebrow at him Spock-style.

Then her smile morphed into a smirk. "But if you get the boots and the hat, all bets are off."

Somehow, it didn't seem too unmanly to be tearing up and hugging his best friend over a 2-pack of Hanes. He knew at that moment that something of his had survived the destruction of Sunnydale, after all.

********

"Life is like drywall," Xander said that Friday morning as he stood in the main atrium of LAX. He was studying the departures monitor, blinking first one eye and then the other, trying to get used to having binocular vision again.

"How's that, Forrest?" Buffy said drily, looking over her rimless blue sunglasses at him.

"Oh, you poke a hole in it by accident and all you have to do is cut a piece to fit, slam it in, mud it up, and once the wallpaper's up, nobody knows what's happened."

It wasn't much of an apology for their fight in the Hyperion courtyard, but it was the best that he could manage under the circumstances.

"I think Willow's spell affected your brain," she joked.

When Buffy had offered to take him to catch his plane, Xander accepted the olive branch with more than a little relief. Although later, while zipping down the freeway in the tiny blue Honda she referred to as the "paternal guiltmobile," Xander hadn't been sure this was such a good idea, after all. Her erratic driving habits were better suited to LA's traffic than Sunnydale's, but he still feared for his continued existence no less than three times during the forty-minute commute to the airport--four times, if you counted that near-collision as they pulled into the short-term parking lot itself. But in the end, perhaps it was worth adding a few more grey hairs to his collection to be standing here with Buffy on this smoggy Los Angeles morning, staring at the blinking digital display together with something like solidarity.

"So, if this Texas thing works out, you're going to come and visit, right?"

"I don't know, all those cows. And they still have spiral perms there, don't they?" she said, shuddering.

They pondered the potential livestock and grooming hazards of the Southwest for a moment, before the silence between them began to stretch to uncomfortable lengths. Xander shifted uneasily, transferring his briefcase from his right hand to his left. Their conversation had been like this since Buffy had shown up unexpectedly at the Hyperion that morning, bearing lattes from the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf for the drive over and a stack of magazines for the flight itself--stretches of what felt like the old camaraderie, punctuated by increasingly uncomfortable pauses. There was so much unsaid between them that neither of them seemed to know what to say.

Finally, Xander couldn't bear the awkwardness any longer. "I better go. No telling how long the whole baggage thing is gonna take." He picked up his new nylon suitcase.

"Xander, wait," Buffy said, removing her sunglasses for the first time that morning. He saw now that there were dark circles under her eyes even spa treatments and careful makeup hadn't been able to erase. "I wanted to tell you something, before you head off into the Great Wide Open." She looked down, fiddling nervously with the silver charm around her neck. "I--I do care."

"About what?" Xander said, knowing full well what she was talking about, but needing to hear her say the words aloud.

"About Anya, about Sunnydale, about--Spike." She nervously shoved her hands into the pockets of her khakis, letting go of the charm in the process. It was at that moment Xander realized it wasn't some expensive trinket she'd picked up at the Third Street Promenade. It was a ring.

An old, tarnished, silver skull's head ring.

Fuck me. I am the asshole of the world.

If Buffy noticed his embarrassment, she didn't let on. "Do you remember, the night before we went into the Hellmouth, when I was in the basement all that time with him?"

"Yeah, we all kinda figured you guys--" Xander paused. It seemed really crass now, after the way things had shaken out, to think of all the snarky, suggestive comments they'd made about the "special instruction" the Slayer was giving her newest Champion.

"Were getting busy before we got really busy?" she finished flatly.

"Something like that, yeah," he said sheepishly

"Well, we didn't. I think I might have--no, I know I would have," Buffy said, meeting his eyes steadily. It was the first time that he'd ever seen her mention sex with Spike, and not look either angry or ashamed. "But he wasn't in the mood, which was definitely a sign of the coming apocalypse," she said, her mouth quirking up into the tiniest of smiles before she sobered again. "We just talked, God, for hours. He told me things. . .lots of things, mostly about his life before he was turned. He was a poet, can you believe that? Said his stuff sucked, mostly, but his father had made so much money in widgets or corsets or something that it didn't matter."

Xander almost couldn't believe it. It was hard to even imagine Spike as human, much less some poor little rich kid trying to play starving artist. But he didn't say anything, realizing that Buffy needed a sympathetic ear, not sarcasm.

"He had a sister who died of the flu when he was little, and a spaniel named Byron who disappeared a few days before he did. He always suspected Angelus had taken it while his gang was stalking him, but he could never prove it." She looked a little ill, which given what they all knew about Angelus and dogs wasn't surprising. "He told me a lot of other things, but I can't remember most of it. I was too wigged out about what we were facing in a few hours to focus on what was right in front of me," she continued ruefully. "Mostly I just lay there and let him ramble--it was like he had this big charge of words built up, and if he didn't get them all out he was going to explode. I realized later, he was talking so much because that was his last chance to talk to me. He knew he wasn't going to make it out of the Hellmouth." Her sea green eyes darkened to emerald with pain. "That I was leading him to his death in the morning."

"Buff, you don't know that," Xander said, feeling, if it were possible, even more guilty than he had two minutes ago. There was something gutting about the realization that Spike hadn't spent that final night in Sunnydale drinking or screwing or doing any of the other things you'd have expected of him. That he had spent his last few hours on earth trying to give the women he worshiped some idea of the man he'd been, rather than the monster she'd known.

"Yeah, I do. Because of what he said, right at the last," Buffy replied sadly. "I was about to go upstairs to find the rest of you, when he stopped me. He took my face in his hands, and he looked at me so seriously. He seemed exhausted, but sort of at peace too, you know? Like he'd finally beaten the demons he'd been fighting all year. I'd never seen him look like that before." Her voice had slowed, face gone almost blank with concentration, like she wasn't retelling the experience so much as reliving it. "He made me promise him that whatever else happened, if I survived I'd get out of Sunnydale and not look back. He said, 'You've been in the dark too long, pet. Get out into the light before you start thinking you belong down here with the night creatures. Before you're too in love with Death to ever give Life his fair shot with you.' I'll never forget that." She looked up at Xander then, eyes wide in that frozen way he knew meant she was holding back tears. "So see, I've just been trying to do what he asked me to do. And maybe I've messed it all up, 'cause I was never very good at following directions, but I figure I owe it to him to try, at least."

Xander blinked hard, his own eyes feeling suspiciously full, before finding his voice. "Buffy, what happened to Spike, and to Anya and the other slayers--it's not your fault. You were a general leading your troops into Armageddon. There was no way we were getting out of there without collateral damage. Everybody understands that."

"Then why are you so mad at me?" Buffy said, her voice as high and pleading as a child's.

No, I'm the asshole of this and several other dimensions.

He sighed deeply. "I'm not mad at you, not really. I was a grade-A jerk to chew your ass like that the other day. I know that, even if I didn't have the balls to say it before now. But see, the First doesn't have an ass to chew." He glanced down at the battered old ring dangling directly over her heart. How had he not seen it for what it was before? Maybe because I didn't want to, he thought guiltily. "I'm sorry, Buff. I really am. I know that if we were adding up accounts, you've lost more than anybody."

She took his hand in her own small, exquisitely manicured one. "That's why I'd kinda like to hold on to what's left," she said softly. In that moment he could see the ghost of the sweet, moon-faced girl she'd been, the one who'd stolen his heart and sealed his fate so many years ago. Then the speaker overhead squawked to life, making them both jump, and the girl was gone, leaving behind this small, tense woman with eyes too old for her face.

"Delta Flight 837 to Dallas, now boarding at Gate 16," it blared.

"Sounds like they're playing my song," Xander said lightly, because the moment was already broken.

She nearly cracked his ribs when she hugged him goodbye, she held on so tightly. God, she's such a tiny thing, he marveled as her head fit under his chin. How did something this small carry so much for so long?

"You do good in school. No drinking, no smoking, no cutting class, no slaying, and no boys. I expect to see good grades from you, young lady," he said a little breathlessly as she released him.

"And you, Private Harris, will hightail it into the wilds of Texas and show those cowpokes how it's done," she said, standing back and crossing her arms in full-on General Buffy fashion. "That's an order from headquarters."

He sketched her a little salute. "Yes ma'am."

They just looked at each other for a minute then, and Xander realized that this was it. This was really, truly it. Even if this job didn't work out, things would never be the same. The Scooby Gang was now on permanent hiatus.

So this is the way the world ends, he thought. Not with Armageddon, not even with the three of us riding off into the sunset together. Just one big fight, a true confession or two, and a few bad jokes. Who knew the grand finale would be so fucking lame?

He reached down and grabbed his carry-on bag to hide the sorrow in his face.

"Call me!" she shouted as he walked away.

Xander couldn't look back to watch her be swallowed up by the heaving masses of the airport.

Part Three: In another part of the world

The sunlight was really, really bright in Texas, Xander realized, stumbling off the plane and onto the glittering tarmac at Eldorado Regional Airport. Even with the sunglasses he had on to protect his new, sensitive eye, he still had to squint. Dazzled by all that shining whiteness, he bulldozed a trio of scruffy student-types probably headed for the local college before hastily making his apologies and scrambling to the shelter of the gate area. He paused for a moment just inside the doors, slipping a hardshell case out of his satchel pocket and exchanging the clear prescription glasses inside for the tinted ones he was wearing.

Whatever Willow had done seemed to have split the vision between his surviving right eye and his new left one, so besides being oversensitive to light, he now had shit-for-vision in two eyes, instead of good vision in only one. But glasses were a small price to pay, he supposed, for not having a Sammy Davis, Jr. marble-in-a-dead-socket or the ironic eyepatch. When trying to start fresh in a new, non-demony place, it was best to leave behind the image of bad-ass one-eyed demon hunter, which was also why he hadn't brought any weapons with him. Well that, and the fact that he knew he didn't stand much chance of getting a twelve-inch dagger or a crossbow through airport security in these heady post-9/11 days.

No, glasses weren't a bad thing at all, Xander thought, looking around the clean, white, over-air conditioned space through his new scratch-proof lenses. Especially since they kicked the whole mature volume up another notch, which could only be of the good in trying to secure employment. The only part of his new adult look that disturbed him was the gray hair, which Willow had explained was a pretty standard side effect of the eye-fixing magic. So along with the glasses, Xander now had a Rogue-like skunk stripe running from hairline to nape where his part fell. Catching sight of himself in one of the mirrored columns scattered around the gate area, with his glasses and greyness and sober blue suit, he realized he looked like the Xander Harris of three months ago's older, world-wearier brother.

Yeah, Texas was bright. The sunlight was bright, the airport sparkled, and there seemed to be an abundance of silver belt buckles and bolo ties catching the light. Not as many cowboy hats as he would have imagined, but there were plenty of boots worn with business suits clicking on the tile floors. He made his way as part of the herd to the baggage claim, feeling the duct tape-wrapped handle of Willow's old leather satchel-cum-briefcase get wet and slippery from flop sweat. The posters in the airport advertised steak houses, dude ranches, a Salvador Dali exhibit at the local art museum, and Jack Daniels, as well as the usual Fortune 500 companies and Internet services. Tammy Wynette was singing about her D-I-V-O-R-C-E over the airport PA system, and Xander wondered if a real taste for country music, the music of pain, was something that one developed over time, or an infection one caught from contact with country music lovers.

His suitcase finally rode by on the conveyor belt at the baggage claim, and he grabbed it. Feeling a little more balanced with a bag in each hand, he looked around at the other side of the arrival area, where tour group leaders held signs and families waited and pointed as members claimed their luggage. In the middle of this mess stood a perfectly still and upright African-American man with a head full of silver hair, holding a tasteful placard with the O'Shea Construction logo and the words "Mr. Harris" lettered beneath it. That's right, he was Mr. Harris now, since Dad was pieces of ash washing up on the sands of Santa Monica.

The man looked at Xander and Xander nodded, pushing all thoughts of his new orphanhood away with a very determined shove.

"Hiya," Xander said, coming level with the man. "That's me. I'm him. I mean, I'm Harris. Xander Harris."

Vodka martini, shaken not stirred, he thought. I sound like a total asshole. Shoot me now.

"Yessir." The man folded the sign under his arm and looked at Xander in a way that made him feel as though the man were adding up his total worth, from his cheap suit to his Timex watch to his Target boxer briefs, and finding the total lacking.

"Take your bags, sir?"

"I'm cool. I mean, I'm balanced. Balanced with the bags. Briefcase in one hand, bag in the other gives me some equilibrium. False equilibrium," he babbled, managing to stop before he made an even bigger ass of himself.

"Yessir, the car is this way."

Xander put his suitcase in the trunk of the Lincoln Town Car, thanking whatever deities were on the clock at the moment that the driver hadn't shown up in anything grander. A limousine would have reduced him to an even bigger gibbering wreck than he was already. He issued a strict injunction to his mouth not to make any Driving Miss Daisy cracks, no matter how great the temptation.

"It's about forty-five minutes to the hotel," the driver said as they pulled out of the parking lot. "Mister O'Shea's put you up at the Corporate Suites, which are very nice. I 'spect he'll be callin' between now and our arrival to set up a meetin' with you."

"Great," Xander said, hearing his voice come out thin and eager.

He bit his tongue.

So he wouldn't give into the temptation of speech, Xander rummaged around in his satchel for a moment and dug out one of the Star Trek novelizations Andrew had left behind at the Hyperion. Strange thing there, to think that Andrew was the closest he'd had to a guy friend for a long time, unless he counted the brief periods when he and Spike had been roommates. Which he really couldn't, even if the vampire had had excellent taste in cult television. Then again, maybe his singular lack of male companionship wasn't so strange. After all, how easy was it to make friends when your hobbies were science fiction, fighting demons, and taking orders from Buffy? Not exactly the kinds of things you could bond with your co-workers over while slugging down beer and pretzels at the local seedy bar. Now that he was retired from the latter activities, maybe he'd have time for some extra-curriculars that didn't involve such a high quotient of blood, guts, and general weirdness. Unless he took up playing Resident Evil again, where the carnage was virtual and so didn't count. Pulling another hardshell case out of his satchel and switching to his reading glasses, Xander opened the paperback and hoped that he wouldn't get a blurry vision headache before they reached Eldorado.

Eldorado, the legendary city of gold.

Maybe it would be. If Xander had learned anything over the years, it was that there was no knowing how things were going to turn out.

Well into the second chapter, right after the third red-shirt security guard had gone to that big transporter room in the sky, the phone built into the console chirped loudly, making Xander jump in his seat and drop the book. He looked up and saw the driver's eyes fixed on him in the rearview mirror.

Facing down vampires had been easier than this.

He picked up the phone.

"Harris," he said, trying to force a little Shatner attitude into his voice.

"Why hey there, Mr. Harris. Clifford O'Shea here. But you can call me 'Buck', everyone does--'cept the missus and the minister, when he thinks of it. Y'all have a good flight? Is Phillips treatin' you good or is he bein' a snob? Tell you I ain't sure if I'm up to that man's standards, and I sign his paychecks!"

O'Shea's voice leapt out of the telephone and grabbed Xander around the neck. Bright, cheerful, and dripping with Texas drawl, it belonged to a Chuck Jones cartoon character. Like Foghorn Leghorn. Or possibly, Yosemite Sam.

"The flight was fine, everything's fine," Xander said to O'Shea, all the while thinking help! to himself.

"All right, then. Phillips is gon' de-cant you at the Suites. Get yourself a shower an' some shut-eye if you want. I'll come by 'bout seven and we'll get you some supper. You eat steak, son? I know there are plenty of veggy-tarians out there in California, and we can fix you up with toe-foo or whatever if you don't eat meat."

"No, steak's fine. Never met a cow I didn't like."

"Good man. Seven it is. Oh--don't get dressed up. Eatin' steak's a messy business if ya do it right."

As Xander hung up, he decided that the formal job interview must be the next day. Dinner out was just the condemned man's last meal before sunrise, a token gesture of pity before the ritual flaying and beheading, and the dumping of his unqualified carcass back on the plane.

The Corporate Suites turned out to be an apartment-slash-residential hotel-type thing, where he checked in at the reception desk, got the key to a one-bedroom suite, an access card to the on-site workout center, and a standing invitation to the daily breakfast buffet, which was included in his stay. Although in general the Suites were as standard, inoffensive and generic as a box of Kleenex, there were design elements here and there that showed a Spanish sensibility. The buildings themselves were finished in stucco-like fashion and had faux red tile roof treatments, red accent tiles demarcating the area between floors, and decorative black iron shutters on the windows.

The suite he'd been assigned had a view of the center courtyard in the bedroom, where he could see the tile-lined fountain bubbling away in the middle of the manicured garden. The living/dining area had a balcony and sliding glass doors, with a million-dollar view of the modest skyline of Eldorado. In the early evening sun, windows flashed like diamonds between the swathes of bright green trees that striped the cityscape in neat rectangles. He could see more tile rooftops, Victorian copulas, and rows of gabled roofs peeking out of the vast canopies of greenery. The profile of the city was pretty low, not much more than five stories or so, and it had the well-laid-out charm and tidiness of a model train platform.

From what Xander remembered of the city website, Eldorado had initially been a Spanish town, part of the Mexican encroachment into what was then the Territory of Texas. Eventually, the Mexican Spanish had been forced back south, and the American settlers had moved in with a vengeance. The first mayor of Eldorado had been named Hezekiah Darling (the name was silly enough to be memorable) and had come to Texas after being banished from Savannah, Georgia for unknown reasons. Darling couldn't have held too much of a grudge, however, since when the time came to formulate a civic plan for Eldorado, he had based it on his hometown. Like Savannah, old Eldorado was laid out on a grid, with squares that faced a central green space which served as almost a neighborhood front yard for those lucky enough to live in one of the fine old houses in the historic district. There had originally been twenty-one squares, as in Savannah, but time and construction had reduced the number to seventeen.

Most of the downtown city area was also in the historic district, where no new building had been permitted since the seventies. The bulk of O'Shea Construction's work was on the outer perimeter of Eldorado, where it built sprawling mansions set back on generous swathes of green for the wealthy magnates of the high-tech companies just down the highway. O'Shea also built less imposing mini-mansions on typical suburban lots for middle-management, and modest ranch-style haciendas on postage stamp-sized yards for the rank-and-file. O'Shea Construction was also responsible for most of the upscale shopping centers and chi-chi restaurants where the magnates and middle managers gathered in the off-hours, as well as the factories, strip malls, and discount outlets where the rank-and-file shopped and worked, but that was the Commercial Division.

It was too much for his brain to process at the moment, Xander reflected, hard enough to imagine he was somewhere that wasn't urban decay or a smoking crater.

It was time to take a shower.

Afterwards, he lay on the bedspread of the king-sized bed in his new Target boxer briefs and didn't sleep. The red numbers on the bedside alarm clock moved and changed until it was time to get ready.

He wore the new Tiki shirt with chinos and a pair of brown loafers that Willow had picked out for him, and headed for the main entrance to meet his fate.

********

O'Shea looked like his voice, if Yosemite Sam had been clean-shaven and six-foot-four. He was even wearing the wardrobe--Levis with a big western-style belt, well-worn cowboy boots, and a faded plaid button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up. All that was missing were the ten-gallon hat and a pair of Colt 45's slung around his substantial waist. Maybe he left 'em in the car, Xander thought with a gulp. O'Shea's bulk matched his height, with arms like tree branches and legs like tree trunks, and a belly that made an entrance a moment or two before the rest of him. But it was hard fat, like a tackle too many years away from the gridiron. His round face had the peculiar kind of weather-beaten ruddiness that results when fragile fair skin burns and peels and re-burns until it goes permanently pink in protest. The rest of his visible complexion was a mottled brown, not from suntan, but from thousands of freckles that had joined together, creating giant freckle continents on his upper chest and forearms. Xander bet that underneath his button-down, Clifford "call me Buck" O'Shea had the farmer tan to end all farmer tans. The color of his face and arms contrasted sharply with his thick shock of silver-white hair, which still retained a few rusty streaks of its original red shade. His small, wide-set eyes were the faded blue of much-washed denim and were drawn up into a permanent half-squint, as if they too had been blasted by the unforgiving Texas sun and had tried unsuccessfully to shield themselves. Clearly, Buck was part of that generation of good ol' boys who thought sunglasses and sunscreen were for women and fags. Leaning against one of the beige stucco pillars in the Suites entranceway, cleaning his nails with a wicked-looking pocket knife, he radiated the paternal benevolence and calm confidence of a man absolutely at home and in charge of his world, a clean-shaven Texas Santa Claus greeting him with a big aw-shucks grin and a twinkle of his bleached chambray eyes.

Xander found him absolutely terrifying.

Buck shot Xander a quick once-over glance identical to the one Phillips had given him earlier, as if he were weighing Xander's entire net-worth on some inner balance sheet. Then his grin widened. "Al-ex-an-der Harris, pleased to meet you in the flesh, son," he announced, pocketing the knife in one smooth motion and nearly crushing Xander's hand in a big, freckled paw.

"Good to meet you too--s-sir." he stumbled on the last word, but decided that when in Texas one should do as the Texans do. "Uh, people usually just call me Xander."

"Fair enough." Buck jerked his head in the direction of the parking lot. "Now that we got the social niceties took care of, let's head out. I got the car outside and we're burnin' daylight."

The car in question was a gigantic black Cadillac from the days when gas had been cheap and bigger had been better. The car was faded from the sun, dinged here and there and in need of a good coat of wax, but Xander had the feeling that it was the automotive equivalent of a comfortable pair of shoes. The interior was pristine, and Buck piloted the vehicle one-handed, with the ease of someone who considered his car an extension of his own body.

"Damn nice little town, ain't it?" Buck said, as they pulled out onto the main thoroughfare that ran in front of the Suites. "Came out here in '70 straight out of the Corps and it was like nothin' had changed here since FDR was in office. Just a wide place in the road, really, and sleepy as hell. A little too sleepy for my tastes--for awhile there, I wasn't too sold on stayin'. Hell, I was young, and when a man ain't seen thirty yet he's always looking for somethin' bigger and better over the horizon. You know how it is," he said, with a knowing glance at Xander. In the process, he entirely failed to yield the right-of-way at a four-way stop to a little old lady in a giant green Oldsmobile. She seemed to take the slight personally, if the fist-shaking and expression of impotent rage were anything to go by.

Buck continued blithely on. "But then I met Candy and started makin' good money working for the DOT, and after we put in the Expressway in the summer of '75--and wasn't that seven different flavors of holy old hell, lemme tell you, supervisin' a crew of men diggin' ditches and pourin' tar in 105-degree weather, tryin' to keep 'em on schedule when the state's payin' 'em slave wages. Chasin' Charlie down the Ho Chi Minh Trail had nothin' on that," he chuckled, gunning the Cadillac's powerful V-8 engine and flying through a light just as it flipped from yellow to red. "Well, pretty soon some hotshot at corporate headquarters figgered out what an easy commute we was from both Austin and San Antone, and that the land here was still as cheap as--well, dirt. Before ya know it they was puttin' in office parks out on the highway an' I told the wife, 'Darlin', if people are gonna work 'round here they might take to the idea of livin' here, too.' Hell, who'll commute an hour or more each way every day when you can be ten minutes from your place o' business? 'Specially when the town's as purty as this one is."

Spotting their turn-off, he changed lanes abruptly, cutting off a Toyota truck full of Mexicans who started yelling out various suggestions in Spanish. Xander's knowledge of the language was limited to "hasta la vista, baby" and "yo quiero Taco Bell," but he was pretty sure they weren't being told to have a nice day. If Buck heard or understood what was being said he gave no sign, still intent on the slings and arrows of his salad days. "Didn't take a genius to figger that Eldorado was gonna grow like kudzu in June, but you wouldn't believe the jawin' I had to listen to when I sunk my life's savin's into that first tract of residential lots. I told some buddies of mine they had a chance to get in on the ground floor of somethin' big, but I may as well've been talking to myself. Some people got no vision, no vision at all," he concluded with a mournful shake of his head, as if feeling deeply sorry for the poor souls foolish enough to ever question the judgment of Clifford O'Shea, Sr. (Much later, when Xander began to have some idea of just how much Buck had cleared on those first developments back in the dizzy boom years of the late 1970s, he would come to understand the older man's pity.) "Anyway, Eldorado's been a great place to live an' raise a family. Sure, you got a few undesirable elements, but nothin' that ain't under control. I bought me and the wife adjoinin' plots in Peaceful Acres, so we're gon' be here 'til Judgement Day."

The Cadillac made a sharp turn and Xander nearly bounced off the door panel.

"Here we are."

Roy's Steak Ranch looked like a place where roach motels sat on the tables between the sugar and Sweet-n-Low packets. It was a low cinderblock building with a sign featuring a neon cowboy reaching up into the sky to drop a neon lasso around a neon T-bone steak that seemed bent on escaping. There was a cement longhorn steer the size of a school bus plopped down next to the main entrance, threatening with its fiercely pointed metal horns anybody who wasn't brave enough to eat steak.

"Don't look like much, I know," Buck said as they climbed out of the Caddy. "The inside's not much better. But Roy gets his meats from Dell's Packing plant near the railroad, and you won't find a cut of meat in here that wasn't on the hoof the day before."

As would often prove to be the case, Buck was right--the inside wasn't any better. Roy's Steak Ranch consisted of a single long, rectangular room, low-ceilinged and dimly lit, floored with rough unfinished pine planks that had long since darkened to almost-black by decades of use and abuse. The room was lined by red vinyl booths on each side, with additional seating provided by a row of pitted and scarred formica tables running down the center of the room. Pictures of prize steers from cattle shows dating all the way back to the fifties graced the cinderblock walls, and Hank Williams, Sr. was wailing about being so lonesome, he could cry over the tinny speakers set into the stained ceiling. There was a pervasive smell of woodsmoke in the air, and honest-to-God sawdust in the corners. The only clue that this place served, according to Buck, "some of the best dam' beef this side of paradise" was that every booth and table was absolutely packed with what looked like locals, with ten or fifteen more people crowded into the small vestibule by the cash register waiting on seats. Xander's stomach growled, and he wondered how long it would be before he got a chance to actually taste any of what he was smelling.

As it turned out, not long. Practically the minute they stepped in the door, Buck was greeted effusively by a small, frog-faced man, the Roy whose Ranch this was, who led the two of them over to a prime corner booth that had just been cleared. Many heads turned to follow them as they made their way across the room, and Buck endured the scrutiny with the good-natured aplomb of a visiting dignitary, exchanging brief, hearty greetings with a few and nodding cordially at the rest. As they slid onto the slick red vinyl, Roy slapped down two oversized laminated menus that had appeared from behind his back as if by magic. After he had engaged in a minute or so of small talk with Buck, in an accent so thick Xander could only make out the occasional "y'all" and "damn", the owner signaled a waitress over to their table and excused himself, mumbling something about needing "ta laht a farr unner dat dam' cook 'fore da holl place's at sixes an' sevens."

Their waitress was a cheerful-looking woman on the wrong side of forty, brown and buxom in the sun-ripened way of many native Texans, with yellow hair teased into the exact height and consistency of cotton candy. She had on a dark green t-shirt with the Roy's Steak Ranch cowboy-lassoing-a-steak logo stretched over one ample breast, and tight Wrangler jeans that strained at her substantial but shapely hips. She greeted them with a toothy thousand-watt smile that reminded him, oddly enough, of Buffy's.

"Well, if it ain't Big Buck O'Shea," she drawled, setting down two waters with lemon and a basket of complimentary garlic bread. "We ain't seen you 'round here in a coon's age. What you been up to, sugar?"

"Aw, the usual, Tammy darlin'--just tryin' to stay ahead of those people I owe. How's that grandbaby of yours?"

"Oh, he's doin' fine, just fine. Fixin' to start school come September."

"Ain't that amazin'," Buck said, squinty eyes widening as if he really were amazed. "I can remember when his mamma was runnin' 'round here in pigtails and kneesocks. Speakin' of which, she ever get things settled with his daddy?"

Tammy gave a decidedly unladylike snort, pursing up her pink lipsticked mouth into a disgusted pout. "Shoot, Buck, she cain't even find his daddy. Last we heard he was down in Mexico, prob'ly holed up with some of his kin down there. You know how it is. Why Amber ever got herself mixed up with the likes of him I still don't know. She's seein' a real nice man now, though, works as a line supervisor at Dell's Packagin'. So keep your fingers crossed."

"Will do. I'll tell Preston to keep an eye peeled in the meantime for Ricky, case he hits town again. Boy's only got one eye and half-sense, but that ain't no excuse for not payin' child support an' helpin' out with the medical bills."

Tammy flashed him another one of those high-wattage smiles. Xander could see in the lines of her cheekbones and the curve of her lips the echo of the knockout she'd been twenty years ago. "I'd sure 'preciate that." She pulled an order pad out of the black cotton apron tied around her surprisingly tiny waist. "Now what you boys havin' tonight? I guess you'll be wantin' the usual, Buck? Porterhouse with a side o' ribs and a Coors?"

"Sweetheart, you're as smart as you are good lookin'," Buck said, sitting back with the satisfied air of a man who's had his every need anticipated. Then he nodded at Xander. "Now this here is Mr. Xander Harris, come all the way out from Los Angeles to see about workin' with me. He's never been to Texas before, an' I done told him the best steak and the best lookin' women in the state were right here at Roy's. So you treat him nice, hear?"

"Honey, you know I treat all my men nice," Tammy said, with a wink at Buck that was just on the right side of too-flirtatious. She turned her fluorescent smile on Xander. "What'll it be, darlin'?"

Xander looked down at the glossy beige menu confusedly. He'd been so busy following the banter between Buck and Tammy that he hadn't even bothered deciding what to eat. Judging from the menu, Roy's Steak Ranch was a democratic establishment: You could have anything you wanted, as long as it was steak. His mind went blank as he surveyed the bewildering array of choices, from rib-eyes to t-bones to filet mignon, in every possible weight and thickness. He noticed one selection set off in bold and his eyes widened--nobody really ordered a 72-ounce porterhouse, did they? And even if they did, nobody was crazy enough to try to eat it all, were they? But there it was, in 16-point type: "The Cattleman's Challenge: seventy-two ounces of pure, marbled perfection. If you can finish it, it's free!" Xander decided to pass: whatever macho points he might score with Buck by taking the challenge would probably be lost when he vomited chunks of pure, marbled perfection all over the stained pine floors.

Okay, then. Should he go for the Spicy Pepper Steak, just $9.95? His frugality and thoughtfulness might be worth something to Buck--self-made men were generally tight with a dollar, weren't they? Then again, Buck might find it insulting, like Xander was implying he couldn't afford to treat interviewees to a more expensive cut of beef. So maybe he should go just for the Strip Sirloin with a side of lobster tail, at a whopping $39.95? Would that signal he was a man with the confidence and charisma to order the most expensive thing on the menu? Or would Buck conclude that Xander Harris was a cocky young whippersnapper who'd run up his expense accounts at every opportunity? Xander's newly-healed eye began to throb from stress, as he felt the silence stretch out to what seemed like infinity while Tammy waited patiently for him to make up his fool mind. Realizing that choking over ordering a steak was no way to impress his prospective boss with his decision-making skills, he elected to take the traditionally safest route and shamelessly ape his betters.

"Uh. . .I'll just have what he's having."

Tammy's smile dimmed sympathetically, as if she'd known all along what was going through his woolly brain. "There, that wasn't so hard, was it, baby?" she cooed, sea-green eyes sparkling with amusement. Picking up the menus with one practiced sweep of her scarlet-tipped fingers, she gave him another one of those flirtatious winks. Xander felt a tiny ping! of attraction deep down in his stomach, which squicked him out to no end, since this downhome honey was probably around the same age as his recently departed mother. Tammy tucked her battered notebook into her apron and turned prettily on her platform heels. "I'll have those drinks and appetizers up for y'all in a minute." She headed back towards the kitchen area, rounded buttocks twitching perkily in her too-tight jeans.

"That is one helluva woman," Buck said with a chuckle. Xander looked up, startled, and saw Buck giving him the internationally-recognized leer of masculine appreciation of feminine assets. Xander gave a non-committal grunt that would have done Oz proud, not quite sure what to say when caught checking out a woman twice his age.

Then Buck's just-us-boys grin faded, and he sighed. "It's a cryin' shame, what she's done been put through. Clocked in fifty hours a week at this place for nigh-on twenty years now, raisin' two girls by herself since her husband lit out for the territories when the youngest was still in diapers. The oldest one's done just fine--she teaches history over at the high school, but the youngest got herself mixed up with this sorry devil Ricky Cuernos her junior year and dropped out to get married. Sure enough, they've got a baby before the ink's dry on the marriage certificate, an' next thing you know she's just like her mamma, workin' her tail off for six bucks an hour to support the kid while hubby's God knows where. Her mamma's just sick over it. Allison might've got most o' the brains in the family, but Amber still deserves better than workin' at the Q-Mart the rest of her days."

Buck shook his head in the ain't-that-a-shame-way Xander recognized from the car. "Why these little ol' gals wanna throw themselves away over men that ain't worth killin' I do not know. 'Specially in this day and age, when a young lady don't need a man to make out just fine. It's not like in the old days, when a gal that wasn't married by the time she was twenty-five may as well've dried up an' blowed away. I done told my two girls--get your education 'fore you start thinkin' 'bout hearts and flowers. Love don't always last, but if you've got that sheepskin, cain't nobody take that away from you."

He paused and took a meditative sip of his water. "'Course, if some no-account had done one of my girls that way, I'd string him up by his balls and let the buzzards peck his eyeballs out," he said matter-of-factly. He picked up one of the enormous greasy slices of garlic bread, then pushed the basket in Xander's direction. Xander took one absently, his mind still occupied with chewing over that last statement.

"But both of mine have better sense than to have anythin' to do with that crazy Cuernos bunch," Buck continued cheerfully. "Don't know what Tammy's girl was thinkin'. Bless her heart, Amber ain't no beauty queen, but I tell you, that Ricky looks like he fell outta the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down." He leaned forward conspiratorially. "Comes from all the in-breedin', ya know--those Cuernos have been marryin' their cousins for I don't know how long. Blood tells, too--Jake looks just like his daddy, poor little bastard."

"Maybe that's why he's sick." Xander said, feeling the time had come to get a word in edgewise.

"What's that?" Buck said, around an enormous mouthful of garlic bread.

"You said something about medical bills--I read somewhere that in-breeding causes all kinds of inherited diseases." Actually, his knowledge of such disorders came entirely from the X-Files episode where Mulder and Scully took on that in-bred family in rural Pennsylvania, but he figured it couldn't hurt to come across as a man who read something besides Star Trek novelizations.

"Well, Jake's not exactly sick," Buck replied, chewing thoughtfully. "He was born with a--well, I guess you could call it a growth on his forehead. Cost his mamma a small fortune to have it taken off. But I'd be willin' to bet the business he got it from his daddy's side of the family, an' the least the worthless son-of-a-bitch could do is pay for it. Lemme tell you--you gotta be real careful who you get hooked up with in this crazy world. You let algae get into your gene pool, you'll have a devil of a time cleanin' it out." While Xander tried to come up with some sort of response that towed the sensible line between Nazi eugenicist and bleeding-heart California liberal, Buck started to chuckle to himself. "Sorry to bend your ear about all this, son. But when a man's to the point where he's contemplatin' bein' a grandfather, his mind tends to dwell on these things."

"Oh, is one of your daughters--" Xander stopped, realizing that Buck had not informed him that either of his daughters was married, had actually made it sound like they were very much not married, and that he might be stomping all over a delicate area. He took a big bite of the greasy bread to cover, and nearly choked on the overpowering taste of butter and garlic salt. If any of the restaurants in Sunnydale had served this stuff, Buffy's job might have been a heck of a lot easier.

Then again, maybe not. Spike had really liked lemon-garlic buffalo wings, after all.

Xander blinked the thought away and, taking an enormous swallow of water to wash the bread down, tried to pick up the loose thread of the conversation. "I mean, uh, are you going to have grandkids, um, soon?"

"Oh, not right away," Buck said. "Kelly's still in high school--so I better not be hearin' any announcements from that quarter anytime soon, and Crissy is too focused on her career right now to even think about a boyfriend, much less a husband and kids. Cliff Jr.--that's my boy--he's not exactly family-minded." A faint grimace crossed Buck's face for a moment, like the garlic bread wasn't agreeing with him, either. Then his face cleared, and he shrugged carelessly. "But eventually. . .hell, I'm not gonna be here forever. Have to consider the future."

Just then, Tammy arrived with their ribs and two foaming mugs of beer. She set down the basket of ribs, two appetizer plates and two bundles of silverware, and gave Buck his beer. But she held onto Xander's, smiling apologetically.

"Sorry, hon, but I'm gonna have to see some I.D. before I give you this. You sure don't look underage, but Roy's just got on my case again about checkin' ID's. He's been het up about it ever since the state cops busted Alpesh at the Kwik Stop for sellin' Eight Ball to some high school kids last week."

"No problem," Xander said, digging out his wallet and handing her his license, which thankfully he'd had on him when he fled Sunnydale. Tammy glanced at it, overplucked eyebrows arching dramatically as she took in his birthdate. "Huh. Alrighty, then." She handed it back to him, looking ever-so-slightly disappointed. "Your steaks'll be up shortly." She twitched away again, rather less pertly than before.

"If you don't mind my askin', how old are you?" Buck said, who'd been watching the whole exchange intently.

"Twenty, uh, three," Xander faltered, then realized that, if he were hired, Buck would see his real birthdate eventually. "I mean, I'll be twenty-three soon. Next April," he concluded miserably.

"Huh," Buck said, the frown lines between his eyes deepening a bit. "I'd've guessed older than that. Thought the easy-breezy California lifestyle was supposed keep the grey hairs away, not bring 'em out," he glanced at Xander's hairline pointedly.

"Guess I was in the wrong part of California," Xander mumbled, carefully heaping ribs from the basket onto his appetizer plate so he wouldn't have to make eye contact.

He heard Buck give a startled chuff that must have been a sound of embarrassment, judging by his next words. It was the first time Xander had heard him sound anything but wholly at ease.

"Sorry 'bout that, son. I get to runnin' m' mouth and forget what I'm about. I spoke with Tito Vasquez about what happened in Sunnyvale and he mentioned that you'd done lost both your parents and your sweetheart in the earthquake. I am most sincerely sorry for your loss."

Xander swallowed and nodded. Having run out of ribs to concentrate on, he now attempted to feign interest in "Pollcat," a brown-and-white steer that had won fame and fortune as the "1996 Reserve Champion at the National Braford Show," and thus been immortalized by an 8X10 glossy hung directly over their table. He stared at "Pollcat"'s placid white face like his life depended on it, knowing that if he looked into Buck's faded blue gaze at that moment and saw the same warm sympathy he'd heard in his voice, he'd start sobbing like a little bitty baby and that would be even less impressive than blowing chunks, wouldn't it?

"Course, the town fathers had no business buildin' on a fault line," Buck went on smoothly, giving Xander time to compose himself. "You gotta have proper gee-o-graphic and seismic studies done before you go to work. Folks gotta live there, an' nobody wants to wake up one morning and find their front yard's turned into the Grand Canyon. 'Course we got tornadoes here, an' that's a whole other flavor of God's wrath. But the boys at the University do a good job with their computer models and whatever voodoo they do with the satellites, so we ain't had nothin' without at least a ten-minute warnin' for years. Bunch a' broken windows and messed up trees, mostly. Except for the trailer parks, o' course. Tornadoes takin' out trailer parks is God's way o' sayin' that people should be livin' in houses, not chicken coops." He paused, and Xander could hear him chewing appreciatively at a pork rib. "Candy has an aunt, sweet woman, but she musta been rollin' out biscuit dough when the Good Lord was handin' out brains, and just as stubborn as the day is long. I told her, 'Aunt Myrtle, you don't wanna go livin' in one o' them wobbly boxes, it's just not safe in these parts.' Even offered to build her a house for cost, but she'd have none of it."

Xander, having finally gotten a grip on himself, snuck a look at Buck, and saw his little blue Santa Claus eyes were now twinkling with laughter. "'Course, next thing you know we get a twister out this way, and sure enough, that tin-can she was livin' in goes up like Dorothy's house headin' for Oz. Lucky she was off visitin' her daughter, or she'd a' gone with it. Still, not an easy thing for a woman her age to get over, havin' all her wordly possessions scattered to the four winds. Some technician even found a pair of her drawers hangin' off the Cell One tower, if you can believe it, and wasn't she embarrassed? Never understood why some people feel the need to write their name in their underwear--I mean, if ya lose 'em, do ya really want 'em back?" He chuckled and took a deep swallow of his beer, draining a third of the glass in a few gulps. He wiped his mouth on his napkin and tactfully suppressed a burp. "But we got her set up in a real nice little place over at Ponce De Leon Estates, now."

Then, seeming to recall that Xander had probably just experienced something similar to his aunt-in-law, his expression sobered again. "Don't mean to be makin' light o' this kinda thing. To be sure, if there's anythin' that burns me more than innocent people gettin' hurt because of somebody else's carelessness, I don't know what it is." He reached across the table and put one huge, warm hand on Xander's shoulder. "Son, you need anything, anything at all, you let me know."

"Th-thanks," Xander stammered. He blinked quickly and looked away, taking another stab at memorizing "Pollcat"'s vital stats, which had been printed helpfully beneath the photo: hip height, 75", weight, 2560 pounds, DAM--"Dominette", SIRE--"Tomcat". . .

Luckily, at that awkward moment Tammy arrived back at the table, bearing a huge, steaming tray in one tanned hand.

"Here ya go. Two Buck O'Shea Specials." She started unpacking the contents of the tray, which to Xander's astonishment contained not only fresh beers and two of the biggest porterhouse steaks he'd ever seen, but additional plates upon which steak fries, hush puppies, and coleslaw had not been so much placed as mounded. He wondered for a second if he'd ended up getting the Cattleman's Challenge after all, then took a look around at some of the other diners' plates and saw that, nope, troll portions were apparently standard in the Lone Star State.

"You fellas need anythin' else?" Tammy said briskly. Xander shook his head and concentrated on the enormous piles of steaming food in front of him, wondering how he was going to stuff a suitably manly percentage of it into a stomach that felt like it had shrunk to the size of one of Tammy's sculptured nails.

"Naw, darlin', I think we're set," Buck answered for both of them. Tammy nodded and twitched off to answer the summons of a foursome of cowboys sitting at one of the center tables, who were holding up their almost-empty beer mugs with aggrieved expressions.

"Xander, you're lookin' a mite green around the gills, there. We may as well go ahead an' talk business right now, so that mebbe you can enjoy the rest of your meal in peace," Buck said, tucking his napkin into the V of his shirt.

Xander looked up from his mountain of coleslaw, for a second too confused to answer. Business. The only business they had between them was about the job. But they'd talk about all of that at the formal interview tomorrow, wouldn't they? Then he realized, with steadily mounting dismay, that Buck had never actually said anything about an interview tomorrow--that had been Xander's own assumption. And now that he thought about it, what kind of Texas millionaire went into the office to do interviews on a Saturday? Though since his return plane ticket was for nine o'clock Sunday morning, the interview had to be tomorrow, unless. . .fuck. Unless this casual conversation over ribs and garlic bread was the interview, to which his major contribution so far had been a random fact gleaned from an old TV show. FUCK. He opened his mouth, probably to make some totally lame and inappropriate comment, like "If I'd known this was it, I'd have worn a better shirt," when, mercifully, Buck cut him off.

"How's six-two-five sound, to start?"

