New York 41/43: Pieces of Xander - Giles/Xander
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: 3018
Previously, in chapter 40:
Xander woke up late at night on the couch and realised he'd forgotten to call Giles. Which sucked, except for putting off the conversation where Xander would have to tell Giles he still didn't want to fight demons. On Friday Xander went to work, where he was reminded again that he looked like the bad end of a bar fight. Still didn't get a chance to call Giles until after work, from the hospital. Xander bumped into Riley, who caught Xander up on fumigation plans. Xander boggled at Riley's ability to combine hellmouths and fatherhood; Riley pointed out the value of a well-earned retirement. Xander came out, which went surprisingly well. Xander called Giles again, to make plans to Talk. Tomorrow.
New York
chapter 41: Pieces of Xander
by Dr Squidlove
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"Ha! I told you!"
"Shut up!"
"You shut up!"
"Make me!"
Mary sighed and tipped her head back on the couch. "I'll make you both, in a minute!"
Jen and Kate turned the volume down to very loud glares. Things were almost back to normal, but mom was still carrying a few extra guilt credits and wasn't afraid to use them.
Xander leaned on the kitchen counter beside Mich. "Are you sure you want to do this?"
Mich waved him off. "Pfff. I served in Afghanistan, sweetcheeks."
"Trust me, you're going to remember those days fondly." He grabbed the carton and went back to pouring juice. The woman had raised twins, toddlers in a two-pack: in Xander's book, that was way more impressive than the years in uniform.
"Mich, you've got the list?" Mary called from the couch.
"Got the list," said Mich.
"Jenny, Kate, come give me a hug before you go."
Jen went over to give her mom a squeeze, and then came to Xander as well. He hugged her hard, not the least bit ashamed to take advantage of the clinginess for as long as it lasted.
Kate was sliding out of Mary's arms when Mary caught both her wrists. "Where's your crucifix?"
Kate pulled her hands away. "Mo-om."
"Go and put it on."
"But I-"
"Go."
Kate stomped off to her room, and then stomped back again, cross in place. She looked balefully at Xander, like he might suddenly start being reasonable about it. He was going to have to check in with Giles about the holy symbol alternatives he'd been promising, but for now, Kate was stuck. She huffed and headed for the door. "Let's go."
"This makes us even for that time I spilled cranberry juice on your Calvin Klein jacket, sister," said Mich as she and Jen followed Kate out.
"And no Froot Loops!" Mary called, as the front door shut.
Xander shoved the carton back in the fridge and carried their two glasses out to the coffee table. "I'll bet you one parent-teacher interview night they didn't hear you."
"No bet." She stretched her arms along the couch. "I think it might do them good to take care of me, for a while."
"For their good."
"Yeah." She grinned, and pulled her legs up under her to make room for Xander on the couch. "Which gives us an empty apartment and no interruptions." She cocked an eyebrow and tossed her black hair.
Xander leaned in, like he was sharing a secret. "You mean we could watch an hour of TV without breaking up a fight or combing chewing gum out of anyone's hair?"
"Live wild, Honey. Maybe a whole movie."
Xander laughed, leaning back and reaching over his head, stretching all the way from his fingers to his toes. So relaxed. Everyone was safe, Mary wasn't angry about anything, and very soon he was going to be wrapped in Giles, making up for two days and all the relief he'd felt when Giles got to the hospital, safe and sound.
Mary eyed him. "Or time for you to tell me what the hell happened back there."
He just had to take care of this first. That pretty much unrelaxed him. This was the only reason why he wasn't halfway across town and half-naked already, and the real reason why Mich had been given the nightmare job of grocery shopping with Jen and Kate hanging off the cart, something Xander and Mary never did themselves. There were advantages to part-time parenting.
It was hard to believe, but it was the first moment he'd had alone with Mary since it all happened. He'd known it was coming for days, but he still had no idea what he was going to say. He didn't even know what she'd figured out for herself.
"Xander." His head jerked up. "Who was the man that attacked us?"
"I'd never seen him before."
Her mouth tightened. "You know that's not what I mean."
"Mary-"
"Okay, let me put it this way. Who are you?"
Xander's gut clenched. "I'm nobody."
"Mich said you were bossing around a colonel."
"A colonel?" When the hell did she- "Oh, you mean Riley? He's a friend. He's helped me move; I've lent him pants."
