Airman Harris 14
Airman Harris
Chapter Thirteen
Rated: Adult
Pairing: Xander/Daniel (and who the hell knows where this is going)
So, exactly where did Xander go when he disappeared?
Previous chapters: One : Two : Three : Four : Five : Six : Seven : Eight : Nine : Ten : Eleven : Twelve : Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Xander pushed open the door to the Magic Box, not sure what to expect. Anya had been less than supportive over the whole signing up the military gig. He really didn’t want to even consider his reaction to him just showing up, and if she ever found out he’d decided to go with the whole gay package, he was going to have to move to another dimension.
“Hello?” The shop was eerily silent. Riley had said that Joyce was sick, so maybe they were at Buffy’s house or at the hospital. Xander slipped into the shop and let the door close behind him. Maybe it was time to let his fingers do the walking. But if he called them, he wouldn’t be able to see if they were really happy to see him or if they were doing the thing where they sounded all supporto while making squinchy faces at each other.
Xander walked toward the back, and suddenly Giles came through the door to the storeroom, looking about as frazzled as Giles got, which wasn’t all that frazzled, but then he was English. The English didn’t seem to do frazzled.
“Hey, G-man!” Xander put on his best smile to hide the crawling fear in his guts.
“Xander.” Giles stopped dead.
"Yep, it's me, back from the wars. Well, not back from them as much as back to them. Assuming you have a war here. You usually do." Xander bit down on the rest of the words. Shit. Back in town in for less than an hour and he was already babbling. Maybe it was the air.
"Wonderful. Another of these young people to whom you have trusted our more sacred duties." And a new English man came out from behind Giles.
"Um. Hey." Xander gave Giles an odd look, but either Giles was ignoring him or... or Giles was pretty much ignoring him.
"Why have we not been given access to this one?" And that was a new English dude who looked faintly familiar.
"Because he has not been in town. Xander." Giles looked at Xander with this expression like there was a stick firmly lodged up his ass. Giles only got that expression when Buffy was in huge world-ending sorts of badness.
"I insist that we have access to all those associated with the slayer."
"Well, funny enough, I'm sort of slayer non-associated right now," Xander said. Yep, there was something majorly stinky in Denmark, and if Giles was trying to keep him out of it, Xander was assuming the stinky something was not good for Buffy. "I'm just in town to say hi and bye and maybe a couple of words between, only it seems like maybe now is not a good time."
"Unfortunately not," Giles agreed. "This is a rather serious meeting you've interrupted."
And that was Giles' way of telling him to go away, which Xander really couldn't blame him for because sometimes, just sometimes, Xander did have a habit of making serious people cranky with his endless joke-t elling. Like O'Neill. Not that O'Neill was really all that serious... but he did get annoyed. Xander started backing toward the door.
"Xander! Oh Goddess. Xander!" Before Xander knew what had happened, he had an armful of Willow. Wrapping his arms around her, he lifted her into the air. This is what he wanted. He wanted to know that everyone was still safe and happy and that they loved him. "Why didn't you call us and let us know you were coming?" And that had an edge of reproach to it. Xander put her down. Yep. Willow was hiding something. He could tell because she had her Willow-hiding-something face on.
"I didn't think I needed to call before visiting my bestest girls on leave. Getting leave is the best part of being in the military, you know."
"The military!" New English guy seemed overly interested in that part. Yep, Xander had definitely accidentally stepped in something.
"Xander's in the Air Force, only I didn't think you were going to get leave for another five months. You told us five months."
"Yeah, well," Xander shrugged. "That was before there was a fire in the storeroom and I got burned and they felt guilty." Xander made a face. "Okay, maybe they didn't feel guilty, but still, they gave me some time off." Oh yeah, Xander was lying out his butt now, and either he had learned to lie a whole lot better than he used to or Willow was too distracted to notice that he was being a big old liar boy. Either way, he didn't like it. He wanted home to be homelike, not changing. And as the man who had joined the military, turned gay, and joined a big secret conspiracy to fight aliens, he did recognize the irony in that statement. "Do you want to see the scar? It's really cool. This shelf fell so it's almost a straight line. I'm thinking of telling people it was a ray gun. Whatta think? Could I convince people it's a ray gun scar?" Xander pretended to start undoing his pants.
"Xander!" Willow shrieked, and all was good with Xander's world. Yep, whatever was wrong, it wasn't so wrong that a Xander joke couldn't put all right again.
