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Click
by Rubywisp
Email: rubywisp@yahoo.com
Pairing: Xander/Lindsey
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Lindsey and Xander... talk. Sequel to I Don't Like Mondays.
Spoilers: If you know there's a BtVS Season Six, you're good to go.
Distribution: My site, list archives. You want it, email me.
Disclaimer: Still not mine. Damn shame, that.
A/N: For Lar. I meant to finish it for your birthday, hon, but I just couldn't make it happen, sorry. Thanks to Alex for the beta.
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The return address on the lone piece of mail in Xander's mailbox reads, "L. McDonald", and Xander is equal parts curious and apprehensive, wondering what Lindsey has to say that he's unwilling or unable to share on the phone.
He wants to tear it open right there in the hall, but can't - his arms are full of the groceries he picked up on the way home from work, along with his hard hat, lunch box and the long-sleeved shirt he'd worn to work that morning but sacrificed to the gods of heat and humidity that afternoon.
Finally, he gets the door unlocked, promptly dropping everything but the food - which he shoves, still in the bag, into his refrigerator. The phone rings as he's tearing the envelope open.
Xander answers it absently, distracted by the papers in his hand. "Xander's House of Habitual Panic; what can I do you for?" he asks, the phone trapped between his ear and shoulder as he pulls off his work boots and kicks them against the wall.
His only immediate response is a warm chuckle that he's already learned to recognize, and he's distracted no more, all his attention snapped to the other end of the line.
"You have a pretty good supply of those. Two weeks, and I haven't heard you repeat one yet."
"Heh. No, I'm like Elton John with his underwear - use 'em once, throw 'em out. Recycling is for wussies." It's a silly thing to be proud of, his aptitude for ridiculous but fitting phone greetings, but Xander always has been. "Hi, by the way," he says with a grin.
"Everybody's got to have a secret talent," Lindsey almost sounds serious, but Xander can hear his smile. "Hi."
"You're mocking me," he replies, carefully not pouting. Only girls pout. Well, and Spike. Spike pouts. Prettily, too, but Xander tries to pretend he doesn't notice.
"Would I do that?"
Xander takes note of the fact that Lindsey's much better at sounding serious than he is at sounding innocent. Must be the voice. Probably hard to sound innocent when your voice is nothing but sex and whiskey. He likes the way that sounds in his head almost as much as he likes what Lindsey's voice does to him. He hopes he can remember to tell Lindsey about it - some time in the future, some time when Xander knows him well enough to say something like that without having an embarrassment-induced aneurysm.
"Answering a question with a question is not an answer, lawyer-boy."
"It's not?"
"Very funny." Xander moves his hand to adjust himself and remembers the papers he's holding. "No, it's not," he says, propping the phone on his shoulder for a moment as he unfastens his jeans and makes himself more comfortable. "But I admire your attempts to avoid the subject."
"There's a subject?" Pause. "I think I missed a memo."
"There wasn't a memo." Xander half-smiles, torn between exasperation and amusement, then takes a left turn and goes for serious. "There was just... um, mail. From you. Today."
"Ah. I wondered when you'd get that."
"Why - I mean, what... what the hell *is* this?" Xander asks, shaking the fistful of papers at the phone as if Lindsey can see them.
Lindsey chuckles, unruffled by Xander's excitement. "What's it look like?"
"It looks like you sent me the results of your last physical, is what it looks like."
"As smart as you are good-looking. I like that in a guy."
Xander flushes and grins, pleased, then frowns. "Flattery will not get you a change of subject. Why am I the proud new owner of a copy of your medical file, exactly?"
Lindsey doesn't answer right away, and Xander knows that eyebrow's halfway to Lindsey's forehead. "Fine. I get why. Sorry. I -" He falls silent, not knowing what to say next. All he'd wanted was a microwave dinner, beer, and hours of mindless television. Sex would've been an unexpected bonus, but serious sex talk - complete with documentation - was nowhere on Xander's list of Preferred Ways to Spend A Quiet Evening At Home. He briefly misses the days when he could claim the dog ate his homework.
"Don't tell me you haven't thought about it. You don't strike me as that kind of guy."
