Fic: Happenstance 3/4

[allyndra]

I really wanted to do this fic in three parts, but it wouldn't cooperate. So this is, officially, the first chapter of the third part. 'Cause I say so.

There were many strange and uncomfortable duties associated with working undercover in a civilian population center on American soil. Killing and capturing Hostile Sub-Terrestrials was strange. Scary and strange. Lying to his parents about what he did was uncomfortable. But the duty that Riley found strangest and most consistently uncomfortable was mandatory recreation time. This consisted of scheduled periods of publicly behaving like the frat boy he pretended to be. Each unit was assigned mandatory rec at different times throughout the week. Some of the soldiers loved it. They thought it was the best part of being assigned to the Initiative Project. After all, how many duty stations required you to drink, fight, flirt, and act like a jerk? Riley had never liked it. He couldn't forget that the role he played *was* a role.

 

Still, there wasn't much he could do about it. Orders were orders. Riley sighed as he pulled up in front of the Pub for this week's rec time. He looked at the cars and people out front and didn't recognize any of them. That meant that neither Forrest nor Graham had arrived yet. Judging from the number of UC Sunnydale stickers on the cars, though, there were plenty of university students. That was just what he needed to make his night complete - a bar full of drunken undergrads. Hopefully he'd be out of here before the freshmen with fake IDs started throwing up in the parking lot. Plastering a completely fake affable smile on his face, Riley walked through the door.

 

It was just as bad inside as he'd feared. People in their late teens and early twenties surged around him. Riley resented them for making him feel old, with their blithe recklessness and blissful ignorance. He fought his way through the crowd and landed at the bar. And in a pile of gum. Groaning, Riley hoisted his foot up and balanced it on his other leg. He grabbed a napkin off the bar and absently ordered a beer while trying to dislodge the goo. He never ordered more than beer during rec time, and even then he set a limit of three. He didn't want to get someone killed by being drunk on patrol later.

 

"Here you go. Riley, right?" Riley looked up at the bartender for the first time and saw a brown haired man with a welcoming smile. His blue eyes widened in surprise, and he jammed his thumb right into the gum on his shoe.

 

"Xander! Dammit!" Riley looked down at his shoe and up at the suddenly wary look on Xander's face. "I mean, 'Hi, Xander. How are you? I'm covered in gum.'" Riley held up his gum coated thumb as an explanation.

 

The cautious expression slipped off Xander's face to be replaced by rueful sympathy. "Hang on a sec."

The man turned away briefly and returned with an ice cube. "It's supposed to get un-sticky if you freeze it. At least, that's what I was told when someone, who shall remain nameless, got gum in Willow's hair in second grade."

 

"Thanks." Riley took the ice and applied it to his gunky hand. "I'm sure it's some kind of payback for enforcing Professor Walsh's no gum policy."

 

"Yeah, I hear that gum karma can be a bitch," Xander said. Riley finished removing the mess from his hand and gave his shoe up as a lost cause. He was about to say something, anything to Xander when the brunette was called away by a customer at the other end of the bar. "Be right back," he called over his shoulder.

 

Riley watched the other man work and came to the conclusion that bartending was not Xander's true calling in life. Granted, he had a friendly barside manner and a surprisingly comprehensive knowledge of alcohol for so young a man, but those were offset by a poor memory for drink orders and a tendency to get flustered when customers yelled at him. Xander finished tending his customers and drifted back to Riley.

 

"I think half of these people are insane," the younger man said. "I'm glad you came; it's good to see a friendly face." He started mopping at the counter with a cloth. The bar wasn't especially dirty there, but Riley figured it gave Xander an excuse to stand there without looking like he was loitering.

 

"Your friends aren't coming by?" Riley asked, looking around as though two bubbly girls and a small, quiet man were going to pop out of the woodwork.

 

"Nope. Willow and Oz are being couple-y tonight, and Buffy is recovering from a traumatic hit-and-run romance."