"Mich said-"
"I wasn't bossing him around."
Her good humour was dissolving fast. "Don't you think I deserve to know what happened to me?"
She did, but that didn't mean he knew how to explain it. His tongue was freezing up out of total force of habit. He wished he'd brought Giles.
"How many men have you killed?"
"What?" This was the express road to crazy town. "I've never killed anybody." Nobody human.
She wrapped her arms around her knees. "You told that man it was just like riding a bike."
"I was just..." If she'd stop bombarding him, he could find a way to explain. Except without lies, he didn't have anything.
"Was I attacked because of you?"
"No!"
"Because of him?"
"Him?" The vamp?
"Your friend Giles."
"No!"
Her eyes sharpened, mouth an angry line. "And nothing to do with that woman, I suppose - Anya."
"Nothing."
Mary blew out a breath and stood up. "This is a waste of time. I'm sorry I'm just a civillian."
"I'm trying, just give me a minute, okay?"
"Let me start you off." She shifted, to face him head on. "That man who attacked us wasn't human."
Xander wanted to sit down. He was already sitting down. Maybe he should try the floor.
"Am I right?"
He nodded a couple of times, before he could squeeze out a "Yeah." There was the big one taken care of. He tried a weak smile. "Bet you didn't see that one coming."
She shrank, looking down at her hands like she hadn't expected that. Or maybe she just hadn't expected him to give it up at last. "It was one of my theories. Not one I actually believed, but it was somewhere in between alien spaceships and you being on the grassy knoll." She stared at him, until he wanted to squirm.
Xander guessed it was his turn to get on with explaining. "He was a vampire."
And she stared some more. "A vampire. Like from Twilight."
"Like... no. Vampires aren't just mopey, whiny... stalkery..." Xander trailed off. "Except sometimes... Well, they don't sparkle, anyway. They kill people."
"That guy... vampire... didn't kill me." She said it slowly, as if picking the right words might make it make sense.
"It was the mark." He reached up for her arm even though there was nothing there anymore, but she stepped back out of reach. He could still see the design there in his mind. "He was coming to take you for a spell-thing. They marked you. With magic."
"You can't be-"
"Your meditation class was a front. You weren't the only one they were after."
He'd lost her. This would have been easier if she sat down and stopped looming over him. "Xander, you're seriously going to sit there and tell me it's sheer coincidence that I got sucked into whatever the hell it is just after your old life came tumbling back into your new one?"
"You think I haven't been blaming myself? You think I haven't been peeking down dark alleys and checking under the beds ever since he showed up?" He was trying really hard not to get defensive, and he wasn't doing so well. "People get killed every day, and it's nothing to do with me, or Giles, except that we've never found a way to stop it." Xander struggled to get his voice back to even. "That was my world before I came to New York. Giles, me, a bunch of us, we used to fight that stuff. Monsters. Things like that. That's why he knew what to do, who to ask for help."
"Monsters." She sat down again, measuring out her reply. "So you're some kind of Superman."
"Buffy's Superman."
"What?"
Xander wrapped his arms around himself. "Not me." Best to get that straight right out of the box. "I hung out with superheroes. I was Ordinary Man. I got saved a lot." Sometimes he helped, and maybe Riley was right and he was more than a slayer footnote, but he still wasn't special like them.
She leaned closer and squeezed his knee. "You saved me, on Wednesday. Stared down that gorilla like my own personal superhero."
"I'm not a superhero."
She watched him with one of those penetrating looks he'd always disliked. Like she thought she'd figured him out, or something.
The less time she had to invent things in her head, the better. He pulled the cushion out from behind his back and held it in his lap where he could fiddle with the zip. "That thing was a vampire. He supposed to drag you down into the subway and hand you over to a bunch of giant rat demons that were going to sacrifice you to open a hell portal."
She shook her head slowly, took a good long while to manage, "Vampires and rat demons and hell portals. Jesus."
"Jesus is the only one I'm relatively sure isn't somewhere under this city." Xander offered a weak smile. He wished he could leave it there. Vampires are real, the subway is dangerous, hey what's on TV? He was pretty sure leaving it there wasn't an option, now the lid was off. "I don't know what to tell you."
"How about you start at the beginning? You were born into it?"
"No. She was."
"Who?"
Right. The beginning. "It started when a new girl came to our school." It was as good a place as any.
"High school?"
