This moment by Criss Moody

Date: May 9th, 2001
Disclaimer: If only. Joss and Co. own them.
Pairing: Anya/Xander/Spike
Summary: Anya discovers the bittersweet parts of life.
Rating: R
Feedback: Tell me I’m a wacked pyscho bitch - but be aware you're not the first to do so.
Notes: Rabbit painstakingly pulled this out of me and betaed. Thank you. And kisses to Jess and Donna for audiencing despite some horror on D's part. I had a craving for Spike/Xander/Anya…yes, I’m insane, and no, i'm not getting help. I like me this way. Title and inspiration comes from Blackbird by The Beatles.
Improv #15: Air – chime – orange – dark

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He likes oranges in the morning because they’re sweet but the rind is bitter. Carefully, he peels the globular fruit in one long, perfect swirl, orange and cream bouncing apart as he lays it down on the table. Then, he separates each slice, so slowly I can read half the newspaper by the time he’s done, each individual section laid out in a circle around the rind. Then, he goes in step, out from the middle, nibbling at a bite of rind, his mouth pursing at the sour citrus, and places a orange piece on the center of his tongue. Lets the saliva pool around it before sliding it between teeth and slicing down, bursts of juicy pulp crashing out against the enamel and flesh.

He has his rituals, like I have mine.

It’s something I've never had a problem with as a human. Rituals. Set certain paths, ways of performing a task. Prayer. Worship. Sacrifice. These things make sense to me. Why do you do it that way? Well, it’s always been done that way and stepping out of line can get you decapitated or turned into a nasty rabbit or something.

He also likes to wake up naked between us, even in the colder months now passed. Spike and I cuddle and leech onto whatever’s closest to us when we sleep. I think, well, I know that I’m afraid that if I don’t hold on while I sleep, I’ll wake up and be Anyanka again. Spike won’t say why, but he can’t sleep without one of us there to wrap long pale legs and arms around. Clenched in the demon sandwich, Xander can’t get away. Even though, sometimes, he has to pee so badly he’s squirming, he won’t make us move. Not until we grumble and wake and fall away from him only to roll into the warm spot left by his body. Spike will watch him walk away, ice blue covering the fear that he won’t come back and the lust. Always the lust because that’s Spike. He gets hard breathing the same air that we breathe.

Delusional to think we’d be happy apart and aside forever.

Early evening, not even dark yet, and we all froze when chiming announced people at the door. People who thought that Xander and Anya were having intercourse in Oregon, and Spike had long since left Sunnydale. I answered the door because, because I didn’t have the patience to keep quiet anymore.

It turned out to be the pizza guy at the wrong house again, and I felt Xander’s relieved puff of air on my neck. I tingled, and turned to kiss him, but heard Buffy and Willow and Tara at the door, with a collective, ‘what are you guys doing here…and what’s with the vampire on the couch? The SPIKE on the couch?’ Of course, they had to come in, and interrupt what I’m sure would have turned out to be a lot of fun sex with the Spike on the couch.

Yelling and shouting and aggrieved Slayers later, Buffy took a hard look at us, and I recognized the squinty look there. Her ‘I’m deciding whether you’re all possessed or not’ look.

“Xander, Anya, do you love him?”

“Uh, yes.”

“Spike, kill them and there won’t even be dust left.”

Sympathetic confusion from Tara and Willow and the trio fled like we had something contagious.

That was three days ago and I’ve realized something about Xander and Spike.

I like them.

I mean, of course, they’re good in bed, and Spike knows almost as much as I do about sexual positions, but I just like them. I like waking up in the mornings to feel Spike slipping in behind me, his cock resting in the small of my back, arms curling around my middle. Xander grunting as he rolls over me and into his place, honey dusted skin dark between pale flesh. The tight feeling in my chest releasing as my breasts cushion up against his broad back. The static spark when Spike’s toes run up my freshly shaven, baby smooth leg.

Past physical pleasures, they fill me up.

