WARNING: There's some vaguely graphic male/male sex in this chapter.
Other Author notes - 1.) I'm trying to write this in an intentionally overdramatic, somewhat corny style, which I think most of you picked up on. 2.) I promise never to throw in a graphic rape/torture scene. I don't do that. 3.) I'm trying to get at least one chapter out each month. That is all.
Xander entered the bar and looked around. At first glance he didn't see Dean or Spike. He allowed himself to relax slightly, only to convulse with unremitting terror as the bar's patrons moved aside with accidental drama to reveal the two men in question situated across the room from each other. Spike didn't notice him, but Dean glanced up from the pool table where he was obviously hustling some good natured rubes and grimaced.
Xander walked up to the bar and ordered a beer, making sure to stay at the end of the bar where Spike was not, and then sauntered nonchalantly up towards where Dean was running the table with unapologetic enthusiasm. Xander watched him for a while, also watching the mark, who seemed disgruntled but more embarrassed than ornery. Xander waited until he'd been sent on his unhappy way before approaching the table.
"Hey," Dean said disinterestedly, counting the money he received from the guy he had just fleeced.
"Hey," Xander returned, in his best parody of butch manly man. He thought it was passable.
"Sam send you to check up on me?" Dean asked without looking up. Xander blinked in surprise.
"No. He said you could take care of yourself. I just..." Xander trailed off, remembering that he didn't really have an excuse for being here.
Dean stared at him for a minute, then bugged out his eyes and waggled his head around in the patented "well?" gesture that he had perfected.
"I just...this is my bar," Xander finished lamely. Dean snorted, clearly not believing him.
"Yeah, okay. Whatever." He turned to re-rack. Xander watched his broad muscular back appreciatively for a moment.
"You know, not everyone around here will be as polite about being hustled as that guy you just beat," Xander said conversationally. Dean gave him a look that communicated how much he supremely did not care.
"You play?" Dean asked gruffly. Xander shoved his hands in his pockets and gave his best "Aw shucks" face.
"I understand the basic concept. Hit the balls with the stick. Knock 'em against each other so they make that cool clicky sound." He turned away to grab a cue, hiding a smile at Dean's disgusted look.
"Well great. And while we play, maybe you can fill me in on how things work in this world."
Moments later, Xander was leaning against his pool queue and watching Dean dominate the table with ease.
"One day," he thought to himself, "I'm going to play pool with someone who won't kick my ass. What a day that will be."
"So I've got a question," Dean said, breaking the more or less comfortable silence. "Based on what Andrew said, and what I've seen, in this universe, most hunters have superpowers?" Xander blinked, momentarily distracted by Dean's impeccable form as he leaned in for a shot. He shook it off after a moment.
"Well, mostly. Of course, lots of un-super people get dragged into this crap involuntarily. That was how it was for me and Willow."
Dean paused and looked at Xander.
"Willow...the witch?" he asked with obvious distaste.
"Willow the best friend who, in addition to being an amazing person, happens to now be an uber-powerful witch, yes," Xander replied with equally obvious protectiveness. Dean held up his hands placatingly.
"Whoa, relax dude, just asking. Don't know the rules here, but in my world, most witches sell their soul to demons for power. And," he added, lining up another shot, "they tend to be creepily unhygienic."
"Well Willow's very hygienic. Deodorant and everything," he joked, mostly mollified. "And getting back to your original question, a lot of normal people fight the supernatural, myself included. It's just that lots of them don't last very long." Xander paused, thinking about it. "Or they don't stay normal."
That caused Dean to miss his shot, and he turned to stare wide-eyed at Xander.
"What the Hell does that mean?"
Xander shrugged and stepped up to take his turn. "Stuff happens, in this line of work. Willow wasn't always a witch. Not too long ago all the slayers were just normal girls with weird dreams. Oh, and there was this one guy," Xander paused, shot, missed, and stepped back.
"His name was Sid. I met him in high school. He was like you, just a normal guy who hunted demons. And then he got cursed by the demons he was hunting." Xander paused to sip at his beer, affecting an air of casual disinterest.
Dean waved his arm in a 'go on' gesture. "And? What happened to him?" Xander waited until Dean was attempting to shoot before he answered.
"He got turned into a wooden dummy and then died."
"Score!" Xander thought smugly as Dean's shot went wide and accidentally knocked the eight ball in. Dean stared at him, part shock, part disbelief, part grudging respect for his underhanded tactics.
It was a complicated look.
"You're messing with me."
Xander smiled.
