Airman Harris 7
Airman Harris
Chapter Seven
Rated: Adult
Pairing: Xander/Daniel (and who the hell knows where this is going)
Summary: Xander finds himself stuck in a very uncomfortable spot--between a sex-sated Daniel and a cranky colonel.
Previous chapters: One : Two : Three : Four : Five : Six
Chapter 7
Daniel's phone rattled against the nightstand, the vibrate mode not really all that much quieter than an actual ring. "God, I hate that thing," Daniel muttered. He rolled away from Xander and snatched it up. Xander groaned. His body had new aches on old aches, but it felt good. Really good. He was trying to remember why he'd always been so dead set against being anyone's butt monkey. Butt monkeying was good. He would be sure to not mention that to Willow and Buffy because they’d think he was possessed or something.
"Trouble?" Xander asked as he forced one eye open. Daniel was glaring at his phone.
Daniel snorted. "I doubt it. Jack's calling from his cell."
Opening both eyes, Xander propped himself up on one elbow. "If the colonel is calling...." Xander let his voice trail off. He really hoped that meant Daniel was needed at work, but at this point, he wouldn't bet on it. As someone who had lived in the land of denial for so very long, Xander recognized a fellow-citizen.
"If it were official, he'd be calling from the mountain," Daniel said as he dropped the phone back onto the nightstand and rolled toward Xander, slipping a hand around his waist. Xander, however, stayed up on one elbow.
“Why do I have a feeling that the colonel does not like being ignored?”
“Because you’re an insightful person who recognizes unmitigated arrogance when he sees it?” Daniel guessed sleepily. Xander laughed. Under all the absent-minded professor shtick, Daniel had a sharp sense of humor. Xander liked that.
“I don’t know about the insight, but the arrogance I can buy.” Xander moved Daniel’s hand and then groaned as he forced his sore body to sit up.
“What are you doing?” Daniel squinted at him.
“Getting pants on. Color me suspicious, but I don’t trust the colonel.”
“And that’s why I would call you insightful, and I’m not saying Jack likes you, but you’re acting like he’s going to come busting in here,” Daniel said with an exaggerated eyeroll. However, his expression immediately turned thoughtful. “Just because I went home with someone we met a few days ago who showed up in the middle of a foothold situation does not mean Jack will break in under some deluded belief that only psychopaths are ever attracted to me.” With a sigh, Daniel sat up. “I’ll get dressed.”
“Can I borrow a robe?” Xander asked. His clothes were still in the living room, and after the number of times Spike had picked a lock, Xander had learned to not walk around naked. Daniel pointed at the floor, and Xander went to dig through a pile in the corner.
“So, what are you searching for?” Xander asked as he pulled a blue robe out of a stack of semi-folded clothes.
“What?”
“The books. You’re looking for something specific.”
“No, I’m not.” Daniel’s voice was fast and a little high.
Xander turned around and looked at him. “You lie about like my friend Willow. You turn the same color, too.”
Daniel glared as he grabbed a shirt and pulled it over his head.
“It’s okay to tell me to fuck off. Really. I was just going to offer to look through any Babylonian books you needed to check, and can I just say that somewhere pigs are flying because me volunteering to do research is definitely one of the signs of an apocalypse.”
Daniel chewed on his lower lip, and Xander got the feeling he’d just stepped into a big steaming pile of emotion. “It’s complicated,” Daniel said softly.
“Yeah, seems like, and hey, I’m fine with you telling me that you need to have your complicated to yourself. Honestly.”
Daniel closed the distance between them and rested his hand on Xander’s arm. “No. It’s just have to explain, and maybe this isn’t the best time for it.”
Xander nodded. It hurt to have Daniel shut the door in his face, but Xander understood that sometimes you just couldn’t talk about things. Willow had come over post-graduation to talk about Larry, and Xander had pretty much shoved her out the door and refused to even talk. Throwing himself into a sex-only relationship with Anya had seemed like such a great plan after that. Looking back, Xander sometimes wondered how much of their distance was college, and how much was that he backed away from the girls. It seemed like there were more and more secrets between them, and even after the whole spell that joined them during the Adam fight, something hadn’t been right. Maybe he would have healed if he had stayed-if he hadn’t signed up for the damn Air Force-but there were wounds that he carried, and he felt like sharing them was the same as wounding the girls. And after the joining spell, he was painfully aware of how many wounds they already carried. Yeah, maybe a little distance and some healing was the best thing for all of them, especially since Willow said that Sunnydale was quiet post-Adam.
“If you ever want to share, I’m here, and trust me, I’m not going to go running away in shock, not unless you tell me you’re a thousand year old demon who wants to make wall decorations out of my intestines. Then, running might be involved.”
