Let Me Show You – Part 1

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         Part 1   


Note: This is in a future universe that peeled off from the show early on. Magic bits : Alive-Tara. Souled-Spike who never lusted for Buffy (well, never more than lusted.) Magic Box still run by Giles and Anya. Tara-Willow kidlets. Random whateverishness.
Note #2: My mental image here of Xander is from the first episode of Season 6, adult and solid muscle. Spike being soul-having was an idea a lot of people (who also weren’t me) had long before the show did it.
Also: I’m 60% sure I wrote this fic off of a sentence or two by someone else as a prompt. Since it was eight or nine years ago, I don’t remember who – or which sentences. If a line in the first few paragraphs rings a bell with anyone, please let me know so I can rewrite?

 
“Hyehhtsh! Hyehhtchuh!!”

“Xander!” Giles gave him an exasperated glare and took the box from his hands when the young man’s eyes stayed in an anticipating squint. “These are fourteen hundred years old. Do you think you could try not to inhale them before I can get them out of the box?”

Xander just waved an apologetic hand and sat back against the ladder-steps, covering his whole lower face face with one hand, like he would someone’s mouth to keep them quiet. “S-ieh- sorry… h’h'h’hyessshoo!!”

“If the dust’s bothering you that much, go help Buffy unload the truck,” Giles said impatiently, as Xander sniffed and widened his eyes  and shifted his jaw, clearly trying to ward off threat of a continued reaction.

“But then who’ll do the th-iehssshoo!! snf! the heavy lifting in here? The bleached wonder’s MIA.”

Anya reached over him to take another box Dawn was passing down, and Xander put his hands on her waist to help her make the distance. “I think we’ll manage,” she said, when he’d lowered her feet back to the ground and pushed her back to straight, while Dawn giggled at the whole maneuver. “But don’t go help Buffy. It’s raining.”

“He won’t melt, Anya,” Giles said repressively, and she turned to frown at him.

“I may not have been human as long as you have,” said the ex-vengeance demon with thousands of years ”alive” behind her. “But I’m not stupid. Sick people are not supposed to go out in the rain. That’s Humans 101.”

Xander had raised a hand to stop her from answering, with the uncanny sixth sense he’d developed over the years for when his wife was going to blurt out the most embarrassing thing possible in the shrillest way imaginable. Too late, of course, so he used it to rub over his face as it went pink instead.

Dawn came partway down the stairs above him and reached to pet his head. “Not just the dust?” she asked, and he didn’t need to look up to see her sympathetic wince, or to know it was sympathy for the right thing. She might’ve grown up, but Dawn still hated being embarrassed to the death.

“Eh.” He shrugged his shoulders and straightened up, getting out of her way. “If the dashing Miss Summers thinks she can handle it in here, maybe I will go help B- the other dashing Miss Summers,” he said, with a wide-eyed quick recovery, clearly at the thought of that sentence being repeated to Buffy.

Anya didn’t buy it, of course, but she was being less perceptive in other areas such as what would and what would not cause her husband to sink through the floor in humilation. “You are sick, aren’t you? Tell him!” She kept bickering with Giles, though, and didn’t notice Xander pinch the bridge of his nose in a pained way and blush another shade. Giles was pointedly ignoring her, and she swirled back to Xander with a finger up so sharply he stepped back. “Maybe that’s where Spike went!”

Dawn gave Xander a sympathetic but you-married-her-you’re-on-your-own pat and went to get the list Giles waved at her for stuff to get out of the basement. Anya just kept looking at him expectantly.

“Honey, you’re going to have to fill in the words for those of us not living inside your head.” He pressed the back of his knuckles to the tip of his nose and sniffled quietly, hoping the growing urge to sneeze would leave him alone long enough to make an escape. It had been gathering all day, but he’d managed to keep himself in happy denial until the dust of the storage area had reached in and pricked at his sinuses. He could tell, it was on now, even though he’d escaped the irritant. The continued sneezing left him feeling bleary and tired as much as relieved.

 ”Maybe it’s him feeling a little weird about the sick human thing?” Anya pursued obliviously, with the enthusiasm she only got when she thought she’d solved a puzzle, crossing back to the counter to raise the triumphant finger at Giles. “It was odd for me at first, when I stopped being a demon! Maybe Spike’s feeling susceptible in his new humanity!”

