*****

Larry feels brotherly and protective the minute he meets Anya. Maybe it's her size, or the fact that she looks a little like his cousin Meredith. He has never been particularly upset about Xander's strange and polygamous sex life, but now, seeing the other woman--as it were--face to face, he feels a sharp stab of something like guilt.

No way do we come out of this without hurting her, he thinks.

Worst part is, she's a trooper. Pitch in, help out, *anything* for Xander. Which is how he feels too, but he'd feel less crummy about it if she was just a little petulant or whiny or somehow more Cordelia Chase-ish.

He holds it in, though. Larry has a vampire double running around, and the double has kidnapped Xander. Anya's feelings don't matter--hell, Larry's feelings don't matter. The only thing that rates is getting him free.

So Larry sets up the plan. He introduces Anya to his old uncle Corky... who also seems to think she's cousin Meredith, but otherwise manages not to behave entirely like a raving lunatic. Since Xander and Larry started taking care him, the old mage has gained weight. He has started sleeping in a bed again instead of the ratty chair on the porch, even sobered up ever so slightly. Larry never had the patience to deal with Corky's antics, but Xander has a way with drunks, infinite resources for cajoling the old man to eat just one more mouthful, take one more bath, lie down for five more minutes before he hits the whiskey trail.

Stupid little caring moments that make Larry love him. Moments will possibly save their butts.

As soon as he can possibly get everybody into place, Larry goes to the astral plane, tracking Xander through the mental ties made up of their mutual lust and affection. He finds him in somebody's office, high up in the SPD's administrative building.

Pale, recently bitten, and visibly stiff from the abuse Larry's vamped double has dealt out in the past twelve hours, Xander is wearing a policeman's uniform. He has the blinds open and is pressed against the inside pane of a sunlit window. Vampire Larry is a few feet away, just outside the direct sunlight, pacing and growling.

"Give it up, Harris," he is growling. "The daylight won't be here to protect you for much longer."

He was supposed to wait, but Larry can't watch this unfold. It's too much like peeking into the window of his own past, all the times he caught up with Xander after school and ground him into the pavement. Memories that burn at him now, a reality he can't face even in distorted fanged form. The fear on Xander's face is too achingly familiar, and he can remember how much, as a boy, he loved to inspire it.

So Larry reels in Xander's spirit, catching himself one last glimpse of the office, and as the spirit of his lover materialises in the astral plane he hooks out a second mental tendril, anchoring himself back to the Sunnydale General Hospital of another universe, the universe where he and Xander's other-world double were both born. Gathering Xander's spirit in his astral arms, he makes a single, Herculean effort--line drive, he tells himself, line drive--and yanks. What he's trying to do is essentially to create a magical slingshot. He sends his body to its birth locale. The body will yank his spirit there... and he has Xander's spirit too.

Last phase of the reaction--Xander's spirit yanks Xander's body to the scene. He hopes.

Like many plans, part one goes pretty smoothly. Zip, yank, pop--and suddenly the arms he's holding Xander with are flesh, not spiritstuff. And Xander's solid too, smelling faintly of dried blood and nervous perspiration, maybe, but alive, here, whole.

They embrace like lost orphans, dissolving into shrieks that are half-glee, half-hysteria. Then, without much more than a cursory glance at the delivery room they've arrived in, Larry catches Xander's face in his hands and kisses him, firmly but not hard enough to bruise.

"Scared me, man," he says.

Xander presses his face into the kiss, follows with a tongue. He slides a hand into Larry's jeans and Larry's cock rises to meet it. They unbutton, push aside the jeans with passion keyed up by relief and spent terror. Xander's tear-wet face dips to his lap and Larry sucks wind at the feel of that clever tongue and jaw, burning through the fear he feels at being home again.

There are shadows in Xander, dark corners and cornices of his personality that make Larry unutterably sad, but they all vanish during sex, dimming to nothing and leaving something so clean, bright and godlike that it is blinding. Divine lips close around the head of Larry's cock and the suction is just right. Purring, Larry weaves his fingers into the dark hair and pulls. The reward is instant; Xander slides forward in a single thrust to take in the whole of him.

That does it. He melts back against the delivery room wall, letting his hands slide out of the hair and onto the blue-clad shoulders. He retains just enough wit to do two things. One is keep track of time, which Xander won't even though for all he knows Anya will be summoning them now. Two, he's got to be gentle. Easy to remember when he looks at Xander's paper-white skin and the bites on his neck. Not so easy when the head dips and rises, faster, faster, and a saliva slick finger slides under and then inside him. The physical instincts of the athlete turned Whitehat want to wrap his legs around Xander, to ram the head down on his cock.