Daniel snorted his laughter and promptly started choking. Smiling, Xander patted him on the back. “Hey, no choking to death over one bad joke. It’d be seriously hard to explain to the colonel.” Xander shifted into his very worst Valley Girl accent. “You see, we were just talking and I made one little demon joke and suddenly Daniel lost the ability to breathe. He just, like, keeled over. Yeah, not really believable, and in the long run, I suck at lying as bad as you do, so stop trying to die.” It might not be all that funny as far as jokes went, but it was almost as if Daniel had all this emotion that had to come out and Xander had popped the bubble. The result was a Daniel gasping for air and turning red as he laughed. Xander knew that his words were making it harder for Daniel to catch his breath, but he couldn’t help it. He wanted to see Daniel laugh. The man lit up with joy when he finally put down all the burdens he carried with him every day.
“Jack would write you up after congratulating you. I think some days he wants to kill me.” Daniel opened the door and started out into the living room.
“Only when you make me listen to your lectures,” Colonel O’Neill commented. He sat on the couch with his feet up on the coffee table, looking down the hall, and Xander had only realized he’d moved when he looked down to find a vaguely penis shaped statue from the floor in his hand like a bat ready to bash someone.
“Jack? What are you doing here?” Daniel stalked down the short hall, and Xander carefully put the statue back down before he broke it only to find out it was some priceless artifact or cursed stone or something like that.
“Someone didn’t answer his phone,” the colonel pointed out. He might be talking to Daniel, but he was definitely looking at Xander. Checking to make sure the robe was tied closed, Xander started down the hall. What was the protocol for having a superior office catch you boffing his best friend? Were salutes involved? Xander had pretty much thought that basic training had covered every stupid, silly, unlikely and improbable situation and the rules for handling it, but clearly they’d left out a couple of pieces of protocol.
“And yet you’re here.” Daniel had out the cranky voice.
“You didn’t answer your phone.” The colonel finally focused on Daniel.
“Because I didn’t want to.”
“Which is why I’m here.”
Daniel stopped mid-word with his mouth still open. Taking a step back, he visibly collected himself. “Jack,” he said slowly, “why are you here?”
“Daniel, because you didn’t answer your phone.” The colonel smiled for one second, and then he seemed to notice that Daniel was not amused. With a sigh, he turned his attention back to Xander, which was so very much of the bad. “Teal’c said he was working out with Harris. I wanted to make sure he didn’t break anything Harris might need to wash dishes tomorrow.”
“Jack,” Daniel snapped.
“Hey, it was concern. I was showing concern,” the colonel insisted, but Xander was fairly sure that was pissiness.
“You’re being an ass.”
“Right now, no. In general, often,” the colonel agreed. “So, Harris, did Teal’c break anything important?” The colonel looked Xander up and down in a way that might be sexual coming from someone else, but it definitely felt contemptuous coming from the colonel.
“No, sir,” Xander crossed his arms over his chest and looked at his clothes on the chair. Oh yeah, subtlety for the win. Xander figured by tomorrow morning, he would be a civilian again with a big old dishonorable conduct discharge, not that gay sex was any more dishonorable than any other sex. Actually, the sex with Daniel was way more honorable than the Faith sex.
“Xander, you’re right. You’re a terrible liar,” Daniel said as he went over and scooped up Xander’s clothes, bringing them over and dropping them onto the table near Xander. “Show Jack the hip.”
Xander made a noise that sounded a whole lot like a squeak, even to his own ears. It wasn’t the manliest reaction, but being asked to show a naked hip to a colonel that hated him was not high on his list of things he A) wanted to do or B) had any idea how to react to.
Putting his feet on the floor, the colonel leaned forward. “Is there a problem?”
“Xander says no, but I say if I had bruising that looked like that, I’d be in the infirmary.”
“It’s not that bad. Geez. How many times do I have to say that?” Xander glared at Daniel.
“Until the bruising goes down so the leg isn’t swollen enough to feel like a football,” Daniel shot back.
Before Xander could come up with an answer, Colonel O’Neill was up and closing in on him. “Airman, let me see the extent of the damage.”
Xander make another unmanly noise and looked to Daniel for help, but the traitor stood there with his arms crossed and a triumphant look on his face. Xander glared.
“Now, Airman,” the colonel insisted. With an unhappy sigh, Xander lifted the bottom of the robe to show the bad leg.
Stepping backwards, Colonel O’Neill whistled. “Teal’c got you good. You must have a dozen serious hits on that side.”
“I never cover my left as well as I should,” Xander said with a self-deprecating shrug. It was the truth.
