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Here's the next chapter of the fic ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
wesleysgirl and I have been writing. It breaks rather abruptly because otherwise it'd be 7,000 words long. I think once these two start talking, they don't want to stop ::pets them::
Previous parts are here
Act of Nature by Wesleysgirl and Jane Davitt
Chapter Nine
Giles walked up the stairs quickly, not letting himself look back. He had a feeling that if he did, he’d go back to Xander, and that wasn’t what either of them needed right then. A few hours apart, time to adjust, time to make sense of what had happened. He reached his bedroom and sat down on the bed, still feeling tired. Tempting to stretch out and sleep for a while, but he forced himself to stand up after a moment and begin unpacking.
There was a chest of drawers against one wall; wooden, with drawers swollen by damp that screeched and fought him as he pulled them open. They were lined with faded, floral paper, peeling up at the edges. Giles unpacked, methodically sorting out socks from sweaters, jeans from shirts...A wardrobe, in much the same state as the drawers, but with an incongruous row of white plastic hangers where he’d been expecting three bent wire ones, took the rest of his clothes and he tucked Xander’s presents at the back, on the floor.
After that he couldn’t find any more excuses not to stop and think.
Xander and Willow...they’d always been linked in his mind. So close, always so close. He remembered feeling vaguely distressed in the aftermath of that ill-timed, doomed flirtation of theirs, when they’d been jumpy and awkward around each other for weeks. Now one was gone and the other...warmth flooded him as he thought about Xander, happiness sweeping away the tiredness as the wind outside was clearing away the brown, winter-dry leaves.
Then the wind dropped, the swirling leaves settled back on the earth, and Giles felt the guilt and doubt return.
He picked up the book he was reading – one from Quentin’s private stock; a scurrilous, scandalous account written by a Watcher whose Slayer had been at the court of Henry the Eight. She’d died after a few months, trapped in the maze of alleyways behind Hampton Palace, too inexperienced to fight off a vampire who’d lived as many decades as she had years. The Watcher had remained at court, observing events with a cynical eye that made for entertaining reading now, but which had led to his death when his barbed insults had irritated an ailing monarch. Giles had found the book when he went through Quentin’s home office, desperate for anything that would help him make sense of what was left of the Council. He wasn’t sure it would hold his attention today though.
He went out into the hallway and paused, looking out of a narrow window at Xander in the garden below, brown mac flapping in the wind, dark hair blowing, as he tied a tarpaulin down, weighing it at the edges with rocks. Giles stared at him, caught up in a longing that, for the moment, left his body unmoved. Then Xander turned his face up to the sky as the rain began to pelt down, his wet hair sleeked back, lips parted, and Giles remembered that hair lying against Xander’s bare shoulders and those lips on his body and was hard before he reached the top of the stairs.
He made the phone calls, dealing briskly and curtly with his secretary, who had her hands full with appointments to be cancelled, and wasn’t pleased at the extra work, and making three other calls to confirm that Willow’s death had been officially classed as an accident and the paperwork on it closed. Then he rang Buffy and spent twenty minutes trying not to mention Xander, as his voice softened when he did and that was one piece of news Xander could give out. If he wanted to.
Doubt returned and Giles buried them in activity, wandering around the house and making notes about the progress Xander had made – it really looked as if he’d finish ahead of schedule – and then cooking something for them to eat for supper, using the remnants of the salmon. The kitchen didn’t have much, but Mrs Stewart had brought up some vegetables as well as the bread and he managed to produce a fish pie, topped with mashed potato. He’d packed several bottles of wine, more for himself than Xander, and he put a Chardonnay in the fridge, thinking that he’d better steer clear of the whisky, no matter how tempting it was.
Then the side door opened and Xander walked in, wet and windswept, bringing in mud, leaves and fresh air, and Giles decided whisky needed a new word to describe it.
Xander shut the door behind him and stepped back onto the mat just inside the frame, clearly trying not to track too much water into the rest of the kitchen. He slipped the mac off and hung it on a hook on the wall, toeing his boots off at the same time in an uncoordinated sort of multi-tasking that brought back memories of his more awkward teenaged years. "Hey. Something smells good." He ran a hand through wet hair and adjusted his eye patch slightly. "You didn't have to cook."
