About his eye, about his dead girl, about those last few months in Sunnydale when she cut everyone off.

They discussed this thoroughly. It went like this:

"Buffy, you really don't have to--"

She punched him in the arm, hard. "Dumbass."

"Ow!"

But he doesn't care if it is about the guilt. He's exhausted from Africa, but too itchy to settle down anywhere. When Buffy suggests the road trip across America, the whole Kerouac thing, without the getting stuck in Oxnard this time, he doesn't hesitate.

Council's even paying.

This time the road trip starts in New York.

At least if they get stuck thirty miles from their starting point, it's New Jersey, not Oxnard.

The first few days, their pace is frantic. Xander can't quite tell if he or Buffy drives that. Maybe it's mutual.

First they hit the sightseeing spots: Empire State Building, Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, Times Square, Greenwich Village, Soho.

Somehow, in all the guidebook-ransacking and nominating of things to see, neither of them mentions Ground Zero.

Craters are scars to them, he guesses, and they have enough scars to last a lifetime.

Xander discovers the Museum of Television and Radio. Buffy indulges him through two solid days of old TV shows, in the screening rooms and at the private consoles.

They watch all the comedies they can think of. They start the two-parter that ended The Fugitive, but it soon becomes clear that what they want is to hear each other laugh. They switch tapes twenty minutes in.

They've been missing this sound. Once they let it loose, they keep finding reasons to laugh. Corny jokes, old commercials (cigarettes!), the hair, the clothes.

They laugh so hard it makes no sound.

The next day they head to Central Park. The plan is to explore every corner, but they wind up lying under a tree, looking up at the sky, at the dizzying movement of the leaves.

Even in New York City, there are places that smell like earth.

He never cared about the smell of earth until he went to Africa.

The smell of rain.

He'd never thought of rain as a blessing before.

Never really thought in terms of blessings at all.

This is a blessing: time with his friend, the very fact that they're both alive to enjoy this.

"You haven't said much about Africa," Buffy says as they're lying under the tree.

"I know. I'm kind of afraid to pull the cork out."

She props herself on an elbow, lays her other hand on his shoulder. "Was it all bad?" she whispers.

"Not at all, no." A tear slips from his left eye, but he doesn't move to brush it away. He resists the urge to explain how the false eye waters more. She knows that.

After a moment he has to look away, but he puts his hand over hers and they stay that way a while.

After the park, they get their second wind. They have pricy, touristy theme-burgers, then drinks at the Marriott's revolving bar. When they reach the street again, the shows have let out. Times Square is a sea of people.

"This is crazier than rush hour," Buffy says.

Funny how the crowds don't bother him. His requirements for breathing space have changed.

"How do you do that?"

"What?"

"Dodge everyone. I must've bumped into two dozen people. It's like you've got sonar or something. Even on your blind side."

Xander shrugs.

"It's eerie, that's what. And kind of beautiful."

Xander laughs.

Walking up toward the hotel, they encounter a man in a doorman's uniform who offers them tickets to a dance at Roseland. "Can't make it, my work schedule got changed. I hate to see them go to waste."

Xander glances at the marquee. Rhythm Revue.

"That's nice, but --" Buffy's saying.

"Thanks. This is wonderful." Another thing he's learned: Gifts from out of the blue are rare.

They get rarer if you don't accept them with grace.

"Can't think of anything that would top off this day better than dancing."

A smile comes over Buffy's face as she realizes it's true.

They're definitely in the minority here. Younger, whiter, not half as dressed-up. But the vibe is more than welcoming. Even the Bronze -- an all-ages club in a pissant little town -- had a snobbery about what you wore, how well you moved.

That doesn't seem to exist here.

What they've got here is joy -- and the knowledge that there's more than enough to go around.

"My god," Buffy says after a few songs. "When did you learn to dance like that?"

He laughs. "If you go to Africa and you can't find rhythm in you, you must be dead."

They close the place down, staggering out onto Broadway at four in the morning. They cab it back to their hotel, where they're sharing a room with two doubles -- their one attempt to curb the expenses they've racked up in the city.

Xander falls in bed like a lightning-struck tree, finds himself too buzzed to sleep.

Same with Buffy, it seems, because after a while she says, "You know, this was an utterly perfect day."

"Me too."

"So this is going to sound crazy."

"You want to leave tomorrow. Uh, today."

"Do you mind?"

"Let's see what's out there."

What's out there is lots of highway. Bad-smelling air, refineries. Takes a while before they are anywhere half as appealing as Central Park.

They don't speak, except to decide on food stops. It's the longest they've ever gone without talking.

Xander mulls what Buffy's said, how he's changed. She's different too. Rounder. Softer -- in more ways than one. Italy's been good for her. The Immortal's been good for her.

(He imagines Anya's first rule of dating: Never date a guy with "The" as his first or middle name.)

He wonders if Africa was good for him.

He doesn't know.

"City of broad shoulders." Buffy's found him at their designated bench at the lake. "That's because you need 'em to carry all the shopping bags."

"Major score?"

"Not bad. Hey -- what's wrong?"

He gestures at Lake Michigan, which stretches so far you can see the curve of the earth. "I miss the ocean. I miss --" His throat tightens.

"I know," she murmurs.

She doesn't know. Not like him. He was born in Sunnydale. His whole life, good and bad, was there. All his history: Willow. Jesse. Then the others.

Buffy's got L.A. She can revisit her past.

Not like him.

Buffy sticks closer to him after this. Xander considers saying it's not necessary, but doesn't.

Maybe it is necessary.