The door opened, and Xander smiled at the sight of Buffy. She looked good. Okay, she looked sweaty and kind of stained, but she made sweaty and stained look good.
"Xander?" She stopped in the doorway and swung the sword up onto her shoulder. "Is that you? Well, I'm assuming it's you unless you're a shape shifter, but what the hell, even a shape-shifter Xander hug would be welcome right now." Despite her words, Buffy didn't hesitate at all. She opened her arms and gave him a huge slayer hug that threatened to crack ribs.
"Human, here," Xander reminded her, his voice strained.
Buffy made a phfft noise. "Yeah, yeah. You always say that, but you never really break." She did, however, back up some. She smiled at him, all eye-crinkly and everything, and Xander felt his guts untangle just a little.
"You are late." Obnoxious English dude took a step forward, and maybe it was seeing Buffy that made the connection finally flair to life. Travers. He was the idiot boy who had fired Giles and promoted Weasley. Great. This so wasn't a good sign.
"Yeah, I noticed." Buffy turned to face Travers, but her shoulder still brushed against Xander.
"Was there an attack?" Giles stepped forward, his voice strained, and that was not Giles asking a casual sort of 'hey, did some random vamp try and snack on you' tone of voice. Xander narrowed his eyes and studied his friends, struggling to figure out what was going on.
"Yep," Buffy agreed. Unlike Giles, she did seem pretty casual about it, and none of this was making sense. If Giles was all tangled in the panties, usually they all were.
"We can begin the review, despite the obvious omission of Alexander Harris' official statement." Travers gave Xander a look that made it clear he considered Xander a lower life form.
"There isn't gonna be a review." Buffy let the sword fall, point first, to the floor and then leaned on it. Oh yeah, she wasn't going for subtle.
"Sorry?"
"No review. No interrogation. No questions you I can't answer. No hoops, no jumps, and no interruptions," she said fiercely when some dweeb tried to cut her off. Idiot. "Nope. I'm going home and spending time with Xander and torturing him for not being here during the whole ugly breakup scene with many, many tales of woe and a couple of Indian movies.
"Excuse me?" Travers looked ready to swallow his own face.
"See ... I've had a lot of people talking at me the last few days. Everyone just lining up to tell me how unimportant I am. And I've finally figured out why." Buffy looked around, and Xander could feel her confidence like a creature... a big cat that prowled the room. "Power. I have it. They don't. This bothers them."
Xander frowned. Who was bothered by Buffy power? Well, other than vampires, but generally none of them spent a whole lot of time discussing vampires and their needs, not after Xander had once asked whether a people-killing cow might be considered a slayer-cow who was going the job avenging all the hamburgers in the world.
"Glory came to my home today." There was a hitch in Buffy's voice that scared the living snot out of Xander. He was snotless. Because no one made Buffy sound insecure.
Xander's reaction was nothing next to Giles' though. He looked panicked. "Buffy, are you alright."
"Funny enough, she wanted to talk. She told me I'm a bug, I'm a flea, she could squash me in a second." Buffy made a little squinching sign with her fingers, and Xander tasted bile. Something big enough to talk to Buffy that way had come to her house. What the hell was going on. What sort of bizzarro world had he found where anyone got to say that to his Buffy. And why was this Glory not really really dead? Well, if she was human, that would explain the lack of deadage, but if she were human, that really didn't explain why Giles was having a very English, very quiet freakout. Only she wasn't big with the squashing. She came into my home, and we talked. We had what in her warped brain probably passes for a civilized conversation. Why?" Buffy looked around the room, clearly building up to her big finale. "Because she needs something from me. Because I have power over her."
Giles looked ready to polish his glasses to nothing, Travers was on the verge of a seizure, and random dweebie guy... he was just looking confused. Clearly none of them had expected Buffy's big power speech. This was her, "I am a slayer, I will not fail math" pep speech, only with some big bad taking the place of math, and no big bad had every scared Buffy as much as math.
"You guys didn't come all the way from England to determine whether or not I was good enough to be let back in. You came to beg me to let you back in. To give your jobs, your lives some semblance of meaning," Buffy said, and now she was channelling her inner Cordelia.
Dweebie guy decided this was a good time to throw his two cents in. "This is beyond insolence."
Xander wasn't even a little surprised when Buffy threw the sword javelin style, embedding it about three inches in front of the guy's nose, right in the wall. Xander had a brief moment to wonder who was fixing the walls now, but before he could actually open mouth and insert foot, Buffy started going again.
