Title: Supervised Slacking
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Pairing/Rating: Giles/Xander, PG-13
Disclaimer: Not mine! They belong to Joss and Mutant Enemy.
Summary: Giles has always been terrible at handling free time. Xander helps him learn how.
Author's Note: This is, as mentioned in the subject line, tag-fic. The way tag-fic works is that the first person to comment on the SECOND PART'S ENTRY gets to come up with my next prompt; rules for the prompts may be found here. The request was made by fuzzyboo03 and it was for "Giles and free time." Warnings for both medical and London geography snafus. This is un-beta'd, as all my tag-fics will be.

Giles has always been terrible at handling free time. To be completely honest, he’s happiest when he doesn’t have any. Buffy’s first year of university is an excellent example of what tends to happen when he has too much; he was bored and lonely and miserable (not to mention drunk) for most of it without something to occupy his mind, without someplace to go everyday where he could feel useful and accomplished. And, yes, even stressed.

He knows it’s dysfunctional, but Giles likes stress, provided it’s not of the “apocalypse in two hours and the books have failed to yield a solution” variety. Any other kind of stress just gives him an edge, makes him more productive. He likes that about himself.

But then one day in Council meeting he stands up to make a point and his chest suddenly constricts. He can’t breathe and the vaguely dizzy, unwell feeling he’s been ignoring all morning suddenly will not be ignored. There is a tell-tale shooting pain down his left arm and all he can manage to say is, “Hell.” His legs won’t hold him, and it’s only because his secretary is as quick witted as she is that he collapses into a chair and not onto the floor. He’s leaning back, staring up at the small patch of white-washed molding visible through the ring of concerned faces swimming above him, and then he’s staring at nothing at all.

He wakes in a hospital bed, of course. Predictable, he thinks, floating in a pleasant fog of painkillers and staring up at a different ceiling altogether. He’s alone, he notes vaguely, and decides with a certain detachment that he’s just as glad. After seven years on the Hellmouth and at least twice that many near-death encounters, being floored by something as mundane as a heart attack is damn embarrassing.

When he wakes again, there’s a doctor standing by his bed. At least, Giles assumes he’s a doctor from the white coat; the jeans, trainers, and smattering of acne would point more toward president of the chess club. But he’s got a certain sardonic, disapproving expression that Giles is sure they all must learn in medical school, and he’s holding Giles’s chart in one hand.

“Ah,” he says, laying the chart face down at the foot of Giles’s bed. “Welcome back to the land of the living.”

He launches into a lecture then that puts to shame Giles himself at his most pedantic and even Buffy at her most self-righteous. He talks about red meat and alcohol, regular exercise and caffeine consumption, until Giles wishes he’d stayed in his nice, comfortable coma.

And then he starts in about stress. He’s talked to some of Giles’s colleagues, he says, and he’s still not sure what it is he does, exactly, but he would bet it’s seventy-five percent responsible for Giles’s current state. Giles manages to tune most of it out, but the punch line penetrates all too well: “You have to slow down, Mr. Giles, or you’ll be dead inside of five years.”

Giles glares at him, tries to cross his arms over his chest and finds he’s hindered by the IV in the back of his hand. “Bollocks,” he pronounces with as much authority as he can manage while wearing a hospital gown he’s fairly certain has no back.

Unfortunately, this is not Buffy’s take on matters when she arrives late that evening. She whirls in like the thunderstorm threatening outside: wet, chaotic, and pissed off. Giles has been obediently resting, flipping through the channels on his television for news reports that might be somehow connected to a worrisome vampire gang that seems to be setting up in Camden when she storms in, hair plastered to her forehead despite the presence of a raincoat with hood. She takes one look at him and Giles braces for the explosion.

But when it comes, it’s nothing like what he was expecting. She glares fiercely at him, opens her mouth, and bursts into tears.

“You idiot,” she manages thickly, crossing to the bed in two quick strides and hitting him on the arm with more force than Giles thinks is really appropriate given the circumstances. “You’ve been running yourself into the ground down here. You gave yourself a heart attack. You could have died.”

“I didn’t though, Buffy,” he says gently, capturing the hand she used to hit him before she can do it again. “It’s all right.”

“I could kill you,” she says, sniffling. He hands her a tissue from the box by his bed.

“I rather hope you don’t,” he replies, smiling gently. “I just went to all this trouble to stay alive, after all.” But that just makes her cry harder, until she sits down with a muffled thump on the edge of his bed. He squeezes her hand, and looks up to see Xander, leaner and darker and rather more dangerous than Giles remembers him, leaning against the wall and watching patiently. He catches Giles’s eye, gives him a rueful smile, and ambles over to sit in one of the bedside chairs.

“Hey, Giles, how are you?” he asks.

“I’m fine, thank you.”

“Giles.”

“No,” he insists, mostly to Buffy, who pauses in the middle of blowing her nose to give him a disbelieving look, “truly. It was relatively minor, the doctor said. More a warning than anything else.” He thanks whatever gods might be listening that Buffy and Xander arrived too late for the doctor’s ever so charming “dead within five years” speech. He’s certain they would have found it motivating in ways he would not enjoy.

“A warning, huh?” Xander says. “Well, if living on the Hellmouth for twenty-two years taught me anything, it’s that warnings are there to be heeded. So what’s this telling you to do – or not do, I guess?”

“Well,” Giles replies, picking at his hospital blanket, “the usual, I suppose. Red meat, alcohol, caffeine. It shouldn’t be a problem.”

“Hmm,” Xander says, looking at him shrewdly. It’s not the sort of look Giles is used to receiving from him. He glances away, discomfited, and wonders if this is why Xander has kept the eye patch so long, when he could have very easily gotten surgery at any time. It’s . . . unnerving. “And that job of yours?”

“My job?” Giles asks, as innocently as he knows how.

“Yes, Giles, your job,” Buffy replies, sounding reassuringly irate. She wads the soggy tissues up in her hand and glares at him. “You know, the one where one in the morning is an early night? Did he happen to say anything about that?”

“No.”

“Wow, Giles,” Xander says, “maybe it’s the drugs, but you’ve turned into a lousy liar.”

Giles sighs, and wonders if he can beg out of his conversation on account of he’s supposed to be avoiding stress. Judging by Buffy’s expression . . . very likely not. “He might have said something,” he admits at last. “But we don’t know –”

“Oh yeah,” Xander says, “I really think we do.”

Giles has no idea what to say to that. He’s too tired to think of something intelligent, so he goes for gallows – or hospital room – humor instead: “Well, I always did know it would probably kill me eventually. I just thought it’d be a bit quicker.”

Too late he sees Xander shaking his head frantically at him and making very unsubtle negating gestures with his hands. “You think this is funny?” Buffy demands, sliding off the bed in her indignation. She puts her hands on her hips and glowers at him. “Giles, do you have any idea how completed wigged I was? You are not – no.” She paces furiously for a few seconds and then says, “No, you, you have to quit.”

“Buffy, don’t be silly, I can’t quit.”

“You can. I won’t do it again, Giles. I won’t do it, with the hospitals and the doctors and the, the –”

Xander stands quickly and cuts her off as she turns on her heel. He grabs her hands and says, “Hey, Buff, I know Dawn’s expecting you to call her. Why don’t you go take care of that?”

For a second, Giles thinks she’s going to refuse, but to his relief she takes a deep breath, collecting herself, and, with one last stubborn glare in his direction, stalks out. Giles rubs a hand over his face, faintly bewildered. He knew she’d arrive eventually, of course, but he didn’t expect her so soon, nor so . . . upset.

”What?” Xander says, causing Giles to look over at him. “You didn’t realize that getting a phone call out of the blue that you’d collapsed in a meeting and had a heart attack would make her flash to her mom dying? Boy, Giles, for a guy with your IQ, you sure are stupid.”

“I –”

“And I have to say,” Xander barrels on, “right now? So not the time for the Funny Man routine.”

Giles holds his gaze for a moment, and then drops it. Apparently Buffy wasn’t the only one “totally wigged,” as they were all so fond of saying. Xander is angry, Giles finally realizes, now that he’s no longer distracted by Buffy’s much louder, not to mention damper, histrionics. And . . . yes, that is fear lurking there as well, behind the anger. “I’m sorry,” he says, and means it.

