Offbeat Debrief

[madimpossibledreamer]

Main Points:
Buffy the Vampire Slayer/NCIS/Arrow
Chapter Summary: Secrets are to be shared.
Word Count: 535
Rating: Gen

         Xander’s relaxed demeanor disappears when they arrive.  It’s hard to tell whether it’s residual from their first meeting or if he really just doesn’t deal well with official trappings.  He’d been—amusingly—completely content and splayed out in the car, even when Gibbs drove as he always does.
         “This has to do with the classified material, right?” Gibbs prompts, trying to get his son to concentrate on something else, and after a fashion it works.
         It’s not as if his posture gets any less ramrod straight, like they’re about to get into a firefight, but he manages a lopsided smile, and the tense, guarded look in his eyes lessens.  “Yes.  Yes, it does.  We’ve been kind of hesitant to read you in, given what happened last time, but you guys have got to be smarter than the army, right?”  He grins, the rivalry all in good fun, and it’s…
         Honestly a little surreal, given that there’s no sign of any sort of military service in Xander’s file or anyone else’s close to him, but it’s also accurate.
         “Got that right,” DiNozzo drawls, amused and slightly disturbed.  Good, he’d caught that, too.
         “Plus, you’re family,” Xander nods at Gibbs, “…and since the rest of the team is family, so are all of you.  It’s just how family works.”
         “Where are you all going without me?” Todd asks aggressively, and Xander shrugs.
         “Take it up with my bosses.  If you can find them.”  Given how difficult it was for even Abby to find a single one of them, that task is probably incapable of being completed, which Gibbs suspects is part of the point.
         “Personally, I’m looking forward to this, young Alexander.  I do enjoy a good story, even if I may already know the ending.”  Ducky definitely looks happy, although—how—“While my acquaintance with Ripper was brief, I did pick up a thing or two.”
         Xander blinks.  “Well, you’re not blind.”  He eyes Ducky again.  “As long as you’re not another Ethan Rayne, we’re cool.”
         “Oh, believe me, my school days were practically tame compared to Ripper’s crowd.  I may as well have been a schoolmarm,” the ME explains.
         Abby, on the other hand, puts her finger right in Xander’s face.  “I don’t care about the Gibblet thing.  You had better get your friend to stop trying to fry my laptops and work computers, or…” she draws her finger across her own throat menacingly.
         Xander holds up his hands peacefully, but Gibbs reads the way he reacts like a soldier, suppressed energy below the surface.  “Ceasefire, or, uh, ceasefile?  Has been declared.  No codemageddon, please.”
         Despite herself, that draws a smile from her, but then, he’d apparently inherited his father’s ease of brightening her day with few words.  “Good, because the world and your friend’s computers are very nice things and I’d hate to have to break them.”
         Xander leans in a little closer to Cait, and Gibbs listens in. “Look, you’re in charge when we’re gone, so…go nuts.  Live a little.”  He slips a twenty into her hand and strolls to the front like nothing had happened.  “Let’s be off.  Thyme and tacos wait for no man or woman or being of indeterminate gender.”