Xander left Ethan and Giles together, because he didn't like Ethan at all – every time the man showed up things went wrong, and he thought that after what he had done to Rory he deserved something a bit more fatal than joining the Council. He didn't want to spend any more time with him than he had to.

He was walking to Doose's to get some coffee when something crashed into the side of his head. He instinctively dropped into a crouch, pulling out the stake he always carried. Then he looked down to see what had actually hit him.

It was a hat. At least, Xander thought it was a hat. It shared certain characteristics with a hat. It looked like a beret. Only no beret that Xander had ever seen shared that rainbow of colours. It was knitted, too, by the look of it. It was, all in all, quite possibly the most ridiculous thing that bore even a passing resemblance to a hat.

Assuming that it hadn't just dropped from the sky (outside of Sunnydale, such pure randomness just didn't happen) he looked around to see who had thrown it. He promptly saw Lorelai standing on the other side of the street, looking like she was having difficulty restraining her laughter.

Xander tucked away his stake, and rather gingerly picked up the hat, in case it turned out to be a demon with even less fashion sense than he had (although he knew Cordelia would protest that such a thing wasn't possible) and crossed the street.

He held out the hat. "I think you dropped something. And by dropped something, I mean that you hurled this… I assume it's a hat… across the street."

Lorelai took a second to compose herself. "Actually, I did drop it, but some freak wind caught it. It's a good thing your head was in the way, or else who knows where it might have gone?"

"I think that catapulting this thing into space would probably have been a better option. Although it might mean that aliens think we're declaring war upon their senses." Xander replied.

"It's not that bad."

"It kind of is. Anyway, what lead you to be carrying such a thing, only to allow it to be swept away by a freak wind that I'm betting was precisely as strong as your throwing arm?" Xander asked.

"I got a call at the inn just now."

"And you wanted to rush out and share it with me?" Xander put his hands over his heart and batted his eyelashes. At least, he blinked rapidly, which he thought was the same thing. "I'm touched, I really am, but I'm taken. Not even sharing phone calls with me will seduce me."

"You know, it's kind of weird bantering like that when you're dating my daughter." Lorelai pointed out.

"You started it, remember? Anyway, just the other day you offered to let me ravish you. You're just as guilty as I am."

"Good point. Anyway, the call was from my dad." Lorelai said.

"Did he say that I'm utterly forbidden from associating with the Gilmore family on pain of death?"

"Similar. He invited you to play golf."

"Golf? As in the game where you hit a little oddly-shaped ball around?"

"Is there some other kind?"

Xander shrugged. "I thought that maybe it was the code name for some kind of grandfatherly interrogation."

"Oh, I'm sure that there will be plenty of that going on." Lorelai replied. "But you'll be playing golf while he does it."

"Crazy golf or standard golf?"

"Does it make a difference?"

"Well, crazy golf can be a form of torture…"

Lorelai smiled. "I'm guessing that you're not really keen on accepting."

"I'm fine with golf. Not sure about Mr Gilmore, although it's probably going to be awkward. But I'm guessing that the reason you have that hat is because it's a golfing hat, and you want me to wear it. And that's just not cool."

"Aw, come on. I dare you." Lorelai pleaded.

"You still owe me a hundred dollars for when I pretended to be Valley Jesus when I met your mother." Xander pointed out. "We both know what that led to. I can't even cash in a dare."

"You're scared?" Lorelai said, waving the hat under his nose. "Of a little hat?"

"I think it might eat my brain." Xander admitted, eyeing it warily. "Or possibly make everyone for miles around roll on the floor laughing at the riotous colouring and sheer shapelessness that is that hat."

"Shush! You'll hurt its feelings."

"I'm sure it'll survive. It probably thrives on the sheer embarrassment it causes."

"I'll tell you what. If you wear this to the golf game, you'll get to dare me to do something, and I'll do it."

"Done." Xander said immediately. "Although I thought I was meant to be making a good impression on them, and I don't think that will help."

"You might be surprised." Lorelai said. "I feel like I should be scared by how quickly you took my offer, though."

Xander interlaced his fingers and put on a stereotypical evil mastermind expression. Given that he had actually met a few, it was pretty convincing. "Well, Kirk has seemed a bit lonely, lately…"

Lorelai blanched. "No. God no."

Xander laughed. "Just kidding. I'll just hold it over your head for a bit."

"I'm beginning to regret making that deal now." Lorelai lamented.

"So when do I have to go to… where am I going, exactly? Does Stars Hollow even have a golf course?"

"No, it's in Hartford. And he wants to see you there at three."

Xander blinked. "Wait, he wants me to play golf with him today? What if I can't make it?"

"Can you make it?"

"Well, yeah, but that's not the point. It's kind of short notice, isn't it?"

"I think it's probably a little bit of revenge for what you did to Mom."

Xander groaned. "I'm never going to live that down, am I? And it seemed like such a good idea, too."

"I enjoyed it." Lorelai admitted. "But it probably wasn't the best of ideas when you're dating their favourite granddaughter."

"They have other granddaughters? I thought you were an only child. Oh, does Rory have a sister? Is she called Charlotte but everyone calls her Charlie so that everyone thinks she's a guy? Then everyone would think that you have sons, but-"

"No, to all those points. It's kind of disturbing the speed with which you came up with that thing about Charlie, though." Lorelai said.

"Oh, so she's their only granddaughter, then? So she must also be their least favourite."

"Your logic is unassailable, but I wouldn't share it with them."

