lunabee34

If you have ever entertained the notion of liking Giles or Xander or Giles/Xander, you should immediately read Giles Thing by

drsquidlove.

This fic is Giles/Xander and it's set in season four and it's so impressively written, y'all, that I almost don't have the words. I'm used to Post-Chosen Giles/Xander, where both of the characters are slightly outside of the bounds of canon characterization. This is so firmly inside season four canon characterization that it takes my breath away.

This is quite possiblythe most plausible fic I've read pairing the two of them. It feels so utterly real. Let me count the ways:

1. The way both Xander and Giles have real issues dealing with the age disparity

2. Xander's relationship with and protectiveness of his parents: the Harrises aren't perfect people, not by a long shot, but they're real--not monsters but real people whose pasts I can imagine leading to what they are; parents who love their son no matter how else they might fail; and oh how does that sting ever so much more than a Daddy Harris who beats Xander

3. The reactions of all the Scoobies and Joyce

4. The dawning awareness in all of them about just what it meant for Giles to be tortured by Angel

5. The time regression plot line that actually allows Xander the luxury of discovering exactly what it is that he loves and values about Giles

6. The quite messy and inexplicable relationship between Giles and Ethan

7. The way Xander is so young without being underaged and the way he is very much the Xander from canon

8. Jenny Calendar. *heart in throat*

9. The way the women are not written out of this story. The way they are not obstacles. The way they matter to Giles and Xander both. The way they are also real people.

10. Xander's fight with Buffy wherein both of them have Points That Are True and it hurts like the most cathartic thing to read because Buffy is dear to them both in different ways and she needs different things from them both and she is still the only girl in all the world

11. This mother is long, my people. Which Lorraine fangirls mightily. Who wants good shit to end?

Go and read. It's been a long time since I've been this head over heels for the Buffyverse.