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Rearrangement by Rubywisp Pairing: Xander/Giles Rating: NC-17 Summary: What in the world made him think he could talk to Giles, of all people, about sex, of all things? Set in Season Three, sometime between "The Zeppo" and "Consequences". Distribution: My site, list archives. You want it, email me. Disclaimer: Still not mine. Damn shame, that. A/N:Written for JaneDavitt, for the Giles/Xander ficathon. Much love and appreciation to Wolfling and Mad Poetess for answering questions I needed answered, and to LadyCat, Lar, and Christina Melani for putting up with me while I spammed them with this as I wrote it. --- Giles looks up when Xander bangs his arm against the counter on his way to Giles' office, completely ruining the element of surprise he considered his sole chance at being brave enough to actually go through with the conversation he needed but didn't necessarily want to have. Crap. "Can I help you with something, Xander?" Giles is wearing that 'please tell me 'no' and go away quickly' half-distracted, no-I-really-*am*-paying attention expression that adults get sometimes. Okay, most of the time, but Xander's been pretty much immune to it since about fourth grade, so he ignores it and makes himself comfortable against the doorframe. Giles also looks slightly worried, which Xander supposes makes sense too. He'd be worried about him showing up at school on a Saturday afternoon, if he didn't know why he was there. Or something. Xander shakes his head to clear it of the not making sense. This whole thing was a lot clearer this morning, back when it was just spur-of-the-moment insanity he latched onto in the shower. What the hell. Might as well go for the gold before he gets kicked out. "I had sex with Faith." That gets him a real look. That and a couple of slow blinks. The light flares off Giles' glasses as he moves his head, taking this in, until Xander starts to feel like it's intentional, like Giles is one of those kids who likes to flash the reflection off mirrors into people's eyes. He blinks back. "It was, um...a couple of days ago." Not what he planned to say. Not in the dictionary definition sense of the word 'planned', anyway. But it's what he got, so he's going with it. Five card stud, nothing's wild. Giles looks away; they watch his fingers drum an eccentric rhythm on the cover of something that proclaims itself to be Glorantha's Compendium. "I'm...rather confused as to why you seem to think this is something I need to know." Xander stops rubbing his elbow. Tucking both hands into the front pockets of his jeans, he shrugs. "'Need to know' is definitely overstating it. Try 'Xander has no approachable or accessible male role models'. It's more a default kind of thing." "So glad to know I'm your first choice." "Well, honestly, kind of my only." Suddenly shy, Xander ducks his head and spends a long time rubbing the back of his neck before daring to glance up again. "Is that a probl...no, of course it is." He straightens up and starts to back out of the office. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean-" "Xander." The quiet - and complete lack of exasperation - in Giles' voice stops him in his tracks. "I'm the one who should apologize. You obviously have something important you need to discuss. Please continue." Xander doesn't answer. He stares off to the side, at a misshapen stain on the wood halfway around the other side of the counter. Blood, somebody's lunch? He can't tell. Could be either. "Xander." He can hear Giles thinking about moving, in a rustling, shifting your feet and your hands sort of way, and the talking is bad enough, but if Giles comes anywhere near him, he's going to roadrunner and he knows it. He leans his way back to the doorway, letting out a small, grateful breath when Giles' clothes quiet down. Xander can't look at him; the thought of Giles coming close enough to lay a calm, understanding hand on his shoulder is enough to threaten the lunch in his stomach with death by library floor. "I just thought-" He shrugs, and then has to look anyway, has to convey his confusion with eyebrows and shoulders, because for once in his life, he doesn't have the words. "Shouldn't it be...I thought there'd be-" He stops again, frustrated, knuckles his fingers roughly across his eyes. "I take it things didn't go as well as you'd hoped." "'Hoped' indicates a level of forethought that definitely didn't exist in all the spontaneity, but yeah. I can't help thinking it should've been more feeling the earth move and less 'Oh, so that's what everybody's been talking about'." Giles ducks his head, but not before Xander sees the corner of his mouth twitch. Xander opens his own mouth to object to the lack of appropriate solemnity, but Giles speaks before he can even get the indignant out. "It's not unusual