At first, Xander thought he meant $6.25 cents an hour, and he opened his mouth again to protest, since he'd been making more than twice that in Sunnydale. Then it hit him that Buck was actually offering him sixty-two thousand, five hundred dollars a year, and he shut his mouth again, because the only words that were springing to mind were various forms of "gaaah!", and hearing his newest employee grunt like a caveman would change Buck's mind for sure.

Apparently taking Xander's silence as demurral, Buck threw his hands up in a "you got me" gesture. "Okay, okay--six-five-five. That includes full medical and dental, four weeks of paid vacation and a company car, o' course. But that's my final offer. If that don't suit, we'll just have to shake hands and say 'been nice knowin' you.'"

Xander had a sudden, horrific picture of himself slinking back into the Hyperion in his cheap suit and borrowed briefcase, forced to live on Angel's charity for the rest of his life after being rendered hysterically mute by Buck's insanely generous offer.

"NO!" he almost shouted in his panic to get the words out. Get a grip, man, he thought. He clenched his hands into fists under the table. "I mean, yes!" he said, in a slightly calmer tone of voice. "I'll take it. Sir."

"Fan-tastic," Buck said, slicing into his porterhouse with relish. He took a large bite, eyes closing briefly in ecstasy. "Damn. Roy's beef gets better all the time. If I didn't know better, I'd swear he was some kinda witchdoctor." He swallowed quickly and cut off another big piece. "Oh, one last thing--we're a mite mixed up in the Residential Division since Albert Johnson had that stroke of his a few weeks back. I've been tendin' to it best I can, but I've got other things needin' my attention. Hell, I cain't be everywhere at once. Upshot is, we could sure use someone in there ASAP. How about startin' on Monday?"

Xander paused with his first bite of steak halfway to his mouth. "Well, um, I mean, I was sort of planning on making the trip back to L.A., you know. . . to get my stuff together?" In reality, the "stuff" he'd left in L.A. could fit inside a large shoebox, but there was no need to tell Buck that. No, the real reason he wanted to use that return ticket was because he needed one last trip to California to see his friends, make his real goodbyes, get some closure on the old life before he started the new one. Didn't he?

"Shoot, just have your friends back there ship it out," Buck said with a dismissive wave of his fork. "O'Shea Construction'll pay for it, o' course--just give Nancy in Accounting the receipts."

"Uh, well. . ."

The older man fixed him with what Xander would soon come to refer to privately as Buck's bulldozer look, a steely-eyed glare that made Xander's free will want to turn over and offer up its belly.

"We could really use you by next week, son."

"Oh," Xander said. He paused and took the bite of steak to give himself time to think. Was there really any point in going back to Cali again? The few friends he had left in L.A. were leaving in a matter of weeks, and they'd already pretty much made the big tearful farewells. And when you came right down to it, how much more closure on his old life was he going to get than a big smoking hole in the ground?

"Okay, then," Xander agreed finally. "Sure. Monday's fine."

"Great. You can hitch a ride to work with me on Monday, and we'll have you settled in before you know it. And you're welcome to stay at the Suites till you find a place you like better." Buck reached across the table again and offered Xander one big, slightly greasy hand. "Welcome aboard, Xander Harris." They shook, Xander this time doing his level best to match Buck's crushing grip and succeeding fairly well.

"Ya know, I got a feelin' about you," Buck said as he released him. "Think you're gonna make out like gangbusters in Eldorado."

"I hope you're right, sir," Xander said, the enormity of the decision he'd just made suddenly hitting him. I am the Residential Division Manager for one of the biggest construction firms in the Southwest. I make sixty-five thousand, five-hundred dollars a year. I have a company car. God help me.

"Oh, I'm never wrong when it comes to spottin' potential." Buck said, with another one of those quick assessing glances, like a man checking over the prize steer he'd just bought. "Pollcat," maybe.

Xander tried not to choke on his steak at Buck's next statement, which was made in all innocence, he was sure.

"I can see it in your eyes, you might say."

Part Four: And you may find yourself

Eight o'clock on a Saturday morning in a strange town was not a comfortable time for doorbells to be ringing. Xander muted the Dexter's Laboratory re-run he'd been half-watching, stumbled over to the door and opened it. In Sunnydale he would have checked the peephole for monsters first, but there was no peephole in the door and presumably no monsters in Eldorado.

Nope, not a monster, though the being on the other side still wasn't quite what Xander had been expecting, which was the maid service or, possibly, maintenance. Instead, his sleep-blurry eyes settled on a tall, curvaceous young woman with long strawberry blonde hair, wearing a sunflower yellow dress that showed off a pair of legs which should have been designated as a controlled substance. She had a fruit basket in one hand and a dog leash in the other, attached to a small, wrinkled creature with a mashed-in face. She opened her mouth to make what was probably a cheerful greeting to match the basket, but before either of the humans could say a word, the creature gave an enthusiastic yip and leapt past Xander into the apartment. The leash jumped out of the young woman's hand, and she yelped with dismay as the fruit basket tumbled to the ground, sending a mixed assortment volleying in his direction. At the same moment her fantastically large handbag hit the floor, vomiting up its contents.

"Mister Winston!" she said, in a tone generally reserved for language that was far harsher and made up of words of four letters.

She dropped to her knees and began stuffing cellphone, fat Filofax, and half-a-dozen pens back into her bag.

"Harris," Xander corrected, dropping to his knees to corral the escaping fruit.

"What?" she asked, but with the ubiquitous Texas accent, it sounded like 'wuut', and for a second Xander wasn't sure she was speaking English.

"Harris," he said and tapped himself on the chest. "Me. Harris."

Belatedly, he realized he was holding a banana.

"Me Tarzan, you--"

"Jane," she said, automatically, and then shook her head as if to clear it. "No. No. Me Brooke, you Harris, he Mister Winston."

She pointed at the dog, who was now working his way through the Krispy Kremes Xander had gotten at the Kwik Stop as part of his healthy breakfast. The dog, who obviously had the best command of the English language in the room, licked Bavarian cream off his short, stubby snout and tucked into another doughnut.

The girl reached over and snatched the banana out of Xander's hand. She then stretched sideways, scooping up a large navel orange that had been making a break for the space under the sofa. Xander made a heroic but not entirely successful attempt to avoid looking down the rather substantial cleavage revealed by her awkward position.

"I can speak English, y'know," she said almost as if she'd read his mind, as she dumped the recovered fruit back in the basket. "And most of the time I can even speak it in complete sentences, but you're kinda catching me at an off moment--I'm not this much of a spaz, usually, really I'm not. So why don't we just forget about the fact that I came in here flingin' fruit at you, and start from scratch, okay? I know you're Alexander Harris. The pug's name is Mister Winston, and I'm Brooke. And I'm real sorry about Mister Winston and your doughnuts, but he's got a sweet tooth, and at the office we always have a big ol' box from Krispy Kreme or Entemann's just sittin' there waitin' to be raided, so he's sorta turned into the Pastry Bandit. I try real hard to keep him on a diet, but it's just about impossible, and pugs get fat so easy. Mamma used to want me to get a pomeranian--they're so much easier to handle--but I didn't want to fall into the ol' cliche of people lookin' like their pets. I mean, we'd have the same color hair and everythin' and that seems a little narcissistic, dontcha think?"

How she managed to get all those words out on one Texas-flavored breath amazed the hell out of Xander, and he'd grown up with Willow as the undisputed Champion of Free Association in California. Maybe there was a Texas division as well. Brooke. Babbling Brooke, that wouldn't be hard to remember. Of course he never did forget a pair of legs.

"You can call me Xander. If you say Al or Alex I might not know who you're talking to."

He had toyed with the idea of using 'Alex' instead of Xander, but it just seemed pretentious. He was Xander, and no matter what he called himself, he'd still think of himself as Xander.

"Xander. Is that with an 'X' or a 'Z'?"

"An 'X'. Like X-ray or The X-Files."

Brooke's pert freckled nose crinkled prettily when she smiled. "Oh, I liked The X-Files. At least until Mulder left, and then it just got silly."

"The last three seasons were totally lame."

"I quit watchin'. I mean, get 'em together or don't, just don't play with me like that."

"They lost me when Samantha showed up with the starlight people. Seven years of waiting and she's a freaking ghost? Gimme a break."

They sat there for a moment, both shaking their heads in disgust over the many shortcomings of 1013 Productions.

"Well," she said, settling back on her heels. "Daddy didn't send me here to assault you with produce, let Mister Winston raid your kitchen, or to talk about TV. We need to take you out for a real breakfast and then get you settled in town."

"Daddy?"

Brooke rolled her eyes, which were blue and pretty. "You haven't the foggiest idea who I am or what I'm doing here, do you?"

Xander settled for the generic head-shake and shoulder shrug, good for all occasions, even when strange women and their pets barged into your apartment and everything went--literally--bananas.

"I swear, I'm gonna strangle that man someday. You'd think he was raised by monkeys. Any civilized individual woulda called you last night and told you I was comin' over here this morning, but oh no, not Big Buck O'Shea." She took a deep breath and then let it out, puffing out her rosy apple cheeks even further. "Well, can't complain about the family tree too much, since I'm his daughter, which makes me Brooke O'Shea."

Of course she was, Xander thought, looking at her as if seeing her for the first time. The hair, the freckles, the bordering on surreal speech patterns--she couldn't possibly be anyone else. But something was confusing him.

Brooke picked up on his befuddlement right away. Her eyes narrowed dangerously. "He called me 'Crissy', didn't he?" Xander nodded cautiously, not quite sure what long-simmering family stew he'd fallen into. Brooke continued on, her pretty face flushing with irritation. "Shouldn't be surprised the man couldn't keep that straight in his head--I mean, it's only fifteen years I've been askin' him not to call me that. God as my witness, if I had a penny for every time that particular confusion came up, I'd've retired to Switzerland by now. Sometimes I think I outta have 'Don't Call Me Crissy' tattooed on my forehead. One time, Daddy called me that right in front of the entire senior board of the Texas Department of Development and Environmental Affairs. If the earth would've opened up and swallowed me right then and there I'd've gone gratefully."

Having recently seen exactly that sort of thing happen, Xander just smiled weakly.

"It just don't go to be called baby names in the boardroom. Lemme tell you, I sent him home with a flea in his ear that night," Brooke concluded with grim satisfaction. Then she blinked. "Oh, I work at O'Shea with you, or startin' Monday you'll be working with me, in case Daddy didn't mention that, either. I'm his Executive Veep of Administration and Special Projects."

She frowned, apparently taking his continued silence as some sort of comment on her career choices. "It's a real job, y'know, not an allowance with a W-2."

"I didn't think it wasn't," Xander said quickly.

"The title's not very good, but I expect you can't put 'does everything Big Buck doesn't wanna be bothered with' on a business card," she finished rather defensively.

Picking up an apple, Brooke examined it for bruises and put it back in the basket. Then she adjusted it. Twice.

"Well, this isn't workin' to spec, is it?" she said. "Why don't you go and get dressed and we'll go out for breakfast before I start gettin' you set up. Daddy said you needed a couple of suits and shirts for work, since you didn't have much to bring from California."

Because it seemed like the right thing to do, Xander got up and then helped Brooke to her feet before fleeing to the bedroom to put on his chinos and Tiki shirt--again. Yeah, wardrobe was definitely going to be a problem, since most of his was in shreds in the rubble of his apartment in California, and he was beginning to think that somebody might notice he was wearing the same Tiki shirt all the time. When he came back into the living room, Brooke had finished reassembling the fruit basket and placed it on top of the entertainment center out of the dog's reach. The dog was still sitting on the sofa looking somewhat queasy. Pounding down two Krispy Kremes could do that to anybody.

"Let's go," Brooke said, grabbing the dog's leash.

Xander felt a little leash-tugged himself as he followed her out.

"You're just gonna have to ignore what a mess my car is. I haven't had time to clean all the debris out of it lately."

The car in question was a sporty little yellow and black Thunderbird two-seater convertible. With its sleek rounded curves and whitewall tires, it looked like a fat honeybee squatting on the asphalt. The mess in question was a matter of gum wrappers and a couple of empty Starbucks cups on the passenger seat floor and some important-looking binders on the luggage shelf behind the seats. When Brooke opened the passenger door, the dog leapt in and sat in the seat with an expression that clearly said "Let's go! Let's go fast!" on his ugly little face. Xander couldn't help but laugh at the way the dog so obviously belonged in the passenger seat, sitting there with the immense dignity of a little old man.

"Now just a minute there, Mister Winston," Brooke scolded, hands on her hips. "We got company. And you know that company means pugs ride in the back."

Glowering at Xander, the pug made a clumsy leap onto the luggage shelf and sighed--nobility giving up his seat of choice to the serf.

"You're just gonna have to excuse Mister Winston. He don't know that he's a D-O-G and not a person."

Getting himself into the seat, Xander fastened the seatbelt and realized that his ass was going to be covered in brown pug hair when he got out. He also noticed that Brooke's flippy little dress flipped a lot of shapely leg in his direction as she got behind the wheel.

"I never had a dog. Aren't they aware of their dogginess?"

In the back, Mister Winston let out a low growl.

"We don't use the 'D' word." Brooke said, slapping on a pair of oval sunglasses and looking at Xander over the lenses. "It upsets him."

Xander looked over his shoulder at the pug, who had been glaring holes in the back of his head.

"He knows? I mean, he knows that he's a 'D' word, doesn't he?"

"Mister Winston is a pug. They were kept by the emperors of China and the royalty of Europe and they've never forgot it. Pugs make cats look low-maintenance." She gave Xander a cheeky grin. "Wanna see him freak out?"

Nodding uncertainly, Xander didn't dare look away from the do--pug--for fear it would bite off the back of his neck. The resemblance between it and certain goblins he'd seen back in Sunnydale was close enough to be unnerving.

"Is there a dog? Is there a dog in this car?" Brooke asked Mister Winston in the overly-bright tone people used for pets.

Mister Winston growled again and turned his small scrunchy head rapidly from side to side, as though attempting to sniff out the mangy, flea-bitten stray that had invaded his vehicle.

Brooke's big blue eyes were sparkling with wicked amusement. "You're the dog, Mister Winston! You're the dog!"

This sent Mister Winston into hysterical yipping, running back and forth on the luggage shelf as he protested himself a pug and not a mere dog. Brooke giggled, and the pug stopped and sat down with an air of injured dignity.

"You know I'm just kiddin' you. Mama loooves Mister Winston," Brooke crooned, leaning forward and scratching him under his non-existent chin.

Mister Winston decided she was beneath his notice, ignoring her attempts at appeasement in favor of staring out at a nearby tree.

Still giggling, Brooke started the car and pulled out of the parking lot at a breakneck pace, cutting off a pickup truck and a minivan before she made a quick right that sent Xander sliding up against the door. He clutched the handle out of reflex and tried to relax. Apparently, Brooke had inherited more from her father than just coloring and syntax. But there were worse places he could be than riding with a dangerous redheaded driver on a bright Saturday morning in Eldorado. If he died in a car wreck, it would still be better than most of his near-death experiences.

"Now, I'm gonna get you set up at Weinstein's Men's Store for some suits, then take you over to the Shirt Exchange and down to the Eldorado Dry Goods for some casual wear. Friday's Casual Day at O'Shea Construction, but Daddy likes to keep it the khakis-and-golf-shirts kinda casual, unless you're goin' to a job site, and then jeans are fine as long as you wear a shirt and tie. Most of the other executives wear suits to the office, and then just hang up their jackets unless they have a meetin'. The dress code's kinda old fashioned, but it keeps things nice, and you don't have to worry about people bein' too inappropriate. We had one girl in data entry who thought a backless cocktail dress was just fine for the office. I had to set her down and tell her 'honey, if you're gonna dress like a tramp, people are gonna treat you like a tramp.' I swear, parents don't teach their kids nothin' anymore."

All Xander could do was nod.

"And I'm gonna get you in with Claire to get a haircut," she announced, looking away from the busy intersection they were approaching to give him that same appraising once-over glance he'd already endured from Phillips and Big Buck. "I know what you've got is prob'ly fine in California, but you've gotta be a little more professional out here." She barely paused at the stop sign, and Xander promised the automotive gods that he'd let her shave his head if he just got out of this trip alive. "And 'cause you're so young, you gotta be more professional than most, to create an air of authority so the older folks don't treat you like a child."

She sighed.

"I came back to work for Daddy after livin' in Austin for four years and Manhattan for two, and suddenly I had people who'd known me since I was in diapers answerin' to me. Thing is, you gotta pretend like you know what you're doin' even when you don't have clue one."

Again he nodded, since he'd been faking it most of his life.

It didn't take long to get to the downtown section of Eldorado, where the buildings and the trees were old and exhaled peace and quiet even with the nominal traffic. Xander felt as though he'd landed on another planet, or at least slipped into an alternate reality movie, like It's a Wonderful Life or Pleasantville. There was even an old movie theater with an Art Deco façade advertising a double-feature of Key Largo and Casablanca. Possibly this was an alternate universe, full of clean, well-lighted places and dashing redheads in sports cars. Maybe this was The World Without Shrimp.

But there was shrimp--fried shrimp, on the menu at the restaurant where Brooke stopped. Passing up the shrimp as not-quite breakfast food, Xander opted for hot cakes and bacon while Brooke made inroads into a mushroom-and-cheese omelet. She actually ate the food as well--she chewed, and swallowed, and apparently kept it down, which hadn't been the norm back home. After long experience of watching girls push their food around their plates, or excuse themselves immediately after eating for mysterious sojourns in the ladies room, watching Brooke eat was an unexpected pleasure. They went through a small pot of coffee at their patio table, while Brooke slipped Mister Winston small pieces of buttered toast. The pug had his own chair, and had been greeted at the door with as much enthusiasm as Brooke herself. The only concession to any kind of health regulation was that the pug had to eat outside.

"So, do you do this a lot?" Xander asked, after they'd both finished most of their respective meals.

"What, eat breakfast?" Brooke said, taking another swallow of coffee with two sugars and extra cream.

"No, give the deluxe Welcome Wagon treatment to new junior executives of O'Shea Residential and Commercial Construction."

"That sounds sorta naughty, when you put it that way," Brooke said, her nose crinkling appreciatively. "Like I'm runnin' a high-class call girl ring or somethin'. But no. Not usually."

"So why me? I can't believe your dad was so eager to have me on board that he sent his VP over just to babysit me this weekend."

"I dunno, good help's hard to come by--the whole Sunbelt's boomin' these days, even with a recession on. You'd be surprised what companies will do to headhunt quality personnel. I've heard about places in Arizona and Florida where high-class call girls aren't exactly outta the question," Brooke said, with an arch of her carefully pencilled brows.

"Damn--you wouldn't happen to have any of their business cards, would you?"

"Sorry, fresh out. You'll have to ask Daddy on Monday," Brooke said, smirking.

"I'll pass, thanks. Not exactly the best icebreaker first day on the job. But seriously, why are you doing this?" Xander persisted.

"Daddy called me last night right after he dropped you off. He was real pleased to get you--I guess I can say that now that y'all've shook hands on a salary," Brooke said with a twinkle. Then her expression sobered a bit. "But he said you'd been through a lot, so you might need a little help gettin' settled." She gazed at him thoughtfully, her eyes looking even bluer in the clear morning air. "His exact words were, 'Darlin', we need to take extra-good care of this one. He's special.'"

For a second Xander couldn't reply. The thought of anyone other than Willow thinking he was special, or feeling the urge to take any care of him at all, much less the extra-good kind, had temporarily rendered him mute. After a minute of hard struggle, he managed to squeeze a few words out, though they came out much lower and rougher than usual. "He told you about the--earthquake?"

Brooke nodded. "He said you lost just about everything."

"The town was pretty much flattened. The epicenter was right under the high school, the high school where I went and then helped rebuild after the last--earthquake. My apartment looked like a bomb site, and my parents' house wasn't anything but rubble when we went looking for the bodies." Xander spoke quickly, off-handly, trying to just get the words out and over with as fast as he could, like ripping the Band-aid off a sore.

"You lost your parents?" You could tell from her expression that Brooke clearly thought this was the worst thing that could happen to anyone, ever.

"And my ex-fiancée. I mean, she was my ex before she died, and after she died, she was an ex-fiancée like an ex-parrot," he babbled. Shut up shut up shut up he thought, mentally shaking himself.

If Brooke got the reference, she tactfully ignored it. "Oh my God, that is so sad." For a second he thought that the brightness in her eyes might have been tears, but then she grabbed his forearm where it lay on the table and squeezed hard, her bracelets jangling a little in the quiet morning. "You just let me know if I can do anything to help. You need somebody to deal with insurance papers or you need somebody to talk to, you just give me a yell, okay?"

She sat back and nervously put her silverware back into place, as if a little embarrassed by her sudden outburst. Xander used the pause in conversation to swallow a final mouthful of hotcakes. He'd lost his appetite, but he hoped it might help him get rid of the big lump that had somehow gathered in his throat.

"I can't imagine, and you're sittin' there bein' so calm," she said. "I swear I'd be in a rubber room if that happened to me. I don't know how you do it."

"This is still shock. I plan on having a nervous breakdown after Christmas--I thought I'd skip the holiday rush."

"Christmas is the time that everything goes crazy, that's for sure," she agreed, giving him a careful smile. She pushed a lock of bright red-gold hair away from her eyes, the sunlight catching on her bangle bracelets.

Because he couldn't look at her bright crispness for a moment, Xander reached out and gave Mister Winston a tentative pat on the head. The pug had obviously been softened up by Xander's tale of woe and batted big brown eyes at him, looking soulful and sympathetic.

"Well, I don't know about you," Brooke said briskly after a moment, folding her napkin and dropping it onto the table. "But when I'm feelin' blue, there's nothin' like shopping to improve my mood." The bustling energy and crackling aura of in-chargeness was another thing she'd inherited from her father, apparently.

Brooke was as good as her word--she did take care of him that day. Or as bad, since clothes shopping fell into the 'necessary evil' category as far as Xander was concerned. The trip to the men's store, the shirt store, and the casual clothes store was a kaleidoscope of fabric, cut, and color where he was poked, prodded, measured, sized, and promised that the right things would be altered as needed and dropped off at the Corporate Suites on Tuesday. What he could carry home went into boxy bags that rapidly filled up the tiny trunk of the Thunderbird. Brooke slapped down a company platinum card for each of the growing stack of purchases, having told an astonished Xander at the beginning of the spree to consider this part of his signing bonus.

But what really blew Xander's mind was the fact that everybody in every store knew Brooke and Mister Winston, and both were treated like visiting dignitaries. Mister Winston got his own chair in each store and no one questioned the right of Miss O'Shea to treat her pug like a child. The sales clerks practically bowed and scraped to her and fell over themselves trying to get "Mister Harris" equipped to Brooke's satisfaction. Although somewhat embarrassing, this was all of the good to Xander. He knew that he'd been fashion-challenged for years, and it was kind of a relief to give up control of his wardrobe to a power greater than his own.

It was weird, though. Like being pulled out of the crowd and taken around by Princess Diana. Brooke had that kind of effect on people. He'd had an inkling that the O'Sheas were big fish in the local pond after seeing Big Buck get the red carpet treatment last night. He hadn't been all that surprised then, knowing that O'Shea Construction was a major employer in Eldorado. But it hadn't been until today that he realized if the town had a royal family, they were it. Since he didn't want to seem ungrateful for everything the Crown Princess of Eldorado was doing for him, he endured the small amount of discomfort of being dressed and fussed over like a giant Ken Doll.

After he'd had his hair expertly cut by a pretty blonde in tight black pants, Brooke hauled him off to get some "decent coffee" for the Corporate Suites coffee maker. They ended up sitting on a park bench facing the courthouse in Darling Square, drinking iced lattes while Mister Winston stalked regally around on the grass, making valiant attempts to defend his mistress and her companion from the squirrels who dared approach them to panhandle for snacks. The pug had the tactical advantage over the rodents, having taken the high ground by standing on a granite marker sunk far into the turf, which was emblazoned with a mossy brass plaque proclaiming it "Darling Square," just in case the street signs hadn't been enough of a clue.

"So you feelin' like you can go into work on Monday with a reasonable amount of confidence?" Brooke asked, throwing a piece of bruschetta to one small interloper with a fluffy bottle-brush tail, much to Mister Winston's disgust.

"No," Xander said, laughing. "But not because of the clothes. I'm just afraid your father's going to figure out he's bought a 'pig in a poke,' as he'd put it, and that I don't have a clue what I'm doing."

"Don't worry 'bout that. Daddy's never wrong about people. I swear, it's spooky. When my sister Kelly was only six months old he looked at her and said 'that girl's gonna be trouble.' Wasn't wrong there. She just went and totaled her third Mustang last week. Daddy read her the riot act over it, but she just laughed and told him he could use the tax write-off, since it was a company car. That's her all over--rushes from pillar to post never lookin' where she's goin', and when everything smashes up around her she thinks it's a good joke. Been like that since she hit junior high--drinkin', smokin', foolin' around with boys old enough to buy her the first two. Now, how can you tell that from a little baby? Nope, Daddy's never wrong about people," she repeated, with the calm certainty of someone reciting a fundamental truth, like the fact that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west.

"There's always a first time."

"Oh, don't come over all Eeyore. You're gonna be fine."

"So, I can call you at three in the morning tomorrow night when I can't sleep?"

"Sure thing--I'll give you all my phone numbers. 'Course, I can't promise I'll make any sense at that hour, but I'll listen." She leaned closer to him, and the scent of her perfume made Xander think of daisies and clouds and other clean, bright, innocent things. "Hey, why don't you come to dinner with me and Mamma and Daddy and Kelly at the country club Sunday night? Coupla gin and tonics the way Jose makes 'em and you'd sleep through any amount of nervousness, I guarantee."

"Uh, sure, thanks," he said, though he realized that Sunday dinner with the Royal Family would probably be more nerve-wracking than Monday morning at the office. But at least now the Tiki shirt wouldn't be putting in its third appearance in one weekend.

"Great." Brooke grinned, giving that little nose-crinkle again. She had nine freckles on her nose, he saw. Exactly nine. "I'll pick you up at six."

Much later, Xander would realize it was at this precise moment, accepting a simple dinner invitation while Mister Winston paraded through the bright July sunshine, that his new life really began.

Part Five: Letting the days go by

As if to refute everything he'd ever heard about the South, Xander felt that things in Eldorado moved fast. It seemed like one week he was feeling ignorant and incompetent about his job, and the next he was coordinating half-a-dozen subdivision developments, signing off on hundred-thousand dollar equipment orders, and overseeing dozens of underlings without a second thought. As Residential Manager, he had a big office on the fifth floor, with a great view of the Eldorado skyline in the distance and the hustle-and-bustle of the highway in the foreground. With his new haircut and his new suits, Xander felt that he could at least fake being the boss even during those times when he didn't have a clue what he was doing.

Having the Boss taking him under his massive wing didn't hurt matters, either. Xander wasn't sure if this was S.O.P at O'Shea Construction with new executives, or pity for his youthful, orphaned state, but in those first few weeks he seemed to receive more of Buck O'Shea's attention than all the other executives combined. Buck took him out to construction sites, introduced him to all the site foremen, and got him on-track with who was doing what projects and what his responsibilities were. Responsibilities that were considerable, but not beyond the scope of his skills. It seemed that he really had learned something in Sunnydale other than how to kill vampires.

Once a week, Big Buck took him out to the links at Vista del Lago Country Club and they played golf. Or more precisely, Buck played golf and Xander tried not to make an ass out of himself. His distance vision was crap even with the new glasses, and despite Buck's heated, repeated instructions to "follow through on your swing and keep your hips straight, goddammit," Xander still hooked or sliced four shots out of five. With a handicap of 26, he doubted he'd be making up a foursome with his boss in the company golf tournament any time soon. Overall, Buck seemed far more pleased by his progress on the job site than his progress on the green. After a few weeks, Buck left his new Residential Division Manager alone to run his department more or less as he saw fit, but he still pursued the weekly golf lessons with the same grim determination that he'd once chased Charlie down the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

Buck wasn't the only O'Shea making frequent appearances in Xander's new life. Apparently, Brooke had not considered her orders to "take extra-good care" of Xander fulfilled when she dropped him and his new wardrobe off at the Suites that first Saturday. Right from the beginning, she popped into his office several times a week and whisked him off to various trendy eateries around the area, introducing him to all the maître d's as "Daddy's new right-hand man, Xander Harris." Pretty soon, even on the rare occasions when he went out to eat without her, he never had a problem getting a good table, and his takeout meals always seemed to materialize within seconds of his placing an order. Clearly, the O'Shea reach extended far beyond Roy's Steak Ranch. They didn't always eat alone, either: as the weeks passed, Brooke introduced him to her wide circle of friends, which encompassed most of the bright young hopefuls of Eldorado's professional set, many of them transplants to Texas just like himself. They all seemed to embrace Xander with the same warmth the O'Sheas had shown him, though with the Crown Princess of Eldorado by his side, they probably wouldn't have dared do anything else. For the first time ever, Xander was seeing what it was like to be on the inside looking out, and finding the view not half bad.

Brooke soon became a permanent fixture, like his flat screen monitor at work and the laptop at home, and every bit as familiar. Over these various lunches and dinners it became clear that they both liked classic rock and cult television shows, that she loved swing dancing but had two left feet, that neither of them could stand shellfish or cabbage, and that they both were relieved to have survived high school. In comparison to Xander's highly edited version of his experiences at Sunnydale High before and after graduation, Brooke's had been full of the usual mundane traumas--clueless boyfriends, jealous girlfriends, projects or papers or parties that didn't turn out--nothing that wouldn't have been right at home on Dawson's Creek. Or, possibly, given her family's money, Beverly Hills, 90210.

Xander also learned that she'd actually been named Crystal Brooke O'Shea at birth and had refused her first name, with its connotations of exotic dancers and bad nighttime soaps, at age eleven. Soon after making this bid for greater credibility, she'd thrown a fit one day while visiting her father at the office, demanding that all and sundry O'Shea employees call her "Miss Brooke." Brooke's ideas about office etiquette had loosened somewhat in the ensuing 15 years, but the nickname had stuck, migrating into a weird honorific at O'Shea Construction. Just about everybody there called her "Miss Brooke" or "Miz Brooke," depending on the thickness of their accent. Her family still called her "Crissy," to her continued annoyance.

The time Xander spent with Brooke was all very friendly, in the non-innuendo sense of the word. After work, when she scooped him up for dinner and the occasional movie on the weekend or the backend of the week, it was clear to both of them that they were hanging out, not going out. They took turns picking up the checks, which bothered Xander not at all, since he suspected her salary was much bigger than his. The only element about his outings with Brooke that did bother him was the fact that she could cry at next to no provocation. The first time she turned on the waterworks was at a shopping trip for his winter wardrobe at the Boca del Oro Mall. At first, he thought he'd done something horribly wrong, perhaps when he protested that he was still a little young for a navy blue Brooks Brothers cashmere v-neck. But it turned out to just be low blood sugar, and once he stuffed her full of cookies and cappuccino she was fine. Scattered showers were the side effect of Brooke's drive and determination: she'd get herself worked into a complete frenzy and then burst into tears as a release valve, claiming "if I don't cry, my head will explode." It took awhile to get used to, but other than making Xander start carrying a handkerchief, it didn't change anything.

All-in-all, being with Brooke felt a lot like his friendship with Willow in the early days before Buffy came to town. Xander was a good friend to girls, he always had been, so what was one more?

One late July evening, during a double-feature of Sullivan's Travels and Gilda at the Rialto revival theater, their hands kept touching accidentally as they shared a large popcorn with extra butter. Later that night, he dreamed he was on an endless train journey to Buenos Aires with a beautiful redhead in a black strapless evening gown who kept accusing him of mixing up the overtime reports on the Ponce De Leon Estates subdivision, phase two. This annoyed him greatly, until she put one satin-gloved hand on his thigh and told him she knew how he could make it up to her. The next morning, as he was changing his sheets, he reassured himself that the woman was obviously Rita Hayworth and not. . .anyone else. That weekend he bought Gilda on DVD and didn't think too hard about the purchase.

Otherwise, his sleep during this time was uneventful, his other most memorable dream involving earth-moving equipment, purchase orders, and an office that was entirely staffed by pugs wearing suits. The last was a little disturbing, but far from a nightmare: The pug dream didn't begin to compare with the Roger Corman blood-and-guts thrillers he'd endured during those first weeks after Sunnydale was wiped from the face of the planet. At worst, Xander thought it only meant he was starting to think of Mister Winston as a person rather than the 'D' word. In fact, aside from weekly phone calls from Willow and the occasional e-mail from Buffy or Dawn, Sunnydale and all its works dropped out of his life completely during this time. Sometimes, Xander would gaze out at the peaceful Eldorado skyline from his comfy office, or see Brooke smiling at him over a foaming frappucino at their favorite coffee bar, and wonder if it wasn't Sunnydale that had been the bad dream. It seemed as if all those days of blood and death and demons had been a seven-year nightmare from which he'd finally woken up.

Days ran into weeks and weeks into months.

In August, Brooke dragged him to her family's "beach shack" at the Gulf, which turned out to be palatial. She sat under an umbrella in a white strapless tank suit that made her look like Betty Grable in that famous pin-up poster, slathering her freckles with SPF 45 while he bodysurfed in the warm water. They slept in separate rooms at opposite ends of the house and didn't hold hands when they walked along the beach at sunset.

In September, he did hold her hand in the waiting room of the veterinarian's office while Mister Winston had a fatty growth removed from his leg. That night he slept in her guestroom while Brooke tended the pug in her bedroom. Mister Winston repaid Xander's kindness by biting the meaty part of his hand, which led to an emergency room visit for Xander. Brooke held his other hand while he got stitched up, her fingers warm and steady in his own. After that Xander's relationship with Mister Winston cooled somewhat, but they remained civil.

When Halloween rolled around, Xander found himself carving a lopsided pumpkin head in the bright yellow and white kitchen of the house she shared with Mister Winston on the edge of the historic district. Brooke had a lot of Art Deco antiques and sleek forties-style furniture and, surprisingly, a big-screen television and Dolby sound system that would have put most movie theaters to shame. Number 11 Oleander Avenue was a comfortable place, as bright and quirky as Brooke herself.

"Thing is, most of the time, family is people you wouldn't be friends with. You're just stuck with them 'cause they're kin," Brooke said as she trepanned around her pumpkin's stem. "Like Kelly, I've talked till I was blue in the face tryin' to get that girl to straighten up and fly right, but there's no gettin' through to her. I swear if she wasn't my sister, I wouldn't have anything to do with her at all." She pulled out a stringy handful of pumpkin guts and grimaced. "This is so gross. Why do we do this again?"

"I think it's some pagan fertility ritual. Either that or it's just something for the kids to throw into the street on Mischief Night," Xander said, frowning in concentration. His pumpkin was coming out with one eye decidedly smaller than the other, giving it a mean, squinty look.

"Do you like Halloween? I used to love it as a kid," Brooke said, wiping her hands off on a paper towel. She reached into the orange glazed candy bowl and pulled out a miniature Snickers bar, unwrapping it with the guilty anticipation of a teenage boy opening a condom. "We'd get dressed up and go around and beg for candy, pretending the neighborhood was full of monsters and that the neighbors were witches and stuff."

"Your neighbors might be witches. You know, Pagan Wiccan kind of witches. Not that you should worry or anything."

"Oh, there are no witches in Eldorado," Brooke said, chewing on her candy bar. "The local fundamentalists wouldn't stand for it. Do you know, they saw to it that the kids can't even celebrate Halloween in school anymore? Last year, when the high schoolers wanted to raise money by organizing a Halloween carnival, they could only put out scarecrows and uncarved pumpkins and such and it had to be called the Fall Festival." She rolled her big blue eyes. "But I expect you had a lot of that goth stuff in California. All those cults and the like."

"We had our share," Xander said non-committally, sticking his hand inside the pumpkin and pulling at some slimy strings. "My best friend back home was a Wiccan. And a lesbian. So she's kind of the Gay Witch of the North."

"Cliff is gay," Brooke replied matter-of-factly as she handed him a paper towel. "You know, my brother the vet? He and his roommate Tommy are partners or whatever you're supposed to call it this week. That whole situation hit the fan two years back, and it took all I could do just to get Daddy and Cliffy civil again. I think it about broke Daddy's heart when he realized there wasn't going to be a Clifford the Third, though that was still no excuse for some of the things he said," she concluded, frowning at the memory. "You'd've thought Tommy was some kinda monster, the way Daddy went on about him. When he's really just the cutest little old thing, sorta reminds you of one of those anime characters, you know? All eyes and floppy hair."

"There could still be a Clifford the Third. Your brother and his boyfriend could get a surrogate mother or adopt or something."

Brooke shook her head sadly. "You've seen the pictures on the walls at Roy's. Eldorado is cow country--it's all about the breeding here. Mamma was a Darling and her family still thinks she married beneath her."

Darling, right. The founding family of Eldorado. Which just meant that Brooke was local royalty on both sides. Xander looked at his pumpkin again and realized that his attempt to correct the initial eye problem had just made the situation worse. Halloween, he decided, brought back too many Sunnydale memories, not all of them pleasant.

"What's the matter?" Brooke asked. "You just went over all Eeyore again."

"Just get a little homesick sometimes," Xander lied.

"Here," Brooke said, pushing the candy bowl towards him. "It's been my experience that chocolate is the best cure for the megrims outside of Southern Comfort." She looked down at the brightly-wrapped candy bars gloomily. 'Sides, if somebody don't help me eat all this stuff I'm gonna be big as my great-aunt Bonita."

"I've never seen your great-aunt Bonita, so I can't really make a judgment call there," Xander said wisely.

"You know the Simpsons episode where Homer gained all that weight and was runnin' 'round town in a mumu? Picture that, only with more hair."

"Yikes," Xander said, shuddering dramatically. "But I think it'd take a lot more than a few miniature candy bars to catapult you into mumu class, hon."

"I dunno, the Darling women really have to watch it. Mamma was runner-up in the 1971 Miss Texas pageant, and she told me she lived on grapefruit and canned tuna for six months beforehand or she never would've made it through the swimsuit competition. I was real pudgy till I was about fourteen or so," Brooke went on, with the air of someone confiding a dark secret. "Daddy used to call me his 'little roly-poly.' I hated that. Baby fat only looks good on babies."

She glanced downwards and made a disgusted sound. "Now would you look at that? I swear, next year I'm just gonna get one of those plastic light-up pumpkins at Q-Mart and save myself the trouble and aggravation." She tore off another paper towel and squatted down, wiping up a stray glob of pumpkin innards that had fallen to the floor. Xander tried not to stare at the length of leg this maneuver exposed, since checking out your movie buddy flew directly in the face of the just-friends code. But the sleeveless denim mini-dress she was wearing that night already showed a lot more skin than was strictly friendly, if you wanted to push the issue. He flashed again on Rita Hayworth and Betty Grable.

"You don't look fat, and you don't look like a baby. Trust me," he blurted.

Brooke looked up, caught his line of sight, and stood quickly. Xander saw her cheeks were flushed as she pulled out the yellow plastic undersink trashcan and tossed the soiled paper towel in it. He looked down and began raking through the candy bowl. Deciding between a Hershey's with almonds and a Kit-Kat suddenly seemed like a vitally important decision.

"Well, I think these boys are about done, don't you?" Brooke said a little too brightly after a minute. "I'm gonna put 'em on the front step. Why don't we fire up the DVD player and watch Young Frankenstein?"

"Frank-en-steen," he corrected, relieved.

The pumpkins went on the front porch, where delinquents threw them into the street later that same night.

********

"So, end of the year evaluations are comin' up. You nervous?"

It was midafternoon and Xander was in his office with Edward Dixon, Assistant Manager for the Commercial Division. Ed was fortysomething, whip-thin and sweaty, with the pale, twitchy air of a lab rat used in one too many experiments. According to company gossip, a.k.a Brooke, Ed had made a bid for Xander's job after the previous Residential Manager retired suddenly due to health problems, and he had never gotten over losing out to a punk kid half his age. In their subsequent run-ins over the past five months, Ed had made clear his opinion that Xander's tenure as Manager was a disaster just waiting to happen. Xander usually avoided him like SARS, but sometimes, like today, exposure was unavoidable.

As usual, Xander's plight was entirely of his own making. In early November, he had come up with the bright idea of the Commercial and Residential Divisions sharing grading equipment. If the schedules could be worked out, there was the possibility of considerable savings for the company. Buck had been all for the plan, but left it up to his two division managers to coordinate the inevitable schedule changes this would necessitate. Unfortunately, soon afterwards Rafael Gutierrez, the Commercial Division Manager, had taken his six weeks of annual vacation, leaving scheduling negotiations to his second-in-command. Ed, naturally, had never thought the idea workable, which was either his honest opinion or his Xander-thought-of-it-not-me opinion. Today, after two hours of standing over a conference table scattered with six months' worth of residential and commercial construction schedules, enduring Ed's cheap cologne while Ed blocked him at every turn, Xander was in no mood for confidences.

He shrugged carelessly. "Not too nervous, no. I've put the effort in, the department's doing okay."

"Effort, yeah." Ed managed to make the word sound vaguely obscene. "Like all that extra effort you've been puttin' in after hours with Big Buck's little girl, am I right?"

Xander bristled instantly. "What the hell's that supposed to mean?"

Ed held up two pale, clammy hands in a placating gesture. "Hey man, I don't blame you. Ya gotta do what ya gotta do to get ahead in this crazy world. If I was in your shoes, with your qualifications, I'd be workin' that Brooke angle, too."

Xander gripped the lacquered edge of the conference table, reminding himself that throwing the Assistant Commercial Manager out the fifth floor window would probably look bad on his upcoming evaluation. "I haven't been working anything of Brooke's. We're friends," he said tightly.

"Friends, right." Ed gave him an obnoxious, just-us-boys wink. "That Brooke sure is a friendly gal, ain't she?"

Before Xander could think of a reply that didn't involve taking flagrant advantage of the six inches and sixty pounds he had on Ed, the door opened.

"Knock knock!"

Both men turned to see Brooke breeze through the door like Princess Diana visiting a children's cancer ward.

"Xander, hon--" catching sight of Xander's visitor, the dazzling smile on Brooke's face dimmed to a more professional wattage. "Oh, hey, Ed."

"Well, speak o' the devil and she shall appear," Ed drawled. "We was just talkin' 'bout you, darlin'." Xander clenched his jaw at the oily familiarity in Ed's voice. He sounded like he was talking to one of the girls down at the Pink Pony strip joint instead of the Executive V.P. of the company.

If Brooke found the tone or the endearment insulting, she didn't let on. "That must have been why my ears were itchin' earlier," she said pleasantly enough. "What were you two fellas gabbin' about?"

"Oh, I was just reassurin' Harris here that he had nothin' to worry 'bout when your Daddy does exec evals next month," Ed explained. "Said you'd be more than willin' to vouch for him. He's just too darn useful to let go, am I right?"

"Xander's done a great job this quarter," Brooke said evenly. "Everybody knows that."

"Ya hear that, Harris?" Ed said with a shit-eating grin. "The Bossman's daughter thinks you're doin' a great job. All those nifty skills Harris picked up out in California are sure appreciated 'round here, ain't they, Miss Brooke? Nobody's better at meetin' all those special little needs than he is, I reckon." His muddy brown gaze crawled over Brooke's shapely form like she was standing there in fishnets and pasties instead of a modest cream silk blouse and linen skirt.

