Disclaimer: I do not own BtVS or Angel.

Xander's odd trips

"Talking"

"Thinking"

This was not a situation Angel wanted to be in. Then again, he was fairly certain that his drinking partner didn't want to be here either.

Which begged the question, why they were sitting at a bar counter to begin with?

All Angel knew was that he had stopped by Cleveland to check in with the Slayers, see what he needed to know, and was all but dragged out of the house by Xander, who proclaimed they were going to get drunk.

He considered the shot glass in front of him for a moment, then looked at Xander. "Alright, why are we doing this?" he asked. "You've made how you felt about me clearly for years, Xander."

"I know. But I'm not going to commiserate with you sober." He downed the shot without blinking and signaled for another. "Besides, by the time we're done, you're gonna be as drunk as me."

That was cryptic, and almost worrisome. Angel considered the man beside him. It had been years since their first meeting in Sunnydale. The boy back then was gone, replaced by a man. It wasn't just how tall Xander stood, or how he moved, or even the fact he had lost an eye. It was his manner. Oh, Xander could still be goofy and crack a joke like always. But then he could snap to a seriousness that made Slayers pay attention and vampires scared.

"What happened?" he finally asked.

Xander considered his shot glass again. "How much has Buffy told you about what's been happening to me?" He knew the Slayer talked to Angel. Usually, it was over the phone or Skype.

Now he had some context. "Enough to have an idea. Some kind of magic has been going after you and blasting you back to the past." He did his best not to smirk as he eyed the human. "Like sending you back to the Trojan War with you as Paris."

"For the last time, that was not my fault." The second he had realized who he had ended up as, Xander had done his best to make sure said war didn't happen. When he wound up going to Sparta, he had been respectful to Helen but did his best to keep away. Unfortunately, that, along with the fact he kept being vague about his past (mostly because Xander didn't know what it was), made her fall in love with him all the more. He didn't realize that she had snuck onto his ship until they halfway back to Troy. By then, it was too late.

"And it's not just the past I'm sent to," he said. "I've been also sent to different worlds too."

"Yeah, I heard about that one too. You were sent to a world where the Slayer was a man and that was you." If his smirk was a bit insulting, he didn't care. "That must've been so fun for you. Makes me wonder why you didn't stay."

"It wasn't my world. Besides, there were a few more differences. Buffy had taken my place and instead of you being there, Darla was the one cursed with a soul." That brown eye stared at him with a very knowing look. "And if things had followed like I suspected they would've, you know Drusilla would've been next."

That…wasn't something Angel had considered. Darla and Drusilla would've been the ones ensouled? Did that mean they would've been like him and Spike? Wait, did that mean Drusilla would've been the one who acted like Spike?

The question led to an image he wished he hadn't thought of and did his best to banish from his mind. "So what happened this time?" he asked. Focusing on the question was the best to go forward.

Xander down his glass again. "I would up back in Sunnydale, back in the high school years. The only difference was this time, I had swapped places with you, complete with backstory."

It took Angel a moment to understand. Once he did, it took another moment to work his lips. "You mean…?"

"Yep. You were a teenaged boy named Liam McConner, best friends with Willow and Jessie, along with a snark-filled hatred with Cordelia. All as Buffy showed up for her first day. And I was the vampire with a soul who was supposed to keep an eye on her. There were some differences in the details," he admitted. "I wasn't Irish. Actually, my human life had been one of the colonists from Roanoke, one of the youngest. The Master decided to take me back to Europe after he slaughtered the colony in order to properly sire me. A couple of decades after that, I sired Darla, and you can guess what happened after that."

"Yeah, I can." So the Whirlwind happened. Angel wasn't surprised by that. It wasn't important. "Were you cursed the same way I was?"

"Escape clause and all." Xander considered his glass. It was painfully empty again. "And since I knew what happened to you, I was going to make damn sure the same thing didn't happen to me. That first meeting, I made sure it went differently than yours."

Buffy could feel that she was being followed. It was why she had walked into this dead-end alley. She looked around for the right spot to hide from sight, yet be ready to attack. There were a couple of dumpsters but those wouldn't work, not with what they could do to her pants. She glanced up and saw the bar above her. Probably for hanging laundry or something. Whatever, it would work.

"What are you doing?"

She froze at the voice and turned around. A man only a few years older stood before. And…he was really smelly. She did her best not to wrinkle her nose but the smell was really strong. The fact he was wearing a shirt with too many holes and was two sizes too big, pants being held up by a threadbare belt and prayer, and an absolutely filthy coat did not help. Neither did the fact that he had actual grime on his skin and in his hair.

