(no subject)
Airman Harris
Chapter Ten
Rated: Adult
Pairing: Xander/Daniel (and who the hell knows where this is going)
Summary: Yes, your eyes are telling you the truth. Two chapters in a day, and it's time for Riley to show up.
Previous chapters: One : Two : Three : Four : Five : Six : Seven : Eight : Nine : Ten
Airman Harris 11
Xander slipped down the hall with the tray of food held out like a talisman. It was amazing how many times you could get into places when you looked familiar and harmless. Between the ability to slip around base unnoticed and the amount of gossip he heard in the kitchens, Xander was starting to understand why the SGC dishwashers needed to have clearance.
“Hey,” Xander said as he approached the airman standing guard on one of the conference rooms. If the rumors were right, Riley was in there. If they were wrong, Xander was going to have to explain why he felt the need to deliver a tray of donuts to some random dude. Unless the visitor was someone really important. Then someone might shoot him.
“This room is restricted.”
“Yep. I hear Colonel O’Neill was really giving this guy a hard time. Maybe that’s why Jackson told me to bring over some treats. I think he’s trying to smooth feathers.” Xander lifted the lid on his tray to show the donuts and pastries and fruit. The airman on guard took one of the dull plastic knives and carefully lifted them to check underneath.
“That sounds like Dr. Jackson,” the airman agreed. “But this guy is military. He’s not even making a fuss about the guard, so I don’t think he’s as upset as Dr. Jackson assumes.”
“Well, I just deliver donuts where I’m ordered to,” Xander pointed out.
The airman nodded and put the knife back down and Xander lowered the lid. “Go on,” he said, opening the door for Xander.
“Thanks.” Xander quickly ducked inside, and sure enough, that was Riley sitting in a uniform and working on the computer that was hooked to the room’s projection system. Riley quickly stood while the door closed behind Xander. He was jumpy. Unless Xander missed his guess, Colonel O’Neill had already done his demon impression for the man. And honestly, Xander hadn’t seen any human who wasn’t at least part demon do so much growling, glaring and barking.
“Riley,” Xander said as soon as the door clicked shut. Some tight little knot in his stomach loosened when he saw the man. “Hey. Oh wait, should I be saluting you?” Xander looked around in panic, his tray still in his hands.
“Xander. No, please don’t. I’m having trouble enough thinking of you being in the service. I don’t need more reminders.” Walking forward, Riley took the tray from Xander, setting it on the big conference table.
“What? Why?” Xander was good at his job, and yeah, his job was washing dishes, but it wasn’t like he wasn’t good enough to wash Air Force dishes.
“Because you are not the sort to take orders,” Riley pointed out.
Xander snorted. “Yeah, Ri, I am. I just started taking orders from different people.” Seriously, if Riley thought that about him, the man hadn’t just missed the boat, he’d fallen off the dock into the ocean while he was at it.
“Very different people,” Riley agreed. “Are you okay here?”
Xander frowned. He’d had way less people try to murder him since he joined, but Riley was looking big with the concern. A little lightbulb went off in Xander’s head. “Colonel O’Neill totally intimidated you, didn’t he?”
“Yes.” Riley didn’t even try and sugar-coat it.
“I am glad I am not the only one slightly, totally afraid of that man. He has an evil eye.”
Riley laughed. “I’ll give you that one. He made vague threats if I didn’t give him a full briefing on Sunnydale. Actually, the threats might not have been as vague as they were specific and violent.”
Xander cringed. He hated that he’d put Riley in the middle. They’d had a sort of truce in Sunnydale, an understanding that as the only two male Scoobies they wouldn’t do anything to embarrass each other, and that meant something to Xander because most of the time, big jock-like men lived on Harris-humiliation. “Oh. Yeah. Sorry about that. I didn’t know what was classified and what wasn’t and I was pretty sure that certain people didn’t want certain names getting circulated in certain circles and there were a few too many certains for me to keep track of what I should and shouldn’t say.” Xander had to fight to cut off his own babble.
“I understand.” Riley patted Xander’s shoulder before he turned and headed back for his seat. Xander knew he was pushing it timewise. Eventually the guard was going to wonder how long it took for an airman to deliver a tray of sugary goodness, but Xander had to know what Riley would say, and he had to apologize before one of the very few male pseudo-friendships in his life turned into a big steaming pile of shit.
