Stupid way to die.

After the battle and the collapse of the Hellmouth, they were supposed to be safe.

So all right. Xander never actually believed that, but he thought they'd have some breathing space. He'd thought the First Evil would burrow somewhere to lick its incorporeal wounds and they'd have weeks, months -- maybe even years, like the last time.

It had never occurred to him to worry about the 5,417,841st evil. A gas station. A dumbass with a gun. An electronic bell that jangles as Giles crosses the threshold, Xander at his heels.

The gunshot slams Giles back into Xander, and they fall to the floor together. The dumbass stumbles over Giles's legs running out the door, and just like that, he's gone.

Just like that.

Xander presses his hand over the chest wound, but from this position, his legs pinned under Giles's (dead) weight, he can't apply much pressure. "Giles Giles Giles," he babbles, "stay with me, you can't cut out on us now."

Such a look of surprise on his face. Xander can't stop himself from flashing on Captain Kirk's death scene in Generations. Stupid, stupid thing to think about.

"Go to the bus outside," he tells the clerk. "Get the redhead. Willow. Buffy, the blonde. Now."

"I'm not going out there." The phone is already in his hand and before Xander can yell at him to do as he says, the man is shouting incoherently at the 911 operator.

Xander should go himself.

But he can't leave Giles.

He slithers from beneath him, scrambles to his knees beside him to put his whole weight behind the hands pressing against the wound. Giles's eyes are open, but they don't see Xander. (When have they ever?)

A rattling sigh passes his lips, and then there's nothing.

Just like that, he's gone.

Xander should get someone, but even now, he can't leave Giles. He deserves to have someone with him who knows him, not some hysterical clerk who just thinks of him as a body.

Xander hears his own voice, urgent and low: "Come on, Giles, come on." As if he thinks there's a chance. His hands, drenched in blood, still press against the hole in Giles's chest. As if that might help. "Come on. Please."

The bell sounds again, loud and startling as a gunshot. Sleepy-eyed Dawn stumbles in. "Guys? What's the hold-up?"

The Army Guy voice comes from somewhere, cool and commanding. "Dawn, go get Buffy and Willow. Keep everyone else inside the bus. Don't tell them anything yet."

Her eyes widening, Dawn takes in the blood on Xander's hands and his jeans. Giles's body sprawled on the entry mat, arm flung out, touching the newspaper rack. Sunnydale's on the front page.

"Go now," he tells her. "I'm counting on you."

She wheels and hurries outside.

The clerk babbles into the phone, giving nothing that could be termed useful information. Xander still kneels over Giles, trying to keep the blood in.

The goddamn electronic bell rings twice more, shredding Xander's nervous system.

"Dawn said --" Willow stops in her tracks, Buffy bumping into her from behind. "Oh god."

"Take it out of him," Xander tells her.

"Giles." Buffy sinks to her knees beside his body. It's a moment before she can speak. "Xander, what happened?" She doesn't have to say it for Xander to hear it: How could you let this happen?

"We walked in on a robbery. Will, take it out. Like you did when Buffy got shot."

She gazes at Giles's still form, Xander on one side, Buffy on the other. Tears slip down her face. "Honey, it's too late. He's gone."

"Bring him back." Xander's not quite sure where the hard certainty of his voice comes from. He'd never have thought he could want this again.

"I can't."

"Like hell you can't. We've all just seen the kind of power you have."

"She's right," Buffy says. "We can't decide this."

"And who can? Giles? Take a look."

"He wouldn't want that, Xander," Willow says softly.

"We don't know that."

"I know that. After -- after Buffy came back, we had a terrible fight. He was so angry."

"Let him be," Buffy whispers. "Let him rest."

Rest. This is a word he can't remember any of them using in connection with death, in all the years he's been fighting at Buffy's side. Funny how it comes up now, not all that long after Giles's conspiracy to have Spike staked. Maybe if things go sour for Robin, he'll be a candidate for the same philosophical spin. He stares at Buffy as her eyes pool with tears, finally letting himself remember the aftermath of her return, and he bites back these observations.

