Nearly December already?
CYA deadline is tomorrow! And I'm busy-ish tomorrow, so I'm posting today:
Title: "Badass Manly Soldier Guys"
Rating: PG? I think?
Characters/Pairing: Xander, Xander & Riley friendship (with the barest, vaguest hints of slash), and a dash of Willow
Setting: Africa, future
Summary: Xander and Riley sit on a rock and drink beer. Yup.
Thanks to: alwaysjbj for the beta!
A/N: Written for the 5th round of cya_ficathon Request: "I have a real weakness for Xander fic set in the future. Happy or sad, any other characters appearing or not, I'd just like to see what might happen. It would make me happy if he was still in touch with Willow, or at least resuming contact perhaps? I've always loved their interaction, although not romantically. Xander slash or hints of it would make me happiest, and I don't mind what flavour. I like him with Giles, Riley, Spike, Oz… yes, pretty much anyone! No fluff, but I don't mind angst as long as there's a happy ending. I love smut, though any rating is fine."
Xander walks three miles once a week for this. It’s tiring, and the conversations are getting shorter and shorter, but he still thinks it’s important, somehow. It was easier when the weather was a little cooler, and he was more willing to talk when he reached his destination. He figures he has to take a break and visit Willow soon, because he’s always been better at the face to face contact, and a tinny-sounding phone connection at the end of the hike is starting to feel like it’s not enough to sustain their friendship.
She talks about what’s going on at her end for awhile; it always starts that way. The last few conversations she’s talked about how Giles was sick, but she says he seems to be getting better now. Willow hasn’t been seeing anyone romantically in a while, and is starting to feel like she’s better off - she seems a lot more interested in her work. Buffy has been seeing another guy who’s just going to turn out to be bad news, and is neglecting her duties in the process. They trust that she’ll come to her senses soon enough, though. Dawn’s still getting all As in university.
It comes to his turn to talk, and his responses are stilted, professional. Maybe he’d be warmer if he had something more personal going on in his life right now, but at the moment he’s all about work, about protecting the locals. It’s hardened him.
“We had a raid scheduled on a bunch of Haljin demons yesterday. All of our strongest were taken to the scene.”
“Yeah?” Willow responds, interested. Haljins are probably the largest breed of demons she’s heard him mention turning up the whole time he’s spent in Africa. She can’t help but be concerned. “How’d that go?”
“We were late. Bunch of secret service army guys got in there first, annihilated them. Guess I should be happy someone else got my work done for me, but I was kind of itching for a fight.” While he says this, he reaches to his hip to run a hand along his rifle. Without super strength, it’s his best defense against the monsters, and it’s like a security blanket for him now. He takes it everywhere. He was never an ‘itching for a fight’ kind of guy before he bought that weapon.
“Well, I’m glad you didn’t have any trouble. I worry about you, you know.”
“Yeah.” He nods to himself. “Finn’s one of them.”
“Riley?” Willow asks, surprised. That’s not a name she’s heard in a long time.
“The one and only. Most of their team’s already moved along, but he and a few of his guys are going to be sticking around for a few days, make sure they got all of them. They didn’t know we were here, but they’re still sticking to their game plan now that they do. I guess they don’t trust us to take care of it.” His last words come out bitterly.
“That might be best,” Willow responds. Neither of them says anything for awhile, a whole minute passes in silence, and then she adds quietly, “You should visit. Soon. We miss you. And Giles… Giles might be better now, but for a while there we were worried, and…”
“I’ll visit when I can. Look, I have to… I should get back. I have a camp to run, and this isn’t the cheapest of phone calls. Next week, okay?”
He walks three miles back every week, and by the time he reaches camp it’s dusk.
*
He walks through the main camp, past the guys playing cards, or telling war stories and trying to one-up the new guys from the army group. He doesn’t see Riley anywhere. He walks all the way through and down the path a little way, to the secluded rock that he likes to sit on to think when he feels like being alone. Sometimes he brings a lantern; sometimes he doesn’t. He knows the path well enough by now that he doesn’t need it. He doesn’t bring one this time, but when he gets there, it’s already aglow, and the light is sitting next to Riley’s feet.
