Every time it rains

Disclaimer: The song "Every Time It Rains" is performed by Ace of Base.  I don't own, I'm just using their song to further my purpose.  *smirk*
Distribution: Anyone who wants it can have it.  Just let me know where you're taking it.
Classification: Friendship
Rating: PG

It’s raining again.  For the third time this week.  Isn’t the sun supposed to shine in Sunnydale?  I used to think the sun would always shine.  Then I learned the truth about what happened when the sun went down, and it was no longer important.

I used to like the rain.  It smelled just right, like freshness and spring and cleansing.  It felt good, because the rain in Sunnydale is warm; none of those icy, sleet-like sheets of cold.  Xander and I would go outside and play in it, making mud puddles while I tried to keep him away from my braids.  He used to like to unplait them and watch the hair plaster to my face, running in long strings over my shoulders.  He always claimed it was like watching fire melt into rain.  Six years old, and a poet.

As we grew up, we gave up on playing in the rain.  Instead, we’d curl up with hot cocoa and marshmallows and watch it run down the windowpanes, making the world outside blurry and unreal.  It was cozy, cuddling up with him and feeling like we were the only ones in the world.  I knew he was just hanging out with his best friend, but to me it was so much more.  I used to spend those rainy nights with my head on his chest, praying and wishing and hoping that his grip on me would change just the slightest bit.  That his arms around me would tighten just a little, would slide down and wrap around my waist and pull me in his lap.  Instead, they’d just rest across the top of my shoulders; two best friends hanging out with each other.

Then, about a year ago, it rained again.  Right in the middle of that wonderfully horrible time I now label as my stepping-out-of-reality period.  When Xander and I were so absorbed with each other that we didn’t even think of how our significant others would feel if they caught us.  Which they did, of course.  Before that, though, we were so caught up in each other that nothing mattered.  And one night it rained.

We’d told Cordy and Oz that I was going to help Xander study for his pre-calculus test.  Nothing unusual there, so they didn’t think twice about us asking them not to interrupt.  They both knew it would take a miracle to get Xander to concentrate, and if one of them dared to disturb us it would completely destroy the studious atmosphere we were trying to set up.  So we were all alone.

We were actually studying.  I was just getting Xander to the point where he understood cosine waves, when we heard that soft pattering.  It didn’t bother us at first, but then it became louder, more insistent.  We stopped paying attention to his pre-calculus book and looked out the window.  Raindrops were streaming in rivulets down the steamy glass.  Then we got up to look outside.

It was beautiful.  There were lots of Christmas decorations up already, even though it was only the middle of November.  The bright red and green bulbs and the neon Santas and reindeer were soft and fuzzy through the haze of rain.  I felt so peaceful and happy, and I looked at Xander.  His eyes were awed.  I never pretended that Xander had an easy life, and I knew he didn’t take beauty for granted.  Then he turned that look of awe on me.

“It’s gorgeous, isn’t it, Will?” he asked softly, taking my hand.  He didn’t take his eyes off of me.

“Yeah, it is,” I replied, my breath catching as he tightened his fingers around mine.

“Sometimes I think that I waste time looking at the beautiful things, though,” he continued, looking back out the window.  “Sure, it’s dazzling right now, but in a couple months they’ll be gone, and the view from your front window is going to be the house across the street again.  Then I’ll have the memories, but that’s it.”

I was mesmerized by the tone of his voice, and curious about the direction he was going.  “But aren’t memories better than nothing?” I queried.

Xander shrugged.  “If that’s all you can get, then yeah, I guess the memories are better than nothing.  But why settle for just memories?  Why not try for a lifetime of experiencing the beauty?”

I could feel the meaning of the conversation changing, but I was too desperate to hear him say the words to stop him from getting my hopes up.  “A lifetime?” I parroted, coaxing him to continue.

“A lifetime,” he repeated.  He wrapped his arms around my waist, just like I had wished he would on those rainy nights a couple years ago.  He buried his face in my neck and kissed me softly.  “Will, I don’t want memories of you to be the only thing I carry with me through the rest of my life.”

“What are you saying, Xander?” I questioned quietly.

