Nothing-Ever After.

It was a chilly December afternoon, and Xander and Cordelia were exiting school toward her BMW in the parking lot. It was the day before Christmas break and the pair was thrilled to be done with their mandated, low yield higher learning. Xander specifically found school to be the biggest waste of his time. Even if he didn’t remember all the details that an exceptional mind like Sherlock could, the teenager has looped enough times to pass tests without reading any of the questions. He either caught up on some sleep during classes or designed pommels, grips, guards, and other aesthetics for his smithing.

Cordelia was looking forward to the extra time of shopping as much as Xander was looking forward to the extra time at the forge and with her. The pair were, as Xander described, functional. They could argue as easily as they could get along, and the sheer animal magnetism ensured some part of their horny anatomy would be glued together. More than the intimate moments, Xander enjoyed how blunt and open they were with each other. Cordelia said what she meant, and Xander returned the favor. They traded harsh jokes with one another, but somehow always knew where to draw the line. They simply clicked.

The student body didn’t feel the same. Xander was the talk of the school whenever Doug, Xander, and Cordelia were in the same class. Doug certainly seemed eager to pay Xander back, and the student body was just as eager to see them brawl again, however, Doug, nor any other junior or senior, didn’t challenge Xander. They would try to humiliate him with their words, but with a girlfriend like Cordelia, Xander was more than capable of verbal sparring. On the positive side, many of the less popular class congratulated him; geeks, nerds, or the less social.

Xander smiled as they reached her red M series BMW. The time looping teen was looking forward to spending more time with the uber-popular cheerleader, then she bluntly delivered terrible news. Stunned, Xander repeated, “Your parents are going to be here tonight?”

“That’s what I said,” Cordelia replied.

“Both of them? At the same?”

Looking at her panicked boyfriend, Cordelia explained, “When Daddy gets time off, he likes to show off his ‘perfect little family.’ So mom comes back, we all go to company dinners, retreats, resorts, whatever the event is.” Cordelia and Xander put their bags in the backseat and then leaned against her lustrous red car in a half hug. She loosely had her arms around his neck as she complained, “He’ll reintroduce me to trust-fund sons of his bosses, try to get us talking, bore, snore. It’s a thing.”

“Uh, wait a minute,” Xander retorted, shaking his head in disbelief. “Let’s not sidestep the trust-fund sons part.”

She answered his worry by rolling her eyes, as if she was over that an hour ago, and told him, “Oh, stop it. You know I wouldn’t trade you for all the money in California.”

Xander quirked his brow in confusion before clarifying, “You mean all the money in the world, right?”

Cordelia snorted before sarcastically proposing, “As if anyone’s going to offer me all the money in the world to dump you.” Xander felt irked by the ludicrous hypothetical, but couldn’t argue the logic. Then Cordelia hugged his neck a little tighter before affectionately confessing, “And if they did, I’d obviously take the money, buy you, and use the rest of it to do whatever we want.”

Restraining a great need to smile, Xander shook his head before acknowledging, “I know I should be offended and objectified, but I’m oddly okay with that.” After leaning in for a gentle kiss, Xander asked, “So?”

Drawing her brows together, the confused girl asked, “So… what?”

Considering how significant this topic can be, he hesitated to clarify, “Am I… Do I get to meet… them?”

Cordelia leaned back as if the question was repugnant and gasped, “My parents? God, no! The last thing I need is Daddy asking you what Ivy League you’re attending or how diverse your portfolio is. No, the farther away you are from them, the happier I’ll be.”

“I have to meet them sometime,” Xander reasoned, still holding her by the waist. “We might not all be together like this for another year. You want me to wait until next year to meet your parents?”

“Music to my ears,” she adamantly stated. “And what about you, Eager Beaver? Why haven’t I met your parents yet?”

Wrinkling his nose as if he smelled something horrible, Xander groaned before rebutting with the nightmare scenario. “So my mom can show you the best way to down a Jägerbomb or bounce a quarter in a glass while dear ol’ dad ogles your prime assets? Uh, no thanks. I’ll happily fabricate a Christmas memory to replace that nightmare.”

“I guess we’re both screwed,” Cordelia commiserated, leaning against him. “And not in the fun way.”

Rubbing her sides with a building eagerness to see her naked, Xander remarked, “At least we still have Christmas.” He snorted when he admitted, “It’ll actually be a first for me… You know. One with a girlfriend.”

Cordelia had the empathy to wince before revealing, “Actually… it won’t.”

“What?” he asked, halting his massaging.

Rubbing his chest, she explained, “Daddy’s taking us to the company Christmas party… in Vegas. So, we won’t be able to meet easily.”

“Easily?” he gasped. “You mean, at all.”

“Yeah, for a week.” Seeing how upset he was to hear the news, she gave him a comforting hug as she expressed, “I’m sorry.”

Xander hugged her back as he glumly voiced, “It’s okay. You should spend time with your family, anyway. My parents may be belligerent drunks, but at least I see them on a semi-daily basis.”

Leaning back, a curious Cordelia asked, “How do they pay for bills and things if they’re either wasted or halfway there?”

“They are what’s referred to as functional belligerent drunks,” he quasi-sarcastically stated. “As far as alcoholism goes, that trait is like winning the lottery.”

Sarcastically, she refuted, “Oh, yeah, cuz you totally won there, right?”

Snorting, Xander half-joked, “You kidding me? Learning to take a punch early on totally counts as a win.”

Judging by her knitted brows, Cordelia didn’t find his joke humorous and was about to say something when the teens heard, “Everything okay?”

They turn to see Ms. Calendar walking toward them, carrying a box of books. Xander let go of Cordelia and moved toward the teacher as he voiced, “Here, let me.”