"Um, I was, uh, gonna jump onto the bar." She knew it sounded lame, but it was the only answer she had.

The man glanced up at the bar, then at her. "Why?"

"Because I wanted to." She could feel how his eyes were staring into her. They felt rather judgmental. She didn't like it. "I don't feel like it now, so I'm just gonna go." She brushed past him, trying to get back onto the street.

"It's not gonna work, you know."

Buffy stopped at his voice and looked back. "What won't work?"

"You, trying to have a normal life." He turned around to face her. "You're the Slayer. Try as much as you want to be normal, that's always going to be a part of your life. You can't walk away from it."

First, she was surprised. Then she got mad. "It's my life, I get to choose what to do with it."

"Like standing around in alleys talking to strange men?" His question shut her down, especially with his raised eyebrow. "You're standing on the Hellmouth, Slayer, and it's taking that as a challenge. You wanna ignore the signs? That's on you." He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a small case. "But we both know you're not going to. You can't."

It was easy to catch the case. Much to Buffy's surprise, it was clean. "Who are you?" she asked.

"…Someone who's been at this longer than you." He turned his back on her and walked deeper into the alley. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I actually have work tonight."

Buffy had no words to that. Once he sat down against the alley wall, he looked just like a homeless person trying to make some space. Yet there was no denying how those brown eyes watched everything, including her as she left.

Angel stared at Xander. "You went with pissing her off?"

"I wanted to make sure she didn't fall in love with me. No feelings, no pure happiness. No pure happiness, no evil Xander."

It made sense, in a way. But that was only the first meeting. They still had the rest of the year to get through. "So you just antagonized her each time you met?"

"Eh, not really. That first meeting was a taster, so to speak. After that, I did my best to keep the meetings short and to the point. I'd find her, let her know about a particular threat, and then leave. Made sure she only knew me as Al."

"Al?" he repeated with a scoff.

"I was trying to be as unsexy as I could be." And last time he checked, no one could make Al sound sexy. "Hell, I actually spent more time with the others than her."

Angel was surprised. "You did?"

"I wanted to make sure they knew who I was, not whatever Buffy thought I was supposed to be. I even spent a lot of time training Liam, making sure he knew how to fight and make tough decisions, not to mention encouraging him to go after Buffy, and vice-versa." Xander froze after that, realizing what he had just said.

So did his drinking partner. The smirk stretched across his lips. "So you—"

Xander cut the vampire off. "Don't, alright? Just don't. I knew what I was doing. I might've been in your position, but I'm not you." Neither of them doubted the condemnation in those last words.

"And there wasn't any point where Buffy saw you as something other than a smelly man who liked to antagonize her?"

"…There might've been a few slipups," he admitted.

The girls had all but collapsed in Buffy's living room. The fight had been brutal. Even with Buffy doing her best to fight all the vampires, a few of them managed to reach Cordelia and Willow. It was only thanks to Al that they hadn't.

But their mysterious partner (if he could be called that) had taken some bad hits in the fight. He said he was fine, but they had seen otherwise. Buffy brought him back to her home, to make sure he got patched up. But she also decided that the first thing he was going to do was get cleaned up.

"What are you going to do with Al's clothes?" Willow asked Buffy.

"Burn them, hopefully," Cordelia answered. It wasn't just the clothes were badly out of fashion, but they smelled so bad. Seriously, the smell alone put her off the older man.

The redhead was shocked, but the blonde nodded thoughtfully. "But…they're his. You can't just burn them," Willow protested. "He won't have anything left. He'll walk around naked."

Each of them took a moment to consider that. In spite of how he was often smelly and dirty, Al was still a man. They had never seen a man fully naked (despite what others might've thought), so it was an interesting picture. Just what would Al look like underneath those clothes?

Buffy pushed the possible image aside and focused on what Willow said. "Don't worry, my Mom still has some of my Dad's clothes lying around. Al can use those." She was fairly certain they were the same size when she left them outside the bathroom door, along with the first aid kit.

When the shower turned off, they all listened for what came next. There was no call for help with bandages, so he must've been doing it by himself. Footsteps came down the stairs after a few minutes, and then Al walked into sight.

As they stared at the sight, suddenly out of breath, Cordelia voiced what they were all thinking. "Hello, salty goodness!"

