New York 13/??: Heat - 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 final checking on the run.
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: 3985
Previously, in chapter 12:
Watching Giles fuss about his upcoming trip back to Scooby-land finally tempted Xander into deciding that he could go, too. All excited about the possibilities, Xander climbed out of bed and ended up snuggled on the couch, channel-surfing with a sleepy Giles. Back in his own bed, Xander had an overwhelming urge to jerk off. All-in-all, a very good night. But back in the real world the next day, Xander realised he really had no right to go. So he saw Giles off to the airport and gave him a big hug goodbye, then called Jen for some daughterly comfort.
New York
Chapter 13: Heat
by Dr Squidlove
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Lunchtime in the corner again, but this time he hit dial.
"Hey, Xander."
"Hey, Mary. Do you mind if I cancel dinner tonight?"
There was quiet on the other end.
"Mary?"
"Is he there?"
"No, he's gone." Giles was on PCH somewhere between San Diego and LA, trading life stories with Tara.
"Did something happen?"
"No. Nothing happened. He left, and the city's still standing."
More silence.
He shouldn't have snapped. She sounded worried, not angry. She'd been tiptoeing around for the last two weeks, since Xander blurted out what Angel did to Giles.
"Will he visit again?" she asked, gently. He wished she'd sound angry so he could stay defensive.
"Maybe." He peered up at an exposed beam. "Probably not." They'd joked about Giles cooking breakfast, but probably that was never going to happen.
"I'm sorry."
Xander shrugged, even though she couldn't see it.
"You deserve to have friends."
He didn't know what to say to that.
She sighed. "I'm sorry, Xander. You scared me."
"You know I'd never let anything happen to the girls."
"I'm not worrying about them right now. I'm worrying about you."
"Can we not talk about this while I'm at work?"
"All right. You're still coming to mom's birthday on Sunday? I promise we don't have to talk about it there, either."
He rubbed his head, wishing that was as easy to avoid. Sort of glad it wasn't. "I'm driving your car, I suppose?"
"How else will I get rip-roaring drunk?"
He smiled a little, glad she was trying. "Do I need to bring a barf-bucket?"
"Only if Rick's barbecuing shrimp legs again. He said he's got the pool open and the fancy new solar on, and there's supposed to be some kind of heat wave this weekend, so bring your swim trunks."
"It's April."
"Weatherman says low eighties. Bring a towel."
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Sam drained her glass and banged it on the table with a sigh. "God, I needed that. If this is April, summer's going to be a killer."
"No fucking joke," said Rickman. "Thought I was gonna slip off the beams in my own puddle of sweat, plummet to my death."
"At least wait until we crack twenty floors, give yourself time for a view on the way down."
"Nah, it's bullshit summer," said Kelly. "We'll just get the winter clothes back in the closet, and it'll freeze our balls off again."
Xander was back in the world of normal people who worried about weather and mortgages and traffic. Sure, Rodriguez collected for the Veteran's fund sometimes, and Pearlman did that thing for Doctors Without Borders, but there was no saving the world here, no near-hell experiences.
Toby raised his beer. "Here's to global warming. Heat wave one day, snow tornado the next."
Xander wasn't sure how he felt about living in the normal world today. Giles was in LA now, and Buffy was either celebrating his return or giving him the biggest cold shoulder of all time.
Or five thousand previously-unknown demons had descended on the city after someone accidentally doodled a magical symbol in the margin of a cursed book, and they were alll fighting for their lives. Historically speaking, it was probably that one.
Giles would call if there was an apocalypse. Probably. Xander took another drink.
Sam refilled her glass. "What do you say, Xander: going to spend the weekend spring cleaning?"
"Nah, got a family thing at Mary's this weekend, then the girls for a couple of extra days over spring break."
Toby did a double-take. "Mary, your ex?"
"Her family's all right. My brother ex-law's got a heated pool, so it's already open."
"Harris, you are not a normal human being. I would suck Rickman's sausage on this table for all to see before I would spend an afternoon with Becky's family."
Kelly leaned over to tap his glass to Toby's. "And I'd watch that before I'd spend an afternoon with Leticia's demon clan."
Demon clan was probably hyperbole. Xander hoped it was.
He wondered how Giles was doing.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Xander was passing out on the couch again. It was a bad habit to get back into, but the TV took Xander's mind off worrying. Giles hadn't called.
There was no reason why he should have called, and anyway, Tara would have called Xander if Giles had gone missing between New York and San Diego, and Xander didn't want to be checking up like an over-protective parent, but there was a big fat sixteen-year reason why Xander didn't want to leave it too long before making sure Giles was okay. Xander was going to call in a day or two.
In the meantime, sleep by television.
It turned out there was a British archaeology show on at 1am each night, a bunch of upper-crust English guys on a dig getting all excited about plate designs and bits of pots, and it put Xander to sleep like a baby.
Well, that and a good slow tug on his cock. A wank, one of those English voices would have called it. Xander hadn't jerked off this much in years.
