I remember reading this a while ago, and enjoying it, but for some reason had absolutely no memory that it was yours... maybe because I wouldn't have expected Bander from you?

Heh. Generally not, no. It's not that I don't like the pairing, but I'd much rather have them both end up with someone else...


Just out of curiosity, what made you choose to include a non-canon pairing?

I'm not actually sure. It just seemed to fit.
The original prompt was for "pairings you've never done before" (at the time I'd never written any pairings except Tara/OC, so that was easy...), and I just ended up with this whole bunch of Buffy pairings - and, with the way it was structured, I really couldn't have her end up with one of the first four (if I could have, it would have been Spike, rather unsurprisingly). But putting Xander on the end seemed to make sense.