#anyway xander as a grown-up is more adorably james bond than he realizes

[theajaheira]

i'm not going to be posting this to ao3 until i know what i'm going to do with it, so for now, have it as a special tumblr preview: xander and sonia's first meeting in the 'verse of what you make!

(for those who would like to read this without the larger context, all you need to know is that this takes place post s7, and xander is working for a new iteration of the watchers' council in a slayer-locating capacity.)

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The girls he met reminded Xander of Buffy in a way that made his chest hurt a little. Though their responses to their calling varied widely, they were always remarkably unremarkable—always concerned with how this would impact their homework, their time with their friends, their bid for Prom Queen—and it always made him think about how Buffy had looked, holding those pom-poms with her chin jutting out. She had been so determined to still be normal, not yet knowing how hard the world would make it to just be.

They were trying to make it better for the girls. They were. But the New Council was still in its baby stages, and the loose framework they’d set up wasn’t always enough to convince the girls that they wanted to join up. Most of their fledgling resources were being devoted to making sure that the little Slayers weren’t going to be walking demon magnets, whether or not they were actually planning to take a stand against said demons. And the worst part was that Xander couldn’t even blame the girls for not wanting this kind of a life. Who would?

Well. Him. But he’d chosen, and they hadn’t. Buffy had wanted to give the girls a choice, and that was what was happening. Two girls of the seven he’d met had chosen, and done so with youthful exuberance that had torn a little at Xander’s heart. More often than not, excited optimism about a calling like this one was a recipe for disaster.

“Are you here for anything?” said the secretary archly.

Xander blinked, shaking his head a little to clear it, before giving the secretary his best winning smile. “Can you, uh, call Sasha Rivera up to the office?” he asked.

The secretary gave him a thoroughly unimpressed look. “No, I cannot, uh, call Sasha Rivera up to the office,” she said. “For one thing, it’s the middle of the day. She’ll be in class. For another—”

“Yeah, see, I’m here on business,” said Xander, flashing his official Council ID in the secretary’s direction. “Our organization wants to recruit Sasha for—”

“What organization?”

“We’re a lot like a Gifted and Talented program.”

“Are you a lot like a Gifted and Talented program, or are you a Gifted and Talented program?”

“Look, I talked to the principal on the phone,” said a bemused Xander. “He said he’d be fine with me sitting down and talking to Sasha about some of the opportunities our organization offers. Is there some kind of a problem?”

Before the secretary could answer, a well-dressed older guy rounded the corner, bustling with cheerful importance. “You must be Alexander Harris!” he said, clapping Xander particularly hard on the back and smiling with unctuous importance. “Welcome, welcome! And thank you ever so much for your charitable donation towards the restoration of our gymnasium! Not that money is tight here, of course it isn’t, but we can always improve upon the existing infrastructure, can’t we?”

“Uh,” said Xander. The secretary was still staring daggers at him for some reason. “Yeah?”

“Splendid,” said the guy, who Xander was now starting to recognize from the briefing packet that Willow had sent them. Principal Tom Sanders. Kind of an asshole, interested primarily in the care and keeping of money, possibly embezzling but nobody had been able to make charges stick just yet. The important thing was getting him to let Xander have a conversation with Sasha, which had been pretty concerningly easy the minute that Xander had made a “charitable donation” to the school. This really wasn’t helping Xander’s feelings about principals in general. “Sophie, why don’t you call Sasha up to the office?”

The secretary’s lips pursed. She stabbed a few buttons on her phone with particular violence, then spoke into the receiver. “Would Sasha Rivera come up to the front office, please?”

“Try to smile a little while you do it, why don’t you?”

“Oh, hey, that’s really not necessary,” said Xander uneasily.

The secretary looked up at Xander and smiled—all teeth, and particularly unpleasant. Xander’s heart flipped over. “Thank you for your charitable donation to Silverfish Middle School!” she said, making charitable donation sound like extremely contagious butt rash. “Sasha will be with you posthaste. Will anyone be looking into making sure she has access to the lesson plan for the time she misses in class?” she added towards the principal.

