Fic: Two men (and their dog) in a boat 9/??
Disclaimers in Part One
Part Nine
Cold water closed over him, his body sliding into the depths with breath expelling suddenness. He let it go, twisting round and down with as much speed as he could, his hands groping for contact in the murk. His feet hit stone - which hurt - but he dismissed the pain and focused on feeling his way instead. It was dark in the bottom of the lock, the light obscured by the shape of boat hulls and the shadows of the gates. For a heart stopping second he thought he wasn’t going to find what he was looking for - and then his fingers tangled in cloth, and he was pushing up, pulling the boy’s body into his arms, thrusting him towards the siren patch of light above them both.
He broke the surface with a gasp, clinging onto his burden with determination - which wasn’t easy, since Michael was squirming with panic, kicking out and pushing away. He was fighting hard enough to inflict bruises, but Xander ignored the blows in favour of getting them away from the Knight’s hull, which was more than capable of reducing the both of them to Xander and Michael jam if they managed to get caught between it and the side of the lock. A few kicks, and they emerged into the semi-open water in front of the Knight’s nose - and Giles was there, reaching over the side to help lift the boy out his arms and up into the well of their boat.
It was the most welcome sight in the entire world.
“Xander. Oh, thank god. Thank god. Are you all right? Can you climb up here?”
He thought about it as Giles handed Michael into the arms of his eldest brother and reached back for him. The curve of the hull arched over his head, and he thought about the consequences of putting all his weight on those outstretched arms. He had plans for those arms later, not to mention the rest of the man attached to them - and now he had time to look, he could see that both lock gates were halfway open, offering a more dignified route to shore. He caught the hand that was held out to him and gave it a reassuring squeeze. “Don’t put your back out,” he said half in jest, treading water and beginning to realise - now that the immediate crisis was over - that the most serious threat hadn’t been drowning, but the danger of being crushed by the gate. Or the boat. Or both …
No wonder Giles was looking quite so shaken. The look in his eyes spoke volumes. Anxiety. Concern. Relief. Exasperation. A little pride. And a whole lot of love. “I can swim from here. Meet you on the towpath?”
The fingers wrapped around his didn’t let go. “You sure?”
Xander smiled. “Sure I’m sure. Ex-swim team. Part fish, remember? Only not, because they did all that rebalancing stuff at the hospital … Go take care of Nancy and the guys. They’re going need an in-charge guy - and you’re pretty good at that. See to Michael, get the boats outta the lock, and make sure everyone’s okay. But keep that dear lord hug to hand, willya? I’m gonna need it later.”
The smiled was involuntary, a wry and affectionate twist of lips that republished the entire eye story and added a coda of promise to it. “I’ll bear that in mind.” A gentle squeeze, and the hand that held him let go. Unlike the heart of the man it belonged too, which was still kind of out there on his sleeve. Xander threw him a smile of his own and struck out for dry land, twisting through the gap between the gates like a dolphin.
Guess I scared him a little …
Fighting vampires and demons was one thing - it was what they did, and the dangers that went with it were an unwritten, unspoken, part of their lives. Risking yourself to save strangers - that was given too, at least when that risk was teeth and claws, arcane forces or sheer unadulterated evil in one of its many unpleasant forms. But leaping feet first into the unknown, to save a clumsy child from drowning ? As far as Xander was concerned that was more or less a given, too, although - now he stopped to think about it - jumping in from that height had been pretty stupid, especially as the lock was discharging, not filling up. He could have hit shallow water and broken both legs. Of course, he could also have been crushed between the boats, or smeared between one and the wall, or even drowned trying to find a place to surface with two bloody big boats in the way …
He dragged himself up onto the tow path and lay there for a minute, shaking as he finished channelling his inner Giles and empathised with the fright he’d just subjected his lover to. He was still shaking inwardly when Hallie turned up with a huge beach towel and wrapped it round his shoulders. It wasn’t that he’d risked his life - he did that on regular occasions. It was that this was supposed to be their vacation, and if Giles ever, ever did anything as bold and stupid and heroic as that with him watching and unable to do anything about it … well, once he’d got him back, he’d grab on and never, ever let go again.
