Combat Comfort:
Part One
Author: Clarity
Disclaimer: Joss. Is. GOD. I just try to interpret his works.
Summary: After S5, Riley stops by Sunnydale. When he leaves again, a certain soldier-possessed Zeppo tags along.
Rating: Rish, for language. Soon to be NC-17
Spoilers: 'The Gift' and much of S5, esp. 'Into the Woods'; 'As You Were' and an altered S6.
Author’s Notes: I may or may not completely rewrite the prologue. I like this bit, though. In the unlikely event that you're impatiently awaiting the next part, which won't happen until I decide what to do with the prologue, check our my links page for Otsoko's fic. She's very, very good at writing our soldier-boys.
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July 11, 2001
Beer, pizza, sports. Male bonding ritual from the depths of time. Only it didn’t
work when the only males you knew were old and British, dipped their pizza in blood,
complained about American beers, and couldn’t follow baseball without talking about
cricket. Sure, only Spike did the blood thing, but it was actually eaisier making small talk
with him than Giles. Which is why Xander Harris had decided to do a little solitary male
bonding tonight. Beer, pizza, sports. A lot less fun without someone to share it with, but
better than another night of Patsy Cline and early-to-bed. He settled into his chair,
flipping on ESPN, and carefully balanced the pizza box on the arm rest. Yeah, he could
do this. Nice, normal, relaxing...he could do this. He needed to do this. He needed to-
Needed to get the door, apparantly, from the forceful knock that suddenly
interrupted Konerko’s first strike. Xander stood up, confused as to who would be
showing up now, since Anya was at a small-business seminar in LA, Willow and Tara
planned to take Dawn to the movies, Giles was spending the night, like him, home alone,
and Spike hated his guts. None of them would be stopping by, and he didn’t know who
else would even think to stop by. Did he even know anyone else any more?
“Riley?” Okay, of the short list of people he’d even considered might be at his
door, Riley was nowhere on it. “Man...when did you get into town? What are you doing
here?”
Sheepish shrug and half-smile, and Xander could see that the big Marine was
carrying a duffel bag. Still not explaining his presence, but...“Actually, I was kind of
hoping you’d let me crash on your couch. I just got in, and I don’t exactly feel like
risking my life at the motel, but I’m not about to show up at Buffy’s like this, so...” He
let the sentance trail off, sort of uncertain, as though he almost expected Xander to turn
him away.
The dark-haired Scooby stepped back as though he’d been punched.
“Oh, God,” he murmured under his breath. “You don’t...of course you don’t,
we couldn’t find you. God...yeah, yeah, you can have the couch, just...oh, man.” He
didn’t issue an invitation, too habituated to Sunnydale to do so, even in his stunned state,
but Riley stepped through the door without looking offended. In fact, he looked more
worried than anything.
“Don’t know what? Is there something I should know?”
“Yeah. Yeah, you could say that.” Xander shook his head, shutting the door
before moving back to his chair. “Look...Ri, man, you’re going to want to sit down. And
have a beer. Maybe a few.”
“Why am I thinking I’m not going to like this news?” Riley asked rhetorically
as he dropped his duffel and took Xander’s invitation to have a seat on the sofa. “What
happened? Is it Buffy?” Xander looked up and met his eyes. He didn’t say anything, but
the look of pain and loss and regret spoke for him. “Oh, God. I...I think I’ll take that
beer. Or five.”
Silently, Xander went into the kitchen and grabbed all four beers left in the
six-pack from the refrigerator. After a moment’s thought, he took out the other six-pack,
too, bringing it back into the living room with him. He had a feeling that the two of them
were going to go through it all tonight.
“Glory?” Riley finally managed to ask, once he’d popped open his first can and
taken a deep drink. Xander nodded.
“Yeah. She...she saved the world, doing it.”
“Of course. Of course she would. She...I mean, she...”
“Yeah,” Xander agreed heavily, knowing exactly what Riley was trying to
express without him having to say it. “I...God, man, I know, okay? I know.”
Riley shook his head vehemently, gulping down the rest of his beer in a single
go. “No. No, you don’t, you...oh, fuck it, I don’t even know any more. I just...” He
closed his eyes and rested his head back on the couch. “She’s really dead?” Sounding
lost and quavery and an inch from tears. Xander had to go for his own beer before he
could answer to keep his own voice from cracking. Oh, God, and just when he thought
he was getting over it...