“Why don’t you ask me that when you’re not on the clock?” said the principal pointedly. “There’s gotta be a separation, Sophie. As my secretary, your job is to make sure Mr. Harris here is able to meet with Sasha Rivera, and frankly, it’s hard for me to see why you wouldn’t be over the moon about her having an opportunity like this.”

“An opportunity a lot like a Gifted and Talented program?” said the secretary.

“Sophie,” said the principal.

Clearly there was something going on here that Xander was missing. He was just about to ask some kind of clarifying question when a girl stepped into the office—tall, gangly, dark hair in two big poofs. “Is everything okay?” asked Sasha Rivera, holding herself in a way that was somewhere between anxiety and defensiveness.

“Sasha, you’ve got a visitor!” said the principal brightly. “This is Mr. Harris of—what was it?”

“The New Council,” said Xander.

“The New Council!” said the principal, clapping Xander on the back again. Xander lurched forward and almost rammed into the wall. “He’s here to talk to you about an amazing academic opportunity that he believes you’re perfect for.”

For some reason, Sasha’s eyes flitted to the secretary. “An academic opportunity,” she said, drawing out the words. “That I’m perfect for. Me.”

The secretary pinched the bridge of her nose.

“…Do you mind if we use your office?” Xander asked the principal.

“Oh, no, go ahead!” said the principal jovially. “Anything at all for such a generous—”

“Great!” said Xander. “Thanks. Sasha, could you come with me for a second?”

“Okay, you know what, I am at my limit,” said the secretary, standing up at her desk with fire in her eyes. “Tom, my name is Sonia, not Sophie, and this is not the way you run a school. Do any of us have any idea who this man is or what his program is espousing? Just because he hands you a big, fat check, you’re willing to let him come in off the street and spend some time behind a locked door with my sister? How is that remotely safe in any way?”

The principal’s smile went all plastic. “Sophie,” he said, “I think you and I can have this discussion later, and not now, especially not in front of—”

“Oh,” said Xander, who had somehow, finally, put two and two together. “No, uh, Sonia, if you want to sit in on this, you definitely can. I didn’t know you guys were sisters!” That did not sound like a thing a Professional Scholarship-Giving Man would say. He tried again. “I mean, look, I can’t really get into the academic stuff until this guy isn’t here—”

“This guy?” said the principal, a little testily.

“Whose office, time, and patience I am very grateful for,” Xander added hastily. “Obviously. I just mean that this is something I want to run by Sasha first, and if Sonia is concerned, as a family member, I can completely accommodate—”

“Now, hold on,” said the principal. “Sophie’s on the clock. I’m perfectly fine if you’d like a meeting with just Sasha, but someone needs to man the phones—”

“Well, if someone needs to man the phones, couldn’t you do it?” said Xander before his brain caught up to his mouth.

Sasha snorted. Sonia pressed her lips together, but her eyes were sparkling with mirth. “Mr. Harris,” said the principal. “I think you should remember that I am allowing you a meeting with one of my students when she should be in class, not suggestions as to how I should run my office.”

“Got it,” said Xander, holding his hands up. “Sonia—”

“Sophie is not a part of this conversation.”

“No, she’s not,” said Xander, not missing a beat. “I was talking to Sonia.”

“You’re a regular little wise-cracker, aren’t you?” said the principal, still with that plastic smile. “Listen, Mr. Harris, that donation of yours doesn’t go far enough to cover my secretary’s salary. If you want to talk to Soph—Sonia outside of school hours, you can, but—”

Ignoring the principal, Xander leaned over the desk, warmed by the fact that Sonia was no longer looking at him with outright antipathy. “I’m obviously not gonna get into the details in front of Principal Moneybags here,” he informed her, his heart doing a funny little twirl when her mouth twitched, “but I would like to talk to you. Both of you. I don’t want to exclude you; you’re involved in this as much as Sasha is. Most of the time, we come to the school, we talk to the girls before we talk to the family, because the girls are the ones who need this information the most. But if you’re receptive to listening, this is definitely a conversation that it would be okay for you to be there for.”