He considers making some cheesy remark about how Riley ‘found his hiding place,’ but settles for a silent nod instead. New Xander uses words sparingly.
When he sits down, he notices that Riley’s got a beer in his hand, and he reaches into a cooler by his side and holds one out for Xander as well. Xander’s mouth moistens at the very thought, and he takes it with a quick ‘thanks’. They mostly live off the land around here. Once a month someone will take the journey to go buy ‘luxuries’ like beer, which ran out early this month, since it was one of the guys’ birthday three days in. It’s been awhile since he’s got his hands on a cold one.
When he’s got the cap off, they tap their bottle necks in a polite, but silent toast. He wouldn’t know what to toast to if he had to say it out loud.
They sit quietly for awhile, and when Riley’s finished his bottle and opened another one, he comments to Xander, “Nice set up you’ve got here. You’re doing good things.”
Xander shrugs. “We do what we can.” And then, as if he can’t help himself, “Where’s your wife?”
He mentally kicks himself. New Xander doesn’t gossip, but he hadn’t seen her and a part of him was curious.
“She left me,” Riley answers neutrally. “Shacked up in Colorado somewhere with, uh, Tom. She wanted to settle down and start a normal life together. I… couldn’t.”
Xander nods. He doesn’t think he could give up this life now if he was asked, either.
Riley shakes himself, gets back down to business. “So how long have you been here doing this?”
“I was here for a couple of years after… You know about what happened with Sunnydale, right? The truth, not the official public story.” Riley nods. Of course he’d know. “Well, I was here for a couple years after that, though it wasn’t as organized as it is now. Then I thought I’d like to move on, traveled Asia for a year, went and spent some time back with the gang in London for six months, but eventually decided that this was where I was meant to be. So I came back, with better resources, and have been here ever since. So that’s another year and a half now.”
Riley leans back onto his elbows, ignoring the parts of the rock that stick into him. He takes a long swig of his beer and looks up with a smile, like he’s admiring the stars, but there’s no way he can see them through the trees. “It’s a nice set up,” he repeats to himself.
*
As it turns out, Riley and his guys stay a week or so longer than planned, and the ritual of sitting on the rock and sharing beers becomes a regular thing, on nights when they don’t have any demons to take down, which is most. It’s like that here - the danger comes all at once, then there are days, even weeks, of quiet.
On the third night, Riley can’t hold himself back anymore. “How’s Buffy?” He couldn’t think of a way to get that information while playing it cool and acting like it wasn’t what he was really after, so he just asks it straight. He knows Xander would see through him anyway.
Xander’s eyebrows rise slightly, though he’s not sure why he’s surprised. Of course Riley would still be thinking of her, even after all these years. She had that effect on people. Mainly men. “She’s older,” he answers, because ‘she’s good’ would be a lie. “Not necessarily wiser, but older. And that’s good enough. That’s better than we could have hoped for.”
“Yeah, I guess in her line of work, reaching this age is…”
“Faith died,” Xander interrupts, and then wonders why he did. New Xander doesn’t offer information without being asked.
“Oh,” Riley answers, and it’s clear that he doesn’t know whether to offer condolences. He never really knew Faith, and what he remembers of her is… not positive.
“She was good, in the end,” Xander adds, sensing Riley’s dilemma.
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. She was ready.” His foot taps the rhythm of an old rock song that he can’t quite place into the soil beneath them. “She was ready.”
*
On another night, they’ve let themselves have a few more than usual, and Riley is singing an old rock song that Xander can’t quite place, and he’s still wishing he could figure out the one that was in his head the other night.
He wants to tell Riley to shut up, that too much noise will draw the other guys to them, and then this place won’t be his anymore, but he just grooves instead. Riley’s voice actually isn’t half bad.
Suddenly Xander reaches out, and grabs Riley’s hand. Riley starts in surprise, but doesn’t pull it back. Xander gapes at the hand, and then holds it up for Riley to see.