“Yeah. Yeah, she’s...yeah. She’s dead. Buffy’s dead.” And how he could say
those words without crying, even months after the fact, he didn’t know. Riley was just
sitting there, eyes screwed shut, stone-faced, but his grip on his empty beer can had
already crumpled the aluminum into a twisted piece of so much scrap. Xander figured he
knew how the commando felt. After all, he’d been living with the same emptiness
himself since last May.
A sudden blast of the ref’s whistle on the TV made both men jump. Cursing his
own stupidity, Xander quickly grabbed the remote and clicked the ball game off, before
turning back to Riley. Jolted out of his statuelike stupor, he’d taken the opportunity to
grab another beer. Xander passed over the pizza box.
“You eaten?” he asked quietly, realizing that food was probably not Riley’s top
priority at the moment, but needing something to say. Also realizing that if Riley reacted
like Dawn had, he’d need to be coaxed into remembering to take care of himself for the
next few days. Of course, if Riley reacted at all like him...
“Damn it!” And here it was. Stage one, shock, stage two, anger, right on
schedule. Riley was up off the couch and pacing, crushing his beer can in a grip that
sloshed alcohol over his hand without him even noticing, before hurling it from him
fiercely. “Damn it! How the hell did this happen to her? How the hell did she...damn it,
Harris, this is Buffy! She faced ADAM, she stopped apocalypses on a weekly basis, how
could Glory have beaten her? It’s not...” Stop to suddenly throw a right hook at the wall
with all his military might and training, and Xander winced as he stood back up and
moved to wait just out of striking range, knowing this stage as well as he knew the shock,
knowing that if the wall Riley had chosen wasn’t solid concrete his hand would have
gone straight through, too, recognizing that the commando probably shattered a couple of
bones and doesn’t even notice or care. “It’s...not...fucking...FAIR!” words punctuated by
vicious punches to the concrete, leaving a bloody smear that Xander will clean up once
he’s dealt with the raging man in front of him. If he can figure out how.
“Riley, it’s-” Cut off, because what can he say to finish off that sentence? It’s
okay? It’s not okay, they both know it, and it probably never will be.
“It’s what? Goddamnit, what the hell happened? How?”
“Ri, I don’t think-”
“How?”
“There was...Glory tried to open a portal, with Dawn’s blood. We tried to stop
her, almost did, but we were too late, and the portal was already open. The only way to
stop it was to stop the blood...Dawn was going to jump, but Buffy wouldn’t let her. She
did it instead. Dawn was made with her blood, stop the blood, close the portal. It was the
only way.”
“The only...God, she killed herself? She fucking killed herself?”
“She saved the-”
“Hell with the world! Why the hell didn’t you stop her?”
“Hell with the...my God. You actually mean that, don’t you?” He stepped
forward, invading Riley’s personal space with a look of understanding painting his face.
“Because you know if I had stopped her, if I had been in any place to stop her, if I’d been
close enough to do anything but stare in complete shock and horror and just fucking
watch her die...” And this time his voice did crack. “Damn it, Riley, you know me, or at
least you used to. You used to trust me. You used to know that if there was any way, any
way in the universe, that I could make her happy, make her safe, I would cut myself in
half to do it. Don’t you get it? If I could have, I would have fucking jumped myself, I
would have jumped and dragged you with me, but I couldn’t and it wouldn’t have helped
anyway.”
Closer now, in Riley’s face, not afraid that the Marine is going to forget himself
and strike out at him any more. Or not not-afraid, simply not caring, pumped up by
instinct and anger and all the emotion he’d spent the past two and a half months trying to
bury. “Why the fuck didn’t you save her, if you’re so upset about it, huh? Why weren’t
you there? Where were you when she cried herself to sleep, when Joyce died, when she
got that goddamned cryptic message from the First Slayer? Why weren’t you there to
help when Glory took Dawn? Don’t fucking ask me why I didn’t save her, like I could
have, why the hell didn’t you?”
“Because she didn’t want me here! All right, I fucked up, I know that, but she
never loved me. Never. She didn’t want me, and she didn’t need me, and she wanted me
gone, so I left.” The last deliberate, forceful, not shouted, but nearly hissed in its
vehemence. Riley and Xander stared at each other, eye to eye, the air crackling with
tension and displaced anger and deep screaming pain that tore similarly at both their souls
and left them lashing wildly at the only targets left.
