Chapter Text
Saturday
Rain was streaking the windows of the car, streetlights making the drops glow against the glass, as Willow and Xander drove back into Cleveland. Xander had been quiet for most of the ride, and he could feel the anxious looks Willow was casting his way.
But he had no idea what to say to her. Hell, he had no idea what to say to himself.
It was possible he was in some kind of shock.
It’d been a year since he’d last seen Dean. He’d travelled, worked hard, moved around, and tried not to think about it all. Succeeded, mostly. And sure, even his vacation had felt like work – having a good time sometimes felt like work – but he managed. Everybody had that black-hole feeling inside sometimes, right?
He’d come back to the hellmouth with low expectations. Giles had asked him to check in with Faith before he travelled to work with Buffy in Scotland. Willow was in town, he’d taken one short drive to the next county to pick up a spellbook for her, and he’d been pinned to a wall before he knew it, wondering what the hell kind of demon lived in the middle of nowhere, Ohio. And wasn’t it weirdly ironic that he got kidnapped by a demon the one day he left Cleveland?
Then the thing had started talking about Dean.
As soon as Xander heard his name, his heart had skipped a beat, then started hammering like it hadn’t in the longest time. When the demon said Dean loved him, warmth had sparked in his chest.
Warmth that’d flared when he saw Dean’s face.
He didn’t believe it, of course. He knew the demon was lying, trying to fuck with his head, and hell, that pissed him off.
Because it didn’t stop his reaction. The second he’d seen Dean’s face, all the old feelings came rushing back. It was like the past year had never happened. A whole year of moving on, trying to convince himself he was fine, that it was fine, that shit happened, and he could deal with never seeing Dean again, gone. All he wanted was Dean.
He’d known the whole time that ‘moving on’ was a relative term, that part of him still thought about Dean sometimes, that he’d what-if-he-ran-into-Dean’d occasionally. But he’d never imagined his feelings for Dean were still so strong. He was still so much in love with Dean he could feel it, burning away deep inside him.
When Dean said ‘I miss you’, it’d sent a shard of fresh pain through him, and it was like he’d been transported back to that moment, that fucking phone call. It was like having a wound he’d thought had healed over suddenly start to bleed again.
No, that wasn’t right. It was more like he’d been bleeding the whole time, and hadn’t realised. Like nothing had felt right for the past year, and he just hadn’t let himself see it. Nothing except looking into Dean’s eyes and hearing him say ‘I miss you.’
Maybe that was why he’d been lying to himself; better to tell himself he was moving on than think about all the ways he wasn’t. Because despite everything, despite the phone call, despite the truth, he still wanted to believe Dean cared so badly.
But he couldn’t manage to lie to himself like that. Dean didn’t love him. ‘I miss you’ didn’t mean anything. Or, it didn’t mean what Xander desperately wanted it to mean.
Dean doesn’t love you, Alex.
Xander gritted his teeth and forced his mind away from the memory like he usually did, mentally burying the image of Mary. She was inextricably linked with his memories of Dean, and that phrase had stayed with him, stuck in his mind longer than anything else about that night. It was the bottom line he hit again and again, whenever he couldn’t stop himself from thinking about it all. Which wasn’t often – he’d buried the memories of that night, and for months now he’d kept himself too busy to think about them.
And now Dean was back, hauling it all to the surface again.
“Xander?” Willow’s voice suddenly broke the silence, dragging him back out of his head and into the car. Which was parked outside the apartment building he’d moved into about a week ago.
“Huh. We’re here,” he managed. Probably not one of the more intelligent things he’d ever said.
“Yep. Here we are,” she said. He looked over. She was looking at him with worried sympathy.
“Sorry, I just...it’s...” He turned away, back to the rain on the window. “I’ve just been thinking.”
“Xander,” she said softly. “Do you want me to help him?”
He looked back at her helplessly. In all the mess of feeling that’d just been dredged up inside him, he’d almost forgotten that Dean was dying.
Willow had managed to send him back to his body. She’d helped, but Dean still might not make it. She’d evened the odds out to about twenty-eighty. Against.
And now she was telling him that she wanted to look up a spell, that there might be more she could do, and if he wanted her to, she could probably help more.
If he wanted her to.
A tiny, irrational part of him – probably the same part of him that still hurt when the words, ‘time we gave up on this, right?’ floated to the surface of his mind – wanted to say no. Wanted to feel like it was none of his business, wanted to think that Dean locked Xander out of his life and now it was nothing to do with him if Dean was dying or not.
But that was just a tiny, irrational, vindictive part of him. The rest of him felt sick at the thought. No matter how Dean felt about him, or how he felt about Dean, the thought of Dean dead...
Xander hated it. Ever since an encounter with an eerily familiar vampire in an alleyway, the image of Dean wearing a face that’d always meant death to Xander had preyed on him, and given him nightmares on top of the ones he already had.
It made the rest of the mess feel insignificant, somehow. Yes, he wasn’t over Dean, hated the way things had ended between them, hated the fact that they’d ended at all. But no matter how Dean felt about him, Xander loved him. It’d never be returned, and maybe he’d never see Dean again. And maybe living with that had sucked so far, and would probably go on sucking.
But Xander knew he’d never be able to live with himself if Dean died and there was something, anything, he could’ve done about it. So maybe that was the bottom line, really. And it made the answer to Willow’s question a no-brainer.
“Yeah, Wills. I want to help. Whatever it takes.”