“What happened?” Xander asks, surprised that he hasn’t noticed in the nights past in which Riley has handed him numerous bottles. The lantern’s up on the rock tonight instead of down by their feet, and that might be why, but he’s prided himself on his increasing awareness over the last few years. To succeed in this business, to go on living, you’ve got to notice everything, the little things.
“Oh,” Riley says. “Lost it in a fight a few years ago. Torn right off. It doesn’t bother me much anymore. They say that if you lose your pinky toe, your whole balance is thrown off, but it’s not the same with pinky fingers. There’s no real consequence. I’ve still got a good grip.”
Xander’s noticed, since they’re still holding hands and he can’t say why. The beer’s made his head a little fuzzy.
“So you’ve lost your finger and I’ve lost my eye. Dangerous business we’re in.”
It’s the first time his eye has been brought up in conversation, but it’s a more obvious thing than Riley’s finger, and never really needed to be pointed out.
“Dangerous business,” Riley repeats softly. “Sooner or later, we all lose something.”
“There was a time, for a little while, when we thought Willow might lose her soul. Her heart.” New Xander really isn’t supposed to share things like that, but something about having Riley here makes him feel the way he did back when they knew each other before. He thinks it’s not so bad to break his hard exterior with Riley, who knew him back when and will be gone in a few days anyway.
“Her Willowness,” Riley simplifies. Xander grins, because he hasn’t been around people who talk like that in a while.
“Yes. And we all know Willow keeping her Willowness is essential.”
Riley softly chuckles, and finally, casually, breaks his hold on Xander’s hand as he reaches to the cooler for another beer. So simple an action, and so much more natural than the way they’d been holding on, but it leaves Xander feeling a little cold.
*
“It’s strange,” Riley comments the next night. “Guys like us, ending up in lives like this. We’re normal guys, you know?”
“We were, once. Or I was.”
“I was, too,” Riley insists. “I know when you met me I was already doing the soldier thing, but I wasn’t always… I mean, I was a farm-boy from Iowa, for Christ’s sake. My parents still have no idea what I do with my life. They think I’m a big time businessman, and that all the travel is because I have a world-wide base of clientele. Every time I go home, I have to pack a bunch of suits I never wear. They don’t know me at all.”
Xander shrugs. That doesn’t seem like a big deal to him. “My parents don’t know either. I don’t think they have any idea in mind of what else I might be doing either. They’ve never asked. Actually, I haven’t spoken to them in about three years.”
“Do you still love them?” Riley asks. That’s not the sort of thing any soldier’s supposed to talk about out here, ever, but Xander’s just about given up entirely on being New Xander around Riley, and thinks Riley’s dropped some of the hard shell around him as well.
“No. Do you love yours?”
“Yeah. I mean, they don’t know me, and there’s no real common ground there anymore, but they still care about me. They’re still what I came from. They’ve still got a home there for me, if I ever need it.”
Xander looks over at him in surprise. “Would you ever do that? Just pack it all in and go home and be a farm guy?”
Riley shakes his head, but says, “Well, maybe if I lost a thumb. Pinky’s no big deal, but opposable thumbs are pretty useful out on the battle field. Pretty useful on the crop field too, actually, so maybe I wouldn’t be any good to them there either.”
Xander quirks his head to the side. “So if you still go home sometimes, what did they think about your finger? What did you tell them?”
“A traumatic trip to the zoo that I don’t want to talk about. Ever. They stopped asking.”
“Huh.” Xander doesn’t know if he’s making a joke, and Riley doesn’t seem affected when he doesn’t laugh.
“Do you ever wish...?”
“No,” Xander answers instinctively. It doesn’t matter the question: Does he ever wish he’d stayed a normal guy? Does he ever wish he’d never met Buffy? Or, if that’s too hard an image to process, does he ever wish he’d met Buffy but she’d been normal? Any way Riley could finish that sentence, the answer would be no. He doesn’t wish for anything anymore.
“Yeah, me neither. How else could a couple of guys like us find our way here?” He asks the question because there’s no doubt that either of them would rather be anywhere else right now. “I like it here. I like this, the quiet, sitting here with you.”
