The Great and Terrible Oz

Written for satiresqueen
Requirements (people): nonromantic - Xander and Andrew; hot sauce, snow; dont want overly fluff (some is okay), incest/rape (or anything along those lines), character death
Ficathon organized by cookie_dough101

Just Playin'

"Queen Latifah."

"Barbershop."

They've been doing this for the last half hour, on Andrew's insistance. The sun was down about two hours and 140 miles ago. Well, more like 180 or 190 miles ago, considering Xander's lead foot, and Xander insists on no flashlight reading in the back seat. Distraction and violation of night vision.

It pissed Faith right off. Andrew's head leaning forward, right next to her ear, and he got to yelling his responses. Chicago! An Officer and a Gentleman! Lords of Discipline! Daredevil! All right next to her ear, cutting through her headphones.

"OK, damn it. That's enough. If we're going to play stupid car games, we're going to play something I can play, too."

Xander still focuses on the road ahead. "Any ideas?"

She can hear Andrew's grin as he responds. "I got one! Truth or dare."

"The problem with that is that we're in the Council's luxurious Chevy Malibu." Xander sounds bored as he responds. "Either we don't have the stuff for the dares or the space."

"We'll improvise." Faith turns in her seat, putting her headphones back in her bag. The window feels cold against the back of her head.

"Well, it's your deal." Xander looks over for a second from the driver's seat. "Who starts? I'm thinkin' you."

"Yeah. You're the one who's going all 'I don't wanna play that game'!"

"Fine. I'm game. Dare."

"Flash the next trucker we pass?" Andrew's bouncing up and down in the back seat.

"Too easy. She'd do that in a second." Xander turns his head hard to the left, checking his bli-- checking to see that he could pull into the passing lane. "What were you reading back there, before sundown?"

"You mean, before you so cruelly forced me to put it down? I was rereading the Trilogy."

"What? You gonna make me read some hobbit shit or something?" Faith laughed to herself. "I can do that."

"Wrong trilogy, Miss Smarty-Pants."

"Your dare, should you choose to accept it, is a dramatic reading of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." Xander switched on the dome light, causing each of them to squint.

"Hey! No fair!"

"Only for the dare, Andrew."

Faith stumbles through the pages, attempting the accents and accepting without complaint their corrections. What's a 'Prefect', anyway? After she makes her way through the Vogon poetry, Andrew and Xander declare the dare finished and the dome light goes dim again. Xander keeps his head turned left to give him some view on that side, but she can tell by the side of his face that he's smiling. It's a good thing to see.

"OK. It's my turn now. Andrew, Truth or Dare?"

"Truth."

"You're diggin' on Xander, aren't you?"

"Wha-?"

"Train's so off the track there, Faith."

"Hey, them's the rules. If he can't say 'I have absolutely no interest in Xander's skinny white ass' and make us believe it, he's bounced. Or is it 'Xander, I've been dreaming of you since I first laid eyes on you'?"

"Xander! I-I-I...."

The smile is gone from Xander's face now. "That's the rule. How many rounds of questions does he lose?"

"Two. I think two."

"Works for me." He looks at the gauges, then back at the mirrors. "One tank's close to empty, the other's close to full. Andrew, if we don't get an answer by the next gas station, that's a pass."

Andrew sputters and whines the two miles to the off-ramp, and scuttles off to the bathroom while Xander opens the gas tank. It's one of those big truck-stop tourist-trap places with cheap plastic Indian drums and I visited such-and-such t-shirts for the kiddies. Faith sits on the hood of the car and lights a cigarette, ignoring the No Smoking signs.

"That was not a nice thing to do." Xander is leaning against the back of the car. The tank's on the right side, so his good eye is off the other way.

"Hey, it's the game, right? OK, he wasn't able to handle it. Way I see it, either he steps up or he steps off."

"So, we're still your toys. Play with us and throw us aside?" The handle clicked and Xander put it back on the pump. "I thought you stopped doing that."

Faith dropped her head, brown hair sliding down to cover her face. She blew the smoke out of her lungs. She felt the blood come warm to her face. It was just a game, right? Just her game. "So, it's your turn. Which are we doing? Truth or . . . . "

"Truth."

