Beginning
By: Aurorarose13
The velvet draperies of night collided with the horizon, silver rays of light, like bits sunlight fighting to get through the stubborn cloth, spearing the floor of Anya and Xander's bedroom. Fragments of the darkness fought their ways free of their sprawling parents to form their own unique shadows. Through the open window blew a rigid summer wind laced with the fragrance of hydrangea that ruffled the sheet drawn tight over the couple in bed.
With one arm propping his head up, Xander rolled onto his side to stare at his beautiful counterpart; Anya lay on her back, staring blankly at the ceiling. Tenderly, Xander traced Anya's jawbone, making his way up to her soft lips. She returned his sweet gesture with a kiss to his fingertips. "Thinking about something special, love?" Xander inquired, watching her silhouette intently.
"Actually, yes. I was thinking about my next check from Giles. I am going to buy many sparkly things, something that will put to shame this ring on my finger." She raised her ring finger into a beam on starlight, twisting it this way and that to get it to shine.
"Hey!" Xander shouted. "That took me months to earn enough money to buy!"
Anya turned to face him, resting the jeweled hand on her fiancé's chest. She cuddled closer until her face was next to his. "It's not that I don't love this ring, Xander—I do—but it doesn't grab everybody's attention. I want everyone to look at me and shade their eyes."
"I thought they did that already; you sparkle plenty on your own, Anya." She smiled at that and planted a kiss on his forehead.
Silence reigned in the room for a while as the two of them enjoyed the warmth they offered one another. Outside, the lazy cricket chirped every so often while the late night driver whizzed down the road on a desperate mission to get home before curfew. Finally, after minutes of the lulling quiet, Anya leaned back to look Xander in the eyes. "You think Buffy and Dawn are okay out there on the couch?"
"Why wouldn't they be? Buff's the Vampire Slayer, so I'm relatively sure she can handle a lumpy pullout bed. Why do you ask?"
Sighing lightly, Anya glanced out through the crack in the door and thought she saw a shadow dance and move. "No reason, I guess. I'm trying to master this human feeling of curiosity, but I feel like it is mastering me. I want to know everything."
"Well, that's simple to break down, dear: you're a nebnose."
She gasped and pulled out of his embrace slightly. Frowning deeply, she growled, "With you speaking in that tone of voice, I feel as though I should be offended." In a moment, her curiosity once again overwhelmed her. "What is a 'nebnose?'"
"Oh, it's not that bad. It's just someone who's always sticking her nose in places it doesn't belong."
"So you're saying my nose is big?" Anya demanded angrily.
Xander moved over to her, and against her will, he kissed the tip of her nose. "Not at all. I think you're nose is just the right size for me to love."
More minutes of silence passed as Anya watched a strip of light on the wall flicker every so often. Many more questions popped into her mind, questions she had always wondered but never had the nerves to ask. As she watched that light stretch and contract like muscle, she felt her strength building inside as brick after brick of courage piled on top of one another, and her lips began to form words. After all, she was entitled to answers before she married Xander two days from now. Grabbing a fistful of sheet in her hand, she choked out the question that nagged in the back of her head for years. "Did you love Buffy?"
Xander's eyes, which had fallen shut in the stillness of night, flew open as though someone had just fired a gun into the pillow beside his head. His body tensed, and his brain raced despite its weariness. He felt like the breath had been knocked out of him, and his mouth was filled with wallpaper paste. Focusing on a dollop of fallen star at the other end of the room, he replied as best he could, "Where did that come from, Anya?"
"Answer me, Xander. I would like to know."
"Why would you even think that?" The Scooby desperately tried to avoid responding to this question since the answer was so dangerous in the wrong hands.
His fiancée glared at him, knowing that obviously the truth was something he kept secret from many people, even himself. "I'm not saying you still do; I'm the one with the ring on. All I want to know is if you ever did love her."