“Good.” Xander throws himself down into the bedside chair so that it creaks alarmingly. “And she’s right, you know. You have to quit.”

“I can’t quit,” Giles says again. “And really, we don’t know for certain that stress –”

“Giles, listen to me. You’ve never been a meat and potatoes guy, so unless you’ve developed a recent cheeseburger addiction, we can rule out diet. I think patrolling every night gets your heart rate up for more than the requisite thirty minutes a day, so that’s exercise. You don’t smoke. You been hitting the scotch again?” Giles shakes his head. Xander shrugs. “So, what do we have left?”

“There are . . . genetic pre-dispositions . . .”

“And those are helped so much by an eighteen hour a day job. Giles,” Xander says, leaning forward, “like you said, this was a warning. Are you really gonna make like an ostrich with it?”

That was, in fact, the original plan, but Giles can’t quite bring himself to say so to Xander. It’s crumbling anyway in the face of his logic, and he knows that to deny it seriously for much longer would be foolish. “I could . . . cut back,” he offers at last.

“Could you?” Xander replies, raising an eyebrow at him – a gesture that is much more effective with the eye patch. “And the next time there’s an apocalypse?”

“Allowances will have to be made for emergencies,” Giles says, in as reasonable a tone as he can manage, but Xander is already shaking his head.

“And there you are, tangled in my loophole-less web of logic. There’s always an emergency, Giles. Where are you going to draw the line?”

It’s a fair question, and one that Giles can’t answer. “I can’t quit,” he says again, more quietly. “Not now. No one is trained who could take over.”

“No one, maybe,” Xander says, “but I bet two or three together – what did you think was going to happen eventually?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Giles leans his head back and stares up at the ceiling. It seems he’s doing that a lot lately. “I rather figured I’d be dead and you all could figure it out.”

“Okay,” Xander says, wagging a finger at him, “you see, that is exactly the sort of thing you shouldn’t say to Buffy right now. You have no idea how completely she flipped when we heard.”

“I think I have some idea, yes,” Giles replies dryly.

“No.” Xander jerks his thumb in the direction of the door. “That was the cool and collected version. Seriously, Giles,” he adds, placing a heavy, somehow comforting hand on Giles’s shoulder, “you really, really can’t die on us. All right?”

Giles looks at him, and then reaches up to cover Xander’s hand with his own. He nods. “I am sorry.”

“Well,” Xander says, standing, “it’s not really your fault. And on account of that, I’m going to do you a favor and go find Buffy and take her home. She’ll be better tomorrow.”

Giles certainly hopes so. It’s only after Xander leaves that he realizes how thoroughly exhausted he is. The television has been on, muted, the entire time, and now he reaches over and turns it off. He means to some thinking then, about what to do about the whole mess. But then he closes his eyes, just to rest them, because truly, even those muscles hurt, and slides into sleep.

Buffy arrives alone the next morning, which causes Giles some trepidation. But she seems calmer, if tired, and the white bakery bag in her hand is infinitely welcome after the runny eggs, cold toast, and weak tea that are the hospital’s idea of breakfast. He lets her kiss him hello on the forehead and accepts the proffered bag. She settles herself cross-legged at the foot of his bed.

He takes one bite of the muffin and chews for half a minute before asking, mouth still full because he can’t seem to swallow, “Buffy, what is this?”

“A blueberry muffin.” He glares. “Non-fat,” she amends at last, but fails to look properly quelled. “Get used to it, Giles. I mean, I know I was a little –” she gestures vaguely” – chick from The Exorcist yesterday, but you scared us.”

He swallows at last and it only sticks in his throat a little on its way down. “I know, but –”

“You tell me you’re fine and I’ll hand over control of everything to Andrew.”

Giles clamps his mouth shut on the words; something in her expression makes him think this is not an idle threat. “I did talk to Xander yesterday,” he says, putting the muffin back in the bag as discreetly as possible. “About cutting back at the Council.”

“Yeah, he told me.” Buffy reaches into the bag and takes out the muffin. To Giles’s relief she doesn’t force him to take it again, but rather breaks off a piece for herself. “And we have – great muppety Odin, that’s awful.” Giles manages not to say anything, but only watches in smug silence as she chews, chews, chews and finally swallows. “Gah. Sorry.”

“Apology accepted,” Giles says, ironically magnanimous. “Just don’t bring me another. I do need some sort of will to live, after all.”

The moment the words are out of his mouth he wonders if that will set her off again, but all she does is grimace at him before setting the bag on the beside tray-table. He relaxes minutely. She makes another disgusted face and says, “Anyway, what I was going to say is that you can relax because we have a plan.”

He blinks at her. “You do?”

“Yup. Xander and I got Willow on the phone last night and we made a plan. A Scooby plan.”

“God help me.”

“Oh hush. It’s all compromisey. You’ll like it. Well,” she amends, “maybe not like it, but you’ll live with it.”

“I can’t wait to hear this,” Giles mutters.

She makes him wait until Xander arrives a few minutes later. Giles reflects that if she is this happy about their plan, he probably won’t be, but he finds he’s willing to go to some lengths to avoid another crying jag. And he wouldn’t mind it either if Xander never looked at him again the way he had yesterday, angry and scared and reproachful. He bites his tongue and tries to keep an open mind.

When Xander arrives it’s with another white bakery bag. He grins when Giles eyes it with suspicion and says, “I knew Buffy was planning on bringing you the Tasteless Muffin O’ Healthy Doom, so I thought I’d bring you something that didn’t hail from the cardboard level of the food pyramid. Here.”

Buffy makes a noise of outrage and reaches to snatch the bag away. Xander steps nimbly aside and hands it to Giles, who peers inside. “Have I been condemned to a life of muffins?” he asks, disappointed.

“What did you expect, a bacon sandwich? I’m not trying to kill you here, Giles,” Xander says, dropping down into the chair he occupied yesterday. “But I promise, this one has both fat and real sugar.”

“Well, thank you,” Giles says, extracting the muffin and glaring possessively over it at Buffy, who looks as though she’s considering taking it away. “Now, why don’t the two of you tell me about this plan you hatched with Willow?”

To his surprise, Buffy looks to Xander, who pauses – or perhaps waits until Giles has his mouth full – before beginning. “The gist of it is this. We get what you’re saying about not being able to quit. But at the same time, we have exactly no faith in your ability to cut back.”

“One apocalypse and boom,” Buffy says. “You’re off that wagon so fast, it’s in the next county before anybody realizes what’s happened. And then I get another phone call. Don’t,” she adds sternly when Giles opens his mouth to protest, “don’t even try to deny it.”

“Right,” Xander says swiftly, forcing Giles to swallow his retort. “And frankly, Giles, I’m not sure you can be trusted in general to slack the way you need to if you want to be alive five years from now – and yeah, I did talk to your doctor.”

“Five years?” Buffy demands. “Five years?”

“Thank you, ever so much, Xander,” Giles says dryly. Xander shrugs, unabashed. “I don’t know what makes you have so little faith in my, er, slacking ability,” he adds, in an attempt to distract Buffy. She shoots him a look that tells him she knows what he’s about, but she doesn’t interrupt. “I mean, Buffy’s entire first year of university –”

“Yee-aah,” Xander says, “we actually don’t want a repeat of that.”

“Me especially.” Buffy pulls a face. “Plus, it drove you crazy. And your coping methods? Really kinda lacking. I seriously doubt Dr. Phil would approve.”

“Fine,” Giles says, as patiently as he can manage. “What, then, do you suggest?”

“Supervised slacking!” Xander says, in the tone of someone announcing a major scientific breakthrough. “Supervision provided by yours truly, the Scoobies’ very own slacker extraordinaire. Not that you’d know it lately, but I feel my skills have not diminished.”

Giles pinches the bridge of his nose. He has the feeling he knows where this is going, but dear God, how he hopes he’s wrong. “Translation?”

Xander glances at Buffy, who nods encouragingly. Xander takes a deep breath and says, “I’m moving to London.”

Giles stares at him. “No.”

