Title: A Breed Apart
Author: Knife Hand
Feedback: Constructive feedback appreciated, flames unappreciated
Spoilers: Some, mostly early series.
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: I do not own Buffy. I would buy the show but I am broke.
Category: Buffy/Xander
Summary: On her first day at Sunnydale High, Buffy finds an odd kinship to a fellow student and something she never knew about herself.
AN: The events of The Witch, Teacher's Pet and Never Kill a Boy on the First Date never happened.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Xander followed Joyce down into the kitchen, helping her as she made some snack food for Buffy.
"Buffy is special." Xander said after a few minutes.
"Of course she is. She is my only child." Joyce replied in a slightly nervous tone.
Xander paused for a minute trying to think of another way to approach the subject.
"Tell me about Buffy's father." Xander said at last.
"Who, Hank?" Joyce responded.
"No. Not your husband, Buffy's father." Xander replied.
"I don't know what you are talking about." Joyce stuttered.
"Trust is at the heart of all things true, from true love to true despair." Xander commented.
"He used to say that. Buffy's father, I mean. How do you know that phrase?" Joyce said.
"From my mother, my real mother. She was like Buffy's father. That is all the stuff I brought over. My mother's journals and letters. I don't even remember her; she left me for my own protection when I was very young." Xander confided.
"That's what her father said. He said he had to leave for her and my sake, that 'they' would never accept her. I never found out what he meant." Joyce said.
Xander and Joyce spent the next twenty minutes talking. Joyce told Xander all about Buffy's father, their relationship and the real reason why Hank did not like to see Buffy, he was 'shooting blanks' as Xander put it. In return Xander told Joyce about his mother, the truth behind vampires, both Buffy and Xander's respective parent and the soulless variety that roamed Sunnydale, and Buffy's calling as the Slayer, including that he would always stand by her.
"I want to help." Joyce said after hearing the full story.
"You are. Just be her mother, which is what she will need. An element of normality in her life." Xander responded.
Xander and Joyce walked back upstairs to Buffy's room carrying the snacks and drinks. Joyce left and Xander dropped onto the bed next to Buffy.
"Find what you wanted to know?" Xander asked.
"I guess." Buffy replied.
The lay there for a while both reading the same passage from one of Xander's mother's journals, not really noticing how close they were, or that their legs had intertwined.
"I got a great idea. Let's take over Sunnydale High." Xander said after a while.
"How?" Buffy queried, showing genuine interest.
"Redefine cool." Xander said with his patented lopsided grin.
********
The last few weeks, since Xander had shown Buffy the stuff about his mother, had seen progress in their plans to take over Sunnydale High. The first step was to get Xander, Buffy and Willow into similar outfits, mostly slightly loose pants and slightly tight shirts or blouses, usually in dark colours.
Xander had joined the swim team, which trained on Wednesday, and after convincing Principal Flutie to let them use the Gymnasium, every day except Wednesday when it was used for Cheerleader practice, they had formed the Gymnastics and Self-defence clubs, which met on Monday and Friday for one hour, two for more advanced students, leaving the rest of the afternoon and the entire afternoon Tuesday and Thursday for training.
General Hellmouth research was conducted on Wednesday, after swim practice for Xander, and most lunchtimes. Giles officially oversaw the Gymnastics and Self-defence clubs as faculty representative. As would be expected a fair number of Cheerleaders signed up for Gymnastics to work on their flexibility, and several to stare at Xander's muscles as he did routines on the rings and parallel bars in a tank top.
At first there were not many boys in the Gymnastics club, until they saw two things. First were some of the routines that Xander could do, including handstand on the rings and the giant swings on the high bar. The second reason that men began joining was an age old one, women. They saw not only the outfits that the girls wore, which resembled tight fitting one- piece bathing suits, but also that the girls seemed to like Gymnasts.