“Thanks,” the beautiful teacher said with a smile. The three then walked to her car a few spaces away as Jenny asked about their plans for Christmas break.

“Yeah, that’s the thing,” Xander bemoaned. “We won’t be able to spend much of it together.”

“Oh?” Jenny asked as she unlocked her car.

Cordelia nodded as she explained, “Parents want to come back and suddenly play ‘It’s a Wonderful Life.’ As if Christmas was the best time to do that,” she pointed out with a scrunched nose.

Xander stopped putting Jenny’s box of books in her trunk to look at her curiously before pointing out, “It sort of is, Cor.”

The unique cheerleader argued, “It’s called, ‘It’s a Wonderful Life.’ Not, ‘It’s a Wonderful Day Out of an Entire Year.’ Is it so much to ask to have that wonderfulness year-round?”

Xander slumped his head, shaking it as sarcastically joked, “Living in a mansion and driving a beamer isn’t wonderful year-round; check. I hope you like the dictionary I’m getting you for Christmas.”

Amused by them, the beautiful teacher smiled before asking them, “These plans your parents are interrupting. I take it they require privacy and a cushy surface?”

Xander had the joke lined up and ready on his lips, but standing next to his girlfriend and across from the woman that he previously slept with made him hold it in. It didn’t stop Cordelia from joking, “A cushy surface isn’t really necessary.” Xander turned to his girlfriend with wide eyes.

Jenny only smiled brighter, marking the first time Xander’s seen her smile in weeks. Looking at the raven-haired woman, he was happy to see how much better she looked. The beautiful teacher had been so quiet or despondent in class that he considered intervening somehow. Now, she stood straighter, looked more put together than before, and he didn’t get the impression she was sad anymore. She looked like a new and improved Jenny.

“I’m actually glad I ran into you,” the sexy teacher told Xander, who perked up curiously. “Would you be able to come by my apartment, mmn, tomorrow night? Sevenish? Both of you, I mean. I came across some information I’d like to go over with you.”

“About Angel?” Xander quickly asked.

“About possible bad stuff,” Jenny seriously clarified.

Xander turned to Cordelia, and at her shrug, he answered, “Yeah, alright. Tomorrow.”

Xander spent as much time as he could with Cordelia, making out in her car before she had to go home, then he went to Dinks to forge. The very next night, Xander and Cordelia enter Jenny’s clean apartment at seven on the dot. The foxy woman of the house was dressed casually but mannerly; a loose white sweater over a white shirt and fashionable black jogger-style sweatpants. She also had on thick wool socks that Xander found funny.

As they walked into her living room, Jenny asked the teens, “Did you eat?” Pointing at the square box on the dinner table, she added, “I bought some pizza on the way home.”

Always one to watch what she eats, Cordelia asked, “Is it thin-crust?”

“Here we go,” Xander teased.

“Who needs so much carbs!” Cordelia whirled on her boyfriend. “They’re like the anti-Christ for the waistline!”

Eying the pair of them, Jenny merrily remarked, “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I did not expect you two to be so cute together. I’m actually jealous.”

“Oh, thanks,” Cordelia beamed, while Xander smirked. He truly felt it was a miracle they got along so well. As ever, Cordelia bemoaned with blunt sympathy, “And I’m sorry to hear about you and Giles.” Jenny stiffened as the cheerleader added, “Real bummer.”

Jenny’s accusatory eyes landed on Xander, who couldn’t keep the guilty look from his face as he mouthed, ‘Sorry,’ for telling his girlfriend. Trying to move them along, he asked, “So, what was it you wanted to tell us?”

Jenny gave him a pass, and they all took a seat on her comfy leather couch as she began saying, “I happen to have family in Europe-”

“Oh, I love Europe,” Cordelia boasted to Xander, who sat next to her. “Paris, Rome, London, the Swiss Alps.”

Pointing out how untraveled he was, Xander grinned as he sarcastically added, “I’ve seen pictures of all those places!”

Cordelia pitifully remarked, “Your life is so tragic sometimes.”

Xander could make points about her life, but instead turned to Jenny and asked, “What’d your family say?”

“They came across some news about powerful artifacts being moved,” Jenny continued.

Drawing his brows together, Xander asked, “What kind of artifacts?”

“The extremely dangerous kind,” the teacher answered. “The kind you can’t move without important people noticing. The bodies are piling up, and it feels like something big is coming.”

“And let me guess,” Xander bitterly began with a buoyant tone. “Sunnydale happens to be the lucky town hosting this big Doom & Gloom extravaganza.”

“That’s what they’ve been saying,” Jenny sadly confirmed. “I was trying to research some of the sites looted—maybe trace their destinations—but, well, Giles and the watcher’s council would have more information and a better network.”

Cordelia frankly asked, “Are you two still not talking? Like, not even as fellow Hellmouth exterminators?”

Jenny took a moment to either settle down or gather her words before somberly expressing, “Cordelia, I don’t know if you’ve ever been cheated on, but the more you place your hopes and dreams in someone you care deeply about, the more vulnerable you become; Thus, the worse they can hurt you. What I felt for Giles wasn’t just physical, it was esoteric…” Jenny took a moment to rub her eyes before continuing. “He meant a great deal to me, and yet, he couldn’t keep it in his pants. I thought we were more than that and I’ve never felt so foolish and discarded in my life.”

Xander knew she was hurting and wondered how bad it was. Seeing her up close, the hurt in her pained brown eyes, made Xander regret not visiting her earlier. He knew Jenny didn’t have friends she could call when she was down. If he wasn’t at the forge so much, navigating his relationship with Cordelia, or dealing with being kicked out of the Scoobies, he would’ve been the shoulder she needed to get through the worst of it.

