A Sneak Preview
I normally don't post bits of something I'm writing unless I'm certain I know when I can get it finished. I'm not with this one, but I have to know how it's going, and I rely on you guys to help me know. I'm thinking of subtitling it "A Guided Tour of Atlanta," 'cos so much of my home town has snuck into this story. Also, I've written enough of the next section I can be pretty sure I'll at least finish that part, so I feel fairly good about posting this.
I haven't even written the cute little disclaimer part yet. Consider it there.
Easy To Be Hard
Sequel to How to be Dead
By Lori Bush
How can people be so heartless
How can people be so cruel
Easy to be hard
Easy to be cold
How can people have no feelings
How can they ignore their friends
Easy to be proud
Easy to say no
And especially people
Who care about strangers
Who care about evil
And social injustice
Do you only
Care about the bleeding crowd?
How about a needing friend?
I need a friend
How can people be so heartless
You know I'm hung up on you
Easy to give in
Easy to help out
Hair - The Musical
She loved him. Sometimes.
When he didn’t eat all her snack food, or use the last clean towel, or bogart the remote and watch endless hours of sci-fi nonsense.
“Buff! Come on We’re burning daylight here!”
Or when he didn’t force her to get up and go running in Piedmont Park with him at the crack of dawn.
The first time, she’d gone out of shock. Then he’d heard her admit she was worried she might get fat, gain baby weight she’d never shed, and he’d promised to take her with him on his daily run so she wouldn’t.
Xander had a daily run. Every damned day. And now he waited for her every morning, right after daybreak, in the kitchen with a freshly made pot of coffee, before he’d head out to do the five miles he’d seemingly done daily for the past God knows how many years.
Xander also never reneged on a promise.
The keeping of promises was a trait she knew from the Xander of her youth. Every now and then, she would uncover more of the boy she once knew inside the man she didn’t know at all.
After their semi-uncomfortable reunion, where she had hired him on as her new Watcher and practically dragged him out of his hotel to come stay with her, they’d gone to dinner, and she’d gotten the first clue on just how much her former friend had changed.
“It’s a wine bar,” Buffy explained as they entered the remodeled house and went upstairs to the dining room, “but I can’t really have wine, what with the baby. You can, if you want. They’ve just got some of the best food in Midtown.”
“No - you can’t have wine, I won’t either,” he answered. He’d ordered a coke.
Imagine her surprise when, after the coke arrived, he’d pulled a silver and leather well- worn flask out of his pocket and poured a generous amount into the glass. Apparently, her surprise was showing.
“What? I said I wouldn’t have wine. I didn’t say I wouldn’t drink.”
He drank an awful lot. She was pretty sure the flask had to be empty by the time dinner was over. They’d barely talked, and she thought it might be because he was too intent on getting a buzz to communicate. But he moved smoothly, with no outward sign of inebriation as they walked back to her car. “You must be tired,” she said, hesitantly breaking the determined silence that had haunted their evening. “Long day, and…” She wasn’t sure how to diplomatically bring up the flask. “It is almost eleven.”
He shrugged noncommittally. “Whatever. If you don’t feel like doing anything else…” he let the sentence drift off, while his eyes scanned the scenery. “Oh, yeah,” he said almost predatorily as they passed The Vortex, a late-night dance club that seemed to be just warming up, “I wouldn’t mind going there. Sometime,” he added in a more neutral voice.
“So - home? Rest?” She tried not to sound too desperate. But the pregnancy was a bit draining on her.
“Sure,” he answered her flatly.
She gone to bed almost immediately after they got home, hearing the sound of the T.V. going while she washed her face and readied herself for sleep. It was nearly midnight. Well, maybe he’d sleep in late in the morning.
When she awoke, she wondered why. The morning light didn’t usually bother her, especially as pale as it still was. She, for once, didn’t have to pee. Still, something - there it was again. A very small sound. Pregnancy hadn’t dulled her Slayer senses in the least. Someone was in her apartment. She grabbed a stake and headed out the hall, remembering as she wakened further that she had company, and relaxing.
The smell of fresh coffee hit her just before she entered the kitchen, but the sight of the man standing at the counter stopped her cold.
“Hey, Buff. You still drink real coffee with the baby, or did you switch to decaf? I can make more, if you want. I just have to have a cup or two before I go out to run.” He stopped, took a sip out of his mug, and gestured again to the pot. “Want some? Or, hey, you wanna come along?”
