needsaparrot | Xander's Workshop, MCA Roof, Early Sunday Evening

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Xander's Workshop, MCA Roof, Early Sunday Evening

It'd been one of those weekends. If by that you mean "those weekends you dream about and then wake up promising yourself never to touch runny cheese at a college mixer ever, ever again."

Still, he had a guest, of sorts, and he might as well show her that he did something besides Apartment Managing, without showing her the other thing he did besides Apartment Managing. Which was why they were currently in the elevator heading for the roof of the building.
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[OOC: for the parental unit! B-word-person also welcome laterwards, if desired.]

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"'kay." Jessica followed him along, wondering again. "I saw Willow up at the school. Had a real nice talk with her. Did she get work done on her eyes? Or a chemical peel? 'Cause I swear, she looks the same as she did in high school."

"Clean living?" Xander suggested nervously.

"Yeah, sure. She said water. You could stand to be drinking that water, you know," Jessica told him. "Me, I could never stand that, but you're still young. Even if you're not as young as your boyfriend," she added under her breath.

The Harris definition of under your breath is not everyone's. Xander winced, because really? Not over that. Possibly by December.

"You'd be surprised how old I feel some days," he muttered. He opened the door to his workshop and turned on the light. A half-finished bench for the lobby was spread out on the worktable, legs not yet attached.

"This is the other thing I do," he said.

Squinting for a moment, Jessica walked in, and looked around, not quite getting it. "You fix stuff?" she asked, tilting her head at the bench. "They pay you extra for that?"

"Sometimes? I helped reconstruct the school this summer. But this is just a project."

"Project," Jessica repeated, then slowly frowned. "Wait, wait. Wait, you designed it?" She got a little closer to get a better look at it, then pointed from it to Xander. "You did this?"

Xander shrugged. "Sure. Carpentry and construction's my thing. The apartment manager deal was kind of an accident."

"You didn't even take Shop," Jessica said, then paused, thinking. "Or wait, did you take Shop?" Because maybe she's forgotten. It's been a while. "This is... it's nice." Really nice, the kind of thing people pay money for. And after a second, she connected it to some of the stuff in his apartment, and blinked. "Hey! You made that stuff at your place!"

"Shelves and tables, yes; sofa not so much." He blew a bit of sawdust off the worktable, then grimaced when a few grains bounced back towards his face. "I took Shop here. And Construction Management at UC Sunnydale." He rubbed at his uncovered left eye, already self-conscious about it and now worried about having to chase sawdust grit out of it, one of his favorite activities ever.

"Shouldn't you have those goggles on? You gotta be careful, Xander, even I know that," his mom nagged. "I knew it was Construction something. I just figured that was, you know. Power tools. Stuff like that." Which in Jessica's mind translated to 'stuff that blows up and knocks down other stuff', not really pretty furniture that you could actually appreciate. She ran a finger over the bench. "Why didn't you do this at home?"

"I didn't get into it until my senior year here," he answered, non-evasively for once.

"And yeah, if I was actually working, I'd be wearing goggles. Trust me, I'm all about the eye-protection." He wiped at his left one again, then blew out a short, shaky breath, and reached into his pocket for the patch, because he knew there was no grit in it, he was just being twitchy, and he knew himself well enough to recognize that he wouldn't stop.

Gay. Now the construction and the furniture. A boyfriend. What else? One surprise after another, this kid. "That patch isn't gonna do much though," Jessica said, watching him. "What's that about? You keep putting it on." How much in love with Halloween could you get, anyway?

And he was likely to for a long damn time. Yeah, he could get through one weekend faking his way uncomfortably through it, but every time he saw her for the rest of his life?

Xander held it in his hand for a moment, not actually slipping it back on. "It's about not having time to stop for goggles when your hometown's about to get sucked into a sinkhole," he answered. Because he wasn't about to try to explain what had really happened. That was close enough to the truth.