Xander's gaze on the lighted patch of wall intensified as he tried to reason out a good response. He racked his feeble brain for words to express his feelings, but there was nothing but blank space with a glowing word hovering in the center—YES! "I can't see what difference it would make if I ever had. It's over and done with. You're the one I want to marry and spend the rest of my life with, Anya." He turned to stare at his beautiful girlfriend. He knew he was lucky to have her, and he did not want to screw up this chance with Anya. With the wedding in two days, Xander did not need to mess everything up. The scales were weighed just so they wouldn't topple to one side or the other. Excess baggage on one side, and one cradle was destined to crash.
"I'm not questioning your love for me. I know how you feel about me," she announced, speaking more from her head than from her heart. She had always had a sinking suspicion that Xander wasn't loving her with his whole self, but she fought that away with her own boundless love for him. "All I want to know is if you've ever loved someone other than me. I don't know much about your past, Xander, or your relationship with the other Scoobies. I don't know the first thing about you. How can I marry a man I don't know? It's not fair to me. I deserve your secrets as much as I deserve your diamonds," Anya said at barely a whisper as she waved her engagement ring at the young man now looking beyond her instead of at her.
The sound of Xander gulping deeply filled the room as much as the steely night did. Anya's gazed bored into his skull until he felt no choice but to reply. "I loved her, yes," he finally conceded, his heart aching with the confession. "Buffy was my first real desire. The minute I saw her gorgeous face, I was inexplicably drawn to her. Everything about the way she moved, talked, fought made me want her more. There was nothing in the world, at that time, that could have kept me from her. Come Hellmouth or high water, I would be her valiant knight.
"I guess she never realized that she meant the whole universe to me, for she ignored me. I was the gopher—and I guess to a great extent, I still am—always being sent of the most menial tasks by her. Why should the princess look to the lowly servant? And though I tried many times, Buffy refused my every advance, and I was left with nothing but a stomach full of unrequited love I had no idea what to do with." His voice took on the same wistful quality as his eyes had while he continued with his sordid tale. "For a better portion of three and a half years, I harbored these feelings for Buffy at varying strengths. Everything I did was to impress her. I went out of my way to make her feel special, to make her understand how much she meant to me. She was without a doubt the center of my life. I guess to some degree she is now because of the whole ongoing Slayer thing…
"But you are my sun now, Anya. I mean that, really, I do. I wouldn't have asked you to marry me if you weren't everything my heart ached for. I cherish every minute with you. I love you, I love you, I love you! And I'll say it as many times as you need me to for you to believe it." She should know by now how I feel, Xander thought to himself, so why do I feel like I went overboard with the 'I love you' stuff? Just who am I reassuring? He nibbled his bottom lip with anxiety as he awaited her reply.
And Anya? She simply lay there, stiff amongst the sheets, going over in her head his words. I tumbled off a cliff in her mind, colliding halfway through the fall with love. In the dried-up riverbed beneath the mammoth bluff stretched the word you languidly as it awaited the fall of the other two words. When the phrase had reached the bottom, a great clatter arose in her head, like the banging of pots in a tiny dark room. It resounded against her skull eventually embedding itself in there, and it gave Anya something to cling to, if even for just the few moments it echoed. For a while, she felt safe and secure and loved without doubt. Xander would never let her go. With an exuberant hug, she drew him closer to her than ever. "I love you, too!" she whispered into his ear, even though she wondered whom exactly she was reassuring. She felt the band of the ring bite into her skin, and quickly—mercifully—she forgot her fears. "Make love to me, Xander." He obliged without a microsecond of hesitance.
Meanwhile, the fleeting shadow that hovered in the doorway drifted away, confused now more than ever. Flowing back into the darkness that begot her, Buffy clambered back onto the couch with Dawn, snuggling close and longing for a reassurance that had never quite been given to her. "Make love to me, Xander," she heard echoing softly in the room, except that it was in her own voice.
THE END