New York 40/43: On a boat - Giles/Xander
Check it out, readers. I have a chapter total, and it's almost done.
Sorry for the delay. I have intermittent access to irritatingly unstable internet, etc. etc.
New York
by Dr Squidlove
drsquidlove@@@livejournal.com
Summary: Xander is thirty-seven. Divorced. Two kids. 4000 miles from Sunnydale and his Hellmouth childhood. Also, straight. Only someone forgot to tell Giles. In fact... where the hell is Giles?
Rated R for sex.
Thanks to gloriana and antennapedia for incredibly helpful mid-construction betas, and lunabee for early through middle chapters, and to huzzlewhat for final checking on the run. And gloriana again for major late-construction revisions.
The Buffy universe is the property of Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy. Borrowed with all due love and respect.
Please ask before archiving.
Feedback ohgodyesplease.
Full headers are on chapter one.
Wordcount this part: 4593
Previously, in chapter 39:
Xander ran as hard as he could out of the tunnels, Mary's cure in hand, Giles lost under a pile of rats behind him. He had to trust Buffy and Riley to rescue him. Mary's family had arrived, and wanted to know why Xander and an army division had become key to her treatment. Xander used his usual diplomatic skills until Mich cleared them out.
Xander tried to run back for Giles, but Sergeant Medic Pennebaker was not cooperative, which turned out okay because Giles got to the hospital first. The reunion was short because Mary woke up. Annoyingly, Giles headed home before Xander could get back to him, and Xander could only give him a quick call to him and Buffy, with a promise of another call tonight.
New York
chapter 40: On a boat
by Dr Squidlove
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Xander picked the girls up from school and brought them back to the hospital. Mich had offered to go, but Mary was safe and Giles was safe, and now he had to make sure the girls were safe.
The whole near-multiple-death adventure had taken less time than it took to do some long division and colour in a map of Lewis and Clark's trip.
Jen and Kate didn't seem to believe him that everything was okay until they saw Mary sitting up, awake, and then there were squeals well beyond the inside voice rules and they threw themselves on her bed. Mary already looked way better than she had when she first woke up, and the way she smiled at Jen and Kate, it didn't seem like she belonged in the hospital gown at all.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Xander jerked awake, heart racing.
No demons. Right. The girls were safe. Giles was safe. Mary was safe. He was on the couch, neck twisted where his head had slipped off the cushion. The weight in his lap was Kate, drooling a little wet patch on his leg. He smiled and clumsily stroked her hair.
The TV was still flickering, but there was no sound. One of the girls must have turned it down. Jen, he guessed - she seemed to have found her way to bed. It tickled him, the idea of her doing something so parent-like.
He rubbed his eyes. It was late. Really late, though he couldn't see the clock from here. It took a good while of inching to slide out from under Kate. Probably wasted effort; if he'd flipped her on the floor, she would've curled up and slept on. He slid his arms under her and lifted and yep, not a sigh. Not from her, anyway. Either he was getting old, or she was getting bigger.
He yawned, jaw creaking with the effort as he carried her through. He slid her into bed and pulled the blanket up. Jen was half-hanging over the side of her bed, Bruno the stuffing-deficient bear clutched in one arm. Xander picked up the clothes strewn across the floor and dropped them in the hamper, pushed a couple of stray drawers shut, looked around by the light from the door for something else to do.
They were fine. He kissed them both goodnight and trudged to his room. Apparently post-apocalypse parties were for the young, because he hardly had the energy to undress, could barely reach to pull off his socks. It was only as he crawled under the covers that he realised he never called Giles. He'd been hoping to get the girls to sleep so he could curl up with the phone.
Xander rolled onto his back to pick it up, and stared at the time. It was seriously late.
He thumbed recent calls, pulled up Giles. He wanted to hear Giles' calm voice, sleep-roughened, asking if this couldn't wait until morning. Heaving a sigh and swearing he'd be perfectly healthy, given a full night's sleep, and there'd be a pointed look at the ceiling that Xander would feel down the phone line. His thumb rubbed over the call button, wavering.
Xander closed the phone and held it against his chest. It could wait until morning.
It just would have depressed him, anyway. He wished Giles was here, bringing Xander awake with rough hands, kissing him and breathing hard in his ear and rolling him onto his stomach to drag his cock up the crack of Xander's ass. Xander couldn't think of anything he needed more right now than Giles lively and greedy, sweat-slick skin sticking them closer. Xander ran his hand over his crotch, too tired for more.
He'd almost let Giles go. Two weeks ago Xander had been lying right here, not doing anything at all to stop Giles from leaving New York, and him. He never would have realised what a crazy, Sunnydale-style-Xander mistake he'd made.
He wasn't Sunnydale Xander anymore. He was never going to make a mistake like that again.
The trouble was, there was going to be a fight, first, because Xander wasn't going back to that life. Even knowing everything Buffy and Riley and Giles did for him, all Xander could think about was somersaulting off that platform, a split-second reflex between Riley catching him and Jen and Kate being left without a dad. He could take that chance to get their mom back but he couldn't take it for strangers. He couldn't take it just to get Giles' respect.
There was already enough creeping danger in his life, now. Even though it hadn't been Anya that got Mary tangled up in the spell, and it wasn't something that traced him through Giles, it could have been. It still didn't make sense that Anya hadn't given him Ebola or a one way ticket to a clown dimension, and it would be nothing but crazy luck if Giles never brought his work way-too-literally home with him. But Anya already knew where he was and Xander wasn't about to let Giles go anywhere, so what was Xander going to do about that?