In the distance he hears sirens. "They'll take him," Xander says. "And they won't release him to us." A handful of 22-year-olds and some teens with no fixed address? They might let the Council have his body -- if there's anyone left there who wants him.

The three of them look at one another. "Let's take him," Buffy says. Without another word, she and Xander carry him to the school bus, as Willow casts some kind of glamour to keep the clerk from trying to stop them -- not that Xander believes he would.

The bench seats are too short to hold his body, so they lay Giles in the aisle at the back of the bus. There's nothing to put him on, no blanket to cover him with -- not even time to see what they might find in the convenience mart. Xander sits in the aisle at his head, his hand on Giles's shoulder. Buffy falls onto one of the seats, the weight of Giles's body finally making this real to her.

Willow follows them onto the bus. "We have to go." She shakes Faith awake. "Faith, we need you to drive us out of here. Now."

Faith scrambles up and starts the bus. She grinds the gears, but gets them moving. Willow stands in the aisle, swaying, her lips moving, and when a string of emergency vehicles screams past them on the highway, not a single occupant seems to take notice of them.

He keeps watch.

Gently he closes Giles's eyes. No one had been there to attend to Anya, but at least he can do this for Giles.

Buffy's lapsed into shock and silence. Dawn edges down the aisle past the body to sit at her side, weeping softly. Once she's finished casting her mystical smokescreen, Willow takes her place next to Kennedy, gently waking her to break the news.

Xander has no one but the already dead.

I'm sorry, Giles. Sorry he was always such a disappointment. Sorry he didn't walk into that convenience store ahead of Giles, keep him safe. This is another relationship he'll never be able to fix, another person who'll never give him what he wants, because it's too late to change himself for them. Sunnydale slammed the door on his parents and Anya, and this is just the echo of that hollow sound.

Giles's arm falls away from where they'd carefully arranged it when they set him down, his hand striking the ridged non-skid floor. The fingers curl in toward his palm, and Xander thinks how graceful they'd looked that time he and Will and Anya caught him playing guitar and singing at the Espresso Pump. It had felt almost like seeing him naked or something. Especially once Giles spotted them and blanched. It had been almost like looking at Giles's wrist now, soft and pale as the underbelly of some small animal. Vulnerable.

He doesn't cry. Hasn't cried at all since Sunnydale collapsed into the Hellmouth. He's been too well trained for that.

He hears the soft tones of a cellphone's keypad. "Angel." Her voice is a broken whisper, girlish, a flashback to a Buffy he hasn't seen in years. "Oh god, Angel. I don't know what to do."

Angel.

The numbness gives way to anger, filling the hollowed-out spaces Anya and Giles and yeah, even his parents carved within him. What have they gone through the last seven years for, why have they closed the Hellmouth? So Buffy can be sixteen again? Maybe spreading the girl-power love on a worldwide basis watered down the line. Watered down Buffy.

He brings this up to Willow, just as a possibility, as he's fueling up the bus. He can leave the bus now without being hauled in by the cops, after Faith went diving in a Goodwill drop box before dawn, finding him some clothes that weren't covered in blood.

"Xander, no. Don't be --" She softens her voice. "Don't be so hard on her." Of course she's not having it -- it was her spell. "She's grieving," Willow says, as if speaking to a child. "You know what Giles meant to her."

He spins on his heel and walks away.

Buffy returns from the convenience mart with a big beach towel to spread over Giles. It's pink, with a Barbie logo. "It was all I could find," she says apologetically.

Rona doesn't return at all. Nobody's surprised -- she's been vocal about being freaked out by riding with a dead body.

Dawn argues for finding her. "I don't like her traveling alone."

"She made it to us alone," Xander points out. "And that's when there were Bringers after her. She's a Slayer now."