"What?" Because that sounded like, like, she didn't know what. Didn't want to know what. Jessica got closer to peer into Xander's face, looking for something to reassure her. But that eye-patch, and, yeah, he'd been there at the end and he hadn't called later and... "Xander?"

Which... made him twitch. It was one thing with Bridge, who knew him inside and out anyway, and had seen it before he'd ever actually seen it. Still, Xander stopped himself from putting the patch on, though his grip on it tightened.

"Grade A farm-fresh acrylic. The paint-job's actually pretty good; it's just the motion that's off."

Jessica clamped her jaw against a quick wave of nausea, suddenly remembering him as a little kid, and a couple dozen repetitions of It's funny until someone loses an eye for this or that joke or something stupid with rubber bands, and God, this is worse than the gay thing, for not telling them about it.

But maybe he felt like he couldn't? Or just didn't wanna deal with them when it happened? Because Tony's not so good with sick people, and she... well. And that had to hurt, so much, and she's crying, shit, this is all wrong. Wrong. "Does it hurt? Still?"

Crap. It wasn't like he'd never seen his mother cry before, but there was three or four too many and his dad proving that Xander didn't get the smart mouth from some recessive gene somewhere, and there was... well, this.

If it were Dawn or Willow or Isabel, he'd know what to do or say to make them laugh, or just be able to reach over for a hug when there wasn't anything else to say, but here he was stuck awkwardly wrapping an elastic strap around his fingers tight enough to cut off circulation.

"No, it doesn't hurt. Well, sometimes I get headaches, but that's--" More about nerve-pressure and bone-damage, and hey whaddya know, there are some things he's not dumb enough to let himself get into. "--no big deal."

"Yeah?" And she wants to believe that, so hard. She wipes at her eyes, which just don't stop tearing up, and now she'll never be able to think of crying without thinking of Xander, no, don't think that now, it'll make it worse. See, he's fine, he's not crying. You can do this. Jessica gulped and said, "So, so, that's a prosthetic. I didn't ever guess. Nobody could tell. I promise." Trying to find something else to say to help. "And it's good that you can still do this, this carpentry, hunh?" Oh, God, what if he'd had a job where that would've put him in disability forever? "And Bridge knows? And he doesn't care?" In which case, she wasn't gonna say one more thing about him being too young for Xander. Nope. She might even give the kid a hug, sometime.

Some part of that string of questions was more than Xander could take, and he let the band untwist from his fingers, reaching up to slip the patch back on. "Bridge wouldn't care if I came back missing a head, I think. Assuming I could still operate without a brain, which plenty of people have assured me I've got a lot of practice at."

"You're not stupid," Jessica says automatically, picking up on the thing she can follow in the rest of it. She rubs at the tears again, and sniffs, trying to smile. "Half the time I can't follow what you're saying. You've never been stupid." The rest of it sinks in, and she gives him a hopeful look. "Yeah? You two. He... you're happy? You're not-- you think this is gonna last?"

This, at least, was something Xander could talk about without feeling like his words were getting tangled around his tongue. Also something he couldn't say without smiling. "He's the best thing I'll ever have, and I don't remotely deserve him."

"Awwwww." Jessica patted his cheek-- the one without the eyepatch, of course, and smiled at him through the sniffling. "That's good. That's really good." She sighed, nodding. "I hope you're right. I really do."

Xander sort of felt like he should bristle at the doubt there, but he didn't really have the energy, and the fact that it seemed like she meant it, and not in a backhanded way, threw him enough to keep his reaction to a simple, "Thanks." Well, no, not simple at all. Just short.

Jessica bit her lip, then said, "There's just one-- naah, forget it. You're happy. You don't have to be anything else, right? You have a good job. You have something you like to do. And Bridge, who's a good kid. Nothing else matters, right?" She's saying it to remind herself of that. If she's got any other disappointments with Xander, that's not something he has to fix.

Xander's Workshop, MCA Roof, Early Sunday Evening

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