"Not an Argyle Socks Kind of Guy" commentary
DVD commentary on "Not an Argyle Socks Kind of Guy", as requested by penwiper26. The story is quite short, features Giles/Xander, and alludes to smut but contains little itself.
I have been asked for a sequel to "Apples, Oranges, and Pears", but I haven't really been ready to take on Yet Another WIP. Friends, I have too many. And writing funny is hard. Way harder than most writing tasks, I think. But if I ever did a sequel, it would pick up right where this story leaves off and rattle on happily. And there would be a lot of sex, because, as we learn here... Giles likes it.
Xander lugged the bag of laundry through the front door. Fetching it from the cleaners without a car hadn't been his brightest idea ever. But hey, over with, and Giles would be happy to have a fresh supply of socks and shirts and towels.
I love writing in Xander's voice. Just plain love it. The boy is fun. The joy of life fizzes over in him, and it always cheers me up to think like that for a while. Plus, I can let rip with the popcult references and the free-association wordplay.
Giles was off seeing some shaman about a demon. They'd just had their meeting with Buffy at the library, and she'd been a total wreck about this de-souling Angel threat. Angel had been calmer, and Giles the calmest yet. He had a plan already, it turned out. He explained it all to the four of them. Xander's job was to play dumb and act scared. Okay, he could handle that. This acting thing was easy when all you had to do was remember what you felt when Angel'd been de-souled for real.
I'm following canon here: we're doing "Enemies", and we're seeing Giles put his plan into action. In this AU, Xander is in the know. I figured there's no point in being coy; we've all watched the ep.
Xander started sorting out the laundry. His stuff was easily put away: shirts in that drawer, pants there, underwear stuffed there, socks crammed in there. Giles's stuff was more complicated, because a bunch of it was on hangers. What the heck. Xander decided to learn how to put it away.
New relationship; Giles's territory in the apartment has hitherto been private.
He figured it was okay to look through the sock drawers of a guy who'd just given you the first two blowjobs of your young life. Two blowjobs, the second of which had been that morning in the shower. Sweet mother of Zeus, that had felt good, with the hot water and the hot mouth and the soapy fingers touching him in places nobody had touched him before. Xander had thought he was going to pass out. He got sprung just remembering it. Very very very instantly majorly sprung in a cargo-pants fly-stressing kind of way.
Xander has just had every young man's dream come true. He's been offered all the sex he could want. He wants a lot. He's 18. His hormones have hormones.
Xander walked up the last few steps to the loft awkwardly, trying to hold the clothes away from his crotch. Fortunately the task of figuring out where Giles kept his clothes was not going to be erotic at all. Or so Xander hoped. You never knew when you were going to discover weird fetishes for things like socks. Or older men. He'd never have predicted that guys with crinkle lines at the corners of their eyes were going to turn out to be so damn hot.
An allusion to the central jokey metaphor of AO&P, that Xander tries out three sexual orientations: women, men, and hot older men. Apparently Giles is okay with younger men, too.
But mostly putting Giles' clothes away turned out to be de-bonering. Giles apparently carried over the librarian approach to his clothing storage. Everything was organized. His t-shirts were roughly sorted by color in the t-shirt drawer. The top drawer of his dresser had three compartments. The one on the left held socks. The one on the right held underwear. The one in the middle had underwear, too. Blessedly unorganized, as far as Xander could tell. He would put Giles' socks away because he was head over heels for him, but drew the line at keeping his jockeys sorted into a rainbow.
I kept my t-shirts sorted by color for a while. It didn't last. But I can totally see Giles doing it and keeping it up.
Giles had a lot of socks. More than Xander did, though to be fair Xander had absconded from his house with what he could carry in a single duffle, and he had left some clothes behind. But even so, his sock collection was not going to compete with this one. Just on sheer variety, Giles had him beat. Xander's socks were mostly in the "tube socks, white, gym, teenagers, for the use of" category. Giles had those, but he also had dress socks. In black, brown, blue, and gray. Xander had exactly one pair of black dress socks, to go with the suit he'd worn exactly once to the Willow-kissing dance of doom. Giles also had wool socks, cotton socks, a pair of soft silky socks that Xander suspected might be real silk. Striped socks, which Xander was damn sure he'd never seen Giles wear. Argyle socks, which he had seen.
My husband's sock drawer, cataloged for the sake of fiction. And exaggerated considerably. Then toned down, because my husband has hot pink socks, which he in fact wears, and I don't think Giles would. Also, I love the military requisition form language. It always makes me think about Eric Frank Russell's writing, and about "Allamagoosa" in particular.
It was difficult to reconcile argyle socks with toe-curling knee-jellifying blowjobs, but there they were, all tagged with the Giles label in Xander's brain.
