Chapter Fifty-Nine
Doubt and passion
Xander & Anya
A/N Prepare for this to get very cheesy. Warning for Mature content, if you don't want to read it, stop at the line.
Sunnydale, the world without shrimp 2003
After the fight with Spike and talking to the bringer, and then the electric cutting out; Xander could see the tiredness falling out of everyone's eyes. Faith eventually sent everyone off to bed, Andrew would give them more information about the mission in the morning and she knew staying up any later wasn't going to help with anything. Xander took Anya home, he hadn't been back since he'd been back from the hospital. It wasn't all so bad, Anya had several ideas about multi-coloured eye patches she could design. He wanted just one night, so many things had changed, Faith was their leader, the First, him and Anya. He needed a night to process it all.
As everyone walked through the house emptily, Xander slipped through the front door. The potentials were back to sleeping in the living room and he thought Faith might condemn him for needing a little space. So he slipped out, left a note on the kitchen counter, everyone needed to use the kitchen and once he'd gotten the generator working - there really wasn't a lot else he would be needed for the rest of the night. Anya followed him because she missed him, not in a missed him physically because he was right there. But there was a vacancy within him that she knew belonged to Buffy being out and alone, a confusion that was agitating him. She could always feel when Xander was frustrated about something and this was no exception. So they went home.
The whole car ride was silent, Anya was peering out the window, it was nice to be out of the house. And by the Gods she was sick of sharing a bathroom with a dozen teenage girls. She thought perhaps after a millennium she deserved some privacy. Xander's apartment had been left a little messy by the constant people trudging in and out of it, but there was some pure homeliness you could never quite get rid of.
"Xander?" Anya said out of the blue as she stood in the kitchen, her back leaning on the counter as she watched Xander pace around trying to obsessively tidy the place up a bit. He dismissed her at first, but her voice became more insistent, pressing into him so he had to look up. Her equally brown eyes stared up at him with question after question but he knew not to fight with her about this.
"I don't know An, it's everything, Buffy leaving. Feeling like I can't do anything but fix the broken things. I can fight a little I guess but ever since-" He stopped himself because he felt the lump rising in his throat, the one that made him feel down. he felt useless, unworthy like all these girls were going to die and there wasn't a single thing he could do to help. It was a pointlessness. He walked towards the woman, her arms reaching around his shoulders but he looked down.
"Ever since the vineyard." She said slowly, breathing out warm air onto his cheeks, he was warm, a heat within him now she was closer. Now he had the space to think. "And you think that because this happened to you when you tried to fight Caleb that it makes you useless?" It was more of a statement than a question, she could almost sense it out of him. He was her man, forever, and yes there had been problems, but they were here in this infinite moment and it felt right.
Xander didn't to nod but he felt himself doing it anyway. Then as he closed his remaining eye for just a second, he felt a pair of warm lips pushing into his own. Anya, ever the forceful kisser. But just as he thought he was about to get suckered into her grasp - for she was as irresistible as she always had been - she pulled away from him, grabbing his hand and placing it on her body. He had to open his eyes to know where, just below her chest, where her heart was. "Xander you feel that?" Another nod. It was the quickening of her pulse, the beats emanating out of her because she was so, so alive.
"You see that you do that to me. That you make me alive. Make my heart beat a little faster just by being there. And you saved me remember, Buffy was going to kill me, well she was trying, and I could feel that you would've done anything to stop that from happening. It's like Tara said, if something happened to you, I'd know." Xander looked a little puzzled for a second that he didn't remember Tara saying that, but brushed it aside because he probably wasn't there. In a roundabout way it was the thing he needed to hear most, that he was wanted, needed. That she needed him to be strong for her. It was the love of her and the others that made him forget himself. And he couldn't be self-pity man if they were going to win this.
"I love you Anya." He said quietly, a light whisper in her ear as she leaned further into him. She gave out a little excited squeal and smiled so that it etched deep into her face. The kind of smile she made when there were big stacks of cash in her hands. But this was the smile she made for him. He didn't need her to say it back, everything she'd just said implied it completely.
He made her melt by kissing her, his tongue pushing through the gap in their lips to mould around hers. Always catching the roof of her mouth, flicking over her teeth. Sucking lightly so that he brought her bottom lip into his mouth; he felt the softness of her flesh and the liquid texture of her lip as the blood rushed through her. She mumbled a moan softly against his lips as she took a quick breath, parting them for a split second. "Right here?" She whispered, so quiet her breath caught and the words came out as a plea. He crashed their lips together again in bright passion. Lifting her up so she was sitting on the kitchen counter.