The Self-defence classes were a different matter. Most of the initial members were outcasts who were always picked on and now wanted to fight back. Most were slow to learn and wanted to do the cool sword fighting that Buffy and Xander would sometimes do without learning the basics first. Some of the students were surprising. Willow quickly became a decent fighter as she was doing both Self-defence and Gymnastics she was fast and flexible.
The Gymnastics, as well as training with Buffy and Xander, had increased her strength; in fact some of her training on Tuesday and Thursday were directly focused on strength. Another quick study was Oz, who was in the year above them and lead guitarist in a band. The reserved and quite type, Oz started in Gymnastics, the first male besides Xander to join, and was pretty good and he soon joined Self-defence as well.
Unlike his stoic personality, Oz was very adaptive in a fight and a slightly aggressive. The biggest surprise, though, came from the smallest student, Jonathan Levinson. Despite his small stature, Jonathan was fast and agile. Buffy and Xander decided to teach him a soft style of martial arts, which would utilise his speed and agility while turning his opponent's strength against them. He soon became one of the best students in the class and could probably survive an encounter with a fledgling or minor vampire, but they determined he was not ready, yet, to know the truth.
Putting Self-defence class out of her mind, Buffy walked into the Bronze looking for Willow and Xander. She hadn't seen Xander since they had gotten back from the fieldtrip to the zoo today. She quickly spotted Willow at one of the tables, and she made her way over quickly, stoping at the bar to get a coke and a croissant.
She sat next to Willow and they began idly chatting and ignoring the stares they got from all the high school boys. Xander saunters in and almost every female turns to look at him, their heads tracking his movement towards Buffy and Willow.
"Girls!" Xander said with a grin.
"Boy." Buffy responded glibly.
"Sorry I'm late, I... just forgot that we were gonna be here." He said, spotting Buffy's Croissant. "Hungry!"
Xander tears a piece of Buffy's Croissant off and begins to eat it.
Buffy looks offended.
"What is this crap? I need real food." Xander said.
Xander dropped the piece of Croissant, leaned towards Buffy, sniffing slightly and purring. While normally this would not be considered unusual, except that it was in public, the purring was unlike anything they had heard before. While there were some Dampir inflections, mostly mate, it was more feral and creepily comical.
At this point Kyle and party, who had just entered, took over another table, after being stared down by Xander. One of them made a cruel joke and the others laughed, joined by Xander.
********
"Something's wrong with Xander, Giles." Buffy said as she entered the library.
"Such as?" Giles responded calmly.
"I think he is possessed or something?" Buffy raged.
"And why would you think this?" Giles said.
"He's been different, meaner. He was teasing people, laughing at torment. He even went Game Face. He never goes Game Face Giles, not unless he's outraged, and he wasn't."
"Sound's like he is turning into a teenage boy. Testosterone is the great equaliser, it turns all men into morons. He will get over it, eventually." Giles said calmly.
"He smelt different." Buffy stated.
"Excuse me?"
"He smelt different. There was a feral scent overlaying his own scent, almost canine."
The doors came crashing open and Willow barged in.
"I think Xander in trouble." Willow said.
"How so?" Giles said.
"Kyle and his gang were picking on me, and then Xander came and stopped them. He said something about me being part of his pack. Then they called him a traitor or something and said the next time they saw him there would be a fight for leadership. Whatever that means." Willow babbled.
"God, I am so mentally challenged. He smells like the Hyenas at the zoo. I got to find him, he can't take them all. You two research animal possessions." Buffy said as she went out the door.
********
Buffy stepped up beside Xander as he faced off against the four other Hyena possessed students.
'Need help?' Buffy growled in the Dampir language.
'Just play along.' Xander responded in kind.
Xander began to sniff and purr at Buffy, who returned the treatment, however it was much more intimate than usual, which normally was the post battle ritual. The whole act was to convince the other possessed students that Buffy and Xander were mates, hence all the more dangerous when together as they would fight to the death to protect each other. After this display the faced off against the others, looking to scare them off for the moment.
