Title: A Critique of Pure Reason
Fandoms: Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel/Lotrips
Main characters: Dom Monaghan, Xander Harris
Rating: PG-13
Length: 40,000 words
Disclaimer: All lies. Which should be quite obvious.
Summary: Dom meets Xander. The rest is history.
AN: Dedicated to calendae, to whom the ridiculous idea of a Dom/Xander crossover belongs.

A Critique of Pure Reason

by

There is a guy at the bar with an eye patch, and this is maybe the most interesting thing that Dom has ever seen in LA. At first he thinks maybe the guy's wearing it ironically - but who wears eye patches ironically? Wouldn't that be like using crutches ironically? Bad taste, even for America.

Then he thinks maybe it's a temporary thing, you know, like the guy just had an eye tuck or something and has the patch to protect it. But he notices that there's a tan-line where the strap goes, so that's not it. Also, this guy is really tan, for winter. Even for LA.

Good looking guy, Dom notices idly, as he tries to figure him out. Not dressed for the clubbing scene, though, not dressed to be noticed. T-shirt and cargo pants both a size too big. Shoulders a little slumped, sitting over in the corner like he doesn't want anyone to see him. But he's paying attention to the room, scanning it like he's looking for something specific.

He really couldn't stand out more if he tried.

In a plastic city of faux perfection, this guy is brown from real sun, not a bottle; he has a heavy bruise on one arm; he may or may not be missing an eye. The sandals on his feet are held together with duct tape.

Dom discovers that he has a pressing need to go up to the bar and get another drink.

The guy glances at him when Dom comes over and signals to the bartender, and out of the corner of his eye, Dom sees Eye Patch Guy do the classic minor-celebrity double take. Dom smiles to himself, and casually glances over, catches the guy staring.

Eye Patch Guy looks sheepish and glances away.

"Hey," Dom says, grinning. The guy looks back quickly and smiles, just a little. But even his smile is sad, somehow.

"Hey, you're, uh, that guy from Lord of the Rings," the guy says, apologetically. "Dominic Monaghan, right?"

"That's me," Dom says.

"You were, uh, you were really good in that," he says. "Great movies."

"Thanks," Dom says. He takes a sip of his drink, tries to think of something else to say.

The guy beats him to it, though. "Uh... this is stupid. But could I get your autograph? I have this fri... well, not friend, but I know this guy who'd kill me if I saw you and didn't get it."

"Oh, yeah," Dom says. He grabs a napkin off the bar. "You got a pen?" The guy fishes one out of his cargo pants. "What's your name?" Dom asks.

"Oh. Xander. But make it out to Andrew, that's the guy who'd kill me."

"Okay," Dom says. And writes, 'Andrew, Be Merry. Dom Monaghan.'

Xander takes the napkin, reads it. "Clever," he says. He folds it and puts it in his shirt pocket. "Thanks."

Dom notices a leather cuff on Xander's wrist, a nice one, with some kind of strange decoration running around it as well - unusual. Dom nods to it. "Nice cuff. Where'd you get it?"

Xander looks at him for a second, then takes a sip of beer. "Africa, actually."

Dom is surprised. "Cool, man. What were you doing there?"

Xander looks down, fiddling with a coaster, turning it around and around. After a second he looks up, smiles wryly. "Fighting evil."

Dom laughs. "And now you've come to LA? You'll be a busy man."

"Tell me about it," Xander says. His teeth are very white in his tanned face, but his eye is bleak and shadowed. "Evil loves Southern California. I grew up around here."

"Yeah?" Dom asks. "You don't seem like an LA kind of guy."

"With the pirate look and everything?" Xander says. "Yeah. I know." His face darkens a little more, turns inward. He looks up again after a second. "Nah, I'm not from here. I grew up in this little town a couple hours away."

"Oh yeah?" Dom asks. He feels like the conversation is starting to get a little weird, even though the topic is mundane. Somehow it's veering into dangerous territory and he feels off-balance. "Whereabouts?"

Xander almost winces. "It doesn't matter," he says. "Hey, great meeting you, Dom. Good luck with everything." And just like that, he puts some cash down on the bar and walks away.

Strangely, this is the most intriguing conversation Dom has had in weeks. It echoes around in his head, and he dreams of pirates, darkly tanned men with shadowed pasts.

He goes back to the same bar three nights in a row, but there is no Xander. Just empty-headed pretty people, all trying to make it in Hollywood. This has never particularly bothered Dom before, but now he is bored out of his mind, and tired of it all.

On the fourth night, there is again no sign of Xander, and Dom gets wasted out of ennui and frustration. When the bar closes he staggers out into the street, begins to walk to his car.

He's not really looking where he's going, and then suddenly in front of him there's some kind of fist-fight going on, a couple of guys in an alley. He can't quite see clearly, because he thought there were three of them, but then there's just two, and then only one, and he blinks, trying to clear his eyes. And out of the darkness comes Xander, brushing off the arm of his coat, which seems to have some heavy gray dust all over it, and adjusting his eye patch.

Dom stands and stares at him. "Hey," he says, inadequately.

Xander looks at him and smiles, surprised. "Hey," he says. "You should look out, walking around here alone at night. LA's a rough town."

"I... yeah," Dom says. "Were you, uh... were there some guys there, a second ago?"

Xander looks behind him, at the empty alley, then rubs the back of his neck awkwardly. "Yeah, they're, uh... gone now."

Dom looks at the alley. There's no way out except past Dom himself, and no one at all had come by him. He blinks. "Okay." Xander just stands and looks at him. "I'm, uh... just gonna go, then," Dom finishes, lamely. He walks to his car, parked near the alley, and fumbles with his key.

"Hey," Xander says, following him. "I don't think driving's a good idea for you, at the moment. I'll call you a cab, okay?"

Dom is having trouble getting the key in the lock, and finally he gives up, glaring at the car. "Okay," he says. He turns at looks at Xander expectantly.

Xander looks sheepish, again. "I don't actually have a phone." Dom sighs and fishes his cell out of his pocket, holding it out mutely to Xander. Who calls him a cab without comment.

When Xander hands the phone back to him, Dom says, "Seriously, who are you?"

Xander shrugs. "I'm Xander. Harris."

"And you fight evil," Dom says. "Calling cabs for the drunk and disorderly."

"Well, it's just a small part of my fighting-evil repertoire," Xander says. "But sure, I guess."

Dom rubs at his forehead. His head is beginning to ache a little bit, and he feels all fuzzy. When he looks up, Xander is still standing there, all tan and eye patch and dirty flip-flops. "You're quite possibly the strangest person I have ever met in LA," Dom says, as the cab pulls up. He opens the door of the vehicle and looks over at Xander, who seems strangely flattered. "You wanna share?"

Xander hesitates for a second, then shrugs. "Sure."

***

"So where're you staying?" Dom asks Xander after giving the cab driver his address.

Xander turns his head slightly, so Dom sees a three-quarter view of his features, streetlights flickering over them. The eye patch is a dark shadow in the far reaches of his face, almost unnoticeable. Somehow he is not less intriguing for this. "Around," Xander says.

Dom nods, slowly. "Oh, right, around," he says. "I hear good things about that place. Does it get cable?"

Xander smiles sharply, his mouth twisting. "Yeah, and they put a chocolate on your pillow."

"Cool," Dom says. The alcohol has dulled his brain and he leans his head back against the seat, closes his eyes just for a minute. The noise of the engine and slight jostling of the road are soothing, nice.

Next thing he knows Xander's shaking his shoulder. "Hey, this is you."

Dom manages to lift his head, rub at his eye. "Right. Yeah."

He opens the door, slides out and stands, but then nearly topples over sideways.

"Whoa," Xander says, sliding out after him. He grabs Dom's arm and steadies him. "You all right?"

"Yeah," Dom says. "It's cool. Just, you know, sleepy. Thanks, man."

Xander looks him in the face and smiles, reassuringly. He opens his mouth and is about to speak when he's interrupted by the squealing of tires, a car pulling up behind them. Dom turns to look and next thing he knows there are four or five guys all around them, grabbing at him. One hits him in the gut and he doubles over, pained. But it only takes a split second for him to remember his stunt training and he quickly head butts a guy in front of him and manages to extract himself from the melee, staggering towards his house.

Their cab has already taken off, driver in a panic, and Xander is competently fighting off a couple of the guys. There seem to be fewer of them than there were moments before. And there's something wrong with their faces. Dom can't get a good look in the mess of fists and elbows, but they're fucked up. And they're not coming after him - they're focused on Xander.

"Run for the house!" Xander says, when he sees Dom staring. "Get inside, quick!"

Without questioning, Dom runs, managing to get the door unlocked and open more quickly than he ever has, adrenaline pumping through his veins.

Xander hits one in the face, hard; kicks another in the balls, and soon he too is racing for the door, skidding past the threshold like a kid running to first base. He makes no effort to shut the door.

Dom is standing frozen in the front hallway. He feels like he should move, do something, shut the door, but his legs don't seem to want to. They seem to want to sit down right here in the middle of the floor, and who is he to stop them?

Xander stands at the doorway, looking out at the guys who are still on the front lawn, but who are not attempting to storm the open door. Their faces are definitely wrong, distorted. Monstrous and yellow-eyed, something wrong with their bone structure. Their teeth glint white in the moonlight.

"Okay, guys?" Xander says to them derisively, as if he's talking to a bunch of naughty children rather than the freakishly strong men with crazy yellow eyes who just assaulted them. "That was just about the lamest ambush ever. My half-witted grandmother would be a better vampire than you freaks. 'Oh, we'll sneak up on them under the cover of Chevrolet and they'll never know what hit them! It's a brilliant plan!' Chuckleheads."

"Hey, it's a Volvo," one of the guys says back, offended.

"And it's probably more intelligent than you are," Xander says, and he swings the door shut casually, with a flick of his wrist.

He turns to look at Dom. "Sorry about that."

"Uh... that's okay?" Dom says, from where he sits on the floor, leaning against the wall. He feels sort of dizzy, like he's not quite sure which way is up. And his brain seems to be telling him that Xander just said something about vampires, but that can't be right.

After a second, Dom looks at the door. "Don't you want to lock that?"

"Huh?" Xander says. "Oh. Right. Sure." He turns the deadbolt like it's a formality. "Hey, do you mind if I use your phone? It's local." He offers Dom a hand up, and Dom takes it shakily.

"No, um... that's cool. Yeah. The phone is...." Dom can't seem to remember where the phone is, for a moment. "In the kitchen. Through here."

He's almost surprised that his legs hold him, but they do, and he walks shakily into the other room, points at the phone.

"Are you okay?" Xander asks, concerned. "Maybe you should sit down. Get some water or something." He picks up the phone but looks at Dom solicitously. After a second Dom collapses into one of the kitchen chairs and puts his head in his hands, elbows on the table. He'd be fine if things would just sit still for a minute and let him *think*. Xander grabs a glass that's sitting on the counter, sniffs it (single guy, yeah?), shrugs and fills it with tap water, puts it down beside Dom's elbow.

Dom looks at it. Unless that's a glass of sanity, he doesn't think it's going to help.

Xander's fishing a piece of paper out of his pocket and dialing, leaning against the counter casually. "Hello, Angel?"

Dom half-listens to Xander's side of the conversation as he rubs his forehead and stares at the wood-grain of the table.

"No, I'm here in a, uh, unofficial capacity. Look, big guy, I don't know if you still do this kind of stuff, but I ran into a big nest of vamps tonight - took a few of them out, but the rest followed me and are annoying the hell out of us. I know you're working for the Man, now, but... yeah. You will? Great."

Suddenly there's a banging on the window and when Dom looks up a fanged, horrible face thumps itself up against the glass, like something out of a nightmare. It's all teeth and eyes and malice and staring at him, and he yelps, loudly. And falls out of his chair.

Xander looks over, grimaces, and walks over to the window. Flicks at the glass like a kid does at a fish tank and, covering the phone, says, loudly, to the... thing, "Newsflash - you're not scary! Now get lost! Shoo!"

Then, looking at Dom, he says, gently, "They can't come in unless you invite them."

Dom's voice, once he gets it out, is weak. "Because they're vampires," he says. Xander nods, looking sympathetic, and goes back to his phone call, details of location and hunting and staking and Dom really can't handle any of this right now. Or maybe ever. He stays on the floor and leans his head against the chair, wanting very badly to just go to sleep. For awhile.

Xander walks over after he hangs up the phone, looks down at him. He's a tall guy, especially towering from Dom's perspective on the floor. He looks like he doesn't quite know what to say.

"They're, uh... going to take care of it for us. So no worries, right?"

Dom almost laughs out loud. "No worries. Right."

Xander runs his hand through his hair nervously, and then sits down on the floor across from Dom.

"I... guess you probably have some questions or whatever."

"You think?" Dom says, trying to be joking and sarcastic, but his voice comes out weird-sounding and shaky.

"I know it's strange. But I'll answer whatever you want to ask me."

Dom looks at Xander, who is serious in the dim light, completely unsmiling. This is not, apparently, a big practical joke or a hallucination. Dom is really sitting on his kitchen floor in the middle of the night, a guy with an eye patch asking him if he has any questions about the vampires that are besieging them. Suddenly he feels very, very tired. And he doesn't want to know.

He looks at Xander, sitting there waiting expectantly. He can see a few gray hairs near Xander's temple, though he thinks that Xander's probably younger than he is. There is a faint scar above Xander's lip, a line of lighter skin, of scar tissue, standing out against his sun-darkened skin. The eye patch looks like it might rub, a bit - Dom thinks it must sometimes be irritating, having that fabric always there.

This is what people who fight evil look like. Dom hadn't known.

"Anything," Xander says, trying to prompt him.