for one's first time to be less than successful." "Oh, it was successful. There was success. There was success twice, in fact." And yeah, he's here because he suspects he's missing a whole lot of something about the whole sex thing, but he can't help but be a little proud of that. "Ah. Then I'm not sure what you're...asking? You are asking me something, aren't you?" "I'm asking you whether or not there should have been...more." Is he red? He bets he's red. His ears are turning into neon signs right about now for sure. Giles looks like he can't decide whether to frown or look surprised. "Twice is nothing to sneeze at, Xander." Xander laughs in spite of the impending panic attack. "Not that kind of more. The kind of more where your heart's ready to thump its way right out of your chest because you're standing too close to somebody you want to stand even closer to. Where your hands feel like they're about to spontaneously combust because your palms have achieved temperatures previously unknown to mankind." "Like I was saying-" "Look, Giles. Faith is hot, okay? Everybody knows this. Faith is so hot that blind Tibetan nuns can *see* it, all the way from Tibet. Um, except for the part where I think they don't actually live in Tibet anymore, but you know what I mean." Please, god, know what I mean. "But double laps around the track aside, the whole Faith-is-built-like-a-porn-addict's-wet-dream thing just...fell kind of flat." That's it. Best he can do, clearest he can stand to be. C'mon, Giles. You've got a big, squishy brain. Help me out here. Giles is quiet for what seems like a long time, and then is. Or maybe it still just seems like it, but either way, Xander knows he's said too much. Said too much before he even opened his mouth, and what in the world made him think he could talk to Giles, of all people, about sex, of all things? The answer is so far beyond him it might as well be Kenny Chapman running the 400 while Xander watches from an asthma attack on the sidelines. Finally, Giles looks up, tips his head and lifts his eyebrows in an expression of...what? Acknowledgement? Agreement? Acquiescence? Big A, Little A, what begins with A? Alexander is an idiot...okay, he's losing the theme now. But it almost worked. "You know, there are...groups. People you can talk to about all of this." "And here I thought I'd found somebody to talk to." Funny: Xander's never wondered what bitter tasted like. Turns out it's fairly straightforward and sharp. Almost like limes. He hates limes. "Sorry. Didn't mean to push you past some kind of staid-librarian personal barrier." Giles throws the sarcasm right back at him inside of a stuttered heartbeat. "I only meant to suggest that you might benefit from discussing this with somebody your own age. Somebody who's going through what you are." Xander snorts. "Right. Because somebody as confused and scared and freaked out as I am is going to be helpful how, exactly?" Giles has a harder time hiding the upward twitch of his mouth. Xander's so far from amused he's coming back around to it from the other side. "You think this is funny? Because me, I'm thinking I've lived in Sunnydale far too long for any kind of anonymity beyond the 'You'll never be more than a squashed slug on the bottom of the entire football team's shoe' variety. I go to one of those meetings and the PFLAG membership packet is in the mailbox by the time I get home." Xander runs both his hands through his hair till it crackles. "And while I may be considering letting my manly side get in touch with other people's manly sides, I gotta say I'm not exactly ready for my subscription to The Advocate, complete with spangly gold lame thong and glossy three-page photo spread of Brad Pitt." Giles chuckles. It's a warm sound, and it rolls smoothly over the hair on the back of Xander's neck that's suddenly standing on end. He swallows as Giles stands up and moves to the front of the desk. Does it again when Giles leans back, crossing one ankle over the other, folding his arms across his chest. "I don't think any of those things are required. And at least one of them is quite frightening." Giles is still smiling slightly as he takes his glasses off and lays them on the desk next to his hip. He pinches the bridge of his nose lightly. Xander can see the skin move as Giles rubs away whatever tension Xander's inflicting on him. Giles re-folds his arms, and when he looks up again, he's still wearing that tiny smile. It'd be disconcerting if Xander wasn't so busy trying to talk himself out of the sudden revelation that it was also sexy. Now *there's* a frightening thought. At least, I wish it was. Oh, man. "Hey. I'll have you know I weigh a whole fifteen pounds more than I did last summer. It's not as scary a prospect as it could be." Another chuckle, this one sanding sparks over his arms, tingles