#i accidentally made myself ship xander/maddie and i'm strangely okay with that

[archer973]

You know which character I wasn’t expecting to like as much as I do?

Xander McClure

In season one I was pretty ambivalent towards him. I felt for him when he lost his dad, I called him an idiot when he was on his revenge kick, but I never really disliked him, because I understood where he was coming from. I liked his friendship with Ben and the fact that he defended Ben against Calvin (who I most certainly do not like)

...but now in season two, I dunno, he’s just really grown on me. I think it’s because they’re starting to branch out his relationships with the other characters, especially Maddie. I love the notion of them as childhood best friends that maybe grew apart a little bit but now are being pulled back together by all the craziness going on in Bristol Cove. I love that, it’s a trope that is near and dear to my heart, having characters with history reconnecting and remembering the happy times they spent together.

Personally, I headcanon Maddie as being a year younger than Ben and Xander, which would kind of explain why Ben and Maddie didn’t really know each other well during school, but Maddie and Xander knew each other because Dale and Sean (and by extension Patti) were friends. We already know that Dale would have Maddie stay with the McClure family when he had to go track down Susan when she disappeared, and Susan herself called Xander Maddie’s best friend.

I mean, picture it. A young Maddie and Xander sprawled out on a beat up couch watching bad old movies, probably horror movies because Maddie seems like the type of kid that would have liked old horror movies. And honestly, Xander doesn’t like horror movies, they wig him out, but 1) he’s not gonna admit that Maddie is braver than he is (even though she totally is and they both know it) and 2) they keep Maddie’s mind off of her mom, and the possibility that tonight is the night that Dale finds her too late, so Xander puts in the tapes without Maddie even having to ask and winds his hands into the blanket so he can pretend he doesn’t jump every damn time a zombie pops out of a bush. And as the hour grows later and Dale still hasn’t come back and Maddie starts to worry more and more, Xander starts keeping a running commentary of abuse against the movies, just so that Maddie will argue with him and not turn inwards and focus on all of the things that actually scare her. 

And when Dale finally makes it back to the McClure house, the sun just starting to rise and Susan safe at home (for now), he and Sean find the two of them sound asleep, legs tangled together and most of Xander’s blanket thrown over Maddie, the TV humming softly with static. And Dale thanks every deity he knows for Xander McClure as he picks up his young daughter and carries her out to the car.

And I don’t think this stops when they’re teenagers, either. When Maddie just can’t take it anymore, when she comes home and finds Susan listless on the couch, eyes glazed over and speech slurred from the drugs, I think she goes to the place that has always been her harbor in the storm. And Patti welcomes her, and Sean too if he’s there, and Xander doesn’t say a damn word, not even if he had plans, not even if he had wanted to go down to the docks and fuck around with Calvin and Chris. Instead he just flops down on his bed and throws the remote to Maddie and offers her his extra pillow when she comes to sit. And they’d stay like that for hours, shoulder to shoulder, watching people get eaten by zombies and haunted by poltergeists. Xander still jumps and Maddie teasingly offers to hold his hand. Eventually the teasing falls out of her offer and Xander’s hearts flips when she laces their fingers together. And when Dale comes to collect Maddie after his shift, he and Patti find them sound asleep, hands still wrapped together, and Dale once again thanks the Creator that Maddie has a friend like Xander that she feels safe enough to lean on.

We know canonically that Maddie and Xander have slept together. I personally headcanon that they were each other’s firsts. Oh, Xander had totally told Calvin and Chris that he got lucky with that cheerleader from Camden Heights, but he had really only gotten to second base. And maybe one night Maddie comes bursting into his room, tears in her eyes, because she just can’t take it anymore, can’t take coming home from school and finding her mother lolling on the couch with a needle beside her. And she throws herself into Xander’s arms and he holds her while she rages into his chest, tears soaking his shirt, and his heart is breaking because Maddie Bishop is the strongest person he knows and he hates seeing her in pain like this. So he does the only thing that he can think of.

He kisses her.

He kisses her and she kisses him back and suddenly her hands are under his shirt and she’s kicking the door closed and pushing him back towards the bed and they fall onto it together and Xander’s heart is racing like one of those hummingbirds that Maddie made him watch a documentary about one night, but it’s the good kind of scary, and when Maddie quietly whispers that she’s never done this before he’s so insanely grateful that that girl from Camden Heights was saving herself for marriage, because the way Maddie’s eyes soften when he admits he hasn’t either is worth every case of blue balls ever.

They never put a label on it, but they’re together for a while, even though you wouldn’t be able to tell because nothing really changes. But then they graduate and Xander starts working on the boat more and Maddie is caught up with online classes and they slowly drift apart. A couple of years down the road Maddie gets with Ben and Xander is happy for her, because Ben makes her smile and laugh and even if his heart aches a little bit sometimes, it’s a good kind of ache. Because all he has ever wanted is for Maddie Bishop to be happy, and if that means dealing with mermaids and committing ecoterrorism, then he’s willing to do it. For her.