"Only because you don't know me that well," Xander scoffs. "I'm not big with the over-thinking, as a general rule." Quietly, "But, yeah, okay. There might have been... some thinking. Of the wondering kind." He doesn't mention that the safe-sex panic didn't set in until the middle of a public-service announcement he'd seen while watching MTV one night. It's one thing for Lindsey to know he's relatively inexperienced; it's another thing entirely to let him know that Xander's completely lacking in common sense.
Lindsey chuckles softly. "Now you don't have to wonder. Or worry."
Xander falls silent again, this time in wonder at the novelty of being the one taken care of for a change. Lindsey doesn't say anything, and after a moment Xander realizes that the quiet sounds a lot like waiting.
"I -" he begins, but stops. He's used to embarrassing conversations, but mortification over someone else's big mouth is a different animal entirely than the discomfiture that comes from confessing your lack of worldliness to a guy who'd obviously been around the block before you even realized anything existed past the driveway.
Xander starts to scratch his chin, once again remembers the mail he's still holding, and tosses it onto the couch next to him. "I haven't ever..."
"Ever?" Lindsey interrupts, and Xander can see the smart-ass grin.
Xander rolls his eyes. "Not what I meant, and you know it," he says as he bends over to pull his sweaty socks off. He makes a face and throws them in the general direction of the pile he left near the front door.
"But it's what you said. That you hadn't ever -"
The teasing works, and Xander's too caught up in asserting his lack of virginity to remember to be too embarrassed to answer. "I just meant that I've never been tested for anything. Haven't ever had a reason." He shrugs. Starts to sit, then remembers his mud-spattered clothes and stands up again.
"That kind of thinking'll get you killed, Xander. You don't know -" Lindsey stops when Xander laughs. "It's not funny."
Xander doesn't agree, but nobody ever accused him of having a normal sense of humor. "I'm sorry," he says. He pulls his jeans off with one hand and tosses them on top of his discarded socks. "But I do. Know. Anya waited all of about five minutes after becoming human to jump my bones. Or it felt that way, anyway."
"Besides -" He lays down on the couch, stretching hugely and just managing not to yawn, too tired and hot to bother looking for clothes to change into. He feels more than just a little naughty, mostly-naked on the phone like this, even though Lindsey doesn't know. Maybe because Lindsey doesn't know, he thinks, and suddenly he's covered in goose-bumps that have absolutely nothing to do with the air conditioning vent in the ceiling.
"Xander?"
"Huh? Oh. Oh yeah. Um, besides - I live on the Hellmouth - statistically, I'm far more likely to die because of some rare, four-eyed, mucus-feeding demon that Giles doesn't even know the name of than I am because I forgot to use a..."
Fuck. Awkward takes the place of articulate, and Xander hopes his twelve-year-old-ness isn't obvious to Lindsey as he doesn't finish his sentence. "Really. It's -"
"Not if you keep thinking like that, you're not." Lindsey's voice lowers and deepens until he's almost... growling? The edge to it makes Xander shiver a little. Just this side of a lot, really, and that's something to be filed in the little room in his head with the "Do Not Disturb" sign on the door.
"Sorry," he repeats. "But between the Hellmouth and the people I end up dating, it's..." He stops chuckling, finally, as a truly scary thought hits him. "You're not a demon, are you?"
"What?"
"Or, um - did you used to be?"
There's a silence Xander doesn't know how to interpret, and he leaps into the breach. "It's all right, you can tell me. I... it seems to be a thing with me. I'm kind of getting used to it, I have to admit, although that in itself is probably the scariest thing of-"
Lindsey cuts him off. "Xander."
"Yeah?"
"I'm not now, nor have I ever been, a demon of any kind. Don't plan on becoming one either, so you can relax. Breathe, man."
Lindsey's tone is affectionate rather than lecturing, and it leaves Xander at loose ends. He's used to fond exasperation and bemused vexation from most people, with not-so-occasional forays into flat-out irritation. This is different, in a way that leaves him alternating between feeling warm and fuzzy and off-balance. It's not bad.
"Sorry. I have a weird-" love life, he starts to say, but can't. He knows he likes Lindsey faster than is probably good for him, not to mention more intensely than he wants to admit, and he can't bring himself to say something that might tip Lindsey off. Scare him away. "My life. It's strange," he says instead.
"Stranger than a regular gig in a demon karaoke bar and a magically re-attached hand?" And even a deaf man could hear the challenge in Lindsey's tone.