Okay, that was it. Eval or no eval, Ed was about to find out just what kind of nifty skills he'd picked up out in California. Xander stood up, clenching his fists to match his jaw. "Listen, you son-of--"

Brooke stepped in between them as quickly and gracefully as a debutante sorting dance partners at her coming out ball. "Oh, Daddy doesn't need me to point all that out, Ed," she interrupted sweetly, matching Ed grin for grin. "He was tellin' me just the other day that Xander's the best darn thing to happen to this company since the invention of quick-dry cement. That he has more knowledge, insight, and plain old horse sense than most men twice his age. 'Fresh blood, that's just what we needed 'round here, darlin',' --I think that's how he put it."

Ed's grin collapsed like somebody had cut the strings holding his lips up.

"Now, if you'll excuse us, I have to speak with Xander about these overtime reports for Ponce De Leon phase two right away," Brooke went on smoothly, indicating the papers she had in her hand. "I sure hate to kick you out, but you know how Daddy feels about anybody who's not at the Exec. Manager level bein' privy to payroll matters."

Ed's pale, clammy skin had gone even whiter and wetter than usual. He looked like a large, sweaty mushroom. "I was just leavin' anyway," he growled, violently shoving the commercial schedules into his briefcase. "Got a safety meetin' in half an hour. We can continue this Monday, Harris--mebbe by then you'll have figured out a way to make this fool idea of yours work."

With that parting sally he was gone, though unfortunately the smell of his English Leather lingered long after him.

"That was a thing of beauty," Xander said as soon as the door had shut behind Ed, all his anger drowned by sheer admiration.

Brooke ran a hand through her amber curls, preening just a little. "Ed's what my Grandaddy Darling would've called a malcontent. He's never had a single warm and fuzzy moment himself, and he won't rest till everybody around him's as miserable as he is. That's why Daddy wouldn't give him your job in the first place. He'd've had the whole division ready to commit hari-kari inside a month."

"Then why's your dad keep him around at all?"

"Cause unfortunately, you can't fire someone just for bein' a pain in the ass. So I do him like I do Mister Winston when he gets a little too uppity for comfort. I roll up a newspaper and smack him right between the ears, and then he remembers who's boss." She rolled the papers she was holding into a rough cylinder and made a little demonstrative swing.

"Metaphorically speaking."

"Except for that one time, yeah," Brooke said with a twinkle. She ambled over to his desk, hitching her hip up on the corner and crossing her legs. Xander followed her, sitting down in his comfy leather chair and leaning back.

"So, what is it about these overtime reports, Miss Brooke?"

"Hush. Don't you start with that foolishness, too," Brooke said, tapping him lightly on the arm with her papers. "I need you to pull the cards for the weeks of November 3rd and 10th. Nancy in Accounting says Chico Rivera's listed as bein' on both the Fontana and Joven street sites for the last pay period. So unless he's developed the amazin' ability to be in two places at once, something's hinky."

"It's not my screw-up this time, I swear. I've been keeping an eye on those things since you kicked my ass about 'em back in July."

"A lady never kicks, Xander Harris. She gently nudges," Brooke replied primly.

"Yeah, well, I had the gentle nudge marks from your high heels branded into my ass for a good two weeks." With a squeal of outraged laughter, Brooke hauled off and smacked him again with her makeshift bat. "Oww! I'm telling your father about this when it's time for your evaluation, missy," Xander said, rubbing his injured appendage.

"Silly rabbit, I don't get eval'ed," Brooke said smugly. "It's one of the compensations of bein' at Daddy's beck-and-call 24-7, includin' holidays and weekends. Wanna trade?"

"No, I'll take the one day of grim horror over 365 days of abject terror, thanks. Oh, speaking of holidays, what's the plan for tomorrow?" Once again, the O'Sheas had taken pity on a poor orphan lad and invited him to the big family Thanksgiving Buck and his wife Candy held every year. Xander had accepted gratefully, finding the prospect of football and a solo Swanson turkey dinner in his bachelor apartment too depressing for words.

Brooke pursed her rosebud mouth thoughtfully. "Well, you know that Cliff and his partner Tommy are comin' down from Austin. And things haven't quite been the same between him and Daddy since he did the whole comin' out thing at Christmas a couple years back, so they're gonna be stayin' with me. They'll probably drive Cliff's pickup, and you know I don't have a back seat so it'd be better if we could all go over together in your Jeep. Then that way nobody gets stuck there any longer than they have to be."

She uncrossed and then crossed her legs again in a nervous movement, the silk of her stockings making a hissing noise as it rubbed against her skin. Xander sat up straight and took a long swallow from the bottle of water on his desk, pretty much draining it. His mouth suddenly felt cotton dry, for some reason.

"Stuck?" he said after a minute, wiping his mouth off. "Um, are you expecting a problem?"

Brooke gave a long-suffering sigh. "Well, Aunt Miranda and Uncle Steven are born-again Christians and they will go on about acceptin' Jesus Christ as your personal savior till you're ready to join the Hari Krishnas outta sheer contrariness. Plus Daddy's gonna bust Gramma Darling out of the old folks home for the night and she does tend to find fault with just about everything." Brooke made a face. "It can be kind of a trial. Maybe I shouldn't have asked you after all. You don't need to be seein' how messed up the O'Shea family really is." She began to rearrange the pens on his desk into a soldier-neat line-up, the movement so unconscious and automatic that she probably didn't even realize she was doing it.

"My dad once threw an entire Christmas ham at my mother. It was still in the can at the time. I think I can handle The Lord and Gramma Darling."

Brooke stopped forming pen regiments long enough to digest this last anecdote, before continuing on. "Well, Tommy and Cliff can only stand about three hours of it. We usually just go back to my house, watch old movies, drink a bottle of wine and make fun of everybody else. That's the best part."

Xander was reminded suddenly of long-ago Friday nights with Willow and Buffy, MST3K-ing Bollywood cinema while cleaning out Joyce's pantry with his two best gals. He smiled. "Sounds great. So, what time should I be there again?"

Three's fine," Brooke said, standing up and brushing the wrinkles out of her skirt. It was raw silk, not linen, he saw now.

Because he was learning some Texas manners, Xander walked Brooke out of his office.

"Did your dad really say all those things about me?" he asked as they neared the elevator.

"'Course he did," Brooke said, pushing the up button. "But don't tell him I told you. Daddy don't like bein' caught out in a compliment." Then she turned and gave him one of those assessing O'Shea glances. Her mouth turned down in a little moue of dissatisfaction.

"'Scuse me, hon, but this has been botherin' me since earlier." She leaned close, tugging at his cream and gold silk tie. She smelled like vanilla and cinnamon today, a warm apple-pie scent that made Xander's nostrils flare. He didn't know what the perfume was called, but he bet it came in a yellow bottle.

"I really like this one," she said, giving the tie another long, strong pull, her soft, clever fingers dancing over his shirt front.

"You should, you picked it out that first weekend I was here," Xander replied, and wondered why his voice was coming out so breathless.

Brooke drew two glossy nails slowly down the silky length of material, smoothing it into place. "Mmmm, I have yummy taste." Baby blue eyes, framed by the longest lashes he'd ever seen on a girl, tilted up to his. "Don't I?"

Xander swallowed hard, his mouth gone all Sahara again. "Yeah, yummy," he said hoarsely.

The elevator doors opened. Brooke gave the tie one final pat and stepped into the elevator. She sketched him a little finger wave. "See you tomorrow!" The doors closed on another one of her crinkly smiles.

Xander stood staring at the elevator doors for a long time.

He liked Brooke. He liked hanging out with her. He liked the lunches and the Snickers bars and the old movies, liked letting her pick out his ties and tie up his cell with a dozen non-essential calls per day. He liked lending her his handkerchief when she was upset and his muscles when she wanted something re-arranged around her little house. Hell, truth be known, he even sorta liked it when she kicked his ass over some real or imagined work-related fuck-up on his part. That she was a girl with girl parts, and the daughter of the man who signed his paychecks, was entirely beside the point. And damn Ed Dixon for suggesting otherwise. Even a Harris had to have some kind of ethics, and screwing the boss' daughter to get ahead was so low that even a Harris was aware of the wrongness of it.

"Fuck him," Xander said to no one in particular. "I know what's really going on."

Squaring his shoulders defiantly, he headed to the vending machines for another bottle of water.

Part Six: How do I work this?

The next day Xander took himself over to Chez Brooke, wearing an olive green sweater she'd picked out and carrying the bottle of wine the sales clerk at Cortez Fine Liquors had suggested. According to earlier conversations with Brooke, wine was the primary beverage of choice at O'Shea holiday celebrations, as opposed to the Harris family tradition that put like with like, matching Wild Turkey with holiday fowl. Which did generally make for a foul holiday, Xander thought, smirking at his own bad pun. Actually, having Thanksgiving without any other members of the Harris family around was a restful prospect, a feeling which made him also feel rather guilty. Xander was determined not to feel guilty, however, over once again spending time outside of work with Brooke. He'd made a firm decision yesterday not to let any of Ed the Malcontent's slimy suggestions ruin a beautiful friendship, or his chance to eat homemade pecan pie.

Thus, sweatered, liquored, and alternately guilty and defiant, he rang the doorbell of Brooke's cute Spanish Revival stucco palace and waited.

The man who answered the door couldn't have been anybody but Big Buck, Jr.--or, rather, Clifford Junior, Xander reminded himself. Looking at Cliff was like looking at Buck minus thirty years and 70 pounds, which utterly didn't jibe with the mental image he'd conjured of Brooke's "gay veterinarian older brother." Xander had been expecting something along the lines of David from Six Feet Under and gotten the Marlboro man instead. Standing in the doorway, Cliff was the living image of the stereotypical Texan, from his slightly unkempt reddish hair, to his comfortable country slouch, to the worn cowboy boots on his feet. He never would have registered on Xander's gaydar, which just proved anew that Xander's gaydar was crap.

Cliff favored him with a long cool stare Clint Eastwood would have envied. "You must be Xander with an X. C'mon in. Crissy's up doin' somethin' to her hair." His words were civil enough, but his voice was as cool as his eyes, and his rugged, handsome face had none of the vibrant warmth of his father's or his sister's. It seemed the O'Shea charisma didn't always breed true, after all.

Xander held up the bottle. "I brought wine," he said, since he couldn't think of anything else.

Cliff inspected the label and gave a low whistle. "Chateau Margaux '96. Mamma's gonna love you," he said. He ushered Xander inside. "Tommy, Crissy's friend is here," he called out.

A moment later, Mister Winston shot out of the kitchen at warp nine and pelted up the stairs, followed by a small, olive-skinned man who was grinning from ear to ear.

"Hey, did you see that?" he said excitedly. "I had no idea el lardo could move that fast. Of all the days to leave the new betacam at home."

Cliff put a possessive arm around the smaller man's shoulders and kissed him on top of his dark tousled head. He fit under Cliff's chin with room to spare. "Tommy, this is Xander, O'Shea Construction's new golden boy. Xander, this is Tommy." His ice-grey eyes held a hint of challenge now, as if daring Xander to make something of it.

"Greetings and salutations," Tommy said, shaking Xander's hand with a surprisingly strong grip for such a tiny person. "We've sure heard all about you. Brookie says you're a fellow exile from Califor-nie-ay. Which part?"

"Sunnydale? Outside Santa Barbara."

Tommy's huge, almond-shaped eyes widened appreciatively. They were such a striking liquid gold color that Xander immediately suspected novelty contacts. "Cooool. That's a fabulous area--lots of natural wonders and celebrities dying to get away from it all. Have you ever noticed that stars are never so obvious as when they're trying not to be obvious? All those baseball caps and Jackie O sunglasses, just to keep us little people at bay. Sad, really. I grew up in San Fran, myself. Which is also a great place," he lowered his voice to a stage whisper, "if you don't mind all the queers."

Xander was startled into laughter. He was seeing now where Brooke had gotten the cartoon comparison from--Tommy was all color, angles and animation. The aura of coiled energy which surrounded him suggested a much larger individual, a quality that, oddly enough, reminded him of Spike. The razor-blade cheekbones and wiry cat's build further added to the resemblance. Though, he was pretty sure the vampire wouldn't have--pardon the expression--been caught dead in a Frosted Flakes t-shirt and orange cargo pants. Tommy's flamboyance also explained a great deal of the O'Shea family tension. Not only was Cliff's lover male and some variety of Asian, but his fashion sense was a cross between rave kid and traffic cone. In addition to the outfit, Tommy had four earrings in his left ear, blond stripes woven through his fashionably messy hair, orange and black rubber glitter bracelets coiled around his left wrist, and checked Vans on his feet. Maybe the O'Sheas could have eventually accepted Cliff taking up with another cowboy like himself, but the vivid Tommy, with his anime looks and day-glo hair, definitely pegged the tolerance meter.

"Does Texas totally suck or what?" Tommy asked, throwing a chummy arm around Xander and leading him over towards the sofa. "They didn't get a Starbucks in Eldorado until last year, and there is no such thing as decent sushi anywhere in Austin. The first time I stayed at Brookie's humble abode, I was quelle surprised to find out she had a cable modem line--I was expecting tin cups and a string."

"Not much for the sushi," Xander admitted. "It's the tentacles. You have to draw a line somewhere and for me it's tentacles. Anything with tentacles is not food, it's H.P. Lovecraft in a cardboard carton."

"Oh, you are adorable," Tommy said, giving him an enthusiastic squeeze. "If little sis doesn't treat you right, you can come home with me." Normally, Xander didn't like virtual strangers who weren't even hot babes getting touchy-feely, but Tommy had a warm, pettable quality you couldn't help responding to right away. He glanced over at Cliff to see how the other man was taking Tommy's flirtation, and saw him watching them with that same cool detachment. If his partner's antics bothered him, he didn't show it--Brooke's brother had one hell of a poker face.

At that precise moment, little sis made her presence known. "Tommy Hu Tora, what in the blue blazes did you do to Mister Winston?" she demanded, thumping down the stairs like the wrath of God in three-inch heels.

"Man, she's usin' middle names. You are so screwed," Cliff said calmly.

Brooke had the pug cradled to her bosom like a baby, and Mister Winston was giving Tommy a truly lethal look from the safety of his Mama's arms. Aside from the pug, Brooke was wearing a flowered silk dress in suitably autumnal shades of gold and red, with a prim line of buttons running from modest neckline to hem. For the occasion, she had pinned her hair up in some sleek way that had a name Xander didn't know, and was wearing a lot of amber jewelry that matched her dress. She looked like a caramel crème in a rich red wrapper.

Tommy's limpid topaz eyes had gone round in mock-shock. "Me? Do something to Mister Winston? Brooke, sweetie, do I look like the kind of man who goes around doing things to innocent animals?" he said, putting one small, braceleted hand to his chest. The overall effect was about as convincing as Sylvester the Cat with Tweety Bird's tail feathers sticking out of his mouth.

Brooke narrowed her eyes and set Mister Winston down on the sofa. "You better be sure you're not. Remember, I've got a .45 in the kitchen and a .22 under my bed, and I'm not afraid to use either one of 'em, buster."

"She's not lyin'. Crissy's almost as good as Dad," Cliff said to Xander. "She could change you from a rooster to a hen with one shot, boy."

Xander just looked at Cliff, not sure if the other man was joking or not. With Cliff it was kinda hard to tell.

Brooke was still focused on Tommy, giving him the thousand-yard stare from two feet away, manicured hands on her shapely hips. In her heels, she towered over him by a good three inches. "And go put somethin' over that shirt--Gramma's gonna have a stroke if you show up in that."

"Far be it from me to shorten that dear woman's life," Tommy said, grinning broadly. "We all know how much your daddy would miss her." He clicked his heels and sketched a snappy little salute before bounding away to the second-floor guestroom, taking the stairs three at a time.

Brooke gave a little exasperated sigh as she watched Tommy's retreating form, before turning back to Cliff and Xander. "Well, you boys manage to introduce yourselves and keep out of mischief?" she asked, brushing a few pug hairs off her dress.

"Oh, yes ma'am." Cliff said. "It's a wonder we didn't set the place on fire while you was takin' all that time tryin' to make yourself look presentable for a change."

"Just for that crack, you go get the pie." She said, arching the eyebrow of power at her brother before turning to Xander. "Don't pay Cliff Junior no mind, he's been workin' with animals so long that he forgets how to be human sometimes. Lie down with dogs, wake up with fleas."

Cliff came back in, a foil-wrapped pie in his hands.

"Lie down with tigers and wake up with really big fleas with attitude issues," Cliff replied.

"Fleas?" Tommy yelled from upstairs. His hearing had to be truly spectacular.

"None of my tigers have fleas," Cliff corrected. "It took six months but I finally got them off Raja when he came down from the Cincinnati Zoo. I run a clean house."

Acutely aware that the conversation was bending around the limits of his understanding, Xander looked to Brooke for help.

"Ohmigod. I totally forgot to tell you, didn't I?" Brooke said, looking a little embarrassed at her lapse in memory. "Cliff's not in private practice--he's a zoo vet. Of course, we always knew he was gonna be some kinda animal doctor. From the time he could walk he was bringin' home God knows what with a busted leg or a broken wing. He had a tank full of snakes, a possum, a raccoon, and some of the ugliest, sorriest mutts you ever did see. 'Course, I was always hopin' that sooner or later he'd just get sick of Mama and Daddy goin' on about his menagerie and run away to join the circus. He'd've been happier than a pig in slops, rolling around under the big top with the rest of the sexy beasts." She gave her brother an arch look from under her long lashes. "And I wouldn't've had to share a bathroom with Kelly anymore."

"I do big carnivores," Cliff explained to Xander. "Mostly. Mammals in general."

"It's the high-glam, top-of-the-food-chain predators all the way. Lions and tigers and bears, oh my. Cliffy's like catnip to the big kitties," Tommy clarified as he bounced back into the room, pulling a neon-orange sweater over his head. "He is such a slut." He pulled the larger man's head down to his level and gave him a loud, sloppy smack on the lips. Cliff's cowboy coolness yielded long enough to flash his partner a quick, aw-shucks grin Xander recognized.

Of course, Xander thought. No way is Big Buck's son gonna be treating poodles and gerbils. Jesus, even the vets are macho deep in the heart of Texas.

"Boys, entertainin' as y'all always are, we got to get this show on the road," Brooke said, looking at her watch. "Daddy and Gramma are prob'ly already lacin' up the gloves, and you know Aunt Randy's halfway to Judgment Day by now." She picked up Mister Winston again. The pug's mood had not improved--he was staring at all of them with an expression of undiluted disgust. He looked like Churchill after the Germans invaded Poland.

"Don't wanna miss Judgment Day, the end of the world is always so much fun," Xander said, pulling out the keys to his Jeep. "I try not to miss a single Apocalypse. It's kind of like following Kiss."

"Oooh, again with the witty cultural repartee. If it wasn't for that fugly sweater, I'd swear you were gay," Tommy replied. He pursed his lips appreciatively, making his cheekbones stand out even further than normal. "You certainly have the ass for it."

"Tommy, you behave yourself, " Brooke said, throwing him a warning look as she opened the front door. "And I picked that sweater out, by the way."

"Now Miss Brooke, I'm sure your boy is secure enough in his sexuality to withstand a compliment or two. And girl, you know you're Trinny and Susannah rolled up in one for me," Tommy cooed soothingly. He twitched the bottom of her long silk skirt. "'Cept you've got much better gams." Brooke slapped at him playfully and they both headed down the steps, giggling. But as Brooke walked on ahead, Tommy looked back over his shoulder, miming a cellphone by his ear and mouthing "Call me." He pointed at Xander's sweater and made the international upchuck gesture. Xander was too amused to be offended, though he doubted he'd letting a guy who dressed like a road flare go all Queer Eye for the Straight Guy on him any time soon.

Cliff just raised his eyes to the ceiling in search of a higher power, or possibly looking for cracks in the plaster.

"Ave, Caesar, nos morituri te salutamos," he said as they walked out the door, which gave Xander a little déjà vu from all the times when Latin was a bad thing.

********

Three hours later they were back in Brooke's living room, the familial obligation of dry turkey and oversweet yams completed. It had begun raining sometime between the first round of cocktails and Brooke's pecan pie, and they'd gotten halfway soaked running between the Jeep and Brooke's house. To Xander's continued annoyance, it was on-street parking only on Oleander Ave, since Brooke's Thunderbird was always squatting majestically in the tiny driveway. Brooke took herself off to give Mister Winston his Thanksgiving plate (an unnecessary indulgence, since he'd already scarfed down a turkey leg and half a pumpkin pie at the dinner), while Tommy sat on the floor and fastidiously dried himself with a towel filched from the kitchen. Cliff had a beat-up leather satchel on the floor and was rummaging around in it, while Xander collapsed on the sofa, full of turkey and green beans.

Despite Brooke's warnings, the O'Shea family gathering hadn't been the hatefest Xander had feared. Sure, there was some tension going around, but it didn't even register on the Harris Scale. Tommy and Big Buck had circled each other like two beasts from different parts of the jungle, while Cliff Jr. looked on with that same icy calm which could have been covering anything from indifference to utter despair. And there had been a few uneasy moments while Gramma Darling instructed Buck on the way "quality" people carved a roast turkey, much to Tommy's barely-concealed amusement. But there had been no yelling, screaming or throwing of food, just some strained looks and a general sense of everyone behaving very carefully with one another. It was nice to see a family that managed to function, even in an awkward way.

Brooke's mother, Candy, had the blonde, bland air of the beauty queen she'd once been, and was pleasant to the point of catatonia: Xander had met her for the third time today, and still wasn't sure if she was just one of those naturally placid people, or having a serious relationship with Prince Valium. Aunt Miranda was plump, intense, and needed to know if Xander was "saved." When he told her he had been, repeatedly, she blinked with surprise and didn't ask for further details. Uncle Steve owned a Cadillac dealership, and Xander had to sit through a long diatribe about the inferiority of Hondas, which might or might not have been a subtle ethnic slur directed at Tommy. Gramma Darling wasn't--she might have looked like the sweet old lady from the Tweety Bird cartoons, but she acted like Livia Soprano with a Texas accent. Xander strongly suspected that he now knew what Kelly, who had been there in all her sullen teenage glory, would be like in about sixty years.

When Brooke deserted him at one point to help her mother and aunt sort out some appetizer-related emergency, Buck had thrown a heavy, freckled arm around Xander's shoulders and introduced him to the rest of the clan. But the only links Xander could now recall from the endless chain of extended Darling kin were the unfortunate great-aunt Myrtle and the zaftig great-aunt Bonita. Myrtle was reed-skinny, bug-eyed, and nervous, as if she'd never quite gotten over the tornado that had flattened her trailer, and kept calling him "Andrew." But he'd quite liked Bonita, who, despite the unlucky resemblance to Homer Simpson with hair, had the style and sass her sisters-in-law lacked. Wrapped in a purple velvet caftan and turban that made her look like a big jolly grape, she'd offered to read his palm after dessert. Bonita predicted long life, great wealth, and half-a-dozen children, providing he avoided needles and strange men in black. Since most of the major traumas of Xander's life could be traced to the latter source, he'd resolved to avoid getting any piercings or tattoos in the future.

"Carpet picnic!" Brooke chirped, coming into the living room laden down with bowls, bags, and boxes and breaking into Xander's reverie.

"Where's your longtime companion, Miss Brooke?" Tommy inquired. He'd finished drying his hair into artful spikiness and was now loading Brooke's carousel DVD player from a black nylon wallet filled with the shiny discs.

"I put Mister Winston down in his doggie bed. He was all tuckered out, poor baby."

"Yes, getting your fat little ass carried around like the Queen of Sheba all day while your personal body servant stuffs goodies down your throat makes for a trying existence."

"Oh hush," Brooke said, as she carefully re-arranged the knickknacks on the coffee table to make room for all the snacks. "You talk about that poor animal like you've got a personal grudge."

"I'm just not a dog person, chérie," Tommy said, pushing the close button on the DVD player.

"Well, you're in my house, so you'll have to fake it," Brooke said, shooting him another warning look. Then she turned her attention back to the table, laying out the food with military precision. "Now, I've got Mallomars and Crunch 'n Munch and beef jerky and Vienna sausages and Cheez-Its and some of those Salt 'n Vinegar potato chips with sour cream dip and tortilla chips with queso sauce, and I think that should about do it."

"What about the Keebler Fudge Stripes?" Tommy whined, plopping down beside Cliff. "You know those are my favorite."

"You finished off both bags last night, so you'll have to make do with the Mallomars this evening," Brooke said unsympathetically. "I'm not runnin' to the store again for you two."

"You people do remember we just had a four-course meal, don't you?" Xander said, surveying the table with dismay. "I mean, with pie and everything?"

"You're in Eldorado now, Golden Boy," Cliff replied. "And Dad's about adopted you into the clan. You're gonna have to learn to do like we do." There was enough edge in Cliff's usually smooth drawl to make Xander tear his gaze away from the bounty in front of him and look at the other man. But Cliff just sat there giving him the Clint Eastwood eyes.

"Oh, just stuff yourself like a Roman Centurion at every opportunity and you'll fit right in," Tommy said lightly. Kneeling behind his seated partner, he put his small, strong hands on Cliff's shoulders and began massaging them in slow circles. Cliff half-closed his eyes and leaned back against Tommy with a little sigh. Xander looked away, with the sudden feeling that he'd intruded on a private moment.

"I've also lifted some of Mamma's private stash," Brooke said quickly, producing two slender, expensive-looking bottles and a quartet of wine glasses. "I figured we all deserved it after puttin' up with Daddy's war stories and Aunt Randy tryin' to save our souls all night."

"Never mind the wine--we've got somethin' way better," Cliff said, opening his eyes and sitting up straight. He rummaged around in his big satchel again for a minute, then, with a small smirk of triumph, pulled out a box of rolling papers and a plastic bag half-full of a green, mossy-looking substance.

"Oh, yes! Tommy came through," Brooke said, clapping her hands together excitedly. "You're forgiven for pickin' on Mister Winston, darlin'."

"You smoke pot?" Xander said, staring at Brooke incredulously. It was like finding out Princess Diana had hung out in leather bars.

"Well, not all the time, I'm not a hophead or anything," Brooke said a little defensively. "But on special occasions--I mean, it's no worse for you than a glass of wine or a double Jack on the rocks."

"Come on Xan-man, don't be a--" Tommy put down the rolling papers long enough to mime a square in the air. "All the cool kids are doing it."

Xander's experience with marijuana was pretty much limited to the summer after high school, when he'd worked at that strip joint in Oxnard. The bouncer, Mario, seemed to have an endless supply of the chronic, and when you spent your nights sleeping in a dusty storageroom and your days swabbing out bar toilets and squee-geeing off the dance poles, you needed a little something to grease the skids. The habit had stopped as soon as he returned to Sunnydale, however: on the Hellmouth, you generally wanted to have your wits about you.

But he wasn't on the Hellmouth anymore.

"Sure, why not?" he said, opening up the can of Vienna sausages.

"Cooool," Tommy said, putting the finishing touches on a beautifully rolled joint. He handed both it and a snazzy silver Zippo to Xander. "You get first hit, for being such a good sport all day."

Holding the joint carefully between thumb and forefinger, Xander put it to his mouth, sparked the Zippo with his other hand, and breathed in with the practiced double-inhale Mario had taught him. But the next second he nearly dropped everything into the sour cream dip, as he collapsed against the edge of the sofa in a fit of dazed coughing. Smoking Tommy's weed was like being hit in the chest with a cannonball wrapped in fur and then falling onto a feather bed that just happened to be on fire.

"What--" *cough* "the fuck--" *cough* is that?" he finally sputtered. The firey feeling was spreading outwards from his chest, shading into a fuzzy-wuzzy buzziness that went all the way to his toes.

"That's Tommy's private stash," Cliff said, reaching across the table and plucking the joint out of Xander's trembling fingers. "He gets it down in Mexico."

"It's amazing."

"For twelve hundred dollars an ounce it better be," Tommy replied, carefully sealing the baggie. "It's strictly special occasions only." He set the baggie on the edge of the coffee table and picked up Brooke's sleek universal remote. He fiddled with a few buttons, and suddenly some very familiar sepia-toned credits were flashing across the 50" screen, accompanied by some equally familiar sound effects and orchestral music. "Just like this."

"Aw man, I love this movie," Xander said sentimentally, leaning back against the edge of the sofa with the boneless ease really good pot gives you. "My best friend and I used to watch it every Thanksgiving when we were little." He bit down on the Vienna sausage, marveling at the new and complex flavors processed meat product had suddenly taken on.

"You two were friends of Dorothy, huh?" Tommy said, grinning wickedly as he ripped open a package of Slim Jims. "Hey Xander, you want to hear my unifying theory of moral subjectivity in the Wizard of Oz?"

"Oh no, not this again," Brooke rolled her eyes and took a long puff on the joint her brother had just handed her, as if for strength.

"Every, single, year, we gotta go through this," Cliff mumbled, shoving a handful of Crunch 'n Munch into his mouth.

"Pay no attention to the peanut gallery. Listen well, my young Padawan. This will change your life." Tommy swallowed the rest of the piece of jerky he'd been chewing on, snatched the joint from Brooke and took a hit. Closing his eyes, he blew the strangely heavy smoke out in slow, perfect rings. Xander was reminded of the caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland, and wondered when he'd fallen down the rabbit hole.

"Okay," he said uncertainly.

"My theory posits that, contrary to popular belief, the Wicked Witch of the West was totally the victim in this little scenario. I mean, think about it: Dorothy's house, which clearly wasn't built up to code, flattens her sister, the Wicked Witch of the East. So right there, she's got grounds for a major wrongful death suit. Then, to add insult to injury, farm girl rips off Eastie's ruby slippers, which, by the inheritance laws of any civilized country, rightfully belong to Westie. When sis lodges a very justified complaint over the issue, her sister's tenants proceed to run her out of town, those ungrateful little insects. I mean, clearly the Wicked Witch of the East kept up Munchkinland pretty well--did you take a look at the size of some of those cottages? Not to mention the landscaping. Anyway, the Witch quite reasonably pursues Dorothy for her lawful property, but in the meantime Dorothy's recruited a gang of homeless goons--the scarecrow, the tin-man, and the lion--to help her protect the swag."

Tommy paused and took another puff off the joint. His strange yellow eyes had taken on a dull sheen, like someone had buffed them with lemon Pledge. "So Dorothy goes to see this Godfather-type character, the Wizard, who's taken over Emerald City. He points the hayseed and her minions like a cannon at his biggest competition, the Wicked Witch of the West. Dorothy and her gang trespasses on this woman's property--which is very clearly marked with "keep out" signs--and why? To steal something else! She's already got the Witch's shoes, and now she wants the poor thing's only visible means of transportation, her broomstick. At this point, the Witch has finally had enough of the little bitch and quite sensibly decides to put Dorothy and her gang under house arrest until she can find a way to get her property back. Dorothy responds by murdering the Witch, then high tails it with the goods back to Emerald City, where she makes her getaway to Kansas. Which was probably a good idea--I mean, if she'd been apprehended by the proper authorities she'd have definitely been looking at thirty to life, once you added up all the charges--manslaughter, grand theft, aggravated burglary, felony homicide."

He leaned back against Brooke's velvet arm chair and surveyed the room like Poirot explaining a nefarious plot involving a candlestick in the conservatory. "Let's face it: the Witch got fucked. Dorothy got off scot-free 'cause she was a young white chick. If she'd been a black dude, they'd've tossed her ass in Oz Federal Penitentiary and thrown away the key." He passed Xander the joint.

Xander took another hit, managing to keep the coughing to a minimum this time. Like a lot of really good weed, Tommy's got mellower the more you smoked it. "Wow," he said, as the edges of the room went all soft and sparkly. "Dorothy as the Big Bad. I never woulda thought of that."

Tommy waved dismissively. "Pfui. Dorothy was just a hired thug. I doubt she had an eighth grade education--you know how those rural dustbowl communities were--they tossed 'em out at twelve and put 'em to work shoveling manure or something. She didn't have the brains or the know-how to work all that out. No, she was a mere pawn for the real Big Bad in Oz--Glinda."

Xander nearly choked on a Mallomar. "The Good Witch of the North?"

"Good witch, my ass. What, you think because she tarted herself up in a crown and pink dress and swanned around in the bubblemobile, that made her the good guy?"

"I always wanted that dress when I was little," Brooke said dreamily.

"That was all camouflage, honey," Tommy persisted. "Who helped Dorothy steal the slippers? Who incited the Munchkin rebellion? Who sent Dorothy easin' on down that yellow brick road to see the Wizard? And, most damningly, who told Dorothy how to get out of Oz only after she'd taken care of Glinda's two major rivals for power? That's why the Wizard left Scarecrow in control and skedaddled when Dorothy skipped town. He was hip to Glinda's little scheme and knew he'd be next on her hit list. I bet you Glinda had taken a lighted match to old Scarecrow by the time Dorothy woke up in Kansas."

"It's always the cute ones you gotta watch," Cliff remarked to Xander. "Hey, don't Bogart."

Xander passed him the joint absently, his mind still on what was seeming more and more like the most brilliant conspiracy theory since the second gunman on the grassy knoll. "So what you're saying is that rather than being a simple kiddie flick, The Wizard of Oz is actually a gritty political thriller."

"Makes All the President's Men look like a game of hide-and-seek, cupcake."

"'Strange women flying about in bubbles stealing shoes is no basis for a system of government,'" Xander misquoted with a goofy smile.

"Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical footwear ceremony," Tommy replied seriously, like he was giving the countersign. Then they both burst into hysterical laughter.

"If y'all are through wreckin' all our cherished childhood memories, can you shut up so I can hear this?" Brooke said, curling up on the sofa and tucking a pillow behind her head.

"Oh, hush. You're just mad 'cause I outed the redhead in the fancy dress as the villain of the piece."

Brooke chucked the pillow at Tommy, but couldn't quite suppress a smile.

Part Seven: Into the blue again

A few hours later, the Wizard of Oz had given way to Tommy's deluxe Hong Kong bootleg of Empire Strikes Back, and the heavily stocked table was beginning to look like a plague of locusts had hit it. The level of the conversation had also dropped considerably.

"Gawd, I'm so full I'm 'bout to bust," Brooke moaned, putting one arm over her eyes. She'd long since shed her high heels and was cocooned on the sofa, wrapped in her saffron knit blanket and surrounded by pillows, much like Queen Victoria in her invalid period.

"Just one more meent, wafer theen?" Xander said, dangling the package of Mallomars over her flushed face.

"Git those dam' things away from me!" she whined, batting the offending cookies to the floor. "I'm gon' be big as a house. . ."

"Oh no, Crissy's gettin' faaat," Cliff sang. He rolled over on his back and grinned at the stamped-tin ceiling. Apparently, even Cliff's poker face was no match for Tommy's private stash. "Daddy's little roly-poly's baaack."

"Shuddup! I am not fat! You take that back, Clifford Darling O'Shea!" She sounded like she was about to cry.

"I bet Aint Bonnie's got some extry mumus if ya need 'em, sissy." With the hair and the freckles and the goofy grin, Cliff suddenly resembled a very large, very evil Howdy Doody. "But how's she ever gon' catch her man in those?" he asked the ceiling.

"Play nice with your sister, Cliffy," Tommy said, crawling over to his partner and laying his small, spiky head on Cliff's chest. Despite the fact that he'd smoked more than anyone, he was the only one whose eyes didn't look like they were suffering from a nasty case of conjunctivitis.

"She's the one done brought it up," Cliff said indistinctly, running his long, calloused fingers through Tommy's hair. He was gazing at the whirling ceiling fan like it contained the secrets of the universe.

"I'm not fat," Brooke repeated in a very small voice from her nest on the sofa.

"Of course you're not, sweetpea," Tommy said soothingly, sitting up. "Xander here doesn't think you're fat, do you, Xan?"

"Huh-uh," Xander said absently. His attention had been stolen by the strobing lights in the final light saber duel between Luke and Darth Vader.

"He's not even lookin' at me!" she wailed.

"Xander, look at Brooke," Tommy said patiently. "Is she fat?"

Xander blinked a few times, trying to focus his eyes. They finally settled on Brooke, taking in her flushed curves and rumpled curls and milky-white skin. Xander thought of chocolate-covered cherries and gooey caramels and soft, creamy centers. Sweet things, yummy things, things you knew would taste good just by looking at them. "No, she's pretty. She looks like. . .candy."

"Why Xander, you silver-tongued devil you," Tommy drawled. "Why don't you go sit on the couch with Brooke and tell her just what kind of candy you think she looks like."

Xander climbed up onto the sofa obediently, because it was easier to obey orders than think his own thoughts. Brooke took his hand in her own rather sweaty one. "Tell me the truth," she said solemnly, her blue eyes big and round and glazed as a Krispy Kreme doughnut.

Mmmmm, his inner Homer drooled. Doughnuts.

Brooke's grip on his hand tightened. Her fingers felt warm and damp, like someone running a fever. "Look at me!" She said petulantly. "You think I'm all squishy, like a marshmallow. Don't you?"

Mmmmmm, Marshmallows. All soft and white and sweet, and you could just sink into them, get lost in all that plump, sugary. . ."Yeah, marshmallows are yummy," Xander said thickly.

"I knew it. I'm gettin' rid of these!" Snatching the Mallomars off the floor, Brooke leapt off the couch unsteadily, nearly flying into the coffee table. Tommy jumped up, cat-quick, and caught her by the waist.

"Xander, why don't you escort Miss Brooke into the kitchen, so she can put the cookies away," he sighed.

Xander stood up shakily. The room seemed to have too many colors in it and was rotating very, very slowly, like Mars. "My legs aren't working so good," he said, clutching onto the end of the sofa for support.

"That's okay, you two can prop each other up," Tommy said, transferring Brooke leanage from Xander to himself. "Maybe if you trip you'll accidentally fall on top of her," he muttered.

"Huh?" Xander said, a little distracted by the fact that Brooke was hanging all over him like a very soft, expensive suit.

"Nothing. Left foot, right foot, your bodies will follow," Tommy said, shoving the both of them in the general direction of the kitchen. "Have fun, you crazy kids."

Xander and Brooke did manage to stumble into the kitchen under their own power, but things quickly degenerated from there. First, Brooke tried to shove the cookies in the trashcan, but Xander, never one to let good chocolate go to waste, snatched them from her hand. Then he tried to put them in the refrigerator, but this apparently offended her sense of order, which appeared to be intact even after a three-hour tango with Mary Jane. Finally, he was just going to set them on the counter, but she still wasn't happy.

"No, cookies go up there, on the right!" Brooke said, her pink mouth turning down in frustration. With the pout and the curls, she looked like the world's most voluptuous second-grader.

Reckless and stoned, Xander stuck the Mallomars in the cabinet to the left of the pug-shaped cookie jar. Brooke squealed in frustration and hopped around, slapping at him.

"No! Your other right!" she yelped and made a grab for the Mallomars.

Since Xander was holding the slim yellow box pretty much over her head, and Brooke's shoes were somewhere in the living room, this put her at an unusual height disadvantage. Undeterred, she made a sudden leap for the box and crashed into him like Charles Barkley putting the smackdown on some sorry motherfucker at the Olympics. Just to keep the two of them from falling into the sink, Xander dropped the Mallomars and grabbed for her. What he ended up with was Brooke smashed up against his chest with his arm around her back, and then she was kissing him. On the mouth. With tongue.

Right, and he was kissing her back. She tasted like chocolate with a hint of the sweet, green taste of the weed. Good, long, sticky chocolate-and-cannabis kisses, with her fingernails raking the back of his neck and the fine softness of her breasts pressed up against his chest. Yeah, good kisses, the kind of kisses that made his knees turn into oatmeal and fogged up his brain with sweaty thoughts. The kiss went on for about a year, time getting very elastic after Tommy's top-notch ganja. But when Brooke finally pulled back from him her eyes, though red from the weed, were sparking with worry.

"Oh God," she muttered and then corrected herself. "Oh shit."

Of course, she burst into tears and ran out of the kitchen as though pursued by snakes. Mister Winston walked in, up from his nap and trolling for more leftovers. He looked over his shoulder at Brooke's retreat, then cast an accusing stare at Xander.

"So not my fault," Xander told the pug. "And I'm not used to that kind of response afterwards."

The Mallomar box was crushed on the floor, with a sad ooze of graham cracker guts leaking from a torn corner.

"You killed the Mallomars! You bastard!" Tommy shouted, bouncing in.

"Aww man, I really messed something up." Xander took off his glasses and rubbed at his eyes, which felt as though somebody had taken a belt sander to them. The shock of the kiss had sobered him up enough to realize how big a mistake he'd just made.

"Are you talking about that big ol' Gone With the Wind-style smooch you planted on Miss Brooke? 'Cause from the other room, it looked pretty hot," Tommy said comfortingly.

"You think Q-Mart is hiring? 'Cause I am so gonna need a new job come Monday."

Tommy shot him a strangely familiar look, one which implied that not only was he too stupid to be drawing breath, but that by doing so he was stealing valuable oxygen reserves away from others more worthy. His resemblance to Spike at that moment was pronounced enough to be disturbing. "Xander, sweetie? I know you're stoned off your cute little ass, but get a fucking clue." He picked up the smashed Mallomar box and ripped it open. "The whole Luke Skywalker routine is adorable, but remember, the Princess walked off with Han in the end."

"So not getting the point here," Xander mumbled.

"Save me, Jebus, from stupid straight people." Tommy rolled his eyes and delicately extracted half a Mallomar.

Because he was stoned, this made perfect sense to Xander.

"Yeah, but--"

Tommy shoved the rest of the cookie in his mouth and dropped the box on the counter. "C'mon." He grabbed Xander's arm and frogmarched him out of the kitchen, while Xander marveled again at Tommy's completely out-of-proportion strength. Then again, Xander's muscles had gone to mush at about the same time as his brain. Xander's stomach fell into his shoes as Tommy dragged him up the stairs and down the short hallway. Flinging open the door to Brooke's bedroom with a dramatic flourish, he catapulted Xander inside. Xander hadn't been pushed into a feminine inner sanctum like this since he'd been shoved into the girls' locker room in ninth grade.

He stumbled over the edge of the rug as the door slammed behind him, hearing Tommy's insane Mozart-like giggle from the other side of it. There wasn't anything else for him to do but stand there with his mouth open like an idiot or a fish. Possibly an idiot fish. By the light of a single bedside lamp, Xander could make out his reflection in the mirror over the dresser. The uncomfortable thing about looking at himself while this ass-hatted stoned was the fact that he was sure he could see inside his own head.

And he totally didn't recognize himself.

Over at the vanity, Brooke was looking at her reflection and seemed to be suffering from the same problem. She had her chin in her hands and was staring at her red eyes and messy hair with an expression close to despair.

"You okay?" he asked, moving to where he could see his own warped reflection over her shoulder. She blushed, and with the red cheeks and red eyes and red hair she looked like her head was on fire.

"This is not how things was s'posed to happen," she said miserably.

"What?" he asked with his usual wit.

"It wasn't gon' be this way. I had plans. Had a whole file in Microsoft Project with a timeline. There were dates an' benchmarks and everythin'."

"And we are talking about what? I'm idiot boy tonight. Idiot Boy being the well-known sidekick of Druggie Dude."

"Drugs are bad," Brooke said, apparently having reverted to seventh-grade health class in her despair. "That's the problem. I wasn't plannin' on gettin' all stoned an' flingin' myself at you over a box of Mallomars." She reached for a tissue to dab at her watery eyes.

Then she dropped her head to the side and regarded him through the mirror. "I like you. I mean, I really like you." Her full lower lip trembled like Jell-O in a hurricane.