“Sam contributed to that hip. I told him he should go to Janet,” Daniel piped up.
“You mean, instead of you two playing doctor?” O’Neill asked, and the tone of voice was sharp enough that Xander’s guts twisted. Dropping the edge of the robe, Xander grabbed his clothes.
“With permission, I’d like to go put my clothes on, sir.”
O’Neill looked from Xander to Daniel and then back. “Oh for cryin’ out loud. Don’t look at me like I just kicked your puppy, Harris. I don’t ask, and as long as you don’t tell, I don’t care. I do care about the men in my command ignoring serious injuries.”
“It’s a bruise, sir,” Xander pointed out. God almighty these people got worked up about a bruise.
“Jack, do not start that conversation with him; you will not like where it goes,” Daniel suggested. “Just order him to have Janet check on that.”
O’Neill glanced over. “Calling in the head of exotic medicine for some bruising might be a little over the top, Danny.”
“Ha!” Xander pointed a finger at Daniel.
“But you clearly need to get that iced, take some anti-inflammatories, and have the on-call doctor check to make sure you haven’t done any permanent damage,” O’Neill said as he pinned Xander with a hard look. Xander barely managed to avoid rolling his eyes. He found commanding officers really didn’t appreciate the gesture. “Go get dressed. We’re heading back to the mountain.”
“For a bruise, sir?”
O’Neill stared at him for several seconds. “When the bruise is severe enough to raise the skin, make the skin hot or turn black, yes, Harris. We have someone who knows enough about the human body to recognize serious damage check it out. Consider it a rule.”
Xander sighed. “Great, more rules.” When O’Neill narrowed his eyes, Xander offered a quick “sir” and then darted back to Daniel’s room to get dressed. Even going as fast as he could, he still heard the raised voices get pretty loud by the time he got back out. Daniel was near the sliding glass doors with his arms crossed, and O’Neill had his back to him, so Xander was guessing no one had won this round.
“Good,” O’Neill said, “you’re ready. Daniel, are you following?”
“Following?” Daniel tilted his head and took a step forward, his eyes searching O’Neill. “I can drive him.”
“Don’t worry about it. I know you’re busy, so I’ll drive Harris in.” O’Neill offered a crocodile smile, but before Xander could manufacture a reason to avoid getting in a car with him, O’Neill had caught him by the arm and was ushering him out of the room.
“Wait, my shoes,” Xander said, but O’Neill didn’t stop. “Government issue. The government can issue some more.” Xander ended up trotting to keep up with O’Neill who was adding new bruises to Xander’s arm. Xander was starting to get the uncomfortable feeling that he was in custody.
O’Neill used the stairs, hurrying Xander down two flights, and Xander could only hope that this wasn’t as ugly as it looked, because it looked plenty ugly. They headed out a fire exit, and the colonel did slow as Xander had to cross the rough asphalt to get to his car.
“I have extra boots in back,” O’Neill offered, and that sounded a bit like one of Buffy’s apologies where she didn’t actually apologize but she did do something really nice to make up for having run off in the middle of a vampire attack to suck face with her undead boyfriend. Yeah, he wasn’t bitter, not at all.
“Sir, am I in trouble?” Xander got in the car O’Neill gestured toward. Part of him said to run, but without shoes, that didn’t seem wise. Well, that and this was a colonel in the United State Air Force. Running from him was way different than running from an angry vampire, even though O’Neill had the same look on his face.
“Don’t ask, don’t tell means that I am not officially required to report anything you don’t tell me, so please do not tell me anything. Ever.” O’Neill slammed his door and started the car.
“Okay.” Xander frowned. “Sir, I really didn’t mean….” How the hell did Xander end that sentence? He definitely meant to have sex. Hell, he’d really had to work to get Daniel to finish the deed. He really did know that Daniel and O’Neill had the sort of knotty relationship Xander usually avoided. Hell, Xander should have seen this mess coming from about a million miles away.
O’Neill rubbed a hand over his face. “Airman Harris, Dr. Jackson is not in the military and I do not expect him to follow military rules. If I did, I’d be disappointed on a very regular basis.” O’Neill gave a weak laugh. “You, however, are a serviceman on my base. I have a certain expectation for how you conduct yourself.”
Xander cringed. “You heard about training.”
“Yes, I did. And if you have time, try teaching Danny to run like that. I’d have less gray hair.”
“But…” Xander studied O’Neill, struggling to see if that had been a really bad joke. The colonel actually looked serious.
“I haven’t seen the tapes, but I tend to trust Teal’c’s judgment on fighting. It also helps that you punched Carter. Not many men do that and live to sing baritone.”