But he holds back, lies still, looks down the uniform's shirt to its black leather belt and slacks. He imagines a badge, imagines a gun, imagines that the slim digit inside him is really a nightstick...

Xander's head is almost a blur now. His free hand wraps around the base of Larry's cock, while the finger inside goes right up against Larry's sweet spot. Larry gasps and groans, impaled and engulfed, and it's his cock and heart exploding at once as he comes. He sprays himself into Xander's mouth just as a team of doctors and nurses burst into the room, rolling in a pregnant woman on a gurney.

Cut to a soundtrack shrieks of embarrassment and anger from the medical types and expectant father.

What can he do? Nothing except leap up, zip up, and help Xander to his feet so they can apologize and run. Xander wipes his mouth stealthily on the back of his hand and the shadows steal back slowly, their return accelerated by the pain Larry can see in every wincing step.

"What now?" he grates.

"I yanked you out of there before Anya was set up to do the spell," Larry says. "It could be a couple hours before they take us back. What's say we get you some blood?"

"How you gonna do that?"

"This is my Sunnydale, remember?" Heart sinking even as he says it, Larry ushers him to an elevator. "Giles and I have a deal with the emergency guys."

"A deal?"

The elevator is broken again, so Larry explains as they limp down the stairs. The Whitehats, as the vampires call them, have always had unrealistic blood requirements, so Giles worked out a system--come in with a bite, pay for the transfusion, with interest, by donating later. Larry has three credit pints logged with the emergency room, and since he has been in Xander's world--otherwise known as Paradise--he has been safe and well-fed for so long that he can probably squeeze out another full donation now.

And sure enough, the grisly treaty is still in place. Larry's favorite intern sets Xander up with a transfusion and washes his bite wounds with holy water as Larry bleeds into a bag. He politely declines to comment on the other injuries they find on Xander when they take off the blue shirt: scratches, welts, cuff-induced bruising at the wrists, a weird mark which Larry recognises as having been left by his vampire self's Varsity football ring.

The intern hasn't noticed Larry's month-long absence from battlefield Sunnydale, but he does mention that Oz and Giles came in last week, with a recent rescuee.

They must think I'm dead, Larry realizes. The old obligations catch at him like cobwebs. Giles, who has saved his life so many times; Oz, who kissed him once and only once, on the day after the Slayer came to town and died, the day when they barely escaped with their lies.

"Anything else we can do for you, officer?" Xander doesn't correct the intern, just shakes his head wearily and puts his shirt back on. His color is better, to Larry's relief. He shakes the guy's hand and they make tracks.

"We'll have to hole up somewhere and wait for Anya and Corky to pull us back home," Larry says.

"Here seems good."

"We can't loiter here." He grabs up two crosses from the stash they keep in the chapel and tries to think. "It's part of the deal with Emergency."

"Maybe look up some of your old buddies?"

"That could get complicated."

"The Bronze?"

"Vamp turf."

"Right, I forgot." Xander lowers himself gingerly into a plastic waiting room chair. "You got a home here?"

Larry shakes his head. No home, no job, no school, no surviving family.

"Let's just crash in a hotel lobby, then."

They take a cab from the hospital, surreptitiously testing the driver with the cross before getting into his car, and drive to the Sunnydale Sheraton. The fa�ade of normalcy is extreme here: tourists and business types drift through the lobby like migrating butterflies, their faces clean and innocent. Xander and Larry skulk over to a couch tucked near an out of the way conference room and flop onto its upholstery. Xander falls asleep almost immediately, leaning on Larry's arm and snoring, his lips pursed like an infant's. His hair is rumpled and smells ever so faintly of delivery-room antiseptic.

Wide awake, Larry edges out his free hand and catches a newspaper that someone has left on a nearby table. By the time he has finished with local news--it's all perkily upbeat, as usual--and flipped to the obits, gnawing worry has made serious inroads into his calm. Anya and Corky should have yanked them back by now, shouldn't they.

Forget it. Just read. The obits don't have any familiar names, which is a relief. It shouldn't be, because he has missed a month's worth of death. Maybe nobody he knows is left. Even so, the list seems shorter and less packed with young people. Not necessarily a huge surprise--the now-dusted Willow and Xander vamps had enormous appetites.