"Actually, yeah." It's not often that Xander gets the drop on somebody, gets to use his astoundingly weird life to freak somebody other than himself out, and he wishes he could see Lindsey's face right about now. "Whole lotta yeah. Exhibit number one? My ex, the former vengeance demon." He can almost *hear* Lindsey's jaw drop, and grins smugly.
"You dated a vengeance demon?"
"An ex-one."
"Huh?"
"My ex is - was - a vengeance demon. She's not, anymore. A demon, not my ex. Well, she is my ex, she's just -"
"Got it," Lindsey says with a laugh, then whistles, low and soft. "You've got balls, man. Huge ones." Then, "How the hell did that happen?"
"I was kinda born with 'em." He fights to keep his voice serious.
"Not what I meant, and you know -"
"Ahh... but it's what you said," he replies.
There's a sigh that from anyone else would be indicative of annoyance, as opposed to Lindsey's amused resignation. "Fine. How did you end up dating an ex-vengeance demon?"
Lindsey's tone is as careful as his words are, and Xander grins triumphantly.
"Long story, but suffice it to say that it's pretty much the way my life goes. You know about the praying mantis teacher..."
Lindsey's "Yeah," is drawn out and cautious.
"Well, then there was the reanimated ancient Incan mummy who literally wanted to suck the life out of me, and the time all the women of Sunnydale wanted my body, thanks to a love spell that didn't take a left turn at Albuquerque and almost got me killed."
Xander intentionally leaves Cordelia out of his recitation. Talk about your sleeping dog that should stay asleep. "By comparison, a girl who used to be the patron saint of scorned women almost doesn't register on the 'Xander's Scary Love Life' scale. At least she wasn't trying to kill me."
"Not even when you broke up with her?" Lindsey asks. "Or do I have the 'who did what to whom' wrong?"
Xander frowns and rubs the line between his eyebrows while he puzzles out Lindsey's meaning. "Oh! Uh, no - she took it surprisingly well, actually." Xander stops, blinking slowly. "Maybe I should be insulted by that."
"Maybe you should just enjoy the fact that all of your intestines are currently inside your body and you still have a dick."
Xander chuckles. "Good point."
"You know, you're pretty good at this yourself," Lindsey says.
"Good at what?" Xander asks, going for innocent.
He shoots, he misses.
"Distraction. Diversion. Changing the subject."
"Yeah. I won the Bullshit Pro-Am last year. Trophy kind of reeked, though."
Lindsey snorts. "I'm just saying - you don't know what was going on between the time she became human and when you -" Pause. "She is human, right?"
"What?" Small laugh. "Yeah, she's human. And I do, I told you. But it's cool - I'll, um," Xander feels himself growing warm with embarrassment and stops to swallow against it. I'm an adult. I can do this. I can be mature and responsible and all about the safe... sex. Safe gay sex. Oh, holy condom talks, Batman. Another gulp. "I understand - I'll go and get... I mean, I'm not really sure where, but I can figure it out and hey, the hospital'd probably be a good place to start, huh? I could do that - go and um, just, you know, go and call and-"
It takes both hands, metaphorically speaking, but he manages to reign the babble in. There's a few moments of the two of them listening to each other be quiet, and Xander realizes that they're both waiting this time. He's waiting for the interruption, the finishing of his sentence, the something that he's always recognized as the 'Oh god, just shut up already' that it really is. Lindsey, Xander realizes, is just... taking it all in. Not rushing him, not shutting him up. Listening. Something warm flares in his stomach. "Got a little carried away there, sorry."
"You alright?" No irritation at all, and Xander doesn't know what to do with that.
"Yeah, I'm fine. It's just..." Deep breath. "I may be freaking. A little. Minor freakage. Sorry."
"You don't have to apologize all the time, you know."
"No, yeah - I know." Another pause, and Xander feels the need to change the subject before the testosterone completely leaves his body and he sprouts breasts. "So. Heard from our favorite dead guy lately?"
Lindsey doesn't call him on the change of subject this time, thank god. "Nah. He's probably still recovering."
Xander laughs at the pride in Lindsey's voice, picturing the smug grin he's sure Lindsey's wearing. "I probably shouldn't be surprised, considering the truck thing, but I still can't believe you shot him."
"Not like it's gonna kill him," Lindsey protests.
