Copyright November 23, 2003 by Matthew Haldeman-Time

Rating: soft R for men kissing and such

Pairing: Xander/Connor

Disclaimer: "Buffy: the Vampire Slayer" and "Angel," with their related characters and themes, belong to Joss Whedon and others, not to me.  I make no money from this venture.

Wherein Xander comes home, takes a shower, and gets kissed.

        He took the groceries into the kitchen.  Lettuce in the crisper, peanut butter in the cupboard.  He refilled one glass candy dish with chocolates and refilled the other one with butterscotch candies.

        Walking back to the bedroom, Xander paused by the answering machine to check the messages.

        Beep!  “-you there?  We have a situation.  Come down to the office.”

        Xander rolled his eyes.  Angel always started talking before the beep.  The simplest of instructions…

        Beep!  “Xander, I did it!  We did it!  It was all wow and glowy!  The coven says nobody’s ever, I mean ever!  I wish you’d been here.  Call me.”

        Xander smiled.  Willow got excited over every milestone, like her power was new each time.  He’d call her after his shower.

        After stripping in the bedroom, Xander got under the hot spray.  It felt great.  He closed his eyes and forgot all about lumber and the foreman and the site and the entire construction business.  All that mattered was being home and not having to go back.

        Until tomorrow.

        But tomorrow morning, he’d be refreshed.  Rejuvenated.  Many good re-things.  Because he’d discovered the secret to happiness in the face of drudgery, boredom, burnout, and, quite literally, all Hell breaking loose.

        Xander was in love.  His love was requited.  And as long as he got a dose of his beloved once every twenty-four hours, he was on top of the world.

        Turning off the shower, Xander stepped out, drying himself.  He wrapped the towel around his waist and walked back to his bedroom.  He flipped on the light-

        -and Connor leapt down from the edge of the dresser, landing silently and gracefully as a cat, smiling with mischief.  “Hi,” Connor said, his hands on Xander’s hips.

        “Whoa,” Xander said, having thrown himself back against the open door in surprise.  “Well.  Hi.”

        Connor kissed him, narrowing his world to Connor’s mouth, to soft lips and a sleek tongue.  Connor’s agile hands pushed the towel off of his hips, letting it drop to the floor.  Before the air could cool his flesh, Connor’s groin pushed forward against his, the denim of Connor’s jeans rough against him but the heat and hardness of Connor’s swelling arousal making up for it.

        Xander put his hands on Connor’s hips in return, dipping his thumbs beneath the waistband of Connor’s jeans, stroking the ultra-smooth silk of Connor’s skin.

        “Mmm.”  Connor pulled away, giving him another big smile, and darted out of the room.

        “You had a good day?” Xander guessed, trying to catch up with Connor’s changing moods.  Connor could go from kissing to killing to talking to stalking in a flash, with no warning.  Consequently, he frequently left Xander empty-handed with a hard-on.  It was tempting to label him a tease, but there was more to it than that.  It wasn’t that he never delivered; he just delivered on his own schedule, whatever that was.

        “Yeah,” Connor answered from elsewhere in the apartment.  The kitchen, it sounded like.

        Xander pulled on sweatpants and a T-shirt before finding Connor.  “What’s the body count?”

        “Three vampires and a Grakil demon,” Connor said around a piece of chocolate, digging through the refrigerator.  The kitchen was dark; the light from the refrigerator revealed a scratch over his left eye and dust smudging his cheek.

        “Was that what Angel needed help with?” Xander asked.  “The Grakil?”

        “Yeah.”  Connor swallowed the chocolate and found the milk jug.  “Wesley vanquished it, but he had to do it from a sacred spot, so we had to get it there.”

        “You were bait?”

        Connor shrugged, lifting the jug to his lips.

        Xander took a cup from the cabinet.

        Connor rolled his eyes and accepted the cup, using that instead.  “What’d you do today?”

        “Built things.  Constructed things.  Got a call from Dawn on my lunch hour.  They’re in Argentina.”  With the refrigerator closed, the only light was the weak light spilling down the hallway from the bedroom.  But Xander’s eyes were adjusting, and he was well aware that Connor didn’t need the light.  “Thank you for saving us all from the Grakil.”

        “You have to stop worrying about it.”

        “Worrying about what?” Xander asked.

        “Me.  Me being bait.  You know I can handle myself.”

        Xander didn’t like being called on his fears.  He’d thought he’d been covering them fairly well.  “You’re not invincible.”

        “Neither are you, and you go out there.  We’ve set you up as bait.”

        Xander didn’t know how to respond to that.  He decided to bypass his brain.  “When I’m bait, I have you for back-up.  Who’s your back-up, Fred?”

        “I can take care of myself,” Connor said again, with the calm confidence of someone speaking a truth.

        Xander didn’t want to ask the question forming in his mouth.  He didn’t want to feel that he needed to ask.  He didn’t want to feel the accompanying shame.  He didn’t want Connor to hear him asking.  “Do you ever worry?  About me?  When I’m out there?”

