RockStarPeach

Title:  Family Relations

Pairing:  Uh… Angel/Xander (not really though), Giles/Wes (implied, and only for my own entertainment)

Rating:  We’ll go with R, to be safe, for language and sexual suggestions, though nothing graphic.

Summary:  Xander makes a discovery, he shares it with Angel, and a bond, of sorts, is formed.

A/N:  For Angel’s Bunnies on

strip_off_angel

sablerose2

“Pairing:  Angel/Xander, Preferred Rating:  Not specified, Summary:  The thought is that Xander finds out that Angel is his great x3 grandfather. As to where it goes from there.......?”

And so here’s what I did with it.

A/N 2:  I’ve never written Xander before, and not really Angel all that much, so this was really kind of hard for me.  Sorry if I screwed it up sablerose2.

And it got nom'd.

Family Relations

Xander jumped and slammed shut the books he had been reading as he heard the sudden crash of Giles’ office door slamming shut.  He scrambled to hide one in his backpack, between the math and English books he was never likely to open, and casually hid the other behind his back as he stood.

He didn’t know that Giles was even at the library tonight; if he had, he’d never have risked getting caught here.  He had figured the stacks in the high school library on a Friday night would be the most private place he was likely to find, but it looked like he was wrong. 

It would be bad enough if anybody thought that he ever read books, but what was inside one of these particular books, he’d seriously like kept secret.  As a matter fact, he was thinking of destroying it.  He’d give Giles back the one in his hand, the one he wasn’t allowed to be looking at, so he’d have to come up with a pretty good excuse as to why he was, and then he’d get rid of the other one.  Yup, he’d destroy it.  Chalk up one more victory for those creepy Fahrenheit 451 fireman freaks, Xander was gonna burn a book.

Well, okay, maybe he’d just rip out the offending pages and burn them.  He didn’t feel bad about it.  Really, he didn’t.  It’s not like it was Giles’ book or anything.  He’d found it at the Sunnydale Public Library, while researching a paper on his family tree for history class. 

He was pretty sure the SPL wouldn’t miss it.  He had taken out a book once on dogs when he was seven and him and Willow had been planning to rescue one from the SPCA and had needed to know how much and what to feed it.  His father had found it, and had thrown it in the garbage, and after two years of ignored phone calls and unopened letters the library had finally given up hope of ever seeing the book again.

He grabbed his backpack and straightened out his shirt, trying to make it look as if he hadn’t been reading, and he wondered exactly when that had become a crime.  Now, if he had been back there making out with Larry, that would have been more than enough reason to be ashamed, but reading?  Right.  Nothing to worry about.  Giles would ask him what he was doing there, Xander would say ‘homework’ and Giles would… see right through it, because Xander never, ever did homework unless it was an excuse to hang out with Willow, or there was some kind of bribe involved.

Yeah, he was screwed. 

Resigning himself to very odd looks, at the least, Xander headed in the direction of the library main room – only to be stopped by another loud crash, and a groan, and the sound of what was probably books being thrown to the floor.

Damn.  He really wasn’t in the mood for any slaying tonight.  Or, not in the mood for any taunting and running away anyway, but it sounded like Giles needed help, so he grabbed the stake from his pack pocket, took a deep breath, and ran out into the open shouting, “Unhand him, you evil fiend!”

Okay, so he could have come up with something better, but the point was to let whatever demon had Giles pinned to the bookshelf, squirming and moaning, that Giles had back-up.

Giles’ attacker backed off so fast that if Xander had blinked he would have missed it.  And Xander did blink, so he sort of did miss it.  One second he was shouting and making vaguely stabbing motions with his stake as he watched Giles being mauled, the next his hands fell limp to his sides, stake forgotten, as he stared dumbly at Wesley, now several feet away, panting and adjusting his glasses as he tried to balance himself on the conference table.

“Xander!” Giles belted out as he stood up straight against the books, smoothing out his clothing and checking himself in the same way Xander had only moments before.

