Parts 1,2,3
TITLE: Maybe He's Canadian, 1: A Chance Meeting
AUTHOR: Otsoko
E-MAIL: otsoko@hotmail.com
SUMMARY: a lonely Xander is stopped by someone he barely remembers, who just wants to thank him.
RATING: PG-13
CONTENT: SLASH: Graham/Xander. Incipient Slashiness. Two words I wouldn't use in front of my Grandmother, but would in front of my Mom.
SPOILERS: All of seasons 1-4, especially one and four.
CATEGORY: Maybe He's Canadian #1
FEEDBACK: you betcha! If you flame me, I will just assume that you are a really ugly closet case with no life, and feel really sorry for you.
DISTRIBUTION: any place slash-friendly who lets me know
*DISCLAIMER: All characters belong to Joss Wheedon, Fox and the WB. I am just playing.
AUTHOR'S NOTES:
1. If you haven't seen all of season 4, large parts of the story will make no sense, but it will nonetheless spoil it for you.
2. Despite all my efforts to Americanize it, there are still probably Canadianisms in the story.
3. This series was written backwards from the last 2 lines of dialogue in part 8.
4. A certain inconvenient ex-vengeance demon is conveniently absent without any explanation whatsoever [OK, She went back to work for D'Hoffryn as a summer intern and she and Xander both agreed that they could see other people or demons as the case may be.]
The two quotes that started all this off:
You know, I'm Canadian, and it *really* bothers me when people mistake me for American. I'm also gay, and it *really* bothers me when people mistake me for straight. Hmmm. Ten percent of the population of North America is Canadian. And ten percent of the population of North America is gay... Think about it.
Scott Thompson as Buddy Cole, the Kids in the Hall. (CBC)
"Maybe she's Canadian."
Graham (referring to Buffy being 'peculiar'), BtVS: the Initiative [the key thing for me being that Graham seemed to know that "Canadian" is, in some circles, a jokey code word for, uh, 'peculiar']
*****
Xander was walking across campus, taking a short cut home. He was feeling dejected after getting fired from *yet* another job. He'd lasted almost 15 days with this one -- almost a record. But the worst of it was the stuff he had accidentally broken was gonna be deducted from his paycheck, which was not even going to leave him enough for a hot chocolate at the Bronze after he paid his parents the rent on the dank smelly basement he called home.
Buffy and Willow had pretty much stopped being supporto-gals after about the tenth job (well, after the 15th job for Willow, she always cut him more slack), so there was no use in calling them up for a little comfort. Besides, Willow was spending most of her waking hours -- as well as her sleeping hours -- hanging out with Tara, doing spells. Buffy and Biff Laternjaw seemed to be joined at the ... hip. Xander was definitely tired of a social life that alternated between being the third wheel and the fifth wheel.
And following the masacre of the final battle with Adam, the remaining demons and vampire types had been avoiding Sunndydale like, well, like a non-hellmouth. Buffy was still doing her patrolling thing, but she always took Riley along. And since they often returned with, ahem, 'battle scars' on their necks, Xander assumed that more smooching than actual patrolling was going on. So, there hadn't been a real scooby meeting in weeks, no 'avengers assemble!', not even random research assignments.
At their last meeting, Giles had assured everyone that the demons and their buddies would slowly return as the word got around the literal underworld that things had returned to non-normal in Sunnydale. Giles, after searching the Chronicles, estimated that this should happen by the first week of October, at the latest. "Of course," he had said, with his usual British guy, school-master like over-precision, "One can never predict with absolute certitude how the denizens of the nether regions will react to these sorts of interferences with what they regard as the natural order of things."
Xander had said to Willow, "His lips move, but the sounds they make are not normal human sounds." Willow smiled and nodded mock-seriously at Xander. Seeing the bemused faces of the Scooby gang, Giles repeated, exasperated, "Oh, anything can bloody well happen. So just stay alert, all of you."
Buffy replied, "I promise to be alert. Riley will be alert, too. We promise to be two lerts." And as Giles scowled at them, the two practically lept for the door. Tara and Willow smiled at each other and got up and headed for the door as well. They both made cute little waves at Giles and Xander. Giles looked at the still not-standing Xander, who was looking at the still not-eaten Scooby meeting snacks.
