TITLE: Normal Boy
AUTHOR: Dreiser
CONTENT: F/F romance. Don't like it, don't read it.
SUMMARY: Subtexty stuff seen from Xander's POV.
DISCLAIMER: I own nothing but a case of Heineken.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Heh. This is a bit unusual as subtext fics go, I suppose. I
mean, I think so. Who knows? Maybe this is normal, just like Xander. Ahhh,
Xander. Gotta love the guy and this fic is for him in all his coolness.

Normal Boy

By: Dreiser


 Xander was a normal boy.

 He knew that. Everyone knew that. In the dictionary his picture should be
right next to the word normal.

 Now the things he dealt with, they weren't normal.

 As if anyone could deal with normal things in Sunnydale anyway. But if they
could he would be at the center of it. The normal boy nexus, that was the
best way to describe Xander Harris.

 Yes, indeedy doo.

 But as stated before, he happened to live in Sunnydale, and unlike Xander,
Sunnydale wasn't normal. No, it wasn't normal at all. In fact, it was the
furthest thing from normal that you could get.

 Sunnydale... was the Richard Simmons of supernatural activity and when it
played Sweatin' To The Oldies, it just made you want to run away screaming.

 That didn't make any sense did it?

 Probably not, but the point is, Sunnydale, like Richard Simmons, just
wasn't normal. Both were horrible abnormalities that really shouldn't exist
in this world.

 Unfortunately, they both did.

 And poor Xander had to deal with both of them. Well, he hardly ever dealt
with Richard Simmons, just his informercials when he got really bored late
at night.

 Which is another story entirely.

 Anyway, Xander was normal even though he was used to dealing with unusual
things. Things that definitely caused hairs to raise and hearts to stop.

 Strangely enough, he got used to the unusual things and soon they became
normal to him. They were just another part of his routine. Fighting the evil
naughty things with Buffy was a daily occurrence and he didn't really thing
much about it.

 In reality, he didn't think much about anything. Xander just went along
with things as they came about.

 Maybe that's how he ended up with Cordelia and Anya. He was always rather
weak willed when it came to women.

 Like Anya said, he liked to be dominated.

 So... it just happened that Xander got used to many strange things in his
life. Then being Xander, he eventually adjusted them into normal status
because they happened so often. Because everything that he ever encountered
on a regular basis eventually became normal.

 Normal just like him.

 Some might say Xander could assimilate things into normality. Resistance is
futile, Xander will make you normal. Then again, some might watch Star Trek
too much.

 What Xander didn't find normal, couldn't want normal, wouldn't even attempt
to make normal were the romantic lives of the various women surrounding him.

 Lucky guy, he had a lot of female friends. A lot of beautiful female
friends. But unlucky guy, they tried their level best to hide their naughty
going ons from him.

 But Xander, being a normal boy, noticed anyway. Especially when the naughty
going ons involved other people of the female persuasion.

 And a lot of times, they did.

 It all started with Faith. Sometimes, Xander thought everything started and
ended with Faith. Like she was the great catalyst in their romantic world.

 Then again, Faith was his first and people do tend to fixate on their
first. Xander surely did.

 Anyway, it started with Faith. The whole noticing of naughty going ons,
that is. And he noticed it big time in the forms of Buffy and Faith.

 It seemed weird to him, them always disappearing together after meetings.
The little touches, the smiles, the sexual innuendo that always made Buffy
blush.

 He mentioned it to Cordelia and she pinched him.

 She always seemed to pinch him. Pinching was Cordelia's punishment
technique for Xander and he had since developed a weird fear of it, jumping
away from people when he thought a pinch was coming on.

 Cordelia, after she pinched him, told him he was just being a normal boy,
more or less, and pushing his own weird lesbian fantasies onto innocent
Buffy and Faith.

 Sheahhhhhh, right.

 Xander knew there was more going on there but what could he do? His
girlfriend was mad at him. So he did the only thing a normal boy could do.

 He obeyed her orders and decided to try and not notice the weird stuff
going on with Buffy and Faith.

 Too bad for Xander that one night, while walking away from Cordelia's house
he happened upon Buffy and Faith involved in a heavy makeout session in a
alley.

 The session probably would've gone on longer, and given Xander much more to
see, if some way stupid vamps hadn't interrupted them and caused the two
Slayers to take their fun to a more private location.

 But still, Xander has his proof.

 The proof, the almighty proof that he could wave in front of Cordelia's
face and show her for once she was wrong and he was right.

 Then he thought about the sort of pinch he would get for doing such a thing
and decided to keep the whole alley romance thing to himself. It was just
safer that way. Especially as he thought about Buffy and Faith's reaction if
they found out what he had seen. Yes, it was safer to keep this to himself.