"Welcome to our Universe." Dean gave a surprised bark of laughter and shook his head.
"Well, I'm definitely not in Kansas anymore." Xander began to rerack the balls.
"My condolences, Dorothy."
"Call me Dorothy again. See what happens."
This time Xander laughed.
"Would Toto be more acceptable?"
"Only if you find it acceptable to get your ass kicked."
"You know, after all this time, I'm strangely comfortable with it." Xander broke, knocking in a solid, and prowled around the table contemplating his next move. "And anyway, it's not always like that. That you get caught up in the fight and suddenly get superpowers or become part demon." Xander took his shot and missed. "In a surprising amount of cases, it works the other way around."
Dean stepped up to the table, accidentally brushing against Xander. He noted idly that Xander smelled good up close.
"What do you mean by that?" he asked quickly.
"Just that on a surprising number of occasions, nonhuman things can become human. Be they glowy mystical keys, vengeance demons, or...vampires." Xander couldn't help glancing towards the bar as he uttered the last. Spike was standing there, smiling easily with the customers. He looked too beautiful to be real. Xander felt his breath catch in his throat at the sudden, unexpected ache in his chest. Dean scoffed.
"Well at least that's the same. Vamps in our world could become human if you got to them in time. Other creatures, not so much."
"Oh yeah?" Xander said, eager for the distraction. "Here it's actually pretty rare. Gotta have an ancient prophecy, mythic trials, the whole nine yards." Dean knocked his balls with more force than necessary.
"Don't get me started on prophesies." he gritted out angrily. Xander laughed.
"Yeah, not terribly fond of them myself."
Dean looked up at him with a wry, rakish grin that set Xander's pulse to racing. He cleared his throat.
"So you've been fighting monsters for a long time, huh?"
Dean gave him an assessing look. Eventually he determined that the question was harmless and shrugged. "All my life. Me and Sammy have hunted things that would make your worst nightmare turn tail and run," he said matter-of-factly, knocking more balls in. Xander rolled his eyes.
"Ok, that statement may be true for most people, but I grew up on a Hellmouth. Trust me when I say that my nightmares could give your nightmares a run for their money."
"Hellmouth?" Dean asked, pausing to swallow another mouthful of beer. Xander unconsciously watched his throat muscles moving.
"Yeah..." he drawled distractedly. "It's what it sounds like. Mouth of hell. Basically a dimensional portal that's closed most of the time but works like a magnet for supernatural mayhem."
Dean nodded with understanding.
"Like a Devil's Gate. I follow you. You grew up on one?"
Xander shrugged.
"Went to high school on top of one, technically. But it had a town-wide influence."
"Huh. So I guess that's how you got into hunting."
Xander was silent for a few moments, not sure about how to answer that. He leaned in for a shot, heedless of how Dean's eyes fixed on him as he bent over the table.
"Sort of yes, and sort of no. Even though I was living on a Hellmouth, I managed to pretend everything was normal until high school. I used to say that Buffy was the reason everything changed. But in my advanced age I realize that even if she hadn't shown up when she did, I could never have ignored the truth after that night."
Xander paused, staring into the distance in front of him. Dean watched him. The cool expression on his face melted a bit as he watched Xander remember whatever horrible bloody tragedy had likely pulled him from his rightful place in safe/happy denial land. He'd seen that look on many a hunter's face. Even though Dean knew the score, he hadn't thought he'd see that look in Xander's eyes. The guy was just too...chipper.
"Who's Buffy?" Dean asked loudly by way of a subject change. Xander blinked, seemingly coming back to himself. He grinned at Dean, suddenly all smiles and good humor.
"She's the slayer." Dean frowned in confusion.
"I thought you guys had a bunch of those."
Xander's grin just widened smugly.
"Not A slayer. The slayer. The one girl in all the world."
Dean looked up at him with a knowing grin from where he was angling his shot.
"Ah...now I see."
"Oh my friend," Xander said with excessive drama, coming around to rest a hand on Dean's broad, muscly back, "you do not know the half of it."
And so Xander related the tale of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, from the perspective of her Sancho Panza-esque friend Xander, who's role in certain events may have been emphasized more in his retelling than it would have been had her story been miraculously made into a TV or comic book series. Dean responded with hunting tales of his own, which even Xander found erred on the side of incredulous. Mostly the bit about the wishing well.
"Although don't get me wrong. I never would have met the great love of my life had it not been for someone not being careful what they wished for. Of course that also might have resulted in bringing a nightmarish reality into existence," Xander pondered.
