“Subject to Change”, 2/5
Second segment.
previous part here
2. He finally set things right with Cordelia.
Not that it started out that way. The state of things between the two of them was a bit odd, but not really uncomfortable. Cordelia seemed to regard the new, transformed Xander as both a challenge to her skill and a blank canvas on which she could endlessly experiment. Xander had his own ideas and preferences, which sparked any number of disagreements, but even those lacked the heat (animosity, passion, or both at the same time) that had once characterized their every interaction. Which was good, because that would have been … weird.
“I’m not saying no to the jeans - even if low-riders would be better than those high-waisted things you wear - but you have got to dump the man-shirts.”
“They’re women’s, Cordy. See? Buttons on the left and everything.”
“That’s just surface, Xander. Look at the cut. You might as well be chopping down trees in those monstrosities.”
“As opposed to chopping up demons? ’Cause that’s what the jeans and the square-cut tops are good for. Durability, freedom of movement, and cheap to replace if they get torn or gunked up. It suits me, and it’s all I need.”
“I’m living the same life you are, but nothing says I can’t look good while I’m doing it.”
“Look good for who, Cordy? You have a reason to keep up appearances. I don’t.”
It went back and forth, never settled to either one’s satisfaction but never turning into a genuine battle, either. Finally, one evening in the apartment Cordelia had invited Xander to share with her (and it was understood that Phantom Dennis could pamper Cordelia all he wanted, but he was to leave Xander clear the hell alone), she set down her wine glass, settled back on the couch with her legs folded beneath her, and observed, “So, basically, you’re gay now, right?”
Xander snorted only a bit of his beer out his nostrils before effecting recovery. “What? No. No, no, no. Not a bit. Nuh-uh.”
“Come on, Xander.” She waved her arms extravagantly (it was her third glass of wine). “You grew up a guy, then you got turned into a girl. So either you’re a girl now who likes girls ’cause that’s what you’re used to, or you’re a guy who likes guys now ’cause that’s what all the female hormones are telling you. One way or the other, suddenly gay. So which is it?”
Xander sighed. “Sorry, gonna have to go with ‘none of the above’.”
She blinked at him. “Huh?”
He set down his beer. “When you came to see me in Sunnydale,” he began. “To see if it was really true, to see what it looked like … I don’t know, maybe to gloat, even if you didn’t actually do that once you were there. Instead you told me I’d be okay, and you set it up with Doyle to get me a female identity so I could officially exist …” He looked at her. “And when you were ready to leave, you kissed me. And it was a really, I mean REALLY good kiss.”
“Well, of course,” Cordelia scoffed. “This is me we’re talking about.”
“So why’d you kiss me, Cordy?”
He hadn’t raised his voice, or put any extra intensity into the words, but Cordelia found herself abruptly more focused than the wine should have allowed. She looked to where he sat, watching her and waiting, and worked to reach inside herself and find the truth he had asked for. At last she said, “I kissed you then … because I finally could again.”
He nodded as if that made sense, and she kept on, gates suddenly open. “I cared for you, Xander. I really did. You can’t even understand how much I gave up to be with you … God, just to be around you even before I was with you. And then you cheated on me and hurt me, and left me with nothing -” She gestured angrily, impatiently. “And then you paid off my prom dress when I was broke and couldn’t afford it, and that was so sweet, even if you knew how much it meant to me you couldn’t know how much it meant to me.” She drew one hand across her eyes. “I loved you. I loved you so much. And there was just no way I would ever, ever be able to trust you again.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Got all that.” And then, showing far more sense than was his normal habit, he closed his mouth and waited.
Which made it easy for her to go on; quietly, with feeling. “So when I came to see you in Sunnydale, and you were a girl all of a sudden … I kissed you because it was safe. I could risk it because it wasn’t really a risk. I could never take that kind of chance with Xander-the-guy … but Xander-the-girl, I wouldn’t be tempted to give in and let him … her … whatever, back inside, so I could finally trust myself with that last kiss goodbye that I never got.”
“I thought it might be something like that.” Xander picked up the beer can, took another swallow. “That’s what I got from it, anyhow. And I was glad, myself, to get that last kiss.” He sighed. “But you want to know the funny part?”
“With you, everything is funny. Meaning weird, ridiculous, and grotesque.” Cordelia shrugged. “But, okay, what did you see as the funny part?”
“The funny part is, because I was different all of a sudden, you were able to treat me the same.” He shook his head. “Nobody else could.”
“Really?” Cordelia looked intrigued. “How?”
“Different ways.” Xander made a distracted gesture. “Just, none of ’em good. Giles … Giles got fidgety around me. Like I made him uncomfortable. Why? how would that work? Even if I started looking good to him, what with all the new bumps and curves, he’d been doing okay with Willow and Buffy for years. You’d think I’d be easier to deal with, but no-o-o-ooo. And Buffy was worse.”
“Wait,” Cordelia said. “Buffy started getting flustered around girl-Xander? I knew it, I knew all that subtext with Faith was more than just Slayer-sisters-in-arms -”
“Not flustered,” Xander said grimly. “Not even close. She started trying to protect me.”
Cordelia cocked her head to one side. “So? She did that already.”
