Fic: Alt End (Giles/Xander) for Valentine's Day Fluffython
Title: Alt End
Author: lillianmorgan
Setting: either post-Chosen or post-NFA, not sure ;)
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Giles/Xander
Disclaimer: I don’t own Joss’ and ME’s toys.
A/N: Thanks always and overflowingly to yourlibrarian for the beta, including the re-write clean-up of the end ;)
Written for rayne_y_daze who requested Giles/Xander as part of inlovewithnight’s Fluffython for Valentine’s Day. (I’m sorry I didn’t do your first request - that felt a bit like coals to Newcastle!) As far as I could make out the only requirement was no character bashing, so I hope you enjoy this!
Alt End
Giles rotated his pint of beer in the way that one does when one is waiting upon someone, and trying desperately to look like one is not anxious or nervous or actually waiting. In the old days, of course, he would have snapped open a pack of cigarettes and retrieved one with the insouciance of a rocker or a beat poet or whoever was most modish at the time. In the old days, of course, before he deemed it unnecessary to append that rather dirty habit to his personal appearance. England had changed around him as well, for soon he probably would no longer be allowed to smoke in a pub at all.
As an aside, that was long and perambulatory, and yes, very well, he was waiting. And hoping.
It had been a significant amount of time, as well, since he had given himself a moment to pause and reflect. Times they were a-certainly-changin’. He took a slurp from his beer, but not too much, for he rather needed all his faculties about him, even if his nerves were, damnably, all a-flutter.
The Slayers’ Council was operating with full flourishing finesse, especially if he had anything to do with it. Despite the fact that it felt like he hadn’t taken a moment’s rest to stop or grieve or contemplate life after Sunnydale, but had rather flung himself full throttle into finding, recovering, rehabilitating and, unfortunately, remunerating all the girls that were flooding out of the woodwork. Buffy, his own charge, had settled herself in Rome. He rather appreciated this close, yet distant, relationship that was forming between them. Email, phone calls, an aeroplane flight or two. Close enough to feel the connection, distant enough to stop the meddling. If changes were implementing themselves of their own accord, he wanted to feel liberated enough to let them.
Thoughts on Buffy led inevitably to Dawn and to her rather florid email about Angel and Spike’s whereabouts and what exactly ‘they’ - in their capacity as Bearers of the White Hats - were doing about it. It was within the conceivable boundaries of his awareness that Dawn and Willow were in cahoots - especially given their timing of one’s email and the other’s phone call, masquerading as Willow’s weekly catch-up.
He wondered why they all seemed to think that he was born yesterday and completely woolly headed on the whole topic. Really, wearing glasses did not make him blind.
He sighed and took another sip from his beer, and stared around the pub. He was damned if he was going to lower his standards and set foot in a Weatherspoon’s, give him old and vintage any day. Particularly if the clientele reflected that tradition too.
Tonight of all nights, on the day devoted to the patron saint of notes and feelings and declarations of devotion, the last thing he needed was chavs and chavettes spilling out all over the bar and all over their clothes and all over each other and …
Oh.
“Hey Giles.”
“Hello. Do sit down. Would you like me to get you a drink?”
“Nah. I’ll just dump my bags. And order from the bar. You good?”
“What? Oh yes, another… Yes, please. Do you need some money?”
“Nah.” And he smiled and winked back at Giles.
Giles watched as the man he had always thought of as a boy turned away from him, ambled toward the bar and leaned against it with all the ease of youth. Xander had met Africa, and taking in the tanned and tranquil way he held himself, it had treated him well. So had all these weekly jaunts about the country chasing leads, mystical energies and anomalies in the universe. His position within the Council as the bloke-that-goes-forth seemed assured.
“So Giles, I’ve been thinking about it,” Xander said, as he placed the two pints in front of them, slopping the froth slightly over the lips of the glasses, and stepping over the chair to sit in it, “and I kinda feel I need a break. Uh, you know. From Council work.”
Giles blinked and then reached for his glasses. Stopped his hand and altered its direction for his beer. Taking a healthy sip, he inclined his head and murmured, “Go on.”
“Well … it’s just …” Xander floundered in the way that only he could. He looked at Giles for reassurance, but Giles felt rather not like giving that, when the carpet had been pulled so overwhelmingly from underneath him.
Xander drummed his fingers on the table. “OK. Here’s the sitch. Or like, let me begin from a point in time that is not here. Right.” He nodded his head as if the affirmation steeled his purpose.