"Aw, I like you too, honey," Xander said, plopping down on the edge of the bed next to the vanity, since his equilibrium was still a little wonky.

Brooke spun around on the vanity stool to face him. "No," she said, her face going even redder in frustration. "I mean, I like you."

"You mean, like me, like me?" Xander said slowly. "Or just. . . like me?" Then he started to giggle madly, because this whole conversation would be waaay more at home written out on wide-ruled notebook paper, complete with little boxes for checking "yes" or "no," and shoved in a junior high school locker. Or maybe just because he was still pretty baked.

At his laughter, Brooke let out the frustrated growl of a caged lioness, and with one sudden movement leapt off the stool and tackled him with a rough-and-tumble ferocity that would have done Buffy proud. Xander fell backwards with a muffled whoomp!, more giggles welling up inside him like soap bubbles as he sank into the downy depths of her satin-covered featherbed. He grinned goofily up at the furious redhead who was straddling him like an angry Valkyrie, pinning his thighs with her knees and his shoulders with her hands, a move she'd probably perfected from years of wrestling with a bigger, tougher older brother.

Wow, spark a few doobies and Princess Diana turns into Xena, Warrior Princess. This made him laugh even harder. In the immortal words of Tommy, cooool.

"Stop laughin'!" Brooke commanded, giving him a sharp shake. "I mean it!"

But Xander, laced on sugar and pot and the bucketloads of hormones the kitchen kiss had dumped into his system, was beyond following such orders. The image of Brooke bounding through the forest in a breastplate and leather skirt, (with three-inch heels, of course) Mister Winston tucked under one bare, braceleted arm, was just too funny for words. He could feel his face flushing and his eyes well up with tears and his stomach start to ache from the laughter, but he couldn't seem to stop.

Her highness, clearly not used to having her commands ignored, gave another one of those dead-sexy frustrated growls and did the one thing guaranteed to get him under control. Digging her sharp little nails into his shoulders, Brooke leaned down and planted another ferocious, open-mouthed, breath-stealing kiss on him. Xander's laughter cut off like somebody had clipped it with scissors.

The kitchen had not been a fluke, this kissing Brooke thing was of the hot. Of the major hot. Her lips were salty from sweat and tears, but underneath she was still full of Mallowmar-y goodness. Only this kiss couldn't be blamed on the cookies: he was probably going to be permanently tattooed with the imprint of Brooke's fingernails, the lioness's claws digging into him as she pulled him closer, her tongue exploring his mouth like it was planning to plant a flag and move colonists there. She clearly meant business this time.

And it finally hit him, like a steel I-beam across the back of the head. Brooke liked him. Not just movie-buddy, help-me-move-my-sofa, go-dutch-on-dinner like, but tackle-me-on-the-bed-and-shove-my-tongue-down-your-throat-like. This amazing, gorgeous, wonderful, smart, and classy girl really liked him. She wanted him. As if to punctuate the realization, at that moment Brooke released his knees, collapsed her soft, lush weight on top of him, and began grinding her silk-clad lap against his. Xander's dick, which had been in cryogenic freeze since May, came to life, stretched, and smiled out at the brave new world it had woken up to.

It was at that point the 2% of Xander's brain still capable of drawing logical conclusions realized that he wanted her right back. That he had, in fact, wanted her for months, probably from the moment she bounded into his life flinging bananas, fashion advice, and too much leg at him. How could he not want her? She was beautiful, brilliant, funny, ate like a lumberjack but talked like a lady. She knew The X-Files had gone to shit after Season Five, could tell the difference between the Green Lantern and the Green Archer, and preferred Batman to Superman. Oh yeah, he wanted her. He wanted her like he wanted a Detective Comics No. 27, like he wanted a whole box of Mallomars after smoking Tommy's stash. And if the part of him that had made the Brooke = want connection months ago hadn't seen fit to share that knowledge with the rest of the class, it must have been because he'd never imagined in his wildest dreams that this goddess would ever, ever want him back. Princesses kissed frogs only in fairy tales, right?

Maybe there were real things about the old stories besides the monsters.

Xander's semi-stoned reverie was interrupted rather unpleasantly by Brooke pulling back and releasing him. She had apparently made her point, or perhaps she was just out of breath. Her magnificent hair was tumbling down around her shoulders like a lava flow, her bosom most definitely heaving underneath the tight bodice of her dress. She looked so good it was almost indecent. Xander realized that his new Rita Hayworth obsession had nothing to do with Rita Hayworth.

"I'm gon' ask you this just one more time," she panted. "Xander Lavelle Harris, do you like me?" Her eyebrows drew together dangerously. "And don't you dare laugh, or I won't be responsible for my actions."

Laughter was absolutely the furthest thing from his mind at that moment, unless he went suddenly hysterical with happiness.

She made a small, vital movement with her hips. "Well? Do you?"

"Y-yes!" Xander squeaked, his fingers digging into the feather bed, half-fearing and half-hoping she'd do that again.

Brooke nodded with grim satisfaction. "And 'cause I don't got a shred of dignity left at this point, I wanna clarify, just so there's no confusion. Do you wanna have sex with me?"

Since he was lying underneath her on her bed, wearing most of her lipstick and sprouting a giant sequoia in his pants, Xander thought the answer was pretty much obvious, but the lady apparently wanted verbal confirmation and far be it from him to deny her anything right now.

"Uh, yes?"

The frustrated fury fled Brooke's face, and she relaxed into the contented smile of a Persian kitten who's fallen head-first into a cut-crystal bowl of cream.

"Well, that's what I thought," she purred, and dropped her head to kiss him again.

Xander sank back, Brooke on top of him and the featherbed underneath him, happily trapped between layers of softness. There was just so much of Brooke. She stretched into infinity like an infinite thing. The way that she'd glued herself to his front was nothing short of intoxicating, with her breasts snuggled up against his chest and her thighs squeezing his hips. His hands, having finally recovered from the shock of being allowed to touch Brooke, moved wherever he could reach. They ran down her back, tangled in the burning silk of her hair, and finally reached down to grab a great double handful of her ass. She was making happy throat-sounds the whole time, kissing him harder, with more need, with more passion, until the whole room was swirling stupidly around him. It was a good thing that he was lying down, because he couldn't have stood up if the safety of the universe had depended on it.

God, it was amazing. Her hair was as soft as it looked, her skin was softer, and her body just melted onto him like butter. And he'd been right--she tasted every bit as good as she looked.

"I am really startin' to hate this sweater," she murmured into his mouth, picking at the olive green cotton.

"You picked it out," he reminded her, even though his diction was as fuzzy as the sweater.

"I changed my mind."

Sliding off him and off the bed, Brooke backed up a couple of feet and began unbuttoning the prim line of buttons down the front of her dress. Something inside Xander began to whine and whimper, like a puppy denied its treat. He reached out for her, but Brooke, a teasing smile on her face, took another step back. Since Brooke wasn't one to skimp on the drama any more than she was likely to skimp on the cream in her coffee, she took that opportunity to let her dress fall in an autumnal heap around her feet. Standing there in nothing but her skivvies, she looked like she should have been photographed in black-and-white and hanging over some private's bunk in the Pacific.

Holy Frederick's of Hollywood, Batman, he thought giddily. This is too good to be true.

It would probably be useful to know at this point that for much of his deprived adolescence, Xander had been embroiled in a heated ménage à trois with his right hand and a pile of those moodily-lit, expensive lingerie catalogs. While other boys his age were stealing their dad's copies of Playboy and Hustler, Xander was secreting his mom's issues of Victoria's Secret underneath his mattress. All those years of poring over the smooth compactness of lingerie models trapped in satin and nylon and stretch lace had left him permanently marked. Call him a romantic or maybe just a wuss, but beautiful women in garter belts and push-up bras had always seemed way more appealing to him than silicone breasts and crotch shots. It had also given him a better-than-average knowledge of women's underwear.

With years of study to his credit, he could identify the long-line strapless satin bra and body-shaping panty briefs Brooke was wearing, but the color left him confounded. It wasn't peach and it wasn't red, it was the reddish peach at the heart of the fruit, the rosy-gold flesh right around the center. With her white, freckled skin showing where it wasn't covered by satin and lace-topped thigh-highs, Brooke was a peaches-and-cream dream. Strong shoulders, full breasts, tiny waist, generous hips and impossibly long legs--it was like one of his teenage fantasies had stepped off her slightly sticky page and come eerily, heart-stoppingly to life. Xander felt sick and dizzy and his heart was beating a salsa rhythm. Brooke seemed to be straining at every seam, as though mere fabric couldn't contain her.

Making matters worse, she put her hands on her hips, ruby lips turning down in a spicy fake pout.

"Not interested?" she asked, with a minxish flick of her hair.

"Come here," he said, his voice about two octaves lower than usual.

He sounded like a caveman.

Girl pretty. Xander want pretty girl. Now.

Brooke sauntered over and settled herself on his lap. Wrapping her arms around his neck, she kissed him again, and Xander clamped his hands around her waist to keep himself from banging her over the head with the lamp and dragging her back to his cave. The kiss went on and on and Xander let his hands wander over skin silkier than the underwear, while his confined erection throbbed and ached like an abscessed tooth.

"You gonna join me or what?" she asked after a long, steamy interval.

"Uh-hmmph," he agreed, having by this time regressed to a pre-lingual state.

Taking this as a yes, she wiggled back and delicately removed his glasses, folding the earpieces and neatly placing them on the bedside table. He couldn't see her individual freckles anymore, but it was a small loss compared to having glass and metal pressing against his face when he wanted other things pressing there. Warming to her work, Brooke grabbed the bottom of his sweater and pulled it over his head, helped by the fact that Xander's arms were now so much cooked spaghetti. A moment later, his t-shirt was flung after the sweater and she was running her kitten claws up and over his shoulders and chest. Xander experienced a moment of indecision as to whether he should growl or purr.

"What are we gonna do with you?" she teased.

With a little smirk, she twisted around, reached down, and started pulling off his shoes and socks. He let her, completely giving himself over to a higher power. In a few moments, he was sitting on the edge of the bed, stupid and naked, fumbling with the hooks and eyes on the front of her bra. When her breasts finally tumbled loose, Xander realized that he'd been a liar for years--more than a handful wasn't a waste. There was something about having his work-hardened hands overflowing in soft girl-flesh, with cinnamon-colored nipples peeking between his fingers, that just made him feel like primal guy. Gimme, his crocodile brain commanded, as he felt a twist deep down in his stomach that had nothing to do with hunger--at least not for food. Brooke moaned when he sucked one and then the other nipple into his mouth, pressing her crotch against his leg, letting him feel the hot wetness that was starting to seep through the mango-colored panties. Her skin tasted like vanilla, cream, and salt, and the way that she twisted her fingers in his hair tight enough to hurt just made his dick throb harder.

"I think we gotta close this deal," she muttered into his hair. She slithered off his lap and shimmied out of the panties, more cream and white and--dear God in Heaven--all that red hadn't come out of a bottle. The well-tended patch of her public hair was the same apricot color as her eyebrows. Xander lay back on the bed and felt even his reptile brain go into vapor lock. The mattress shifted as she climbed on top of him, and he opened his eyes and watched the hypnotic sway of her breasts as she positioned herself above his hips. Hips that were starting to strain upwards of their own volition.

"Is this for me?" she teased and took his dick in her hand, with the same strong, sure pulls she had used on his tie a lifetime ago.

All Xander could do was grunt.

Maybe it was the weed, maybe it was the one hundred and ninety-two days that he'd only had his own hand for company, or maybe it was just Brooke. In any event, all the nerves in his cock seemed about ten times more sensitive than ever before and having her slide onto his swollen shaft was like plunging into melted chocolate fondue. She groaned and he caught her breath in his mouth as he lunged up to kiss her, the shining curtain of her hair falling around them.

Still stoned on Tommy's primo weed, Xander felt time get elastic again. They fucked forever, or at least it seemed that way. Brooke ground down on him at a languorous, steady pace, and all he did was lie there and enjoy every millisecond of it: the concentration on her face, the undulation of her breasts, the sweat beads that formed on her forehead, and the way that her breasts felt swaying in his hands. After several years of fucking, she tossed back her head and a furious blush crept up from her nipples to her hairline and she shuddered above and around him, squeezing his dick from the inside, massaging it, the pressure building up and building up until he was either going to come or explode into a thousand pieces all over her antique bed. Smirking at his distress, Brooke made that wicked little shimmy with her hips again, and again, and one more time, and that was enough--he came and came and came, until it felt like his entire spine was shooting out of his dick and his brains were leaking from his ears. Forget climaxing--this was an out-of-body experience. From his position on the dark side of Mars, he could vaguely hear the sounds of Brooke coming again, but he was too far away to enjoy the prospect of having given a girl multiple orgasms. Plus, he strongly suspected that she'd done most of the giving in this situation.

After a moment or two, Xander fell back down to earth and sunk into the suffocating comfort of the bedding, feeling utterly wrung dry.

It's unpleasantly like being drunk, his mind quoted loopily.

What's so unpleasant about that?

Ask a glass of water.

Finally, Brooke groaned and half-collapsed on top of him. Their skin made wet, sticky sounds as she moved over, one leg still between his, her arm thrown over his chest and her hair sticking to his face and neck. They were panting like Olympic runners, and even though what was left of his brain was seriously oxygen-starved, Xander retained the presence of mind to keep an arm around her and trace his fingers over the humid surface of her skin.

"Wow," he said. "Major wow." Not the most eloquent post-coital pillow chat, but the best his five remaining brain cells could come up with.

"Shoulda done that sooner," Brooke mumbled, burrowing her nose into his neck. "Thought I was gonna have to send you an engraved invite."

A sudden, buzz-killing realization washed over him like a cold shower. "Oh Jesus, we didn't use anything. You don't think. . ."

"Shush," Brooke said calmly, raising her head and giving him a Mona Lisa smile, or at least the way the Mona Lisa would have smiled if she'd been naked on satin bedding after two orgasms. "I'm on the pill--and I'm fine. And unless you've been doin' somethin' in the last couple of months you haven't been tellin' me, so are you."

Xander just looked at her uncomprehendingly. Brooke's smile widened. "Your company physical in September. Dr. Torres tests for just about everything, just to be on the safe side. I peeked at your file about a month ago."

This should have bothered him, but strangely enough, it didn't. It was oddly comforting to think that Brooke really did think of everything.

Then a silly thought hit him about as hard as the lust had, making it the second I-beam that night to finally penetrate the thickness of his skull.

"Hey," he started, shakily hitching himself up on one elbow. "You wanna go out with me?"

This time it was Brooke's turn to dissolve into giggles. Xander could only wait until she'd finished laughing and wiped the helpless tears from her cheeks with the back of her hand.

She grinned at him and he could see all nine of the freckles on her nose even without his glasses.

"Yeah, Xander Harris, I'll go out with you."

Part Eight: My God, what have I done?

The month between Thanksgiving and Christmas would come to be known in Xander's mind as Sexapalooza 2003. It shouldn't have surprised him that Brooke dove into sex with the same gusto she attacked working, shopping and eating. There was, however, a certain amount of furtiveness that went with the marathon sex-fest. Brooke told him on their second night together that there was no reason for the whole town to be in their business, as it inevitably would if word got out they were dating. Xander correctly interpreted "the whole town" as "Daddy," but decided to let her have her way on this, as in many other things. It wasn't like they weren't both single and over 21, but the sneaking around seemed naughty and dangerous to Brooke, and Xander wasn't about to harsh her buzz.

This meant no sleeping over. Brooke had a reputation to protect in Eldorado, one that would be better served by Xander stumbling out of her house at two in the morning rather than six. Six nights out of seven he staggered down her neatly tiled front doorstep nookie-stunned and reeking of sex. He stuck an industrial strength air freshener in the Jeep and tried not to worry about it, even though he had to park on the street and got the odd parking ticket from time to time for being too close to the fire hydrant. The only awkward part of these nightly romps was the disdainful pug leaving the room in disgust when the humans reached the tongue-wrestling stage. Mister Winston would only come back to the bedroom once Xander was getting dressed, scrambling onto the bed to sleep on the pillow next to Brooke, where Xander's head had been just moments before. The message was clear: Mister Winston belonged in the bed with Brooke, not Xander. But he was so blissed out he could even deal with the fact that not long after Sexapalooza began, the pug also began pissing in his shoes on a regular basis.

One weekend, Brooke hired a dogsitter and they went to San Antonio, staying at a tasteful B&B and only getting out of bed to make one half-assed attempt to see the sights and eat Mexican food. Afterwards, his only semi-clear memories of the whole crazy weekend were drinking Dos Equis near the river and getting a blowjob in the shower that dropped his IQ ten points.

Xander was pretty much in heaven. He'd always suspected he might have a slightly higher sex drive than normal for humans his age, or at least that had been implied to him on more than one occasion. And after a six-month hibernation, his libido had returned with the roar of a bear finally out of its den. Happily, Brooke's libido was the she-bear to his he-bear, and there were nights that she actually wore him out.

Almost every day they met for lunch, as they'd done for the past five months, except now lunch was sneaking back to the Corporate Suites and dining on each other's skin. If work hadn't been so slow because of the upcoming holidays, he would have ended up in a shitload of trouble. It wouldn't have taken Sherlock Holmes to figure out why Xander always came back at one o'clock rumpled beyond belief and smelling like Brooke's perfume. After work they just couldn't keep their hands off each other, and Xander knew he was floating around in a blissful sex-soaked daze half the time. Despite the happy fog, Xander still had guilt to spare. Big Buck had shown him nothing but kindness, and he was repaying the man by banging his daughter at every opportunity. So not right.

Also, that image of being hung by his balls and having his eyes pecked out by buzzards wasn't gonna go away anytime soon.

But he was just too crazy about Brooke to even consider stopping. The two of them had a terrific time in and out of bed. They watched action movies and ate pizza sitting on the floor in her living room. They went bowling and she dropped the ball on her foot, which required ice and get-better sex. They were even working their way through the entire Monty Python oeuvre, and Brooke could now proudly quote the Dead Parrot Sketch chapter and verse. She was really the best of both worlds, someone he'd have a blast hanging out with even if there was no sex involved. That there was sex, the best of his life and plenty of it, was just the icing on Xander's already triple-layer vanilla and white chocolate fudge cake. When he was with Brooke, Xander felt like he could do anything, like he was light years away from being Buffy's Boy, the loser who had paid his parents to live in their basement and had left his fiancée stranded at the altar.

Christmas was a blurred repeat of Thanksgiving, with Tommy and Cliff coming down from Austin, only including a frantic gift-wrapping marathon Christmas Eve. With Brooke's mania for perfection, each gift had to be agonized over and painstakingly wrapped in a personalized fashion for the recipient. At 3 AM, she collapsed in a sobbing, stressed-out heap on the living room rug and announced that her head was going to explode and she no longer wanted to live. Xander had to carry her upstairs and tuck her into bed before he and Tommy cleaned up the wrapping debris while Cliff watched.

Christmas Day was a weird amalgamation of stress and repressed lust. It was a more-than-surreal experience for Xander to be eating roast beef and sweet potato casserole and making small talk with great-aunt Myrtle while Brooke's foot massaged his calf under the table. The fact that the old lady still thought his name was Andrew and was under the impression he'd recently left the Merchant Marines didn't help matters much. After dinner, Buck gave Xander a set of Callaway titanium golf clubs, with the injunction that "I'm gonna get you down to a 12 handicap if it finishes the both of us." This was coming on top of the frighteningly large bonus check he'd received at work the week before. Together, the gifts made Xander nearly combust from guilt over what he was doing with Buck's daughter. Brooke gave him a butter-soft brown leather briefcase to replace the one Willow had handed down to him, and it seemed like one more symbolic step away from Sunnydale. In front of everybody, Xander gave Brooke a yellow Roseville art vase from Amarillo Antiques that she'd been coveting for months. It was the public gift, the one that didn't set off any sex alarms.

Christmas night, Tommy and Cliff discreetly retired to the guest bedroom by nine, leaving Brooke and Xander downstairs to have sex under her gold, white, and yellow-festooned Christmas tree. Afterwards, while Brooke was sitting naked under the now-drunkenly tilting tree and picking tinsel out of her hair, Xander gave her the not-for-public-consumption present. It was a princess-cut lemon-yellow diamond pendant, on a chain so fine it was nearly invisible. Of course she burst into tears, which had pretty much been his reaction when he'd signed the sales slip. But it was nice to be able to make a girl weep from happiness for a change.

Deep in his heart, Xander knew that something this good couldn't last. He'd never been lucky, and the tiny portion of his brain that hadn't been screwed stupid spent those four weeks speculating on just when the other shoe was going to drop. He figured he had until around Valentine's Day, traditionally one of his more disastrous holidays, before he fucked it all up in some spectacular fashion.

As it turned out, he was being way too generous with himself.

"The good thing about goin' to Cliff and Tommy's for New Year's is gettin' out of town," Brooke said to him one day not long after Christmas. "One guest room, one guest bed with 400-count Egyptian cotton sheets, and no sneakin' off at 2AM for you. If I can just convince Tommy to let me bring Mister Winston, we'll be all set." She chewed thoughtfully on the last of the ice from her drink. "I may have to call Sheila, though--Tommy's still kinda ticked off about Winnikins wettin' all over some of his vintage Jungle Book animation cels last time. I found him some more on e-Bay, but Tommy acts like he did it on purpose or somethin'. Can you believe that?"

Xander, who was on his third pair of Nike cross-trainers this month after having the two previous pairs baptized by Mister Winston's disdain, wisely decided to plead the fifth on that one. He gave Brooke a non-committal smile from around the big bite of fried ice cream he'd shoveled in to cover.

Since it was only two days shy of their five-week anniversary, they'd decided to celebrate with a three-course lunch at Las Margaritas, one of several dozen Mexican restaurants in Eldorado. They'd chosen Las Margaritas for very good reasons: it served enchiladas hot enough to blister the bumps off your tongue, and mojitos frosty enough to let you actually get the enchiladas down. Also, it was far enough away from the office that the possibility of anybody catching them playing footsie under the tabletop was significantly decreased. Not that they had much to worry about on that count. Between Christmas and New Year's, O'Shea Construction was as deserted as heaven on a Saturday night. Vacation time went around faster than a head cold, and even Big Buck was due to go off on his yearly cruise with Candy in the next couple of days. The worst of the holiday insanity was behind them, and there was a long weekend of privacy and a shared bed in Austin in front of them. From where Xander sat, the view in all directions looked pretty good.

Especially since Brooke was sitting right smack in the middle of his eyeline. She looked even prettier today than usual, the pale winter sunlight coming in from the window near their table highlighting the gold and copper streaks in her hair and the rosy-pink tones in her milky skin. In her butterscotch angora sweater and black pencil skirt, with her hair in a flippy little pony-tail, she looked like one of those sweater girls from the fifties--Jayne Mansfield with better manners.

"What?" she asked, wrinkling the freckles on her nose and cocking her head to the side. The melted ice from her drink was giving her lower lip a shine you usually only saw in magazines.

"You're gorgeous."

From under her slyly dropped lashes, she gave him a look even hotter than the Las Margaritas enchiladas.

"Well, aren't you sweet," she cooed, rubbing her foot against his leg under the table.

Mojitos were good, they were like drinking limeade with a kick. A big cow-sized kick. Xander lifted his third and finished it off, resisting the urge to lick his lips.

"Should we really be doing this? Drinking at lunch?" he asked.

Brooke gave him the cream-fed kitten smile.

"Honey, this is one of the four or five occasions when it's good to be the daughter of The Big Man. 'Sides, there's nobody around at the office. And anybody who is left is playin' Solitaire or biddin' for stuff on e-Bay. Nobody cares what shenanigans we're gettin' up to today," she said, punctuating her statement by finding a sweet spot just under his right knee. Xander nearly choked on an ice cube.

Brooke leaned forward and whacked him on the back, which didn't really help his situation any, since this gave him a million-dollar view straight down the V of her sweater. Finally, he managed to get the coughing under control and sat back, straightening his tie with a nervous movement. Brooke just sat there looking at him with that wicked little smile which made his libido sit up and beg like a dog for Snausages, but at least she'd put her shoes back on.

"I've been thinking," he said, pushing his thoughts back on track with a determined shove.

"Now, why would you wanna bother your pretty little head doin' a thing like that?" Brooke purred, tracing one long, glossy-tipped finger over the knuckles of his left hand. Xander captured her wayward fingers in his.

"No, really. I've been thinking that, you know, maybe after your dad gets back from vacation we could, like, do official dateage." His nervousness had caused him to momentarily lapse back into Sunnydale-speak.

Brooke raised one perfectly arched amber eyebrow. "'Dateage?' Sweetie, sometimes I wish you'd learn to speak English." Her tendency to poke fun at him whenever he reverted to the slang of his wayward youth was one of the many reasons he'd worked hard to talk like a grown-up over the past five months. That, and the humiliating time he'd referred to Ponce De Leon phase two as "that major-big project thingie" at a meeting in front of Buck and everybody.

"Officially date," he corrected quickly. "In public, with people knowing and stuff. No more sneaking around and going out of town." Making me feel like a dirty little secret, he mentally added, offering up post-mortem regrets for being rotten to Spike about his clandestine affair with Buffy.

Doubt marched across Brooke's pretty face, as the pause stretched out much longer than Xander would have liked.

"I dunno. I mean, it's not like I'm embarrassed of you or anything. Not since I gave you that little makeover back in July, anyway," she said, giving him a teasing smile before growing serious again. "It's just, if we march into work Monday morning and announce we're a couple, Daddy will meddle. There's no gettin' around that." Brooke frowned and stabbed at her drink with the tiny cocktail straw.

"Not an ultimatum, just thinking out loud," Xander said, trying to cover the hurt in his voice.

He must not have succeeded very well, because her frown got a little deeper. She squeezed his hand.

"No, you're right. People are gonna find out sooner or later, with you over at my house every night. And Daddy'll be the first to know--you'd swear that man was psychic or somethin', the way he figures things out. We should just go ahead and tell him, but it's not gonna be easy." She sighed and tortured the cocktail a little bit more. "I prob'ly should have told you sooner, but I did date a guy from work once before. It was awhile ago, the summer between my junior and senior year of college. Kevin was one of the site managers over at Chula Vista when we were doin' the build-out there. I was twenty-one and he was real cute."

A slow pink flush started creeping up from her cleavage to her cheeks.

"I was also real stupid. Stayin' out late, comin' in drunk and all rumpled. I was still livin' at home and things got ugly. Daddy warned me that Kevin was nothin' but trouble, and he wasn't happy that I was goin' out weeknights to places I had no business settin' foot in. We ended up havin' a big ol' fight, and three days later I got an e-mail from Kevin sayin' he'd got a job offer outside of Scottsdale and it had been real fun." She shrugged. "I just know Daddy had somethin' to do with it. You know how he is--he's always managin' everything and everybody. I mean, Kevin just upped and left." Brooke stared moodily at her now-watery drink, a hurt in her big blue eyes that not even five years had been able to completely erase. "I never saw him again."

A little lump of ice had formed in Xander's stomach that had nothing to do with the Mojito.

After a moment, Brooke roused herself from her brown study. "Now, I'm not sayin' anythin' like that'll happen now. Daddy just loves you," she said, brightening like a sunlamp cranked to the highest setting, "Lord knows if he didn't, he wouldn't be so determined to fix your golf game. I wanna tell him, and I'm gonna tell him. I just wanna wait for the right moment." Her sunny smile widened. "Like right after he signs the big deal with the developer for Los Olivos, which is so goin' to happen before February."

"We're getting Los Olivos?" Xander said, all worries about Kevin and his fate dimmed by the prospect of putting up two hundred houses in six months. "Well, forget dating, because I won't be leaving the office for the rest of my life."

"I'm sure you'll figure somethin' out. We have great faith in you, Xander Harris," she said cheerfully, her blue eyes sparkling like aquamarines in the soft winter light. Then she glanced down at her watch. "Ooops, guess we need to be headin' back. It won't look good if we skip out on the last afternoon of the workin' year entirely. Just lemme visit the little girls' room first." Brooke leaned over and gave him a quick kiss on the lips, her mouth soft and yielding against his own. "Mmmm, so cute!" she exclaimed, ruffling his hair in a girlish, teasing gesture. She stood up and headed off towards the back of the restaurant, hips swaying invitingly under the tight black skirt.

While Brooke was in the bathroom, Xander paid the check with his new platinum AmEx, wondering not for the first time what he'd done to deserve all this. Maybe all those karma points he'd banked helping save the world for seven years were finally paying dividends.

********

It was a six-block walk back to the office, and Xander noticed that Brooke was weaving just a little as they ambled along the sidewalk. He took her arm, not feeling completely steady himself. Even on a full stomach, three Las Margaritas mojitos were enough to skew your sensors. As they slowly made their way back towards the O'Shea building, Xander could feel a mild throbbing behind his left eye, and he glanced up at the early afternoon sky. Sure enough, there were dark clouds building up towards the east, probably somewhere around LaGrange. The most severe of his migraines had slowly tapered off in the last few months, but his re-formed eye was still better than a barometer for detecting changes in the weather.

As Brooke had predicted, when they finally got back to the office, they found it pretty much empty. The main reception desk was manned by a disgruntled-looking teenager whom Xander remembered from the mailroom. She offered Brooke a tight smile and went back to transferring calls. Brooke sashayed into the lobby and stared at a couple of sturdy cardboard boxes squatting where the Christmas tree had been. Both were clearly marked "ornaments--lobby tree" in Brooke's clear Palmer script.

"Well, this isn't right," she said, looking back at the receptionist's desk. "Sandy, these can't be here. It doesn't look good, and somebody could trip right over 'em."

"Can you hold, please?" Sandy said into her headset and poked a button on the computer/phone hybrid. "Ed and some of his boys were takin' down the decorations this morning. They were gonna put everythin' back, but I ain't seen 'em since they headed out to Roy's for barbecue a couple hours ago. Took off early, I guess."

"I can get them," Xander said, eyeing the larger of the two boxes, which had started out life holding a 17" computer monitor. "But I'll have to make two trips."

"No hon, they're too heavy."

The big box wasn't heavy, but it was on the awkward side. Seeing over the top of it was a bit of a strain on his neck, and the contents lurched with the dangerous sounds of shifting glass ornaments. Brooke patted his arm, her fingers surreptitiously squeezing his bicep, and gave him a cheeky smile.

"Well, aren't you just the big strong man," she said, in a bright voice that might have passed the FCC censors, but registered down in the lower part of Xander's brain as sex.

She trotted out in front of him, the curves of her backside registering blatant invitation with each sassy swish of her skirt. In the elevator, Xander propped up the box against the handrail and lowered his tie an inch or two while Brooke's blue eyes snapped, crackled and popped at him. He craned his head to glance at his watch: 1:32. Thank God five o'clock wasn't that far in the future.

"So, where does this go?" he asked when the elevator decanted them in the warren of cubicles on the third floor.

"Supply closet," Brooke said and clipped on ahead, like a tidy ship navigating through ice floes.

Her ponytail was practically streaming out behind her. A fierce masculine pride rose up inside Xander's chest, like music being cranked on a car stereo. How great was it that such a crisp, efficient, smart, and hot girl was his? That he'd be all over her inside and out before dinnertime that night? That he, Xander Harris, had somehow tripped and fallen ass-backward into a bed of yellow rose petals?

The cubicle farm was pretty much empty, just the odd head here and there showing over the elegant wood-and-glass dividers Brooke had installed in place of the usual soulless grey plastic. Brooke made her way past the coffee station, through the copier room and into the supply closet. Like everything else at O'Shea, it showed her clean, clear stamp. The shelves were all neatly labeled and organized, and there wasn't so much as a paperclip out of place. Xander was scanning the shelves, looking for something that indicated where the Christmas decorations should go, when he heard a quiet click behind him. He turned his head to see Brooke leaning against the closed door with that three-cornered kitten smile on her rosy lips.

"Aren't you just the cutest thing. Bein' all manly and carryin' that big ol' box for little ol' me," she cooed, crossing over to him with a serious sway in her hips. The tight black skirt showed off every dangerous curve. "What can I do to show my appreciation?"

I'm not bad, I'm just drawn that way.

Jesus, Xander thought. I'm fucking Jessica Rabbit.

Strangely enough, he was okay with that.

"Oh, I'm sure you'll think of something," he said, trying to keep things light, since they still had approximately three hours and twenty-eight--he glanced at his watch again--make that three hours and twenty-seven minutes to go until quitting time. "Where do I put this?"

Brooke held his gaze a moment longer, her eyes promising things that were probably illegal in the great state of Texas. Finally, she nodded at the wall behind him. "Top shelf." Xander turned, trying to refocus his attention on the task at hand

Okay, the top shelf was challenging but not impossible. Somehow, he managed to hoist the light but unwieldy box over his head and shove it into place on the sturdy metal shelving unit. The flaps of the box stuck up reproachfully at him, and he realized that normally, Brooke would have been nagging at him to tape the box closed to keep the dust out. The lady seems to have other things on her mind today, champ, his inner sleazebag--which sounded disturbingly like Spike--whispered. You really gonna wait three hours and twenty-seven minutes to find out what they are?

The box finally settled in place, Xander turned and saw that Brooke had perched herself on a pile of copy paper boxes and was sitting there with her head tilted to the side and her legs crossed above the knee. She really did look like she should have been painted on the side of the Memphis Belle wearing nothing but a yellow negligée and a smile.

"What?" she asked after his appreciative leer registered. "I could watch you workin' for hours. Nothin' wrong with that."

"You wouldn't know real work if it bit you," he said, advancing on her.

Her gaze was steady and screamed 'take me now, you fool' every bit as loudly as her body did.

"You think it will?" She licked her lower lip. "You know, bite me?"

"Could happen."

Tasting rum and roasted chilies, Xander plumbed the depths of her mouth while Brooke's fingernails worked their way along his spine between his shirt and jacket. He had the familiar sensation of falling into something soft, warm and yielding when she pressed her body up against his, the layers of wool and angora feeling thinner than rice paper.

"You're naughty," he said into the curve of her neck.

Her throaty giggle went straight to his cock, which woke up from five hours of office off-duty mode and begged to be let out to play. Which was kind of wrong. Was that normal? Did every other guy on the planet have hair-trigger erections or was there something fundamentally fucked up about the Harris makeup?

Brooke didn't seem to mind. Her tongue worked its way into his ear and a sharp shudder of pleasure crept from his neck down to his spine, making his toes curl inside his blue-flecked socks.

"You're so tasty," she murmured.

"Yeah?"

"Oh yeah," she agreed and went for his mouth again.

Naturally, his arms went around her, enjoying the soft resilience and solidness of her pressed up against him. God, she was an armful and more. She was downright--what was the word? Willow would know. Brooke was decadent--yeah, that was it--she was a butterscotch sundae with vanilla ice cream and macadamia nuts and extra whipped cream. She was French bread slathered in butter and orange-blossom honey. She was--then Brooke's small white teeth bit down lightly on his ear lobe, and he lost the higher brain functions needed to extend the metaphor. With her arms around his chest, her hands worked their way underneath his jacket and deftly jerked the shirttail out of the back of his pants. Her sharp little fingernails scored his lower back, teasing.

"I been thinkin' bout this aaalll day," she hummed into his ear. Under the fuzzy gold sweater, her breasts were full and soft in his hands, even trapped in the confines of underwire and lycra. He wanted to stick his face between them and just nuzzle like a puppy.

"Got a secret," she continued, her lips directly against his ear. "I ain't wearin' aaany undies."

A dense, doughy lump lodged in Xander's throat. He swallowed around it and moved to investigate. Sure enough, under the layers of soft wool skirt and silky slip, his fingers encountered the lacy top band of Brooke's thigh highs and above that--nothing but Brooke herself. The hushpuppy lodged in his windpipe swelled along with his dick. Nothing but the sleek skin of her upper thigh, the lace band cutting delicately into the soft flesh of her leg, then soft curls, where she was wet and hot and sweet and so, so ready for him.

A smarter man might have said "Baby, let's grab my car keys and blow this Popsicle stand." A stronger man would have said "Hold that thought for three hours and twenty-something minutes." But Xander was about to prove for the seven hundredth time that he was neither smart nor strong when it came to sex. He gave into temptation with a grateful sigh, plunging his fingers into her waiting honeypot. Brooke gave out a pleased little squeak and her foot lashed out into the metal shelving unit, making it rattle preternaturally loud in the confines of the supply closet. She gasped and grabbed at his shoulders.

Aww yeah, lookie what I can do.

Drunk on power, lust and Mojitos, he curved his fingers inside her, looking for the sweetest of sweet spots while his thumb worked over her clit. High strung as she was, Brooke could go from zero to sixty in thirty seconds flat. After four weeks with her, Xander was starting to imagine that he was actually pretty good in the sack, since his girl could come on a dime. Sure enough, her fingernails bit through his suit jacket and into his skin and she was breathing in short, sharp gasps and her face was flushed bright pink. Her head fell back and he kissed the white line of her throat, careful not to leave any marks, but really just aching to bite down and see if she bled vanilla syrup or not. After a few moments of slick fingering, Brooke kicked the metal shelves again and came with a sharp squeal, her fingers curling into his biceps, while a wave of red flashed up from the low neckline of her sweater all the way up to her hairline.

"Ohmigod," she muttered and buried her face in his shoulder. The heat was pouring off her in slow waves. It wouldn't have surprised him if she'd spontaneously combusted right there among the copy paper. Her hands ran over his back and shoulders, then tangled in his floppy hair. Breathing hard, she trembled against him for a few moments.

"Oh baby, that's--it's--wow," she faltered. Her eyes had that peculiar glazed look only really good sex or Tommy's private stash could give them.

"Wow, Brooke O'Shea at a loss for words," Xander teased, cuddling her against him. "I am the man."

"Oh, you think you got me, huh?" Brooke returned, pulling back from him a little.

"Me and the shelves would say yes."

There was a dangerous gleam in the eyes that had been dulled with afterglow just a minute before. "We'll see who's got who."

Grabbing him by his necktie, she shoved him up against the beige cinderblock wall and kissed him hard enough to loosen his fillings. With her perfect breasts smashed up against him and his hands cupping her ass, the world was a happy place. In short order, she was deftly unbuckling his belt and unfastening his fly. Giving him a saucy little smile for good measure, she gracefully folded to the floor and eased his almost painfully swollen cock out of his pants. All Xander could do was smack his head against the cinderblock and hold on for the ride.

God, she was criminally good at this, and he didn't even have the nerve to ask where she'd learned. Nor, at that moment, did he care: his brain cells were headed south at warp nine as her wicked little tongue lapped at him like he was an ice cream cone in her favorite flavor. Around and around and around and down, moving in slow, teasing circles, until he was ready to sign over his soul and those of three close relatives if she would just--"Brooke--oh my--fuck," Xander spluttered as she took him in, all the way in, and it was like being devoured by pure, wet heat, like being swallowed by living velvet. She pulled back, her tongue tracing the throbbing vein on the underside of his dick, and Xander cried out again, using whatever shreds of control he had left not to grab the back of her head. One scrambling hand reached out and found the edge of the metal shelves, fingers digging into the cold steel like a drowning man clinging to driftwood. It was like drowning, drowning in honey, rich and gold and sweet, he was drowning in her, but he didn't care if she killed him as long as she didn't stop. She took him in again, and that was so good, so right, so yes that it hurt. He could feel the heavy, pulsing ache at the base of his spine that signaled a truly mind-bending orgasm was in the mail, all the blood rushing to the center of him in a flush of heat, and if she'd do that for just a second longer it would be enough, oh Jesus almost too much, and then she would kill him, but he'd die so very, very--

"Well, ain't this cute."

Xander froze. Brooke froze. Time itself froze.

Xander opened his eyes, but it took a moment for his endorphin-fogged brain to register who it was.

Oh, fuck me, he thought.

Ed Dixon stood there, pale features twitching with triumph, the other box of Christmas ornaments on the ground beside him. How long he'd been standing there and how much he'd seen Xander didn't even want to guess.

Brooke managed to unfreeze long enough to stand up. It was so quiet in the supply closet that Xander could hear her knees crack as she did so. She ran a hand over her hair and smoothed her wrinkled skirt, nervous, automatic gestures she probably wasn't even aware of. A deep, painful blush that had nothing to do with sex was creeping from her hairline down. Xander could do nothing, just stand there and gape, the combination of shock and hormones rendering him temporarily paralyzed.

"Now, kids, don't stop on account o' me. You wanna indulge in a little afternoon delight, you go right ahead." Ed indicated the box on the floor with a small nod of his head, but he never took his eyes off Brooke. "I'll just leave these here and let y'all get back down to business." He shoved the box inside, and then his eyes did meet Xander's. One closed in a slow, wolfish wink.

"I told ya she was friendly." With that little witticism he turned and left, his footsteps tapping gleefully down the polished hallway.

The hollow door clicked behind him with terminal finality.

Xander had never lost a hard-on so fast in his entire life. He sagged up against the wall, feeling the enchiladas and Mojitos roil sickeningly in his stomach.

"Ohmigod. Ohmigod. Ohmigod," Brooke began chanting in a not-good way. She had her hands pressed against her face, stretching out her lips in a horrible imitation of a smile.

"Maybe he won't--" Xander began.

"Won't tell? Are you insane or just plain stupid?" Brooke snapped, dropping her hands and crossing her arms in front of her defensively. "Ed Dixon's been waitin' for somethin' like this since I turned him down for a date two years ago. Not to mention how he feels about you." She was staring at the closed supply-closet door, like if she just looked hard enough she could somehow erase the last ten minutes. "Oh, it's like Christmas just come all over again for that little weasel. He's prob'ly settin' at this desk right now typin' up all the juicy details for an inter-office memo. In three hours there won't be a soul in town that won't know Brooke O'Shea got caught on her knees in the supply closet, goin' down on the Residential Division Manager like a real pro. I may as well resign right now and get a job hustlin' drinks at the Pink Pony." She glanced over at Xander, and her face went even redder. "Please fix your pants."

"Sorry," Xander mumbled, rearranging himself.

"And now Daddy'll know I've been havin' sex. How am I ever gon' look him in the face again?" Brooke's voice had risen to a desperate wail. She put a hand to her mouth. "Oh, Gawd, I think I'm gon' be sick."

"Hon, you're twenty-six. Your Daddy must know you're not a virgin," Xander protested as he hastily shoved his shirttails back into his pants.

Brooke rounded on him like a wounded lioness. "It is one thing, Xander Lavelle Harris, to suspect that your grown daughter ain't exactly a nun. It is quite another to hear proof positive that she's no better than one of them bottle blondes down at the Broken Spoke Saloon." Her voice had begun to shake, whether from fear or anger he couldn't tell. Probably both. She rubbed the back of her hand under her eyes in a vain attempt to manage the flow of tears that had begun leaking out of her baby blues. "Daddy's gon' disown me for actin' like such a tramp."

"Whoah, trampage did not happen. Tramp-free environment here," Xander said, and reached out a hand to soothe her. "Common sense challenged but trampless. I'm sure your Daddy will forgive you."

The look Brooke gave him was pure distilled venom. "Think he's forgiven my brother yet? And far as I know, Cliff never got caught givin' blow jobs on company property." She shook her head and grabbed for the doorknob. "I gotta get outta here. I gotta think."

"Look, I'll tell him it's my fault." Xander grabbed her wrist before she could open the Evil Door from Hell.

"You got that right," she said, with another shake of her head.

Xander drew his hand back, cut to the quick. "Wait just one damn minute. I was not the one not wearing panties, okay? There was premeditated sexiness there."