Around and around. Xander clumsily reached back to drop his phone on the nightstand. His body was numb but now his mind was chasing its tail, so he slid his hand inside his shorts and turned all his powers of concentration back to imagining Giles was here, pinning him to the mattress.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The morning was wasted herding two uncooperative little girls out of bed and through the bathroom and into the kitchen, Kate whining and Jen fighting him on everything. He almost kept them home from school, but that got another tantrum from Jen, who didn't want to miss any days of the last week of school - and when did it get to be the end of the school year? - so off they went. Xander stopped by each of their guidance counsellors to keep them updated and made it to work just an hour late.
He really wasn't ready for that. Barely in the gate he was getting strange looks, and then Sam barrelled into him. "Christ Xander! I thought something happened to Mary."
"It did."
"Looks like it happened to you, too," said Rodriguez. "What the hell, Harris?"
Xander brushed Sam's fingers away. "She got the worst of it."
"You got mugged?"
"Something like that."
A crowd was gathering. "Did the cops get the guy?" "Did you do him any damage?" "Should you even be here?" "The police gonna press charges?" "Fuck, Harris, you seen your face?" Things were way easier in Sunnydale, where no one noticed all the random bruises.
"Holy hell, Harris. You could've had another day off." Pearson slid through the crowd to get a better look.
He could have, but Giles had said something about stopping back at the museum after he took Buffy to the airport and Mary's family were sticking around all day, so Xander had figured it was a good idea to get back to work. He should have come up with a plan C. "Didn't really want to hang around at home."
"It's called rest, you arse. You'll want light duties, I suppose."
"I'd appreciate it."
It was worse when everyone finally got to work and left him alone.
He could have kicked himself for falling asleep before he could call Giles last night. No way was he going to be able to talk to him properly on his lunch break, which meant waiting until after work, and even then it was only going to be the phone, when every passing hour was making Xander more and more antsy to see him. He could still taste all that fear lingering in the back of his throat for Giles left behind in the tunnels. He had to keep fighting the urge to make a quick call, just to make sure he hadn't imagined seeing Giles in the hospital. Considering the things Xander had seen in his life, it wasn't all that crazy to be paranoid that the government might have altered his memory to think he saw Giles at the hospital when maybe he didn't really and it was just the government's way of making sure Xander kept quiet. Or something.
Riley wouldn't do it, but if Warren could make Buffy in his basement out of spare parts, then the army could probably rustle up a Riley-bot without much fuss. Or they could have just re-chipped him. Chipping technology had probably advanced since 2000.
It wasn't crazy to wonder what if maybe Giles was still down in the tunnels, somewhere, waiting for Xander to come back.
Xander really wished Giles and Buffy had stuck around a little longer yesterday.
When lunchtime rolled around Giles didn't pick up, but he sent a message to say he was tied up. It helped. Then Xander called both the girls. They must have still been shaken, because neither of them minded.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
He finally got a hold of Giles in the evening. "Giles!"
"Xander. I was starting to think you were a myth."
"Me and Bigfoot." Was Bigfoot a myth? They'd never covered that one.
"I, I missed you last night." The longing in his voice went slipped through Xander's belly, loosened the tension in his shoulders, made him wish even more that Giles was here. "You didn't call."
"Yeah, I'm sorry. I passed out." Xander's voice echoed around the concrete stairwell. "Buffy's gone home?"
"I put her on a plane this morning. Where are you?"
"At the hospital. Jen's telling Mary about a fight a couple of her mortal enemies had in Spanish class."
"Oh."
Mary was feeling well enough to laugh, the girls seemed to have forgotten she was breakable, and Xander had finally been able to slip out and find a quiet set of fire stairs where he could focus all his worrying on Giles. "How are you doing, anyway?"
"I'm fine. How's Mary?"
"Good. Great. Mary's great. You should see her; she looks better than we do. In fact, Charlie - Pennebaker - the medic - said she should be good to go home tomorrow. I'm going to head over with the girls, help her settle back in."
"Of course."
"After that, I'll be footloose and fancy-free." Xander did a little hop-step up a step and down again. Giles-time. Okay, it was good that no one was around to see that. He turned around and sat on the landing so he didn't do it again, ready for a long chat.
"You're coming over here?"
"Sure. I don't know when. It might not be until after lunch."
"Might not be at all?"
"No! I want to see you. Check your limbs are properly attached. Or..." Uh oh. "Do you mind if it's late? Should I wait until Sunday?" Xander really, really couldn't wait until Sunday, but there was that whole looming conversation with Mary, and he didn't know when he was going to get trapped in it.
"Of course not. I don't want to impose, if you have things to do."
"You're my thing to do," Xander said, dropping his voice to phone sex tone.
"Right. Anytime, Xander. I'm sure I'll be reading late into the night, anyway. I'll see you tomorrow."
Somehow, that was the end of the call. Xander flipped off his phone and took a slow breath. He'd been planning to work his way into some dirty talk. He missed him. Really, really missed him. It seemed like months since they'd sat on the couch, surrounded by takeout containers, and talked. Or made out like teenagers. Or had sex. Tomorrow, all of the above. He wondered if Giles was having the same withdrawal.
He stood up and pushed through the fire door back onto the ward, taking his time heading back to Mary's room. Xander's part was done here. Mary was safe; Jen and Kate were in their mother's arms, and Xander didn't need to be-
He yelped. "Riley! Stealth train much?"
Riley smiled that broad, easy smile. "Got to keep the troops on their toes." He looked military as ever despite his jeans and button-down shirt. Xander wondered how they hadn't figured it out sooner back in Sunnydale. "I just stopped in to see how Mary's doing."
"Great. I can't, I mean, I don't know how to..." Xander grabbed his hand, and then realised that was stupid, and pulled him into a quick manly hug with a few firm pats on the back. "Thank you. A million thank yous. A great big truckload of thank yous."
Riley clapped his shoulder as they parted. "No problem. New York's been moved to the top of the priority list. The unit's sticking around to do some fumigation, should get the vamps down about eighty percent."
"You can do that?"
