Graham was sitting in a booth at the back, pitcher and two glasses in front of him. He was wearing one of those military type dark green sweaters. He looked like commando-guy from a mile away.

Graham looked up with a friendly smile, "Hey." with a hint of nervousness that Xander didn?t expect.

"Hey." Xander replied as he slid onto the bench opposite commando guy.

Graham poured him a beer and slid the glass over. Graham raised his glass to Xander, they clinked glasses and took a drink. Graham looked at Xander, and asked, "So, you been fighting demons long?"

Xander got a somber look on his face. "More or less since I ran into some vampires in grade ten."

"No shit?" Graham raised one eyebrow. Xander nodded, and continued, even more somberly:

"Me, Willow and my best bud, Jesse, got captured by these vampires, Buffy saved Willow and me, but they got Jesse." Xander suddenly looked down at the table. Not wanting this guy to see his face. Change the subject fast, Xander told himself.

"Harsh." Graham knew what it was to lose a good friend to the dark forces.

With effort, Xander lightened his tone and looked up, "Then I sort of tagged along with Buff when she went after the vamps; been a charter member of the Scooby gang ever since."

"Whoa! Four years!" Graham shook his head in amazement. He'd been doing it for less than a year, and he had been considered an old-timer by the other Initiative guys. Even if Xander's count was one tenth of Buffy's, this guy had taken out more HSTs than Graham could ever dream of doing. He was too embarrassed to even ask.

Xander nodded, "And you, how did you get into the hey let's go capture monsters and do experiments on them for someone's evil purpose game?

Graham would have taken offense at that, were it not for the totally friendly grin on Xander's face. Graham said simply, "They gave me a job, I did the job."

Xander had to chuckle: hanging out with Oz had given him the experience necessary for talking with laconic commando guy.

"So, Buffy says you were in the army?

"I was army guy for like one night ? it's a long story." Xander notes that Graham had talked to Buffy about him?He looks at Graham's face for a hint. He doesn't get one.

"Not going anywhere." Graham takes a swig of beer.

Xander relates the story of that fateful Halloween night when people turned into the characters they were dressed up as, thanks to the evil Ethan Rayne. He was dressed up as a soldier, so he became a soldier (OK, so maybe not so long a story?)

Graham was cracking up as Xander told the story, mainly at the way Xander was telling the story. Xander was thinking: I like this guy, he laughs at all my jokes and keeps buying me beer.

"Same Ethan Rayne got sent to the camp in Nevada?"

"Yeah. What happened to him there, anyway?"

"Didn't tell us. Need to know."

Xander looked at the guy. How did these military guys just not ask? Some kind of military brainwashing thing? "So, are you still commando guy?, What with the Initiative now home to three weeks worth of cement trucks?"

"You know about that, huh?" Graham grins. No secrets from the Scooby guy. Not sure he wants to be keeping secrets from this guy.

Xander grins, "Hey, I was cement pourer guy for two weeks ? union wages and everything. You guys got any more secret installations that need filling in, I'm your man."

Graham chuckled, then answered his question, "We all got discharged ? the survivors. Just as well."

"Why? Did you get tired of the demon chasing? or just the let's make supermonsters and destroy the world thing."

"Nah, nothing like that - I still want to fight the good fight."

"Then why 'just as well'?"

Graham hesitated, looked at Xander a second, and then looked back down at his glass. 'You're a tough guy, Graham,' he thought to himself. 'You've gone into a biker bar and sent 4 Hell's Angels to hospital; You've faced down more HSTs than half the Initiative put together; You've taken on a whole squad of Colombian insurgents single-handed with just your pistol and your knife; You get wounded by a canine-type HST, and you're back on patrol within 12 hours. No question you're tough.' Graham swallowed hard. He looked back up at Xander, not saying a word, and thought, 'Now, tough guy, let's see you do something *really* brave, like telling this guy the truth.' Graham cleared his throat, "The whole 'don't ask, don't tell' thing was getting ? hard." Graham had on his poker face, trying hard not to look to see Xander's reaction.

Xander's head snapped up as what Graham had just said sank in. Flashback to locker room and suspected werewolf football player guy?Okay, he kind of overreacted to that one. And the Willow/Tara thing definitely came out of left field for Xander. He was determined to be cool this time:

"So you like the boys." Xander said with what he hoped was an easy-going, 'hey, I'm cool', voice, and raised a merry glass of beer to his lips.

Graham looked straight at him, shook his head, and said with the slightest of smiles, "No, Harris, I like the men."