Heh. Argyle socks have all kinds of connotations for me, starting with "prep" and continuing with "conservative" and proceeding on to "hopelessly uncool". But if Giles wears them, can they be unsexy? But they're dorky! Wait. Brain melt.
Xander added one week's worth of neatly-paired clean socks to the drawer. Now the underwear, which he grinned over, because he'd seen that on its owner. Giles was mostly into boxers these days, though he also had a healthy supply of colorful briefs. Xander figured out the underwear drawer, too, because that also was organized. The everyday stuff was on the right. The middle stuff was Date Underwear. Silk. Satin. Stuff with little red hearts on it.
Doesn't everybody have a Date Underwear collection? You know, the thongs that drive you mad normally but that you'll put up with because you think they'll be taken off later?
Okay, little red hearts on Giles-boxers was weird, though not argyle brain-melty weird.
I'd pay to see that.
Xander slid the scary underwear drawer shut again and starting hanging up shirts. He'd just done the last one when he heard the front door open. He hung himself way out over the loft banister so he could watch Giles walk into view, look up, see him, and grin. Giles tossed his attache case on his desk and ran up the stairs. He had a plastic drugstore bag in his hand.
Ah, the new relationship rush!
Xander met him at the top of the steps and wrapped his arms around Giles' waist. Giles pitched the bag at the bed and pulled him close for one of those demanding, hot, ferocious kisses. Then he ripped Xander's collar open to expose his neck. He got to work on the spot he'd sucked at last night. Xander let his head fall back.
Demanding, commanding Giles in the bedroom here. Though I'm also sure that this Giles will take all roles in bed with Xander and do whatever Xander enjoys.
"Fuck," he said. "Fuck, yeah."
Yeah, he was the king of the sweet talk, yeah, but how was a guy supposed to think well enough to talk when Giles was biting at his neck and grinding against his hips?
Giles eventually eased off and nuzzled Xander's ear. "Hello to you, too," he said.
"So so so not an argyle socks guy."
Xander rejects the image of Giles in those socks. Which is fine: it's a uniform, and not the whole man.
"Pardon?"
"Oh, nothing. How'd it go?"
Giles let him go and stepped over to the closet. He took off his tie, then hung it up. "Arrangements are made. We need only wait. I, er, did some shopping for necessities as well. In the bag."
Giles takes off the Watcher uniform and switches to human being mode. The working title of AO&P was "Buddy Flick", by the way, which says what I was aiming for in their relationship.
Xander pounced on the bag and unpacked it onto the nightstand. A couple of boxes of condoms. Woah. And a big bottle of hand lotion with a pump on top. Hand lotion? Probe Extra Rich. What?
Xander is a trifle naive. But he clues in fast.
"A pump bottle? You bought a pump bottle of lube?"
Giles ran a hand through his hair until it stood on end. "Er, yes. I'm sorry, I didn't ask what sorts of things you wanted to do. I just assumed we'd be, um. If you don't want to, it's fine. There are many other, uh, enjoyable um--"
He'll stammer about the emotional stuff, though. He doesn't want to push Xander into anything Xander doesn't like. Note that neither man names the activity they're discussing.
"Hey, big guy. Not a problem. I just didn't realize it came in that size. It comes in jumbo with a pump. Um. Yeah. Did I really just say that?"
Giles grinned at him, one of those big grins that transformed his face. "You did."
"So that bottle, unless I'm crazy, represents an awful lot of sex."
Xander watched Giles take off his jacket and hang that up too. "Mmm. I suppose it does," he said, from inside the closet.
"Wow."
Giles emerged and shut the closet door. "I like sex," he said.
YES.
A wave of joy broke over Xander, and it was all he could do to keep standing up he was so happy. "I approve of that. I think that's good. Gonna take a stand here. Because I am eighteen years old, and I like sex too. And I've only had it--" Xander counted on his fingers. "Four times. Five if we count last night and this morning separately and I'm not sure what the rules are but anyway I am thinking that every time I do it again it gets better. So I like it too. Let's do it as often as possible."
Really, this monologue is the whole point of the piece. Though the sock drawer was the alleged excuse.
Giles laughed, in that quiet way he had when he was truly deeply all the way down happy. "All right, then. Let's."
"Now?" That came out squeakier than he'd wanted.
The grin turned a little dangerous. "If you'd like."
Pirate Giles!
"Yeah. I'd like."
A moment later Xander's back hit the bed, and Giles was on top of him, and things got even better from there.
Uhuh. Yup. I suppose people want to see more of that. I wouldn't mind seeing Xander's first experience with the er, personal lubricant. I don't think the lube bottle had its first use that time, though. Xander needs some more practice with the basics before he moves to the advanced boysex topics. Some day, some day I will write more. But I have to get the existing WIP load reduced first.