“I mean, I’m really sorry I threw you under the O’Neill bus.”
“It’s okay. It was the right call, Xander. We have protocols for this situation, depending on the security rating of the group requesting information. We have the level one disclosure that offers only a general story about hostile forces, the level two with organized groups posing a threat to national security and the level three with full disclosure of all the things that go bump in the night.”
Xander didn’t want to make any assumptions. “So, are you telling them....”
“Everything except names. Those are my orders.”
Blowing out a breath, Xander tried to imagine what Colonel O’Neill’s face would look like during that briefing. As much as Xander would love to be a fly on the wall, he suspected that even the flies wouldn’t be safe from O’Neill’s temper. And that’s if the colonel didn’t believe Riley. If he did, the man was going to go thermonuclear. “Yeah, have fun with that. I mean, without visual aides, they're going to think you're crazy,” Xander warned. Mentally, Xander made a note to warn Daniel to steer clear for at least a day. O’Neill’s bad moods had the ability to tie Daniel into big old knots.
“I brought surveillance video.”
“Oh.” Xander cringed as he realized what the video might have on it. Riley said he wasn’t outing Buffy or Willow specifically, so he trusted that their faces weren’t clear, but that didn’t mean that the footage couldn’t still have a high humiliation factor. Xander knew he spent a lot of time running and screaming like a little girl while some vamp chased him. He spent even more time flying through the air from some well-timed kick he didn’t manage to duck. And if the universe really hated him, there was probably footage of Xander stealing shit, and O’Neill would love to have an excuse to throw Xander in a jail cell. He would dance a jig and sing with joy, even. “Um, Riley, would you have anything that will humiliate me for all time and/or land me in jail. I mean, I'm kinda fond of not being the base idiot. Well, I was until I got my ass kicked so bad during training that the doctor pulled me out. I guess the clumsy followed me. But I’m really hoping you don’t have anything on those tapes that I’m going to regret.”
“Is that how you got hurt?” Riley leaned forward, and Xander dropped into the chair nearest him.
“You heard that I got hurt?” Xander was almost certain that the whole aliens trying to take over base thing was a secret. This is why he hated secrets; he never knew who was in the know for which parts. It made conversation awkward.
“Colonel O'Neill suggested that you needed to heal from something, but I'm relieved that it was only a training accident.”
“Oh.” Okay, so he’d heard about the Teal’c ass kickage. Teal’c and Xander had already come to an agreement that they would scale back training not because it was in any way, shape or form logical but because other people got their panties in a wad way too easily, and Xander really was never going to use that expression in front of Teal’c again because explaining it was just too embarrassing. “Yeah, well it'd be less embarrassing if it had been an actual injury.”
Riley frowned. “Xander, some of my worst injuries were training injuries. It's not common, but people have died during training, so don't think that a training injury is any less serious than one suffered in battle.”
“I'll keep that in mind, Obi Wan. So, are you planning to humiliate me with your home movies?” Shaking his head, Riley got an expression that suggested he knew he’d lost that round. But it was true, getting hurt in training was embarrassing. If Xander were the officer who’d gotten his elbow cracked on a weight machine by a dishwasher, he’d be humiliated.
“Most of the video is grainy enough that you can't tell who trips over which tombstone,” Riley promised.
“Three cheers for cheap cameras.”
“More like three cheers for cameras that were too far away from where the actual action took place.”
“That too." Xander leaned forward. He knew the next bit was none of his business, but no one would tell him why Riley had left Sunnydale. Xander hated that his girls were keeping secrets, but more than that, he hated that he was too far away to easily find out what their secrets were. Usually he could just torture Willow with his puppy-eyes and she cracked like a pistachio. "Ri, what happened with you and Buffy? I mean, I really thought you were the anti-Angel, and trust me, from me, that's a compliment.”
“I appreciate that. But I made my own mistakes.”
“Did your mistakes include sex with a woman a hundred years younger than you or random murder and mayhem?” Xander asked. “If not, you're way ahead of Deadboy.”