It's Faith who backs him up. "Let her go. If she doesn't want to stay, we don't need her."

Vi cuts out on them too, with a story about safety in numbers. She'd feel better, she says, knowing Rona had someone watching her back.

He'd half expected Andrew to do a fade too, but he sticks around, first off the bus when Faith pulls up in front of the old hotel she says is Angel's HQ.

Except -- not so much, now. The place is half packed up in boxes when they straggle in a few hours before sunset. Angel says they've got a new arrangement, working out of the offices of Wolfram & Hart. At that, Faith drags Angel back into his office, where there's Faith's raised voice and Angel's calm, reasonable one, neither intelligible enough to follow through the closed door.

The rest of them are left in the lobby with Angel's people. A bald, black guy -- younger and tougher looking than their bald, black guy. A green-skinned demon with horns and a painfully loud suit. A skinny brown-haired girl Willow calls Fred. Faith's old Watcher with the two last names, neither of which Xander recalls. Wesley. Right. He remembers this now, that Wesley had hooked up with Angel and Cordelia, presumably after he followed Cordy out to L.A. Guess things had worked out between them.

Wesley greets them solemnly, without a trace of the pompous air he had when Xander knew him before. "I'm so sorry about Mr. Giles. I remember how very close you all were."

"Is Cordelia around?" Xander blurts. "She'd want to know."

There's some foot shifting among the others, and the green guy makes a soft noise in the back of his throat, but he says nothing.

Wesley clears his throat. "Yes, well," he says softly, jamming his hands in his jeans pockets. There was something Xander had never dreamed he'd see, back in Sunnydale. Wesley favored suits and bowties back then. Wesley lifts his eyes from the marble floor and meets Xander's gaze. "I'm afraid there's more bad news. Cordy's been -- she's been very ill for some weeks. She's in a coma."

"Oh," Xander says, barely audible to himself. He blinks, wondering why this piece of news staggers him. It's not like he'd even talked to her in the last four years. "What, um, what happened?" The regretful look on Wesley's face makes Xander wish he hadn't asked. He holds up a hand before Wesley can launch into the tale. "You don't have to -- I'll just assume some kind of supernatural nasty."

He sees from Wesley's expression that the assumption is correct.

Faith and Angel burst from the office then, tension still simmering in Faith's movements. Introductions are made and green guy -- Lorne -- goes off to get the refugees something to eat and drink before they all settle in to talk about what they'll do with Giles.

Xander had been all for building a pyre in the desert and having it done by now, without any external help. Buffy, Dawn and Willow were against it, and since theirs were the only four voting memberships in the cooperative (tellingly, Kennedy tried to cast a vote, while Faith claimed no such right), he was outnumbered.

Angel offers to let them bury him in the hotel's courtyard garden. Except for Angel, they all troop outside in the slanting afternoon sunlight to have a look around. It's something of a genteel wreck, this garden, overgrown in some parts, dying in others. The exterior of the hotel that surrounds the courtyard is showing its age, signs of longterm neglect.

"I don't like it," Xander says. "You're all clearing out of here. There'll be no one to take care of things." He'll be alone and forgotten. Just like Anya will, back in the crater.

"Not necessarily," Angel says behind them. He stands in the shelter of a covered walkway. "You're all welcome to stay as long as you'd like. Give yourself time for some R&R. Or establish a base of operations here, set up a school for the new Slayers. There's plenty of rooms for living quarters, lots of space for training." Plenty of Angel for Buffy to run to, not so incidentally. "It'll be nice to see the place getting some use."

The majority of the voting membership comes down on the side of burial in the garden. Also on the side of staying, at least for the time being.

"There's a shovel in the maintenance shed," Wesley says. He disappears.

"There wouldn't be any lumber, would there?" Xander asks.

