Hiraeth (pronounced [hiraɪ̯θ])

   TITLE: Que Sera, Sera aka. Doris' Day

   AUTHOR: kerk_hiraeth

   FANDOM: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (au for canon from Welcome to the Hellmouth / The Harvest)

   LENGTH: 500

   CHARACTERS: Xander; Jesse & two (count'em, two) Willow's;

   SHIP: Xander/Jesse;

   A/N: Very soon after I posted my first story in twenty-one months, I began to get images that confused me, until I also began to wonder what might have come to pass if someone other than Jesse had been taken by Darla during the pilot episode(s).

           This was the result. As always getting the story to fit the parametres was the most fascinating of exercises. I cannot express how much I have missed that.

          Also this www.youtube.com/watch is the tune that is referenced.

       He woke, as he always did, with the dawn; not troubling too much with the getting dressed. He'd be back in bed before very long anyway.

    A tiny noise had him looking down as a tiny body; stirring at the sudden absence of warmth, snuggled tighter to the rising chest on the other side. Lifting the baby; pausing on the way only to turn the heating on in the room that would become hers, he carried her down to the kitchen.

   Carefully he laid her on the changing mat, he got the makings of their breakfasts together and started before he began the messier business of changing diapers and making sure she was fed.

   Ready for the next poop.

   Pulling out a draw under the table; everything he needed already laid out, a smile made him feel warm in the knowledge that someone knew him so well.

   Dark memories of his own family intruded, but a discontented noise brought him safely back to the present.

   By the time he heard the shower running diapers were changed; baby fed, and breakfast ready. Just time to get the coffee ready before arms wrapped themselves around him and a kiss was planted on his neck.

   Silently then they watched as their little girl; never to know her Slayer mother, shifted contentedly; already in the carrier, ready for the creche.

   As he watched Jesse eating his breakfast Xander pondered on the gawky teenager he'd known at Sunnydale High who'd somehow become an award - okay he'd been runner up, but that school had never won anything - teacher.

   Helping Jesse secure the straps, Xander impulsively took the tiny hand grasping Jesse's thumb and kissed them both.

   Jesse touched noses with his husband; whispering, as he'd done so many times before, “Do you ever wonder where we'd be if that vamp hadn't taken Willow?”

   It was rhetorical, saving Xander from lying. 

   He'd thought about it too many times; if Jesse had been taken; what he'd be if it had been him.

   Watching Jesse, singing that same tune he sang to this Willow every morning, as he set off on his half hour trek to school, he thought of it once more but, as he shut the door behind him, he began to go through all he had to do before he met Jesse later and they went over to Chez Summers for his small birthday bash.

   'Forty!'

   Laughing at himself, he stole a cookie, and walked upstairs. 'How the hell did I get to be forty!'

   Thoughts of their school pal; best of the Three Caballeros, they both agreed, to the fore; he wondered what high powered career she'd be over achieving at if he hadn't been forced to kill the monster she had become.

   Shaking his head vigorously he settled into Jesse's side, of course, of the bed and fell asleep; that tune playing in his head, contented and grateful, even with a couple of dozen teenage hormone bombs he was supposedly responsible for, at how his life had turned out.

   The future's not ours to see, 
   kerk hiraeth