*****
Unable to sleep, I turn over fitfully and look across at my sleeping wife. She looks so peaceful in her sleep and I smile, leaning over to place a kiss on her forehead. A strand of her dark hair falls across her face and I brush it away gently, watching her face for any sign of reaction. She stirs in her sleep and I pull away slightly, looking into her beautiful brown eyes as she opens them.
"Mmmm. Xander?" she murmurs, still half asleep. "Are you still awake?"
"Yeah, honey," I tell her. "It's okay. I'll sleep soon. I was just thinking."
She regards me thoughtfully for a moment and I know that she wants to say something about my habit of thinking too much late at night, but she just gives me that smile that makes my heart melt and then turns over onto her opposite side. "I love you," she says and I smile again because I know that she means it.
So now I lie here and I look at her back as it rises and falls with her steady breathing. And I pull her closer to me, trying to fall asleep as well. But my mind seems intent on keeping me awake tonight as it sifts through a maze of memories, picking out selections to bring before me. It seems to be taunting me with what could have been, trying to make me prefer that to what is. And so I'm lost in memories, wishing I could just go to sleep.
*****
"Why?" I ask, feeling truly helpless for the first time in a long while. "Why do you have to leave?"
I look up at him as he approaches the edge of the bed where I'm sitting. His expression is soft but it does little to comfort me. So I look away from him and focus my attention on my hand, which is plucking nervously at the knees of my jeans. Angel stops just in front of me and my gaze is drawn up to his face once again. I watch him silently as he begins speaking, only half listening to his words.
"I'm sorry," he says and his voice is full of regret. "But this is for the best." His voice is calm and quiet and his expression holds no emotion except a vague sorrow. I realize suddenly that I'm going to be the unreasonable one here, the one who screams and shouts, unwilling to let the relationship end quietly.
"The best for who?" I ask him and I can hear the angry, bitter tone in my own ears. I'm not surprised when I see him flinch upon hearing it. "For you? For Buffy? For people I don't know? Because I'm pretty sure you're not worrying about me here. Otherwise you would have talked to me about this before. Instead I get home to find you packing. Were you even going to say goodbye?"
He sits down next to me and I bite the inside of my lip as I feel tears preparing to fall. I won't cry. Alexander Harris does not cry, especially not over something as trivial as his heart getting ripped out of his chest. "Xander," he says softly and I feel like screaming at him to please raise his voice or show any kind of emotion at all. "It's best for all of us. I love you, but I can't be with you. You know that. You deserve a future with someone who can be."
"Fuck you," I spit back at him and I laugh when I see the shocked expression on his face. "I bet Buffy didn't say that when you used the same speech on her, right?" I watch the look of guilt cross his face at my words and I smile bitterly. He *should* feel guilty; he can't even be bothered to come up with an original excuse for abandoning me. "No, I bet Buffy cried and told you she loved you and begged you to stay. Well, I'm not Buffy. Just leave if that's what you want to do. I don't care."
I'm lying of course. I care more than I ever have before. The thought of him leaving makes my stomach clench painfully. I'm fairly certain that if he walks out the door I will die. But I don't tell him any of that; I just watch him as he rises slowly from the bed and begins walking towards the door. He picks up his suitcase from where it sits just inside the door and then turns back to me. "I love you," he says gently.
"I hate you," I answer. It hurts to say but I clench my jaw and glare at him. He's leaving me; that's all I can focus on at the moment. He promised that he would never leave me, knowing how hurt I had been by people in the past. He swore that he would always be there for me. And now I'm watching him walk out of my life. And I love him, of course. I don't think I could ever really hate him. But I watch his face calmly as the hurt expression crosses it. And then he turns and walks through the open door and out into the hallway. I stay seated where I am and listen to the sound of his footsteps. And then I hear the unmistakable sound of the front door closing behind him.
*****
What if he hadn't left? What if I had tried to get him to stay? How would my life have been changed? Against my will, I'm asking myself these questions. I love Cordelia. I would never trade the life I've made with her for a life with Angel. But I can't help the path my thoughts take. I still miss him. If he was here, would it be like it was in the beginning? Or would we have drifted apart by now? Would I still look at him the way I do at Cordy? Or maybe Angel was right in the letter he left. Maybe I would have ended up resenting him.
Cordelia stirs in her sleep again and now she's on her side facing me as I watch her sleeping face. She's so beautiful and I know that I must be the luckiest person in the world because this amazing creature loves me, even after I hurt her so much in the past. I feel guilty for even trying to imagine my life without her. If I lost her now, I know that it would be like losing a part of myself. But sometimes, mostly late at night when Angel and I would have been spending time together, I can't help but think back and wonder what might have happened. Because even though our relationship ended painfully, we were happy once.