 

Riley recognized the perfect opening to weasel information out of Xander. "What about Giles? Willow mentioned that he was a friend."

 

"Giles? In a place like this?" Xander burst out laughing. It was a good sound, and Riley planned to encourage it as much as possible. "Hell, no! This is an American excuse for a pub, with its bloody awful music and crowd of hooligans. God, he'd probably polish a hole in his glasses." Xander caught a look at Riley's face and realized he wasn't sharing the joke. "Giles was our high school librarian, and even though he hangs out with us, he's really not creepy. But he is middle aged and very British. He'd hate it here. So, no. Nobody's coming to lend moral support for my first night on the job."

 

"It's your first night?" Riley asked, with an appalled look at the swarm of customers coming in the door. "Poor you. Don't worry, I'll be your moral support." The blonde man wanted to reach across the bar and take Xander's hand, but he restrained himself by clutching his bottle tight.

 

Xander's eyes went soft and took on a shy, grateful expression that tugged at Riley's memory. "Thanks, man. That's kinda...awesome." Riley basked in that look for a moment, soaking up the warmth of Xander's smile. Of course, with the influx of customers, a moment was all he got before the bartender was swept away to fill their orders. For the next hour, Riley sat contentedly on his bar stool, nursing his beer and living for the lulls when Xander made his way back to him. It was the best time Riley had ever had during mandatory rec.

 

The two men got along amazingly well for people with so little in common. Riley was an overeducated soldier from the Heartland, while Xander was an underachieving California boy. The differences didn't seem to matter much as they talked. Granted, their conversations didn't stray far from discussions of food, movies, and music with occasional forays onto mocking the bar patrons. Riley felt more comfortable with Xander than he did with most civilians. For one thing, the man was funny, and he seemed to appreciate Riley's wit and humor.

 

Xander had just come back from filling an order for a drink with a bizarre name. Riley hadn't even heard of it before, but Xander had known what went in it. "Are you sure this is your first night as a bartender? 'Cause I don't think the ingredients to a Scarlet Fever are common knowledge," Riley said. He twirled his mostly empty beer bottle on the counter. A completely empty one sat beside him.

 

"Do not question my knowledge, for it was learned at my father's knee," Xander replied. "Seriously, you can't grow up in my family and not know a little something about the booze. This *is* my first ever bartending shift." He paused, then said, with his eyes wide and innocent, "I'm a virgin."

 

Riley choked on the last swallow of his beer. "You did that on purpose!" he accused.

 

"Yup," Xander said with a smirk. He looked smug until he heard and order being called out. "No rest for the semi-wicked," he sighed, and turned away from Riley. The blonde man stared at him as he worked. Xander had been flirting with him. Yes!!! The realization sent a wave of exultation through him. Riley was sitting there with a fatuous smile on his face when he felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned his head and saw Forrest. 

"Hey! You are so late, it no longer counts as late. I'm marking you absent for this drinking session." He took in the look on Forrest's face. "What? What's wrong?"

 

"I don't know what you're thinking, is what's wrong. You got all twitchy when Graham hooked up with that stripper when we were safely outta town, and then you track down your own. Here! What's going through your head, Riley?"

 

Now Riley was staring back at Forrest. "What? I came in for a drink and I ran into Xander. We were just...what stripper?"

 

"Riley, take a good look at that boy. How did you not notice that he's the guy you were drooling over in Oxnard?" Now Forrest's irritated look had morphed into concern, as if Riley were being exceptionally slow and might need to be checked for a concussion.

 

"Xander?" Riley watched the brown eyed man as he served drinks, stumbling once and mixing up two orders. "Are you sure?" He was beautiful, but he didn't act like a stripper. However strippers acted.

 

"One thing about being a straight guy watching male strippers: you spend a lot of time looking at their faces. It's definitely him," Forrest said. He seemed very sure. Riley stared at Xander, who was finishing up with his current customers. He'd been instantly attracted to the man, but he hadn't questioned it. His identity as friend of Riley's students had stopped Riley from considering that Xander might have another identity.