Dom doesn't want to hear about those guys outside, those things in his backyard. He looks at Xander directly, sees his one dark brown eye looking back.

"Are you really missing an eye?" he hears himself asking.

Xander blinks at him. "Yeah." He self-consciously rubs at the band of the eye patch, adjusting it.

"Can I see?" Dom asks. Because it is the middle of the night and there are vampires outside and he wants to know, see what they can do.

Xander stares at him. Dom can see his breathing speed up, get shallower. "I don't... No one's ever asked me that," he says after a second, almost to himself. Dom looks at him. "Yeah, I guess," he says finally. "What the hell."

He reaches up and pulls the patch aside, bares the empty socket. It's bad.

Dom looks, without flinching. After a second he raises his hand to Xander's temple, rests his fingers lightly on the skin there, near the cavernous hollow in Xander's face. He can see that it is taking a lot of effort for Xander to stay there, stay still - he obviously badly wants to flinch back. His skin is warm under Dom's fingertips.

"Wow," Dom says quietly after a second, looking at the deep, empty hole where Xander's eye should be. He looks like a mutilated doll, broken, unbalanced. "That's fucked up." He can barely hear himself, he says it so faintly.

After a pause Xander says, "I know." His voice is jagged, rough edges and ache.

Dom moves his finger along Xander's temple just slightly, almost but not quite a caress, and then pulls his hand back, moves himself back into his own space. Xander clears his throat, looking down and moving the eye patch back into position. Neither of them speaks.

"Vampires?" Dom asks, after a minute.

"No," Xander says. "It was... it was something else."

"Evil?" Dom says.

"Yeah." Xander isn't looking at him - he's staring into space, somewhere above Dom's right shoulder. He looks bad, lines pronounced on his face.

"Okay," Dom says, and he gets up from where he sits. That's enough.

Xander is still sitting, staring off into space. He doesn't move even when Dom leaves, goes down the hallway and pulls out a spare blanket and pillow from the linen closet. He walks back into the kitchen and tosses them in Xander's lap.

"Couch is in the living room. That cool?"

Xander glances up. "Oh. Yeah."

"Good. Because otherwise you'd be in with me, and I kick."

Xander looks startled, then laughs a little, seems to mostly come out of his mood. "Couch is good."

Dom smiles slightly at him and heads to his room, pulling off his shirt as he goes. Halfway down the hall he calls back to Xander, "If I have nightmares, I'm holding you responsible."

"Fair enough," he hears Xander say, before he falls onto his bed and into a deep sleep.

***

Dom slip-slides out of unpleasant dreams and troubled sleep, an oily residue of vague anxiety and unease clinging to him even as he opens his eyes, blinks to the morning sun coming through his blinds. The sheets are tangled around his legs and he struggles briefly to free himself before getting to his feet and letting his head accustom itself to standing upright. Something is wrong, deeply wrong, with the world, but he can't remember what it is, just has a sense of disquiet and danger lodged in his gut and between his shoulder blades.

On his way to the bathroom to brush his teeth, he notices the spare blanket folded neatly at the bottom of the couch and blinks. Suddenly his vague sense of discomfiture has a very definite source, and he remembers an evil face pressed against the window, the blackness of an empty eye socket, the fangs on men in his backyard.

Vampires. It's a lot harder to believe when the sun is shining and everything is quiet, he thinks as he brushes the nasty taste out of his mouth.

When he pads into the kitchen, wearing only pajama bottoms, Xander is standing at his stove, cooking. His clothes look a lot more ragged in daylight and his hair is still sleep-mussed, flat in the back. He is barefoot.

Dom clears his throat. "Hey."

Xander turns, smiles. "Hey. Morning. You want eggs?"

Dom thinks for a second, feels out his stomach. Not the worst hangover ever. And he does kind of want eggs. "Yeah, okay." His voice is sleepy-rough, and he runs a hand through his hair, pulling up one of the stools at the island as Xander starts putting the contents of the frying pan onto two plates. Dom finds himself thinking about that crude hole in Xander's face, the withered edges of the eye socket, and he inadvertently winces when Xander turns, though there is only the ordinariness of the eye patch, black fabric and elastic. He wonders when the eye patch became ordinary.

Xander looks at him, expressionless. "You're thinking about my eye, aren't you?"

"No," Dom says, too quickly.

"I know it's fucked," Xander says, his voice still carefully neutral. "You don't have to pretend."

Dom looks down as Xander puts the plate of scrambled eggs in front of him, feeling awkward. "Well, we're all a little fucked," he says, finally. "I mean, look at my ears! That's just wrong, man." He looks up at Xander, grins apologetically.

Xander laughs, surprised. "Okay," he says, shaking his head a little. "Um... forks. Where?"

Dom points at a drawer and Xander pulls two out, slides one across to him.

"So..." Dom says. "Vampires. Still real?"

"'Fraid so," Xander says, sitting down across from him.

"Werewolves?" Dom asks, joking.

"Yup," Xander says absently, taking a bite. "My best friend dated one in high school."

Dom blinks at him. "Really?"

"Uh huh," Xander says. "Kind of annoying, actually, he had to lock himself up at the full moon and one of us would have to watch to make sure he didn't get out."

Dom swallows, then finally laughs, disbelievingly. "Was he really good at basketball?"

Xander looks up and grins. "Yeah, we called him teen wolf. Looked a lot like Michael J. Fox."

Dom shakes his head. "Bizarre." He takes another bite of eggs, considering. "Okay, um... zombies?"

"Yeah, if something raises the dead. We had a zombie cat for a couple of days."

"What'd you call him?"

"Ugly," Xander says, straight-faced.

Dom laughs. "Um... Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?"

"Those are characters," Xander says. "So no dice. Oh! Except once?" Xander is suddenly animated. "I met Dracula. Seriously."

"You met Dracula," Dom says skeptically.

"Yeah, it was crazy. Except then he made me his bug-eating minion," Xander says, his face clouding over again. He digs his fork into his eggs irritably.

Dom looks at him in his old shirt, stubble dark on his cheeks, scars and eye patch and grim determination. "That's hard to imagine," he says after a second.

Xander looks up, surprised and pleased. "Thanks. But it's really not."

The phone rings, interrupting, and Dom gets up to answer it, punching the talk button on the cordless. "Hello?"

"Hello, is Xander Harris there?" an American voice asks politely. Dom blinks, then holds the phone out to Xander. "It's for you," he says slowly.

Xander looks as confused as he feels, but takes the phone from him.

"Hello?" he says uneasily into the receiver. Then he seems to relax, his whole body breathing out in an annoyed sigh. "Andrew! How did you get this number? ... Geez, never trust a vampire, soul or not."

Dom stares at him. What?

"No, yeah, I'm fine," Xander says into the phone after a second. "I just... lost my cell phone a couple of days ago. You guys need to stop obsessing. ... No, I'm just... no, Andrew, I haven't met any celebrities."

Hey, what the hell? Dom looks at him and clears his throat, loudly. Xander grimaces and shakes his head, but Dom keeps glaring at him until he caves.

Xander sighs. "Well, okay," he says into the phone. "I did meet, uh, Dom Monaghan." He immediately winces and holds the phone out from his ear, making a face at Dom. Dom can hear what sounds like squealing coming from the receiver, and he tries to suppress a smirk. Xander listens for awhile. "Andrew.... Andrew. Get a grip on yourself...." Another long pause. "Andrew, you're not making any sense. Conspiracy? I don't...." Xander looks at Dom, brow furrowed in confusion. He covers the mouthpiece of the phone with his hand and says, "You aren't dating Elijah Wood, are you?"

Dom starts laughing, laughing so hard he can't get words out. He shakes his head 'no' at Xander, who shrugs apologetically and rolls his eyes, pointing at the phone.

"Okay, Andrew? I've gotta go. Tell Giles and everybody I'm fine, all right? All right.... Yeah.... Okay.... Andrew? That's cool, but I've gotta go. Okay. Bye, Andrew. Okay... *bye*, Andrew. Bye." He hangs up the phone quickly, punching at the "end" button and chucking the cordless down on the counter like it was burning his hands.

"Sorry," he says to Dom. "That was the reason I lost my phone, right there."

Dom smiles. "What'd you do with it?"

Xander's face darkens, gets closed off. He stares into space for a second. "I threw it into a crater," he says, finally, and then picks up their empty plates and turns, taking them to the sink.

The water from the tap seems louder than usual, and Dom doesn't know what to say.

**

Dom stares at Xander's back, the planes of it shifting as he washes the dishes, his body tense and movements angry. And as he stares, suddenly something in his brain clicks, two and two standing next to each other to abruptly make four. Crater, town a couple of hours away, abnormally high death rate, the only news story anyone could talk about for like a week. Last May.

"You're from Sunnydale," he blurts out. "That earthquake/sink-hole thing."

Xander's shoulders go very still. "Yeah," he says finally, on an exhale. He puts the last plate in the dish rack and leans with both hands on the edge of the sink, shoulders hunched.

Dom fidgets. "So I'm guessing it wasn't actually a freak geological occurrence?" he says to fill the long silence. "More evil?"

"Yeah," Xander says again. He turns abruptly. "Look, I should go." He looks strained, dark ring around his eye, lips pressed tightly together.

"No, c'mon..." Dom cuts himself off. After a second, he sighs. "You always get this touchy when your hometown comes up?"

Xander's fingers start tapping rapidly against the counter behind him. "I'm not... I just..." he looks away, tries to collect himself. "Look, man, you don't want to get into this. Trust me. I'll leave and you can go back to your life, and... yeah. Just forget about it."

"What if I don't want to forget about it?" Dom asks, his voice low.

"Then you'll probably end up dead," Xander says, looking Dom in the eye, face drawn. He holds the eye contact until Dom finally looks away, unnerved. "I should go," Xander says again, softly.

"Where?" Dom asks, looking back at him.

Xander shrugs. "Does it matter?"

"I could give you a ride," Dom says. "Where are you staying?"

Xander shrugs again, looking awkward. "I'm, uh, not sure yet."

"Well, where's your stuff?"

Xander looks down at himself wryly, then glances at Dom with a half-smile. "I'm currently wearing all my worldly possessions. Oh, except my flip-flops, which are in your living room." Dom's eyebrows go up. "Hey, the things you own, they end up owning you," Xander says ruefully. "I'm a free man."

Dom clears his throat. "That's very Tyler Durden of you, but... don't you want to do laundry?" he asks. "I could throw your clothes in the washer, you could take a shower. And then I could drive you wherever."

Xander rubs his forehead slowly, face troubled.

"You should take advantage of this," Dom says. "I don't offer to do just anyone's laundry, you know."

Xander plucks at the sleeve of his grimy shirt, makes a face. "Well... okay, yeah. Thanks."

"Not a problem," Dom says, and he steers Xander towards the bathroom.

"Just leave your stuff outside the door and I'll put it in the wash," Dom says, after explaining the funny tic of the shower head to Xander, and he goes to get dressed, throwing on a thrift store t-shirt and his favorite jeans.

When he scoops up Xander's clothes from outside the bathroom door - cargo pants, t-shirt, flannel shirt, boxers - he notices an extra heft to the trousers. Xander forgot to empty his pockets. In the laundry room Dom pulls out a shoebox and dumps the contents of the pockets into it, examines them. Snooping is wrong, he tells himself as he pokes through, looking at what's there.

One Leatherman, scuffed and battered, the knife edge obviously re-sharpened several times. There is a dark stain at the bottom of the knife that might be blood.

Two sharp sticks - stakes, Dom mentally corrects himself.

One toothbrush, blue.

One pair of extra boxers, plaid, rolled up. After a moment's hesitation, Dom throws them in the washer with the rest of Xander's things.

One ballpoint pen, black, with tooth-marks on the end.

One keychain with three keys on it. The keychain is one of those plastic ones that holds a photograph on each side, and contains two pictures obviously taken at one of those automated photo booths, maybe at a fair or something. On the first side, Xander and a brown-haired woman are squeezed into the booth together, making faces at the camera, laughing; on the other side, they're kissing. They look happy. Xander has both his eyes and is wearing a truly hideous, bright Hawaiian shirt. He is almost unrecognizable, cheerful and bright, a goofy grin on his face. Dom looks at the pictures for a long time before setting the keychain aside.

One United States passport, issued in June of 2003. Dom flips it open idly, notes that it belongs to one Harris, Alexander LaVelle, with an unfortunate photograph inside. Xander's birth date is in November of 1980, to Dom's surprise, making him just 23. That seems much too young. The emergency contact, penciled in on page seven, is a Rupert Giles, in London, and the "bearer's address in the United States" has been left blank. The stamps inside are from the UK, Germany, Italy, South Africa, Namibia, Angola, Zimbabwe - a long line of stamps, of visas, going on and on. The last is from Cairo, with Arabic Dom can't read. So the Africa thing wasn't a joke.

The final item is a wallet, brown leather, partially held together with duct tape where it has begun to tear. Dom flips it open gingerly, this final invasion of privacy. There is a California driver's license, issued to Alexander L. Harris, with an address in Sunnydale, California. There are various cards - credit, debit, library, Blockbuster, frequent flyer, voter registration (also with the address in Sunnydale). Health insurance through an organization called the "Council of Watchers." Some cash, and a list of names and phone numbers, scattered throughout the world. A note, in loopy girl's handwriting - "Xander, we love you! Be safe! Love, Dawn" - and, in another handwriting underneath, "Ditto for me. And don't do anything stupid. Love, Buffy." And pictures, which Dom saves for last. There is one of a much younger Xander, sitting on a picnic table with two girls, a blonde and a red-head. Xander is grinning, looking at the blonde, who is looking up at the camera and trying not to smile. The redhead is laughing, looking over at the two of them. The next picture is another one of the brown-haired girl from the keychain, except now her hair is blonde. She is sitting with her body facing away from the camera, and has just turned her head to look behind her, unaware the camera is there, face serious and open, unguarded. She is very pretty. The third picture is a posed school photograph of a lanky teenager with long brown hair, nose a little too big for her face, maybe fourteen or fifteen years old. And the fourth and final picture is of Xander and the key chain woman, younger, all dressed up, posed in front of a big "Class of '99" backdrop. School dance of some sort, it looks like. Neither of them is smiling, and they look awkward with each other, like their touching hands are posed, not natural. Not like the pictures in the keychain, where they are all easy casualness, all happiness.