I have been asked for a sequel to "Apples, Oranges, and Pears", but I haven't really been ready to take on Yet Another WIP. Friends, I have too many. And writing funny is hard. Way harder than most writing tasks, I think. But if I ever did a sequel, it would pick up right where this story leaves off and rattle on happily. And there would be a lot of sex, because, as we learn here... Giles likes it.
Xander lugged the bag of laundry through the front door. Fetching it from the cleaners without a car hadn't been his brightest idea ever. But hey, over with, and Giles would be happy to have a fresh supply of socks and shirts and towels.
I love writing in Xander's voice. Just plain love it. The boy is fun. The joy of life fizzes over in him, and it always cheers me up to think like that for a while. Plus, I can let rip with the popcult references and the free-association wordplay.
Giles was off seeing some shaman about a demon. They'd just had their meeting with Buffy at the library, and she'd been a total wreck about this de-souling Angel threat. Angel had been calmer, and Giles the calmest yet. He had a plan already, it turned out. He explained it all to the four of them. Xander's job was to play dumb and act scared. Okay, he could handle that. This acting thing was easy when all you had to do was remember what you felt when Angel'd been de-souled for real.
I'm following canon here: we're doing "Enemies", and we're seeing Giles put his plan into action. In this AU, Xander is in the know. I figured there's no point in being coy; we've all watched the ep.
Xander started sorting out the laundry. His stuff was easily put away: shirts in that drawer, pants there, underwear stuffed there, socks crammed in there. Giles's stuff was more complicated, because a bunch of it was on hangers. What the heck. Xander decided to learn how to put it away.
New relationship; Giles's territory in the apartment has hitherto been private.
He figured it was okay to look through the sock drawers of a guy who'd just given you the first two blowjobs of your young life. Two blowjobs, the second of which had been that morning in the shower. Sweet mother of Zeus, that had felt good, with the hot water and the hot mouth and the soapy fingers touching him in places nobody had touched him before. Xander had thought he was going to pass out. He got sprung just remembering it. Very very very instantly majorly sprung in a cargo-pants fly-stressing kind of way.
Xander has just had every young man's dream come true. He's been offered all the sex he could want. He wants a lot. He's 18. His hormones have hormones.
Xander walked up the last few steps to the loft awkwardly, trying to hold the clothes away from his crotch. Fortunately the task of figuring out where Giles kept his clothes was not going to be erotic at all. Or so Xander hoped. You never knew when you were going to discover weird fetishes for things like socks. Or older men. He'd never have predicted that guys with crinkle lines at the corners of their eyes were going to turn out to be so damn hot.
An allusion to the central jokey metaphor of AO&P, that Xander tries out three sexual orientations: women, men, and hot older men. Apparently Giles is okay with younger men, too.
But mostly putting Giles' clothes away turned out to be de-bonering. Giles apparently carried over the librarian approach to his clothing storage. Everything was organized. His t-shirts were roughly sorted by color in the t-shirt drawer. The top drawer of his dresser had three compartments. The one on the left held socks. The one on the right held underwear. The one in the middle had underwear, too. Blessedly unorganized, as far as Xander could tell. He would put Giles' socks away because he was head over heels for him, but drew the line at keeping his jockeys sorted into a rainbow.
I kept my t-shirts sorted by color for a while. It didn't last. But I can totally see Giles doing it and keeping it up.
Giles had a lot of socks. More than Xander did, though to be fair Xander had absconded from his house with what he could carry in a single duffle, and he had left some clothes behind. But even so, his sock collection was not going to compete with this one. Just on sheer variety, Giles had him beat. Xander's socks were mostly in the "tube socks, white, gym, teenagers, for the use of" category. Giles had those, but he also had dress socks. In black, brown, blue, and gray. Xander had exactly one pair of black dress socks, to go with the suit he'd worn exactly once to the Willow-kissing dance of doom. Giles also had wool socks, cotton socks, a pair of soft silky socks that Xander suspected might be real silk. Striped socks, which Xander was damn sure he'd never seen Giles wear. Argyle socks, which he had seen.
My husband's sock drawer, cataloged for the sake of fiction. And exaggerated considerably. Then toned down, because my husband has hot pink socks, which he in fact wears, and I don't think Giles would. Also, I love the military requisition form language. It always makes me think about Eric Frank Russell's writing, and about "Allamagoosa" in particular.
It was difficult to reconcile argyle socks with toe-curling knee-jellifying blowjobs, but there they were, all tagged with the Giles label in Xander's brain.
