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Pre-Fic Comments:
Doncha hate it when an idea grabs you and won't let you go? I might continue this (might!) but if anyone else wants to take this and run with it, email me and ask.
* * *
Rupert Giles was moderately excited. He had been assigned to Watch over the new Slayer, Buffy Summers. It was an honour to be selected, out of all the possible Watchers that the Council could have called.
Eclipsing that task was the fact that he would finally be able to meet a long distance friend for the first time.
He had first encountered the friend when the fellow had written to him about the bibliography of the Elusive Writings. In return, the fellow sent him a photostat copy of the 1909 printing of Unaussprechlichen Kulten. While that version had been censored heavily by the printers, Giles had greatly appreciated receiving it. The Watcher had written back to the man, and their friendship had grown from there. He had found the man to be unusually erudite in the field of esoteric occult literature, and an amazing source of information about where one might find copies.
The British man looked down at the note with the carefully written address.
Xander Harris
FIXME FIXME FIXME
Sunnydale, CA
USA
Ah, this was the correct house. Strange, it didn't look like what he had envisaged. Giles looked up and down the road, before straightening his jacket. He knocked on the door three times.
It was answered by a man who had been behind the door when good looks -- or smell -- was being handed out. A days growth of beard was on his face, and he was garbed in jeans and a singlet.
"Excuse me, sir, but is there a Xander Harris living here?," Giles asked, mindful of the fact that assumptions made an ass out of you and me.
"What you want the boy for? He done something?," the man asked
"No," Giles replied. "I merely wish to meet him."
"Sure," the barely-human man said. "Xander! Get here now!"
Giles blinked. The learned scholar of three years acquaintance appeared to be a sixteen year old boy with abominable dress sense.
* * *
Giles was in the boy's small bedroom, carefully sitting on the bed in between stacks of books. Most of the floorspace was taken up in ancient grimoires and scrolls, modern notebooks and catalogs. A small desk in the corner had a relatively clean area with some sheets of paper that were half-filled with writing.
"Surprised?," Xander asked, a grin tugging at his mouth.
"To be honest, yes," Giles said. "I was expecting a man of retirement age, not..."
Xander shrugged. "I learnt long ago what this town was on. Once I started learning what the world was really like... could you stop?"
The man in tweed could only shake his head.
"So... why are you in Sunnydale, Rupert?," Xander asked, a pencil rolling around his fingers unconsciously.
"Well..." Giles made a snap decision. "I trust you with this. Vampires are real, as you know. What you don't know is that into each generation a Slayer is born, one girl in all the world, a Chosen One, one born with the strength and skill to hunt the vampires--"
"--to stop the spread of their evil et cetera," Xander interrupted. He got up, excited, and dug into a pile at the foot of his bed. He produced a faded book, brittle with age and the acidic ink used. He handed it to Giles.
The Watcher looked it over. His hands started shaking. "Good Lord.... where did you get this? This is the sixth edition of the Slayer's Handbook!"
"A copy, actually," Xander said smugly. "I found it at a book fair in Los Angeles two years ago."
Giles looked around the small room with new respect. He'd already known that Harris had works like the Book of Eibon, and De Vermis Mysteriis, but the man also had numerous other books. A thorough man, then, not a dilantette.
"I'm going to help you and the new Slayer," Xander said. "Research, if nothing else. Demons and other supernatural entities of unholy origin are drawn to Hellmouths, historically."
* * *
Post-Fic comments:
Must replace the FIXME's with Xander's street address (if it is known.)