Standard disclaimers apply.
Xander had been facing death since he was 15 and he had wondered more than once if it would be better to see it coming or not. Tonight was a 'see it coming' night, and he wasn't fond. Maybe if he saw it coming because he was boldly leaping into danger to protect someone (and hey, he'd had some chances at a Blaze Of Glory, They'd Say Awesome Things At The Funeral ending) that would be one thing, but just getting to his feet after being knocked down and seeing Big Ugly launch some sort of totally gross bone spears at him with no chance to move? Kinda sucked.
As it happened, though, when you see death coming, it means you're not looking at your rescue. He felt something slam into him from the side, heard the disturbingly familiar sound of solid objects tearing into flesh, and rolled over to see Kitty's face contorted in pain as the unit spasmed beside him.
For the record (and there was a record as of all official patrols) Xander did not 'snap'. He did react rather quickly, and it's possible that moving into hand to hand range in order to empty his revolver into the eye slit in the creature's exoskeleton was a little more... hands on than usual Initiative trained tactics, but that doesn't mean he 'snapped'. And there's nothing wrong with a little strong language while eliminating a hostile.
When the Ugly was down and the team had all called out their conditions, he flung himself beside his HK and tried to assess the damage. The spasms had faded, but it still trembled badly like after the... Then he remembered the impact as Kitty had knocked him aside. "Fuck, I hate that chip. Listen, I have to get these spears out of you so you can heal. It might hurt more, just hang on."
As his team bagged the hostile and cleaned up the area, he drew the bony weapons as gently as he could from the unit's body, murmuring praise and comfort the entire time. When Richards, the team medic, made his way to their side, Xander only said, "You got the blood?"
"You're cut, sir, if you could-"
"Yeah but the brass freaks if I feed it my own, so do you have the blood or not?"
Trying not to sigh loudly enough for for it to be considered insubordination, Richards gave up trying to check on his commander's scalp and reached for the two blood bags that he had found space for in his gear after HK1217 suffered its first major injury with their team. It was O neg, rotated daily and the coil of transfusion tubing granted some plausible deniability, but he'd rather admit that he was prepared to feed an injured vamp than ever again have to fudge an injury report to make "Lt Harris sliced his own arm deep enough to need stitches when his Hunter/Killer got hurt" into something less likely to get his commander on mental health leave.
Harris might be younger than him and granted his commission based on 'special skills of value to the Initiative' but he was the best team leader Richards had worked with before or after he joined the monster hunting squads. And if he treated his HK unit closer to the way a K-9 officer dealt with his dog than a com tech saw his gear, well... he kept them all alive and they had a kill/capture rate that gave them bragging rights with anyone whose clearance allowed bragging.
Xander ignored the sigh and took the first bag, stabbing through the IV port with the bone spear he had just removed and holding it to the HK's mouth. "There you go, sweet Kitty, you're gonna be fine..." He wondered a bit at the way it wouldn't meet his eyes, usually his unit would be staring at him as he doctored it. But the wounds were closing and he turned his attention to his duties as he held the second bag.
"Walsh, you and Jackson get Big Ugly to the white coats and if your Aunt Maggie asks why we didn't take it alive, tell her to wait and read the reports. Davidson, you're to check in for a complete workup, and no I don't care that there was no intel on this thing being poisonous, there was no intel on it being immune to electricity either." He gathered Kitty up in his arms and headed for the jeep. "Richards, stop fussing, the scratch was from a tree I hit and I'm not concussed, trust me I know what that feels like. I want descriptions of the hostile's tactics and downloads of any good shots of it from the helmet cams in the system before we go off duty tonight, full reports at the start of tomorrow's shift."
He skipped his office - he could do the basics from his room after he was sure Kitty was okay. The wounds had closed by the time they got back to base, but the unit was very still, not meeting his eyes and seemed almost afraid.
When they got into the room, things hadn't changed, and he sat them on the bed and spoke quietly. "What's wrong, Kitty? Did those spears have something on them or do you need more blood?" The unit shook its head, still lowering its eyes. "You're scaring me a little, here. Is it because of the chip triggering, I'm so sorry you had to deal with that on top of the injuries, I mean you were saving me and-"
The HK shuddered hard and held up its hands, twisting them apart and down. "I don't understand, Kitty." It reached over to his bedside table and took a pencil then snapped it in half. "You broke something?" It shook it's head, snapped the pieces again and pointed from itself to the pile. "You're broken?" He caught its chin in his fingers and turned the unit to face at him, seeing both pain and shame in expressive blue eyes even as it tried to look away.
