The Best Part
Xander sits in the waiting room, his own injuries nothing that couldn’t be handled with a first-aid kit, nothing that required a stay.
The wall across from his vaguely uncomfortable chair exudes a falsely cheery yellow. Disinfectant barely covers the faint smell of urine and the stronger yet less easily definable stench of pain. Why are hospitals everywhere so similar? he wonders. This isn’t Sunnydale Memorial, but it feels like it.
Liar, his mind whispers.
He sighs. Nowhere is ever going to feel exactly like Sunnydale again. He spent half his life dreaming of getting out of that hellhound town, yet here he is, not a day gone by, and he already misses it. Already misses …
Shaking his head in a futile attempt to derail such thoughts, he picks up and immediately puts down the only reading material within reach - an issue of People from last October. If he didn’t care about what celebrities were doing seven months ago when they were actually doing it, there exists little chance he will care now.
Movement catches his eye, and a woman walks past, plump and pretty, with long hair a deep black, which was one color that …
No, he tells himself, I can’t think of …
Turning his head farther than he’d have to if he still had both eyes, he looks up and down the hall. Andrew, Willow, and Dawn went off to look for food while Faith stayed with Robin, and Buffy and Giles looked after the rest of the new Slayers. Xander wishes someone would return now, would give him something to do, something to keep himself occupied.
He sits drumming fingers on thighs, an anxious tattoo of nerves, until a door opens, and he stills to avoid embarrassment.
Emerging from a patient’s room, a nurse squeaks her way up the cold tile hallway in sensible white sneakers, her bright turquoise slacks and multi-colored floral top hanging tent-like around her.
And there she is, in his mind, irrepressible as always, Anya: “I’m not sure I like these things the nurses wear now. They’re not nearly as much fun as the costume I wore when we played patient/nurse.”
The noise that chokes from him sounds half laugh, half sob, and it tears something in his chest as it emerges.
“Why, the front of mine unbuttoned, and you were able to easily push up the short skirt,” she chirps with enthusiasm. “I think that was the best part, don’t you?”
And he pictures her rising and falling above him, ‘taking care’ of the ‘patient,’ her face a study in concentration and pleasure, beautiful with love and life.
“Yes, An,” Xander whispers, voice rough, eye closed to keep seeing her, “that was the best part.”
The wall across from his vaguely uncomfortable chair exudes a falsely cheery yellow. Disinfectant barely covers the faint smell of urine and the stronger yet less easily definable stench of pain. Why are hospitals everywhere so similar? he wonders. This isn’t Sunnydale Memorial, but it feels like it.
Liar, his mind whispers.
He sighs. Nowhere is ever going to feel exactly like Sunnydale again. He spent half his life dreaming of getting out of that hellhound town, yet here he is, not a day gone by, and he already misses it. Already misses …
Shaking his head in a futile attempt to derail such thoughts, he picks up and immediately puts down the only reading material within reach - an issue of People from last October. If he didn’t care about what celebrities were doing seven months ago when they were actually doing it, there exists little chance he will care now.
Movement catches his eye, and a woman walks past, plump and pretty, with long hair a deep black, which was one color that …
No, he tells himself, I can’t think of …
Turning his head farther than he’d have to if he still had both eyes, he looks up and down the hall. Andrew, Willow, and Dawn went off to look for food while Faith stayed with Robin, and Buffy and Giles looked after the rest of the new Slayers. Xander wishes someone would return now, would give him something to do, something to keep himself occupied.
He sits drumming fingers on thighs, an anxious tattoo of nerves, until a door opens, and he stills to avoid embarrassment.
Emerging from a patient’s room, a nurse squeaks her way up the cold tile hallway in sensible white sneakers, her bright turquoise slacks and multi-colored floral top hanging tent-like around her.
And there she is, in his mind, irrepressible as always, Anya: “I’m not sure I like these things the nurses wear now. They’re not nearly as much fun as the costume I wore when we played patient/nurse.”
The noise that chokes from him sounds half laugh, half sob, and it tears something in his chest as it emerges.
“Why, the front of mine unbuttoned, and you were able to easily push up the short skirt,” she chirps with enthusiasm. “I think that was the best part, don’t you?”
And he pictures her rising and falling above him, ‘taking care’ of the ‘patient,’ her face a study in concentration and pleasure, beautiful with love and life.
“Yes, An,” Xander whispers, voice rough, eye closed to keep seeing her, “that was the best part.”