Giles said dryly, “To quote my host, ‘Don't worry, I'll press you into domestic servitude in the morning.’ Besides, I was getting hungry and I’ve just been sitting around reading; you must be starving.”
He was having trouble keeping his words light, and even more difficulty in not going over to Xander and kissing him, just because he could now. If he could. Maybe Xander had spent the day regretting what had happened, wondering how to tell him it wasn’t going to happen again...
“Can I get you anything? Coffee?”
"Only if you want me bouncing off the walls all night," Xander said. He touched the eye patch again, almost as if it were a nervous habit, and stepped a little bit closer.
Giles closed the gap between them, feeling caution vanish. “I had other plans,” he said, reaching out and running one hand lightly up Xander’s arm. “I think they involved you being a little more relaxed than that.” He let his hand cup Xander’s face, looking for any hint that Xander didn’t want him this close, saw none, and leaned in for a kiss that he intended to be warm without giving away how much he needed Xander right then.
To his relief and pleasure, Xander pressed into the kiss eagerly, sliding an arm around his waist while the other hand rested at Giles' hip. The kiss was rather long, as it seemed neither of them wanted it to end to soon, and when it finally did, Xander asked, "You okay?"
Giles smiled at him. “Let’s just say that relieved my mind of one worry.” Xander gave him an enquiring look and he sighed, stepping back and rubbing his forehead, feeling foolish. “I’ve – spent the last few hours convincing myself that you’d be having second thoughts. This has all happened so fast and you must feel – how do you feel? I never got around to asking, did I?” He took a deep breath. “You said yesterday you wanted to take it slowly and I seem to have ignored that completely. Maybe I’m making assumptions I shouldn’t be?”
Xander looked at him, concern and a mild sort of confusion written all over his face. "Assumptions? You mean... oh." Xander grinned a bit wearily and moved in closer again, and Giles found himself being wrapped in a careful embrace. "No," Xander said, his voice tender and affectionate. "No, you're not making assumptions you shouldn't be."
“Oh, good,” Giles murmured, letting his hand slip down Xander’s back but not going lower than his waist. “Then that means I can kiss you again – but I think I’ll hold that thought until you’ve changed and eaten. You look exhausted.” He gave Xander one more kiss anyway, this time pulling back before it had chance to deepen. “I think we could both do with an early night.”
"Yeah, you're probably right." Xander seemed reluctant to go, but after a moment he did.
Giles listened to the sound of him going up the stairs and tried not to think about the fact that Xander was stripping off his clothes to put on clean ones. Instead, he focused on getting the casserole dish from the oven and setting out plates and silverware. By the time he was hesitating in front of the refrigerator, contemplating whether or not the wine was a good idea, Xander had returned, wearing yet another pair of slightly ill fitting but comfortable looking jeans and a soft sweater.
"Are you communing with the fridge?" Xander asked, gesturing to indicate that Giles was standing in front of the open door.
“Yes, and it’s very sad you never put anything interesting in it,” Giles replied. He decided to open the wine and if Xander didn’t want any – and Giles couldn’t recall ever seeing him drink it – it would still be just about drinkable the next day. He straightened up, holding the bottle, and raised an eyebrow. “Corkscrew? Glasses? Or am I expecting too much? And feel free not to join me. I just thought it would go well with the meal.” He studied Xander more closely and grinned. “Your hair’s sticking up, and I have this overwhelming urge to tell you that you look adorable. Please stop me, using extreme measures if needed.”
"What kind of extreme measures?" Xander asked, using one hand to straighten his hair as he moved across the kitchen and opened a drawer. He rifled around inside it for a moment. "Aha! Or, you know, eureka. Something like that." He turned around, shutting the drawer with his hip, and came over to offer Giles a small utilitarian corkscrew.
Giles took it from him, and frowned thoughtfully. “Hmm. For something that dire, I think you’d have to threaten me with tickling at the very least. Of course, you don’t know where I’m ticklish, or even if I am. Tricky problem, really.” He eased the cork out and gave Xander a sidelong glance. “I think you’re safe now. It seems to have settled down.”
"Which?" Xander asked, looking at him rather strangely and going over to take two wine glasses from a cupboard. "Me being adorable? Or you feeling the urge to tell me that I am? Because I'm not sure you should get the credit just because I fixed my hair."
