New Fic - part 2
Pivotal Moments in a Shifting Universe - Part 2
Season 5 - post-The Gift
Buffy was dead.
The words were carved into his soul. Undeniable. Inescapable.
Buffy was dead.
He’d dreaded this from the first instant he’d learned he was to be Watcher to the current Slayer. There was no CPR that could bring her back this time. She’d sacrificed herself for Dawn, throwing herself off Glory’s tower into that tear in reality and had been dead long before her body hit the ground, and all that was left was a tombstone with an epitaph whose morbid humor had brought the first fleeting smile to his lips since he’d gathered up his Slayer’s broken body and carried it from the battlefield.
Buffy was dead.
She’d been so beautiful, even in death. And maybe he would find some comfort in that recollection - one day. The look of peace on her face as she lay there: a warrior finally able to rest after battle, to lay down the burden she’d carried so long and so bravely. But for now, there was little comfort to be found in the thought. Just endless grief, his own and that of the others. Willow and Xander, who had grown up fighting alongside Buffy; Dawn, now the sole surviving Summers woman; even Spike, who’s heartbroken sobbing would have shocked Giles, if he’d been capable of feeling anything through the numbness of his own pain.
There was a time when he would have tried to fill the aching void with alcohol but this was beyond such petty comforts. His Slayer was dead and he had been useless to prevent it. All his training, everything he’d struggled to learn and to teach had meant nothing in the end. Buffy had still died, giving her life for Dawn without hesitation. Saving them all like the true heroine she was.
He hadn’t been able to save her. Instead, he had more blood on his hands, more guilt on his soul. He’d taken an innocent life. Cold-bloodedly pinched the life out of an injured man, who’d been helpless to resist, in the name of the greater good. Ben’s life sacrificed to prevent Glory’s return. Just as he’d once helped kill Randall to try and stop Eyghon. At least with his first murder, they’d been trying to save Randall, his death hadn’t been the intended consequence of their bungled attempt to exorcise the demon. He had no such excuse with Ben. He’d killed the man deliberately and cold-bloodedly to deprive Glory of her host. Doing what he knew Buffy could not.
It had been the right thing to do. For Buffy and for the world. He just hadn’t realized how much it would cost him.
He hadn’t told the others what he had done. Hadn’t wanted to burden them with his guilt when they were crushed with their own grief and loss. Buffy had been too strong, they had all begun to believe in her invincibility. To believe that somehow she was immune to the fate of Slayers to die young and violently. Losing Buffy was more than any of them could bear and for weeks, they’d been like sleepwalkers, just going through the motions of life. He’d done the best he could to help them but he feared that, in the end, he had been little use to any of them. Especially as time passed and they recovered, while Giles himself remained mired in grief and guilt.
He knew he should go home. Back to England and whatever life he could rebuild for himself, without his Slayer, without the Council, without everything he’d spent his life training to be. Watchers who survived their Slayers were expected to return to England. Take their place among their peers with the self-satisfied knowledge that they had done their duty and that Slayers were destined to die violently and early. Every Watcher expected to lose their Slayer and there was a certain protocol for how both sides handled it. Polite sympathy one the one side (“Hard luck, old man, losing your Slayer to that fill-in-the-blank demon. Tricky buggers, they’ve taken down more than a few Slayers.”), and suitably restrained sorrow and chagrin on the part of the Watcher (“Yes, a terrible loss. She fought well, there were just too many of them.”).
Watchers weren’t supposed to be haunted by their Slayer’s death. They weren’t supposed to grieve as deeply as for a beloved daughter. They certainly weren’t supposed to spend the days and weeks after the death trying their best to help their Slayer’s friends and family come to terms with the loss and patrolling in their Slayer’s absence.
Oh, more than a few Watchers over the centuries had lost themselves in vengeance. Hunting down the vampire that had killed their Slayer and either killing it or being killed themselves. If they survived, they returned to the fold, their lapse charitably forgiven; never mentioned except in whispered exchanges behind their backs.
Bugger that. The Council had fired him and he owed them nothing. He wasn’t going to pretend that Buffy’s death hadn’t shaken him to his foundations. His Slayer was dead, and all they had left was her memory and that obscene parody that Spike had commissioned.