“You can’t be so hard on yourself,” Xander asserted with deep empathy.

“Yeah, you weren’t the one who did it with Buffy’s mom,” Cordelia asserted with conviction. “He’s the one who should feel stupid, not you.”

Xander sighed in disbelief before whispering to his girlfriend, “Not helping, Cordy.”

Turning to her boyfriend, then to the older woman, she defended her point, saying, “I just mean, look, you’re still hot for… twenty-five? Twenty-six?”

“…Thirty,” a grim Jenny slowly confessed, then finished, “… three.”

Cordelia winced at the age, making Jenny feel worse, and Xander emphasized to his blunt girlfriend, “Wow, Cor, you’re really on a roll.”

“Thirty-three,” Jenny repeated to Cordelia with a sad smile. “And the only people who are even remotely close to friends are my students.” Rubbing her temple in frustration, the beautiful teacher bemoaned, “God, my life is so pitiful.”

“Stop it,” he told her. Xander leaned forward to look at the teacher sitting across from them. “Cordy’s right. You’re still beautiful and really smart. There is no guy or friend that’s beyond your reach.”

“Except Giles,” Cordelia’s unfiltered mind spoke.

Xander sagged his shoulders as he turned to his girl and denounced, “Really!?”

“And the guy before Giles,” Jenny sadly added, making Xander’s spine stiffen horribly straight in nervousness.

Eager for gossip, Cordelia leaned forward to ask, “Really? There was a guy before Giles? Why don’t you call him? Maybe you can get back together.”

Xander’s stomach started turning uncomfortably before Jenny shook her head and confessed to Cordelia, “He was more of a night-time friend.”

Cordelia nodded in clear understanding before curiously asking, “Was he any good?”

“Like you wouldn’t believe,” Jenny quickly boasted.

“OOOhhhh! Even better,” Cordelia tooted, bouncing in place on the couch. It was hard for Xander to not feel nervous, flattered, and a little turned on by such an uncomfortable situation. “You should definitely call him.”

“Can’t,” Jenny answered the pretty girl. “He has a girlfriend now.”

“It couldn’t hurt to try; See if he’s happy,” Cordelia suggested, and Xander checked out of the conversation. “Maybe his girlfriend’s a real bitch and he can’t wait to get away from her.”

Feeling an odd sensation to defend Cordelia from Cordelia, Xander hesitated to add, “Or- Or maybe she’s not.”

Jenny smiled at Cordelia as she voiced, “I hear she’s actually nice… in her own way.”

“Maybe she’s the charitable kind,” Cordelia proposed with a zing of hope. “I hear that’s a thing with the really good ones.”

Jenny leveled deadpanned eyes at Cordelia before asking, “So, if you consider yourself as a ‘really good one,’ you’d lend your boyfriend out?”

Without surprise or shock or even befuddlement, Cordelia inquired, “To you?” No one answered, but Jenny didn’t deny it. The sensual teacher simply raised her eyebrows, and to Xander’s astonishment, his girlfriend shrugged before answering, “Sure.”

With wide eyes, Xander whipped his head to Cordelia as he exclaimed, “Say the fuck what!”

“Oh, calm down,” Cordelia replied with a casual wave of her hand. “It’s not like I’m breaking up with you. It’s just sex.” She turned to Jenny and verified, “It is just sex, right?”

“...Yeah,” Jenny cautiously answered. “Just to be clear, you’re okay with Xander having sex with me?”

“Not more sex than he has with me,” Cordelia emphatically clarified to the two. “But, yeah. And only because we won’t be able to spend most of our holidays together.”

Xander’s lips were getting dry from keeping his mouth open for a long time. He rubbed his eyes hard, as he staggered to respond to this unfathomable turn. “I- I know you’re using words to communicate thoughts, but they’re making absolutely no sense to me.”

Mildly amused by his befuddlement, Cordelia quickly kissed him on the lips before slowly enunciating, “I, Cordelia Chase, give you, Xander I-hate-your-middle-name Harris, permission to fuck Ms. Calendar while I’m away.” With a stern finger to the face, she warned, “But no love stuff! Just straight gut-busting animal pounding! You only love me, got it!”

Xander shook his head to a building crescendo before bellowing, “No! I don’t got any of this! How can you be okay with this? It’s you and me.”

Cordelia repositioned herself on the couch to face him better as she reassured her boyfriend, “It’s still us, Xander. But I’ve had sex that didn’t mean half as much as it means when I’m with you. I’m confident enough to know you’ll always come back to me, even if you have meaningless sex with a thirty-three-year-old woman.”

With a bit of grief, Jenny revealed to the teenage girl, “You have a knack for hitting where it hurts.”

“Sorry,” Cordelia apologized. “And again, it’s not going to be, like, all the time. I have my limits.”

“I thought I knew your limits,” an aghast Xander confessed, unsure about the Cordelia in front of him. “This is no limit! You’re limitless!”

Becoming irritable, Cordelia demanded to know, “Why are you so against this? Most men would kill to have a girlfriend as hot, and cool, and open as me.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Xander begrudgingly admitted. “But it’s not like I’d be cool with you having meaningless sex with other guys. So, I shouldn’t do that either; have meaningless sex with girls, not guys.”

“No problems there,” Cordelia assured him. “I don’t want any other guys.”

Looking at her with evident confusion, Xander was at a loss for words. Feeling he should be more open, his brown eyes flickered from Cordelia to Jenny, and back before he expressed to his strange girlfriend, “I... I just don’t… want to risk what we have.”

Cordelia smiled softly, took his face in her soft palms, and looked deeply into his brown eyes before kissing him with as much passion as ever. Xander easily felt her warmth as much as her love for him, and he couldn’t stop deepening their kiss. Xander wanted her to feel how much he wanted her, and only her.