“Wesley was just…” he trailed off, looking at the man in question with wide, panicked eyes. 

“I was just…” Wesley said, looking anywhere but at the other two men in the room.

“Going over some training manoeuvres with me,” Giles explained, in what was, in his defence, a pretty convincing way.  “So, yes,” he continued, addressing Wesley now.  “If you get them pinned with your hand across the throat, and then get your knee just so….”

“Yes!” Wesley barked out.  “Thank you.  I’ll be sure to remember that.”  And Xander would have been blind not to notice the leer that accompanied that last statement before Wesley looked down, embarrassed, and Giles cleared his throat.

“Xander, what are you doing here at this time of the night?  You lot were sent home hours ago.  Buffy has finished her patrol, and there is no pressing research to be done, and you’re hardly the type I’d have expected to be browsing the stacks for a good bit of literature in his spare time.”

He was babbling.  Oh God, Giles was babbling.  That could only ever mean that he had something to hide.  Xander looked back and forth between the pair of watchers several times, and decided pretty quickly that he would rather not know what that hidden secret was.

“I was just… reading… school project… history…” he finished off, lamely, and breathed a sigh of relief when he realised that Giles wasn’t paying any attention anyway.  He was still too busy looking between the ground, Wesley and his crotch.  Xander took the opportunity to put Giles’ book down on the counter, hoping that Giles would think that he left it out by mistake.

“So, I’ll just…” Xander said, as he indicated the library doors, and gripped the strap on his backpack tighter.

“Yes.  Yes, you should…” Giles started, but then seemed to regain some sort of brain functionality and stopped Xander on his way out.  “Wait.  Xander.”

Xander turned around, sure now that Giles was going to ask what he’d been up to in the stacks. 

“It’s late.  It’s dark.  You shouldn’t be out on your own.  I was just,” Giles sneaked a brief glance at Wesley and cleared his throat before continuing.  “Just about to head home anyway.  I’ll give you a lift.”

Crap.  No.  He didn’t want Giles to drive him home.  10 minutes of awkward silence interspersed with Giles trying to be polite by asking about Xander’s history project.  10 minutes of deflecting the questions while he tried desperately not to wonder what exactly it was that Giles was ‘training’ Wesley in.

“Don’t worry about it G-man.  I’ve got my stake,” he said, holding up his right hand to show off the piece of wood, still in his grip.  “I’ve got my ability to scream like a girl, and run straight to Buffy’s house; I’ll be fine.”

Giles nodded distractedly.  “If you’re sure.”

Thank God.  “Yup.  I’m sure.  Sure is me.  Full of sure.”

“Alright then,” Giles agreed.  “I’ll see you back here tomorrow, for patrol then.  The girls are taking the night off.  Something about a ‘girls night out’ so it will just be the three of us, plus Angel.”

Xander was pretty sure that he actually squeaked as Giles mentioned the broody vampire, but luckily nobody noticed.  “Cool!  Yeah!” he said, with probably a little too much exuberance to be believable.  “See you tomorrow.”  And he all but ran for the doors without looking back.

Great.  A night of fighting demons with Giles and Wesley… and Angel. 

***

He had gone to the public library earlier in the evening, fully intending to get his project done.  He had been able to trace his family back further than he’d thought, and had discovered that a part of his family was from Ireland.  It was turning out to be not so bad of an assignment after all, and Xander’s interest insured that he was getting it done pretty quickly, and he was pleased to think that he’d be getting a decent grade on something for once.

Then something he had read sidetracked him pretty fast, and he’d practically ran all the way to the high school needing to cross reference the book he had been browsing with one from Giles’ private collection.  Yeah, that’s right.  Xander cross referenced.  It was amazing the levels he was willing to sink to when his reputation was on the line.  Not that he had much of one to start with, but if what he suspected was true, he’d never live it down.

After five minutes of tracking down the book he needed (locked in Giles’ desk with the key inconsiderately hidden in a cup full of paperclips), half an hour of reading through first one book, then the other, then both at the same time, and almost an hour of staring blankly at the pages, willing them to tell him something else, he finally had to admit it.