He missed sex, of course, but lately it wasn't fucking on his mind. He ached to be touched. Every night he was on this couch with his eyes half-closed and his hand in his shorts, pulling his cock and imagining how good it would be if he was in someone else's arms, someone else's hand closing around his. Slowing him down, speeding him up. Kissing his neck.
Xander let his free hand run over his chest. He wanted legs tangled with his, someone who'd push his hand aside and take over with a confident grip, breathe hard in his ear as she worked him, cock and balls, whispering that he was attractive and wanted.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Xander roared as he burst out of the water, sending the kids scattering. Aiko was laughing so hard there was a serious danger of her drowning so he dove in and came up beneath her, lifting her high in the air. She squealed until he dropped with her into the water, squeezing her against his chest for safety.
There was a mass of splashing, and suddenly fifty slippery hands were on him, clutching at his wrists and arms, more underwater at his legs and ankles, one mischievous fist hanging off his shorts. Xander could barely stand for laughing, and then broad shoulders crashed into the backs of his knees and yanked him under.
Xander came up spluttering to hear "Uncle Xander!" "Drown Uncle Xander!" "Get him, Ricky!"
God knew when Rikuto the Juniorest got all adult-sized. Xander had skipped the President's Day thing, and all the kids were ten years older than they'd been at Christmas. Callie had her lip pierced - giving Kate ideas - and Aiko was dog-paddling around without swimmies.
Xander grabbed for a passing limb and found Kate's leg, hauled her in and lifted her shrieking above him. "Whatcha gonna do now, kiddo?"
"Go for his ribs!" yelled Mary from the sidelines, and Xander whipped around.
"Hey, no coaching!"
But they had him, and he was helpless, dropping Kate and swallowing water as he laughed as hard as the kids swamping him.
"Incoming!" Squeals and an enormous splash behind him, then more squeals from the sidelines.
"Uncle Rick! I hate you!" Jen sat up, cursing.
"If you're going to lie beside the pool, Jenny..."
"Mo-om!"
Xander took the distraction to sneak out of the kid-pile. He swung out of the pool and bent over to shake his hair on her.
"Daa-ad!"
"If you're gonna lie beside the pool, Jen..." He grinned at her glare and turned to reach for his towel.
Mary and Mich were grinning at him, in a scary sort of way.
"What?"
"Nice ass," Mary leered.
Xander blushed, which was kind of ridiculous. "You can't comment on my ass anymore. You signed the papers. Paragraph fourteen, sub-clause b."
"I can," Mich retorted, letting her eyes slide southwards.
"You're a lesbian. Also, I don't want Petra dragging me off to one of her secret military prisons."
"I'm not close-minded. Not around asses like that."
Xander snorted. "Doesn't the new navy make you ladies take classes on social sensitivity and the evils of sexual harassment?"
"Mich failed all of them," Petra said from the spa where she was lounging with Rick's wife, Hitomi.
"Would you all please stop traumatising me?" Jen yelled from under the arms she'd wrapped around her head.
Xander turned away. He really didn't need Mary leering at him when she was lounging back in a scrap of yellow bikini, bronze skin gleaming, silk-black hair fanned out around her face. She looked smoking.
Besides, early summer or not, it really wasn't warm enough for lying around in a damp bikini, and he could see her nipples sharp under her suit.
Rick and Hitomi's house was in New Jersey, with their four kids and the sort of yard that deer sometimes wandered through. Winter family gatherings were at Mary's parents' place in Boston, but the summer ones were at Rick's, around the pool. And if Xander was going to be honest, it was always a good time. He may have been the guy who failed to make Mary happy ever after, but everyone was always friendly. Rick genuinely liked Xander, and her sister Michiko liked everyone. To his six nieces and nephews he was Uncle Xander, same as always, and it was impossible not to have a good time with eight kids water fighting. Seven kids, anyway, while Jen tanned and preened on the side. He didn't want to know when she downsized to the micro-bikini.
It was a good time, but there always that lingering feeling that something wasn't quite right. He never examined it too closely because if he did, he remembered it was him.
He wandered over to the table for a handful of stale corn chips. This was the future he'd once imagined with Anya: domestic backyard, Buffy and Willow bringing their kids over on holidays. Dreaming of a monster-free life, kind of like being eight years old and dreaming of superpowers or about being adopted by rich parents with a private jet and their own toy store.
He'd moved to New York looking to disappear for a while. He met Mary and he was still there, missing in Manhattan. There was plenty to love in the city, but he missed the suburbs. Wished the girls knew what it was like to camp in the backyard or to know every family on the block. They were growing up city kids, and the very idea of moving would have horrified them. Especially Jen.
He made sure to wipe his feet extra-well before he went inside. Never mind that the kids had trailed half the pool in here through the afternoon, slapping in and then back out, popsicles in their fists.
Mary's mom was at the sink washing dishes, her husband Rikuto waiting behind her with a tea towel.
