Airman Harris 5
Airman Harris
Chapter Four
Rated: Adult
Pairing: Xander/Daniel (and who the hell knows where this is going)
Summary: After a quick delivery to Cheyenne Mountain puts Xander at ground zero of a whole new set of secrets, he finds that sometimes living in a new place is the best way to find yourself.
Previous chapters: One : Two : Three : Four
Chapter Five
"So, this is your home." Xander looked around at the piles of papers and leaning tower of books and dusty, old things sitting around on various shelves. The place looked like Giles' after a really long, hard night of research, only with less post-slaying slime. The lack of slime was a nice touch.
"It's a mess, I know.” Daniel grabbed a bronze horse statue off the floor where it partially blocked the door and quickly moved it over to a far corner of the small living room. Curtains were pulled back, and Xander could see a small balcony overlooking the town. It was nicer than anything Xander could afford, even here where the prices were half of what they were in California. You’d think that the Hellmouth and death rates would bring down housing prices, only not so much.
"Hey, add a couple of pizza boxes, and it'd feel like home."
Daniel grinned at him. "Next time Jack starts complaining about my housekeeping skills, I'm bringing you over for backup.”
Jack again. Xander nodded, but he was starting to notice a real pattern of their conversation circling back to Jack, which was actually less disturbing than Anya's habit of circling back to evisceration and penis shriveling, but with just as much potential for disaster. Xander wasn’t sure if he was being brave or just stupid by ignoring the little voice in the back of his head that said he was about to get his heart stomped all over. Maybe he was just lonely. And maybe he really, really liked Daniel. All were pretty possible.
"Would you like something to drink?" Daniel asked brightly. And they had officially reached the awkward stage of this evening’s date.
Xander looked around. "Do you shop more than you dust?" he asked suspiciously. "I mean, if you don't, that's okay because I've had more than one gallon of milk turn into a science experiment, but I'd just like some warning if water is the safest thing in the apartment."
That made Daniel laugh as he shrugged out of his jacket and tossed it at the couch. "Actually, I've learned to go for non-perishables. Cans of V-8 juices, frozen lemonade, that sort of stuff."
"Lemonade sounds good." Xander smiled and didn't mention what else sounded good, but now that Daniel had lost the jacket, Xander could see the definition of his shoulders so much better. It was hard to think of Daniel as a geek because he had the body of a jock. Actually, that was pretty much a perfect man-geeky head with nice wide shoulders just underneath.
"I'll make some." Daniel offered, interrupting Xander’s little obsessive stare. Daniel ducked his head in a gesture that made Xander's cock ache. Oh yeah, Daniel was cute. Seriously cute. Adorably cute. Xander could hold his own and he definitely hadn't gotten hit with the ugly stick, but he wasn't in Daniel's league. Then again, he wasn't in Faith's league or Anya's league either. For someone who was slightly on the very normal side, Xander did get some pretty hot lovers. “I’ll just go get that.” Only after Daniel had sort of scampered out of the room did it occur to Xander that he’d been pretty much doing the creeper-stare. Great.
Once Daniel disappeared into the kitchen, Xander took the time to wander the room. When he had to step over a towering mass of magazines, he groaned in pain. Oh yeah. Teal'c had totally kicked his ass. Xander stopped and examined a picture of Daniel and his military team. Jack's arm was thrown over Daniel's shoulder, and Teal'c had a near amused expression on his face and the blonde woman who had creamed Xander stood between, her bright smile beaming at the camera. They were family. Xander could see that from the easy way they all posed in front of the camera. Actually, he had pictures of Willow and him and Buffy that looked pretty much exactly the same.
"Do you like it on the strong side?" Daniel called.
Xander frowned. He knew what his father meant by strong lemonade, but he was almost sure that Daniel wasn’t the sort to offer an underage man vodka. "I don't know, is strong a metaphor for alcohol?" he just asked.
Daniel stuck his head out of the kitchen. "No, I normally add about half as much water as I'm supposed to, but last time I tried to give Sam a glass of lemonade, her lips puckered into this really unpleasant expression."
"Strong is fine. Alcohol, not so much."
"Deal," Daniel agreed as he disappeared into the kitchen. After a half second, he popped back out again. "Wait. Are you telling me you're an alcoholic or that you're too young to drink?" Daniel had a slightly horrified expression, but Xander wasn't sure which option horrified him.
"No alcoholism. Not yet, anyway. There's a long Harris family tradition of drinking too much and doing completely stupid stuff, particularly on any major holiday, that I'm trying to avoid."
Daniel's tilted his head and gave Xander an odd look. "So are you a fan of preventative measures or underage?"
