Disclaimer: I don't own them. Joss is a god.

For Te, who puts thoughts into my head.
  

Under
by Jane St Clair

It's not the bed he first made love to Anya in. That one was hers. The first time they fucked, stupid and high-energy, was on his old bed, in the small corner of basement hell that he was proud to call his. This is the one they picked out together, and of all their furniture it's the piece Anya now apparently doesn't want. IKEA-issue blandness, almost completely hidden by the blankets he's piled on it, both on top of and under Willow.

He wouldn't have been able to carry her here, but he didn't have to. She cried against him for hours, until she was out of breath and gasping like it hurt and shaking in his arms. All day. It was almost dark, and Xander was worrying about how to move a nearly-comatose Willow into town when the cab came. Driver with a cocked eyebrow who looked at them like he'd seen a million things worse than a couple of people all teary-eyed and covered in dirt.

He was wrong, but Xander didn't think it was really worth explaining that.

Someone sent it, and someone paid for it, because the driver refused Xander's handful of wadded bills and change. Giles, probably. Xander eventually convinced Willow to sleep, and when she was dead to the world he called Buffy's. Got the most mixed-up excuse for a story he'd ever heard, and only just managed to shake off the urge to demand that Giles come hug him too.

He stripped down and showered instead. Cried under the stream of the water where he was almost positive Willow couldn't hear him. It ended with him crouched over the toilet, puking up a day of nothing to eat. Acid on his lips that took ages to wash out of his mouth.

Later, in his honest-to-god, dress-me-up-and-call-me-Fred pyjamas, he peels Willow's jacket and blouse off and washes her down. Not quite sure when he became enough of an adult to strip his best friend in the universe to the waist and think mostly about her bruises instead of her breasts.

They're tiny. She's lost huge amounts of weight, and he can't remember when. He wonders if the magic did this to her.

". . . Xander?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm cold."

"Yeah. Sorry about that." One of his sweaters over her head, then all the blankets he can manage. She's boneless. If he wasn't been dry-walling for a living, he'd never be strong enough to wrestle her out of her clothes.

He looked at the clothes for a long time before he decides he can't keep them in the apartment. One of those moments where he misses living in his parents' basement, if only for the back yard that was just outside the door. Uncle Rory burned so many rags out there over the years that no one would have even glanced at Xander burning things in the night.

He could do it anyway.

He gets his coat and boots and pulls them over his pajamas, puts the wreck of Willow's clothes in a garbage bag. He empties an old steel trash can in the alley into one of the new rubber ones. Clothes into the can with as much loose newspaper as he can find and the gin he worries himself by keeping under the sink.

He remembers standing in this alley a month ago, staring up into his own dark apartment. Aching all over. He'd slept in the motel for three nights and he still wasn't brave enough to walk through his own door. Trying to figure out what, exactly, had fucked him up so badly. If he'd been damaged at birth. Maybe he should have gone to live in Uncle Rory's shack as soon as he was been big enough to run away. There would have been just as much drinking, but there'd have been less screaming, and more disturbingly fun lechery. A whole different set of issues than he wound up with, but would it really have been any worse?

And then. Dog.

It didn't look anything like a monster. Just a really big, moderately dirty dog, one that had been out running in the bush all day. Found some good, thick mud, and maybe a dead moose to roll on. Big paws. No collar. Looking at him, very seriously.

"Hey." Because it was the most profoundly obvious entrance he'd ever seen. Unless he was wrong and turned out to be just talking to a largish, uninterested animal.

It was Oz, though. Dog, then strange, hairy, gorilla-dog type thing, then guy. Man, Xander supposes, though the word never seems to quite apply to Oz. They're years off being teenagers now, and Oz is older than the rest of them, but he's so little. So naked in the dark. Messy hair starting to mat into dreads, mud smeared on his arms and legs like paint. Leather jewellery around his neck, like he'd been trying to recreated his old silver effect out of animal carcasses.

Oz said, "Hey."

Xander was lost for words, by then. He hadn't been able to explain to Anya, or to Buffy. Not even to Willow, when she asked him. He sat down in the dry grass against the fence and stared over his knees until Oz came closer. Then hugged him like a big, soft dog. The kind he'd thrown his arms around as a kid. Oz leaned into him and let Xander rock him back and forth. He didn't smell as dirty as he looked. Just woodsy. Juniper or something in his hair. Blood on his skin.

Eventually, Oz pulled away and stood up. Naked in the streetlight and looking nothing like a naked guy should look. He took Xander inside and upstairs, made Xander show him the apartment.

Leaned in and kissed him in front of those big, wonderful, east-facing windows.

They didn't fuck in the bed. On the floor, with Xander's clothes spread from door to window, and Oz naked on top of him, kissing him. Arching back when they scrabbled together enough lubrication for Xander to take him. Sucking Xander's disturbingly clean fingers and growling, always very careful with the teeth. Until Xander flipped him over and fucked Oz, as hard as he could, swearing at himself. Rolled off after and curled up on the floor until Oz slid in behind him and licked his neck, then turned onto his belly and grunted and growled while Oz fucked him.

Oz, he remembers, went and found blankets and sheets. Big couch cushions. He built fort around Xander and covered it over, crawled inside with a comforter trailing behind him. Pillowed his head against Xander's chest and slept.

He didn't leave until the next afternoon. There was pizza in between, which got eaten in the blanket-cave. Xander suggested a shower and Oz made a very graceful shrug that managed to mean no without saying it at all. And then he left. Walked out, down to the street, stood there naked and looked up at Xander. Changed, and left.

If the world was fair, Xander would have a way to get in touch with Oz in case of very serious, world-ending emergency, but it isn't and he doesn't. He thought about that, last night or the night before, whenever it was, dragging Jonathan and what's-his-name all over town, looking for a haven. And maybe if he'd found Oz, Oz would have ripped the guys' throats out and saved Willow from trying to do it herself. But as far as Xander knows, Oz hasn't been anywhere near Willow, not in almost two years. He can't even look at her.

Xander goes back inside.

Willow's burrowed down in the middle of his bed. She's shaking hard enough that she must be crying in her sleep.

Xander digs her out. Pulls her into his lap and goes back to rocking. He's hours beyond hungry, and he's so tired he almost can't remember how much he hurts all over. Willow's hair smells like warm, salty female. The smell of her's all over him. And she won't stop shaking. Frantic without even being awake.

He knows he isn't going to do anything, but he still rolls Willow down. Holds her under him, wrists pinned to the bed with all the force he can stand to use on her. Her thighs against his through his pyjama pants. Naked Willow in his bed.

"Shhh."

Holding her down.

"It's okay."

Legs between his, bending up to touch him. He isn't going to. There are lovers in this room that he's afraid to even imagine.
 

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