Giles scowled at him. "Just take them with you, Xander." And Xander had grabbed the bags of chips and pretzels and left. And since then, no scooby meetings, no vampire slayage, no demon hunting, no prophesies, no nothing. The yawn-worthiness of the summer, vampire-wise, only made the lack of a social life all the more apparent.
Xander was carefully studying the sidewalk as he walked, barely noticing the big jock type doing a run, heading towards him. With shades of high school jock bullies playing in his subconscious mind, Xander stepped out of the way, barely looking up at the guy as he ran past. The jock, wearing a tank top and shorts ran by Xander, then came to a screeching halt and turned and said,
"Harris, Xander Harris?"
Xander looked back at him, the dude was totally familiar. Xander couldn't place him immediately. Wait a minute: big guy, all muscle, military hair cut:
"You're one of the commando guys, huh?"
"Yeah". The guy gave Xander a friendly nod. Graham tried hard not to show his slight embarrassment: he'd never been embarrassed by his unit before. But his guy and his friends had been the ones who had saved the day in the end. No thanks to Graham and the Initiative. In spite of the Initiative, in fact. It wasn't right somehow. Graham's face maintained an almost stone-like stoic look. He wanted to make it right. He needed to make it right, especially with this Xander guy. "We almost met at the Bronze a while back." He put out a hand, "Graham, Graham Miller."
Xander shook the offered hand. Graham looked straight at Xander. Graham's face was his patented stoic, expressionless look. That always happened when he was nervous. He bent forward a bit and rested his hands on his upper thighs, breathing deeply -- he had just run a bit more than 12 k.
"I wanted to thank you, for what you did against Adam." Graham's voice was deep, steady. He clearly meant what he said.
Xander shrugged and cracked a smile, happy to being thanked rather than being dissed..."No problem."
"You saved my ass, all our asses." Graham still half bent over, looked up into Xander's eyes.
"It really was mainly the Buffster." Xander protested, but more than a little pleased at Graham's gratitude.
"Way Riley tells it, it was the four of you. Team effort."
Xander shrugged again, but this time his smile was more genuine. "Well, yeah, in a mystical union of the souls / the whole is greater than the sum of the parts kind of way."
Graham chuckled, "Gestalt heroics, huh?"
"You know," Xander said brightly, "I'm pretty sure I'd agree with you if I had a clue as to what you just said." But Xander really liked the sound of the 'heroics' part.
Graham thought Damn!. Last thing he wanted was to put this guy down. "Sorry, Psych-speak, occupational hazard of the grad student cover."
Xander grinned lopsidedly, "Hey, I gained ten pounds when I was ice-cream truck guy. Talk about your occupational hazards."
Graham laughed. He started to jog in place a bit, clearly anxious to finish his run. Or maybe just anxious.
"Xander, Can I buy you a beer later on?" Graham had been mentally practicing that line since he had first recognized Xander.
Xander thought to himself: I cannot stress enough how much I *don't* have other plans for tonight. He smiled and said: "Yeah, sure."
"Great. The Pub at like 8?"
A nod, "OK".
"Great!" Graham gave Xander a quick pat on the shoulder. " Later!" he said, and jogged off, breaking into full run after a couple of seconds.
Xander grinned. He couldn't help but feel better. It was the first time that anybody had actually thanked him for what he had gone through fighting Adam. And it came from one of the commando guys -- not the corner he would have predicted. Xander watched the guy run off for a good five seconds. He stopped and looked around real fast, making sure nobody had caught him staring at the commando guy's ass. Even if, as this Graham guy had pointed out, it was an ass that Xander had saved.
Graham hit his stride. That went well, he decided. He was glad he finally actually met this guy. Riley had described him as being a good guy, but with an off-beat sense of humor -- Graham thought that that probably meant that Riley didn't get a lot of his jokes. He liked Riley, but the guy was sometimes oblivious to the obvious. Actually, his friendship with Graham was kind of proof of that. All the hints that Riley had available about Graham's extracurricular activities, and Riley didn't have a clue. Graham had always liked that about Riley.
Graham thought Xander was pretty funny. Good at the banter. Maybe a slightly peculiar sense of humor. Maybe, thought Graham with a grin, maybe he's Canadian.
