Title: An Older Man

Author: meagan

Summary: Seventeen years from now, something bad happens to Xander. Part of the Reversal series.

Distribution: Please ask.

Spoiler: None for the show. Otherwise, the whole Reversal series.

Rating: G/PGish

Disclaimer: Of *course* they belong to someone else. I could never come up with characters like this. Specifically, they belong to Mutant Enemy, Fox, WB, and anyone else I forget.

Reversal 21: An Older Man
by meagan

The phone rang in the middle of the morning. To most people, this would not be troublesome. Angel, however, was not a person. And the voice on the other end belonged to Cordelia. Ever since she had become a vampire more than fifteen years previously, she did not stay up past sunrise. Ever.

So if she was calling him at ten in the morning, it had to be a pretty major deal. Unfortunately, he couldn't understand her words because of her hysterical sobbing. He looked at the caller identification box. Spike's place.

He didn't even hang up the phone before dashing out the door.

~~~
The car had been confiscated some years before from an extremely sleazy drug dealer. Heavily tinted windows -- illegally dark -- protected any vampire desperate enough to drive from Los Angeles to Sunnydale in the middle of the day. Thanks to Spike's involvement with the group, they had a vamp-friendly building, complete with protected parking garage, to use in the small town when necessary. Like now.

"Cordelia?" Angel cautiously opened the door. Considering her hysterics on the phone, it was a good idea to be careful. Maybe she had been kidnapped, brought here, and forced to call him. She and Xander had left Los Angeles the previous evening to visit their old gang while Angel stayed behind to take care of a few loose ends on one of his most recent projects, taking advantage of the rare quiet that came with the absence of Sasha and Gillian. Thanks to some vigorous lobbying on the part of the children, they were spending the weekend at friends' houses.

Now he heard soft chanting in a foreign language. Willow's voice. Not a panicked or frightened voice. Then, finally, Cordelia's voice. "Do you think it worked?"

Willow sighed. "I hope so. It worked for you, so I don't see why it wouldn't work this time."

Softly, Angel called to them. "What's going on here?"

A puffy-faced Cordelia ran to him and flung her arms around his neck. "I'm sorry, Angel. I didn't know what else to do. There was so much blood..."

"Whoa." Carefully, he pulled her arms away. "Blood?"

"Xander." That single word was enough. He collapsed. That's all he *could* do. "Angel? Are you okay?"

"What happened?" He heard his voice say the words, but he couldn't believe he had uttered them. Idly, he wondered if this was what shock was like.

Willow stepped forward, kneeling so she was at his eye level. "There was a drunk driver. He ran a stop sign and hit the passenger side of the car." She didn't mention that the car had been Cordelia's and that Xander wasn't even allowed to check the oil on the car. She didn't have to. Xander hated driving at night. His nearsightedness gave him night blindness, and if he could avoid driving after dark, he did. It worked out nicely that he always had someone with superior night vision to help him avoid driving at night. Even if it had been his own car, he wouldn't have been driving.

"No." He said the word calmly, as if someone had asked him if he had read _Breakfast at Tiffany's_.

Now Cordelia stepped in. "Remember what you did after graduation?"

After graduation? She couldn't mean... "You mean when I changed you and had Willow cast the soul spell?"

Cordelia nodded. "It's going to be weird, you know. He's going to be his own grandfather now. Step, but still..."

"What?" Clearly, he was hallucinating. She couldn't mean what he thought she meant.

"I'm sorry, Angel. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea. I stepped over a line -- took matters into my own hands without thinking about what you or he would have wanted. I --"

"Wait." Her words died immediately. Willow was impressed. She hadn't ever seen anyone who could quiet Cordelia like Angel. "So you're telling me that you changed Xander into a vampire?" Cordelia nodded. "And then you brought him all the way here for the soul restoration?"

"Well, not quite. We were almost here when it happened. I mean, it was just a few blocks away. So I just carried him here after we did the blood thing."

"Ah." A few blocks away? And she didn't call him until ten in the morning? Things were not quite adding up here. "So what time did this happen?"

"About three in the morning."

"And what did you do between the time that you changed him and the time you called me? And why on earth did you wait so long to perform the ritual?"

Willow flushed. "It was because of me. After she brought him here, she had to find me. I was... busy. Anyway, then she put him in Oz's chains while she went back and got the driver."

Why in the world -- "Oh, no. You didn't."

Fortunately, the words were not said in a horrified or furious tone. Cordelia grinned. "Yup. I did. Spike helped. We saved some for Xander once he wakes up, too."

Now his voice took on the resigned tone whenever he heard about the antics of the blond. "And the body?"

"Incinerator."

Well, on the up side, he didn't have to worry about losing control and hunting down the person who did this to his husband. "So where is he now?"

~~~
The bedroom was not what he had expected. Since it was Spike's place, he had expected lots of wrought iron -- an elaborate bed, several immense candleabras, a chandelier. Instead, the room featured a simple bed, a bookcase, and a low dresser with a small bookcase-style stereo system. Extremely understated and basic. Instead of the expected dark colors -- heavy on dark red and black -- he saw light oak wood and various shades of blue and green. He realized who decorated it when he saw the acoustic guitar and music stand sitting in the corner. Oz obviously used this room as practice space. And in the bed was the body he had been looking for.

"Xander?"

"Angel. Do you mind? I'm trying to sleep. And I have a killer headache. I need some drugs." A groggy, grumpy voice. An attitude that he heard nearly every single day that he dared attempt awake the younger man. One that, for several terrifying hours, he had thought he would never hear again.

The older vampire chuckled. "No, you don't. You and I need to have a long talk."

"About what?" Xander winced. "And can this wait until after this headache goes away?"

"It can't really wait. And it's about this." After climbing into the bed, Angel carefully nipped a small tear in his wrist and placed it in front of Xander's nose. As expected, Xander's fangs dropped down at the first whiff of blood. And also as expected, he eagerly latched onto Angel and sucked heartily.

But what Angel didn't expect was Xander's reaction after he released Angel's wrist. "So I guess I'm a vampire."

"Um, yeah."

"Hey, my headache's gone. I guess I needed to eat." Xander contemplated the situation for a moment. "You?"

"Cordy."

"Why?"

"You were dying. Drunk driver."

"And the driver?"

"Spike and Cordelia."

"Good." He licked Angel's wrist one last time, cleaning off the last traces of blood there. "Did they save any for us?"

"Of course. But for you."

The response was a frown. "No. Both of us." Resigned, Angel nodded. "Good." He was quiet again for a long moment. "Angel?"

Xander's voice had grown quiet and small, and Angel had at first thought he had imagined it. Until he moved his eyes to Xander's face. The fear he saw there made him pull the smaller man close to him before he answered. "What?"

Another long silence. Then, still in the small, quiet voice, "You know what this means?"

Angel gently kissed the top of Xander's head before gently moving his hand to Xander's chin, tilting Xander's head so they were looking each other in the eye. "Yeah. It means that you're stuck with me for a very, very long time."

"Really?" Angel nodded. Xander frowned. "I look older than you, though. You're going to be stuck with a thirty-five-year-old forever."

Angel sighed as if horribly put out by the idea. And then smiled. "I always did like older men."

"'Always?'" Xander's voice was tense. "Since when?"

Another kiss, this time just barely touching lips. "Since you passed me by in the number-of-birthdays-as-a-mortal thing."

~~~ the end ~~~