“Yes. Sorry, Giles,” Buffy says, “but this is the deal.”

“There is no deal!” Giles snaps. “I will not be – be baby-sat. I had one, very minor –”

“Not that minor,” Buffy mutters.

Giles ignores her completely. “– heart attack. I will not be treated like an invalid –”

“Whoa, whoa,” Xander says, straightening up in his chair and holding his hands up, as though in surrender.

But Giles knows them both far too well to think that they might give up so easily. “I will not calm down! I will not have someone constantly interfering in my –”

“No, Giles,” Xander replies with an authority he never used to have, damn him. “It’s that I’m watching that little machine over there that’s monitoring your pulse rate, and it just shot up like twenty beats a minute. So unless you want to have a second, maybe not so minor heart attack right now, I suggest you re-find your Zen.”

Now that Xander has said something, Giles can feel his heart beating much too quickly, and he has the unpleasant sensation of muscle fatigue in his arms and legs as well. He closes his eyes and takes several deep, calming breaths. When he opens his eyes again it’s to find Buffy looking at him with her eyes wide and pleading and it’s just so bloody unfair. “Please,” she says, “will you just listen?”

Giles doesn’t answer. After a few seconds, they apparently decide (and rightly so) that that’s the best they’re going to get, and Xander goes on. “I won’t be moving in with you or anything,” he says. “But you need someone around to make sure you don’t work more than six hours a day –”

“Six!” Giles sputters.

“Count yourself lucky,” Buffy informs him. “I argued for four. And that’s Monday through Friday. Weekends, you’re off.”

“And so’s your cell phone. If there’s an emergency,” Xander adds, before Giles can object, “they will call me and I will decide if it’s actually a red on the apocalypse scale.”

Giles is speechless, but not for long. He bargains. He placates. He promises. He outright argues and then he comes dangerously close to begging. It is beyond him to imagine what he might do with such an ungodly amount of free time. It will drive him completely mad in very short order. He won’t be able to do it, it’ll kill him faster than his stupid heart –

“Giles, your pulse,” Buffy says warningly.

“Yes, well, I’m panicking, that does tend to raise one’s heart rate.”

“You see?” Xander says. “This is why you need me. You have no grasp on the fine art of slacking. But never fear – I doubt that what we’ll be doing could really be called slacking anyway. Slacking doesn’t usually involve museums or rewriting the Watcher’s handbook.”

“Wait, what?”

“Well, you need something to do,” Buffy says, patting his leg through the blanket. “We know better than to deprive you of everything. You’d probably end up with withdrawal symptoms.”

She’s more right than she knows, Giles thinks, and with the sense that it was all inevitable, he gives in.

Three days later the hospital lets him go with a list of things he’s to avoid if he knows what’s good for him. He tries to hide it, but Buffy finds it anyway. She stays another four days while Xander goes back to Scotland to collect his things, and Giles discovers that there are far more ways to cook a boneless, skinless chicken breast than he ever wished to know. They go walking everyday, which is not such a hardship as the neighborhood around Giles’s apartment is actually quite nice. There’s even a park, complete with duck pond, that he had no idea existed until they stumble upon it their second afternoon out.

He remarks upon this to Buffy one day while they’re sitting on a bench, pretending that Giles doesn’t need to get his breath back. Buffy is tossing bread to the ducks, which mill around their end of the pond, quacking in a demanding, obnoxious way. “See?” she says, tossing a piece to one that looks a tad underfed. “You just need to look on the brightside of all this. You would never have come here otherwise.”

“Hmm,” Giles says dubiously.

To his surprise, she laughs at him and loops her arm through his as they stand up to continue their circuit around the pond. “Lucky for you, Xander is Brightside Guy,” she says, shaking her head at the disappointed ducks.

“Yes,” Giles says. “I’m just not sure – well, I’m not sure this arrangement is going to work, Buffy. Xander and I . . . in case you haven’t noticed, we’re very different people.”

“Mm,” she says. “Less different than you might think, now. I know you haven’t spent much time with him recently, Giles, but really, I think you two will be good for each other.”

“If you say so,” Giles replies. He can only hope she’s right, because if this is Plan A, he’s not at all sure he wants to meet Plan B.

“I do say so,” she says, and smiles – sparkles – up at him.

The next day Xander returns, suitcase in either hand, and moves into Giles’s guestroom despite his assurances that he’ll find his own place as quickly as possible. Buffy departs the day after that, having made them promise to visit over one of Giles’s “shiny new work-free weekends.” The house is quieter without her, and Giles finds he misses her more than before, somehow – though it’s possible he simply hadn’t noticed. Having time to think has made him realize just how much he was ignoring in the weeks before his collapse. He feels better than he has for some time; it turns out that more than four hours of sleep a night and balanced meals at regular intervals really are helpful that way.

But it is still with a sense of relief that he wakes to the sound of his alarm clock for the first time in over two weeks and realizes that he actually has something to do today.

Xander is slurping a cup of coffee at the kitchen table when Giles comes in. Not for the first time, Giles thinks he should probably be more annoyed by the fact that Xander still hasn’t found his own place to live, but the truth is that it’s not been nearly as terrible as Giles expected. Xander can’t cook, but he does the washing up without complaint, and the intervening week has reminded Giles just how much more fun it is to cook for more than one person. He doesn’t remark much on what Giles cooks either; granted, it hasn’t been especially necessary, but occasionally something not on the approved list appears (he refuses to switch to non-fat cheese, for instance, because it doesn’t melt in any way he considers to be natural). Giles always expects Xander to say something, but he never does.

“Good morning,” Giles says, heading to the cabinet that holds his supply of tea.

“Morning,” Xander says, glancing up. Giles ignores his obvious scrutiny in favor of filling the electric kettle. “Are you sure you’re up for this?” he asks at last.

“Yes, Xander. I feel it will probably not overwhelm me.”

To his not-quite-surprise, Xander takes this at face value and does not pursue the subject. This is something that has surprised Giles; sometime in the three years since he last spent much time with Xander, the once gregarious and at times egregious teenager he once knew has turned into a mature young man with an excellent sense of when to leave well enough alone. Giles’s greatest concern about the entire arrangement was that the constant Xander-babble would drive him madder than the inactivity on its own would, but it hasn’t, thus far. Perhaps, he thinks, this might work after all.

“Well, I’m off,” Xander says, setting his empty coffee cup in the sink. “Daytime cemetery tour with some of the newbies,” he explains in response to Giles’s questioning look. “But I will see you at three o’clock on the dot. And don’t think you can hide from me in the archives,” he adds sternly. “I am well versed in such tactics.”

“I would never dream of doing such thing,” says Giles, who had in fact been thinking exactly that – though only in case of an emergency. Then Xander is gone and fifteen minutes later Giles is out the door himself.

He walks instead of taking the Underground, because it is a fine spring day, the Council building isn’t all that far, and the trains will be stifling with morning commuters just now. He isn’t even out of breath, he’s pleased to note, as he enters the building through the wide, spotless, swinging glass doors.

The guard, a young man named Philip, smiles at him as he checks Giles’s ID and then scans him for glamours and other standard methods of magical disguise. “Welcome back, Mr. Giles,” he says. “We missed you around here.”

“Thank you, Philip,” Giles says, accepting his ID again. “I missed it as well.”

It takes him twice as long as usual to reach his office because of all the people who stop him on the way to inquire about his recovery and tell him they’re glad he’s back. After the third or fourth of these, he’s reduced to stammering “thank you” and disengaging as quickly as is polite. He’s rather flummoxed, actually, and quite happy when he arrives at his office at last and is able to shut the outer door on their smiling, concerned, and entirely overwhelming faces.

Then, of course, there is his secretary, an extremely competent young woman named Silvia. Fortunately she limits herself to a simple, “Welcome back” as she hands him his usual cup of coffee.

He stares at it for a moment and then sighs, handing it back. He may as well do the thing properly, he supposes, and says, “Thank you, but . . . tea, if you please. Herbal. I’m afraid I’m off caffeine for the duration.” The duration of the rest of his life, apparently.

“Oh, of course, I’m sorry. I’ll be right back with it – Faith and Robin are waiting for you.”