Much like Nancy was doing with Michael, right there and then, he guessed. He watched as Amber brought the Belle out of the lock and in to moor at the towpath. There wasn’t much of a gap in the pound between the tenth and eleventh lock, so Giles had to bring the Knight in alongside the Belle and rope her there. Ben had run down past the next lock and onto the bridge into Hatton, using his phone to call for emergency help, and Simon was left to close up the lock gates and check everything was left as it should be. A task Giles had given him to stop him from going into meltdown, Xander suspected. Keeping people busy meant they didn’t have time to come up with worst case scenarios - which was a good thing, because the worst hadn’t happened, and there’d be no benefit in worrying about might-have-beens.
Gemma jumped down to join him, bringing another towel and a mobile phone, which she thrust in his direction. “Mr Giles said you’d need to call someone?” she said anxiously - then gave up trying to be polite and threw her arms round him instead. “Thank you. Thank you. That was - that was awesome.”
“That was actually pretty stupid,” he said, knowing Giles was probably going to tell him that in a moment or two. “But - I’m glad it worked out okay.” He paused, realising that he didn’t know if it had or not. “It did, didn’t it?”
“Yeah.” She stepped away from the hug and smiled, trying to pretend she hadn’t been shaken by what had happened. “Yeah, I think so, Michael’s okay, but - Nancy wants him checked out though.. Just in case. You too, I guess.”
He didn’t think he needed checking out, but he wasn’t about to argue about it. “Can’t argue with a Mom in full Momma bear mode,” he said wryly. The phone was Giles’ - with Willow’s number on prominent display. “Or with Giles when he’s busy being right, either.”
His thumb hit dial, and he brought the phone to his ear, bracing himself as he did so.
“Your Mr Giles,” Gemma said with admiration, glancing in the relevant direction. “He’s pretty awesome too. I’ve never seen a guy move that fast.”
“I have,” Xander grinned. “Hey, Will. Yeah, it’s me. Stand down on the cavalry, will ya? We’re okay. Yeah, both of us. Well - I got a little wet, and, I guess Giles panicked, but he had reason. No, not that kind of reason. Just me doing something stupid … yeah, a kid tried to drown himself, so I jumped in after him. Yeah. That kinda stupid. I’m fine. Really. The kid too, we think, but we’ve an ambulance coming just in case. Yeah, yeah, I’ll get on the ambulance too. No, you don’t need to pop over. Giles will take care of me … yeah. Yeah, sure. Now reset the red lights and we’ll call when we get home. You got it. Give my love to Ken. Yes, I mean that. No, I won’t forget. Luv ya. Yeah. Bye.”
He hit the end call button and smiled at Gemma’s puzzled expression. “My best friend,” he explained. “She worries. About me. About Giles too, but he wouldn’t have set her alarms ringing. She’s - um - psychic.” It was a little bit of a lame excuse, but he wasn’t about to try and explain the witchy version of a med-alert bracelet, especially as it didn’t look as if he were wearing one. The enchantment was in his glass eye - and if that had gone off, he’d been a lot closer to getting himself killed than he’d thought.
It also meant he owed Giles a lot more than a reassuring hug …
“Really? Cool. Hey, Ben’s back.”
He was. He was also accompanied by a slightly built but very efficient looking female paramedic, who eyed Xander up and down for a moment, said “stay there, my partner’s on his way” and promptly disappeared into the Belle.
Things seemed to happen in a disconcerting rush after that. There was time - just - for a brief hug from Giles, who gave him a hard, Ripperish, stare before visibly relaxing and stepping back to let the paramedic’s partner take charge of him. There was a blanket to replace his towel, Jim handing him his sneakers and a replacement t-shirt, and a mostly overheard conversation between Nancy and Giles with him telling her to just go and let him worry about the boats, and yes, he thought Xander would be fine, and he’d take care of her and Michael, and could she just make sure she brought him and Xander back in one piece, and soon - and he caught the grateful kiss Nancy planted on his partner before the three of them - plus Gemma, who’d been nominated for Mum watch - were whisked away on a short ride to the nearest A&E.