Brooke flung the door open. Her eyes were fairly snapping with rage. "All I know is that if you hadn't been on me like white on rice at the restaurant, teasin' and flirtin' and makin' me all crazy, I'd've never thought of such a fool idea in the first place!" And she was gone in a cloud of vanilla perfume and nervous anger.

For the next few minutes, all Xander could do was stand in the doorway of the supply closet with his head resting on the doorframe and sigh.

She was right. Until he came along, the only reason Brooke would have been on her knees in a supply closet would've been to rearrange the toner boxes. It was all his fault that the princess of Eldorado would now be walking around with a tarnished crown. Blood always told, and there was entirely too much loser algae in the Harris gene pool.

Then Xander froze again, as the most terrible thought yet dawned upon him.

If Big Buck O'Shea would disown his favorite child for public lewdness, what the hell was he going to do to the man who'd put her up to it?

Part Nine: Am I right? Am I wrong?

The call came at 4:05, right around the time Xander had begun to have real hope that it wouldn't. It was Buck's executive assistant, Tiara, requesting Xander's presence in the Big Man's office on the seventh floor. Now.

After Brooke had made her speedy exit from the supply closet and the building, Xander had considered following suit. But if living in Sunnydale had taught him anything, it was that running from whatever scary thing was coming after you only made things worse. It was best to stand your ground and face it, no matter what the consequences. So after he'd finished getting dressed, he'd slowly made his way back to his office. He'd spent the next two hours staring out at his spectacular view of the peaceful green Eldorado skyline, wondering if this was the last time he would ever see it.

"I'll be right up," Xander said quietly. He slowly replaced the phone in its cradle. He stood up, pushed his comfy leather chair in, and straightened a few pencils on his desk. Then he took one last look around the cheerful yellow-and-brown office, his eyes lingering over the bookshelves full of three-inch project binders, the pull-out drawers of tidily stacked blueprints, the lacquered pine conference table gleaming in the late afternoon sunlight. He ran his hand fondly over his 17" flat-screen Dell monitor. Then he reached for his jacket and put it on. If he was about to get summarily booted, he might as well look professional while Merle the security officer escorted him off of company property. Hell, I'll be lucky if that's the worst that happens, Xander thought as he closed the door behind him, flashing on an image of Big Buck and his brother-in-law Sheriff Darling showing up on his doorstep with shotguns and rope, ready to haul him out to wherever the buzzards roosted.

Xander walked down the hallway towards the elevator. This close to quitting time on the last day before New Year's, the halls were almost eerily quiet--he could hear his footsteps echoing on the polished wood floors. He doubted he'd have a chance to say goodbye to anybody, since he'd be long gone by the time his co-workers got back from the holidays. But at least no one would be around to witness his humiliation. He pushed the up button and waited, watching his own reflection in the bright copper-colored metal doors. He was surprised at how outwardly calm he looked, since the rain headache that sex had temporarily stunned was back with a vengeance, and his stomach was doing queasy little backflips. Again, his Sunnydale training was standing him in good stead.

The doors opened and he stepped inside.

Yeah, you better remember your training, 'cause in about half an hour that's all you're gonna have left, a nasty little voice spoke up in Xander's head as he made the too-short trip from the fifth to the seventh floor. No job, no apartment, no car, no references. If you're lucky, maybe Angel will take you on as a maintenance man for the Hyperion.

Xander clenched his hands. I'll still have Brooke, he said to himself.

Come on, Harris, the voice shot back. You humiliated her in front of a man she despises. You ruined her reputation at the company. You made sure the father she adores hears she's a big slut who blows her co-workers in supply closets. Do you honestly think she'll ever forgive you?

Xander thought of Cordelia, pale and diminished in her blue hospital gown, lines of pain etched into her pretty face. Of Anya, standing in the ruins of her wedding dress and her dreams, staring at him with the eyes of a wounded deer.

You let her down. The way you let all of them down.

Xander rested his head against the cool metal of the elevator doors, feeling his pulse pounding behind his eyes. I'm sorry, he thought, not even sure who he was apologizing to. I'm so, so sorry for everything.

The doors opened. Xander stepped out of the elevator and quickly made his way down the short hallway to the President's office, ready now to just get this over with.

Tiara Wilkes was seated behind her desk in the impressive buttercup-colored antechamber to Buck's office, typing with astonishing speed for someone with three-inch sculptured nails. A six-foot-tall African-American goddess, with a heroic cleavage and attitude to match, Tiara had started at O'Shea as a framer in the Commercial Division when she was a nineteen-year-old single mother of two. In the ensuing twenty-odd years, she'd gone from framer to supervisor to forewoman to Executive Assistant for the President of O'Shea Construction, discarding a series of "worthless" husbands and producing two more kids along the way. Now she was in her forties, impeccably turned out, with a B.A. in Business Administration she'd earned going to college on nights and weekends. She wore her air of authority with the same ease she wore her sweet, musky perfume and dragon-lady fingernails.

Xander had been more than a little in awe of her at first, but instead of chewing him up and spitting him out, Tiara had taken pity on the poor orphaned white boy. She seemed to consider him in the same light as her four unruly sons, the eldest of whom was only a few months older than Xander. She nagged him about drinking too much coffee, brought him home-made fried chicken and collard greens left over from her massive Sunday dinners every Monday, and had patiently explained the complicated time sheet system to him three different times after Brooke kicked his ass over the Ponce De Leon phase two overtime reports.

Xander couldn't even look her in the eye.

"He's waitin' for you," Tiara said shortly, nodding towards the closed inner-office door.

Xander did look at her then. It was the first time Tiara had ever greeted him with anything but a big smile and a "hey, sugar." But today, her sharp cocoa-brown features were as impassive as an Easter Island statue. Tiara was also a pillar of the local African Baptist Church and had known Brooke since she was in Buster Browns. Xander didn't even want to imagine what she was thinking about him right now.

With one last sad glance at Tiara's stony face, Xander took a deep breath and put his hand on the shiny brass doorknob of Buck's den.

It was time to face the music.

Buck's inner sanctum took up a good quarter of the top floor of the O'Shea Construction building, a fitting proportion for the man who had started it all. Rectangular in shape, it was decorated in the same soothing autumn tones as the rest of the offices and boasted 12-foot ceilings, crown moldings, and mirror-glossy heart-pine floors. Glassed-in floor-to-ceiling bookshelves took up each of the small ends of the room, jam-packed with everything from old site plans to the Time-Life Series on the Old West to Samuel Darling-Jenkins's scholarly three-volume A History of Eldorado County. Elephants were everywhere--sitting majestically on the bookshelves, unfurling their trunks proudly on top of the wood file cabinets next to the door, even galumphing stoically across the bottom stand of the three-foot globe in the west corner of the room. Buck really liked elephants--the O'Shea Construction logo featured a large bull elephant lifting an I-beam in its wrinkled trunk, and over the years he'd bought or been given elephants of every known substance--wood elephants, bronze elephants, elephants of glass and jade and ivory. Xander's Christmas gift to him this year had been a genuine antique elephant leg wastebasket he'd found when he was buying Brooke's vase. He had never inquired where the pachyderm fetish came from, though he could venture a guess as to why a man like Big Buck O'Shea would appreciate an animal known for its patience, keen memory, and the ability to demolish everything in its path when the mood struck it.

But elephants weren't the only members of the animal kingdom represented in the room. On the open wall next to the entrance door, the head and shoulders of a magnificent twelve-point buck had been mounted just above the heart-pine wainscotting. According to Brooke, the deer in question had been something of a legend in Buck's hometown of Wildwood, Florida, often pursued but never caught by the many crack shots in the area. A local paper had offered the then-princely sum of $250 to anyone who could catch the deer, affectionately referred to in local parlance as "Ole Mossback." Twelve-year-old Clifford, who had been raised in what polite folks refer to as reduced circumstances and everyone else calls dirt poverty, had vowed to take it down and buy himself a new bicycle for his paper route, much to the amusement of most of the adults in town. The adults stopped laughing when, after two months of tracking the deer through the swampy, mosquito-infested Florida woods every spare second he wasn't in school or delivering the news on his rusted old Schwinn, take it he did, with a single shot from his .44 rifle. Buck earned himself the money and a nickname that stuck. Many years later, from its place of honor right between Buck's Elks and Rotary Club civic service awards, Ole Mossback gazed down upon visitors with the glass-eyed calm of a bested foe whose battles are long over.

At that moment, Xander almost envied it.

Buck was in his usual position, seated behind the massive Chippendale mahogany desk which dominated the center of the room. He had a gold Cross pen in one large calloused hand, and was rifling through a stack of papers an inch thick with the other. His small blue eyes were even smaller than usual, narrowed in concentration as they glanced back and forth between the papers and a large black leather ledger propped against his mahogany In/Out box. His ruddy forehead was wrinkled from sheer effort, the generous mouth his daughter had inherited turned down in a stern frown of deep thought. Enthroned there on his equally massive oxblood leather chair, framed on either side by a majestic 12X20 picture window, he resembled nothing so much as a busy king sorting out the daily proclamations for his empire. The scary kind of king, one of those medieval types who could start crusades or chop off heads just by putting pen to parchment. Xander had to fight an absurd impulse to kneel on the expensive Persian carpet in front of the desk.

"You needed to see me. . .Sir?"

Buck grunted his assent. "Siddown." Xander wilted into the quilted leather chair in front of Buck's desk, glad to be seated, since he didn't quite trust his legs at this point.

Buck never took his eyes off the ledger in front of him. "To be honest, Xander, I coulda done without this today. I'm busier than a one-legged man in an ass-kickin' contest, tryin' to get this pile of paperwork off my desk 'fore Candy and I head out tomorrow. But we may as well get it over with."

Xander swallowed hard. "Yessir." To be honest, I could do without the whole "I'm so fucking disappointed in you" speech, too. Why don't you just tell me to get the hell out of your town and we'll take the rest on faith, okay?

Buck scrawled a few figures, put his pen down and shut the ledger with a snap! He did look at Xander then, his sharp little blue eyes pinning him like twin laser beams. "So, before I get started, you got anything to say to me?"

I'm sorry, sir. Your daughter is the Devil's candy and I've got one hell of a sweet tooth. Xander cleared his throat. "Uh, that is--no sir. Not really."

Buck gave the barest of nods. "Right. Guess there's not really much to say, is there?" He pulled a sheet of paper out from the top of his In box. "It's all down here in black and white."

Xander stared at the paper in Buck's hand, wondering if Ed had actually sent out that juicy e-mail Brooke had predicted.

Buck held the paper out a goodly distance from his face, since he didn't seem to like reading glasses any better than sunglasses. "Lessee--the Commercial Division. Productivity, up 15%. Absenteeism, down 11%, On-site accidents, down 9%. Not to mention that nifty little equipment sharing scheme you cooked up. Overall, I'd say my prediction was right on the money--you've made out like gangbusters this year."

Xander looked at Buck blankly, his mouth hanging open a little. The words that had just come out of his boss's mouth were so different from what he was expecting that the man may as well have been speaking Chinese.

Buck put the paper down, his bushy eyebrows drawing together. "Somethin' the matter, son?"

"I'm just--this wasn't what I thought you were going to say."

Buck chuckled, his stern expression easing into one of benign amusement. "I know. Everybody always thinks they're gon' be plucked-and-fried at their year-end eval. And I admit, I've relieved a few folks of their tail feathers on certain occasions. But you had nothin' to worry about, boy. I thought nobody could replace ol' Al Johnson, but you've filled his wing tips and then some."

Xander's stomach did another one of those queasy little guilt-flips at the almost paternal pride in Buck's voice. He gripped the arms of the chair, feeling the leather go slick from his sweaty palms.

"That's why I've decided to increase your salary to an even 7-0."

Xander swallowed hard. The big lump was back in his throat again, but for very, very different reasons this time. "I--I don't know what to say."

Buck chuckled again. "Just say thank you and keep on doin' what you've been doin'. That's all I ask."

No sir, I really don't think you want me to keep on doing what I've been doing. Xander put one hand to his face, rubbing at his eyes, which felt like over-filled water balloons that someone was squeezing too tightly. He tried to process the idea that Buck might not have found out about the supply closet shenanigans after all, but after the day he'd had, that seemed like thinking of the wishful variety. "Yessir. Thank you, sir."

Buck said nothing for a moment, tapping the stack of papers in front of him with his big gold pen and pursing his lips like he was considering something. Finally, he spoke again. "You know, not to pry into your business, but Nancy in Accounting says you're only puttin' the minimum in your 401K, and not takin' anythin' out for savin's or investment purposes. Just having your whole check direct deposited into your checkin' account."

Xander shifted uncomfortably in his seat. A little inner voice that sounded a lot like Anya had been nagging at him for months to do something about his finances, but he'd been too busy, what with the settling in and then with the screwing his brains out, to ever get around to doing more than opening up the required checking account at Eldorado Savings and Loan. Every time he'd visited the ATM or paid bills online, he'd looked at his swelling balance with a strange mixture of guilt, satisfaction and disbelief. All those zeroes didn't seem like they could belong to Xander Harris, whose life savings before coming to Eldorado had totaled a lavish $728. His newfound wealth just didn't feel quite real, like leprechaun gold that would dissolve to dust in the harsh light of day.

"Well, I haven't--"

"Oh, I know how it is," Buck said easily, with an amiable wave of his pen. "You're young and single, and you got more excitin' things on your mind than retirement funds and investment portfolios. Am I right?"

You have no idea.

Buck threw down the pen and stood up. "C'mere, son."

Xander, head still throbbing from fear and confusion, did what he was told. When he came even with Buck, the older man put one arm around his shoulders and turned him towards the huge picture window behind the desk. Buck's view was even better than Xander's. From this angle, you could see not just the highway and the modest Eldorado skyline, but several of the spanking new subdivisions that O'Shea Construction had built in the more outlying parts of town. The late afternoon sun peeking valiantly through the gathering storm clouds shone on the rows and rows of tidy houses laid out like monopoly pieces on the rich green flatlands below. Buck looked out over it all with an expression of benevolent possessiveness. The resemblance to a monarch commanding all he surveyed was stronger than ever.

"When I came out here thirty-odd years ago, this wasn't nothin' but a bunch of wore-out cattle pasture and scrub land. Back then, if you'd a' told somebody that one day this would all be prime residential property, they'd've laughed right in your face. Point of fact is, lotsa people did laugh when I first got started. But I knew that sooner or later I'd be the one laughin', 'cause they was livin' in the past, and I was lookin' towards the future. It's always the future that gets the last laugh, son. And if you don't plan for it, sooner or later the joke's gon' be on you."

Xander felt the fatherly grip Buck had on his shoulders tighten. "I see a lotta young men your age, drinkin', druggin', runnin' round livin' the life o' Riley, never thinkin' about a day past tomorrow. Their drivers' licenses may say they're of legal age, but really they're just overgrown little boys, that's all. I remember, we had one workin' here a few years back, a site manager over at Chula Vista name of Kevin Prior, he was one o' that sort."

Xander's knees turned to water. If Buck hadn't had that death grip on his shoulders, he wasn't sure he'd still be standing.

Buck continued smoothly, as if unaware of Xander's sudden collapse. "That Kevin was a real bright boy, good lookin', too--had a way about him, that one. An' that was just the problem. He thought he could waltz in here an' do just as he pleased, 'cause any amount of trouble and aggravation, an' then flash that cute little grin and bullshit hisself outta the consequences. I let him know P.D.Q. that might work back where he come from, but out here that dog won't hunt."

Buck turned his keen gaze away from his kingdom and zeroed in on Xander.

"You see, in Eldorado, we protect what belongs to us."

He knows. Oh God, he knows.

All of Buck's usual vibrant warmth had leached away, features gone almost eerily expressionless, little blue eyes cold enough to have frozen liquid nitrogen. It was the concentrated blankness of a hunter sizing up prey. Xander suddenly had a pretty good idea of what Ole Mossback must have seen when young Clifford tracked it down and shot it dead.

"What happened to Kevin?" he said, his voice almost a whisper.

"Why, I had to put him down the road, o' course," Buck said blandly. "Last I heard, he was workin' somewhere out in Arizona, but you never can tell where these fly-by-night types'll end up. Wouldn't surprise me a bit if he'd come to some bad end."

"Ohh," Xander said, the response more a sigh than a word.

"The point here is, Kevin was a young man who didn't think about the future. All he cared about was what was right in front of him--what those Madison Avenue types would call instant gratification. An' there's an awful lotta Kevins out there--for awhile I was beginnin' to think all that MTV and video gamin' and Internettin' had done ruined every male under the age o' thirty. That's why I was so tickled to find you, Xander. First time we met, I said to myself, 'now, there's a young man that ain't had everythin' handed to him on a silver platter. Who's willin' to work for what he wants, and takes care o' what he gets. Who knows how easily everything can slip away if you ain't careful.' And I was right, wasn't I?" Buck concluded, still holding Xander in that basilisk stare.

All Xander could do was nod.

Buck nodded back with grim satisfaction, then looked back out over the peaceful landscape. "I love this town. I feel like I helped build it, in a way. But Eldorado's not like a lot of places. There's temperamental elements here, though I know you cain't always tell to look at it. People round here got their own way o' doing things, and sometimes those ways are kinda volatile--guess there's still a little too much of the Wild West mindset in these parts. I'd hate to think of things goin' to pot when I'm not here to look after 'em. Folks think I'll be around forever, but that just ain't so. It'd be a real comfort to know that even after I'm gone, somebody's gon' be lookin' after Eldorado, and the company that built it."

Xander followed Buck's line of sight to the rows of neat little houses, full of ordinary people just trying to work their jobs and raise their kids and get through their ordinary, hum-drum, regular little lives. Volatile elements or no, in Eldorado there were no walking nightmares, no smoking craters, no beautiful, fragile things destroyed beyond recognition. Just peace and prosperity and acceptance, clean, well-lighted places and beautiful redheads who made you feel like a king. The thought of losing all that made something deep inside Xander cry out in pain.

"I love it here too, sir," he said, a little surprised at the naked honesty in his own voice.

Buck's frozen features thawed a bit at that, and he smiled. "I had a feelin' you did, son. But you'd be surprised how many don't. Findin' someone to help keep things in order--that's not such an easy proposition. Once, I thought Cliff, Jr. might take over, but he'd rather play with his kitty-cats than attend to business." His smile faded, and Xander saw a brief spark of pain in Buck's cool blue eyes, so quick that if you hadn't known what to look for you would have missed it.

"Crissy--she's a smart girl, a good girl," Buck went on after a moment, taking no notice of the guilty start Xander made at the mention of Brooke. "She does a fine job with the admin. end of things, but that girl don't know a stud finder from a staple gun. She cain't handle the business all by herself. She needs someone she can depend on, who'll be there for her in the long-haul. Someone who's not just about the instant gratification." His eyes focused again on Xander, the expression in them this time challenging, appraising, the look he'd given Xander when he'd taken his measure over a plate of pork ribs and offered him a new life with the same ease and generosity that he'd offered to share the garlic bread.

"I need someone who can think about the future, Xander. Who'll prove to me he can be trusted with all the things I hold dear. He shows me he can take care of my future--why, he'll never have to worry about his own. You understand where I'm comin' from, boy?"

Xander stared back at him, sudden realization dawning like the sun shining between storm clouds. Anthony and Jessica Harris's only child wasn't the sharpest tool in the box, but even he caught on eventually.

He knows, all right. But I think. . .I think he's offering me a way out. A way to fix this. Please, let me fix this.

"Yessir. I think I get it." Xander felt almost giddy from relief. He could have kissed the old man, if kissing O'Sheas hadn't already gotten him in way too much trouble today.

Buck's large, rugged features warmed to their usual kindly temperature. His fingers tightened on Xander's shoulder affectionately. "You're a good man, Xander Harris. I couldn't be any prouder of you if you were mine. I mean that."

Xander looked away and tried to get a grip on himself. He'd already used up a lot of slack with Buck today. He wouldn't test the man's patience further by bursting into guilty, grateful tears right in front of him.

"Well, I guess I've about talked your ear off by now, huh? And I know you got better things to do than stand around listenin' to an old man jawin' all day. You got any big doin's scheduled this weekend, son?"

You could say that. But I think there's been a sudden change in plans. "Not really."

Buck released his constrictor-like hold on Xander and gave him a man-friendly pat on the back as he began steering him towards the office door. "Well, I'm sure you'll come up with somethin'--Crissy tells me you're real well liked around here. Why don't you go ahead and take off now, this day's about shot, anyway. Go crack open a six-pack and see what's shakin' with your buddies. Even a go-getter like yourself cain't think about work all the time."

Xander stopped with his hand on the doorknob, wanting desperately to give the man who had given him so much some kind of reassurance, something to let him know he wasn't another Kevin Prior. "Sir? I just want you to know--you can trust me." I'll fix this. I swear to God I will fix this.

Buck favored him with an aw-shucks grin. "I know I can, son. You go have yourself a nice holiday, now. Oh, and be careful o' Tiara on the way out. Her next-to-youngest done got hisself on academic probation out at Texas A&M and she's been crosser than a bear all day. Look's like DeShawn may be another one of them manchildren we was discussin'."

"Oh--that's too bad," Xander said automatically, but not really feeling bad at all at the possibility that Tiara didn't know how he'd betrayed the O'Sheas' kindness. If things worked out, she'd never have to know. Nobody would ever have to know.

"We'll see. It's never too late to turn things around. Never too late. Go talk to Nancy in Accounting when you come back next week."

"Uh-huh," Xander muttered absently as he opened the door, his mind whirling with the sudden, desperate plan he'd just conceived.

He sped past Tiara and out of the office like a man dodging Scylla after he's just cleared Charybdis. He had to find Brooke right away, right now, this minute. But he had one stop to make first.

********

It had begun raining lightly as Xander pulled out of his reserved space in the O'Shea building parking garage, and by the time he got to Oleander Avenue over an hour later, the promised storm had developed with a vengeance, the road in front of him little more than a white curtain of water. Xander parked half on the curb in front of Brooke's duplex, noting that her yellow convertible was sitting crookedly in the driveway, looking forlorn with the top down under the furious onslaught of the rain. Okay. At least she's home. That makes things easier. On the drive over, Xander had suffered panicked visions of having to track her down at the mall or the nearest shopping center, since Brooke had a tendency to indulge in retail therapy when stressed. Focused as he was on the mission at hand, Xander barely felt the egg-sized raindrops as he bolted out of his car, taking the sidewalk and front steps in three bounds and pounding on the front door like a bill collector. The right pocket of his blazer was weighted down and glowing like kryptonite.

No answer.

He knocked again, even harder this time, and tried to peer through the stained glass insert in the front door. There was movement inside, and after a moment, he heard an aggrieved yip that could only have come from Mister Winston.

Maybe she was in the shower, maybe she'd taken to her bed with a bottle of seltzer and a cold compress. Maybe she was--

After a few seconds that felt like a few hours, he fumbled out the spare key she'd given him and unlocked the door.

"Brooke? Honey, where are you?" Xander called out.

No answer.

Trotting into the hallway, Mister Winston fixed Xander with a disapproving pug frown, as though he'd been spying via pugcam on all the events of the afternoon.

"Where's your mamma?" Xander asked, feeling stupid both for asking the dog and for referring to Brooke as the dog's mother.

Mister Winston merely sniffed and began to walk away.

Xander scanned the hallway. Brooke's white-with-yellow-polkadots oilcloth rain slicker was hung neatly on her brass coatrack, the matching umbrella stowed in the stand next to the door. It wasn't at all like Brooke to go out of the house without protection of some kind, not when there were pitch-black cumulonimbus clouds looming on the horizon.

Xander flashed on the badly parked car in the driveway, its leather seats warping in the pouring rain.

God, if she's this distracted, where did she--

Shit, the reservoir.

Brooke liked to walk there, especially if she was feeling tense. She had told him looking at the water made her feel calmer. Maybe a twenty-minute walk from here, possibly longer in heels. Not that Xander knew anything about wearing heels, other than the fact that they slowed most women down. The reservoir. Lots of water. Brooke was a bad swimmer, mostly because it dried out her hair, and she'd never really learned anything other than the dog paddle. She wouldn't--

It was an ugly image, Brooke all floating and lifeless like that girl in the Mel Gibson movie--what was her name--Sheila or something?

Oh bad, big time bad.

Okay, he wasn't egotistical enough to think that Brooke would kill herself over him, but she was completely capable of being klutzier than usual because she was upset and falling into the reservoir.

What did the cops do? All those competent detectives on TV. There had to be something he could--

Witnesses.

Xander looked down at Mister Winston.

The pug sighed and plunked his hind end down on the shiny parquet floor, a long-suffering expression on his scrunchy face. He was clearly waiting for the Big Stupid Human to make the first move.

"Totally aware of the stupid factor here," Xander began. "You being a do--pug and not speaking English and all. But I need to find Brooke. She's upset and I've gotta talk to her. Do you understand that?"

Well, it worked on Lassie, didn't it?

Mister Winston blinked his bug eyes and briefly considered the wallpaper before sighing again. Unwillingly, the pug rose and headed for the front door.

"Right. Lead on, McGruff," Xander muttered, caught somewhere between feeling foolish and grateful.

Sure enough, the pug led him outside and down the front steps. Wincing at the cold rain, Mister Winston trotted resolutely across the street towards Oleander Square. Darkness had fallen like a lead balloon, and despite his worry, Xander was pleased that no one was going to notice he was following a pug down the street like a, well, puppy dog. After fighting his way through a thicket of rhododendron bushes that the pug nipped neatly under, Xander emerged into the central part of the square. The white cement fountain spurted water into the air in defiance of the rain. In the gloom in front of the fountain, he could make out a familiar bright gold sweater and equally bright hair through the raindrops on his glasses. He let out a long sigh of relief.

"Good boy," Xander muttered half to himself, half to Mister Winston.

Putting on an unusual burst of speed, Mister Winston waddled ahead to his mistress. Brooke looked down from staring at the fountain, making a small sound of surprise before picking up the pug.

"Winnikins, how did you get out? It's cold and wet and nasty. Not a fit day for pugs."

"Bad day all around," Xander agreed, coming up to her side.

If possible, Brooke was even more thoroughly soaked than he was, her fuzzy sweater matted, ponytail limp with water, tracks of mascara dripping down her pale face. Chilled and droopy and miserable, like a half-drowned kitten.

She'd never looked more beautiful to him.

"What are you doin' here?" she asked, her eyes wide. "I called work and Tiara said you'd been with Daddy in his office and then come flyin' through the door like a devil was after you. I thought he'd given you till sundown to get outta town or somethin'."

"No, I generally run faster than that when a devil's after me," Xander said truthfully. "It was just my year-end eval. He gave me a raise."

Brooke blinked in shock.

"A raise? Then he must not know. Ed must not have--" there was a wild flash of hope in her eyes, as she wiped the rain and mascara off her face with the hand that wasn't holding the pug.

Xander was pretty sure that Buck knew everything there was to know about what had gone on in that supply closet, whether from Ed Dixon or just his own scary omniscience. But there was no need for Brooke to know that. No need at all.

"Guess we got lucky," he said. He pushed his sopping wet hair out of his eyes and looked around for shelter. Spotting the prim white park gazebo a few yards from the fountain, he nodded in that direction. "C'mon. We need to talk, and I'd rather not have to worry about drowning while we do it."

He must have sounded more grim than he'd intended, because Brooke shot him a worried look. But, still holding Mister Winston, she followed him over to the gazebo willingly enough.

When they reached the little building, he stopped just inside the archway, clutching onto the smooth wood railing for support. Brooke sat down on one of the damp wooden benches that lined the structure. Xander saw that the hand not holding Mister Winston was gripping the edge of the bench so hard her knuckles were turning white.

Xander took a deep breath and began. "Hon, what happened today. . .I don't want anything like that to ever happen again. I don't want to ever feel like that aga--"

"I know, it was bad, but we'll be more careful," Brooke broke in quickly. "No more of this sneakin' around and drivin' each other crazy. I'll tell Daddy about us when I see him tomorrow--he'll put his two cents in but we'll work it out, everything will be--"

"That's not good enough."

Brooke's arms tightened on Mister Winston until the pug squeaked in protest. "What are you sayin'?" she said quietly.

"Put down the pug."

Brooke clutched onto Mister Winston like he was her only friend in a harsh and uncertain world. "But it's cold and wet and--" her chin had begun to tremble slightly.

"Really, put down the pug. I think you'll want to be pugless here."

White to the lips, Brooke placed Mister Winston on the bench beside her and looked at Xander warily.

"Okay." Xander took another deep breath and tried to squelch the runaway rollercoaster feeling in his stomach. "Brooke, the last few weeks have been the best of my life. But after what happened today--we can't keep on like this. It's not fair to either of us. See--"

"I know, that's why I said I'd fix things, if you'd just give me--"

"Just let me finish, sweetie. See, it isn't fair 'cause I can't keep my hands off you. When I'm near you, I can't concentrate on anything else. I'm lucky your dad didn't boot me out on my ass this afternoon, after the way I've been handling things for the past month. That's why. . ." he trailed off, swallowing hard.

Brooke was now clutching onto the bench with both hands. "Just say it, Xander," she said, the tiniest of catches in her voice.

"That's why I can't just have you on lunch breaks and evenings and weekends. I need you all the time, Brooke. Not just because of the sex even though that's unbelievable, but because you're the most beautiful, brilliant, dazzling woman I've ever met. I thought I'd lost you today, and it felt like I'd lost myself. I love you, sweetheart. More than I've ever loved anything."

Brooke tilted her head to the side and stared at him, tears beginning to run down her face. That completely broke Xander's nerve. All the words he'd rehearsed in the car on the way over scattered like small, frightened toads. "And I know you're too good for me, but I want to try and be good enough for you and I think I can do a decent job of it because I want to be the guy you want me to be, I want to be the guy who's there for you in the long-haul--" Xander stopped, out of breath and out of words. With a complete lack of finesse, he pulled the small black velvet box out of his blazer pocket and thrust it at her. The box drew her gaze as though she'd been hypnotized.

"Is that what I think it is?" Brooke asked in a small voice.

"Yeah, it's a really small car," Xander said lightly, since it had cost about that much. Having all that extra cash lying around in his checking account had actually turned out to be a good thing. He'd gotten the ring at the same place where he'd gotten her necklace and been able to use his debit card, since the owner didn't take personal checks.

Brooke still couldn't take her eyes off the box.

"You know what this means, right?" she said slowly. "You're not just makin' some big gesture 'cause you feel bad about what happened, and then gon' lose your nerve and not tell me about it 'til the last minute like you did with that poor Anna girl?"

Xander flinched a little at the mention of Anya, but he recovered and set his jaw determinedly. "I mean it. I mean it more than you can know."

I can be trusted. I'm not a scared little boy. Not anymore.

Slowly, Brooke reached out one mascara-streaked hand and picked up the box, staring down at it like it could explode at any moment.

"I love you, Xander," he prodded.

"I love you too, hon," she said absently, unable to look away from the damp velvet.

He tried again. "Yes, I'll marry you."

"Yeah, you'll marry me."

Xander grinned and gave up. "Go on, open it. If it's wrong, I can take it back and get it exchanged or something. If I can get the clerk to let me back into the gumball machine."

His lame attempt at humor broke Brooke's temporary paralysis. She looked up at him, her big eyes sparkling with happy tears.

"I hope it's one of those smiley-faced ones that glow in the dark."

"Friendly and useful. But it's not one of those. It is yellow, though."

It was yellow, all right. When Brooke's trembling fingers finally pried open the little box, the ring sparkled like captured sunlight in the distant glow of the quaint gas lamps lining the square. A lemon-yellow, princess cut, two-and-a-half carat diamond, with half-carat white stones set on each side in platinum. Brooke's eyes went big and round as a Powderpuff Girl's.

"Is that okay? 'Cause I can totally go back and get the smiley-faced one if you want."

Brooke's face collapsed and she began to sob, jumping up and throwing her arms around Xander's neck nearly hard enough to send them both stumbling down the gazebo steps. Mister Winston yipped with annoyance and skittered away from the crazy humans. Her skin was scalding hot compared to the cold rain that had soaked through his clothes and hair and he luxuriated in her warmth for a moment. It was definitely a better reaction than the teeth-jarring slap he'd gotten the last time he'd proposed to a woman.

"So that's a yes? You wanna get married?" he asked her wet hair.

"Uh-huh," she sniffed, still clutching him hard enough to cut off the circulation.

He pulled back so that he could cup her face in his hands, wiping the mingled tears and rain water off her cheeks with his thumbs.

"I'm thinking that marrying you is the easiest way to keep you from attacking me in closets."

"Oh God," her dewy eyes rolled like big blue marbles. "That was all my fault and I was so mean to you about it and I'm so sorry," she babbled. "I just couldn't stand the thought of Daddy findin' out about us that way and I kinda lost my religion."

"You freaked. I was pretty freaked myself. But now he'll get to find out about us the right way." Or at least that's what we're all gonna pretend.

Xander looked down at the box in her hand. "Are you going to try it on?"

Brooke gave a laugh that was still half-sob. "You'd have to hog tie me to keep me from it."

They untangled enough for Brooke to slip the ring on the appropriate finger, and together they admired the perfection of the fit. The happy coincidence of the store having a yellow diamond engagement ring in Brooke's size that perfectly matched the necklace he'd given her a couple of weeks ago had made Xander wonder, not for the first time that day, just how secret their affair had been even before lust and Mojitos led them down the garden path.

Brooke held her ring up close, the diamond flashing little sparkles of golden light on her flushed, happy face. "Well, I guess you got me after all," she said softly.

He said nothing, just hugged her again. But even as he reveled in the lush softness of his new bride-to-be, his head buzzing pleasantly with lust and relief as her warm, wet lips nuzzled his ear, a tiny part of Xander couldn't help wondering--

Who had really gotten who?

********

Reader, he married her.

The bridesmaids wore yellow, unsurprisingly, and the wedding reception featured both Veuve Clicquot champagne and ribs from Roy's Steak Ranch. Other than voting for the ribs, the sum total of Xander's involvement in the wedding preparations was going to Houston one February afternoon to have his new Armani tux custom-fitted. From the moment he and Brooke had shown up on Buck and Candy's impressive front stoop that rainy evening still glowing from post-engagement gazebo sex, the formidable O'Shea machinery had switched into gear like the Millennium Falcon jumping into hyper-space. The engagement party, the rehearsal dinner, and the ceremony and reception at Buck and Candy's Southfork-style ranch were planned and executed by Brooke and her mother with Old World elegance and military precision. Which was fine by him: After the agonies he'd suffered planning his wedding to Anya, Xander rode the implacable current of O'Shea will those three months like a surfer catching an easy wave to shore.

Besides, for much of that time Buck kept him too busy working 12-hour days on the Los Olivos Development to worry about seating charts and flower arrangements and drastic, life-altering decisions. Xander's workload was further increased by the fact he was also helping out with the Commercial Division while Buck searched for a new Assistant Manager. Ed Dixon had left the company suddenly right after New Year's: evidently, you could fire someone for being a pain in the ass, after all. Xander's impossible schedule kept up until the week of the wedding, and except for a brief but memorable excursion to the Pink Pony for his bachelor party, Tommy and Cliff managed to hold him under house arrest at the Eldorado Hilton for the three days before the ceremony without it seeming like such. Clearly, the story of his previous non-wedding had spread to the O'Shea clan at large, and they weren't taking any chances on Xander suffering a relapse of cold feet. They could have saved the effort--after everything he'd been through, wild apocalypses wouldn't have dragged him away from the altar.

Buffy and Dawn came to the wedding with Buffy's new boyfriend Matt, a doctor of some flavor, tall, dark, and square-jawed, with more than a little of Angel in his looks and a hint of Riley in his new penny brightness. The guy came complete with an almost frighteningly adorable three-year-old daughter from his deceased wife, whom Buffy shepherded around like she'd been looking after cherubic pre-schoolers her entire life. Dawn was full of stories about Hemery High, still sounding a little stunned at her sudden, meteoric popularity there. Apparently, it was easy to fit in when you weren't dodging hellbeasts every other week. Willow, his "Best Person" for the second and hopefully final time, was a swinging single once again, muttering something about anger management issues and WASP entitlement and leaving it at that. Still, she seemed fine, chattering blithely about her thesis and the research facilities at NYU. Xander hoped they were all as happy as they looked--and if not, he had enough happiness to share. So much happiness that it was only Tommy's swift kick to the ankle that kept him from crying like a baby when Big Buck walked Brooke down the grassy aisle there in the big back yard, the two of them beaming identical freckled smiles at him.

Xander and Brooke went to Disney World for their honeymoon. Fortunately, it rained for most of the week, so they didn't feel guilty about hardly leaving their suite at the Grand Floridian. The one clear afternoon, Xander got a sunburn when Brooke firmly trounced his ass at golf, they went on Space Mountain seven times, and she got sick from too many Mai-Tais at the Polynesian. When they got home, Brooke put the picture of them wearing matching mouse-ear hats and hugging Goofy in front of Cinderella's Castle in the center of the living room mantlepiece.

The day after they got back, he moved his few belongings from the Corporate Suites to the yellow house on Oleander Avenue. In the weeks that followed, he settled into the role of prosperous young married like he'd been born to it. Other than the occasional skirmish over closet space and his ongoing cold war with Mister Winston, Xander was blissfully happy with his new life and his new wife. The poor orphan lad had defeated the monsters, found power and riches in the legendary city of gold, married the princess, and lived happily ever after.

As it turned out, happily ever after lasted five whole months.

Part Ten: In a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife

The good thing about Saturday morning, Xander thought not for the first time, was the sheer, simple bliss of being able to shut off the alarm and sleep. Sleep was good. No clock radio advising him of the latest pile-up on the interstate, nagging him to buy used cars, or informing him of how badly the Round Rock Express had been spanked in San Antonio the night before. No hustling out of bed, gulping down breakfast, and fighting commuter traffic. No rushing into the office to face the piles of paperwork which seemed to appear in his In-box no matter how empty he'd left his desk the night before, as if evil elves cobbled together extra purchase orders and time sheets while he slept. Nope, Saturday mornings were definitely of the good.

Squishing his eyes shut, he huddled deeper into the covers and tried to wrap the comforting warm darkness around himself again. But a few seconds later, an insistent whining made his eyes pop open. The whining was accompanied by a demanding snuffling and scratching at Xander's side of the boxspring.

Even without his glasses, it was painfully easy to see a familiar smushed-in face poking up at him from the side of the bed. In the first few weeks of married life, Mister Winston's looks had definitely taken some getting used to: a groggy Xander had awoken every morning thinking he was being attacked by goblins rather than a show-quality pug with a full bladder.

"Okay, okay. You gotta take a piss. I get that. Just stay away from my shoes," Xander mumbled, reluctantly rolling out of bed. He grabbed for his glasses on the bedside table, and the world snapped into better focus.

Feeling drugged and stupid, he pulled a pair of sweatpants over his boxer briefs and followed the pug down the stairs. Perky pug followed by stupid human--it was enough to make you wonder who really had the upper rung on the evolutionary ladder. Xander unlocked the front door, and Mister Winston zipped out to the small front yard of the house. As usual, Scotty the paperboy had managed to lodge the Examiner in the bushes below the bay window, and Xander had a few sticky moments while he untangled both the paper and himself from an enormous spiderweb. While he was doing the "get it off me" web dance, Mister Winston went over to the neighbors' hydrangea bush and lifted his leg. At this rate, Xander was going to have to replace the bush before the end of the month. Again. For some reason, the pug thought that the hydrangea bush on the other side of the property line was his personal urinal, ignoring all the shrubbery on his own rightful turf. Xander wasn't sure if Mister Winston was trying to expand his territory, or simply making a comment about the Wheatons' landscaping. In any event, there hadn't been any harsh words exchanged so far over the matter. Xander had just pulled up the two previous pee-poisoned bushes and replaced them with a fresh one from the DIY warehouse. Rick Wheaton had never said anything about it, which was just fine with him.

Back inside, Xander wandered over to the hall closet and pulled out a pair of sneakers and a sweatshirt. He pulled on the sweatshirt, and while he was tying the laces of his running shoes gave the paper a quick once-over. The allergy index was up, the market was down, the state legislature was trying to push through another tax increase for education funding, and J. Lo was getting divorced again. Yep, and the Round Rock Express had been spanked in San Antonio the night before. The universe was running according to normal rules, so Xander was going to go out for his normal morning run.

Before he left, he ran back upstairs and stuck his head in the bedroom door, addressing the still-sleeping bulk of his wife.

"Hon, I'm going to stop by Billy's and get some bagels on the way back from my run. What do you want?"

The noises that emerged from underneath the sunny yellow quilt weren't English as he understood it, so Xander went over to the bed and repeated the question.

"Sweetie, what kind of bagel do you want?" he asked, giving Brooke a soft prod in the rump.

"Usual," she mumbled.

There was no usual. Brooke changed her bagel preferences the way Oz used to change his haircolor.

"Which is?" Xander persisted.

"Peanut butter 'n cream cheese. Did you take Winnie out? 'Cause he's gon' pee in your shoes again. You can't 'spect him to hold it like he's bigger than he is," Brooke said indistinctly.

Though she had now emerged enough for Xander to see her sleepy blue eyes and wild tangle of red-gold hair, he knew she wasn't really awake. The fact that she was talking meant next to nothing. Brooke talked in her sleep. She talked in her sleep, she talked to herself, and she'd been known to have long conversations with her computer regarding the problems she had with its attitude.

"Get one for him. Plain. . .butter on top," Brooke mumbled, turning over and disappearing under the quilt again.

"Toasted?"

"Fishes," Brooke replied, and Xander knew he'd lost her to the sandman. Or, possibly, that Mister Winston took his breakfast bagels with tuna.

The morning streets were quiet and cool, not yet scorched by the searing heat of August. After three blocks, Xander broke into a good sweat and pulled off his sweatshirt to tie it around his waist. It was nice being out here now, after the sun was up but before anything really started moving. This early on a weekend, he practically had the sidewalks to himself: the only people he saw were sleepy, pajama-clad folks out to pry their Saturday Examiners from whatever strange landing places Scotty had seen fit to deposit them. Over the past year, Xander had kept up with the running because it bled off the energy he stored from sitting behind a desk fifty hours a week. Plus, it was a relatively painless way of maintaining his weight while letting him eat three Texas-sized meals every day.

Life was good. Amazingly good, Xander thought as his feet pounded into the sidewalks of the residential streets. He had a wife he was crazy about, a job he liked, and a house that was increasing in property value, all in a great town that was pretty, clean, and safe. After his five-year anniversary with O'Shea Construction, he'd be eligible for the profit-sharing plan. Between that, his salary, and what Brooke made (and he still wasn't sure exactly how much that was, and didn't really care), they'd probably be millionaires before he was thirty-five. The whole rest of his life was as neatly planned out as one of Brooke's spreadsheets. There were houses to be built, yellow furniture to be bought, red-headed grandbabies for Big Buck (one day, far in the future) to beget, and when the Big Man went to that Great Construction Site in the sky, Xander and Brooke would run O'Shea between the two of them. He couldn't have built a more perfect life if he'd custom-designed one using AutoCAD.

With an impatient sigh, Xander stopped at an intersection, jogging in place while he waited for the light to change.

