“Hey, Xand,” Dawn appeared from out of the crowd, juggling bright coloured glasses filled with even brighter coloured cocktails. “That was a blue jubaree for you, a Hukapor hotshot for Captain Jack …” She coloured a little as she handed the drink to the man in question. He smiled back, one of those rougish ‘hey, you know you want me’ smiles that should have been annoying the hell out of Xander but somehow weren’t. There was something about Jack that had instantly endeared him to their entire group – and it wasn’t until he’d seen the man happily make a pass at three passing strangers, all of different sexes, and just as happily accept their rebuttals, that Xander had figured out what it was.
He reminded them of Anya.
Not directly. He was far more keyed into the world around him for a start. But there was this open, unselfconsciousness to him that should have come across as arrogance and yet somehow managed to be charming instead. He flirted with everyone; preened, posed, and generally had fun. Which was, Xander reminded himself firmly, precisely why they’d all come on this little expedition in the first place.
“… and something green and glowy for me,” Dawn was saying, slipping back into her place at the rail between Xander and the Captain. Down on the dance floor, Buffy was strutting her stuff in the company of yet another tall, dark and dashing Jarian. There seemed to be an endless supply of them, all of them eager to spend a few moments with the vivacious blonde and her seemingly inexhaustible supply of energy. Xander had been exhausted fairly thoroughly earlier in the evening, so he’d retreated up to the lounging area, content to lean on the rail and watch as the Slayer danced the night away.
“This is just so much fun,” Dawn giggled, sipping at her drink and glowing almost as brightly as it did. Not in a green ‘key to the dimensions’ way, fortunately, but simply from happiness. Xander smiled, pleased to see her enjoying herself.
“Isn’t it just?” Jack took a healthy gulp of his cocktail and flashed the two of them a five hundred watt smile. “The Doc said that the Jarian’s knew how to throw a party. Guess he was right.”
“That’s just what Giles said,” Dawn offered cheerfully. “Actually – he used a lot more words and most of them were much longer, but that was what he meant.”
“Hard to think of Giles and this kind of fun in the same sentence,” Xander grinned, turning to lean his weight against the rail so that he could join in the conversation while he sipped at his drink. A little bit further down the rail, Willow was talking to Rose, her distinctive red hair bent close to the blonde, who was giggling almost as much as Dawn. A frown briefly creased his features as he took in the all too familiar sight. Rose was not Tara, and never would be, but she was close enough in looks that seeing the two of them together was disconcerting. Jack glanced round to see what he was looking at and grinned.
“Good looking young lady, that Willow of yours,” he said. “Good job I’m not the jealous type.”
“Absolutely,” Dawn agreed. “I’d hate to see you get turned into something small and furry. Which Willow might do, if she thought it was necessary.”
“Only if she thought it was necessary,” Xander interjected, smiling at the thought. “Besides – if you were the jealous type, you’d have had Buffy to deal with, long before Willow got in on the act. Hey,” he defended at the looks this earned him. “I have eyes. Well, okay, eye - but I’m still the one who sees things. I saw the way he was watching the dynamic duo during the concert. If Buffy thought for one moment that you were a threat to her Watcher, she’d tear you in pieces and make you eat the tender bits.”
Ouch, Jack pantomimed, grinning at the suggestion. “No danger of that, I can assure you. The Doc’s a grown man. He can pick whichever partner he wants. But, dang,” he added with feeling, “does he have taste.”
“You’re kidding me,” Xander reacted, only half in mockery. Dawn snorted into her drink.
“Xander,” she spluttered. “I thought you were the ‘one who sees?’ Giles gets all sorts of hits on the hotness scale. Buffy was practically having to beat some of the new Slayers off him, once we’d got him cleaned up and kitted out in his new gear.”
“Well, I know that,” Xander defended. “Just – there’s the Doctor, doing that whole black leather, mysterious Time Lord thing, and Jack here is looking at Giles. I’m not judging,” he added swiftly, “I’m just saying, that’s all.”
“It may have missed your attentive notice,” Jack smiled, “but the Watcher’s a Time Lord too. And – uh – “ His eyes went briefly distant. “Black leather? I can picture that. Oh, yeah …” He recovered himself with a small shake. “You’re just too close to him, kid. Think you know him too well. Except you don’t, given the way you reacted, back there in the street.”