*****
Part 2: Tough Guy
Graham was sitting in a booth at the back, pitcher and two glasses in front of him. He was wearing one of those military type dark green sweaters. He looked like commando-guy from a mile away.
Graham looked up with a friendly smile, "Hey." with a hint of nervousness that Xander didn’t expect.
"Hey." Xander replied as he slid onto the bench opposite commando guy.
Graham poured him a beer and slid the glass over. Graham raised his glass to Xander, they clinked glasses and took a drink. Graham looked at Xander, and asked, "So, you been fighting demons long?"
Xander got a somber look on his face. "More or less since I ran into some vampires in grade ten."
"No shit?" Graham raised one eyebrow. Xander nodded, and continued, even more somberly:
"Me, Willow and my best bud, Jesse, got captured by these vampires, Buffy saved Willow and me, but they got Jesse." Xander suddenly looked down at the table. Not wanting this guy to see his face. Change the subject fast, Xander told himself.
"Harsh." Graham knew what it was to lose a good friend to the dark forces.
With effort, Xander lightened his tone and looked up, "Then I sort of tagged along with Buff when she went after the vamps; been a charter member of the Scooby gang ever since."
"Whoa! Four years!" Graham shook his head in amazement. He'd been doing it for less than a year, and he had been considered an old-timer by the other Initiative guys. Even if Xander's count was one tenth of Buffy's, this guy had taken out more HSTs than Graham could ever dream of doing. He was too embarrassed to even ask.
Xander nodded, "And you, how did you get into the hey let's go capture monsters and do experiments on them for someone's evil purpose game?
Graham would have taken offense at that, were it not for the totally friendly grin on Xander's face. Graham said simply, "They gave me a job, I did the job."
Xander had to chuckle: hanging out with Oz had given him the experience necessary for talking with laconic commando guy.
"So, Buffy says you were in the army?
"I was army guy for like one night – it's a long story." Xander notes that Graham had talked to Buffy about him…He looks at Graham's face for a hint. He doesn't get one.
"Not going anywhere." Graham takes a swig of beer.
Xander relates the story of that fateful Halloween night when people turned into the characters they were dressed up as, thanks to the evil Ethan Rayne. He was dressed up as a soldier, so he became a soldier (OK, so maybe not so long a story…)
Graham was cracking up as Xander told the story, mainly at the way Xander was telling the story. Xander was thinking: I like this guy, he laughs at all my jokes and keeps buying me beer.
"Same Ethan Rayne got sent to the camp in Nevada?"
"Yeah. What happened to him there, anyway?"
"Didn't tell us. Need to know."
Xander looked at the guy. How did these military guys just not ask? Some kind of military brainwashing thing? "So, are you still commando guy?, What with the Initiative now home to three weeks worth of cement trucks?"
"You know about that, huh?" Graham grins. No secrets from the Scooby guy. Not sure he wants to be keeping secrets from this guy.
Xander grins, "Hey, I was cement pourer guy for two weeks – union wages and everything. You guys got any more secret installations that need filling in, I'm your man."
Graham chuckled, then answered his question, "We all got discharged … the survivors. Just as well."
"Why? Did you get tired of the demon chasing? or just the let's make supermonsters and destroy the world thing."
"Nah, nothing like that - I still want to fight the good fight."
"Then why 'just as well'?"
Graham hesitated, looked at Xander a second, and then looked back down at his glass. 'You're a tough guy, Graham,' he thought to himself. 'You've gone into a biker bar and sent 4 Hell's Angels to hospital; You've faced down more HSTs than half the Initiative put together; You've taken on a whole squad of Colombian insurgents single-handed with just your pistol and your knife; You get wounded by a canine-type HST, and you're back on patrol within 12 hours. No question you're tough.' Graham swallowed hard. He looked back up at Xander, not saying a word, and thought, 'Now, tough guy, let's see you do something *really* brave, like telling this guy the truth.' Graham cleared his throat, "The whole 'don't ask, don't tell' thing was getting … hard." Graham had on his poker face, trying hard not to look to see Xander's reaction.
Xander's head snapped up as what Graham had just said sank in. Flashback to locker room and suspected werewolf football player guy…Okay, he kind of overreacted to that one. And the Willow/Tara thing definitely came out of left field for Xander. He was determined to be cool this time:
"So you like the boys." Xander said with what he hoped was an easy-going, 'hey, I'm cool', voice, and raised a merry glass of beer to his lips.