that loop and gather in his wrists until Xander's pretty sure he can't feel his fingers. "I was talking about Brad Pitt, actually. I've never understood what people find so appealing about him." "You mean besides the perfect smile, the perfect abs, the perfect...oh, god. Did I really just say all that out loud?" Unfortunately, the foot in his mouth he can feel just fine. "Rest assured, I'm not going to fall over from shock anytime soon." Giles fixes him with another of those tilted-head, no-glasses, so-concerned-it-hurts looks. "But do you see why I think it's a good idea for you to find a peer group to explore this with? You might even find someone who can share your appreciation for Mr. Pitt." It's kind, it's gentle, it's understanding. It's exactly the right thing to say, and it makes Xander crazy. He pushes away from the door, but there's no room to pace, not there in the doorway of Giles' office. He could go out into the library proper, but he has a feeling any change of venue is going to put an end to this, and he's not nearly ready to squash himself back into the little box he's been carrying around for the last few days. So he stays right where he is, too close to Giles, really, all things considered. He needs some room, some place to look other than the worried, caring expression on Giles' face that should be helpful and comforting but isn't. "I'm not...I don't..." He finds something else to look at after all: one of the labels on the filing cabinet against the wall has a torn corner. Xander stares at it, working his jaw hard enough his back teeth hurt; Giles waits. "I fucking know, all right?" It's quiet, barely makes it out over the bleeding in his throat, but he feels like he's shouting when he says it right into Giles' eyes. "I know," he repeats, with a snotty curl of his lip that doesn't even make Giles blink. He has to turn his head away, twist his neck toward the door in an attempt to find some air that his admission hasn't sucked out of the room. "I don't need to sit around and talk attraction and the algebra of trying to get the cute guy at the video store to notice me. I know." His eyes sting. He's never said it out loud before, not even obliquely, not even in his own head. "Xander." Giles' hand is warm and heavy on his shoulder, and just as unbearable as Xander thought it would be. He shakes it off, but tries to keep it easy. "What? I don't; I've got the theoretical part down like a down thing, believe me." His face is hot and vaguely moist; he thinks he's sweating, even though the library was cold when he came in, but he's too busy trying to breathe normally to pay much attention. "I just want to know how it *works*. And you can spare me the obligatory checking of my birds and bees credentials," he says, holding up one hand in the narrow space between them. "I understand the basics. But you flirt with the wrong guy, and your next come-hither smile is going to be a few teeth short of a Colgate ad, you know?" Giles laughing at him is obviously going to become a habit. Xander would mind, except he discovers that he kind of likes the way Giles' eyes crinkle at the corners. "The underlying principles are very much the same, I assure you." "Yeah, right." Xander snorts and looks at his tennis shoes, trying not to dwell on the idea of Giles understanding 'underlying principles'. "They are." Out of the corner of his eye, Xander can see Giles' hand stretch wide, almost reaching, before Giles apparently thinks better of it and slides both hands into his pockets instead. "You meet someone, get to know him-" Xander's stomach starts backpedaling for the bleachers at the way Giles whacks that particular gender-specific pronoun out onto the field. "-realize you enjoy spending time with him, spend a little more, one thing leads to another, and the rest is - hopefully - a graceful fade to black." Xander shakes his head. " But the leading is the part I don't understand. It's not like it is with girls. You can't just-" He flails for a minute, hands waving in front of him, then he brushes the backs of his fingers along the back of Giles' forearm. "-reach out and touch and then work your way inside the personal space bubble if she...um, if he...doesn't knock your lights out." Giles looks down at where Xander's fingers are curled against him, just under his elbow. Xander drops his hand; Giles lifts his head. "Why not?" It's such a simple, straightforward, obvious question that Xander doesn't think there's an answer for it. Maybe that is the answer: why not? He starts breathing again. It's kind of loud, but he thinks that might be okay. "I guess that could work." He nods. "But then how do you get from 'personal space is irrelevant' to sticking your tongue down somebody's throat?" They wince in unison; Xander laughs again. "Sorry." Giles nods a small smile at him. "How did