“I was startled.” Xander was still reeling from that moment. He’d made a lot of assumptions about his friend and mentor over the years, many of which had been systematically demolished in the same time period. The man’s sexuality – or actually his lack of it – had been a fundamental in his perception of their relationship. He’d known that most of that was probably illusion – hell, he’d met Olivia, hadn’t he – but he’d been happy living with the fantasy, the way the Watcher had always coloured and changed the subject whenever Anya made one of her famous remarks. He’d never quite equated the man’s determined protection of his privacy with the essential passion that lay behind it.
“We were all startled,” Dawn said. “They didn’t do that last time they met. Well,” she corrected hastily, “if they did, we didn’t see it.”
“Yeah,” Xander agreed. “The Doctor was a lot shorter then, too … Mind you,” he considered, staring into the blue depths of his drink, “last time, we were on the run from Glory, there were Daleks involved, and there probably wasn’t time for that sort of thing.”
Jack thought about that for a moment. “There are no more Daleks,” he said. “They’re all gone. Vapourised in that Time War of theirs. Along with the rest of the Time Lords. The Doctor thought he was the only survivor.”
“There were a few,” Xander reported gloomily. “The Bringer’s killed them. Hunted them down and – killed them.” He shivered, not wanting to go where those kind of thoughts would take him. It hadn’t sunk in to begin with, how Giles had been the last – the only - survivor of that terrible campaign. Buffy had been so intent on saving the Slayer line that she’d missed the unbearable tragedy being played out on the sidelines of her personal war. It had only been at the end, with Sunnydale a dust filled crater and the world populated with a whole army of Slayers that any of them had paused to think about just how alone the Watcher had become. Xander had found it hard to comprehend, but Buffy – it had hit Buffy like a physical blow. She’d spent so long being chosen, special, standing alone in a crowd and then – at the very moment when that burden had been lifted from her shoulders - she had turned to find the one soul who had understood her sense of isolation, condemned to carry that same weight in his heart.
Hearts, he corrected himself, ruefully. He occasionally forgot that Time Lords had two …
“There’s still Wesley,” Dawn pointed out, trying to sound cheerful about it. Xander snorted.
“There’s probably still Ethan, but you don’t hear Giles cheering about that. Wesley’s still in his first incarnation, Dawnie. There’s no way he’s gonna get it. But the Doctor …”
They had met like drowning swimmers, clinging to each other in currents that threatened to overwhelm them both. And like those swimmers they had continued to hold on, desperately, neither man entirely losing touch with the other, through the whole of the concert, the stroll through the festival, or here, under the crystalline roof of the pleasure dome. It hadn’t been overt, but Xander had seen it, the subtle shift of hands linked together, the way they had sat side by side, knees or hips constantly touching as if each feared the other would simply fade away if their connection were lost. He’d noticed something else too; the fierce and pleasured pride with which Buffy had watched them interact. She understood – and had silently and happily given them both her blessing.
Rose, he thought, had done much the same, although with less certainty and just a little sense of hurt. He could understand that. She wasn’t like Ace, all gung-ho and ‘hand me the nitro99’. She had, he suspected, a quiet vulnerability behind her confident façade.
It was no wonder Willow was attracted to her …
“Here’s to the Lords of Time,” Jack was saying, lifting his glass in a toast. Dawn lifted hers so that the glasses clinked together.
“The Doctor and the Watcher,” she echoed with a grin.
“I’ll drink to that,” Xander capped, lifting his own glass and bringing himself firmly back to the moment. Introspection over, Xander Harris. Live in the now. Live for the now. And the weird blue drink thing that tasted like sugared pears and had a kick like a Slayer in training.
“Have either of you seen them lately?” Jack asked, scanning the crowd with interest. Xander shook his head. Now he thought about it, he hadn’t seen the Doctor or the Watcher for a while. Dawn went quietly pink.
"Oh god,” she said. “They’re off somewhere – doing it, aren’t they.”
They are?
Jack broke into a decidedly wicked grin. Images he really didn’t want to think about swirled into Xander’s brain. His one good eye went wide - and then he hurriedly pushed the thoughts away.
“No,” he denied hastily. “Course not. I mean – they’ve probably just gone looking for a decent cup of tea or something. They’ll be sitting somewhere - talking about books and Time paradoxes and dusty bits of history they’ve both visited. Swapping war stories and ‘my apocalypse was bigger than your apocalypse’ kind of tales.”
“Right,” Jack said sceptically. “Sure.”
There was a long pause as the three of them stared out at the dance floor and thought about the events of the day.
“They are so doing it,” Dawn murmured eventually.
“Yeah,” Xander nodded.
Jack sighed. “Oh yeah. “