Graham looked straight at him, shook his head, and said with the slightest of smiles, "No, Harris, I like the men."
Xander gulped, and took a too-quick swig of beer to hide it. Graham flashed an amused grin. Xander choked a bit, but recovered, . But he was more determined than ever to be supporto-guy. If nothing else, he owed that much to Larry's memory. "Must have been a lot of work hiding that from the other Initiative guys."
Graham nodded, "Yeah, it was. And yet I got a D in covert ops."
Xander cracked up. Graham chuckled along with him. The tension was definitely broken.
When Xander stopped laughing, he asked if Graham knew about Willow and Tara.
"Yeah, Riley told me about it."
"So was mister Iowa corn-fed freaked?"
Graham chuckled at the description of Riley Finn, All-American Boy, as he shook his head.
"No way. You can’t spend time in the military and not get used to the women-loving women."
"And what does Riley think about the men-loving men?"
"Don't know. Never came up."
"So you're still in 'Don't ask, don't tell' mode with him?"
"Yeah … for now."
"So you're out to … who?"
"You". Graham was looking at the bottom of his beer glass.
Xander nodded and thought, 'OK, I must be easy to come out to. Except for my best friend, of course. Willow had to hide it from me.' Maybe he understood that better now. Like Graham not being able to tell his best friend, Riley. When you're going through the big changes, you're afraid to risk losing a friend. Xander nodded, "You gotta do it when it feels right."
There was an extended silence, as Graham's getting the double entendre showed in a growing grin. Then Xander got it. He blushed.
Xander stammered, "I just mean that, ya know, coming out to someone when you're ready, it's better."
"And you know this how?" Graham raised his head slightly, looked at him and asked, with a wry -- but hopeful -- smile on his face.
"Well. There was this football player at my high school, Larry, and we sort of had this conversation in the locker room, and I thought I was talking about werewolves, cause I thought maybe he was one, and he thought I was talking about being gay….so when I told him I'd been through it myself, he thought I was coming out to him, so *he* came out to me. Turns out he wasn't the werewolf, but he did become our high school's one man queer liberation front after that."
Graham was laughing so hard that he knocked over his glass, spilling a quarter glass of beer all over the table as Xander told the story.
Graham was mopping up the spilled beer with a wad of paper napkins. "Wow!, out in high sch…Wait!, Wait!" His head snapped up and he stared hard at Xander," You're a werewolf?" Was he buying drinks for an HST?
"No, I was more like a were-hyena." Xander was smiling.
Graham stared at him, more than a bit puzzled.
Xander hastily added, "I got better." a pause "It was a one-time gig."
Graham asked carefully, "So… no turning hyena?"
Xander shook his head, and gave Graham a winning grin, "No. I promise. I turned hyena once. It was not good. I did not have a good time. I swear I'll never to do it again."
Graham sat back and stared hard at Xander. "You've led one interesting life, Xander Harris."
When Graham just kept staring at him with those eyes, Xander, a trifle uncomfortable, changed the subject back to Graham.
"So, how 'bout you? You got the boyfriend thing going on?" Guy who looked like Graham *had* to have at least one boyfriend, thought Xander.
"Nah, too dangerous -- career on the line."
Xander nodded. He almost said, 'not any more', but held back.
Graham refilled his glass and took a long swallow of beer. Then another. He held the almost empty glass between his hands, and twirled it slowly, back and forth. "Did some of the one-night stand thing… except it never lasted the whole night."
Remembering his one time with Faith, Xander said, "Yeah, I know that one, leaving the motel at 2 am, clothes in hand. Deed done, time to go. Not the total fulfilling experience."
Graham grinned somberly and nodded. "Yeah."
Graham continued "Mainly though, it was a lot of nights chatting up some guy, then bring too gutless to make a move and going back to my rack and putting on the headphones and listening to Patsy Cline…"
"… country music, the music of pain… " Xander added softly, nodding.
Graham looked at Xander a little surprised, a lot impressed that he knew who Patsy Cline was, and even more that her songs meant to Xander what they meant to Graham. He nodded slowly and said: "Exactly."
Their eyes met for a full second. Xander looked away.
Graham decided to change the subject. "So, you were you with Buffy before Riley?"