“Coffee - sure. Regular, uh, yeah, fine.” She was gawking, she knew it. But the clothes he’d had on last night were, well, unremarkable. This, now, was the smallest pair of satiny running shorts she’d ever seen on a man, and she lived in a heavily gay neighborhood, so that was really saying something. Speedos covered more. Only the loose basketball jersey he wore as his top gave any hint of modesty, and it bared powerful shoulders and arms that were covered in lean muscles. His legs were equally impressive. The queens next door were going to go ballistic if they saw him, Buffy was sure. All that eye candy. She was gonna have to install an extra lock.
“So you wanna come?” At her blank stare, he elaborated. “Running. You do still exercise, don’t you?”
Well, quite honestly, no. Her obstetrician hadn’t ruled it out, but Buffy had viewed her condition as a “get out of workouts free” card. She knew in her heart it was going to be all that much harder to go back to it once the baby was born, Faith had even told her that was so, but she was counting seriously on Slayer healing to do some of the work for her. “Uh, running? Sure.” She looked down at her baggy knit pajamas. “Just lemme change.”
She scrounged out some sweat pants that still fit and a maternity tee shirt. She was going to die from the heat, but she didn’t have anything else to wear. Pulling her hair back in a messy ponytail as she went down the hall, she wondered why she was doing this, exactly. Well, she probably should, but still…
At this early hour, Peachtree Road was a runner’s heaven. Joggers trotted by in ones and twos, some complete with jogging strollers; more serious-faced runners sprinted past, mostly alone. Quite a few wore Peachtree Road Race tees. Apparently, the older the tee, the higher your status among the running community. In fact, locals often referred to it as “the race for a tee shirt.” It was coming up soon, run every year on July Fourth, so the training was going on in earnest. She and Xander headed north on Peachtree, Buffy deciding that Piedmont Park would be a good place to go.
He was taking an easy pace, and she knew it was for her benefit. She was struggling just a little, desperately trying not to show it. She considered herself doing well when they reached the park and she hadn’t dropped dead yet.
There were fewer serious runners there this early; more people walking dogs and a higher ratio of baby strollers. The sky was streaked with apricot and purple, and the beauty of it took Buffy’s mind off her burning calves for a bit. There was no one in sight when it happened. The noise, the movement, the shock of it all…
Thinking about it later, it could have been a tree branch snapping, or maybe a car backfiring. It really couldn’t have been a gunshot, although it certainly sounded like one. Whatever it was, it rang out in the quiet morning air, and no more than seconds passed before Buffy was staring up from the sidewalk at the underside of a sleek handgun, held by a grim-faced Xander Harris.
Her first thought, somewhat irrationally, was “Where the hell was he keeping that?” Next she found herself wondering how he’d somehow eased her down on her back and knelt over her, that quickly, without harming her in the least. ‘Slayer healing’ had never stopped ‘slayer hurting’ in her memory. She watched him scan the area with a professional air. Her next thought came out her mouth without stopping by her mental filters first. “Do you want to get arrested?”
He scowled down at her, but apparently decided the danger was gone, had it ever existed. He stood up, the gun disappearing without Buffy being able to follow its movement from her prone position. “I have a license to carry concealed,” he spat tersely.
She struggled to get up, and he finally noticed and hauled her off the ground. “Concealed where?” she asked breathing heavily from the effort and eyeing the skimpy shorts. Shit, the mental filters must still be off-line.
He turned into Robo-Cop. “Has anyone threatened you? People here know what you do? Any strange, ritualistic deaths lately?”
“Whoa, John Wayne,” Buffy held up her hands in surrender, “Climb down off that horse. Yeah, there’s people here who know what I do. My doctors are all Council trained and approved. They know who and what I am. But threats? Xan, my cover is that I head an environmental group protecting a state landmark. Not a lot of challenges there - outside of being teased by the Park Employees as being overkill. The chances of anyone disturbing the Fairy Nest with development are slim to none. First, the Park is privately owned, and profitable. Then, if somebody bought the company out, they’d have to get permits from so many state and federal agencies before they even ran into me… And the press would crucify them first, anyway. Outside of stupid humans, the Morssago’s have no natural enemies, so no one should be trying to off me to get to them. As for ritualistic deaths - eww. I’ve been away from Sunnydale long enough to find that thought disturbing. Thank God.”