“I like it, too,” Xander replies, and he thinks he likes it better than when he came to this rock to think and avoid talking.
*
They’re sitting facing apart with their backs pressed together, and Xander’s whole body feels warm.
“So the rest of my team found some interesting activity a hundred miles or so north,” Riley says. “Me and my guys’ll be heading out tomorrow.”
“Huh,” Xander comments, and wonders if this place could even feel like his anymore, once he has it to himself again.
“So, you know, we all want to thank you and your team for your hospitality,” Riley adds awkwardly, and reaches behind and to the side to pat Xander’s hand, and lets it linger there a moment before pulling back again.”
“Nah, don’t… don’t even,” Xander replies softly. “You know, I’m gonna miss…” He coughs. “…your beer.”
Riley laughs, and somehow the moment feels less tense than it did a moment ago. “Maybe I’ll let you keep a few bottles.”
Xander separates from him to look at him, straight in the eye. “Yeah?”
“Play your cards right,” Riley replies, and it’s something of a promise.
*
Xander walks three miles, and at the end of the hike, he opens a bottle of beer while he dials. It’s not cold anymore, but it tastes good.
“You didn’t call last week,” Willow says, and she sounds a little hurt, but mostly concerned.
“Yeah, things were kind of shaken up with our visitors. They stayed longer than expected. They’re gone now, though.”
“That’s cool. You know, as long as it wasn’t… anything bad.” Willow still sounds worried. “So did you talk to Riley much?”
“Yeah, a little,” Xander answers lightly. “We’re going to keep in touch, kind of. He gave me one of his walkie-talkie things, so whenever he’s in a ten-mile radius…”
He can practically hear Willow rolling her eyes down the line. “Men are so unsentimental. That’s your idea of staying in touch? I’m glad that’s not the only way I can count on hearing from you.”
“The price of being such badass manly soldier guys.”
“Of course.”
“So, listen. I think I might come visit soon. How’s two weeks from now?”
“Two weeks would be awesome.”
Title: "Badass Manly Soldier Guys"
Rating: PG? I think?
Characters/Pairing: Xander, Xander & Riley friendship (with the barest, vaguest hints of slash), and a dash of Willow
Setting: Africa, future
Summary: Xander and Riley sit on a rock and drink beer. Yup.
Thanks to: alwaysjbj for the beta!
A/N: Written for the 5th round of cya_ficathon Request: "I have a real weakness for Xander fic set in the future. Happy or sad, any other characters appearing or not, I'd just like to see what might happen. It would make me happy if he was still in touch with Willow, or at least resuming contact perhaps? I've always loved their interaction, although not romantically. Xander slash or hints of it would make me happiest, and I don't mind what flavour. I like him with Giles, Riley, Spike, Oz… yes, pretty much anyone! No fluff, but I don't mind angst as long as there's a happy ending. I love smut, though any rating is fine."
Xander walks three miles once a week for this. It’s tiring, and the conversations are getting shorter and shorter, but he still thinks it’s important, somehow. It was easier when the weather was a little cooler, and he was more willing to talk when he reached his destination. He figures he has to take a break and visit Willow soon, because he’s always been better at the face to face contact, and a tinny-sounding phone connection at the end of the hike is starting to feel like it’s not enough to sustain their friendship.
She talks about what’s going on at her end for awhile; it always starts that way. The last few conversations she’s talked about how Giles was sick, but she says he seems to be getting better now. Willow hasn’t been seeing anyone romantically in a while, and is starting to feel like she’s better off - she seems a lot more interested in her work. Buffy has been seeing another guy who’s just going to turn out to be bad news, and is neglecting her duties in the process. They trust that she’ll come to her senses soon enough, though. Dawn’s still getting all As in university.
It comes to his turn to talk, and his responses are stilted, professional. Maybe he’d be warmer if he had something more personal going on in his life right now, but at the moment he’s all about work, about protecting the locals. It’s hardened him.