Xander gulped, and took a too-quick swig of beer to hide it. Graham flashed an amused grin. Xander choked a bit, but recovered, . But he was more determined than ever to be supporto-guy. If nothing else, he owed that much to Larry's memory. "Must have been a lot of work hiding that from the other Initiative guys."

Graham nodded, "Yeah, it was. And yet I got a D in covert ops."

Xander cracked up. Graham chuckled along with him. The tension was definitely broken.

When Xander stopped laughing, he asked if Graham knew about Willow and Tara.

"Yeah, Riley told me about it."

"So was mister Iowa corn-fed freaked?"

Graham chuckled at the description of Riley Finn, All-American Boy, as he shook his head.

"No way. You can?t spend time in the military and not get used to the women-loving women."

"And what does Riley think about the men-loving men?"

"Don't know. Never came up."

"So you're still in 'Don't ask, don't tell' mode with him?"

"Yeah ? for now."

"So you're out to ? who?"

"You". Graham was looking at the bottom of his beer glass.

Xander nodded and thought, 'OK, I must be easy to come out to. Except for my best friend, of course. Willow had to hide it from me.' Maybe he understood that better now. Like Graham not being able to tell his best friend, Riley. When you're going through the big changes, you're afraid to risk losing a friend. Xander nodded, "You gotta do it when it feels right."

There was an extended silence, as Graham's getting the double entendre showed in a growing grin. Then Xander got it. He blushed.

Xander stammered, "I just mean that, ya know, coming out to someone when you're ready, it's better."

"And you know this how?" Graham raised his head slightly, looked at him and asked, with a wry -- but hopeful -- smile on his face.

"Well. There was this football player at my high school, Larry, and we sort of had this conversation in the locker room, and I thought I was talking about werewolves, cause I thought maybe he was one, and he thought I was talking about being gay?.so when I told him I'd been through it myself, he thought I was coming out to him, so *he* came out to me. Turns out he wasn't the werewolf, but he did become our high school's one man queer liberation front after that."

Graham was laughing so hard that he knocked over his glass, spilling a quarter glass of beer all over the table as Xander told the story.

Graham was mopping up the spilled beer with a wad of paper napkins. "Wow!, out in high sch?Wait!, Wait!" His head snapped up and he stared hard at Xander," You're a werewolf?" Was he buying drinks for an HST?

"No, I was more like a were-hyena." Xander was smiling.

Graham stared at him, more than a bit puzzled.

Xander hastily added, "I got better." a pause "It was a one-time gig."

Graham asked carefully, "So? no turning hyena?"

Xander shook his head, and gave Graham a winning grin, "No. I promise. I turned hyena once. It was not good. I did not have a good time. I swear I'll never to do it again."

Graham sat back and stared hard at Xander. "You've led one interesting life, Xander Harris."

When Graham just kept staring at him with those eyes, Xander, a trifle uncomfortable, changed the subject back to Graham.

"So, how 'bout you? You got the boyfriend thing going on?" Guy who looked like Graham *had* to have at least one boyfriend, thought Xander.

"Nah, too dangerous -- career on the line."

Xander nodded. He almost said, 'not any more', but held back.

Graham refilled his glass and took a long swallow of beer. Then another. He held the almost empty glass between his hands, and twirled it slowly, back and forth. "Did some of the one-night stand thing? except it never lasted the whole night."

Remembering his one time with Faith, Xander said, "Yeah, I know that one, leaving the motel at 2 am, clothes in hand. Deed done, time to go. Not the total fulfilling experience."

Graham grinned somberly and nodded. "Yeah."

Graham continued "Mainly though, it was a lot of nights chatting up some guy, then bring too gutless to make a move and going back to my rack and putting on the headphones and listening to Patsy Cline?"

"? country music, the music of pain? " Xander added softly, nodding.

Graham looked at Xander a little surprised, a lot impressed that he knew who Patsy Cline was, and even more that her songs meant to Xander what they meant to Graham. He nodded slowly and said: "Exactly."

Their eyes met for a full second. Xander looked away.

Graham decided to change the subject. "So, you were you with Buffy before Riley?"

"Huh? No. Why?"

"The way you snagged her at the party at Lowell House from under his nose. You should have seen Riley's face." Graham was grinning from ear to ear.

Xander laughed as he shook his head "The Buffster and I have this long and tragic history of her being seriously not interested in me."

Graham gave Xander a serious once-over, and then said slowly, "Then she *is* peculiar."

It took Xander a full thirty seconds to process that one. "Thanks ? I think." A beat. "Hey, let's play some pool!" Xander said brightly, changing the subject as quickly, if not as elegantly, as he could.

*****