After a minute-long kiss, Cordelia rested her forehead on his and softly voiced, “You’re my man, Xander Harris. A little side hussie isn’t going to change that.”

“Again, right in the gut,” Jenny casually remarked.

“Sorry, jeez,” she apologized to her teacher. Turning back to her boyfriend, she added, “So touchy,” before instructing him, “Look, lie back, and let me show you what I’m proposing. If you still don’t like it after that, then we won’t do this.”

Cordelia kissed Xander once again, with a slow, deep and loving passion. At the same time, she had him lean back into the soft couch before sliding her hand down to his groin. The beautiful cheerleader began stroking his cock through his jeans and Xander couldn’t help getting hard. With a deft hand, she unzipped him and Xander grew more nervous as she pulled his dick out. He wasn’t sure about any of this.

Cordelia ended their kiss to offer Jenny, “Only mouth, okay?”

The teacher nodded before getting on her knees and positioning herself between his legs. The gorgeous woman didn’t hesitate to wrap her pink lips around his knob. Jenny and Xander both closed their eyes upon the warm, moist contact. While Jenny missed his cock inside her, Xander eyed Cordelia in fear she’d suddenly hate him. Jenny took him deeper and began bobbing her head in earnest while Cordelia just smiled and watched.

Even when Jenny slurped deeply and moaned around his erect cock, making Xander groan at the pleasure, Cordelia said nothing. Jenny sucked harder, like she’d been starved for weeks, making her cheeks hollow inward. As she gobbled Xander’s man-meat down to her throat, Cordelia leaned against Xander, watching the experienced woman’s oral skill with fascination. Enveloped by these gorgeous women, Xander knew he wouldn’t last long.

“Don’t forget to swallow,” Cordelia voiced as Jenny bobbed her raven-haired head faster. “Look at her go. Wow, she was really starving for some. Doesn’t that make you sad?”

With Cordelia rubbing his chest under his shirt, Xander couldn’t answer as he felt the countdown initiate. The aroused boy tensed, and twitched with enough time to voice, “I’m cumming! Jen!” The teacher swallowed his member down to her throat, till his glands tickled the bottom of her gulping esophagus. Xander thrusted as he held her head, then flooded her throat and oral cavity with his thick semen.

“Shhhiiiiiiii,” he moaned, as her face remained firmly against his crotch, drinking load after load of his creamy spunk. The sensual teacher didn’t let a drop of his jizz trickle down her lips as she pulled away, then licked his limp dick clean. It’s then that the teens noticed that the horny woman was fingering herself throughout.

“Xander?” Cordelia called.

“Haah…HHmm?”

“Make her cum,” she ordered her boyfriend. His eyes widened as she added, “I want to see you fuck her.” Jenny stood up and removed her sweater and thin shirt as she eyed Xander hungrily. “Make her scream,” Cordy ordered, and though conflicted, the aroused boy simply gave in.

Cordelia kissed his cheek, then lifted him from the couch. She was pulling him to the front door when Jenny voiced, “The bedroom’s this way.”

“Right,” Cordelia chuckled with a bright smile before leading Xander to Jenny’s bed. Soon the student and teacher were naked while Cordelia watched them from the side. With Jenny on the bed, Xander spread the teacher’s knees apart, then buried his greedy tongue into her soaking wet pussy. The naked woman gasped at his talented tongue. Her legs shuddered as he plunged his lapping tongue deep into her sensitive hole and coaxed out a steady stream of her love juices.

Jenny’s flushed face was panting as Xander expertly excited her impassioned cunnie. She whimpered as he stroked her swollen labia, nibbled & sucked on her cherry clit, and pumped two fingers into her dribbling hole. Xander could feel her pink snatch throb along his tongue with her tensing thigh muscles against his sweating face.

“Xander!” she moaned. “I’m getting close! I’m almost there! MMMNNNN!”

Her vulva grew very wet and when her sex’s honey began to stream down her thighs, Xander captured the liquid with his tongue, lapping up her mess as his curling fingers pumped faster.

“Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my GOD! I’MMMMM cumming! I’m cumming! I!”

Jenny’s body seized up and spasmed as her entire sexy body was rocked with wave after wave of pleasure. With his mouth buried in her melting vagina, Xander swallowed her discharge as she quivered and shook, and eventually calmed down.

“That was so hot,” Cordelia called from the side. Xander looked at the convulsing Jenny, at his blushing girlfriend, and again, he was struck by how uneasy this all felt to him. Then she smiled at him and ordered, “Make her scream for me.”

When Jenny was breathing much easier, Xander brought his swollen knob to the teacher’s pulsing pink twat. Jenny raised her head and groaned as she saw Xander rub his fat head up and down her slippery slit. She moaned deeply when he pushed his bloated tip into her tight snatch. To feel him work inch after inch of his throbbing meat into her contracting vagina was the exact pleasure Jenny had been eagerly missing. The gorgeous teacher plopped her sweaty raven-haired head back and enjoyed being filled to her quaking depths.

“Ohhhhhhhh! This-mmmm! I missed this!” Jenny moaned with eyes closed and Xander on top of her. The teen boy gasped as her slurping sex squeezed his sheathed cock like she was starving.

Xander gripped her hips and slowly pulled out before thrusting back in. Between her spread-eagled creamy legs, Xander built a steady rhythm, humping the sexy teacher’s filthy wet crotch. Jenny writhed underneath the panting boy as he pounded into her slurping slit, his swinging testicles slapping against her as he focused on the bundle of meat-curtains that made her quiver the hardest. The teen gripped and rolled her right breast, squeezing her hard nipple between his fingers as he fucked the woman’s sucking sex harder and faster.