“Will, I think what we feel is too special to let go of,” he confessed.  My heart started leap-frogging around my chest and it was hard for me to breathe.  “I’m afraid that what we’re doing is going to end up hurting us.  We’re sneaking around; we’re cheating.  I think we either need to stop for now, or we need to break up with Cordy and Oz.  It’s not fair to them, and it’s not fair to us.  But if we keep doing this, we’re going to be the ones who suffer the most.  I just have this feeling.”

I twisted in his arms and looked at him seriously.  “Do you want to break up with Cordy?” I asked.  He shifted and a thoughtful gaze appeared on his face.

“I would, if you agreed to break up with Oz,” he replied finally.  I stared at him for a minute, until a huge grin split my face.

“I will,” I promised.  His face broke out into a smile mirroring mine.

We never got the opportunity to break up with Oz and Cordelia.  Less than two days later, Spike pulled his stunt with locking us in the basement, and Oz’s damnable wolf senses found me, and Xander, in that fateful embrace.  I was so horrified and guilty that I pushed Xander away from me.  I wouldn’t talk to him, wouldn’t look at him, wouldn’t let him touch me at all.  It hurt me so much to not be with him, but I felt I owed it to Oz to stay away from Xander.  I thought Oz would distrust me after that, and our relationship would die a gradual death, and then I would be with Xander again.

It didn’t happen that way.  Instead, Oz and I grew closer.  Well, physically.  Emotionally, I still held back.  I told Oz I loved him, I pretended I was completely happy to be with him, and he went on thinking life was fine.  In the back of my heart, I recognized that Xander would be the only person to ever occupy it.  Oz couldn’t hold a candle to the man I’d loved all my life.

Then, Oz and I made the decision to have sex.  Or, rather, we panicked and jumped each other.  I pumped his ego up and told him it was the best night of my life, but I felt ashamed of myself.  I’d given my virginity to a man I didn’t love, for a reason that didn’t even satisfy the flimsiest of excuses.  It was a moment of irrational fear that led to us sharing something that we were afraid would never be shared.  Oz was afraid that he’d never get to be with me in that way, and I was afraid I would die without ever being held and made love to.  So I did it, even though I desperately wished it was Xander I was sharing that moment with.

Afterwards, I felt more distanced from Xander than ever.  I knew he had slept with Faith, but I didn’t hold it against him.  It hurt me to know he hadn’t waited for me, but rationally I knew that he didn’t have any reason to believe I’d ever let him back into my life.  In the months since “the fluke,” I hadn’t let him do so much as throw his arm around my shoulders in a friend-like way.  How was he supposed to know that I ached to be with him?  I couldn’t give him any indication that I felt otherwise.  When I slept with Oz, it was the final straw, so to speak.  He left, and my heart left with him.

Over the months that he was gone, I dreamed about him.  I cried every night, wishing that he would call, that he would write.  He never did.  He came back a different person, someone else’s Xander.  Not that he’d found anyone, unless you counted the strange union with Anya that posed as a real relationship.  He just wasn’t *my* Xander anymore.

It’s been two months now since he got home.  We barely talk.  When we get together as a group, he’s always the outsider.  The non-college guy.  Our conversations, if you could call them that, are stilted and just touch the surface.  We don’t know each other anymore.

It hurts.

I used to know everything about him.  I knew his favorite TV show, his favorite comic book, his favorite dessert.  We told each other everything that we could think of, and every detail of our day would be laid open for discussion at the end of it.  We were two halves of a whole.

Now half of me is gone, and it’s all my fault.

If I hadn’t rejected him, if I hadn’t let my guilt about hurting Oz rule my heart, then we’d be together.  We’d be sharing everything still.  We’d be sitting here together, gazing out my window and watching the rain, instead of me sitting here alone, aching to be in his arms.

I reach over and press the “on” button for the CD player that Buffy and I share.  Hitting the “shuffle” button, I sit back and let the rain wash over my heart.