"Isn't as satisfying as personally shoving a stake through them, but it's effective. That's what my people are putting together now. We've cleaned out half a dozen cities; so far it looks like they'll take years to get back to old infestation levels."
Wow. Sounded way more satisfying than up-close and personally vulnerable staking to Xander. He looked up the corridor to make sure no one was eavesdropping. "Is it going to take out the lot that did this to Mary?"
"I've got a special squad hunting down the Cult of Viniorum. My best team."
"Good." The military wasn't exactly top of Xander's trust list, but they'd done okay so far, and if Riley picked them, then okay. "They going to chip them or kill them?"
"Kill."
"Good."
An orderly passed, pushing an empty bed and they paused, nodding a greeting. Xander waited until she was well down the corridor before speaking again. "Here's what I want to know. Has Mary been meditating in a well-lit room for an hour every week with a bloodsucker while I worried about subways and dark streets?"
Riley's face hardened. "We don't know for sure. But the place was a windowless room in a building with direct subway access. Her guy could have run midday groups right through summer without ever touching daylight."
Xander slumped against the wall, pushing a hand through his hair. "I'm the great protector."
"Hey. You checking up on that mark saved Mary and the other four people down there."
Xander nodded. It wasn't as reassuring as it should have been, but it was good of Riley to try. It was pretty amazing of Riley to be here at all. Xander owed him more than a thanks and goodbye. Xander lifted his head. "Do you want to come get a coffee? The girls need some time with their mom, and Starbucks is one floor up."
Riley beamed. "Sounds good."
Xander stuck his head in to tell Mary he was heading upstairs for a while, and then followed Riley to the elevator.
"Are you and your ex always this tight, or just when one of you's been branded by an HST soul-sourcing company?"
"Varies. Usually we get along pretty well."
As they stepped into the elevator, Riley asked, "You got a girlfriend?"
Xander hit the button for the next floor and kept on staring at the doors as they closed. "Nah. No girlfriend." He half-turned his head and started a new subject. "So how about Sam? You guys have kids?"
"We're doing okay. Sam's great. She asked after you." He pulled out his phone, passing it over as the doors opened. "Max and Jake turn three next week." Two blond, round-cheeked Riley clones grinned out of the screen.
"Twins!"
"Yeah, turned out making them was harder work than we expected, so the twins thing was a bonus." He gave an awkward smile as he slipped it back in his pocket.
Xander passed his own phone over. "That's Jen and Kate."
Riley nodded, smiling. "I saw them in there with your ex as I came past. The youngest - Kate? - seemed to have a whole lot of ranting going on about what was wrong with the jocks at school."
"She must get that from Mary's side." Xander slid his phone back in his pocket as they stepped out.
They ordered their drinks and Xander insisted on paying, shoving Riley off to locate and secure a table like a good soldier. Not an easy mission in afternoon visiting hours, but they didn't make the man a colonel for nothing. By the time Xander had a venti in each hand, Riley had a corner staked out.
Xander sat back to get his first real look at him since he showed up yesterday. He looked as strong as ever - military life, Xander supposed - but there was grey in his hair and Xander was a little pleased to see Riley had some midde-age spread going on as well. "So this is what your people do, now? Just gas a city, and bam, no more problems?"
"We wish. It's not quite that effective. For starters, it only works on v-" His eyes darted around at the other customers. "-suckers, and it's not a hundred percent. If we can get some good information ahead of time, we can knock out most of an enclosed population."
"Like the subway tunnels." Xander sipped his black, black coffee. God, yes, he needed that.
"Exactly. The patterns Giles has been putting together for us this past month are good, but they're not done, and now we have to jump the gun a little. And New York's a big city, way bigger than anything we've worked before, so it's going to be a challenge. Ramirez has been looking into it, is pretty sure your creepy winged things will go down, but we're going to have to come up with something new and special for the rats."
"Wait." An old conversation dropped back into Xander's brain. "Giles was putting together the patterns for you? All those maps and news articles - you were the secret contact he was talking to?"
"Yeah. Giles' recon was exactly what we needed. We wouldn't know where to start without what he gave us."
"I thought he was talking to the Council, or something." Why hadn't Giles said?
Riley shrugged. "He got in touch with me around the time he moved here, said he could compile attack patterns if I could get a team here to do something about it. Suited me: we've got people, but no one like Giles. It's funny he never mentioned you: I didn't even know you were until town until he called about your ex-wife."
Xander stared down into his cup. "I don't do that stuff anymore."
"Right. I just thought..." Riley shrugged. He didn't seem disappointed.
"You've got kids. How do you do it?" How did Riley always manage to glide through everything Xander couldn't? Last time he showed up, it was all happily married, and now it was happily married with kids and still killing the bad things.
He smiled. "Make twins?"
"Protect them. Do what you do, when you don't know what's coming for you."
Riley let out a dry laugh. "I was going to ask you that. Max and Jake are still in our sight, every second. I was going to ask you how you let your girls do all those wild crazy kid-things, like go to school."
Xander snorted. "Crucifixes are go. They've been drilled to check taxi drivers' faces in the rear-view mirror as they get in. I tell them to compare it to the ID card, hoping that 'lack of reflection' will be weird enough to get them out again when they start catching them alone at night." He sat forward. "But I'm not... I'm out of all that stuff, or I thought I was. I've just been blocking it out like everyone else. That night we got dragged down into tunnels - if it had been up to me, I would have just walked past. I don't want my girls growing up without me."
Riley sat back. "You were the one with him in the food bucket?"
"Yeah." Giles really had gone out of his way to keep Xander under the radar. "I was ready to kill him for getting me dragged down there."