Giles took the glasses from him, set them down, and turned to face him again. Reaching out, he ruffled up Xander’s hair gently and said, “You’re adorable,” smoothed it back again as Xander started to grin, and added, “you’re still adorable. Now let’s eat before I manage to convince you that you’ve made a huge mistake.”
Xander's grin was enormous as he pulled out a chair and sat down, but even still he looked weary. "I don't think you're gonna be able to convince me there," he said, watching as Giles poured some wine into each glass and slid one across toward him. "This is... good. You know? It feels right." He might have been blushing the tiniest bit as he glanced down at the table.
“It does,” Giles said quietly, sitting down and brushing his hand across Xander’s. He helped them both to the casserole and said, “Do you think it helps that we know each so well? Or not? I suppose we’re saved the excruciating round of questions about star signs, favourite colours and an amusing anecdote from childhood, but this – this is so new that even eight years of friendship doesn’t seem enough to make it less so.”
He took a sip of his wine, deliberately avoiding making a toast. It would have to be to Willow’s memory and somehow, selfish though it was, he wanted to have a space of time that was just about both of them. The guilt of that soured the wine but he forced himself to take a second sip before placing it back on the table.
"This is good too," Xander said, taking another bite and, it seemed, barely chewing before swallowing. "And please tell me that we don't have to swap childhood anecdotes." It was said lightly, but something crossed over his face, something dark and full of sorrow, and Giles wondered if it were because the memories that sprung to mind were bad, or if it were just that they included Willow.
He shook his head, using the excuse of a mouthful of food to avoid answering in detail. Not if it puts that much sadness in your eyes, we don’t.
“Oh, I spoke to Buffy at some length; you’re right, she seems to have forgiven me, though it was a little awkward at first.” Giles felt he was going from one awkward subject to another, but at least this one was only a problem for him. “She seemed to think us all meeting in the New Year was an excellent idea; probably in London. You could travel back with me, if you liked?”
Xander looked somewhat surprised at the suggestion. "I won't be done here by then."
“If you flew, as I did, you’d only be away about three days at most,” Giles said with a frown. “From what I’ve seen, you’re well ahead of schedule. Why is it a problem?”
Part of him felt a little hurt that Xander wasn’t pleased at the idea of extending their time together, and it didn’t help when he wondered if Xander was worried about Buffy and Dawn finding out about them.
“We don’t have to tell them, you know,” he said. “About –us. If that’s what’s troubling you. You could stay at a hotel with them...”
"What? No." Xander didn't seem upset by the idea. "I mean, unless you don't want them to know." When Giles' expression made it clear that this wasn't the case, he went on, with a little smile playing at the corner of his lips, "You don't seriously think that me being with you is going to be a bigger shock than finding out I was seeing Cordelia, do you?"
“Well, thank you for putting me well and truly in my place,” Giles said. “I was looking forward to rendering Buffy speechless for once.” He grinned. “I have a feeling Cordelia would be in whole-hearted agreement, though for slightly different reasons.” He topped up their glasses, although Xander had done no more than take a few sips from his. “Would you prefer it if it was later on then? After you’ve finished here?”
Xander picked up the wine glass, taking a larger swallow this time and then looking down into the pale golden liquid as if he might see the answer to the question there. "No," he said finally. "No, I think it's better to, you know, get it over with." He set the glass down again and pressed the heel of his hand over his eye patch with a sigh. "Which makes it sound like it's something I don't want to do, when that's not it. It's just... it keeps hitting me, you know? I keep thinking about how she wasn't in the last time I called, and... what if she'd been there? Or what if I'd called at a different time? Maybe she would have said something, maybe..."
He sighed again.
“I should have mentioned it to you,” Giles said bitterly. “I don’t know why I didn’t when we were speaking.” He pushed his plate away and picked up his glass. “No. I do know. Those conversations with you ...they came to be something I looked forward to, as a time when I wasn’t thinking about work. Willow, the spell – that was work, you see? God, could I have been more selfish? Falling in love with you wasn’t wrong – I’m not sunk that deep in guilt that I could ever think that – but letting it put Willow at risk? I don’t know why you’re being so – do you not see how wrong it was of me? You should hate me, and I wouldn’t blame you if you did.”