“Um, okay.” Xander was definitely confused. That usually meant he’d fallen asleep on the important part of the lecture. The problem was, Xander didn’t know what he didn’t know.
“Any symptoms other than pain?”
“No, sir.” Xander squirmed in his seat. Oh this felt bad. So very, very bad.
“Harris, I don’t bite.”
“No sir, I didn’t think you did.”
“Then stop squirming.”
“Yes, sir.”
They drove in an awkward silence until O’Neill hit the first red light. Xander twisted in his seat, and two cars behind them, Daniel followed. “He’s back there,” O’Neill offered. “He probably thinks I plan to zat you.”
“Zat?” Okay, that didn’t sound good. O’Neill glanced over at him. The light turned green, but O’Neill was so busy staring holes into Xander that the car behind them had to lay on the horn to get O’Neill moving again.
“Seems like Sunnydale is a dangerous place to grow up,” O’Neill commented in a falsely casual voice. A huge bolder formed in the pit of Xander’s stomach. This was pretty much every one of his worst nightmares coming true at once.
“Uhhh.” Xander’s brain failed him.
“So.” O’Neill focused on the road in front of him, but that didn’t change the fact that Xander felt like the colonel was dissecting him. “How many fights have you been in?” For the first time, Xander realized that Colonel O’Neill was like Buffy, always distracting people with this air-brain image before kicking their ass. And Xander was about to be the kickee.
“Honestly, I don’t know,” Xander answered. “High school bullying is a real problem in America, you know.”
“Are you going to play it that way?” O’Neill glanced over, and that was the look of a man who already knew something. That was Uncle Rory after he already knew about the accident Xander had with the car. That was Giles who had already found the crushed half of a Twinkie between the pages of his book on high muckity muck somethings. Although, in Xander’s defense, that had been Cordelia’s fault. She had slammed the book shut after insisting she wouldn’t compete for his attention.
“Uh, will it work?” Xander asked although he already knew the answer. He was so fucked.
O’Neill straightened up. “How many fights have you been in with people who honestly wanted to kill you?”
Xander considered that. Jesse, Amy, Amy’s mom, Ms. French, Spike, Moloch, Angel, the Master, Drusilla, Principal Snyder… and that was just sophomore year. Giles had even come close to killing him a couple of times that first year, although Xander suspected that wasn’t the sort of fight O’Neill was asking about. For one second, Xander considered lying, but he sucked at lying and this was a colonel who saved the world on a regular basis. He was a good guy. A really scary good guy. Xander sighed in defeat. “I couldn’t say, sir.”
“More than twenty?”
Xander snorted. “Oh yeah.”
O’Neill took a deep breath, but he didn’t look particularly surprised.
Xander had expected surprise. Actually, Xander had expected shock. “How did you know?”
O’Neill shrugged. “You’re too used to the danger and too young to be this battle hard, Harris.”
“Okay, that’s funny, because battle-hardened is not the first word I’d use to describe myself. First two words?” Xander frowned. “First hyphenated word?”
“It’s one of the first words Teal’c used to describe you.” O’Neill shot the words back at Xander like a weapon, and for a second, Xander couldn’t catch his breath.
“Really?”
O’Neill rolled his eyes. “Do I look like I’m joking?”
“Um, I’m guessing no, but sometimes your jokes are only moderately jokelike, sir.”
O’Neill gave him a dirty look, but Xander just shrugged. It was the truth. “When I surprised you, you grabbed the first weapon on hand.”
“Well, if you break into someone’s house, you really can’t act surprised when you surprise them.”
O’Neill gave him an odd look. “Most people don’t instinctively keep track of possible weapons, Harris, but you knew exactly how to grab the nearest heavy object, and you didn’t even think twice. Teal’c is impressed with your fighting, and when Carter looked up your hometown, she couldn’t believe her eyes. It takes a lot to shock Carter, but Sunnydale’s death rate did it. Do you want to tell me what’s going on in that town?”
The boulder in Xander’s guts grew. This guy hadn’t been around Xander for more than a few minutes, and Xander had totally let a lot of cats out of the bag. Tons of them. Other than the whole demons-real secret, Xander wasn’t sure there was much more for O’Neill to figure out. But that was a conversation Xander really wasn’t having with anyone, not unless Giles signed off on it first.
“Really bad cops,” Xander lied. Oh, he exaggerated the lie to make it clear he was lying so that it wouldn’t really count as an actual intentional lie, but anything was better than the truth right now. “I mean, seriously bad.” Xander could feel the panic rising up his throat. “And it’s sort of contagious. I once broke into the local Army base, and I talked my way into an armory despite the fact that I was sixteen or seventeen at the time.”