Xander shrugged. "Both. I signed up about eight months out of high school and I'm a few weeks short of twenty right now."
Daniel's eyes got amusingly large. "Really? You're nineteen?" He made a face and took a step closer so he sort of wilt over an arm of one of the chairs. It was the sort of overdramatic gesture Buffy used when Giles suggested studying, but Xander had the uncomfortable feeling that Daniel really did feel strongly enough to wilt. "I just robbed the cradle,” Daniel said in a sort of stage whisper. “Jack is never letting me forget this."
"Why, how old are you?" Xander figured that Daniel couldn't be too much older. He had the sort of cute going that only younger men had, versus say Jack who had that whole distinguished and dashingly handsome older guy thing covered.
"Old enough that I'm going to refuse to answer that question on the grounds that it tends to incriminate me." Daniel sighed. "I don't know why I'm bothered. I mean, my wife was sixteen when we married, so it's not like age is a barrier, but being that we're both American with American mores for age-appropriate behavior, this is a little... disconcerting. Clearly not disconcerting enough though, because I have no intention of stopping."
Xander crossed his arms over his chest and shifted as he tried to find a way to stand that didn’t make his ass muscles ache. They’d ache worse if he sat though. "Um, the only part of that I understood out of that is that you are married and I really hope that's in the past tense because I have more than one reason to be really uncomfortable with cheating. Hugely uncomfortable. World-endingly uncomfortable." Between the Cordelia-Willow mess and all of Anya's stories, Xander had a phobia about cheating.
"She died." Daniel's voice lost all emotion, and Xander could almost taste the toejam from both of his feet being shoved in his mouth at once. Daniel's face was this brittle mask that didn't do much to hide the pain below.
"I'm so sorry," Xander offered. He was almost positive the words were pretty worthless, but he didn't know what else to do.
Daniel took a deep breath and seemed to try and center himself. "I lost her a long time ago, even if she only died last year." The words might have been casual, but Xander could feel the pain.
"Leave it to me to stick my mouth in my feet on our first date. Wait...." Xander cringed. He clearly sucked at both sympathy and the English language.
Daniel stood up and came over to stand at Xander's side. Slowly, he rested his hand on Xander’s shoulder. "You didn't stick your foot in anything. Some days I wish I could talk to someone about Sha're, but the others were involved in trying to rescue her, so trying to talk to them..." Daniel let his voice trail off.
"You don't want them to think you're blaming them," Xander guessed.
Daniel's smile was small and sad. "Yeah. I know they did their best."
"I bet they did. They're a little intense." Xander looked over at that photograph of the team.
Daniel gave a weak laugh. "They are." Again, the mood turned somber. “It didn’t save her.”
Xander thought about Faith and about how much he'd wanted to believe that he could save her--that by having sex with him she was reaching out to him for help. He knew that he could be such a joke, running to Buffy’s side with nothing more than a rock to use against a nest of vampires. He had this really strange habit of surviving, but it wasn’t because he was the hero type, but with Faith… he’d wanted to be her hero just like he’d wanted to be Buffy’s hero when she was sick in the hospital. Instead, Buffy had gotten out of her hospital bed to battle some demon who had been hunting kids-she didn’t need him at all. All of Xander’s hopes about coming to someone’s rescue had added up to a big nothing in his life.
Even after he’d signed up for the Air Force he’d stuck around to watch Adam go down, but he was only the heart in the big world-saving spell. Yep, he pushed blood to other people, but he wasn’t exactly a fighter. When Spike had been making fun of him… well, it only hurt because it was slightly and entirely true.
"Good people want to save everyone. It doesn't mean they can,” Xander said gently. He had come to terms with being a big pile of nothing, but for some people, that wasn’t so easy to accept. Then again, he doubted Daniel was quite as talented at accomplishing nothing. People in Cheyenne Mountain talked about Daniel like he walked on water. The guys in the kitchen were ready to put up an altar for him, but that have something to do with the fact that Daniel would publicly rip into Colonel O’Neill when the colonel did something like steal every plate in the kitchen to use in an impromptu shuffleboard tournament. Xander was still having trouble getting his head around a colonel that annoyed people as much as Colonel O’Neill seemed to.
For several minutes, Daniel studied him. "You're right. Sometimes we can't save people." Daniel sighed. "Are you sure you're only nineteen?"
"Pretty sure, although I wouldn't put it past my parents to lie if it meant a tax-break or something. I don’t think they’d be smart enough to do that, but I wouldn’t put it past them.”