He continued to eye the entire area suspiciously. Finally, the tension in his body dialed down a notch, and Buffy let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. She inhaled it again quickly when he pulled that damned flask out of God knew where and took a large swig. It vanished once more as mysteriously as the handgun had.
“Fine,” he spat after a few more moments of uncomfortable silence, “Let’s go back.”
Buffy insisted on stopping at a café for breakfast, but the number of words they exchanged even in that effort could be counted on the fingers of one hand. She saw him doctor his coffee yet again with the flask, and bit her tongue to avoid saying something cutting about it. She didn’t know how he’d react, and was startled to realize she was a bit afraid of him. He had killed Slayers before, after all…
She shook that thought from her head. He’d done what he felt had to be done. She was acting just the way he expected people to act, and she would never be able to get through to him if she did that.
He’d been beside her when she’d been at her worst. She’d dealt with who she was and what she’d done, but it had taken a year of therapy to get to that point, and she was still going, because once she’d realized what she’d become and done to her closest friends and young girls who’d relied on her, well, she’d fallen apart, and was still getting all put together again. She owed Xander now that loyalty he’d given once without question. Especially now she realized how hard it would have been for her to be loyal to someone who’d behaved as she did then. His bad behavior was nothing next to that. And his killing of Slayers had hurt him far more than any act of his could ever hurt her.
The rest of that day had been a little out of kilter - like a film running just a frame or so ahead of the sound track. Xander didn’t seem to notice, but Buffy felt it, setting her ill at ease until bedtime.
He’d gone out and come back silently some time in the middle of the day. That night she saw it had been a run to the liquor store, since the flask didn’t appear, but rather a full bottle of Jim Beam. The T.V. ran well after she retreated to bed again. But she knew tomorrow had to be different. Her life had to resume, and she was going to have to drag him along for parts of it, if his title as her Watcher was going to amount to anything.
The early run and the constant tension had at least worn her down - she slept like the dead that night.
~**~
<< (1) >>
Does that work for you guys? In the next section, Xander meets the Morssagos, and you get to find out more about them. Beyond that, I don't know what's going to happen yet - I'm as curious as y'all are. But I've written more pages tonight, in one sitting, than I have in several tries previously, so there's hope we'll all find out before long.
I haven't even written the cute little disclaimer part yet. Consider it there.
Easy To Be Hard
Sequel to How to be Dead
By Lori Bush
How can people be so heartless
How can people be so cruel
Easy to be hard
Easy to be cold
How can people have no feelings
How can they ignore their friends
Easy to be proud
Easy to say no
And especially people
Who care about strangers
Who care about evil
And social injustice
Do you only
Care about the bleeding crowd?
How about a needing friend?
I need a friend
How can people be so heartless
You know I'm hung up on you
Easy to give in
Easy to help out
Hair - The Musical
She loved him. Sometimes.
When he didn’t eat all her snack food, or use the last clean towel, or bogart the remote and watch endless hours of sci-fi nonsense.
“Buff! Come on We’re burning daylight here!”
Or when he didn’t force her to get up and go running in Piedmont Park with him at the crack of dawn.
The first time, she’d gone out of shock. Then he’d heard her admit she was worried she might get fat, gain baby weight she’d never shed, and he’d promised to take her with him on his daily run so she wouldn’t.
Xander had a daily run. Every damned day. And now he waited for her every morning, right after daybreak, in the kitchen with a freshly made pot of coffee, before he’d head out to do the five miles he’d seemingly done daily for the past God knows how many years.
Xander also never reneged on a promise.
The keeping of promises was a trait she knew from the Xander of her youth. Every now and then, she would uncover more of the boy she once knew inside the man she didn’t know at all.
After their semi-uncomfortable reunion, where she had hired him on as her new Watcher and practically dragged him out of his hotel to come stay with her, they’d gone to dinner, and she’d gotten the first clue on just how much her former friend had changed.
“It’s a wine bar,” Buffy explained as they entered the remodeled house and went upstairs to the dining room, “but I can’t really have wine, what with the baby. You can, if you want. They’ve just got some of the best food in Midtown.”
“No - you can’t have wine, I won’t either,” he answered. He’d ordered a coke.
