Andrew's guard had been down when James showed up. When he was out in public he was careful to pay attention to his surroundings, the people coming towards him, everything, and he was good at not looking like someone that was paying so much attention to what was going on. But when he was back at the complex he usually let his guard down. The people there weren't likely to come out of nowhere and attack him, after all.
Besides, he was filled with the Christmas spirit and all that. He and Andrea had been playing Christmas music quite loudly while decorating. To be honest, part of the reason he'd thrown himself head first into the decorating and Christmas stuff was to keep his mind off of things. Namely, James shaped things. Yes, he did genuinely love the holidays, and decorating and all of that, it was right up his alley. But it was rare that he paid more attention to things like that than to everything else. Andrew could get a bit obsessive over things sometimes, and it was usually when he was trying not to focus on other things.
Or, you know. When something just really needed to get done.
The thing that Andrew had been trying so hard not to focus on was James. Because that guy just kept creeping into his headspace, making Andrew remember all those fake memories and everything. And Andrew's life was a lot easier without those memories. They just made things complicated for him.
Because the whole ordeal with the wizard in question? That was actually the one area of his life that Andrew was not comfortable with. Being a complete nerd when surrounded by non-nerds? No problem. Leading a branch of the Slayer army, training them and everything? Non-issue. Being confronted by someone that he had memories of dating for over a year, even though he'd never been on a date in his life? Holy fuck, no idea what to do there. And he was usually pretty good at figuring what to do, you couldn't be a leader without being good with the planning, after all. But those were like... battle strategies and finding out what sort of demon or whatever it was making the attack so that he knew the best way to stop it. He didn't know the best thing to do in this sort of situation. And he wasn't confident in himself enough with stuff like this to be okay even though he wasn't sure.
So when James came at him, clearly pissed off at him, Andrew couldn't help gulping a bit. He knew he couldn't take that step back, there was no where for him to go. So instead, he just stood there, looking at the angry James. "Uh, so, didn't we already have our talk?"