Where he spent three hours waiting for someone to see him, drank some very suspect hospital coffee, and finally had to endure a thorough examination from a very young doctor, who eventually pronounced him abominably fit and healthy, despite a few blossoming bruises. He had to wait for a nurse to find him some sterile water so he could pop out his glass eye and let the doctor check that it and the socket it fit into were both clean and hadn’t suffered any harm from being immersed in canal water; the doctor obviously thought that that was the most interesting part of the examination, but he seemed to believe the usual cover story about losing the real one, and saved his admiration for the quality of the replacement’s workmanship. Xander did tell him it was made of crystal and quartz, not glass, and the inset iris was tiger’s eye and onyx, but he left out the part about who’d made it, since he didn’t want to give the impression he’d managed to get a concussion to go with his bruises. He actually thought it was rather cool that Giles had contacts in the magical jewellery business, but he’d long since realised that my partner called in a favour from a sorcerer he knows really wasn’t the way to go when taking to the average man - or doctor - on the street. He exited with suitable small talk and emerged back into the general hospital bustle to find Gemma and Michael waiting for him, she with a wide grin on her face and the boy looking very subdued and apologetic. Nancy had gone to call a taxi; half an hour later they were on their way back to the Canal Centre, where, Gemma assured him, the boys had moored the boats after bringing them the rest of the way down the flight.
He was anxious to get back, since - although he thoroughly understood Giles waving him off and staying behind to be Mr Responsible guy, and he hadn’t needed him to be there - the fact that he’d been whisked off to hospital without him had been preying on his mind. He thought it might have been bothering Giles even more; the man had had a lot of practice sending people out while he stayed behind to worry about their fate, and while intellectually he would have had the assurance that everything was fine, neither of them had had the time to settle all that adrenaline and emotional trauma into something they both could live with.
For all the grateful thanks you from Nancy, and the apologies from Michael, and the admiring looks from Gemma, the thing foremost in his mind was that he could have got himself killed, and Giles would probably have spent the rest of his life blaming himself for it …
Continued in Part Ten
Part Nine
Cold water closed over him, his body sliding into the depths with breath expelling suddenness. He let it go, twisting round and down with as much speed as he could, his hands groping for contact in the murk. His feet hit stone - which hurt - but he dismissed the pain and focused on feeling his way instead. It was dark in the bottom of the lock, the light obscured by the shape of boat hulls and the shadows of the gates. For a heart stopping second he thought he wasn’t going to find what he was looking for - and then his fingers tangled in cloth, and he was pushing up, pulling the boy’s body into his arms, thrusting him towards the siren patch of light above them both.
He broke the surface with a gasp, clinging onto his burden with determination - which wasn’t easy, since Michael was squirming with panic, kicking out and pushing away. He was fighting hard enough to inflict bruises, but Xander ignored the blows in favour of getting them away from the Knight’s hull, which was more than capable of reducing the both of them to Xander and Michael jam if they managed to get caught between it and the side of the lock. A few kicks, and they emerged into the semi-open water in front of the Knight’s nose - and Giles was there, reaching over the side to help lift the boy out his arms and up into the well of their boat.
It was the most welcome sight in the entire world.
“Xander. Oh, thank god. Thank god. Are you all right? Can you climb up here?”
He thought about it as Giles handed Michael into the arms of his eldest brother and reached back for him. The curve of the hull arched over his head, and he thought about the consequences of putting all his weight on those outstretched arms. He had plans for those arms later, not to mention the rest of the man attached to them - and now he had time to look, he could see that both lock gates were halfway open, offering a more dignified route to shore. He caught the hand that was held out to him and gave it a reassuring squeeze. “Don’t put your back out,” he said half in jest, treading water and beginning to realise - now that the immediate crisis was over - that the most serious threat hadn’t been drowning, but the danger of being crushed by the gate. Or the boat. Or both …
No wonder Giles was looking quite so shaken. The look in his eyes spoke volumes. Anxiety. Concern. Relief. Exasperation. A little pride. And a whole lot of love. “I can swim from here. Meet you on the towpath?”
