title: The Guy Thing 2: Metaxa. (Xander/Riley)
Author: otsoko (otsoko@hotmail.com)
Summary: Xander and Riley go for a drink
Rating:PG-13
Content: almost-Slash Xander/Riley, almost angst.
Category: The Guy Thing #2
Spoilers: Season 5, follows the events of 'Fool for Love'
Distribution: list archives, otherwise, just ask.
Feedback: yes, please.
Disclaimer: Joss owns them. just playing. promise
ACK. The beloved beta, Emmy, who puts up with my language madness. And Te,
who saw a very early draft of this one and pointed out something really
embarrassing, which I think I've fixed.
NOTES:
1. OK. I finally get around to this series again. Part one, which got
posted to lists in November 2000, can be found at.
http://www.finnatics.com/theguything.htm

2. Another songfic in the Otsoko tradition of songs no one else has ever
heard of ...<g> It's a Greek Rebetika.. The radically sad, slow songs that
they sing in Greek bars in movies with the guy slowly dancing, taking a
half-step/half-jump forward, then back ... Rebetika songs are always sad.
And usually about getting really drunk, or loving someone who doesn't love
you, or being forced out of your home.
The song is 'To Tram to Teleftaio' (the Last Streetcar). It's about being
too drunk and needing to catch the last streetcar home. The last bit of
dialogue (after the bartender's 'efharisto' lesson) is from the song,
translated from the Greek into Buffy-speak.

The Guy Thing 2: Metaxa

Xander put himself between Riley and the drunk guy. Both of them were
tensed and ready, fists clenched, glaring at each other. As the bouncer put
a beefy hand on the other guy's shoulder, he turned to Xander and growled,
"Why don't you get your buddy out of here?"

"Good idea!" Xander said as brightly as he could given the fact that he was
scared shitless. He put a hand on Riley's upper arm, and said in as
friendly voice as he could muster, "Come on, buddy. Let's go get some
air."

Riley didn't move. Xander whispered sharply, "Riley!". He was suprised, but
perfectly willing to be grateful, when Riley let him lead him out the bar
and onto the street.

Once outside, he could feel the ocean breeze, humid, salty, with more than
a trace of dead fish from the boats only yards away, bobbing in the
moonlight, somehow picturesque if not exactly romanitic....

Riley stopped, shrugged Xander's hand off his arm, and glared at him,
annoyed.
"Xander, I can take care of myself. I don't need you to ..."

Xander interrupted, "I know you'd come out of that fight OK, Ri. I was sort
of counting on it, so there'd be someone around to take me to hospital
afterwards. That guy in there had three friends."

Riley looked at him. "Shit, sorry. I wasn't thinking."

"It's alright." Xander looked down.

"You would have jumped in, wouldn't you?"

Xander shrugged and continued looking at the sidewalk in front of him.
Riley put a hand on his back.

Another shrug from Xander. Riley let his hand slide off.

Backup. What Riley wanted was backup. Like the guys on the team in high
school. Like the guys in his squad. There for him. No questions asked.

OK, Xander was being there for him. But with lots of questions asked. Too
many questions, maybe.

"You're not used to talking your way out of it, right? You're used to
hanging out with the manly men: Jump in, duke it out, figure out why later.
"

Riley laughed. "Yeah. I guess so." He found himself a little embarassed
by that analysis.

Xander looked over at him.
"You used to beat up on guys like me in High School, didn't ya?"

Riley's head snapped over to look at Xander. He sighed and shook his head.
"I went to school in a really small town, Xander. I knew everybody in the
school. Knew all their brothers and sisters. My parents knew their
parents. It wasn't like what you're thinking at all."

Xander nodded. "Small town boy."

"I was from *outside* the small town, actually."

"Better than a hellmouth, anyway."

They walked down the almost deserted street near the waterfront. Xander
checked to make sure his stake was handy. Nights out in Sunnydale always
had that little extra special touch of danger. As they walked by the
fishing boats, Xander heard the sound of music coming from a dimly lit place
half a block up a street so narrow, it would properly be called an alley.
He looked up at it. Some kind of Middle-Eastern sounding music: sad, slow,
loud.

"Wanna check it out?" Riley asked.

"Why not?" Xander shrugged. "But if it's a demon bar, we're not staying."

Riley cracked a smile, "OK".

Xander read the cheaply painted sign, 'Taverna Piraeus', and noticed a Greek
flag in the window.

"OK, Riley. You gonna play nice with the other boys?"

Riley grinned and nodded. "Promise."

The two walked in. Riley practically strutting in, Xander was a bit more
cautious, checking the place out. Mostly, he tried to figure out how much
trouble Riley could get into. Riley went straight over the bar and ordered
himself a whiskey, turning to Xander to see what he wanted.

The bartender took one look at Riley and rejected his order, almost spitting
out "No whiskey, Metaxa!", handing them two shot glasses and a bottle of
Metaxa. Riley was ready to argue with the bartender, but one look from
Xander and he backed off. Riley threw a 20 on the counter. The bartender
took it, without offering any change.
"Efharisto." he muttered.

When Riley looked at him, not understanding, the bartender raised an
imaginary glass in the air and added "Yasu!", without too much enthusiasm,
but Riley could tell it was as welcoming a gesture as he was going to get.
The bartender leaned on the counter and returned to talking soccer with an
old fisherman who smelled like he'd just back from two weeks at sea, and had
come to the bar before heading home for a badly needed bath and change of
clothes.