As they stalked towards the others, Buffy brought forth her Game Face, then looked over at Xander with her burnished golden eyes and he brought his own Game Face forward. This caused enough fear in Kyle and the others that they turned and ran. As soon as they were out of sight, Xander retracted his Game Face, looked at Buffy, still in her Game Face, for a long second, as if he was struggling with himself, then he ran for the Library.
********
Xander ran into the Library, shocking Willow and Giles, and locked himself in the book cage. Buffy entered a second later, he Game Face gone.
"What the hell do you think you are doing?" Buffy demanded.
"Sorry Buffy, but I almost lost control. The Hyena, it's in me and I can't always control it. It wanted you during that, and then when you changed, the Dampir, I, wanted you. I almost lost it and I can't trust myself at the moment." Xander said, shame clear in his voice.
"Um. Changed?" Willow asked nervously.
"I went Game Face." Buffy said.
"Ok. I think we should get back to how we can reverse-trans-possess Xander." Giles said.
The poured over books and Willow searched the internet. Xander even helped from inside the book cage, Buffy or Willow passing him books to look through.
********
Willow waited, jiggling nervously outside the quarantined Hyena enclosure. Giles and the Zoo keeper were waiting inside the enclosure, readying the ceremony. Xander was leading the other possessed students to the enclosure and Buffy was out making sure that they followed Xander. Willow spotted Xander and Buffy running towards the Hyena enclosure, so she turned and entered to find Giles and the Zoo keeper.
********
Xander and Buffy rushed in and turned to face the possessed students. Then they heard a scream behind them and some weird chanting. They turned to face the Zoo keeper who was holding a knife to Willow's neck.
Xander and the other possessed student's eyes lit up, followed by the Zoo keeper's eyes lighting up. Buffy immediately smelt the change in Xander. Buffy growled softly, and Xander replied. Before anyone else could move Buffy and Xander ran at full dampiric speed at the Zoo keeper. Buffy pulled Willow away, making sure she did not get cut by the knife, while Xander, timed a second behind Buffy, crash tackled the Zoo keeper, causing him to fall into the Hyena feeding area.
********
Xander knocked at the Summers' door. Joyce opened the door and welcomed him inside.
"Xander? Did you come to talk to me or to Buffy?" Joyce asked.
Ever since his first visit, Xander had been visiting Joyce to talk about his mother and Buffy's father. For his part it was more a way to find out more about the life of his mother's kind, but for Joyce it was a way to reconnect, even vicariously, with the love of her life.
"I really need to talk to Buffy, Ms S., it is quite important." Xander said.
"Of course. She's up in her room." Joyce said, catching on that something was amiss but not sure what.
Xander walked slowly up the stairs to Buffy's room. He could feel her presence and he knew she could feel him as well. When he reached her door, she opened it and let him in.
"Xand. To what do I owe this pleasure?" Buffy asked with a grin.
"Buff, we need to talk." Xander said.
Buffy's grin disappeared when she heard his tone.
"What's the matter? Did anyone die?" Buffy said, genuinely concerned.
"No. We need to talk about us." Xander said.
"Huh?"
"Look, Buffy. I am attracted to you, maybe it is the pull of another Dampir, and I know, at least physically, you are attracted to me. Hell I can smell it sometimes, like when we faced down Kyle and his gang last week." Xander began, forestalling Buffy when she tried to interrupt.
"Just let me get this out. There is a strength in you that the Hyena recognised, that whole mate thing, at least on my part was not all an act. Even the Vampire part of me senses it. I figure this whole thing leaves us with three options. Firstly, we try to repress these feelings until the tension builds up and one of explodes, literally or figuratively, this is the Hellmouth after all. Option two, I leave. Leave town, go forever. Or option three, we get together and try to make this work.
"I think that I love you. Not the vampire in you, the human. All of you and I want to give it a try. If, however you don't or for you it is just the pull of two Dampir then I will leave town. I'll give you all the time you need to think about this, ok. Come and see me, or call, when you have made up your mind."
At the end of his speech, Xander left Buffy's room, after a drawn out second looking into her eyes, to let her think about what he had said.