Dom flips the pictures over to see if anything is written on the back, see who these girls are, but there isn't anything there. He fingers the glossy blankness, wondering which, if any of them, is Dawn or Buffy or any of the other names on the phone list, and then carefully replaces the pictures into the wallet, fastens it back up.

He hits the button to start the washing machine and goes to see if Xander's finished his shower yet.

***

Dom figures the only reason he wins the argument is that he has the advantage of being fully clothed while Xander is only wearing a towel.

Xander keeps folding his arms across his chest, folding and refolding them.

"So where were you going to go today if you hadn't been trapped in my house by vampires?" Dom asks.

"Oh, hey, you can just drop me off at the bus station," Xander says. He moves his hands as if to put them in his pockets, then remembers that the towel has no pockets and awkwardly re-crosses his arms across his chest.

"That's not," Dom points out, "actually what I asked." A bead of water is right in the hollow of Xander's collarbone, catching the light from the window. Dom tries not to watch as it moves downward across Xander's chest. Which is broad and muscular. As are his bare arms. "Where were you planning on going?"

Xander sighs and rubs the back of his neck, where his hair is still damp from the shower. The drop of water has moved lower, nearly to his navel and the towel below, slung low around his hips. His skin looks very tan against the clean white of the cotton, brown and strong. "Sunnydale," he says finally, his shoulders slumping. "The crater. I was going to go back."

"I'll take you," Dom says without hesitation.

"You really don't have to do that," Xander says, looking very tired.

"I know. But I'm doing it," Dom says. He hears the buzzer for the washing machine go off and moves toward the laundry room. "We'll go as soon as your clothes are dry."

Xander starts to say something, but Dom cuts him off. "Hey, I'm between projects." He does air-quotes on the "between projects" bit. "I'm bored. Please. Let me have something to do today."

Xander's hands don't know what to do with themselves again - he rubs his forehead, then eventually just sits heavily on the couch, letting his arms rest on the cushions beside him. "Okay," he says finally, defeated. "Okay."

***

They take the old VW bus Dom bought on eBay.

"eBay?" Xander says dubiously.

Dom shrugs. "Thought it was funny. And the thing runs."

And so they are driving across the California desert, sun hot on Dom's left arm where it is resting on the windowsill. Sunglasses on and windows down, an old mix tape Elijah had made playing loudly on the stereo. Not talking much - Xander seems tired and morose and Dom is leaving him alone, for once.

The distances of driving in America are still strange to Dom - how you can drive for hours and hit nothing at all except the vast expanse of highway, the long flat emptiness. How you can drive what would be the entire length of England and Scotland and not make it out of California.

Dom hears a tinny melody begin and turns down the music. "That's my mobile," he says. "Could you see who's calling?"

Xander reaches for the dashboard where Dom had tossed the phone. "Why does your cell play 'Hit Me, Baby, One More Time'?" he asks as he picks it up. Dom shrugs, staring with great interest at the road in front of him. "It's 'Kelly'," Xander says, looking at the display.

"Eh. Ignore it, then," Dom says. "I'm not in the mood."

"Yeah? Who's Kelly?" Xander asks.

"Osbourne," Dom answers.

Xander stares at him and snorts. "Seriously?"

Dom shrugs. "Yeah."

"You lead a surreal life," Xander says, looking back down at the phone and shaking his head.

It's Dom's turn to snort. "Yeah," he says. "It's my life that's surreal."

Xander starts pushing buttons on the phone, looking through the numbers Dom has stored.

"Orlando Bloom," Xander says. "My friend's little sister wants to marry that guy."

"Everyone's little sister wants to marry Orli," Dom says. "It's like a disease."

Xander's smiling. "And how is 'Orli' these days?"

"He's shooting... something or other," Dom says, answering despite the heavy irony of the question. He tries to keep his tone neutral. "I dunno. I haven't talked to him lately. I guess he's okay."

"Yeah," Xander says, quieter.

There's a pause. Finally Dom takes a breath and speaks quickly. "You ever feel like everyone's moving on with their lives but you? Like they all know what they're doing and have things together and you're just stuck?" His chest feels tight, empty, vulnerable, and he stares at the road with hot eyes.

"All the time," Xander says, quietly but with surprising fervor.

Dom glances at him quickly, but Xander is looking straight ahead and all Dom can see is profile and eye patch. And Xander's hands, twisting on the mobile, clutching hard. "Yeah," Dom says after a minute. They drive in silence for a minute before Dom turns the music back up, uncomfortable with the silence. Xander tosses the mobile back on the dashboard and slumps in his seat, resting his head against the window.

The VW hums along the empty highway.

***

They have to stop to fuel up about three-quarters of the way there. Dom stands in the sunshine pumping the gas while Xander goes inside to use the toilet. It is a dusty old service station in the middle of nowhere and Dom looks out over the scrubby desert, bleached out in the afternoon sun. He is beginning to feel a strange sense of unease and revulsion, coupled to a growing desire to go forward, keep driving. It feels like the dark parts of him, the parts he dislikes, are rising up - the shame and power he felt sneaking his dad's porn, the black hatred he had for Mike Harris as a teenager, the feeling of wanting to beat him till he bled. He shudders involuntarily just as Xander comes out, holding two Cokes and a bag of crisps.

"You okay?" Xander asks, his one good eye squinting in the sun. He hands Dom one of the Cokes.

"I feel... weird," Dom says, shaking his head. "It's probably nothing." He finishes dispensing the gas and swings the nozzle back to its holder.

"Half like you want to go forward and half like you want to run away screaming?" Xander asks matter-of-factly.

Dom stares at him. "Yeah."

"Feels like home," Xander says. Dom keeps staring until Xander elaborates. "That's the Hellmouth. We closed it last year, but there's still a little bit of the mystical energy or whatever left. It attracts evil, that's why our town was the way it was." He fixes Dom with a steady gaze. "Not everybody notices the feeling, but yeah, it's there."

"Weird," Dom says, beginning to feel uncomfortable. He goes around the vehicle to climb back into the driver's seat.

Xander slams shut his own door as Dom starts the engine.

"It's not far now," Xander says quietly. "We're almost there."

***

It is a big-ass crater. Landscape looks like it belongs on the moon, or a Shel Silverstein book - Where the Highway Ends. Road just runs straight into the enormous hole, cracking and buckling a bit before it gets there. The authorities have put up big caution signs, but otherwise, it's just a giant crater, out in the middle of nowhere. Where a town used to be.

"Scheisse," Dom mutters when he sees it. Xander stares straight ahead.

Dom pulls the VW bus onto the shoulder to park, more out of habit than necessity. It's not like parking in the middle of the road would block traffic or anything, but it feels better to be on the shoulder. Safer. He turns off the engine and they sit staring out the windshield at the desolate landscape. Xander looks pale, like he might be sick.

After awhile Xander gets out and walks off, looking like he needs to be by himself. Dom doesn't follow. Instead he pulls out his journal and sits on the edge of the crater, after making sure the ground is sturdy. He lets his legs dangle over the edge and leans back against his hands, his fingers in the sun-warmed dirt. It is a gorgeous day.

He starts to write, but suddenly doesn't know what to say. How best to sum up the events of the last 24 hours? "Met one-eyed man at bar. Spent night trapped by vampires. Eggs for breakfast."

Instead he writes, "More things in heaven and earth, Horatio. Weirdest night ever. Met Xander Harris." And then chews on his pen and doodles in the margins for awhile. After a bit he realizes he's doodling faces with fangs and a werewolf playing basketball.

Xander is walking around over to his right, throwing rocks harshly into the crater, his motions quick and angry. Dom watches the trajectory of the stones, listens for them to hit the bottom. It's a long time before he hears them faintly clatter against stone and earth and whatever else is down there. Bodies, probably, Dom thinks. Then he wishes he hadn't thought it.

He looks down at the drop below him and wonders if you could climb it, down into the bottom. Wonders if anyone has. It seems like you should be able to see rubble, the remains of houses and things, but it's just a bunch of debris, impossible to make anything out. Rocks and dirt and dust all muddled together.

Xander comes over after awhile, stands on the left so his good eye is facing Dom. He doesn't say anything, just looks into the crater as Dom squints up at him.

Finally, he says, "I think I know more dead people than live ones." He sits down beside Dom, resting his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. Dom can see his index finger rubbing hard at his temple, as if trying to massage out a headache. Xander continues, quietly, almost to himself. "I always think that coming back here will help, but it never does."

Dom fiddles with a pebble, looking down.

"I worry that I'm forgetting," Xander says, still so soft that Dom has to strain to hear. "They don't have gravestones, even, anymore. And no one else remembers. Sometimes I want to get their names tattooed all over me, so I can't forget."

Dom flicks the pebble into the crater thoughtfully, watches it tumble down the side. "Tell me," he says.

Xander's head comes up. "What?"

"Tell me about them. Start at the beginning," Dom says, flipping another pebble and watching its descent.

Xander doesn't say anything for a long time, looking straight ahead, his face haggard. "Jesse," he says, finally, letting out a long breath. "My best friend. Tenth grade. He got vamped and then I staked him." He is very controlled, but his voice is heavy and he speaks like someone ripping off a scab, morbid fascination and pain and the grim satisfaction of getting it off.

Dom takes hold of Xander's right hand and pulls it towards him. Xander stares, confused, as Dom uncaps a Sharpie with his teeth and writes "JESSE" in big letters across the back of Xander's hand. Xander looks at it for a long moment. The skin of his palm is warm under Dom's fingers, where he's holding it steady, and he can faintly feel Xander's pulse beating quickly under his thumb. Xander's hand is full of calluses, thick and rough.

Dom spits the marker's cap onto the ground beside him. "Who else?" he asks quietly, when Xander stares him in the face.

Xander blinks and looks down, thinking. After a second he looks up again. "Dr. Gregory. Our biology teacher. A praying mantis lady decapitated him."

Dom makes a face, sympathetic acknowledgement of icky-ness, and writes "Dr. Gregory" up Xander's right arm. "Who else?" he says.

The list goes on, the Sharpie ghosting across Xander's skin, marking him. When Dom has written names up and down the front and backs of both arms, he pauses, out of space.

"Take off your shirt," he says after a second. "Unless that's everyone."

Xander laughs humorlessly. "I'm not even finished with high school." He pulls his shirt off quickly, body twisting, and Dom keeps writing on his sun-warmed skin as the roll call continues.

By the time Xander's whole upper body is covered, Xander is shaking beneath Dom's hands. "Tony Harris," he says in a low voice. "My father. Jessica Harris. My mother." Dom writes Tony on Xander's left shoulder and Jessica on his right, carefully printing in the small space left. Xander takes a deep breath, shudders as Dom finishes the last 's' and stands poised for the next name.

"Who else?" Dom murmurs, again. He is kneeling behind Xander, a hand on each of his shoulders, fingers smeared with black ink. Dom's hands are steady, trying to be reassuring, putting slight, comforting pressure on Xander's shaking muscles.

"Anya," Xander says, his voice frayed and rough. "I was going to marry her. I..." he stops, abruptly, choking on the words.

Dom writes "Anya" in the last space remaining, just between Xander's shoulder blades, dead center in his back. The sun is setting on the other side of the crater, its light rosy and warm and in Dom's eyes.

"She's the last one," Xander says. "That's it." He looks down at himself, covered in black names, upper body full of them. He laughs unsteadily. "I look like the Vietnam Memorial."

"Nah, you're much sexier," Dom says, hands still on Xander's shoulders.

"Well, the Vietnam Memorial is not the sexiest of memorials," Xander says absently, picking up his shirt and sorting out the sleeves. "It's no Washington Monument."

Dom laughs and stands as the sun finally sinks completely below the horizon. Xander's head goes up sharply.

"Shit. Sunset."

***

"Shit shit shit shit shit," Xander says, scrambling to his feet and pulling his shirt over his head haphazardly. He gets one arm stuck in his hurry, and struggles briefly before finding the right sleeve and shoving his hand through.

Dom looks around warily. "What?" Then it sinks in. Sunset. Vampires. Whatever the hell else is out here. "Shit," he says slowly. The desert around them is empty, but it's growing darker and colder by the second and that feeling of unease, the one that comes from somewhere outside himself, is rising.

"Get in the car!" Xander says fiercely, already moving, and Dom abruptly jerks alert and jogs to the driver's side, swinging himself up and in. Xander slams his own door shut as Dom shoves the key in the ignition, turning it quickly, his right hand poised to put the van in drive as soon as the engine starts. But nothing happens. He turns the key again. Nothing.

Dom closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and tries again.

Nothing.

Xander turns his head to look at him slowly, an expression of horror dawning on his face. "You're kidding me."

Dom groans and puts his head on the steering wheel. "Fuck."

"Mother of *God*," Xander says and throws his door open, going around to the front of the vehicle. Dom jumps out to follow him.

"Engine's in the back. You know anything about fixing cars?"

Xander groans and leans against the front of the van. "No. Do you?"

Dom shakes his head.

