"Hi, Xander."

Xander looked up, then smiled. "Hey, Rory. How's things?"

"Things are good. I see Mom's roped you in to help her out. I hope she's actually paying you."

"Oh, she said something about letting me take her home and ravish her." Xander smirked.

Rory blushed a little, but said "You can't actually consensually ravage someone. It would just be sex."

"Okay, can we stop talking about your mother and her sex life now? Please?"

"God, yes."

"So, is there something I can do for you, or did you just want to see me work?"

"I thought I'd enjoy the show." Rory grinned. "It's not often that you get to see Jesus as work."

"Just don't expect any miracles, okay? This will be a rush job - it'll probably only pass muster until the real doors arrive."

"Well, having doors is better than not having them, even if they are shoddy workmanship."

"Hey!" Xander said indignantly. "It might be a rush job, but my work is never shoddy!"

"In case you didn't know, carpentry is hardly my strong point, Xan. I can't tell good doors from bad doors."

"Well, for future reference, this is a decent door. It's nothing special."

"Noted."

"So." Xander said, changing the subject. "Are you going to your grandparents' house on Friday?"

"I missed the last dinner because of my finals, so I kind of have to go to this one." Rory replied, a little nonplussed by the new topic. "Why?"

"It's a surprise."

"What is it?"

"A surprising surprise." Xander answered. "And suddenly I understand why Giles got so annoyed when I kept pestering him to tell me what his surprise was."

"Is it at least a nice surprise?"

"Well, I'm going to like it. You and Lorelai probably will, too."

"Do I need to do anything, or just be an unwitting accomplice?"

"You just have to be there."

"Sure thing." Rory said. "Can you at least give me a hint?"

"Nope!" Xander said cheerfully, grinning like a pumpkin. "That'll spoil the surprisingly surprising surprise."

"You know I'm going to be dying from anticipation all week, right?"

"So, will there be a chance of glad not to have died from anticipation sex?"

"Xander! Is that all you think about?"

"No, but I'm currently holding a big tool and feeling all manly right now."

Rory giggled. "Y-you're holding a big tool?"

"So, you find out whether she likes you or not?" Luke said to Jess.

"Yup."

"And?"

"Oh, I threw her to the ground and we consummated our undying love right then and there. We're getting married tomorrow."

Luke blinked. "I can't tell if that means that you like her or if you're just being ridiculously sarcastic."

"You know me, Luke. It could quite easily be both."

"So, is it both?"

"I've got to plead the fifth on that one."

"Ha! So you ido/i like her!"

"Hey, Luke, can we not do this? We don't live in a chick flick, you know."

"I reserve the right to tease you mercilessly about this at a later date."

"You, tease?" Jess scoffed. "Like you even know how."

"I'll have you know that I've picked up a lot from Lorelai over the years."

Jess buried his face in his hands. "Oh, God. Don't even go there. She'll probably give me shtick about liking someone who is basically a slightly broken version of Rory."

Luke frowned. "Slightly broken?"

"Well, yeah. Her town fell into a giant crater, in case you forgot that. Which you probably haven't, seeing as how she yelled at you about it. You can't just get through something like that."

"Ah. So that explains her breaking in to give you some cigarettes. You can be the town's smoking couple. And I do mean that with all the clever implications attached."

"She doesn't smoke. And if smoking couple is the best you can come up with, perhaps you should go to Lorelai for extra teasing classes. Although, seeing as how you're dating now, you probably wouldn't get that much studying done anyway..."

"Alright!" Luke held up his hands in surrender. "You win!"

"How kind of you to say so." Jess said sarcastically.

"Seriously though, am I going to get a call from the police in the future saying that you two have knocked over a liquor store together?"

"Why Luke, I'm offended that you'd think I would do something like that!"

"Fine." Luke grumbled. "Just, when you and Bonnie do go and hold up a bank together, leave me out of it, will you?"

"Sure thing, Uncle."

"So, when are you going to bring her over? You just know that Liz will be dying to meet her."

"Luke!"

Later, when the light went and Xander could no longer make doors properly, he went home and called Buffy, hoping that she would've sorted out the mess with Faith and the other Slayer by then.

"Hi, Xander." Buffy said the moment Xander's call went through. Xander wondered idly if she'd been waiting by the phone. "What's going on?"

"Um, well." Xander composed his thoughts, trying to get them in order. He really needed to remember her to work out what he was going to say before calling people. "There's a guy in town - Rory's ex, actually - and I think Dawn likes him, and he likes her. I'm not actually sure, though, because I kind of blurted out the whole thing to her earlier and she seemed gobsmacked by the whole thing."

"So you called me because Dawn may or may not like someone? God, Xander, as much as I like a good gossip I've been worried all day about this."

"Actually, that's not everything. The guy, Jess, is basically the closest thing to Spike you can be while still be human."

"Are we talking about early days Spike, chipped Spike, soulless but in love with me Spike or ensouled Spike?"

"Early days Spike. He smokes, didn't graduate high school, ran away from home while he was still dating Rory, leaving her pretty heartbroken, gets into fights, and likes literature."

"Wow. Sounds just like Dawn's type."

"Yeah. That's kind of the problem. I know how that... ithing/i you had with Spike ended. I don't want Dawn to end up like that."

"Xan, you know that it wasn't entirely Spike's fault-"

"Yeah? You asked him to rape you, did you?" Xander said harshly.