“Fuck that,” Xander snapped cruelly. “She never needed anybody but herself,
no matter who asked her. She loved Angel, and no one then or since has ever been good
enough for her. But if you still love her, then you fucking stick around and do whatever
the hell you can, because as stubborn as she is, she’s still human, she still needs help, she
can’t save the world again and again on her own, and you love her, so you’re going to do
whatever in hell you can to make sure she stays happy and safe. You don’t start trying to
commit slow suicide on a nightly basis out of your own self-pity. You don’t just fucking
disappear one day and leave her to spend the next three months wallowing in her own
grief!”
“Yeah, well, screw you, Harris,” Riley growled, trying to brush past the shorter
man. Xander would have none of it. Hands up to grab shoulders, hold firmly, MAKE
him stand and meet the eyes. Riley tried to shrug him off, tried to brush off his grip, went
to push the brunette away, and found himself thrust up against the concrete wall he’d just
attempted to pulverize, staring into the fierce and angry and still somehow completely
understanding brown eyes boring into his from not two inches away. “Screw you. You
don’t fucking know-”
“What? Don’t know what it’s like to be in love with her, to have her brush you
aside? Yeah, Riley. I know. At least you got to touch her. At least you could hold her at
night and watch her sleep. I never even had that. I spent five and a half fucking years in
love with her, so don’t tell me I don’t know what it’s like. To know, to just know, that
you’d willingly give her every ounce of your soul, that you love her with everything you
have, and no matter what you do, she’ll never see you the same way? She’ll never need
you the same way you need her? I’ve been there, I’ve done that, I put my hand through
the wall in Willow’s dorm room because I wasn’t good enough, and I fucking know what
it’s like to blame yourself. So don’t tell me I don’t know, all right, Ri? I know.”
“I don’t-” Blue eyes that a few moments ago blazed with anger and were now
brimming with soul-rent pain closed for a moment, unable to keep up their controled
stare. “I don’t blame myself.” Raw and grating.
“Sure. That’s why you’re so intent on breaking every bone in your hands.”
Xander’s voice gentler now, more compassion than ferocity, though his grip hadn’t
loosened. “Look at me, Riley.” No response. “Hey. Look at me.”
The soldier looked up, finally meeting the unwavering gaze of his friend. “You
fucked up big time, Riley. I know, because I was there to pick up the pieces afterwards.
But you didn’t kill her. You didn’t kill her, and I didn’t kill her, and maybe we both
could have saved her if we made different choices sometimes, but we didn’t. And she’s
dead, and she’s not coming back, and you killing yourself isn’t going to change that.”
“I’m not trying to-”
“No. But I know how you felt about her, and I know you well enough to know
that you’re going to spend the next couple of months wallowing in guilt, throwing
yourself in the path of everything you’re up against, and pretty much just beating yourself
up.”
“How do you-” Flash of understanding at the empathy in the calm brown eyes.
“So what brought on the epiphany?” Riley asked instead.
“Lots of beer, lots of sex, lots of work, lots of demons,” Xander admitted. “Sort
of all of the above, really. Anya telling me I was good enough, almost getting myself
killed a few times before I realized just how stupid I was being, and of course the old
familiar standby, getting drunk off my ass a few dozen times. Which sort of sounds like a
good idea now.”
Let Riley go at the nod, the barest hint of the sheepish smile from earlier
crossing his face before the marine slumps in his depression. Xander pat him
comfortingly on the shoulder as they both moved to sit down on the couch again.
“Give it time. It’s gonna be hell for a good long while. I’ve...God, I’ve known
since May, I’ve had time, and it still...it still kills. But it gets better.” He pulled two
beers out of the plastic rings, offering one to Riley. “This helps.”
“Tha-” Riley reached out to take the beer, then stopped, noticing his right hand
as if for the first time. “Shit. I didn’t even realize...”
“Yeah, trying to deck solid concrete can do that to you.” Xander set the beers
aside, then took a gentle hold of the hand. “Hold still, let me take a look. You think you
broke anything?”
“I don’t-ahhh. Ow. Yeah, probably a few things.”
“Figured. I seem to remember you pack a pretty mean punch. That’s gotta be
hard on the bone structure.” The brunette shook his head. “I’ve got a first aid kit, but I
can’t patch this up here. You’ll have to go to the hospital.”
Riley looked slightly lost. “But...beer...baseball...”
“Broken bones. We can get roaring drunk once they’ve fixed you up. As it is,
you’re not going to be fighting anything for a while. You think you can get some time off
from your great and powerful CO?”
“Um...I guess, probably. Yeah. I mean, I’m pretty useless like this, right?” he
asked rhetorically, looking at his injured hand.
Xander patted him once on the shoulder as he got up and grabbed his keys.
“C’mon. I’ll drive you to the ER.”
To Be Continued!
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