“Thank you.”

Faith and Wood are indeed waiting for him, along with a report on the activities of the last two weeks. He accepts their respective “welcome back’s” with a nod, which is all he can manage at the moment, and sinks into the chair behind his desk with a sense of both relief and satisfaction. “I assume everything is in here,” he says, rifling through the report, “but tell me, how did it go?”

“Five by five, chief,” Faith replies with a smile, but lets Wood give the actual report. A clutch of fire demons was dealt with; two Slayers on the unit involved were injured and treated for minor burns. Nightly patrols in the cemeteries have turned up an average number of standard issue vampires, nothing special. And the Slayers had their first clash with the vampire gang in Camden three nights ago; three of the five vampires were staked, two escaped, and one Slayer was knocked unconscious in the melee. The concern, Wood says, is that the gang was actually looking for a fight.

“I see,” Giles says. “Well, good work. Very good work – please pass that along to the Slayers as well. Have we heard from Andrew?”

“His report should be in your email,” Wood says.

“Good, good,” Giles says, relieved. Unlike his oral reports – monologues, more like – Andrew’s written reports are almost always concise and professional and utterly devoid of digressions into the ideological implications of Lando Calryssian’s wardrobe.

“He says it’s been real quiet though,” Faith adds. “Thought I might go down there next week, see if I can’t rustle them up some action, keep the girls from totally spazzing from boredom.”

“Ah, yes, good idea.” Giles removes his glasses then and rubs his eyes. “Well, I’m sure you know that I need to, er, cut back here. Doctor’s orders and all that.” He clears his throat and takes a deep breath. “In any case, do the two of you think –”

“We got it covered, Giles,” Faith says, “no worries.” Wood nods his agreement.

“Oh,” Giles says, a little surprised but not at all displeased by their confidence, “very good then. Thank you.”

Soon after that he finds himself alone in his office for the first time. He takes a minute to simply enjoy it, and then he turns his attention to the one thing he has been dreading about his return: his email inbox.

The remainder of the six hours slides by all too quickly. He spends most of it catching up on the obscene amount of email correspondence – God, how he hates the internet – that has piled up in his absence. To his surprise, Willow calls at noon, just to check in – something she’s been rather bad about of late. Giles would never admit it, but he is grateful for the breather it allows him, especially as he’s able to pretend that it’s not a breather at all. She and Giles talk briefly about what she and Kennedy have been up to in Brazil, and then more extensively about the possibility of her coming home to help Faith and Wood.

“It’s not that I don’t trust them,” Giles tells her, “it’s just that –”

“You were already doing the work of three people?” she supplies wryly. “Delegation, Giles. It’s the Word of the Day. And you know I like England.”

Silvia brings him a salad for lunch. He eats it at his desk, because if he’s only allowed to work six hours a day then it’s going to be a solid six hours. Then there are calls to Watchers in Germany and Bolivia, and yet more email, until finally –

“Let’s go.”

Giles glances up to see Xander leaning in the doorway. “I’m just finishing this email.”

“Tomorrow. It’s three o’clock.”

“Just this one.”

“Save it. You’re out of here.”

“Xander, be reason –”

“Hey, don’t think I won’t unplug you if I have to. Let’s go.”

Giles gives up, saves the email, and within ten minutes they’re outside. It’s clouded over from this morning, but it isn’t especially cold. Giles glances over as they walk – where they’re going, he isn’t certain – and sees Xander looking back at him out the corner of his eye.

“Don’t look so grim,” Xander says when he catches him looking. “Three o’clock and you’re done! Most people would kill for that schedule.”

“Yes, well, I’m not one of them,” Giles replies shortly.

“Yeah, I picked up on that awhile ago. Look, I thought we might go to that museum, the British one.”

“You mean the British Museum?”

“Yeah. Buffy said when you took her and Dawn there, you made all the boring parts interesting.”

“I –” Giles starts to say that he doesn’t feel like playing tour guide, that if he can’t work he’d just as soon go home, but then he sees the look in Xander’s face and can’t quite bring himself to say it. He is suddenly aware of just what an enormous effort Xander has made; he’s moved across the whole bloody country for heaven’s sake, and for no other reason than he thinks Giles needs him. He expects that thought to feel humiliating, but it doesn’t. Instead he feels a strange, warm feeling in the pit of his stomach. He remembers waking up alone in that hospital room, and thinks that maybe it’s time to make a little effort himself.

“That sounds like a fine idea,” he says at last, and is surprised at how Xander’s face brightens.

And so it goes. They breakfast together in the morning, work through lunch, and at exactly three o’clock, Xander appears in Giles’s doorway. He stops whatever he’s doing (because, says Xander, just finishing that one email is the beginning of the end) and they leave together. They go to the Tate (the modern one, which Xander hates, or the old one on the river, which they both like better) or the British Museum (which they are working their way through slowly, because even Giles’s stories can only hold Xander’s attention for so long, and, as Xander points out, it’s free) or the National Gallery (where they both need the audio tour, Giles’s knowledge of art history being rather more rudimentary than his knowledge of all things mystical and arcane). On days when Xander can’t stomach the idea of a museum, they seek out other London tourist attractions, like Westminster Abbey, St. Paul’s Cathedral, and the market in Covent Garden, where they spend an entire afternoon picking out presents for Buffy, Dawn, and Willow.

It’s Giles, however, who suggests they visit the Tower of London one afternoon at the beginning of May. The sky is clear with no hint of rain, and the rolling expanse of lawn surrounded by the white stone castle looks deceptively pleasant. They take a turn through the buildings where prisoners of all stations were kept, stand for a few minutes in front of Traitor’s Gate (dry at the moment, as it is low tide, and rather unimpressive), and then queue up see the Crown Jewels. Xander is appropriately impressed by the ghoulishness of everything.

At last, after nearly three hours of wandering about, Giles feels the need for a break, and suggests they get something to drink at the café. They can see the front lawn with the ravens from their table, and Xander says, nodding toward the sharp-beaked black birds, “Isn’t there a legend about them or something?”

“Yes,” Giles says, vaguely pleased. “It is said that as long as there are ravens at the Tower of London, England shall remain.” He sips his tea before adding, “If they should ever abandon the Tower, that will mean that the Kingdom is fallen, or about to fall.”

“Huh,” Xander says, glancing out at the ravens hopping about on the grass.

“I believe I once heard that most of the ravens here during the Second World War were killed – died, rather, from the shock of the bombings. But even then, one survived. And so did England.” Though he knows it is ridiculous, Giles is unable to help a small note of something – affection, perhaps – from creeping into his voice. He has never really gone in for patriotism, and after so long in the U.S. he finds it almost distasteful, but he cannot deny that England, with its long, sometimes glorious, very often dreadful history, is comforting to him. If there is anything he appreciates about his current situation it is that it has given him the leisure time to re-discover that history.

Xander pauses in the process of scraping the whipped cream, which looks unnaturally stiff, off his chocolate cake and frowns. “And they just stay here?”

“Well, these days I believe their wings are clipped,” Giles answers wryly. “No use taking chances. But they are kept very well-fed and I doubt any of them really have any desire to leave. It’s one of my favorite legends,” he adds. “I’m not entirely sure why, but the ravens – they always make me think of the Council.”

Xander raises his eyebrows and glances back towards the birds. “Well, I can see a certain physical resemblance to Travers, I guess,” he remarks.

Giles smiles. “That’s not quite what I meant. I think it’s more a matter of . . . permanence. The Council has always been here, and so have the ravens.” He takes a sip of tea and, seeing that Xander still looks rather skeptical, says, “I think it might be a cultural difference. Nothing in America ever struck me as really permanent, but here . . . well, there is a certain appreciation here for things that don’t change.”

“Yeah,” Xander says, “I sort of get that. But, I mean, is that really a good thing? Things, organizations, people, relationships – they all change. They should, anyway, I think. I mean, the First had to blow the Council up for it to change the way it needed to, and I dunno, I kinda think there has to be a better way.”

