Fic: Reason Enough (Oz/Xander, PG)

[allyndra]

Title: Reason Enough

Author: Allyndra          

Pairing: Xander/Buffy, Xander/Cordelia, Xander/Willow, Xander/Anya, but really Xander/Oz (No, it’s not an orgy! Get your head out of the gutter.)

Rating: PG

Spoilers: Through Chosen 
Disclaimer: These are not my beautiful characters. This is not my beautiful world.

Summary: Xander’s never had a good reason to fall in love.

 

 

There was no reason for Xander to fall so hard for Buffy. If he felt like sounding deep, he would say it was because of the inner strength that let her deal with having a destiny before she had a driver’s license, but he knew that was a lie. He was giddily, head over heels in … something for Buffy the moment he saw her. He didn’t know then that she had a destiny. He just knew that the sun shone through her hair like she was its very favorite person, and that the strange feeling in his stomach had nothing to do with crashing into that rail and everything to do with the curve of her lips. Later he would call it a crush, but that was only because he couldn’t think of a reason to defend it as love. After all, she’d never loved him back.

 

There were so many reasons *not* to get involved with Cordelia that it took a major overthrow of his common sense just to kiss her a second time. Sometimes Xander would lie awake at night and recite the reasons to himself. She was shallow. She was mean. She was embarrassed to be seen in public with him. Most of the time he didn’t even like her. But all she had to do was tilt her head toward the janitor’s closet and raise an eyebrow, and all those reasons went straight out of his head. He might not like her, but he wanted her. After the breakup he mentally erased the part of their history that had been a real relationship, the part that made him ache when he thought about throwing it away, and he blamed it all on hormones.

 

He never had to look for reasons to get involved with Willow. She was his best friend, funny and mega-smart, and she kept on liking him even after she watched him puke up the fluorescent aftermath of eating five packets of dry Kool Aid mix and then drinking a two liter of Mountain Dew. She was perfect for him. But those reasons never seemed to matter. Xander knew them intellectually, but emotionally and physically they had no impact. Then one day - BANG! The reasons he should be with Willow weren’t just in his head, they were flooding through his veins, making him pant and shiver and sneak closer even when they were in public. When she was safely back with Oz and he was alone, Xander decided it had all been something Freudian. Maybe it was Oedipal, and he had fixated on Willow because she was the one who had made him lunch and put band aids on his skinned knees when they was little. In any case, it wasn’t love, because he loved Willow, but not like *that*.

 

Xander had no reason to turn Anya down when she’d shown up and demanded sex. And it would have taken a good, logical reason to convince her, too. Since all the blood had drained away from his brain, he hadn’t been up to the challenge of coming up with one, so he’d taken the easy route and had sex with her. He’d kept on taking the easy route, staying with her rather than thinking up reasons to leave, right up until the wedding. And then he’d seen all the reasons he should run in vibrant Technicolor, felt them playing out around him in Feel-a-Rama. When he visited the empty grave he bought for her in an immaculate, expensive cemetery, Xander told her he had loved her. Really he had. Just not enough.

 

Xander had never expected to run into Oz again. There was no reason he should, what with Oz going incommunicado after his last visit to Sunnydale and Xander not leaving a forwarding address on account of the Post Office collapsing into a giant crater. But when he looked up from his horrified fascination with the Coyolxauhqui Stone one hot, smoggy day in Mexico City, he saw Oz standing there, looking taller and paler when surrounded by short, brown people. Xander swallowed his surprise and grinned his recognition, calling out a greeting. Oz didn’t look surprised at all, but Xander took that more as Oz’s innate imperturbability than as a sign that Xander had been expected. He smiled back and pulled Xander down into a hug, and when they left the museum, Xander felt like he was sneaking the real treasure out with him. Xander had already delivered the manuscript Giles had sent him to Mexico with, so there was no reason he couldn’t take some time off to catch up with Oz.

 

Spending time with Oz wasn’t at all like picking up where they’d left off. It was like something new, something not based on Willow or Buffy or full moons. Oz took him to the little apartment he’d been renting, turned on the radio, and started cooking dinner. Xander hovered off to the side, trying to stay far enough back to be out of the way but close enough to still watch, because someone called Tia Beatriz had been teaching Oz to do amazing things with food. Oz gave him an amused look and beckoned him closer, offering to teach him the secrets of perfect tortillas. It was harder than it sounded, especially since measuring cups were apparently against the rules, but it was more fun than Xander had ever had in a kitchen without chocolate sauce being a factor.

 

Oz had hold of Xander’s hand, trying to show him exactly how big of a handful of fat he should use, when Xander looked down into familiar green eyes and caught his breath. He didn’t know what Oz had planned for the future, and he didn’t know how he would define this feeling five years from now. He only knew that the music flowed around Oz like he was its very favorite person and that the strange feeling in his stomach had nothing to do with the ceviche he’d had for lunch and everything to do with the point of Oz’s chin.

 

Oz cocked an eyebrow at him and stroked a slippery thumb across the side of Xander’s hand. “Why the smile?” he asked.

 

Xander dropped his gaze to the side and managed not to squeeze the handful of fat. “No reason,” he said.