“So, we’ve had this, uh, date,” Xander flicked his gaze from the table top to Giles in a fleeting second, “that for these festive holidays when everyone is making with the merry, you and I meet and prop each other up. Take care of each other. Because we’ve loved and lost and that sucks.” His fingers stopped drumming and passed mesmerisingly over Giles’ own. “And that’s great and fun and okely-dokely in a kind of fly-by-night fashion but there comes a time in a man’s life when he realises that the guy sitting opposite him is not really about the propping but more about the prodding. Or, ok, the lack thereof.”
“I do believe at one point in time you took English classes. I’d rather enjoy it if you cast your mind back to those, to make yourself slightly more coherent.” Giles narrowed his eyes as if to will Xander into it.
“Uh, yeah. Whatever.” Xander leaned forward and sipped at his beer from the table. “Ok so, yeah, Council business is great and I really enjoy it. But the problem is, and there’s no easy way of getting around it, you’re my boss.”
“Well,” Giles coughed, “there is that.”
“And it’s kinda hard to take orders from you Giles -”
“I’m sorry if it’s been an imposition - ”
“When I was kinda hoping there might be, like, more in the way of other kinds of orders. Of the non-council type. Of the, like, hearts and flowers and sealed with a kiss type.” Xander blushed a beet red, and took a very large sip from his glass.
“Xander…” Giles began but didn’t quite know how to finish.
“I mean,” Xander continued, “I don’t like the casualness of the whole you-and-me thing. And it’s not like here’s me complaining about the,” and he lowered his voice to a barely-there whisper, “sex, which is totally not what I’m doing because that is hot and also kinda not what I expected. I’m so not complaining about that …only … I want there to be more. And I figured that if I left the Council that would give us more space … to you know … like … for … stuff between us.” Xander swallowed loudly but continued his impassioned gaze upon Giles.
“Though I see you’ve found your eloquence.”
Xander stared at him and then burst out laughing. “Oh my God, Giles, was that you trying on the flip?”
“It’s quite possible, given the importance of the situation.”
“Importance? Whoa, Giles, I can see I’m gonna have to brush up on my Cryptic 101.”
“Pot meet kettle,” Giles pondered. “So,” he cleared his throat, “you mentioned something about hearts and flowers. Being a tad old-fashioned,” Giles paused for Xander’s resulting giggle, “only a tad, mind you, you may have to refresh my memory on what all that means.”
“So we’ve got a deal?” Xander asked, eyes emoting eagerness.
“That you leave the Council … so that we can shag each other senseless.” Giles paused again and continued, “I see some merit in the plan.”
Xander slapped the table loudly. “That’s like, maybe, one of three times you’ve ever thought a plan of mine had merit.” He rustled around in one of his bags, pulled out a pen and paper and began madly scribbling on it.
“You’re more inventive in some areas than others,” Giles parried. “What are you doing?”
“Noting it down for posterity. Let’s get this clear, so you’re saying there are things I’m actually good at.” Xander leaned in across the table and waggled both his eyebrows at Giles, despite the patch adding comic value.
“Well of course I think there are things you’re good at - ” Giles stopped and cleared his throat, then leaned across the table to meet Xander, “including, apparently, taunting the librarian.”
Xander erupted into laughter again, his body, and the table, shaking with the force of it. Then once he had subsided, he added softly, “Giles, you know, you being a librarian is pretty far from my thoughts these days.”
Giles leaned back in his chair and added haughtily, “That’s only because books still seem to have a soporific effect on you. I notice my gift to you from last year is still in a remarkably unpolluted state.”
“Giles, if all those years of near-death experiences haven’t made me and books do the fandango, it just isn’t going to happen. Besides, research? Not what I want to be thinking about at bedtime,” Xander suggested, replacing the pen and paper into his bag with a flourish.
“Apparently you never got to chapter six,” Giles chided, while draining the last of his drink.
“Only you would give me a dirty book with a title like 'Investigating Demon Kinship Structures'.”
Giles rolled his eyes in mock offence, then sharpened his gaze on Xander. “Try it,” he murmured, running his hand over Xander’s and letting it linger, “you never know. You might enjoy it.”
Xander’s face broke open into a smile that Giles could only think to describe as undeniably happy. “Right,” he said, dropping his voice to a soft cadence, that seemed to shimmer over Giles’ senses, “like I tried you. And liked it.”
Giles returned the smile back, with interest. “Exactly. Now drink up your beer and we shall see precisely how we can put your plan into action.”
Xander downed his pint all in one go.
Finis
Just a few notes for those who don’t call the UK home:
Weatherspoons is a chain of pubs in the UK famed for being fairly generic.
Wikipedia defines a chav thus: "[The word] refers to the scum of the English society, mostly a person with fashions such as flashy 'bling' jewellery and counterfeit designer clothes or sportswear, an uneducated, uncultured, impoverished background, a tendency to congregate around places such as fast-food outlets, bus stops, or other shopping areas, and a culture of antisocial behaviour." Chavette is obviously the female form.