"We did some renovation work," Angel says. "There might be something usable." He leads Xander to one of the higher floors, where the air is stale and the walls are patchy with plaster and different colors of paint. Angel lets him into a room with sawhorses and planks and other bits of crap lying around. There are planks long enough to work, but it won't be much of a coffin.

"How are you doing?" Angel asks from the doorway. Doorways have always seemed to suit him -- he's never a part of anything, neither in nor out.

Xander just turns and looks at him in disbelief.

"I smell his blood all over you," Angel says. "You were there."

"Yeah, well, so what?" He turns away and begins hammering.

They all gather around the grave Wesley has dug, the piece-of-shit coffin Xander has cobbled together. Xander suppresses an inane urge to say, "Preacher, if you'd say a few words over him, I'd be right appreciative." There's a long, painful silence as everyone tries to boil their own particular complicated relationship with Giles down to a handful of sentences. At last Andrew steps in, and his "few brief remarks" soon are looking like they're going to cover Giles's whole life, in real time.

That's when he notices. The scar slashing across Wesley's neck. It's faded some, but still pink and puckery. He finds himself staring as Andrew drones on and on -- it's easier than listening. Wesley had been so shiny and new when he came to replace Giles. Despite his bragging about field experience, even Xander had logged more real-world demon fighting time. In this Wesley he sees something he's come to understand himself: The more experience you have, the less certain you are about how much you know.

It takes a while before he notices Wesley is staring back. Xander's not even embarrassed to be caught, because he feels himself being reevaluated in much the same way, as Wesley contemplates the eyepatch. Have his own wounds made him look more substantial to people who knew him years ago, or does he still just look like a guy who can't get out of the way fast enough?

By the time Andrew finishes, he's sucked all the air out of the courtyard. Each one who knew Giles at all says a brief piece -- Xander doesn't register any of it, isn't even sure what he says himself. Finally they come to Wesley, who clears his throat. "I know that I --" He's silent for a long moment before he says, "I always hoped our paths would cross again."

The wish for a second chance, the longing to be enough this time, to take back the fuckups and betrayals -- there's a lot of it going around. At least there should be. Of the ones here who've known Giles since the beginning or near to it, only Dawn has the right to be immune from regret.

Each one of them tips a shovelful of dirt onto the coffin, ending with Buffy, who sets about filling in the grave. Xander doesn't stay to watch. He drifts into the lobby, wondering if there's any alcohol around. The others follow, their voices rising. It's only natural, this post-funeral release. But it's more than he can handle.

"Xander," Wesley says behind him, "Cordelia lived at the hotel for a few months. Her things are still here -- perhaps there's something of hers you'd like as a keepsake."

He takes the escape route Wesley offers, accompanying him up the marble stairs to the guest rooms.

She'd done a lot with this room to make it more homelike, Xander can tell, but it's still so far below anything the Cordy he knew would have accepted that it's hard to envision her here. The vanity table looks most like it belongs to his Cordelia, scattered with mysterious jars and bottles. He touches an expensive-looking pump dispenser. "Hellmouth or not, it still comes down to the magical potions, doesn't it?"

"It's an arcane science I can't begin to understand," Wesley says.

"Some things man -- and I do mean man -- was not meant to know." He spots a silver disk off to one side, slightly smaller around than a tavern coaster. He remembers it from when they were dating -- her Tiffany compact. Even Xander, a guy who normally wouldn't know Tiffany from Target, knew this, because Cordy always took care to mention it. It was a talisman, the name an incantation. He nestles it in his palm, stroking his fingers over its cool surface.

"Take that if you like," Wesley says softly.

"I don't know. When she comes back to the land of the living, she'd better have her Tiffany compact."

There's a slight pause, then: "I think you should take it."

And that's the confirmation. She's as good as dead and no one, not even a guy who has seen all sorts of mystical shit, believes she'll ever come out of it.

He slips the compact into his pants pocket. How weird to have something of Cordy's but nothing that belonged to Anya. His good eye prickles, and before his throat can tighten, he turns toward Wesley, touching his own neck. "That's a hell of a scar. What did that to you?" Shows the kind of life he's been living, Wesley too, that he asks what, not who.

