In Which Xander Gains Some More (Okay, Pretty Odd) Experience Points

Things were better now, way better than they were last year, but sometimes Xander felt like he still didn't quite belong in the group. It wasn't like he didn't know that Buffy and Willow and Giles would always be there for him, would always want to be his friend, but sometimes it just felt like they didn't want him right now. Dawnie always wanted him around, sure, even though she knew she couldn't touch him any more than the other girls could. Maybe that was the appeal, Xander though. The "safe" guy. That was him.

Maybe, Xander thought, it was something to do with the fact that they were all coupled off now, and he wasn't. As he listened to his parents breaking things upstairs (honestly, it was a wonder they even had anything left to be breaking, at this point) and listened to Riley cough awkwardly and then tease Buffy, he wished he had somebody to sit below him, someone whose shoulders he could rub and who could pat his knee comfortingly when the yelling got unbearable.

Man, he really needed to get his own place.

But when it came time to actually do that, he awkwardly waved at the realtor instead of shaking her hand, and she was obviously much more impressed with Riley than him, and he suspected she would be plotting how to make a move right now if he wasn't holding onto Buffy's hand so tight. God, always with the hand-holding.

Then of course his evil twin had to show up and start taking over his life, striding around with his hair all slicked back and awesome and hey, was that really what he looked like from the back? Xander never knew his back was all broad and stuff, with an ass that never felt as tight when it was actually attached to him than it looked on someone else.

When he was crouching on the floor outside the apartment that should have been his, he heard the real estate lady coming on to the other him and thought bitterly that probably, being an evil twin, even though the other Xander looked like him he could probably touch her if he wanted. Not that Xander really wanted to. Her lips were way too red and her hair was sort of pointy and he didn't really think that suit was doing much for her.

And just as the guy, the other Xander, was leaving the apartment, Xander crept out from around the corner (very sneakily, if he did say so himself). Then he yelled, "Yaaa" and jumped on the other him's back. Which maybe ruined the sneaky vibe he'd been going for, but it was too great an opportunity to pass up.

And also then the other Xander punched him, which really wasn't how he'd planned on this going at all.

"I won't let you do this!" he yelled from the floor.

For a second, it looked like the other guy was just going to run away. He looked scared. But then a "What's going on out there?" came from the apartment across the hall, and the guy looked sharply at Xander and then seemed to make a decision. "Get up," he said. "In here," and he opened the door to what should have been Xander's apartment with the keys he'd just gotten.

Xander cautiously stood up and followed him, leaning back against the door and keeping his hand on the doorknob, just in case he needed to make a speedy exit.

The guy turned on him, whip-fast, and pushed him up against the wall, twisting his collar in his hand. "Why'd you steal my face?"

"What?" Xander said, flabbergasted. (And a little bit short of breath, because it wasn't like people pushed him up against walls every day of the week. At least, not since the summer and Rob.) "You stole my face. You're my evil twin!"

The guy took a step back, seeming a little flustered himself. "No I'm not. You're my evil twin."

Xander was confused, and worse than that, he found his mind wandering, eyes sliding up and down the other Xander, and he'd never realized how good his hair could look all slicked back like that, and wow, he should wear button-up shirts that weren't three sizes too big more often. And when he finally made his way to the guy's face, Xander was surprised to see that the guy was eying him just as intently.

"What?" he said.

"Nothing!" the guy said quickly, looking away. "It's just, I never really looked at myself quite like this, you know?"

"I was just thinking the same thing!" Xander said, and laughed, and the other guy started laughing too. And then Xander realized abruptly that he was laughing with his evil twin. He'd never noticed how his eyes crinkled up like that when he laughed, and Xander had never really thought himself to be an attractive guy, but all of a sudden…

And maybe it was that, or the fact that Xander knew what he was missing now, thanks to Dracula, and suddenly the lack of sex in his life was a million times more devastating than it had ever been before, or maybe he was going a little crazy, what with the evil twin thing and all. But one of those things surely explained what Xander did next. Which was, instead of punching the evil demon who'd stolen his face, or running away and finding Buffy, saying, "Hey," soft and slow, and taking a step toward the other guy.

He must have recognized something in Xander's voice, because his eyes went wide and then narrowed, and then his mouth turned up a little bit at the corners, uncertain, and Xander almost felt like he didn't even need to say what he said next.

But he said it anyway. "Hey, so, I know you're, like, super evil and stuff, but we're never gonna get this chance again, right?"