“We had a raid scheduled on a bunch of Haljin demons yesterday. All of our strongest were taken to the scene.”
“Yeah?” Willow responds, interested. Haljins are probably the largest breed of demons she’s heard him mention turning up the whole time he’s spent in Africa. She can’t help but be concerned. “How’d that go?”
“We were late. Bunch of secret service army guys got in there first, annihilated them. Guess I should be happy someone else got my work done for me, but I was kind of itching for a fight.” While he says this, he reaches to his hip to run a hand along his rifle. Without super strength, it’s his best defense against the monsters, and it’s like a security blanket for him now. He takes it everywhere. He was never an ‘itching for a fight’ kind of guy before he bought that weapon.
“Well, I’m glad you didn’t have any trouble. I worry about you, you know.”
“Yeah.” He nods to himself. “Finn’s one of them.”
“Riley?” Willow asks, surprised. That’s not a name she’s heard in a long time.
“The one and only. Most of their team’s already moved along, but he and a few of his guys are going to be sticking around for a few days, make sure they got all of them. They didn’t know we were here, but they’re still sticking to their game plan now that they do. I guess they don’t trust us to take care of it.” His last words come out bitterly.
“That might be best,” Willow responds. Neither of them says anything for awhile, a whole minute passes in silence, and then she adds quietly, “You should visit. Soon. We miss you. And Giles… Giles might be better now, but for a while there we were worried, and…”
“I’ll visit when I can. Look, I have to… I should get back. I have a camp to run, and this isn’t the cheapest of phone calls. Next week, okay?”
He walks three miles back every week, and by the time he reaches camp it’s dusk.
*
He walks through the main camp, past the guys playing cards, or telling war stories and trying to one-up the new guys from the army group. He doesn’t see Riley anywhere. He walks all the way through and down the path a little way, to the secluded rock that he likes to sit on to think when he feels like being alone. Sometimes he brings a lantern; sometimes he doesn’t. He knows the path well enough by now that he doesn’t need it. He doesn’t bring one this time, but when he gets there, it’s already aglow, and the light is sitting next to Riley’s feet.
He considers making some cheesy remark about how Riley ‘found his hiding place,’ but settles for a silent nod instead. New Xander uses words sparingly.
When he sits down, he notices that Riley’s got a beer in his hand, and he reaches into a cooler by his side and holds one out for Xander as well. Xander’s mouth moistens at the very thought, and he takes it with a quick ‘thanks’. They mostly live off the land around here. Once a month someone will take the journey to go buy ‘luxuries’ like beer, which ran out early this month, since it was one of the guys’ birthday three days in. It’s been awhile since he’s got his hands on a cold one.
When he’s got the cap off, they tap their bottle necks in a polite, but silent toast. He wouldn’t know what to toast to if he had to say it out loud.
They sit quietly for awhile, and when Riley’s finished his bottle and opened another one, he comments to Xander, “Nice set up you’ve got here. You’re doing good things.”
Xander shrugs. “We do what we can.” And then, as if he can’t help himself, “Where’s your wife?”
He mentally kicks himself. New Xander doesn’t gossip, but he hadn’t seen her and a part of him was curious.
“She left me,” Riley answers neutrally. “Shacked up in Colorado somewhere with, uh, Tom. She wanted to settle down and start a normal life together. I… couldn’t.”
Xander nods. He doesn’t think he could give up this life now if he was asked, either.
Riley shakes himself, gets back down to business. “So how long have you been here doing this?”
“I was here for a couple of years after… You know about what happened with Sunnydale, right? The truth, not the official public story.” Riley nods. Of course he’d know. “Well, I was here for a couple years after that, though it wasn’t as organized as it is now. Then I thought I’d like to move on, traveled Asia for a year, went and spent some time back with the gang in London for six months, but eventually decided that this was where I was meant to be. So I came back, with better resources, and have been here ever since. So that’s another year and a half now.”
Riley leans back onto his elbows, ignoring the parts of the rock that stick into him. He takes a long swig of his beer and looks up with a smile, like he’s admiring the stars, but there’s no way he can see them through the trees. “It’s a nice set up,” he repeats to himself.
