When all else fails...

[callmesgtfury]

Who: Kaylee and Xander
When: Afternoon
Where: Kaylee's Room
What: Xander knows that Kaylee is still rather down since Owen's disappearance, and takes a day off from sex with a vampire slayer decides to go visit his best friend with a box in hand, hoping to cheer her up a bit.

Comments

[kay_lee_frye]

Kaylee had been dozing when a knock on the door made her eyes snap open. Recognizing the knock as Xander's she stretched quickly with a stifled yawn and rolled off the bed. Padding barefoot over to the door she used one hand to ineffectually smooth down her hair.

"Wei, Xander," she greeted, opening the door with a genuine smile. "What's up?"

[callmesgtfury]

"Well, if I'm not interrupting anything, I came by to steal you for the rest of the day." He said, his surprise hidden behind his back. He wanted this to be a surprise.

"So.. let your favorite neighbor in from the cold?" Well, it wasn't really cold, especially since the snow had finally gone the way of the dodo. Something for which Xander was grateful.

[kay_lee_frye]

"Nope, not interruptin' anything. Steal away," Kaylee said with a grin, holding the door open and stepping out of the way so he could pass. "But if you're comin' in, I don't really think it counts as stealin'," she pointed out.

[callmesgtfury]

"Well.. okay. I did mostly plan on staying in, so.. you're right. But either way.. okay. You're just right." He said, nodding at Kaylee as he entered her room. He figured he'd explain just what he'd had planned in a few minutes after he was able to check on his neighbor/best friend.

[kay_lee_frye]

Kaylee giggled at Xander's apparent hesitation. It could look daunting at first, but it was really very easy once you knew what you were doing.

"There are three different suits of tiles," she explained, more for the sake of education than it having any importance to their playing. "Tǒngzi, suǒzi, and wànzi, which are the circle suit, the bamboo suit, and the character suit. And they're numbered one through nine," she said, pointing out examples of each. "These," she continued removing a pair of tiles which each had one large circle on them, "are nicknamed dàbǐng, which literally translates as big pancake," she giggled.

[callmesgtfury]

Xander blinked a few times. "I'm going to hope that you don't expect me to remember the Chinese names for all of these tiles. But.. okay, I think I get it. So they have to be exactly the same? Or can I do 1 circle and one character?" He said, trying to pick up on the general rules before he went for nuances of the game.

[kay_lee_frye]

"Oh, didn't I tell you? There's goin' to be a test after," she teased. "But no, it has to be the same suit and the same number to be a match. Same with the Honor tiles which are the fēngpái, or Wind tiles and the sānyuánpái, or Dragon tiles," she continued to explain, pointing to each type of tile in turn. "The wind tiles are dōng, nán, xī, and běi, East, South, West, and North. And the Dragon tiles are hóng zhōng, qīng fā, and bái bǎn which are red, green and white."

"Then there are Flower tiles, and those are different," she paused in her explantion to make sure Xander was still with her.

[callmesgtfury]

"Erm.. okay. I think I follow." Xander said, taking another glance at the tiles. This must have been what it was like being her when he was talking about games from his childhood. So, this was all sorts of fair if you looked at it from the abstract.

[kay_lee_frye]

Kaylee looked up from the table where she was looking for her next move for when it was her move and gave Xander a long curious look.

"I wasn't going to say that you were," she finally said slowly. "You're very defensive about her." It was both a statement and a question.

[callmesgtfury]

..Okay. So Xander was a little defensive about his ...whatever it was with Faith. Which was only because of the incident with Dawn. But that was because Dawn knew the whole history between Faith and Xander, and not the watered down one he'd told Kaylee. Which, yes, he felt horrible withholding information from his best friend, but that wasn't a story he was proud of.

He pulled a pair of tiles off of the board and shrugged. "I actually figured you'd make a joke about it. I know how much you enjoy teasing me."

[kay_lee_frye]

"Normally, yeah," Kaylee admitted, still giving him an evalutative gaze. "But you're really defensive about your relationship." She knew there had to be something more to it, more than what she was aware of, but she wasn't going to push any more than she already had.

She turned her attention back to game her eyes dancing over the few piles of tiles that were left on the table. "I ain't seein' anymore matches," she said, once she had gone over every option. "I think we lost."

[callmesgtfury]

"Well, we've failed. But at least we were pretty close." He said, almost sidestepping her comment, but realizing that Kaylee was the kind of friend to not give up on that sort of thing.

"Sorry.. it's Dawn. She.. came down on me kind of hard about the whole thing for a bit. Which.. I can't blame her, but... she's from before Faith came back on our team." Okay, so that was a good answer, and even true.