He looked at Xander, feeling the same confusion he’d experienced yesterday at the lack of reproaches from him.
The look he got back held nothing but warmth. "I don't think you could do anything that would make me hate you. And if you think I'm going to give you more ammunition to make it easier to hate yourself, you're nuts." Xander stood up and began to clear the table, motioning to Giles that he was stay where he was. "You're not in charge of the world, you know. It's not your job to keep track of every little thing everyone's doing, and it's not your fault that things go wrong sometimes."
“No, but – ” Giles took a deep breath, twisting around in his seat to look at Xander, desperately afraid that any moment he’d succeed in convincing him of his culpability, but finding it impossible to stop talking. “I let her down because I was thinking about you to the exclusion of everything else, every chance I got. The last six months...the huge job of rebuilding the Council, dealing with people who whine that I’m not more like Quentin, or those who complain because I’m worse...it’s not something I ever expected to be doing. I’ve been sleeping in the office, working weekends...God, listen to me make excuses! But, don’t you see; if I had time to spare for you, I should have had more for her. I didn’t really listen; I just gave her what she asked for, the way a parent gives into a nagging child, just for the sake of peace. She deserved better than that from me.”
Xander shut off the water and turned to face Giles, wiping his hands dry on his jeans. "She deserved to have you treat her like an adult, what with her being one and all, and that's what you did. You trusted her to deal with it, the same way you trusted me to deal with this place." He came closer, stopping about a foot from Giles and looking at him steadily. "I didn't realize how much stress you've been under. You could have told me."
Giles shrugged a little helplessly. “What good would it have done? You couldn’t have helped with the problems themselves, and I’d no wish to bore you to death, so you stopped calling me.” He shook his head. “I just wanted to forget all about that bloody place. Believe me, hearing about your trials and tribulations finding the perfect fishing spot was just what I needed.” He stood up, wanting to get comfortable if they were going to talk. “I lit a fire in the room next door. I wasn’t sure if you used it or not, but it was about the only one with any furniture in it. Want to finish off this wine under the beady gaze of that rather moth-eaten stag on the wall?”
wesleysgirl and I have been writing. It breaks rather abruptly because otherwise it'd be 7,000 words long. I think once these two start talking, they don't want to stop ::pets them::Previous parts are here
Act of Nature by Wesleysgirl and Jane Davitt
Chapter Nine
Giles walked up the stairs quickly, not letting himself look back. He had a feeling that if he did, he’d go back to Xander, and that wasn’t what either of them needed right then. A few hours apart, time to adjust, time to make sense of what had happened. He reached his bedroom and sat down on the bed, still feeling tired. Tempting to stretch out and sleep for a while, but he forced himself to stand up after a moment and begin unpacking.
There was a chest of drawers against one wall; wooden, with drawers swollen by damp that screeched and fought him as he pulled them open. They were lined with faded, floral paper, peeling up at the edges. Giles unpacked, methodically sorting out socks from sweaters, jeans from shirts...A wardrobe, in much the same state as the drawers, but with an incongruous row of white plastic hangers where he’d been expecting three bent wire ones, took the rest of his clothes and he tucked Xander’s presents at the back, on the floor.
After that he couldn’t find any more excuses not to stop and think.
Xander and Willow...they’d always been linked in his mind. So close, always so close. He remembered feeling vaguely distressed in the aftermath of that ill-timed, doomed flirtation of theirs, when they’d been jumpy and awkward around each other for weeks. Now one was gone and the other...warmth flooded him as he thought about Xander, happiness sweeping away the tiredness as the wind outside was clearing away the brown, winter-dry leaves.
Then the wind dropped, the swirling leaves settled back on the earth, and Giles felt the guilt and doubt return.
He picked up the book he was reading – one from Quentin’s private stock; a scurrilous, scandalous account written by a Watcher whose Slayer had been at the court of Henry the Eight. She’d died after a few months, trapped in the maze of alleyways behind Hampton Palace, too inexperienced to fight off a vampire who’d lived as many decades as she had years. The Watcher had remained at court, observing events with a cynical eye that made for entertaining reading now, but which had led to his death when his barbed insults had irritated an ailing monarch. Giles had found the book when he went through Quentin’s home office, desperate for anything that would help him make sense of what was left of the Council. He wasn’t sure it would hold his attention today though.