And if perfect wasn't quite as exciting as it was cracked up to be, well, that wasn't Eldorado's fault. Twenty-two years of living in Sunnydale would make any place look tame in comparison. There was no way that shopping with his wife for more expensive bric-a-brac they didn't need, or discussing stock options with the other bright young marrieds over cocktails at some overpriced downtown bistro, or even watching Big Buck shake on yet another million-dollar deal, were going to be able to compare with the hair-raising adrenaline rush of battling the forces of Evil on a weekly basis. But tame was a good thing, a worthwhile thing. He'd earned the right to have a life where the most dangerous activity he engaged in was eating the last of the Chunky Monkey without telling Brooke.

Xander took his pulse with one hand, checking it against his top-of-the-line Omega sportswatch. Seventy-two. This, and some of his hotter moments with Brooke, was about the only time it got much above 60 anymore. Not like when he was living in Sunnydale, where he could reach his target heart rate six times a day through sheer terror alone. You really couldn't beat the cardiovascular workout of lopping the head off a Zagrok demon, or tracking a hungry Olethros wyrm back to its hole. Even hiding in a dumpster to avoid being smelled by a pack of hungry, feral vamps, or sneaking into the morgue with a copy of Grimorium Verum to identify the symbols scrawled on a freshly-slaughtered corpse, had a certain aerobic benefit.

Not that he missed doing all that, or anything. Running to get your body fat down to 10% was definitely better than running for your life. Definitely.

The light changed, and Xander pushed determinedly forward.

All those years of living on the Hellmouth had just left him with a few kinks, that's all--and not even the fun kind. When he took Mister Winston out for his evening constitutional, he couldn't help peering into the shadows of the trees lining the peaceful streets, looking for a gleam of scale or flash of fang, fingers flexing for the weapon that wasn't tucked into his sweatpants. Making his weekly trip to Amarillo Antiques with Brooke, he'd find himself lingering lovingly over the display of vintage knives and swords, testing the edges of each blade with one sure finger and judging whether it would be enough to slice through the spiny armor of a Polgara demon, or dust a vamp with a single stroke. He'd pass the local occult shop, a swanky little boutique not too far from the downtown center, and feel a queer, funny ache in his chest, even though he was pretty sure the most ominous thing in there was the retail mark-up. He'd even dreamed he was back in Sunnydale a few times, not nightmares, mostly just endless, frustrating dreams about being in the old Sunnydale High School library or the Magic Box, looking through volume after dusty volume for something important that he couldn't find. But none of that meant anything--just mental hiccups. Old habits dying hard, as old habits tended to do.

Taking a few deep, tidal breaths, he stepped up the pace from a fast jog to a full sprint.

Even if he missed Sunnydale, which he didn't, the town was as dead as the vampire that had closed the Hellmouth. Unless he was planning on running off to Cleveland for a bracing round of free-lance demon hunting, which he wasn't, he was just going to have to find more challenges here in Eldorado. He could brush up on his golf game, maybe. That would be good. A hole in one had to be as exciting as dusting a vamp.

Quickly passing the ugly bulk of Casa Seville, its faded stucco walls blooming with climbing roses that perfumed the whole block with their seductive scent, Xander continued up Cypress Street towards the center of town. Halfway up the block, he saw that some of the 1950s tract houses lining the right-hand side of the street were being torn down. This was odd enough to make him cut his pace. He usually kept up with any major construction projects that were happening in Eldorado, mainly because O'Shea handled most of them, but he hadn't heard of this one. Why this particular crew was working on a Saturday morning was even more of a mystery--that had to mean paying time-and-a-half at the very least.

Xander felt long-dormant instincts yawn and rear their slightly rusty heads, and he slowed to a walk. No harm in checking it out--this was his neighborhood, after all. He had a right to know what was going on.

Wending carefully around an earthmover, Xander scanned the construction site with a practiced eye. He winced when he saw the Green Development Company Logo. As far as O'Shea Construction could be said to have a rival in Eldorado, Green Development was it. But it was hard to imagine Buck getting outbid by the likes of them, much less not even complaining about it to Brooke and Xander if such an impossibility occurred.

Ah-ha, the mystery deepens, Watson, he thought with a small, strange thrill.

He found the crew boss drinking coffee, reading the newspaper and generally being useless, as the majority of Green employees were. Xander would have had any crew boss of his fired if the man had been holding anything other than a site plan or tools. But this wasn't his crew, and it made no difference to him if the man was wasting company time and money.

"Hey, whatcha doin'?" Xander asked, arranging his best just-a-regular-guy smile on his face.

The crew boss jerked his head in the direction of the piles of dirt and cinderblocks that had been rows of slightly dilapidated ranch houses a few days ago. "Takin' 'em down." His accent was hard enough to chop wood. "Holl block's comin' down."

"Wow. Putting something new up?" he said, still trying to give off the friendly, stupid vibe.

"Coupla houses, mebbe. Restovit's gon' be a green space--the new Seville Square, or some such bullshit."

Interesting. Someone was paying Green Development to replace one of the four original town squares that had been built over in the days before historical preservation had become a cause célèbre in Eldorado. This meant taking prime real estate out of the marketplace and tying it up in a public green space. And the someone in question was apparently anxious enough about it to have a construction crew working on a weekend. That had to be costing a pretty penny. A penny they wouldn't even be seeing a return on, other than in community goodwill.

Weird. Nice, but weird. Xander's curiosity snuffled ahead like a hungry beagle.

The crew boss glanced down at Xander's chest. "You guys get any o' th' work?"

Shit, Xander thought. I'm standing here like a total asshole, trying to be all man-on-the-street, wearing an O'Shea Construction t-shirt complete with Elmer the Elephant and his trusty I-beam. In the old days, that would have been thickheaded enough to make Giles lift his Scooby badge. Talk about rusty.

"I dunno. That's all handled upstairs," he said, trying to recover. He attempted a redneck accent for good measure. "Ya know how it is with the suits. They don't tell the workin' men jack shit. I just punch th' clock and do what they tell me."

Either a year of living in Texas had improved his southern drawl, or the crew boss was too lazy to care who Xander really was. He shrugged. "Damn straight. If CURE wants ta have us bustin' our humps out here seven days a week so's a bunch of junior leaguers can put in plaques proclaimin' they've restored Old Eldorado to its glory days, whatever. I'm just glad ta git the overtime." He paused and contemptuously spat a wad of tobacco big enough to choke a camel on the dusty ground. Having made his opinions known by both word and deed, he turned back to his paper.

Xander backed away, quickly losing interest. Well, that explained everything. Citizens United to Restore Eldorado, or CURE, was the local historical preservation society. Founded in the early 1970s by a power-clique of the ladies who lunch, they'd been single-handedly responsible for beginning the transformation of the historic district from a slum neighborhood where streetwalkers openly solicited customers on every corner, and winos camped out under the huge bronze statue of Hezekiah Darling in Darling Square, to the charming (and pricey) neighborhood it was today. Having bought up many of the dilapidated old houses when they were on the market for almost nothing, the group had made a fortune restoring and selling them to yuppie newcomers eager to buy a piece of local history. Their coffers full to overflowing, CURE had expanded its efforts in the late 1980s, focusing on preserving parts of Eldorado which lay outside the old district, often preventing developers from tearing down buildings they deemed of historic or aesthetic interest, even when the interest in question seemed relatively slight.

Buck, who'd gotten into a tussle with the group a few years back over a tumbling-down shack that sat square in the middle of a piece of land he'd marked for development, called it CURSE.

If CURE had its sights set on bringing back the missing squares, it had the pull to see it done, and the money to hire crews to work on it seven days a week. Judging from the stories he'd heard from Brooke about Buck's legendary dust-ups with Lonnie McKay, the President of CURE, it wasn't surprising that O'Shea didn't get the work. Buck probably hadn't even put in a bid for it.

Sighing, Xander felt his Scooby sense go back into hibernation.

Making a vow to call Buck about an early morning tee-time at Vista del Lago next week, he jogged down the street and didn't look back.

********

"Do you have any idea how disgusting a peanut butter bagel is with cream cheese on it? It's like a smushy thing that makes your mouth stick shut just looking at it. It's like paste in a paper wrapper."

Brooke just shrugged and took another big bite of her bagel. "Personal choice. I don't like the plain ones, and you know I'm allergic to blueberries."

Sitting there among the rumpled covers, her hair in messy red ringlets around her face, Brooke looked like an occasion to sin in daisy-printed Nick 'n Nora shorty pajamas. There were the moments like this when Xander wondered if it was quite right for him to have this much carnal lust for his partner in life. He also wondered how much of the coveting of his neighbor's wife Rick Wheaton was doing. If he'd been Rick, by now it would have reached levels high enough to send Moses scrambling back up the mountain for a few more commandments.

Stretched out on the bed, Xander turned his thoughts away from the tempting curves of his wife's flesh, to the not-so-tempting breakfast beside him.

"Apparently, so is the girl at Billy's. I got raisin again."

"Hate raisin," Brooke agreed, wrinkling her pert freckled nose. She washed down the bagel with the last of her morning latte.

"I think she hates me. Every time I ask for blueberry, I get raisin. Maybe there is no blueberry, there's just raisin."

"There is no spoon," Brooke smirked, poking him in the stomach with one well-maintained foot and making a grab for his cappuccino.

Putting his rusty defensive reflexes to good use, Xander quickly swept the cup onto the far nightstand out of her reach and grabbed his thieving spouse by the ankle. "You wanna know what they mix the bagel dough with? A big paddle. A big paddle just like your big feet!"

Brooke gave out a squeak of outraged laughter and kicked, sending Xander's bagel flying somewhere into the corner of the bedroom. Pinning her calf to the mattress, Xander bit her anklebone just hard enough to make her giggle and started his way up her leg, nibbling away at her shinbone like it was a particularly succulent piece of corn on the cob. By the time he reached the back of her knee, Brooke's giggles had evolved into happy gasps, and her cream-cheese sticky fingers were running through his hair. He didn't mind. The skin on her inner thigh was as silky as the butter on his misbegotten raisin bagel, and tastier. Her sleepy girl smell washed over him in warm waves, and his dick would have been hard even if she hadn't been kneading away at it with her free foot.

"C'mere," she demanded, pulling at his shoulders.

Some hasty rearranging and he was lying on top of her, enjoying every square inch of soft Brooke body beneath him. She had her arms twined around his neck and was kissing him with her peanutbuttery mouth. His hands were making quick headway in stripping away the frustrating layers of cotton lying between him and paradise, when the goddamn doorbell rang.

"Oh shoot," she muttered into his lips.

"Maybe they'll go away."

"Nope--it's prob'ly Parker Printing with the programs for the benefit," she sighed. Every year, O'Shea Construction sponsored a big charity benefit for some worthy local cause, and this year it happened to be the facial deformities unit of Eldorado Regional Medical Center. Brooke had spent the last six weeks hip-deep in preparations for the event, driving everyone from senior management to the mailroom staff nuts with her brilliant but exhausting plans. Its official title was the rather unwieldy Jamboree to Benefit the Eldorado Maxillofacial Deformities Center, but Buck and Xander had come up with their own much snappier name for it.

"You mean Hoedown for Harelips?"

"I wish you and Daddy wouldn't call it that," she said, fixing him with a low-wattage version of her warning look. "Now, you go down and deal with the delivery guy while I get some clothes on. Don't sign the acceptance slip until I get a look at 'em." She put her hard little knuckles in the center of his chest and shoved. "Go on, now. Shoo!"

There wasn't anything for Xander to do but what he was told. With Mister Winston at his heels and the remains of his rapidly-cooling cappuccino in his hand, he went downstairs and answered the door, glad that he'd managed to lose his hard-on in the process.

Sure enough, Dave, the delivery man for Parker Printing, was standing there, with a handcart full of cardboard boxes and a clipboard. A tiny, red-haired man with a turned-up nose and eyes the color of newly-cut grass, he looked about as happy as anyone being forced to work on a Saturday could.

"Mornin', Mr. Harris." Dave nodded cordially and then crouched down to greet Mister Winston. "How's my puppy?"

Mister Winston gave Dave the Churchill-like stare of Deep Disdain and retired to the kitchen, leaving Xander feeling somewhat embarrassed by his canine stepson.

"He's kinda shy," Xander said sheepishly.

"We've met before," Dave said with an understanding grin, straightening up. "Before he got hisself banished from th'office for takin' a dump on those contracts of your father-in-law's."

Xander gave him an answering grin, remembering with relish the one time Mister Winston hadn't been able to whine and wheedle his way out of trouble. While Brooke clutched the cringing pug to her chest, Big Buck, his face like a thundercloud, had held out the brown-smeared contracts and practically rubbed Mister Winston's nose in them. His pronouncement had been short and to the point: "Crystal Brooke, If I ever see that filthy critter 'round here again, there's gon' be two heads mounted in my office. Now get it outta my sight." Bearing witness to the banishment of Mister Winston had actually been worth putting up with a week of Brooke's resulting sulks.

"Did I say shy? What I meant was rude. He's kind of rude."

"That dog's got the most attitude per pound in Eldorado." Dave shook his head in amazement. "Gotta admire that. Though I like horses, myself."

"Mornin', Dave!" Brooke said, traipsing down the stairs in a yellow velour hoodie and shorts that made the most of her curves and the smooth length of her legs, her ruddy hair pulled into two neat ponytails. She looked about fifteen, the kind of fifteen that made grown men think bad, sticky thoughts.

Dave swallowed, hard. So did Xander.

"You got my pretty little programs?" Brooke asked, coming even with the men. Xander could now see that over the curve of one ample breast, the logo of the hoodie's designer was embroidered in big white letters--JUICY. He bit his lip to keep from making any of the half-dozen witty but totally inappropriate comments that sprang unbidden to his sexually-frustrated brain.

Dave, the consummate professional, had apparently recovered from the blatant product placement. He now had his eyes firmly fixed on Brooke's face. "Yes ma'am, got 'em right here. If you just wanna sign--" He offered the clipboard hopefully.

Brooke tilted her head to one side, blinking her big blue eyes at him reproachfully. "Now, you know better than that, Dave Piskie. I don't sign anything till I see what I'm gettin'. We O'Shea's aren't ones for buyin' pigs in pokes."

Dave flashed her a bashful grin as he opened the top box. "Had to try, didn't I?"

Extracting the top copy, he handed it to Brooke with the kind of ceremony that generally called for white gloves and a silver platter.

Brooke smiled back at him and accepted the program. Then she glanced down at it, and her smile dimmed like the sun going behind storm clouds. She looked up at the hapless delivery man, her eyes gone equally stormy.

"Take these outta my house."

"But--"

"You heard me. Get rid of 'em. Right now. I don't wanna see 'em again," Brooke said in a rapid, machine-gun fire voice. She turned and headed for the table in the alcove next to the stairs, where she'd left her purse last night. "I've gotta call Izzie right now."

Xander's testicles shrank back into his body. He knew that particular Brooke voice. It was the equivalent of a cat twitching its tail right before it sprang on some helpless squirrel and tore its head off.

"Sorry, man," Xander said softly, turning back to Dave.

"Hey, just glad I ain't Izzie," Dave replied just as softly, re-sealing the box with a resigned shrug.

With her eyes glued to the front page of the program, Brooke punched a number into her cellphone without even looking at it. This was one of Brooke's special talents: she was a human speed dial, with perfect recall of almost any phone number and the ability to dial with mechanical precision.

"Izzie? Brooke O'Shea here. I just got my shipment of programs for the Benefit and I'm 'bout to have a cardiac episode. Don't your people proofread anything before it goes to press? This is the last revision that I corrected on Wednesday."

Her rosebud mouth turned down in the familiar dissatisfied pout as she listened to the unlucky Izzie on the other end.

"Whaddyou mean, you got the proof there and it's fine? You better get your eyes checked, cause the one I'm lookin' at is most certainly not fine. It has 'Maxillofacial' spelled M-E-X-I-L-L-O. That's right, Mexillo, like Mexico. I'm standin' here with 1500 very expensive benefit programs that look like they got some kinda weird ethnic slur on the cover!"

Pause. Listen. Frown.

"Yes, I do think people will notice it. You know Dr. Garcia-DeSoto, one of the directors for the Clinic? He's also one o' the plaintiffs for that defamation suit about the Taco Bell dog. So I got a feelin' he might just take this the wrong way."

Pause. Listen. Really big frown.

"Don't give me that. This ain't my first time at the rodeo, Isadore Parker. I e-mailed you the right cover, with the right spelling, on Wednesday. Somebody on your end screwed up but good, and I ain't about to be humiliated 'cause you're too cheap to hire decent help and too sorry to check up after 'em!"

Xander shot Dave an apologetic glance. Dave just grinned and gave Xander a whatcha-gon'-do? shrug. Clearly, he too had witnessed displays of O'Shea temper before.

Brooke's face was now as red as her hair.

"What we have here is a failure to communicate. So lemme put it in real simple terms that you can understand. Either you have 1500 new, non-offensive programs in my office at 9 AM Monday morning, complete with a corrected invoice givin' us a ten percent discount for all the trouble, or the next time you do business with O'Shea Construction the Devil's gonna be handin' out ice skates. Do I make myself clear?"

Xander could hear Izzie's frantic protestations even from where he was standing. Brooke's face returned to something close to its normal color.

"Good. I'll expect 'em in my office then, 9 AM sharp." She closed her flip phone with a vicious click and headed into the kitchen without a glance back at either of the men staring at her from the vestibule in dumbstruck awe.

Xander followed Dave out to the truck and watched him re-load the boxes of programs. The sun was out full-force, the night's coolness starting to warm to the usual baking midday heat.

"Whoo-ie, bet poor ol' Izzie's settin' in a bucket o' ice water right now," Dave said conversationally as he loaded the last of the boxes. "Your missus scorched his ass but good."

"Yeah, Brooke's bad side isn't a comfy place to be," Xander agreed. Catching Dave's squinty-eyed look, he continued hastily, "Of course, I wouldn't know anything about that. Seriously. I don't."

Dave gave Xander a sympathetic slap on the back. "You just ain't been married long enough yet," he laughed, climbing back into the truck.

Brooke was standing at the sink when Xander walked into the kitchen, the phone clamped to her ear while she made tea that smelled like lawn clippings. Chamomile, he assumed, for its soothing effects. Which evidently hadn't kicked in yet--she was plunging the defenseless teabag up and down in the mug with the vim of a Salem judge dunking a suspected witch. But at least she was using the honey-chile voice she reserved for friends, as opposed to the rapid-fire tone she'd blitzed Izzie with earlier.

"And it was just wrong! MEX-illo, of all things. Like we were sayin' only Mexican people needed reconstructive surgery. The last thing I want is to give somebody an excuse to say that Brooke O'Shea's a racist. Not after the Zorro costume thing last year."

"Who's that?" Xander mouthed.

"Jan," Brooke mouthed back, before turning her attention to the conversation again. "Who knew it was a slur? I thought Antonio Banderas was hot. I think Ree was just takin' a dig at me or somethin', anyway. Treatin' me like some big, dumb gringa."

Since Hurricane Brooke had been downgraded to Tropical Storm Brooke, Xander, visions of interrupted breakfasts dancing in his head, pushed the fall of hair away from his wife's neck and kissed her warm, buttery skin. Brooke slopped tea onto the counter and blotted at it with a paper towel, even though Xander was still attached, lamprey-like, to her. Mister Winston, with a roll of his big brown pop-eyes, gave a disgusted whine and headed for the living room. Don't let the swinging door hit you on the way out, chum, Xander thought.

"Uh-uh. She never did like me. Remember cheerleading try-outs in ninth grade? Like it was my fault she had two left feet. People with thighs like that shouldn't wear mini-skirts, anyway."

Sliding his hands around the front of her hoodie, Xander eased the zipper down with silent stealth. A moment later, he'd unsnapped the front of her bra and was having a nice fondle of his wife's tits while she tried to keep up the conversation. JUICY, he thought with a wolfish grin.

"No, he said they'd be ready in ti-ime," Her voice broke a little on the last word, as he teased her nipples into high, tight points, but she didn't push him away.

Chuckling to himself, Xander started easing down the velour shorts and Brooke's panties. Her frantic hand gestures to give her one more minute on the phone grew more panicked, but he cheerfully ignore them. Brooke shot him a look of death over her shoulder, but still obediently picked up her right foot and let Xander pull the shorts off over her white Keds sneaker.

"Uh-hmm. Yeah, we can get those. . .at, um, Lubbock Hay an'--H-hey!"

Her voice rose to a squeak as Xander slid his hand between her legs, finding evidence that she was just as interested in him as she was in the conversation.

"No, I'm fine, Jan, just clearin' my throat. I said Lubbock Hay and Feed." He ran his fingers over the creamy white globes of her ass, and Brooke shivered and arched into him, but somehow still managed to keep the beat of the conversation.

He was the luckiest man in the world, no doubt about that.

In a matter of moments, Xander had dropped his sweats and was buried to the hilt in her hot wetness while she stubbornly continued to chatter with Jan. In another woman it might have been perverse, but with Brooke, it made laughter bubble up somewhere inside his chest. She was just too damn cute.

He got into the rhythm of the fucking, hard, deep strokes that pressed her stomach up against the counter and made the glass bowl in the mixer shake with tiny metallic pings. It was a pretty funky contrast, hot stand-up sex in their sunny yellow-and-white kitchen, like a scene from one of those movies on the scrambled porn channel. All that was missing was his pizza delivery uniform and the boom-chicka-wow-wow music.

"We'll need--fake hay--bugs 'n all--" By now, the smooth thread of Brooke's conversation was getting decidely knotted. She'd didn't even seem to notice that she'd spilled the rest of her tea on the clean kitchen counter.

With one hand squeezing her breasts together and the other flicking at her clit, Xander sucked on her shoulder, happy as a pig in slops, whatever that meant. He had his groove on and was grooving away, the pressure of a big climax starting somewhere around the base of his spine and shorting out most of his higher centers. Brooke was rubbing against him like a lioness in heat, the hand not clutching the phone reaching around and pulling him closer, her claws raking into his hip. Xander made one more mad, glad thrust and Brooke shuddered from ass to shoulders.

"Jan-somethin'-came-up-I-gotta-call-you-back-later-bye," she blurted out in one breath and then dropped the phone on the counter, where it bounced once and went skidding to the floor.

"Oh God, you are so baaaad," she gasped. Clutching at the counter's edge with both hands, she threw her head back and pushed back into him.

"And you love it," he murmured, raking his teeth across the vanilla-ice cream skin of her neck.

She made a noise deep in her throat and clamped onto him with killing force. Xander saw stars, and came with a rush that drained all the fluid from his brain. Brooke writhed underneath him for a moment, and then they were both slumped onto the now tea-soaked counter.

"You coulda waited 'til I was off the phone," Brooke said plaintively after a minute, sounding rather muffled with the left side of her face pressed into the countertop.

"I know how you and Jan are once you get going with the girl talk," Xander replied reasonably. "Didn't want to wait all day."

After a few more moments of companionable breathing, their limbs had regained some solidity. Brooke shoved Xander off her back and straightened up, making a face and rubbing at the base of her spine as she pushed one tea-steeped ponytail off her shoulder. Naked from the waist down, with her shorts and panties wadded around her left ankle and her cinnamon-tipped breasts bobbing free from the unzipped front of her hoodie, she looked so luscious, so JUICY, that Xander's dick twitched. The movement attracted her attention and she transferred her bright blue gaze from his face to his crotch.

"You know, the bed's much more comfortable than the formica," she said, imitating his reasonable tone. "I'm just sayin'."

All Xander could do was pull her close and kiss her, enjoying the silky slide of velour and sweet woman-flesh against his body.

"Love you, baby," he whispered into her hair.

"Yeah yeah, let a man bang you on the kitchen counter and he's yours forever." She looked up at him with one of her trademark three-cornered kitten smiles. "Let's adjourn this meetin' upstairs. I've thought of a thing or two we can do with the leftover cream cheese."

********

"We gotta get up," Brooke said sleepily, many, many hours later.

"Can't move."

Xander had his head pillowed on her stomach, and she was running her fingers through his hair while Godzilla systematically crushed Tokyo underfoot. Sunset was bleeding through the lace curtains, filling the bedroom with a warm gold haze that matched the warm gold haze in Xander's brain, the one that came only after hours of uninterrupted, high-voltage sex. He was limp as a dishrag, his spine was gelatin, and he couldn't have gotten another erection if he'd swallowed a truckload of Viagra. His dick was actually at the point of being unpleasantly raw rather than pleasantly sore, his jaw ached, and his nose still hurt from where Brooke had bucked up against him and jammed her pubic bone into it. Like many Saturdays before this one, they'd spent most of the day wringing every possible climax out of each other, then dissolved into nerveless lumps of flesh while watching weird old movies on deep cable.

This was almost too much of a good thing.

Xander shifted a little, burying his tender nose in the silky flesh just above Brooke's bellybutton, breathing in her heady vanilla-lemon scent.

Almost.

"There's nothing for dinner," Brooke said, trying again a few moments later.

"Howszat?" Xander said, sounding somewhat muffled, since his lips were having a difficult time separating themselves from Brooke's skin.

"I was gonna take some chops outta the freezer, but you distracted me."

"You're a baaad wife," he mumbled.

"But you can make up for it."

Xander raised his head. "I can?"

Brooke stretched on the 500-count linen sheets, looking as sleek and sated as a well-fed cat. "Take me for ribs at Roy's, and then we can swing by Best Buy and you can buy me the new Sex and the City DVDs."

"You forget to defrost dinner, so I have to buy you something to make up for it?"

"Exactly," she said, tweaking his earlobe.

Xander rolled his eyes. "Insane girl logic. You shower first."

Brooke sat up and stretched again. Her tousled amber hair, long since come loose from its confining bands, shimmered halo-like around her rosy face. Standing up a little woozily, she slowly walked into the master bathroom adjoining the bedroom, fair skin shining like pink Carrera marble in the dusky light. She was so stunning in the afterglow that all Xander could do was look after her with his mouth hanging open in sheer amazement. He thought of a picture he'd seen in one of Tara's Art History books once, of an ivory-skinned goddess rising naked out of the sea, red hair tangling around her like vines as nymphs attended her. Vermicelli, that had been the artist's name. Xander wondered what he would have thought of his wife.

He sank back onto the rumpled featherbed, grinning like the lovesick fool he knew he was. His wife. Even after five months of marriage, he still couldn't quite believe she was his. Xander burrowed deeper into the all that yielding softness, enjoying the comfortably sprung feeling in his muscles. As his gorgeous, brilliant, utterly fuckable spouse would probably put it, he'd been rode hard and put up wet, and enjoyed every crazy, exhausting minute of it. She really was all the excitement one man could handle in this life. Who needed demon-hunting in Cleveland when you had Brooke?

Part Eleven: How did I get here?

Xander and Brooke, full to bursting from Roy's Saturday Night Special (two big racks of ribs, plus all the salad and garlic bread you could eat), strolled hand-in-hand into the fluorescent wonderland of the Eldorado Best Buy not long before darkness fell.

"While you're getting your stuff, I think I'll check out the car stereos," Xander said, as Brooke was pulling him in the direction of the DVD section.

"Again?" she said, her mouth turning down. "We spent all last Saturday huntin' through every electronics store in town, and you couldn't find anything to suit. What makes you think they'll have somethin' better this week? Besides, your Jeep needs that new stereo like a cat needs two tails."

"Says the woman with seventy-two pairs of shoes."

"Fifty-one," she corrected primly. "I took some to the Goodwill last week. Anyway, I have to have those for work--you know how much more harshly women in the professional arena are judged on their appearance than men. You don't need a seven-hundred dollar car stereo to prove yourself."

If wardrobe were credibility, Brooke would be President of the United States right now. But Xander wisely decided not to pursue an argument he knew he was going to lose.

"Humor me," he said mildly. "I just bought you ribs."

"You know, I was watchin' this program on the Discovery Channel when you were workin' late the other night, and this anthropologist was sayin' that shopping is actually a modern manifestation of the primitive hunting instinct," Brooke said thoughtfully. "Modern man doesn't have to spend hours every day stalkin' the Woolly Mammoth to make it through the cruel winter, so instead he tries to satisfy his primal urges by trackin' down Tivos and plasma televisions and George Foreman grills and draggin' 'em back to his cave."

"And I guess since modern woman no longer has to spend hours every day picking up nuts and berries, she spends two hours at the Clinique counter picking out blush?" Xander couldn't help remarking.

"It wasn't two hours. Thirty minutes, maybe. They'd discontinued my favorite color," Brooke said defensively. "Anyway, I was thinkin' that you'd seemed kinda restless lately, spendin' so much time huntin' for all these gizmos--"

"I'm not restless," Xander protested. "I'm contributing to the local economy. There's a recession on--it's the patriotic thing to do."

"Well, Mr. All-American, I figured if you had all this extra energy to burn, maybe you could come to the target range with Daddy and me next time we go. It'd prob'ly be more fun than arguin' with Dale at Discount Hi-Fi over his installation fees."

"No thanks. You know I'm not much on playing shoot-'em-up," Xander said with a slight shudder. Watching his best friends get blown away by that bastard Warren Mears had forever squelched any interest he might have had in firearms. "Stalking the elusive Woolly CD changer with MP3 and digital satellite radio is more my speed."

"Fine, fine, suit yourself," Brooke sighed, but her smile was indulgent. Giving him a quick, slightly garlicky peck on the lips, she headed off in the direction of the DVD's. After a moment or two of enjoying the hypnotic sway of his wife's hips under her denim miniskirt, Xander turned and made a beeline to the back left-hand corner, which was taken up by the store's impressive array of car stereo equipment.

As usual, Xander heard the car stereo department long before he saw it. Smack in the middle of the L-shaped wall arrangement which housed the stereo and small speaker displays was a raised triangular platform of brushed steel panels and chrome caging. This was where the super-charged, mega-expensive, mega-bass stereo systems were located, the ones that always seem to be installed in beat-up, spray-painted low-riders worth much less than the systems themselves. Within this temple of sound was a big display monitor that let you test-drive the mega-bass combos in-store, mixing and matching the various brands of amp and sub-woofer until you found the perfect combination guaranteed to render you deaf before the age of 35. Also as usual, some idiot was enthusiastically engaged in the process, cranking the volume on the display unit as high as it would go, then turning it down whisper-quiet, then cranking it all the way up again to test the speakers' range. Unsurprisingly, the music was the most obnoxious known to humankind, a frenetic techno-beat overlaid with vocals that sounded like the singer was in the process of passing a particularly painful kidney stone.

SO IMPRESSED WITH ALL YOU DO

TRIED SO HARD TO BE LIKE YOU

FLEW TOO HIGH AND BURNT THE WING

LOST MY FAITH IN EVERYTHING

Doing his best to ignore the wall of noise, Xander headed to the display wall behind the mega-bass triangle. Spotting the Sony system, a chrome and neon confection of violet lights and candy-colored animated digital displays, he took out his shiny new tungsten Palm Pilot, where he'd stored the price information from his scouting trips to Best Buy, Circuit City, Discount Hi-Fi and Bob's Electronics Round-up last weekend. It was still $659.99--fifty bucks cheaper than he'd found it anywhere else in town. But installation was extra. Circuit City and Electronics Round-up had free installation, but that would work out about the same once you added on the more expensive sticker price. Installation was extra at Discount Hi-Fi, too, but he bet it was cheaper there than it would be here at the corporate--

SHREDDING SKIN SUCCUMB DEFEAT

THIS MACHINE IS OBSOLETE

Hunching his shoulders against the onslaught of the music, Xander peered at the numbers on his Palm Pilot and tried to think. His gaze drifting over the display wall, he spotted the other system he'd had his eye on, the Kenwood Cirrus. At $549.99, over a hundred bucks cheaper than the Sony. Pretty much the same features, MP3 capability and the digital satellite radio tuner, plus a 10-disc dashboard CD changer he wouldn't have to stick in the back of the Jeep, which would be a lot more convenient than having to climb out and shift everything around whenever he wanted to add something new. But it didn't have the same nifty animated displays, although he did like the detachable face plate and--

TEAR A HOLE EXQUISITE RED

FUCK THE REST AND STAB IT DEAD

Xander stopped, sighed, and with a swift, almost angry movement, snapped the cover on the Palm and shoved it back in his shirt pocket. What the hell difference did $50, or $100, or a even $1000 make, anyway? He could buy every system the store had on display, twice, and still wouldn't feel the pinch. And the sad irony was that Brooke was right: he didn't need animated menus or digital infrared tuning to play his Travis and Radiohead CD's or listen to NPR on the way home from work. Just like he didn't need this Palm Pilot instead of his trusty old leather datebook, or his new thousand-dollar Sony digital camera instead of the Kodak Instamatic he had for years. He'd been spending money like a drunken sailor lately, for no other reason than--

BROKEN BRUISED FORGOTTEN SORE

TOO FUCKED UP TO CARE ANYMORE

Okay, that's getting pretty fucking annoying, Xander thought, feeling annoyance flare into real anger. A man couldn't even have a good brood over the essential hollowness of conspicuous consumption without some asshole trying to rupture the eardrums of everyone in a 50-yard radius. How many times did you have to crank the bass before you realized that whether you went with the Pioneer or the Kenwood or the Rockford-Fosgood, they were all really goddamn loud? Here's a primal urge I can satisfy, Xander thought grimly. He spun on his heel and walked around the corner of the bass display to the entrance arch, ready to tell this idiot to stick his subwoofer where the animated digital display don't shine. But as he walked up the brief ramp to the demonstration area and got a good, long look at his tormenter, Xander's steps abruptly slowed.

POISONED TO MY ROTTEN CORE

TOO FUCKED UP TO CARE ANYMORE

The man's back was turned to him, but there was no doubt even from this angle that he wasn't some dumbass redneck looking to soup up his Iroc-Z. He was of medium height--maybe 5'9 at most sans the cowboy boots he was wearing, with the thin, wiry build that often indicates more pound-for-pound strength than the bulkier varieties. This in itself wasn't so unusual--it was a fairly average body type in Eldorado, what with the Mexican and Scotch-Irish ethnic background of so many citizens. What Xander could tell of his outfit--the boots, black jeans, grey sleeveless shirt--it wasn't that much different from what you'd see on half-a-dozen good old boys slurping down barbecue and beers at Roy's on any given night. No, the man's alienness came from his coloring. Instead of the normal copper or bronze summer glow of most locals, the skin on the ripped, muscular arms left bare by his shirt was white. Not just Caucasian, but white, like rice or milk or paper, the almost translucent paleness of skin that hasn't felt the sun in a very, very, long time.

But the man's deathly pallor wasn't the strangest thing about him.

The strangest thing about him was his hair.

Almost as white as his skin, a tortured, bleached platinum color never found in nature. Short and wavy, rising in stiff tangles from his scalp, a just-rolled-out-of-bed-after-doing-nasty-things-there kind of tousle.

Xander inched forward, feeling like he'd just fallen into one of his recent recurring dreams. Or into a very old memory.

A damp December afternoon in what he likes to call his bachelor pad, but what he knows deep down is just his parents' dank, musty basement. Bad enough to be living like a Morlock, but babysitting a grouchy, bored, newly-chipped vampire while Giles is in England visiting Olivia has turned the new digs into his own merry little circle of hell.

A grouchy, bored, newly-chipped vampire who won't quit playing with Xander's cheap Brand X stereo. Screwing up the station pre-sets, fiddling with the bass/treble balance, but most irritating of all, blowing the speakers by cranking the sound as high as it will go, then turning it down whisper quiet, then cranking it up again as high as it will go. A tic as mindless and repetitive as an autistic child banging its head into the wall.

Sound goes up. Sound goes down. Sound goes up. Sound goes down. Xander digs his nails into the water-stained plaid sofa.

"God as my witness, Spike, if you don't cut it out, you won't have to worry about the Initiative. I'll stake you myself."

Scornful blue eyes meet his. The vampire's pale features, almost too pretty for a boy's, darken into a petulant scowl. "Fuck off, Harris. If you had the stones to stake me, you'd have done it when I found all those books of ladies' knickers under your mattress. A word of advice, mate: thongs are not for you. Maybe a nice long-line girdle, you're gettin' a bit thick there--"

He cuts off, since even the undead need breath to talk, and Xander's hands are wrapped around his throat. Xander feels Spike tense beneath him, like he's going to fight, then go abruptly still, like he's remembered that he can't. It's quite a rush, Xander realizes, knowing that he could do anything he wants to his old enemy, anything, and there's not a damn thing Spike can do about it. If he wants a little payback for all the hurts and humiliations over the years, Spike's just gonna have to lie back and take it. Xander's hands tighten, the blood rushing to his face as he presses the cool white body into the slick leather of the orange Barcalounger.

Then he looks down into Spike's face, sees the gleam in his eyes, and realizes something awful: the sick bastard's enjoying this. What the hell am I doing? Xander thinks, the heat of anger frozen by cold, dawning horror. He releases Spike and stumbles off the chair, backing away and rubbing his hands on his jeans, like he's just realized that Spike's virulently contagious. Spike catches his gaze again and raises an eyebrow at him, lips quirking in a strange little smile Xander doesn't even want to begin to interpret. He just turns and runs, the vampire's maniacal chuckling following him all the way up the stairs. As he slams the door behind him, a single hoarse word floats up from the darkness below.

"Chicken."

Leaning his forehead against the flimsy plywood door leading to the basement, heart pounding with too many emotions, Xander can hear it begin again.

Sound goes up. Sound goes down. Sound goes up. Sound goes down.

Xander blinked and shoved the memory back into the depths of his subconscious, where it had lain quietly buried for the last five years. Of course, it wasn't him. It couldn't be him. He had Buffy's eyewitness account of Spike's final moments, and even though she hadn't stayed to see the ashes scatter, there was no way he had made it out of that firestorm alive. The vampire was as dead as Sunnydale.

But God, the resemblance was uncanny.

Xander decided to move just a little closer, and that would put this absurd debate to bed once and for all. When he saw the man's face, his eyes would be muddy brown, not steely blue, his features blunt and homely, not razor-blade fine. Just some small, wiry guy with a sun allergy and Billy Idol's hair, not a miraculously resurrected creature of the night.

A few more feet, and he'd know for sure.

Moving under cover of the thumping bass shaking the walls of the little room like an earthquake, Xander crept forward, that same strange, illicit thrill he'd felt this morning at the construction site swirling in his belly. The man seemed utterly oblivious to Xander, his bleached head moving slightly to the pounding techno-beat, apparently lost to everything but the music.

TRIED TO SAY TRIED TO ASK

I NEEDED TO BE ALL ALONE BY MYSELF

WHERE WERE YOU?

Xander was about five feet away, almost at the angle where he could see the man's face, when suddenly there was a black-and-white blur in front of his eyes and WHAM! He flew back against the brushed-steel wall, his head smacking into an expensive 6.5" speaker with the dull clang of bone hitting metal. But there was no time to worry about property damage, since he was too busy worrying about damage to far more precious property lower down: the stranger had his balls in a grip like steel pincers. Testicles throbbing, his head spinning from the sudden attack, Xander looked down into a pair of eyes the color of glacial ice.

At moments like this, the human brain, weighted under an avalanche of impossible information, tends to focus on the basics:

Holy shit! It IS Spike!

Xander gasped for breath and tried to gather his scattered thoughts, which were running around waving their arms like Chicken Little.

He's alive! Not dead! Alive!

Then Xander's head cleared enough for him to get a good look at the vampire's expression.

Spike's alive! And he's going to kill me.

Spike's face was preternaturally calm, those pale eyes watching him like a cobra watches a mouse. So many of Xander's memories of Spike were from his muzzled days that he had forgotten how fucking terrifying the vampire could look, even when he wasn't in game face. But now image after lethal image rose in his brain, of the days before a plastic chip or a belated soul had humanized a monster. He swallowed hard, and was reminded that real fear, mortal fear, tastes like a mouthful of copper pennies.

Spike's hand made a small, vicious movement, and Xander gasped as another sick-hot bolt of pain shot through his testicles and curdled in his stomach.

"Who's that trip-trapping on my bridge?" Spike said softly. The words had no more human warmth or inflection than the hissing of a snake.

"Sp--ike," Xander wheezed, trying to find enough breath to talk. "It's me--"

But the vampire just went on clutching him in that castrating grip, the cruel planes of his face as cold and unresponsive as a frozen corpse. There was no recognition there. None at all.

"It's Xander--Xander H-Harris--please--" If Spike didn't let go soon, Xander was going to be singing along with his Travis and Radiohead CD's as a permanent soprano.

And then, like some inner remote had clicked from Faces of Death to Monty Python, Spike's features abruptly cleared. The predatory coldness in his eyes warmed to the familiar sardonic amusement, and he released Xander's manhood and took a step back. Xander sagged against the wall, knees weak from the post-adrenaline rush, his balls aching in that nauseating way that made you want to simultaneously throw up and shit yourself.

Unperturbed by Xander's obvious distress, Spike took a pack of Camels and a Zippo out of his front shirt pocket and lit a cigarette, casually ignoring the No Smoking signs posted every five feet. Xander stared at him for a moment, trying to process what had just happened through his brain, which was gyrating like a tilt-a-whirl with shock and pain. Spike stared calmly back, neither of them saying anything, the thumping music filling the silent space between them.

IT'S FUNNY HOW EVERYTHING

THAT SWORE IT WOULDN'T CHANGE

IS DIFFERENT NOW JUST LIKE YOU

WOULD ALWAYS SAY WE'LL MAKE IT THROUGH

THEN MY HEAD FELL APART

AND WHERE WERE YOU?

It was Spike, no doubt about that. The near-gelding put to rest any thoughts Xander might have had that the First was up to its old tricks again. But it wasn't Spike, either--or not the Spike he remembered from the past few years. Starting with the wardrobe, which was a lot stranger than it had appeared at first glance. Scuffed black cowboy boots, tipped with wicked silver points, were on his feet, but the nod to local customs ended there. The rest of his outfit was pure post-millennial punk. Oversized black jeans slung low on his narrow hips, faded and torn in half-a-dozen places, like they'd been tied to the back of a truck and dragged over nine miles of gravel. A tight white wifebeater, almost new, under a grey mechanic's shirt that wasn't--sleeves torn off, a tear along the hem, a patch with the name "Bill" half-hanging over the pocket. Silver rings on four of his fingers, a silver barb-wire bracelet around his left wrist, a silver bike chain, complete with padlock, hanging around his neck. His left ear was pierced twice, his right ear five times, silver studs and hoops in each. There was a silver bar through his scarred left eyebrow. Xander had read in one of Giles's books once that vampires are allergic to genuine silver, that it makes them itch and burn like mad, but everything on Spike had the dull, frosty glow of the real thing.

Even if the allergy story were true, this Spike didn't look like a little itching and burning would faze him much. Not when he seemed unconcerned by the other, more serious injuries visible on his pale skin: a puffy, half-healed bite mark over his jugular, too ragged to show if it was demon or human; a fresh gash on his forehead, glistening reddish-black under the harsh fluorescent lights; a cluster of angry yellow-and-black bruises on his forearms, bruises that looked like they'd been made by small, cruel fingers holding him down with crushing pressure. Guess he still likes it rough, Xander thought queasily. Whoever had put those marks on Spike, maybe she--or he, or it--had put that expression in his eyes as well. Red-rimmed and deeply shadowed, the effect heightened by coal-black liner, they had the spent, jaded look of someone who hasn't had any real sleep in weeks, probably because he's been too busy doing obscene things in dark alleys. Everything about him seemed more than it had been, more edgy, more intense, more dangerous, like Spike ratcheted up to eleven. Xander bet he could have walked into the local biker hangout, the Broken Spoke Saloon, eyeliner and all and not gotten hassled except by the very drunk or the very stupid--menace vibrated from him like the hum from high-tension wires.

To call Spike's new look Rough Trade didn't even begin to cover it.