He was related to Angel.   Distantly, sure, but related.  By blood.  Angel was his great, great, great etc. grandfather.  On his mother’s side.  He thought he might be sick.

If he’d thought he hated his family before…  Xander hated Angel.  Xander loved to hate Angel, but seeing as how he was a relative, all that animosity made an odd sort of sense now.  Sure, vamps were bad, like he always said, but he would be the first (okay, maybe fifth) to admit that he had always been a little unfair to Angel. 

Even Giles tolerated him better than Xander did, and Angel had never killed Xander’s girlfriend. 

But now he got it.  Xander had never liked any of his relatives, and right from the beginning Angel must have set something off in him, so really, him being such an ass to broodboy?  So not his fault! 

He needed to make sure that nobody ever found out about this.  He’d go home, get rid of the evidence, and never think about it again.  Yup, this whole ugly discovery would be completely forgotten and nobody would ever find out that he shared DNA with a mass murdering psychopath with bad teeth, bad hair, and severe social retardation. 

Xander knew there was a reason he hated research.

***

6:30 the next evening, and ten minutes before sunset, Xander had shown up at the school library to find Giles and Wesley on opposite sides of the room, Wesley immersed in a book at the table, Giles restacking books in the fiction section.

They both looked up as he arrived, Wesley closing his book and nodding a greeting and Giles placing his handful of books on the table, shelf-stacking apparently not so important.

“So, what’s up tonight?” Xander asked.  “Patrol?  Research?  Researchy patrol type stuff?”

“Yes, both actually,” Wesley spoke as he stood up, apparently brining the meeting to order, adjusting his glasses and tugging at the bottom of his suit jacket to smooth out any imaginary wrinkles that might be there.  He knew Buffy had been being sarcastic, but Xander couldn’t help thinking she was right; Wes was kind of cute when he was trying to be in charge.

“Buffy reported in last night that she had seen a new demon on patrol.  We haven’t been able to identify it, so Mr. Giles and I will stay here, and continue our research, while you and Angel do a sweep of the cemeteries.  He’ll meet you at St. Lukes.”

Xangel gulped.  “Me and… Angel?  Patrolling?  Together?”

“Is that a problem, Xander?” Giles asked, frowning.

“No!” he answered a little too quickly and forcefully.  “No problem.”

The two older men stared at Xander for several seconds, and he stared back, hoping maybe that they’d change their minds, and ask him to stay while one of them went out with Angel, but he knew that wouldn’t happen.  Finally he gestured vaguely to the door, saying, “So, I guess I’ll just…”

“Thank you, Xander,” Wesley cut him off before he could even finish, sat down and opened up his book again, picking up where he’d left off when Xander had arrived.  “And please do report back when you’ve finished,” he added distractedly, not even looking up.

Giles rolled his eyes fondly (Fondly?  What the hell?!) at Wesley and smiled at Xander.  “Do be careful,” he said before grabbing a book of his own and going to join Wesley at the table.

***

Angel waited at the front gates to the cemetery for Xander to show up.  He didn’t mind having to patrol with Xander.  Exactly.  He would have preferred Buffy, or Faith, or even Giles, but Xander was better than Wesley, he supposed, so he shouldn’t really complain.

Besides, help was help, and even if his ex-girlfriend wasn’t the slayer, he’d still be out here every night, staking vamps and killing demons, trying to make up for, oh, pretty much everything he had ever done.

He felt Xander approach even before the young man had turned the corner and come into view, vampire hearing alerting him to the sound of footsteps and heartbeat and breathing that were so familiar to him.

It was odd.  He didn’t like Xander very much, and okay that was putting it mildly, but there was something about him that made Angel feel… protective, he supposed would be the word.

Even though he’d like to give Xander a heartfelt kick in the ass most days, it still pissed him off whenever anybody else did it. 