“Oh, you are absolutely right about the Council. Nevertheless, it’s still here,” Giles points out. “London was destroyed during the war, and it’s still here as well. Perhaps it’s foolish to think it always will be, but part of me believes exactly that. And my work with the Council – well, on some level I think it’s about doing my part toward that end.”

“I didn’t realize you thought of it that way.”

“Most of the time, I don’t. Just when I think of the ravens.”

Xander doesn’t say anything more, but he looks thoughtful as they pay and then, by mutual, silent agreement, leave the Tower to find the nearest Underground station.

A month goes by this way, punctuated by weekend trips to Bath and Canterbury and Brighton. Xander goes out patrolling every night with the Slayers, while Giles stays in and works on re-writing the Watcher’s handbook, a project he intended to start long before being forced into this reluctant semi-retirement, but which he never quite seemed to get around to. Now he can give it the attention it deserves. He finds that it’s more satisfying than he expected, especially whenever he is able to rewrite some arcane and ridiculous dictum in a way he knows would give Quentin Travers heart palpitations of his own.

He realizes eventually that he has stopped seeing the classified pages of the newspaper with apartments circled lying about. The guestroom is now thoroughly Xander’s own space, and there has been no talk of him moving out for several weeks. Initial mild indignation gives way quickly to the realization that Giles doesn’t really want it any other way. He says nothing directly, but rather suggests that they clean out the top shelf of the guestroom closet so Xander can have more storage space. Xander blinks at him for a moment before agreeing, and Giles knows he’s recognized it for the tacit invitation that it is.

And then, one day at the very beginning of June, Giles realizes that it’s 2:45 and he’s watching the clock because he and Xander have plans to take a boat trip up the Thames to Greenwich and visit the observatory that afternoon. He stops and shakes his head, tries to refocus and finish the email to the Watcher in Beijing that he’s started, but can’t quite manage it. The sense of happy anticipation is strange to him, not new exactly, but strange nonetheless, like old clothes that suddenly fit again. And the warm feeling in his stomach is very odd as well, and more frequent of late. He hasn’t felt this way since . . .

. . . Jenny.

Giles swallows, his hands stilling altogether over the keyboard. Mechanically, he shuts down the computer, though there are still ten minutes left before he can expect to see Xander, and leans back in his chair. He is vaguely horrified and not a little stunned. He can’t think for the rushing in his ears and he has to fold his hands together in his lap to stop them from shaking.

By the time Xander finally arrives – a little late for once, thank God, at 3:05 – Giles has collected himself. Xander doesn’t seem to notice anything out of the ordinary as they walk the short distance down to the river, which is at high tide level at the moment and more gray than brown on account of the cloudy weather. They buy their tickets for the tour boat and claim seats inside, beside the rather dirty windows. Xander is dressed casually in jeans, a black t-shirt, and a leather jacket (which suits him very well, Giles cannot help but notice), but Giles feels very overdressed amid the tourists in his coat and tie. He takes off his tie and stuffs it in his pocket, and wonders why he doesn’t feel much better.

Fortunately for Giles the boat has a guide, and he needn’t do much talking as they make their way up the river, past the Globe and the Tate Britain, under the ill-designed Millennium Bridge, and past that modern monstrosity, the London Eye; past the Globe, which they have not yet visited (and though Giles has been thinking that going to a performance there this summer would be quite nice, that suddenly sounds far too much like a date for comfort), and the Tower of London, whose ravens are not visible from the water; under the Tower Bridge and, finally, past the docks and warehouses.

“Vampirepalooza,” Xander says softly. Giles nods his agreement; the Slayers finally put paid to the vampire gang in Camden a few weeks ago by virtue of sinking a crossbow bolt into the chest of the leader, but the remnants are popping up in the docks area now. But as of yet they are struggling to re-organize themselves and patrols have been hitting the area especially hard, taking down as many as ten vampires a night. Faith and Wood and Xander aren’t worried, and so, after a moment spent contemplating the old brick buildings, Giles forces himself to stop. That’s the sort of thing he delegates to the younger generation these days, limiting himself to the organization of the Council on a global level, which is more than enough to fill six hours a day.

The sun has come out a little by the time their boat docks in Greenwich. There are people sitting out in the park, in couples and in groups, as well as a number of young people with guitars, not busking, just playing. A women in her mid-twenties walks by, frisbee in hand and overly excited Border Collie at her side, and Giles notices Xander watching her appreciatively.

“Why don’t we sit for a bit?” Giles asks, veering off the gravel path and onto the grass. “The walk up to the observatory is rather steep.”

Xander wisely refrains from asking if Giles is sure he’s up for it – they both know by now that Giles will say something, however oblique, if he isn’t – and flops onto the grass. Giles lowers himself more carefully, and it is only after he’s done so that he realizes Xander has sat so he can watch the woman with the dog.

“You could go talk to her,” Giles suggests after a moment.

Xander looks first startled and then rather sheepish. “Um, no, that’s okay.”

“Why not?” Giles asks, wondering if his masochistic streak knows no bounds – or if he’s just trying to prove that this recently realized . . . whatever-it-is, isn’t going to be a problem. Xander shrugs and, unable to stop himself, Giles adds, “I’ve noticed you haven’t gone out much – or at all – since you’ve been here.”

“That’s not true,” Xander replies. “We go out all the time.”

“That’s not what I meant, Xander, and you know it. I certainly hope it’s not on my account.”

“No, no,” Xander says quickly, “it’s just . . . well, I haven’t really felt like it since . . .”

“Since Anya?” Giles suggests sympathetically.

“Yeah.”

“It’s been almost three years, Xander. I think maybe it’s time to move on. And who knows?” Giles adds with a smile. “Maybe now that you’re not on the Hellmouth, you might actually be able to date someone who isn’t a demon.”

Xander smiles briefly and then shakes his head. “I dunno,” he offers after a moment. “It’s – well, you weren’t at the Wedding That Wasn’t, but my reasons . . . it really had nothing to do with Anya, you know?”

“It didn’t?”

“No. It was me and my, my stupid family and my parents’ marriage.” He sighs, picks a long blade of grass and starts tearing it into strips. “She was so hurt by it and it wasn’t anything to do with her. Nothing’s really changed since, so I figure – why do that to someone else?”

“I see,” Giles says slowly. “And you don’t feel you’ve changed at all since then?” He knows for a fact Xander has, actually, but he’s not sure how aware of the changes Xander himself is.

“Yeah, but . . . not in any way that matters. I mean, yeah, sure,” he amends when Giles gives him a sharp look, “they matter, but you know, early childhood trauma is kinda hard to shake.”

“Indeed.” Giles is silent. “Well,” he says at last, “ I certainly won’t push you, but I think it would be a shame if you let that stop you from dating anyone ever again.”

Xander shrugs. “I don’t think it will,” he says. “It’s just . . . I’m looking for something different now, I guess.” Giles watches him carefully, but Xander is paying unusual attention to his blade of grass. “Something less Leave It to Beaver that I might not be able to screw up as bad. Or someone I might not be able to screw up as bad. Plus,” he adds, “it’s not like most of the women I meet these days are real date-able. At least I assume it’s not real Kosher for a Watcher to date a Slayer?”

“It . . . was definitely frowned upon, yes,” Giles says. He stands and Xander scrambles up after him. “Mostly because the Council wished for its Watchers to maintain a certain detachment from their Slayers. They weren’t happy with any sort of close relationship, be it parental, like mine with Buffy, or, er, sexual.”

They start up the hill to the observatory, and Xander is silent for several minutes. Giles is just as glad, since the climb is stealing his breath even more than he anticipated “So that’s what the old Council thought,” Xander says at last. “What’s the opinion of the kinder, gentler, more enlightened new Council?”

“Well,” Giles says breathlessly, “it’s a difficult issue. I feel forbidding it altogether might be futile, since we’re actually trying to encourage a closer relationship between Watcher and Slayer. It is perhaps unavoidable that in some cases that might develop into . . . something else.”

“Plus, Willow and Kennedy,” Xander says as they reach a look-out point about halfway up the hill.

He goes to lean on the railing and Giles leans next to him, taking a moment to recover his wind before replying. “Yes, Willow and Kennedy. At the same time . . . well, many organizations have non-fraternization rules and for very good reasons. I want to protect everyone involved – I’m just not sure how yet. I’ve been rather avoiding re-writing that portion of the handbook.”