"Funny thing. I can't remember." He clears his throat unnecessarily. "I lost a great deal of blood, and my short term memory -- I have flashes of memory from the hospital, but there are days I can't recall at all, and nothing of the attack." He nods toward Xander. "Surely you know --"

Xander shakes his head. "I remember every fucking second." Suddenly it's impossible to stand still in this room full of Cordy. There's noplace he can go where Anya is this alive. He'll never have this sense of her surrounding him, reminders of little things she loved. He wishes he could burn this room to the ground. "I need --" He doesn't know what he needs.

He needs to get out.

As Xander reaches the door, Wesley puts a hand on his shoulder. Not so much gentle and consoling as restraining. "I understand what you're going through."

"The fuck you do."

"A woman I loved is dead, and not one of my friends understands why I should have cared about her."

How does he --? Xander suddenly has a vision of Andrew nattering nonstop as Wesley dug.

Wesley continues, "A man whose good opinion I very much wanted is dead, and I don't quite understand why after all this time it matters so much."

Xander seizes his wrist and pulls Wesley's hand off his shoulder. "If you're looking for a grief support group, try somewhere else." The movement makes him aware of the tang of Wesley's sweat, the smell of earth. He's conscious, too, of the nearness of the other man's body.

"I've never thought much of the talking cure," Wesley says.

Right, he thinks. They're in complete agreement. So why isn't Xander leaving? He touches the scar on Wesley's throat. "I'd trade places with you in a heartbeat. Have it all be a blank."

Suddenly Wesley takes him by the shoulders and shoves him up against the door, and the next thing he knows they're kissing, hands making rough explorations of one another's body. Wesley's knuckles brush the crotch of Xander's jeans, tearing a gasp from him.

"You like that, do you?" Wesley whispers into Xander's ear. Another fleeting, searing contact, then his hands move above the waist.

Xander makes a sound low in his throat.

"We seem to have a similar destiny, Xander." Wesley's breath is hot in his ear. "Wanting. Hoping. Never having, not for long."

Oh, Christ, later for the meta sex. He reaches for Wesley, undoes the top button of his fly.

Wesley seizes his wrists, pins them against the door. "Be a good boy." His voice silky. Steely. "You wanted to be, didn't you? But you could never be good enough."

Don't fucking rummage in my brain, he wants to say, but he knows somehow that this is the price of having this body warm his. Wesley's leaning close to him, not touching him anywhere but the wrists, but so near that there's a buzz running through his skin. He brings his mouth close to Xander's, his breath almost like a kiss, but when Xander leans forward, Wesley withdraws, at the same time letting his hips graze Xander's, just for a second.

A groan. Xander supposes it's his.

"You had to learn your place. You can't for one moment forget your place." Wesley releases him then, but Xander stays pinned to the door. "But you did forget." Another touch through the denim, this one lingering just a breath longer. "Didn't you?"

He'll say anything. "Yes," he whispers.

Wesley's hands slip under the hem of the stolen shirt, invading. "Didn't you?"

"Yes," he repeats, louder.

Wesley's thumbs find a rhythm that makes Xander's breath jerk in and out. "And the thing is, there's no way of calculating just how much damage you've done in those moments of forgetting. Much less making amends."

He's losing the thread here, doesn't know how to respond. Wesley's hands retreat.

Xander gives his head a shake. This is fucked. He reaches for Wesley again, steals a kiss.

And finds himself pushed back against the door, Wesley's fingers closing around his throat. He thrashes in panic, grabbing at Wesley's forearm. I hate having my neck touched, he thinks to say, when the sudden truth occurs to him that his dick has another opinion entirely on the matter. All this time he's remembered the terror of what Faith did to him, while forgetting the warm darkness that closed in on him then, so erotically charged and inviting. It had never occurred to him to try to go back there. But now --

"Please," he whispers.