He broke the kiss to look down, he needed to see to be able to undo the buttons on her pants and undo her flies. They were loose elastic too, it just seemed like the company had insisted on a zip. She waited patiently as his hands slipped over the zip, it would be thought that he would be used to doing this sort of thing with his eyes closed but there was still a bit of the old, geeky, high school Xander left inside him that made him stumble. She takes in a gasp of exaggeration as he pulls her jeans down her legs leaving her breathy and sitting in her underwear. She pushed his shirt off of his shoulders as their lips came back together. His hands cupped round her neck and back, rubbing her smooth skin underneath his fingertips.
For a carpenter, Xander had relatively soft hands, the little pads of his fingers rubbing small circles into Anya's back as she gripped his waist underneath the vest he was left in. In their rush of passion - which was deserved in their abstinence of living in a house full of people - Xander lifted her shirt over her head and ran his hands over her stomach, taking note of several freckles and moles that he'd missed. Last time had been a nervous wreckage, this was a scene of the perfect purity of their relationship. It needed no background music or warm lighting, just her soft moans as he caressed her.
His kisses moved down to the flesh of her neck, his lips suckling just below her ear where the placement of her jaw meant the skin there moved infrequently. After he was finished there was a blotchy jot of red rounded and deepened with the blood colour as it came to the surface. It was a bruise that would last for days, another factor they would have to hide. But then again, they'd always hidden things, this was no exception, except Anya had matured and she agreed that they should remain together in secret, the group wasn't ready yet. Good news wasn't a concern right now.
As he descended to plant his lips over her chest, his fingers unclipping her bra and pulling it down her slender arms, her breasts revealed as perky and upbeat as he held her cheeks close in his palms. Anya breathed out slowly and slightly hitched in excitement as she unbuttoned his pants and pulled them down over his knees so that they pooled around his ankles. As he lifted the vest over his head, her hands went to cup his boxers. Stroking him slowly through the cotton of his underwear she slipped her hands inside the elastic. He groaned at her touch, he was always quiet during this time between them, Anya was the loud one, but wasn't that true of anything.
She slid the boxer shorts down the hair of his legs and let him cup his large hands over her breasts - the nipples hardening as stroked his thumbs over them. Instantly moving closer to her as moved the thin material of her panties aside, lightly stroking her folds before tracing a circle over her clit. He only did it once just to tease - to which she replied with a deeper moan and clutched at his hips, trying to bring them closer. He pulled her panties away from her centre and drove into her.
She was slick to the touch and he could push into her easily, each thrust was more powerful than the last, he started gently so as not to test her muscles. He wanted to give her pleasure not cause her discomfort and have to stop, she twitched gently as he gave a grunt and let his tongue suck back on her lip. It was her favourite thing about kissing, the way he sucked on her. She'd discovered it the first time he'd kissed her, the gentle gripping of his tongue on her skin, the way he used his teeth for more leverage.
His hand was on the small of her back as she had to break the kiss to moan, her breath too short to keep their lips clamped together. His lips felt almost chapped as he bit his lip, trying to get more traction as he found the pleasure spot inside her with his tip. Thrusting upwards into it he felt her legs grip his manhood into place like a vice. That meant she was close, so close that she gave out a strangled cry when the air gave out. With a final push he made her orgasm, th energy surging through her very human body like an electric shock that made her tremble against the heat of his skin as he gave a few more thrusts into her, pushing himself over the edge.
He gave a quiet moan but he was mostly silent, kissing her as the effects the sex between them wore off and she collapsed into his lap. "Xander." She whispered calmly, it was an echo of earlier but this time it had a weight, a meaning, and a reason. Xander didn't want it to be over yet, he knew they had the whole night together, but this moment. This perfect moment of bliss before downfall was what he craved the most. It was a desperate longing for it to last forever and that they wouldn't have to fight the evil. But they did.
"Anya." Was all his lips let pass before she shared the warmth between them in a sweeter kiss. Her legs were still wrapped around his waist so he tucked his hands under her butt and lifted her cleanly off the kitchen counter. Kitchen. Counter.
He lifted her towards their bedroom, he was pleased he go to call it theirs again. "Did we really just have sex on the kitchen counter? We had that idea when we first moved in but wow, that was really-" Anya said as he laid her cleanly in the bed, her limbs a little floppy as he slid in beside her, moving his thicker body above her so her could see her whole face as he kissed her.
"-Nice, Xander that was so lovely." She said as she gave his chest a light push. He lifted himself off her for a second, giving his brown eyes a glint of uncertainty before she continued. "I love you, Alexander Harris, and I always will." Then he melted into her again, their night of freedom before the real war started.