“Hmm,” Xander says, and then falls silent.

Giles struggles briefly. The next question is obvious. But it is, first of all, none of his business, and, secondly, he cannot pretend even to himself that his desire to ask it is not selfish. He is very quickly discovering, however, that his lack of self-control when it comes to such matters is rivaled only by his masochistic tendency to make things worse for himself. It is with a twinge of self-loathing that Giles begins, “If I may ask –”

But Xander, it seems, is expecting the question. “Nah,” he says, before Giles can even finish. “I was just curious. Most of them are too young anyway.”

He changes the subject quickly and Giles goes along, unwilling to push. But Xander’s excuse rings a little hollow. It’s true that the majority of Slayers currently in training are under the age of twenty, but Willow’s spell called Slayers of all ages; the youngest they have found is about ten and the oldest nearly eighty. There are a number of Slayers in their mid-twenties or even thirties in training, both in London and in Inverness, and Giles finds it hard to believe that Xander doesn’t feel attracted to any of them. Or perhaps, he considers, thinking of the young woman with her dog, he does feel something and is too afraid to pursue it. The thought saddens Giles, but he also detects more than a little selfish relief in it as well.

The observatory is very crowded and by mutual agreement they don’t linger long. Xander seems underwhelmed by the Prime Meridian, which is, after all, really just a large clock and a metal strip on the ground. Giles mostly wanted the boat ride down the Thames anyway, and he’s not very disappointed when Xander starts to fidget after only a quarter of an hour. Six weeks ago, Giles reflects as they start back down the hill, it would have driven him mad to go somewhere – even someplace as close by as Greenwich – only to go straight back. Now, it doesn’t bother him at all. He decides he’s pleased with the change.

The trip down the hill is easier than the trip up, and Giles doesn’t need to stop and rest. Neither of them says anything until they’re standing in the queue for the boat. Then Xander asks, “What about you?”

“What about me?” Giles replies, a little distractedly. He’s watching the line ahead of them and trying to determine if they’ll be able to manage seats inside or not. The sun has slipped back behind the clouds and the breeze has a sharp edge to it. He doesn’t particularly relish the thought of sitting on the deck.

“Do you have any – you know – romantic, I dunno, prospects?”

Giles glances at him sharply, but he’s standing on Xander’s blindside – very unusual, that; Xander almost always maneuvers himself so Giles is on his sighted side when they walk together – and he can’t read his expression. “No,” he says, flatly.

“What about what’s her name, who came to visit you in Sunnydale a couple of times? The one Anya called your –”

“Xander, we are in public. Stop right there, I beg of you.”

Xander grins at him unrepentantly. “Yeah, so, her. She was hot.”

Giles grimaces. “Her name is Olivia, and I did see her once when I came back to England after Buffy d – the first time, that is. But, er, I wasn’t – we weren’t – it didn’t go well.” Giles tries to inject a note of finality into his tone. He has no desire at all to relive that single, agonizing encounter, nor to relate the story to anyone, much less Xander. It works better than Giles expects it to; Xander doesn’t say anything until they’re on the boat again – sitting outside, just as Giles feared, because every seat inside is taken. He buttons his coat up to his throat and shoves his hands in his pockets. The boat’s engines rumble to life and they pull away from the dock.

“And Ethan Rayne?” Xander asks. He’s looking away so that his words are whipped away by the wind. Giles thinks – hopes – that he has misheard, but then Xander glances back at him, one eyebrow raised, and Giles knows he hasn’t. For a moment he can’t answer; all he can do is wonder why now, today, when they haven’t talked about any of this at any point in the last six weeks.

And then he remembers that, oh yes, it’s because he’s a bloody masochist, apparently, and he’s done this to himself.

“No,” Giles says. He glances away, toward the murky water foaming away from the sides of the boat in a clear, clean V. “I haven’t heard from him lately either.”

“But you were, weren’t you? Not in Sunnydale,” Xander amends quickly when Giles turns to glare at him, “but before? It’s just, he was kinda obsessed and it was all really – well, Anya pointed it out. She said he would have made a great vengeance demon if not for his, er –” Xander makes an interesting gesture; Giles feels the tips of his ears turn red and hopes Xander doesn’t notice. “Well, you know – knew Anya.”

“I can imagine,” Giles says. He clears his throat. “Is there money riding on this, by any chance?”

To his credit, Xander looks sheepish. “Me and Buffy and Will might’ve made a threeway bet. Buffy thinks there’s no way you’d have ever fallen for someone like Ethan. Willow thinks you guys did it that last time, when he turned you into a what’s-its demon. I think you guys’ve done it, but not in Sunnydale.”

“I see,” Giles says with perfect mildness, and wonders if having a second heart attack, which does not seem out of the question at the moment, would get him out of this excruciating conversation permanently. “How much, as a matter of interest?”

“Forty bucks, plus a twenty dollar bonus to the person who finally gets it out of you.” Xander crosses his arms over his chest – his leather jacket can’t possibly be serving very well against the wind – and says, “Well? Who wins?”

Giles considers refusing. He should, really, it would serve them all right. He opens his mouth to do just that, however, and finds himself saying, “You’d bloody well better use that money to take me to dinner, is all I have to say about it.”

Lucky for Xander, he doesn’t gloat. He just grins and says, “Deal.”

A week later a check arrives in the mail from Buffy, and two days after that Xander receives a wire transfer from Willow, both in the amount of thirty dollars. Giles is embarrassed all over again; somehow he’d not quite realized that collecting on this bet would entail Xander telling Buffy and Willow exactly what he found out. But all Xander does is tell him to go change, they’re going to “the good place,” meaning an Indian restaurant about six blocks from Giles’s house that serves outstanding naan for about twice the price naan should ever be.

They decide to walk because it was sunny all day and there’s still a hint of summer in the air. There are a number of people out in Giles’s neighborhood, walking dogs or taking their children to the park, some of whom Giles even knows well enough now to wave to. One woman, perhaps five years younger than Giles himself, stops to ask how he’s been. They exchange pleasantries while Xander pets her dog, a friendly, if rather slobbery, mutt, and she wishes them a nice evening.

“She likes you,” Xander says, once they are out of earshot.

“Er . . . I’m sure not,” Giles replies. “We’ve spoken before, that’s all.” Actually, she asked him if he was new in the neighborhood, forcing him to admit that no, he’d been living there almost two years. “Recently recovering workaholic” was how he explained it. She laughed and said she was glad to hear it and they left it at that.

“I’m sure yes,” Xander counters.

“Well, I don’t really – I’m not sure now is the right time –”

“Hey,” Xander says, clapping him on the shoulder, “it was just an observation from someone who knows . . . okay, absolutely nothing about these things.” Xander shrugs. “Just thought you might like to know.”

“Well, thank you,” Giles says. He glances over, but Xander is looking straight ahead, his face revealing nothing.

“The good place” is, as usual, filled with an eclectic mix of business people, tourists, and locals. They snag the last two person table left and make their selections; Giles orders a bottle of red wine, the one alcohol left on his approved list. He lets Xander drink most of it and carry the conversation as well as they work their way through chicken curry and lamb masala, two huge plates of garlic naan, and a side of spinach flavored with cheese and Indian spices, which Xander won’t touch and Giles is happy to have to himself. Two glasses of wine later, Xander is breaking his own rule and talking about work for once – more specifically the “attitude adjustment” needed by one of the new arrivals. Giles finds the whole thing rather ironic, but limits himself to nodding and making sympathetic noises.

“Faith is even tired of her,” Xander says, leaning forward and gesturing with his fork. “And I don’t get it. I mean, what is this, He-man? It’s not like we clubbed her over the head and dragged her here against her will. She could have stayed home, ignored it all, and saved the rest of us the headache.”

“Well, why did she come?” Giles asks, tearing off a piece of naan and using it to scoop of the last of his spinach.

Xander raises his eyebrows. “Fight against evil?” he answers in a way that suggests Giles might have somehow forgotten. “Sacred calling? Stake – vampire – poof? Isn’t that why they all come?”

