Lar ||| Buffy & Angel
Metaphors, Similes and Other Hazards of a Post-Apocalyptic Life
by Lar


EMAIL: HERE
RATING: PG-13
PAIRING: Angel/Xander
DISCLAIMER: They belong to M.E., not me.
SUMMARY:Stranger things may have happened but not to Xander. Really.
A/N:Written for otherpervert for the maleslashminis Xander Round. Set about 10 years post "Not Fade Away" and very arguably AU depending on how you see that playing out.
Required elements: snuggling/petting, complaints about hair gel, happy ending

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Xander learned a long time ago that saying things like 'never happen' was akin to tapping Fate on the shoulder and daring it to whip up a nasty surprise. This is the sort of lesson a guy learns when he survives more than one apocalypse and spends three years surrounded by small girls with the power to kick his ass without breaking a sweat.

He's perfectly willing to believe that when he turned 30, he slipped into an alternate universe. There is no other explanation for the fact that he is coming home to a place where the person waiting for him is not a person at all. Not technically, though Xander gave up nitpicking the first night he spent in Angel's bed.

He walks through the door now, turns to lock each and every bolt behind him, drops his bag of weapons on the floor. "Honey, I'm home. Come give us a kiss."

Angel steps into the front room from the kitchen, a mug in each hand. "That never gets funny," he says as Xander turns around again and smirks at him. "Kind of like the whole thing with you needing a parrot."

"Maybe not," Xander admits as he steps forward and takes the cup offered, sniffing it suspiciously. All it takes is one mouthful of blood when you're expecting coffee to make a man get a little picky about what goes in his mouth. "But the parrot thing was funny the first couple of times."

"No it wasn't," Angel assures him and waits for Xander to drink before he asks the usual. "How many tonight?"

"Oh it was slow," Xander tells him as they both head towards the living room, steps in sync. Angel's boots make sharp clicks on the wood; Xander's sneakers squeak a bit. Both sounds are familiar and almost comforting.

"Slow for you or slow for me?" Angel asks as he sits on the couch. Xander settles in beside him and they sit shoulder, hip, thigh, knee touching. "I mean for you, two or three is slow. For me, two or three dozen's makes for boredom."

"Bragging really does not become you." Xander shrugs, sips his coffee again. "Slow for you, Mr. Gotta Kill 'Em All. They're getting braver. Or making stupider minions, if that's possible. And there were more of the other things this time."

"Which ones?" Angel asks, his tone casual but his posture signaling that it really isn't casual at all.

"The nasty ones," Xander tells him and looks at him as he rubs his fingers over the scar under his patch. "Seems like you can kill off vamps a lot easier than you can get rid of those fucking lawyers." He leans back, head on the cushions of the couch, his eye focused on the ceiling above. "Oh and I spotted the dragon. It was kind of perched up on the top of the Wolfram and Hart building like a big scaly vulture."

Angel frowns at that and then reaches out and takes the cup from Xander's hand, sets it on the table, He leans over, one arm on the back of the couch and the other falling easily on Xander's thigh. "The up side to that is that it's probably eating the lawyers."

"Who'd have thought you'd be the one to come up with the sunny point of view?" Xander asks without looking at Angel. He's tired, wants to sit here forever with the soft couch against his back and neck and let Angel brood and fuss over him while he pretends he's not doing it. But the hand on his hip is presenting a pretty convincing argument for actually moving after all, especially when Angel slides it from the outside of Xander's thigh to the inside and moves up higher, long fingers cupping between his legs when Xander spreads them almost without thinking.

"I'm full of surprises," Angel murmurs and leans in closer still. Ten years ago, Xander wouldn't have tolerated being in the same room with him. Tonight he's got his legs spread and his dick hard under Angel's caress. More telling than either of those actions, he's got his neck bared, completely vulnerable, and the only thing Angel is going to smell on him is desire.

"You know what would be really shocking?" Xander asks as he lifts his head. "If you let go of the 60's and forgot where you're keeping that secret stash of Dippity Do."

"I love it when you talk dirty to me," Angel says utterly deadpan and he shuts up any possibility of Xander's rebuttal by kissing him, sucking at Xander's bottom lip until there's nothing in his brain to do with wiseass remarks about hair gel, worries about the increasing numbers of demons and lawyers in the city, or anything other than how quickly everyone can get naked.

-----

The sun comes up the same as it does every morning, and like every other morning Angel senses it despite the fact that the bedroom windows are covered with blackout shades carefully sealed along each and every edge. Sometimes he gets up and stands there with his hand on the material of the shade, as if he can feel the sun he can't see. When Xander asked him about it once in a clear case of post-coital insanity, Angel raised one eyebrow and asked him if he'd been at the Anne Rice again.

This morning there's the same view, pale expanse of naked skin marked all over with scars that seem to disprove the theory of vampiric healing. Angel won't talk about the battle in the alley that night or how many things came through the doorway that they never really closed completely. That was a different world for them both. Xander props his head on his hand, elbow buried in the pillow and waits for Angel to let his hand drop away from the shade, turn back to the bed.

"Now would be the time for you to make some deep, emotionally moving remark about sunlight, right?" Xander asks. "Just prompting you so I can start with the mocking. It's been a while since I had a really good mock."

"Been a while since I had a really good reason to smack you around," Angel says and walks over to the bed, sitting down with a sound that comes close to those that Xander associates with old men after a long day. It's a weary kind of sound and he's tempted to take that as his cue to begin the aforementioned mocking. Something tells him it's not the time though and instead he plumps up the pillow beside him and then pats it.

"I love it when you talk dirty to me," Xander says easily and when Angel looks back over his shoulder, it's with a pained, put upon expression. "Yeah ok, not my best work. Come back to bed, I'm sure I'll come up with something better."

Angel smirks then and lets Xander pull him down, lets Xander drape himself over his chest and fling one leg over both of Angel's, spooning in defiance of Angel's refusal to turn over for a proper positioning. It's not a bad metaphor for the way their lives work now, Xander decides as his body warms Angel's cooler one. And as he starts to drowse there, it's probably not so strange that he's wondering if maybe it's a simile instead.

-end