He feels like he's regressing.

In Africa he was fine on his own, though a good part of the time he traveled with a fixer.

In Africa his dreams didn't make him wake, shouting. Or worse, crying.

Mostly they're about Sunnydale, but sometimes it's Africa.

Scary things on the march in the night there. Often the scariest were the humans. When he'd seen what was going on in northern Uganda, he'd gotten the fuck out of Dodge.

Maybe he's still running.

"I think I've hit my limit with cities," Xander says as they're returning from dinner. "My city limits."

Buffy readily agrees, though he suspects there's some truth-stretching. She spotted Kanye West at Ralph Lauren and hasn't stopped squeeing.

He pauses at the rack of brochures for area attractions, which they've been breezing past for a few days. Grabbing a fistful at random, he takes them up to their room, and they lay them out on the ugly patterned bedspread.

They contemplate them like a Tarot spread. Does their future hold the Spam Museum, or the House on the Rock?

"You know what's really weird?" Buffy mumbles sleepily. The lights have been out for maybe half an hour.

He doesn't care what's weird. He loves this, that's all. Drifting toward sleep, only to be hauled back by the sound of a voice. The tidal pull of exhaustion, then the surge of wakefulness that follows. Eventually getting so tired the bed actually does feel like a drifting raft. That whole sleepover thing. "What's weird?"

"We haven't seen a single vamp. Giles would be cracking the books to figure what's really going on."

Xander tells her what he has learned about gifts.

The first small-town motel they stop at, somewhere in southwestern Wisconsin, they lose the frugal and take two rooms. But what happens is, Buffy comes into Xander's room to watch I, Robot on HBO and eat chips and dill-garlic cheese curds and they each fall asleep on one of the double beds and then they wake up and talk in the dark and then drift back asleep again, just as they've been doing.

The only difference is, there's not a power struggle over one bathroom in the morning.

And this:

He notices the dreams are easing up some.

"Oh sweet Jesus."

"What?"

"This is the most horrific thing I've ever seen."

"You just said that about --" She comes up by him. "Oh god. That's unspeakable. Who would--" Words fail her.

"Collect figurines of bathing clowns? I dunno, Buff. We've never encountered that level of evil."

"Quien es mas creepy? Four Horsemen of the A-word, or these?" Apocalypse is a forbidden word.

"I can't believe you even have to ask."

"You're the one who dragged us here, on account of that stupid book."

"Don't diss the Gaiman." He likes reading about some other poor fucker fending off the A-word.

Buffy tires of waiting, ventures a question. He notices she asks in daylight. After the House, over Butterburgers at Culver's. "When were you most scared over there?"

No shortage to choose from, but it's like Penn Jillette saying pick a card, any card. Only real choice here is whether he'll tell the story.

"I met this woman in Mombasa," Xander finally says. "She was --" Even now he can't reduce her to words. "I would've gone with her."

"But--?"

"She caught sight of this amulet Willow made me. She -- recoiled."

She'd hissed, is what.

"Ohhh-kay."

Xander shivers in the air conditioning.

He wishes he hadn't talked about Mombasa. Or even thought about it.

The dreams come back with a vengeance that night. (Though Anya would have blamed it on the Butterburger.)

That sound.

Hiss is really a feeble word.

Buffy slips out of her bed and crosses to his. She doesn't offer or ask, just curls up with him, spooning from behind.

She doesn't say anything at all.

Xander listens to her even breathing, his heart beating a little less wildly. She snugs an arm around him.

He matches the rhythm of his breath to hers, and at last falls asleep.

When he wakes a good hour later than usual, Buffy's already in the shower.

He's not sure what to think about what happened last night. Not that he's confusing it with anything to do with sex. But it's intimacy, no question. It's not a kind of intimacy he and Buffy ever shared.

If he's felt like the woman at certain times in certain relationships, Buffy definitely has qualified on occasion as the man. Closed off sometimes. Protecting herself. Thinking she's protecting others.

This is new.

When she emerges from the bathroom, she doesn't mention it, just asks, "How'd you sleep?"

Later in the day she does open up. They're walking a trail in a state park. He's beginning to think about lunch.

She's thinking about something else. "When you got hurt. When Caleb hurt you." The pauses between words are so painful he wishes she'd stop. "I was a crappy friend."

"You had an apoca--"

"Stop."

"Sorry. A-word."

"No. Don't make excuses. I just -- I couldn't bear it. It felt like my fault."

"Speaking of Don't --"

"I can't help it."

"Buffy, I never waded into a fight I didn't want to."

"I've never thanked you."

"I feel like you did."

On the road a couple of nights later, they stop at a motel that doesn't have any two-double rooms left, just ones with a king. They're too tired to scrounge up another motel at this hour, so they take it.

After that, they never go back. When they don't stumble onto a free outdoor concert or wander into a country-western bar, they spend evenings sprawled on ugly bedspreads, watching pay-per-view movies and eating microwave popcorn.

It's a lot like high school, only with less sexually confused feelings. Mostly.

Or that's what he thinks, before the kiss.

Xander tosses the remains of tonight's snack, bought in the Corn Palace gift shop. Microwavable popcorn attached to the ear. A better souvenir than snack.

"I think there was enough to feed a small sparrow," he says as he wipes his hands on a napkin from McDonald's.

"You have some butter," Buffy says. He thinks she lies. She touches his mouth with bare fingertips, not a napkin.

His heart thumps, even before she presses her lips to his.

Heat and tenderness and so much confusion.

When she asks, though, he doesn't hesitate. He's learned what to do with a gift.