TBC.
Author: Knife Hand
Feedback: Constructive feedback appreciated, flames unappreciated
Spoilers: Some, mostly early series.
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: I do not own Buffy. I would buy the show but I am broke.
Category: Buffy/Xander
Summary: On her first day at Sunnydale High, Buffy finds an odd kinship to a fellow student and something she never knew about herself.
AN: The events of The Witch, Teacher's Pet and Never Kill a Boy on the First Date never happened.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Xander followed Joyce down into the kitchen, helping her as she made some snack food for Buffy.
"Buffy is special." Xander said after a few minutes.
"Of course she is. She is my only child." Joyce replied in a slightly nervous tone.
Xander paused for a minute trying to think of another way to approach the subject.
"Tell me about Buffy's father." Xander said at last.
"Who, Hank?" Joyce responded.
"No. Not your husband, Buffy's father." Xander replied.
"I don't know what you are talking about." Joyce stuttered.
"Trust is at the heart of all things true, from true love to true despair." Xander commented.
"He used to say that. Buffy's father, I mean. How do you know that phrase?" Joyce said.
"From my mother, my real mother. She was like Buffy's father. That is all the stuff I brought over. My mother's journals and letters. I don't even remember her; she left me for my own protection when I was very young." Xander confided.
"That's what her father said. He said he had to leave for her and my sake, that 'they' would never accept her. I never found out what he meant." Joyce said.
Xander and Joyce spent the next twenty minutes talking. Joyce told Xander all about Buffy's father, their relationship and the real reason why Hank did not like to see Buffy, he was 'shooting blanks' as Xander put it. In return Xander told Joyce about his mother, the truth behind vampires, both Buffy and Xander's respective parent and the soulless variety that roamed Sunnydale, and Buffy's calling as the Slayer, including that he would always stand by her.
"I want to help." Joyce said after hearing the full story.
"You are. Just be her mother, which is what she will need. An element of normality in her life." Xander responded.
Xander and Joyce walked back upstairs to Buffy's room carrying the snacks and drinks. Joyce left and Xander dropped onto the bed next to Buffy.
"Find what you wanted to know?" Xander asked.
"I guess." Buffy replied.
The lay there for a while both reading the same passage from one of Xander's mother's journals, not really noticing how close they were, or that their legs had intertwined.
"I got a great idea. Let's take over Sunnydale High." Xander said after a while.
"How?" Buffy queried, showing genuine interest.
"Redefine cool." Xander said with his patented lopsided grin.
********
The last few weeks, since Xander had shown Buffy the stuff about his mother, had seen progress in their plans to take over Sunnydale High. The first step was to get Xander, Buffy and Willow into similar outfits, mostly slightly loose pants and slightly tight shirts or blouses, usually in dark colours.
Xander had joined the swim team, which trained on Wednesday, and after convincing Principal Flutie to let them use the Gymnasium, every day except Wednesday when it was used for Cheerleader practice, they had formed the Gymnastics and Self-defence clubs, which met on Monday and Friday for one hour, two for more advanced students, leaving the rest of the afternoon and the entire afternoon Tuesday and Thursday for training.
General Hellmouth research was conducted on Wednesday, after swim practice for Xander, and most lunchtimes. Giles officially oversaw the Gymnastics and Self-defence clubs as faculty representative. As would be expected a fair number of Cheerleaders signed up for Gymnastics to work on their flexibility, and several to stare at Xander's muscles as he did routines on the rings and parallel bars in a tank top.
At first there were not many boys in the Gymnastics club, until they saw two things. First were some of the routines that Xander could do, including handstand on the rings and the giant swings on the high bar. The second reason that men began joining was an age old one, women. They saw not only the outfits that the girls wore, which resembled tight fitting one- piece bathing suits, but also that the girls seemed to like Gymnasts.
The Self-defence classes were a different matter. Most of the initial members were outcasts who were always picked on and now wanted to fight back. Most were slow to learn and wanted to do the cool sword fighting that Buffy and Xander would sometimes do without learning the basics first. Some of the students were surprising. Willow quickly became a decent fighter as she was doing both Self-defence and Gymnastics she was fast and flexible.