“That’s the spot,” the sweating woman moaned out into the room. “You always know my spots! You know better than anyone!” Jenny sang as she clung to Xander’s shoulders, clawing at his bucking back while her spread legs swung off the sides of his bucking body. He pounded deeply into her quaking vagina’s sensitive folds and Xander could tell she was close.

“Fuck me, Xander! Fuck me, Xander! Fuck me, Xander!” she repeated as her pleasure coil brimming with concentrated bliss threatened to detonate any second. “Fuck!! I’m cumming! I’m cumming! I’m gonna cummmmmm!”

Jenny screamed from deep in her full belly as her spine snapped into an arch and her stuffed pussy exploded with a grand orgasm. Her eyes rolled back as her quivering body clenched her lover and her twitching toes curled backward. The tightness of her cunt was too much for Xander, and fully sheathed inside her quivering cock-pocket, he flooded her love tunnel with load after load of his hot sticky spunk. For the next couple of minutes, they simply enjoyed the intense buzz of pleasure coasting up and down their joined bodies.

Panting raggedly, Xander pulled his spent shaft from her yawning snatch and laid beside the sweaty teacher. Despite dreading what he might see, he then turned to Cordelia. She wasn’t touching herself or seemed overly aroused to have watched her boyfriend fuck another woman, however; she smiled her beautiful smile at him and he smiled back. The teens eventually left Jenny’s apartment, and Xander promised Jenny to be back to research whatever terrors were on the way to Sunnydale.

Cordelia seemed contemplative on the drive back home and Xander asked, “Are you alright?”

Her listless response of, “I’m just thinking,” made him nervous. She left with her parents to Las Vegas the following morning, and Xander spent his days either at the forge or at Jenny’s apartment. On Christmas, he spent a few depressing hours with his parents, a fun hour with Willow to talk & exchange gifts, an hour on the phone with Cordelia, and the rest of the night inside Jenny.

Xander still felt odd about the entire situation, mostly due to it happening in the first place. He couldn’t shake how odd it continuously felt for a girl as self-absorbed as Cordelia to allow him to have sex with another woman. It was so contrary to her nature and Xander knew how much Cordelia hated her mother’s oblivious acceptance of her father’s string of mistresses. In Cordelia’s eyes, it was a weakness, which is why she always spoke her mind, regardless of how uncomfortable it made others. She never wanted to be like her mother. Xander became more concerned when she hadn’t returned his last few calls.

The night before Cordelia came back, Jenny and Xander were in the teacher’s apartment, translating pages of crate manifests from five different countries to find connections. They were seated at her dinner table with pages, books, and notepads sprawled in front of them. Xander knew it was something they couldn’t ignore, and after all the research they’ve been doing, the Sherlock within was telling him these stolen items were part of a whole that was being put back together. Xander and Jenny just needed to discover what the weapon or artifact was so they could then figure out how to stop it.

Taking a break from reading, Jenny leaned back in her chair and looked across at Xander before asking, “Have you ever thought of being with other girls?”

The distracted teen looked up from his studying and asked, “Huh? Oh, uh, no. I think that department is fully staffed.”

“No? Not even Buffy?” At her suggestion, Xander sighed at the thought of his blonde crush. As much as he loved Cordelia, Buffy always lingered for some inexplicable reason. “I thought you were in love with her,” Jenny added, making him recall his failures.

“I do- or, did,” he admitted, more like a question. Clearly unsure, he sufficed to say, “I want her to be happy… And that’s not with me. Which is… just, something I’ll have to live with.”

“She’s not happy anymore,” Jenny softly noted. The beautiful woman stood up and walked around the table as she suggested, “You could make her happy.”

Leaning back against his high-backed chair, he solemnly voiced, “Pretty sure I’m the reason she’s so miserable; on account of my forcing her to break up with her soul mate and all that.” When Jenny straddled his thighs, he asked, “What are you doing?”

“Just taking a break,” she seductively told him before kissing his neck. Xander massaged her thighs as she nibbled, sucked, and kissed the skin of his neck. Then she pulled back to confess, “You know, I never thought they were soul mates.” She massaged his neck, face, and scalp as she orated, “I mean, I’m sure they felt genuine love for each other, but soul mates? I don’t think so.” Her right hand lowered to massage his growing erection through his jeans as she continued. “And even if, by some chance, they were soul mates, they’d obviously be the short-lived tragic kind. The one that doesn’t have a chance in hell of growing old together. Do you really think that’s what girls dream of? Short-lived soul mates?” Xander groaned as she gripped his raging erection tight in his jeans, and whispered in his ear, “In my estimation, I think you’re the best man for her.”

Xander immediately pulled back, frustrated over the topic of Buffy and his ever-present uneasiness over Cordelia. Xander held her hands still, and looked her seriously in her brown eyes before asserting, “Except I’m not.” He was only getting more annoyed at the thought of Buffy, and added, “Cuz I am otherwise spoken for.”

Jenny stood up and sat on the very edge of the table in front of him as she pointed out, “If the past week is any indication, I’d say Cordelia doesn’t mind sharing.”

“I mind,” he told her, because he really did mind. No matter how many times his dick enjoyed being buried in the alluring woman in front of him, this situation just didn’t sit well with him. It shined a bright spotlight on his weakness for beautiful women and how he allowed them to treat him; how difficult it was to say no when gorgeous women pay attention to him.

“But you did it with me.”

“And I’m still trying to figure out why,” he frustratingly asserted. “This isn’t like her.”