Xander points one hand defensively at the ceiling. "Hey, didn't say I thought it was a bad thing. Not like I haven't wanted to lay one on him a time or two myself. In fact," he begins, preparing to play the ace up his sleeve in the 'I hurt Angel more than you did' game. But thoughts of portals lead to thoughts of Buffy, and he can't bring himself to finish.
"What?"
Xander swallows and shakes his head. "Uh, nothing. Never mind. Just... hey, if it's him or you, I'm not gonna be sorry it's him, you know?" he says quietly.
He falls silent, chewing his bottom lip nervously, unwilling to take back his statement or to try and fix it, even if his grief gives his words an unintended weight.
There's a long, long pause on the other end of the line, but when Lindsey speaks, his voice is low again, and rough. The only thing Xander really registers is the pleasure in it at what he hadn't meant to say.
It makes him feel like he needs to be touched, that voice. Makes his skin ache, the fact that his skin *can* ache something new to add to the rapidly-growing list of things he's learned since meeting Lindsey. Xander rolls his head back on the arm of the sofa, trying to concentrate, trying to listen, trying to ignore the way the gravel in Lindsey's voice always sends the blood rushing straight to his cock.
He closes his eyes and thinks about breathing. He feels more than a little stupid, not to mention fifteen years old, for being this excitable. But all the focusing does is make him more aware of his body, the way every inch of him seems to be stretched tight with need .
Xander hopes he's making the appropriate listening noises as he tries to resist the urge to touch himself. Not that he's averse to a little phone sex, but one-sided, on-the-sly phone sex is creepy in a way that he's afraid of. That way lies middle-aged, beer-belly Xander drooling over underage teenage girls in short-shorts. Or boys, all things considered. His oh-so-helpful libido flashes his brain an image of Lindsey in nothing more than a tight pair of faded denim cut-offs, and he groans.
"Xander?"
Xander clears his throat. "Yeah?"
"What are you doing?"
Oops.
"Um, listening?"
"You asking me or telling me?" Lindsey's not doing a very good job of disguising the amusement in his voice, and Xander wonders how much he's even trying.
What the hell, he figures, though he suspects it's his sex drive talking, rather than his brain. "Which one will you believe?" he answers, letting his voice drop, letting some of what he's feeling creep into it, hardly believing his nerve. But now it's Lindsey's ball - he can pick it up and run with it, or he can pretend he didn't hear anything and ignore it.
"Answering a question with a question isn't an answer, Xander," Lindsey says, echoing Xander's own words from earlier without actually throwing them back in his face.
Xander chuckles a little bit, letting it trail off into a sigh. Fidgets, rubbing his hand across his chest and shoulder, across his face. Knowing he's caught or about to be, knowing he wanted to be, the knowing just making him harder. It amazes him, the way Lindsey makes him want.
"I was listening," he protests. "I just... got kind of distracted." He swallows nervously even as every sense in his body ramps up a notch, waiting. His slides his hand back down his chest and lets it hover over his stomach.
"Why, Xander," Lindsey drawls. "I had no idea that listening to me talk about dropping a new engine into the truck would have such an effect on you. I'll definitely have to keep it in mind."
"Dork," Xander says, grinning in spite of himself. Lindsey doesn't respond, and Xander takes a deep breath, fingers dropping to drum rapidly against his stomach before he answers. "It's not - it wasn't what you were saying. I mean, it's just that..." He stops.
Lindsey's quiet again, doing the waiting thing, and Xander tips his head back as far as it'll go, making a frustrated sound deep in his throat. "You're not gonna help me out at all here, are you?" he asks, barely keeping the pleading out of his voice.
"Nope," is the response, and Xander's silent for a moment, taken aback, misunderstanding until Lindsey continues. "Want to hear you say it."
Relief washes over Xander at the same time as Lindsey's voice scrapes sex over every single one of Xander's nerve endings, the feeling like fingernails down his back. The combination makes him feel high. Reckless.
He gives in, finally, riding the wave, sliding his hand under the waistband of his boxers as he confesses. "You have no idea, do you? Your voice, what it does to me."
"Tell me," Lindsey orders, and Xander's cock twitches hard in his hand, even as his heart stutters nervously. He can do this. Right?
"It's like, when you talk- I can feel it. On me. In me." He pauses, exhaling forcefully, aggravated. "I don't know if I can explain it."
"I think you did a pretty damn good job," Lindsey answers unevenly.