Daniel let his head fall forward, but his hand still rested against Xander’s arm. The pain had settled down in the room, and Xander knew that people couldn’t just shrug off that kind of pain. The only time he’d ever seen Giles be really and truly stupid was after Jenny Calendar’s death.
“What was she like?” Xander asked.
Daniel’s head came up and he looked at Xander, the blue of his startled eyes focusing on Xander’s face for a second before he slowly straightened up. “She was beautiful and strong. Her father arranged the marriage, but I don’t think he every understood how much of the time she just told me what to do.” Daniel smiled fondly. “She pretended to let me be the head of the household only the reality was more about her running everything while I wasn’t looking.”
Xander laughed. “I’ve known a few women like that. Of course, most of the women I know don’t wait for you to look the other way before arranging your life for you, sometimes in violent and physically inappropriate ways. Some of the guys I did basic training with-they acted like women were too weak to keep up. That’s pretty stupid. Actually, that’s pretty suicidal because the second you turn your back on some girl because you think she’s this cute little thing, she’s going to drive a knife through it.”
“That’s funny.”
“What?”
Daniel shook his head. “Jack always tells me that I should watch out for the women more than the men. He said that the kind of women who tended to come sniffing around me were looking for some place warm to shove their knives, and my back made for a good target.” Daniel sounded almost amused by that, but Xander could feel his guts tighten. Of course, Daniel was probably joking. No way could he have a track record as bad as Xander’s. Mummy girl, Cordelia, Faith, Anya, that one night when Drusilla wanted to turn him into her little kitten… it was a damn scary list.
“You too?” Xander asked. “I thought I was the only one who seemed to attract slightly psychotically dangerous women.”
Daniel’s laugh was still a little brittle, but Xander could almost feel the pain start sliding out of the room. “Oh no. Jack insists that I put off some sort of pheromone. All the crazy women seem to make a beeline for me.”
“Okay, two pieces of advice,” Xander suggested. “One, never stand too close to me in public because if both of us put out those pheromones, our combined power of attracting psychotic women could end the world. Seriously end. I mean, I’ve had girlfriends who considered genital mutilation a pleasant hobby and polite dinner conversation, so I have my own issues, and I do not need you adding your pheromones to my issues.”
When Daniel broke out in honest laughter, Xander grinned like an idiot.
“Okay, and what the second piece?” Daniel asked.
“When a girl smiles, run. Run fast. Do not stop. Do not pass go. Do not look over your shoulder, because you know the second you do that you’re going to trip over the root that magically appears in front of your foot.”
“Magic would explain the number of times I’ve gone down,” Daniel agreed. “Okay, that’s fair. Run from women. At least Sam isn’t going to have to give you the female power speech. I hear that the first time she met Jack she oh-so-politely called him a sexist for assuming she couldn’t handle her own.”
“Is that Sam?” Xander looked at the picture.
“Yep. Major Samantha Carter, do not slip up and call her doctor, even if she is one.”
“Like a real doctor or the fake doctoring stuff like you do?” Xander asked as he looked at the smiling woman in the picture. That had not been the expression she’d had on her face when she introduced Xander’s face to the floor. However, Daniel wasn’t answering. Xander looked over. “What?”
“Fake doctoring?” Daniel crossed his arms.
“It’s not like you actually fix broken bones,” Xander pointed out.
Daniel gave an explosive sort of snort-sigh noise that really didn’t sound healthy. “You think I’m a fake doctor?”
Xander mentally ran that thought the verbal double check machine. “Not fake like you aren’t doing something real because you’re really good at this whole thing. People are ready to join the cult of Daniel, but you aren't a real doctor with the actual doctoring.”
Daniel blinked fast and gave Xander a very unhappy look. “I have doctorates in anthropology, archeology, and linguistics.”
“Okay.” Xander drew the word out because as much as he thought they were fighting, he wasn’t sure over what. Daniel did another of those fast-blink things, this time followed by a narrowing of the eyes.
“Doctor means you’ve studied a subject until you are one of the top experts and that you have helped to add more knowledge to the field. Not only did I study linguistics for years, but I published a well-done study of conservative Sa’idi Arabic and the genitive exponents as they related to the translation of religious texts.”
Xander definitely didn’t catch more than four words in that whole thing, and three of those were ‘the’. However, that definitely sounded like something that would impress the British out of Giles. “Wow. That’s really something.”
“Which is why they awarded me the doctorate,” Daniel pointed out. “Doctor means that you earned a degree that means you are one of the best.”
“Wait. I thought doctor meant that you could fix people who fell out of trees while trying to catch a butterfly for their best friend.”
Daniel shook his head. “No. That’s just a medical doctor-they have degrees that mean they’re the best at medicine. Trust me, my degree in archeology or Sam’s degree in physics are just as important as any medical doctorate.”