Dean laughed and slapped him heartily on the back, letting his hand linger.
"I gotta say, I have no idea what the hell you're talking about most of the time. But damned if you aren't the most hilarious guy I've ever met."
Xander tried to ignore the warmth creeping into his skin from Dean's resting hand. He turned his head and couldn't help sucking in a surprised breath. Dean's face, with it's soulful green eyes and rakish grin, was suddenly inches from his own. Dean's smile was easy and innocent enough, but it set Xander's nerves pleasantly on edge.
Before Dean could notice his reaction, he deadpanned,"You are literally the first person to ever say that to me."
Dean burst out a surprised guffaw of laughter and slid away, his hand slowly dragging a fiery trail across Xander's back. Without the burning hot support of Dean's solid frame next to him, Xander realized several things all at once: 1.) he'd maybe had more beer than he should have, 2.) Dean was crazy freakin' pretty-sexy, and 3.) he really needed to pee. See item 1.
"So, yeah," he said quickly, putting his cue back and entirely missing Dean's calculating appraisal of his nervous, rabbity behavior, "I gotta hit the head. I'll be back."
"Pssht. What're you, British?" Dean asked teasingly. Xander paused momentarily in his quickmarch to the bathroom, just the span of a heartbeat, but he couldn't keep his eyes from flicking towards the bar where Spike was still standing, looking beautiful and happy. He quickly shook it off and ran to the bathroom. Dean watched him scurry and laughed, not noticing where his gaze had been drawn.
In the bathroom, Xander finished his business and leaned against the sink. It was a simple but clean single stall bathroom, for which he was grateful. Xander stared into his reflection and his reflection stared back. If he were to imagine that his mirror-self had a voice, that voice would be asking what he was doing here, and why he was actively lusting after a man he knew nothing about and may in fact be dangerous. However, Xander was a little drunk and didn't quite know how to articulate all that so his reflection remained voiceless. Some of it's points did filter through Xander's brain, however, and he felt he still needed to ask himself:
"What am I doing here?"
The simple answer was to protect Spike. However, he'd been there about an hour and a half and in all that time, Dean's only social interactions had been with possible marks and the waitress in his search for more beers. He seemed to be as straight as straight could be. Spike, similarly, had been waaay too busy behind the bar to spend more than a few moments socializing with anyone. So, really, the situation was perfectly safe. Still...
Xander sighed. Truth was, he was still here because he was having fun. Dean was a mix of sarcastic, rude, and pretty that Xander found oddly familiar and compelling. Plus it had been a long time since he'd just been able to hang out with a guy. The slayers were fine and all, but they were part of a group he could never join, and sometimes it was hard to break through that invisible barrier. But Dean, he was just another guy who was doing the best that he could with what he had. And while he was kind of a huge dick, he was also a very pretty dick. Snicker. Dick.
Xander looked at his snickering reflection in the mirror. "Get a hold of yourself, man," he whispered. He stared harder at his own reflection. He looked okay for a guy his age, he thought. Tan, some laugh lines. Could be worse. He reached up to ruffle his hair and noticed something weird. His reflection in the mirror was...darker, than himself. Xander squinted into the glass, and something in the depths of the image twitched. Suddenly, like a magic eye picture clicking into 3D, Xander could make out a shadowy silhouette superimposed over his own reflection. Xander stared at it intently, nearly going cross-eyed trying to make out more distinct features. A crazy paranoid part of his mind hoped that this wasn't Bloody Mary and/or Slenderman. He thought he could make out a set of eyes superimposed over his own – creepy, greenish, calculating eyes – but he got distracted by the actual reflection of the bathroom door opening and closing behind him. He turned around, the mystery of the bathroom mirror temporarily forgotten.
Dean had closed the door behind him and flipped the lock. He grinned cockily at Xander who was leaning back against the sink. Xander swallowed hard.
"I could've sworn I'd locked that door," Xander thought vaguely.
Dean continued to smile smugly and strode purposefully towards him, head down and eyes intent. Those deep, deep, impossibly deep penetrating eyes pinned Xander to the sink like a butterfly to the cork board of a mad lepidopterist.
Xander had only a minute to wonder if this was a good idea before Dean was on him. Dean's mouth descended on his and his thigh pushed insistently up into Xander's crotch, forcing him back against the white porcelain.