 

"Hi, friend of Riley's" Xander returned and nodded a greeting at Forrest. "Can I get you something?"

 

Riley was upset by that. How could Xander act like everything was normal when..."You made me gay!" His voice was harsh, but fortunately not very loud. Out of the corner of his eye, Riley saw Forrest checking to be sure no one from the Initiative had heard him. He was glad his friend cared enough to keep an eye out for him, because Riley couldn't drag his attention from the man in front of him.

 

Xander held his hands out placatingly. "No. Much with the no. Beer might lower your inhibitions, but it does not make you gay."

 

"Not the beer! Last summer, in Oxnard. With the bomber jacket, and the red...That was you!" Riley's voice was still accusing. He couldn't stop staring at Xander, trying to reconcile the sleek and sexy dancer he remembered with the friendly, funny townie he'd been getting to know.

 

"You saw that?" Xander squeaked. He sounded horrified. Groaning, he scrubbed his hands over his face. "I swear somebody in charge hates me. I dance for one night over a hundred miles away and people from Sunnydale see me. How is that fair?"

 

"One night?" Forrest asked, sounding surprised. Riley could second that emotion. The man hadn't moved like an amateur on stage.

 

"Yeah. I mean, I was a dishwasher. I was supposed to be in the kitchen. But Seth called in and I got drafted."

 

"Well you looked," gorgeous, wonderful, edible, "good up there. Like you knew what you were doing," Riley reassured him.

 

"Really?" Xander's big brown eyes were bright with pleasure. "Some of the guys had been teaching me, so I knew the basics, but I felt like everyone was laughing at me."

 

"Nobody in our group was laughing," Forrest said. He seemed to have decided that Xander wasn't a threat at the moment. Or else he preferred mocking Riley over protecting him. "There might have been some moaning, though." Oh yeah, he'd chosen the mocking.

 

Xander blushed bright red. He looked at Riley hesitantly. "You...really?"

 

Riley took a deep breath. "Really, really." He tensed as he waited to see how the bartender would respond.

 

"Is this the part where I tell you I get off work in three hours? Oooh, or I could write my phone number on a bar napkin," Xander suggested with a blinding smile. Riley felt all the tension flow out of his shoulders as he took in that smile. Of course, it flowed directly to another part of his body. He was so focused on the man in front of him that it took Riley a moment to notice the beeping that was coming from his pocket. It wasn't until he saw Forrest checking his pager that he knew what was going on.

 

"Crap," Riley said with feeling.

 

Forrest answered Xander's questioning look. "There's an emergency at Lowell House. We have to go."

 

Technically, Riley should have done as Forrest did, and started casually exiting the bar as soon as that pager went off. Instead, he took a minute to grab a napkin off the bar and scribble his name and phone number on it. He slid the napkin across the bar to Xander. Suddenly uncertain, he ducked his head. Ducking to avoid someone's eyes would probably work better if he weren't over six feet tall, so the brunette probably saw him blushing as he said, "Maybe you could, um, call me. If you feel like it." He risked a look and was caught in the intensity of Xander's eyes. Riley wanted nothing more than to drag the man across the bar and kiss him senseless.

 

But Riley Finn wasn't a soldier for nothing. It took all his training and sense of duty, but he turned and walked away. At the door, he looked back at the man behind the bar. Xander was staring down at the napkin with a bemused smile. He lifted his head and met Riley's gaze. With a little nod, the brown haired man tucked the napkin safely into his pocket. Riley went to report in with a light heart.

Part Four

Comments

[allyndra.livejournal.com]

I'm having so much fun going form post to post replying to you comments! This totally made my morning.

I agree with you, Riley gets bashed far too often. He's not quite as abused as Kennedy, but it's close. I know he doesn't have the snark factor that makes UST between Xander and Spike so believable, but I think he and Xander would do really well together. They're both loving and insecure (and hot), and they would be good for one another.