Unlike himself, none of the rest of them seemed to feel the desire to tear that blasted robot to pieces. He knew the robot was necessary to the pretense that the Slayer was still patrolling the Hellmouth. But it was a constant, devastating reminder of what they had lost and at times, Giles thought he’d go mad if he had to hear that relentlessly perky voice one more time or see the thing respond with chipper incomprehension to the pain it caused just by existing.
In truth, the others were doing better than he was. They were still grieving, still flinching when mention of Buffy caught them off guard. Still inclined to falter and fall silent in the midst of conversation, but the tears had gradually faded and sometimes laughter would fill the shop and, for a moment, everything would be like it was before.
Except nothing would be the same, ever again. Not for him.
But the others were beginning to recover and didn’t need him anymore. They had each other and Giles was more and more certain that he was no longer needed here. He’d begun talking about leaving, preparing them, and they had all made polite noises about his staying. They would miss him, but they no longer needed him to prop them up and keep them going from day to day. They were adults now, except for Dawn, and Dawn had five older siblings looking out for her. The magic shop had been something to fill his time, then later a place to train with Buffy and to research with the group. He wasn’t emotionally attached to the store the way Anya was.
Part of him longed to return home. Watching the two couples just reminded him of how lonely he was at times. Tara had become Willow’s anchor, he was no longer needed to teach or guide her in the wise use of her gifts. Xander was a man now, with a good job, and in a loving relationship. He didn’t need Giles hanging about, watching with a trace of envy as Xander showed daily how much he cared for Anya.
He’d long since accepted that there would never be anything more than friendship between himself and Xander. It was plain that Xander truly loved Anya, and Giles was proud of the way Xander coped with Anya’s many eccentricities, his endless patience over the past two years as he had helped her adjust to being human again.
No, it was time to slip away before he wore out his welcome. Time to return home and find a way to survive Buffy’s death. Give these young adults their freedom to follow their paths without his interference.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Season 6 - post-Grave
He hated hospitals. Not an original thought, of course, but he’d spent far too much time in them as both patient and visitor and was entitled to the opinion. Especially at times like this, when he was both patient and worried friend. Hospitals had too many rules. Oh, undoubtedly there were good reasons for those rules but they were frustrating all the same. And the fact that bedridden patients weren’t allowed even short visits to another patient’s room was currently a source of enormous frustration.
Buffy had assured him that Xander was going to be fine but Giles wanted to see for himself. He was worried that Xander’s physical injuries might be just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. There was a strong possibility that Xander had suffered mystical damage that the hospital wouldn’t recognize, and wouldn’t know how to treat if they did find it.
He’d felt what happened on Kingman’s Bluff, the magic Willow had taken from him had formed a connection between them, allowing him to sense what she was feeling. He’d felt her lash out at Xander with the same killing rage she’d already turned on Buffy and himself. Xander had stopped Willow, where he and Buffy had failed, although the victory had nearly cost him his life.
It wasn’t supposed to have happened this way. The plan had been to break through Willow’s grief and rage by infusing her with the living spirit of magic. Letting the clean energy from the coven purge her of the stolen dark magics that were fueling her destructive fury. But they’d underestimated her. They hadn’t anticipated Willow stealing so much magic: from the books, from Rack - another who fed on stolen magics and was stronger than he should have been. Nor had they realized how quickly she would spiral out of control. Willow had killed two people: Warren and Rack.
Because of that, the magic of the coven hadn’t been enough to bring her back from the dark place she’d gone to. It had dampened her rage but that just let the grief flood through her, grief still in its first unbearable freshness. Willow had still been lost to reason, and all Giles had accomplished was to convince her that the only way to end her own suffering and that of everyone else was by destroying the world.
They all owed their lives to Xander. He’d saved them all, just by refusing to give up on Willow. Against all odds, love truly had won the day. The love of a friend had gotten through to Willow where Buffy’s Slayer strength and the most powerful of magics had been useless.
It was both humbling and awe inspiring.
