Summary In Place of the Family Series 4th Story, the MPreg.

Xander has started in the Vocational School in the Carpentry program. A few months into his program, there's a construction job on a handicap-accessible home that has a Federal Grant because the first crew had left the job in shoddy condition. So they come to the Voc school to get some of the students for on-the-job training, paid training. Xander, who's signed up for it, is one of the six students who get a position and he opts to work full time since Oz is now in Law school and Giles is still working at home. He likes what he does, really enjoys the pipe laying and the cabinet fitting parts of the job, and he makes friends with the other workers.

His best friend in the program, Duke, continues to feed him his lunch. Duke's mother is a Thai mail-order bride who was able to bring her son over. Duke and Xander are the best of friends and Duke routinely feeds Xander his lunch. While on the work site, it becomes evident that Xander's hermaphroditic existence is coming out. His crew starts to pick up on subtle signals, like Xander staying over on an afternoon off to clean the kitchen of the house after putting up cabinets, like Xander using his ham sandwich to eat the Thai food Duke's given him. Eventually, Xander figures it out too.

While he's considering his situation, an incident on the site happens to him. Duke and he are repairing a crack on some newly put up drywall when a problem with the first crew is shown. Part of a ceiling falls on Xander's back and knee, pulverizing his knee and giving him a spinal injury - mostly swelling. Xander tells the hospital about his condition and they have him transferred to LA for his usual doctor, Doctor Adams, to deal with. Doctor Adams gets him into a private rehabilitation hospital, where they repair his knee and wait for the swelling to come down. There's a delay in the swelling coming down because of the child, they can't give him the medicine he needs because of the child, but Xander fights them over keeping his child.

While there, Spike starts to visit him, somewhat to pay Xander back for helping him when he was down. Giles and Oz also visit, but sporadically and the family's problems come out now as Xander needs their strength to start healing. Oz adapts once Xander compares their relationship to what Oz and Willow had, promising to start treating him better, which he does. Giles, on the other hand, shows that he's still having problems not controlling the totality of his world. He gets cold and snipey at Xander, trying to force Spike to leave him alone. Trying to force Ethan, when he shows up, to leave Xander alone and to take back the gifts he had given Xander. (Ethan gave him a book on people like Xander and their roles in the past of the magical community, usually as constructors of things to help their magic using lovers, and a cheap laptop to waste time on.) Oz starts to work on his relationship with Xander, even telling off the head of the Law school when the time he's been spending in LA comes to his attention and derision. Blair and Sam, who have been in and out of Xander's room to help cheer him on, call Giles in to talk to him again. In the first session where Xander and Giles get together, Giles accuses Xander of many things (cheating on him with Ethan and Spike, poisoning people against him, taking his children away from him) and Xander punches him. When Giles gets home, Buffy and Sileya force him to leave the house and go live in the trailer because Buffy had been called in to verify what Xander had been telling Giles during their session.

Xander heals over the later months of his pregnancy and starts therapy. His therapist discovers that he's not only a freak, but a rich freak, and moves against him by trying to sabotage his recovery. He's removed from that therapist's care. Before he's ready to go home (he's said he won't go home until he can walk out the door), he goes into labor. Spike acts as his anchor during his trip back into his head during the early stages of labor. Little William Philip is born, and when Spike hears the baby's name, he passes out.

Xander gets to go home the weekend after having the baby, and he's up to using a cane. The cane is a prettily carved gift from Spike, though no one knows where it came from. Xander's first morning home, he goes for a ride on the Strife horse, leaving his cane against the wall of the stall.