“Hmm, perhaps not. What was her home life like?”

Xander frowns. “Uh . . . five kids, I think. She’s the oldest. Mom died a couple years ago. I don’t think her file said much about the dad – the team that informed her didn’t meet him – but it did say the house was a disaster. What are you saying? You think she did it just to get away?”

“I don’t know,” Giles says. “I couldn’t say for certain without meeting her – but I think you should keep in mind that everyone’s motives might not all be the same.”

“Hmph,” Xander says, scooping some curry chicken and rice on to his fork. “You just sucked all the fun right out of loathing her. Thanks a lot, Giles.”

By the time they pay and start home, Xander is rather tipsy. Giles doesn’t mind in the least, except that tipsy Xander apparently has very little sense of personal space, and Giles finds it very distracting how Xander keeps drifting toward him, always just shy of actually bumping into him. Even more distracting is the growing certainty that Xander is doing it on purpose, and that if Giles were to glance over, were to give him just the right look, not encouraging even, just curious and questioning, Xander might actually say something. It’s all extremely . . . distracting.

Later, that’s how he explains the fact that he doesn’t realize they’re being followed until the vampires are practically upon them.

They both have stakes with them, of course, but it takes Giles a few seconds to fumble his out. Xander, who has been training several hours a day for the past three years, is much quicker about it, even with most of a bottle of wine in him. Before Giles quite knows what’s happening, the two of them are standing back to back, with three vampires closing in on them.

“I can take two,” Xander mutters.

Giles doesn’t argue. He hasn’t trained at all since getting out of the hospital, and he’s about to find out the hard way just how rusty he’s gotten in the intervening weeks. Taking on more than one could very well be fatal, and not just to him.

“You know,” one of the vampires says, as the three of them pause just a few feet away, “it used to be something to kill a Slayer. Now, though, there’s so many of them, I think it might be better to bag a Watcher. What do you think, boys?”

“I think you’re right,” one of the others says, eyeing Giles’s jugular. “I don’t usually go in for old, but I think I’ll make an exception just this once. Especially after Camden.”

“No, he’s mine,” the first one snaps. “Get out of my w –”

He explodes suddenly in a cloud of dust and a death scream that grates in Giles’s ears. Xander has used the distraction to lunge forward and stake him, and now it’s two on two. The fight is quick and dirty and intense, as Giles grapples with his vampire for the stake and the upper hand. It goes well for few minutes, but Giles can feel his heart pounding, a pressure in his head, spots swimming before his eyes, he can see Xander down on the pavement, a vampire standing over him –

Then footsteps are pounding up the pavement and Wood and Faith are there, with three younger Slayers. They make quick work of the remaining vampires, who are dust before they even know what’s happening. Faith is at his side in seconds, telling him to bend over and breathe deeply, which Giles does only too gratefully. “Xander,” he says, when he’s in less danger of passing out. “Is he –”

“He’s fine,” Wood reports; he’s kneeling on the ground next to Xander. “Knocked unconscious, but no harm done. Sorry we didn’t get here sooner,” he adds.

“Yeah,” Faith says, as Giles finally straightens. “They’re part of the leftovers from the Camden gang – we were tailing them, but we lost them for a couple blocks.”

“It’s all right,” Giles says, even though it almost wasn’t. “I’m more concerned about the fact that they knew who we were. Is it possible they were looking for us?”

Wood shakes his head. “Unlucky coincidence, I think. All the really smart ones have been killed, there’s just a few loose ones wandering around now. I don’t think they can organize well enough.”

“I hope not.” He feels shaken; he was not prepared tonight to be attacked practically on his front stoop. A few feet more and they would have been safe. “I hadn’t considered – precautions are taken with Buffy’s safety, of course, but I didn’t think –”

“You’re the easier target now, chief,” Faith says. “There are fewer Watchers, more Slayers, and without the Watchers we’d be fighting blind. It’d be smart strategy, and if we hadn’t taken out the leader in Camden they might have even figured it out eventually.”

“We should consider this a warning,” Wood says, “maybe start talking about protection or at least precautions.”

Xander groans. Giles goes quickly to kneel beside him, examining the rapidly swelling lump at the base of his skull with a practiced eye. He’ll be groggy, Giles decides, and possibly rather nauseated, but an ice pack, a few ibuprofen, and some rest should take care of it. Xander opens his eyes and blinks up them, clearly disoriented. “Giles?” he manages.

“Right here, Xander,” Giles says. He starts to reach for his hand, but at last second becomes aware that Wood, Faith, and the three Slayers are watching, and grasps Xander’s shoulder instead.

“We win?” Xander asks, slurring the words a little.

“Yes, thanks to Wood and Faith’s timely arrival.”

“Oh,” Xander says. “Good. Ugh . . .” He lifts his head, and then sets it back down, wincing. Wood and Faith help him up, and then Giles steps in, slipping Xander’s arm over his shoulder. “I’ve got him, thanks,” he says.

“Are you sure?” Wood asks, eyeing Xander dubiously. “We could take him to the ER.”

“No, no,” Giles says. “If there’s one thing I know, it’s how to treat a head injury.”

“If you’re sure,” Wood says.

“I think the girls and I’ll stay, though,” Faith says. “Just in case some of Pile O’ Dusts’ friends show up looking to party.”

Giles isn’t very well going to refuse. “Thank you,” he says, and ushers Xander into the flat. He settles him on the sofa and goes for an icepack from the freezer. He glances out the kitchen window as he does so; he can see movement in his overgrown back garden, but after a moment he realizes it’s just one of the Slayers Faith had with her, making a circuit around the house. He relaxes, wraps the ice pack in a towel, and returns to the living room. Xander is slumped on the sofa, looking rather pale and unfocused. He startles a little when Giles gently lifts his head to apply the ice pack, and then reaches up to hold it in place himself.

“Thanks,” he says.

“How are you feeling?” Giles asks, settling himself on the sofa beside Xander.

“Kinda out of it,” Xander replies, his voice rough and groggy. “Woozy.”

“I told Robin we didn’t need to go to hospital, but if you think you do we can certainly –”

“No, I’m all right, I think. Damn, that was – almost really bad.”

“Indeed,” Giles says grimly.

“I thought I had the one and then it knocked me down and I guess I fell wrong.” Wincing, Xander adjusts the ice pack.

“And I was – I suppose the word ‘useless’ would be generous.” Giles sighs. “Well, I think I’ll take this as a sign that it’s time to start training again. Slowly,” he adds, when Xander gives him a look that is probably meant to be sharp, but comes off more squinty-eyed than anything else. “But I need to do some weapons work, at least. It took me far too long to get my stake out tonight.”

“Don’t beat yourself up over it, they caught us off guard.”

“They shouldn’t have. I think they’d been following us for a few blocks and I hadn’t noticed.” He comes up short as he suddenly remembers why he hadn’t noticed. He looks down at Xander, but he’s closed his eyes and Giles decides that asking someone with concussion if they’d been flirting with him earlier is somehow . . . unfair. Instead he goes to get a glass of water and a bottle of ibuprofen from the medicine cabinet. Xander accepts them both gratefully, takes two of the tablets and then sits up, removing the icepack from the back of his head.

“You should keep it on there,” Giles says, sitting back on the sofa. “It will keep the swelling down.”

“I know,” Xander says, rewrapping it carefully. “It was getting in the way though.”

“Of what?”

Xander looks at him with – well, Giles can only describe it as nervous determination. Giles has a split second to wonder what the hell is going on, and then Xander leans forward, closing the already short distance between them, and presses his lips to Giles’s.

Giles is too startled to do anything except freeze. After a few seconds, Xander pulls back and says, from mere inches away, “If I’ve been reading you wrong, can we blame it on the head trauma?”

Giles doesn’t answer at first. He can’t seem to get any words out, and finally he decides that words aren’t what’s required. It’s his turn to lean forward, press his lips to Xander’s, and Xander’s turn to freeze, but only briefly. Giles feels the moment Xander relaxes, his mouth softening, his head tilting for a better angle, and then his hand comes to rest lightly on the small of Giles’s back before drifting up to cup the back of his head. Giles isn’t sure how long they spend there, kissing softly, almost chastely, before, by mutual, silent agreement, they pull away, but only far enough to lean their foreheads together.