IT'S FUNNY HOW EVERYTHING

YOU SWORE WOULD NEVER CHANGE

IS DIFFERENT NOW JUST LIKE YOU

SAID YOU AND ME MAKE IT THROUGH

DIDN'T QUITE FELL APART

WHERE THE FUCK WERE YOU?

Spike endured the scrutiny patiently enough for a moment or two, but finally, he rolled his eyes and, with a quick flick of his hand, reached over and shut off the punishing bass on the demonstration board next to him. The sudden silence was almost as deafening as the music had been. Fixing Xander with the familiar eviler-than-thou sneer, he leaned back against the opposite wall and took another deep inhale of his cigarette. He was wearing the jet-black nail polish again, Xander noticed.

"Harris," he drawled, exhaling a poisonous cloud of cigarette smoke. "What have you done to your hair?"

Okay, big scary Lazarus routine or not, this was too much. "What have I--what are you--you--why--" Xander sputtered. Shifting his tender nether regions to a more protected angle, he pointed an accusing finger. "You're supposed to be dead. Deader even than you were. Buffy said you burned up in the Hellmouth with the big noble sacrifice and the blaze of glory--"

"Yeah, well, rumors of my nobility were always greatly exaggerated," Spike cut in. He pitched his half-smoked cigarette to the floor and ground it into the thick blue carpet with one heavy bootheel. There was a tightness around his mouth and a tension in his hands that made Xander think mentioning Buffy or the Hellmouth again probably wasn't such a great idea. But he pressed determinedly on, too wigged to worry about personal safety.

"You're supposed to be dust at the bottom of the Sunnydale crater. Not hanging out at Best Buy in Eldorado, fronting the bass and--and molesting people!"

Spike's tense expression relaxed into a smirk. Pushing off the wall with one booted foot, he slowly and deliberately closed the three or four feet between them, moving with that fluid grace peculiar to vampires, like all his joints had been oiled. Pressing one pale hand against the steel wall directly beside Xander's face, he leaned forward until he was mere inches from him. He still smelled the same, of cigarettes and whiskey and chocolate and other contraband things.

"That wasn't molesting," Spike said, savoring the syllables of the last word like they tasted sweet. Xander saw a flash of silver behind pale red lips, and realized Spike's tongue was pierced. His gaze wandered down, taking in two suspicious-looking lumps underneath the tight wifebeater--lumps that looked like rings. Jesus, nipples, too, he thought. His eyes dropped down a little further. What else do you think. . .

Spike slowly traced one black-tipped finger up the front of Xander's Ralph Lauren button-down, moving from his navel to the hollow of his throat, drawing his gaze back to those wintry eyes. Xander shivered at the vampire's cold touch. Yep, that's definitely why he was shivering.

"I ever decide to molest you, Harris, you'll know it," Spike said in a gravel-and-honey voice that wrapped around your cerebral cortex like a boa constrictor. Xander swallowed hard, his mouth gone dry as sandpaper.

"You're back," he whispered. "I can't believe you're really back."

"Big as life and twice as unnatural," Spike replied just as softly, still holding him with those cold eyes the way he'd held him in his grip a few moments earlier.

"How did you--I mean, where have you--"

"Sweetie, did you find what you wanted?" A voice said from the archway.

Xander jumped about ten feet in the air, or maybe it just felt that way. When he landed, he ducked from underneath Spike's entrapping arm and turned to regard the bright figure of his wife, who had the Sex and the City Season Six DVD's clutched triumphantly in one hand.

"Brooke! What--no! Nothing here I want," he sputtered. "Didn't find anything. Huh-uh."

"You sure about that?" Spike smirked, reaching into his shirt pocket for his lighter and another cigarette.

Xander whirled on him, the shock and fear and pain of the last five minutes flashing into sudden anger. In the past year, while they were all mourning him as the fallen, tragic hero, it had been easy to forget what a colossal prick the vampire was.

"I'm sure. All that's here is a bunch of cheap, flashy, obsolete crap. Why the hell would anybody want that?"

"I dunno, but you'd be surprised how many do."

All right, that was really hitting below the belt, Xander thought, face flushing. "For cheap thrills, maybe. But everybody always knew it was a piece of shit. The only reason it didn't get dumped years ago was because of the--the special attachments," he shot back.

Something dark and awful stirred in the depths of Spike's eyes, like a body whirling under the surface of a frozen river. "Funny thing about those special attachments--you never know when the warranty's gonna expire," he replied tonelessly.

Xander stared at him for a second. It felt like that same cold finger was now tracing down his spine. "Which--which attachments are we talking about?"

Spike just gave him an unreadable look from under his long lashes and took another puff on his cigarette.

Brooke, who'd been watching the entire exchange closely, stepped into the enclosed area. "Xander? Aren't you gonna introduce me to your friend?" she said, her blue eyes wide with interest.

God, no. The idea of Brooke and Spike--Spike!--even existing in the same universe was laughable. To have them shaking hands and exchanging cordial greetings was just seven different kinds of wrong. Xander's first, best instinct was to lie: No, honey, I don't know this spooky stranger with the funny hair. He's just some random guy who was telling me all about the new JVC amps. But he wasn't at all sure Spike would back him up in this. In the vampire's present mood, he probably wouldn't. Xander sighed and tried to make the whole thing as brief and painless as possible. "Brooke, this is Spike. Spike--Brooke," he said, gesturing vaguely in each direction. Then he took his wife by the hand and started pulling her towards the archway. "Well, Spike, it was great seeing you again, buddy, but we really have to get going--"

"Why, where's the fire?" Brooke said, digging her kitten heels in. Turning back to Spike, she stuck out her free hand and gave him her best Princess Diana smile. "Hi there. I'm Xander's wife."

Up to this point, Spike hadn't been paying Brooke any particular attention, but the effect of this simple greeting was amazing. The vampire went still as a statue, literally freezing with the cigarette halfway to his mouth as he took in Brooke's vivid, voluptuous form. His cool blue gaze traveled up the smooth length of her legs, over the graceful curve of her hips, to the slim lines of her waist, like a surveyor mapping out virgin territory. He lingered over the ripe swell of the breasts hidden beneath the thin cotton of her yellow peasant blouse, tilting his head slightly, like he was listening to the music of her heartbeat. Slender white neck, pretty round face, bright copper hair he took in with three quick flicks of his eyes, like a camera shutter clicking in rapid succession. Then he repeated the whole disturbing process all over again, only more slowly, moving from her bright head to her polished toes as if he had all the time in the world to complete this extended eye-fuck of Xander's wife. He blinked once or twice, then looked up and finally noticed her still-outstretched hand. Slowly, carefully, he took it in his own smooth white one. At the touch of her flesh, his eyes widened, and his head tilted to one side until Xander thought it was going to pop off his neck. Her small hand trapped in his, Spike stared at Brooke like he'd never seen anything like her in his life, but had just realized she was the only thing in the universe worth looking at. Xander shivered again, the hairs on the back of his neck prickling almost painfully. He'd seen that look of total, world-tilting focus before: the vampire used to have the same expression on his face when he looked at Buffy. A cold, crawly feeling chilling his insides, Xander stepped a little in front of his wife in an instinctive protective gesture.

But strangely enough, Brooke seemed completely unfazed by Spike's scrutiny. She looked calmly back at him, as if strange men stopping in their tracks and giving her the once-or-twice-over happened every day. Which, in point of fact, it did, but most of them didn't have the creepy, enthralling stare of a century-old vampire. Cocking her head to one side, Brooke met Spike's eyes with the O'Shea assessing gaze, taking him in with the concentrated interest of a gunslinger staring across a dusty street at high noon. At least, Xander hoped that was the kind of interest Brooke was showing.

Finally, at the point where Xander was ready to launch into his bad Gary Cooper impression just to break the tension, Spike reluctantly released Brooke. He took another pull on his cigarette, and Xander could have sworn for a second that his hand was shaking. But his voice, when he spoke, was smooth as ever.

"Well, well, what a lovely creature," he said softly. "Wherever did Harris find you?"

"I think it'd be more accurate to say I found him," Brooke corrected, crinkling her freckled nose at Spike. "Or rather, Personnel did. We met at work, can you believe it?"

Spike raised one eyebrow. "Work, eh? And what exactly is it that you do, love?"

"I'm V.P. of Special Projects at O'Shea Construction," Brooke said. "Maybe you've heard of us? We're one of the bigger outfits in these parts."

"I'm new to the area--just catchin' up on who all the big guns are," Spike replied coolly. "You say you handle the special projects? Ain't that neat. And does Xander here," he waved his cigarette in Xander's direction but never took his eyes off Brooke, "help you with these special projects?"

"No, I'm usually all by my lonesome," Brooke said with a pretty little pout. "Xander's much too busy with his own work most of the time." Then her pout morphed into a proud smile. "He's my Daddy's right-hand man."

"Daddy, eh? I'd sure like to meet the man responsible for you, sweetheart," he said with an appreciative leer.

Brooke giggled and tossed her amber curls.

"And you say Xander's his go-to guy?" Spike continued after a beat. "Which I guess makes you the go-to girl."

Brooke slowly blinked her baby blues at him, almost but not quite batting her lashes. "What a way to put it! But I s'pose you're right. I pretty much do everything Daddy doesn't wanna be bothered with. But neither of us could do without Xander." She squeezed her husband's hand until he could feel her wedding rings cutting into his fingers.

Spike's smile had turned knowing. "I'll bet. Xander's always had a knack for attractin' the right sort of people. Just got that certain--" he paused and took a long drag on his cigarette while he searched for the right word. Then he exhaled quickly, like he'd found it. "--magnetism. You know what I'm talkin' about, don't you, pet?"

"Yeah I do," Brooke agreed, giving him another one of her blinding smiles. "That certain I don't know what."

"Oh, you know what," Spike returned, waggling his brows at her. Then they both started to laugh.

Xander looked at his wife and the vampire bewilderedly. Spike and Brooke seemed to be speaking English, but it was like they'd suddenly dropped into a dialect of it he didn't know, Proto-Banter, or something. He wasn't sure what was weirder: that Spike--Spike!--was flirting with his new bride, or that his bride seemed to be holding her own. Brooke, sensing Xander's discomfort, turned and gave him an encouraging wink before zeroing back in on Spike.

"And what exactly is it that you do, Spike?" Brooke said, mimicking his earlier phrasing exactly, with a charming little tilt of her head.

Spike tilted right back at her. "You could say I'm an independent scholar."

"Really? That's so interesting," she said, sounding truly interested. "And what are you studyin' here in Eldorado?"

"Me, mostly," a husky voice said from behind them.

They all turned to see who had spoken. Standing in the archway was a small, striking woman, with long, tousled dark hair and the kind of curves that draw men in faster than 2-for-1 Heinekens. She was wearing black motorcycle boots, black jeans tight enough to stop traffic, and an equally tight red tank top that read "PSYCHO BITCH" in big black block letters. There was a black leather thong looped around her neck and black rubber bracelets snaking up one lean, muscled bare arm, balanced off by a man's watch on a thick black leather wrist cuff on the other. A 36" television--it its box--was balanced easily on one shapely hip. Carrying the huge box like it weighed about as much as a box of Kleenex, the newcomer ambled up next to Spike and took the cigarette out of his hand. As she inhaled deeply, she gave him a long look with her dark come-hither eyes, cleavage swelling impressively over the low neck of the tank top. Spike's deep focus on Brooke broke long enough for him to return her gaze, his pale eyes darkening with what could have been either hunger or anger or lust or some unholy combination of all three. Never breaking eye contact, she exhaled, wreathing the two of them in a cloud of sinuous grey smoke. Then she handed him back the cigarette, barely brushing his hand with fingertips that had been painted the same deadly black as his. The vibes between them were as palpable as heat shimmering off of asphalt.

"Yeah, I'm just about his favorite subject these days," she said, giving the vampire a gleaming predatory smile with lips that were glossed the dark, sullen red of dried blood. Xander noticed that she had a fresh purple-black bruise high on one cheekbone, and four long, vicious cuts under the tribal tattoo on her upper right arm, cuts that looked like they'd been made with razor-sharp fingernails.

He suddenly knew who was responsible for Spike's sexy wounds.

"Faith!" he squeaked, trying to recover from the second mind-numbing shock in as many minutes. "You're out of--California." And apparently into Spike--Spike!

"You know me, I stay in one place too long, I just get in trouble," she answered, turning her jungle-cat smile on Xander.

He swallowed hard. "What happened to Robin?" You know, your non-dead, non-psychotic boyfriend? his tone implied.

"The bell has tolled for poor Cock Robin," Spike said obscurely, with an odd half-smile.

Rolling her eyes and looking irritated, Faith set down the box and pointedly turned her back on the vampire. In a posture oddly reminiscent of Buffy, she crossed her arms and gave Xander a thorough once-over glance that was entirely too much like the one Spike had given Brooke. Her big brown bedroom eyes started from his new Nike cross-trainers and slowly worked their way up, lingering appreciatively over certain newly toned areas. Xander shifted uncomfortably and felt the heat rise to his face--it was weird enough having someone undress you with her eyes, without the knowledge that the person doing it has actually seen you naked. When she finally made it to his face, her eyes widened a little as they met his, apparently surprised to realize that he had two now--or, actually, four. Traveling on, her eyebrows drew together as she took in Xander's hair, which had continued to grey rapidly in the past year.

"Damn, you're looking good, Xan," she said after a minute. "But what's with the hair?"

Before Xander could think up a reply, Brooke, who'd been strangely quiet while Faith made her big entrance, decided to step in and re-establish control of the conversation.

"Hi there, I'm Brooke Harris," she said with pointed politeness, offering Faith her free hand.

"Hey, I'm Faith," she replied off-handly, as they shook hands briefly. Then her eyebrows drew together again. "Wait a sec, you mean--"

"This pretty thing is Mrs. Harris," Spike put in helpfully, still looking at Brooke like he was wondering what flavor she'd be. Xander clutched Brooke's hand a little tighter.

"Whoah!" Faith laughed. "I have been out of the loop." She looked at Brooke with increased interest. There was another mini-High Noon moment while the two women sized each other up, brown eyes locking with blue. Xander gave another one of those nervous fidgets, remembering certain painful confrontations between Faith and Anya during the last days of Sunnydale. Not that he was deluded enough to think that Faith actually gave a shit about him, but she was definitely capable of fucking with him for the sheer ball-busting joy of it. And there had already been enough busting of his balls for one day, thanks very much.

"So, how do you two know Xander?" Brooke said finally, evidently realizing by this point that her husband wasn't going to be volunteering any useful information.

"You mean he never told you about us?" Faith said, voice rising in mock-surprise. "That hurts, man." Her eyes were glittering with suppressed laughter.

"We knew each other back in Sunnydale," Xander said quickly. "A long time ago--in high school." Which wasn't really a lie, if you didn't think about it too much. It was amazing, how quickly the old Sunnydale habits of euphemism and double-speak came back to you.

"I thought I'd met all of your Sunnydale friends at our wedding," Brooke said to him, the faintest note of accusation in her voice. "You told me you didn't have very many."

Faith gave him a friendly clap on the back that almost knocked him over. "That's Xander, always so freakin' modest. I bet he never told you what a player he was back in the day, either."

Xander shot her a covert pleading look, which Faith blithely ignored.

"Yep, staying out late, fighting, getting mixed up with dangerous women. Good times, huh, Xan?"

"Some things never change," Spike muttered.

Xander looked at him puzzledly. "What?"

"Wow, Xander always made it sound like he was sorta quiet in high school." Brooke said. She turned to her husband, blue eyes sparkling. "Hon, you never told me you were a bad boy." She didn't seem at all displeased by the information.

"The baddest," Faith said with an evil little grin. "There was this one time, I'd gotten into a wicked fight with a couple of lowlifes and it was looking kinda bad. Xander had his uncle's '57 Chevy, and he comes cruising along and--"

"So what are you guys doing here?" Xander broke in, before Faith could careen any further down that particular memory lane. "Just passing through?" he added hopefully.

"Naw, man, we're here to stay for awhile."

"Seein' the sights, soakin' up the local color. Lots to keep us occupied," Spike said, still looking at Brooke.

"Are you an independent scholar, too?" Brooke said to Faith.

"Hell no," she said, laughing her dark whiskey laugh. "I've got a real job."

Spike smirked at her almost fondly. "Yeah, she's gettin' to use all her special talents out here."

"In Eldorado?" Xander said disbelievingly.

Spike and Faith exchanged another long look. "You'd be surprised how many thirsty people there are in this neck of the woods, Harris," Spike said finally.

Xander gaped at him, his overtaxed brain taking in the words but refusing to process them.

"I'm a bartender," Faith said to Brooke, who was looking as confused as Xander felt. "Got a gig at Crossroads four nights a week."

Brooke's pleasant, politely confused expression abruptly shifted. She looked like she'd just bitten down on a lemon, peel and all. "Crossroads?" she said flatly.

Faith seemed amused by her reaction. "Yeah, you know it?"

"Uh, no, not really--I mean, I know of it," Brooke faltered.

"You guys should stop by some time," Faith said. "The first shot's on me--I'll even give you the clean glasses."

"Yes, do bring the missus," Spike chimed in, smiling at Brooke. "I'm sure you'll both have a gay old time of it."

"Speaking of time, we better hit it," Faith said, looking at her watch. "My shift starts in half an hour, and if I'm late on Saturday night there won't be a bar on Sunday morning." She picked up the box again, lifting it easily in one hand. Xander glanced at Brooke worriedly, but she didn't seem to notice anything odd about a 5'5, 115-pound woman hefting a 200-pound television around like it was an iPod.

"Right, then," Spike said. He pitched the cigarette and ground it out, then nodded at Xander. "Be seein' you, Harris." He turned to Brooke once again and put out his hand, which she took automatically. "Brooke--it was a real treat meetin' you." Xander could see that Spike was slowly running one thumb back and forth on her wrist, right across the bracelets of fortune, where the pulse is strongest.

"Likewise, I'm sure," Brooke replied pleasantly. "I hope y'all will get a chance to come by and see us sometime. We're right downtown, Number 11 Oleander Avenue."

Spike looked a little surprised. "Is that an invitation?"

"Oh yes. I'd love to hear some more about Xander's wild high school days," Brooke said, giving her husband a teasing smile.

Xander winced. A clearly unstable, possibly unsouled Spike now had carte blanche to enter their home at any time. And he didn't have the faintest idea what the de-invite spell was. He'd have to call Willow, tonight.

"I'll make a point of it, then," Spike said. Holding Brooke's gaze with his own, he lifted her hand to his lips. The contrast between Spike's Sex Pistols chic and the courtly gesture should have been comical, but instead it was just really, really disturbing. The vampire's nostrils flared, like he was memorizing the scent of Brooke's skin, and for just a second, Xander could see the point of a pierced tongue flicker between those pale red lips. He didn't actually taste Xander's wife, but it was damned close. Xander clutched onto the one of the sharp metal shelves behind him for support, flooded by a wave of fear and anger so intense he was almost lightheaded with it. He wanted to say something to Spike, something clever and threatening and double-edged, but sheer outrage had left him stupid.

"Come on, Spike," Faith said impatiently from the entranceway. "Before we grow old and grey?"

"Speak for yourself," Spike said. But he gave Brooke back her hand. "I'm sure we'll meet again soon, love," he said, his voice all silk-and-sand.

"Lookin' forward to it," Brooke replied, with a gracious little nod of her head, like a queen granting her favorite knight some special favor. Xander ground his teeth together so hard he was surprised his fillings weren't setting off sparks.

Without another glance at Xander, Spike followed Faith down the ramp and out into the main aisle. Through the archway, Xander watched them slink towards the front cash registers, like a 21st Century Sid and Nancy with slightly better posture. Spike had his arm around Faith and was talking rapidly in her ear, all the while looking very amused about something. Faith was listening intently, and after a moment she made a sudden exclamation and looked back over her shoulder at the bass area where Brooke and Xander were still standing. Her forehead was wrinkling in that fierce way which usually meant trouble for someone.

"Well, that was something completely different," Brooke said cheerfully. "You never told me you knew such colorful people. You have hidden depths, Xander Harris."

"Guess it slipped my mind," Xander said absently, his eyes still on Spike and Faith's retreating figures.

"Hmmmm, Spike and Faith," Brooke mused. "Sounds like one of those progressive gloom-and-doom bands Cliffy used to listen to back in high school. What are their last names, anyway?"

"They don't have last names. Like rock stars or comic book villains," Xander said gloomily.

"Well, they certainly are a striking couple," Brooke went on. "What Daddy would call absolute steppin' lightning together. People like that, you never know what's gonna happen when they're around."

"No, you don't," Xander said weakly, putting one hand to his middle. His balls were still singing Ave Maria, the too-many ribs he'd eaten at dinner roiling sickeningly in his stomach. Spike and Faith. William the Bloody and the Dark Slayer. Together. In Eldorado.

"I've got a baaad feeling about this," he whispered to himself.

"What's that, hon?"

"Nothing," he sighed. "Let's pay for your stuff and go home. I've gotta make a phone call."

********

Note: In this scene, Spike's grooving to Nine Inch Nails' appropriately titled "Somewhat Damaged."

Part Twelve: Same as it ever was

Willow wasn't home the first time Xander called. Or the second, or the third. Okay, so she was a cute single woman living in New York City--it was probably a bit much to expect her to be hanging around on a Saturday night waiting for him to call her with a mojo emergency, but still. She could check her voice mail once in awhile, since she's got that weird thing about cell phones giving you brain cancer, he thought angrily, as he listened to her recorded voice tell him yet again to leave a message at the beep.

Buffy, who possessed a cell phone, a home phone, and a pager, wasn't answering any of her numbers, either. Which, despite his worry, Xander was actually a little grateful for, since he wasn't looking forward to breaking the news to her about Spike. Any relief she might feel that he'd somehow come out of the Hellmouth in one piece would probably be squashed by the news that he'd pulled an Angelus and taken up with Faith. That was a little too much ironic déjà vu even for someone who'd grown up in Sunnydale.

Next, he dug out the Angel Investigations card he'd had shoved in the back of his wallet for what seemed like forever. The number dutifully transferred him to some place called Wolfram and Hart, which must have been the other company they'd merged with last year, if he correctly recalled what Wesley had told them during his few visits to the Hyperion the previous summer. Xander spent fifteen minutes trying to navigate through the labyrinthine automated system, before giving up and punching zero. He was connected to the night operator, who informed him rather snottily that even if she had Mr. Angel's or Mr. Wyndham-Price's weekend numbers, she would not be authorized to give them out to random people calling up with vague tales of emergencies in Texas. Regular business hours were 9:30 to 5:30 Monday through Friday, and if he wanted an appointment he should call--but Xander hung up on her before she could finish the rest of her spiel.

Growing a little desperate at that point, he even tried Dawn. Though neither witch nor slayer nor vampire CEO, she'd compiled some impressive occult files that last year in Sunnydale. Even if she didn't have the de-invite spell on her laptop, she'd probably know Giles's number, which he'd somehow managed to misplace in the move from the Corporate Suites to Oleander Avenue. But again, no luck. He spoke briefly to Hank Summers, who informed him that Dawn had gone on a weekend field trip with her class to Big Sur, no cell phones allowed. No, he didn't have Mr. Giles's phone number--but Dawn would be back tomorrow afternoon, should he have her give him a call then?

No, that was okay, Xander sighed, thanking him quickly and clicking off. He set the tiny, silver, ferociously expensive Nokia down on the polished wood of the desk and put his head in his hands. Until this moment, it had never really hit him just how completely the Scooby Gang had scattered to the four winds in the past year: New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, London, Eldorado. Separate lives and separate interests, held together only by fiber-optic wires and digital signals, ephemeral connections that could be made or broken at a second's notice. Useless during a crisis of metaphysical proportions, which is why they'd never relied on them in Sunnydale. E-mails got lost, phones went dead, pagers and cells were turned off or left behind when you needed their owners the most. There was no substitute, he was remembering, for having your friends right there with you, watching your back when the things that went bump in the night started slithering into the light. Your real friends, the ones you'd faced life and death with, not the people you had coffee with at work or met for cocktails twice a month. Much as he loved her, even Brooke was no comfort to him right now. Xander had never felt so alone in his entire life.

He sat in the small study off the living room for the better part of an hour after making that final phone call, his thoughts chasing each other round and round like a dog after its own tail. Through the large window over the desk he stared out into the blackness of the back yard, heart pounding at every rustle of leaf and shift of shadow. Finally, he could bear it no longer. He got up from the desk, walked out of the office, and went through the living room past his unwitting wife, who was curled up on the sofa with Mister Winston and a pint of lemon sorbet, engrossed in the adventures of Carrie Bradshaw and friends.

Grabbing his brown leather Hugo Boss jacket from the hall closet, he shrugged it on as he made his way out the side door and into the garage. There, underneath his work bench, pushed all the way to the back, was a box containing a few choice items he'd collected in the past couple of months. Though several were quite valuable, he hadn't brought them into the house, since that would have meant uncomfortable explanations to his wife. Explanations he couldn't have made even if he'd wanted to, since the impulse that had led him to assemble them had been deep and wordless, even to himself. He'd just known he wanted them.

Six ash stakes, which he'd made himself from some old boards Rick Wheaton had discarded when he was repairing his picket fence. A small axe he'd gotten at the hardware store, too small for chopping tree limbs, but perfect for chopping tough, scaly flesh. A set of titanium throwing knives, which he'd bought on the Internet and had delivered to his office. A magnificent antique sword, two feet of beveled steel sharpened to a razor edge with an engraved gilded handle, which he'd drooled over for three weeks at Amarillo Antiques, before finally giving in and buying one Sunday when Brooke was home with a headache. All the way at the bottom, still complete with convertible leather sheath and belt clip, the long dagger he'd carried with him into the ruins of Sunnydale. A box full of shiny violence, hidden in the shadows like pornography, but evidence of a deeper, more shameful obsession.

But now there was no shame, only relief that he hadn't been left to face this situation empty-handed. His heart pounding with a weird outlaw excitement, Xander picked up the dagger and two of the stakes. He wound the sheath strap around his left wrist and attached the knife, pulling his sleeve down to conceal the arrangement, and stuck the stakes in his commodious front pockets. He took the double-headed axe, smiling grimly to himself at the satisfying heft of it in his hands, and tucked that into the back waistband of his jeans, where the thick leather of the jacket would cover it. His fingers lingered lovingly over the sword, but he reluctantly decided it was a little too obvious and left it in the box. Instead, he took two of the throwing knives from their velvet-lined carrying case, stowing them in his inner pocket. Shoving the box back under the bench, he arranged his face in what he hoped was a good imitation of a half-embarrassed smile. Then he walked back through the side door and into the living room.

"Hon, I hate to admit it, but the Ben and Jerry's down at the Kwik Stop is calling my name."

Brooke barely looked up from the screen, where Carrie, dressed in a bizarre outfit that made the traditional burlap-and-bloodworms of vengeance demons look tasteful, was wailing about her latest neurotic break-up. "On top of all those ribs? You keep this up, darlin', and 'Chubby Hubby' is gonna be literal truth rather than ironic commentary," she said. "Why don't you have some sorbet instead?"

"No way. I know you let Mister Winston lick the spoon when I'm not around," Xander joked.

"Ewww, I do not," she said, giving him her full focus for the first time. "But, even if I did, a dog's mouth is cleaner than a human's," she hedged, catching the pug's reproachful look.

"Anyway, I'll run an extra couple of miles tomorrow." Not to mention the workout I may be getting tonight, he thought to himself.

"Oookay, I'll remind you of that when seven o'clock rolls around tomorrow mornin'," Brooke said, turning her attention back to the television.

Xander sincerely doubted this, since at seven o'clock on a Sunday Brooke herself would still be deep in dreamland, but he let it go. He walked slowly over to the couch, hoping the knives in his pocket wouldn't clank, and gave her a brief kiss on top of the head. She looked up and smiled at him. In the golden glow of the end table lamp, the wide, lace-trimmed neck of her nightgown exposing the soft curves of her neck and shoulders, she looked lovely and innocent and terribly, terribly vulnerable. Xander's throat tightened.

"I shouldn't be gone long," he said. "But I'm going to set the alarm. Don't answer the door while I'm not here."

Brooke's eyebrows drew together. "Why not?"

"Um, I've heard there's been some break-ins in the area," Xander lied quickly. "Lots of strange people around these days. You've gotta be careful."

Brooke snorted. "You sound just like Daddy," she said, taking another bite of sorbet. "Actin' like everybody in the whole world is after my white body."

No, just one vampire. That's enough. "Humor me," he said, with a small, tight smile. "I just bought you DVD's."

"Mmmm, you're a good husband," Brooke said, and held up her rosy mouth to be kissed.

Her lips tasted like lemons, and Xander held on a lot longer than normal for a good-bye kiss for a fifteen-minute errand. His hands twined in the soft silk of her hair while he breathed in her comforting scent, part vanilla bath gel, part just Brooke. When he finally pulled back, her face was more flushed than usual. "Wow, we've gotta send you for ice cream more often," she sighed. "Hurry back soon, sweetie." Her soft blue eyes gave him a look that was more like a promise.

"Soon as I can," he said, a small catch in his voice. Then, because if he stayed any longer he might not leave, he turned and walked out of his comfortable yellow living room and into the surrounding darkness.

********

Like many towns, Eldorado had a clear demarcation between the haves and the have-nots. The Have Not contingent was to the east of the Old Highway, on the other side of the rail line that ran by the meat-packing plant behind Q-Mart. On the wrong side of these tracks, the carefully landscaped medians, charming iron lamp posts, and well-tended homes gave way to wide strips of potholed asphalt, harsh arc-sodium street lights, cracked sidewalks overgrown with weeds and dying grass, and squat, grimy houses shuttered behind iron bars. The East Side was also where the town's several trailer parks were located, for those not quite in the squat-and-grimy price range. These were as far from the tony "manufactured housing" retirement communities on the West Side, as a dirty, mange-ridden mutt is from a sleek show dog. Even the smell of the town was different over here, the combined stench from the packing plant and several tire yards clouding the whole area with the scent of blood and burning rubber.

Xander had rarely been to this part of town since moving to Eldorado, since O'Shea Construction and all its concerns were firmly entrenched on the West Side, and there was a dearth of good shopping and expensive bistros over here. Not that there wasn't plenty to keep you entertained on the East Side, if you were of a certain mindset: here you could find the infamous Pink Pony strip joint, Christabel's Private Gentlemen's Club, The Broken Spoke biker bar, bodegas owned by shotgun-wielding Mexican-Americans that specialized in lottery tickets and cheap tequila, and, of course, Crossroads. Xander had heard the bar surface from time to time on the edges of local gossip, the same way he'd heard of the Broken Spoke, as the site of dust-ups and bust-outs and break-ups, but he'd never even considered going here. For someone in his position, Crossroads may as well have been on the Moon.

Living up to its reputation, the bar was singularly uninviting from the street. It was housed in a long, skinny, wooden building that had been painted white about a thousand years ago, but had since dimmed to a peeling, dingy grey. In lurid contrast, a red neon sign on the front of the building inflamed the Texas night, the second 's' in the name flickering and buzzing like an angry wasp. The only visible entrance into the place was a warped swinging door with two small windows on either side of it, blacked out with cheap spray paint. The overall effect was of a pale, scabby face with a shrieking mouth, two blinded eyes, and a blazing, bloody gash in its forehead. The parking lot wasn't much more cheerful, a square of hard-packed dirt filled with vehicles that would have been more at home sitting up on blocks in a trailer park. Xander sat in the pristine Jeep with its hand-rubbed wax job and realized that he couldn't have been any more conspicuous if he'd arrived via Lunar Module.

He just stayed there and stared at the screaming door for about five minutes, his entire body burning from the Molotov cocktail of emotions swirling in his stomach. A large part of his brain was begging him to make the sane decision, the safe decision, and get out of here, go home and lock all the doors and windows and call for the Cavalry tomorrow.

You can't take him, you know you can't take him, the large, sane part whispered frantically. He's unchipped, probably unsouled, and definitely bearing a grudge.

But a small, dark part of him, the part that wasn't sane or safe at all, wouldn't let him turn the keys in the ignition.

"The question is, do you feel lucky?" he muttered under his breath. He caught his own gaze in the rearview mirror, recognized the old, familiar darkness reflected there. One hand reached into his right pocket, slowly stroking the long, cool length of the ash stake. "Well, do ya, punk?"

In answer, he took the keys from the ignition and climbed out of the Jeep. It was one of those breathless August nights when the heat feels like a living thing, a giant beast curling around your body and smothering you in its thick, humid fur. Xander started to sweat inside the leather jacket about thirty seconds after leaving the air-conditioned Jeep, but he had no intention of taking it off, since it was camouflaging the only things standing between him and a snapped neck. He just wished he'd had time to stop off at the catholic church for holy water and a spare crucifix or two. Shoving his hands deep into his front pockets and clutching the stakes like twin rosaries, he pushed the swinging door open with his shoulder.

Like most bars of similar ilk, Crossroads was dim and smoky, with the high, gamy stench of a men's dorm. In other words, it smelled like somebody had poured old beer and the contents of an ashtray over a pair of sweat socks that had been worn for six months and then jacked off into. The scent made Xander's nostrils flare and his scalp prickle, bringing back as it did old memories he'd done his best to forget in the past year.

When his eyes finally stopped watering from the smoke and began to get used to the gloom, he could make out a dozen battered tables in the back of the room that looked like rejects from Roy's Steak Ranch, complete with equally trashed metal chairs. Big, scarred wooden booths ran down the left-hand side, with a bar that appeared to have been dragged from the debris of Baghdad in the front center. It had clearly been cobbled together from the remains of other bar carcasses, just more roadkill on the recreational beverage highway. An ancient Wurlitzer jukebox and a strangely pristine pool table on the right-hand side rounded out the décor. The only other attempt to brighten the place was a collection of faded Lone Star beer signs that had been stuck at haphazard intervals on the walls. The jukebox was playing the Rolling Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil," and the dark linoleum floor was sticky underfoot.

From what he could make out in the dimness, the clientele seemed pretty much like your standard collection of bottom-feeders, with flannel and trucker caps predominating over cowboy hats, worn with mullets and some of what had to be the biggest pompadours since Elvis left the building for good. Typical downscale Texas. He wasn't surprised to see a few Elmer the Elephant t-shirts and hats here and there.

Xander's quick survey of his surroundings was halted by his stupid glasses, which had begun to steam up the minute he walked in the door from the contrast between his body heat and the chilliness of the room. Like everywhere else in Eldorado, Crossroads was over-air conditioned to Arctic temperatures. He would have been glad of his leather jacket even if it hadn't been stuffed with weapons. Keeping his back prudently against the wall next to the door, he took his glasses off and started rubbing them clean with the tail of his shirt. The atmosphere of the room improved considerably with everything blurred to vague, fuzzy shapes, though unfortunately that didn't do much about the smell.

Half-blind and tense, Xander jumped when a hand suddenly clapped him on the shoulder.

"Dude, what's up?"

He blinked, trying to make out a face in the blurry dimness. He could tell from the voice it wasn't Spike or Faith, but that was about all. After a minute of squinting his eyes like Mr. Magoo, he realized who it was and relaxed, though he was more than a little surprised to see him here.

"How's it goin', man?" Tito said cheerfully. He was wearing his usual sunny smile and a goatee he hadn't been sporting when he was an usher at Xander's wedding--good thing too, since Brooke would have had a cow or three.

"Uh, great."

"I ain't seen you since you got hitched. Guess havin' an old lady kinda ties ya down--they don't call 'em the ol' ball and chain for nothin', right?" Tito laughed a little too loudly.

Xander realized that the beer in Tito's hand probably wasn't his first, since he was breathing fumes of nearly toxic levels into his face.

"Sssooo, what brings you to the bad side o' town?" Tito said, slurring his words a little. His eyes were a painful-looking red, whether from smoke or alcohol Xander wasn't sure.

"Just dropping by, you know. Thought I'd stop in and check it out," he said, not up to admitting that he was looking for a possibly psychotic vampire and a jailbird slayer.

"Ain't much to look at, is it? But these places never are. Shore seems like old times though, don't it? I mean, if I didn't know better, I'd swear I was back at Willie's. Not that I hang out here all the time, or nothin'. Me and some of the boys are celebratin' my cousin Ricky gettin' out of County yesterday." He leaned forward, and said in the loud stage-whisper of the intoxicated, "deadbeat dad, y'know--nothin' violent."

But Xander wouldn't have cared if Cousin Ricky had been in for barbecuing babies. He was too focused on Tito's previous words.

"Did--Did you say Willie's?" Xander put his glasses back on, suddenly anxious not to be blind and vulnerable.

"Yeah," Tito said, looking a little flummoxed. "You remember Willie's, dontcha? You and that hot little girlfriend o' yours used to go there sometimes, keep the peace, knock a few heads?" His voice dropped to the stage-whisper again. "Ta be honest, a lot of us sorta appreciate having a slayer keepin' an eye on things. I mean, most fellas just want to have a few beers and let it all hang out, not sacrifice a virgin. I tell you, a few bad apples always gotta spoil it for everybody else."

Xander just stared at Tito for a second. Stared at him because, he could now see, what he'd thought was a goatee wasn't a goatee. It was some sort of tendrily growth, like the delicate, hair-like spines on a sea urchin, cascading down Tito's broad face. Also, his eyes were red. Not red from smoke or alcohol, but a brilliant scarlet with gold streaks in it, like his irises were on fire. Good thing he didn't show up with those at the wedding, huh? Xander thought dizzily.

As slowly as if he were moving underwater, he turned and looked around the room again. His gaze wandered over the booths and tables full of rough-looking men and the occasional woman. Now used to the light, he could make out other faces. There was Dave from Accounting, Stavros who drove the steamroller, Jose from Eldorado Savings and Loan. Faces as familiar as Tito's, but now, he could see, equally sea-changed with horns, scales, spiny protrusions. Gina from Personnel was in the front booth, only right now she had about three more breasts than normal. Rochelle, who sold him his morning lattes five days a week, sat next to her, a mohawk-like series of spikes protruding from her head. Underneath the cowboy hats, underneath the gimme caps, above the t-shirts and work shirts, were other things that didn't belong in a bar in Eldorado. Tentacles were draped across tables, claws scraped on glass and dirty Formica, and tails were wrapped neatly around chair legs to keep them from being stepped on. There was a quartet of vampires, wearing cowboy hats and full game face, playing pool in the back. The Not So Good, the Sorta Bad, and the Really, Really Ugly were all out hoisting a cold one right here in front of him like it was the most normal thing in the world.

A tall, skinny creature, sporting long braids and a silver-and-turquoise squash necklace, gave a sorrowful flutter of his wings and jammed a quarter into the jukebox. In a moment, Jim Morrison began moaning over the chatter of the bar.

Well show me the way

To the next whiskey bar

Oh, don't ask why

Oh, don't ask why

For, if we don't find

The next whiskey bar

I tell you we must die

I tell you we must die

"This is a demon bar," Xander said. His voice sounded high and strange even to his own ears.

"Yeah, I thought we'd already established that fact," Tito said, scratching at his tendrils confusedly.

"Why does Eldorado have a demon bar?"

"Because Eldorado has demons," Tito said slowly, like someone explaining an easy point to an idiot child.

"Why does Eldorado have demons?" asked Xander, shock reducing him to idiot-child-level questions.

"Well, my grandma always said we was here before the white folks, even before the Spanish, maybe, but I'm not sure--" he stopped, noticing Xander's face, which had crumpled like a used Kleenex.

"Oh, shit," he said. "Don't tell me ya didn't know." He looked deeply embarrassed, like someone who'd accidentally aired dirty family laundry at a dinner party.

"No," Xander said, shaking his head with exaggerated thoroughness. "I didn't."

"Damn, I thought--God, you're from Sunnydale, Xander. How could ya not know?"

"You never told me!" Xander almost yelled. "When you were going on and on about the jobs and the weather and the fucking mall, you somehow forgot to mention that Eldorado was a demon town!"

"I didn't think I had to!" Tito almost yelled back. "I mean, it's as plain as the nose on Aricthyx's face over there," he pointed to the winged creature's long, anteater-like snout. A K'ryth demon, that's what it was, Xander remembered, the information surfacing like a random bubble in the boiling morass of his brain. They'd had an infestation of those back home, what, senior year? Junior? Hope nobody in here has head lice, or things could get ugly, Xander thought, before turning his attention back to his friend with a rather dazed push.

Tito was enumerating the many signs and portents Xander had missed, counting off on his stubby fingers, which were currently sprouting thick, curved yellow claws. "--night golf at the public course. Every butcher shop in town sells blood and entrails, and most of 'em are open 24 hours. Half the school kids take the fall and spring equinoxes off. I mean, if nothin' else, didn't ya ever wonder why a little pissant burg like this has got a world-renowned facial deformities center? It's for all the demons and half-demons who cain't pass like most of us can," he abruptly shifted into his pleasant human face by way of demonstration. "I mean, you'd haveta be blind not see it."

"Guess my eyes aren't what they used to be," Xander said softly, taking off his glasses again and rubbing at his face. His left eye was throbbing like a plasma ball. He wasn't sure if he wanted to go on a sudden rampage and smash everything in the bar, or sit down on the sticky floor and sob like a baby. Unable to decide, he put his glasses back on and just stood there, letting the sights and smells and sounds of the demon bar flow around him like a polluted river.

Oh show me the way

To the next little girl

Oh, don't ask why

Oh, don't ask why

For, if we don't find

The next little girl

I tell you we must die

I tell you we must die

"Look, Xander, I'm sorry about springin' this on you," Tito said after a minute, sounding more sober. He'd shifted back into his spooky demon face, but his voice was kindly as ever. "I know it's not the sorta thing you bring up in polite company, but I thought you knew, honest I did. Here, lemme getcha a beer."

"Forget it, first one's on me," a woman's voice said. Xander was roughly shoved out of the way as she barged past, hefting a case of Lone Star under one arm like it was a six-pack.

"Faith!" he blurted, happy in his poleaxed state to latch onto something that at least looked familiar.

"You're costing me ten bucks, y'know," she said over her shoulder as she marched to the bar. With a distracted wave at Tito, Xander followed right on her heels, like a puppy fearful of losing its master in an unfamiliar place.

"Huh?" he asked stupidly.

"Spike said you'd show up tonight. I had ten bucks on tomorrow night. I hate it when he's fuckin' right." She slid under the service hatch and popped up on the other side of the bar. "So, you want beer, tequila, rotgut, or beer?"

Xander slid onto the nearest barstool, not even caring at this point if it was dirty enough to leave a mark on his freshly-pressed jeans. "This is a demon bar," he said sotto voice, as if imparting top-secret information.

She rolled her big brown eyes. "Yeah, and they tip like shit. I think the twisted fuckers get a charge out of having a slayer bring them drinks. Assholes."

"You said you had tequila?"

The slayer flashed him her go-to-hell grin. True to her word, she took out a bottle of pale gold no-name tequila and poured him a shot in one of the clean glasses lined up on the side of the bar. Xander downed the shot in one go, not even wincing at the sharp, oily taste. It didn't do much for his headache, but once the burn subsided, at least he could look around again without screaming. He recognized more demons, guys from work he'd occasionally grabbed a sandwich with at lunch hour, or met at the water cooler to discuss the latest Spurs game. Half his goddamned crew was there sporting horns and fangs. Guys that he had given orders to, chewed out, docked wages (if he could ever get the time sheet system straight) and generally harassed, were actually creatures who could have torn off his head and pissed down his neck--if they did, in fact, piss.