He went out into the hallway and paused, looking out of a narrow window at Xander in the garden below, brown mac flapping in the wind, dark hair blowing, as he tied a tarpaulin down, weighing it at the edges with rocks. Giles stared at him, caught up in a longing that, for the moment, left his body unmoved. Then Xander turned his face up to the sky as the rain began to pelt down, his wet hair sleeked back, lips parted, and Giles remembered that hair lying against Xander’s bare shoulders and those lips on his body and was hard before he reached the top of the stairs.
He made the phone calls, dealing briskly and curtly with his secretary, who had her hands full with appointments to be cancelled, and wasn’t pleased at the extra work, and making three other calls to confirm that Willow’s death had been officially classed as an accident and the paperwork on it closed. Then he rang Buffy and spent twenty minutes trying not to mention Xander, as his voice softened when he did and that was one piece of news Xander could give out. If he wanted to.
Doubt returned and Giles buried them in activity, wandering around the house and making notes about the progress Xander had made – it really looked as if he’d finish ahead of schedule – and then cooking something for them to eat for supper, using the remnants of the salmon. The kitchen didn’t have much, but Mrs Stewart had brought up some vegetables as well as the bread and he managed to produce a fish pie, topped with mashed potato. He’d packed several bottles of wine, more for himself than Xander, and he put a Chardonnay in the fridge, thinking that he’d better steer clear of the whisky, no matter how tempting it was.
Then the side door opened and Xander walked in, wet and windswept, bringing in mud, leaves and fresh air, and Giles decided whisky needed a new word to describe it.
Xander shut the door behind him and stepped back onto the mat just inside the frame, clearly trying not to track too much water into the rest of the kitchen. He slipped the mac off and hung it on a hook on the wall, toeing his boots off at the same time in an uncoordinated sort of multi-tasking that brought back memories of his more awkward teenaged years. "Hey. Something smells good." He ran a hand through wet hair and adjusted his eye patch slightly. "You didn't have to cook."
Giles said dryly, “To quote my host, ‘Don't worry, I'll press you into domestic servitude in the morning.’ Besides, I was getting hungry and I’ve just been sitting around reading; you must be starving.”
He was having trouble keeping his words light, and even more difficulty in not going over to Xander and kissing him, just because he could now. If he could. Maybe Xander had spent the day regretting what had happened, wondering how to tell him it wasn’t going to happen again...
“Can I get you anything? Coffee?”
"Only if you want me bouncing off the walls all night," Xander said. He touched the eye patch again, almost as if it were a nervous habit, and stepped a little bit closer.
Giles closed the gap between them, feeling caution vanish. “I had other plans,” he said, reaching out and running one hand lightly up Xander’s arm. “I think they involved you being a little more relaxed than that.” He let his hand cup Xander’s face, looking for any hint that Xander didn’t want him this close, saw none, and leaned in for a kiss that he intended to be warm without giving away how much he needed Xander right then.
To his relief and pleasure, Xander pressed into the kiss eagerly, sliding an arm around his waist while the other hand rested at Giles' hip. The kiss was rather long, as it seemed neither of them wanted it to end to soon, and when it finally did, Xander asked, "You okay?"
Giles smiled at him. “Let’s just say that relieved my mind of one worry.” Xander gave him an enquiring look and he sighed, stepping back and rubbing his forehead, feeling foolish. “I’ve – spent the last few hours convincing myself that you’d be having second thoughts. This has all happened so fast and you must feel – how do you feel? I never got around to asking, did I?” He took a deep breath. “You said yesterday you wanted to take it slowly and I seem to have ignored that completely. Maybe I’m making assumptions I shouldn’t be?”
Xander looked at him, concern and a mild sort of confusion written all over his face. "Assumptions? You mean... oh." Xander grinned a bit wearily and moved in closer again, and Giles found himself being wrapped in a careful embrace. "No," Xander said, his voice tender and affectionate. "No, you're not making assumptions you shouldn't be."