you arrive at that point with Cordelia?" "Well, for starters, there wasn't a lot of graceful anything," Xander admits with a half-shrug. "There was lifelong hatred, then entire cruise ships full of sarcasm and mocking, and then one day in the middle of a fight... boom! Tonsil hock- uh, we were kissing. I think we might have redefined the term 'sudden attraction' single-handedly." Several more nods, slowly. "And Faith?" "Second verse, same as the first, except for the 'lifelong hatred' part." It's not quite a laugh, the short, humorless sound that comes out of Xander's mouth. "I'm developing my unhealthy patterns early, aren't I? Probably not the best way to finally fulfill my previously-unexplored potential as an overachiever, but hey - everybody's got a gift." "None of it sounds particularly pleasant. You have my sympathy." "Yeah, well. It was what it was." Xander brushes off the unwanted commiseration with a flick of his wrist. "So about the fading to black..." Deflection: the weapon of spies, politicians, and uncomfortable young men everywhere. "You know - sometimes, when you want something...when you want it very badly...the only thing you can do is make the choice to risk it." Giles' eyes are bright and warm. Xander's brain is trying to tell him something, but it's all in code, red flags waving and snapping in the breeze, and he hasn't been able to lay his hands on specific answers when he wants them any time this decade, much less now. "Can I kiss you?" bursts out of him before he's even aware of the thought forming, and not even an entire set of reference books could've prepared him for that. "That's-" Giles stops, coughs, clears his throat, all without looking away. Xander's heart is rearranging things behind his ribcage; it's beating that hard. "That would be one way to go about it, yes." Oh, god, he thinks for what has to be at least the fortieth time in the last ten minutes. His hands are blocks of twitching ice and he wonders if the blackness buzzing at the edges of his vision is in any way a harbinger of fainting. "Giles, uh...that wasn't a practice run." It's almost funny, watching the realization bloom across Giles' face. Realization, surprise, and something Xander thinks looks too much like the beginning of 'no' for him to be completely comfortable. Giles looks away first, gaze dropping to the floor. Xander feels like his next heartbeat is hanging on the edge of something sharp and unbalanced. "Xander." Two syllables, one word, no hope on the horizon: love in an elevator turns out to be more like a fifty-two story drop in a brakeless plummet to the basement. "This...conversation already goes so far to obliterate the boundaries of anything resembling appropriate behavior between a student and a school employee that it doesn't bear thinking about. I'm not-" The words fade, blurring into something indistinct. There's more, of course; there's always more with Giles. No point saying in five words what you can say in ten, preferably in words of three or more syllables. But even Giles knows how to just say no, and that's the one thing Xander's not hearing, loud and clear. He leans in; up, really, and that's just the beginning of the different. Giles' mouth is smooth and warm, but a little dry; Xander figures it's the lack of any kind of lip gloss, and the thought of Giles in lip gloss makes him giggle. Not a lot. Just enough that Giles starts to turn his head to move away, probably to ask about it. Xander knows if that happens, it'll be the end of the practical demonstration aspect of the afternoon, so he refuses to let it. Besides, he hasn't felt Giles' fingertips against his skin yet, and he suddenly wants to, very badly. He slips one hand up to cup the side of Giles' face, part of him noting the stubbled roughness against his skin, the way it sates the sudden ache in his palms. The sharp connection of jaw to ear scratches at him; it's different from the smooth curve of Cordelia's cheek, or Faith's, yet so unexpectedly welcome. Different, better, best, and the hills are alive with the sound of music, or at the very least the thudding of Xander's heart as he presses more firmly against Giles. He catches the corner of Giles' mouth gently between his teeth and licks until Giles makes a noise Xander never thought would feel so good to hear. It's not until Giles' own hands come up to his neck, his thumbs rubbing long and slow along the underside of Xander's jaw, pushing pulsing waves of week-kneedness down through Xander's body and into his legs, that Xander realizes that he was hoping for this, somewhere deep inside where even he couldn't see it hiding. But now that he has, he wants it badly enough that he'd gladly suffer through the skin-crawling awkwardness of the last several minutes again, as long as it ended this way. Admitting it opens the gates, and a new need