Cupid

*TEASER*

By AlantisB

"You're not friends. You'll never be friends. You'll be in love 'til it kills you both. You'll fight, and you'll shag, and you'll hate each other 'til it makes you quiver, but you'll never be friends. Real love isn't brains, children. It's blood. It's blood screaming inside you to work its will. I may be love's bitch, but at least I'm man enough to admit it."

-Spike

My name is Xander Harris. I am also Cupid, the God of Love. I am not insane. Okay, I admit, if a guy walked up to me and told me he was a god, I would laugh then advise him to go get a CAT scan. Nothing says your crazy more than saying you're a god, it's pure egotism to suggest you're the god of love and that you control all those love feelings. Well, the younger ones like lust and a bit of puppy love here and there. Also the dark emotions like vengeful love and passion.

My mom, Aphrodite, is really the head love god, I'm her worker. I go out and make people fall in love when Mom says that this couple or that couple works well together. But I'm also a minor mischief god too, I mean if you had the power to shoot people with arrows and you wanted a good laugh, what better way to do it then make a man fall in love with a cow?

Anyway, I've had this big problem for a while now. I've lost my touch, so to speak. I'm not feeling the whole, love thing, for centuries and that was making me slack off. Zeus, the big head guy on Mount Olympus (who's a real player, he probably slept with one person in every mortal family around the world by now), was getting pissed at me. The divorce rates were rising and the amount of people sleeping around that end up calling it quits to their marriages. So he banished me, telling me I wasn't aloud back on Mount Olympus unless I get a hundred couples together while being mortal with no powers.

Now either the fates have a bad sense of humor, or it was a chance thing, because I ended up on the Hellmouth. Not a nice place to find love let me tell you! Everything here has a bad vibe, and the worst thing is the mortals don't realize it at all. They go through their day-to-day lives ignoring the supposed 'animal attacks', 'PCP gangs' and 'missing persons' on the news.

When I arrived at the Hellmouth, the first thing I did was create a past for myself, adding my mortal life to certain people's minds so that I just didn't suddenly appear. Willow, my best friend for my mortal life, was a great person to have as a friend. For a while, I learn more about her and the life we could have had if I was really a mortal and I was happy. She was a cool girl, for a mortal anyway.

Sometimes I had to direct her away from my family life because my mortal parents didn't exist, they were voices and doppelgangers created to sound like someone was home, but I was the only one that lived there. Life was going good, and I just enjoyed myself ignoring my duty of putting a hundred couples together for a while. I never really had a vacation before, and this was nice, even if it was the Hellmouth.

After a year, I realized I needed to get in gear. I mean, I don't want to be on Earth forever, you know? I miss my son, Bliss, and my best friend Strife. But hey, I realize I can't exactly make the job easy. The first couple I paired up ended up backfiring on me, and I was depressed for a while. I ended up confiding to my best friend Willow that I was Cupid, the Greco-roman god of love.

Somehow, she couldn't believe it (like I would lie to her! Hmph. I feel insulted.) and ended up telling her mother about me. Claire was a psychologist, and out of the goodness of her heart had sent me to the nut house where they locked me up for a year (the bitch). I tried to convince them I was Cupid, but nothing budged. So finally I said I was Xander Harris, the kid that lived next door to Willow Rosenberg. They let me go a few days later, and Willow, the unbeliever, had to be my "Watcher".

Then Buffy came.

Don't get me wrong, Buffy is a great girl and all but she's a hero. Yep, most gods really dislike heroes, especially after my Uncle Herc putting us all to sleep until the modern times--we basically ignore him now. He's still on the earth somewhere, probably helping out the mortals doing something. Buffy, she was different though. She was a Slayer, one of those few mortals Pops (Ares) granted the ability to fight off Vampires and other demons that were not a part of the scheme of things--at least, not since Bacchus died.

I didn't mean to get caught up in the whole saving-the-world thing, but somehow I had. That first day when I felt her power, it knocked the breath out of me. Well, the railing I skateboarded into knocked the breath out of me literally, but I'm getting off topic. Yeah, that chick was going to cause me some major bad mojo.

Slayers can sense demons and baddies, they can also sense gods. And I am a god—in a mortal body that looks nothing like my real godly corporal form but that's not important to know. Anyway, I followed her, watching her, and I confronted her. I killed my other best friend for her that turned into a vamp, and now I'm stuck in this ploy I created years ago, being Xander Harris, the donut boy for the Scooby gang.