Imagine her surprise when, after the coke arrived, he’d pulled a silver and leather well- worn flask out of his pocket and poured a generous amount into the glass. Apparently, her surprise was showing.
“What? I said I wouldn’t have wine. I didn’t say I wouldn’t drink.”
He drank an awful lot. She was pretty sure the flask had to be empty by the time dinner was over. They’d barely talked, and she thought it might be because he was too intent on getting a buzz to communicate. But he moved smoothly, with no outward sign of inebriation as they walked back to her car. “You must be tired,” she said, hesitantly breaking the determined silence that had haunted their evening. “Long day, and…” She wasn’t sure how to diplomatically bring up the flask. “It is almost eleven.”
He shrugged noncommittally. “Whatever. If you don’t feel like doing anything else…” he let the sentence drift off, while his eyes scanned the scenery. “Oh, yeah,” he said almost predatorily as they passed The Vortex, a late-night dance club that seemed to be just warming up, “I wouldn’t mind going there. Sometime,” he added in a more neutral voice.
“So - home? Rest?” She tried not to sound too desperate. But the pregnancy was a bit draining on her.
“Sure,” he answered her flatly.
She gone to bed almost immediately after they got home, hearing the sound of the T.V. going while she washed her face and readied herself for sleep. It was nearly midnight. Well, maybe he’d sleep in late in the morning.
When she awoke, she wondered why. The morning light didn’t usually bother her, especially as pale as it still was. She, for once, didn’t have to pee. Still, something - there it was again. A very small sound. Pregnancy hadn’t dulled her Slayer senses in the least. Someone was in her apartment. She grabbed a stake and headed out the hall, remembering as she wakened further that she had company, and relaxing.
The smell of fresh coffee hit her just before she entered the kitchen, but the sight of the man standing at the counter stopped her cold.
“Hey, Buff. You still drink real coffee with the baby, or did you switch to decaf? I can make more, if you want. I just have to have a cup or two before I go out to run.” He stopped, took a sip out of his mug, and gestured again to the pot. “Want some? Or, hey, you wanna come along?”
“Coffee - sure. Regular, uh, yeah, fine.” She was gawking, she knew it. But the clothes he’d had on last night were, well, unremarkable. This, now, was the smallest pair of satiny running shorts she’d ever seen on a man, and she lived in a heavily gay neighborhood, so that was really saying something. Speedos covered more. Only the loose basketball jersey he wore as his top gave any hint of modesty, and it bared powerful shoulders and arms that were covered in lean muscles. His legs were equally impressive. The queens next door were going to go ballistic if they saw him, Buffy was sure. All that eye candy. She was gonna have to install an extra lock.
“So you wanna come?” At her blank stare, he elaborated. “Running. You do still exercise, don’t you?”
Well, quite honestly, no. Her obstetrician hadn’t ruled it out, but Buffy had viewed her condition as a “get out of workouts free” card. She knew in her heart it was going to be all that much harder to go back to it once the baby was born, Faith had even told her that was so, but she was counting seriously on Slayer healing to do some of the work for her. “Uh, running? Sure.” She looked down at her baggy knit pajamas. “Just lemme change.”
She scrounged out some sweat pants that still fit and a maternity tee shirt. She was going to die from the heat, but she didn’t have anything else to wear. Pulling her hair back in a messy ponytail as she went down the hall, she wondered why she was doing this, exactly. Well, she probably should, but still…
At this early hour, Peachtree Road was a runner’s heaven. Joggers trotted by in ones and twos, some complete with jogging strollers; more serious-faced runners sprinted past, mostly alone. Quite a few wore Peachtree Road Race tees. Apparently, the older the tee, the higher your status among the running community. In fact, locals often referred to it as “the race for a tee shirt.” It was coming up soon, run every year on July Fourth, so the training was going on in earnest. She and Xander headed north on Peachtree, Buffy deciding that Piedmont Park would be a good place to go.
He was taking an easy pace, and she knew it was for her benefit. She was struggling just a little, desperately trying not to show it. She considered herself doing well when they reached the park and she hadn’t dropped dead yet.