Xander's mind raced. Kitty wasn't physically hurt, but something about the fight had upset it worse than he had ever seen. It hadn't taken down the Ugly personally, but Xander had been proud of its performance and was planning a thorough reward considering it put itself between him and...
"Vamp units can take a lot of damage, and 1217 here has a reputation for being practically indestructible, but never count on it as a shield. We've lost more than one handler because an HK dodged when he expected it to stand and fight and the hostile barreled right into him."
Remembering the words of his trainer when he was being paired up, it all clicked together. "Oh, Kitty... You're upset because you saved me." The unit turned away but he just pulled it into his arms and stroked its back and arms while whispering into its hair. "No, Kitty, you aren't broken, never broken, you're the strongest vampire I've ever seen..." He picked it up and walked to the shower. "Let's get you cleaned up, huh?" He stripped off the shreds of the black jumpsuit and began washing off the blood and dirt from the fight. "Nuh uh," he batted away Kitty's hands when it tried to undress him as well. "Let Xander take care of you tonight. Someone deserves a hero's reward, hmm?"
He rinsed the unit and toweled it gently dry, touching every bit of skin, and kissing or nipping a few particularly tempting areas. Then he carried it back and set it on the bunk with a kiss to the tip of its nose. "You sit right here a minute, okay?" He returned after a quick shower of his own, throwing on a pair of clean boxers before sitting beside Kitty and running his hands over the pale expanse of skin before him.
"Tell me something, Kitty." He began circling its pink nipples with his fingertips, lightly scratching one or the other occasionally. "If those spears had been heading for Richards or Walsh tonight, would you have done anything but used the opportunity to hit the Ugly?" He caught those pretty blue eyes with his own and wouldn't look away until it shook its head slightly no. "That's right, you wouldn't."
The nipples had begun to pebble up and he started pinching and rolling them between his fingers and thumbs, not bothering to hide his smile as the unit needlessly panted and arched its back slightly. "And if I had been crazy enough to let your old handler Finn take you out tonight to 'keep his hand in with the fieldwork', would you have saved his life?" This time the head shake was emphatic, and Xander rewarded it by leaning down to lick and suck one of the hardened nubs. "That's right," he said around his treat, nipping lightly before sitting up again. "He was lucky I didn't deck him for just looking at you like he did. You aren't his, you never were, not like you're mine."
He slipped a hand down its belly, tracing the hard lines of muscle to bypass the unit's erection and pet its thighs and balls. "Now I want you to really think, Kitty and be honest with yourself and me, okay?" He began to slowly feather touches on its length, not even hard enough to move its foreskin against the shaft. "If I get reassigned tomorrow, or killed or hurt too badly to keep doing fieldwork, and the brass tries to assign you a new handler and tell you that you're his now, are you going to treat him like you do me?"
He kept his eyes pinned on the unit's and in spite of the confidence he was handling its body with, he held his breath a moment waiting for it to respond. Kitty shook its head the tiniest bit, and ran a hand over its long stilled heart, then the neck scar from its turning before placing its fingertips in the center of Xander's chest. Tears pricked in his eyes as he moved forward on the bunk, covering its body with his own and peppering kisses over its face and neck.
"That's right. You aren't broken, Kitty, you're mine. My strong, brave, loyal Kitty, and no one else's." He let the unit remove his boxers this time and reveled in the feeling of cool, strong hands clinging to him as he pumped their arousals together. "I'll tell you something else, too. There might have been a way to take that hostile captive like the white coats wanted, but I didn't even take time to think about it. That ugly motherfucker hurt you and it was gonna die."
Kitty pulled its head back and looked at him with eyes gone gold around the edges as a low growl started from its chest. "I don't know what I'd do if I lost you, but there's no way I could just be assigned another HK. You're mine, but I'm your's too, Kitty." He might have said more, but there were cool lips covering his and a clever tongue mapping his mouth and he just gripped a hip hard enough that he'd be worried about hurting a human and ground down on the cool, familiar form as they both came.
Afterwards, he made the unit stay in bed while he cleaned them up. "Rewarding my hero, remember?" And if his report didn't even get started until the next morning, the white coats could deal. He had a Kitty to pet, kiss and love until it lost any trace of shame at facing how fully it belonged to him.