And I am sick of it! Nothing I do for them is good enough, its like whenever those times I give them good battle plans that Pops would have been proud of, they shrug it off to the soldier spirit that 'possessed' me on Halloween. Whenever I get moody-pissed like, they blame it on the aggression of the Hyena spirit's remains! It's like I'm nothing without these 'spirits' to them, I'm the White Knight that is dumb but suddenly comes up with great plans spontaneously like in comic books. Now I know how Joxer felt.

I'm glad I didn't try to tell Willow again and not tell Buffy at all what I really was when this started. If I had, it would be so much harder for me. They would expect me to know all the answers because I'm a god, and that automatically makes me super-intelligent and I always know all the answers to every little damn thing. Or they would be asking me about their love lives. Eww. Don't want to picture Buffy in bed, not anymore at least. After the last flow of boyfriends she got, which I hadn't 'set up' for her at all, I think I prefer my women less soiled.

Angel now, he was the man I had set for her. Since I don't have big godly powers like my bow and arrows, I can only do the little loves, like boyfriends and girlfriends, occasionally a marriage like I said before. Mostly I do the whole, sexual lust thing. They were the perfect 'it' couple for me. They were number 3, the first successful couple on my list. Then they had to go screw up a good thing by fucking. It all would have been so cool and right if they didn't. Some things I hate about this age, makes my job harder when I can't get a couple to wait until they were married or at least courting before screwing. Oh well. So that one ended badly, but was still a couple. Point for me, dude.

Next couple was Willow and Daniel Osborne, Oz for short/nickname. He was a good choice for my Willow, he was quiet, attentive, a bit possessive, had a great ass, a bit short and goes furry three nights a month but every relationship has problems. Hell, if I really wanted a great lay, or even a good mortal-to-mortal relationship, I would pick him. He's just so cute in a gothic, punk way. Reminded me a bit like Strife, only quieter and saner--and not as many pins.

They were good together, sometimes I wasn't sure but it worked. That would have lasted if that Veronica chick didn't want to go wolfy with Oz. She let him out: he ate her after he fucked her. Oz felt guilty so he left my poor Willow saying he had to get control of his beast. HA! I could have helped him, if he had asked. Which he hadn't, and he left us. Stupid jerk, I should have told him who I was. Maybe he wouldn't have left and break poor Willow's heart. And I would still get to oogle at his ass.

Well, I won't say all the couples I've managed to tie together in the last four years in this journal, but it's been hell trying to do it in the middle of a slump. Needless to say, I've still got more to do but I'm getting close. Only five more couples to go and then I can go back. Here's the kicker though you'll never believe it, after all this time being a mortal as Xander Harris, I've come to like the little things. I like hanging out with my friends when they remember me. I like fighting off the demons of the Hellmouth even if I'm a love god, although I am the son of War too, a lot of people forget that.

What I like most is that I, for once, am not being used or fawned over by women or men trying to gain favor with me. I mean, there was a reason I made my body look nothing like my real form, no one notices me! Sure it was great way back when I was still pre-teen in Ancient Greece but now I'm hitting my early twenties simply put in mortal terms and I don't want shit-for-brains partners that want to brag about laying me, I want someone with a personality.

I hate to say it-- I would have never married Anyanka. She's the type of girl that could get tiring fast if it's all sex and no relationship. Sure, she was a good lay, and I would never turn down great sex, but marriage? Let me tell you, by the time a couple decades past, she would get tired of me tending to my temples or followers and ignoring her. It would be like Psyche all over again!

Let me duck out for a moment to take a shower, I suddenly feel dirty.

Okay I'm back. What was I saying? Oh yeah . . .

Over the last few days, I've been wondering about my memory. Sure, I have this 'memory' of Ancient Greece, and that casting down from Mt. Olympus, but what if I'm not really Cupid? I was thinking, and thinking, and thinking, that maybe I'm just delusional, and I'm crazy. What if when the hundredth couple is put together and I stay mortal? Would I have to check myself in the loony bin and call myself nutty?

Now that I wrote that down, I feel really stupid. Forgive my lack of character in the last few sentences. But I can't really scratch that out cause then it wouldn't be like, my journal with all my feelings. It'd be one of those piss-poor imitations all fluffy and lovely-dovey like. And if this leather book is going to have my name stamped on it, it's going be about my feelings about everything. Yeah, I'm anal that way. I get it from my Pop.

Okay. I'm done introducing the situation. So now what? I'm never good at this journal thing. It's so boring and mortal, but now that I'm mortal I suddenly find the compulsive urge to write out my entire life story into a book where it could be found and dangerously mess with the flow of time and history, creating chaos for all the old fat white guys that thought they knew history and . . .

Hmm. I like that idea.

*

 TBC