He’d never expected it to be Xander who confronted Willow, he’d assumed it would be Buffy. Which was why he’d sent Anya with the message that Slayer strength couldn’t stop Willow. He hadn’t wanted Buffy to confront Willow with violence, just to remind her that life was worth living and that Tara would not have wanted Willow to do this. He’d assumed that Tara would be the way to reach Willow.
But fate had sent Xander to face Willow, not Buffy. And Giles suspected that they would all be dead now and the world destroyed if not for that fact. Buffy was a warrior, trained to meet violence with violence and that had only sent Willow deeper into darkness. Xander had faced Willow with nothing but his love, the stubborn courage he had always shown in battle, and his willingness to throw himself weaponless against invincible enemies to save his friends.
Giles had felt it, that moment when Willow flinched, as the dark power she’d hurled at Xander had done its work, throwing Xander across the field and slamming him to the ground. Willow had hesitated for one second; faltered momentarily in the face of Xander’s pain, pain that she had caused deliberately and Giles had dared feel hope for the first time. The coven’s magic may have opened a crack in the solid wall of rage, but Xander’s unwavering love had been what had crept inside and reached Willow, pulling her back from the brink.
None of the rest of them could have done it. Stood there and let Willow attack again and again without fighting back. It hadn’t been a bluff, or a ploy. Xander had been willing to lay down his own life in the hope that, if nothing else, his death would stop Willow, would find a way through the madness of her grief and bring her back to them.
Lying on the rubble-strewn floor of the Magic Box, in those first moments of realization that he was possibly going to live after all, and the world with him, it had caused Giles to ponder his childhood religious training in a way he hadn’t done in nearly 30 years. Given his lifelong commitment to training a warrior, it was something of a shock to discover that turning the other cheek really could be the most powerful weapon there was.
Giles would recover. His own injuries were primarily physical, the energy stolen from him had been borrowed energy, not his own life-force. It was Xander he was worried about. Willow had been channeling intensely powerful magics to raise the temple and Xander had used his own body to block the flow of magic. There was no telling what that could have done to him.
Once again, Giles cursed his own weakness and hospital policy that prevented him from seeing Xander.
Leaving Sunnydale had been the hardest thing he’d ever had to do. He’d thought it was the right decision at the time. Buffy was leaning on him too much, and the others seemed to be transitioning into adulthood, no longer needing a father-figure. Willow had been chafing at his authority, and Xander had a good job, something that looked to becoming a solid career, and he and Anya seemed settled and happy.
How had it all gone so wrong?.
He’d have to take Willow away from here. There was no familiar place in town she could find a haven. Buffy’s house had become a place of horror for all of them with Tara’s blood still spattered on the wall and the carpet. The Magic Box was destroyed, no-one would even be able to safely enter the building until the support beams had been repaired. The only place Giles could think to safely take Willow was back to England and turn her over to the Devonshire coven. They would be able to do what he had so spectacularly failed at: train and guide Willow. Assess her strength and teach her to use her power wisely. And, if necessary, to restrain her and contain her power.
It was the only thing that made sense. To let Willow find herself again. Give her a fresh start in the quiet green fields of England, away from the Hellmouth and the constant struggle that came with assisting the Slayer.
He’d stay long enough to see Xander, to make sure he was going to be alright. To tell Xander how proud he was of him. And that’s all. He would say nothing of the feelings he had for the young man, or how those feelings had grown as he learned how much he’d missed Xander while he’d been in England. There was no point. He may have felt an unworthy pang of happiness that Xander and Anya were no longer a couple, but that didn’t change the fundamental fact that Xander had no interest in men in general. And none whatsoever in Giles.
He would stay just long enough to attend Tara’s funeral and mourn with the others for the shy, gentle woman who’d been so briefly part of their lives. Then he’d take Willow back to England and pray the others would be able to pick up the pieces of their lives and go on. One more time.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Season 7 - post-Dirty Girls
Dawn was holding Xander’s hand between both of hers, silent tears sliding down her cheeks and dropping unheeded onto her lap as she sat beside the hospital bed, her eyes never leaving Xander’s face. Xander slept the heavy sleep of the deeply drugged, unaware of her presence or her grief. Even his head turned towards the wall couldn’t hide the extensive bandages that covered half his face.
Giles watched them for long moments, struggling to gain control of his own emotions, before he trusted himself to speak. “Dawn,” he said quietly.