Xander couldn't breathe; couldn't think. His alcohol-numbed mind was overwhelmed by the sensation of warm, firm maleness over him, pushing against him. He heard himself moan as Dean's agile tongue plundered his mouth. His ass was pushed up onto the cold sink as Dean pressed firmly against him, forcing Xander up and back with lightning sparks of frictious pleasure. He couldn't help himself as his fingers tightened in the soft cotton of Dean's shirt. He felt strong, warm hands slithering under his clothes like firebrands against his skin. One of those hand snaked down his abdomen, wending a scorching trail downwards. Xander groaned and bucked up against the other man as Dean teasingly dipped his thumb inside the top of Xander's jeans and slid a mocking pass over the base of Xander's cock.
Luckily, Dean wasn't in the mood for excessive foreplay and the taunting lasted only a minute before he was roughly ripping open Xander's fly. When Dean's hand was wrapped firmly and none-too-gently around Xander's manhood, Xander reared back his head and gasped in shock at the sudden, exquisite pressure. Dean merely pressed his advantage by snapping forward with the deadly intent of a cobra to latch onto the base of Xander's neck with blunt teeth. He teased the sensitive skin of Xander's throat with this teeth and tongue while stroking him with a practiced ease that had Xander clutching him helplessly and gasping for breath.
Some distant part of Xander's mind, far above the all-encompassing pleasure he was experiencing, recognized that perhaps he should be doing something to return the favor. This same oddly lucid part of him subsequently made note of the fact that Dean was not being shy about rubbing his own half-clothed member (when did that happen?) against Xander's taught thigh. Then the lucid part of Xander's mind, satisfied by the general fairness of the proceedings, surrendered to the rhythmic pleasure Dean was eliciting.
They writhed against each other, the rhythm increasing until the paper towel dispenser was shaking with the ferocity of their passion. Xander couldn't suppress a low groan as he felt the delicious pressure pushing him higher and higher towards ecstasy. The only sound Xander could hear was the harsh panting of their breath and the pounding of his heart. Thud Thud Thud.
THUD!
"No Xander," Lucid Brain sighed exasperatedly. "That's someone at the bathroom door."
Just then, an inarticulate shout came through the bathroom door. Xander froze. Dean must have noticed something too because his movements slowed without stopping and he glanced over his shoulder at the door.
"Oi! You alright in there?" A sexy British voice called through the door.
Dean was about to answer back when Xander clutched onto him and thrust up violently, suddenly stiffening in an uncontrollable release of pleasure. Feeling Xander lunge against him so suddenly and unexpectedly caused him to lose control. Dean buried his head in Xander's shoulder and thrust mindlessly against him as he came.
When he was able to form coherent words again, Dean turned back to the door where someone was still knocking and yelled out hoarsely, "It's alright! Just drank too much, that's all."
The voice on the other side of the door laughed, clearly disbelieving, and seemed to go away. Dean rolled his eyes and turned back to Xander. He smiled at the glassy-eyed, utterly disheveled picture Xander made. He was about to say something snarky and sarcastic when all at once Xander seemed to come back to himself, and not in a pleasant way. Xander stared at the door, and something like horror and anguish came over his face. Whatever it was, it was not post-coital bliss.
"Xander," Dean said quietly. Xander didn't respond, and the look on his face didn't change. Dean frowned, and shook him gently.
"Hey, Xander," he said more loudly. That got his attention, and he blankly turned that horrible expression on Dean. "You okay?"
Xander blinked and shook himself. He tried a wan smile.
"Yeah, I'm fine," he murmured. He shook himself again and this time his smile was more geunuine. "Yeah, sorry. I'm fine. That was, um, great. Unexpected, but , yeah, great," he said awkwardly. Dean laughed.
"Unexpected my ass. Which, you were totally staring at all night," he said teasingly, sliding away from Xander. Xander offered a goofy grin.
"You got no proof." He pushed away from the sink and straightened his clothes, hiding the mess as best he could. He grimaced. "I think I've had enough for the night. I'm gonna head back."
Dean adjusted himself, cleaning off somewhat with paper towels. "Alright. I'm still a kinda wired so I'm gonna stay out for a bit. Now that you've seen I'm safe and not raising any kind of hell," he added with a wry grin in Xander's direction.
Xander paused. He supposed those two possibilities probably should have passed through his mind earlier. But he'd honestly been too freaked about the Spike situation to consider any other angle. And now that he realized his being there would just make it more likely that Dean's attention would be drawn to Spike, Xander figured he'd better just go. Outwardly he shrugged.
"Can never be to careful," he said glibly. "See you later." With that, Xander quickly left through the bathroom door. He very purposefully kept his head down until he was outside, not wanting to accidentally see Spike; not after having come at the sound of his voice.