Haunted By Secrets

[madimpossibledreamer]

Like Dante, Xander gets stabbed a lot.  He's fine, though.
Xander's DT looks pretty similar to Dante's in DMC4.
You might recognize some of the Slayers from the other Alexander Gibbsverse stuff.

Main Points:
Buffy/Devil May Cry/Resident Evil/Background NCIS Crossover
Chapter Summary: Leon and Xander really should have talked before this point.
Word Count: 2840
Rating: Teen
Pairing: Leon/Xander
Warnings: Xander gets stabbed, but given that he's Dante-like, he's fine.

           It’s lucky he’s got a couple days before his next mission to get his head together, obsessing about the details.  They’re working with some other organization this time, some international one, and he’s got to keep it looking professional, with his own style, of course.  The first thing he notices is that it’s mostly a bunch of women armed with crossbows and other medieval weapons, but unlike the other agents the only thing he’s worrying about is their reload time, because they definitely look like they know their way around the weapons from the way they’re holding them.  The second thing he notices is the laugh in response to what one of them said, and at that point he definitely takes a much closer look to find a white head of hair in the center because he knows that laugh.  And then he strides over, purposefully, angrier than he can remember ever having been except when people are dying because he knows that laugh.
           The instant Xander sees him, there’s a split second of that familiar happy ‘hey it’s Leon’ face before the context hits him and he turns almost as white as his hair.  “…You’re not Chris.”  It’s whispered and Leon definitely wasn’t meant to hear that and it only makes him madder, because.  Is his whole life a lie?  Was Xander just leading him on?  Was—nope, he can wait to have this crisis until after he drags him off and interrogates him.
           “Hey, is this the cute agent you keep going on and on about?  He’s got the right hairstyle.”  It’s not that the female agent that speaks up doesn’t notice how betrayed he feels.  She’s just…indifferent.  He’s not sure whether that makes him feel better or worse, so he just files that away for later.
           “Redgrave.  With me,” he barks, hands clenching into fists just so they stop shaking. 
           Xander doesn’t make a joke.  He doesn’t even glance at the other agents from whatever agency.  He just follows, and Leon’s brain comes up with the image of a lamb going meekly to the slaughter.  He harshly stamps it out, because he doesn’t deserve to feel guilty about this.
           When they’re finally in the semi-privacy of the tent, Xander finally speaks up.  “They’re probably taking bets on whether you outright kill me or kiss me to death.”  He doesn’t sound amused, more like…resigned to whatever fate Leon deems fit.
           “You don’t think you’re getting out of this one unscathed, do you?”  Leon can’t decide whether it’s an honest question or an observation.
           Xander looks at him like he’s grown a second head.  That’s probably justified.  Leon’s tempted to turn and look, just because he has seen monsters with two heads before, but then, he’d probably be reacting differently (say, using that big sword of his—at his back) if Leon really did start mutating like that.
           He tries to get his thoughts in order, finds himself going in circles, and finally settles on, “So, you were expecting Chris.”
           Xander swallows.  “Yeah.  They said I’d be dealing with Chris.  I mean, Redfield.  I…Is it really obvious I wasn’t ready for this?”
           “Yeah.  Yeah, it’s pretty clear,” Leon agrees, icy bite to his words, and that bright head of hair flops like a beaten puppy.
           “I am just…I am making this worse.  Why did I think I could be trusted to not break everything I touched?” Xander whines his rhetorical question, falling silent to think through his thoughts.  Hopefully, that doesn’t mean he’s taking the time to come up with a lie.  “Okay, first things first, Agent Redfield doesn’t know about me.  We’ve never met, and he doesn’t know I know you.  Honestly, I wouldn’t even know anything beyond his name except my best friend who pushed me to meet you, well, not you, specifically, but to go out that night and stop stewing in my own juices, she’s pretty good with computers and the use thereof, and she got her hands on your file and a couple of others and kind of kept pushing, and I was trying to be good but it turns out my self control is not as good as I’d hoped.”
           “You read my file?”  He sounds like he’s being honest, but then, he’s never heard Xander lie (or only ever heard him lie) so he doesn’t have a basis of comparison.
           “Yours and Chris’s, but, uh, yours was frequent reading.”  He still looks miserable.  “…Your profile picture was pretty handsome, okay?”  At least on a surface level, he’s interested, then.  It doesn’t excuse the lying, or, well, lying by omission…
           “Lie to me,” Leon demands, watching every nervous tic, only to watch Xander go through confusion to understanding to sympathy.
           “I’m not actually here in this tent,” he responds obediently.  It’s conversational, but—but the tone is wrong.  He’s going for that casual statement he uses sometimes, usually to conceal his own feelings, but it’s a little too flat.  Too robotic.  He’s having trouble forcing the words out.
           “Again.”  He’s torturing himself a little with this, and Xander’s face gets a little more anguished in response, but he goes for it.
           “I don’t miss Anya.  I don’t care about my friends.  I’ve got both my eyes.  I don’t need—” his voice cracks on the last one, but he powers through anyway.  “—I don’t need you.”
