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“I kinda met someone.”
Giles’ apartment was suddenly silent. Even the crickets stopped rubbing their wings together to process this new information. Not that there were crickets in Giles’ apartment. They were outside.
“Oh, my god, Xander, that’s great! Was it someone in Gotham?” Willow asked. “We wondered why you stayed so long and never brought back that spell ingredient Giles asked for.”
Xander slapped his forehead. “Shit, I forgot. Did we avert the apocalypse?”
Buffy smiled. She’d had her teeth whitened earlier in the day and was just dying to show them off. “Yes, we did. Eventually. Riley died a horrible and agonising death, though. I accidentally staked him in his territorials. He bled to death. It was way icky.”
“Oh, Buff, I’m so sorry…” Xander started. Riley was a dufus, but he did fetch some truly great doughnuts.
“No biggie.” Buffy flapped her hand. “The doughnut place delivers now.”
Xander clutched at his heart and sagged with relief. “Phew!”
“Anyway, enough about us,” Willow said. “Tell us about this ‘someone’. Is she nice? Will we like her? She’s not a demon, is she?”
“Uh – is there any way to tell you that she is a he without panic, freaking out and offers to take me shopping?”
Both lenses dropped out of Giles’ glasses before he had the chance to rub them furiously with his hanky. Obviously it was one shock too many. “Good Lord! Xander, are you telling us that you’re gay?”
“Yup. Gay as they come. I’m a gay cowboy. But without the cow. And I prefer to think of myself as a man, not a boy. But you know what I mean.”
“Bugger.”
“Is there a problem, G-man?”
“Bloody right, there is. I owe Spike fifty dollars.”
“Oh, sorry.” Xander looked to Willow for some support. “Wills? Say something.”
“She’s a he? Like a he that isn’t a she, or isn’t a he that is a he-she he? An actual he?”
Xander nodded. And then backtracked to work out what Willow was asking. He nodded again. “He’s all he.”
After a small amount of hesitation and an expression much like that of a little dormouse lost amongst the corn, Willow finally spread her arms wide and flapped. Deciding that looked very silly, she instead folded Xander into a Willow-shaped hug.
Relieved, Xander returned the hug and looked over at Buffy to gauge her reaction. “Buffster?”
Buffy’s smile was small and twisted slightly into something that shone with sleaze. “Is he studley?”
“Much. And again with the much.”
“Can we meet him?!” Willow screeched loudly enough to shatter a pane of glass that was a mile away. It was a good job, really, because the glass was being carried across a busy road by two construction men, and a car was coming and if the glass hadn’t shattered…
“Sure,” Xander beamed. He turned towards the door and shouted, “You can come in now!”
Everyone was most surprised to see a man in tights. Oh, and a mask. And some kind of utility belt.
“Fetish?” Buffy asked.
“No, no, it’s just his job. He’s a Cape. A hero. He’s The Dark Knight.”
Buffy grinned. “Coolness. What’s your name, Mr Dark Knight? Or is it just The Dark Knight? Mr The Dark Knight?”
With a voice so deep it made the floor vibrate, and an expression that could terrify the soul of a man into retreat, the man in tights said, “I’m Batman.”
TBC…
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Suki Blue Fiction