“Anya, it’s been years-” Giles began, rolling his eyes heavenward.

“Newer humanity than mine!”

“Why would ”ensouled” count as “humanity” in the first place?” Willow asked, suddenly clicking her pencil down on the table, clearly in as bad a mood as Giles and tired of having her research interrupted.

Tara gave Xander a look of commiseration. Willow and Anya would get on one another’s nerves, have a squabble that drove everyone else crazy, and then be over it while everyone else was left with the lingering urge to strangle them both. She blinked when she realized he really was still standing there trying not to sneeze, and her warm eyes softened. 

She turned and put a light hand on Willow’s arm. “Anya got her s-soul when she got her humanity, so it makes sense sh-she’d think about it that way, honey.”

Willow blinked at her wife and closed her mouth. Tara interrupting her when she was on a tear was rarity enough for her to subside, even when Anya made a triumphant gesture. Tara just went back to the grimoire she was pouring through rather than explaining, for which Xander was grateful. Willow on Xander-watch was a bossy creature well avoided.

“Eh- eihheh-” Xander pinched his nose viciously between thumb and fingers, and winced as the sensation went spreading and strange rather than being relieved. But at least it was banked back a little.

“Yes!” Anya spread her hands. “A soul is all about letting icky things about the world get to you!” She rolled her eyes and continued expressively, “The thought used to drive me crazy! Having to care about everyone’s little emotions and everyone’s little germs, being affected by them!” She turned and glanced over Willow and Tara’s heads to where Xander was trying to will himself into spontaneous combustion, and came down a couple of notches. “Although I’ve had enough exposure to “sick” by now to not worry about it so much.”

She’d managed to get every eye in the shop on him by now, except Tara, who was unobtrusively going through her bag. Xander smiled and sniffed haughtily and dropped his hand. “So I catch things easily,” he shrugged lightly. “What can you do? Not to mention, the syphilis? So not my fault.”

That even got a bit of a smirk from Giles, though he didn’t look up from the box he was going through, spreading small wrapped packages out on the counter. That Thanksgiving curse had been interesting, and it wasn’t a joke Xander could make with Spike around – the vampire still resented being tied to the chair at the dinner table too much, and would pout.

Anya came a little closer to him, and her voice came down another notch as she looked at him, and actually spoke to him rather than for the audience. “Did I say that wrong? If Spike said he was used to you being “sick” you wouldn’t have taken him literally – you’d have laughed.”

The sudden transition to earnest puzzlement made Xander take her hand and gave it a little squeeze. “Well, I wouldn’t think you would need to state the obvious as much as our resident-”

“You are sick, aren’t you?” she interrupted him, in what was a quiet voice for Anya, sounding kind of surprised. Like her own words had finally waved a card for her, and she was finally thinking about what she’d observed before, what it meant. She frowned at him. “I mean, actually sick. Should I be making you drink orange juice?”

Wishing he’d just once managed to convince Willow to teach him a vanishing spell, Xander smiled back and shook his head, letting go of her hand and making a bow. “I am possibly sniffly, or even sneezy, but I am the mighty Xander, and though the dust of the ancient’s ancient toys may daunt me, it will not triumph in the end!” After the sweeping gesture and expansive voice the others ignored completely by habit of years, Xander leaned his forehead to Anya’s and whispered, “I’m fine.”

She frowned again, but didn’t say anything else. Dread moved through him at the considering look in her eyes. She was going to do or say or ask something that was going to give him away for real, he just knew it, and then he wouldn’t need a spell to spontaneously combust.

“Perhaps the mighty Xander would be better occupied by helping Buffy unload the truck, rather than continuing to interrupt our research?” Giles asked rather pointedly. He’d caught that “ancient’s ancient” thing after all. The man really would never would grow out of his mid-life crisis.

“I am off, then, and bid you most adieu-”

He dodged when Willow threw a warning eraser at him, and ducked through the back door of the magic shop into the training room with another clowning flourish. He closed the door and leaned back against the wall with relief, and buried his face in the elbow of his shirt.