“I see dark clouds out my window
I know the storm is coming any minute
And the thunder just confirms my fears
And I know that tears are winning
I’ll be crying all night for it to stop
Look here comes the very first drop

‘Cause every time it rains
I fall to pieces
So many memories the rain releases
I feel you
I taste you
I cannot forget
Every time it rains
I get wet

Darling I am still in love with you
As time passes by it just intensifies
I know I’ll never be with you again
I’ll never find another with that kindness in his eyes
I’ll be crying all night for it to stop
Look here comes the very first drop

‘Cause every time it rains
I fall to pieces
So many memories the rain releases
I feel you
I taste you
I cannot forget
Every time it rains
I get wet

On sunny days the more I
I walk in the light
And I try not to think about
The love I live without

But every time it rains
I fall to pieces
So many memories the rain releases
I feel you
I taste you
I cannot forget
Every time it rains
I get wet

‘Cause every time it rains
I fall to pieces
So many memories the rain releases
I feel you
I taste you
I cannot forget
Every time it rains
I get wet

‘Cause every time it rains
I fall to pieces
So many memories the rain releases
I feel you
I taste you
I cannot forget
Every time it rains
I get wet”

By the time the song is over, the tears are streaming down my face faster than the raindrops over the glass in front of me.  I’d bought the Ace of Base CD a couple months ago, needing something chirpy and good for dancing crazily to.  “Every Time it Rains” is one of the slow songs on it, and I always thought it was pretty.  I always refused to listen to the words, though.  Refused to allow the meaning and the relevance to my life sink in.  Now I’m forced to listen to them.  The rain always brings back the pain, the ache for him.  Brings back the memories that I don’t want, yet can’t bear the thought of losing.

The phone rings and I sniffle, wiping the back of my arm across my cheeks, wiping the tears from my face, if not from my heart.  Picking up the receiver, I hiccup a weak “Hello?” into it.

“I miss the rain, don’t you?” says the soft voice on the other end.  “It never seems to come often enough anymore.”

“It never did,” I remind Xander quietly.  Sighing, I curl up on my bed and will back the tears that press against my closed lids.

“Will, what happened?” he asks sadly.  I give up on holding back the tears and let them fall.

“I gave up on us,” I reply in agony.  “I didn’t listen to my heart when it told me that no matter how badly I’d hurt Oz, it would be nothing compared to how I was hurting you.”

“Have you closed your ears to it permanently?” he inquires hesitantly, trying not to show his hope.

“No, I don’t think so,” I answer.  “But I don’t know how to go back.  We’re not even friends anymore, Xand.  How can we be more if we can’t even be that?”

“Who says we can’t try?” he argues.  “One step at a time.  We can get to know each other again.  Become a part of each others’ lives again.  Please, Will, I can’t lose you.”

“I don’t want to lose you, either, Xander.  I just tried for so long not to think about you, about what I was losing, that it’s hard to let you be a part of me again.”

“ ‘I try not to think about the love I live without,’ ” he quotes softly, and my eyes widen.

“Xander, you didn’t,” I protest, a small smile slipping onto my lips.  He didn’t go and buy the same CD I did. . .

“It’s Ace of Base,” he replies sheepishly.  “It’s a really pretty song called ‘Every Time it Rains’ and I guess I can kind of identify with it.”

“That’s the song I was listening to just before you called me,” I respond in awe.  “Do you think it’s some sort of sign?”

“It’s a sign that we’re so connected that we can’t do anything without the other being a part of it,” he states firmly.  “It’s a sign that we can’t *not* be with the other.”

“Let’s work on being friends again first, before we move on to the next level,” I say quietly.  “I miss you, Xand.  I need you to be my friend again.”

“And I need you,” he says quickly.  We sit in silence for a moment.  Finally, I speak.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

“I’m on my way,” he chuckles, the grin evident in his voice.

“I’ll go get the ice cream,” I laugh.

“And I’ll bring the spoons,” he offers.  “I’ll talk to you soon, okay?”

“Okay,” I say.  Before I hang up, I speak one more time.  “Xand?”

“Yeah?” he asks curiously.

“Don’t get wet, okay?”

The silence doesn’t last long.  “Never again, Will.  With you around, the rain can’t touch me.”

I hang up the phone, a smile radiating from my lips.  Looking out the window, I see the rainfall begin to dwindle.  Funny, it doesn’t bother me anymore.  Maybe because the memories it brings back to me are good.  The storm has passed.  And I’m looking forward to a sunny future.

The End