Riley looked down at the tabletop. “I'm not so sure about that.”
“Okay, that's sounding ominous.” Xander wondered if he was going to have to try and kick Riley’s ass, not that he could, but for Buffy, he’d try.
With a shrug, Riley looked back up at him. “Yeah, well it turned ugly. Dracula visited.”
“Wait. The Dracula? Like Dracula Dracula?”
Riley nodded. "Don't mention him around the watcher. He's still a little sensitive about Dracula's brides."
“Whoa. Do you mean... the watcher got down with vampire chicks?” Xander scrambled to avoid Giles’ name before he could accidentally out someone. “Okay, my brain is officially rewiring itself right now.” Xander leaned back, his whole world slightly skewed and warpy after that little revelation. Giles getting his funk on with vampires. Yep. Brain broke.
“He's not the only one who got himself in trouble during that visit.”
The guilt on Riley’s face made Xander’s heart sink. “Oh, that is not a good tone of voice. Tell me you weren't orgy adjacent. Tell me that you’re talking about Spike ending up with a good case of dusty after mouthing off to the wrong vamp.”
“No. Neither of those happened." Riley ran a hand over his face. "Dracula thralled me in order to keep me out of the way while he seduced the slayer."
"Oh geez. Please tell me she didn't boff another vampire. I swear, I will go back and give her my 'vampires bad' speech right now. She keeps telling me she doesn’t need to hear that speech from me, but then she keeps doing things that make it pretty clear my message didn’t soak in the first three thousand times I said it.”
“There wasn't any sex involved, but there was biting.” Riley’s face twisted with disgust, and Xander was right there with him. Yuck.
“I leave town for eight months and she's off letting vamps suck on her. Isn't there anyone pointing out that vamps are undead, arrogant, evil bloodsuckers? I could get postcards made, every week a new reason to hate vampires.”
“I went to the suckhouses.” Riley blurted the words out so fast that Xander’s brain couldn’t quite keep up.
Riley. Suckhouses. Nope, those two did not fit in the same sentence. Riley was normal man. He was the Buffy-boyfriend who didn't have issues. He was the official anti-Angel who Xander loved in a manly, brotherly, I-really-don’t-want-to-think-about-what-you-do-to-my-sisterish-best-friend type way. “Okay, no offense, but are you a moron?” Xander finally demanded.
Riley wiped a hand over his face. “Most addicts are, Xander.”
“Most addicts don’t let monsters suck on them. And I’m trying to be understanding here, but EWWWW is as close to understanding as I can come, and that’s not very close. Not even in the same zip code, actually.”
“No, but it’s honest. I wanted to know why she let them bite her, and I... I can't explain it. Dracula's thrall made me see vampires differently, and when I did go to the suckhouse, it felt so good to let them feed on me. I've gone through addiction treatment, and the Army knows about my problem in Sunnydale. However, that's why I left town.”
Xander felt like the world just kept tilting out of control. Why the hell didn’t he know about any of this? He was in the next state over or maybe two states over-Xander would have to check a map on that one-but it wasn’t like he was on another fucking planet. Someone should have mentioned something. But no. He leaves town and suddenly no one thinks to mention that Buffy is screwier in the head than normal or that Giles has gone all Ripper-kinky with vamp girls. Panic. Xander was feeling panic. He had to force himself to focus on the present conversation. Riley. Suckhouses. Stupid. “Okay, I know Sunnyhell has more than its fair share of suckhouses, but seriously, why would you leave you-know-who just to stay away from a few suckhouses?”
“Thirteen.”
“Thirteen what?”
“Suckhouses,” Riley answered.
“Wow. That’s a lot of suckhouses. Okay, when you have more suckhouses than Starbucks, that’s bad, but when you have thirteen times more suckhouses than Starbucks, that’s really bad. But I’m still not seeing the logic, Ri. I mean, you’re going to run into vamps no matter where you go. Well, unless you’re a frikkin mile under the ground in a mountain, but trust me, these people have their own issues.”
“I’m not cleared to know about them,” Riley quickly said, his hand sliding across the table toward Xander as if he could physically hold back any words. Right, like Xander would just go blurting about aliens. That wasn’t going to happen for so very many reasons.