She turned her head to look at him as he stood in the doorway of the room.
“It’s late. You need some rest.” She stirred, ready to argue, but he didn’t give her a chance to speak. “I’ll sit with him.”
Dawn looked back at Xander, raising his hand to her lips and kissing it gently. “How could this happen to him?” she asked brokenly. “It’s not right.”
“No, it’s not,” Giles agreed. “He didn’t deserve this. None of them did,” he added, thinking of all those injured young girls lying in beds down the hall, and the less seriously injured but no less demoralized girls back at the house. “Dawn, I don’t want to sound trite, but it is unfortunately all too true that terrible things happen to good people.”
“Do you think Caleb knew?”
“Knew what?”
“That Xander sees things,” Dawn said. She looked up at Giles, fresh tears welling in her eyes. “I told him that was his power and this happened.” Seeing Giles’ puzzlement, she shook her head. “Never mind.”
Giles looked at her curiously. It didn’t sound like she was shaking off a silly thought, more that she was unwilling to share something that was between her and Xander. He watched as she bent to kiss Xander’s forehead above the bandages and then slowly released his hand and moved reluctantly towards the door.
“If he wakes up, tell him I’ll be back in the morning,” she told him.
“I will.” He laid a hand on her shoulder, giving it a quick squeeze as she passed him, then sat down in the chair she’d vacated.
Things were falling apart. Buffy was stretched so thin she was close to snapping. Willow was hanging on by a thread to her control over her magic, the Potentials terrified and unprepared for the deaths and injuries they had seen tonight. All of them were in over their heads as their enemies became legion and none of them had any idea of how to fight the First.
And now this. Xander had been permanently maimed. Giles wasn’t sure any of them would survive this latest blow. Xander was one of the linchpins holding them together. An average guy, with no special skills, who’d survived for seven years fighting beside the Slayer. A good man, fighting not because it was his destiny, but because it was how he’d chosen to live his life and because he was loyal to his friends. He didn’t think even Xander realized how important he was to morale in that overcrowded, tension-filled house.
Buffy was mishandling the situation. Maybe not strategy-wise, although Giles had his doubts about some of her recent decisions, but in the way she was relating to the people around her. As she’d grown more frustrated and short-tempered, Buffy was lashing out indiscriminately at all of them. She was treating the Potentials as hardened warriors, not frightened teenagers, and they weren’t ready for that. Anyone who wasn’t useful as a fighter - Anya and Andrew, and even Dawn and Xander, was being pushed aside, even belittled at times for their inability to contribute. Granted, Anya and Andrew could be annoying and Giles was guilty of impatience with them himself, but they were both doing their best and Anya, at least, had centuries of knowledge and experience that shouldn’t be taken lightly. Dawn was turning into a fine researcher and it worried Giles that Buffy, who had been so protective of Dawn during the fight with Glory, was as often as not, ignoring Dawn and her very real contributions in favor of the more obvious help of the fighters in their group.
As for Xander… Certainly, the house wouldn’t be fit to live in without Xander’s tireless work repairing what got broken. And he very much feared that, without Xander, the Potentials would be either deserting in droves or in full-blown mutiny against Buffy’s leadership. Giles had heard about the speech he’d made to the Potentials: the girls had been talking about it after the fighters had left. He’d never known Xander had that kind of eloquence, and he’d been so proud of him.
Looked at him now, Giles almost wished Xander hadn’t rallied the frightened girls into a fighting force. If they’d all refused to go, maybe Buffy would have re-thought her reckless plan and no-one would have died this night. And Xander might still have both eyes.
Xander deserved so much more than this. He deserved friends who respected him as well as loved him. All too often, Giles had been aware that Buffy and even Willow, looked down on Xander. Unconsciously, to be sure. They would have denied it, and sincerely believed they were telling the truth. But they spent more time belittling him than supporting him. Jokingly, of course, but he’d watched Xander hide his pain and insecurities behind self-deprecating humor for too many years not to know when Buffy and Willow were unintentionally hurting him.
And they weren’t the only ones.
