The hallway outside Xander’s apartment was dim, lit by single-bulb fixtures spaced every five paces, so he never opened his door after dark, after 6:30, without a stake in his hand, a baseball bat within easy reach. Tonight was no exception, not even after he looked through the peephole.

He opened the door slowly, inch by inch, millimeter by millimeter, and the blonde—she was still a blonde—smiled at the visible weaponry. "You’re learning," she said. She sounded just like he remembered, looked mostly the same, if thinner, older, but looks had deceived him before so he reached out and laid a hand on her arm: warmth, pulse beating beneath the surface of her skin, and he breathed a sigh of relief.

"I can come in without benefit of an invitation, too, but I figured I’d be polite and wait for one, rather than just barging on in," she said, still grinning, but then it faded. "I’ve done enough barging in my life, I think."

He stepped back, away from the door, and motioned for her to enter; to her credit she didn’t grimace at the crampedness of it, at its unmistakable bachelor pad feel. She just looked at him and only blinked slowly when he said, "Buffy, what are you doing here?"

She didn’t answer immediately; instead, she walked across the living room to his couch, pushed three days worth of still folded newspapers to the floor, and sat. He joined her, then put his arm around her as her head was suddenly on his shoulder.

"So it turns out that slayers aren’t supposed to live long lives, no matter how many of us there are," she said. She reached over to grab his hand, thin fingers wrapping themselves around his palm, and they were shaking, trembling, so he tightened his grip; it didn’t help. Softly, sounding as defeated as Xander had ever heard her sound, she continued: "I know why now, even if I don’t know the technical terms—Giles could tell you those—but this is what I’ve discovered: too much, too early, and you don’t have anything left for the long haul. I think I’m entering the long haul now, Xander—most of the time, nowadays, I’m pretty sure I’m already smack dab in the middle of it."

When the meaning beneath her words processed, his first instinct, as always, was to call Giles, his next to ask again, What are you doing here? because he wasn’t the first person Buffy turned to, not now, not ever, especially now that he wasn’t at her side constantly—or at all, really—anymore.

Maybe she sensed his hesitation, because she said, with another tremble of her fingers, and this time of her voice, too, "I don’t have any right to ask this from you, not after, well, our lives, but I’ve done everything, Xander, except be normal, and you’ve always made me feel normal. I want to feel normal for a change, for a bit, for however much longer I get, which— I— it’s not going to be a long time."

She met his gaze full on, and it wasn’t one of the earth-shattering, world-stopping looks that she used to give Angel and Spike, Riley, but it was the closest he’d ever come to getting the look he’d wanted from her; he could see love there, too, for him.

As he looked at her, he wondered if too late was better than never, decided in that instant, as she actually felt frail against him, that it was; he said, "Okay," softly, and held onto her even more tightly than before.