"Huh? No. Why?"
"The way you snagged her at the party at Lowell House from under his nose. You should have seen Riley's face." Graham was grinning from ear to ear.
Xander laughed as he shook his head "The Buffster and I have this long and tragic history of her being seriously not interested in me."
Graham gave Xander a serious once-over, and then said slowly, "Then she *is* peculiar."
It took Xander a full thirty seconds to process that one. "Thanks … I think." A beat. "Hey, let's play some pool!" Xander said brightly, changing the subject as quickly, if not as elegantly, as he could.
*****
Part 3: Xander Lets Go
Xander and Graham had played a couple of games of pool and then headed out. There had been an awkward moment when they parted, and Xander wondered whether they should hug. No, he had decided: They were too manly.
On the walk back to his home and basement, feeling some of the effects of the alcohol, Xander felt some stuff that he hadn't felt in a long time. It had been somehow easy to talk about it with Graham. Maybe it was just talking about it with another guy who knew all about hell-mouthy stuff, and had lost buddies along the way. Or maybe, just the way Graham looked at him.
He hadn't even mentioned Jesse in years. To anyone. Jesse had been his best bud. Had been for years. Until the vampires. And yet, with Graham, it had seemed the most natural thing in the world to mention Jesse…even if it hurt. Big time.
Xander started to get a little choked up thinking about Jesse. With Graham he had covered up with a jokey description of how Buffy had kicked some serious vampire ass, but he had left out the part about how he staked his best bud -- ok, Jesse had turned vampire, and Xander hadn't really meant to…
Everybody had different ways of dealing with stuff, thought Xander. When Buffy had to kill her vampire lover, she lost it and blew town and went walkabout for months, and everyone felt really sorry for her -- Except maybe Xander. Maybe because nobody cut him any slack when *he* had to stake his vampire lov….
Fuck! what am I saying! OK, he and Jesse had sort of fooled around, kid stuff. It wasn't like they were boyfriends or anything. Just sometimes when they were hanging around, they sort of …
OK, Xander thought, clearly for the first time: before Faith, I had had sex with exactly one person: Jesse. Ok, it wasn't great sex. It was mainly fooling around, and a couple of times when Xander had gotten a hold of a bottle of his Uncle Rory's peppermint schnapps, it had gone a little farther. But Xander was definitely still a virgin, in both senses, when he got captured by the she-mantis in grade 10. It just kind of happened when Xander had 'borrowed' porn tapes from his Uncle Rory's hidden collection and the two horny teenagers had turned off the lights and watched and well stuff happened -- the first four or five times, they hadn't even touched each other. Then they discovered that they didn't really need the porno tapes.
They never talked about it. Ever. And Xander certainly never brought it up with his other best friend, Willow: it was a guy thing, he'd told himself.
Xander was pretty much fighting back tears as he walked back home. It was late enough that his dad would be passed out. If he got caught coming home late by dad, there would be a scene. Like there always was. Ever since…
Ever since his dad, in a fairly drunken rage had started banging on the door to the basement, screaming to be let in, demanding to know what the fuck the two of them were doing in the basement. He and Jesse, pants around their ankles, were sitting next to each other on the couch in the basement, porno playing on the TV.
The two guys had freaked. Xander had pulled up his pants fast and turned off the TV, Jesse had yanked his clothes back on and started for the stairs. "That's not the way out!" Xander had yelled. And panicked Jesse had let Xander open the window above the washing machine for him and he had climbed out that way.
Xander had sat alone in the basement for what seemed like forever, listening to his dad beat on the door, turning the door knob violently, and demanding to know what they hell the two of them were doing, demanding to be let in. Telling Xander that he was making his mother cry. Xander could hear his mom's sobs whenever his dad stopped screaming to catch his breath.
Xander just sat, shivering, holding back tears. When his dad had finally relented and gone to bed, or passed out, or both, Xander had curled up on the basement couch and cried. He had cried himself to sleep. And that was the last time he had ever cried.
Xander had been wracked with guilt. He couldn’t look his dad in the eye, nor could his dad look him in the eye -- unless his dad was drunk, which was often enough, and then Xander would be on the receiving end of a pretty abusive tirade. And the lock on the basement door was removed a few days later while he was at school. He never asked why, and his dad never said anything to him.