“Maybe you don’t know Cordelia as well as you think you do,” Jenny suggested, and Xander eyed her defensively. Softening her elegant expression, she elaborated, “You’re both still young adults trying to figure out what you like and what you don’t like. Experimentation is a vital part of that process. We’ve done it every time you come over, and not only does Cordelia know, she doesn’t seem to mind. Rare as they are, some girls are just sharers… if the guy is worth it, obviously.”

“…Maybe,” Xander couldn’t deny, however, he couldn’t deny the nagging feeling at the back of his mind. It didn’t feel like it was coming from Old Man Xander’s memories. Something inside of him simply felt off, and he couldn’t pinpoint what that imbalance was. Xander could only assume a deep fear… that he didn’t know Cordelia as well as he imagined; that the fourteen years they’ve known and hated each other—on top of the time loops and future memories—didn’t give him an insight into the amazing girl. And if Xander was wrong about her, maybe he was wrong about everything else he knew.

Sighing, Xander argued, “A few days ago, I would’ve bet you everything I owned that Cordy would mind sharing, a lot. So, either I don’t know her like I think I do, or something isn’t right. And if it’s the latter, my first guess on the crazy train is possession, followed closely by a curse.”

Jenny slanted her head and looked at him like he was overreacting. Then asked with heavy disbelief, “Really, Xander? Who in their right mind would curse two teenagers?”

“Uh, everyone,” he animatedly answered like she was the crazy one. “Have you not seen, like, every horror movie ever? Young teens getting killed, kidnapped, or romanced via paranormal activity is like a rite of passage for us. Being possessed or getting killed in weird or dumb ways is what we’re known for.”

Amused, she huffed a small laugh before responding, “Fine. Then who would gain by doing either of those to you?”

Though the humored woman smiled at Xander, the Sherlock pattern within couldn’t stop thinking—which meant he couldn’t stop thinking—that he was looking at a suspect. To speculate Jenny tightened his chest and made his skin break out with hot & itchy goosebumps. He reasoned aloud along with his Sherlock-pattern, “Someone… someone who’d want to be with me… have sex… despite my having a girlfriend who’d totally be against it. Someone who may have been feeling alone and rejected for weeks. Maybe someone I’ve been intimate with before.”

‘Someone with a Gypsy lineage that have a history of cursing people,’ his mind added, as he stood up and eyed her sternly.

Xander didn’t break eye contact, as if peering into her soul and seeing the truth before she even uttered a word. He couldn’t be sure and hoped he was wrong, but he had to know. The silence between them lasted a full minute until she finally asserted, “You have to understand, the spell did nothing she didn’t have in her to try-”

“Jenny!” he heatedly yelled, moving away from her, forcing the chair to scratch the wood floor loudly.

“It’s not that kind of spell!” she insisted, putting her palms up in peace. “I promise you, I would never manipulate Cordelia into doing something-”

Eying her in wild disbelief, he heatedly interjected, “You already have-”

“Wait! Wait,” she tried, attempting to explain herself. “I’d never manipulate her into doing something she hadn’t thought of doing already-”

“Are you kidding me?” the irate boy interrupted again. “Then what! For how long!” However, at the thought of Cordelia and whatever this spell might be doing to her, he instead demanded to know, “What did you do?”

Anxiously, Jenny tried to explain to the agitated boy, “If there was a way for her to rationalize sharing you with another woman, the magic would just remove the pressures not to. That’s it. Somewhere in her mind, Cordelia could imagine herself agreeing to this, or she never would’ve consented to it. I promise you.”

“But she wouldn’t!” Xander yelled, certain Cordelia would never have approved this. “I know she wouldn’t! What you’re talking about is the magical version of ‘Getting Her Drunk First!’ How do you not see that?!”

“Xander, please,” Jenny tried, moving closer, but he stayed away. “You have to understand, on some level, she does want it-”

“Stop! Please, just stop,” Xander yelled at her with a look of derision on his face. “Even if that were true. I didn’t want it. I. Didn’t. WANT TO! And you knew that!”

Xander should’ve known. He shouldn’t have submitted to the beguiling pleasure. It should’ve been enough that he wasn’t comfortable with it. But then he’d hear his father’s voice accusing him of being a failure of a man. ‘Any man would, you fairy!’ he heard his father yell. Xander shook his head of familial thoughts and focused solely on helping Cordelia.

The boy walked up to his saddened teacher and pleaded, “I need you to be the cool Jenny Calendar I know. The one who’d protect her students exactly from the kind of shit you just did. Tell me how to break the spell.”

Slowly, Jenny backed away from him. She turned, and for a moment, he thought she might run, however, she only walked to the kitchen. In front of the sink, she looked at him sadly before opening the bottom cabinet. The despondent teacher reached back for something and returned with two glass vials she placed on the dining table. Aside from the clear liquid inside, one vial had a brunette strand of hair while the other had a blonde one.

He raised the vial with the blonde strand and asked the obvious question with his eyes. The defeated woman answered, “Buffy.”

“You wanted me to sleep with Buffy?” Xander asked, aghast.

Jenny yelled back, “I know how much you love her! I was doing it for you-”

Then he realized the real reason for all of this and interjected, “Does any of this have to do with getting back at Giles?”

Anger suddenly overrode her downcast temperament and Jenny was quietly steaming a moment before asserting, “He picked her! Giles picked her and her mother! I thought you, of all people, would understand what it’s like to feel betrayed by them. Buffy threw you out, Xander, and her watcher let it happen! All you wanted to do was keep the worst from happening and save lives. And for that, she threw a hissy fit and banished the messenger.” Taking a breath, she sadly added, “I don’t need to explain how much Giles hurt me, but to this day, I can’t… stop thinking about it… unless I’m with you.” With tears welling up, she confessed with deep sincerity, “Xander… how you make me feel is unlike any man I’ve been with.”