“Not reading me wrong,” Giles says at last.

Xander laughs quietly. “I figured.”

“So when you said that you were looking for something different . . .” Giles begins.

“Someone I can’t screw up as bad,” Xander finishes. “Yeah, that would be you. Though I don’t think you should underestimate my ability to screw things up.”

“And I don’t think you should overestimate it,” Giles replies gently.

“Hmm. Maybe.”

Giles retrieves the icepack from where it has fallen, forgotten, to the floor, and presses it against the swollen, bruised area on the back of Xander’s head. He doesn’t startle this time, and he lets Giles hold it there himself. Xander reaches for Giles’s free hand and laces their fingers together. It has been a long time since Giles has had even this much physical intimacy with another person, long enough for him to stop missing it until now, when it’s suddenly offered. He looks down at their fingers curled together, rubs his thumb over the calluses Xander has from training with sword and crossbow, and feels the warm feeling in his stomach spread to his chest.

“How long have you, er . . . ?” Giles asks.

Xander has closed his eyes, and he keeps them closed as he replies, sounding sleepy, “Awhile. Don’t know exactly. One day I just realized that any day you called was better than the days you didn’t, and even if all we talked about was work, it didn’t matter. You’re very sexy on the phone, you know.”

“I am?”

“Oh yeah. Anya used to always say so,” Xander says, looking up at him now. “I used to give her a bad time about it, but then I realized it was true.” He presses his hand to the center of Giles’s chest; Giles can feel his heart beating against Xander’s palm. “I think she’d approve of this, you know. Except if she were here you know she’d want a threesome.”

Giles has to smile, even as he feels his ears turn red. “So – so when you came down here,” he says, only stammering a little, “did you think –”

“Nah,” Xander says. “I didn’t. I didn’t think it would ever – Buffy had this idea, I think she’s been watching too many romantic comedies with the girls up in that castle – really, there can only be so many viewings of Sleepless in Seattle before it does something to your brain – and she thought maybe . . . but, no, I didn’t.”

“Buffy knows?” Giles says, more surprised than he thinks he should be. Some of his conversations with her make more sense now, and the way she twinkled at him every time they talked about Xander, as though she knew something he didn’t, which, in point of fact, she did.

“Yeah. Two years in that castle together means she and I don’t have that many secrets from each other. She’ll be happy when she hears . . . er, assuming there’s something to tell her,” Xander adds, rather anxiously. “Otherwise, you know, head trauma. Totally delirious. No idea what I’m saying. Won’t remember it tomorrow.”

Giles rests the back of his fingers against Xander’s cheek and kisses him for an answer. This time the kiss deepens, becoming complex. Xander cards his hands through Giles’s hair and kneads the back of his neck; Giles slides his hand under Xander’s shirt, feeling soft skin, a smattering of chest hair, firm muscles. He kisses Xander’s throat and hears him sigh, a soft, arousing sound. Giles lifts his head and looks at Xander, who looks back steadily, his eyes even darker than usual.

And then there’s a knock at the door.

Giles jumps and Xander sits up – too quickly, judging by the pained look that crosses his face. Giles buttons his shirt up all the way and stands, waving Xander down. He retrieves his glasses from the end table – Xander removed them some time during the . . . proceedings – and goes to answer the door, pausing to retrieve a stake from the umbrella stand.

It’s just Faith. “Any trouble?” Giles asks, half relieved and half annoyed, and hoping she can’t tell he’s just been snogging Xander on the sofa; if anyone could it would be her, he thinks, and tugs subtly at his collar.

“Nope, seems really quiet. I think you’re good for the night. And the patrol down by the docks just radioed in, said they had a slow go of it – I think we’re coming to the end of this thing.”

“Good, good,” Giles says, and then, embarrassing as it is, feels compelled to add, “Thank you, Faith, for the, er, rescue tonight.”

“No problem, chief,” she says, turning to go. “Just glad we got there in time.”

“Me too,” Giles mutters once he’s shut the door. He sighs and goes back into the living room, seating himself not on the sofa but in the armchair across from Xander. “Faith,” he says. “She says everything’s quiet, so I suppose that means that we should, er, go up to bed. Separately,” he adds when Xander starts to look hopeful.

“Oh,” Xander says, and sounds so disappointed that Giles almost laughs at him.

“Xander, you have concussion. My general and unfortunately extensive experience with that is that it’s a bit of a, er, turn-off, so to speak.”

“Did your general and extensive experience with it happen when you were twenty-five and hadn’t gotten any in about four years?”

“No,” Giles admits.

“Well, then. Don’t be all with the judging.”

Giles smiles but says firmly, “There will be others nights, Xander. Do you need help upstairs?”

“Nah, I’m good,” Xander says somewhat grouchily, pushing himself up off the sofa. He stands easily enough, but then doesn’t move. He sways alarmingly and Giles reaches forward to grab him. “Whoa,” Xander says, gripping Giles’s arm. “Okay, I see what you mean. Turn-off, yeah.”

“It’ll be better in the morning,” Giles assures him. He sees Xander to his room, closing the door on the sight of him stripping off his shirt, and then leans against the wall, head in his hands. A shower before bed suddenly sounds like an excellent idea.

The next morning Giles finds Xander sitting at the kitchen table in his boxers. This strange, since both of them are usually – or always – dressed by the time they come downstairs for breakfast. Giles himself is ready for work in a coat and tie. He doesn’t remark upon it – he’s decided that if Xander wants to forget all about the night before he should have the option – and instead wishes him a good morning and goes to make tea, as is his habit. He’s measuring out the right amount of tea when he feels fingers – Xander’s, he certainly hopes – walking up his back and creeping around his neck to unknot his tie.

“What are you doing?” Giles asks, intending to sound stern, but spoiling it at the last by a faint gasp as Xander kisses the back of his neck.

“You’re not going into work today,” Xander says. He pulls the tie away altogether and then slips an arm around Giles’s waist. “And neither am I.”

“Xander –”

“I called in already. I have a terrible headache from the concussion. Not really,” he adds, “just in case you didn’t realize.”

“Xander, I meant what I said last night about weapons training.”

“I know. And I think it’s a good idea. But . . . tomorrow.”

“I have things to do today, Xander,” Giles says, but he can’t quite manage his usual level of indignation. He lets Xander turn him around so he’s leaning back against the kitchen counter and finds his hands sliding, as of their own volition, under Xander’s shirt and up his back.

Xander undoes the first few buttons on Giles’s dress shirt, grins at him, and kisses him properly for the first time. By the time they break apart, breathlessly, they are pressed together and Giles’s resolve is much weakened; the edge of the counter is digging into his back, but he can’t even manage to care about that. He dips his head to drop a line of kisses up Xander’s throat to his ear, and is very pleased at the noise Xander makes as a result.

Still, he feels the need to put up some small amount of resistance, if only for appearances. “This really can’t happen on a regular basis,” he says, pulling away as much as he can, considering he’s trapped between Xander and the counter. “We have responsibilities.”

“Yes,” Xander says, and does something that makes Giles forget quite suddenly just what those responsibilities could possibly be. “But I believe my main one is helping you learn how to slack off properly, which I plan to pursue with great concentration today.”

“Oh?” Giles manages. “Well, I – I certainly wouldn’t want to get in the way of that.” He kisses Xander then, because he can tell he’s about to say something and while in general Giles is as fond of witty banter as anyone, under these particular circumstances he finds it distracting. Xander kisses him back and then, fortunately for Giles’s back, grabs him by the hand to lead him upstairs. Giles follows willingly, unable to remember why he had ever put up any resistance, for any reason, ever.

Giles can already tell that this – whatever this is going to be – will be heady and strange, possibly juvenile and definitely fun. It will be ridiculous, he reflects, thinking of the warm feeling in his stomach, which has turned overnight into something like (oh, he can’t believe he’s thinking this) butterflies. It will almost certainly be very undignified for someone of his age and experience.

And God help him, he decides, kicking the bedroom door shut behind him, because he cares not a wit.

Fin.