The fingers wrapped around his didn’t let go. “You sure?”
Xander smiled. “Sure I’m sure. Ex-swim team. Part fish, remember? Only not, because they did all that rebalancing stuff at the hospital … Go take care of Nancy and the guys. They’re going need an in-charge guy - and you’re pretty good at that. See to Michael, get the boats outta the lock, and make sure everyone’s okay. But keep that dear lord hug to hand, willya? I’m gonna need it later.”
The smiled was involuntary, a wry and affectionate twist of lips that republished the entire eye story and added a coda of promise to it. “I’ll bear that in mind.” A gentle squeeze, and the hand that held him let go. Unlike the heart of the man it belonged too, which was still kind of out there on his sleeve. Xander threw him a smile of his own and struck out for dry land, twisting through the gap between the gates like a dolphin.
Guess I scared him a little …
Fighting vampires and demons was one thing - it was what they did, and the dangers that went with it were an unwritten, unspoken, part of their lives. Risking yourself to save strangers - that was given too, at least when that risk was teeth and claws, arcane forces or sheer unadulterated evil in one of its many unpleasant forms. But leaping feet first into the unknown, to save a clumsy child from drowning ? As far as Xander was concerned that was more or less a given, too, although - now he stopped to think about it - jumping in from that height had been pretty stupid, especially as the lock was discharging, not filling up. He could have hit shallow water and broken both legs. Of course, he could also have been crushed between the boats, or smeared between one and the wall, or even drowned trying to find a place to surface with two bloody big boats in the way …
He dragged himself up onto the tow path and lay there for a minute, shaking as he finished channelling his inner Giles and empathised with the fright he’d just subjected his lover to. He was still shaking inwardly when Hallie turned up with a huge beach towel and wrapped it round his shoulders. It wasn’t that he’d risked his life - he did that on regular occasions. It was that this was supposed to be their vacation, and if Giles ever, ever did anything as bold and stupid and heroic as that with him watching and unable to do anything about it … well, once he’d got him back, he’d grab on and never, ever let go again.
Much like Nancy was doing with Michael, right there and then, he guessed. He watched as Amber brought the Belle out of the lock and in to moor at the towpath. There wasn’t much of a gap in the pound between the tenth and eleventh lock, so Giles had to bring the Knight in alongside the Belle and rope her there. Ben had run down past the next lock and onto the bridge into Hatton, using his phone to call for emergency help, and Simon was left to close up the lock gates and check everything was left as it should be. A task Giles had given him to stop him from going into meltdown, Xander suspected. Keeping people busy meant they didn’t have time to come up with worst case scenarios - which was a good thing, because the worst hadn’t happened, and there’d be no benefit in worrying about might-have-beens.
Gemma jumped down to join him, bringing another towel and a mobile phone, which she thrust in his direction. “Mr Giles said you’d need to call someone?” she said anxiously - then gave up trying to be polite and threw her arms round him instead. “Thank you. Thank you. That was - that was awesome.”
“That was actually pretty stupid,” he said, knowing Giles was probably going to tell him that in a moment or two. “But - I’m glad it worked out okay.” He paused, realising that he didn’t know if it had or not. “It did, didn’t it?”
“Yeah.” She stepped away from the hug and smiled, trying to pretend she hadn’t been shaken by what had happened. “Yeah, I think so, Michael’s okay, but - Nancy wants him checked out though.. Just in case. You too, I guess.”
He didn’t think he needed checking out, but he wasn’t about to argue about it. “Can’t argue with a Mom in full Momma bear mode,” he said wryly. The phone was Giles’ - with Willow’s number on prominent display. “Or with Giles when he’s busy being right, either.”
His thumb hit dial, and he brought the phone to his ear, bracing himself as he did so.
“Your Mr Giles,” Gemma said with admiration, glancing in the relevant direction. “He’s pretty awesome too. I’ve never seen a guy move that fast.”