Turns out, Al and Buffy's father were the same size. That fact showed in how well the clothes fit him. Close to the skin but not so close to hinder movement, allowing the muscles to move. Which was why they could see how fit he was. Not like a football player but as an actual warrior who spent his life fighting. The clothes themselves were chosen well, a black shirt tucked into jeans so dark, they could've been mistaken for black, while a white overshirt, mostly buttoned but untucked, hung over his body.

Yet, it wasn't only the clothes or the body that took their breath away. Now that he was properly clean, the girls could see Al's face for what it was. His dark hair was cut close but still long enough to be pushed back from his face, leaving gentle patterns in its path. His features had strength, yet also seemed gentle. It all depended on the mood in his eyes. And right now, those eyes were a warm brown, almost like chocolate. Above everything, he carried a sense of matureness, something they hadn't seen in the boys before.

There was only one conclusion: Al was hot.

Having realized the situation, the aforementioned Al only had one thought. "Oh no."

He had to get out of this, quick.

"You vamped out, didn't you?" Angel asked, doing his best not to laugh (he was failing).

Xander's glare only lasted a couple of seconds before he sighed. "Yeah, it just happened. Freaked the girls out and I raced out the door." He waited while the vampire beside him kept laughing, almost falling off in the process. "Of course, that led them to finding out who I was, my condition, and Darla's death. So that didn't change."

That killed the laughter right off. "What happened after that?" Angel asked.

"Since they knew what I was, they invited me into their group. I tried to stay apart, but you know them."

"Persistent?"

"Understatement. They just wouldn't take no for an answer." Xander had no idea how annoying and yet welcoming that was. He had always been on the other end. "Didn't help that Liam didn't have anything against me. And now that she knew me better, Buffy…" He fell into a depressed sigh and downed another shot.

Angel knew what that meant. "Started to fall for you?" he asked, despite already knowing the answer.

"I'm fairly certain me antagonizing her beforehand kept it at a crush. But she started looking at me the same way our Buffy looked at you, even when I kept trying to get her to look at Liam." His head didn't quite slam against the counter, but it was close. "Why does she have a thing for older bad boys? Seriously, why?"

The vampire knew he didn't have a leg to stand on, because he had been one of those boys. Still, seeing Xander Harris groaning about being that in position made him smile. "So, what happened next?"

His head rose up and that single eye found him. "What do you think happened? Junior year rolled around and everything that entailed."

Yeah, that killed Angel's humor. That meant Spike and Drusilla rolling into Sunnydale, Kendra appearing, and…

Him losing his soul.

"I thought you had done your best to stay away from Buffy," he said, eyes accusing the human.

"I did. But I was so focused on avoiding the sex, I completely forgot the escape clause itself. Pure happiness." The words tasted like poison when he spoke them. They did nowadays.

A bad feeling curdled around Angel's stomach. "What happened?"

"Christmas dinner at Buffy's house. Everyone was invited, even me. The warmth, the laughter, the feeling of home, of friends, even the food. I felt like I belonged again. It was…perfect." The ache in his voice made them both somber. "I didn't realize that until I was back home."

It didn't matter if he had it at the Summer's house or on his own. The outcome was the same. "You lost your soul," Angel said.

Xander nodded. "Thankfully, I was able to enact my emergency plan." He scoffed at Angel's look. "I had already been through that once and I knew there was a good chance it would happen to me. You really think I wouldn't have taken measures?"

"What did you do? Try and stake yourself?"

"Nope, I sent a video."

Liam did his best not to fidget in his seat as he pressed play. It had been a rough week, especially since Al suddenly decided to play for the other side. The Judge hadn't helped matters either. They had been so busy Liam hadn't realized he got a package from Al until today.

The screen came alive, showing Al sitting on a couch. "Hello, Liam," he said in a serious tone. "If you're watching this, it means things have gone to shit and I'm evil now." His fingers ran through his hair as he sighed. "I was really hoping that it wouldn't happen. At this point, I'm just praying that it didn't happen like I feared it would."

"What does he mean?" wondered Liam. It was like Al knew what might happen.

"Not the point, never mind. Listen, Liam. Back when I was a vampire, I was known as the destroyer of men, a mockery of my former name, but one I proved time and time again. I was evil, the worst kind of evil. If I had a target in my sights, there was nothing that would stop me from having my fun. I would spend months stalking them, haunting their steps, all to see how terrified they were before I got bored and ended their lives. Any time someone tried to fight me, I was able to outsmart them and get away, pursing whatever I wanted with a merry mood and a bloody smile.