“Oh, good,” Giles murmured, letting his hand slip down Xander’s back but not going lower than his waist. “Then that means I can kiss you again – but I think I’ll hold that thought until you’ve changed and eaten. You look exhausted.” He gave Xander one more kiss anyway, this time pulling back before it had chance to deepen. “I think we could both do with an early night.”
"Yeah, you're probably right." Xander seemed reluctant to go, but after a moment he did.
Giles listened to the sound of him going up the stairs and tried not to think about the fact that Xander was stripping off his clothes to put on clean ones. Instead, he focused on getting the casserole dish from the oven and setting out plates and silverware. By the time he was hesitating in front of the refrigerator, contemplating whether or not the wine was a good idea, Xander had returned, wearing yet another pair of slightly ill fitting but comfortable looking jeans and a soft sweater.
"Are you communing with the fridge?" Xander asked, gesturing to indicate that Giles was standing in front of the open door.
“Yes, and it’s very sad you never put anything interesting in it,” Giles replied. He decided to open the wine and if Xander didn’t want any – and Giles couldn’t recall ever seeing him drink it – it would still be just about drinkable the next day. He straightened up, holding the bottle, and raised an eyebrow. “Corkscrew? Glasses? Or am I expecting too much? And feel free not to join me. I just thought it would go well with the meal.” He studied Xander more closely and grinned. “Your hair’s sticking up, and I have this overwhelming urge to tell you that you look adorable. Please stop me, using extreme measures if needed.”
"What kind of extreme measures?" Xander asked, using one hand to straighten his hair as he moved across the kitchen and opened a drawer. He rifled around inside it for a moment. "Aha! Or, you know, eureka. Something like that." He turned around, shutting the drawer with his hip, and came over to offer Giles a small utilitarian corkscrew.
Giles took it from him, and frowned thoughtfully. “Hmm. For something that dire, I think you’d have to threaten me with tickling at the very least. Of course, you don’t know where I’m ticklish, or even if I am. Tricky problem, really.” He eased the cork out and gave Xander a sidelong glance. “I think you’re safe now. It seems to have settled down.”
"Which?" Xander asked, looking at him rather strangely and going over to take two wine glasses from a cupboard. "Me being adorable? Or you feeling the urge to tell me that I am? Because I'm not sure you should get the credit just because I fixed my hair."
Giles took the glasses from him, set them down, and turned to face him again. Reaching out, he ruffled up Xander’s hair gently and said, “You’re adorable,” smoothed it back again as Xander started to grin, and added, “you’re still adorable. Now let’s eat before I manage to convince you that you’ve made a huge mistake.”
Xander's grin was enormous as he pulled out a chair and sat down, but even still he looked weary. "I don't think you're gonna be able to convince me there," he said, watching as Giles poured some wine into each glass and slid one across toward him. "This is... good. You know? It feels right." He might have been blushing the tiniest bit as he glanced down at the table.
“It does,” Giles said quietly, sitting down and brushing his hand across Xander’s. He helped them both to the casserole and said, “Do you think it helps that we know each so well? Or not? I suppose we’re saved the excruciating round of questions about star signs, favourite colours and an amusing anecdote from childhood, but this – this is so new that even eight years of friendship doesn’t seem enough to make it less so.”
He took a sip of his wine, deliberately avoiding making a toast. It would have to be to Willow’s memory and somehow, selfish though it was, he wanted to have a space of time that was just about both of them. The guilt of that soured the wine but he forced himself to take a second sip before placing it back on the table.
"This is good too," Xander said, taking another bite and, it seemed, barely chewing before swallowing. "And please tell me that we don't have to swap childhood anecdotes." It was said lightly, but something crossed over his face, something dark and full of sorrow, and Giles wondered if it were because the memories that sprung to mind were bad, or if it were just that they included Willow.
He shook his head, using the excuse of a mouthful of food to avoid answering in detail. Not if it puts that much sadness in your eyes, we don’t.
“Oh, I spoke to Buffy at some length; you’re right, she seems to have forgiven me, though it was a little awkward at first.” Giles felt he was going from one awkward subject to another, but at least this one was only a problem for him. “She seemed to think us all meeting in the New Year was an excellent idea; probably in London. You could travel back with me, if you liked?”
Xander looked somewhat surprised at the suggestion. "I won't be done here by then."