It's the first time Xander's heard anything like a lack of control on Lindsey's part, and the revelation makes him bold.
"Your turn," he says, trying to put a little of what made him shiver when Lindsey said it to him into his voice. He settles his hand more firmly around the base of his cock and pulls. "Tell me what you're doing."
"Aren't you - aren't you even gonna ask me what I'm wearing first?" Lindsey's breathing is loud enough for Xander to hear now, and the sound of it pulls his hips up, away from the couch.
"Fuck you," Xander manages around the groan he's trying to swallow. "Where are you?" He wants to know. Has to know. Wants to be able to imagine Lindsey clearly, sweaty and flushed and naked, stripping his cock as fiercely as Xander's doing his own.
Lindsey doesn't answer, though. He's got his own things he wants to know. "Is that what you want, Xander? Want me to fuck you?"
Xander licks his lips and closes his eyes against the flood of images cascading down the walls of his brain. All he's been able to do for the last couple of weeks is wonder what it'd be like to go further than mutual blow jobs, the idea of fucking Lindsey constant background noise, and now he's about to get a free preview, in orgasmic surround sound. A strangled noise escapes him.
"Yeah, you'd like that, wouldn't you?" Lindsey's voice is growing rougher with every word that leaves his mouth, but Xander's only dimly aware of it anymore. "Fuck, I know I would. Sliding my hands all over you until your whole body aches, feeling your skin, so fucking warm and smooth underneath my hands... so hot, Xander, you're like a walking furnace, you know that? And I'd just be making you hotter. Making you squirm, making you fuck yourself against the bed, trying to get you off, needing to... needing it..." Lindsey can't hold the moan in, and it sucks the air right out of Xander's chest.
"Jesus, don't stop now," he says, gasping.
"I'm - fuck, I'm not. Just, got a visual," Lindsey chokes out, his drawl thickening. "Kind of took my breath away."
"Know the feeling," Xander says. He can see it too, in his head. Himself, naked and begging, incoherent with want and the feel of Lindsey's hands on him. "Fuck, Lindsey," he pleads, not really sure what he's asking for but trusting Lindsey to give it to him.
"It's gonna feel so good," Lindsey tells him, neither one of them noticing the shift from hypothetical to promise. "Gonna open you right the fuck up. Open you up with my mouth and my hands, gonna make you crazy, wanting it."
Xander sucks in his breath hard. "Already there." He's so close, so fucking close, every muscle in his body clenched tight, his hand fast and furious around his dick.
Lindsey's breath is ragged now, like shattered glass. "Gonna open you right up. Push inside you so fucking slow, and fuck, yeah - you're gonna be so, so fucking tight..."
And the idea of that is so transgressive - so different, so new, even after two weeks of thinking about almost nothing else - that it sends Xander crashing over the edge. He comes with a sharp yell, hips snapping desperately against thin air, Lindsey's own groan of release barely registering.
Full awareness returns as his skin dries and his breathing slows. Xander can feel embarrassment creeping around, trying to wedge a foot inside the door, too, but the bone-melting level of relaxation he's currently feeling is doing a pretty good job of preventing it.
He grins lazily, satisfied. "Damn," is all he can say.
"Right there with you," Lindsey agrees languidly.
"Forget the dog," Xander says. "I think the phone is this man's best friend right about now."
Lindsey laughs outright at that. "Yeah." Then, "You've got a dog?"
Xander blinks, confused. "What? No. No dog - apartment."
"No, you said-" Lindsey laughs again. "Never mind."
Before Xander has time to ask another question, his phone beeps, telling him he has another call.
He twists his head around so he can see the caller ID box. Willow. Shit. He doesn't exactly want to pick up now, post-orgasmic and still half-breathless like he is, but she knows he's home and she'll just keep calling until he answers. Or, even worse, come over.
"Hey, Lin, I've got a call I've got to answer. Hang on a sec, okay?"
"Sure," Lindsey says agreeably. He sounds well-fucked and sated, and Xander's grinning as he clicks the phone over.
"Hey Will, what's the what?" he asks cheerfully.
"Xander, I think I - no, that's not right, I know I did. Tara thinks so, too. I figured it out."
Willow's voice is serious and determined, and Xander feels his grin fading as understanding dawns, remembering their most recent conversation.
"Willow-" he starts, but she cuts him off.
"I did it, Xander. I know how we can bring Buffy back."
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End
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