And the guy said, "I mean, I know this is probably just part of some evil ploy to kill me…"

And Xander said, "I could say the same thing about you."

And the guy said, "But," and took another step forward.

And Xander said, "Yeah…" and licked his lips.

And then they were on each other, and it felt so strange to be grasping his own hair, sliding his hands down his own chest, unbuckling the same belt he'd had for six years now, a weird out of body experience that Xander had never in a million years dreamed he would have.

It was weird, Xander knew that, thought it in the back of his head as his garbage-stained shirt was ripped off him. But it was also good, which helped with pushing those thoughts away. After all, Xander knew what his body liked, and maybe it was part of the evil demon magic that his twin seemed to know too, and so Xander told himself to ignore the weird and just enjoy it, because this was probably the only action he was going to get in the near (or distant) future unless he decided to take a spontaneous trip to Transylvania or something.

And after, as he drifted off into a satisfied sleep, he thought, Maybe this guy isn't evil after all. Maybe there's some other explanation, even for that shiny thing he keeps flashing.

But when he woke up, the other guy was gone.

Then of course it turned out that he wasn't an evil twin after all, just a split-off part of Xander's essence or something—Xander kind of stopped listening at some point. Not because of how the other Xander's shirt collar was flipped under and showing a patch of neck or anything. No, other reasons. Other reasons were the reason he wasn't paying attention.

Xander was starting to realize the extent to which living in Sunnydale could really mess with your sexuality. No wonder Buffy was always going for the fangy ones.

After they'd, ahem, checked out some stuff in the car on the way to the magic shop, and after Giles did his spelly thing to put them back together again, Xander thought to ask whether the curse would have stuck to both of them. Anya's curse, that was. "Perhaps not," Giles said, taking off his glasses and scrunching his eyebrows consideringly at Xander. "It's possible the Toth's curse would have considered a preexisting curse to simply be another aspect of your personality and siphoned it into one or another of you. Did you try to, um…touch any women while under the curse?"

"No!" Xander said. "I was too busy going after myself! That is, I mean, getting on my own tail…I mean, following myself! Trying to solve the mystery!"

Giles gave him a look that was less considering and more pitying, mixed with something Xander couldn't quite pin down, maybe something like secret amusement. But that was pretty much just another day on the Hellmouth.

xXx

It seemed like he spent much of the rest of that fall trailing after Riley on patrol (and holding himself back from reaching out to grab that ass. Buffy was one lucky lady in that department) and fighting a sort of distant crush on him that he suspected was made up in large part of being relieved that Buffy had picked somebody way less evil (and less mean) than Angel this time. And better looking too, Xander thought, not being so much just one big forehead. And though lXander privately thought that he had handled being useless and un-powerful much more gracefully than Riley, overall…even so, he was still the best guy Buffy had ever dated, by a long shot.

But he felt a little twinge when he told Buffy to go after him, not to let him go. Because there was a tiny, selfish piece of Xander that knew his crush on Riley would only get bigger if Riley came back, and an even tinier part that whispered that he could love Riley better than Buffy could. But that wasn't even on the table, obviously, and besides, Xander didn't think he would even know where to begin with big scary feelings-monster kind of love. So maybe it was best (for all of them, maybe for Buffy most of all, because if Xander was honest he wasn't sure she was ready for another big scary either) that Riley left anyway.

But even with the realization that he wasn't exactly ready for something real, like, god forbid, a mature adult relationship, Xander was glad when he could say that he'd had sex with people besides himself and Dracula.

As the months passed and Dawn got kidnapped every other week and then they realized she was connected to some great mystical something (because who wasn't, around here, except for Xander), there were others, too. A few one-night stands at bars he wasn't quite old enough to be in, in cities not his own so no one would know (he even went to LA once; now that was a horrifying experience). Not that he was ashamed of being gay (he guessed he might as well get used to the fact, because it had definitely been true for a while), but Xander was certainly ashamed of going to bars where there were more men wearing glitter than not. Then there was that guy who was only into him when he was dressed up as an army guy, but that only lasted a couple of weeks and there was no need to go into that whole thing, really. Xander would kind of rather not think about how weird that had started to get.

But nothing too noteworthy, and mostly Xander concerned himself with helping to save the world through the power of research and being secretly thankful that even lady vampires couldn't come within a foot of him without bouncing away again, which came in particularly handy whenever Harmony decided to come to town.