“If you flew, as I did, you’d only be away about three days at most,” Giles said with a frown. “From what I’ve seen, you’re well ahead of schedule. Why is it a problem?”
Part of him felt a little hurt that Xander wasn’t pleased at the idea of extending their time together, and it didn’t help when he wondered if Xander was worried about Buffy and Dawn finding out about them.
“We don’t have to tell them, you know,” he said. “About –us. If that’s what’s troubling you. You could stay at a hotel with them...”
"What? No." Xander didn't seem upset by the idea. "I mean, unless you don't want them to know." When Giles' expression made it clear that this wasn't the case, he went on, with a little smile playing at the corner of his lips, "You don't seriously think that me being with you is going to be a bigger shock than finding out I was seeing Cordelia, do you?"
“Well, thank you for putting me well and truly in my place,” Giles said. “I was looking forward to rendering Buffy speechless for once.” He grinned. “I have a feeling Cordelia would be in whole-hearted agreement, though for slightly different reasons.” He topped up their glasses, although Xander had done no more than take a few sips from his. “Would you prefer it if it was later on then? After you’ve finished here?”
Xander picked up the wine glass, taking a larger swallow this time and then looking down into the pale golden liquid as if he might see the answer to the question there. "No," he said finally. "No, I think it's better to, you know, get it over with." He set the glass down again and pressed the heel of his hand over his eye patch with a sigh. "Which makes it sound like it's something I don't want to do, when that's not it. It's just... it keeps hitting me, you know? I keep thinking about how she wasn't in the last time I called, and... what if she'd been there? Or what if I'd called at a different time? Maybe she would have said something, maybe..."
He sighed again.
“I should have mentioned it to you,” Giles said bitterly. “I don’t know why I didn’t when we were speaking.” He pushed his plate away and picked up his glass. “No. I do know. Those conversations with you ...they came to be something I looked forward to, as a time when I wasn’t thinking about work. Willow, the spell – that was work, you see? God, could I have been more selfish? Falling in love with you wasn’t wrong – I’m not sunk that deep in guilt that I could ever think that – but letting it put Willow at risk? I don’t know why you’re being so – do you not see how wrong it was of me? You should hate me, and I wouldn’t blame you if you did.”
He looked at Xander, feeling the same confusion he’d experienced yesterday at the lack of reproaches from him.
The look he got back held nothing but warmth. "I don't think you could do anything that would make me hate you. And if you think I'm going to give you more ammunition to make it easier to hate yourself, you're nuts." Xander stood up and began to clear the table, motioning to Giles that he was stay where he was. "You're not in charge of the world, you know. It's not your job to keep track of every little thing everyone's doing, and it's not your fault that things go wrong sometimes."
“No, but – ” Giles took a deep breath, twisting around in his seat to look at Xander, desperately afraid that any moment he’d succeed in convincing him of his culpability, but finding it impossible to stop talking. “I let her down because I was thinking about you to the exclusion of everything else, every chance I got. The last six months...the huge job of rebuilding the Council, dealing with people who whine that I’m not more like Quentin, or those who complain because I’m worse...it’s not something I ever expected to be doing. I’ve been sleeping in the office, working weekends...God, listen to me make excuses! But, don’t you see; if I had time to spare for you, I should have had more for her. I didn’t really listen; I just gave her what she asked for, the way a parent gives into a nagging child, just for the sake of peace. She deserved better than that from me.”
Xander shut off the water and turned to face Giles, wiping his hands dry on his jeans. "She deserved to have you treat her like an adult, what with her being one and all, and that's what you did. You trusted her to deal with it, the same way you trusted me to deal with this place." He came closer, stopping about a foot from Giles and looking at him steadily. "I didn't realize how much stress you've been under. You could have told me."
Giles shrugged a little helplessly. “What good would it have done? You couldn’t have helped with the problems themselves, and I’d no wish to bore you to death, so you stopped calling me.” He shook his head. “I just wanted to forget all about that bloody place. Believe me, hearing about your trials and tribulations finding the perfect fishing spot was just what I needed.” He stood up, wanting to get comfortable if they were going to talk. “I lit a fire in the room next door. I wasn’t sure if you used it or not, but it was about the only one with any furniture in it. Want to finish off this wine under the beady gaze of that rather moth-eaten stag on the wall?”