"Since you asked so nicely." Wesley releases his throat, but Xander catches him again, brings his hand back. "Ah," Wesley murmurs. "You learn your lessons well, I'll give you that." He works the buttons of Xander's fly one-handed as the other squeezes his neck. "How is it to have so important a teacher as Faith back in your life?" Wesley hooks his hand into the waistband of Xander's boxers, sliding them down, allowing his erection to spring free. "Has she quizzed you yet on what she taught you?" He glides his palm over Xander's ass.

He tries to draw in air, but the pressure at his throat keeps him from it. Things begin to gray.

"You're doing brilliantly, Xander." His body responds to the sound of his name. Recognition. "So well-schooled. Just one more thing I want from you. I want you to touch yourself."

That's about all he manages. His blood roars in his ears and his vision fades as he closes his rough carpenter's hand around his cock. It's just a few strokes before his back arches with the orgasm that shudders through him. He cries out and falls to his knees, greedily sucking in the stale, faintly perfumed air.

Wesley strokes his hair, murmuring, "So very fine, such a good boy."

He's not a boy. His face flames as he becomes aware of himself, kneeling, jeans shoved down below his ass. He hasn't done this since -- well, the only time was with Jesse, that sleepover when they each pretended not to know the other was awake as they lay in the dark jerking off. Xander's never done anything like this, surrendering himself in front of a man who stands before him, fully dressed.

He can't quite tell if it's shame that flushes his cheeks or desire. Doesn't know if this is life's natural response to the reality of death, or if he's come to the place where he'll whore himself for some kind words. He feels the need to explain. "This is not something I --"

"Shhhhh. Of course I can see that. I can see who you are."

Xander closes his eye as tears gather in the lashes but do not fall. He gives himself to the comforting rhythm of Wesley's hand smoothing his hair, and when the nature of his caresses gradually changes, Xander submits to their gentle urging and takes Wesley's cock into his mouth. He's an apt pupil -- Wesley says so in not exactly those words -- and his attentions earn him kisses and praise, the knowledge that he pleases Wesley. He's found something he does well, after 22 years of flailing around in his King-Midas-in-reverse life.

Even then, Wesley has not finished showing him all he can be. He draws him to Cordelia's bed (Xander doesn't think about that) and opens one of her expensive jars, scooping out a handful of what Xander's mother used to call cold cream. And it is cold when Wesley trowels it into the crack of his ass, and it's a heavy, spicy scent that screams opium den to him. And he's definitely intoxicated, by the perfumey smell, by Wesley's constant murmurings, the feel of skin on skin.

He lies beneath Wesley's weight for a time, breathing, trying to let his muscles stretch like warm taffy at Wesley's urgings to relax. Wesley's hands are locked around his wrists like before (be a good boy), which makes him hard. Crooning softly into Xander's ear, he raises up and then pushes his way inside.

Xander's breath hisses through his teeth. There's a constant stream of words, though, rushing over the pain like a river flows over rocks, smoothing them down over time. It flows at times in rapids, where the words crowd together so close he can't make them out, and sometimes in pools, slow, barely moving. The words make everything right, even when the rhythm picks up and Wesley's thrusts border on rough. Then words become grunts and then drawn-out wordless cries, and when it's over they lie together tangled in sheets smelling of sex, sweat and cold cream.

Xander feels slightly lightheaded, slicked with slime, and he aches in a variety of places. Wesley's hand rests on his hip, keeping him tethered to this world. Still talking, practical things now, about how they can outfit Xander on his W&H account. Xander can see how this will create a rift with Buffy -- that everyone who leaves the Hyperion for Wolfram & Hart, even Angel, will be on the opposite side of a divide that can't be closed. The thought makes him feel hollow -- loss on top of loss -- but it can't be helped.

He knows already that he's going with Wesley.

He's taken so long, after all, to learn his place.