Just in time. “Eh!‘h’h'h’heehhh…. Ehyeh- Yih’ehh- eh’uh’eh’eh’uhhh…. Eikgihyieshoo!!uhh! Heh-! G’yie’ehhtssshoo!!” He hastily dropped his arm as he felt something shift in his nose, not wanting to ruin his shirt. It felt somehow much less satisfying to give the sneezes to the air. “EhIHPSSSHTSHTSH!!kuhoh…”

Wow. He really felt sick now. Definitely a cold. And he’d just brought it all up into his head and his nose with a vengeance. He realized his nose wasn’t satisfied with the last, spraying sneeze, and was just about to start running on him. Now that’s attractive. He pulled out the tissues Tara had spelled into his pocket as he exited stage left, and thought for the four hundredth time how lucky you could get when your best friend married well.

He didn’t let himself think of much as he mopped his nose and gave a couple of much stuffier sneezes, clearing his throat and hoping it wasn’t bad enough to thicken his voice yet, at least. Buffy probably wouldn’t notice, but just the thought of her realizing and commenting on it made him shiver low in his stomach. Very low, in a way that made him have to remind himself he was married. Twice over.

And both of them individually could stand up to the Slayer on certain grounds, and neither one of them would bother if they caught him getting up around her on any provocation. No, they’d show him what the prevailing view on infidelity was in these parts. Levy the punishment themselves. There might even be handcuffs-

Xander rubbed both hands over his face and shook his head, hard. Fantastic. That he absolutely wasn’t going to let get started, not this time. He was going to bury that as deep as it would go. It felt like a miserable cold had gotten ahold of him – there was no reason to add the misery of permanent unrelieved horniness for the duration by letting his odd quirk stir up his libido.

Xander couldn’t stand to be sick. Really couldn’t. He could stand slime demons better. He had no trouble with people ignoring him, in them not noticing – that was great, that was what he wanted. The noticing and still not caring was what got to him, made him feel sick in a strange, completely disproportionate way he still hadn’t managed to get over after all these years, no matter how ridiculous he told himself it was.

Especially with Giles, the I-am-no-one’s-father-figure who had been the only one available for so many years. Poor as he was at being more than a mentor, little interested as he was in parenting anyone but Buffy, and maybe Willow a little, he was still the best example of parenthood Xander had ever had. It wasn’t Giles’ fault – Giles had never volunteered for the job - but it still made Xander feel about four every time he got a “Xander! You’re bleeding on my couch!” or a “Well, if you’re contagious you should get out of here.” Four, and hiding shivering in the bushes from the sneering and the shouting.

He couldn’t help it. That was the worst part. Even after facing up to the whole thing and trying to be all honest therapeutic progress about it. He didn’t even want anyone petting him or fussing over him, it embarrassed him. And yet. It still made him feel four years old and abandoned, and it made him feel beyond humiliated that he was a fully grown man having such idiotic feelings, and the whole thing was just better avoided as far as he was concerned, the way Angel’s soul getting popped loose again was to be avoided.

Willow would go out of her way to be nice to him if she noticed he was dragging, but she had a family to take care of now, and it just made him feel guilty and embarrassed, how much he wanted it despite her bossiness, how much he drank it in bottomlessly once she started offering it. How much it hurt if she did it impatiently. Better all around if they all just ignored him for a few days. Better for him in every way if everyone did. He hoped he’d headed Anya off, but he wasn’t entirely sure.

He did get colds often, but they didn’t tend to get bad and they didn’t stay long, and if he could dodge the embarrassing regression to a pre-schooler and it was the right kind of cold, he even sort of really enjoyed it. So no point in getting all rattled and crazy about it yet. Just – try to keep a low profile and duck out early, that would be key.

He sniffled testingly and promptly sneezed again, a couple of itchy little “eihtsh! ehehhtsshuh!!”s that made him really need to blow his nose again. After that, though, he decided he was okay for the moment, and went out to hail Buffy cheerfully and get a box he could barely lift dropped on him in a lateral pass. He “oomphed,” and she apologized, and they laughed, and Xander tried to ignore the nagging little sense of worry that spread deeper in his chest every time he had to stop and sniffle or rub away another sneeze. 

                             On to Part 2 
~ Let me know what you think?