Epilogue: In Which, Whatever, Catharsis or Something

They just fit together, the way Xander was always catching Andrew's eye during kitchen pile-ups and Andrew was turning to him whenever one of the girls got a comic book or action movie detail wrong.

When the evil preacher, Caleb, poked out his eye and Xander felt the most agonizing pain he'd ever felt (well, probably, it wasn't like he could be expected to remember all the agonizing pain he'd ever been through), Spike was the one who rescued him, but Andrew was the one who sat by his side in the hospital (when Willow was tired enough to let him, anyway), holding his hand and ever so lightly, tenderly touching the skin under his eye.

Sunnydale became a ghost town, and everybody started fighting each other like it was the only thing they knew how to do anymore.

After Andrew spoke with the voice of the Bringer, Xander had to hold him half the night before he stopped shaking. The other half of the night, they did what everybody else was doing: had sex the night before the night before the end of the world.

They'd been doing lots of making out, but one of them always shied away, scared or guilty or not ready or everything. But that night, Xander thought they felt just the right amount of safe with each other and an equal amount of danger pressing in from all sides so as to make it pretty much inevitable.

It was awkward and fumbling and hands-shaking at first, but then Xander flipped Andrew over onto his back and Andrew's hands came up to grip Xander's biceps, to run his fingers along the lines of muscle there, and their breath hitched, not quite in unison, and Xander could see Andrew's eyes full of wonder, and knew his own eyes must look similar (he could tell he'd been lighting up whenever Andrew walked into the room lately, and this was a whole new kind of light).

It was still a little awkward and fumbling after that, but in a tense, heat-filled way that Xander wanted to bask in for the whole rest of his life.

Unfortunately, there were other things that required his attention.

xXx

The night before the end of the world, Xander invited Spike to play D&D with them and Spike snorted and said, "Not bloody likely," but then paused and clasped Xander's shoulder in the hall. "Keep yourself safe tomorrow, Harris. And keep that little blond mouse you've been shagging safe too. He's actually not too bad." And then he added, "But I'll kill you if you tell him I said that."

Xander nodded, laughed. Spike turned to go, but Xander pulled him back into a hug. Spike didn't even resist all that much before hugging him back. It felt kind of weird, but good.

It was far from the weirdest thing that happened that night, though.

In the early hours of the morning, there was a knock on the door, and when Xander cautiously opened it, it was Anya.

"Well," he said, stepping back. "You're about the last person I expected to see." Then he paused. "Are you a person? Or a demon?"

Anya shook her head disparagingly and gave him a pursed-lipped look, though he fancied her glance turned a bit admiring as it landed on his eye patch. It certainly seemed like she hadn't changed much. "Demon," she said. "After I left here, I ended up in Cleveland, and I met this guy and we fell in love and had many pleasure moments together, and then he left me at the altar and I got my powers back and became a vengeance demon again." She paused and looked consideringly at Xander. "Probably it's a good thing I left," she said. "If I'd stayed maybe we'd have gotten together, and probably the same thing would have happened."

Xander kind of wanted to protest this, because although Anya had always been very pretty and was clearly very sharp, he really didn't see that happening. But who knew? How did you ever know?

"So, not that it's not nice to catch up with evil demons who have cursed you," Xander said. "But what are you doing here, Anya?" He noticed that while Anya had been talking, Andrew had wandered up behind him, and was now tugging ever-so-gently on his shirtsleeve and looking fascinated at the sight of Anya.

"Well," she said, "obviously I am here to assist in your apocalypse and redeem myself for my prior life of evil."

"So you're not here to win my heart?" Xander said. "I thought maybe, what with the showing up on the doorstep and all."

"Ew, no. I'm way over you. And it looks like that guy is all over you."

"I know all about that redeeming stuff," Andrew said, sliding an arm around Xander's waist. She had a point, Xander had to admit, with the all-over-you thing. "I recently completed a quest for redemption myself." And then, "Are you really a vengeance demon? I've never met one before. What's the best curse you ever put on somebody?"

Anya's eyes lit up and she focused on Andrew, practically pushing Xander aside. "Well, there was this one time, in Russia…"

Xander was proud of himself for waiting two whole minutes before bursting in, "Can we maybe talk about a different curse you put on someone?"

Anya looked up at him. "That's very rude, I was just in the middle of my story. But yes, we can talk about another. I've cursed a lot of people."

"Including, you know, me?" Xander was only vaguely alarmed to hear how high-pitched his voice had become. Under the circumstances, he thought it was rather justified.

"Yes, including you. But you know, I really don't think that was one of my best. No offense, Xander."