"Sophomore year."
He started to tell her about his life. Some of it.
He told her about vampires: being chased through the sewers, storming into the demon-filled Bronze, but he didn't talk about Jesse.
He explained what a slayer was, about the one who saved them over and over until she finally gave up her life, and then came back, but not that he helped rip her out of heaven.
Plenty about Giles. His scathing, stuffy Britishness and his encyclopaedic knowledge of everything and how much ass he kicked with a sword. Funny, Xander hadn't noticed how hot that was at the time, but he remembered it now and the image in his mind made his cock stir. He couldn't tell Mary that they let him disappear for sixteen years.
There was the long and entertaining list of his own personal disasters: he tried and failed to make her laugh at those. The praying mantis teacher who wanted to mate with him, his brief excursion into the hyena side of the Force, his first kiss from a genuine princess who tried to suck the life out of him, crazy duplicate-Xander hijinks. He couldn't explain that Anya was a ninth century Swede on a mission to reclaim her humanity or that a false premonition about his future from one of the thousands of men she'd tortured was why he'd yanked out her heart and driven her back into the business.
Not Willow's death, not finding out Dawn's long-standing crush was invented by monks, not lying to Buffy about Willow's spell to restore Angel.
Mich must have taken the kids shopping in Brooklyn, because it seemed like he'd been talking for hours, and there was still no sign of them. Mary had shifted at some point, maybe when he was talking about being left behind when Buffy and Willow went to college, and now she was leaning back against his chest, his arm folded over her.
"God, Xander." Her voice was quiet. "The life you've led. I don't know how you function at all. I'm sorry all that happened to you."
I'm sorry that happened to you. It was such a weird thing to say. She'd said that to Mei Li when her cat died. The only time people had ever said stuff like it to him was during the divorce.
"I wish you'd told me."
Xander worked at the lump in his throat. "I never wanted you to be part of it."
"You should have told me."
Yeah. He should have. "Are you angry?"
She wound her fingers around his on her stomach, thinking hard about that. "I want to be mad at you. No, I am mad at you, but hell, Xander. Rat demons and vampires. I think I'm just realising now how much all your hare-brained secrecy really was because you loved me."
Funny, because he was realising the exact opposite. Not that he hadn't loved her, because he had, and still did, and Giles was right, he always would. He squeezed her hand. But in between all the stories he'd kept secret to protect Mary were all the pieces of him. 'Some marriage,' Anya had said, cutting straight to the brutal truth, like she always had.
A lot had been missing between them. Something he might have with Giles.
Mary twisted to face him, but she didn't move back. Her hand was still tangled with his, and her face was inches away.
He realised, suddenly, how this would look from the outside. If Mich and the girls came home, or Giles walked in. He gently pushed Mary back to her own seat. He wasn't confused anymore.
If the last few weeks hadn't been enough, and leaving him behind in the tunnels hadn't been enough, then two days without him had been. It was the dawn of a new Xander, and Giles was going to get the whole package, maybe not in mint condition, but complete.
"Xander."
"Hm?" He looked up at her narrowed dark eyes, realised he'd wandered off for a second there.
She leaned in, taking his hand again. "I'm going to ask you something, and I don't want you to answer right away. I want you to think about this. I want the truth." That sounded ominous. Xander nodded. "Does having Giles in your life bring extra danger down on you? Or on Jenny and Kate?"
"Do you really think I haven't been thinking about it ever since he showed up? Yes." He didn't need time to think about that.
"But you kept telling me he wasn't dangerous."
"He isn't."
"Don't split hairs, Xander. Not now."
He needed to explain this well. Xander took the time she'd offered, tried to find the right words. "He's still part of it. Vampires and rat demons and saving the world, that's his gig. His destiny. He can't walk away like I did, so maybe... I can't promise nothing evil is ever going to spill over if I'm with him. But Giles isn't dangerous. He's the opposite. He's the inflatable stuff they hang up around the pool to save someone who's drowning."
"And your almost ex-wife?" Mary asked, not giving any clues to how she was taking this.
Anya was the real wildcard. It hurt to say out loud, but, "I don't know. Giles said she wouldn't, and I know he's tried, but he can't promise anything, either. She's got a vengeful streak." He wasn't selling this well.
"Thank you." She squeezed his hand and slumped back in the chair.
Xander blinked a couple of times. Thank you for bringing an angry vengeance ex into their lives? "For...?"
