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Title: A Mile In His Moccasins 9/26 After breakfast, Buffy and Willow walked together to the Magic Box while Giles took Dawn to school and then headed off to work Buffy's job at the Doublemeat Palace. When the girls got to the shop, they quickly explained the situation to Xander and Anya. All four settled down to research bodyswitching spells. Eventually, Xander had to leave for work, Anya got busy with customers and Willow announced that she had to go to class. Buffy stood up from the table, too. "Where are you going, G - Buffy?" Xander asked. "Good save, Xand. I just thought I'd take a break from the research thing. Maybe go get a mocha or something." "You might want to check out a barber shop on the way," Anya observed. "I didn't want to rip Giles' face all to pieces trying to shave it. He'd glare at me." Xander, Willow and Anya shared a bemused smile. Buffy looked crestfallen. "Okay, so I know it's sorta wimpy, but it's Giles. You've all seen his glare. I don't want to see it directed at me is all." "Um, Buff, I think you forgot something," Willow smirked. "What's that?" "You're wearing his glare now, since you're wearing his face." Buffy grinned from ear to ear. "Hey! You're right!" ***** Giles muttered mutinously under his breath as he lowered the french fry basket into the hot grease. "How in heaven's name does Buffy put up with this?" Todd, in the meantime, continued to drivel on pointlessly about half- digested political ideas. Giles thought if he heard the Doublemeat power structure compared to something out of Machiavelli one more time he was going to do serious violence to the boy. Besides that, it was clear that this young cretin thought he was an utter idiot. No. Worse than that: he thought Buffy was stupid. Buffy might have her faults - did have them, in fact - but she was certainly not stupid. Even without her SAT scores it was clear that Buffy's mind was not lacking. She was an excellent strategist, and perfectly capable of learning whatever she felt a need to know. But this barely post-pubescent twit not only thought he was smarter than Buffy, but that it was his right to tell her so over and over and over again ad bloody nauseum. Buffy might stand it for herself, but there was no way Giles was going to stand it for her. And the boy continued to blather on. "...of course, I'm not saying Nazi Germany was a model society, really, but at least Hitler made the trains run on time, if you know what I mean..." "Mussolini." "...but of course...what? Mussolini?" "Benito Mussolini? Il Duce? Certainly you've heard of him?" "Of course I've heard of him," Todd answered defensively. "What about him? What does he have to do with Hitler?" "Aside from the fact that they were allies in World War II? Not that much, I suppose. Their ideologies were actually rather different if you look at them in detail. But that's beside the point. What I was trying to say is that it was Mussolini, not Hitler, who made the trains run on time. A common mistake among the undereducated and the willfully ignorant." "Wha...how...that can't be right. Anyway, how would you know that? You're a dropout." Giles smiled. Somehow, Todd didn't find it pleasant. "I've forgotten more than you'll ever know if you live to be a hundred. And you know why that is? Because I know how to keep my mouth shut and learn from people instead of carrying on about things I know nothing about. And while we're at it, don't you have anything better to do than talk at me? You're at work. Work for a change." Todd glared for a moment then turned on his heel. "I'm going on break," he spat as he walked away. "And you have no idea how close you came to being broken in two," Giles added as he pulled the fries from the grease. ***** Freed from the labors of research, Buffy headed straight to the mall. If she knew Giles, that credit card in his pocket rarely got used, and was probably paid off in full every month. "Not this month, unless he's got a big ol' pile of money in his bank account," she grinned. "But first, mocha goodness at Starbuck's." She stopped and picked up a magazine to scan while she drank her coffee. In deference to the body she inhabited, she decided against Cosmo and picked up Entertainment Weekly instead. She knew Giles would prefer something more intellectual, but she couldn't make heads or tails of Archeology Digest or anything like that. Maybe if she had him there to answer her questions, but not on her own. There was too much she didn't understand. Now if he offered to take her on a dig, that might work. Hands on always made it easier for her to understand things. Learning about Russell Crowe's latest film, she could do on the printed page. She sipped her mocha and flipped the pages of her magazine, content to have nothing better to do for once. After a moment, she frowned. When was the last time she'd had to just do nothing? Aside from the months she'd spent in her grave, that is. When had it been? Her eyes opened wider when she realized it had been before her mother died. Since then, she'd had to care for Dawn as well as the world. Her own life had been put entirely on hold. She'd dropped out of school, stopped going to the movies or hanging out at The Bronze. Even the few social events since then had been tainted with her Slayer duties or her obligations to Dawn. Usually both. Except Spike. She didn't want to let her mind go there, but it got stubborn on her and insisted on looking at what she didn't want to see. Spike had been her only release valve in the mess of her life for months now. When she was with him, she could forget responsibility, duty, Slaying, Dawn, and all the things that made life unbearable to her. God, she could completely forget life since he was dead. "Really great coping mechanism, Buff," she muttered to herself. Maybe she needed to make the time to do something healthier in the way of escapism. She couldn't believe how much better she felt with a little time off and nothing important to do in it. Plus reading a magazine and drinking coffee, while not exactly the healthiest things she could be doing, either, were at least more socially acceptable than having sex with a vampire she didn't even like. And spending lots of someone else's money had to be the most socially acceptable vice in the country. She heard giggling at another table and glanced over to see two young women looking in her direction as they consulted one another and blushed. She looked around to see what boy they were admiring, but there wasn't a guy in sight...except her. They were checking her out. And it felt oddly good. It had been a long time since anyone had checked her out. But they were really checking out Giles, she realized. Giles. Her Watcher. Tweedman. Safe, old guy Giles. Couldn't these girls find anyone their own age? Suddenly it struck her that she'd almost never found a guy her own age. Angel was more than two hundred years older than she was, Riley was six years older, and as for Spike... He was a great big mistake that she didn't want to think about anymore. Plus he was at least a hundred years older than her. So Giles was...twenty-seven years older. Was that really so far out of the ballpark? It's not like a Slayer could expect to live another thirty years when she was already pushing twenty-one. Really, a guy Giles' age wouldn't be so bad, as long as he could understand about the whole Slayer thing and protect himself. But it was all wrong for those girls at the table. They could have the Owen Thurmans and Scott Hopes out there who needed nice, ordinary girls who weren't going to die in the next fifteen minutes. Even Riley had found himself a nice, demon hunting girl who had fully as much chance of living another fifty years as he did. Those guys were really off limits to a Slayer. She'd fought that idea over and over and over again, but she finally realized the truth of it. "I can't be normal if I'm the Slayer. I can't have a normal guy in my life." But for the first time in her life, she didn't mind that so much. Maybe being boy-free Buffy didn't have to be that bad. And even when everyone else around her coupled off, Giles was there to make her feel less third-wheely. If he stayed this time. She wondered if he would. She hoped so. Maybe it was time to kiss and make up - so to speak. But first, she so needed to improve his wardrobe. She stood and headed out of the coffee shop. First stop, The Gap. *****
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