This is my first ever requested fiction, so I'm hoping it turns out okay. This was written for Davinci_1985's Xangel Ficathlon, as requested by:
Devo79! Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and Happy Holidays all rolled into one for you!
Requirements: Sunshine, Cotton sheets
Timeline: This is a human!AU where Sunnydale, California is a tiny town where everybody knows everybody and is led by very strongly repressive evangelical beliefs, led by Xander's father, the town preacher.
Rating: M – for language and violence, and sex/masturbation/virgin awkwardness
Warnings: Slash, AU, and there are religious references all through this story – in fact, it's strongly led by a positive view of faith, so I'm sorry if that offends you
This is the set-up: In Sunnydale, California, everybody knows everybody and no one's life is private. Xander Harris is the son of Tony Harris, recovering abusive alcoholic who has become Sunnydale's repressive southern Baptist church's preacher. Xander is an idealist who values love and loyalty above everything, and believes that God created everyone and therefore everyone is equal in God's eyes. He wants to escape his parents and the life that they've picked out for him from day one.
This is the title: This is named "Winter Song" after the song "Winter Song" by Sara Bareilles and Ingrid Michaelson on The Hotel Café Presents: Winter Songs. It is named after the beauty of the song and soft, plaintive refrain:
Is love alive?
Is love alive?
Is love alive?
This is my winter song
December never felt so wrong
'Cause you're not where you belong—
Inside my arms
Every chapter has at least one song in it, and this is meant to be read with the song lyrics - this is essentially an enormous songfic using different songs that fit in with the mood/thoughts of the chapters. I will post a final soundtrack list after the end of the story.
Ensemble:
Tony Harris is a recovered abusive alcoholic, Tony was abused by his father and grew up to believe in a very hateful evangelical Christian point of view. He believes that Xander will grow up to be just like him and run the church.
Jessica Harris is a devout young woman who shares her husband's religious views. She was going to become a nun before she met Tony and decided to marry him and help him set up the Church of Sunnydale. She monitors Xander's friends and reputation closely and dreams of sending him to Liberty University, Jerry Falwell's school.
Willow Rosenberg is Xander's best friend and is shunned by the entire town due to her being a bisexual, vegan, social & political activist, and a feminist. She is the only one around whom Xander can be himself, and they both make plans to escape Sunnydale as soon as possible.
Buffy Summers is the new girl who latches on to Xander and Willow because she hates Sunnydale with a fiery passion and wants to be friends with the two people who don't act like clones of everyone else. She is also smart, funny, and fiercely loyal to her friends.
Cordelia Chase is the beauty queen of Sunnydale who plans on marrying Xander at some point in the future, mainly because of Xander's parents' power in the community and that Xander is the only one besides Buffy that ever stands up to Cordelia and her Cordettes.
Tara McClay is the painfully shy poet in Xander's Wednesday night Bible studies groups, and he shelters her from her father, who he suspects is abusive. Xander can't help but notice Tara's poetry…and they way Tara eyes Willow when she thinks no one is watching.
Spike and Drusilla are the local badasses of Sunnydale, and are reluctant friends of Xander's because Xander is friends with everybody. They share a past with Angel that no one knows about, and they're not telling. No one's sure about anything with Spike & Dru, and they plan on keeping it that way.
And then there's Angel, the mysterious, gorgeous twenty-year-old with secrets of his own who lives in a small apartment at the center of town…
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Winter Song
Prologue: Runaway
And I wonder
How long it would take them
To see my bed is made
And I wonder
If I was a mistake
I know that I have nowhere else to go
But I know that I cannot go home
These voices trapped inside my head
Tell me to run before I'm dead
"Runaway" by P!nk (I'm Not Dead)
The fights had never been as bad as this, and he'd lived through a lot of them.
He heard his mom sobbing and his dad yelling and he buried his head even further in his pillows. He felt like a three year old, but still, he'd learned a long time ago that it was easier to pretend that they weren't fighting than to deal with the knowledge that they were, and that it was his fault…again.
It hurt to move. The pain was a comfort, almost; it kept him grounded and let him know that he was still alive. The thing to remember here was that he was alive, and he knew what he was going to do. Xander had always felt better with a plan, even when the choice was a bad one.
Still, there wasn't anything else left to do here. He was no longer welcome here, and there was nothing else for it. He'd die in the place they wanted to send him, and he'd had enough. Enough pretending, enough trying to not see the truth that was staring him in the face this whole time. He had to leave, get out of this miserable little town with its miserable people before it smothered him to death the way that it had his parents and his friends' parents, and pretty much everyone else in the tiny little town of Sunnydale, California.
