The following morning, I woke up much later than usual, feeling better than I had in ages. The smell of baking muffins and coffee wafted up from the kitchen. From the noise level, it sounded like there were at least ten people down there. A shriek rose up out of the dull roar.
"Fuck you and your patriarchal there-is-no-try bullshit! If I don't try, I can't eat. It's a toaster oven, and I want my spelt bagel - toasted!"
My ears perked up. Woe be unto the newbie who disrespected The George in this house. I started to roll out of bed, anticipating some righteous carnage. Then I noticed how I wasn't rolling out of my bed. Whoops.
Regret nibbled at the lining of my stomach. He'd managed to convince me, mostly, that I hadn't committed rape or anything. So, why did I feel so uneasy? I huddled under the covers, counting cracks in the ceiling. Our house, villa really, was kind of majestic, in an ancient, crumbling way. Most of us with rooms on the second floor kept a bucket or two around for the winter rainy season and the inevitable leaks.
Aside from the bed, the room contained an armoire, a nightstand with a swing arm lamp, and a desk with a matching chair. That was it. Some of the furniture had been left by previous tenants. We had also received some hand-me-downs from our ever-widening circle of friends and colleagues on the continent, as well as from some of the newbies' families. Other stuff like linens and dishes we picked up at IKEA.
Andrew's room was as bare as mine. None of the survivors of Sunnydale had much in the way of material possessions. Somehow though, seeing this room saddened me. This room didn't belong to an ascetic minimalist.
Collectibles and twenty-face dice should have covered shelves, floor to ceiling. There should have been mint condition action figures, still in their original clamshell packaging, and comic books encased in UV-resistant glassine wrappers. Framed posters, signed by obscure Canadian actors should have covered the peeling gray plaster. A person lived here. A person with distinct preferences and prejudices, a person from whom I'd taken more intimacy than I had earned the right to.
The only personal things in the room were the plastic Dr. Gero mug on the desk with some pens and pencils in it that I found at the Porta Portese flea market and had brought back to him a month ago, and three yellowing paperbacks, also on the desk, artifacts from our first apartment in the city.
There had been a backpacker hostel around the corner with a small bar on the roof top. The place teemed with boisterous Aussies and pounding techno music, twenty-four-seven. My sister cheerfully dubbed it 'Il Nuovo Bronzo'. Neither Andrew nor I much cared for the place, until we discovered a dusty bookshelf in the laundry room with a sign that read, 'Take one, Leave One'.
We each took three books, promising each other that we'd bring them back when we were done. Then Buffy got approval for Council funding for the purchase of the house, specifically for the establishment of a permanent newbie training base. We never did manage to get back to the hostel and return the books, and it took me forever to read the ones I had, with the move and the renovations to make the house livable.
The books on the desk were the three I had taken and read first. We had only gotten around to trading recently. I made the bed before I left, like I could pretend that nothing sordid ever happened here if I could only smooth away the evidence.
I stepped into the shower, and it was perfect. Our ceilings might leak, but we had splurged on the showers. Each bathroom in the house had its own water heater. There was no such thing as running out of hot water here; we had our priorities in order. I reached for the shampoo.
Exactly how creepy was it, on a scale of one to ten, that Andrew had convinced me that we should just use a big communal bottle of the same stuff so the shower would be less cluttered? It was high-end shampoo, especially for people whose main sources of income were essentially charity. It smelled like almonds and was supposed to be sulfite-free. Whatever. I had stopped caring about stuff like that a long time ago, but now the smell of it...it smelled like him. Like me. Like...god, Andrew. What had I done?
He had his own full schedule and duties associated with the Council apprenticeship, but he took time most every day to cook and clean for us. He took care of the house and the people in it, to the extent that we let him.
In Sunnydale, he seemed so weak and damaged and there was such a crazed need under the surface of him to be accepted. I recognized it. I shrank from it. That need was a black hole that couldn't be filled, I knew all too well. Now I was the one with the need, to somehow make amends and set right what I had done.
I worked up the courage to show my face downstairs, and thankfully most everyone had filtered into the main living room to unpack a weapons shipment that arrived from London. The newbies worked like obedient little elves under Andrew's direction, most of the time. Packing straw covered every surface in the room.
He looked up as I reached the bottom of the stairs, face completely neutral. "Hey there, sleeping beauty, your plate is waiting under the pilot in the oven. Didn't want it to get cold."
I shambled into the kitchen, found my breakfast, and sat down at the table to observe the chaos. The girls unwrapped all manner of swords, spears, and killing machinery.
"Look at this crossbow!" One of them exclaimed. I thought her name was Susanna. Suziana? Something like that.
"Norah, here, let me see," said Andrew. "Nice craftsmanship. Purple heart wood, looks like."
Norah? Maybe Susanna had been last month. I lost track after a while.
Andrew tested the weight of the crossbow in his hands, then raised the weapon and sighted down the hallway.
"You'll shoot your eye out, kid!" I called to him. It was the first thing I thought of. At that moment, I had never wanted anything more than for things to be okay between us.
He looked up, flashing me a grin that could have lit up the Mariana Trench. I saw everything there that I needed to see. It would take far more than one night of me being stupid and crazy to shake him. I gave repeated thanks to all the deities I didn't believe in.
The newbies gathered around Andrew and he began explaining where each item was to be stored in the cellar below, and the cataloging system linked with Willow's office in Glastonbury that kept everything organized across the globe. Sure, he could be a pompous dork sometimes, but he was going to make a great Watcher.
He was endlessly patient with the girls. He never forgot their names, and he remembered personal details about each of them, like food allergies and countries of origin and which ones didn't get along and couldn't be paired together for sparring practice.
It was all more than I could have managed. I made an effort, and some days it was an effort, to be as kind as possible to the newbies. It was hard for me to really connect with any of them. They always finished the program and got placed out in the world. They also had a tendency to die. It wasn't negligence in our training that caused it, just statistics. The good guys didn't always win.
Andrew was the one who made the calls to the families. Buffy had taken on the responsibility in the beginning, but she had to be away so much these days that the task had fallen to him. He even made the final arrangements if the girls' families weren't around, and he attended all of the funerals. He was often the only one there.
Life seemed to go back to normal after that, normal for our house anyway. It was summer and there were so many people passing through, new friends and veterans alike. Our days flowed by mercifully lacking in leering or double-entendre. Our personal space bubbles shrank, as though our bodies had decided, independently of our brains, that increased casual contact proved just how much we were over what had happened. We developed mutual amnesia.
Once though, on my way out the kitchen door, I knocked over a bowl of strawberry preserves. I asked him if he minded cleaning up since I was late to class. He kind of bowed and it was such a weird thing to do, it made me laugh.
As I slammed the door, I could have sworn I heard him say, "As you wish" which of course was just silly. I had read the book; it was one of our six. Never mind having seen the movie so many times I could recite the entire thing myself. Later, I began to suspect I had imagined it all anyway. I kept the door between my bedroom and the bathroom locked at night. It seemed like a good idea, in case I lost my mind again.
**********TBC