"That was nice." A beat of silence, and then, "Can we do it again now?"
The noise Xander made was half-groan, half-sigh, and one-hundred percent heartfelt. "Ahn, my darling…I'd like nothing better! But d'you think I could have another minute or two to recover from the last time, before we start all over again?"
He loved his ex-demoness fiancée with all his heart, but there were times when he was forced to wonder about the "ex" part. Now, the "demoness" part—no question about that! he mused with wicked satisfaction. Like most men, Xander was capable of overlooking a great many female personality quirks in favor of other, more…physical skills. Given the sheer magnitude of Anya's quirkiness, it was hardly surprising that her sexual appetites (and inventiveness!) were equally precocious. It made for a rather mercurial, but ultimately fun relationship. You know you wouldn't have it any other way, Xander-ol'-boy!
All the same, there were times when her enthusiasm could be a bit…much.
This was looking like one of those times. He watched as Anya's delicate features settled into a pout, and the mattress quivered as she flounced over to lay on her other side, her back to Xander. She flung the most disparaging insult she could think of over her shoulder at him.
"Men!"
For someone who spends so much of her time with her mouth open, she sure can cram a lot of meaning into a single word… Knowing he would soon be in real trouble if he didn't soothe her bruised ego, he stroked one hand gently up and down her bare arm.
"Hey, Ahn—it's not like I'm saying this just to make your life miserable! It's sort of a built-in flaw of the male species…like insensitivity, and a tendency to scratch in inappropriate places." He laughed weakly at his own humor, but stopped when Anya still wouldn't look at him. He paused for a moment, studying the hard, tense curve of her neck and shoulders, down to where they disappeared beneath the creamy bedsheets. Is this one of those times I'm supposed to be the concerned fiancé, or one of those *other* times, when I'm supposed to go away until she forgives me for whatever I did wrong this time?
He decided to chance the former. After all, it's not like I can afford to wait three days for her to get over it… "Ahn? Um…I'm sorry?"
She responded with a tiny sniffle, then rolled back over, an expression of displeasure still painted across her lovely face. "Oh, that's just typical, Xander! Why must you always assume that everything is all about you?" Her voice took on a decidedly raspy tone as it mounted a steady climb up the shrill-o-meter. "Some of us have bigger things to worry about than how long it takes Little Xander to get back on his feet! I mean, there's that state tax refund I'm still waiting for that I'll probably never get now, and a whole shop full of inventory that's going to cease to exist tomorrow, and the possibility of spending untold eons mouldering in some slimy hell dimension to contemplate, not to mention all those international shipping fees that I'll never get to charge to the customers—so maybe you could try to be a bit more understanding if I'm suddenly no longer in the mood!" Her challenging gaze would have been frightening, if not for the quicksilver tears rolling diagonally across one cheek to moisten her upper lip with the bitter tang of salt and misery.
Xander blinked. Okay, file *that* response under 'Non Sequitur'…if it'll fit, 'cuz that file's crammed kinda full…
"Hold on a second—pause, rewind, and let's run through that last scene one more time, Ebert—" He broke off when Anya suddenly burst into a fresh bout of crying. If she didn't cut that out soon, he thought he might start hyperventilating. "Wait, what did I do now?" he asked desperately.
"E-Ebert's th-the one who's d-d-dead!" she whimpered miserably around her hiccuping sobs.
Xander went to roll his eyes at her theatrics, but stopped himself just in time. He'd learned that even something as simple as an eye-rolling could lead to a disastrous fallout, when dealing with Anya. He gently laid one hand on the soft skin of her shoulder, as it shook with the force of her tears. "Ahn—I know the great movie mogul would be touched to see how much you care, but can we go back to that thing you said about the slimy hell dimension?"
Anya tried to skewer him with her gaze, but her red-rimmed eyes rather ruined the overall effect.
"Okay, yeah…the end of everything. I remember that, but you heard what that Harry guy said—we're all going back to the Powers! That's not 'slimy hell dimension,' that's gotta be 'mystical heavenly-bliss dimension,' right?"
His fiancée huffed at him in frustration. "Well, yeah, if you're human!"
This time it took two blinks for Xander to recoup. "Okaaaay…still not seeing the hang-up, here."
"Xander! I was a demon, remember? For, oh, I dunno, a good ten centuries or so!?! And now, here I am—a real-life human being for just a couple of paltry little years, and which one do you think is gonna count, when they do the whole 'who's been naughty or nice' judgement-thing?" She pushed several stray tendrils of red-gold hair out of her face with one trembling hand. "I mean, everything that anybody's ever written about the honest-to-goodness apocalypse is all about the good little boys and girls getting their heavenly rewards, and the bad ones being shipped off to someplace all flamey and awful and having their fingernails plucked out and their guts done up in bow-ties and their skin flayed off really slowly and then dipped in big vats of salt-water, and…well, that doesn't sound like the way I'd prefer to spend eternity, thank you!"
