just my style

[madimpossibledreamer]

happy labor day

Main Points:
Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Constantine|Hellblazer
Summary: Xander's surprised not to wake up dead.
Word Count: 535
Rating: Teen, with the warnings. because it wouldn't be constantine or hellblazer without the warnings
Warning: some self-loathing and self-sacrificing shenanigans

         Xander wakes up to being slapped and grins into the blood. He hadn’t been sure there’d be anything to wake up to, so he’s allowed to be annoyingly smug about the whole thing. “Help us up, then?”
         “You’re terrible, Xander!” Willow’s holding his body and rocking slightly, and yeah, okay, so maybe re-traumatizing her with another possibly dead body wasn’t exactly the smartest plan, but it’s not like that was the point. More an unintended side effect.
         “You say that like it’s news,” he points out, taking the time for an inventory. Those ribs are probably just badly bruised. A quick stretch says he’s luckier than he has any right to be. “I accept guilt cookies.”
         “Xander!” she admonishes, but there’s the hint of a smile, and she can’t destroy his joy. “I am not baking ‘sorry I tried to destroy the world’ cookies.”
         He pretends to be thoughtful. “Does that mean you’re not sorry, then?” he questions, laughing outright at the betrayed look she shoots him. Huh. He’ll have to do a more thorough inventory later, of course, but he feels lighter than he has in years. It’s hard to tell if she absorbed some of his pain, and he’d apologize and feel like a sorry git if he didn’t actually think maybe that might serve as a better punishment than anything else he could have arranged. That, or maybe it’s just the glow of a real victory, no tricks, no putting things off for tomorrow, no consequences for a job well done.
         “No, it’s just...guilt cookies don’t seem adequate.” She doesn’t want to let go, which is fine, he decides, because this is a little awkward but comfortable, and he hasn’t slept decent in a few weeks.
         “They’re a start,” he suggests, and she narrows her eyes at him, actually seeing him for the first time in…
         He doesn’t remember.
         “You’re trying to distract me, mister. You were going to sacrifice yourself.” She pokes him in the chest.
         “You don’t have to break out the Resolve Face! I’ll talk; I’ll talk.” Of course, he’s not sure where to begin, but. “Yeah, you caught me red-handed. Figured I needed a backup plan. If I’d failed to get through to you, neither of us were leaving the confines of my head. Ever.”
         She looks like she’s going to start crying. Or slap him again. Or both. Probably both, come to think of it.
         “Why would you—” She cuts herself off. Course she does. Not like she needs him to voice the answers aloud for her, now. “You matter,” she insists loudly, with the certainty that she’d point at the sky and say the sky is blue.
         His smile’s a bit crooked now, just like him, really. “Not like it’d be the worst fate in the world, an eternity with my bestest of best friends.” Like he’d show up to this apocalyptic shindig without an ace up his sleeve.
         She buries her face in his shoulder and starts watering his shirt with her tears. “All the guilt cookies you can eat,” she promises.
         “Sounds like my kind of night, sweetheart,” he tells her, pressing a kiss into her hair and just breathing in the moment.