"I'm pretty sure there's a law against doing dishes on your sixtieth birthday, Satsuki."
She smiled politely. "I like doing the dishes; you know that."
"Is there anything I can do?"
"You're doing a fine job of keeping the children entertained."
"I tagged Rick. He has sea monster duty." Xander didn't particularly want to stick around in here, but he always felt he should be doing something to make Mary's parents think he was less of a jackass. He'd been out playing in the pool while someone - presumably them - had cleaned up all the mess from lunch.
Rikuto took another dish from the rack and started drying it, expressionless. Okay, probably offering to help when the work was already done wasn't going to earn him any points.
"I'm sorry I didn't help with-"
"Don't be silly." She smiled a little more warmly. "I've been listening to my grandchildren squeal for an hour. Why on earth would I have preferred to have you under my feet?"
The last part was scathingly honest, but so was the first, so Xander didn't mind too much. "Let me at least take care of the slip'n'slide you have going here." He grabbed the mop Hitomi kept by the fridge for exactly this and gave the floor a wipe.
He was putting the mop away when the door rattled open and more wet feet slapped in. "Dad!" "Hey Dad!" "Dad!" "Can we go in Uncle Rick's boat?" "He said we could come!" "Mom said ask you, so can we?"
"Please, Uncle Xander!" piped up on the end.
"Girls, it's-" he twisted his head to see the kitchen clock, "-almost five. Time to head home. You don't go boating at this hour."
"Tomorrow," Jen explained, way too condescendingly for someone asking a favour. "Uncle Rick said we could stay over."
"You may be on spring break, but your mom and I have to work in the morning." It was a pity - Xander would have loved a day on Rick's boat himself, and the girls never had enough time with their cousins. It was the sort of big family life Xander had always wanted himself, as a kid.
"Mich and Petra are staying over," Mary said from the doorway. "She said she could drop the girls home." She looked apologetic. "I know you're supposed to have them tonight, but-"
"No, that's... That's good." Somehow it had all been settled. "No, it's great. As long as Rick and Hitomi are-"
He was drowned under a chorus of thank yous and slippery wet hugs and just as suddenly abandoned as the girls bounded outside to crow about getting permission.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Xander put the music on low and tapped the nav control, running a mental check to be sure he was okay to drive. He was drained and dried out and still baking a little from the sunburn he could feel across his shoulders and neck, but he was awake enough. He'd sleep like the dead - or in fact better than a lot of the dead - when he got home.
He'd had a good day. He was glad the girls had family like that, weekends in the pool with their cousins, an uncle and aunts who'd invite them to stick around without Xander or Mary. It made him feel weirdly like he was doing something right even though it had nothing to do with him. It was just another thing he had to thank Mary for.
Mary had fallen asleep before they even hit the highway, head twisted against the window. Her olive skin was flushed across her forehead and nose, black hair tangled in a knot from her brief dip in the pool. She never would have headed home like this back when Xander first knew her. She would have been showered and changed, hair groomed silky and straight before she stepped foot out the door for the car.
Luckily no one had to get out to charge the car in New Jersey because she hadn't even pulled her shorts back on, just slipped on a shirt and thrown a towel between her bathing suit and the upholstery. She was going to be cold once the heat of the day wore off.
Xander had to stop looking at her legs.
That was the drawback to days like this, one of the reasons he'd dreaded coming. Because they always made him feel like family, like when he got home Jen would barely wake enough to wrap her legs around Xander's waist, and Kate would sprawl slack in Mary's arms as they rode up the elevator. They'd carry the sleeping girls to their beds, and he'd lock up the house and find Mary already under the covers, drifting, but not so deep that he couldn't wake her up for a little while longer.
The parenting and teasing and being a family had been so easy today, so exactly how it should be that he didn't understand why they weren't married anymore. Plenty of couples had problems just as big as theirs, never had days as good as this, and stayed married.
He knew it wasn't as simple as that, but he had a two hour drive and Mary's smooth thighs stretched out beside him, and he'd been weirdly horny for days, and it was hard to remember why it wasn't.
Xander shook her shoulder gently when he finally found a parking space. She writhed and blinked. "Where are we?"
"My place."
"Oh." She yawned as she reached her arms over her head for a long, cat-like stretch that tightened her damp shirt over her breasts. "Guess it's time for me to take over."
"No way. Come on. Come up and have some coffee or something before you get behind the wheel and fall asleep again."
That opened her eyes, and she grinned. "That sounds great. Let's just pretend I did the polite insistence that I don't want to intrude."
"And then we can pretend that I ignored your protests and pocketed the key." Xander waved her key and slid it into his shorts.
"Mmmkay." She slid out of the car and stretched again, closing her eyes in pleasure as her arms reached over her head, shirt lifting to show a sliver of stomach. Oblivious to the eyes that had spent almost as much of the last two hours on her legs as on the road.