The drunk, sad, K'ryth demon collapsed against the cracked neon front of the jukebox, singing along with Jim Morrison and sobbing as though his hearts were breaking.

Oh moon of Alabama

We now must say goodbye

We've lost our good old mama

And must have whiskey

Oh you know why

One of Aricthyx's friends, his wings drooping sympathetically, picked the devastated demon up and started half-walking, half-carrying him away from the jukebox. Aricthyx fumbled a tiny black phone out of the pouch around his waist and began jabbing at the keypad. "Naw man, don't call her again," the other K'ryth said, taking the phone out of his friend's talons and crushing it into tiny fragments in one huge hand. Aricthyx, his eyes igniting into lamps of blue-white flame, let out a low, menacing growl and waved his claws fearsomely, like he was planning to tear the other demon's throat out. Then just as suddenly, his lips began to tremble, and he threw his arms around his friend's scaly neck and began wailing at the top of his voice. "I know man, I know," the other K'ryth said, patting his wings comfortingly as he lead him to one of the tables in the back.

Xander put his hand to his forehead. His brain was swelling dangerously, ready to explode like Jiffy-pop at any second all over Faith's nice dirty bar top. Hands shaking, he took out a crisp five dollar bill from his wallet and laid it on the bar. Faith re-filled his glass wordlessly, and he downed the shot like his stomach was on fire and he was trying to put it out. When he set down the glass and looked up, he saw she had her elbows leaned on the bar and was watching him intently, a bemused expression on her sultry features. She was bending over enough to give Xander an eyeful of the assets barely covered by her tight tank top. But even Faith's considerable charms weren't enough to distract him from the subject at hand.

"I didn't know this was a demon bar," he said. "Somebody forgot to tell me that Eldorado was chock full of demony goodness."

"Fuck," Faith said, looking irritated. "Now I owe Spike a twenty. He said you didn't have a clue, but I told him there was no way anybody could be that--" she stopped abruptly and began wiping down the bar.

"It's okay," he said gloomily. "Xander Harris is buttmonkey to the universe. I've accepted my fate."

"Hey man, it was an easy mistake," Faith lied consolingly. "They keep things a little more on the down low here than in Sunnyhell. Nobody getting juiced up on those funky Hellmouth vibes, y'know?"

Xander just nodded and took out another five. Faith cocked an eyebrow at him, bent down and pulled a Lone Star longneck out from the refrigerator under the bar.

"Here. You drink any more of the other stuff and you'll be in worse shape than Crybaby over there." She nodded towards the back, where Aricthyx had passed out on the sticky linoleum. His friends were grouped around him, eyes glowing, snouts waving agitatedly, apparently arguing over who was going to drive him home.

This all sounded just fine to Xander, but he accepted the beer and took a long pull on the bottle, draining half of it. His head had begun buzzing like the sign outside from the sudden infusion of alcohol, but the throbbing ache was still there underneath.

"If it makes you feel any better, Eldorado looks good on you," Faith said, giving the concerned bartender routine a try. "You are almost hot, Xander Harris. Lost a lot of weight, didn't you? Not like that Poppin' Fresh thing you had going on when I saw you last year."

Faith's concerned bartender routine needed a lot of work, Xander thought dimly, taking another swig of his beer.

"What was the deal with that?" Faith persisted. "Weren't you all sports guy or something before?"

"Just the swim team thing. Brief flirtation with fitness back in the day," Xander said, and knew that he was blushing.

"Damn, you lost like, what, fifty pounds? Pillsbury Doughboy no more, huh?" she said, giving him a flirtatious little wink.

"Closer to thirty, actually," he said flatly. He hadn't been that fat.

"Most guys get married and get fat, you go and get skinny. Barbie got you on a special diet or something?" Faith's words were casual, but something in her tone was not.

"My wife's name is Brooke," Xander corrected her, sounding snippier than he intended.

"Brooke. Right. She's something else, isn't she?" Faith said, again in that too-careful tone.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

Faith held up her hands in a placating gesture. "Nothing. Didn't mean to get your Jockies in a bunch. It's just I don't see you for a year, and suddenly you're all buff, and you've got four eyes and this grey hair thing going on, I gotta wonder who's responsible. Figured it was the little woman."

"Willow did the eye. The eye mojo is responsible for the Pepe Le Peu look. I lost thirty pounds from grief and kept it off with running and working fifty hours a week. Anything else you'd like to know?" Xander said, not quite sure where the hostile was coming from, but deciding to go with it.

"Nope, guess we're done," Faith said calmly, clearly used to dealing with sudden mood swings. Xander finished draining his beer.

"You want another?"

He nodded and put down another five.

"You look really good," he said almost grudgingly as she popped the cap off the beer.

She did, fit and tan, with her tattoos sliding gracefully over the muscles in her arms, and she was smiling. He could remember when smiles were either rare or dangerous coming from Faith.

"Hey, just ditched the jailhouse pale." She pushed some stray hair behind her ear. "I need to ask you a question, though. You and Spike used to live together back in the day, right?"

"We were roommates. Your average platonic guy room-mateage. No big deal. Nothing to make mention of, nothing worth remembering," he yammered, and took a pull on his fresh beer before something incriminating flopped out of his mouth like a sick fish.

Faith ignored his sudden discomfort, too intent on her own problems. "Was he a complete and total fucking slob? I mean, he's driving me nuts. Holed up in his room eighty percent of the time, and when he's up and around he doesn't do a goddamn--"

Something important rose up in the back of Xander's sludgy thoughts and waved its arms, demanding attention.

"--coffee cups full of blood, all scabbed up and leaving blood rings on everything, it's fucking--"

Blood. Oh God.

"--see the bathroom. I mean, Jesus H.Christ! All this hair clumped up in the drain, and I know it's his 'cause nobody else's is that color. Wet towels everywhere, you'd think they had holy water on them or--"

"His soul," Xander interrupted. "He's got it?"

"What?" Faith said, halting mid-diatribe.

"Does Spike still have his soul?" he repeated urgently.

She shrugged and wiped at the bar top some more. "That's what they tell me."

"Who's they?"

"The same they who stuck me in this hole-in-the-road town with William the Bloody Pain in the Ass," Faith answered impatiently, like it should have been obvious. "Can you fucking believe it? I must be the only slayer in the world who gets a vampire that's killed two slayers as a watcher. Kinda makes you wonder if Giles and the rest of those stuffed shirts still have it in for me." She shook her head disgustedly.

"Spike's your watcher?" Xander said, not quite sure he'd heard that right the first time.

"I know, it's fucked up. They had some kinda shortage or something."

"So. Wow. Huh," Xander said, channeling Oz in his surprise. "So he definitely has a soul." He was anxious to clarify that point, what with Spike basically having a key to his front door and all.

"All I can tell you is what they told me, which ain't much. He won't talk about it. But I haven't seen him drinking any O-Neg that didn't come out of a bag, or killing anything that didn't need killing. Doesn't mean I'm not sleeping with a stake under my pillow. He steps out of line and I'm gonna make an ash out of him. At least that will get him out of the fucking trailer."

"You're living in a trailer?" Xander asked, not quite able to keep the disgust out of voice. After a year of building quality residential housing, he'd picked up Big Buck's prejudice about people living in tin cans.

Faith nodded grimly. "Giles can yap all he wants about the new and improved Watchers Council, but they are still the cheapest bastards on the fucking planet. Still singing the same old song--the Chosen Ones aren't supposed to get paid for the sacred slayage. What-the-fuck-ever. I mean, they're not the ones working in this shithole. That's the best thing about having Spike around--at least he ponies up for groceries." Then she smiled, a dark, secret little smile that was nothing like her usual brash grin. She crossed her arms, fingers absently rubbing at the cuts on her right bicep. "Well, the second best thing."

"Yo! Babe! Need another pitcher here!" somebody yelled from the far corner of the room.

"Hold your water, Larry!" Faith yelled back, grabbing a pitcher and filling it from the Lone Star tap. "Asshole," she muttered. "Be right back." She stalked towards the back of the room, stepping right over Aricthyx's prostrate form in the process.

"Spike's a watcher," Xander said to himself, shaking his head in disbelief. "Spike is Faith's watcher." Of all the unbelievable things he'd seen and heard today, this really tilted the pinball machine. The Immoral Kombat thing these two obviously had going on, that wasn't so hard to wrap his mind around. Spike's judgment when it came to the opposite sex was less than ideal, and Faith's wasn't much better, he knew from sad experience. And it didn't take Dr. Phil to figure out that if these two ever got together it would be the sexual equivalent of nitroglycerin. But Spike and Faith living together, working together, Spike a watcher? That was kinky.

A tremendous crash derailed Xander's train of thought, causing him and most of the Mos Eisley Cantina-esque patrons of Crossroads to turn and stare at the swinging front door, which had slammed open with a sound like the end of the world.

As if thinking about him had conjured him up, Spike stood in the doorway, the neon light from the sign outlining him like the fires of hell. His sharp features set in a mask of barely controlled fury, he glared around the room.

"Which one of you miserable fuckwits drives a vomit green '87 Toyota?"

Deathly silence. One of the vampires in the back started edging towards the men's room, caught Spike's basilisk stare, and thought better of it.

"I'm losing patience, lads." His voice was low, rumbling, like a volcano about to erupt. "Out with it. Who does that hunk of scrap metal belong to?"

There were suddenly a lot of accusatory looks being thrown around the room, many of them centered towards one of the rear booths. Finally, a small, shaking hand went up in that vicinity. Xander craned his neck to see who it was, but the body the hand belonged to was lost in a sea of flannel and trucker's hats.

"Get it out my parking space in the next thirty seconds, and I won't rip your tongue out and use it to clean my windshield," Spike told the hand.

The hand went down and after a moment, a tiny figure emerged from the crowd in the back. Xander's eyes widened as he recognized Dave Piskie from Parker Printing's pointed, freckled face. He noticed Xander on his way to the front and gave him a small, wobbly smile before scurrying past the vampire, who was staring at him like he was a particularly loathsome species of insect.

"Sodding pixies, always up to no good," Xander heard Spike mutter as he slammed out the door after Dave.

"Jesus," he said under his breath.

"Yeah, one thing you need to know about Slim Shady," Faith said behind him. She'd returned to the counter and was looking at the front door, which was still swinging rapidly from Spike's exit. "He's different now."

"Yep, kinda noticed that when he went all Hannibal Lecter on me at Best Buy."

"That was nothing, that was normal," Faith replied. "You haven't seen--" she stopped, arranging the shotglasses on the bar the same way she was trying to arrange her thoughts. "Okay, back in Sunnydale last year, he was cool. Even though Buffy had him like totally fucking whipped, he was still pretty fly for a dead guy, y'know? Now--not so much."

"What happened to him?" Xander said, since that really was the big question, once you got the soul business out of the way. "I heard he was a charcoal briquet. A charcoal briquet under a billion tons of dirt. How the hell did he come out of that?"

"I dunno. They won't tell me anything, and when I asked Spike about it, he just looked at me. You know how he does, like you're the dumbest fucking white person on the planet?" She pushed the hair out of her eyes in a frustrated gesture. "But wherever he was, it wasn't good. I mean, sometimes he's okay. Others, it's like the lights are on, but you don't even wanna know what's home. You throw all the shit he's taking into the mix, and it's like living with the three fucking faces of Eve."

"Shit?" Xander asked confusedly. Spike sure didn't look like was taking much shit from anybody.

"Drugs, Xander," Faith said, looking irritated at his slowness. "Real hard-core, high-impact demon shit. He's tweaked out about half the time." She looked back at the door. "Like right now."

"He is? How can you tell?"

"The tongue thing? If he wasn't on the juice, he wouldn't have talked about it. He'd have just done it."

"Ouch," Xander shuddered, with a slight adjustment of his still-tender private parts. "But if this stuff lowers his thermostat that much, maybe he should be on it all the time. Like Prozac," he joked.

Faith's face darkened. "No, he shouldn't."

"Why--"

The door slammed open again, robbing Xander of the chance to ask for further details. Spike walked back in. Actually, walked wasn't quite the right word for it, since this was nothing like his usual cocky shoulder-swagger. Spike practically undulated, moving across the sticky linoleum with the liquid ease of a leopard stalking prey. The feline effect was further heightened by the slow unblinking gaze with which he surveyed the room, his head tilted slightly to one side, like he was picking out the weakest of the herd. Every eye--most humanoid, some slitted like a snake's, a few on stalks--turned to watch his progress in the pin-drop silence that had fallen the instant he returned. When it became clear he was headed in Xander and Faith's direction, there was a low, general sigh, and Crossroads returned to normal. Or, as normal as it ever got. As Spike drew up close, Xander saw that the vampire's normally pale features were glowing with the hectic flush of a human running a dangerous fever. But he didn't look human. Not at all.

"Harris, my dear chap. Happy to see Old Home Week continues," Spike said, sliding up to him and putting a friendly paw on his back. "Faith, darling, the boy is dry. Get him another one on me. And my usual, please." He threw a crumpled ten on the bar. Xander could feel the heat from Spike's hand even through two layers of cotton and leather, and he wondered what kind of drug had the power to send a vampire's system into that kind of overdrive. He had a feeling it wasn't Nyquil.

"I do hope you're enjoying yourself in our humble little establishment," Spike went on. Xander saw that his pupils were dilated to the size of dimes, black swallowing ice-blue until there was only the thinnest ring of color around the very edge of his irises.

"Not as much as you," Xander returned pointedly.

Spike cocked his head at Faith, lips turning up in a warm smile that had something very wrong with it. "Been telling tales out of school, have we, pet?" He leaned closer--too close--to Xander. As always, he smelled like leather, cigarettes and that weird spicy smell all vampires seemed to exude like natural perfume, but there was another smell on top of those now, a sickly-sweet scent like overripe fruit or dying flowers. "Pay no mind to our intrepid barmaid. I'm afraid three years as a guest of the state has left her with a rather dim view of the human condition."

"You're not human," Faith said tightly, as she popped the cap on Xander's third beer. Reaching under the bar, she took out a bottle of Jack Daniels and slapped a highball glass on the counter, which she filled almost to the top with undiluted whiskey.

"No, I'm not." Spike leaned forward and, with the lightest of touches, brushed the hair back from her face, his fingers barely lingering over the bruise on her cheek. "That's what keeps it so interesting for you, isn't it, sweetheart?" His words were mocking, but those strange black eyes were fixed on her in a look so hot it should have carried its own parental advisory sticker. Xander saw Faith's fingers tighten on the bar until the wood creaked in protest. His smile widening, Spike turned back to Xander.

"Now, where was I wandering to? Oh yes, so glad to have the opportunity to renew old ties, Harris. You've done terribly well for yourself here, haven't you? Heir apparent to O'Shea Construction and all that. Nice snaps on the website, I thought. Papa-in-law looks like quite the robber baron."

Something else was different, Xander was realizing, as he began to digest Spike's latest flavor of scary. The vampire's normal clipped mockney accent was completely gone. It had been replaced by something deeper, richer, a tone practically dripping with privilege, education, and money. A bit like hearing Giles talk, except there was a nasty little lilt to Spike's voice that Xander had never heard in the watcher's speech. It was a voice made for saying cutting, clever things over brandy and cigars in some swanky men's club somewhere, a place where a Harris would only be allowed in to sweep up after the paying members. Xander remembered Buffy saying something once about the human Spike coming from money, and wondered if whatever he was flying on was bringing out his true voice. If so, William must have been something of a bastard.

"Yes, our little Pip's become a gentleman and married Estella after all," Spike continued, taking a meditative sip of his whiskey, the overhead lights from the bar glancing off the rings on his hands and in his ears. The unhealthy flush to his skin made the gleaming wounds on his face and neck even more apparent. There should have been something laughable about hearing that refined voice coming out of that rough figure, but instead it was just really creepy, like listening to someone who's been possessed.

"Huh?" Xander asked after a second, a little too distracted by Spike's Exorcist routine to parse the reference.

"Never you mind. Batman and Wolverine never met them, so they don't really count, do they?" Spike said soothingly.

Xander stared at him, not sure if Spike had just insulted him or not. He decided to play the odds and assume that he had.

Spike favored Xander with that warm, weird smile again, black eyes glowing like lumps of charcoal in the burning plains of his face. "You have a lovely house, by the way. A tad yellow, but very nice."

Xander stopped with his beer halfway to his mouth. "When did you see my house?" he asked, just managing to keep the tremble out of his words. He has his soul, he reminded himself, trying to stem the tide of sudden panic in his gut. Faith said so. Plenty of soul, lots of soulage going on there.

Yeah, so did Ted Bundy. And Warren Mears. And so did he when he murdered all those people last year, a frightened voice spoke up in his head.

Spike didn't answer the question right away. Instead, he took the cigarettes and Zippo out of his front pocket and lit up, moving with the languid slowness of the lethally stoned. Finally, when Xander was just about ready to grab the lighter and make vampire flambée, he spoke. "I took a little drive up there this evening, since your wife was so good as to give me the address," he said, sending a cloud of smoke in Xander's direction. "It was a bit late to call, but I did catch a glimpse of dear Brooke and her unspeakably ugly dog through that rather charming dormer window. You really ought to warn her about leaving the shades open at this time of night. Especially if she's going to wear such fetching lingerie." He exhaled again. Through the hazy smoke, his dark gaze was fixed on Xander like a child watching a live beetle pinned to a card.

Xander's left hand tightened on the beer bottle. His other hand automatically went into his jacket pocket. "You stay away from her." His couldn't stop the shake that time, and didn't give a damn.

"Now, that wouldn't be very neighborly, would it?" Spike said reproachfully. "Especially when she practically laid out the Welcome Mat for me tonight? No, I'll have to stop by for a quick drink some time soon."

Xander's hand tightened on the stake.

"Spike--" Faith began in a warning voice.

"Or perhaps we could even have dinner," Spike continued, ignoring the slayer. He ran his pierced tongue over his teeth, the silver stud flashing in the light. "Something tells me Mrs. Harris would be delicious company."

"You son of a bitch!" With reflexes oiled by fear and rage, Xander was on his feet in one swift movement and had the stake aimed for the vampire's chest like a SCUD missile finding its target. But Spike was quicker. In a motion so fast it was nothing more than a blur in front of Xander's vision, he pitched his cigarette, grabbed the hand holding the stake and twisted. Xander cried out in pain and the stake went clattering to the floor. Still holding Xander's wrist at that odd angle, he reached down, picked the stake up with his free hand and set it on the bar. Then his fingers tightened on Xander's wrist. Xander bit his lip to keep from giving Spike the satisfaction of hearing him cry out again.

"Now, what we have here is your standard joint lock," Spike said, his tone calm, almost bored. "A wee bit more pressure on the bone, and your arm will shatter at the elbow like so much cheap glass. A nasty fracture, that--you'd be looking at months of rehab, an operation or two, maybe a pin to set the joint. Take it from one who knows--it's no fun having people shove bits of plastic and metal into your body, Harris. So as the lovely Faith here would put it, why don't you chill the fuck out and sit down?"

Xander had no choice but to obey.

"Good lad. Now take that other stake out of your left-hand pocket and set it on the bar. Faith will hold them for you until you're ready to leave--she so enjoys these little peacekeeping duties. Don't you, petal?" Faith didn't reply, just stared at the vampire stony-faced.

Reluctantly, Xander fished the stake out of his pocket and slapped it on the bar. Faith picked the stakes up, holding them business end out. "Spike," she said, her voice low and serious. "Enough."

"No need to get testy, lamb," Spike said easily. "I'm not planning to bruise the boy. Just going to let him in on a few home truths."

To prove his statement, he finally let Xander go. Xander sat there, trembling slightly from the adrenaline, rubbing his injured wrist. Spike sat down next to him again, cocking his head in that superior way of his. "As a gesture of goodwill, I'll even let you keep all those cunning knives you've got tucked into that very nice leather jacket." He ran one black-tipped finger over Xander's left sleeve experimentally. "Hmmm, lovely. Is this Hugo Boss?"

"How did you--"

"Don't be thick, Harris. I could smell the steel on you the minute I came in the door," Spike said off-handly. He leaned one elbow on the bar and took another sip of his whiskey. "So the plucky orphan lad came here tonight carrying heavy, ready to take on the big bad monster threatening his lady fair. No hard feelings there--I think that's rather sweet, actually." He smirked and raised his glass in a mock-toast.

Then he set the glass down again, face suddenly serious. "But what if I were to tell you that the damsel you're so chivalrously protecting isn't in distress?"

Xander rubbed at his eyes with his sore wrist, the tension headache from earlier having grown steadily worse. Too much had happened in the last three hours. He really wasn't up to playing any more of Spike's bizarre mind games. "What?" he said tiredly.

"Was I using too many syllables for you? My apologies," Spike replied with poisonous politeness. "Let me rephrase. Our Miss Brooke doesn't need you playing knight errant, lad. From what I saw this evening, she could handle me and any other nasty thing that might come calling."

Xander blinked at him. "Huh?"

Spike rolled his eyes. "Always suspected those stories about uranium in the Sunnydale drinking water were true," he said, sighing impatiently. He leaned forward, invading his space again. "Listen closely, you bloody great lummox." He punctuated his next statement by tapping a long finger on Xander's forehead with each word.

"Your. Wife. Is. Not. Human."

Xander was so flabbergasted that the best retort he could come up with was straight out of the schoolyard. "She is so!"

With a sardonic lift of his pierced brow, Spike responded in kind. "Is not."

"Yes, she is," Xander said through gritted teeth.

Spike's other eyebrow went up. "How do you know?"

"I just--just know," Xander sputtered.

"Says the man who got himself carved up like a Christmas goose by that sweet young thing last year."

"That was different!" Xander almost shouted. "That was Sunnydale. This is--is--"

"Eldorado. And there's no such thing as demons in Eldorado, is there?" Spike said softly. As if to illustrate his irony, at that precise moment the K'ryth demons stalked past. Two of them, wings straining with the effort, had Aricthyx by the shoulders and heels and were carrying him towards the door. "He throws up on my couch, he buys it," one of them declared loudly as they went out.

Xander just stared at Spike. He opened his mouth to retort, but it was like all the synapses in his brain were suddenly giving him the General Protection Fault.

Spike leaned in even closer. The heat was radiating off him in waves--it felt like standing in front of an open oven door. "Thought you had it so sweet here, didn't you? Snug as a bug in a bleeding rug, with your posh job and your cozy nest and your designer duds, and wifey cosseting you along like a colicky brat. Seemed like a real soft doss, didn't it?" He was still using that dangerously over-enunciated voice, consonants slicing at Xander like scalpels. "Well, I do so hate to burst your bubble, Harris, but Eldorado's just another demon town, and you've just caught yourself another demon bride. And not just any demon, either. Your dearly beloved is the scariest fucking thing I've seen in years, and given where I've been that's saying something."

And then Spike did the strangest thing of the whole night.

He began to giggle.

Seeing Xander's horrified, bewildered expression, he waved his hand in mock-apology, but he didn't stop.

"Sorry, old thing, but it's just too funny," he tittered. "You're worried about the Big Bad Wolf, when it's Little Red Riding Hood that bears watching! You sad, sad bastard." His giggles grew louder, a high, terrible sound, like rats skittering over glass.

"You're--you're insane," Xander sputtered. "Again."

"Oh yes," Spike answered after a moment, wiping his eyes. "I'm mad. She's mad," he nodded at Faith. "We're all mad here." He grinned at Xander, face shining from the drug and an awful, manic glee. "You must be, or you wouldn't be here."

And that's when even a Harris had finally had enough.

"Fuck you, Spike," he said, standing up and backing away from the crazy vampire. "I don't know where you've been, and I don't know what the hell is wrong with you. And you know what? I don't care. Get junked to the eyeballs on magic smack. Fuck with Faith's head, she's used to it. Give the other hellspawn a real hard fucking time. But don't think for one second you can slither into my life and pull this shit. My wife is not a demon. She's good, and pure, and decent, and everything you wouldn't understand because you're rotten down to your old bones. I don't care if you have a soul. You're scum, Spike." Xander stopped, nearly panting with righteous indignation.

"Fine, don't believe it," Spike said, still grinning. "But when the Yellow Rose of Texas eats your face, don't come crying to me."

Xander clenched his hands. "Stay the fuck away from me and my wife. Or next time, you won't see the stake coming."

All things considered, not a bad exit line, Xander thought as he slammed out the door. Clint Eastwood would have been proud.

Part Thirteen: And you may ask yourself

If Xander had spent the last couple of weeks checking out remote keyless entry systems instead of stereos, things might have turned out very differently. As it was, they caught up to him as he stood by the Jeep, attempting to open the driver's side door with a hand that was shaking like a palsy from his confrontation with Spike. He was so intent on trying to jam the stupid key into the stupid lock that he never even noticed them until a heavy, clawed hand fell on his shoulder.

"Where do you think you're goin', boy?" a voice like steel wool said.

Xander turned around, a sinking feeling in his stomach. Standing around him in a rough half-circle were five men. Or, rather, five vaguely man-shaped things. Four of them were obviously closely related: big, hulking Blutos with skin the color and texture of a basketball, thick yellow horns curling over their simian brows, and too-long arms dragging the ground like worn-out Stretch Armstrong dolls. The fifth, Xander noticed with some surprise, was his friend Tito Vasquez. He had the same gold-streaked red eyes as the rest, but his demonic features were otherwise limited to the spines on his face. There was another important difference between Tito and his companions as well: he was the only one who didn't look mad as hell.

"What's it to you?" Xander replied, a little surprised at the steadiness of his own voice. Channeling Clint had its perks

"We got a bone to pick with you," the demon who'd spoken before replied. He was obviously the leader--his horns were a good five inches longer than his companions.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Where the hell do you get off callin' us 'hellspawn'?"

"And suggestin' we ain't decent?" The one to his immediate left, who looked shorter and younger than the rest, piped up. "We're Americans same as you."

"Our family's been in Eldorado six generations. How long you been here?" The one on the leader's right put in. He was wearing a Confederate flag t-shirt with the words "Forget, Hell!" emblazoned underneath it in big gothic letters.

Xander blinked. Tito aside, he didn't even remember seeing this group in Crossroads, much less giving them attitude. Then he remembered his final speech to Spike and winced inwardly.

"Nothing personal, boys," he said evenly. "Just making conversation."

"Yeah, we saw your conversation," the leader said, his horns waggling disapprovingly. "Comin' into our bar and tryin' to stake one of us? That ain't right."

"'Sides, don't you know that vampire's crazier than a shithouse rat?" The one in the flag t-shirt said. "You get him all worked up and he'll take it out on the rest of us."

"Yeh, tanks a 'aht." the one on the end next to Tito said in a thick, muffled voice. "Ah'm still tyin' ta gow ma tung back fum ast time."

"Well, we tole you to stay out of his parkin' place, Dwight," the little one whispered to him.

"Look, what do you want from me?" Xander said, in hopes of getting out of here before midnight.

"We want you to apologize for insultin' us," the leader said. "And for steppin' on Dwight's tail when you barrelhoused out of there." He nodded at the tongueless demon, who, Xander saw now, was holding his worm-like appendage up with a wounded expression.

"You didn't even say 'excuse me' or nothin'," Flag shirt said, crossing his arms, which were roughly the size of highway pylons. "Where were you raised, in a barn?"

All things considered, they were being pretty civilized about it, the safe, sane part of Xander's brain realized. Going by the weird and wonderful code that was demon etiquette, he had insulted them. Xander opened his mouth to make the safe, sane apology that would get him out of here in one piece. But, to his astonishment, he found the words wouldn't come out. The apology was lodged in his throat like a lump of taffy.

"Well?" The leader said, red eyes sparking fiercely.

Xander opened his mouth again, but the words still wouldn't come. The silence stretched out, growing as thick and sour as cottage cheese.

"Dude, Xander, just apologize," Tito said after a minute, pulling at his spines worriedly.

Maybe it was three hours of mortal terror. Maybe it was the shock of finding out that safe, sane Eldorado was crawling with the very things he'd moved thousands of miles to get away from. Maybe it was hearing Spike laugh at him yet again. Or maybe it was just three beers on top of two shots of cheap tequila. But, whatever the reason, that was when the small, dark, obviously suicidal part of his brain leapt up and strangled all safeness and sanity into utter submission.

Almost unconsciously, he put his right hand behind his back, fingers curling around the polished handle of the axe.

"Fuck you," he said distinctly. "I'm not making nice with hellsp--"

He didn't get to finish. As his wife would have put it, the four of them were on him like ducks on a June bug. Xander, seven years of Scooby training rising to his aid, managed to get in a few lucky licks right at the beginning. He hit the leader square between the eyes with the blunt end of the axe, knocking him into his two closest companions and sending the three of them over like bowling pins. Growling like a pit-bull, Dwight charged him, but Xander, whirling around like Chow Yun-Fat in that tiger movie, sliced the luckless demon's left horn off at the root with a practiced stroke of his axe, sending him screaming into the farther reaches of the parking lot. Flag shirt, the lithest and quickest of the four, had managed to get to his feet and was now heading towards Xander like a runaway freight train. Xander neatly sidestepped him, stuck out his leg, and footswept him back to the ground. Tactically speaking, this would have been the time to make a break for it, but Xander was beyond making tactical decisions. Dropping the axe, he jumped on top of the demon, wrapped his hands around his huge greasy neck, and started banging his gigantic horned head into the ground. He could hear Tito's voice pleading frantically, but his blood was roaring too loudly in his ears for him to make sense of what he was saying. Nor would he have cared if he could. His heart racing with that odd outlaw excitement that had been ebbing and flowing through his veins all day, he just kept pounding Flaggy's head into the pavement, over and over and over again, because that's what he deserved, demon scum coming into his town and grabbing him by the balls and looking at his wife like that and telling nasty little lies and if he just kept pounding and pounding and pounding him into the ground maybe that would shut that red laughing mouth up once and for--

And that's when Xander's luck ran out. The two surviving demons grabbed him by the back of the shirt and hauled him off their kin, sending him flying towards the front of the Jeep. Xander hit the shiny chrome grill at roughly the speed of light, leaving a big Xander shaped-dent in the metal, before bouncing off and hitting the dirt with a muffled thud! He lay there gasping for breath, the wind knocked out of both lungs, and then the three demons were on him again. Or maybe they'd called up some reserves from the bar, because it suddenly seemed like there was a lot more than three of them, hands and feet all over him, kicking and punching and crunching until Xander lost count of the blows. He curled into a fetal position, older, sadder instincts from his junior high school days coming into play, his only thought now to keep a shred of dignity by not crying out from the pain.

At the point when he was about ready to flush dignity down the toilet and start yelling for help, he heard a woman's low whiskey voice shouting from what seemed like very far away.

"All right, CUT THE SHIT!"

The blows abruptly stopped, but Xander heard a few more sharp thuds and cries of pain, like the beatings had been located elsewhere. Or maybe that was just his ears ringing. He coughed and tried to sit up and see what was happening, but the world seemed to be tilting drunkenly on its axis, sending his head careening against the dirt once again.

Then strong, feverishly hot hands were lifting him up off the ground, dusting him off and settling him against the crumpled front of the Jeep. Blinking his eyes a few times, Xander stared dazedly into Spike's sharp features, which were practically glowing with amusement. Or maybe it was just whatever horrible shit he was taking.

"Still clashing with the titans are we, Harris?" Spike said. "Thought you'd have learned better by now."

Xander just shook his head, not in answer to the question, but in an effort to get the birdies tweet-tweeting around his head to fly away. After a minute, he recovered enough to take notice of the striking tableau a few feet away, over Spike's left shoulder. Faith had one booted foot on the neck of the puny demon, who was on the ground holding his stomach like he, too, had had the wind knocked out of him. Her right hand was clutching a thick billy-club, probably the author of the huge, swelling lump on Flag t-shirt's forehead. He was sitting a few feet away, also looking rather dazed. The slayer's left hand was occupied in a stranglehold on the leader, effortlessly holding his 300 pounds of bulk a good two feet off the ground. Bosom heaving in the tight tank top, her big doe eyes glittering with that lethal pleasure peculiar to slayers, she made Lara Croft look like a high school gym teacher. A male high school gym teacher.

"Whoah," Xander said weakly.

Spike turned and surveyed the remains of the fight. "Yes, she's coming along rather nicely," he said, pursing his lips appraisingly. "Still telegraphing her punches, though. We'll have to work on that."

Faith was too focused on her defeated opponents to hear the criticism. "This your idea of fair odds, Hector?" she growled at the leader. "Five-to-one?" She gave him a good, hard shake with each syllable of the statistics.

"Four-to-one. I got no beef with Xander," put in Tito, who was standing off to one side, glaring at his fallen relatives.

The leader of the demons tried to speak, but Faith was crushing his larynx and all that came out were a few gurgly sounds. With a disgusted sigh, she released his throat and let him drop to the ground. He fell on his butt like a sack of hammers. After a few woozy seconds, he sat up on his haunches, brushed some of the dirt off his Wranglers, and cleared his throat a few times.

"Faith--*cough*--girl--*rattle*--he insulted us," Hector wheezed plaintively.

Faith crossed her arms, clearly not convinced. "So? I tell you you're a flaming sack of shit five times a night and you just smile and call me sugar."

"That's--*rasp*--different. He--*cough*--ain't one of us."

"Neither am I," Faith said flatly.

"More than him," the little one squeaked from his position on the ground.

"Faith, darling, the boys are letting you into their clubhouse," Spike drawled. "How touching. I think this calls for--"

She whirled on him like a striking rattlesnake. "Spike, shut the fuck up!" she hissed. Then she turned back to the others. "Hector, Bubba, Ricky," she took each of them in with a quick, contemptuous flick of her eyes. "Your asses are out of here. Banned--two weeks."

There was a chorus of protestations from the general vicinity of the ground.

Faith's eyebrows drew together dangerously. "You wanna try for a month?"

There was much sullen shaking of big horned heads.

"No ma'am," they murmured more or less in unison. Faith took her boot off the little one's neck, and they all started scrambling to their feet.

"Then hit the fucking pavement. Pull this shit again, and next time you won't be getting up so fast."

She turned to Spike, indicating Xander with a sharp jerk of her head. "Make sure he gets out of here okay. Then you get gone. You've stirred enough shit for one night."

"Why Faith, I--"

"Save the wide-eyed act for the civilians, Billy-boy. Get the fuck out of here before I show him how to use these." She dropped the two forgotten ash stakes on the ground next to their feet, and nodded briefly to Xander. "Xan, I'll see you around." She spun on her heel and stalked back towards the bar. "Fucking testosterone, makes 'em all bugfuck crazy, like I don't have enough shit to take care of. . ." they heard her muttering under her breath as she strode away.

"C'mon boys, let's go see if we can locate Dwight," Hector said, raspy voice sounding even hoarser than normal. He sighed and shook his head. "Lord, his mamma's gon' have my butt for biscuits when she sees his horn." He shot Xander a sour look, but Spike gave a small, almost imperceptible lift of his eyebrows and the big demon looked away. Without another glance in their direction, he and his kin started walking slowly and sorely towards the back parking lot.

"Tito, you comin'?" Hector threw over his shoulder, red eyes flashing at his cousin, who was still hovering uncertainly on the sidelines. After another moment or two of indecision, Tito nodded.

"Sorry about this, Xan-man," he said. "You really shoulda just said you was sorry." He headed off after his relatives.

Head still buzzing from a wicked combination of alcohol, adrenaline, and pain, Xander sank down on the ground in front of the Jeep. Leaning back against the crumpled bumper, he must have greyed out for a few minutes. When he came to, he realized that Spike was seated companionably next to him, smoking a cigarette and staring quietly into the darkness of the trash-strewn field next to Crossroads.

"You know, today started out really good," Xander mumbled, taking off his dirt-streaked glasses and trying to clean them on the equally dirty tail of his shirt.

Spike exhaled, the smoke from his cigarette glowing orange in the harsh arc-sodium lights of the parking lot. "Seems like a pretty fair ending, as well."

Xander put his now semi-clean glasses back on and looked at Spike, trying to see if he was kidding. But the vampire's expression was serious.

"You are nuts."

Spike cocked his head at him. His eyes were still that eerie black, but his smile was the old sardonic smirk. "What? Got what you came for, didn't you?"

Xander shifted irritably against the Jeep, heard a crackling, tinkling sound, and reached into his front shirt pocket. With a weary sigh, he fished out the shattered remains of his tungsten Palm Pilot and tossed them into the dirt. "I didn't want this. None of this. If you hadn't shown up all scary S&M guy, I never would have--"

"Oh, so this is about me. Why Harris, I didn't know you cared."

Despite his weariness, Xander felt the familiar spark of Spike-irritation ignite in his chest. "That's not what I--you threatened me."

"I did no such thing. Had a bit of fun, perhaps. I wasn't the one who burst in here with my big wood and started trying to impale innocent bystanders." He paused and exhaled, sending a series of perfect smoke rings into the direction of the vacant lot. "Sounds to me like somebody's unfulfilled," he concluded thoughtfully.

"I am not unfulfilled!" Xander said hotly. "My life is great, perfect, wonderful! The Tom Cruise of lives."

Spike pitched his cigarette butt into the parking lot with a contemptuous flick. "Then answer me this, Rain Man. Why did you risk this great, perfect, wonderful life to come here tonight? If you really thought Big Bad was back, what were you planning to defeat me with? Strong language?" To illustrate his point, he picked up the two thick ash stakes. He broke them both like breadsticks with a single snap of his fingers, and tossed them after the cigarette butt. "Christ, lad, you might as well have walked in with a big 'Drink Me' sign hanging 'round your neck. We taught you better than that."

The calm, patronizing tone of Spike's voice made Xander's jaw clench. It was bad enough when Giles or Buck or someone who actually knew what they were doing made him feel like a big zero, but being talked down to by a hundred-year-old vampire with the emotional maturity of a fetus was really too much.

"Admit it. You were just gagging for a bit of the old rough-and-tumble," Spike continued in that same condescending tone "When I wouldn't oblige, you found satisfaction elsewhere. That little tussle with the Cuernos boys is the most fun you've had in months."

"And this is Spike's brain on drugs," Xander said nastily. "I moved 1200 miles from Sunnydale to get away from demons, you retard, not roll around on the ground with them."

"Yet you wind up in another Sunnydale, rolling around with a demon every night. There's poetic irony for you," Spike said just as nastily.

Despite his pain, despite his weariness, the irritated spark in Xander's chest suddenly exploded into a full scale forest fire. Calling on the last reserves of his strength, he twisted around and slammed Spike against the front of the Jeep. Straddling the vampire's slight form, he grabbed him by the lapels of his tattered shirt and leaned close, invading his space for once.

"My wife is not a demon," he said in a low, strangled whisper. "And I'm not some adrenaline junkie who gets his jollies playing patty-cake with the scum of the earth. You're the only junkie here, Spike."

Xander wasn't sure exactly what reaction he'd been expecting from the vampire. More violence, maybe, or at least a really vicious comment. But instead, Spike relaxed underneath his hands, settling himself against the twisted chrome of the Jeep with a liquid ease, like all his bones had turned to butter. He looked up at Xander and smiled, his expression calm, almost gentle, dilated eyes as wide and deep as black holes, and just as easy to fall into. Xander could smell that thick, sweet, strange scent again, his nostrils filling with the odor of old roses and dying lilies. His death grip on Spike relaxed, and he found himself wondering absently if it was possible to get a contact high from this distance.

"I know, it's difficult for you. The plucky orphan lad made good, defeated his demons and became a man at last. Strapped on his seven-league boots and strode away to paradise," Spike said, speaking in a soft, silky voice that twined around Xander's tired brain like a friendly cat will twine around your ankles. "To realize the life you thought you'd left behind has followed you, that the darkness is rising up like a scorned lover and pulling you back into its awful embrace. . ." Spike leaned close, closer, until they were almost kissing-distance apart. ". . .it's almost obscene in its wrongness, isn't it?"

The vampire's eyes weren't black, Xander was realizing. They were all kinds of colors, like the rainbow swirl of an oil slick, red-blue-purple-yellow-green-white-orange, reeling and spinning until you were almost dizzy from it. But it was a good kind of dizzy, the heady whirl of a merry-go-round, all light and color and play. You didn't want it to stop.

"And to find out that the monsters haven't just followed you home: they are your home. How dreadful that must be for you," Spike went on in that same warm velvet voice. "To think that the very thing that frightens you most is sharing your board and bed. To see that everything you've loved, everything you've believed in, everything you've offered up the quick of your life for, has all been a terrible lie. That's what has you seeing red, isn't it, lad?" Spike reached up one flushed hand and smoothed the damp hair back from Xander's eyes. His fingers were as warm and soothing as June sunshine on Xander's aching head.

"Yes," Xander said thickly, not quite sure what he was agreeing to and not caring, as long as Spike kept touching him.

"But that's not the most terrible truth of all, is it? The thing you won't say even to yourself, the knowledge you keep locked in your heart of hearts, is something quite different." Those hot, clever fingers continued stroking, caressing, moving down, leaving trails of fire in their wake.

"You want the darkness to take you. That's the apple in your Eden, Xander. But you'd rather kill the serpent than admit you're starving, wouldn't you?"

The fingers suddenly stopped somewhere around his knee, as if waiting for an answer.

"I. . .um. . .what?" Xander faltered. He tried to think of something to say, anything that would make Spike go on, but that kaleidoscope gaze seemed to be stealing all his thoughts.

Spike smiled a little, but didn't wait for further reply. His hand glided up the inside of Xander's thigh. He could feel the heat of it even through his jeans, which suddenly seemed much too tight, chafing against his tender, swollen flesh.

"Go home, boy," Spike said, his voice dropping to a sinuous whisper. "Run back to your castle and draw the bridge up behind you. Curl up next to your queen and pull the blankets over your head. Swallow all those delicious lies she's been feeding you and ask for seconds." That burning touch had reached Xander's groin, stroking, pulling, teasing, kneading. Xander bit his lip, the sensation indescribable, pleasure and pain mixed up together until you didn't know where one ended and the other began.

The vampire leaned forward, his too-warm lips right against Xander's ear. "Forget about what's out here in the dark. Don't think about what makes your heart pound and your breath catch and the blood sing in your veins. Tell yourself you have what you really want. But always remember. . ." he trailed off. There was a low, crunching sound, one that seemed vaguely familiar, but he couldn't quite place in his giddiness.

"Remember, I know where you live, old friend."

And suddenly there was a sharp, stabbing pain in Xander's ear, like the jab of a piercing gun, only about ten times as painful. He cried out and pulled away, falling back on his butt in the dirt in his shock. Stared up into a face twisted into cruel, inhuman curves, eyes gone the poisonous yellow of burning sulfur. The vampire grinned, baring razor-sharp incisors gleaming sticky red.

"That's molesting, Harris," Spike said, his tone as bright and awful as the blood on his lips.

Then he began to giggle again.

In the days to come, as his perfect life began to come apart like a shattered Palm Pilot, Xander Harris could never remember much of those last nightmarish minutes at Crossroads. How he managed to scrabble up under that mocking yellow gaze, find his keys in the dirt, climb into the Jeep and get out the hell out of there, would forever be one big, terrified blur. The next thing he could clearly recall was sitting in his car a block from his house, clutching the steering wheel in a white-knuckled grip and shaking from head to foot, his thoughts as blank and buzzing as a white noise machine.

But ever after, two things always remained with him, as clearly as if he'd captured them on digital video.

The high, terrible sound of the vampire's laughter, and the single word Spike had shouted at him as he peeled out of the parking lot.

Chicken.

Better Buffy Fiction Archive Entry

Eldorado I-- Once in a Lifetime