 After all, he wanted to keep on living.

 A few months later Faith went awol, the Mayor turned into a giant snake,
their school was destroyed, and the dark Slayer was in coma land.

 That meant, in Xander's mind, the end of any more naughty going ons in his
part of the world. Mainly because he also broke up with Cordelia and wasn't
getting any.

 A few months after that he was with Anya and getting plenty. Some might
even say too much. But not him as he was, of course, a normal boy with
normal needs.

 It was in this bliss of getting some that Xander took to noticing Buffy and
Willow, and how they acted together. Now, he never much thought about how
they always held hands, he thought all girls did that. But then he noticed
the little looks and touches and as he noticed this his brain flashed back
to his first.

 Faithy doodle doo.

 She'd probably whack him for saying that. Faith wasn't like Cordelia. She
wasn't a pincher, she was more a whacker and he knew she'd whack him
mightily for calling her such a wussy nickname. But hey, she was in a coma
and he was observing weirdness in Buffy and Willow.

 Xander decided it was time to be observant man.

 Observant man to the rescue, doo doo doo! Superhero music plays as he goes
off to observe his two best friends with sharp eyes that spot girl on girl
romance.

 Normal boy, he was a strange boy at times too. Xander partially blamed
Anya, she was perverting his mind a lot. The girl just didn't have any
restraint about sexual topics.

 To be honest, her attitude was oddly freeing.

 So off Xander went, observing them. He didn't know what he was going to do
this time. Maybe he'd just watch them when they were together and see if
anything popped out at him. Yeah, that sounded wrong but it was his plan.

 But it still didn't sound as wrong as the idea of Willow doing stuff in
public like Buffy had done with Faith. That didn't fit the redhead's
personality at all. She just wasn't that type of girl.

 At least, that's what Xander thought until one night, while walking across
the U.C. Sunnydale campus, he found Willow pushing Buffy up against a
mausoleum with what looked to be some very naughty intentions.

 And here Xander thought she was still getting over Oz leaving. He supposed
that Buffy was helping her heal.

 Whatever that meant.

 Their healing went on for awhile and then Buffy met Riley and Xander
supposed the healing ended. He felt bad for Willow, figuring that Buffy had
dumped her.

 Then he came upon Willow with her new witchy friend, Tara, when he went to
school to visit with her.

 Bam, wham, zoom! Five seconds after seeing them together Xander knew the
signs.

 Tara was going to be the next female acquaintance of his to join the
Sisters of Sappho. As he watched them, Xander couldn't help but wonder if
they'd do it outside. Of course, moments after thinking this, Xander had a
Cordelia moment and pinched himself.

  Seeing Tara blush at something that Willow said to her made Xander doubt
they'd get outdoorsy. Tara was the real deal and she inspired indoor antics
no doubt. He couldn't help but smile as he watched the two girls. They just
looked so content and happy together.

 Being a normal boy, Xander wanted that for himself. He wanted to feel those
things when he was with Anya.

 And he did, when he wasn't feeling horny.

 Which again, was an entirely normal thing for boys. At least, Xander
assumed that it was normal.

 For awhile Xander assumed that his days of spotting hidden things were
over. Willow had Tara and Buffy had Riley and he was with Anya. What else
was there to see? He most definitely didn't want to go into the Giles zone.
Especially since his mind was rather preoccupied with the whole noticing
female/female romance before everyone else did.

 Then it all came back to Faith.

 She woke up, switched bodies with Buffy, caused some trouble and skipped
town.

 Next thing Xander knew, Faith ended up in L.A. where she was reforming with
Angel and Buffy approved of the whole program, hoping Faith could
'straighten out.'

 Xander assumed this wasn't meant literally.

 Sunnydale and L.A. were a few miles apart, that was for certain. So Xander
couldn't know exactly what was going on there. He just heard things whenever
Buffy would check in with Angel to find out about Faith.

 But one day, for who knows what reason, Xander felt seized with curiosity
to find out about Faith himself.

 She was his first, after all.

 Waiting until Anya was in the shower, as he wanted to live through the
phone call, Xander dialed the number to Angel's and ended up talking to dead
boy himself. Angel said, more or less, that Faith was gone for the day,
having gone to Cordelia's place.

 Bingo! Yet another score for subtext spotting boy. Hanging up the phone,
Xander smirked and felt like giving himself a big pat on the back. While
this went on, Anya walked down the basement stairs drying her hair.

 Anya noticed his smirk, of course. Anya noticed everything about him. Anya
had the eyes of a hawk or some other scary bird that hunted things.

 Then she noticed other things and moved with the speed of a scary bird to
pounce onto him for a passionate embrace. And it was an embrace that Xander
returned heartily.

 Because he was a normal boy.

-End-