The Slayer may have died, but at least she left a hole in the Master's operation.

His stomach roils, the way it does when he's messing with magic. Maybe he's tired after all. Could be he's so exhausted he can't even tell. It has happened before, here in the combat zone. He gives himself a mental shake and tries to lose the fatalism. No matter where he is, Xander is with him. That's what matters, right? Keep your eye on the ball, he tells himself. You're here, he's here, and you're not overtired. It's going to be okay.

Two things happen at once then. Xander's eyes snap open like shutters, black with fury and in no way sleepy anymore. Larry has time to wonder: woken from nightmare? At the same time, two men round the corner, stepping into corridor. One is wearing a rumpled suit and an eager, desperate necktie. The other is Devon, improbably coiffed and corporate-like in some thoroughly expensive threads. Clearly a vampire.

Devon. Suit. Weird.

Larry barely has time to process this, though, before Xander is on his feet. He has a cross from the chapel tucked in one hand and a stake--where did he get a stake--hidden in the other sleeve. "Excuse me," he says, in an utterly convincing law-enforcement voice, and Devon and his victim to be stop automatically. Xander steps between them, making a space, and flashes the cross like it's a badge.

Everything goes straight to the slowmo replay--Devon's demon face coming out to play as he lurches back and away. Seeing this, the victim blanches, falling toward the couch and Larry. Blocking him from offering Xander an assist.

He raises his own cross anyway, makes to jump in, but Xander's other arm comes up in a swift and lethal arc. The stake, which is glowing greenly, goes home.

"Fucking bummer," says Devon, reverting to type just before he drifts away in flakes.

It is the smoothest non-Slayer kill that Larry has ever seen.

Without breaking stride, Xander catches the falling victim, who is gibbering. "Did you see that, did you see, hey, did you see that?"

"Yeah, we came, we saw, we saved your ass," Larry says.

"What's your story, pal?" Xander asks.

The guy blurts it out gladly. He's from out of town, unemployed. He saw an ad in USA TODAY that said someone in Sunnydale was paying money to do a psych study on people with--get this--no family, no friends, no ties. Apparently the Master is recruiting people who won't be missed from all over the country, just to keep his blood-extraction operation in the black.

Xander reads the ad and then tucks it into his wallet, disgusted, before sending the guy back to his hotel room and the attendant despair of joblessness.

"We can't do anything about this," Larry says unhappily. "Anya could retrieve us anytime."

"Anya's late," Xander says curtly. "There's no point in sitting around."

"You're hurt," Larry says.

"Slept it off." And he does look better somehow, like his joints have oil in them again instead of bits of broken glass.

"She won't be much longer."

"Larry," he grins, "Let's go kill stuff."

"Uh uh. We wait here for Anya." But Xander is catching by the hand, giving him a good solid smack on the lips.

"It'll be okay," he promises, and he drags Larry off into the insanely dangerous night.

* * *

Their first stop is a Whitehats weapon cache near Sunnydale High, a bunker of weapons and Slayer stuff that Giles has squirreled away in a dead-end culvert. They load up on stakes, on crossbow hardware and holy water. Larry is wavering between a conviction that the rape has snapped Xander's mind and the certainty that they are going to get killed. The fatalism is back: he hates it here, hates the way being here, in this Hell world, always means having to choose between crappy alternatives. He wants to go home.

>From the cache they stroll out to the cemetery. Even more of the streetlights have been blown, and the night sky is thick and black, almost syrupy. The stars are extra bright and silvery. "Triple romantic evening, huh?" Xander asks him. Larry manages a wan smile in response.

Between the tombs, Xander dusts two newborn vampires like they are rookie-season ball players. He's at work on a third, slugging it out with him. A focused darkness takes hold in his face, is scaring the shit out of Larry. Not to mention the glowing stake, and the way he's getting as good as he's giving, and shaking it off. This is magic--again, and unwelcome, and what if it interferes with their getting home?

Then a woman leaps into the fray. Not a Slayer, at least Larry thinks not--she's way too old. She leaps on the vampire and tries to stake it; ends up flying and knocked silly for her efforts. Larry gets between her and the vampire, cross extended.

The distraction costs it its unlife--Xander roundhouses the thing, driving the stake home.

"Shit," the woman says absently, trying to pull herself up.