He ripped his gaze away just as she let her arms drop and grabbed the towel off the seat to wrap around her waist.
Up in the apartment, Xander made coffee while she went to the bathroom. He ignored her complaints when he steered her away from the couch to a counter stool. "I'm trying to wake you up, not send you deeper."
"You tired?"
Yeah, he was tired, but still a little buzzed from paying attention to city streets. "I've got a while." He poured juice for himself and took a long drink before leaning on his elbows to face her across the counter. "Drink your coffee."
"Tell me about your friend."
"Huh?"
"While you're sleepy and easy to prod."
"Mary, I told you-"
"I'm not asking for state secrets, just..." She leaned forward, playing with her mug. "You've been different since he showed up. Happier. Sadder. Crazier. More... sure of yourself. Like you, I don't know. Went through something." A quick look up and then down again. "You don't have many friends, Xander, and never any that mattered like that."
It was all true. And Xander was wrung out from a good day, and Mary felt like his wife tonight, and there was no one else he could talk to about how much he missed him. "He's smart. Like, smarter than anyone you've ever met. I don't think... He didn't think much of me, back then - you can imagine what a dumbass I was as a kid - but he put up with me, with all of us. We were kind of... I guess him and me were family before we were friends."
When the girls went to college, Xander had tried to hang out, but they weren't really buddies even then. It was Anya who'd made them friends, he realised. Anya started working with Giles, and that shifted the whole adult-kid dynamic they'd had going before that. It wasn't like he could explain all that to Mary. "He likes old stuff. History. Like, ancient history. Name something four thousand years old, and he'll reel off everything you never wanted to know like the audiopedia. There was this one time..." He trailed off. He couldn't talk to her, either, didn't know how to dance around what he could and couldn't say. He sipped his juice.
She looked so serious. "I don't know you at all."
"You know me better than anyone else."
"Not as well as him."
Xander opened his mouth to say Giles only knew who he used to be, but that wasn't true. He understood Xander better now than ever.
"I'm sorry." She scrubbed her hair and then wrinkled her nose at the post-swim tangles. "I don't get to be jealous anymore. It's just that today was a really good day."
"Yeah."
"I love watching you with the girls. I don't get to do that so much anymore." They looked at each other for a long time.
"I'm glad you have family for them," Xander said at last. "They're good people."
She watched him, thoughtfully, and he guessed she was wondering about his. He tried to imagine Kate and Jen at a Harris family gathering, his parents' drunken fighting, Uncle Rory explaining the finer points of taxidermy. Yeah, he was happy they had Rick and Mich and a truckload of cousins.
She swigged the last of her coffee. He could hear her swallow in the quiet. "I should go."
"You're sure you're awake?"
"I'm fine." She smiled to show everything was okay between them, and he held his sigh of relief.
He tipped the rest of his juice down the sink, and she brought her cup over. He could smell her behind him. Nobody on earth smelled as good as Mary. Even with the lingering chlorine in her hair, her scent did things it shouldn't anymore. He closed his eyes and breathed, didn't jump at all when her hand settled on the small of his back. Right where Giles had touched. What was it with this kitchen?
"Should I go?" she asked softly.
He wanted to be touched so badly, it hurt. He turned and pulled her into a kiss, hungry like he'd been waiting on this for weeks, and she clutched him back just the same. Her lips were dry from the sun and soft and tasted like the same vanilla lip balm she'd always used, and inside was bitter from coffee.
This was a bad idea but they were adults, and they'd survived worse ideas than this. And no way would a man who'd already spent countless nights with Mary resist her hands slipping up under his shirt. All the way up his back, under his collar to rub the back of his neck where it made his knees weak.
Kissing felt just like how he remembered in the dusty filing cabinets in the back of his brain. Maybe he hadn't blown their first kiss up into more it was, when he was babbling in the car and she leaned across, awkward as hell but the whole world had stopped. Before he started panicking, anyway. Or the one on the night he spilled a whole batch of meatballs across the kitchen floor, and she laughed until she couldn't breathe anymore. Or that one when she told him she was pregnant for the second time (which went a lot better than the first time), and he kissed her against the wall.
God. He needed not to be doing this. He wasn't good at being divorced to start with; remembering this side of things was a bad, bad idea.
Except there wouldn't be consequences until morning, at least, and right now her towel was giving way, and he had her ass in his hands, smooth bare skin and a little scrap of suit. He lifted her, stomach and mound and thigh dragging over his cock until he settled her on the edge of the sink, her quick hands unbuttoning his shirt, pulling her own over her head while he shook his free.
God she was beautiful. Perched on his sink in a swimsuit like a men's magazine fantasy, smiling like a dare. He slid a hand up the thigh he'd been watching since New Jersey while he worked his fingers inside the cup of her top to find her nipple pointed and hard. And if he hadn't been hard already... And then her ankle slipped between his legs and pressed his cock, and he groaned.
This was going to go all the way.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
end chapter 13
Dr Squidlove appreciates feedback. Tasty, tasty feedback.