"For being honest with me now."
It was like someone had found the pin and pulled, as four months of fear slowly leaked out of him. Except it wasn't four months. It was a weight he'd been dragging around for fourteen years, always looking back over his shoulder for the stray piece of Sunnydale that would crash into his life and send Mary running scared with his daughters. Now his metaphors were jumbled but Xander was weightless.
He was safe.
"I want the girls to know Giles."
She jerked back. "What?"
"You know who he is now. There's no reason to-"
"We had an agreement." All the understanding was gone. "Six months with a new partner. We didn't want the girls being introduced to a procession of dates-"
"Weren't we a pair of optimists."
"-and now you want to play happy families two weeks after you've done a one-eighty from straight to gay?"
Of course he wanted exactly that, but he wasn't that blind. "I'm not talking about having him sleep over while the girls are staying, and he isn't someone I picked up in a bar last week. He's a friend. They already know he exists. It's hardly like they're going to suspect anything."
"Do you really think you're that good an actor? If he's that serious, he can wait a few months."
"This is the guy who ran headlong into a demon-infested hell-hole to save you."
She stopped, angry now. "Don't you dare play that card, Xander. I am incredibly grateful for what he did, but this is about Jenny and Kate. This is the first person you've dated since me, it's a such a twist on your sexuality that you can still barely believe it yourself, and it's been two weeks with a terrifying crisis in the middle. There's a reason why we both agreed to the six-month deal."
"We agreed to it because we still thought we might get back together."
She froze. "I didn't."
Xander's 'Oh,' never made it out loud.
"Well. Isn't that rich." She sagged back into the chair.
Xander didn't speak. He hadn't thought it for a long time, but back then, when they were figuring out how to get along again after all the fights, it had seemed like maybe there was hope. It had taken another four years to realise how badly he'd screwed her around. He stood. "I need to go. Giles is expecting me. Will you be okay until the girls get home?"
"Yeah. Xander..."
"We can talk next week." Please, no more tonight.
She eased off. "All right."
When he reached the door, she said, "Xander? Thank Giles for me. And your other friends."
He smiled. "I will."
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
end chapter 41
Dr Squidlove appreciates feedback. Tasty, tasty feedback.
We're almost there!
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: 3018
Previously, in chapter 40:
Xander woke up late at night on the couch and realised he'd forgotten to call Giles. Which sucked, except for putting off the conversation where Xander would have to tell Giles he still didn't want to fight demons. On Friday Xander went to work, where he was reminded again that he looked like the bad end of a bar fight. Still didn't get a chance to call Giles until after work, from the hospital. Xander bumped into Riley, who caught Xander up on fumigation plans. Xander boggled at Riley's ability to combine hellmouths and fatherhood; Riley pointed out the value of a well-earned retirement. Xander came out, which went surprisingly well. Xander called Giles again, to make plans to Talk. Tomorrow.
New York
chapter 41: Pieces of Xander
by Dr Squidlove
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"Ha! I told you!"
"Shut up!"
"You shut up!"
"Make me!"
Mary sighed and tipped her head back on the couch. "I'll make you both, in a minute!"
Jen and Kate turned the volume down to very loud glares. Things were almost back to normal, but mom was still carrying a few extra guilt credits and wasn't afraid to use them.
Xander leaned on the kitchen counter beside Mich. "Are you sure you want to do this?"
Mich waved him off. "Pfff. I served in Afghanistan, sweetcheeks."
"Trust me, you're going to remember those days fondly." He grabbed the carton and went back to pouring juice. The woman had raised twins, toddlers in a two-pack: in Xander's book, that was way more impressive than the years in uniform.
"Mich, you've got the list?" Mary called from the couch.
"Got the list," said Mich.
"Jenny, Kate, come give me a hug before you go."
Jen went over to give her mom a squeeze, and then came to Xander as well. He hugged her hard, not the least bit ashamed to take advantage of the clinginess for as long as it lasted.
Kate was sliding out of Mary's arms when Mary caught both her wrists. "Where's your crucifix?"
Kate pulled her hands away. "Mo-om."
"Go and put it on."
"But I-"
"Go."
Kate stomped off to her room, and then stomped back again, cross in place. She looked balefully at Xander, like he might suddenly start being reasonable about it. He was going to have to check in with Giles about the holy symbol alternatives he'd been promising, but for now, Kate was stuck. She huffed and headed for the door. "Let's go."