“Hey, deadboy,” Xander said, in way of a greeting, and Angel just ignored him, turning on his heel and entering the cemetery, leaving it to the young man to follow or not.

They patrolled about a third of the grounds with general quiet, both from their surroundings, and from the men themselves, and something about the way Xander wasn’t being his usual pain in the ass made Angel a little uneasy.

He was about to ask what the kid’s problem was when he heard voices.  He motioned for Xander to be quiet and follow him and they weaved through and around and over a few headstones and a mausoleum or two and they came upon what appeared to be two vampires readying themselves for dinner.

A young woman was backing away from them slightly, hands up in the air pleadingly, babbling about how they could have her purse, but please just let her go as they advanced slowly, toying with their victim.

“This doesn’t really seem fair, does it boys?” Angel asked, as he stepped into view of the other two vampires.

“Two big strong men against one tiny little girl?  Not exactly a fair fight, you know?”

The vampires turned on Angel then, snarling, and Xander took the opportunity to help out the young woman.  “Go,” he told her, in a tone that brooked no argument, and picked up her fallen purse, pushing it into her chest when she made no movement to accept it.  “Run.  Get out of here, and don’t look back.”

She still made no move to leave, but did manage to shake her head a little and say, “but..” in a quiet voice.

Xander smiled, but gave her a slight push in the direction of the street, and the relative safety of populated areas and said, “Don’t worry about it.  We’ll take care of it, and we’ll be fine.”

The girl nodded and did as Xander suggested, and he let out a breath of relief as he turned back to help Angel with the vampires.

But instead of helping, he stood and watched, because Angel didn’t need any help, not really, and the way he fought had Xander mesmerized.  He was fluid and solid and fast and relaxed and completely in control and… beautiful.

Xander shook his head, fast, to try to get rid of those thoughts, because they couldn’t possible lead to anything good.  He had honestly never thought about Angel’s attractiveness before, and the fact that he was now, after discovering that the vampire was a distant relative was kind of freaking him out, especially given most days he’d rather lock him in a bright sunshiney room than not.

Still, the guy could fight, and Xander had to give him that.  It wasn’t long before he had dusted one, then both of the vamps, ash falling to the ground in a cloud around him, stake thrust forward in a parody of a fencing move, everything still and quiet.

“Come on,” Angel said, breaking the spell.  “Let’s rest for a minute.”

***

Xander followed Angel to a set of low rise headstones, and sat down on one of them after Angel sat on the other.  There was really no reason for them to rest.  Angel couldn’t exactly get winded and Xander hadn’t really exerted himself, what with the talking and the standing and the watching.

Still, Xander was glad of the respite, and tried to focus on anything but patrolling, and Angel, and patrolling with Angel, and had almost convinced his mind to focus on the memory of that time when he and Willow were kids and she had kissed him after he gave back her Barbie, when his neck decided it wasn’t listening to his brain, and swivelled to give his eyes a very good view of Angel, arms at his sides, head tilted up to the sky, and looking for all the world like he owned, well, the world.

“What?” Angel asked, after a long moment of putting up with being observed.

“What, what?”  Though the comment had seemingly come out of nowhere for Xander.

“You were staring at me.”

“No, I wasn’t.”

Angel sighed.  “Preternatural senses here, Xander, not to mention regular old sight.  I think I can tell when someone is staring at me.”

“No, I wa-”  And okay, maybe he was, but he wasn’t really ready to get into any of the reasons that was the case.  “Don’t we have more vamps to stake?” he asked, changing the subject.  “You know how I hate vamps.”

Angel just looked at him, but if looks could kill, Xander would be really, really dead.  Angel got up then, and headed out to check the rest of the cemetery, again leaving Xander to follow.

***

It wasn’t long before they came across another vampire, though this one was alone.  He was clearly on the hunt, or more like the scavenge, really, waiting for some hapless prey to happen by as he leaned against a crypt, hidden in the darkness.

He had been doing a pretty good job of hiding, and Xander and Angel had both been doing a pretty job of being irritated enough with each other not to be as aware of their surroundings as they clearly should have been, because the demon managed to get a pretty good jump on them.