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 final checking on the run.
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: 3985
Previously, in chapter 12:
Watching Giles fuss about his upcoming trip back to Scooby-land finally tempted Xander into deciding that he could go, too. All excited about the possibilities, Xander climbed out of bed and ended up snuggled on the couch, channel-surfing with a sleepy Giles. Back in his own bed, Xander had an overwhelming urge to jerk off. All-in-all, a very good night. But back in the real world the next day, Xander realised he really had no right to go. So he saw Giles off to the airport and gave him a big hug goodbye, then called Jen for some daughterly comfort.
New York
Chapter 13: Heat
by Dr Squidlove
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Lunchtime in the corner again, but this time he hit dial.
"Hey, Xander."
"Hey, Mary. Do you mind if I cancel dinner tonight?"
There was quiet on the other end.
"Mary?"
"Is he there?"
"No, he's gone." Giles was on PCH somewhere between San Diego and LA, trading life stories with Tara.
"Did something happen?"
"No. Nothing happened. He left, and the city's still standing."
More silence.
He shouldn't have snapped. She sounded worried, not angry. She'd been tiptoeing around for the last two weeks, since Xander blurted out what Angel did to Giles.
"Will he visit again?" she asked, gently. He wished she'd sound angry so he could stay defensive.
"Maybe." He peered up at an exposed beam. "Probably not." They'd joked about Giles cooking breakfast, but probably that was never going to happen.
"I'm sorry."
Xander shrugged, even though she couldn't see it.
"You deserve to have friends."
He didn't know what to say to that.
She sighed. "I'm sorry, Xander. You scared me."
"You know I'd never let anything happen to the girls."
"I'm not worrying about them right now. I'm worrying about you."
"Can we not talk about this while I'm at work?"
"All right. You're still coming to mom's birthday on Sunday? I promise we don't have to talk about it there, either."
He rubbed his head, wishing that was as easy to avoid. Sort of glad it wasn't. "I'm driving your car, I suppose?"
"How else will I get rip-roaring drunk?"
He smiled a little, glad she was trying. "Do I need to bring a barf-bucket?"
"Only if Rick's barbecuing shrimp legs again. He said he's got the pool open and the fancy new solar on, and there's supposed to be some kind of heat wave this weekend, so bring your swim trunks."
"It's April."
"Weatherman says low eighties. Bring a towel."
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Sam drained her glass and banged it on the table with a sigh. "God, I needed that. If this is April, summer's going to be a killer."
"No fucking joke," said Rickman. "Thought I was gonna slip off the beams in my own puddle of sweat, plummet to my death."
"At least wait until we crack twenty floors, give yourself time for a view on the way down."
"Nah, it's bullshit summer," said Kelly. "We'll just get the winter clothes back in the closet, and it'll freeze our balls off again."
Xander was back in the world of normal people who worried about weather and mortgages and traffic. Sure, Rodriguez collected for the Veteran's fund sometimes, and Pearlman did that thing for Doctors Without Borders, but there was no saving the world here, no near-hell experiences.
Toby raised his beer. "Here's to global warming. Heat wave one day, snow tornado the next."
Xander wasn't sure how he felt about living in the normal world today. Giles was in LA now, and Buffy was either celebrating his return or giving him the biggest cold shoulder of all time.
Or five thousand previously-unknown demons had descended on the city after someone accidentally doodled a magical symbol in the margin of a cursed book, and they were alll fighting for their lives. Historically speaking, it was probably that one.
Giles would call if there was an apocalypse. Probably. Xander took another drink.
Sam refilled her glass. "What do you say, Xander: going to spend the weekend spring cleaning?"
"Nah, got a family thing at Mary's this weekend, then the girls for a couple of extra days over spring break."
Toby did a double-take. "Mary, your ex?"
"Her family's all right. My brother ex-law's got a heated pool, so it's already open."
"Harris, you are not a normal human being. I would suck Rickman's sausage on this table for all to see before I would spend an afternoon with Becky's family."
Kelly leaned over to tap his glass to Toby's. "And I'd watch that before I'd spend an afternoon with Leticia's demon clan."
Demon clan was probably hyperbole. Xander hoped it was.
He wondered how Giles was doing.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Xander was passing out on the couch again. It was a bad habit to get back into, but the TV took Xander's mind off worrying. Giles hadn't called.
There was no reason why he should have called, and anyway, Tara would have called Xander if Giles had gone missing between New York and San Diego, and Xander didn't want to be checking up like an over-protective parent, but there was a big fat sixteen-year reason why Xander didn't want to leave it too long before making sure Giles was okay. Xander was going to call in a day or two.
In the meantime, sleep by television.
It turned out there was a British archaeology show on at 1am each night, a bunch of upper-crust English guys on a dig getting all excited about plate designs and bits of pots, and it put Xander to sleep like a baby.