           “So, you were just lying by omission, then,” Leon hazards.  His heart still feels like shattered glass.
           “I wanted to tell you, but I liked it when you looked at me like you looked at me before and not like you’re looking at me right now.  I was scared.”  Xander swallows.  “I was planning on telling you when you asked me out.  Not, like, right after, but a day after or something.  I dunno.  I was still in the planning stages.”
           What a coincidence.  “You were going to tell me.”
           A white head bobs; a puppet on a string.  “I liked feeling normal.”  The whisper isn’t even directed to Leon, but it hits hard, because he understands that feeling.  With effort, Xander pulls himself together trying to look professional.  “I mean, you couldn’t tell me everything.  Guess the difference was, I knew that.  Pesky NDAs.”
           “Guess you’ve got those at your job too.”  But then, there’s the easiest way out of this whole mess.  “But you could’ve just told me you worked at a government agency and I would’ve understood.”
           Xander blinks a couple times, like the thought had never occurred to him.  “Oh, uh…yeah, I guess I could’ve done that.  Except that would’ve made my complaining about the girls taking all the hot water sound a little…”  He works that through in his head.  “Sorry, the job description I used is kind of the go-to.  We don’t usually interact with feds outside of our jobs, and Gibbs was only read in ‘cause he accidentally stumbled into something.  We found out he was my dad after the fact.  Most civvies just get the rescue school deal.” 
           “But by that point, you knew I was a federal agent.”  Sure, it had been their first meeting.  But he’d known, because Leon had told him.
           “I’m explaining this wrong.”  Xander blows a fringe of hair out of his eye, frustrated.  It flops right back down again.  “We’re pretty new at this.  As an agency, I mean.  Our predecessors were kind of a bunch of arrogant jerks who thought their way was the only way to do things and they didn’t need any help.  They didn’t explain what they did to anyone, and they definitely didn’t try to do any kind of PR or outreach.  They didn’t leave much in the way of notes and what they did leave in place we’ve kind of had to scrap because it’s worse than nothing.  We’re still trying to figure out all the protocols from scratch, because none of us really have the experience and we can’t exactly ask dead guys for their obviously impeccable expertise, which is why they’re dead, or do outside consulting because it’s tricky, hence there not being a specific procedure of what to say when you meet an attractive federal agent off the job.”  He snorts mirthlessly.  “Also I was not entirely joking about rotting away.  Except in the way that it wasn’t literal, I guess.  I haven’t been doing much other than working, so, hey, look at that, good-looking presumably normal person to talk to!  Talk to him and not say anything wrong!  For actual years the longest conversation I’d had with someone not in my agency was tripping through small talk with a cashier.  I am honestly the least qualified person to play at being this normal thing.”
           That sounds more than a little familiar.  And a bit of a disaster.  Now he knows why.  It doesn’t make the hurt go away, but.  At least he understands.  “Gibbs can’t help?”
           Xander’s shoulders slump.  “We’ve asked him about a few things, but he’s not an expert on all of this, and we haven’t even told him everything.  If nothing else, there’s just the sheer volume.  We’re going to have a backlog for longer than any of us live.  Building an agency from the ground up is a lot of work.”
           Out of nowhere, the thought of how cranky Hunnigan would be if she was expected to do that pops up.  It’s amusing, but he keeps the smile off his face.  “And because it was our first meeting, you couldn’t even ask for advice.”
           “Pretty much.”  A small, wry smile.  “We don’t even really have NDAs, as such.  Just a very scary redhead who will hunt you down.”  He forestalls Leon’s question with a hand.  “I’m getting there.  The Army was around in Sunnydale, playing Umbrella-lite.  We definitely researched Umbrella once it came to our attention because it’s relevant to our area of expertise.  The downsized copycat didn’t have any zombies, but, uh, demons, and Frankenstein’s monster.”
           Maybe it’s not cops, persay, Xander has issues with, but authority figures in general, and he’d just made an exception for Leon.  He can see the whole thing with Frankenstein’s monster, but…demons?  And, wait, Sunnydale had gone down in…and the guy’s four years younger, he remembers that conversation…. “How old were you?”
           “Eighteen.”  And he was twenty-one, on his first job, when he’d first seen a zombie.  The butt-monkey jibe slots into place, as does Xander’s panic when trying to come up with a less problematic story to tell.
           Still, given what he knows about NDAs… “Are you supposed to be telling me that?”
           Xander outright smirks at that.  “Hey, I’m not naming names and frankly I’d like to see Uncle Sam try to come after me.  Guys like you and me, you know, experts of the monster-hunting variety, are hard to come by.”  He sighs and adds, “Also, you deserve to know, so, you know, I’d fight them for this.”
           Leon doesn’t know how to deal with that, either, so he doesn’t, going back to an earlier question. “…You said demon.  How can you be sure they’re not just virus-mutated?”
           Xander flashes another regretful smile.  “Well…try not to freak out too badly.”  Everything else that happens is too quick for him to process—a monster appearing in Xander’s place, and—