It finally clicked with Xander why Daniel was all pissed. “I really didn’t mean to say it wasn’t important-all the work you do, I mean. I’m pretty much just famous for saying whatever comes into my mind, which is a problem because my mind is not always appropriate.”
“It’s fine.” Daniel offered him a smile that actually looked genuine. “At least you listen to why I’m upset. I can’t tell you how frustrating it is when one of your best friends in the world keeps telling you over and over that your most deeply held beliefs are nothing but stupid fairytales.” From Daniel’s tone, he was not speaking in hypotheticals.
“Colonel O’Neill?” Xander guessed.
“Oh yeah.” Daniel looked at the picture on the mantle. “And Sam’s not much better. I mean, she tries to be, but when it comes down to it, she always thinks that the answer is in a piece of technology. She’s very much focused on physics.”
“And ass kicking,” Xander added as he rubbed his hip. Between the thumping Major Carter handed out and Teal’c’s extra tutoring, Xander was feeling more than a little sore.
“Ass kicking?” Daniel took a step forward and stared intently at Xander’s hip, which was a little awkward given that Xander’s half-hard cock was starting to poke its head up.
Xander rubbed the hip and tried to angle his body to avoid embarrassing himself. “The major was my sparring partner, not that I knew she was a major. Trust me, I would not have punched her in the nose if I’d known that. You know, most commands pretty much frown on the punching of officers.”
“You punched Sam?” The tone was enough to set off alarms in Xander’s head.
“Are you sounding shocked that I got a hit in or is that a sort of warning that the punching of Major Carter is likely to lead to unpleasant and potentially permanent side effects?”
“Um… Maybe a little of both. No offense, but Sam is a little vicious on the sparring mats.”
“Oh yeah. More than a little. What is it with little short blondes and their ability to kick major ass?” Xander asked as he gently rubbed his hip.
“Bad?” Daniel asked.
“It hurts. It didn’t help that Teal’c brought the staff down on this leg when we were working out after the official working out.”
“He…” Daniel frowned. “Teal’c gave you one-on-one training?”
“I asked him to. If I’m going up against something terrifying, I’d prefer to know the general shape and size of the terror before I have to make any spur of the moment decisions.” Xander figured that he’d never have to fight off a Jaffa army alone, but given the number of times his assumptions had gone up in smoke, he was preparing for it anyway. After all, he never expected to need his soldier memories so he could wire up his school with C-4, and look how handy that skill turned out to be.
“You must have really impressed Teal’c. He does not waste his time training just anyone.”
Xander snorted. “Clearly he does because he spent two hours training the base’s junior dishwasher.”
“Junior translator.”
“Junior dishwasher who doubles as the linguist when the other linguists are really desperate for help,” Xander compromised. It was actually creeping him out a little the way Daniel kept acting like Xander was geeky. Nerdy, yes. Xander was all about the nerdish love. But geeky implied smart, and Xander was not smart. Nope. Not even in the same ballpark with smart. He couldn’t even find the right street to get to the ballpark.
“You need therapy. Now let me see the leg. Sometimes I think Teal’c forgets that the rest of us don’t have a symbiote to help us heal.”
“And can I just vote for never getting one?” Xander said as he pushed Daniel’s hands away and started unbuckling his own belt. Mutual undressing was good, but this wasn’t sexy time and he had a big phobia about zippers, penises, and other people not being careful enough. “I don’t care how fast I would heal, having one of those things in my stomach would mean that no amount of therapy would ever make me okay again. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men would not put Xander’s psyche back together again.”
“I agree with you.” Pain flashed across Daniel’s face again, and Xander cringed at his own ability to stick feet in mouth.
Xander unfastening his pants and lowered the edge enough to show his left hip. A colorful map of bruising had started to form, and Xander could swear he saw the impression of the edging stripe running sideways across his hip. Major Carter had really slammed him down on that thing.
Daniel whistled and tugged on the pants to see the rest of the leg, which was equally colorful, but not nearly as nasty looking. Teal’c had gotten in a couple of good hits right above the knee before announcing that a real Jaffa would have taken out the knee and disabled Xander. That was oddly fair because Xander planned to kill and disable any and all evil Jaffa he met.
“You should have Janet look at that,” Daniel suggested.
“Is she one of the psychotic women we’re avoiding?” Xander teased back. He might not know a Janet, but he knew bruising when he saw it. The colors would fade… eventually… and after they’d turned a really alarming shade of green that would make it look like his leg was rotting off.
Daniel almost choked on a laugh. “I dare you to say that in front of her.”