Riley bumped a sugar packet around the table with his finger. "Look, I don't do much field work, these days. Yesterday was... It was Buffy and Giles and you. Mostly my job is to send other guys out on missions. Weighing risks like it's all economics. Then I go home and Max and Jake have torn up the living room to make a track for their race cars and I'm glad as hell I'm behind a desk." He took a long drink. "I don't know." He thought for a minute, watching the kids behind the counter as he shuffled things in his brain. "Oh. It was you down there? That's what Buffy was talking about when she read him the riot act for getting you caught up in it?"
Riot act? "I say huh?"
Riley took a long drink from his coffee. "I wondered why Buffy was blaming him for the whole soul tattoo deal, but I guess it wasn't. She must have been talking about the food bucket. That makes way more sense."
Okay. That was unexpected. Buffy chewed out Giles? But Riley was missing the main point here. "You wouldn't have walked past a stranger getting drained on the street."
He heaved a sigh and flicked the sugar packet at Xander. "We're not kids anymore, Xander. We should know better than to just plough in, stakes blazing. I do weigh the risks. My people are trained and armed. I don't send them out to fight one-on-one just so they can feel heroic."
"But you're still out there. Doing something. You didn't just walk away, leave everyone behind."
"Of course I did." Riley looked at him like he was an idiot. "I left all my army buddies behind to be with Buffy. Less than a year after that, I left Buffy and all the rest of you behind and got on a fast helicopter to Central America."
He did. So, okay, he wasn't perfect, but, "You're still out there doing something. Maybe not in Sunnydale, maybe not with Buffy, but-"
"You think this has to be for life?"
Xander blinked. How else would it be? "It is for Buffy. And Giles." Sometimes Xander forgot Giles had the destiny going, too. Was it really such a surprise that he expected Xander to be special like him?
Riley shrugged and took a long pull from his coffee, almost draining it. "Yeah, it is. But it doesn't look like Buffy's wishing a life sentence on anyone else, and I'm sure Giles isn't, either. This is more than a job for me, but I'm not going to do it forever. Graham retired a couple of years after Sunnydale, been living on a boat ever since. You think I'm not happy for him?"
"He retired?"
"Served his country for eight years; now he's sunning himself on his houseboat off Miami between IT gigs." Riley really did look happy about that. "Anderssen went to Afghanistan and saw things that, swear to god, give me nightmares. Forrest and a lot of Walsh's team never got to walk away at all." Riley went quiet for a minute, fingering the rim of the lid on his cup and Xander wondered what it had been like for him. He'd seemed to bounce back after the whole Adam thing, good old unflappable Riley, but he lost half his unit in that fight: guys he'd fought alongside like Xander had fought alongside Buffy and Giles and Willow and him. Nobody bounced back from that. Finally Riley took a little breath, and started again. "You do what you can for as long as you can, and then you get out before it kills you or makes you crazy. Hell, Xander, you gave up half your teenage years to saving the world. I figure that's more than enough for anyone. You've got a right to pull your pension."
He finished his drink and reached over to drop his cup in the trash, held it open for Xander. "With this fumigation thing, I'm gonna be in town a couple of weeks. I know you're not much for old ties, but if you want to catch a drink sometime..."
"Yeah." Pulling a pension. Retirement. Xander liked the sound of that. "Yeah, a drink'd be great. I've got the girls weekends, but maybe during the week..."
"Sure."
Xander led the way back to the elevator. "And Giles."
"Yeah. That'd be great. So you have been in touch with him then, since he came back from wherever the hell he was?"
They stepped in and faced front, and Xander looked sideways at him. "We're, um, together." He braced himself. "Giles and me."
Riley did a double-take. "You're shitting me."
"Yeah. I mean, no. I mean, we are. Together."
"Wow." His eyes were ready to bug out, and Xander wondered if he'd dropped that bomb too fast. Riley had been totally cool with Will and Tara but maybe guys were-
"Graham'll be crushed." Riley chuckled.
Xander didn't believe for a second Graham would even remember who he was let alone care which way he swung. "This is where I say huh?"
Riley's expression was sly. "That he didn't make a move. He thought you were hot."
"He what?" Graham? Mr Square-Jawed Poster Boy for Masculinity had been checking out Xander? That first year out of school, when Xander was forging new frontiers of uselessness?
"I mocked the hell out of him for eyeballing a straight guy. Seriously, you play both teams?"
"Um. I was pretty Anya-specific, back then. Pretty Giles-specific now."
"Bad luck, Graham."
The elevator stopped on Mary's floor, and Riley flashed a grin as he reached to shake Xander's hand. "Give me a call. Your boyfriend has my number."
Xander was in a haze as he walked to Mary's room. Graham deserved a boat and a demon-free life. Gay and demon-free.
Jen and Kate were showing Mary something on her phone: how to play Car Crash, by the looks of it. He knew they mattered more than saving the world, but what Giles had said about someone stepping in if they needed help, that had stuck with him. Could he really tell Giles he was going to walk away again, even after everything Buffy and Riley and Giles did for him yesterday?
Mary caught sight of him, and quietly gestured for ten more minutes.
Xander could use ten more minutes. He found an empty waiting room and called Giles back.
"Xander?"
"Hey." Okay, once again, Xander hadn't figured out where this conversation needed to go. "I realised I need to talk to you."
"Oh. Yes?"
"Well, not right now I guess." He was an idiot, and the dead silence on the other end seemed to agree. "I'm just figuring stuff out, and I should have talked to you already." Better yet, he should get Riley to talk to Giles, explain all that stuff about retirement and boating, and how it didn't make him a coward.
"Perhaps we should save this conversation for tomorrow."
"Yeah. Okay." Every phone conversation just ended up awkward and weird.
"I will see you tomorrow?"
"Sure."
As soon as he closed the phone, Xander wanted to call back and promise Giles everything would be okay, but it felt kind of stupid, so he checked the time and slid it back in his pocket. Time to collect the girls and head home.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
end chapter 40
Almost there!