“Yeah, neither was I,” Xander pointed out. “I was supposed to be delivering Jell-O and looked at how well that turned out.”
Riley laughed. “Colonel O’Neill did seem to think you had a talent for getting in trouble.”
With a snort, Xander pointed out, “He doesn’t know anything yet. I’ve been playing nice and washing dishes. And you know me, I’d be very happy to wash dishes for the next three and a half years.”
“But you don’t think it’s going to happen that way,” Riley finished.
“Hey, I’d be happy if it did work that way, but I’m not holding my breath for normal. Now that you’ve changed the subject, do you want to tell me what’s the what in Sunnydale? Yeah, suckhouses bad, but trust me, she’s stood by boyfriends who did loads worse. You don’t even want to get me started down that path because that way lies raving and babbling and really vicious comments about stupid hair.”
Riley leaned back in his chair, all emotion gone from his face. “It just didn’t work out.”
“Bullshit. When things don’t work out, it usually means that someone is making them not work out.” Xander studied Riley, struggling to understand his expression. “Did she throw a fit over the whole vampire thing, because if she did, I am very happy to go back and remind her about a certain incident involving beer or Halloween candy or eggs because it’s not like she hasn’t seen things get a little wonky and out of control before, and Dracula-thrall sounds like extenuating circumstances.”
“She found me in the suckhouse.”
Xander cringed. That would have been ugly. He loved Buffy, but she was big with the overreacting when she felt betrayed. He was pretty sure it was a father-issue thing.
“And Spike’s the one who told her,” Riley added. Clearly there was one person Riley was happy to throw under the O’Neill bus, but then, Xander wouldn’t mind if Colonel O’Neill put a few dozen rounds of ammo in the bleached one.
“Spike? She listened to Spike? Okay, when did I fall into wonky-world because her listening to Spike makes me want to go looking for the pod, and I mean that in an Invasion of the Body Snatchers way rather than any actual pods.”
“I caught the allusion,” Riley said. “However, Spike wasn’t the problem. She’s a slayer, Xander. She wants someone who can keep up with her, and I couldn’t. She kept trying to protect me, especially when it turned out that Dr. Walsh had used some experimental medicine on me to amp up my strength. The stuff was killing me, and when I got clean, I couldn’t keep up with her anymore.”
Xander closed his eyes. Shit. She’d tried to make Riley fray-adjacent. Buffy had this terrible habit of shoving people off to the side and insisting she had to protect everyone, and that was a problem when people thought they had a right to defend themselves. Xander had learned to just do what he could around the edges. Kill a zombie here, stake a vampire there and not mention it to Buffy. And yeah, he killed one for every two dozen she took out, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to get in the fight and kill his one. But Riley… he was a bad-ass soldier who was used to being on the front lines.
“It isn’t you, you know. She does that to everyone,” Xander offered gently. Hell, Willow was turning all magic-girl in her efforts to not get shut out by her best friend, and Giles wasn’t exactly a big help on that front. The Watchers might think Giles was too lenient, but too lenient still included filling Buffy’s head with stories of being the one and only person responsible for all evil in the world.
Riley nodded. “I know she did it to you, but I guess I thought I’d be different-that she’d trust me as a fighter.”
“You’re giving her too much credit, Ri. I mean, I love her in a perfectly platonic, brotherly way, but when it comes to fighting, she’s not the most even-headed person in all creation. She has trouble letting go because everyone keeps telling her that she has to handle everything herself, and she believes them, which is slightly craplike, but that’s what she does. It doesn’t mean that she doesn’t love you, because I’m telling you, she was way, way happier with you than she ever was with Deadboy. I mean, yeah Deadboy had the whole Romeo and Juliet darkness going for him, but everyone ends up dead in that play, and that was definitely the path she was on with him. But you were more… and I’m trying to come up with a play that is all-American here.”
“Death of a Salesman,” Riley said dryly. From the tone, Xander was guessing some self-insulting was going on.
“You were happy-making,” Xander said instead.
Riley sighed. “Maybe I was when Dr. Welsh’s drugs made me strong enough to keep up with her. These days, I’m not making her happy, Xander. That’s why I had to leave. She has enough pain in her life without me making her unhappy.”