“So, I’m thinking that means yes.”
“Jack would say yes.” Daniel moved and poked a nasty bit of black bruise near the back of Xander’s knee. “Personally, I think she’s a wonderfully warm and caring woman as long as you don’t randomly poke her by refusing to take her medical advice.”
“Okay, but we’ve already established that you have really shitty luck with women. Should I even be listening to you and your judgment of women?”
Daniel laughed again. This time the sides of his eyes crinkled up, and Xander felt inordinately proud of that. “Probably not,” he admitted, “but if you tell her I said that, I am denying it and leaving you to suffer on your own.”
“Warning taken. However, why would I flash her? If you’re trying to get me murdered, you might want to do the job yourself rather than dragging other people into the plot. In case you never watch those true crime things on television, dragging other people into the murder plot never ends well. It’s always best to kill and dispose of your own bodies. Although having help with the bodies is helpful.” And Xander really wished he was joking, but when the demons didn’t turn into nice, neat piles of dust or die in conveniently remote corners of town, Xander was on the frontlines of the body disposal end of slaying. Having help was nice, but trusting someone enough to let them help you with a body… not easy.
Daniel finally gave up on his search for more bruises and shook his head fondly. “You make me laugh.”
“As long as you’re laughing with me and not at me, that’s good. Wait.” Xander made a show of looking around. “I’m not laughing.” The joke would have worked better if Xander kept a straight face, but he couldn’t. Daniel’s grin was like a bad cold-spreading onto everything it touched.
“Before you, I thought Jack was a meshuganah. I think he just lost his crown. However, to answer your question, Dr. Janet Fraiser is the base doctor.”
“A real doctor this time?” That earned him an eyeroll.
“Yes, a real doctor. You should have her look at that.”
Xander looked down and poked the edges of the bruise. Oddly, Daniel was the one to cringe. “It’s just a bruise. I’ve had worse.”
“It’s black.”
“Bruises are supposed to be black.”
“No. No, they aren’t. I’ve seen blue bruises and purple bruises and green bruises, but black bruises usually include serious damage.”
Xander rolled his eyes. “Bruises are just bruises. I worry more when I don’t see the bruise. The kind of bruise that leaves the skin looking okay, but then it makes your whole leg swells up like a watermelon and any sort of pressure leaves you throwing punches at your best friend just to try and stop the pain… yeah, that’s the bruise I worry about.” The very memory was enough to make Xander ill. That had been one of the post-Angelus injuries, and really, he had good reason to hate vampires. The girls always acted like he was being a vampire racist or something, but he had reliable evidence that vampires equaled bad.
Daniel turned serious. “Xander, that’s the sort of internal damage that can kill you.”
“It was a bruise. And hey, that bruise was way worse than this bruise, and it healed fine.”
Daniel blinked at him owlishly for a moment, and Xander had the impression that Daniel was having to search for words. Considering how many words the man knew, that was a little surprising. “I will be warning Janet that you don’t spend a lot of time taking care of yourself. I may also warn her that from the sounds of it, you’re either clumsier than me, which is saying a lot, or you regularly throw yourself off cliffs.”
“What?”
Daniel’s frown deepened. “Xander, you’re describing serious bruising... life-threatening bruising. When you have that sort of injury, the swelling can actually block blood flow and cause gangrene. Someone should have taken you to the hospital if you had that kind of injury, and you’re acting like it happened all the time.”
Xander looked down at his own leg. “It’s bruising. Bruising, by definition, is not serious.” He said it, but Xander suddenly wasn’t so sure.
“I hope you still love me after I rat you out to Janet.” Whoa. That was an odd way for the “love” word to fall into the conversation The second the words were out of his mouth, Daniel froze. Xander waited for the denial and the verbal flailing, but Daniel left the words flapping out in the wind.
“I hope you still love me after I put Nair in your shampoo for ratting me out,” Xander finally warned in return.
Daniel’s smile returned, even if it was a little shaky. “Don’t worry. I deal with Jack. I can take care of myself when it comes to sophomoric, puerile jokes.”
Xander made a mental note to buy a dictionary.
“So, just how bruised are you?”
Xander stepped back and considered Daniel suspiciously. “Are you trying to invent reasons to get me out of my clothes?”
“Maybe. Maybe I just want to make sure you aren’t about to drop dead.”
“Oh, I’m not,” Xander promised. “If I prove that, do you think we might find something else to do for the night?”
Daniel blushed all the way to the tips of his ears. Clearing his throat he offered a quick, “I think so.” Then he flashed Xander a smile that had Xander scrambling to get out of his shirt.