"Ms. Calendar?" Xander says it incredulously, a big smile breaking across his face as Larry helps the woman to her feet. She is rubbing her jaw.

"Yeah, kid. Who are you?"

Xander shrugs. "Nobody. Sorry."

Then Giles and Oz and a third guy are barrelling toward them, crosses out, super-soakers at the ready.

"Back!" Giles shouts at Xander, but of course nothing happens when he brandishes the cross. Xander gives the three of them an odd look and goes on grinning at the woman.

"Jenny, are you all right?"

She pushes down the crossbow pointed at Xander's heart. "He helped me, Rupert."

"Ripper," says the other old guy, in extravagantly English tones. "This isn't working."

"Welcome back," Oz says to Larry.

For some reason, *this* gets everybody's attention. Suddenly he's got five pairs of eyes on him. Oz pulls the trigger on the watergun and its battery-operated pump chatters, drenching him in what must be holy water.

"Huh," he says, and turns the gun on Xander for good measure.

"Larry?" Giles now, in that wounded and thank-God voice that says he's been laying up nights, worrying.

"Uh... surprise?" He holds up the cross in case they still aren't convinced he's not a vampire.

Then Giles is actually hugging him, and Oz is in there too. The woman and the Englishman look pleased but puzzled. And just like that, Xander makes to wander off, on the scent of another vamp.

"Hey Harris..." Larry tries to say from inside the crush.

"Be right back. Fee fi fo fum and all that."

That does it. This is no time for explanations, but Larry grabs Giles' face. "He's alive, not a vamp," he says. "He's from the other world, the one where the ditz didn't make that wish. We're supposed to be going back there--" Please, please, please, let that be true--"we could vanish any time."

"I see," Giles says, absorbing it all.

"Thing is, something's going on. That's the fourth vampire he's killed tonight."

Chain reaction--the Whitehats look at each other significantly.

"The spell..." Giles says weakly. The woman--Jenny--puts her hand to her throat, where a green gem glows with pale light. "Larry, it's rather a long story..."

"We were trying to give her Slayer powers," Oz says.

"Not that long after all." The Englishman smirks.

"Ethan..."

Sounds of combat rise up from behind a crypt and they all look Xanderward. "I guess it worked after all," Giles says. Then a vamp flies into view, *sans* its head, and vaporizes before it hits the ground.

Jenny pushes the green pendant into Larry's hand. "You'd better give this to him. It stabilizes the spell."

"Okay." He moves on numb legs to find Xander, grinning and dusting flakes of the undead off of his police uniform. "Guess what?"

"I've won a free trip to a nude beach on the French Riviera?"

"There's a do-it-yourself Slayer spell on the loose." Larry claps the green gem into Xander's palm.

It takes a second to sink in. Then a stunned but goofy expression breaks out.

"Cool!" They share a high five that nearly breaks Larry's wrist. "Here and I thought it was post-shock delirium!" With that, Xander throws back his head and howls, laughing. Larry can't help joining in. It's exactly like scoring a touchdown.

"Xander," he manages finally. "This has implications."

"Yeah," Xander says, but from the look on his face the boy thinks the implications are *good.* He amps down immediately to focused glee. "Tell Giles to call the gang together."

* * *

Giles' new crowd is composed of mages: Ethan Rayne, Jenny Calendar, a woman named Veruca and a girlish goth kid named Michael. All of them except Ethan are multiply tattooed--crosses and arcane symbols cover their throats, their chests and wrists. Holy armor for bodies too frail to compete with the enemy.

Xander takes charge like he really is the Chosen One, instead of the fortunate Stand-In. He quizzes Giles rapidly on the state of all things locally infernal. They tell him that the Master has struck a truce with the Mayor, that Angel is toast, that the Master's nest is at the factory and that the Bronze has become a hangout for newbie vamps trying to become part of the A-list. No sign of Spike and Drusilla, no sign of Kendra, Faith, or anyone else Slaylike. The Hellmouth, here at the school library, is half-open. Smoky things escape from it, taking their time before coalescing into solid demons. Nobody knows if the Initiative exists or what they're up to.

Once briefed, Xander breaks them into teams. He sends Ethan and Oz to raid a military base at the edge of town, writing out a lengthy shopping list. Jenny and Veruca are supposed to load up at the magic shop and then--carefully--swing by the university in search of Reilly and the soldier boys. Michael is left with the books, organizing the mother of all research sessions.

Larry and Xander hit the Bronze with Giles.

