needsaparrot | MCA0: Sunday Night

Xander's got an e-mail home open, half-written, as he lounges on the couch with the laptop. Oddly, it's not to Willow, this time - not that it's always to her, but she tends to get the bulk of them due to BFF privileges.

This time, though, it's to the other best friend.

Dear Buffy:

So I met Bridge's parents. His mom pulled a knife on me. Good times. I'm not in tiny card jail, though, which I think I'm supposed to take as a sign that they like me. In other news, mini-Fandom-Andrew got the lead in the school play. I'm not sure if I should warn him about possible fairy possession or warn the school about possible monkey-demons. I'm not sure this school would even notice possible monkey-demons; it's not like we did.

64,000$ question: What if Angel'd still been evil after he got the soul back? What would you have done? Except you did, when you killed him, so I guess I'm asking what should I have done to hel---

If you think, given how close that gets to mentioning things he's never mentioned, that this letter's going nowhere fast, you're not wrong.

[OOC: For the guy whose parents haven't put Xander in tiny card jail yet.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Have I mentioned in the last two minutes that I love you?" Xander grins.

"Not in the last two minutes, nope," Bridge replies.

"I love you. Also trust me, you are not in competition with Andrew. Or, y'know. Anybody anywhere."

"Good," Bridge says, grinning widely at that. "Because in case you haven't noticed, I'm sort of in love with you a lot."

"It might've caught my attention a couple times." There might be a Xander slouching sideways on the couch in such a manner that his head ends up in Bridge's lap.

In the not-dirty way.

"I'm very subtle about it," Bridge replies, and ooh, head in lap. Which necessitates a hand absently running through Xander's hair.

Which necessitates one of Xander's eyes going unfocused. Which would be disconcerting if he weren't wearing a patch over the other one.

"Mmmhhmm. Me too." Then a blink. "I'm not, am I? Too subtle?"

Bridge shakes his head, his free hand reaching for Xander's, twining their fingers together. "Even if I couldn't hear you think it, I'd know."

"Good. 'Cause I wasn't sure if you heard that thing I told your mom about nine billion and forty-seven? But I was under-reporting there, just in case they thought I was sucking up."

"Note how I didn't even use a number," Bridge points out. "'Cause they don't go high enough. Well, infinity I suppose. Infinity and one, maybe."

"Well, mine was on a scale of one to ten," Xander points out right back.

"Well, I *suppose* I can make a concession in that case," Bridge says, after pretending to think it over.

"Mighty big of you."

"Glad you agree."

Xander laughs and stretches, the movement shoving the laptop down to the end of the couch. Then he's quiet for a moment, reminded of what he'd been doing before Bridge showed up.

Bridge glances over at the laptop, then back at Xander. "Hey," he says softly. "You're all thinky. What's up?"

"Just... been trying to figure out how I can help Mel. If I can help Mel, even."

Bridge frowns a little. "With what happened to her brother and... everything?" he's a little hazy on the details, since he wasn't there for the final fight with Harth, but he'd seen how Mel looked after, and he knew the basics.

Xander nods, his head shifting under Bridge's fingers. "Yeah. From my experience of a whole two vampire resoulings, that's not how it was supposed to go."

"Having the soul is supposed to equal good, and a happy ending. But it didn't, not this time."

"I dunno about happy ending," Xander says, thinking of the ongoing Buffy and Angel Days of Our Afterlives show. "But it's not supposed to equal more people dying."

"Well, I meant happy relatively speaking, the no-people-dying thing."

"That's the idea. That's what happened with Angel. I mean, he's still a vampire; he's still trouble." He can only bend so far. Not-dirty. "But he tries to be one of the good guys."

"It sucks," Bridge says, "that some people don't need the excuse of being demons or monsters to be evil." Yeah, it's kind of an obvious statement, but even after two years in Fandom, knowing plenty of people from Sunnydale, and even being possessed by one, demons are still something he doesn't really understand fully.

"I don't know if Harth was evil before he was dead, or just..." Xander's hand describes a vague frustrated arc in the air. "Messed up? I do know it's messing Mel up."