Before Angel had even registered a slight movement out of the corner of his eye he found himself face first in the freshly cut grass, and could feel a dull throbbing begin in the back of his head, where he had been punched.

He wasted no time jumping back up to his feet and managed to see Xander toss a couple of ineffectual jabs and kicks at the vampire as he laughed at the display and effortlessly knocked the stake out of Xander’s hand.

Angel lunged forward with the intention of tackling his opponent to the ground, but the other vampire, it seemed, had expected this, and a sharp backwards kick to Angel’s groin had him down again.

Xander took a step back, trying to put some space between him and their attacker, and raised his hands in surrender.  “Hey, you don’t really want to eat me do you?”  Xander asked, hoping to turn him off his meal.  “I’m kind of gamey, and way too full of junk food.  You’ll probably get indigestion!”

He sort of squeaked out the last sentence as he backed up into the wall of the crypt hands shooting down to his sides to brace himself against the solid stone.

The vampire just snarled, or it could have been a smile, he was really too ugly for Xander to say for certain, and closed the distance between them in two very rapid steps.  The vampire’s wide open mouth seemed to hang in the air forever before it descended to Xander’s throat agonisingly slowly.  Xander closed his eyes as he felt the cool breath of a hiss against his neck and hoped that Angel’s balls had super vampire healing speed, because he was in need of some serious help.

Angel slowly managed to pull himself up from his knees, the irritation he felt that some other vampire was going to be snacking on Xander, when really, if anyone was going to cause the boy any pain it should be Angel, helping to motivate him.

He stopped only long enough to pick up the stake that Xander had dropped and charged full force at the other two, driving the stake into the vampire’s back just as he heard the whispered sound of sharp fangs pressing against soft flesh.  He watched the vampire turn to dust, and closed his eyes as the force of the blow he delivered carried him through the cloud to land against Xander, against the wall.

Xander heard the telltale ‘poof’ of a vampire ceasing to be, and barely had time to think ‘Hooray for vampire balls!’ before the wind was knocked out of him when the vampire attached to those balls thumped into him with considerable force.

“You okay, Xander?” Angel asked, tilting his head to inspect any possible damage to Xander’s neck, but otherwise not moving.

Xander tilted his own head then, to give Angel a better look, and his breathing returned, hard and heavy, lungs working overtime to re-oxygenate his blood.  He felt his chest brush Angel’s with every intake of air, and even though he was winded, he was fully capable of speech, and should have told Angel that he was fine, he just couldn’t get his mouth to work.

Angel used the fingers on one hand to softly trace across the almost bite Xander had suffered, tips coming away with the just the faintest traces of blood.  He bent his head closer to the mark and inhaled, quietly but deeply, enjoying the intoxicating scent.  “You’ll be fine,” he told the boy in a gruff voice.  “Not even really a scratch.”

And then they were kissing.  Or, more accurately, Angel was kissing, Xander was letting his mouth fall open in surprise, but not fighting it in the least when Angel’s tongue crossed the lip barrier and sought out Xander’s in the warm cavity of his mouth.

And then Xander kissed back.  And it was really good, because, hey, kissing?  Always good, and Angel could really do the most amazing things with his tongue, and it was enough to make little Xander stand up and take notice.  But it was also really bad.  So, so very bad, because he was kissing a vampire, and he was kissing a boy and he was kissing Angel and most importantly, he was kissing his several times great-grandfather. 

 He pushed Angel away, but he had to admit that the action had just as much to do with his need for more oxygen as the wrongness of the whole thing, and collapsed forward, hands resting on his knees as Angel stumbled back, and Xander’s lungs once again earned their keep.

“Oh God,”  Angel said, gasping for his own unnecessary breath.  “Xander, I’m so sorry.  I shouldn’t have...”

“No, it’s not…” Xander managed between deep pants.  “It’s just…” and Xander wondered how he could tell Angel that he really wouldn’t have minded continuing the kiss and seeing where it ended up, but the fact that they were related made it more than a little creepy?

