He exhales through his nose, smiling at her. At least she could take a joke, the conversation had been too serious, Xander had almost started to think she couldn’t take a little good-natured ribbing at all. Thankfully, he was wrong. She seemed to loosen up a bit now that they’d gotten back off the bike and onto solid ground. He wonders quietly to himself if he should offer her a ride home whenever this conversation was over, or if she’d not even trust him when he crossed his heart. “Would you believe he wasn’t my friend til after the first time he kidnapped me?” Long after, really. But hey, he’d gotten some really cool toys, a sweet ride, and a girlfriend out of it at the time–plus some time off in Bora-Bora. So Gibbons was a weird dude, he’d come through on his end of the promises he’d made, and Xander had fulfilled his. It all worked out in the end. Well, until he had to fake his own death. 

“When I get antsy, I gotta move, gotta do something. I hate feeling cooped up.” He noted her hand, and he actually felt a little bad about it, if he was fully honest with himself. “Get rid of tension….you ever tried learning how to box? Or a martial art or something? I hear those are great for that.” Not to mention he was pretty well versed in a few of them himself. Xander was proud of himself that he didn’t respond with the pre-teen answer about knowing a way they could both work some tension out together, but he’d only just stopped it from coming out of his mouth. He shakes his head. “Listen, this one time in Prague, I had to do some save-the-good-guys shit, right? I had to jump out of a plane and snowboard down to this radio tower, and partway there, an avalanche starts comin’ up on my booty. I actually got a little buried, held onto the radio tower and had to dig myself out. I can’t say I was only nervous at the beginning of that.” Granted it was one of the best thrills he’d gotten in his life at that point, too, but that wasn’t the point he was trying to make.