By Minim Calibre
Notes: Written for the second flashficathon. Spoilers through BtVS 7×22, Chosen. Buffy/Xander, NC-17.
“Heads or tails?” Xander held up a battered quarter that looked like it had been at ground zero when Sunnydale imploded.
Dawn, Buffy noticed, didn’t bother to open her eyes or lift her head from the sticky vinyl of the bus seat. “Which one means what again?”
“Heads, you sleep in the motel room; tails, you sleep on the bus.”
“I should have let Child Services take me,” Dawn groused.
Buffy kicked the bottom of Dawn’s foot, staring at her sister with an exaggerated frown. “Just for that, I’m taking the room.”
“Hey!” Dawn sat bolt-upright, her eyes growing as big as saucers. “You can’t do that.”
A triumphant smile and a palm opened to expose the room key caused Dawn’s eyes to narrow, going from saucers to slits in half a heartbeat. “Already did. Besides, I’m the one with the almost-mortal wound to recover from. See you in the morning.”
Dawn’s muttered grumbles faded to blissful silence as Xander and Buffy exited the bus, each carrying bags of dirty clothing. Maybe if she’d explained to Dawn that staying in the room also meant washing everyone’s blood and dirt stained garments, by hand, with whatever soap the motel room provided, they wouldn’t have had to go through the coin-toss farce. She let herself in, taking in the ragged carpet and nicotine ivory of the walls, not allowing herself the luxury of remembering when something like this wouldn’t have seemed palatial.
“Ah. Room sweet room.” Xander’s voice was overly hearty, the cheerful notes thick with the strain of maintaining them. She tried to remember when the chipper tones were real and whole. Maybe before she came back, or before her mom died, or before Riley left.
“Are we flipping for the bed, too?” Xander wasn’t the only one who could force cheer, though granted, hers was a little closer, okay, a lot closer, to being real. “Cause, if we are, I’m going to have to go with heads.”
A ghost of a grin crossed his face along side the shade of a leer. “Heads, you get the bed, tails, we both do?”
“We can share, or take turns. Your call. And there’s free HBO, so we can stay up way past our bedtime watching movies our parents don’t want us to see.” It was almost easy to say the words, to slip back in time to when she and Xander and Willow would stay up until it was time to get up, watching movies and being kids. Back when the grin would have had two eyes to meet. Her own smile wavered a little. “Xander—”
“Buffy, don’t,” he looked at her, the cheerful mask frozen on his face. “I’m not up to being serious right now.”
She bit her lip and started hauling the bags into the bathroom. The water pouring from the faucet was hard and yellowed with things she didn’t want to think about, turning the bathtub into a murky swamp of fabric and slimy half-formed soap bubbles that grew murkier and muddier as she scrubbed at the various shirts, pants and socks. She glanced at her own shirt, still covered in blood and ash, hesitated, then stripped down to her underwear.
A choked sound from the doorway startled her. Xander stood there, one last load of laundry in hand, trying to look anywhere but at her. “I’ll just leave these… here,” he said, hastily backing away.
“Xander.” He paused, keeping his head twisted patch-side out. “You should hand me your shirt and pants, too. They’re kind of filthy, and there’s no sense in us stinking up the bus.”
“You know, in all my years of dreaming about taking off my clothes with you, this is so not how I pictured it.” But he followed her orders, blushing the whole time.
“Xander, I’ve seen you in swim trunks.” Swim-trunk Xander had been kind of cute in the moments before she realized who was filling those Speedos. This Xander was a little more bulky, a little more ragged around the edges, but still kind of cute. She tossed a bar of soap at him. “Stop blushing and start scrubbing.”
Two people didn’t make the job go twice as fast. In fact, two people scrubbing clothes somehow devolved into two people splashing each other and fighting over the tiny bottle of shampoo when the midget soap bars finally gave up. Xander lunged for it, missed it completely, and toppled into her.
Under the dirt and dust, Xander smelled good. She’d forgotten Xander smelled good. Buffy looked up at him, startled, wondering why she wasn’t making an effort to push him off. She’d grabbed hold of him to break their fall, and her hand was still on his waist. She should be moving that. Probably not in the way that she was moving it.
She definitely shouldn’t be kissing Xander, but it just seemed like the thing to do. Or helping his hand unclasp her bra and then shoving off his boxers, but clean clothing wouldn’t be any good without clean underwear, right? Buffy stopped trying to justify her actions as his hands slid up her thighs to grab hold of her underwear and pull them off.
This was probably a huge mistake, but she couldn’t force herself to care. He closed a hand half-awkwardly over one breast, calloused palm brushing back and forth across her nipple until she was squirming and whimpering. She arched her back, thrusting her hips and rubbing herself against his cock, hardly noticing when it slid inside almost by accident. Buffy thrust harder, tightening around him and pressing into him, letting the feel of his movements and the weight of his body build sensations until they shut out reality.
He withdrew, thrusting against her, leaving her stomach a hot, wet, sticky mess. As reality came back, she gave thanks that he’d been slightly less stupid than she was.
“We should clean up,” she suggested uncomfortably.
“Because that worked so well the first time.” Xander sounded a little shell-shocked; she couldn’t blame him.
“Well, it wasn’t bad, exactly. Just… weird. I’ve always thought of you as a brother.” Okay, she sounded even more shell-shocked than he did. Regret was starting to filter through, and it didn’t exactly feel good.
Xander laughed, and it sounded almost genuine. “It’s a good thing you don’t have any brothers, Buff.”
She punched him half-heartedly before scrambling to her feet and wiping herself off with a washcloth, wishing she hadn’t already thrown her clothing in the tub. Not sure what to do next, she stuck her hands in the lukewarm water and started scrubbing the clothes. The shampoo bottle had fallen in during their not-so-epic battle, which rendered the effort pretty moot.
Xander grabbed her hands, pulling them gently off the sweatpants (she thought they were Kennedy’s, but they could have been Faith’s) she was using to try and get the stains out of her own shirt. “Hey,” he said. “It’s all right. Post-thwarted-apocalypse relief sex is something that happens to the best of us.”
“Well, the plus side is, we probably don’t have to worry about what might happen if we shared the bed.” She gave him a wan smile, and he ruffled her hair.
“So, free HBO. What do you say we go wild, leave this stuff here to soak, and watch whatever they’re showing?” His expression was pure Xander, all goofy concern and honest caring. Suddenly, she didn’t feel so bad after all.
“Sure.” Buffy wanted to either giggle or cry with relief, so she settled for a sheepish grin. “Sounds like a plan.”