Hearing such a genuine confession made Xander regret ever being with her. It’s not as if he’s any bigger than other men; he’s average-sized. Xander simply has the advantage of the time loop making everyone forget their experiences with him. Having sex with Jenny would then exceed all her expectations because she doesn’t know that he’s had sex with her hundreds, if not thousands, of times, allowing him to know all of her pleasure spots. Xander suddenly felt sad regret for heedlessly being with her.

“I know they’re not horrible people, Xander,” Jenny continued, breaking him out of his regretful thoughts. “I know that, but the way Giles and Buffy treated us was wrong. And neither of us should accept that abuse. We don’t deserve it.” When Xander took the vials to the sink, she called out, “We’re just standing up to the hurt they caused us.”

He looked at her a moment, thinking of all the times Buffy had blown up on him when he questioned her love for Angel, or when she didn’t believe him, or when she accused him of betraying her. And though he didn’t like any of those reactions, Xander knew that deep down, Buffy didn’t actually hate him. She only lashed out when she was hurt.

‘If I can’t understand that, how can I call myself a friend?’ he thought before emptying the contents of the vial into the sink before washing it down the drain. He quickly grabbed his stuff and left without saying a word.

The entire night, Xander dreaded what Cordelia’s response would be, but he wouldn’t get to hear it for another three agonizingly long days. The recently cursed girl avoided him; dodged his calls or otherwise pretended not to be home. When Xander couldn’t take being shunned by her any longer, he broke into her house after he spied her parents leaving without her. Cordelia was shocked to see him enter her bedroom. Eying all the tissue boxes or balls of tissues around her bed, broke Xander to see. Her eyes and nose were red, and before he could get a word in, she immediately ran to the bathroom and locked herself inside.

“Cordy! Please talk to me!” he yelled through the door.

“Go away!” she yelled back and the crack in her voice felt like a knife to the heart.

Xander felt his own chest tighten and his eyes heat up as he yelled, “It’s not your fault! You were cursed! I know you didn’t want to do that!”

“But you did!” she yelled back and he could hear the betrayal in her broken voice. “I tried- I tried so hard t-to pull you out! But you just wanted to fuck her!”

“No, I didn’t! I didn’t! I swear I didn’t!” the frantic boy tried, feeling his throat swell. “You know I didn’t want to do that! You know how much I love you!”

“If you really loved me, then you would’ve known!” she yelled at the top of her lungs, taking his breath away. Then he heard her sobbing through the door, and Xander couldn’t stop his own streams of tears from spilling down his face. No matter how many times he called to her, the desperate boy couldn’t get anything else out of her. Mr. And Mrs. Chase returned soon after and involved the police when the teenager refused to leave.

Xander had nothing after that. No friends and no girlfriend. The truest family he’d ever known was gone. Xander dealt extensively with hopelessness before due to the time braid, however, nothing of this caliber. He truly felt like walking death; heavy but somehow devoid of any warmth. And entertaining the thought of looping back to change it all felt just as nauseating as moving forward. With nothing and no one, he fell back into the one thing that can’t let him down.

Xander found shelter in Wild Dinks and stayed there for weeks. Pete and the boys just let the broken-hearted boy hammer away at the anvil and make anything he wanted. Xander would fold and stretch runes into white-hot metal billets over and over until they were beautiful blades. Initially, he attempted to make a vessel magic would want to reside in, but soon, he lost himself in the mindless process of weapon-smithing. He worked throughout the day and night, only sleeping when his vision blurred or he couldn’t hold his hammer anymore. Then the depressed boy would inevitably wake up from nightmares.

Xander skipped going back to school, ignored his seventeenth birthday, and his only visitor was Angel, of all people. When the vampire wouldn’t stop brooding annoyingly beside him, Xander eventually told him what happened with Cordelia. The tall vampire didn’t even offer his condolences. He simply remained quiet in brooding understanding. It was then that the pair were ambushed by Spike, his crew, the newly turned Doug Jeffries, and his brothers; twelve vampires in total.

“Told you we didn’t have to tail him, Bossman,” Doug the vampire told Spike.

Heavily outnumbered, Angel and Xander grabbed weapons as they were immediately ambushed. Xander dual-wielded his hammer and tongs while Angel unsheathed his sword. With Spike leading the attack on Angel, Xander found himself surrounded by Doug and his brothers, eager for payback. Despite his attempts to keep them at bay, dual-wielding his hammer and tongs to break their bones, they were faster, stronger, and more durable.

Eventually, Xander was punched across the face, kicked in the back, and punched in the gut, downing him before being used to compel Angel to stop fighting. Angel dusted three of Spike’s men, but at the sight of Xander’s beaten body being threatened with death, he reluctantly dropped the sword. The vampires took them to the abandoned Bric & Broc factory. Xander was very familiar with their lair and wasn’t surprised when Drusilla and Spike shackled him in the torture room.

Xander thought he’d die as they tortured him; again. However, not unlike before, they kept him alive no matter how many times he tried to goad them into killing him. The teenage time looper then thought he might die when he witnessed the vampires reassemble and resurrect a tall, blue demon. They called him the Judge, and the monster was a muscular, lumbering humanoid demon with blue skin and solid black eyes. His body was covered by metallic armor and the back of his head bore three bone crests.

Spike convinced the Judge not to kill Xander and Angel as he had a horrible plan for Buffy & friends. Then Spike and Drusilla continued torturing and maiming Xander for their joy. The bloodied teen lost all concept of time even before they took his left eye, pulled his fingernails off, and broke most of his bones. He called on his Navy SEAL training to deal with the sheer tsunami of agony until the sadistic vampires mercifully knocked him out.