*****
"Whatever you say, Angel," I say as I roll my eyes at the vampire in front of me. He grins back at me and I can't help the swell of pride that comes from knowing that I can make him smile when few other people can.
Angel steps towards me and wraps his arms around me. He pulls me closer and I tilt my head up just slightly as he leans in to place a kiss on my lips. "I love you," he whispers softly for me alone to hear. And I let myself be wrapped up in him, feeling his strong arms around me. It feels good to hear someone say that; I can't remember the last person who told me they loved me.
"I love you, too," I answer and as usual it feels amazingly good to say that to him. I love the way he smiles gently when he hears it and the way his arms tighten just a bit around me. I move my head to rest my cheek on his shoulder and I just stand there letting him hold me for a few moments.
After a while, we pull apart and return to our task of fixing Willow's birthday dinner. It seems to be taking twice as long for the two of us to prepare it together since we keep getting distracted. This last distraction was started with a debate over which vegetable would go best with the chicken that was baking in the oven. Angel said that we should make asparagus, to which I replied that asparagus was the most disgusting vegetable on the planet and we should make corn. He gave me *that* look, the one that makes my heart melt, and said that asparagus made him happy and he would be forced to brood all night if we didn't make it. What else could I do besides roll my eyes at him?
So now we're making asparagus, which I swear I won't eat, and flavored rice to go with the chicken. The kitchen is filled with the smells of cooking food and Angel is bustling around making sure everything is taken care of. It's a scene I've seen dozens of times, yet it never fails to strike me as just slightly odd. But what's more strange than the scene itself is that it feels so *right*.
I was always taught that the man works and brings home the money. Or he spends it on booze. But either way, he has control of it. And the woman does the cooking, cleaning, raising of kids, and everything else that needs to be done. That was how things went in the Harris family. There was never any doubt that there would be a man *and* a woman. No Harris boy would ever grow up to be anything but an upstanding boozing womanizer. Of course, they never said that. Mom always said I could be whatever I wanted to be. But there was always the unspoken "but you'll probably wind up wanting to be just like your father" lurking behind her eyes. Well, I suppose I showed them. I'm about as far from being anything that he would approve of as I can get. And that knowledge makes me insanely happy.
When Angel pauses for a moment, done with the tasks that need to be completed before the food is finished, I pull him to me again. Breathing in his scent, I smile contentedly. This is nice. This is what my parents should have had, what they should have shown me I could have. I didn't know until Cordelia what being in love even looked like. And I haven't known until Angel how being loved in return is. And I do love this feeling so much.
*****
I sigh softly, not wanting to wake Cordelia. Those are the days I miss, the ones when we were just together and happy. And late at night I remember moonlit walks along the beach and long discussions about our pasts. But it was always about the past, never about the future. And I suppose that's the difference between my life with him and my life with Cordelia. Angel would never let me look past today. If the conversation started turning towards talk of the future, he would always change the subject. With Cordelia, I can look ahead to when we're old and our children are grown. That's a nice feeling, knowing that this beautiful person beside me will be with me even when we're both old and gray.
As my thoughts turn to Cordelia, I smile and reach out a hand to stroke her hair gently. I love her so much. She's given me the two greatest gifts of my life, our marriage and our beautiful little daughter. And I don't think I ever let her know how very much she means to me and how lost I would be without her. I try to show her, but I'm not sure if I do enough. She and Brittany have become the focus of my existence and they have filled my life with so much happiness that I can almost forget all the bad times. This thought makes me feel guilty once again for missing Angel. I know that's ridiculous, of course, since I can't help the emotions I feel. In fact, I'm sure that Cordelia would tell me so if she was awake and knew what I was thinking. But I still feel the pang of guilt.
But now Cordelia stirs and I forget all the self-recrimination and everything else as my mind focuses on her. Her eyes flutter open as if she somehow knew that I needed her to be awake and she smiles at me. "Xander?" she asks sleepily. "Are you still awake? What time is it?"
"It's 3:30," I say after a glance at the alarm clock on the nightstand. "I'm sorry, baby. Did I wake you up?"
"No," she says with a shake of her head. "You need to sleep, though." Her voice is filled with concern and I realize again how incredibly lucky I am that she cares about me. "Can't you think about Angel in the morning?" she asks.
I chuckle softly. I should have known she would know what was bothering me. "No," I answer truthfully. When Cordelia is awake my thoughts are constantly with her. "But it's okay. I don't really need to think about him any more. I love you," I tell her and I hope that she knows how completely true that is.
"I know," she answers, reaching out a hand to brush against my cheek. "I love you, too." She kisses me gently on the lips and wraps her arm around my shoulders. "Now go to sleep."And I obey Cordelia, closing my eyes and falling into dreams of my beautiful wife, the memories of Angel not entirely forgotten but put aside for now.
The End