There were fewer serious runners there this early; more people walking dogs and a higher ratio of baby strollers. The sky was streaked with apricot and purple, and the beauty of it took Buffy’s mind off her burning calves for a bit. There was no one in sight when it happened. The noise, the movement, the shock of it all…
Thinking about it later, it could have been a tree branch snapping, or maybe a car backfiring. It really couldn’t have been a gunshot, although it certainly sounded like one. Whatever it was, it rang out in the quiet morning air, and no more than seconds passed before Buffy was staring up from the sidewalk at the underside of a sleek handgun, held by a grim-faced Xander Harris.
Her first thought, somewhat irrationally, was “Where the hell was he keeping that?” Next she found herself wondering how he’d somehow eased her down on her back and knelt over her, that quickly, without harming her in the least. ‘Slayer healing’ had never stopped ‘slayer hurting’ in her memory. She watched him scan the area with a professional air. Her next thought came out her mouth without stopping by her mental filters first. “Do you want to get arrested?”
He scowled down at her, but apparently decided the danger was gone, had it ever existed. He stood up, the gun disappearing without Buffy being able to follow its movement from her prone position. “I have a license to carry concealed,” he spat tersely.
She struggled to get up, and he finally noticed and hauled her off the ground. “Concealed where?” she asked breathing heavily from the effort and eyeing the skimpy shorts. Shit, the mental filters must still be off-line.
He turned into Robo-Cop. “Has anyone threatened you? People here know what you do? Any strange, ritualistic deaths lately?”
“Whoa, John Wayne,” Buffy held up her hands in surrender, “Climb down off that horse. Yeah, there’s people here who know what I do. My doctors are all Council trained and approved. They know who and what I am. But threats? Xan, my cover is that I head an environmental group protecting a state landmark. Not a lot of challenges there - outside of being teased by the Park Employees as being overkill. The chances of anyone disturbing the Fairy Nest with development are slim to none. First, the Park is privately owned, and profitable. Then, if somebody bought the company out, they’d have to get permits from so many state and federal agencies before they even ran into me… And the press would crucify them first, anyway. Outside of stupid humans, the Morssago’s have no natural enemies, so no one should be trying to off me to get to them. As for ritualistic deaths - eww. I’ve been away from Sunnydale long enough to find that thought disturbing. Thank God.”
He continued to eye the entire area suspiciously. Finally, the tension in his body dialed down a notch, and Buffy let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. She inhaled it again quickly when he pulled that damned flask out of God knew where and took a large swig. It vanished once more as mysteriously as the handgun had.
“Fine,” he spat after a few more moments of uncomfortable silence, “Let’s go back.”
Buffy insisted on stopping at a café for breakfast, but the number of words they exchanged even in that effort could be counted on the fingers of one hand. She saw him doctor his coffee yet again with the flask, and bit her tongue to avoid saying something cutting about it. She didn’t know how he’d react, and was startled to realize she was a bit afraid of him. He had killed Slayers before, after all…
She shook that thought from her head. He’d done what he felt had to be done. She was acting just the way he expected people to act, and she would never be able to get through to him if she did that.
He’d been beside her when she’d been at her worst. She’d dealt with who she was and what she’d done, but it had taken a year of therapy to get to that point, and she was still going, because once she’d realized what she’d become and done to her closest friends and young girls who’d relied on her, well, she’d fallen apart, and was still getting all put together again. She owed Xander now that loyalty he’d given once without question. Especially now she realized how hard it would have been for her to be loyal to someone who’d behaved as she did then. His bad behavior was nothing next to that. And his killing of Slayers had hurt him far more than any act of his could ever hurt her.
The rest of that day had been a little out of kilter - like a film running just a frame or so ahead of the sound track. Xander didn’t seem to notice, but Buffy felt it, setting her ill at ease until bedtime.
He’d gone out and come back silently some time in the middle of the day. That night she saw it had been a run to the liquor store, since the flask didn’t appear, but rather a full bottle of Jim Beam. The T.V. ran well after she retreated to bed again. But she knew tomorrow had to be different. Her life had to resume, and she was going to have to drag him along for parts of it, if his title as her Watcher was going to amount to anything.
The early run and the constant tension had at least worn her down - she slept like the dead that night.
~**~
<< (1) >>
Does that work for you guys? In the next section, Xander meets the Morssagos, and you get to find out more about them. Beyond that, I don't know what's going to happen yet - I'm as curious as y'all are. But I've written more pages tonight, in one sitting, than I have in several tries previously, so there's hope we'll all find out before long.