“I have,” Xander grinned. “Hey, Will. Yeah, it’s me. Stand down on the cavalry, will ya? We’re okay. Yeah, both of us. Well - I got a little wet, and, I guess Giles panicked, but he had reason. No, not that kind of reason. Just me doing something stupid … yeah, a kid tried to drown himself, so I jumped in after him. Yeah. That kinda stupid. I’m fine. Really. The kid too, we think, but we’ve an ambulance coming just in case. Yeah, yeah, I’ll get on the ambulance too. No, you don’t need to pop over. Giles will take care of me … yeah. Yeah, sure. Now reset the red lights and we’ll call when we get home. You got it. Give my love to Ken. Yes, I mean that. No, I won’t forget. Luv ya. Yeah. Bye.”
He hit the end call button and smiled at Gemma’s puzzled expression. “My best friend,” he explained. “She worries. About me. About Giles too, but he wouldn’t have set her alarms ringing. She’s - um - psychic.” It was a little bit of a lame excuse, but he wasn’t about to try and explain the witchy version of a med-alert bracelet, especially as it didn’t look as if he were wearing one. The enchantment was in his glass eye - and if that had gone off, he’d been a lot closer to getting himself killed than he’d thought.
It also meant he owed Giles a lot more than a reassuring hug …
“Really? Cool. Hey, Ben’s back.”
He was. He was also accompanied by a slightly built but very efficient looking female paramedic, who eyed Xander up and down for a moment, said “stay there, my partner’s on his way” and promptly disappeared into the Belle.
Things seemed to happen in a disconcerting rush after that. There was time - just - for a brief hug from Giles, who gave him a hard, Ripperish, stare before visibly relaxing and stepping back to let the paramedic’s partner take charge of him. There was a blanket to replace his towel, Jim handing him his sneakers and a replacement t-shirt, and a mostly overheard conversation between Nancy and Giles with him telling her to just go and let him worry about the boats, and yes, he thought Xander would be fine, and he’d take care of her and Michael, and could she just make sure she brought him and Xander back in one piece, and soon - and he caught the grateful kiss Nancy planted on his partner before the three of them - plus Gemma, who’d been nominated for Mum watch - were whisked away on a short ride to the nearest A&E.
Where he spent three hours waiting for someone to see him, drank some very suspect hospital coffee, and finally had to endure a thorough examination from a very young doctor, who eventually pronounced him abominably fit and healthy, despite a few blossoming bruises. He had to wait for a nurse to find him some sterile water so he could pop out his glass eye and let the doctor check that it and the socket it fit into were both clean and hadn’t suffered any harm from being immersed in canal water; the doctor obviously thought that that was the most interesting part of the examination, but he seemed to believe the usual cover story about losing the real one, and saved his admiration for the quality of the replacement’s workmanship. Xander did tell him it was made of crystal and quartz, not glass, and the inset iris was tiger’s eye and onyx, but he left out the part about who’d made it, since he didn’t want to give the impression he’d managed to get a concussion to go with his bruises. He actually thought it was rather cool that Giles had contacts in the magical jewellery business, but he’d long since realised that my partner called in a favour from a sorcerer he knows really wasn’t the way to go when taking to the average man - or doctor - on the street. He exited with suitable small talk and emerged back into the general hospital bustle to find Gemma and Michael waiting for him, she with a wide grin on her face and the boy looking very subdued and apologetic. Nancy had gone to call a taxi; half an hour later they were on their way back to the Canal Centre, where, Gemma assured him, the boys had moored the boats after bringing them the rest of the way down the flight.
He was anxious to get back, since - although he thoroughly understood Giles waving him off and staying behind to be Mr Responsible guy, and he hadn’t needed him to be there - the fact that he’d been whisked off to hospital without him had been preying on his mind. He thought it might have been bothering Giles even more; the man had had a lot of practice sending people out while he stayed behind to worry about their fate, and while intellectually he would have had the assurance that everything was fine, neither of them had had the time to settle all that adrenaline and emotional trauma into something they both could live with.
For all the grateful thanks you from Nancy, and the apologies from Michael, and the admiring looks from Gemma, the thing foremost in his mind was that he could have got himself killed, and Giles would probably have spent the rest of his life blaming himself for it …
Continued in Part Ten