This was the second time in barely a month that Xander had come close to being killed. Giles was as guilty as the rest of them in not recognizing and acknowledging Xander’s pain after the first attempt. Xander had been stabbed in the gut with a sword so that his blood would open the Hellmouth and all of them had laughed about it, joking around as if it was no more significant than just another disastrous date.
A Khindarr demon had tried to kill him. They were stronger than humans, it had tossed both Buffy and Spike about like nine-pins before Buffy had been able to behead it. Xander had been tied up and helpless and they had all followed Xander’s lead in turning the incident into a joke; just another example of Xander’s bad luck with women. The next day, he’d been back at work repairing things around the house as if he healed as fast as a Slayer, and Giles knew that wasn’t true.
“I’m so sorry, Xander. Sorry for failing you. For not being a better person. For never telling you how I feel: how proud I am of you, and how much I admire you. I’m sorry that it’s taken this to bring the words out of me.” The sound he made was half-laugh, half-sob. “I’m a coward. I should have said these things years ago, and I’m only able to speak now because you’re not conscious to hear me. I love you, Xander. I’m in love with you.”
It was terrifying to hear the words spoken out loud and Giles waited for a long moment, sure that fate was about to play tricks on him by having Xander be awake but the steady, deep breaths didn’t alter and he sighed in relief. “You don’t need to worry. I’ve had feelings for you for a long time now and I’m sure you’ve never noticed. I know that you don’t think of me that way and I’ve long since accepted that I’m not what you want. But I’ve almost lost you twice now in just a few weeks and there is a good chance that none of us may survive the coming battle.” He trailed off, not really sure any longer what he was trying to say. If it was to state his feelings for the record before they all died in the coming battle, he was fairly sure that saying them to an unconscious person didn’t count.
But how would it help to tell Xander that he loved him? The last thing any of them needed right now was more distractions, more tension. Telling Xander would accomplish nothing. There would be no passionate love-making before battle, nothing but awkwardness and avoidance. No, far better if he left things as they were. Even if the improbable happened and Xander welcomed his affections, he knew Xander too well to think that this was the right time. Xander’s lifelong insecurities would lead him to believe that Giles had spoken solely out of pity.
Maybe if they all survived the First… Maybe he would speak then. When Xander had adjusted to the loss of his eye. For now, Giles took Xander’s hand in his own and held it, settling in for the long night, determined to be there when Xander woke.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
16 months later -
“Xander, welcome home.”
Giles didn’t even attempt to hold back his smile as he reached forward to shake Xander’s hand. He was surprised and pleased when Xander ignored the outstretched hand and enfolded him in a bear hug.
“Giles!”
Stepping back, pleased but a trifle flustered, Giles took a moment to study Xander closely. He almost hadn’t recognized the tall, lean figure that had emerged from customs and strode towards him with energy and bounce.
Xander was darkly tanned, his hair longer than Giles had ever seen it and pulled back into a ponytail. He was lean as a greyhound, the black eye patch still a jarring sight - one Giles thought he would never truly get used to. More importantly though, Xander looked happy. The fatigue and depression that had clung to him in the months after the battle with the First had vanished completely. Xander had gone to Africa looking 10 years older than his age - worn out and tired of life, still grieving for the ones who hadn’t made it out of Sunnydale. The infrequent email contacts they’d had, sent from anywhere Xander had been able to find an available computer, had chronicled Xander’s slow rejuvenation, and the emails gradually became longer and full of wonder for the continent he was discovering, traveling through villages and open savannahs as he followed leads on possible Slayers.
Xander had proved gifted at finding Slayers, beyond anything Giles could have hoped. Despite cultural and language barriers, Xander seemed able to inspire confidence in even the most suspicious tribal elders, convincing them to entrust their daughters to him, to send them off with the stranger to be trained.
“God, it’s good to see you!” Xander exclaimed, interrupting his train of thought. “You look great!”
“And you…” Giles returned. “I would hardly recognize you.”
Xander laughed, the joyful sound reminding Giles of the boy he’d first met, all those years ago. When had Xander stopped laughing like that? It shamed him that he couldn’t remember.
“Some serious battery re-charging took place in Africa,” Xander said, still grinning. “But how come you’re here instead of some low level flunky?” he asked, stooping to pick up the worn duffle bag he’d dropped on the floor. “You have flunkies now, right?”