"eBay?!" Xander asks fiercely.

"Sorry," Dom says. "Look, I'll call Triple-A, no problem." He pulls out his mobile to start dialing.

Xander is looking around sharply, trying to keep watch in every direction at once. He pulls the stakes out of his pockets without looking, tossing one to Dom. Dom, caught off-guard, bobbles it, nearly dropping both the stake and the phone. "Hey!" he says. "Watch it!" Xander doesn't even look at him. "What'm I supposed to do with this, then?" Dom asks sharply.

"Pointy-end to heart," Xander says vaguely, his attention on the land around them. "Should've been paying attention," Dom hears him mutter to himself angrily. "Damnit, damnit, damnit."

Dom punches in the number, but when he tries to send, nothing happens. His phone says "No service." He tries pulling the antenna out, moving the phone around, but there's no change. He hits a few more buttons before giving up.

"Can't get a signal," Dom says, letting out an exasperated sigh.

"Fan-frickin'-tastic," Xander says. "We're stuck here." Dom leans against the front of the van next to him, holding the stake awkwardly in his right hand. Xander looks over and raises an eyebrow. With a small half-smile, he takes it from Dom and readjusts his grip. "Like this," he says, his hand hot on Dom's wrist.

"Yeah," Dom says. "Okay." Xander takes his hand away and leans back, his head against the front windshield of the vehicle. Dom feels very short, standing next to him like this.

"Fucking eBay," Xander says after a moment, expressionless. Dom can't tell if he's teasing or annoyed.

Dom shrugs, looking out into the growing darkness. "So what now?"

"Hell if I know," Xander says. "We don't even have any other weapons."

Dom glances over at him. "We could see what else is in the van. Tire iron, that sort of thing."

The back of the van holds an old blanket Dom had thrown in for a picnic one day, a lighter, some loose change, fast-food wrappers, an old newspaper, the spare tire and, finally, the promised tire iron. Xander weighs it in his hand as Dom absently flicks the lighter. Flame. No flame. Flame. No flame. Xander looks over at the sparking flint, quick and alert.

"Fire," he says. "That's it. Grab your stuff, I know where we're going."

Xander shoves the blanket into Dom's arms, picks up the tire iron and newspaper, and starts walking quickly away from the van, around the edge of the crater. "Where?" Dom asks, surprised. He quickly locks the van, which is probably pointless, but whatever, and starts walking after Xander.

"Hurry up," Xander tosses back over his shoulder, long legs striding ahead. Dom rolls his eyes and breaks into a jog until he catches up.

"So, what's this about fire?" Dom asks.

"Four ways to kill vampires," Xander says, without looking over. He is still scanning the area around them, moving his head from side to side to compensate for his missing eye. "Stake to heart. Beheading. Sunlight. And fire. Light them up and they'll burn right into dust."

"Oh," Dom says. It is getting very, very dark out here in the middle of nowhere, and stars are beginning to come out one by one. You can see a lot of them, away from Los Angeles like this, all bright and clear and somehow reassuring. In the dim starlight, the black writing on Xander's arms looks like trails of insects, like army ants marching across Africa on the Discovery channel, alien and somehow mesmerizing.

Dom almost trips over a scrubby bush he doesn't see in the gathering darkness.

Xander grabs his arm and steadies him. "Watch it."

Once Dom's found his feet again, he jerks his arm away from Xander's hand. "Where the hell are we going?" he asks. His voice sounds sharp and worried, even to himself, and very young. He hates that.

Xander puts his hands up in an apologetic, well-sorry-for-touching-you-I-was-just-trying-to-help kind of way that annoys Dom further. "Down to the beach," Xander says, voice still staccato and clipped. "There are grills and stuff there where we can get a fire going. And there's a sea-wall we can put our backs against. It's the best place I can think of to wait out the night."

"Fine," Dom says, as if he's been consulted.

They walk on in silence, feet tramping across the uneven earth.

***

The beach is empty and cold. Southern California or not, it is March, and the white of the breakers and the light color of the sand combine to look pale and remote, chill and bare. Dom shivers as the sand shifts under his feet and the waves roll in with a constant, rhythmic roar.

Xander looks up and down the beach with a strange look on his face, sad and tired underneath the watchfulness. After a minute he turns to the right and starts striding forward, Dom trailing behind.

They walk down the beach for about ten minutes before Xander seems to think it's a good place to stop, a fire pit in front of them and a wall of tumbled rocks behind them. Dom looks around nervously, but there is nothing to be seen but ocean and sky and sand and boulders, no monsters or vampires around. Still. He begins to wonder if Xander's obvious anxiety is really warranted.

Xander sets down the newspaper and uses some of the driftwood he's been picking up along the way to poke at the remains of the charcoal still in the pit. "Good enough," he says. "Okay. I'll get it started, can you find some more wood?"

Dom nods and, turning, starts poking along the beach, looking for anything flammable. "Keep alert," Xander calls after him and Dom waves dismissively back. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He sticks the stake in his pocket, where it pokes at him uncomfortably.

Without Xander in his sightline, the beach feels even lonelier and more unworldly, all ghostly starlight and dark shadows. When his arms are only half full of driftwood, he turns back, unwilling to walk farther down the beach alone, though at the same time he feels a bit of a wanker for this reluctance.

In the distance Xander is a dark figure silhouetted against the small blaze he's just started, bright and yellow and warm, licking up the newspaper. His back is to the rocks and his attention is focused on the fire, feeding larger sticks into it.

Suddenly Dom notices a black shadow on the rocks behind Xander, creeping slowly towards him. As it detaches itself from one rock to climb down lower, Dom can make out that it seems to be human shaped, and that it is most definitely going after Xander. It is nearly to the sand, and he catches the glint of fang and misshapen face briefly.

His mind incongruously flashes to Gollum skulking towards Frodo and Sam, stealthy in the night, before the threat overwhelms him and he starts forward. Not conscious of making any kind of decision as to what to do, but with adrenaline pumping, Dom finds himself dropping the firewood and sprinting toward the menace, vaguely aware that he is yelling and pulling the stake from his pocket.

The next few seconds are a blur. He sees Xander and the vampire both whip around to face him, both equally startled. Then he is on the vamp, tackling it to the ground and stabbing with the stake, his heart pumping so hard he doesn't quite know what he thinks he's doing. The stake makes contact, goes into the vamp's chest with a grisly wet impact, but nothing at all happens except that the vamp grunts and then starts laughing. The stake protrudes ridiculously from its chest, and he thinks about how odd that is as the vamp flips him over onto the ground easily, with no more effort than if Dom were a beetle. Its teeth flash down at him, heading for his neck, when suddenly the vamp is jerked backwards, one fang slicing off-kilter into Dom's shoulder and then tearing down his arm as the vampire is dragged away. He feels a hot, sticky warmth coasting along his skin before he is aware of any pain, and looks down to see dark blood, thick and viscous and alarming, before it is suddenly coated with feathery ash.

Xander is standing over him, breathing hard, face white. "Shit," he says, staring at Dom's arm. "Are you all... well, no, you're not. Um. Okay. Stay there."

He moves out of Dom's sightline and Dom is left staring up at the stars, sand gritty against the back of his neck. There's Orion, he thinks dreamily, and shivers. He feels cold. And suddenly his arm is beginning to hurt, badly, a sharp, bright pain radiating down from his shoulder.

Xander is back, kneeling beside him with the blanket in his hands, using his knife to rip strips off. The fabric tears unevenly, trailing thread ragged along the edges. Xander's face is still ashen and drawn.

"Can you sit up?" he asks Dom.

Dom thinks about it for a moment. Experimentally, he gets his left arm, the uninjured one, underneath him, and pushes himself to a sitting position.

"Good," Xander says. The pain is making Dom's head much clearer, the way jumping into very cold water does, and he winces as Xander uses the blanket to mop at the wound.

"Ow," Dom says, sucking air in through his teeth.

"Sorry," Xander says, his attention focused on Dom's arm. "It's not deep, that's good. I mean, it sliced all the way down to your elbow, but it's not deep. You probably need stitches, but I can stop the bleeding now."

Xander begins to wrap the gash expertly in the strips of blanket, putting pressure on it and pushing the edges together. It fucking hurts.

Dom grits his teeth and tries to breathe evenly through his nose. He watches black drops of blood drip onto the sand, soaking in and making a dark stain.

"That was a stupid thing to do," Xander says in a low voice, as he ties the makeshift bandage in place. His hands are long-fingered and white in the starlight, moving dexterously on the strips of cloth. He finishes the knot and looks up at Dom, eye dark. "Thanks."

Dom nods and looks down. "Well, I'm known for doing stupid things," he says weakly.

Xander half-smiles and inspects the bandage. "How's that feel?" he asks.

Dom shrugs, then winces as his shoulder moves. "Hurts like hell."

Xander smiles wryly. "You'll get used to it," he says, and gets up to tend the fire.

***

Dom stands beside Xander and watches him fiddle with the fire, adding larger sticks. He works easily, seems to know what he's doing.

"You go camping a lot?" Dom asks. Xander glances at him, forehead furrowed. "You're good at that," Dom explains, nodding to the fire.

Xander shrugs. "Got used to doing it in Africa. Though I'm a little more used to using cow dung than sticks."

Dom raises his eyebrows and smiles slightly. They fall into silence as Xander goes back to working on the fire, though Dom is continually listening for sounds of menace, of anyone coming. He hears a rustling somewhere behind them and turns quickly. There is nothing there. He feels jumpy and light-headed and tense, all his muscles poised for action, for danger.

His arm hurts horribly, throbbing along with his pulse. He thinks about how annoyed his agent will be if that scars, and again about how much the damn thing hurts. Sharp bright pain like broken glass. He thinks about what kind of germs could be in a vampire's mouth, and starts wondering how long it takes for gangrene to set in. His arm is throbbing and he is cold and tired and thirsty and miserable and trapped in the middle of nowhere, and maybe eventually going to lose an arm, or just bleed to death out here on the fucking California beach in the middle of March, if something worse doesn't get him first.

Is it a splinter, then? he suddenly hears Billy's voice say in his head - Billy's teasing voice, soft Scottish vowels and consonants sliding together in a comfortable jumble. The knot of unhappiness in his stomach tightens sharply, into homesickness and longing and loss and something else he doesn't want to think about. He feels like he might puke right there on the beach, maybe right where his blood has soaked into the sand, just go ahead and make it a Monaghan bodily fluids festival already. He tries to concentrate on breathing steadily.

Xander glances over at him absently, the firelight playing warm and red on his face, and then stares. "Are you okay? You look like death."

Dom sort of nods vaguely, and then regrets the movement. His head is fuzzy, disconnected, and there is a rushing sound in his ears, coming up to drown out everything around him.

Xander, looking alarmed, reaches out to grab his arm. "Hey, man. Hey. You better sit down." He eases Dom down onto the sand, and Dom goes without protest, blackness coming up at the edges of his vision, only vaguely conscious of strong hands holding him steady. Breathe, he tells himself. Breathe.

Somehow he is sitting on the sand, concentrating hard on just remaining conscious, on hearing and seeing and getting himself under control. Breathe in. Breathe out. Focus. After a long minute the roaring in his ears begins to recede slowly, and the center of his vision, where things are clear and he can see the fire and the sand, grows larger, expanding back into the blackness threatening to take him over.

He gradually becomes aware that Xander's hand is on his shoulder, slowly gripping and releasing, a comforting kneading as he gets his bearings back.

"You're okay," Xander is murmuring, though his face is white and worried. "You're okay."

Dom finally nods, breathing out in a long exhale. "Yeah," he says shakily. He still feels tired and light-headed, but the immediate threat of passing out is over.

"You lost a lot of blood," Xander says, troubled. "You should have something to eat, or at least some water. If we had any of those things."

Dom manages a faint smile and shrugs. His arm starts up hurting again at the movement, jagged and sharp. "How 'bout some aspirin?" he says weakly.

There is a sound of rustling from the top of the rocks, and both their heads come around quickly to look, staring into the darkness, tense and alert. Nothing happens for several minutes, while they scan where the sound had come from. After a bit, Xander finally says, "I think it was just the wind."

Dom looks at him, tense and wary. "I don't think I like vampires much," he says. The understatement of the century.

Xander smiles wearily. "Me neither."

It is getting colder and colder, and Dom begins to shiver, wishing he had put a jacket on over his t-shirt. Goose bumps are springing up all over his arms.

Xander looks at him, that sharp, noticing gaze, and raises an eyebrow. "Should've known better than to just wear a t-shirt in March," he says wryly, taking off his flannel shirt. "Southern California or not." Without asking, he casually slings the shirt around Dom's shoulders, his arms reaching around Dom's body to help him get the sleeve over his injured arm. He smells of Sharpie, sharp and chemical, and of sweat, and Dom's laundry detergent, and the slight tang of ash and blood. His hands have drying brown stains, Dom's blood, smudged on the knuckles and under the fingernails, where the blanket didn't quite wipe them clean. The shirt is way too big for Dom, and its fabric is worn and soft and warm from Xander's body.

Xander sits back and looks around again warily, looking for threats. "Look," he says, "we'll sit back to back so nothing can sneak up on us, okay? Lean on me and, for Pete's sake, say something if you start feeling like you're going to pass out."

Dom nods, and Xander moves to sit with his back to Dom's, the fire on Dom's right. Xander's back is warm and solid and large, sturdy enough so that Dom can lean back heavily without Xander moving. After a few minutes, he relaxes into it, stops holding himself up and leans back completely, resting his head on the back of Xander's neck.