And then, Jesse was dead. At Xander's hand, sort of, but close enough so that Xander's nightmares had been filled with the sight of Jesse turning to dust in front of him for months. When Jesse died, it was like something was all over. Almost like Jesse and Xander were being punished for the fooling around they'd done.
It was also the last time Xander let himself get close to another guy. He started hanging out with the girls, with Willow and Buffy and later Cordelia. He became a charter member of the she-woman man-haters club. Or at least the man-avoiders club. And as for the girls, he only went after the ones he knew he couldn't get: Buffy -- who he knew was only interested in dead-boy, and then a teacher (who turned out to be, well, not really human), and then a mummy girl, then Cordelia, who as the alpha cheerleader, would definitely have no interest in a loser like Xander Harris.
Except that she did. It clicked with Xander, finally, why it never really bothered him that he and Cordelia had never even gone as far as he had with Jesse. And Xander had managed to end things just when Cordelia was getting interested in getting serious. Because maybe subconsciously he wanted it over. And it was over, just in time. He thought. Just. in. time. It had still hurt like hell to get dumped like that: rejection is still rejection.
And then Faith, second shot at a slayer. They'd actually *had* sex, before she had rejected him. Xander figured that someone trying to choke you to death counted as rejection. And Anya. Well, you just don't say no to a vengeance demon. And yeah the sex had been fun. Big fun. But, Anya was not exactly like a real girlfriend. Close, but the girl was only interested in her orgasms… Ok, his too, which was…nice. Having an orgasm friend had been really pleasant, in a purely physically kind of way. But, you couldn't really talk to her about stuff. You couldn't goof around with her like you could with…Jesse.
Xander shook his head to clear it. OK, the being punished part made no sense now that he said it to himself. Jesse got vamped because the vamps got him. No other reason. Not because of fooling around with Xander, not to punish Xander. Just because the vamps dragged Jesse away before Buffy caught up with them.
He had been positive that he was never gonna have a bud like Jesse again. A guy who laughed at all his jokes, and ok, kidded him a bit, but someone Xander knew would always be there for him. Yeah, and maybe someone to fool around with.
Xander always kinda felt that the fooling around part meant more to him that it did to Jesse. He didn’t really know that, cause they never talked about it. And he always let Jesse make the moves. Always let Jesse be in control. Xander never took charge, afraid that if he pushed it, Jesse would bolt. Maybe it had been a mistake not to tell Jesse how he felt, or show Jesse how he felt, take charge once in a while. And now it was too late. Way too late.
And Xander didn't understand why hanging out with Graham was bringing this all out. Why was having a beer or two with Graham making him think about Jesse? Xander reached the porch of his house. Nothing made sense. Nothing. Except that one thing was *starting* to make sense. For the first time. Jesse. Xander didn't know if he had loved Jesse, or been in love with Jesse, or had a crush on Jesse, or just been really close buds with Jesse, or what. He did know that he missed Jesse. And he really missed what he'd had with Jesse.
Xander opened the door to the house slowly. He heaved a sigh of relief as he heard his dad snoring loud enough to wake the dead. Well, not quite *that* loud, he hoped. He walked very quietly to the basement stairs, gently closed the door behind him, and tip-toed down the creaky stairs. He switched on the light and looked around, the room was in as big a mess as his life was.
He was pretty sure he wasn't gonna be able to fall asleep. He picked up his walkman and walked over to the shelf where all his cassettes were. He heaved a sigh that sounded pathetic even to him. There was only one tape to put on. He pulled it out and slipped it in the walkman. And that song that he never finished listening to would be there, half way through. He just stripped off his clothes and fell into the unmade bed in his boxers. He put the headphones on. He pressed 'play'. He lay staring at the ceiling. Patsy Cline sang:
you want me to act like we've never kissed
you want me to forget,
pretend we've never…
Xander let out a sniff. A bigger one than he would have liked. He rolled on his side. He tried really hard not to think about Jesse.
I fall to pieces
each time someone speaks your name
I fall to pieces
time only adds to the flame.
He hugged the pillow tightly against his face and chest. He closed his eyes. Xander began to shudder, then convulse, then sob. "Jesse!" he moaned softly. And for the first time since that night when his dad had almost caught the two of them, Xander cried.
Parts 4,5,6,7
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