I was blubbering one night, and I looked awful. The mirror flashed back this red-faced beast with wet tracks sponging down her puffy cheeks. Xander had declared his love for me – at night, in the dark, away from his friends. But we weren’t naked, and we weren’t having sex, so it made me cry. Because I believed him, because I didn’t believe him, and because he made me feel like a real girl and I realized not for the first time that being real hurt.

Ran from the apartment while Xander whimpered in his sleep and curled around my body pillow. Stumbled hard into the ground, and shook when a hand caressed my shoulder blades. Spike picked me up, took my back to his crypt, and poured whiskey down my throat until I stopped crying. When I asked him why, he shrugged, and I thought ‘well, maybe he’s trying to get in good with Buffy. I mean an idiot could see he’d like to screw her.’ Until his cold, dry lips whispered down my cheek, and his tongue bathed my face of salt tracks. Didn’t know why, and felt like I’d been dumped on my head and spun like a top when his lips bumped into mine, moldable flesh meeting and giving way as we kissed. Soft, mutual sighs and we ended on the floor, and I felt the scratch of twigs and dirt on my thighs for days.

Nothing since then and I took it pragmatically and didn’t tell Xander. Thought he’d never get ‘why’ two people would just have sex. Nearly forgot about Spike as death crept among us and made itself known. I shouldn’t have forgotten. I see the hugeness of how he feels when he loves and my being, fragile mortal shell that it is, aches when I see him look at Buffy. And feel the answering chord in my gut that knows that look. I give that look to Xander. When Xander and Giles took the hellgod wasted Spike back to his crypt, Xander asked some questions.

Like “Spike, why are you muttering my girlfriend’s name and mine in confusing and intermittent ways? ‘No, it’s not Xan, just lonely. Swear. Tell Anya. S’okay to feel.’” And I don’t know details, but I think Xander might have explored some of his homosexual urges and done more than wash the blood from Spike’s body. They showed up at my door clean but silent, Spike unconscious, moaning, and Xander unusually calm. Like he got when he dealt with his parents. Tranquil surface.

I didn’t say anything, and that was probably stupid, because I always say something. I took Spike in my arms, and held him while Xander retrieved cloths and antiseptic. We stripped Spike of his shirt and shoes, gently applying stinging liquid to open gashes, wincing as Spike groaned, then howled. As we lowered him to the bed, Xander regarded me. Regarded because he just stood there, next to the bed, barely a foot away from me, and looked at me. I’d gotten pretty good at knowing his looks, but I didn’t know that one. And I said so, loudly into the dark fragility of the room, and he smiled back at me, stepped into my body and kissed me. Grasping my face in his hands and pressing into me, he licked his way into my mouth and we kissed. And I saw what people meant when they said that kissing was the best part of sex. He said in a way only Xander could ever say, “An, I think you had sex with Spike. And I’m not mad. I’m not jealous. I’m sad you couldn’t tell me that. I think I’m a little frustrated you didn’t come get me. But…uh, can I just be corny and say life is short?”

I said something short and stupid, like okay or yeah and we hugged. That was the first time we all slept together. I woke up with Spike pressed deep into me, as if even wounded and exhausted he was horny, and Xander with eyes open caressing Spike’s thigh as the vampire rocked himself against me. Xander’s other hand brushed against my lips as I came, and as I slipped back into sleep, I heard him shift, roll me to my side, and slide in between Spike and I, into the sex warmth. He squished into the wet spot and I think he likes it there, because he usually ends up there. He likes feeling us against him, below him and in him.

We don't get strange looks from anyone anymore, and Buffy comes over sometimes, arguing with Xander and Spike about what movie to watch. I'm jealous that Spike feels for Buffy, even now, and I’m mad that she doesn't see him as more than a demon. But Xander loves me. And Spike's good in bed.

I'm not sure about happiness, and I don't understand perfection, but I know bittersweet. And I like it.

~end~