"That's who you're facing now. The person you know as Al, the man who would teach how to punch, match your sarcasm with his own, help you get the girl of your dreams, he's gone. In his place is a monster, one who will enjoy whatever horrors he's got planned for you.

"There's only one thing you can do, Liam. You'll have to kill him." His eyes stared through the screen, right at him. "He's not me, he's a monster, a vampire. You've been helping Buffy hunt them for nearly two years now. Don't hesitate, don't show mercy. He won't give you any. I'm gone, Liam. The only thing you can do is put a stake through him and end him before he causes you and your friends more pain.

"I'm trusting you, Liam. This is what I taught you to do." He stood up. "Good luck." That would've been the last thing he said as he walked over to turn the camera off, until he said, "Oh, and because you'll either show this to them, or because they're that nosy, Buffy, Willow, Liam has the final say over what happens. No arguments. No protests."

Liam stared as the screen went dark. Then he looked at Buffy and Willow, who were sitting beside him. "Well, at least he got that out of the way," he said with a wain smile. They didn't reply. Neither did Giles or Cordelia.

Okay, Angel could freely admit that if he had thought about sending Buffy a video warning, he would've. It was brilliant. Then again, Xander was technically cheating. "Did it work?" he asked. The bar was starting to look a little blurry.

"Well, they certainly tried to kill my evil self. I just didn't account for how slippery that asshole was," Xander grumbled. "Every time they had him, he managed to get away. And it went on for months, long enough Jenny to figure out how to redo the curse." He sighed. "And from what I gathered, that caused an argument between her and the others."

"You didn't kill her?"

"I never had the chance. I trained Liam well enough that he was always on my trail. He was persistent like that." Xander gave the vampire a knowing look. "You probably had the same persistence too, before you became the town drunk."

That brought a growl to his throat. He was starting to regret telling the Scoobies about his life before Darla sired him. "What happened next?"

"What? You can't take a wild guess?"

He could. "Acathla."

"Bingo, got it in one! The Scoobies went off to fight against me and my group, while Jenny attempted the ritual even after Liam told her no." He downed another shot, swaying a little on his stool. "I'm assuming she was successful because I was ejected out of my imprisoned shotgun seat and brought back here, where barely a day had passed. And now, we're here."

That they were. "That's the whole reason you dragged me to this bar?" Angel asked. "To tell me what happened?"

"No, no, Mr. Hair-gel. That was so you had the proper context." He brought his refilled shot glass up in salute. "Now, we can properly commiserate. To our problems with blondes!"

Angel found himself raising his glass, deciding to go with it.

What happened next, neither of them remembered. They awoke the next day to pounding headaches and unsympathetic Slayers. They learned that apparently, quite a night was had. Not only did they have a bar crawl which involved three drinking contests and four bar fights, they also managed to get into a street race, and won. And that wasn't accounting for the accidental destruction they caused in the process. They might've learned about it in hindsight, but Angel and Xander separately came to think it was a good night.

The Cleaveland Slayers told the Head Watcher and Slayers about what happened. Within a month, a new rule had been made: Xander was not allowed to go drinking with Angel.

Said rule was broken four more times that year (one of which included Spike).

End

Author's note: Thank you for all the reviews you've sent me.

This is the third story in what I'm starting to call the Cleaveland-verse, along with Youth Problems and Earn the name. If I keep coming back to this, it's likely going to be equal parts humorous and dark. Case in point, this story.

Now, I'll admit that I probably haven't searched hard enough, but I haven't found a story where Xander and Angel swapped positions. So I chose to wrote it. And yes, Xander was going to cheat if he wound up in that situation, like annoying Buffy, trying to play matchmaker and ensuring there wouldn't be any doubts about killing him if he went bad. If I gave this story more detail, it would probably show the first two seasons through his eyes in a different position, complete with color commentary.

I did want to write the story where Xander winds up as Paris of Troy because I knew it would be funny as all hell. He knew what would happen if he got involved with Helen, so he did his best to avoid her. More often than not, he spent his time in the city helping construction during the day and hunting vampires during the night. Unfortunately for him, his actions and manners made him appear a distant and possibly brooding bad boy. Or as he would put it, he pulled an Angel. I'm still debating whether Helen should stay in the past or wind up following him back when he leaves.

Regarding the part where he and Buffy swap places, I see it happening during the Zeppo. Since Xander knows what happened, he would take the time during the day after to find Buffy and thank her for what she did. She would try to lie, say she hadn't done anything, but he would just smile and thank her all the same. Also in this universe, Cordellia would be Charles Chase.

I'll see you all next chapter!