Giles shuffled sleepily into the kitchen, scrubbing a hand through his hair and pretending there wasn’t less of it than there used to be. He dipped his other hand into the pocket of his robe and fumbled out his glasses. Once they were on his face the world came into focus and he cast about for the kettle.

Despite all claims to the contrary, Giles watched pot did boil. He poured hot water over the PG Tips bag in his mug, and then poured hot water over his hand with a yelp when two strong arms came around his waist from behind and squeezed a surprised huff of air out of him.

“Bad Watcher,” Xander murmured into his ear, “No cookie.”

“A momentary lapse, I assure you,” Giles tried to adopt a lofty tone and failed completely as Xander continued to gust warm breath over his ear and neck. “Even Roger Wyndam-Pryce was rubbish before his first cup of tea.” He dropped the kettle back on the hob and then inspected his burned fingers, blowing on them to cool them off.  He turned in Xander’s embrace and wobbled his lower lip, holding up the pink digits for inspection.

“Oh, jeez, hon, sorry, I—” Xander stopped abruptly when Giles failed to hold onto the mock pout and they shared a warm smile.

“Aw, is Mister Kettle picking on you again?” He took Giles’ hand in his own, saw that despite Giles’ teasing the skin on his middle and ring finger did look a little too red, and proceeded to kiss both fingers softly.

“I always expected my headstone to read ‘died in battle’, not ‘felled by household appliance’,” Giles said. Then he pulled his hand away from Xander and proceeded to give his husband a proper ‘good morning’ snog, full of tongue and tease and morning breath.

He held Xander’s head in place until he was done, although the tightening of Xander’s arms around his waist again was a clear indication that Amy Yip at the water park had been retired years ago and was showing no signs of a comeback.

When Giles pulled his mouth away, both of them were breathing hard and grinning foolishly. He ran his hands through Xander’s hair one more time, admiring the hint of grey dusting the thick brown locks.  Xander’s eye patch had been pushed askew in their enthusiasm and he eased it gently back into place without thought, as he’d done countless times before.

The eye had been gone for as long as they had been together, and Giles had made it perfectly clear that the scarred empty place beneath Xander’s brow neither bothered nor revolted him. But unless they were alone in the bedroom, Xander insisted on covering it up, and Giles had learned to leave it alone. Both men had shared a lifetime of issues in the years they had been together, but each man had his secrets too, and they had built their life together understanding that there was a time for confrontations and a time for peace.

It hadn’t been easy, and sometimes Giles thought that he and Xander probably held the record for the longest continuous foreplay in recorded history.  Seven years of dancing around each other in the Slayer’s shadow followed by another three years as part of an army had finally brought them to this. To a comfortable flat in the middle of London where Giles could train potential Watchers through the internet and Xander could impress potential building owners with his knowledge of construction and architecture.

And now they had been lovers for as long as they hadn’t been, and just last year, they had decided (at a pub after one too many pints and a threat against Xander’s life if he ever tried to play darts again) to, as Xander had put it, “civilly unionize. After all, haven’t you always wanted a child-bride, G-man?”

Giles had made Xander put “I promise to never call you G-Man” into his vows, and Xander had made Buffy and Dawn wear orange. With ruffles.

Giles’ mind was suddenly crowded with memories: A shared motel room in Sedona; a Hellmouth in Cleveland; a mugging in New York; a castle in Scotland. And more specific visions: Xander still bruised from a Fyarl demon attack; his own stitches when a Gnarl had caught him unaware; Xander in a mystical binding spell while Giles hacked his way through the dozen witches holding him hostage—

Abruptly he cut off the flood of memories, cleared his throat and realized his tea was probably stewed into bitterness and—

Xander caught him even as he was turning towards the counter and tugged him close by the lapels of his dressing gown.

“That headstone comment is gonna cost you,” he told Giles, smiling easily and letting his hands slip under the robe to rest warm and heavy on Giles’ hips. He had been with Giles long enough to tell when the other man was cataloguing near-death experiences, and he was determined that on this surprisingly sunny morning when the most dangerous thing in either of their lives was the weird guy living next door who insisted on playing violin concertos at three in the morning and occasionally going through their garbage, he was going to derail that train of thought before it could pull up at Guilt Station, which Giles had designed just for it.

Also, there was just something so hot about his husband all sleep mussed and tea deprived first thing in the morning.

“Terrifying,” Giles murmured, letting his gaze travel down Xander’s body, noting the bare smooth chest, the dark trail of hair starting just below his navel and spreading out as it disappeared under the waistband of the light grey boxers dotted with tiny blue police boxes.

Giles was bare-chested as well, and he couldn’t help but compare his own furry chest and rounder stomach with Xander’s body. He wasn’t fat, far from it in fact, but the incidents of running for his life had decreased over the years and despite daily exercise that ranged from hiking the hills around Devon to making love for hours at a time, he had grown a bit soft.

If the happy erection suddenly poking him in the thigh was any indication, Xander was quite all right with the softer side of Giles.

“That’s me,” Xander said, sliding his hands underneath Giles’ striped pajama pants. “Terreoxander Rex”

Giles chuckled softly and just had enough presence of mind to remove his glasses and drop them none to gently onto the counter before Xander was claiming his mouth, tongue and teeth and lips moving lazily over his own but with enough intent that Giles was gasping for breath after only a few minutes and his hips were moving restlessly, trying to align with Xander’s own. He could feel Xander’s rough calloused fingers stroking over his bare arse and he clutched at Xander’s shoulders and turned his head with a groan.

Xander brought one hand around to cup Giles’ cock inside his sleep pants and  Giles went to his favorite spot on Xander’s body (at least this week; the favorite spot was a random thing, moving around Xander’s body like a Guiding Spell gone awry, and one of the great joys in Giles’ life was determining just where it was on any given day), dropping his head onto Xander’s shoulder, mouthing at the warm, damp skin there and then biting softly at the joint where neck met shoulder.

Giles’ full body shiver matched Xander’s as Xander tugged his cock free of its cloth confines. He moaned shamelessly as both Xander’s thumb and cool air swiped over the head. Licking at the bite mark he had just left on Xander’s neck (and already imagining a hundred horrible vampire jokes when Xander finally noticed it), he fumbled and tugged impatiently at Xander’s shorts and muttered curses into Xander’s skin.

“Gods! Xander!” he exclaimed when he finally felt their naked cocks stabbing insistently at one another. Xander brought his hand up from where he had been tugging on Giles’ balls and wrapped his fingers around both of their cocks.

“Oh, yeah, there we are, that’s it, oh yeah,” Xander tipped his head back to give Giles more access to his neck and stroked their cocks in the rough short bursts that they both liked.  

Giles couldn’t co-ordinate his movements. His mouth roamed wet and sloppy over Xander’s neck, his ears and then, when he tugged hard on Xander’s hair, his lips. His hands were in Xander’s hair, and then skittering across his chest, and then clamping down hard on his biceps. His hips slammed forward instinctively and he could feel his whole body tense as his orgasm boiled up through his balls and—

“Xander!”

Giles wasn’t sure if he had shouted himself awake, or if it was tumbling out of the bed and onto the cold hardwood floor that had done the trick, but he shook his head groggily and pulled himself upright with a groan.

The third dream in as many nights, and he still wasn’t sure what to make of it. Always Xander, always some utopian future, and always with a wet patch on his pajamas, making him feel like a randy teenager.

He wondered if he should talk to the coven about prophetic dreams. He wondered if there was any significance to the eye patch. He wondered if he should just go out some night and get himself a damned good shag.

He never wondered about his feelings for Xander in the dreams, and never noticed that he didn’t.