Dr Squidlove appreciates feedback. Tasty, tasty feedback.
Sorry for the delay. I have intermittent access to irritatingly unstable internet, etc. etc.
New York
by Dr Squidlove
drsquidlove@@@livejournal.com
Summary: Xander is thirty-seven. Divorced. Two kids. 4000 miles from Sunnydale and his Hellmouth childhood. Also, straight. Only someone forgot to tell Giles. In fact... where the hell is Giles?
Rated R for sex.
Thanks to gloriana and antennapedia for incredibly helpful mid-construction betas, and lunabee for early through middle chapters, and to huzzlewhat for final checking on the run. And gloriana again for major late-construction revisions.
The Buffy universe is the property of Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy. Borrowed with all due love and respect.
Please ask before archiving.
Feedback ohgodyesplease.
Full headers are on chapter one.
Wordcount this part: 4593
Previously, in chapter 39:
Xander ran as hard as he could out of the tunnels, Mary's cure in hand, Giles lost under a pile of rats behind him. He had to trust Buffy and Riley to rescue him. Mary's family had arrived, and wanted to know why Xander and an army division had become key to her treatment. Xander used his usual diplomatic skills until Mich cleared them out.
Xander tried to run back for Giles, but Sergeant Medic Pennebaker was not cooperative, which turned out okay because Giles got to the hospital first. The reunion was short because Mary woke up. Annoyingly, Giles headed home before Xander could get back to him, and Xander could only give him a quick call to him and Buffy, with a promise of another call tonight.
New York
chapter 40: On a boat
by Dr Squidlove
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Xander picked the girls up from school and brought them back to the hospital. Mich had offered to go, but Mary was safe and Giles was safe, and now he had to make sure the girls were safe.
The whole near-multiple-death adventure had taken less time than it took to do some long division and colour in a map of Lewis and Clark's trip.
Jen and Kate didn't seem to believe him that everything was okay until they saw Mary sitting up, awake, and then there were squeals well beyond the inside voice rules and they threw themselves on her bed. Mary already looked way better than she had when she first woke up, and the way she smiled at Jen and Kate, it didn't seem like she belonged in the hospital gown at all.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Xander jerked awake, heart racing.
No demons. Right. The girls were safe. Giles was safe. Mary was safe. He was on the couch, neck twisted where his head had slipped off the cushion. The weight in his lap was Kate, drooling a little wet patch on his leg. He smiled and clumsily stroked her hair.
The TV was still flickering, but there was no sound. One of the girls must have turned it down. Jen, he guessed - she seemed to have found her way to bed. It tickled him, the idea of her doing something so parent-like.
He rubbed his eyes. It was late. Really late, though he couldn't see the clock from here. It took a good while of inching to slide out from under Kate. Probably wasted effort; if he'd flipped her on the floor, she would've curled up and slept on. He slid his arms under her and lifted and yep, not a sigh. Not from her, anyway. Either he was getting old, or she was getting bigger.
He yawned, jaw creaking with the effort as he carried her through. He slid her into bed and pulled the blanket up. Jen was half-hanging over the side of her bed, Bruno the stuffing-deficient bear clutched in one arm. Xander picked up the clothes strewn across the floor and dropped them in the hamper, pushed a couple of stray drawers shut, looked around by the light from the door for something else to do.
They were fine. He kissed them both goodnight and trudged to his room. Apparently post-apocalypse parties were for the young, because he hardly had the energy to undress, could barely reach to pull off his socks. It was only as he crawled under the covers that he realised he never called Giles. He'd been hoping to get the girls to sleep so he could curl up with the phone.
Xander rolled onto his back to pick it up, and stared at the time. It was seriously late.
He thumbed recent calls, pulled up Giles. He wanted to hear Giles' calm voice, sleep-roughened, asking if this couldn't wait until morning. Heaving a sigh and swearing he'd be perfectly healthy, given a full night's sleep, and there'd be a pointed look at the ceiling that Xander would feel down the phone line. His thumb rubbed over the call button, wavering.
Xander closed the phone and held it against his chest. It could wait until morning.
It just would have depressed him, anyway. He wished Giles was here, bringing Xander awake with rough hands, kissing him and breathing hard in his ear and rolling him onto his stomach to drag his cock up the crack of Xander's ass. Xander couldn't think of anything he needed more right now than Giles lively and greedy, sweat-slick skin sticking them closer. Xander ran his hand over his crotch, too tired for more.
He'd almost let Giles go. Two weeks ago Xander had been lying right here, not doing anything at all to stop Giles from leaving New York, and him. He never would have realised what a crazy, Sunnydale-style-Xander mistake he'd made.
He wasn't Sunnydale Xander anymore. He was never going to make a mistake like that again.
The trouble was, there was going to be a fight, first, because Xander wasn't going back to that life. Even knowing everything Buffy and Riley and Giles did for him, all Xander could think about was somersaulting off that platform, a split-second reflex between Riley catching him and Jen and Kate being left without a dad. He could take that chance to get their mom back but he couldn't take it for strangers. He couldn't take it just to get Giles' respect.
There was already enough creeping danger in his life, now. Even though it hadn't been Anya that got Mary tangled up in the spell, and it wasn't something that traced him through Giles, it could have been. It still didn't make sense that Anya hadn't given him Ebola or a one way ticket to a clown dimension, and it would be nothing but crazy luck if Giles never brought his work way-too-literally home with him. But Anya already knew where he was and Xander wasn't about to let Giles go anywhere, so what was Xander going to do about that?