It is a rout. Xander comes in the main door and starts cutting a swath. Larry and Giles wait at the fire exits with flamethrowers, torching the would-be escapees. One lone vamp manages to flee via a skylight above the stage, but they let her go. Making a quick circuit, they catch one more before they start releasing the six or so surviving entrees. One of them is a gangling anemic kid with brown hair, who screeches when Xander folds him into a hug.

"Jesse?" He crows and squeezes the poor guy until he's just shy of fainting. "How's it going, man?"

The poor kid is too shell-shocked to answer.

This is all so weird. Larry's hating every second they spend in this place, but for Xander it's clearly old Home week. Visiting with other people who he's buried. A strange kind of redemption.

And if he, Larry, was Xander, he would tell himself it was just what he deserved for playing the bully-boy all those years. But he's not Xander, and as far as he's concerned karma is bullshit. Nice that Xander is having fun, but he's got to get him out of here before the bubble bursts, before the terrible reality of this world comes home and gives Xander's heart another stomp.

Xander finally releases the quaking Jesse to the gathering ambulance crews and joins him and Giles in the escaping from official attention part of the game plan. They bail in Giles' white van, speeding back to the library.

"Isn't this of the neat?" Xander enthuses quietly into his ear. "Jesse... Miss Calendar... even the school not being exploded?"

Larry shrugs. This Sunnydale has a far higher bodycount than its twin--it's just not within Xander's particular social circle. He's trying to think of something neutral to say when unnaturally strong fingers close around his shoulder. "We *are* going home, Lare. Police station full of vampires, remember? Uncle Corky in need of regular maintenance? Our friends, our life, all that?"

Our life. His heart flip-flops with barely contained joy. Home. Xander hasn't forgotten anything after all. The resentment fades like snow under sunlamps.

"The Boy Slayer gig is just a short-term groove," Xander continues. "I get that. Hell, it's too good to be permanent."

Larry kisses him, leans into the waiting embrace.

"This whole world is indirectly my responsibility, right? Cordelia and Anya created it because of me. I owe them some slayage for their buck."

"I guess." What he kind of thinks is that Xander has too much self-blame and not enough self-esteem, but it is painfully true that Giles and company can use all the help they can get before he and Xander please-god-please-Anya vanish. "You know, good things do last sometimes," he says. "Sometimes we deserve them."

Xander doesn't answer, just goes bleak-faced for a second before letting the scent of scorched demon raise his spirits again. And what more can Larry say? It's his fault, sort of. The evil Larry has probably trampled what little dignity Xander's family and years of school bullying had left him.

Then he does give in, briefly, to the guilt-demons. He should have guessed the Larry vampire was out there... why else would Corky snare him from another dimension instead of just raising him from the grave? Now Xander is paying for his lack of foresight. He's holding the freakout at bay, but how could anyone go through that--astral tricks not withstanding, a rape is a rape--and not be nutsified?

*****

Back at Giles the war goes on. They down two-day old doughnuts and do an inventory-regroup. Ethan has acquired all the hardware on the list--infrared goggles, incendiary grenades, radios. Xander isn't so cocky he thinks he can take the Master on, so this plan is equipment and group oriented. They wait for dawn, enspell the vamps, and break into the nest. Xander takes out any sentries and the bunch of them lay the bombs. Rescue detail falls to Jenny and Veruca, hardware to the boys. There's an unconscious sexism in the labour allocation that Larry notes but doesn't comment on. Superficially, it does make some sense. Veruca can pick locks, and Jenny has an air of do-as-I-say gypsy mojo that will probably work well on shell-shocked civilians. It is no wonder the Whitehats thought the Slayer spell would choose her to carry the torch.

They get to the building in time to see the last few vampires fleeing daylight. One is dragging a young woman with him--Xander takes it out, stealthily, with the crossbow--but the rest are unencumbered and go indoors unmolested.

Then the spell--everyone but Xander gets into a circle and they call down some serious wicked, a heavy-duty torpor that is supposed to strike the vamps triple-sleepy, to make them feel gorged and blood-doped. The idea is that even if Xander and Larry vanish from the fray, the others will have at least a slim chance to burn the nest and get out.

It is the first time Larry has been in a circle, let alone one so big. The magic is purple and heavy and powerful, sexy and dangerous at once. He is almost unwilling to dump the power into the vampires down below--he has a minute where he just wants to hang on, to wallow in it. But he stands down temptation and slam-dunks the attack.