*
As it turns out, Riley and his guys stay a week or so longer than planned, and the ritual of sitting on the rock and sharing beers becomes a regular thing, on nights when they don’t have any demons to take down, which is most. It’s like that here - the danger comes all at once, then there are days, even weeks, of quiet.
On the third night, Riley can’t hold himself back anymore. “How’s Buffy?” He couldn’t think of a way to get that information while playing it cool and acting like it wasn’t what he was really after, so he just asks it straight. He knows Xander would see through him anyway.
Xander’s eyebrows rise slightly, though he’s not sure why he’s surprised. Of course Riley would still be thinking of her, even after all these years. She had that effect on people. Mainly men. “She’s older,” he answers, because ‘she’s good’ would be a lie. “Not necessarily wiser, but older. And that’s good enough. That’s better than we could have hoped for.”
“Yeah, I guess in her line of work, reaching this age is…”
“Faith died,” Xander interrupts, and then wonders why he did. New Xander doesn’t offer information without being asked.
“Oh,” Riley answers, and it’s clear that he doesn’t know whether to offer condolences. He never really knew Faith, and what he remembers of her is… not positive.
“She was good, in the end,” Xander adds, sensing Riley’s dilemma.
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. She was ready.” His foot taps the rhythm of an old rock song that he can’t quite place into the soil beneath them. “She was ready.”
*
On another night, they’ve let themselves have a few more than usual, and Riley is singing an old rock song that Xander can’t quite place, and he’s still wishing he could figure out the one that was in his head the other night.
He wants to tell Riley to shut up, that too much noise will draw the other guys to them, and then this place won’t be his anymore, but he just grooves instead. Riley’s voice actually isn’t half bad.
Suddenly Xander reaches out, and grabs Riley’s hand. Riley starts in surprise, but doesn’t pull it back. Xander gapes at the hand, and then holds it up for Riley to see.
“What happened?” Xander asks, surprised that he hasn’t noticed in the nights past in which Riley has handed him numerous bottles. The lantern’s up on the rock tonight instead of down by their feet, and that might be why, but he’s prided himself on his increasing awareness over the last few years. To succeed in this business, to go on living, you’ve got to notice everything, the little things.
“Oh,” Riley says. “Lost it in a fight a few years ago. Torn right off. It doesn’t bother me much anymore. They say that if you lose your pinky toe, your whole balance is thrown off, but it’s not the same with pinky fingers. There’s no real consequence. I’ve still got a good grip.”
Xander’s noticed, since they’re still holding hands and he can’t say why. The beer’s made his head a little fuzzy.
“So you’ve lost your finger and I’ve lost my eye. Dangerous business we’re in.”
It’s the first time his eye has been brought up in conversation, but it’s a more obvious thing than Riley’s finger, and never really needed to be pointed out.
“Dangerous business,” Riley repeats softly. “Sooner or later, we all lose something.”
“There was a time, for a little while, when we thought Willow might lose her soul. Her heart.” New Xander really isn’t supposed to share things like that, but something about having Riley here makes him feel the way he did back when they knew each other before. He thinks it’s not so bad to break his hard exterior with Riley, who knew him back when and will be gone in a few days anyway.
“Her Willowness,” Riley simplifies. Xander grins, because he hasn’t been around people who talk like that in a while.
“Yes. And we all know Willow keeping her Willowness is essential.”
Riley softly chuckles, and finally, casually, breaks his hold on Xander’s hand as he reaches to the cooler for another beer. So simple an action, and so much more natural than the way they’d been holding on, but it leaves Xander feeling a little cold.
*
“It’s strange,” Riley comments the next night. “Guys like us, ending up in lives like this. We’re normal guys, you know?”
“We were, once. Or I was.”
“I was, too,” Riley insists. “I know when you met me I was already doing the soldier thing, but I wasn’t always… I mean, I was a farm-boy from Iowa, for Christ’s sake. My parents still have no idea what I do with my life. They think I’m a big time businessman, and that all the travel is because I have a world-wide base of clientele. Every time I go home, I have to pack a bunch of suits I never wear. They don’t know me at all.”
