Title: Lovers By Definition
Author: Bonster
Email: angelxanderforever@hotmail.com
Feedback: definitely
Website: http://www.geocities.com/angelxanderforever
Archive: on my site, the lists it’s posted to, and anywhere else, just let me know. I like knowing where these boys play.
Pairings: S/X
Rating: R
Disclaimer: The characters aren't mine. They belong to Joss "God" Whedon. Oh and ME, Kuzui, Fox, etc.
Spoilers: Up to at least season 5.
Summary: Xander contemplates how the word “lover” fits into his life.
Notes: Helen you are a damn fine beta. *pet*



What is a lover?

I once read that a lover was someone who was an ardent follower, one who is devoted, and also one who feels sexual love.

What was Xander Harris looking so closely at the word lover for, you ask? I will take time for you to stop your sniggering, and remember the reason fondly.

Spike.

I wanted to know what he meant when he said the word lover with such emotion, as he trailed his fingertips down my collarbone and gazed at me with such adoring eyes.

I can’t help the smile that forms when I think of those early days.

But I also can’t help the snort that bubbles up when I think of calling him that in public. Or when one day, while on the phone, I mention something about my lover. It just seems so dramatic and a bit silly.

But the way Spike said it in hushed tones….

To help me with this need to figure out what lover means to me, I am going to consider my past flings, significant others, one night stands, whatever you want to call them.

Cordelia Chase. We had all the intensity and need of lovers, but we never went “that” far.

Willow Rosenberg. Best friend, who you can have a Wiccan good time with. It was sweet, but it had a lot of sour. The whole attraction and the acts that came from it made us both feel like we were drowning, but doing so while sitting in an incredibly comfortable hot tub.

Faith. The equivalent of a body-sized hand job. Complete with a quick clean up. Definitely not lovers.

Anya. Anyanka. Anya Christina Emmanuella Jenkins is the name she had prepared for the Council during their evaluation that one time. Anya and I were never really completely at ease with one another. Shielding each other from the things we thought might hurt. A lot of one or both of us mentally saying, “Well, this is how this certain situation is supposed to go, so….”

The whole together portion of our lives started out as a strictly fuck-buddy thing. Not lovers. When did we become lovers? It was definitely after the whole Adam thing, but what was it before? I can't really say exactly when it happened, if it ever truly did.

We were there for each other. The sex was great; it was comforting and hot, but it was also distant.

Somewhere along the line both of us ended up at the "this'll do" point.

The relationship. For all its surface chemistry, the foundation for love just wasn't there. Passion? Only if we were deluding ourselves about it or role-playing. Longing? Yes. We both longed for...I'm not sure. Maybe we were longing for the connection that just really couldn’t happen….

There was so much distance between us. Those gaps, however, were unseen and unacknowledged. We did the best we could with the emotions and physical needs we both had.

But in the end, it fell apart. There was no glue- nothing to truly bind us to one another.

We couldn’t talk to one another for awhile after the confrontation as to where our relationship was. Months later, though, still adjusting, we had achieved a fairly content friend level.

That was a full three years before I began seeing Spike, well, really seeing him at any rate.

He was never as helpless as everyone thought. Yeah, he couldn’t do specific things without getting a headache, but that only stopped him in the beginning. As the months wore on after being chipped, and it was apparent the piece of metal was a permanent addition, Spike began to be more curious, and almost accepting, rather than angry about it.

If he was jumped by intrepid humans, he channeled what was left of that anger and pain into quick hand movements and well-placed kicks. It caused the world to spin and darken for him, but only for a few seconds, and he still had time to make his quick getaway.

I always knew this. I knew that if it was his whim of the day to have us all killed, then he would go about setting it up, and we would have to stop both the plan and him. An incredibly real threat, but until he actually hatched such a plan, he would just be an irritation.

When he didn’t enact such a plan, and in fact became quite helpful, my doubts still remained. He was soulless and had a history of frolicking with the atrocity-creating crowd- not a thing that inspired trust.

Like I said, it was years after the breakup with Anya, before I saw Spike’s intentions were just that - intentions. He was all talk. But why? What would make a perfect, albeit handicapped, harvester of human blood all talk and no action?

The thing that makes the world go round, well, it and gravity.

Love.

Spike, the demon spawn from Hell, loved and loved well.

Why did it take me so long to see it, you’re asking? You try growing up on top of a Hellmouth with rather negligent parents. So not a combination that nurtures easily given trust.

But one day, it just hit me. A catharsis. Where’d I learn that word? Watched Much Ado About Nothing with Willow and Tara one too many times. You try resisting the urge to learn the words that a dirty and oily Michael Keaton spits out between rotting teeth. I’m definitely not man enough to.