"This makes us even for that time I spilled cranberry juice on your Calvin Klein jacket, sister," said Mich as she and Jen followed Kate out.
"And no Froot Loops!" Mary called, as the front door shut.
Xander shoved the carton back in the fridge and carried their two glasses out to the coffee table. "I'll bet you one parent-teacher interview night they didn't hear you."
"No bet." She stretched her arms along the couch. "I think it might do them good to take care of me, for a while."
"For their good."
"Yeah." She grinned, and pulled her legs up under her to make room for Xander on the couch. "Which gives us an empty apartment and no interruptions." She cocked an eyebrow and tossed her black hair.
Xander leaned in, like he was sharing a secret. "You mean we could watch an hour of TV without breaking up a fight or combing chewing gum out of anyone's hair?"
"Live wild, Honey. Maybe a whole movie."
Xander laughed, leaning back and reaching over his head, stretching all the way from his fingers to his toes. So relaxed. Everyone was safe, Mary wasn't angry about anything, and very soon he was going to be wrapped in Giles, making up for two days and all the relief he'd felt when Giles got to the hospital, safe and sound.
Mary eyed him. "Or time for you to tell me what the hell happened back there."
He just had to take care of this first. That pretty much unrelaxed him. This was the only reason why he wasn't halfway across town and half-naked already, and the real reason why Mich had been given the nightmare job of grocery shopping with Jen and Kate hanging off the cart, something Xander and Mary never did themselves. There were advantages to part-time parenting.
It was hard to believe, but it was the first moment he'd had alone with Mary since it all happened. He'd known it was coming for days, but he still had no idea what he was going to say. He didn't even know what she'd figured out for herself.
"Xander." His head jerked up. "Who was the man that attacked us?"
"I'd never seen him before."
Her mouth tightened. "You know that's not what I mean."
"Mary-"
"Okay, let me put it this way. Who are you?"
Xander's gut clenched. "I'm nobody."
"Mich said you were bossing around a colonel."
"A colonel?" When the hell did she- "Oh, you mean Riley? He's a friend. He's helped me move; I've lent him pants."
"Mich said-"
"I wasn't bossing him around."
Her good humour was dissolving fast. "Don't you think I deserve to know what happened to me?"
She did, but that didn't mean he knew how to explain it. His tongue was freezing up out of total force of habit. He wished he'd brought Giles.
"How many men have you killed?"
"What?" This was the express road to crazy town. "I've never killed anybody." Nobody human.
She wrapped her arms around her knees. "You told that man it was just like riding a bike."
"I was just..." If she'd stop bombarding him, he could find a way to explain. Except without lies, he didn't have anything.
"Was I attacked because of you?"
"No!"
"Because of him?"
"Him?" The vamp?
"Your friend Giles."
"No!"
Her eyes sharpened, mouth an angry line. "And nothing to do with that woman, I suppose - Anya."
"Nothing."
Mary blew out a breath and stood up. "This is a waste of time. I'm sorry I'm just a civillian."
"I'm trying, just give me a minute, okay?"
"Let me start you off." She shifted, to face him head on. "That man who attacked us wasn't human."
Xander wanted to sit down. He was already sitting down. Maybe he should try the floor.
"Am I right?"
He nodded a couple of times, before he could squeeze out a "Yeah." There was the big one taken care of. He tried a weak smile. "Bet you didn't see that one coming."
She shrank, looking down at her hands like she hadn't expected that. Or maybe she just hadn't expected him to give it up at last. "It was one of my theories. Not one I actually believed, but it was somewhere in between alien spaceships and you being on the grassy knoll." She stared at him, until he wanted to squirm.
Xander guessed it was his turn to get on with explaining. "He was a vampire."
And she stared some more. "A vampire. Like from Twilight."
"Like... no. Vampires aren't just mopey, whiny... stalkery..." Xander trailed off. "Except sometimes... Well, they don't sparkle, anyway. They kill people."
"That guy... vampire... didn't kill me." She said it slowly, as if picking the right words might make it make sense.
"It was the mark." He reached up for her arm even though there was nothing there anymore, but she stepped back out of reach. He could still see the design there in his mind. "He was coming to take you for a spell-thing. They marked you. With magic."
"You can't be-"
"Your meditation class was a front. You weren't the only one they were after."