“I’ve missed you,” Giles admitted truthfully. “Plus, I hoped that my face would be a trifle more welcome than Andrew’s.”
“It is,” Xander assured him.
The carry-on was all Xander was traveling with, despite Giles’ distinct recollection of Xander leaving for Africa with a large suitcase. As they headed for the car-park, he couldn’t help stealing sideways glances at Xander, still marveling over the changes in the younger man.
During the past year, while Xander has been in Africa the two of them had been corresponding by email. When he’d realized that the only way he’d be able to communicate with Xander was through email, Giles discovered that he was able to overcome his dislike of computers. It turned out that writing an email could be very like writing a letter, just using a typewriter instead of a pen.
After an awkward beginning, exchanging little more than news on Xander’s progress in finding Slayers and comments on their respective weather, they’d gradually grown more comfortable, and the emails had gotten longer. Giles had sought Xander’s advice on issues with rebuilding the Council and he’d discovered that Xander was surprisingly good at finding solutions to interpersonal problems - a legacy of his foreman experience with the construction company. With little or no access to television or other types of entertainment, Xander had begun to read the books he picked up as he traveled, often books that had been left behind by other travelers. As a result of having to take what he could find, Xander had read an astonishing variety of books over the past year. Giles never knew if Xander’s most recent email would contain his thoughts on Steinbeck and Tolstoy or - as it had on one memorable occasion - a detailed tongue-in-cheek summary of the non-existent plot of a trashy romance novel of the sort that featured a brawny, bare-chested hero clasping a scantily clad wench in his arms. He knew that for a fact since Xander had insisted on describing the cover art in his email. Giles hadn’t laughed so hard in a long time as he had over that description.
Now, together on the same continent and in the same car, Giles found he wasn’t sure what to say. His feelings for Xander had grown as he’d gotten to know the younger man better in this past year than he had in all the previous years he’d known him, but there had been the safety of distance and the comforting familiarity of friendship about their email exchanges. Giles found himself almost wishing for a computer as he glanced across at Xander again.
“Careful,” Xander said. “If you keep that up, I’m going to start thinking you’re checking me out.”
Giles froze, appalled at having given himself away, but Xander had sounded amused more than anything. “I’m afraid that’s exactly what I’m doing,” Giles told him with a smile. “Strictly professionally, of course,” he added, knowing he was flirting and not caring since Xander either didn’t notice or didn’t care.
“Oh, well, as long as it’s just professional interest, you won’t mind that I’m doing the same thing.”
To Giles’ surprise, Xander proceeded to give him a thorough once-over, and he realized that Xander was flirting back.
It was better after that. Giles knew he was smiling too broadly, but he felt almost giddy with happiness as the awkwardness faded and they were suddenly talking comfortably during the drive to his flat. He had prepared a number of excuses for why Xander should stay in his guest room instead of any of the other options open to him, but the subject never came up. Fortunately, other than a hotel or one of the emergency rooms at the new Council building, there weren’t all that many other choices. Buffy and Dawn were still in Italy; Willow had left Kennedy and gone on a spiritual retreat to Nepal - at least in part, Giles suspected, to avoid having to deal with the torrent of blaming calls and emails that Kennedy had unleashed on the rest of them following the bitter breakup. Faith and Robin were still in Cleveland, and Xander had come home from Africa after Giles had decreed that a year was the outer limit for anyone to be traveling alone on Council business.
He wasn’t planning on telling Xander exactly why he’d decided to implement that particular rule.
Other than Andrew, Giles was the only one of the Sunnydale group still in London. And now Xander, if he was willing to stay.
“I’d planned to have you stay with me,” he said, a bit too casually, as they approached his exit off the M25. “But, of course, if you…”
“Your place sounds great,” Xander said firmly, cutting him off. “If you’ve got room, I’d love to stay with you.”
“There’s plenty of room,” Giles told him. “It will be good to have company. I’m afraid I don’t know quite what to do with a flat where people actually knock before entering. Quite disconcerting.”
Xander laughed. “Well, if we could have been sure you were conscious, we probably would have knocked.”
