Title: Xander Repeated

Author: Skandranon

Email: [email protected]

Genre: Buffy tVS

Rating: PG

Ongoing WIP

Pairing: eventually Spike/Xander (give it time)

Warnings: Slash (man-on-man action), character death (mild), mild violence, a few swear words, lotsa Xander-abuse (in a non whips-n-chains way)

Author's Notes: I basically stole the plot from the movie Groundhog Day, since I thought it was something that might happen in the Buffyverse. Do you hate me? Also, this is very AU, since the Scoobies are still in High School, but Spike has a chip. I altered things to suit my own purposes. Hate me now? You should. Wait til you see how many times Xander gets called stupid.

September 12, Wednesday

The day started like any other day for Alexander Lavelle Harris. The night before he had set his alarm clock an hour earlier so that he could get up and have time to study for the big test today, but he had screwed up and set it for 6 instead of 4. This threw off his balance for the rest of the day, starting with when he woke up just in time to see the bus sail past his house. Muttering a few choice curses, he lurched to his feet and dragged himself over to his closet.

His father drove him to school, complaining the entire way about the economy, his job, the price of milk, and mostly about Xander's stupidity. Xander sat quietly in the passenger seat and took the abuse, knowing better than to talk back to his father about anything. They got to the school with time to spare, and Xander hurried out of the car and went in search of a certain redheaded best friend.

Second period went by slower than slowly, as Xander gnawed on his eraser in hopes that it might provide answers he didn't know for the test before him. He filled in some random bubbles, wrote down some vague sentences in the essay section, proudly signed his name and turned it in. By the end of the class they were graded, and he was consoling himself with the fact that 32 wasn't such a bad grade, considering he didn't study at all.

During lunch Xander munched on his stale and/or congealed food and providing the occasional goofy one-liner for Willow, who was bemoaning her pitiful A-.

"A minus! I mean, I almost never get a minus! Minus means inadequate. It means 'Oh, you only barely got an A, it almost isn't an A, so we'll put this little dash next to it to remind you that if you had gotten any lower, it would have been a B+.'"

Xander idly wondered if he should complain about his F--- to make her feel better, but luckily at that moment Cordelia wandered over to do it for him.

"Congratulations Xander. I saw your test score for English. Wow, 32, that's like a new school record. For worst grade, that is. How do you do it, Harris? A rigorous schedule of Non-studying?"

Xander replied with the first quip that came to him, which must have been pretty bad because Cordelia left laughing. Willow tried not to look guilty, which for her was an expression of uber-guilt. She attempted to make him feel better by offering to tutor him, but only succeeded in rubbing it in that he was an idiot.

She didn't mean to, not really. It's just that, her having an IQ of two people and his being the equivalent of a circus poodle, any word from her mouth only served to remind him of his faults.

Sighing inwardly, Xander got up to put his tray away, but a mountain came out of nowhere and bumped into him. A mountain by the name of Varsity Quarterback Pete Conners, who now had the remains of Xander's meal smeared all over his pants. And didn't look too pleased about it.

Xander began to ponder whether begging for forgiveness could be considered manly, but he never got the chance to find out. Before Mr. 7ft could even swing, there was a short little blond girl between them, gripping his arm in a vise of a hand.

"Why don't you stay away from my friend, huh Pete? I doubt you'd be able to play football with a broken leg."

Pete backed away from the annoyed Ms. Summers, muttering something about hiding behind girls as he stalked away. Watching him go, Xander wondered if there was a spell that could actually make the earth open up and swallow you when you wanted it to.

Having done her good deed for the day, Buffy decided that Xander needed further embarrassing and escorted him and Willow to the library, happily sipping on her soda as she went.

Giles was there to meet them when they arrived, an expression of "There's a demon running loose and we have to kill it" on his face. He immediately launched into his mandatory British-guy explanation.

"Oh good, you're all here. I need to talk to you about a new demon that's shown up in town. Apparently it's been eating the local wildlife, and a few people have caught sight of it. It appears to be a dark green in color, with its eyes on stalks protruding from its head."

Sip sip. "So basically it's a green bug-eyed monster?"

"Er, yes, I suppose you could describe it like that."

Xander took his natural position as seat-warmer and let the experts talk it out, sometimes noting important words like "weapons", "park", and "Xander, could you get me that book over there?"

He turned with a "Which book?", but apparently Buffy had set her drink down on the table, because now thanks to his elbow it was spilled all over a blue hardback. "Um, oops."

"Xander! Oh, I don't believe it. How could you be so clumsy?" Giles rushed to check the condition of his precious tree-sliver square, and wasn't very thrilled with what he found. "Xander, this was a first edition! Do you have any idea how much it cost? Oh, it's ruined, the script is running together."
Xander had glanced in that book once or twice before. It was in a completely different alphabet, and his opinion was that it always had looked like the script was running together. He said as much.

"Don't be foolish. It's Gedroshan, a demonic language, and it's completely illegible now. Of course you wouldn't know that; the only language you read is English, and at times I'm doubtful about your skill in that."

Okay, that was nudging into the "mean" zone. He could understand, though. Giles was mad, he had just trashed something worth a lot of money, who wouldn't be screaming insults? He made an attempt to apologize.

"Oh, just, get out, before you ruin something else. Out!"

Fine fine, he was going. It's not like he was needed or anything anyways.

After school, the day took a wonderful turn as he was fired again. Apparently someone had been stealing from the register, and they blamed him, the registee. He didn't try do defend himself, knowing they wouldn't believe him anyway.

As soon as the sun went down, he returned to the library to meet with the others. Giles and Buffy had opted for good ol' violence to take down the beast, so he picked out a shield and a spear as Buffy went for a dagger and Giles selected a sword. He knew his place in the group. Buffy was the brawn, Giles was the brain, Willow was the magic, and, well, okay, also the brain, and Xander was the delay tactic. Whenever another teammate needed time to recover or pick up their knife or whatever, it was his duty to step in and let the bad guy pummel him until they were ready.

They headed out and searched the area all night, sticking mostly to parks since that was where the monster fed. By midnight there was still no sign of their quarry. Giles was getting a tad frustrated, in a British manner of course, which involved a lot of huffing and complaining whenever a Scooby did something stupid. Since Xander was the only stupid one in the group, this meant that every few minutes he received another "For goodness sakes, watch your back, will you Xander?" or "Please Xander, could you stop that ridiculous humming?"

Xander was about to make Giles guess the name of the song he was humming, when the bush behind them exploded into a green blur of claws and teeth.

Buffy nearly crowed in delight as she went at the demon, whacking it again and again with her knife, which looked pitifully small in comparison to the hulking beast. It didn't appear to like this turn of events, and knocked her down with one fiercely taloned arm.

That was his cue. Hefting his shield, he leaped in front of the fallen Slayer and jabbed the monster with his spear. It glared at him with five beady eyes, and then suddenly the ground was flying at him.

He lay there for a moment, waiting for the throbbing in his head to stop, but when it replied that no, it didn't want to stop, he lurched to his feet. He was just in time to hear a heart-stopping scream, much too high in pitch to be the demon. Whirling around he was treated to a nightmare come true as he watched Willow slide to the ground, the light fading from her eyes as the blood seeped through her yellow flowery sweater.