The fire crackles, with the occasional loud pop, and sparks flutter upwards, bright fading spots of light. Behind the crackling is the darker, lower roll of the ocean - all outdoorsy noises, solid and comforting. Dom can't hear traffic or music or any of the ambient city sounds he's used to, and he can feel some muscle in his back finally relax, soften. The firelight is red, and he is warm with Xander's body against his back and Xander's shirt around him and the fire beside him.

"Tell me a story," he says drowsily. He feels Xander's quiet laugh before he hears it.

"What kind of story?" Xander asks.

"A happy story," Dom says. He is looking up at the sky, watching the sparks fade into the stars, watching ash fly upwards and float away in the breeze. The pain in his arm is a dull red ache he wants to be able to ignore. Wants to focus on something else.

"I don't think I know any happy stories," Xander says quietly. Dom feels him take a deep breath and let it out slowly.

"Tell me about Africa, then," Dom says, warm and sleepy. "Tell me about Cairo."

Xander doesn't say anything for a little bit. Resting against Xander's back, Dom feels him breathing, Dom's own body rising and falling with Xander's inhales and exhales. He focuses on breathing in sync with Xander, the swell and shrink of lungs in tandem. It feels comforting.

"Cairo," Xander says, finally. "Cairo was... okay, actually. I didn't run into any vamps or demons or anything in Cairo."

"Why not?" Dom asks.

"I wasn't looking for them," Xander says. "That was after... well, I was on vacation. Sort of. Taking a break."

"Oh," Dom says.

"You could see the pyramids from my hotel," Xander says quietly, almost to himself. "From the roof. You could look out across the city and see the pyramids in the distance, looming over the buildings. If it was really hazy, you almost couldn't see them at all, just the shadows of them coming out of the dust and pollution, but there they were. The frickin' pyramids. But if you looked down you'd just see garbage on the roofs of houses, and poverty, and dark alleys, and people crowded together. The TV in my hotel room was held together with duct tape, but there were two guys in every elevator to push the floor button for you, because people are cheaper than technology there. And everything's brown, dusty, sandy, except right on the river, where it's green, suddenly. This surprising green, when you're not expecting it. Like you'd forgotten what green was, what growing things looked like, and there they were again. "

Dom lets himself fall into Xander's voice, into Cairo. His eyes slip closed and his head feels disconnected from his body, like he's floating above them, looking down. Seeing his light hair mixing with Xander's dark, his smaller body nestled against Xander's larger one.

"Did you go to the pyramids?" he asks.

"Yeah," Xander says. "I went out to them one day, with all the rest of the tourists. They're huge, right, really impressive. Look just like in pictures. And you can go inside, and you figure that's going to be amazing, right? I mean, the pyramids are made of blocks of stone that are taller than I am, how could the inside not be fantastic? And so you go inside, up these long narrow slanting corridors, all the way to the very center of the pyramid. Imagining them bringing the Pharaoh's body up this way, imagining high priests and mummies and hieroglyphics and all that stuff, like in your 7th grade world history class. Thinking how unbelievable it is that you're about to get to go inside the secret room inside these pyramids."

Xander pauses. "And?" Dom asks, finally.

"It was an empty room," Xander says. "Nothing there. Just a gray, empty room."

The fire pops loudly in the silence. Xander shifts, in the process nearly knocking Dom sideways. Dom struggles to stay upright, moves so that his head rests between Xander's shoulder blades.

"So you go back down again and get your picture taken on a camel," Xander finishes, his voice dull and blank. "That's what Cairo's like."

"Oh," Dom says.

His arm is hurting again, throbbing along with his breaths. It is getting colder still. He thinks about the vampire's teeth again, how it tore through his arm, and stares into the darkness, listens for anything out there. The beach is quiet, and it unnerves him. Xander has stopped talking. "How did you start fighting evil, anyway?" Dom asks finally, his desire to break the silence overcoming his desire for Xander not to tell any more stories.

Xander sighs, his breath soft. "There was this girl," he says. He says it like it's the beginning of an inevitable story. Like that's the way everything starts, like how else would you get into fighting evil if there weren't a girl? Dom's tired enough that this seems to make sense. "Buffy," Xander continues.

"You were in love with her?" Dom asks.

"Yeah," Xander says, voice somehow sweet, longing. "Yeah, I was in love with her."

"Are you still?" Dom asks.

"No," Xander says, on an exhale. After a moment, he continues, "Yes. I don't know." He pauses again. "These days... it's almost the kind of love that feels like hate, sometimes. Or something. I don't know. Anyway, it's not the same."

"Yeah," Dom says. "Things never stay the same, though, do they?"

"No," Xander says. He suddenly tenses at a rustle in the bushes beside them, but when nothing appears he relaxes again, muscles shifting against Dom's back. "And then with vampires and everything," he continues, as if there had been no interruption, "once you've seen them, it's hard to un-see them. And so you fight them, because what else are you supposed to do? So you fight them until you lose everything, and even then, you can't stop."

"Yeah," Dom says. He takes a breath. "There are things you can't go back from." He thinks of Billy's lips, the sweet curve of them, of things that can't be undone, that you keep doing even though you know they'll end everything.

They fall into silence, the fire dying down beside them. Dom lets his eyes close again, shutting out the stars and ocean and the menacing dark outside the circle of firelight. He concentrates on the warmth of Xander's body and of the fire, the smell of salt and wood smoke, concentrating on these physical sensations to block out anything else. And he finally slips into sleep, lulled by the sound of the waves.

He dozes fitfully, his head pillowed on Xander's back. At some point in the night he wakes slightly to find Xander moving him so that he's lying on his left side, face towards the fire. Xander moves his hand lightly over the bandage on Dom's arm, checking it, making sure the jostling hadn't upset it. His touch is so delicate that Dom barely feels it, a whisper of pressure, gentle. Dom slips back into unconsciousness as Xander again lies back to back with him, warm and watchful and awake, weapon at the ready.

Dom sleeps.

He dreams of pain in his arm, of Billy's eyes turning yellow and his teeth growing long and sharp. He dreams of Billy's face alien and monstrous, turned on him in anger, of Billy's fangs ripping down his arm. It is cold, cold, cold, and his blood is pooling red on the ice, frozen puddles of blood.

He wakes shivering, freezing and terribly thirsty, tears wet on his face. His arm hurts, fuck it, it hurts, it hurts, and he's cold, and he wants water, and the sand is uneven and uncomfortable under his body.

Xander's arm comes over his chest, rubbing briskly to warm him up, and his body slowly stills, stops its shaking. "Hey," Xander murmurs. "Hey. Don't go into shock on me. You're okay. Stay with me. Stay warm. You're okay." Dom makes his breathing slow again, feels the impersonal warmth of Xander's body seeping into his own as he quiets.

And he suddenly wishes the one holding him were Billy, or Viggo or Elijah or Orli or Sean or anyone, really, any of those who have left him behind. And somehow it seems that this is their fault, that if it weren't for them he wouldn't be out here with this sad stranger, injured and bleeding at a disaster site, fearing he won't last the night.

In aching lonely sadness, he falls back to sleep.

***

Dom wakes up to pale morning light, the cool of dawn. Xander is no longer lying behind him, and he rolls onto his back, the sand shifting beneath him. He finds himself blinking up at a perfect blue sky, a sunny day that seems strangely cheerful after the terror of the night before. Birds are chirping, for heaven's sake. This is an odd place.

The fire is long out, cold ashes black in the pit, and the remains of the blanket, still stained with blood, are draped over him. He is still wearing Xander's shirt, but Xander is nowhere to be seen.

He pushes himself into a sitting position, blinking as his head feels like it's about to float right off his body. After a moment his vision clears, but his head still throbs, his arm is killing him, and he generally feels like shit, muscles stiff and aching. He would kill for a glass of water to drink. Several glasses of water. Perhaps a small lake.

He looks up and down the empty beach, all white sand and blue water, idyllic and Southern Californian, like something out of a Beach Boys song. He automatically gauges the waves for their surfing potential, makes a mental note to tell Billy about it. Then his stomach sinks, remembering, and he pushes that out of his mind.

Dom pulls Xander's shirt half-off to look at his bandage, and can see that dark red blood has soaked through to the outside, already looking old and dried. He feels vaguely dizzy at the sight, and quickly moves his arm back into the shirt, wincing at the motion.

He starts at a rustling in the bushes, but when he looks it's just Xander coming back, in the final stages of zipping his fly.

"Hey," Xander says. "You're awake."

"Yeah," Dom says. His throat is rough and dry, and he runs a hand through his hair self-consciously. His scalp is gritty with sand.

"How do you feel?" Xander asks. "Because we're going to have to try to walk to get help. You up to it?"

"Yeah," Dom says, and gets to his feet. He sways slightly as he stands, feeling unbalanced, but once he's up he feels all right. Thirsty. In pain. Light-headed. But okay.

Xander looks at him closely and nods a bit, smiling slightly. "Good," he says. "And hey, maybe the van'll start this morning. You never know."

After Dom takes his own trip to the bushes and Xander makes sure the fire's out, they are ready to start their trek back around the crater, picking their way carefully around brush and rocks. Dom starts sweating quickly, despite the cool of the morning, and he keeps his head down, focusing on where he's placing his feet.

When they reach the highway and the van, Xander takes the keys from Dom and tries again to start it. Dom sits in the shadow of the vehicle, trying to get his head to stop spinning. After a minute or two of no results, Xander slides out the open door to sit beside Dom.

"Yeah, it's dead. You sure you can keep going?" Xander asks. Dom nods determinedly. He will make it. "Okay," Xander says, sounding unsure. "Tell me when you need to stop, though, okay? You're still... we really need to get to a hospital."

"I'm fine," Dom gets out, trying to sound solid and reassuring. Xander looks at him quietly for a minute, and uneasily adjusts his eye patch. "We can go now. I'm ready," Dom says, getting to his feet and using the van to steady himself.

They leave everything with the van except the stakes and their wallets, and begin to walk down the highway, sun reflecting off the pavement. Since it only leads to nowhere, to a crater and desolation, they walk down the center of the road, the yellow line between them. Dom feels like the survivor of an apocalypse, on an empty road, part of the remains of a dead civilization. He has the crazy feeling that the crater is a looming mouth at their backs, about to swallow everything. Evil. He has to stop himself from glancing back.

The following two hours are the longest of Dom's life. He puts one foot in front of the other for miles, feeling that he might just keel over and die at any moment. Occasionally a bit of wind picks up and blows dust into his eyes. He keeps sweating. He is thirstier than he has ever been, the inside of his mouth dry and raspy. He feels unfocused and detached, head fuzzy and unclear. Xander walks beside him, and out of the corner of his eye Dom can see Xander watching him closely. He keeps focusing just on the next step, watching his feet, getting into a rhythm of walking.

It is getting almost hot as the sun rises, and Dom ends up squinting in the bright sunshine as they walk east. His head begins to ache at the strong light reflecting off the desolate landscape, the barren desert where almost nothing grows. He thinks that now he knows how Frodo must have felt, trekking across Mordor, legs about to give out. After having this thought he manages to distract himself from the agony of walking by pretending he is Frodo, with Xander as Sam at his side, heading to Mount Doom. The distraction lasts for about five minutes before he again starts thinking about the pain that's in his arm and growing in his feet and side.

It seems like they have been walking for years when Xander says, "Hey, a gas station." Dom looks up and sees it on the horizon, the dusty Shell sign one of the most welcome sights of his life. His legs are near giving out, his head spinning in an alarming way.

Xander perks up, starts walking a little faster. Dom presses to keep up, but staggers and nearly falls. Xander stops, alarmed.

"I'm fine," Dom says, catching himself and standing still, breathing heavily.

"You're swaying," Xander says, startled.

"No," Dom says. "I'm good, I can make it."

Xander looks at him for a second, and then matter-of-factly puts his arm around Dom's shoulders, supporting him. "Lean on me, doofus," he murmurs, and starts moving forward.

It's easier with Xander half-carrying him, Xander's arm strong and steady around him, but even so Dom is in a cold sweat by the time they reach the service station, barely able to help move himself at all. Xander sets him down on a bench outside the garage and crouches down in front of him. He looks alarmed, his face drawn.

"You're completely white," Xander says. "Let me look at your arm."

Dom tries to shrug off the flannel shirt, but his arm hurts too much when he moves it, so Xander has to reach around and help him. Together they pull the sleeve away to show the bandage. There are spots of bright red soaking through alongside the darker, dried blood of the night before.

"God," Xander says. "It opened up again. Um, okay, sit here. I'll be right back." Xander disappears into the convenience store and Dom leans his head back against the wall behind him, focusing on breathing evenly, trying to get his body under control. He feels like he might throw up. And the sun is in his eyes.

***

Swallowing hard and trying to focus on something other than the pain, Dom looks off into the distance, back towards the crater. It's too far away to see now, but he feels an uncomfortable prickling on the back of his neck, dread in the pit of his stomach. He tries to blame it on blood loss.

After what feels like a lifetime, Xander comes back out of the building, holding a couple of bottles of Gatorade. He pulls off the cap of the blue one and sits beside Dom, putting the bottle carefully into Dom's left hand. "Drink that," he says, watching Dom with a worried expression.

Dom puts the bottle to his mouth and begins to gulp the liquid. The cool wet on his tongue is the best thing he has ever felt, no question. He had intended to drink slowly, savor it, but finds himself gulping it down so quickly he can't even taste it. He drinks so fast the Gatorade spills out around the corners of his mouth, dribbling down his chin and onto his shirt.

"Slowly," Xander says softly. Dom gasps for breath and keeps drinking. "I talked to the guy working. His grandson's going into town, so he's going to take us to the hospital. And they're going to go tow the van."

Dom drains the last few drops of the bottle, breathing hard, and nods. Xander opens a bottle of orange Gatorade and hands it over to him next.