Author: lillianmorgan
Setting: either post-Chosen or post-NFA, not sure ;)
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Giles/Xander
Disclaimer: I don’t own Joss’ and ME’s toys.
A/N: Thanks always and overflowingly to yourlibrarian for the beta, including the re-write clean-up of the end ;)
Written for rayne_y_daze who requested Giles/Xander as part of inlovewithnight’s Fluffython for Valentine’s Day. (I’m sorry I didn’t do your first request - that felt a bit like coals to Newcastle!) As far as I could make out the only requirement was no character bashing, so I hope you enjoy this!
Alt End
Giles rotated his pint of beer in the way that one does when one is waiting upon someone, and trying desperately to look like one is not anxious or nervous or actually waiting. In the old days, of course, he would have snapped open a pack of cigarettes and retrieved one with the insouciance of a rocker or a beat poet or whoever was most modish at the time. In the old days, of course, before he deemed it unnecessary to append that rather dirty habit to his personal appearance. England had changed around him as well, for soon he probably would no longer be allowed to smoke in a pub at all.
As an aside, that was long and perambulatory, and yes, very well, he was waiting. And hoping.
It had been a significant amount of time, as well, since he had given himself a moment to pause and reflect. Times they were a-certainly-changin’. He took a slurp from his beer, but not too much, for he rather needed all his faculties about him, even if his nerves were, damnably, all a-flutter.
The Slayers’ Council was operating with full flourishing finesse, especially if he had anything to do with it. Despite the fact that it felt like he hadn’t taken a moment’s rest to stop or grieve or contemplate life after Sunnydale, but had rather flung himself full throttle into finding, recovering, rehabilitating and, unfortunately, remunerating all the girls that were flooding out of the woodwork. Buffy, his own charge, had settled herself in Rome. He rather appreciated this close, yet distant, relationship that was forming between them. Email, phone calls, an aeroplane flight or two. Close enough to feel the connection, distant enough to stop the meddling. If changes were implementing themselves of their own accord, he wanted to feel liberated enough to let them.
Thoughts on Buffy led inevitably to Dawn and to her rather florid email about Angel and Spike’s whereabouts and what exactly ‘they’ - in their capacity as Bearers of the White Hats - were doing about it. It was within the conceivable boundaries of his awareness that Dawn and Willow were in cahoots - especially given their timing of one’s email and the other’s phone call, masquerading as Willow’s weekly catch-up.
He wondered why they all seemed to think that he was born yesterday and completely woolly headed on the whole topic. Really, wearing glasses did not make him blind.
He sighed and took another sip from his beer, and stared around the pub. He was damned if he was going to lower his standards and set foot in a Weatherspoon’s, give him old and vintage any day. Particularly if the clientele reflected that tradition too.
Tonight of all nights, on the day devoted to the patron saint of notes and feelings and declarations of devotion, the last thing he needed was chavs and chavettes spilling out all over the bar and all over their clothes and all over each other and …
Oh.
“Hey Giles.”
“Hello. Do sit down. Would you like me to get you a drink?”
“Nah. I’ll just dump my bags. And order from the bar. You good?”
“What? Oh yes, another… Yes, please. Do you need some money?”
“Nah.” And he smiled and winked back at Giles.
Giles watched as the man he had always thought of as a boy turned away from him, ambled toward the bar and leaned against it with all the ease of youth. Xander had met Africa, and taking in the tanned and tranquil way he held himself, it had treated him well. So had all these weekly jaunts about the country chasing leads, mystical energies and anomalies in the universe. His position within the Council as the bloke-that-goes-forth seemed assured.
“So Giles, I’ve been thinking about it,” Xander said, as he placed the two pints in front of them, slopping the froth slightly over the lips of the glasses, and stepping over the chair to sit in it, “and I kinda feel I need a break. Uh, you know. From Council work.”
Giles blinked and then reached for his glasses. Stopped his hand and altered its direction for his beer. Taking a healthy sip, he inclined his head and murmured, “Go on.”
“Well … it’s just …” Xander floundered in the way that only he could. He looked at Giles for reassurance, but Giles felt rather not like giving that, when the carpet had been pulled so overwhelmingly from underneath him.
Xander drummed his fingers on the table. “OK. Here’s the sitch. Or like, let me begin from a point in time that is not here. Right.” He nodded his head as if the affirmation steeled his purpose.
“So, we’ve had this, uh, date,” Xander flicked his gaze from the table top to Giles in a fleeting second, “that for these festive holidays when everyone is making with the merry, you and I meet and prop each other up. Take care of each other. Because we’ve loved and lost and that sucks.” His fingers stopped drumming and passed mesmerisingly over Giles’ own. “And that’s great and fun and okely-dokely in a kind of fly-by-night fashion but there comes a time in a man’s life when he realises that the guy sitting opposite him is not really about the propping but more about the prodding. Or, ok, the lack thereof.”