"Well, no, bu-"

"Look, Buffy, I don't think he's a good guy. He's a bad guy. And Dawn's just lost her home, and she's already pretty fragile after everything that's happened to her. This is the last thing she needs."

"Xan, I'll talk to her. But I can't promise anything. You know Dawn - she's hardly the type to stay away from someone just because I say so. Especially given my track record on that front. Anyway, she's in a normal town doing normal things now. Maybe she needs a relationship with a bad boy. Every girl needs at least one of those."

"Willow didn't."

"Xan, Willow's gay. And she dated a werewolf. And you could say that, with Tara, Will was the bad boy there."

Xander sighed. "I guess. I just don't want to see her hurt, you know?"

"Maybe you're just sad that you're not the belle of the ball anymore." Buffy joked.

"Well, I guess Jess is better than Moloch. At least slightly."

"That's the spirit! But, Xan, you know that no matter what we do she'll probably go ahead and see Jess no matter what we say. So, if she does, at least try and be nice to him, okay?"

"Seriously? I couldn't be nice to Angel even before he flipped out and went crazy. How am I meant to be nice to Jess?"

"Maybe just avoid him then."

"Oh, that I can do. That'll be no problem."

Buffy did call Dawn, and as she had predicted Dawn didn't pay the slightest attention to what she said. She said something about not being Anne Elliot and having to do things for herself without listening to other people trying to persuade her to do what ithey/i wanted.

Xander solved that entire situation by avoiding it completely. He spent most of his waking hours making doors, and so was naturally away from anywhere that Jess and Dawn might find themselves. However, with Miss Patty, Babette and the other town gossips seemingly on every street corner, Xander still felt like Sherlock Holmes spying on people with his Baker Street Irregulars. So it was that he found that, even though Dawn and Jess had kissed all of once, besides that their relationship didn't seem to have changed.

Xander finished the doors on Friday afternoon, and handed them over to Dean to get them attached. Then he went to go and find Giles.

Giles was, as he had been ever since his encounter with Ethan, reading. He was trying to find out what Ethan had meant by his cryptic reference to Stars Hollow being something unusual. He had yet to find anything of interest.

"Hey, Giles." Xander said cheerfully, sitting down opposite Giles. Giles jumped - he'd been so absorbed in what he was reading that he hadn't noticed Xander's arrival.

"Oh. Hello, Xander." Giles said tiredly, before turning back to his book.

"Can I ask you a question?"

"I believe that you have the capability, yes."

Xander rolled his eyes. "I was wondering whether I could borrow a suit. What with you being the King of Tweed and all that."

Giles looked up, surprised. "Why? I can't even remember the last time you wore a suit."

"My wedding, probably. But I'm meeting with a guy to arrange our insurance later, and I need to make a good impression."

"You can't borrow one of my suits, no. They're tailored to my measurements, and they wouldn't work for you. But a shop bought one should do the job in these circumstances."

"Bah. I was really hoping for a tailored tweed suit. It would make everything just so much funnier."

"Funnier? I wouldn't think that insurance should be funny."

"Oh, that part isn't. But after that it'll be a barrel of laughs."

"Well, if you're set on a specially tailored one, we can and see. It'll be a rush job, but I'll be better than shop bought."

"This is going to be a big outing, isn't it?" Xander said, resignedly.

Giles smiled. "Yes, I'm afraid it will be."

Later that night, Rory and Lorelai arrived at Lorelai's parents' house for their traditional Friday night dinner. They were greeted at the door by the latest of Emily's long string of maids, and then ushered through to the parlour.

"Where's Dad?" Lorelai asked.

"Oh, he's got some kind of meeting upstairs. Would you like a drink?"

"Martini."

"Soda, please."

"So, Lorelai, you said on the phone that there was something important that you wanted to tell us. What was it?" Emily asked.

"Oh, I'd rather wait until Dad comes down."

"You know how his meetings get. It starts out as business, then they start smoking cigars and talking about the clients they've swindled."

"Wow, my grandpa's Al Capone." Rory murmured.

"Nothing so dramatic, I'm sure." Emily replied. "Lorelai, you'd best tell me now and I'll tell your father, if it's that important."

"Well, it's about the inn-"

"Hold on, I think that's him now." Rory interrupted.

Indeed it was. Richard Gilmore came down the stairs.

Following behind him was Xander, dressed in tweed suit.

Rather than going to the door, Xander took a turn into the parlour, swept Rory into a movie-style kiss (where he put one hand behind her head, one at the small of her back and then tilted her so that only her heels were on the floor and he was supporting her entire weight) and then pressed a note into Emily's unresisting hand before leaving without a word.

Rory blushed, pressing her fingers to her lips. Lorelai, with difficulty, restrained herself from bursting out laughing at Emily and Richard's frozen expressions.

Eventually, she managed to get herself sufficiently under control to ask "What does the note say?"

Emily, seemingly running in autopilot, unfolded the note. "Ice Bank Mice Elf." she read.

That was too much for Lorelai, who burst out laughing so hard that tears sprang to her eyes. Rory followed soon after.

Richard looked at Emily in astonishment, saying "You do?", which of course only caused the younger Gilmores to laugh all the harder.

"I don't understand." Emily frowned. "What does Ice Bank Mice Elf mean?"

"Think... about what... the words... sound like spoken aloud." Lorelai managed to say. She was having difficulty speaking because she was laughing so hard that she could barely breathe.

Emily's lips worked silently. Then her eyes went wide and she dropped the note. "Oh my God!"