"Okay, fair enough. But I was thinking we could talk about it maybe more along the lines of you, you know, taking it off me?" Really, Xander thought he was doing very well; he wasn't even threatening her with physical violence (not that he could have carried said violence out…yet. Though, actually, since she was a demon again—Xander pulled his mind sharply back to the matter at hand).

"Yes," Anya said impatiently. "I was getting to that. I thought that could be part of my redemptive arc, but if you want to hurry the process along and ruin all the proper drama of it…"

"Yes," Xander said. "That is exactly what I want."

By this point, the other D&D players had trickled out into the hallway, and now Willow stuck her head down over the banister. "What's going on?" she said groggily. "What are you guys doing up?"

"Anya's going to remove Xander's curse," Andrew told her, and Xander noticed that his voice was very small, the excitement of vengeance-demon stories gone out of it completely.

Willow flew down the stairs, and she grabbed Anya by the shoulders. "Anya! You're here? More importantly, you are?"

"I am. If you'll remove your witchy little hands, I might actually have room to work here."

Willow looked like she wanted to make some comeback, then closed her mouth and stepped back. Xander realized that he was practically panting, that his nerves were abuzz with excitement. After all these years, all this time, to have Anya here in the house, to have a chance of leading a normal life at last.

Not that it had been all bad, obviously. He looked at Andrew, whose face was down. So much of it had been so good.

"So…" he said, mouth dry now that the time had actually come for it. "So how do we do this?"

Anya shrugged. "Someone just has to wish for you to be able to touch women."

Xander found himself laughing and couldn't stop. After all these years, it was that easy.

Distantly, through the laughing, he heard Anya saying, "So who wants to do it? You have to be precise with the language, you know, or else he could end up always having to touch a woman, or have to touch every woman."

And he heard Andrew say, voice still so small, "You do it, Willow. You were there when it started. You should be the one to finish it."

Xander took his hands off his knees and straightened up in time to see Andrew retreating to the stairs and sitting down on the first step.

Something weird was going on. But he didn't have time to think about it, because Willow was looking at him, mouth half open and a question in her eyes: Are you sure? Do you really want me to do this? and he nodded. Yes, he found. He really did. To be able to be in control of his own body again, totally and truly. To be able to do anything. Xander found that he was trembling.

Then Willow was speaking. "I wish that Xander Harris once again has the ability to touch women." Keeping it clear and simple, that was his Willow.

He didn't feel anything, no fizz or zing or feeling of melting (but then, he hadn't felt anything when it started either), didn't feel any different at all, and for a moment, Xander wondered whether it had really worked. Or maybe this was just some cruel joke of Anya's, getting her revenge on him one last time before—

But these thoughts were interrupted by a body slamming into his chest full-force, and then Willow was there, squeezing the breath out of him, and he gave a startled cry, and a cheer went up from Amanda and the potentials in the living room who'd been awakened, and they crowded in too, girl hands touching him everywhere, and Xander was laughing again. Even Buffy emerged, opening the door to the basement and poking her bleary head out, followed by the even blearier head of Spike (Xander had known things were happening with them again!), and her eyes lit up and she joined in the hug. Even Anya threw up her hands and dove in, and Giles was taking off his glasses and wiping at what looked suspiciously like a tear. Xander felt as though he would burst, in the best possible way.

Through the tangle of girl arms and girl hair, Xander saw Andrew disappearing up the stairs.

xXx

When he was able to extricate himself, Xander padded up the stairs. He found Andrew in the upstairs bathroom, tucked into a ball on the rug in front of the shower.

Xander kneeled down, touched Andrew's shoulder. "Hey, what's up?"

Andrew's voice was muffled. "I think it's pretty clear what's up."

"Um, it's really not," Xander said, alarm creeping into his chest and his voice. "What's the matter?"

Andrew lifted his head. His eyes were bright and his mouth was set. "So you can touch girls again."

"Yeah," Xander said, and felt a smile pulling at the corners of his mouth, stretching across his face. "I can." Then he realized. "But you're not happy about that."

Andrew sniffed. "Well, would you be, if I could touch girls?"

"Andrew," Xander said, sitting back on his heels. "You can touch girls."

"But I don't want to," Andrew said, looking intensely into Xander's eyes. "But you do. And now you can."

Suddenly, Xander realized what was happening. He leaned forward, took Andrew's face in both his hands, and held it tenderly. "The only one I want to touch is you," he said. "And I'm counting all genders and sexes and species in that statement."

Andrew peeked up and met his eyes. "Really?" he asked.

Xander pressed their foreheads together. "Really."

And there on the bathroom floor, leaning back against the bathtub, they kissed. There was no more time for fighting.

They had a world to save, after all.

And they would face the end, together.