        “Yes,” Connor said.  “You have experience and some training, and you know when to fight and when to run.  But sometimes your ideals overrule your survival instinct.  And sometimes the situation becomes too dangerous.  I worry about you.  It makes me fight harder.”

        “Buffy couldn’t worry about us,” Xander said.  “She didn’t have that luxury.  It was all about the kill.  It had to be.”

        “For some warriors, any outside thought is a distraction,” Connor said.  “Maybe my brain is better developed than hers is.”

        Xander was startled into laughter.

        Connor smiled.  Connor liked to make him laugh.  “She told you that, but it may not have been true.  She was fighting for something, and you were part of that something.”

        “Then what are you fighting for?” Xander asked.  There was a small tear in Connor’s shirt.  He touched it, wondering how close death had been this time.  It was hard to know.  Sometimes Connor was in a fight so horrible he was seconds from death and only escaped alive due to luck and genius, and sometimes it was an easy kill that was, for Connor, pure sport.  Unless Xander was there as a witness, he never knew what kind it had been.  For his own peace of mind, when he couldn’t be there, he imagined that it was, for Connor, a walk in the park.

        “I used to fight for survival,” Connor said.

        Everyone Xander knew, it seemed like, had been through something unimaginably terrible, and survived.  It had made them stronger and more intent on fighting the good fight and living the good life.  But of all of the horrible tales, Connor’s was the worst.  Hands down.  Buffy, coming back from Heaven and thinking she was in Hell?  Maybe Hell was relative, but Connor had been in the real thing, and there was no comparison.  Angel had been in Hell, but Angel had deserved it.  Connor?  An innocent newborn?  Xander was biased, being in love with Connor and everything; but even without that, Connor was the strongest, bravest, most kick-ass person Xander had ever met.

        “I fight so maybe the good will keep its lead over the bad,” Connor said.  “I fight because innocent, defenseless people need someone to stand up for them.  I fight because my mother gave her life for me and I don’t want to destroy her legacy.  I fight for you.”

        “For me?” Xander asked.  His voice was too high.  He cleared his throat and tried again.  “Me?”

        “You’ve given a lot in this fight.  You’ve lost too much.  I want to give you the world you deserve.  Every demon I kill is one less demon this world has to face.”

        “I don’t want you to die,” Xander said.  It wasn’t the right time or place, if there ever would be one, but it still had to be said.  He reached over and switched on the light.  He’d spent too much of his life dealing with death, in the dark.

        “Everything dies,” Connor said.

        “We don’t even know if you can die,” Xander said.

        “I think a good decapitation might do it,” Connor said.

        “What if we got you a nice thick steel collar?” Xander asked.  “It could be the new thing in fashion.”

        “I don’t want you to die, either,” Connor said.  “Everyone dies, or leaves, or betrays.  I don’t think you’re like that.”

        “I don’t have the best track record with women.”

        Connor smiled slightly.  “I’m not a woman.”

        Xander corrected himself.  “With romance, then.”

        Another smile.  “I’m not romantic.”

        “We eat on the roof so we can gaze at the moon.  That’s romantic.”

        “Last time we did that we were attacked.”

        “Yeah, but it was romantic up until that point.”

        “We ended up covered with gore.”

         “There was a slight disruption to the mood.”

        “You had intestines in your hair.”

        “That’s just one of the many little things I do to make myself attractive to you.  What’s your point?”

        Connor laughed, then put his hand on Xander’s hip, gently squeezing as he surprised Xander with a kiss.  “I trust you.”

        “You trust people,” Xander said.

        Connor shook his head.  “I like people.  I trust you.”

        “You don’t trust people?  Not even Wesley?”

        “I like Wesley.  I think I like all of them.  But if it came down to it, they’d do what they have to do.  I’d do what I have to do.  I understand that.  They understand that.  Especially Wesley.”

        Yeah, that was true, but…  “I wouldn’t?” Xander asked.

        “If you ever have to draw the line, I won’t be on the other side of it,” Connor said.

        How did Connor just know these things?  Without worrying or doubting or second-guessing?  It was like Connor had a bullshit eliminator in his head.  Xander’s head, meanwhile, was outfitted with a bullshit maker.

        “I’m going to take a shower,” Connor said, toeing out of his sneakers.  “Can you make supper?”

        “Yeah.”  Back-up and support was his thing.  If Connor was going to be out saving the world on a daily basis, the least he could do was heat up frozen pizza.

        Connor kissed him again, a long, lingering, deep kiss, like Connor wanted to set up residence in his mouth.  “If anybody calls, I’ll be back out after dinner.”

        “Okay.”  Xander watched Connor walk away.  Connor stripped out of his shirt as he walked, leaving it in the hallway, and Xander’s eyes were drawn to him, his lithe grace, his smooth skin, his tight sleek musculature.

        Maybe Xander could steal a few private moments after pizza, before Connor went back out there.