He'd lost her. This would have been easier if she sat down and stopped looming over him. "Xander, you're seriously going to sit there and tell me it's sheer coincidence that I got sucked into whatever the hell it is just after your old life came tumbling back into your new one?"
"You think I haven't been blaming myself? You think I haven't been peeking down dark alleys and checking under the beds ever since he showed up?" He was trying really hard not to get defensive, and he wasn't doing so well. "People get killed every day, and it's nothing to do with me, or Giles, except that we've never found a way to stop it." Xander struggled to get his voice back to even. "That was my world before I came to New York. Giles, me, a bunch of us, we used to fight that stuff. Monsters. Things like that. That's why he knew what to do, who to ask for help."
"Monsters." She sat down again, measuring out her reply. "So you're some kind of Superman."
"Buffy's Superman."
"What?"
Xander wrapped his arms around himself. "Not me." Best to get that straight right out of the box. "I hung out with superheroes. I was Ordinary Man. I got saved a lot." Sometimes he helped, and maybe Riley was right and he was more than a slayer footnote, but he still wasn't special like them.
She leaned closer and squeezed his knee. "You saved me, on Wednesday. Stared down that gorilla like my own personal superhero."
"I'm not a superhero."
She watched him with one of those penetrating looks he'd always disliked. Like she thought she'd figured him out, or something.
The less time she had to invent things in her head, the better. He pulled the cushion out from behind his back and held it in his lap where he could fiddle with the zip. "That thing was a vampire. He supposed to drag you down into the subway and hand you over to a bunch of giant rat demons that were going to sacrifice you to open a hell portal."
She shook her head slowly, took a good long while to manage, "Vampires and rat demons and hell portals. Jesus."
"Jesus is the only one I'm relatively sure isn't somewhere under this city." Xander offered a weak smile. He wished he could leave it there. Vampires are real, the subway is dangerous, hey what's on TV? He was pretty sure leaving it there wasn't an option, now the lid was off. "I don't know what to tell you."
"How about you start at the beginning? You were born into it?"
"No. She was."
"Who?"
Right. The beginning. "It started when a new girl came to our school." It was as good a place as any.
"High school?"
"Sophomore year."
He started to tell her about his life. Some of it.
He told her about vampires: being chased through the sewers, storming into the demon-filled Bronze, but he didn't talk about Jesse.
He explained what a slayer was, about the one who saved them over and over until she finally gave up her life, and then came back, but not that he helped rip her out of heaven.
Plenty about Giles. His scathing, stuffy Britishness and his encyclopaedic knowledge of everything and how much ass he kicked with a sword. Funny, Xander hadn't noticed how hot that was at the time, but he remembered it now and the image in his mind made his cock stir. He couldn't tell Mary that they let him disappear for sixteen years.
There was the long and entertaining list of his own personal disasters: he tried and failed to make her laugh at those. The praying mantis teacher who wanted to mate with him, his brief excursion into the hyena side of the Force, his first kiss from a genuine princess who tried to suck the life out of him, crazy duplicate-Xander hijinks. He couldn't explain that Anya was a ninth century Swede on a mission to reclaim her humanity or that a false premonition about his future from one of the thousands of men she'd tortured was why he'd yanked out her heart and driven her back into the business.
Not Willow's death, not finding out Dawn's long-standing crush was invented by monks, not lying to Buffy about Willow's spell to restore Angel.
Mich must have taken the kids shopping in Brooklyn, because it seemed like he'd been talking for hours, and there was still no sign of them. Mary had shifted at some point, maybe when he was talking about being left behind when Buffy and Willow went to college, and now she was leaning back against his chest, his arm folded over her.
"God, Xander." Her voice was quiet. "The life you've led. I don't know how you function at all. I'm sorry all that happened to you."
I'm sorry that happened to you. It was such a weird thing to say. She'd said that to Mei Li when her cat died. The only time people had ever said stuff like it to him was during the divorce.
"I wish you'd told me."
Xander worked at the lump in his throat. "I never wanted you to be part of it."
"You should have told me."
Yeah. He should have. "Are you angry?"
She wound her fingers around his on her stomach, thinking hard about that. "I want to be mad at you. No, I am mad at you, but hell, Xander. Rat demons and vampires. I think I'm just realising now how much all your hare-brained secrecy really was because you loved me."
