TITLE: Ah, Young Love
RATING: PG (themes)
DISCLAIMER: These characters belong to Joss, but he neglects them, and it makes me sad. So I write about them.
SUMMARY: Willow and Xander are involved… coming from me, what else could it be but angst and fluff? But by way of explanation, this takes place in 1989 or so, when they're 7 years old.
DEDICATION: to Shannon, who taught me how to build a fort
~*~*~
On a rainy afternoon in the living room of the Harris household, Willow pressed her nose glumly against the windowpane, small hands resting on the sill. She sighed, following the drips of rain as they traveled down the glass.
"We could play Monopoly," Xander suggested.
"That's boring. How about Connect Four?"
"You always beat me at that game," he nixed the idea.
"Looks like we'll just be sitting around doing nothing, then." The redhead flounced over to the dusty green couch and plopped down. She was followed by her restless friend who placed his knees next to her, facing backward and holding on to the back of the couch.
"Don't be grouchy, Wils," he implored with earnest eyes. "Look!" he pulled the multi-colored old afghan off the back of the sofa and over his head. "I'm a ghost! Oooooo…." He waved his arms around.
She giggled at the sight of it. "There's no such thing as ghosts, silly."
A head of ruffled brown hair revealed itself from the folds of the knitted blanket. "So? That's the whole point of pretend."
She cocked her head thoughtfully, then scurried towards the chair where Mr. Harris had fallen asleep in front of the tv. Standing on tiptoe, she carefully pulled another blanket out from behind him. His head flopped down to the side, and the remote control clattered noisily to the floor. "Oops," Willow winced, placing it delicately back on the armrest before scooting across the room again.
She pulled the blanket over her shoulders and placed an armrest cover on her head as if it were a hat. "I'm a witch!" she announced, then cackled and ran in a circle.
"Well I'm- Superman!" Xander responded, posing heroically in his cape.
"Oh help, Superman, I'm caught in a net!" Willow wriggled frantically from the ground, trying to escape.
"I'll save you!"
The scenario finally played out after the two of them realized there was nobody around to play the bad guy. Jesse's parents wouldn't let him go over to Xander's.
"Now what?" Xander asked, breathless from having run around the house several times chasing an invisible fiend.
Willow stared at her blanket and looked around the room. "I wonder if we could make a tent out of these blankets," she mused, pulling idly on one of her pigtail braids.
"How would they stay up?" Xander shrugged.
"Hmm.."
Putting their two seven-year-old heads together, they experimented with several architectural strategies before finally draping every available blanket and half the sheets in the house over four kitchen chairs. After some cooperation and hard work they had finally engineered what proved to be much more than a mere tent.
"It's a fort," Xander beheld it in awe.
"A house, with rooms," Willow added.
"A castle!"
"No, a cave!"
"It's all of those put together," Xander concluded with delight, crawling inside.
Willow stood for a moment, surveying the lopsided canopy of cotton and yarn with all its mismatched corners.
"Come on!" Xander urged, pulling at the leg of her corduroy overalls. "Check it out in here!"
Tentatively the second-grader ducked down behind one of the flaps of blanket that served as an entranceway.
"Isn't this awesome?" grinned the flashlight-shadowed face that greeted her.
"Yeah, it really is!" she replied, looking around. "So what should we play?"
"Let's pretend we're trapped in a cave?"
"How did we get trapped? An earthquake?"
"Yeah. No wait, a bomb exploded and broke the building down!"
The afternoon wore on and they played bombed-out building, castle, and Scooby-Doo in turn. Hours passed with neither aware that the rain had stopped and the sun come out long ago.
"You're the most fun to play with. You're my best friend," Xander announced as they lay on their backs, taking turns making a light show on the "ceiling" with the flashlight.
"I know," Willow said simply, "you're my best friend too."
"And Jesse is my best friend too," came the addendum. He handed her the flashlight.
Willow looked at the patchwork ceiling, revealing a He-Man sleeping bag and a yellow quilt with tiny roses, separating the two of them from the world outside.
"Xander, someday if I ever have to get married, will you marry me, so I don't have to marry someone mean or yucky?" she asked.
"I donno, maybe I would, but only if April O'Neil won't marry me. She's so pretty and she has cool clothes. Velma is pretty hot too. But I think she's too girly. But She-Ra would be a good wife…"
Willow sighed. "They're all just cartoon characters, Xander."
"Well I wouldn't marry the cartoon ones, duh. I'd go find the real ones who do the acting. Then I'd ask them to marry me."
Willow shook her head, but before she could think of how to answer they heard a creaking noise outside the tent and Xander's father groaning.
"What the hell time is it?" Willow heard him say. "'Livia, it's late, why don't I smell dinner cooking?"
Xander's mom yelled back from the kitchen. "Get your own dinner, you drunken waste of space, I'm not cooking till you get a job!"
"What I do is none of your damn business!" he bellowed back, then muttered, "stupid bitch…"
Heavy footsteps plodded past the fort and then paused. "What the hell? Stupid kid playin' house like sumkinda fairy?" The voice was laden with disgust. Xander was afraid his fort was about to be kicked down; Willow was afraid Xander would be In Trouble again, and she'd have to go in the other room and cover her ears.
"Ah well, 'least the little shit's bein' quiet for once," Mr. Harris grumbled and continued walking away.
For a moment, both children lay still, with the flashlight off. Then Willow turned her head around to look at Xander, who had pulled a flap of blanket over his head and curled up as if to take a nap.
"Xander?"
At the sound of his name, he pulled the flap of blanket tighter and didn't say anything.
She waited a minute, and tugged at his sleeve. "Xander, don't be sad," she implored.
He was still quiet, but he took the blanket off his face and looked at her. She patted his face with a soft hand. "Don't worry, it's okay."
One corner of his mouth lifted, then dropped again. He felt a little better, but not all better.
He took the flashlight and swung it in a figure 8 shape around the fort.
"Wils?" he asked after a while of doing that.
"What?"
"If I stayed in here forever, until I grow up, would you stay with me?"
"Well… if I could go home and visit my mom sometimes, and go to school, I'd stay. And you could come with me when I leave."
His chocolate syrup eyes gazed up at her, lost and hopeful, and she thought seriously about the difficulties of living in a fort until she was a grownup. But as long as she could still go home to visit, maybe it would be fun.
"Even forever," she affirmed solemnly.
He grinned and threw affectionate arms around her briefly. "You're so cool, Wils."
"Kids! Dinner! Come get yourselves some cereal," Mrs. Harris called them.
With "forever" forgotten, the two scrambled out of the fort and into the kitchen.
Stubbing out her cigarette, Olivia watched them with a small smile. She had a good kid, even if he was a pain in the ass to take care of, and that friend of his was a little cutie.
"Don't spill the milk," she instructed her son fondly, grabbing her pack of cigarettes and lighter and sauntering out of the room.
Xander pulled one of the remaining kitchen chairs over to the cupboard and produced a box of cereal. "Lucky Charms?" he looked to Willow for approval.
She nodded enthusiastically. Xander's house was the only place where she got to eat good food for dinner.
As the two sat in companionable silence crunching their dinner, Willow looked up to notice Xander staring at her.
"What are you looking like that for?" she asked.
Around a mouthful of marshmallows, which he'd carefully separated from the rest of the bowl's contents, he replied. "Maybe we can-" he paused to swallow, "get married after all."
"Okay," Willow replied, nonchalant. "But I'm not going to kiss you, because that's just gross. No offense."
"Good," Xander sounded relieved, "I don't want to kiss you either."
Content on their agreement, Willow and Xander went back to eating their dinner.
FIN