The two sat across from each other at an incredibly beaten up wooden table.
Riley put the glasses in the middle of the table, and took the cork of the
bottle between his teeth and pulled it out, and filled the shot glasses to
the brim. He held his glass up to Xander, and waited for Xander to do the
same.

"Yasu!" Riley wasn't sure what led him to say it, but going on his
instincts hadn't been wrong yet. Xander responded, "Yasu". Riley downed
the shot and banged the empty shotglass on the table. Xander followed suit,
even though he knew this is the beginning of a very bad idea.

"Look, Ri, I know ya don't think much ... I know I'm not one of your
commando guy buddies, OK." Hint of bitterness in his voice. Xander
fighting that. Suave Xander nowhere to be found.

Riley's turn to be taken aback.
"You'd make a good marine, Xand."

"That a compliment?"

"Yeah. A big one. The biggest."

"Then, thanks." Xander gave him an appreciative smile. "I wouldn't,
though."

"Why not?"

Shrug. "Because I wouldn't, ya know, just charge in cause someone told me
to."

"Seems like Buffy's always trying to get you not to charge in."

"Yeah, you noticed that, huh?"

"Yeah. We got that in common."

"But you're charging in anyway, right? Blowin' up vampire nests on your own
and all that..."

"Look. That was just something I had to do."

"A man's gotta do..."

"Yeah." Riley nodded, glad that Xander got it.

"So you're doin it by yourself cause you figure I'm less than a man..."

"Aw, fuck no. Christ, Xander. That's not what I said."

"It is what you meant."

"No, Xand. It's just that, well, in the cemetary the other night ... you
guys just ..."

"... didn't just automatically follow your lead."

"Well, yeah. I mean, I got the training and everything."

"Riley, How long you been doing the vamp hunting thing?"

He shrugged, knowing where this was going. "Year and a half."

"How long we been doing it?"

Riley sighed, "What, four years?"

"Yeah." Eyebrows raised to make the point.

"Yeah, but ... I'm just used to ..."

"We're just not your commando guys, Ri."

"Yeah, I got that."
 

Riley refilled the glasses, and the two clinked glasses and drank. The two
shotglasses banged down on the table in unison. Riley grinned at Xander and
nodded in approval.

Xander was a little taken aback by the woody, slightly sweet taste of the
Greek brandy. It was thicker than he expected, almost syrupy. It soothed
the back of the throat even as it burned it.

Xander looked over at Riley as he refilled the glasses. Riley raised the
glass again, but before he could down it, Xander clinked his glasses, and
pointedly took a sip instead of downing the whole thing. Riley gave him the
slightest of nods and followed suit, suddenly realizing that the only point
of whatever it is was doing was doing it together.

"So how's life as the construction grunt?"

Xander looked up. "I got made crew boss."

"Promotion? When did that happen? Congratualtions. You're supposed to
tell us so we can celebrate, ya know."

Xander sighed. "And listen to Buffy and Giles make jokes about how badly I
was gonna fuck up the job. No thanks."

"Means a lot to you, the job, the promotion."

"I'm good at it. Ya know?"

"Yeah," a sigh. "Yeah I know that one. I used to know that one."

Xander looked at him and light dawns. "It's not just the other commando
guys you miss, eh?"

"I miss the whole thing, Xand. I miss having a ..."

"... place."

"Yeah."

"I mean, this is cool. Hanging out, taking a few classes, seeing Buffy,
hitting the gym whenever I want. But it's not enough. It's not what I
thought it would be ..."

"Why are ya here? For Buffy?"

"Yeah. Plus, I kinda burned my bridges when I got the discharge. Kinda
said some things."

"Graham wants ya back in."

"Yeah."

"So bridges may be smoldering but not burning."

"That almost made sense."

Xander grinned.
"Look, Buffy's been going through a lot, ya know."

"Yeah, I know."

"If ya want, I can talk to her."

Riley cut him off sharply. "No."

If Xander hadn't seen the flash of pain in Riley's eyes, he would have been
hurt by the sharp edge of the negative. But Xander just nodded. Once,
slowly, an understated nod. There are times when words don't matter,
they're just words.

The music playing was slow, sad, almost middle-eastern sounding, lots of
strumming string instruments that sounded almost like mandolins or guitars,
but weren't. All the lyrics sounded like someone had yanked the singer's
heart out, thrown it on the floor and was slowly grinding their heel into
it.

Both guys looked around the bar. Xander would ordinarily have been sort of
scared to come into a place like this by himself, but Riley had been taking
him on a tour of the scuzziest bars that Sunnydale had to offer. He had
heard stories about these waterfront bars, tucked away in alleys just off
the docks where the fishing boats tied up.

The bars walls had tourist posters of Greece, mountains, and stunningly
white villages perched on cliffs over perfectly blue seas. Picture perfect
snapshots of a home halfway around the globe. There were handwritten notes
in Greek announcing one thing or another above the bar. Xander grinned to
himself when he found himself thinking that Giles would have a field day
here, correcting their Greek misspellings and then feeling all superior.

The other patrons all seemed to know each other, and greet each other with
hugs, the drunker the patron, the more bearlike and affectionate the hug.
The few that deigned to notice the two 'foreigners' either pointedly ignored
them, or gave them a sidelong glance trying to figure out if they were there
to make trouble. Clearly the bar was a little home away from home. Xander
looked around and suddenly felt envious of the regulars.