The Gymnastics, as well as training with Buffy and Xander, had increased her strength; in fact some of her training on Tuesday and Thursday were directly focused on strength. Another quick study was Oz, who was in the year above them and lead guitarist in a band. The reserved and quite type, Oz started in Gymnastics, the first male besides Xander to join, and was pretty good and he soon joined Self-defence as well.
Unlike his stoic personality, Oz was very adaptive in a fight and a slightly aggressive. The biggest surprise, though, came from the smallest student, Jonathan Levinson. Despite his small stature, Jonathan was fast and agile. Buffy and Xander decided to teach him a soft style of martial arts, which would utilise his speed and agility while turning his opponent's strength against them. He soon became one of the best students in the class and could probably survive an encounter with a fledgling or minor vampire, but they determined he was not ready, yet, to know the truth.
Putting Self-defence class out of her mind, Buffy walked into the Bronze looking for Willow and Xander. She hadn't seen Xander since they had gotten back from the fieldtrip to the zoo today. She quickly spotted Willow at one of the tables, and she made her way over quickly, stoping at the bar to get a coke and a croissant.
She sat next to Willow and they began idly chatting and ignoring the stares they got from all the high school boys. Xander saunters in and almost every female turns to look at him, their heads tracking his movement towards Buffy and Willow.
"Girls!" Xander said with a grin.
"Boy." Buffy responded glibly.
"Sorry I'm late, I... just forgot that we were gonna be here." He said, spotting Buffy's Croissant. "Hungry!"
Xander tears a piece of Buffy's Croissant off and begins to eat it.
Buffy looks offended.
"What is this crap? I need real food." Xander said.
Xander dropped the piece of Croissant, leaned towards Buffy, sniffing slightly and purring. While normally this would not be considered unusual, except that it was in public, the purring was unlike anything they had heard before. While there were some Dampir inflections, mostly mate, it was more feral and creepily comical.
At this point Kyle and party, who had just entered, took over another table, after being stared down by Xander. One of them made a cruel joke and the others laughed, joined by Xander.
********
"Something's wrong with Xander, Giles." Buffy said as she entered the library.
"Such as?" Giles responded calmly.
"I think he is possessed or something?" Buffy raged.
"And why would you think this?" Giles said.
"He's been different, meaner. He was teasing people, laughing at torment. He even went Game Face. He never goes Game Face Giles, not unless he's outraged, and he wasn't."
"Sound's like he is turning into a teenage boy. Testosterone is the great equaliser, it turns all men into morons. He will get over it, eventually." Giles said calmly.
"He smelt different." Buffy stated.
"Excuse me?"
"He smelt different. There was a feral scent overlaying his own scent, almost canine."
The doors came crashing open and Willow barged in.
"I think Xander in trouble." Willow said.
"How so?" Giles said.
"Kyle and his gang were picking on me, and then Xander came and stopped them. He said something about me being part of his pack. Then they called him a traitor or something and said the next time they saw him there would be a fight for leadership. Whatever that means." Willow babbled.
"God, I am so mentally challenged. He smells like the Hyenas at the zoo. I got to find him, he can't take them all. You two research animal possessions." Buffy said as she went out the door.
********
Buffy stepped up beside Xander as he faced off against the four other Hyena possessed students.
'Need help?' Buffy growled in the Dampir language.
'Just play along.' Xander responded in kind.
Xander began to sniff and purr at Buffy, who returned the treatment, however it was much more intimate than usual, which normally was the post battle ritual. The whole act was to convince the other possessed students that Buffy and Xander were mates, hence all the more dangerous when together as they would fight to the death to protect each other. After this display the faced off against the others, looking to scare them off for the moment.