“I do believe at one point in time you took English classes. I’d rather enjoy it if you cast your mind back to those, to make yourself slightly more coherent.” Giles narrowed his eyes as if to will Xander into it.
“Uh, yeah. Whatever.” Xander leaned forward and sipped at his beer from the table. “Ok so, yeah, Council business is great and I really enjoy it. But the problem is, and there’s no easy way of getting around it, you’re my boss.”
“Well,” Giles coughed, “there is that.”
“And it’s kinda hard to take orders from you Giles -”
“I’m sorry if it’s been an imposition - ”
“When I was kinda hoping there might be, like, more in the way of other kinds of orders. Of the non-council type. Of the, like, hearts and flowers and sealed with a kiss type.” Xander blushed a beet red, and took a very large sip from his glass.
“Xander…” Giles began but didn’t quite know how to finish.
“I mean,” Xander continued, “I don’t like the casualness of the whole you-and-me thing. And it’s not like here’s me complaining about the,” and he lowered his voice to a barely-there whisper, “sex, which is totally not what I’m doing because that is hot and also kinda not what I expected. I’m so not complaining about that …only … I want there to be more. And I figured that if I left the Council that would give us more space … to you know … like … for … stuff between us.” Xander swallowed loudly but continued his impassioned gaze upon Giles.
“Though I see you’ve found your eloquence.”
Xander stared at him and then burst out laughing. “Oh my God, Giles, was that you trying on the flip?”
“It’s quite possible, given the importance of the situation.”
“Importance? Whoa, Giles, I can see I’m gonna have to brush up on my Cryptic 101.”
“Pot meet kettle,” Giles pondered. “So,” he cleared his throat, “you mentioned something about hearts and flowers. Being a tad old-fashioned,” Giles paused for Xander’s resulting giggle, “only a tad, mind you, you may have to refresh my memory on what all that means.”
“So we’ve got a deal?” Xander asked, eyes emoting eagerness.
“That you leave the Council … so that we can shag each other senseless.” Giles paused again and continued, “I see some merit in the plan.”
Xander slapped the table loudly. “That’s like, maybe, one of three times you’ve ever thought a plan of mine had merit.” He rustled around in one of his bags, pulled out a pen and paper and began madly scribbling on it.
“You’re more inventive in some areas than others,” Giles parried. “What are you doing?”
“Noting it down for posterity. Let’s get this clear, so you’re saying there are things I’m actually good at.” Xander leaned in across the table and waggled both his eyebrows at Giles, despite the patch adding comic value.
“Well of course I think there are things you’re good at - ” Giles stopped and cleared his throat, then leaned across the table to meet Xander, “including, apparently, taunting the librarian.”
Xander erupted into laughter again, his body, and the table, shaking with the force of it. Then once he had subsided, he added softly, “Giles, you know, you being a librarian is pretty far from my thoughts these days.”
Giles leaned back in his chair and added haughtily, “That’s only because books still seem to have a soporific effect on you. I notice my gift to you from last year is still in a remarkably unpolluted state.”
“Giles, if all those years of near-death experiences haven’t made me and books do the fandango, it just isn’t going to happen. Besides, research? Not what I want to be thinking about at bedtime,” Xander suggested, replacing the pen and paper into his bag with a flourish.
“Apparently you never got to chapter six,” Giles chided, while draining the last of his drink.
“Only you would give me a dirty book with a title like 'Investigating Demon Kinship Structures'.”
Giles rolled his eyes in mock offence, then sharpened his gaze on Xander. “Try it,” he murmured, running his hand over Xander’s and letting it linger, “you never know. You might enjoy it.”
Xander’s face broke open into a smile that Giles could only think to describe as undeniably happy. “Right,” he said, dropping his voice to a soft cadence, that seemed to shimmer over Giles’ senses, “like I tried you. And liked it.”
Giles returned the smile back, with interest. “Exactly. Now drink up your beer and we shall see precisely how we can put your plan into action.”
Xander downed his pint all in one go.
Finis
Just a few notes for those who don’t call the UK home:
Weatherspoons is a chain of pubs in the UK famed for being fairly generic.
Wikipedia defines a chav thus: "[The word] refers to the scum of the English society, mostly a person with fashions such as flashy 'bling' jewellery and counterfeit designer clothes or sportswear, an uneducated, uncultured, impoverished background, a tendency to congregate around places such as fast-food outlets, bus stops, or other shopping areas, and a culture of antisocial behaviour." Chavette is obviously the female form.