"Sure about that?"

"It's winter, it's night, it's too cold, and I'm not going to risk stripping to my underwear and singing 'Rock Your Body'. Truth."

"OK. I can do this." She takes a drag from her Marlboro and blows it out slowly. "Still a boxer man?"

"Is that your question?"

"No way. I'm just thinkin' aloud. That wouldn't be too bad an idea, though. Remember the lyrics, though. 'Gonna have you naked by the end of the song.' You might've got somewhere."

He finally looks over at her, and Faith can't read his emotion. "A wardrobe malfunction in the works? Your scarf and tank top don't look overly engineered."

"Hey, I'm the one with a question." Faith lifts her head and gives a half-smile through her hair. "A question. OK. Here goes. I know I'm like . . . what I'm like. I'm tryin' to change. I slip. Sometimes I don't think and I say shit. Like you just saw. But I'm doing better, I think." Without looking, she flicked the butt of her cigarette into the trash.

Faith stands up, starts pacing back and forth in front of the car. "Still, not perfect. Now, we're workin' together, and that's cool. We sit in meetings, and they send us on these trips, and I'm blown away by how weird it isn't, when you have every right to freak whenever you're in the same room as me." She waves her arm back towards the off-ramp "Or, in this case, the same not-room. I know we're not square, and I'm fine with that. I mean, not fine with that, but I know I can't expect you to come out and say 'I forgive you'." She stops, looking up at Xander, then breaking the gaze to pace again. "And there it is. That word. Forgive. Heaviest fuckin' word, I swear to God."

She stops herself, then leans on the hood. "OK, here's my big golden question. One day, after I put my head on right, after I get myself on the big 'I saved the world' plaque hanging next to Giles' door, once I get my act together and shit, and I came and said sorry for all that . . . is there a chance? A chance you could say . . . ." Faith runs her hand through her hair, pushing it back out of her face. "That you could say it?"

Xander stands for a moment. Silent. Stoic, even. That's a word from the book she got once, about the Spartans. It was in her cell when she got out. She had to look it up.

"I have to go pay. Want something to drink?"

"You gonna let me drive?"

"I'm good for another couple of hours, and then we should get some rooms, crash out so we're fresh when we get in tomorrow."

"Then something without caffeine."

"Gotcha." Xander starts walking off toward the main building, passing a shivering Andrew as he crosses the concrete. Andrew opens the back seat and picks up his book, taking out a bookmark with old-school Spock on it that says Reading. The Final Frontier. Faith sits roughly in her seat and closes the door behind. She doesn't turn to look. "Hey, Andrew. About that, I . . . ."

"I don't want to talk to you."

Fair enough.

After a few minutes of silence, Xander appears, carrying a white plastic bag. He's rolling but still in the parking lot when he starts to pass out the snacks. Andrew gets banana milk and a package of gummy worms. Xander, Twinkies and a bottle of Coke. Faith, a bottle of milk and a bag of cheese popcorn.

In minutes, they found themselves at a stop sign, ready to pull back onto the Interstate. Xander glances over before he starts the car rolling forward, quickly coaxing it up to highway speeds.

"The question. The one from earlier? The answer is yes."

Faith fights a smile. "Yes?"

"Yes. Not now, but yes." Xander joins the smile, adding a look toward Faith to his regular glances toward the gauges and mirrors and the road ahead. "After trials and pains, but yeah."

"Hey, hey, hey, guys! Playing a round by yourselves is against the rules! You can't do that!"

"Make with the snoozin', you know you must lose."

"But I wasn't snoozing. I was taking care of an important bodily function!"

"Stop whining, and put that book away. You'll mess up your eyes." He looks forward and begins to pass an 18-wheeler, taking care to go wide. "I think we're on Faith's turn."

"Dare."

"OK." He reaches again into the snack bag, pulling out a small bottle of Tabasco sauce. "Drink this. To the bottom."

Faith holds the bottle up, looking at it in the light from the truck they just passed. "Bastard. You set this up."

"It's your game." Xander's poker face is gone now. He can't control his grin. "You playing?"