Title: Family
Author: Mireille (mireille719)
Fandom: Buffyverse
Pairing: Giles/Xander
Rating: FRT
Summary: Rupert sighed quietly. "Angel couldn't find a way to contact Wesley's family, and he hoped I'd be able to get these things to them."
Word Count: 2,200
Spoilers: Post-Chosen/post-NFA; draws from aired-episode canon only
Disclaimer: I'm not Joss. You can tell because he's read the S8 comics.
Feedback/Concrit: Both welcome, either here or at mireille719 {at} gmail {dot} com
Notes: Written for rainkatt for a donation at fire_fic. Thanks to lostgirlslair and soft_princess for the prompts that helped me find a bunny for this, and to lostgirlslair also for beta-reading.

Xander should have known the package was going to be trouble. It was plain, it was clumsily wrapped, and it had a return address that, while perfectly legible, didn't tell him anything at all beyond the fact that it had been mailed from Los Angeles. That didn't really narrow it down much. There were a lot of people in Los Angeles, and some of them probably didn't even want Rupert dead.

But the package wasn't addressed to him, and he was late for a meeting, and so he just put it on the hall table and called Rupert's voice mail on his way out the door. If that box was going to explode or summon a demon or turn Rupert into a toad, Xander at least wanted him to be warned.

By the time he got home, Xander had almost forgotten about the package, though; he'd had a long and painful meeting with the architects who were supposed to be designing the Council's new headquarters, and around the fifth time he said some variation on "Never mind why we need it built this way; just accept that we do and put it in the design, damn it!" everything had slipped his mind except for the strong and very genuine desire to either demand that Rupert send him back to Africa on the next flight, or to quit altogether. There was a whole country full of pizza places and fast-food restaurants that hadn't fired him yet.

It was late, he was exhausted, it was raining, and all he wanted was to make a pot of coffee, heat up something to eat, take a long shower, and forget all about building plans and the difficulty of convincing architects that yes, this so-called office building really did need two floors devoted to gyms and martial arts studios, and also did he mention that the door to the room with all the built-in bookshelves needed to be iron? No, not steel. Trust him on this one. God.

He'd hoped that maybe he wouldn't have to do the "heating up dinner" part of his plan, because it was late enough that Rupert might be home, but when Xander opened the door, the house felt chilly and there was no smell of anything cooking. "Rupert?" Xander called, hanging up his jacket and dropping the folder of sketches and notes on the table. That was when he remembered the package he'd left there earlier; it was gone.

"Rupert?" Xander called again, reminding himself that even for them, the chances that there had been anything truly dangerous in that package were pretty slim. "Are you home?"

"In here," Rupert called, and Xander went through into the living room, pretending not to be as relieved as he actually felt. When he saw Rupert, though, the worry came back. Something was definitely wrong. Rupert was still wearing his jacket and tie from the office, though the tie was loosened and somewhat askew, and it looked like Rupert had been running his hands through his hair. With instincts developed on top of a hellmouth, Xander immediately looked at the coffee table, expecting to see a pile of books on it--the definitive sign of "the world is ending, and I don't know how to stop it yet."

There were books on the table, but not as many as Xander had expected. There was the book Xander was reading--Rupert had given him a couple of James Bond books for Christmas last year, and Xander was slowly working his way through the entire series--and the same small stack next to Rupert's end of the couch that had been there last night. The only book that didn't seem to belong was a small one with a brown cover, and it was closed. About half the surface of the table was covered with papers; as Xander sat down on the couch next to Rupert, he noticed that there seemed to be several photographs mixed in with what looked like bank statements, bills, and handwritten notes.

Xander frowned. "What's this?"

"That package you brought in this morning," Rupert said. He took off his glasses for a moment, rubbing the bridge of his nose, and then picked up his glass from the end table, taking a drink of Scotch. "It's from Wesley."

Xander almost asked, Wesley who?, because for a moment, he was running through the names of everyone who worked for the Council. There was a Weston, cranky old guy in Edinburgh who'd retired twenty years ago and still felt the need to show up from time to time to tell Rupert he was doing it wrong, but he couldn't remember-- Oh. Wesley. "I, um," Xander began. "I thought he was supposed to be dead?" Not that being dead automatically stopped people from sending mail, not in their line of work, but still. Dead. For several months now.

"He is," Rupert said, and Xander felt kind of bad for being relieved. Not exactly relieved that Wesley was dead--not that Xander had ever liked him all that much, but he hadn't wanted him dead except for a few times in twelfth grade when Cordelia had been drooling a little too obviously--but relieved that if he was dead, he'd apparently stayed that way. "This is... some of his personal effects. Angel sent them."

"Huh? I mean, why you? It's not like you and Wesley were best buds, or you and Angel either. And why now? The stuff that went down in L.A.--that was what, six months ago?" Xander picked up one of the pictures from the table, a Polaroid. From the center of the picture, Cordelia grinned up at him, her arms around Wesley and a guy Xander didn't recognize. Angel loomed behind them, the strained expression on his face probably an attempt at a smile. Xander wondered what had happened to Cordy. Andrew had come back from L.A. with a story about a supernatural coma, but after that, they hadn't heard anything. The cleanup crew the Council had reluctantly sent to L.A. last spring hadn't found anything out.

And his ex-girlfriend was so not the issue here, Xander reminded himself as Rupert started talking again. "Angel was only now able to get back to Los Angeles. There's a letter in there somewhere," he added, waving toward the pile. "Wesley's landlord put his belongings into storage when the rent wasn't paid, and these were the things that weren't sold to pay the storage fees."