Dom is halfway through the second bottle before he slows down, lowers the drink to let himself breathe, wiping his mouth awkwardly on the sleeve of his left arm.

The door of the convenience store opens again and an old man, maybe in his seventies, steps outside. He is a small man, bent slightly and wearing a John Deere baseball cap that shades his heavily wrinkled face. He has a laconic air about him, moving deliberately into the sunlight and putting his hands in his pockets. He regards the clear, cloudless sky.

"Gonna storm soon," he says after a moment. The hair on the back of Dom's neck prickles again, that itchy sensation coming back around his skin.

Xander makes a faint noise that is almost a laugh. "Really," he says politely. The old man turns to look at him, and Dom is startled at how dark the man's eyes are in contrast to his white hair, how sharp and alert. The man looks at Xander seriously.

"You see if it don't," he says. "Sunnydale," he says. "She's restless."

Xander looks at the old man steadily, face wary. Dom shivers.

The old man looks at the sky again and spits thoughtfully on the dusty ground. Then he turns back to Xander. "You were from there," he says. It's not a question. Xander nods slowly. "You look it," the man says coolly. Dom gets the feeling he isn't just talking about the eye patch.

All of a sudden Dom feels like the world is shaking, moving under him. He thinks it's just him, his lightheadedness making him unbalanced, until he notices the alarmed start Xander gives and the way one of the gas nozzles falls right out of its holder. The old man doesn't move or change expression.

After a few seconds the shaking ends. "Sunnydale," the old man says again. "She don't give her people up easy." He spits again. Xander's face is white and his jaw is clenched. "Here comes Ronnie with the truck," the man says. He nods at Dom and walks back inside.

"Was that an earthquake?" Dom asks, blinking.

Xander nods slowly, still staring into the distance. He doesn't shift when a beat up blue pick-up truck pulls up in front of them and a skinny boy of about 18 gets out. The boy's hair is bright red and his face is freckled, but his eyes are the same surprising dark brown as the old man's. He blinks nervously and shoves his hands into his pockets.

Dom nudges Xander. "Let's go," he says.

Xander blinks, snapping out of it, and gives Ronnie a forced smile. "Hey," he says. "Thanks for the ride."

Ronnie nods awkwardly and shrugs. "Yeah," he says.

Xander helps Dom stand up and moves toward the door of the car. He pauses for a moment when they're both upright. "Look," he says softly to Dom. When Dom follows his gaze to the horizon, towards Sunnydale, he stops short. The sky is still perfectly blue and cloudless above them, but in the distance heavy black clouds have come out of nowhere, and Dom can see rain pouring down from them. The clouds are moving towards them quickly enough that Dom can see it happening, and the wind begins to pick up, gusting in Dom's face. He stares at Xander, but Xander doesn't look back at him, just helps him up into the cab of the truck and slides in beside him.

"How're you doing?" Xander asks, closing the door.

"All right, I guess," Dom says. "Better, a bit."

Xander hands him a pack of peanut butter crackers. "You should probably eat something." Dom takes them as Ronnie gets into the driver's seat and starts the truck.

Ronnie doesn't seem to be a talker, and Xander just stares morosely out the window as they drive, his jaw clenching and unclenching. Dom leans his head back against the seat, gritting his teeth when the truck bumps and jars his arm.

After only five minutes or so of driving, the storm catches up to them, the sky darkening and fat raindrops falling heavily onto the windshield. The rain soon becomes so heavy and visibility so bad that Ronnie has to slow way down, the windshield wipers frantically thumping back and forth with a rhythm that makes Dom's head ache. There is a flash of lightning off to their left. Ronnie shifts nervously in his seat.

Dom can see Xander's clenched fist drumming unconsciously against the door, but the rain is so loud he can't hear the thump of it. The trunk bumps again, jostling Dom's injured arm against Xander's side, and Dom yelps without meaning to.

Xander glances over at him, looking worried again. "You gonna hold up? We're almost there."

Dom nods and grits his teeth again. They are coming up on buildings, a small town. Through the pouring rain he sees a sign with a big H on it as Ronnie takes the exit.

"Almost there," Xander says again. The rain hits the windshield like bullets, the wind blowing it in sheets, and it is so dark it looks like twilight, though it's not yet noon.

***

The rain is still pouring down when Ronnie pulls the truck into the ambulance bay of the small local hospital. He looks over at them, his strange dark eyes shadowed in the dim light.

"I'll prob'ly be done with my errands by this afternoon. You want I should come back and get you?"

Dom looks warily over at Xander, but Xander shrugs. "Yeah, that'd be great. Thanks." He opens the truck's door and slides out, reaching back to help Dom down. Dom's head starts spinning again at the movement, and he almost falls when he reaches the pavement, arm aching and legs weak. The rain pours down on them, immediately plastering Dom's hair to his forehead, drops hitting hard against his bare head. Xander props him up with one arm and reaches around to shut the door with the other, Dom sagging heavily against his shoulder.

When Ronnie has roared off in the truck and Xander is shuffling Dom towards the emergency room door, Dom says (loudly so that he can be heard over the rain), "You really want him to come back for us?"

"Why not?" says Xander, half-yelling. Rain is dripping off his chin, and his eye patch is sodden. "We have to go back for the van anyway."

"He freaks me out," Dom says, using his good arm to wipe the rain out of his eyes. There is a clap of thunder so loud that it feels like the ground is shaking. It goes on and on, the whole way to the door, rumbling so Dom feels it in his gut.

"Ronnie's okay," Xander shouts when the thunder finally stops. He hits the handicapped button that makes the door to the emergency room swing open and moves them through quickly, out of the rain and into shining white linoleum.

***

Xander talks to the doctor like he's done this a thousand times before. Apparently, he and Dom had gotten stranded, and then when they were horsing around on the beach Dom had gotten thrown into a sharp piece of shell that had cut his arm. The doctor looks like she doesn't much believe that, but just raises her eyebrows and stitches Dom up, putting in an IV for his dehydration.

So now he's wearing a hospital gown and propped up in bed with the TV on, enjoying some of the hospital's fine cuisine and finer painkillers and feeling not half bad. Xander is slumped in the plastic chair beside him. The rain is still coming down outside as hard as ever, thumping with an unnerving ferocity at the window, and Dom thinks there might even be some hail.

He turns from his hospital pudding to say something about it to Xander, but finds Xander dead asleep in the chair, his head pillowed at an awkward angle on his shoulder. His hair is still damp on his forehead, and he's back to wearing the flannel shirt Dom had worn all night, a bit of blood smeared down by the hem. There're dark circles under his eyes (well, under one eye and the eye patch), and Dom thinks that he probably didn't sleep all night, watching for vampires. He wonders if Xander killed any others after Dom had fallen asleep.

He briefly considers throwing the maraschino cherry that came on top of the pudding at Xander's head, but thinks better of it.

At a whirring sound from the bedside table, Dom turns his head to see his mobile phone vibrating away. He answers it without thinking.

"'Lo?" He keeps his voice low so he doesn't wake Xander.

"Dom!" comes Elijah's voice, sounding surprised that he had answered. "Where've you been? Your phone's been all, 'This customer is unavailable.'"

"Really?" Dom says. "Weird."

"Right, weird," Elijah says dryly. "Some kind of technical glitch, I bet."

"Guess so," says Dom. "Look, Lij, this isn't really a good...."

"Dom," Elijah says. "Shut it. You've been avoiding us ever since the Oscars, man, and we all know it. What the hell is going on with you?"

"I don't know what you mean," Dom says evenly.

"Fuck it, Dominic, you know exactly what I mean. I hate it when you fucking do this."

"Look, Lij, I'm fine, all right? Everything's fine. Except that I'm in the hospital with a big gash in my arm at the moment and their vanilla pudding is really fucking terrible."

Elijah sounds confused, then concerned. "You're what? What happened?"

"I got attacked by vampires," Dom says.

"Fuck you, Monaghan," Elijah says, annoyed.

"What? It's the truth," Dom says. "Look, Lij. I'm fine. Okay? I don't want to talk, I don't need to share my feelings, I'm fine."

Elijah sighs and pauses. After a second his voice gets lower, sadder. "Dom. Did something happen with Billy?"

Dom stares at the receiver for a second, then without saying anything he very deliberately flips the phone closed and rings off.

While he's still looking at the display, knuckles clenched white around the mobile, it begins to vibrate again, Elijah's name in the window. Without thinking he chucks the phone across the room at the waste paper bin.

It thuds off the rim and skitters across the floor toward Xander, skidding to a stop just by his left foot.

"Nice shot," Xander says, his eye open and watching the phone as it continues vibrating, whirring against the floor's sickly yellow tile. He must have woken up sometime in the proceedings, though he is still slumped in the chair and hasn't moved except to straighten his head out of its awkward angle.

"Rubbish bins are harder to hit than gigantic craters," Dom says sharply, still angry. He hopes that Xander was woken by the mobile going across the room and not by the conversation preceding it.

"True," Xander says mildly. He leans down and scoops up the phone, glancing at the display. "Elijah Wood wants to talk to you."

"Elijah Wood can fuck off and mind his own business," Dom mutters. He stares very hard at the TV screen, where Bob Barker is about to get a contestant to spin the giant wheel. Bob Barker is such a fucker.

Out of the corner of his eye, Dom can see that Xander is looking thoughtfully at the phone, turning it between his fingers. Rain is lashing hard against the windows, and the fluorescent lights overhead give an eerie look to the room against the darkness of the half-daylight outside.

"So what happened with you and Pippin?" Xander asks quietly, without looking up.

***

Dom freezes, unblinking. The young naval officer spinning the wheel on TV has just gone over a dollar. Under his sailor hat, his clean shaven face falls, and he is escorted off the stage.

"Don't be ridiculous, Xander," Dom says finally. He keeps his voice patient and even, like he's talking to a child. "Pippin is a fictional character. Nothing could happen between me and a fictional character."

Xander looks at him steadily until Dom is forced to look away from the TV.

"What?" Dom asks defensively.

Xander sighs. "So what happened with you and Billy Boyd?"

"Nothing," Dom says. He looks down at his food and starts picking at the remains of his green beans. He can feel Xander still watching him. Outside there is a flash of lightning followed almost immediately by a clap of thunder, incredibly loud. The storm is still right on top of them.

"Sure," Xander says. "Nothing's a bitch. I always hang up on my friends when nothing's happened."

Dom doesn't say anything.

Xander kind of half-shrugs and moves his attention to the TV screen. "I really hate Bob Barker."

"I don't think he's speaking to me," Dom says quickly, all in one breath. Like ripping off a band-aid, quick and fierce. It stings in the same way.

"Bob Barker?" Xander asks. Dom laughs humorlessly, surprised, and looks over to see that the corner of Xander's mouth is curling up. Funny guy.

"Well, he isn't either," Dom says. He goes back to looking at the dull, rubbery green of his beans. He rolls one over with his fork, then starts mashing it down with the tines. "Pippin. Billy. Isn't speaking to me."

"Why's that?" Xander asks, his voice neutral. He is still looking at the TV screen as if deeply fascinated by the actual price of the camper on display. This makes things easier to say.

"Because," Dom says. "Because of the Oscars."

"Those six hour broadcasts make me cranky, too," says Xander.

"Yeah," Dom says. "And the musical numbers." He has effectively turned his green bean into paste and so moves on to the remains of his chicken breast.

"I'm guessing it wasn't actually the musical numbers," Xander says. "Unless you were forcing by a demon to sing out all your deepest feelings or something."

Dom glances up at him.

Xander shrugs. "It happens."

Dom looks back down and uses the edge of his fork to shred the little bit of chicken left. He begins to arrange the pieces in a pattern in the middle of the green bean mush. A smiley face, first.

"It was afterwards," Dom says quietly, carefully moving the chicken into shape. "There was... I was pretty drunk. And happy. I was really, really happy, you know? We'd just won the Oscar - all the Oscars, clean sweep, and it was like... everything felt unreal. Like, I wouldn't have been surprised if I'd grown wings and started flying around. Like a fucking dream and you'd wake up tomorrow and none of it would have happened."

The chicken-and-green-bean smiley face smirks up at him from the tray. He scowls at it and starts rearranging the mouth into a frown.

"So I was being an idiot, because it wasn't like it was really happening." He moves some of the pieces so they make angry eyebrows on the frowning face. Xander is being quiet now, looking down at the phone he's still holding and fiddling idly with its antenna.

"And I kissed him," Dom continues, quickly and almost under his breath. "Billy. And then we, uh, exchanged words, rather heatedly, and we haven't spoken since, the end."

"Oh," Xander says.

"Yeah," Dom says. His head aches, badly, and his arm, and pretty much everywhere, actually. "I need some more fucking painkillers."

Xander looks around for the button that calls the nurse, and presses it. Dom glares down at the evil frowning face he's created, and then crushes it into the green bean goo until it is unrecognizable. From the corner of his eye, he can see Xander watching him.

"Stop staring at me," he says crossly.

Xander shrugs and looks away. "Sorry."

The rain is still pounding down outside, and the back of Dom's neck is itching in that creepy way it's been doing on and off ever since the trip to Sunnydale. "Is it ever going to stop fucking raining?"

Xander's face is drawn and worried as he looks out the window at the still raging storm. "I don't know," he says.

"Well, you're not much good, are you?" Dom says. It's mostly meant to be just kidding around, but he's still angry and upset, and it comes out sounding harsh, like he means it. Xander darkens.

"Not much," he says grimly. He slouches further in his chair.

Dom sighs and rubs his forehead with his uninjured hand. Xander is staring into space looking bleak, and tired, and old. Dom feels bad.

"Look, I didn't... do you want the rest of my pudding?" Dom asks, holding it out to him awkwardly and immediately feeling stupid.