“An armory?”
Xander cursed himself. Okay, that hadn’t been the best example to pull out. Of all the incompetence he’d seen over the years, he had to pull out the one example that made him look like a criminal. Clearly the Sunnydale police weren’t the only incompetent ones. “It seemed logical at the time,” Xander offered, channeling his inner Vulcan. O’Neill didn’t look impressed.
“Were you involved in anything illegal or immoral, Harris?”
“Immoral, no. And I was never caught doing anything illegal, so technically I don’t think it counts.”
“Oh, it counts,” O’Neill said ominously. “Why don’t you start at the beginning?”
“Because it’s not my secret to tell, sir.”
“Airman?” That was a seriously unhappy voice.
Xander held his hands up. “Sir, I would never give Stargate secrets to anyone. They are not my secrets to tell. However, I can’t give you someone else’s secrets anymore than I can give away your secrets.”
O’Neill paused as he turned off the main road to start the private drive up to the mountain. “The Stargate is classified. Are you trying to claim that Sunnydale is classified?” he demanded once they were away from the last car except for Daniel who was definitely tailgating.
Considering that someone had built a big-ass military base under the town, Xander had his suspicions about that. “I honestly don’t know, sir.”
“There’s a lot you don’t know, Harris.”
“Shitloads,” Xander agreed. “Sir.”
O’Neill sighed, but at least he had an expression that looked more weary than angry. Hopefully Xander wasn’t about to land in a cell. “If I went to Sunnydale, would I figure this out myself?”
“I sincerely hope not, sir.” Xander really didn’t want to think about O’Neill and Spike in the same room. Then again, that might be one way to get rid of the annoying vampire.
“You’re making this difficult on me, and if this is difficult for me, I’m likely to take that out on you, Airman Harris.”
“Yeah, I figured, sir. I’m still not going to tell you someone else’s secrets.”
O’Neill was silent for an uncomfortably long time-long enough that Xander started calculating the odds that the colonel would arrest him. They passed the outer perimeter in a few minutes, a guard passing a mirror under their car while O’Neill gave him the silent treatment. Only after they were moving toward the main entrance did O’Neill speak again. “Is there someone you could contact, someone who might be willing to tell me their own secrets?”
Xander blinked. He hadn’t thought about that. “Um, maybe.” He considered all the people who were involved in the secret. Xander didn’t want to give O’Neill the girls’ names, and Giles would have kittens all over his floor if the government called him. If Xander were there to watch the birthing, it might be worth it, but the fallout when the girls found out definitely would not. But one person would know how much the government already knew and which secrets were still vaguely secret. “Captain Riley Finn.”
“Captain?” O’Neill straightened at that bit of news. “What branch?”
“Um. I’m not sure. He was a little vague about that, and then he wasn’t in the military at all, but apparently he’s gone back to his unit since I signed up, and it’s all a little confusing.”
O’Neill’s eyebrows were all the way up now.
“He’s actually a nice guy, but he walked into a strange situation, and then a few people… um…” Xander stopped, not sure how to explain the joy that had been Adam.
“Died?” O’Neill guessed.
“Yeah, that.”
“Military deaths?”
Xander considered that. Mostly, he blamed Maggie Walsh and her drugs, but he had no idea what had gone into the official reports, assuming there had been any. “Sir, I really don’t know. I left Sunnydale before I joined the Air Force. The military wasn’t knocking down my door and inviting me to briefings.”
And that was O’Neill’s narrow-eyed cranky and suspicious look. “This story had better be worth my time, Harris. If it’s not, you’re going to be scrubbing the Stargate with a toothbrush. A really small one.” O’Neill held up his fingers to show how small, and this time he definitely was not joking.
“Sadly, it is, sir. However,” Xander added quickly when O’Neill got a hopeful look on his face, “that is not my story to tell.”
“Harris, you’re a real pain in the nik’ta.”
“Neck?” Xander guessed hopefully. O’Neill gave him a cold look before pulling the car into his reserved spot.
“No,” he said tersely. Reaching into the backseat, O’Neill grabbed a pair of boots and shoved them at Xander. “Get them on and report to the infirmary. On the double.”
Oh yeah, this was going to go great, but at least he’d pointed O’Neill at someone else. Xander took a second to mentally apologize to Riley before he pulled the heavy boots on. When it came to having to explain Sunnydale, it was every man for himself. Riley would understand that.
If Xander hoped for a little privacy for his infirmary visit, he was destined for disappointment. O’Neill and Daniel both stood just outside O’Neill’s car, waiting for him to get the boots. It looked like he’d picked up an escort.