           “I stabbed you.”  Suddenly the world is moving like molasses, and he’s going to float away.
           “Yeah, you did, but no harm, no foul.”  There’s a distortion in Xander’s voice—it’s definitely his voice even if it’s coming from a nightmarish humanoid magma-lizard—that sounds demonic but other than tucking the batlike wings behind his back he hasn’t bothered to do anything else.  He’s more concerned about getting Leon to sit down than removing a blade from his own heart.
           “I’ve never stabbed someone I liked before.”  Even his own voice sounds distant.  Like he’s not even in control of the words he’s saying, which makes sense because it’s a ridiculous statement.  He’s had to deal with zombies of would-be colleagues, sure, but it’s not the same thing.
           “Lucky you chose the durable guy, huh?”  The tone doesn’t sound like an evil demon monster.  It doesn’t match the voice at all.  The tone sounds like the caring guy who’d comforted him after he’d woken up from the nightmare.  Trying to project that calm manner again, to keep them both from panicking.  And just like a nightmare evaporating, the harsh pointed features disappear, leaving a face he’s pretty familiar with, looking like a hopeful puppy.  “At least you didn’t waste any ammo.”
           Leon can’t find the words, just pointing with a shaking hand at the hilt still stuck in…in his heart…
           “Oh yeah.  You’ll need that back.”  Xander pulls it out, spray of blood and all, and it’s only the anchor of a warm hand in his own that stops him from floating away completely.  “I’ll clean it off after you stop having a panic attack.  How about that?”
           “You’re…you’re really calm about this.”  Leon wants to be that calm, but the hand that had held that knife won’t stop shaking. 
           Xander carefully takes that hand and gently pulls it to the pulse at his neck.  “You feel that, right?”
           That’s…he finds himself counting it, calmed by the beat.  “You’ve still got a heartbeat.  How?”
           “I heal pretty fast.”  It has to be more than that, but Leon’s having trouble pushing past the fog in his head, and Xander seems completely content to just crouch there, Leon’s hand on his neck.  Trusting.  It’d be easy enough to slit his throat or choke—
           Both his hands are pressed against something warm, held in place by gloved hands.  One still held against Xander’s pulse.  Still there.  Still strong.  The other’s actually against a bare chest.  He’s unzipped his shirt, and it’s hanging awkwardly in a few flaps, because of the hole—  Xander doesn’t shave, he notes with detachment.  At least, not his chest.  And he wasn’t kidding about the white hair being natural, either.  It looks like he shaves his face from here, where he’s practically curling into the guy.  The blood—the blood—beneath his hands is starting to dry, but there’s no feel of a wound beneath.  Just skin.  And a voice murmuring the perfect rhythm for him to breathe.
           “I stabbed you,” he repeats, and notes Xander’s eye get a little wider with alarm.  “I stabbed you and you’re fine.  You’re still breathing.  Your heart’s still beating.”
           An encouraging nod.  And he can feel the movement.
           “You were talking about demons before you…changed.”  A patient, encouraging smile.  “You’re not human, are you?”
           “Half-human, all Xander.  And Willow assures me your virus-detecting things wouldn’t ping me as a problem unless they’re set up in a really unintuitive way, so you can go ahead and double check.  I’m not a fleshy-headed mutant zombie.”  When Leon doesn’t immediately panic, he adds, “I was going to use Chris as a dry run.  I mean, I wasn’t going to tell him how I find him sexy, but.  The rest of it.”
           Leon struggles to follow the words.  At least he’s doing a little better than he was.  “You got me instead.”
           “Yeah, I did.”  The caution still hasn’t left Xander’s lone eye, but the words are full of so much affection Leon squeezes his eyes shut.
           “I’m still mad, you know.”  He’s a bundle of emotions, really, but that seems like the relevant one to mention.
           Xander sighs.  “I figured.  This isn’t…I mean, this is big.”
           “We’re going to talk about this again.”  When he’s not panicking about—things he’s not thinking about.
           “I figured that too.”  Because he’d known this would hurt.  Both of them.  And was putting that off.  Leon can understand that, but he’d have preferred to learn a bit sooner, before he was so emotionally invested.
           He gently pulls his hands out of Xander’s grasp and is immediately tempted to check, just one more time, that the man’s alive, but resists.  “I’ll need some space to think about it.”
           Xander actually sounds a little hurt at that.  “You’ll have all of it you need.  I’m not gonna pressure you about anything.”
           Leon finally smirks.  It’s not one of his usual.  He doesn’t have the energy for it.  His brain caught on to the fact that unlike Ada, Xander’s not keeping secrets to manipulate, and it’s not like he doesn’t understand keeping secrets because of work.  It still feels like a betrayal, but he’ll parse that—and the whole demon thing—later.  “Cute agent, huh?”
           He hasn’t really seen him blush that hard, either, but it’s well worth it.

           Sierra stares at him, honing in on the blood marring his outfit, the second they leave the tent.  They’d been joking around about the death thing, he knows.  “Did he…know you’d survive?”
           “I was in DT, so…probably not?”  He brushes his arm against Leon’s to keep him grounded, still, and she raises her eyebrows.
           “Sir?” One of the agents also noticed and is panicking a little, but all Leon can do is shrug.