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English
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Part 5 of Gradual
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Peja's Wonderful World of Makebelieve Import
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Published:
2020-11-05
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1,318
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1/1
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Gradual Romance

Summary:

SUMMARY: Larry walks Xander to his door at the end of their date.
SERIES: follows "Gradual Epiphany", "Gradual Belief", "Gradual Realization" and "Gradual Courage"

Notes:

(See the end of the work for notes.)

Work Text:



Gradual Romance
by Scorpio

Xander watched the houses on his street slide by the windows of Carl's car as he sat in the back seat with Larry's warm hand nestled in his own and smiled. The date had been a good one, Hellmouthy stuff not included. Although, thankfully, the Hellmouthy part of it had been nothing more serious than a small clutch of newly risen fledges. It would have been a lot less scary if Larry and Carl had known about vamps before hand and had been appropriately armed, as it was Xander was just glad that he had been able to dust all three of them.

The girl that they had saved would be fine and the police had been their normal charming and oblivious selves. Xander was still a bit miffed that they had recognized him as one of Buffy's friends and as such had been less inclined to believe him. It was only because both Larry and Carl had spotless records and had backed him up one hundred percent that he hadn't been accused of mugging that girl himself. In any case, Xander felt it had been a bit over the top for the cops to warn Larry and Carl that he was 'a bad influence' and that they would be better off making different friends that weren't a part of a 'pack of troublemakers'.

Then Xander didn't have time to think anymore as the car pulled smoothly in front of his own house and Carl was shifting the gear into 'park'. Carl opened his door and climbed out in order to flip the front seat forward. Larry gave his hand one last squeeze before letting go and climbing out as well. Reaching forward to give Bev a friendly shoulder pat and a whispered "G'nite," Xander slid across the seat and climbed out of the car as well.

Before Xander could make some clumsy thanks-goodbye-see you later's, Larry once again reached out to claim his hand and turned to Carl. "I'll be back down in a minute, man."

Carl nodded, "No problem," and turned to Xander. "Nice moves, Xan. Both on the bowling lanes and in the alley. See you tomorrow in school, dude."

Xander grinned a lopsided smiled and nodded. "You too, guy. See you tomorrow." And with that, Carl grinned and ducked back into the car to give them at least the illusion of privacy.

With a grin of his own, Larry tugged on his hand and Xander obediently followed the bigger boy as he led the way up the crooked flagstone walk to Xander's front porch. The second step creaked alarmingly under Larry's weight the same way it did with both him and his father, but they both ignored it. The porch light was out, so that meant that his parents had already gone to bed, but Xander was used to that. With his free hand, he dug into his pants pocket and pulled out a set of keys. The sound of them jingling was oddly loud in his ears.

They finally reached his front door, but Larry didn't let go of his hand. Instead the other boy stopped and turned to face him, a soft smile on his face. "I...uh, I had a really good time tonight. I'm," Larry paused and looked down at his feet, a light blush stealing over his cheeks, "I'm glad that you came with us."

Xander smiled and a nervous giggle built up inside his chest, but he bit it back and merely bounced on his toes once or twice. "Yeah. Me too. I'm glad I came out with you guys, I mean. Not that I didn't have a good time, I did. I mean..."

Larry chuckled quietly and brought up one hand to rest a finger against Xander's lips to silence his babbling. "I know what you meant." And Xander grinned behind the finger before Larry had a chance to pull it away.

When he did pull back his hand, he had a nervous and excited look on his face. "Would...would you like to maybe do this again? I mean, not necessarily the bowling thing, but the going out thing?"

Xander couldn't help but smiling widely at that. A second date! Of course, he had technically gone out on several dates with Cordy, but that was different. The only ones who knew about those dates were his friends since Cordelia refused to tell her own friends just what she had done on the nights that she spent with him and the gang. Larry, on the other hand, had made their first date a double-date with his own friends and forced the issue of them dealing with Xander-as-date-material. And he wanted to do it again.

"Yeah. I think I'd like that, Larry. Definitely, yeah."

Larry's answering smile was like the sun coming up, it lit up his whole face. Xander just basked in his reflected happiness for a moment and then Larry's expression became oddly serious and intent.

"I wanna kiss you now. Is that okay?"

And with those five little words Xander felt more nervous adrenaline pump into his system than he had when he had charged pell-mell into that alley full of vampires. His stomach did some weird little flippy twitchy thing and the palms of his hands broke out into a sweat. His mouth went dry and he was sure that his eyes had gotten so large as to take up his entire face, but as nervous as he was about kissing a guy, about kissing *Larry*, he was also mildly shocked to realize that he wanted that. Him.

"yeah"

It was barely a whisper, but Larry must have heard him because he was leaning forward with heavy lidded eyes and one hand drifted up to slide gentle fingers into the hair at the back of his neck. And then there were soft warm lips pressed lightly against his own, just barely brushing in a teasing way. He gasped in surprise that it felt good and right since some part of him had been expecting apocalyptic badness to come from kissing another boy. A soft moan came from Larry and then the lips were pressing a bit harder, molding themselves to Xander's and a tingle of pleasure sizzled down his spine to settle in his groin. Without thought he clutched at Larry's jacket and pressed his own lips back, even going so far as to stick just the tip of his tongue out and running it along the length of Larry's bottom lip. The bigger boy shivered in his arms and then slowly pulled back to gaze at him with slightly unfocused eyes.

The hand in his hair let go and gently slid around so that Larry could caress the side of his face with the backs of his fingers. "I gotta go. I'll see you tomorrow in school, okay?"

Xander couldn't speak. He merely looked up at Larry with wide eyes and nodded. Larry simply gave him a blinding smile of happiness and then turned and walked down the porch steps and headed back to Carl's car. Still feeling stunned by the fact that he'd kissed Larry who was a *guy*, a *male* guy at that, Xander merely watched unblinking as Carl climbed out of the car and high-fived Larry before he climbed into the back seat. Then Carl tossed him one last wave and ducked back into the driver's seat of the car. The headlights flickered once in goodbye and then they drove off down the street.

And Xander was still standing on his front porch like an idiot. Shaking his head to try and start his brain back up, Xander turned back to his door and tried to insert his key into the lock. It was only then that he noticed that his hands were shaking.

 

END: Gradual Romance

[scorpiofic@aol.com]
http://members.tripod.com/sentinel-cat/Scorpio

Notes:

This orphaned work was originally on Pejas WWOMB posted by author Scorpio.
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