Around and around. Xander clumsily reached back to drop his phone on the nightstand. His body was numb but now his mind was chasing its tail, so he slid his hand inside his shorts and turned all his powers of concentration back to imagining Giles was here, pinning him to the mattress.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The morning was wasted herding two uncooperative little girls out of bed and through the bathroom and into the kitchen, Kate whining and Jen fighting him on everything. He almost kept them home from school, but that got another tantrum from Jen, who didn't want to miss any days of the last week of school - and when did it get to be the end of the school year? - so off they went. Xander stopped by each of their guidance counsellors to keep them updated and made it to work just an hour late.
He really wasn't ready for that. Barely in the gate he was getting strange looks, and then Sam barrelled into him. "Christ Xander! I thought something happened to Mary."
"It did."
"Looks like it happened to you, too," said Rodriguez. "What the hell, Harris?"
Xander brushed Sam's fingers away. "She got the worst of it."
"You got mugged?"
"Something like that."
A crowd was gathering. "Did the cops get the guy?" "Did you do him any damage?" "Should you even be here?" "The police gonna press charges?" "Fuck, Harris, you seen your face?" Things were way easier in Sunnydale, where no one noticed all the random bruises.
"Holy hell, Harris. You could've had another day off." Pearson slid through the crowd to get a better look.
He could have, but Giles had said something about stopping back at the museum after he took Buffy to the airport and Mary's family were sticking around all day, so Xander had figured it was a good idea to get back to work. He should have come up with a plan C. "Didn't really want to hang around at home."
"It's called rest, you arse. You'll want light duties, I suppose."
"I'd appreciate it."
It was worse when everyone finally got to work and left him alone.
He could have kicked himself for falling asleep before he could call Giles last night. No way was he going to be able to talk to him properly on his lunch break, which meant waiting until after work, and even then it was only going to be the phone, when every passing hour was making Xander more and more antsy to see him. He could still taste all that fear lingering in the back of his throat for Giles left behind in the tunnels. He had to keep fighting the urge to make a quick call, just to make sure he hadn't imagined seeing Giles in the hospital. Considering the things Xander had seen in his life, it wasn't all that crazy to be paranoid that the government might have altered his memory to think he saw Giles at the hospital when maybe he didn't really and it was just the government's way of making sure Xander kept quiet. Or something.
Riley wouldn't do it, but if Warren could make Buffy in his basement out of spare parts, then the army could probably rustle up a Riley-bot without much fuss. Or they could have just re-chipped him. Chipping technology had probably advanced since 2000.
It wasn't crazy to wonder what if maybe Giles was still down in the tunnels, somewhere, waiting for Xander to come back.
Xander really wished Giles and Buffy had stuck around a little longer yesterday.
When lunchtime rolled around Giles didn't pick up, but he sent a message to say he was tied up. It helped. Then Xander called both the girls. They must have still been shaken, because neither of them minded.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
He finally got a hold of Giles in the evening. "Giles!"
"Xander. I was starting to think you were a myth."
"Me and Bigfoot." Was Bigfoot a myth? They'd never covered that one.
"I, I missed you last night." The longing in his voice went slipped through Xander's belly, loosened the tension in his shoulders, made him wish even more that Giles was here. "You didn't call."
"Yeah, I'm sorry. I passed out." Xander's voice echoed around the concrete stairwell. "Buffy's gone home?"
"I put her on a plane this morning. Where are you?"
"At the hospital. Jen's telling Mary about a fight a couple of her mortal enemies had in Spanish class."
"Oh."
Mary was feeling well enough to laugh, the girls seemed to have forgotten she was breakable, and Xander had finally been able to slip out and find a quiet set of fire stairs where he could focus all his worrying on Giles. "How are you doing, anyway?"
"I'm fine. How's Mary?"
"Good. Great. Mary's great. You should see her; she looks better than we do. In fact, Charlie - Pennebaker - the medic - said she should be good to go home tomorrow. I'm going to head over with the girls, help her settle back in."
"Of course."
"After that, I'll be footloose and fancy-free." Xander did a little hop-step up a step and down again. Giles-time. Okay, it was good that no one was around to see that. He turned around and sat on the landing so he didn't do it again, ready for a long chat.
"You're coming over here?"
"Sure. I don't know when. It might not be until after lunch."
"Might not be at all?"
"No! I want to see you. Check your limbs are properly attached. Or..." Uh oh. "Do you mind if it's late? Should I wait until Sunday?" Xander really, really couldn't wait until Sunday, but there was that whole looming conversation with Mary, and he didn't know when he was going to get trapped in it.
"Of course not. I don't want to impose, if you have things to do."
"You're my thing to do," Xander said, dropping his voice to phone sex tone.
"Right. Anytime, Xander. I'm sure I'll be reading late into the night, anyway. I'll see you tomorrow."
Somehow, that was the end of the call. Xander flipped off his phone and took a slow breath. He'd been planning to work his way into some dirty talk. He missed him. Really, really missed him. It seemed like months since they'd sat on the couch, surrounded by takeout containers, and talked. Or made out like teenagers. Or had sex. Tomorrow, all of the above. He wondered if Giles was having the same withdrawal.
He stood up and pushed through the fire door back onto the ward, taking his time heading back to Mary's room. Xander's part was done here. Mary was safe; Jen and Kate were in their mother's arms, and Xander didn't need to be-
He yelped. "Riley! Stealth train much?"
Riley smiled that broad, easy smile. "Got to keep the troops on their toes." He looked military as ever despite his jeans and button-down shirt. Xander wondered how they hadn't figured it out sooner back in Sunnydale. "I just stopped in to see how Mary's doing."
"Great. I can't, I mean, I don't know how to..." Xander grabbed his hand, and then realised that was stupid, and pulled him into a quick manly hug with a few firm pats on the back. "Thank you. A million thank yous. A great big truckload of thank yous."
Riley clapped his shoulder as they parted. "No problem. New York's been moved to the top of the priority list. The unit's sticking around to do some fumigation, should get the vamps down about eighty percent."
"You can do that?"