yawns wide inside Xander. He's itching to know the texture of Giles' skin against his fingers, to find out whether angles and planes and hard-edged lines equal the 'more' he's been wondering about. He thinks it might, if the noises he can't swallow but Giles does are any indication. Or the way his entire body ripples goosebumps when Giles - inadvertently? He can't tell - scrapes his fingernails lightly down the back of Xander's neck. There are other things he wants to know, too. Things his unconscious never even let him dream of but that are flipping through his head now like one of those books where you thumb the pages and the drawings look like they're moving. He wants to see Giles need. Hear Giles want. A picture of Giles, head rolled back against...a wall? A pillow?...flashes at him flippity-quick, and he shivers. He's moving his mouth, murmuring 'please' against the hot salt of Giles' neck, feeling the rumbles in Giles' throat in his own gut, even before his hands drop to fumble with Giles' belt buckle. "Xander, that's not a good idea." It's not like Xander doesn't know Giles can move quickly; he's seen him work out with Buffy, watched him on patrol, and the speed with which his hands shoot down and grip Xander's wrists tightly enough that it occurs to him to worry about marks shouldn't surprise him. But it does, along with the way the slight pain thwacks the air right out of his lungs. "Why not?" Stupid question, stupidest question, question with the most obvious answer since 'Is Michael Jackson a tad eccentric?' Quick snort from Giles, who's looking down at where he's holding Xander's wrists with an expression that makes Xander have to twitch hard enough to make Giles look at his face again. "I'm not a kid." "You're only-" "Eighteen, remember? Legal and everything." And holy shit, he cannot believe he's having this conversation with Giles, doing his best to convince Giles that he really is old enough to suck dick. Suck his dick. Half of him is expecting to wake up to the sound of his alarm clock any minute now. Either that, or whatever hallucinatory venom he's been slimed with this time should be wearing off shortly. The other half...the other half wants. "Strictly speaking, yes." Giles' fingers are skating lightly, non-stop along the bones on the outside of his wrists. Xander curls his feet inside his shoes and fights the urge to shiver, afraid that too much of anything one way or the other will tip the odds in favor of a hasty retreat on Giles' part. "But you're also a student here, which means-" "Not a damn thing." Giles lifts his eyebrows at him, and Xander lets himself laugh, lets himself roll his hands around until he can run his thumbs over the soft, veined skin on the underside of Giles' forearms. It tingles. "Giles, c'mon. We've fought vampires and ghosts and egg monsters right here in these halls for years, and nobody's ever seen any of it." "This is the sort of thing they would decide to notice, Xander. Trust me." And yeah, that's regret and sorrow and apology, all wrapped up in one nifty package and spoken in a tone that sends even more blood thudding straight to Xander's dick. He doesn't answer, just pulls away and turns to close the office door. Flips the blinds shut, Giles' eyes incinerating the skin on the back of his neck. He can almost smell the smoke. Xander manages to turn around and push into Giles again without being stopped or having to look him in the eye. He tucks his face into the warm gap between the loosened collar of Giles' shirt and his neck and slides his arms around Giles' waist, gratified when Giles rests his hands loosely on Xander's hips in return. Giles doesn't speak, not even when Xander burrows a little farther and starts dragging slow, wet kisses over the goosepimpled skin. He waits for disapproval and rejection and then realizes it isn't coming; his hands find their way back to Giles' waist. This time, he starts pulling the leather out of the buckle in conjunction with a couple of light scrapes with his teeth over Giles' collarbone; Giles is already shuddering by the time Xander slips his hand inside and comes up with a fistful of smooth, hard cock. Later, he'll spare anywhere from a minute to several weeks to freak the fuck out about this, but right now, he's up against a deadline, afraid that Giles will come to his senses and put an end to all this white-hot madness. But Giles just establishes the usefulness of handfuls of Xander's shirt and sparks Xander's blood into an instant conflagration when he murmurs Xander's name as Xander sinks to his knees, somehow managing to take Giles' slacks with him with a respectable minimum of hitching and pulling. Xander wants to take his time, wants so badly to investigate skin and smell and soft heaviness with lips and tongue and hands that it snaps his spine rigid with need. But that