“Mr. Harris,” said the principal testily, no longer sounding quite so friendly.

Sonia looked up at him—gorgeous eyes, Xander thought, as dark as the night sky—and said, simply, “Okay.”

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They met at a café a few blocks away from the school, Sasha cheerfully guzzling down a hot chocolate while Sonia delicately sipped black coffee. “I hope I didn’t jeopardize your job there,” Xander started uncertainly, eyes on Sonia even though they probably should have been on Sasha.

“No, it’s fine,” said Sonia tiredly. “I’ve been thinking about quitting for a while now. He keeps calling me Sophie and asking me to handle all the Black History Month stuff because I’d know more about it than him.”

“Which is racist,” Sasha chimed in. “He’s a stupid old racist.”

“Definitely do not say anything uncomplimentary about your teachers within their earshot,” said Sonia, fixing Sasha with the same terrifying Older Sister Look that Buffy had perfected. She looked back towards Xander with a lopsided smile, took another sip of her coffee, and added, “But yes. He is a stupid old racist.”

“…Uh,” said Xander. Usually, the talks with the girls were pretty straightforward. He did tend to fuck something up in the process, because he wasn’t always good at tapping into his inner Confident Xander, but this was the first time that talking to one of the baby Slayers also involved talking to someone this intimidating. And pretty. Intimidatingly pretty. That described this situation very well. “So. Look. I have something I need to talk to Sasha about.”

“Really,” said Sonia.

“Soso, don’t be mean,” said Sasha reprovingly, setting her own hot chocolate down. “Mr. Harris—”

“Xander,” Xander corrected.

“Really?” said Sonia.

“Again,” said Sasha. “Don’t be mean.” She turned expectantly to Xander. “Xander. What kind of academic thing am I up for?”

Now came the hard part. “Not an academic thing at all, actually,” said Xander carefully. “More like…” He hesitated. “Sasha, have you been experiencing anything unusual in your day-to-day life as of late?”

Sonia stiffened. Sasha’s gaze went down to the table. “So, what is this, some kind of X-Files investigation?” said Sonia, defenses up all over again. “You’re zeroing in on my sister with your perfect suit and your effortless charm and you’re going to cart her off to a government institution to do experiments on her?”

“Okay, first of all, if you want to cover up the weird happenings, you might not want to accuse me of being an undercover government operative,” said Xander, not sure whether he should be amused or concerned. “Second of all, if I was a government operative, I’d be the worst government operative ever, because I did just invite you guys out for coffee. And third—” Something caught his attention. “Effortless charm?”

Sotto voce, Sasha said, “My sister likes dorks.”

“Stop that,” said Sonia to Sasha.

“Do you not like dorks?” Sasha gestured to Xander. “Is he not totally your type?”

Xander decided to change the subject. Effortlessly. “HA HA HA ANYWAY,” he said, hoping to God that he wasn’t blushing. “UNUSUAL OCCURRENCES?”

“Why do you wanna know?” asked Sasha. It wasn’t as defensive as Sonia, but there was something of a warning to the question.

Relieved by a topic of conversation that wasn’t whatever the hell had just happened, Xander transitioned back into the usual Slayer spiel. “There’s a lot of stuff I’m gonna tell you right now,” he said. “Pretty much all of it is going to be hard to believe. When I’m done, I am going to show you categorical proof that my word is good. If you don’t want proof, or if you think I’m a total nut-job, that’s fine, but you need to understand that burying your head in the sand is going to put you in more danger than you’re already in right now.”

“Danger?” Sasha repeated skeptically.

“Danger,” Xander confirmed. “So listen up.”