Xander woke up in a large white room his sluggish mind eventually recognized as the Sunnydale mall. He was tied to a wide support beam on the first floor of the spacious walkway. Ahead of him, Xander could see with his one good eye Angel tied to another support beam with Drusilla and the Judge around him. A blurry version of Buffy, Willow, Oz, and Giles were also there, armed and on high alert. Many of the civilians not cowering behind divides or mall furnishings were being corralled by vampires into a spot like cattle.

“Just in time, Xander, my boy!” Spike looked between him and the Scoobies as he happily voiced, “Right, since we know how much this Slayer loves her boy toys, we’ll be kind and give her one.” Spike cut Xander down as Drusilla cut Angel down and they dragged them front and center, twenty feet away from Buffy and the gang.

Through the rushing blood in his ears, Xander heard Willow cry out, “Buffy! You have to save him!”

Spike yelled over Willow’s wailing, “You can choose one, Slayer. Either this sad sap,” the blond vampire stated, pulling Xander up by his blood-and-sweat-dried hair, making him groan in pain. “A bit of wear and tear on him at the moment. A few- well, a lot of broken bones, but he still has one good eye.” Turning to Angel, he continued, “Or you can pick your Knight of the night! Keep in mind, we could just kill them both, but, nice as we are, we’ll give you one. So, choose, Slayer.”

Drusilla pulled on Angel’s collar, raising his beaten face. His legs were bound and his hands were manacled, however, he seemed less hurt than Xander.

“Choose, Slayer!” Spike gleefully demanded. “Show Angel here how pointless loving the living is.”

“Buffy! Please save Xander!” Willow yelled, and through the pain, Xander’s half-lidded vision focused on the blonde slayer. Her shoulders were tense, her fists were gripping a sword and stake so tightly, Xander thought the stake would be crushed by the squeezing pressure. Worst of all, tears were falling down her tortured face, to Spike’s delight. Her pink lip quivered, and she looked decimated by the choice put before her. It was a choice to make with a figurative gun to her head.

In his fogged mind, Xander wondered why she was so conflicted and thought, ‘Why… not… pick… me? She couldn’t… hate me… that much.’ Then, upon realizing the other option was Angel’s life, his mind voiced, ‘Oh… Fuck…’

“On the count of three, princess,” Spike playfully directed. “We don’t have all bloody day.”

“Wait!” Buffy yelled, needing more time.

However, Spike gleefully counted with haste, “Three, two, one-”

“Angel!” the distressed Buffy yelled, taking an unconscious step forward.

In disbelief, Willow had to be held back by Giles as she yelled, “Buffy!”

“Give me Angel!” the crying Buffy repeated.

Spike and many other vampires laughed at her choice before the English vampire remarked, “Last minute of my life, I couldn’t have predicted that.” The flamboyant vampire lifted Xander up with one arm to look him in his one good eye before saying, “Poor, poor Xander. Mate, she either loves him more than a living, breathing meat sack she’s sworn to protect, or she truly hates your guts.”

Spike raised his knife, then looked at Buffy. Willow screamed for Buffy and Spike to spare Xander’s life, but Xander was happy to end it all. He felt so dead; he didn’t even want to loop back. Xander simply wanted it all to end. It off-handedly made him wonder if this was what Wolverine felt at times; a desire to just end it all. Then, Spike dragged the beaten and bloodied boy directly to Buffy with no fear she’d try anything to him. He made her look at Xander’s broken body while Willow cried in Giles’ arms, begging Buffy to save him.

“Please, please, please don’t let him die!” Willow wailed.

Spike ignored her and put the blade to Xander’s dirty and bloody neck. He ordered the slayer, “Look at this living, breathing, blood-bag you bloody Slayers are tasked to protect, and tell me you’d rather have your undead, vampire boyfriend instead.”

Xander was forced to watch through blurry vision, a pained Buffy shedding tears for him. When she mustered up the courage to look into his good eye, Buffy’s face broke from extreme heartache. Xander imagined her deep despair wasn’t because she was giving up her love to save him, but because she knew she could never give up her love, even to save him. Xander huffed, to his extreme pain, then nodded with whatever pitiful wisp of smile he could muster. The teen just looked at her one last time, the Buffy he could never have but loved above all.

He thought he heard her wrong when she weakly voiced, “G-Give me Xander.”

Xander stared at her, tears freely streaming down her face as Spike asked, “Come again? Didn’t quite catch that.”

Squeezing the stake so hard it crunched and splintered in her supernatural grip, Buffy yelled, “Give me Xander!”

“Ah,” Spike playfully acknowledged. “He’s all yours,” he said, then Xander felt the knife being plunged into his back before being thrown forward. Buffy caught him as chaos erupted all around them. The Judge began consuming the group of souls corralled by the vampires and Spike’s crew attacked those the Judge wasn’t causing to explode. The few people that hid well began fleeing for their lives, but were chased by vampires. In the middle of it all, Buffy held Xander in her arms as she begged for his forgiveness.

“I’m sorry, Xander!” she cried as she cradled him. “I’m so, so sorry.”

“Heeey… d-d-d-don’t be,” he coughed, as it felt like his lungs were filling with warm blood. Tears milking from her beautiful greenish-blue eyes, all Xander could think to say was, “Y-you didn’t do… an’th-thing wrong.”

“I did everything wrong!” she yelled as he patted his blood-dried hair.

Feeling so close to the end, Xander had to ask, “H-hey Buff? C-C-Could you… ever… l-love… me?”

As his vision darkened, he still caught the doubtless expression on her teary face as her cracking voice confessed, “Xander…. How could I not when you-”

Darkness.

Xander woke up to the blaring alarm beside his dirty bed, and he knew by the pigsty of his smelly room that it was October 31st, 1997.