Note 2: Here's the deal: This is part of a big series. It's up to something like twenty-five parts so far. But I don't want to flood the lists with a posting of the whole series. So for those who care enough to want backstory, the rest of the series can be found at the url below. For this story, you need to know that this is five years in the future, Xander and Angel are married, and they have twin babies (Xander's daughter and son. It's complicated, and it's explained in the stories "Very Little Closure" and "A Little More Closure," found on my page). There is no Doyle in this series because I started it before I found out about him. Since this piece is Christmas fic, I thought, hey, I might as well send it now.

*****

"So what do you want to do for Christmas?"

For just about any other person, this would be a perfectly innocuous question. For Xander, however, it brought up much inner conflict. "Well, I don't know. How about we wait another week to decide?"

Angel sighed. "Xander, it's almost the middle of December. We need to tell people *now* so they know what's happening." Xander shrugged. "So should I go ahead and invite Cordelia over?" Xander shook his head. "Should I tell Whistler that we'll go to their place?" Again with the negative head movement. Exasperated, Angel threw his hands up in the air. "I don't want you to miss another holiday. On Halloween, you had that stomachache that just came out of nowhere. You missed Thanksgiving because of that headache." Now he frowned, concerned. Xander had spent a good chunk of time throwing up because of the pain before Angel had finally managed to convince him to go to the hospital. Once there, he had been given an injection of something that had stopped his vomiting -- and made him fall sound asleep fifteen minutes later. Demerol. That was it. And then the rest of the weekend was spent with Xander in a lovely narcotic haze because the pain simply would not stop. "Did you ever find out what was wrong?"

Avoiding Angel's eyes, Xander nodded. "Stress."

"Stress?" Confusion was clear in Angel's voice. "What could you be stressed about? I mean..."

"I know what you mean." Now Xander sighed. "It's just that, well, holidays were always a stressful time in my family. The pressure to have this picture-perfect day. But we weren't picture-perfect, so someone was always getting yelled at. Fighting galore. Mom overcooked something, or Dad didn't wrap a present to her liking, or someone forgot to buy the special candles. And let's not even go into the whole alcohol thing. It's easier to just skip it all. Yeah, I know, things are different now, but try telling my mind that."

"And so..."

"Physical manisfestation of psychological issues." He shrugged. "Or so the doctor decided. It seems logical to me. She said that I should consider this anti-depressant that seems to work for people with social anxiety. The stomachache and the headache were apparently caused by that."

"Xander, I'm sorry. I didn't realize..." Angel lifted one hand to Xander's head, running his fingers through soft hair.

"Don't." Xander jerked his head away. "Don't be sorry. How could you know? I mean, everything's perfect. You have the perfect house and the perfect kids."

Now Angel smiled softly. "I also have the perfect husband."

Xander laughed harshly. "We're still in honeymoon phase. Just wait until I do something to piss you off. You'll be changing your tune in a hurry."

Silence fell between them, Angel watching Xander pretend to keep busy -- wiping down the kitchen counter and avoiding looking at Angel. Finally, Angel spoke. "Look, if you just want to skip it, we can. It's not a big deal." He moved to Xander, gently grabbing the mortal's hands and stilling their frantic movement. "I just want you to be happy. I thought that a big Christmas gathering would be a good thing, but I'm obviously wrong here."

Xander's eyes were glued to their hands. "I'm sorry. I --"

"Xander. Shut up." But Angel's tone was tender, and he stepped closer to the smaller man. He pulled one hand away from the other three and gently cradled Xander's face. "I haven't had a Christmas in, well, a very long time. I just got a little overenthusiastic. Christmas is time to be with your family, and you're my family now. Therefore, it's a time to be with you."

"If you want to do the tree and nog and whatever..." He trailed off, distracted by Angel's thumb on his lips.

The vampire smiled, aware of the reason Xander didn't finish the thought. "Just the whatever." He dropped his hand from Xander's face and released Xander's hands, not missing the disappointment that flickered across the mortal's features. But before Xander have a chance to voice his objection, Angel slowly slid his hands under the hem of Xander's shirt, one hand carefully moving from hip to stomach while the other rested on Xander's lower back.

"Um, Angel?"

"Yes?" Angel's thumb dipped into Xander's navel.

"Would this be whatever?"

Grinning, Angel bent his head to Xander's collarbone, planting kisses along a trail that ran up to Xander's ear. Once he reached his destination, he deliberately stroked his tongue against a small patch of skin that he had long ago identified as one of Xander's happy spots. "Sure. If that's what you want."

At that moment, Xander was content to let Angel suck on his ear while he unfastened Angel's pants and shoved the garment to the floor, but he was interrupted by the cries of two infants. "Oh, man. The hungry cry."