Xander shrugs. That doesn’t seem like a big deal to him. “My parents don’t know either. I don’t think they have any idea in mind of what else I might be doing either. They’ve never asked. Actually, I haven’t spoken to them in about three years.”
“Do you still love them?” Riley asks. That’s not the sort of thing any soldier’s supposed to talk about out here, ever, but Xander’s just about given up entirely on being New Xander around Riley, and thinks Riley’s dropped some of the hard shell around him as well.
“No. Do you love yours?”
“Yeah. I mean, they don’t know me, and there’s no real common ground there anymore, but they still care about me. They’re still what I came from. They’ve still got a home there for me, if I ever need it.”
Xander looks over at him in surprise. “Would you ever do that? Just pack it all in and go home and be a farm guy?”
Riley shakes his head, but says, “Well, maybe if I lost a thumb. Pinky’s no big deal, but opposable thumbs are pretty useful out on the battle field. Pretty useful on the crop field too, actually, so maybe I wouldn’t be any good to them there either.”
Xander quirks his head to the side. “So if you still go home sometimes, what did they think about your finger? What did you tell them?”
“A traumatic trip to the zoo that I don’t want to talk about. Ever. They stopped asking.”
“Huh.” Xander doesn’t know if he’s making a joke, and Riley doesn’t seem affected when he doesn’t laugh.
“Do you ever wish...?”
“No,” Xander answers instinctively. It doesn’t matter the question: Does he ever wish he’d stayed a normal guy? Does he ever wish he’d never met Buffy? Or, if that’s too hard an image to process, does he ever wish he’d met Buffy but she’d been normal? Any way Riley could finish that sentence, the answer would be no. He doesn’t wish for anything anymore.
“Yeah, me neither. How else could a couple of guys like us find our way here?” He asks the question because there’s no doubt that either of them would rather be anywhere else right now. “I like it here. I like this, the quiet, sitting here with you.”
“I like it, too,” Xander replies, and he thinks he likes it better than when he came to this rock to think and avoid talking.
*
They’re sitting facing apart with their backs pressed together, and Xander’s whole body feels warm.
“So the rest of my team found some interesting activity a hundred miles or so north,” Riley says. “Me and my guys’ll be heading out tomorrow.”
“Huh,” Xander comments, and wonders if this place could even feel like his anymore, once he has it to himself again.
“So, you know, we all want to thank you and your team for your hospitality,” Riley adds awkwardly, and reaches behind and to the side to pat Xander’s hand, and lets it linger there a moment before pulling back again.”
“Nah, don’t… don’t even,” Xander replies softly. “You know, I’m gonna miss…” He coughs. “…your beer.”
Riley laughs, and somehow the moment feels less tense than it did a moment ago. “Maybe I’ll let you keep a few bottles.”
Xander separates from him to look at him, straight in the eye. “Yeah?”
“Play your cards right,” Riley replies, and it’s something of a promise.
*
Xander walks three miles, and at the end of the hike, he opens a bottle of beer while he dials. It’s not cold anymore, but it tastes good.
“You didn’t call last week,” Willow says, and she sounds a little hurt, but mostly concerned.
“Yeah, things were kind of shaken up with our visitors. They stayed longer than expected. They’re gone now, though.”
“That’s cool. You know, as long as it wasn’t… anything bad.” Willow still sounds worried. “So did you talk to Riley much?”
“Yeah, a little,” Xander answers lightly. “We’re going to keep in touch, kind of. He gave me one of his walkie-talkie things, so whenever he’s in a ten-mile radius…”
He can practically hear Willow rolling her eyes down the line. “Men are so unsentimental. That’s your idea of staying in touch? I’m glad that’s not the only way I can count on hearing from you.”
“The price of being such badass manly soldier guys.”
“Of course.”
“So, listen. I think I might come visit soon. How’s two weeks from now?”
“Two weeks would be awesome.”