"Isn't as satisfying as personally shoving a stake through them, but it's effective. That's what my people are putting together now. We've cleaned out half a dozen cities; so far it looks like they'll take years to get back to old infestation levels."
Wow. Sounded way more satisfying than up-close and personally vulnerable staking to Xander. He looked up the corridor to make sure no one was eavesdropping. "Is it going to take out the lot that did this to Mary?"
"I've got a special squad hunting down the Cult of Viniorum. My best team."
"Good." The military wasn't exactly top of Xander's trust list, but they'd done okay so far, and if Riley picked them, then okay. "They going to chip them or kill them?"
"Kill."
"Good."
An orderly passed, pushing an empty bed and they paused, nodding a greeting. Xander waited until she was well down the corridor before speaking again. "Here's what I want to know. Has Mary been meditating in a well-lit room for an hour every week with a bloodsucker while I worried about subways and dark streets?"
Riley's face hardened. "We don't know for sure. But the place was a windowless room in a building with direct subway access. Her guy could have run midday groups right through summer without ever touching daylight."
Xander slumped against the wall, pushing a hand through his hair. "I'm the great protector."
"Hey. You checking up on that mark saved Mary and the other four people down there."
Xander nodded. It wasn't as reassuring as it should have been, but it was good of Riley to try. It was pretty amazing of Riley to be here at all. Xander owed him more than a thanks and goodbye. Xander lifted his head. "Do you want to come get a coffee? The girls need some time with their mom, and Starbucks is one floor up."
Riley beamed. "Sounds good."
Xander stuck his head in to tell Mary he was heading upstairs for a while, and then followed Riley to the elevator.
"Are you and your ex always this tight, or just when one of you's been branded by an HST soul-sourcing company?"
"Varies. Usually we get along pretty well."
As they stepped into the elevator, Riley asked, "You got a girlfriend?"
Xander hit the button for the next floor and kept on staring at the doors as they closed. "Nah. No girlfriend." He half-turned his head and started a new subject. "So how about Sam? You guys have kids?"
"We're doing okay. Sam's great. She asked after you." He pulled out his phone, passing it over as the doors opened. "Max and Jake turn three next week." Two blond, round-cheeked Riley clones grinned out of the screen.
"Twins!"
"Yeah, turned out making them was harder work than we expected, so the twins thing was a bonus." He gave an awkward smile as he slipped it back in his pocket.
Xander passed his own phone over. "That's Jen and Kate."
Riley nodded, smiling. "I saw them in there with your ex as I came past. The youngest - Kate? - seemed to have a whole lot of ranting going on about what was wrong with the jocks at school."
"She must get that from Mary's side." Xander slid his phone back in his pocket as they stepped out.
They ordered their drinks and Xander insisted on paying, shoving Riley off to locate and secure a table like a good soldier. Not an easy mission in afternoon visiting hours, but they didn't make the man a colonel for nothing. By the time Xander had a venti in each hand, Riley had a corner staked out.
Xander sat back to get his first real look at him since he showed up yesterday. He looked as strong as ever - military life, Xander supposed - but there was grey in his hair and Xander was a little pleased to see Riley had some midde-age spread going on as well. "So this is what your people do, now? Just gas a city, and bam, no more problems?"
"We wish. It's not quite that effective. For starters, it only works on v-" His eyes darted around at the other customers. "-suckers, and it's not a hundred percent. If we can get some good information ahead of time, we can knock out most of an enclosed population."
"Like the subway tunnels." Xander sipped his black, black coffee. God, yes, he needed that.
"Exactly. The patterns Giles has been putting together for us this past month are good, but they're not done, and now we have to jump the gun a little. And New York's a big city, way bigger than anything we've worked before, so it's going to be a challenge. Ramirez has been looking into it, is pretty sure your creepy winged things will go down, but we're going to have to come up with something new and special for the rats."
"Wait." An old conversation dropped back into Xander's brain. "Giles was putting together the patterns for you? All those maps and news articles - you were the secret contact he was talking to?"
"Yeah. Giles' recon was exactly what we needed. We wouldn't know where to start without what he gave us."
"I thought he was talking to the Council, or something." Why hadn't Giles said?
Riley shrugged. "He got in touch with me around the time he moved here, said he could compile attack patterns if I could get a team here to do something about it. Suited me: we've got people, but no one like Giles. It's funny he never mentioned you: I didn't even know you were until town until he called about your ex-wife."
Xander stared down into his cup. "I don't do that stuff anymore."
"Right. I just thought..." Riley shrugged. He didn't seem disappointed.
"You've got kids. How do you do it?" How did Riley always manage to glide through everything Xander couldn't? Last time he showed up, it was all happily married, and now it was happily married with kids and still killing the bad things.
He smiled. "Make twins?"
"Protect them. Do what you do, when you don't know what's coming for you."
Riley let out a dry laugh. "I was going to ask you that. Max and Jake are still in our sight, every second. I was going to ask you how you let your girls do all those wild crazy kid-things, like go to school."
Xander snorted. "Crucifixes are go. They've been drilled to check taxi drivers' faces in the rear-view mirror as they get in. I tell them to compare it to the ID card, hoping that 'lack of reflection' will be weird enough to get them out again when they start catching them alone at night." He sat forward. "But I'm not... I'm out of all that stuff, or I thought I was. I've just been blocking it out like everyone else. That night we got dragged down into tunnels - if it had been up to me, I would have just walked past. I don't want my girls growing up without me."
Riley sat back. "You were the one with him in the food bucket?"
"Yeah." Giles really had gone out of his way to keep Xander under the radar. "I was ready to kill him for getting me dragged down there."