invisible clock is ticking away the seconds with alarming rapidity, and before he's even gotten a satisfactory look at it, he's sliding his lips over the head of Giles' cock. Truth be told, he's wincing a little as he does it; he doesn't know what to expect and isn't sure what to do, and he knows he's going to fuck it up. But he can't stop, doesn't want to stop, doesn't dare stop, and when Giles digs a little deeper into his shoulders and starts murmuring things that sound like yes and bloody hell and a little slower, right there, it licks flames tight around Xander's own balls, until his whole body's threatening to become one giant conflagration of insatiability. The third time he pushes down too far, bringing tears to his own eyes, Giles hauls him to his feet. It hurts for all that it's gentle, and Xander's fidgeting out an embarrassed apology even as Giles is turning him around. He snaps open Xander's jeans, pushing at them till they slide down his legs, and then settles Xander carefully into the chair behind the desk with a open-mouthed kiss to his forehead that makes Xander wonder just how many erogenous zones he has. And how willing Giles is to help him find them all. Xander's dizzy with horniness, 'oh my fucking god' warring for brain space with pure, unadulterated, 180-proof lust, and he doesn't figure the rest of it out until Giles has his lips wrapped firmly around Xander's dick. It takes a while to get the words out, since Giles is doing his best to lick any semblance of intelligence right out of him. Lick and suck, lick and suck, and holy shit, his stomach's going to slide right out along with his brains if Giles sucks him any harder. "What the...what...what..." Kind of hard to talk when you can't breathe, harder yet by the time Giles lets Xander's cock slip out of his mouth and starts sucking soft licks over his balls. "I think you lost your page, Giles," he manages finally. "You've got your who does what - oh, god, if you do that again I promise I'll never secretly borrow the wood nymph book again for more than a day and a half at a time, tops." Giles chuckles, the vibrations sending Xander into a hunched-over position as he digs his nails into the back of neck to keep himself from coming. It helps, at least until Giles takes Xander's balls in one hand and his cock back in his mouth and sucks and sucks and sucks relentlessly until Xander gives in and gives up the game in a brain-blinding shower of white noise and multi-colored sparks. He realizes he's still conscious when he feels Giles' hands moving and shifting him, rearranging his clothes while Xander does his best to keep from puddling right into the chair. Before Giles can pull away, Xander grabs his wrist, tugging until Giles has to sit on the desk to avoid being pulled right into Xander's lap. Speaking of laps...Xander frowns. "Jeez. What's a guy got to do around here to be allowed to return the favor?" "What?" Xander tips his head in the direction of Giles' crotch and tries not to look embarrassed. Judging by the way Giles' mouth twitches, he fails. "I'm fine, Xander, thank you." Xander stands, fighting the impulse to stay a normal, non-blow-job-swapping distance away. He nudges his way in between Giles' legs. "You do know that self-denial is highly overrated as a lifestyle choice, right? It's nobody's friend. Really." Yeah, Xander's going to get used to that laughing thing in a hurry, no doubt about it. It's fucking hot. "I told you I'm fine, Xander. No self-denial required." Giles surprises him then, leaning forward for a kiss that's full of affection, and if the sex was unexpected, the tenderness is a revelation, as is Giles taking Xander's hand and pressing it against his cock. His soft cock. Xander leans back far enough to go wide-eyed where Giles can see it. "You mean...just because you-" "Not entirely, no," Giles says, letting go of his hand. "I helped myself along a bit. But it didn't hurt." The twinkling heat in Giles' eyes sets off a series of tiny explosions up Xander's spine that blossom into full-fledged airborne fireworks when Xander thinks about it. He doesn't realize he's gaping until Giles shuts his mouth with a finger to the underside of his chin. He's grinning. "What was that all about?" "Sorry." Xander shakes his head, taking a deep breath in a bid to regain control. "I just got a visual, that's all." Six inches suddenly looks like a lot of distance. Xander leans forward, his face on Giles' shoulder hiding his desire to be held. Licking more kisses into the hollow of Giles' collarbone doesn't hurt, either. Giles obliges twice: by tilting his head out of the way and by rubbing slow, deep circles into Xander's upper back. Xander thinks he may have to file a change of address with the post office if this keeps up, because he's not going anywhere anytime soon if he can help it. --- End