Xander looks at him dubiously, but Dom keeps offering it, feeling like a kindergartener trying to buy love with snacks. After a second Xander smiles unexpectedly, a quick flash of a grin. "Okay," he says.

"It's really pretty lousy pudding," Dom says apologetically as Xander takes it. But Xander digs in with a relish.

"Hey, it's sugar," he says as the nurse walks in.

"Do you need something?" the nurse asks.

Xander gestures at Dom with his head. "He wants more painkillers."

"Yeah, the good stuff," Dom says, giving her his cheekiest grin. She tries not to smile back as she moves to adjust his IV.

She glances at Xander once she's given Dom the medication. "You know, it's really supposed to be only family back here. Hospital policy."

"Oh, we're brothers," Xander lies smoothly. She raises her eyebrows like she doesn't believe it for a second. Probably the accents.

"Half-brothers," Dom jumps in. "Raised a continent apart but connected by the ties of brotherly love. We're practically like the same person." He gives her the cheeky grin again.

She laughs and shakes her head. "Okay."

When she leaves, Dom grabs the TV remote. "There must be something else on. This is America, after all." Xander smiles.

They spend the next half hour watching Jerry Springer in comfortable silence.

***

Just after the credits begin to roll on The Jerry Springer Show, the power abruptly goes out, cutting off the TV and leaving them in near total darkness. The eerie, almost brown light of the storm outside is the only illumination, and the hospital is oddly silent without the noises of the machines. The rain seems impossibly loud.

Dom holds his breath for the fifteen or twenty seconds it takes for the emergency generators to kick in with a chorus of beeping. The ghostly green back-up lights blink on at the same time, making the room even more weird and unearthly. Lightning flashes when Dom glances over at Xander.

"Great," Xander says, somehow sounding resigned and tense at the same time.

"Has this storm thing happened to you before?" Dom asks.

Xander looks out the window, face shadowed. "No, this is new."

"Fantastic," Dom mutters.

After a second Dom realizes that the whirring he's hearing is his phone, vibrating in Xander's hand. He makes a face. "Turn that thing off..." he starts, then stares as Xander, apparently without thinking, answers it.

"Dominic Monaghan's phone," Xander says casually, like he does this all the time. "May I ask who's calling?" He listens for a moment, then holds the phone out to Dom. "It's Hannah Wood, and she says if you hang up on her she'll hunt you down and kick you in the nuts. Again."

Dom scowls. "She's never kicked me in the nuts," he tells Xander, for some reason feeling that explanation is necessary. Xander hands him the phone. "What, brat?" Dom says into it.

"Who the hell was that?" Hannah asks.

"Just... nobody," Dom says. "Nothing." Xander raises his eyebrows and Dom makes a face at him.

"Um, okay," Hannah says. "Look, Lij says..."

Dom groans. "If this is about Billy, I really don't want to fucking hear it."

Hannah pauses, taken aback. "What?"

Dom internally punches himself in the face. "Huh?"

"What about Billy?" Hannah asks, her voice guarded.

Playing dumb is usually the best strategy in these situations. "What? I didn't say anything about Billy," Dom says.

Hannah snorts. "Okay."

Dom rolls his head from side to side, trying to work some of the kinks out of his neck. "So why did you call? Because I have things to do."

Hannah lets out an annoyed breath of air. "Yeah, whatever. I don't know what's going on with you guys, but my brother said you said something about the hospital and now he thinks you might've been serious, but you won't answer his calls so I'm supposed to ask you if you're dying or something, because that'd be really inconvenient and therefore just like you."

"I just got stitches," Dom says. "I'm not dying."

"Well, that's a relief," Hannah says dryly. There is another loud clap of thunder from outside, and the emergency lights flicker briefly.

"Yeah," Dom says. "Hey, do me a favor? Turn on the Weather Channel and see if there's anything about a freak storm."

"Um, okay," she says, and he can hear her walking, then the TV clicking on.

"Well?" he asks.

"It's showing North Dakota at the moment, instant gratification boy."

"Who cares about fucking North Dakota?"

"I don't know," Hannah says dismissively. "So who's the guy, Dom?"

Dom pauses. "None of your business."

"Dick."

"Bitch."

"Loser. Wait, okay, it's flipped to California. Yeah, there's a weird storm like two hours from here. Near that disaster site from last summer. They're saying... hold on... okay, yeah, the storm just came out of nowhere a couple of hours ago and now it's just hovering over this town a little ways away from that crater. It's all weird 'cause it's really small and totally localized, and they have no idea what's going on or how long it's going to last."

"Well, that's helpful," Dom says. "It's only over that town?"

"Yeah," Hannah says. "Why the hell do you want to know, anyway?"

Dom looks out the window at the pouring rain. "We're kind of stuck in the middle of it at the moment."

"Um, the fuck? Why are you all the way out there?"

"Divine intervention," Dom says.

"Uh huh," says Hannah. There is another bright flash of lightning, almost simultaneous with an insanely loud clap of thunder. As soon as the rumbling dies down and lets the phone become audible again, Hannah says, "Dude, was that the storm?"

"Yeah," Dom says. "It's pretty bad. Look, Hannah, I better go. Talk to you later, okay?" He hangs up before she can say anything else.

Xander is standing now, facing the window, looking worriedly at the rain pouring down from the black clouds outside.

"What do we do?" Dom asks Xander's back. Xander doesn't turn around.

"No idea. Get the van fixed and get the hell out of here, I guess."

"Do you think it'll let us?" Dom asks.

"I hope so," Xander says softly. He doesn't sound very sure.

***

Within an hour of Dom's release from the hospital that afternoon, Ronnie has returned to pick them up, his old blue truck idling innocuously in the ambulance bay. On seeing it out there in the gloom, that feeling of dread returns to Dom's stomach with a vengeance, the back of his neck again prickling. So he hesitates in the hospital doorway as Xander darts into the rain, and when Xander turns, pulling the door of the truck open, Dom is still hanging back under the overhang.

Xander stares at him, rain dripping down his face. "C'mon!" he yells over the pounding storm. Dom can see Ronnie's dark shape in the driver's side of the truck, but can't make out his features.

"I don't know about this," Dom yells back.

Xander, already almost soaked to the skin, makes a 'what the hell?' gesture and takes a few steps back towards Dom. "C'mon, seriously!"

Dom hesitates, then finally follows Xander into the rain and up into the cab of the truck, Xander's clothes squelching unpleasantly with wet as they settle in. Ronnie glances over at them, his face blank and pale. His freckles stand out strongly against the white of his skin, and in the dim light his eyes are shadowed. Dom shivers as Ronnie puts the truck in gear.

They drive back down the highway in silence, towards the service station and their van. The storm stays with them the whole way.

When they are about halfway there, Dom hears an ominous rumbling coming from behind them. "What's that?" he asks.

Xander looks over his shoulder and Ronnie hits the gas, suddenly accelerating.

"Mudslide," Xander says, with the grim surety of a native Californian. Dom follows Xander's gaze backwards to see the slope on the right side of the road behind them begin to move.

"Fuck," Dom says, as he watches it pick up speed.

Ronnie clenches his jaw and drives faster.

***

Dom clenches the dashboard as they speed forward. His eyes are focused on the place where the slope running parallel to the road flattens out and the ground is level, the highway no longer at risk from the collapsing hillside. He can see the exact spot they have to reach to get out of the way of the mudslide, and he leans forward, urging the truck forward mentally. Come on, comeon, c'mon, c'mon....

The truck pulls out of range, onto the safer road beyond the slope, and Dom leans back, closing his eyes and sighing in relief. But as they all start to relax (Ronnie's white knuckles loosening a little on the wheel), the truck hits a patch of water and begins to hydroplane, losing contact with the surface of the road. They skid to the left and Ronnie, his face pale and panicked, fights with the wheel, overcorrecting. The truck goes into a spin, swiveling around 180 degrees before it finally slows to a stop, facing back towards the sliding mud. Dom finds himself clutching Xander's arm like some big girl's blouse.

"Sorry," he says, embarrassed, prying his fingers from their death grip as his heart pounds with adrenaline. Xander doesn't even notice, staring out the windshield in disbelief. Dom looks up, then gapes at the enormity of the mudslide now in front of them.

"Whoa," Xander says. The road is completely buried in feet of mud, absolutely unsurpassable. It is a brown mess of thick wet dirt and debris, trees swept away and half-sticking out of the muck. It's practically impossible to even see where the road had been.

"Holy shit," Ronnie says softly.

"Fucking hell," Dom agrees.

"Sweet merciful Zeus," Xander adds.

Dom snorts involuntarily. He looks at Xander. "What, are you keeping it clean for the network?"

Xander shrugs sheepishly.

"That's done it," Ronnie mutters. "No getting out now." The rain hammers down on the windshield, not letting up for an instant. Ronnie takes a deep breath, seeming to try to settle himself, and Dom momentarily feels sympathy for him. The kid is young, after all, even if he is a little off.

After a long moment, Ronnie sighs, straightens his shoulders and carefully puts the truck into reverse, turning it around cautiously so it is again facing the direction of the service station and the Sunnydale crater.

At that moment there is a bright flash of light right next to them and a simultaneous crack of thunder so loud that Dom has the momentary sense that the world has come to an end. His vision is full of spots and his ears echo wildly, disorienting him. As he looks up, blinking, he sees that a tree directly to their right has been struck by lightning, and that its flaming trunk, split in two, is teetering and about to fall on top of them.

The truck skids as Ronnie hits the gas, and they barely get out from under the enormous fiery tree before it falls across the road behind them, splashing and sizzling in the water.

"Fuck!" Dom says. Ronnie's freckles are dark against his white face as he drives and Dom can see his hands shaking. Dom feels like he'll never catch his breath. His heart is pounding.

There is another lightning strike close by and a loud clap of thunder, and they all wince. Xander's face is tight and drawn, the dim watery light playing across his features. "This is my fault," Xander mutters, his fist clenched and tapping nervously against his thigh. "My fault. It's after me. I'm putting everyone in danger."

Dom rolls his eyes. "How is it your fault?" he asks, willing his voice to be steady. Xander doesn't answer. "What, should we throw you overboard and hope the storm stops?" Dom asks, trying desperately to lighten the mood. Xander stares at him. "Like Jonah," Dom clarifies. Xander still stares. "In the Bible?" Dom says. Xander raises a dubious eyebrow. Dom shrugs. "Okay, so it was in Master and Commander, your point?" Xander looks like that's more like it and Dom makes a face at him. "I think I'd prefer to get out of this without anyone dying, if that's okay with you," Dom says.

"It's okay with me," Xander says grimly. "I don't know if it's okay with whatever's doing this." The rain pounds down, almost obscuring the road from view, making even the yellow lines difficult to see.

"Sunnydale," Ronnie says hollowly from the driver's seat.

Dom turns to him, exasperated. "Okay, it's a place. It's not a fucking serial killer." Ronnie's jaw clenches slightly, but he doesn't say anything, just glances at Dom edgily from the corner of his dark eye. Dom gets that prickling at the back of his neck again, his skin crawling.

He looks down, sees Xander's hand continuing to tap nervously. The names Dom wrote the day before are still there in the black permanent marker, faded but clearly legible. Dom can see them on the back of Xander's hand, on his wrists, poking out from his sleeves and his collar, letters that Dom knows must still be all over Xander's upper body. The fading somehow makes it look like the ink has bonded with Xander's skin, soaked down to deeper layers, become part of him. They look like old tattoos, like birthmarks, like the markings on an animal's fur or a bird's feathers. Like they've always been there.

Xander suddenly looks almost unearthly, eye patch and dark circles and white face and these black markings on his neck and arms, all shadows and pale skin and dark hair, a ghostly look about him. Dom stares, dread suddenly seizing him.

Then Xander glances at him with a quick half-smile and he's just Xander again, a guy in a ripped flannel shirt who jokes about musicals and likes bad pudding and daytime television.

It suddenly occurs to Dom that there's no reason ghosts wouldn't like daytime television, and he scoots away from Xander a little bit on the seat, settling himself further away. Except then he realizes he's just scooted himself closer to Ronnie, and unhappily moves so he is sitting exactly equidistant from each of them.

This day really couldn't suck any more.

***

The storm follows them all the way back to the service station, possibly even increasing in intensity. When they run through the pouring rain into the convenience store, Ronnie's grandfather just looks at them, expressionless under his John Deere cap.

"Has it been like this here the whole time we've been gone?" Xander gasps out, wiping water from his eyes. Dom runs his hand through his sopping hair.

"Nope" the grandfather says. "Was sunny up until about ten minutes ago."

"Fan-frickin'-tastic," Xander mutters.

"Mudslide," Ronnie says to his grandfather. "Up the road a ways. Wiped the whole highway out about fifteen minutes back. No way to get through."

The old man levels his impassive gaze on Xander and Dom. Dom feels suddenly extremely bedraggled, soaking wet and muddy, his shirt torn.

"We'll have to call 911," Xander says. "They can probably get us out. Don't they do helicopter rescues and things?"

"Can't get a helicopter through this," the grandfather says slowly, looking out at the thick black clouds and the high winds whipping the trees. "Unless the storm lets up. You really think the storm will let up?" He fixes Xander with his sober dark eyes.

Xander looks like he's starting to panic. "There's got to be some way to get out of here."

The old man twists his mouth. "I don't think you'll be leaving tonight, boyo." He almost looks sorry for them for a moment. "She's seen to that."

Dom doesn't ask what he means by 'she'.

***

Xander slumps down into the plastic chair beside the counter of the store, putting his head in his hands. He seems to be thinking very hard.