“I wasn’t knocked unconscious nearly as often as all of you like to claim. It really was quite a rare occurrence.”
“Just keep telling yourself that, Giles,” Xander said comfortingly.
~~~~~
It felt right to have Xander in his flat. They made dinner together, moving around each other in the tiny kitchen with an ease more usual to long-term partners than two people cooking together for the first time. Giles found himself smiling frequently, enjoying the company. He’d been too busy with the Council, too focused on the work that needed doing to make new friends or to look up old ones, and was only now realizing how lonely he’d been in the past year.
Xander had learned to cook in Africa and as he expertly chopped and sliced, he kept Giles laughing with stories about his early, disastrous encounters with African food. Dinner was casual and congenial as they caught each other up on the latest word from the rest of the far flung members of the Sunnydale group. Giles was so proud of all of them. They’d weathered storms that would have destroyed lesser people, and they’d done it as mere children. Now they were adults, and they’d all chosen to remain in the fight, all of them having changed and grown through the years.
Afterwards, as Xander leaned against the kitchen counter watching Giles wash their few dishes, he cocked his head and asked: “So, what’s next?”
Somehow it was as natural as breathing to answer that question by leaning over and kissing Xander. Just a gentle, exploratory kiss, that deepened as Xander didn’t pull away. Giles found his hands lifting to cup Xander’s head, his thumbs brushing lightly over the tanned skin of his cheeks, as his lips moved against Xander’s and he tasted for the first time the lips that had featured in his dreams for more years than he cared to remember.
Xander’s hands on his shoulders broke the kiss and Giles lifted his head aware suddenly that Xander had gone completely motionless.
“Wow,” Xander said thoughtfully after a brief pause. “Umm…I actually meant what’s next, work-wise.”
Giles stepped back, appalled that he’d misread the situation so completely. “Xander, I’m so sorry. This won’t happen again.” He was terrified that Xander would leave, unable to accept what had just happened.
“Giles, it’s ok. I dated Anya, remember? There’s not a whole lot of things I haven’t tried at least once. I’m not freaking out. Ok, I am freaking a little, but mostly because I didn’t see that coming.”
Giles ducked his head, color flaming in his cheeks and thinking that it was absurd that he was blushing at his age. “I’ve-I’ve had feelings for you for a long time, Xander,” he confessed. “It was just never…” Never the right time. Always too much else going on. Never thinking Xander would welcome his advances.
Well, maybe this was finally the right time. The right place. The right moment. “I love you, Xander.” He spoke calmly, but his heart was pounding in his chest as he searched Xander’s face for his reaction.
A series of expressions chased each other across Xander’s expressive face: shock, surprise, uncertainty, and finally, an almost shy pleasure. “I don’t know what to say. That’s…” He shook his head, like he was trying to clear it. “I thought about you a lot this past year, Giles. I missed you. And there were some late night thoughts that surprised the heck out of me. But it never occurred to me…” His eye scanned Giles’ face. “Really?”
“Really,” Giles told him firmly, daring to allow himself to feel hope. “I realized I’d fallen in love with you when you almost died at Kingman’s Bluff. I couldn’t bear the thought of losing you.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Because it wasn’t the right time. I didn’t want to burden you with my unwanted feelings, especially not then. Too much had just happened, and I knew I’d have to leave again, to take Willow back to England. I told you the next year, when you were in hospital,” he offered.
Xander frowned. “I know I’d remember that.”
“Well, you were unconscious at the time, but I assure you I said it,” he admitted sheepishly.
Xander started laughing. “Maybe we are destined to be together, if that’s your idea of a declaration of love.”
‘Destined to be together.’ Giles liked the sound of that. He leaned forward again, slowly, giving Xander time to pull away, but Xander met him halfway, and this time the kiss was mutual, and Giles closed his eyes and let himself fall into the sensations. Xander’s mouth moved hesitantly against his, obviously cataloguing the differences in kissing a man instead of a woman, before gaining confidence. His tongue traced the outline of Giles’ lips and Giles’ mouth opened and their tongues met. Sensation exploded in him as his tongue dueled with Xander’s and he lost himself in the kiss.
When at long last, they both pulled back slightly, Xander was smiling.
End