Funny, because he was realising the exact opposite. Not that he hadn't loved her, because he had, and still did, and Giles was right, he always would. He squeezed her hand. But in between all the stories he'd kept secret to protect Mary were all the pieces of him. 'Some marriage,' Anya had said, cutting straight to the brutal truth, like she always had.
A lot had been missing between them. Something he might have with Giles.
Mary twisted to face him, but she didn't move back. Her hand was still tangled with his, and her face was inches away.
He realised, suddenly, how this would look from the outside. If Mich and the girls came home, or Giles walked in. He gently pushed Mary back to her own seat. He wasn't confused anymore.
If the last few weeks hadn't been enough, and leaving him behind in the tunnels hadn't been enough, then two days without him had been. It was the dawn of a new Xander, and Giles was going to get the whole package, maybe not in mint condition, but complete.
"Xander."
"Hm?" He looked up at her narrowed dark eyes, realised he'd wandered off for a second there.
She leaned in, taking his hand again. "I'm going to ask you something, and I don't want you to answer right away. I want you to think about this. I want the truth." That sounded ominous. Xander nodded. "Does having Giles in your life bring extra danger down on you? Or on Jenny and Kate?"
"Do you really think I haven't been thinking about it ever since he showed up? Yes." He didn't need time to think about that.
"But you kept telling me he wasn't dangerous."
"He isn't."
"Don't split hairs, Xander. Not now."
He needed to explain this well. Xander took the time she'd offered, tried to find the right words. "He's still part of it. Vampires and rat demons and saving the world, that's his gig. His destiny. He can't walk away like I did, so maybe... I can't promise nothing evil is ever going to spill over if I'm with him. But Giles isn't dangerous. He's the opposite. He's the inflatable stuff they hang up around the pool to save someone who's drowning."
"And your almost ex-wife?" Mary asked, not giving any clues to how she was taking this.
Anya was the real wildcard. It hurt to say out loud, but, "I don't know. Giles said she wouldn't, and I know he's tried, but he can't promise anything, either. She's got a vengeful streak." He wasn't selling this well.
"Thank you." She squeezed his hand and slumped back in the chair.
Xander blinked a couple of times. Thank you for bringing an angry vengeance ex into their lives? "For...?"
"For being honest with me now."
It was like someone had found the pin and pulled, as four months of fear slowly leaked out of him. Except it wasn't four months. It was a weight he'd been dragging around for fourteen years, always looking back over his shoulder for the stray piece of Sunnydale that would crash into his life and send Mary running scared with his daughters. Now his metaphors were jumbled but Xander was weightless.
He was safe.
"I want the girls to know Giles."
She jerked back. "What?"
"You know who he is now. There's no reason to-"
"We had an agreement." All the understanding was gone. "Six months with a new partner. We didn't want the girls being introduced to a procession of dates-"
"Weren't we a pair of optimists."
"-and now you want to play happy families two weeks after you've done a one-eighty from straight to gay?"
Of course he wanted exactly that, but he wasn't that blind. "I'm not talking about having him sleep over while the girls are staying, and he isn't someone I picked up in a bar last week. He's a friend. They already know he exists. It's hardly like they're going to suspect anything."
"Do you really think you're that good an actor? If he's that serious, he can wait a few months."
"This is the guy who ran headlong into a demon-infested hell-hole to save you."
She stopped, angry now. "Don't you dare play that card, Xander. I am incredibly grateful for what he did, but this is about Jenny and Kate. This is the first person you've dated since me, it's a such a twist on your sexuality that you can still barely believe it yourself, and it's been two weeks with a terrifying crisis in the middle. There's a reason why we both agreed to the six-month deal."
"We agreed to it because we still thought we might get back together."
She froze. "I didn't."
Xander's 'Oh,' never made it out loud.
"Well. Isn't that rich." She sagged back into the chair.
Xander didn't speak. He hadn't thought it for a long time, but back then, when they were figuring out how to get along again after all the fights, it had seemed like maybe there was hope. It had taken another four years to realise how badly he'd screwed her around. He stood. "I need to go. Giles is expecting me. Will you be okay until the girls get home?"
"Yeah. Xander..."
"We can talk next week." Please, no more tonight.
She eased off. "All right."
When he reached the door, she said, "Xander? Thank Giles for me. And your other friends."
He smiled. "I will."
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
end chapter 41
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