As they stalked towards the others, Buffy brought forth her Game Face, then looked over at Xander with her burnished golden eyes and he brought his own Game Face forward. This caused enough fear in Kyle and the others that they turned and ran. As soon as they were out of sight, Xander retracted his Game Face, looked at Buffy, still in her Game Face, for a long second, as if he was struggling with himself, then he ran for the Library.
********
Xander ran into the Library, shocking Willow and Giles, and locked himself in the book cage. Buffy entered a second later, he Game Face gone.
"What the hell do you think you are doing?" Buffy demanded.
"Sorry Buffy, but I almost lost control. The Hyena, it's in me and I can't always control it. It wanted you during that, and then when you changed, the Dampir, I, wanted you. I almost lost it and I can't trust myself at the moment." Xander said, shame clear in his voice.
"Um. Changed?" Willow asked nervously.
"I went Game Face." Buffy said.
"Ok. I think we should get back to how we can reverse-trans-possess Xander." Giles said.
The poured over books and Willow searched the internet. Xander even helped from inside the book cage, Buffy or Willow passing him books to look through.
********
Willow waited, jiggling nervously outside the quarantined Hyena enclosure. Giles and the Zoo keeper were waiting inside the enclosure, readying the ceremony. Xander was leading the other possessed students to the enclosure and Buffy was out making sure that they followed Xander. Willow spotted Xander and Buffy running towards the Hyena enclosure, so she turned and entered to find Giles and the Zoo keeper.
********
Xander and Buffy rushed in and turned to face the possessed students. Then they heard a scream behind them and some weird chanting. They turned to face the Zoo keeper who was holding a knife to Willow's neck.
Xander and the other possessed student's eyes lit up, followed by the Zoo keeper's eyes lighting up. Buffy immediately smelt the change in Xander. Buffy growled softly, and Xander replied. Before anyone else could move Buffy and Xander ran at full dampiric speed at the Zoo keeper. Buffy pulled Willow away, making sure she did not get cut by the knife, while Xander, timed a second behind Buffy, crash tackled the Zoo keeper, causing him to fall into the Hyena feeding area.
********
Xander knocked at the Summers' door. Joyce opened the door and welcomed him inside.
"Xander? Did you come to talk to me or to Buffy?" Joyce asked.
Ever since his first visit, Xander had been visiting Joyce to talk about his mother and Buffy's father. For his part it was more a way to find out more about the life of his mother's kind, but for Joyce it was a way to reconnect, even vicariously, with the love of her life.
"I really need to talk to Buffy, Ms S., it is quite important." Xander said.
"Of course. She's up in her room." Joyce said, catching on that something was amiss but not sure what.
Xander walked slowly up the stairs to Buffy's room. He could feel her presence and he knew she could feel him as well. When he reached her door, she opened it and let him in.
"Xand. To what do I owe this pleasure?" Buffy asked with a grin.
"Buff, we need to talk." Xander said.
Buffy's grin disappeared when she heard his tone.
"What's the matter? Did anyone die?" Buffy said, genuinely concerned.
"No. We need to talk about us." Xander said.
"Huh?"
"Look, Buffy. I am attracted to you, maybe it is the pull of another Dampir, and I know, at least physically, you are attracted to me. Hell I can smell it sometimes, like when we faced down Kyle and his gang last week." Xander began, forestalling Buffy when she tried to interrupt.
"Just let me get this out. There is a strength in you that the Hyena recognised, that whole mate thing, at least on my part was not all an act. Even the Vampire part of me senses it. I figure this whole thing leaves us with three options. Firstly, we try to repress these feelings until the tension builds up and one of explodes, literally or figuratively, this is the Hellmouth after all. Option two, I leave. Leave town, go forever. Or option three, we get together and try to make this work.
"I think that I love you. Not the vampire in you, the human. All of you and I want to give it a try. If, however you don't or for you it is just the pull of two Dampir then I will leave town. I'll give you all the time you need to think about this, ok. Come and see me, or call, when you have made up your mind."
At the end of his speech, Xander left Buffy's room, after a drawn out second looking into her eyes, to let her think about what he had said.
TBC.