Dom turns to the old man. "Um, my van is still broken down out by the crater."

"Oh, Ronnie can bring the tow truck 'round and we'll take a look," the old man says.

"Thanks," Dom says.

"You oughta go with him, show him where it is," the old man continues. He turns to his grandson. "Ronnie, go get the truck."

"In this storm?" Dom asks.

The old man glances over at Xander, whose head is still in his hands. "If you don't take your friend there, I don't reckon the storm'll be a problem."

Dom looks uneasily at Xander, who seems to be muttering to himself. "I guess," Dom says slowly. Ronnie has already gone for the tow truck. "Xander? You think that's a good idea?"

Xander looks up, startled. His eye is red around the edges and he looks strained. "Huh? Oh. I don't think it matters," he says. "Go ahead. I'll just... stay here."

Dom hesitates, but when Ronnie pulls the truck around, he finds himself climbing into the passenger seat, glancing worriedly back at Xander as he settles himself on the ripped vinyl. He can see Xander faintly through the glass, still slumped in the chair. As he watches, Xander's head comes up abruptly, as though the old man has just said something to him, and his mouth moves, saying something in response. But then Ronnie puts the truck in gear, so the last thing Dom sees is Xander frowning and ducking his head unhappily.

Driving toward the crater, the dimness of the raging storm only lasts for about ten minutes before they abruptly reach the end of the black clouds and emerge into sunshine and blue sky, a bizarrely perfect California day. Without the beating of the rain it suddenly seems extremely quiet, and Dom squints in the bright light, wishing he had his sunglasses. Everything looks washed out and yellow, the desert reflecting the setting sun, apparently a completely average end to a completely average day. Disbelieving, Dom glances behind them and finds himself looking back into another world, the wind and dark rain coming down in sheets beyond the edge of the clouds, a sharp dividing line between storm and not-storm.

The storm does not follow Dom and Ronnie. They reach the crater unscathed, the van exactly where Dom and Xander had left it, and slide out of the cab of the truck into sun and dry heat. Ronnie moves jerkily, in a hurry to leave, occasionally shooting frightened looks at the empty crater. He starts to hook the tow truck up to the van as Dom leans against the side of the truck, looking thoughtfully towards the crater.

It looks innocuous enough, silent and dusty and inert, just as before. But after a moment Dom notices a shimmering in the air above it, a wavering like the heat waves above a furnace, though the day is not nearly hot enough to cause them. He takes a step or two towards the crater, peering at it.

"Watch it!" Ronnie says sharply. When Dom looks at him he catches a wild, terrified look on Ronnie's face, a look of absolute alarm, before Ronnie seems to force it down, visibly calming himself. "Stay back," Ronnie says more quietly, but with an intensity that Dom finds unnerving. Dom steps back as Ronnie turns to fumble with the mechanism of the truck.

After a second of watching Ronnie, who is blushing bright red, Dom turns back to the crater. As he turns, he catches a glimpse of something out of the corner of his eye, something strange. Like the top of a castle, or a mosque, all peaks and minarets and towers. A temple or something, with naked women and snakes carved in stone on the sides, the whole structure coming up out of the ground. He swings his head around to look directly, but it's gone. Maybe he never saw it in the first place, maybe he's just imagining things.

He thought he saw Xander in front of it, a heavier Xander with two eyes, wearing a ripped blue shirt and with blood on his face.

This whole place is making him lose it. He tries to shake it off, but can't stop staring out at the crater, straining his eyes to see anything in those rippling heat waves. At the same time his skin is crawling.

"C'mon!" Ronnie calls sharply, already in the cab of the truck. Dom hadn't even noticed that Ronnie had finished hooking the van up, but quickly jogs around to swing himself in. Ronnie hits the accelerator sharply before Dom even has his door closed, throwing Dom back against the seat and making him struggle to shut the door as they drive away. Dom's stupid eBay van bumps along behind them.

***

On their return, Dom pushes open the door to the convenience store, hurrying to get out of the driving rain, water dripping into his eyes.

"It's been raining here the whole time?" he asks Xander as he gets the door shut behind him. Xander is still slumped in the chair beside the counter, looking tired and drained.

Xander nods. "Where are Ronnie and his grandfather?" he asks.

Dom looks out towards the garage adjoining the Shell station. "They're working on the van. They say they can get it fixed pretty easily."

"Oh," Xander says vaguely. "Good."

Dom stands awkwardly for a minute before shrugging and starting to look casually at the magazines in the rack beside the candy bars. He sees one with Viggo on the cover and picks it up, walking back towards Xander to hop up and sit on the counter beside him. "Guess we're stuck here until the rain lets up," Dom says, trying to be light. He flips to the article and starts skimming for good Viggo quotes to mock. When he glances at Xander, he sees him staring out into the storm.

Xander clears his throat. "Did the sun set yet? It's been so dark I can't tell."

"Oh," Dom says. "Um. Yeah, it did. Or it was just about to, when we were driving back." The sky outside still has an eerie green tint to it, but is growing blacker and the rain lashes hard against the windows. Dom can see the branches of the trees outside whipping around fiercely in the wind, which howls ominously around the corners of the Shell station. Lightning strikes nearby with a ferocious clap of thunder, and Dom winces.

"The phone line's dead," Xander says. "I tried it earlier. The pay phone and their phone. Is your cell getting reception?"

Dom pulls out his phone and looks at it. "No."

Xander's hand is resting on his knee, Jesse still written across the back of it in faded black ink. Xander stares down at it, tapping his fingers idly. Dom watches Xander's muscles play under the name of his dead friend, rippling and catching the harsh fluorescence of the lights above them.

As Dom stares at Xander's hand, the power goes out abruptly, leaving them in pitch blackness. "Fuck," Dom mutters into the darkness. It takes a bit for his eyes to adjust, before he can see the pale of Xander's face and the glinting half circles of his fingernails, reflecting in the faint light from outside.

"This storm isn't going to end," Xander says quietly.

Dom doesn't say anything. The wind howls deeply outside, moaning loudly against the building. The storm is building in intensity, the wind picking up, a feeling of electricity in the air. All Dom's hairs are standing on end. He shudders.

Xander stands up suddenly. His eye is shadowed, his teeth glinting white, his face resolute. "I have to give it what it wants," he says. He walks past Dom to the door, looking outside through the glass.

"Wait, what?" Dom says, jumping up to follow him. "What?"

"I've got to go out there," Xander says. He turns to face Dom, looking unearthly with the storm raging behind him. Lightning flashes, illuminating him for a brief second, his face caught like a photograph and impressed in Dom's brain.

Xander does not look as frightened as Dom had thought he was. His face is white and lined, but he looks strong and sure of what he's doing. In fact, there is almost a fierce joy in his features, anticipation and excitement. His eye is alight, his face set and intense.

"Are you crazy?" Dom chokes out. Behind Xander he sees a huge branch from a tree break off with the force of the wind and go flying into the blackness.

"No," Xander says. He reaches into his pocket, fumbles around trying to find something. After a second he pulls out a stake, which he hands to Dom, and a crumpled piece of paper. "These are phone numbers," he says. He passes the paper to Dom, their fingers brushing. Xander points to the first name and number on the list. "If I don't come back, I want you to call this number. Ask for Giles. Tell him what happened. He'll know what to do. If you can't get ahold of him, then call the next number. That's Willow. Okay?"

"Xander...," Dom starts.

"This is what I have to do," Xander interrupts. He turns back to face the storm again. With his back to Dom he says, wistfully, "I saved the world once. Did I tell you?"

"No," Dom says, his voice cracking.

"Yeah," Xander says. "That was an okay day." He looks down at his hand again, at the names coming out of his shirt sleeves. After a moment's hesitation, Xander pulls off his shirts, first the flannel one and then the t-shirt underneath. His torso is still covered with the names of the dead, every inch of him marked with that faded black ink, clinging resolutely to his skin. Larry, Dom sees on his upper arm, and Kendra. "We're going," Xander says quietly, more to himself than Dom. "All of us. We're going back."

"Xander," Dom says quickly. "You can't do this. It's insane, you can't just go out there. We'll figure something out, okay, it'll stop, it's not...."

Xander turns back to face Dom, making Dom abruptly break off in his rant. Xander is smiling slightly, as though he didn't hear any of it. "It'll be okay," Xander says, that weird look of decision and exhilaration still on his face. "Really."

Dom shakes his head. "No, it's not...." There is another loud clap of thunder, and a gust of wind throws rain hard against the plate glass window. "Xander, this is stupid. Seriously. Don't go out there. You'll die."

Xander just smiles again, his face tinged with a little sadness this time. "'Bye, Dom," he says. "Sorry I dragged you into all this."

Dom looks at him, desperately willing him to stay. And after a second he thinks, what the hell, and because he is a stupid guy who does stupid things, he grabs Xander by the back of the neck, stands on his toes, and kisses him, hard, right on the lips.

It's pretty awkward. He gets part of Xander's chin at first, and then their teeth clash, but after a second he finds the right angle and it's good, just right. Fierce and desperate and oddly sweet, and Xander tastes like salt and fear and kind of like he needs to brush his teeth.

Xander pulls back first, straightening up and giving Dom an odd look. His hand comes up to touch his face, rubbing thoughtfully just underneath his mouth. "Oh," he says softly. Then, just as Dom's stomach starts to sink, he smiles. Grins, more like, a sudden quick grin that reaches his eyes. "Oh," he says again.

Dom smiles back cautiously.

"You know?" Xander says thoughtfully, still rubbing his chin. "I think Pippin will call you." And he turns for the door, swinging it open so the rain begins to blow in.

He looks back at Dom over his shoulder one more time, his face again showing that fierce joy and determination, hunches his shoulders, and walks resolutely into the storm.

Dom stands in the doorway and helplessly watches him go, rain glinting on his shoulders, names in darkly scrawled lines across his white body, hair wet and plastered down on his head. He watches until Xander disappears around a curve of the road, illuminated one last time by a flash of lightning, his body small and dark in the distance, disappearing into the night and the storm.

Seven minutes later the rain abruptly stops.

***

Dom stands in the doorway to the garage, glowering. Ronnie and his grandfather are at work on the van, heads bent close together over the engine, oblivious to everything that's just happened. It is strangely quiet without the rain, and Dom's ears ring in the empty silence. He stands staring at them until the grandfather finally glances up.

"What did you tell him?" Dom asks shortly.

The grandfather ignores him. "This here's got a problem with the starter," he says, wiping his hands on a greasy rag. "We've nearly got it fixed, though."

Dom makes a dismissive motion with his hand. "What did you tell him?" he asks, his voice tight and low and controlled, as angry as he's ever been.

The old man rubs his forehead and tips his hat up, resigned. "I didn't tell him nothing but what he knew already," he says. He straightens the John Deere cap again, looking away.

"Yeah, I bet," Dom mutters. "We have to call the police," he says, more loudly. "Xander's disappeared."

"I know," the old man says. "The storm stopped, didn't it?"

"Yes," Dom says, glaring. "It did." He turns and leaves, slamming the door behind him. He checks his cell phone for service, but it isn't getting a signal. The phones back in the store are also still out, so he ends up spending an hour cooling his heels, looking out into the darkness towards the crater and pacing back and forth. The painkillers the hospital gave him are beginning to wear off, and the arm the vampire bit is aching.

Finally when he glances down at his cell, there's a signal and he nearly falls all over himself fumbling for the paper Xander gave him. With shaky hands, he dials the number at the top of the list, the one for Rupert Giles.

The phone rings for a long time before it's answered by a sleep-roughened but posh English voice. Even though it's very, very early in the morning in the UK, this man doesn't sound sleepy. He sounds alert and worried, like middle of the night calls are both routine and terrifying.

"Yes?" the man asks.

"I'm looking for Rupert Giles. I'm a friend of Xander's," Dom says.

"This is Giles," the man says. "What's happened?"

And Dom tells him the whole story, from the beginning, punctuated by a few intelligent questions from Giles to clarify details.

"And so he's disappeared?" Giles asks, at the end.

"Yeah," Dom says. "Just walked into the storm."

"All right," Giles says. There is a silence. Dom gets the impression that Giles is thinking very hard. "One of our operatives will be out there shortly. Willow. We'll see if she can locate him, and maybe learn more from the site. After that we'll take whatever other measures are necessary."

"The road's washed out," Dom says. "There's no way to get here at the moment."

"That won't be a problem," Giles says vaguely.

"Um, okay," Dom says. He pauses, then asks quietly, "Is Xander dead?"

After a long silence, Giles sighs. "I hope not."

"Me too," Dom says.

***

Dom is walking back and forth outside the service station, staring into the darkness, when he hears a faint popping sound behind him. He turns quickly, alarmed, and sees a red-haired woman standing where no one had been seconds before. She looks worried.

"You're Dom, right?" she says. "I'm Willow."

"How did you get here?" Dom asks, looking around for signs of some kind of transportation.

"Teleported," Willow says dismissively. "So you saw Xander disappear? Giles told me what happened."

"Uh... yeah," Dom says, still trying to get his head around 'teleported'. He points. "He walked right in that direction. Towards the crater. You, um... teleport?"

"Only in emergencies," Willow says, turning to look where Xander had gone.

Dom stares at her. "So you're... like, magic or something."

"Uh huh," Willow says. She starts taking some weird looking stuff out of her pockets. "I'm a witch."

Dom kind of laughs. "Uh... but not a wicked witch, right?"

Willow winces a little, kneeling to the ground to start arranging her supplies. "Not at the moment, no."

Dom stares at her, a little unnerved. He doesn't quite trust this strange girl, arranging bizarre items in some kind of ritual pattern on the ground outside a gas station. "What're you doing?" Dom asks. At his question she finally looks at him direct