“And I didn’t much like it,” Xander agreed. “But this was amped up way beyond that. She couldn’t put me at risk. I was too vulnerable.” He crunched the empty beer can in his hand, which was actually ludicrous with someone who looked more like Angie Harmon than Bruce Willis. “Let’s be serious, the strength difference between vampire and human is, like, four times what you get with male-female. So that part hadn’t changed for me, I’d always been outclassed. And Buffy knows that, but now the Slayer - the one girl in all the world, who I’ve saved her life more times than we’ve kept count - is trying to tell me I need to stay home and stay safe while everybody else keeps on fighting the fight.” His jaw clenched. “Everybody meaning including Willow.”
“That … doesn’t make sense,” Cordelia said, frowning.
“Which I told her, loud and often. Not that it did me any good.” Xander’s brows lowered in a dark scowl. “People try to say violence is mainly a guy thing, but I’m letting you know right now, it was female Xander that started wanting to belt her in the mouth.”
“Yeah, ’cause that’d work.” Cordelia pursed her lips. “But you mentioned Willow. Was she on the whole keep-Xander-safe thing? or did she get afraid you’d try to steal Oz from her?”
Xander winced. Visibly. (Good.) “No. Neither one. But …” He stopped, tried a few times to find the right words, sighed. “Okay. You know how it is when you haul me along with you to one of those clubs you like so much?”
“Uh-huh,” Cordelia said. “You’re nervous with the guys, and don’t know how to talk to the girls. Total buzz-kill, I don’t know why I keep trying.”
“Me, either. But, okay, imagine we’re out together like that, and I put my arm around you. Laughing, right? we’re just two gal-pals out on the town. And then I pull you in for a sideways hug, ’cause girls do that, too. Only I don’t relax the hug.”
Cordelia was staring. “Willow did that? with you?”
“Nothing that extreme.” Xander grimaced. “I was exaggerating to get the point across. But everything was too … too too with her. Too close. Too much. Too often. Too … familiar. We’d got all our old boundaries back in place after the whole fluking thing, but now Xander’s a girl so that makes it okay.” He scowled again. “It wasn’t okay. It was weird, and a lot of personal space invasion, and nothing like okay.”
Cordelia fought to keep from laughing. Poor, oppressed Xander, struggling to resist the dastardly advances of mousy Willow … “That must have been really awkward for you,” she said through carefully stiff lips.
“Yeah. And then some.” He looked up. “But, y’know, it actually brings us back to where you kicked off this wacky evening of Truth or Dare.”
“Really? How?”
“It wasn’t there, Cordy. I’d been a little crazy over Willow once, but now it just wasn’t there.” He leaned toward her. “I’m not interested in guys, because my whole life pointed me the other way. And I’m not interested in girls who are into girls, because I’m not a girl, no matter how much my mirror says otherwise.” He shook his head. “I’m literally a man trapped in a woman’s body. So, either way, not gay.”
“Okay.” Cordelia thought about it, picked up her wine glass. “Well, I asked, and you answered. Glad we got that straight.”
Xander shrugged, and grinned. “You can’t have been too worried, not if you let me move in with you.”
“I’m not worried,” Cordelia countered. “But I still put you in the spare bedroom, and we’re not about to be having any slumber parties together.”
Xander popped the top on another can of beer. “It’s a deal,” he said, and held out the can. Cordelia clinked her wine glass against it, and they solemnly drank to seal the agreement.
* * *
And they kept it that way, until the night they didn’t. The night after Doyle died, sacrificing himself to save so many others, and Cordelia and Xander got howling drunk together back in the shared apartment: Xander because this was a painful reminder of too many other deaths, Cordelia because she hadn’t known how much she’d meant to Doyle (or he to her), and now it was too late, too late, sobbing and incoherent in her grief.
Xander awakened in the low light of the new dawn to find the two of them together in her bedroom, tangled in sheets and discarded clothing and each other’s limbs. Her face was mooshed into her pillow, still splotchy with tears, her hair frowsy in monstrous bed-head. She was wrecked and forlorn and so beautiful it made him ache, and he lay without stirring for an hour, lest any motion disturb her.
At last she woke, blinking, and as her eyes came into focus they met his. Met, and stayed. She simply looked at him, her expression not changing, and he gave her however much time she needed. At last she said, “We didn’t do anything.”
“No,” he said. “We didn’t.”
Her eyes were still on his. Direct, unwavering. “If you had wanted to, I’d have gone with it,” she told him, perfectly calm. “I just … it hurts, it hurts so bad, I just wanted to make it stop, or at least blot it out for awhile …” She sighed. “If it was ever going to happen, that’s when it would have happened. And I do still love you.”
His heart swelled at that, but he kept his voice level. “I never stopped loving you,” he said softly. “But where we are with each other, you and me, it’s … the right place for us.”
She thought about that. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, it is.”
Xander drew a careful breath. “So, we’re good?”
Cordelia’s expression still hadn’t altered, but she raised her hand to touch his cheek. Then she took his face in her hands and gave him their real last kiss, long and slow and warm and perfect. When it was done, she told him, “We’re great.”
And so they were.
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