"Okay, that answers the 'why now' part. It still doesn't explain 'why you?'" It didn't explain why this seemed to be getting to Rupert quite this much, either; when Rupert leaned forward, Xander had been able to see that the level in the bottle of Scotch had gone down a fair amount since yesterday. But Xander figured that might be a question better left until later.

Rupert sighed quietly. "Because Angel couldn't find a way to contact Wesley's family, and he hoped I'd be able to get these things to them."

That actually made sense, in a way. Even if Rupert didn't know Wesley's family personally, he'd probably know someone who did. And Rupert turning up at the door with their dead son's personal possessions would probably be less stressful than a vampire, even one with a soul, doing the same thing. "So do you need help finding them? I'll volunteer for whatever detective work you need."

"I've already spoken with his parents," Rupert said, sighing again. "I rang them when I first got home."

"Okay," Xander said, still frowning a little. If Rupert had already spoken to Wesley's family, and he wasn't packing up this stuff to send it on to wherever the Wyndam-Pryces lived, that couldn't have been a good conversation. "What happened?"

"Essentially," Rupert said, "I was told to bugger off." He paused to take another sip of his drink, and then shrugged slightly. "Apparently, his father washed his hands of Wesley some time ago. He didn't seem particularly interested in the news that he was dead."

Now it was Xander's turn to sigh. "Some people are just like that," he said, and Rupert reached out and squeezed his hand. A month or so after they'd gotten out of Sunnydale, Xander had managed to track down his parents; they hadn't been much more interested in hearing that Xander had survived than Wesley's had been to find out that he hadn't. "I'm okay," he added quietly, squeezing back. And he was, because it had been a while since he realized that these people--Willow and Buffy and Dawn and Rupert--were his family, a lot more than anybody related to him was; that was even more true now than it had been a year ago.

"I know," Rupert said, his hand tightening on Xander's again, and Xander thought he might have an answer to his third question, after all. When Rupert went on speaking, Xander realized he'd been right. "I just can't help but remember what happened when you called your parents," he said. "If I'd been the one to ring them, to tell them something had happened--"

"Yeah." Xander nodded. He did get it, honestly; he just didn't know what to say. Rupert hadn't been the one to call, nothing had happened--well, nothing fatal, anyway. "But it would have been okay."

"His own father doesn't even care that he's dead," Rupert repeated. "I'll admit my father and I didn't always get on, but not to that extent. And Wesley and I were never friends, but the thought of his death going completely unnoticed...."

And it wasn't just Wesley that Rupert was upset about, Xander knew. He'd obviously been sitting here getting morbid about things that hadn't even happened, and that wasn't good for anyone. "Who says it did?" he said, and Rupert looked at him. "I count four people in this picture," Xander said. "And okay, Cordy... might not know what happened, but there are two other people here. Angel went back for Wesley's stuff, and actually took the time to send it to you, so he can't have totally not cared about Wesley. And I don't know who this guy is, but maybe he's around somewhere. Maybe he remembers Wes." Xander shrugged. "And if it had been me, I'm pretty sure there would have been a couple of people who'd miss me." He smiled, slightly, letting go of Rupert's hand so that he could put his arm around Rupert's shoulders, instead, pulling him close.

"You know there would have been," Rupert said.

"Yeah. You, for example." Xander brushed Rupert's lips with his own, still smiling a little. "Like I told you back then, my family? Is right here in this house. And in Rome. And in Rio. Maybe Wesley's family was in Los Angeles."

"You're probably right," Rupert said.

Xander grinned. "You always say the nicest things."

"I don't know what I'm meant to do with all this, though," Rupert said, waving a hand at the papers on the table. "I don't even know why I was looking at them, really--to see if there might be someone else who wanted them, I suppose."

"What's in them?"

"Bank statements. Bills. A few letters and photos." He nodded toward the brown leather book. "Wesley's notes from when he was in Sunnydale; I'll put those in the Council files."

"I don't know who inherits Wesley's stuff," Xander said, "but I'm pretty sure that whoever it is can get the bank balances and stuff without the papers, so you can throw that away. The letters and stuff, I don't know. Did you talk to both Wesley's parents, or just his father?"

"Just Roger," Rupert confirmed.

"Then maybe send them to his mom? You never know. She might want them." Xander took the glass out of Rupert's hand, setting it down on the table. "But not right now. Right now, you're going to come upstairs with me and tell me about the rest of your day while I take a shower, and then I'm going to make us something to eat and make you listen to me complaining about my day, and then we're going back upstairs and I'm going to make absolutely sure that you don't lie awake half the night worrying about something you can't do anything about."

Rupert didn't argue, only got up and reached for Xander's hand to pull him to his feet as well, and Xander smiled to himself. He'd been totally honest earlier: his family was right here. Was Rupert and Willow and Buffy and Dawn and even Andrew, in the "dorky cousin who sometimes embarrasses everyone" sense.

And even if Wesley hadn't ever been his favorite person, he found himself kind of hoping there'd been somebody back in L.A. that Wesley had been able to say that about. He wouldn't say it made everything okay, but it helped.

"What are you smiling about?" Rupert asked, though he smiled back.

"Planning evil," Xander lied cheerfully. "But don't worry; it's the naked kind of evil. You'll like it." Rupert laughed, the shadows leaving his eyes for the first time since Xander got home, and knowing he could do that made Xander's crappy day suddenly get a lot better.

Oh, yeah. It definitely helped.