Angel pulled his pants back up and continued to smile as he watched Xander, retrieving the required bottles from the cupboard and preparing formula. "You know, that's really amazing."

"What?" Task complete, Xander handed one bottle to Angel. "The sooner we get this done, the sooner we can do... whatever."

The vampire accepted the bottle. "You can tell the cries apart. The hungry cry, the pick-me-up-*now* cry, the I-want-my-dad-and-only-my-dad cry, the tired cry, the change-my-diaper cry." They reached the squirming bundles that made the aforementioned cries and picked them up, carefully inserting a rubber nipple in each infant's mouth and sitting down on the small couch in the nursery that had been located there specifically for this purpose.

"Can't you?" Xander frowned, confused. "I mean, you always hop up and take care of the problem without any problem."

"Yeah, after I stop and figure out what's wrong. And it took me four months to figure out how to do that. You don't want to know how many diapers I changed that, as it turned out, didn't have to be changed. Or how many times one of them threw up on me because I tried to get them to eat when they weren't hungry. Sometimes I still mess it up, but I'm doing better now that I stop and ask myself what you would do. Once you came back, I watched and learned from you."

They sat in relative silence for several minutes, listening to the sounds of babies slurping down their meals. Finally, Xander spoke. "Do you realize that you keep using that word?"

"What word?" Angel continued gazing at the child in his arms.

"Back." Xander shifted so he could lean against Angel while still holding on to his son and the bottle. "You say it like I was here before. With you."

He shrugged. "You *were* with me before. You just had to leave for a while to take care of some things. And now you're back."

"Do you really believe that? I mean that I had to leave."

"Honestly? At the time, no. Cordelia just kept telling me that so I wouldn't take a nice walk in the park on a sunny day. But now? Yeah." He turned his attention to the baby girl in his arms. "We wouldn't be here if you hadn't left. And now I think they're fed. We probably have an hour or two before they decide to complain about something else."

Nodding, Xander took care of the usual post-feeding ritual before turning the lights out in the nursery and following Angel back to the living room. "So what now?"

Deliberately casually, Angel shrugged. "Whatever."

"Whatever?" Xander grinned. "But you put your pants back on."

Angel gazed at his lower body. "So I did. Oops. Wanna fix that?"

"I don't think so." Xander sat down on the couch, propping his feet on the coffee table in front of him. "I think that you need to take responsibility for your own actions."

"Xander..."

"Floor show. Now."

"Xander, you know I can't dance."

"When has that ever stopped *me*?" The grin widened. "Besides, who said anything about dancing?"

Angel gazed thoughtfully at Xander for a long moment -- so long that Xander lost his grin and began shifting uncomfortably. "Xander. Don't move."

Xander froze. "Why?"

"Just..." Now Angel grinned, moving closer to Xander. "Don't move. I have a surprise. Well, maybe not a surprise. But I do have a plan."

And then Angel was on Xander's lap, straddling the smaller man's hips while slowly unfastening first Xander's pants and then his own. "Uh, Angel, this isn't quite what I had in mind."

"And your point is?" He climbed off Xander's body just long enough to tug both pairs of pants off, casually tossing them onto the floor before resettling into his previous position. "Up." He indicated Xander's arms. Once the limbs rose into the air, shirts followed pants.

"Point?" His hands floated down, coming to a rest on Angel's shoulders. "I was supposed to have a point?" Angel pulled Xander's hips from the back of the couch, angling them so Xander was slightly reclined -- and so the two could more easily grind against each other.

"Yeah." Angel lowered his mouth to Xander's ear, quieting his voice to barely a whisper. "You gave me an order. I'm not following it." Slowly, he ran one hand across Xander's chest, fingernails catching nipples before changing direction and grazing the underside of the mortal's erection.

"No objections here." Xander took time out from his chatter to pull Angel's hand away and raise his hips, trapping both cocks between their bodies.

They both fell silent, thrusting against each other more and more frantically as time slid by, until they were both merely trying to postpone their own orgasm until the other came. Finally, Xander carefully dragged his teeth along Angel's neck and collarbone, stopping at Angel's nipple. He grinned as the suction he applied made Angel grind faster. The more suction he applied, the more urgently Angel moved.

He hadn't noticed that during this whole process, Angel's hand moved steadily upward to Xander's chest, so when fingers pinched his nipple at the same time he gently but firmly clamped his teeth around Angel's nipple, it was as if Angel's fingers were jumper cables. His entire body twitched convulsively, but he was held down by the weight of Angel, similarly quivering.

Finally, they stilled, and Angel moved off Xander. "Still want that floor show?"

Xander shrugged, smiling contentedly. "Whatever."

~ the end ~