He touched the swollen mark his father's drunken fist had left on his face and winced. He'd have to check himself out in the mirror and see how bad it looked, before he headed outside. He had an appointment to keep, one that he could not afford to miss. It was the one thing that he needed to do in this town, with the one person he needed it to be with. One last goodbye, as it were, before he cut the ties and disappeared without ever looking back.
He got up and headed to the stereo, flipped it onto the rock station and turned it up just loud enough to drown out the angry throb of voices below but not loud enough to attract any attention upstairs. It wouldn't do for them to drag him out of his room while he was busy planning his escape from them.
Heading to the mirror above his desk, Xander surveyed his appearance in the mirror. His cheeks were flushed but that was more from emotion than anything. His father had never been a physically strong man, and he was even worse when he had been drinking, thank God. Xander's eye was a little red but the swelling was so small that it'd likely be gone in an hour, if that. He looked deeper, willing the mirror to tell him what it saw.
What he saw was a flushed, nervous, excited, scared, angry, happy seventeen-year-old boy, with cute chocolate-brown puppy eyes, an expressive smile, and soft brown hair cut into an attractive spiking length. He hoped that this would work – no, he prayed that this would work because if he got rejected in this then he knew he would never work up the courage to actually leave.
He turned away from the mirror resolutely and locked his door, throwing a duffel bag on top of his bed. He needed to pack light but also well enough to last. He threw in four changes of underwear, three changes of socks, five shirts, one dress shirt, two pairs of jeans and one pair of work-type khakis. He'd wear another pair of jeans, a plain white shirt and his prize possession: his grandfather's black leather jacket.
His grandfather had given it to him on his sixteenth birthday, with the air of a solemn occasion. "Xander," he'd said gravely, but with a twinkling light in his old blue eyes and a slight smile on his lips, "I wasn't sure if I was ever going to pass this on, but I can see that same restless look to you that I had in me when I was your age. I wore this jacket through all my travels, and it took me to war and back and kept me in one piece. I wore this jacket when I met your grandmother, and we've been married going on forty years now. You take care of this jacket and it'll take care of you."
It had been the best present Xander had ever gotten in his life. He needed its luck now, more than ever. He wanted to stop by his grandparents' house on the way out of town but he knew that after this last month his parents would be calling his grandparents, and likely damn near everyone else in this miserable little town where you couldn't even go to the grocery store without everyone knowing what you were going to buy.
He wasn't brave enough to face his grandfather. Maybe he'd write them a note, let them know that he was okay. God knew they'd been more parents to him than his own at times.
He packed his portable CD player and a pair of headphones. He was only taking his five most prized records with him. He also grabbed an old, beat-up copy of Dune by Frank Herbert, his favorite book (another gift from his grandparents). He put enough money in his wallet for his purposes and then he took the can of cash that he'd been saving for the past two years working the cash register at Pop's, the local sandwich shop, two afternoons a week, in a hidden compartment he'd sewed into his duffel bag for just this reason. A little over $2,000 wasn't going to last him long, but it was enough to start with.
Then he was done, and it was time. He sighed as he looked at the dresser and debated taking the picture with him. With what he was planning now, it didn't seem appropriate, and neither of them would likely ever want to speak with him again. But still…he couldn't just leave their memories behind. They had been the only ones who'd kept him alive in this stifling old town, the only ones that had kept him here when his entire being had been screaming at him to leave for years now.
He cursed to himself and grabbed the picture frame, dropping it on top of his duffle bag and zipping it closed. He checked the clock – 7:12 p.m. It was now or never. He took one last look around, imprinting, and then clicked the stereo off, ducked over to the window, dropped the bag to the bushes below. He waited to make sure that his parents hadn't noticed and then he climbed outside, hanging off of the frame until his feet were only about six feet off the ground. He dropped down the last six feet, absorbing the impact with his knees bent.
He didn't look through the windows; he'd keep the memories of his parents that he'd chosen, not the ones of them that they had forced on him these last few months. He shouldered the bag and set off to Angel's and he didn't look back once as the sun set behind him.
A/N: I would just like to note that this story will be posted on my LiveJournal (.com), but I've posted it here first because I always post my fanfiction on first. To all readers of the Passion of Angels and Demons, this story is already about done, so I'll be posting this a few chapters at a time while I'm working on Passion.
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