A catharsis about Spike. Then meandering thoughts about Spike. Followed by deep contemplations about Spike. And then came the staring, gauging, and fast looks away when he would notice. At last appear ye lusty thought-trains, with a sign hanging from the caboose that said, “Ooh! He’s a keeper!”

My feelings were so new to me. I had never developed feelings for a guy before. Sure, maybe I had found a few attractive, but not in a “come a little closer” kind of way.

The more I was around Spike, the more I developed a yearning for him. I guess it started out as a crush. Just a few weeks after my epiphany, he was half-carrying me home after a nasty attack, and I realized my feelings were starting to run a little deeper than just a crush. After cleaning me up and bandaging my left arm, he seemed slightly reluctant to leave. I think that was because of my constant swaying and continuous babble-stream about how there were two of everything.

He did leave though.

After that night however, it seemed like something had changed between the two of us. We started hanging out, which we had never done before.  I knew I liked being around him, what with the crush and all, but now he seemed to enjoy my company too.

A couple of months later, we were able to finish each other’s sentences and had fallen into a routine when at my apartment. Spike was over quite a bit- well that’s an understatement, more like he was over every night. We watched television mostly, but we also tried out Playstation games.

Spike had a friend who would ship him game samples before they went on the market, but they were usually crappy. The samples included a whole lot of fake Resident Evil or crummy commando games. I let him have at the commando ones, although he never got very far, because he ended up killing everyone in camouflage, even non-targets.

And god forbid, someone should appear in a white coat in any of these games. He’d always end up breaking the controller. He’d always bring a new one over when that would happen. So me minding? Not really. All hail an excuse for him to come over.

It was little things like the slaughter of all the humans in some of those games, that made me wonder what the hell my heart was thinking. But then that would be followed by the fact that the heart doesn’t think, the brain does. To make a distinction is just stupid. My non-logic brain parts were completely happy with being happy with Spike, and they were louder than the logic parts. Ergo, we had the appearance of Xander, the lovesick puppy.

Just a week after the twenty-third broken controller, Spike came over after patrol as usual. Only this time, he was plastered. We’re talking kiss the pavement because you can’t tell it’s pavement drunk.

When I opened the door, he stood there, alternately opening his eyes very wide, and then squeezing them shut. As I shook my head and fondly smiled at his obvious intoxication, he slunk forward. Suddenly my arms were filled with a noodle-like, rather smelly vampire. Lifting him up enough to stabilize myself, I shut the door and dragged him over to the couch. He melted out of my arms, rather than tumbled, and as he sat up, I was caught in his sapphire eyes, as he blearily looked at me.

“Xander,” he said. Only it sounded more like “Shanda.”

“Yeah, Spike?” I gulped. Him being so close and looking at me the way he was…it made my stomach do the Clinch of Gid, that giddy light feeling that only comes from things that just make you want to bounce and laugh. In a manly way of course….

Anyway, Spike was looking at me and blinking. He had this strange look on his face that was saying so much and so little all at once.

And then, he looked away. The moment- whatever it had been- passed. I went about getting him ready for sleep.

The next morning, I was making breakfast, thinking that Spike would be sleeping through his hangover. Sometimes I’m just not on top of things.

I didn’t hear Spike get up because I was scrambling some eggs, and the microwave was doing wonders with instant oatmeal.

All of a sudden, I felt a cool hand on my arm, tugging me around, and then there were those intense eyes again. But I didn’t get a good view of the eyes, for his lips were against mine all of a sudden, pressing mine not in a bruising way, but not in a soft as rose petals way, either.

At first I was too shocked to react, but when I remembered that one needed to move one’s lips around a bit not to be thought of as a post, I broke out of my shock and dived into the kiss.

Spike may or may not have had a hangover, but I knew that although the kiss was firm, hesitation floated just under the surface.

Well, let’s just say that I got rid of any and all hesitation in a horizontal way. Oh, and in a vertical way, a diagonal way, and even a certain numerical way that is just great to do…a lot.

So now, a few weeks later, when Spike calls me lover in such a heated way, I really feel it's true.

Being lovers is so much more than just having sex. And you don’t have to be in love to be lovers.

For me and Spike, we just fit one another. We each have our own keys and locks that only the other can use. It’s a combination of protecting, nurturing, worshipping, and most of all caring, which can grow into loving.

I’m not sure if I am fully in love with him yet, but I do know that I think of us as lovers. Lovers who are redefining the term using what we know, what we need, and what we are.


The End