“Pain?” Xander frowned. “I haven’t heard of pain. What pain?”
“You didn’t hear?” Riley seemed surprised. “Her mother had an operation. They said she had some sort of brain tumor.”
Xander’s mouth went dry as he thought of Joyce’s strength and the way she’d held them together through way more crap than any parent should ever have to deal with. Hell, his own mother hadn’t been able to handle it when Xander failed ninth grade math, but Joyce had been right there with them from the time she found out about slaying. “Is she okay?”
“The doctors say she will be, but that sort of brain injury is going to have consequences, and if I can’t help, the best thing I can do for all of them is to stay out of the way.”
Xander totally disagreed with that. Totally. However, he wasn’t sure how to convince Riley of that. All he knew was that Buffy pushed people away the most exactly when she needed them the most. And Xander had been idiotic enough to sign up for the military so he couldn’t be there. “How about on the slaying front?” Xander asked casually. He’d really limited his calls home since he’d joined the Air Force because he didn’t want anyone to slip and say something not-so-good over a government monitored phone. However, Riley would have kept up with Buffy and the others-Xander knew that for sure. He was an idiot who let vampires suck on him and who had managed to miss that his girlfriend was screwy in the head and couldn’t admit how much she needed him. Oh yeah, idiocy was involved. But he still cared for her.
“They say it’s all quiet. Not a peep.”
Xander’s guts turned to stone. It was never peepless in Sunnydale. If they weren’t talking it was because there was something so big that Buffy didn’t want people feeling obligated to come home and help, and they were back to idiocy, only this time Buffy’s sort.
“That’s good,” Xander said weakly. “I still think you should try to work things out.”
Riley shook his head. “I’m seeing someone else, and I’m sure she’s seeing someone else by now.”
Xander doubted that. Buffy had worse taste in lovers than he did. Well, than he had had in the past. Xander was pretty sure Daniel was a keeper. Two visits to a closet and one night in bed, and Xander was pretty much willing to buy the wedding ring. But that also might have something to do with the fact that Daniel could explain things without making Xander feel stupid and he laughed at Xander’s jokes, and he had this adorable expression when he ducked his head and blushed. Yep, Xander planned to keep Daniel if there was any human way possible. The only fly in the ointment was that O’Neill looked like he might start spitting nails any time he caught of glimpse of Daniel in the back kitchens, sitting on a counter and talking while Xander shoved dishes through the machine.
“I hope she has a good life, but I can’t be part of it,” Riley said sadly.
“I get it,” Xander said with a nod. “I think you’re an idiot, but I get it.”
Riley smiled. “Thank you. Not just for getting it, but for helping her and loving her and for making it possible for me to have even the short time I had with her. You were always good at getting her to see things in a new way, and I suspect that you talked to her about me.”
Xander shrugged. “I said the Initiative were dangerous idiots and someone needed to blow them up,” Xander pointed out, but the fact was that he’d also told Buffy that she needed to give someone normal a chance. At the time, Xander figured anyone that distracted Buffy from Angel was of the good, but looking back, Riley had been a good choice. Yeah, he didn’t fit in and he was an idiot, but he’d loved Buffy.
“And look, you were right,” Riley said with a wry grin.
Xander nodded. He really didn’t need reminding of the number of times he’d been right because his guts were screaming at him, and if he was right about how wrong things were back home, there was serious trouble on the horizon. “Hey, I should let you get with the preparing because O’Neill is not exactly a fountain of patience. He doesn’t even have a faucet of it.” Xander stood up.
“That’s a deal,” Riley agreed as he stood as well. He reached out his hand, and instead of saluting an officer, Xander shook his hand, feeling oddly adult as he did so. “Take care of yourself, Xander.”
“You too, Riley. You’re still the best man she ever had in her life.”
“But I’m not the one she needed.” Riley took a step back. “That doesn’t mean I won’t be there for her with a P-90 and a bucket of grenades if she calls.”
“Keep ‘em ready,” Xander said before he turned and headed for the door. If his gut was right, things were, as Giles would sometimes mutter when he thought no one was listening, going arse over teakettle. But one call home would make it clear whether or not Xander’s gut sirens were misfiring.