Well, that and a good slow tug on his cock. A wank, one of those English voices would have called it. Xander hadn't jerked off this much in years.
He missed sex, of course, but lately it wasn't fucking on his mind. He ached to be touched. Every night he was on this couch with his eyes half-closed and his hand in his shorts, pulling his cock and imagining how good it would be if he was in someone else's arms, someone else's hand closing around his. Slowing him down, speeding him up. Kissing his neck.
Xander let his free hand run over his chest. He wanted legs tangled with his, someone who'd push his hand aside and take over with a confident grip, breathe hard in his ear as she worked him, cock and balls, whispering that he was attractive and wanted.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Xander roared as he burst out of the water, sending the kids scattering. Aiko was laughing so hard there was a serious danger of her drowning so he dove in and came up beneath her, lifting her high in the air. She squealed until he dropped with her into the water, squeezing her against his chest for safety.
There was a mass of splashing, and suddenly fifty slippery hands were on him, clutching at his wrists and arms, more underwater at his legs and ankles, one mischievous fist hanging off his shorts. Xander could barely stand for laughing, and then broad shoulders crashed into the backs of his knees and yanked him under.
Xander came up spluttering to hear "Uncle Xander!" "Drown Uncle Xander!" "Get him, Ricky!"
God knew when Rikuto the Juniorest got all adult-sized. Xander had skipped the President's Day thing, and all the kids were ten years older than they'd been at Christmas. Callie had her lip pierced - giving Kate ideas - and Aiko was dog-paddling around without swimmies.
Xander grabbed for a passing limb and found Kate's leg, hauled her in and lifted her shrieking above him. "Whatcha gonna do now, kiddo?"
"Go for his ribs!" yelled Mary from the sidelines, and Xander whipped around.
"Hey, no coaching!"
But they had him, and he was helpless, dropping Kate and swallowing water as he laughed as hard as the kids swamping him.
"Incoming!" Squeals and an enormous splash behind him, then more squeals from the sidelines.
"Uncle Rick! I hate you!" Jen sat up, cursing.
"If you're going to lie beside the pool, Jenny..."
"Mo-om!"
Xander took the distraction to sneak out of the kid-pile. He swung out of the pool and bent over to shake his hair on her.
"Daa-ad!"
"If you're gonna lie beside the pool, Jen..." He grinned at her glare and turned to reach for his towel.
Mary and Mich were grinning at him, in a scary sort of way.
"What?"
"Nice ass," Mary leered.
Xander blushed, which was kind of ridiculous. "You can't comment on my ass anymore. You signed the papers. Paragraph fourteen, sub-clause b."
"I can," Mich retorted, letting her eyes slide southwards.
"You're a lesbian. Also, I don't want Petra dragging me off to one of her secret military prisons."
"I'm not close-minded. Not around asses like that."
Xander snorted. "Doesn't the new navy make you ladies take classes on social sensitivity and the evils of sexual harassment?"
"Mich failed all of them," Petra said from the spa where she was lounging with Rick's wife, Hitomi.
"Would you all please stop traumatising me?" Jen yelled from under the arms she'd wrapped around her head.
Xander turned away. He really didn't need Mary leering at him when she was lounging back in a scrap of yellow bikini, bronze skin gleaming, silk-black hair fanned out around her face. She looked smoking.
Besides, early summer or not, it really wasn't warm enough for lying around in a damp bikini, and he could see her nipples sharp under her suit.
Rick and Hitomi's house was in New Jersey, with their four kids and the sort of yard that deer sometimes wandered through. Winter family gatherings were at Mary's parents' place in Boston, but the summer ones were at Rick's, around the pool. And if Xander was going to be honest, it was always a good time. He may have been the guy who failed to make Mary happy ever after, but everyone was always friendly. Rick genuinely liked Xander, and her sister Michiko liked everyone. To his six nieces and nephews he was Uncle Xander, same as always, and it was impossible not to have a good time with eight kids water fighting. Seven kids, anyway, while Jen tanned and preened on the side. He didn't want to know when she downsized to the micro-bikini.
It was a good time, but there always that lingering feeling that something wasn't quite right. He never examined it too closely because if he did, he remembered it was him.
He wandered over to the table for a handful of stale corn chips. This was the future he'd once imagined with Anya: domestic backyard, Buffy and Willow bringing their kids over on holidays. Dreaming of a monster-free life, kind of like being eight years old and dreaming of superpowers or about being adopted by rich parents with a private jet and their own toy store.
He'd moved to New York looking to disappear for a while. He met Mary and he was still there, missing in Manhattan. There was plenty to love in the city, but he missed the suburbs. Wished the girls knew what it was like to camp in the backyard or to know every family on the block. They were growing up city kids, and the very idea of moving would have horrified them. Especially Jen.
He made sure to wipe his feet extra-well before he went inside. Never mind that the kids had trailed half the pool in here through the afternoon, slapping in and then back out, popsicles in their fists.