Two days later
Xander swung his axe again and again, lopping off limbs and slicing through torsos. The hands kept clawing, and the heavy bodies wiggled where they fell. With a disgusted look on his face, he pulled his axe free of a skull that was practically jelly.
It was almost two in the morning, it was freezing, and he’d reached the point of exhaustion where his eyelids felt gritty and his vision was swimming just a little. He’d slept badly; he had enough trouble sleeping under normal circumstances, and this week had been anything but normal. And now there was an army of zombies battling their way out of one of the biggest cemeteries in Cleveland.
He swung his axe again, and paused to throw an elbow at a zombie that was getting too close to his back. Xander glanced around at the girls – they were all still upright, and looking progressively more and more disgusted with the whole exercise.
“Faith,” he yelled across the horde, feeling a little desperate. “Any word from Clara?”
Clara headed up the local chapter of wiccas. She had power, more than enough to take on the necromancer who’d clumsily raised these practically-still-decomposing zombies. A real necromancer and they’d be in trouble, but this guy...
Unfortunately, although his magical clout was sub-par, like all true cowards he was good at hiding. And Clara couldn’t stop the zombies until she found him.
“No,” Faith yelled back. “And she’d better hurry. This is nastier ‘n that thing with the horns.”
Xander grimaced. That thing with the horns had been gross, for a whole lot of dripping-mucous reasons. But Faith was right. This was worse.
These guys smelled.
Goddamn zombies, he thought absently. His arms were starting to ache. The zombies weren’t all that hard to deal with, but they made up for it in sheer numbers, and the group was busy keeping them contained. It was disgusting work, but distracting enough. And he needed the distraction.
After they did the spell to help Dean, Willow had been called back to China. Later the same day, zombies rose and started munching on some goth kids who’d been having a party in one of the cemeteries – in the middle of winter, and honestly, Xander didn’t know how they could stand the cold – and he’d jumped at the chance to join the containment team. It was better than the alternative, which was sitting in his apartment trying to figure out what the hell to do about Dean.
If he should do anything. When Willow did the spell, and they found out exactly where Dean was, the urge to go to South Dakota was almost uncontrollable. He wanted to see Dean again, if only to ask one or two of the million embarrassing and awkward questions he had buzzing around in his head. But what if Dean didn’t want to see him? ‘I miss you’ didn’t mean you wanted to see someone. Well, it did, but it didn’t mean Dean wanted to see him. People said all kinds of things when they were ghosts that they might not mean when they were alive again. So he’d stayed away, trying to preserve what little was left of his dignity.
And maybe he was preserving his heart, as well. Seeing Dean again was great in theory, but what happened when he saw Dean, and saw the way Dean never, ever loved him back? He didn’t think he could deal with getting that close again to what he’d never be able to have. Better to stay away.
Dean doesn’t love you, Alex. He flinched as the words ran through his mind, her voice clear in his head.
Angry at himself for thinking about it again, Xander struck hard at a groaning figure, hoping to distract himself. The blow managed to wedge his axe in a zombie skull again, and this one was a little less decomposed than the last – it was harder to pull the blade free.
And now that he’d once again hit that bottom line, as inevitable as the bottom of a bottle, should he be worried that in spite of everything he desperately wanted Dean to come to Cleveland?
He swung his axe a little harder, and moved closer to the centre of the fight. He ducked under a flying limb, and nearly caught a skeletal hand in the face. He forced himself to concentrate, to think of nothing but the next punch, the next swing.
Zombies were definitely better than sitting alone, waiting for somebody who wasn’t even coming. No matter how torn Xander was, no matter how much he couldn’t decide what he wanted, the decision had already been made. Dean wasn’t coming.
If he fought hard enough, maybe he’d be exhausted enough to sleep later.
Thankfully, the zombies kept coming, and Xander fought mindlessly until sunrise. Physical exhaustion took over whenever there was a break in fighting, and it got harder and harder to throw himself back into the fray. But he managed, reminding himself that this was better than nothing. Better than waiting.
Faith and the other girls were tireless, and they all managed to keep the zombies penned in until the sun rose. With the first touch of light over the horizon, the creatures and their severed parts sank back into the earth and Xander tiredly lowered his axe.
“Head home,” Faith suggested wryly. “Try to sleep this time.”
“Yeah, thanks. You too, Faith.” She gave him an arch smile, obviously not at all tired. Goddamn slayer energy, he thought.
He trudged home, wearily shouldering his weapon. Nobody paid any attention to the axe – one of those weird hellmouth things, no doubt. There weren’t that many people out on the streets of Cleveland at sun-up, anyway.
Finally, Xander reached the apartment building. He walked carefully up the front steps, which sometimes had a film of ice over them this early in the morning, and into the building. He’d been staying there for about a week, but it wasn’t really his apartment. The apartment had been bought in his name when Giles decided they needed a place in Cleveland separate from the Slayer house. It was warded out the wazoo, and after he left for Scotland in week’s time, someone else would move in.
The hall inside was warm, and Xander could feel himself melting. Of course, the warmth brought on a desire for sleep so hard he almost passed out right there in the hallway.
Gathering his strength, Xander walked past the out-of-order elevator and started on the flights of stairs to his floor. His axe weighed heavily, but the thought of his bed kept him going.
At that moment, Xander rounded the corner into the hallway outside his apartment and saw Dean sitting on his doorstep. And just like that, the world stopped.