God, why was his life never just normal?

“Here,” Xander said instead, and handed Angel two folded up sheets of paper that he pulled from his coat pocket.  He hadn’t burned them, like he told himself he would, not yet anyway, but he had torn them from the book.

Angel looked at him curiously but accepted the sheets.  There was a deafening quiet as Angel read, then re-read the pages.  He then read once again for good measure, before squeezing his fist around them, and saying, simply, “No.”

“Fraid so, big guy,” Xander responded.

“It’s impossible.  I can’t be your ancestor.”

“And yet…”

Angel laughed, but it was mirthless.  “Knock up one lousy bar wench…”

“You’re taking this better than I did,” Xander offered with a half smile and sat down on the grass, Angel joining him a few seconds later.

They sat in silence for a moment, but it wasn’t exactly uncomfortable.  “So…” Xander finally ventured.  “That, uh, bar wench.  She was pregnant when you got vamped?”

Angel only nodded, not looking up from the papers he was still holding.

Xander knew he should really let this go, not bother talking to Angel about it.  The less said about it, the easier it would be to pretend it wasn’t true.  “Why’d you let her live?  You killed everyone else.”  But it seemed his mouth wasn’t in agreement with his brain.  It didn’t really matter anyway; his denial knew epic proportions and he’d be able to repress it eventually.    

“She was out of town,” Angel answered, incredibly uncomfortable having this conversation.

“Good for me then, huh?” Xander joked, and for the first time, Angel wished he would have killed more people.  Then he wouldn’t have to deal with this highly disturbing bit of information.

The knowledge did make an odd sort of sense to him, though.  Angel felt a bizarre sort of attraction to Xander in light of this information, but not in the widely understood definition of the word ‘attraction’.  He’d always felt it, really, but he had managed pretty easily to push it back considering how incredibly irritating Xander was.  Infuriation and annoyance, with an underlying protectiveness and attraction, and it wasn’t hard to see how the first two emotions would win out every time.

But now things were different. 

Angel was a vampire, and to him family meant devotion, companionship, violence and sex.  And even though he knew it was so very wrong, and even though he still didn’t really like Xander much, he couldn’t help but want to tear his pants open, throw him face down in the grass and dirt and bury himself inside that tight little hole until Xander had no doubt who the patriarch was around here.

He knew he couldn’t and wouldn’t tell Xander about these desires; it would freak the kid out, even if it would be kind of funny to see his reaction.  And the thought of Xander always checking behind him in the library, and making sure that Angel never had a direct view of his ass while out on patrol, put a secret, evil smile on Angel’s face.

It turned out that smile wasn’t secret enough, because Xander noticed it and was about to ask what exactly about this whole thing Angel found so funny, when Angel put an end to any further conversation.

He grabbed Xander by the elbow, helping him up and said, ‘We’ve still got the south side to cover.  Better get going.”

***

The rest of the night passed without any further incident and as they were on their way back to the cemetery gates where they had started out the evening, ready to head in their thankfully separate directions, Angel spoke the first words in almost an hour.

“You know, it really sucks that we’re family.  Now I won’t be able to kill you if you get too annoying.”

Xander looked at Angel, eyes scrunched in puzzlement as he tried to determine if Angel was serious.  Did that mean that Angel would have killed him before?  Did that mean that even now he was safe from Angelus if he ever made a comeback?  And then he noticed the tiny pull at the corner of Angel’s mouth, and turned his head to the side to hide his own smile as he started to walk away.

“It doesn’t go both ways, Deadboy,” he tossed over his shoulder from a few meters away.  “So it might be a good idea to not act too much like yourself around me.”

“I just said I wouldn’t kill you, Xander,” Angel shot back.  “Doesn’t mean I won’t turn you.”

And everything seemed to be back to business as usual.  But as they both walked away from the night, they knew that things had changed, a little, and that despite everything, it might not be so bad.

END