Mary's mom was at the sink washing dishes, her husband Rikuto waiting behind her with a tea towel.
"I'm pretty sure there's a law against doing dishes on your sixtieth birthday, Satsuki."
She smiled politely. "I like doing the dishes; you know that."
"Is there anything I can do?"
"You're doing a fine job of keeping the children entertained."
"I tagged Rick. He has sea monster duty." Xander didn't particularly want to stick around in here, but he always felt he should be doing something to make Mary's parents think he was less of a jackass. He'd been out playing in the pool while someone - presumably them - had cleaned up all the mess from lunch.
Rikuto took another dish from the rack and started drying it, expressionless. Okay, probably offering to help when the work was already done wasn't going to earn him any points.
"I'm sorry I didn't help with-"
"Don't be silly." She smiled a little more warmly. "I've been listening to my grandchildren squeal for an hour. Why on earth would I have preferred to have you under my feet?"
The last part was scathingly honest, but so was the first, so Xander didn't mind too much. "Let me at least take care of the slip'n'slide you have going here." He grabbed the mop Hitomi kept by the fridge for exactly this and gave the floor a wipe.
He was putting the mop away when the door rattled open and more wet feet slapped in. "Dad!" "Hey Dad!" "Dad!" "Can we go in Uncle Rick's boat?" "He said we could come!" "Mom said ask you, so can we?"
"Please, Uncle Xander!" piped up on the end.
"Girls, it's-" he twisted his head to see the kitchen clock, "-almost five. Time to head home. You don't go boating at this hour."
"Tomorrow," Jen explained, way too condescendingly for someone asking a favour. "Uncle Rick said we could stay over."
"You may be on spring break, but your mom and I have to work in the morning." It was a pity - Xander would have loved a day on Rick's boat himself, and the girls never had enough time with their cousins. It was the sort of big family life Xander had always wanted himself, as a kid.
"Mich and Petra are staying over," Mary said from the doorway. "She said she could drop the girls home." She looked apologetic. "I know you're supposed to have them tonight, but-"
"No, that's... That's good." Somehow it had all been settled. "No, it's great. As long as Rick and Hitomi are-"
He was drowned under a chorus of thank yous and slippery wet hugs and just as suddenly abandoned as the girls bounded outside to crow about getting permission.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Xander put the music on low and tapped the nav control, running a mental check to be sure he was okay to drive. He was drained and dried out and still baking a little from the sunburn he could feel across his shoulders and neck, but he was awake enough. He'd sleep like the dead - or in fact better than a lot of the dead - when he got home.
He'd had a good day. He was glad the girls had family like that, weekends in the pool with their cousins, an uncle and aunts who'd invite them to stick around without Xander or Mary. It made him feel weirdly like he was doing something right even though it had nothing to do with him. It was just another thing he had to thank Mary for.
Mary had fallen asleep before they even hit the highway, head twisted against the window. Her olive skin was flushed across her forehead and nose, black hair tangled in a knot from her brief dip in the pool. She never would have headed home like this back when Xander first knew her. She would have been showered and changed, hair groomed silky and straight before she stepped foot out the door for the car.
Luckily no one had to get out to charge the car in New Jersey because she hadn't even pulled her shorts back on, just slipped on a shirt and thrown a towel between her bathing suit and the upholstery. She was going to be cold once the heat of the day wore off.
Xander had to stop looking at her legs.
That was the drawback to days like this, one of the reasons he'd dreaded coming. Because they always made him feel like family, like when he got home Jen would barely wake enough to wrap her legs around Xander's waist, and Kate would sprawl slack in Mary's arms as they rode up the elevator. They'd carry the sleeping girls to their beds, and he'd lock up the house and find Mary already under the covers, drifting, but not so deep that he couldn't wake her up for a little while longer.
The parenting and teasing and being a family had been so easy today, so exactly how it should be that he didn't understand why they weren't married anymore. Plenty of couples had problems just as big as theirs, never had days as good as this, and stayed married.
He knew it wasn't as simple as that, but he had a two hour drive and Mary's smooth thighs stretched out beside him, and he'd been weirdly horny for days, and it was hard to remember why it wasn't.
Xander shook her shoulder gently when he finally found a parking space. She writhed and blinked. "Where are we?"
"My place."
"Oh." She yawned as she reached her arms over her head for a long, cat-like stretch that tightened her damp shirt over her breasts. "Guess it's time for me to take over."
"No way. Come on. Come up and have some coffee or something before you get behind the wheel and fall asleep again."
That opened her eyes, and she grinned. "That sounds great. Let's just pretend I did the polite insistence that I don't want to intrude."
"And then we can pretend that I ignored your protests and pocketed the key." Xander waved her key and slid it into his shorts.
"Mmmkay." She slid out of the car and stretched again, closing her eyes in pleasure as her arms reached over her head, shirt lifting to show a sliver of stomach. Oblivious to the eyes that had spent almost as much of the last two hours on her legs as on the road.
