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Point You Homeby WesleysGirlRating: PG-13 Giles/Xander Written for the Schmangst-a-thon, for Kivrin. Thanks to Sam_gamgee and Ginny for the betas. There are fifteen empty liquor bottles in Giles' trash can. For a few minutes, Xander is more than a little freaked out, but then he remembers Anya complaining about how Giles' kitchen stinks, and something about how he hadn't been taking out the trash, and he calms himself down with the probable reality that it's weeks worth of bottles. It has to be, because Giles is... well, the grown up. And even though Xander has been trying to do the right thing, with Anya and the engagement and helping Willow and Tara take care of Dawn, he knows he's only pretending. At night, when Anya is curled up sleeping beside him and he's staring at the ceiling -- knowing that it's there, a constant, is kind of reassuring, although maybe not at much as he wishes it was -- Xander knows he's not a man. Not yet. He still has too much to learn. He knocks at Giles' door three times, and there's no answer. He turns the handle. There's a click, and the door opens. "Giles?" Xander feels weird just walking in, which is crazy, because he's walked in without knocking plenty of times. Hundreds, maybe. But this feels different. Everything's different now. "Hey Giles?" There's a muffled noise that Xander doesn't like the sound of, and then he sees Giles' hand raised up from the other side of the back of the couch. He shuts the door and goes over to where Giles is lying on the couch, a small pillow tucked under his head and a blanket draped over him all crooked like he couldn't be bothered to fix it. "Did you want something, Xander?" "You didn't show up for patrol last night," Xander says. "And you were supposed to bring Willow some book. I guess she needs it for research or something." Giles looks like hell. His face is flushed, and there's a half empty bottle of whiskey on the table. At least the cap is on it. He's wearing a t-shirt and flannel pants, like he couldn't be bothered to get dressed. "Yes, well, if any of them living in that house listened to their messages, they'd have heard the one I left telling them that I'm ill." Xander slides the whiskey bottle away and sits down on the table, reaching out a hand to touch Giles' forehead. Giles bats at his hand, but not before Xander can feel how hot he is, skin dry and seared. "You're sick!" he says accusingly. "Your powers of deduction astound me," Giles says, closing his eyes. "You should be in bed," Xander says. "That would require moving, and I've already decided that's not something that will be happening today." Giles sounds half asleep, but not in a good way. More in a miserable way. Xander frowns and reaches out to touch him again. This time, he lays the backs of his fingers against Giles' cheek. This time, Giles doesn't push his hand away. He's hot, like there's something burning just under his skin, something that makes Xander's knuckles tingle. After a few seconds, Giles opens his eyes again and looks at Xander. Giles' eyes are kind of weird, and not just because they're glassy with fever. Because they're different colors, green and blue and a little bit of brown all mixed together into something that Xander doesn't think could rightfully be called hazel. His fingers are still pressed to Giles' cheek. "You'll be okay," Xander says stupidly. In that moment, he feels so clumsy that he's more afraid to move his hand than he is to leave it where it is, which is saying something considering the way his heart is thudding in his chest, louder than anything else in the room, a whooshing lub-dub sound traveling past his ears. "Will I?" Giles asks, more hopeless than Xander's ever heard him. Even on the night Buffy died, Giles had held it together. He'd gotten them to the hospital, where Dawn and Anya and Tara had all been taken care of and eventually released. Xander is pretty sure he'd even patched up Spike, although it wasn't one of the things that they'd ever talked about. Come to think of it, they didn't talk about a lot, and right now Giles isn't holding it together. In fact, if the whiskey bottles out in the trash can are any indication, Giles is falling apart worse than any of them. Xander pulls his hand back and stands up. "Stay there," he says, and goes into the bathroom, where he finds ibuprofen and a thermometer in the medicine cabinet and then a clean washcloth that he wets down with cool water. He brings these, along with a glass of water, back to the living room. Giles just blinks at him tiredly as he sits down again. "Open," Xander says, holding the thermometer in front of Giles' face, and Giles does. He obediently opens his mouth and lets Xander slip the thermometer -- an old fashioned one, not the digital kind -- under his tongue. While he's lying there, flushed, Xander folds the damp washcloth into fourths