Riley bumped a sugar packet around the table with his finger. "Look, I don't do much field work, these days. Yesterday was... It was Buffy and Giles and you. Mostly my job is to send other guys out on missions. Weighing risks like it's all economics. Then I go home and Max and Jake have torn up the living room to make a track for their race cars and I'm glad as hell I'm behind a desk." He took a long drink. "I don't know." He thought for a minute, watching the kids behind the counter as he shuffled things in his brain. "Oh. It was you down there? That's what Buffy was talking about when she read him the riot act for getting you caught up in it?"
Riot act? "I say huh?"
Riley took a long drink from his coffee. "I wondered why Buffy was blaming him for the whole soul tattoo deal, but I guess it wasn't. She must have been talking about the food bucket. That makes way more sense."
Okay. That was unexpected. Buffy chewed out Giles? But Riley was missing the main point here. "You wouldn't have walked past a stranger getting drained on the street."
He heaved a sigh and flicked the sugar packet at Xander. "We're not kids anymore, Xander. We should know better than to just plough in, stakes blazing. I do weigh the risks. My people are trained and armed. I don't send them out to fight one-on-one just so they can feel heroic."
"But you're still out there. Doing something. You didn't just walk away, leave everyone behind."
"Of course I did." Riley looked at him like he was an idiot. "I left all my army buddies behind to be with Buffy. Less than a year after that, I left Buffy and all the rest of you behind and got on a fast helicopter to Central America."
He did. So, okay, he wasn't perfect, but, "You're still out there doing something. Maybe not in Sunnydale, maybe not with Buffy, but-"
"You think this has to be for life?"
Xander blinked. How else would it be? "It is for Buffy. And Giles." Sometimes Xander forgot Giles had the destiny going, too. Was it really such a surprise that he expected Xander to be special like him?
Riley shrugged and took a long pull from his coffee, almost draining it. "Yeah, it is. But it doesn't look like Buffy's wishing a life sentence on anyone else, and I'm sure Giles isn't, either. This is more than a job for me, but I'm not going to do it forever. Graham retired a couple of years after Sunnydale, been living on a boat ever since. You think I'm not happy for him?"
"He retired?"
"Served his country for eight years; now he's sunning himself on his houseboat off Miami between IT gigs." Riley really did look happy about that. "Anderssen went to Afghanistan and saw things that, swear to god, give me nightmares. Forrest and a lot of Walsh's team never got to walk away at all." Riley went quiet for a minute, fingering the rim of the lid on his cup and Xander wondered what it had been like for him. He'd seemed to bounce back after the whole Adam thing, good old unflappable Riley, but he lost half his unit in that fight: guys he'd fought alongside like Xander had fought alongside Buffy and Giles and Willow and him. Nobody bounced back from that. Finally Riley took a little breath, and started again. "You do what you can for as long as you can, and then you get out before it kills you or makes you crazy. Hell, Xander, you gave up half your teenage years to saving the world. I figure that's more than enough for anyone. You've got a right to pull your pension."
He finished his drink and reached over to drop his cup in the trash, held it open for Xander. "With this fumigation thing, I'm gonna be in town a couple of weeks. I know you're not much for old ties, but if you want to catch a drink sometime..."
"Yeah." Pulling a pension. Retirement. Xander liked the sound of that. "Yeah, a drink'd be great. I've got the girls weekends, but maybe during the week..."
"Sure."
Xander led the way back to the elevator. "And Giles."
"Yeah. That'd be great. So you have been in touch with him then, since he came back from wherever the hell he was?"
They stepped in and faced front, and Xander looked sideways at him. "We're, um, together." He braced himself. "Giles and me."
Riley did a double-take. "You're shitting me."
"Yeah. I mean, no. I mean, we are. Together."
"Wow." His eyes were ready to bug out, and Xander wondered if he'd dropped that bomb too fast. Riley had been totally cool with Will and Tara but maybe guys were-
"Graham'll be crushed." Riley chuckled.
Xander didn't believe for a second Graham would even remember who he was let alone care which way he swung. "This is where I say huh?"
Riley's expression was sly. "That he didn't make a move. He thought you were hot."
"He what?" Graham? Mr Square-Jawed Poster Boy for Masculinity had been checking out Xander? That first year out of school, when Xander was forging new frontiers of uselessness?
"I mocked the hell out of him for eyeballing a straight guy. Seriously, you play both teams?"
"Um. I was pretty Anya-specific, back then. Pretty Giles-specific now."
"Bad luck, Graham."
The elevator stopped on Mary's floor, and Riley flashed a grin as he reached to shake Xander's hand. "Give me a call. Your boyfriend has my number."
Xander was in a haze as he walked to Mary's room. Graham deserved a boat and a demon-free life. Gay and demon-free.
Jen and Kate were showing Mary something on her phone: how to play Car Crash, by the looks of it. He knew they mattered more than saving the world, but what Giles had said about someone stepping in if they needed help, that had stuck with him. Could he really tell Giles he was going to walk away again, even after everything Buffy and Riley and Giles did for him yesterday?
Mary caught sight of him, and quietly gestured for ten more minutes.
Xander could use ten more minutes. He found an empty waiting room and called Giles back.
"Xander?"
"Hey." Okay, once again, Xander hadn't figured out where this conversation needed to go. "I realised I need to talk to you."
"Oh. Yes?"
"Well, not right now I guess." He was an idiot, and the dead silence on the other end seemed to agree. "I'm just figuring stuff out, and I should have talked to you already." Better yet, he should get Riley to talk to Giles, explain all that stuff about retirement and boating, and how it didn't make him a coward.
"Perhaps we should save this conversation for tomorrow."
"Yeah. Okay." Every phone conversation just ended up awkward and weird.
"I will see you tomorrow?"
"Sure."
As soon as he closed the phone, Xander wanted to call back and promise Giles everything would be okay, but it felt kind of stupid, so he checked the time and slid it back in his pocket. Time to collect the girls and head home.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
end chapter 40
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