He ripped his gaze away just as she let her arms drop and grabbed the towel off the seat to wrap around her waist.
Up in the apartment, Xander made coffee while she went to the bathroom. He ignored her complaints when he steered her away from the couch to a counter stool. "I'm trying to wake you up, not send you deeper."
"You tired?"
Yeah, he was tired, but still a little buzzed from paying attention to city streets. "I've got a while." He poured juice for himself and took a long drink before leaning on his elbows to face her across the counter. "Drink your coffee."
"Tell me about your friend."
"Huh?"
"While you're sleepy and easy to prod."
"Mary, I told you-"
"I'm not asking for state secrets, just..." She leaned forward, playing with her mug. "You've been different since he showed up. Happier. Sadder. Crazier. More... sure of yourself. Like you, I don't know. Went through something." A quick look up and then down again. "You don't have many friends, Xander, and never any that mattered like that."
It was all true. And Xander was wrung out from a good day, and Mary felt like his wife tonight, and there was no one else he could talk to about how much he missed him. "He's smart. Like, smarter than anyone you've ever met. I don't think... He didn't think much of me, back then - you can imagine what a dumbass I was as a kid - but he put up with me, with all of us. We were kind of... I guess him and me were family before we were friends."
When the girls went to college, Xander had tried to hang out, but they weren't really buddies even then. It was Anya who'd made them friends, he realised. Anya started working with Giles, and that shifted the whole adult-kid dynamic they'd had going before that. It wasn't like he could explain all that to Mary. "He likes old stuff. History. Like, ancient history. Name something four thousand years old, and he'll reel off everything you never wanted to know like the audiopedia. There was this one time..." He trailed off. He couldn't talk to her, either, didn't know how to dance around what he could and couldn't say. He sipped his juice.
She looked so serious. "I don't know you at all."
"You know me better than anyone else."
"Not as well as him."
Xander opened his mouth to say Giles only knew who he used to be, but that wasn't true. He understood Xander better now than ever.
"I'm sorry." She scrubbed her hair and then wrinkled her nose at the post-swim tangles. "I don't get to be jealous anymore. It's just that today was a really good day."
"Yeah."
"I love watching you with the girls. I don't get to do that so much anymore." They looked at each other for a long time.
"I'm glad you have family for them," Xander said at last. "They're good people."
She watched him, thoughtfully, and he guessed she was wondering about his. He tried to imagine Kate and Jen at a Harris family gathering, his parents' drunken fighting, Uncle Rory explaining the finer points of taxidermy. Yeah, he was happy they had Rick and Mich and a truckload of cousins.
She swigged the last of her coffee. He could hear her swallow in the quiet. "I should go."
"You're sure you're awake?"
"I'm fine." She smiled to show everything was okay between them, and he held his sigh of relief.
He tipped the rest of his juice down the sink, and she brought her cup over. He could smell her behind him. Nobody on earth smelled as good as Mary. Even with the lingering chlorine in her hair, her scent did things it shouldn't anymore. He closed his eyes and breathed, didn't jump at all when her hand settled on the small of his back. Right where Giles had touched. What was it with this kitchen?
"Should I go?" she asked softly.
He wanted to be touched so badly, it hurt. He turned and pulled her into a kiss, hungry like he'd been waiting on this for weeks, and she clutched him back just the same. Her lips were dry from the sun and soft and tasted like the same vanilla lip balm she'd always used, and inside was bitter from coffee.
This was a bad idea but they were adults, and they'd survived worse ideas than this. And no way would a man who'd already spent countless nights with Mary resist her hands slipping up under his shirt. All the way up his back, under his collar to rub the back of his neck where it made his knees weak.
Kissing felt just like how he remembered in the dusty filing cabinets in the back of his brain. Maybe he hadn't blown their first kiss up into more it was, when he was babbling in the car and she leaned across, awkward as hell but the whole world had stopped. Before he started panicking, anyway. Or the one on the night he spilled a whole batch of meatballs across the kitchen floor, and she laughed until she couldn't breathe anymore. Or that one when she told him she was pregnant for the second time (which went a lot better than the first time), and he kissed her against the wall.
God. He needed not to be doing this. He wasn't good at being divorced to start with; remembering this side of things was a bad, bad idea.
Except there wouldn't be consequences until morning, at least, and right now her towel was giving way, and he had her ass in his hands, smooth bare skin and a little scrap of suit. He lifted her, stomach and mound and thigh dragging over his cock until he settled her on the edge of the sink, her quick hands unbuttoning his shirt, pulling her own over her head while he shook his free.
God she was beautiful. Perched on his sink in a swimsuit like a men's magazine fantasy, smiling like a dare. He slid a hand up the thigh he'd been watching since New Jersey while he worked his fingers inside the cup of her top to find her nipple pointed and hard. And if he hadn't been hard already... And then her ankle slipped between his legs and pressed his cock, and he groaned.
This was going to go all the way.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
end chapter 13
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