and lays it across his forehead. He's pretty sure that it takes three minutes for those thermometers to work, and he can't see a clock from where he is. He stopped wearing a watch a while ago, hoping that not seeing the passage of time would make it a little more bearable, so now he has to count the seconds in his head. When he thinks it's been long enough, he takes the thermometer and checks it. Giles has a temperature of a hundred and one point five, which isn't enough to be scary but is definitely, Xander knows from experience, enough to make him feel miserable. "Sit up," Xander says, trying for a cheery tone, but he has to help Giles get upright. He shakes two pills out into his open palm and holds them out for Giles to take, which he does, again not saying anything, just doing what Xander wants him to. Xander moves over and sits on the couch next to Giles, then tentatively puts an arm around his shoulders, feeling the heat radiating off the older man's body. "Give those a little while to work, and then we'll get you up to bed, okay?" Giles leans his head back onto the couch and sighs, muttering something that Xander can't understand. "What?" Xander says gently. "What's the bloody point?" Giles repeats irritably. Xander knows what he's asking, and there's a temptation to tell him, but it's not the right time. "You'll sleep better up there," he says. Giles rolls his head to the side and just looks at Xander. "You know what I mean," he says, his gaze boring into Xander's, and Xander feels sick, his stomach twisted. "Yeah," he says. "I know." He's angry, so he moves away a little bit, not trusting himself to touch Giles when he's mad. "But it's not like there's any real answer to that, is there? I mean, what the hell am I supposed to say?" And then he gets it, like a slap in the face. He knows what it is that Giles needs. And all the anger drains away, leaving nothing but sympathy and sorrow in its place. "Come on," Xander says gently, pulling Giles to his feet and starting toward the stairs, guiding him. It's awkward, trying to get someone bigger than you to walk when they're all weak and confused, but he manages to get them upstairs without falling, and he lowers Giles down onto the bed and pulls the covers up over him. Then he lies down on the bed next to Giles and puts his arms around him. Giles tenses, frowning. "What...?" "Shut up," Xander says. "But what are you -- " "Shut up," Xander says again, more softly, and Giles does. After a minute, Giles relaxes, sighing and almost snuggling closer, and Xander closes his eyes and just holds him, and somehow it's not weird. The fact that it's not weird is weird. It should be weird, having Giles' hot face pressed against his neck, feeling the way the back of Giles' head fits into his hand, but it's not. And it's not weird when Giles starts to cry, his tears burning Xander's skin with its salt, and it's not weird when Giles lifts his face and Xander, not knowing what else to do, kisses him. Giles' lips are dry and firm against his, and Giles gets an arm around him, holding on. Giles tries to say something, his voice raw, cracking; Xander silences him with another kiss. "Don't say anything," Xander tells him. If they talk, he has to try to make sense of this, and he's not ready. Right now, all he wants to do is make Giles feel better. They kiss a few more times, but Giles is too fevered for anything else, and Xander isn't sure he could give him more, anyway. It's a relief when Giles' breathing evens out and he drops off to sleep. Xander lies there for a while looking at Giles' face, peaceful and relaxed in sleep in a way it never is awake, and then gets up and goes downstairs to the kitchen. He straightens up, rinsing off the dirty dishes and putting them in the dishwasher. He goes through the refrigerator and throws out some leftovers that look more like a science experiment than food, chasing them down the garbage disposal with the half bottle of whiskey from the living room table. He puts the bottle on the countertop so there won't be any question later about what happened to it. In the freezer, he finds a macaroni and cheese dinner. It's some weird brand, imported and with the names switched around, but he puts it in the oven and puts the timer on. While he's waiting for it to cook, he finds the book Willow wanted, the whole time listening for any sounds from upstairs. There's only silence. When the food is done, Xander takes it out, stirs it, then spoons it into a bowl and puts plastic wrap over the top. He puts it on the main shelf of the fridge with space left around it -- not that that's hard, since there's hardly anything in there anyway -- and shuts the door. It takes him fifteen minutes to think of what to write in the note he leaves, and in the end it's short and to the point. Food in fridge. I took that book that Willow wanted. End.
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