"I'm fairly certain I said no interruptions. You're Watchers. Without a Slayer, you're pretty much just watchin' Masterpiece Theater. You can't stop Glory. You can't do anything with the information you have except maybe publish it in the "Everyone Thinks We're Insane-O's Home Journal."
Xander cringed. Okay, that was not exactly true. The Watchers had the assault team guys, the special forces badasses trained to take out bad slayers, so if Buffy felt the need to make fun of someone and really get her Cordelia on, there was way more going on that anyone had told him about. There was more than just a sick Joyce, that's for sure.
Buffy gave Travers the nastiest smile Xander had seen out of her.... pretty much since ever. "So here's how it's gonna work. You're gonna tell me everything you know. Then you're gonna go away. You'll contact me if and when you have any further information about Glory. The magic shop will remain open. Mr. Giles will stay here as my official Watcher, reinstated at full salary..."
"Retroactive," Giles said with an oh-so-not-subtle cough.
"To be paid retroactively from the month he was fired. I will continue my work with the help of my friends..."
"Children," Travers said with a cold glare.
"We're talking about two very powerful witches and a thousand-year-old ex-demon." Buffy glanced up and spotted Tara and Anya watching over the balcony. Yep, they'd been smart enough to avoid ground zero of the verbal slapdown.
"Willow's a demon?!" Anya looked around shocked. Xander opened his mouth to point out that Anya was the demon and she was always very happy to embrace her demoniness, but one sharp glare from her and he shut his mouth. He'd dated her long enough to know the look that meant she was considering evisceration with a kitchen fork. What the hell was going on?
"And Xander. He's a real soldier," Willow added, wrapping her self around Xander's arm.
Buffy smiled at them, that real smile that made Xander believe that she could do anything and that she'd be his bright and shining girl forever.
"He's now our official soldier who has clocked more field time than all of you combined," Buffy agreed as she sneered at the Watchers again. Oh yeah. As soon as everyone else was gone, Xander was tickling Willow until she confessed everything or peed her pants. And since making her pee her pants would so not be safe, he was really hoping she'd tell him everything.
"So, what's it going to be?" Buffy stared at Travers. It was Buffy and Xander and Willow together against Travers and dweebie guy, and Xander could feel the power shifting.
"Your terms are acceptable," Travers said, all the time looking like the worst loser in the land of all losers.
"Good." Buffy's smile returned. "So. Glory. I wanna know, what is up with her?"
"Well, yes, that is rather a prickly situation..." Travers looked so very Gilesean in that moment.
"Just tell me what kind of demon I'm fighting."
"Well, that's the thing, you see. Glory isn't a demon."
Buffy frowned. "What is she?"
"She's a god."
"Oh." That was it, Buffy dropped one "oh" into the conversation and the whole room seemed to fall silent. A god. They were fighting a god and hadn't even called him? Xander felt that hard knot like when everyone else gets picked in gym class and he was standing there with Tucker just knowing that people will pick Tucker over him and there's nothing he can do about it except stand there and look like a goofy idiot. They were fighting a god, and he'd talked to them. Oh, he hadn't talked to them much what with the whole attempted to keep them away from the freaky secret government conspiracy people, but he'd talked to them. They'd told him about Willow adopting a cat and Buffy breaking up with Riley, and Dawn getting caught shoplifting, but no one had thought to mention the god.
Xander had a cold wave go through him. What if this was an alien-type god? If this was some goa'uld, she would have ships and Jaffa and frikken staff weapons, and those things hurt. Yeah, Teal'c said that P90s were way more effective, but funny enough, they were one P90 short of any P90s unless the girls were keeping even more secrets from him. Xander could taste the bile rising up his throat.
Willow found her voice first. “A god? Like Osiris?”
Xander dearly wished he could tell them about gods like Apophis and Ra, but that would so not go over well with O’Neill, and Xander was already in enough trouble with the colonel. The way he figured it, when the colonel got his hands on Xander, he was going to strangle him before throwing him under the jail. But hopefully they wouldn’t send anyone after him until after he helped his girls. He’d worry about the mess he’d made out of his life later. Maybe he’d even send Daniel an email and offer to turn himself in as soon as he’d settled some problems at home. Yeah, and Xander had totally screwed that up, too. O’Neill was his best friend/first choice, and Xander knew that when he’d snuck out of the mountain with the garbage. But his love life didn’t compare to having a god wandering around Sunnydale.
“Okay, I know I’ve missed one or two meetings, but what the hell is going on?”