She frowned angrily into Xander's eyes, then added, in a sulky voice, "You can pick your jaw up off the floor anytime now."
"Bu…bu…but…but Harry—he said that…that we'd all go back to…he said it was…good, he said…" Xander was completely dumbfounded. Once he had begun to accept the news of the universe's imminent expiration date, he'd been…sort of okay with the whole deal. Sure, there were things he wished he'd had the chance to do, experiences he'd never get to have, and that kind of thing. But to hear Buffy gush about how amazing her three months in heaven had been…well, it didn't sound like a bad trade. No more world…but hey, no more pain. At all. Of any kind. Ever.
Never once had he considered the idea that he might not have Anya by his side, to share in his newfound paradise.
The possibility was…too terrible to contemplate.
"I know what he said," Anya whined, "but…well, I just don't think that Elemental sound-and-lights guy was telling us everything! He seemed kind of…weasel-y."
Xander shook himself out of the scary place his thoughts had gone. Eternity without Anya…I don't care what kind of Powers these Be…they wouldn't do that to us.
Suddenly, the whole idea seemed utterly ridiculous. Anya was human. She had a soul. And it was a good soul.
'Nuff said.
"What? That's just silly, Anya. He was cool—in an 'I'm the All-Powerful Mouthpiece of the Divine' kind of way…like Alan Rickman!" Then Xander's eyes lit up and his brows performed a sudden, strange contortion, as a thought occurred to him. "Hey…you think God really looks like Alanis Morissette? 'Cuz if he's really a she, there's gonna be a lot of religious-types out there feeling pretty silly…"
"Xander!"
He sighed. "Look, Ahn…you're not going to any hell dimension—just think about it. When Buffy died, she went to heaven—and she may be cool, but she's never been perfect. I mean—hello! This is the girl who boinked Angel's soul right out of him, which made him kill a whole flock of people, remember?" At her blank look, his train of thought faltered a bit. "Oh, well…no, I guess you wouldn't remember, would you? But the point is…not exactly a spotless track record for the Buffster. So it's not about counting the good deeds, and the bad deeds, and plugging them into some equation—good and evil aren't like doing the Magic Box's ledgers. It's about…learning from the bad stuff and…trying to do better…I guess…"
Xander floundered a bit in his explanation, trying to find the words to describe something he only partly understood. Religion had never been a big thing in the Harris household, but after five-plus years of hanging with Buffy, he felt like he'd become pretty well acquainted with the spectrum of fuzzy greys that made up the concept of 'good and evil.'
"Here's another thing—what about Deadboy, Sr., himself? From what we've heard, he's off fighting the good fight in L.A., trying to earn his redemption or whatever. He was a whole lot more evil than your demon-self ever was…but now that he's got his White Hat mojo on, working for the Powers and all that, do you really think they'd send him back to hell?"
He gazed at her sincerely for a moment…before his natural whimsy reasserted itself. "Now, the peroxide poster boy, on the other hand—" he added jokingly.
Anya looked only partly convinced.
Clasping his love's silky hands between his own larger ones, he looked her in the eye and spoke gently. "I don't care what kind of awful things you did when you were a demon—you've come so far past all that, it's not even a blip on the radar anymore. You're a beautiful, funny, compassionate woman, with a good and generous soul. No one deserves a happy afterlife more than you."
The two lovers smiled at each other, as new tears welled up in Anya's eyes.
"And," Xander added, with a touch of his usual humor, "if that's not enough to convince you…I know an even better reason not to worry about hell dimensions."
Anya giggled lightly at the pompous pose he affected. "What's that?"
He grinned wickedly at her. "Because without you, there won't be any heavenly bliss for me, and I know I haven't done anything worth being sent to hell over!" As he finished speaking, he slid one hand beneath the sheets, slipping it up Anya's hip and beneath her nightshirt to her waist…where he began to tickle her mercilessly.
They thrashed around for several minutes, waging an all-out tickle-war amid the twisted covers, until they found themselves wrapped comfortingly in each other's arms, their breath coming in giggles and puffs.
"So," she smirked at him, "two orders of eternal heavenly bliss, coming up?"
His hand traced a warm curve over her cheekbone. "Sounds good to me."
A delightful glint sparkled in her eyes. "How about some more of the temporary, terrestrial variety?"
"Yes, please!"
As he pulled her head down for a long, warm kiss, a dim thought flitted across his mind—wait…if they send Spike to hell, my eternity of heavenly bliss won't include the opportunity to kick his ass, and that's just not fair—but then his brain was swamped by a tidal wave of a rather different sort of bliss, that rapidly eroded any capability for coherent thought.
And really, a sarcastic mental voice mused, through a hot daze
of feeling, would an eternity without Spike be so bad?
~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~