From there it is commando time, creeping into the pit. Xander dusts torpid vampire guards. The incendiaries are supplemented by the gas pipes they break on the building's lowest level. The dozing vampires do not wake when Veruca unlatches the cage holding tonight's menu.

"This is going way too easily," Xander mutters, when they are almost finished.

Somehow, it's too much. "Would you stop?"

"What?"

"The defeatist attitude. Harris, you've got--"

"Larry, all I meant was my spider sense was tingling."

"What you meant was--"

"Shh!"

He lowers his voice. "You gotta start thinking about letting okay things be okay, you know? When stuff is good, you can't go around wondering when's it gonna end."

"Larry..." There's a moment when he thinks Xander's going to pat him condescendingly, but instead the extended hand knocks him flat as something white and big roars over him like a rocket. The Master has broken out of the magically induced coma, and the others are stirring in their gas-laced, not quite ready to go deathtrap.

Fuck.

"Go!" Xander shouts from underneath the Master and everything human breaks into a run, pounding up the emergency steps double-time while Xander takes a couple serious face blows and tries to pin the ancient creature to the wall. It looks faintly puzzled, which Larry guesses makes sense since it probably thinks this is its weeks-dead vampire baby.

If only Oz was on his side, Larry thinks. Then there's a high-pitched shriek--Michael, dying horribly--and he snaps out of it.

"Hey!" Larry shouts to get the Master's attention. He flicks out a flaregun that he picked from the weapons pile before they left, points it down the stairwell at the invisible gas fumes and not so invisible bomb materials. The Master doesn't let Xander go, but he makes a gesture and the waking vampires stay put for a moment. Enough time to let everyone get clear? It's hard to say--with the gas pipes ruptured, the whole block could go up.

"Let him go," Larry says to the Master, but the vampire looks straight at him, and the flaregun hand starts to tremble. He's not sure he could move now if he had to. Down below, the vamps in his peripheral vision are starting to move again. Xander, his throat caught in the long, powerful fingers, is struggling less and less vibrantly.

No way, Larry thinks. I do not lose you now. But he still can't move.

Xander kicks out at the Master, shaking the gaze. "Do it!" he yells, and Larry's finger clenches obediently around the trigger. The flare dives into the firewell below, and he tries to grab at the Master before he can get the mind-whammy on him again. All he gets is a brief touch of sleeve and a crushing blow to the ribs. The floor is vibrating with the shockwave of the coming explosion and he can already feel the hot exhalation of fire...

*...probably already too late to get out...*

...at least the blast is big enough and bad enough to catch the Master, but the fucker's still got Xander, who is making a run-run gesture to Larry with one weakening hand.

As if. Larry launches himself at the arm again, gets hit again, goes down.

*...no time left... guess we fry now...*

At the top of the stairwell, he can see the others, fleeing the coming inferno. Jenny Calendar has fallen near the entrance to the building. Giles looks like he might head back to get her. The others are clear. Oz is moving like he's blinded, both hands pressed into the flow of blood gushing from a ruined eye socket. Only Ethan is still beating feet, getting as far away as possible.

What the hell. Larry tries to get to Jenny, to cover her with his body. If he and Xander are both going to die, maybe she will still--

But then hot sunshine beams through the boiling hungry flames. Larry's shirt is on fire but they aren't there any more. For a moment they are in two places: Jenny is burning to death beneath him and Xander is falling to a hardwood floor as the Master squeezes and incinerates and it's too late, she's dead, he's gone, they're alive, they're here...

Which is...

God, it's the attic. Anya squints at Larry indifferently even as Xander leaps up to put his shirt out with a blanket.

They both smell like burnt hair.

"Xander!" And then Anya's in Xander's smoking, cop-dressed arms, pressing her lips to his, and Larry finds he is just a little jealous after all. She drags him off with a jubilant, horny expression and Xander tries to throw a look over his shoulder. Meaning what... "I'll call you?"

Then he consents to being led away. Leaving Larry with a burned shirt, Uncle Corky and the closeted status-quo.

Not too bad, considering where they were yesterday, he tells himself. Then he firmly sets the brief sensation of feeling taken for granted aside and resets his priorities to the realistic: fridge, shower, bed.

It can all still work out, he knows it can.

He sighs, displacing the attic's resident population of dustmotes, and heads downstairs with Corky as they swirl in the slanting sunlight.

end