“Xander! Language!” Willow mock punched him in the arm. “Those other soldiers are a bad influence on you.”
“Airmen,” Xander corrected her automatically. "Which doesn't really matter as much as us facing a god. And can someone please provide a nice simple definition of 'god'? I mean, if her big power is getting people to come to church twice a year, that's one thing, but if we're into locus plagues and killing new born sons, I'm kinda worried."
"She hits hard," Buffy muttered, and the stone in Xander's guts got a little heavier. Buffy thought this Glory-god hit hard? Buffy wouldn't think Refrigerator Perry hit hard. Buffy made fun of Spike's attempts to hit hard, and having been the recipient of fist of Spike more than once, Xander could testify to just how hard the bleached one hit. Xander frowned, wondering where the annoying one had gotten to.
"And..." Xander waited for someone to add more information. Unfortunately no one seemed to have a whole lot of information.
"Yes, well, I'm sure we can find something in the texts now that we know what we're looking for." Giles would have sounded more convincing if he hadn't been polishing his glasses. "But perhaps right now, you would like to spend some time with Xander. Travers and I can..." Giles let his voice trail off.
Travers still looked cranky. "I had noticed during our inventory that you have a single malt scotch."
"Yes, well, I had..." Giles sighed. "Come on, then." With that, he headed into his office, Travers and dweebie guy following.
The second the real adults were out of the room, Xander grabbed his two girls to hug them again. This time, he held on with a desperation that made his knees feel strange.
"Hey, you just gave me a hard time for inappropriate hug strength," Buffy complained, and Xander had to force himself to ease up. Tara was there, her hand going to Willow's back as she smiled at him.
"Welcome home," she offered.
"It's about time. You know, we shouldn't have broken up before you left because long periods of time apart require gift-giving, and I would like to have a gift.”
“Considering he dumped you, that’s not going to happen,” Buffy said softly, but not softly enough.
Anya sniffed. “I dumped him, but that’s only because I know the likelihood of men putting their penises in someone else when they aren’t near their women. I will not have Xander’s penis in anyone else if he is committed to me.”
Xander smiled and opened his arm. “Ahn, I’ve missed you.”
For a second, she blinked at him, clearly confused. But then her expression softened and she came close and let him pull her into a hug. “Does this mean we’re getting back together?”
“Nope,” Xander said. Considering where his penis had been, he really didn’t need to lead Anya on. “But I’m still glad to see you.” Xander wondered how long he’d have to wait before seeing them all again. He suspected top secret prisons didn’t have visitor days. “So, now that the hugs are out of the way, what are you guys doing not telling me that you have a god running around loose?”
“Technically, we didn’t know she was a god until just now,” Willow pointed out, but when Willow started citing technicalities, Xander knew full well that they’d left him out on purpose.
“Hey, you were off doing your own thing, and we were being supportive,” Buffy said, giving Willow a hard look. Great. They’d discussed this. They’d discussed leaving him out of the loop. They were loop-excluding co-conspirators.
“By not telling me your mom was sick and you were fighting someone who hit hard?”
“I’m always fighting someone who hits hard,” Buffy said, poking him in the stomach.
“You fight people that I think hit hard. You don’t think they hit hard. The vampires around here hit you, and you laugh at them. We have vampire therapists to handle all the insecurities you cause in the undead.”
Buffy was grinning, but as much as Xander loved making her laugh, that wasn’t really his point here.
“But you think Glory hits hard. You think that. Which means she’s more than the average big bad, and you didn’t tell me.”
Willow pressed close. “We didn’t want you to feel like you had to give up your life to come back here.”
Xander suffered a wave of guilt. They didn’t want him to give up his life, but they’d given up theirs.
“Let’s all get something to eat, okay?” Tara suggested in the awkward silence the filled the room. Xander dropped his gaze to the floor and fought with emotions that darted through so fast that he couldn’t even put a finger on them. He couldn’t even tell if he was angry. He felt something, or many somethings, but the feelings were all like oily smoke that raced through his brain and made him feel dirty and scummy and then vanished before he could really get a handle on them.
“Food. Yeah. I could eat a couple of buckets of chicken. Or a cow. I might eat a cow,” Buffy said, and Xander found himself smiling despite the tangled web of ugly in his heart. Maybe if he just let himself get swept up by his girls, he could forget everything else. Besides, he didn’t have time to break down. They had a god to kill, and he definitely needed a briefing. When the hell had gods started using hellmouths?