Must Be A Tuesday

Buffy sighed, and dabbed as gently as she could manage at the slashes in Xander's shoulder. "You are so lucky you're not dead."

Xander winced. "I'm not convinced."

"That you're lucky, or that you're not dead?"

"Exactly." He hissed as she patted a cloth over the wound and stuck it down to his skin with adhesive. "I think it's time I get bonus pay on this job."

Buffy sat down next to him, and glared at him. "You're an idiot."

"And your sunshiney attitude is speeding my recovery along just fine." He sat up extremely slowly, and reached for his shirt. Buffy handed it to him without a word. "Y'know, Buff, there's this new concept some people are trying out, where they thank each other for -"

"Don't. Don't even start." Buffy crossed her arms and glared again. "You could've been killed, over nothing, and you're gonna give me attitude that I'm not congratulating you on putting yourself in danger? Uh-uh. Not happening."

"I didn't ask for congratulations. Believe me, I don't feel like I managed anything great, here." He struggled with getting the shirt over his head without lifting his wounded arm, and made very little progress. In between efforts, he said, "And I don't really need to be lectured over doing something dumb again. Kinda lowers the morale a little."

Buffy sighed. "It's not that it was DUMB, Xander. It's that it was needless. Usually when we've got guys with long knives and big teeth, you wanna leave them to me."

"Well, he was behind you," Xander said through an armhole of his shirt.

Buffy stood up and straightened his shirt out for him, then held the armhole as low as she could for his arm to slide through. "I kinda knew that."

"Right. The ol' Spidey-sense." He winced and held a hand to his shoulder. "Well, look. Willow's gone, Giles is gone, Tara's gone, Anya's..." He trailed off. "I saw him coming for you and I panicked. I knew he was there, I had the surprise, I thought it would be enough. Y'know, six years of this, guess I had myself fooled into thinking I knew what I was doing."

Buffy put a hand to his shoulder, as well, much more gently. "Don't put yourself down. I didn't mean it like that." She sighed. "You and Dawn, Xander... You're the ones I have left. I'm gonna fight with everything I have to keep you. You're my family."

He hung his head, embarrassed. It was usually easier, somehow, for him to say this sort of thing to Buffy than to hear it from her. "Yeah. Yeah, I know."

"And if anything looks like it's about to go wrong?" She tapped his good shoulder, forcing him to look up at her. "You run like hell. You go, get Dawn, wherever she is, and don't even look back at me. Got me?"

Xander gave her a half-grin. "Not a damned chance."

She grinned back. "Figured as much."

"Least I'm dependable, huh?"

"We'll talk." She got up from the table and slid an arm under his shoulder to support him. "Let's get you sewn up at the hospital."

"Y'know, I think I'm almost gonna be disappointed when Willow gets back. This is sorta fun."

"Nearly getting killed every week?"

"You walking around with your arms around me."

"Enough already," she said with a laugh.