"Good plan."

"Anyway, I'll give you directions and this hat, and then you can go home and quietly panic because you'll realise that you're going to have to wear it public."

Xander's eyes narrowed. "I'm tempted to dare you to ride through town on a horse like Lady Godiva."

Lorelai laughed. "Yeah, you should be so lucky."

After Xander and Lorelai parted ways, she went onto the diner. Luke seemed to be having a quiet meltdown behind the counter.

"What's up, Doc?" she said, sliding into a chair at the counter.

"I think I might have agreed to play golf with your father. I'm not sure. He talked, and I think I agreed…" Luke said. He had the shell-shocked look that Lorelai was used to seeing when her parents manipulated someone into doing something they really didn't want to do. She'd seen it in the mirror often enough.

"When?" Lorelai asked. "'cause if it's today at three, he asked Xander as well. Hopefully you're mutual flailing will cancel each other out."

"I don't flail."

"Trust me." Lorelai put a hand on Luke's arm. "When my dad starts in on you, you'll flail. You'll flail around like a flailing flailer."

"That's a lot of flailing." Luke murmured.

"It's not too late for us to make a run for it. We could be over the border in no time."

"Which border? Mexico? We live in Connecticut. It would take us days to drive, and if I'm going to have to wait around in an airport I might as well just play golf instead."

"Well, in that case, I'll have coffee before you go and flail yourself to death."

Xander got there early, and rented a set of golf clubs for an exorbitant amount of money. He was pretty sure he could've bought a car for less than that.

He wasn't nervous, because after you've descended into a cave full of Ubervamps there isn't a lot that will make you nervous, but he wasn't looking forward to it. He found himself hoping that some kind of apocalypse would happen which could only be resolved by a glorified bricklayer.

Xander had never played proper golf. He'd played mini-golf in Sunnydale occasionally, although that had stopped once they'd taken Ted that one time. Buffy had claimed that he had ruined the experience for her, but Xander thought that it was just because the fact that Joyce had been dating someone had unnerved Buffy so much that even her Slayer skills hadn't stopped her from playing really badly. It had been the only time that Buffy had ever taken more than three shots to sink the ball.

Of course, he had hit around an empty can occasionally while the gang waited for vampires to pop out of the ground, but that hardly counted.

The fact that he was a pretty good archer and decent swordsman did nothing to convince Xander that he could play golf without doing something embarrassing like hit the ball in completely the wrong direction, or mistake his caddy for a small tin to keep teabags in.

Luke showed up a while later, and although Xander felt a little guilty about it, seeing how uncomfortable the older man looked made him feel better. At least Willow had come up with a cover for him that was exactly the kind of thing that Mr Gilmore would approve of. He guessed that owing a diner wouldn't be nearly as impressive.

So Xander tried to calm Luke down as he took him to rent his own clubs. He thought about offering to pay for them, buy decided against it.

When they left the shop, Mr Gilmore was outside.

The first thing he said was "Why are you wearing my granddaughter's hat?"

Xander gaped for a second, before he realised that he was talking about the hat that Lorelai had given him. She hadn't told him that it was Rory's. He suddenly realised that it had been the hat that had cheered up Luke, rather than his feeble attempts.

"Um, she gave it to me." Xander lied quickly. "She said it was a mandatory golfing thing. I'm thinking now that she was just pulling my leg."

"Indeed." Mr Gilmore said noncommittally. "Haven't you played golf before?"

"No. Archery's more my thing." Xander said before stopping to think about it.

"Really? I didn't think that was taught in schools."

"It isn't. Or at least it wasn't in mine. It was something of an extra-curricular activity."

"Are you any good?"

"I can hit a moving target at about fifty feet." Xander said self-deprecatingly. He had no idea whether that was good or not. He wasn't even sure that it had ever been as much as fifty feet. He might possibly have done it at a further distance. In the heat of the moment you didn't stop to check things like that. Especially given that arrows rarely killed demons or vampires outright.

"Impressive." Mr Gilmore turned to Luke. "And you? Have you ever played golf before?"

"Uh, no."

"Oh well."

The afternoon wore on, and Xander discovered that he was actually pretty good at golf. Nowhere near as good as Mr Gilmore (who, after a while, asked Xander and Luke to call him Richard) but certainly better than Luke. When he was playing, you could probably stand directly in front of him and he would still miss you.

He talked about why he was working for charity and what it did – he was glad that he had asked Willow to make a cover, because Richard almost seemed to know more about it than he did. When Richard asked about the business side, he only said that he didn't deal with that, but that he knew they were funded by an antique dealership. That was more or less what the Watchers' Council had been, after all.

Richard seemed satisfied. Xander was considerably happier about that than he had expected.

On top of that, no one went into hysterics about his hat, so all in all it wasn't as awful an afternoon as he had expected. He even managed to stop Richard from making Luke flail too much.

He doubted that Richard liked him very much (and after Ice Bank Mice Elf, Xander wasn't really surprised) but at least he didn't seem like he was actively going to try and sabotage his relationship with Rory.

After they did all the holes and Luke and Xander went back to Stars Hollow, Xander went and found Rory. She only laughed a little at the fold cap. He put it on her, and wasn't really all that surprised by the fact that she looked absolutely adorable and not at all like some shapeless rainbow thing was trying to eat her head.

They walked down by the lake, and he told her how the game had gone, and that he no longer held the title of the Gilmores' Most Hated Person, and they made out under a tree.