Heh. Argyle socks have all kinds of connotations for me, starting with "prep" and continuing with "conservative" and proceeding on to "hopelessly uncool". But if Giles wears them, can they be unsexy? But they're dorky! Wait. Brain melt.
Xander added one week's worth of neatly-paired clean socks to the drawer. Now the underwear, which he grinned over, because he'd seen that on its owner. Giles was mostly into boxers these days, though he also had a healthy supply of colorful briefs. Xander figured out the underwear drawer, too, because that also was organized. The everyday stuff was on the right. The middle stuff was Date Underwear. Silk. Satin. Stuff with little red hearts on it.
Doesn't everybody have a Date Underwear collection? You know, the thongs that drive you mad normally but that you'll put up with because you think they'll be taken off later?
Okay, little red hearts on Giles-boxers was weird, though not argyle brain-melty weird.
I'd pay to see that.
Xander slid the scary underwear drawer shut again and starting hanging up shirts. He'd just done the last one when he heard the front door open. He hung himself way out over the loft banister so he could watch Giles walk into view, look up, see him, and grin. Giles tossed his attache case on his desk and ran up the stairs. He had a plastic drugstore bag in his hand.
Ah, the new relationship rush!
Xander met him at the top of the steps and wrapped his arms around Giles' waist. Giles pitched the bag at the bed and pulled him close for one of those demanding, hot, ferocious kisses. Then he ripped Xander's collar open to expose his neck. He got to work on the spot he'd sucked at last night. Xander let his head fall back.
Demanding, commanding Giles in the bedroom here. Though I'm also sure that this Giles will take all roles in bed with Xander and do whatever Xander enjoys.
"Fuck," he said. "Fuck, yeah."
Yeah, he was the king of the sweet talk, yeah, but how was a guy supposed to think well enough to talk when Giles was biting at his neck and grinding against his hips?
Giles eventually eased off and nuzzled Xander's ear. "Hello to you, too," he said.
"So so so not an argyle socks guy."
Xander rejects the image of Giles in those socks. Which is fine: it's a uniform, and not the whole man.
"Pardon?"
"Oh, nothing. How'd it go?"
Giles let him go and stepped over to the closet. He took off his tie, then hung it up. "Arrangements are made. We need only wait. I, er, did some shopping for necessities as well. In the bag."
Giles takes off the Watcher uniform and switches to human being mode. The working title of AO&P was "Buddy Flick", by the way, which says what I was aiming for in their relationship.
Xander pounced on the bag and unpacked it onto the nightstand. A couple of boxes of condoms. Woah. And a big bottle of hand lotion with a pump on top. Hand lotion? Probe Extra Rich. What?
Xander is a trifle naive. But he clues in fast.
"A pump bottle? You bought a pump bottle of lube?"
Giles ran a hand through his hair until it stood on end. "Er, yes. I'm sorry, I didn't ask what sorts of things you wanted to do. I just assumed we'd be, um. If you don't want to, it's fine. There are many other, uh, enjoyable um--"
He'll stammer about the emotional stuff, though. He doesn't want to push Xander into anything Xander doesn't like. Note that neither man names the activity they're discussing.
"Hey, big guy. Not a problem. I just didn't realize it came in that size. It comes in jumbo with a pump. Um. Yeah. Did I really just say that?"
Giles grinned at him, one of those big grins that transformed his face. "You did."
"So that bottle, unless I'm crazy, represents an awful lot of sex."
Xander watched Giles take off his jacket and hang that up too. "Mmm. I suppose it does," he said, from inside the closet.
"Wow."
Giles emerged and shut the closet door. "I like sex," he said.
YES.
A wave of joy broke over Xander, and it was all he could do to keep standing up he was so happy. "I approve of that. I think that's good. Gonna take a stand here. Because I am eighteen years old, and I like sex too. And I've only had it--" Xander counted on his fingers. "Four times. Five if we count last night and this morning separately and I'm not sure what the rules are but anyway I am thinking that every time I do it again it gets better. So I like it too. Let's do it as often as possible."
Really, this monologue is the whole point of the piece. Though the sock drawer was the alleged excuse.
Giles laughed, in that quiet way he had when he was truly deeply all the way down happy. "All right, then. Let's."
"Now?" That came out squeakier than he'd wanted.
The grin turned a little dangerous. "If you'd like."
Pirate Giles!
"Yeah. I'd like."
A moment later Xander's back hit the bed, and Giles was on top of him, and things got even better from there.
Uhuh. Yup. I suppose people want to see more of that. I wouldn't mind seeing Xander's first experience with the er, personal lubricant. I don't think the lube bottle had its first use that time, though. Xander needs some more practice with the basics before he moves to the advanced boysex topics. Some day, some day I will write more. But I have to get the existing WIP load reduced first.