Transitions - Ch. 4

The wave of total joy Buffy felt at the sound of her mom's voice dried up instantly as she remembered who and what and where. With Giles. In her birthday suit. In her mother's house. In her little-girly bedroom. In her bed. What had seemed like a great idea in the middle of the night, all alone, seemed less great when she looked up past the dark tousled waves of Giles's hair to see Joyce's shocked, pale face. And...yikes! Her dad's face, too, glowering--how was that for a Giles word?--just behind Joyce's.

Giles made a little noise of protest when Buffy stirred--he'd started to get a bit tense again, probably just about ready for another of Moira's wonder-shots--though not, at least, needing it as badly as he had before. Carefully as she could, Buffy moved his head off her shoulder and onto the pillow, hoping that doing so didn't leave anything exposed to her dad's view. Hank's eyes already bulged out of his head in a way that would have been pretty funny, if she hadn't been the cause. Her mom just looked like she wanted to faint, or throw up. Maybe both, as soon as she could figure out which took precedent. She had those two little white spots--one by each corner of her mouth--that meant she was so mad the blood had stopped reaching her head.

"Downstairs, young lady. Right now," Hank Summers snapped, in a voice that wasn't anything near as bad as some of Giles's Watcher-voices--but quite bad enough, thank you very much. Bad enough, for sure, to make Buffy feel about three steps below pond scum--and about three years old.

"Uh, Dad--" she began.

"Now, I said!"

"Hank--" Her mom blinked, like she'd just come out of some kind of zombie trance. "Why don't you go downstairs first?"

He started to protest, then took her point and went, his tread so heavy on the steps it sounded like Godzilla was heading into the living room. That would have been funny too, if Buffy hadn't felt so petrified, and so embarrassed. But not ashamed. She wasn't in any way ashamed, and that was kind of a surprise. Weirdly enough, it almost made her glad to get everything out--she'd had enough to last a lifetime of the lying game.

Joyce went to the dresser and, without a word, started tossing clothes over her shoulder onto the bed: the one pair of ugly cotton panties Buffy owned, her sensible white cotton bra, her baggy overalls and the biggest, most concealing t-shirt in the drawer.

"Get dressed, Buffy," her mom said, in this quiet, deceptively calm mom-voice. "Go downstairs and talk to your father. He's been very worried about you."

Yeah, right, Buffy thought. This would be Hank Summers, invisible dad? But she didn't say anything.

"You could have called me yourself," Joyce said. "Buffy, I didn't know if you were dead or alive. You didn't have to make me wait to hear that from Mr. Wyndham-Price."

Thanks, Wes, Buffy thought. God, her mom was good--she could have been a travel agent for guilt trips. Joyce was right, though; about that part anyway. Buffy knew how much her mom loved her, and that she really should have phoned. Even looking at it from the selfishness angle, if she'd taken the time to call herself, maybe her mom would have just stayed in L.A, or at least given her an estimated hour of arrival. Time enough to maybe make everything look not quite so barfworthy from her mom's point of view.

She wondered if Joyce would buy hypothermia as an explanation? You were supposed to get skin-to-skin naked for that, right? To warm the other person up?

Nah, she thought. As some old, dead guy once said, honesty was the best policy. Better to deal now than to go cringing around the truth until it finally just came out anyway.

"I know," Buffy told her. "I'm sorry, Mom. It would have been--umn, considerate to call you. It was just kind of a night..."

"I don't want to hear." Joyce pressed a hand to her forehead. "I don't want to look at you right now. Just go."

What was a person supposed to say to something like that? Buffy went.

Her father had waited to pounce--not with a welcoming hug, or anything else that let her know he was glad to see her safe. He lit into her with a lecture, and went on and on and on, spicing the whole thing up with a bunch of "disappointeds" and "young lady's" and "deceitfuls." Buffy felt her eyes glaze over. It came to her that she didn't care about anything this man said. He didn't know her, hadn't been there for her--he was just a guy who, for the past two years at least, had done pretty much nothing but sign checks. Check-guy. Money-guy. Mr. Big Businessman, whose quarterly reports meant way more to him than her birthday.

Buffy remembered the time when that poor unconscious kid, Billy, had made all her worst dreams come true. It was probably real after all, the stuff her nightmare-dad said. She was a disappointment to him. She wasn't the daughter he'd wanted. To him she probably seemed awful: mouthy and lazy, with a sucky attitude.

She turned her back and went to sit on the couch, feeling numb. He didn't have any right. He didn't mean anything. She watched the mouth move in the middle of her dad's blank, pleasant, temporarily-furious, all-American face and thought, He doesn't know me. He'll never, ever know me again.

"You aren't even listening, are you?" Hank asked.

Why not be honest? What was there to lose? She wasn't a kid anymore, she couldn't spend the rest of her life worrying if she made daddy proud. Buffy shrugged.

"That man up there--" Her father sat beside her on the couch. He looked like he had bit into something nasty-tasting. "How old is he?"

Buffy shrugged again. "How come it matters?"

"I asked you a question, young lady."

"Stop calling me that!" she snapped, suddenly furious. Overhead, dimly, Buffy could hear her mom tear into Giles--like that wasn't a waste of time. Chances were, at this point, he wouldn't even hear her.

Buffy rubbed her temples. She wanted to sleep more. Hours and hours more. She slept really well with Giles beside her; much better than usual.

"I don't know." She glanced at her dad's face. He looked like a stranger, like some angry stranger who just happened to be sitting there yelling at her. What did it matter? "Forty-something. Forty-five, maybe?"

"My God, Buffy." Her dad just looked shocked, in a whole different way from her mom. Disgusted, and pissed off, and like he not only didn't know her, he didn't want to.

Buffy thought of the lines in Giles's face, that got there from laughter and tiredness and worry and maybe even pain. She thought of the way they crinkled around his amazing green eyes when he smiled at her. She thought of how they'd fought and laughed and held each other at all the best and the worst moments of their lives, and the way Giles had been there for her every single second of all their time together.

"I don't want you to see him anymore," her father said. "Your mom told me about the unhealthy relationship you had with that college boy--and now this. Buffy, we worry about you."

College boy? Oh, yeah. Angel. Buffy almost smiled at the thought of Angel as a college boy, but she knew that smiling would only make her dad madder, and she didn't really want to have a blow-up fight with him in her mother's house.

Then came the kicker: "Your mother told me, too, about this strange fantasy you have--that you're some kind of superhero? Frankly, sweetheart, you're awfully old for that kind of thing.

What the hell, Buffy thought. "Not that old, Dad. We just met one Slayer who made it all the way to twenty-seven. Course she was crazy by then, but it's the years that count, right?"

Buffy jumped off the couch, moving away from him, not wanting to look at his face. "If you start right now, maybe you can make a nice little daughter who's everything you want. Or a son. A son would be even better, right?"

Hank's jaw dropped.

"C'mon, Dad. That's why you're here, isn't it? You're mom's mystery man. Two years, and I get nothing from you, and now we're all going to be one big happy family again? Geez, you honestly think it works like that?"

"You are the most insolent, disrespectful..."

Buffy turned to stare at him. She could feel her face getting hard and cold, until she knew the look she gave him was probably worthy of Moira at her most Watchery. "Don't forget slutty, Dad. That one's important."

"Buffy, I caught you naked in bed with a man who's older than me. What am I supposed to say to you?"

"Try this: do you love him? Is he good to you? Does he take care of you? 'Cause, Dad, the answer to all those is yes. Okay, so he's older, but what does that matter? Okay, big, big cliche time, but if I walked out the door and got hit by a bus tomorrow, and least I would have known what it was like to be loved by the most decent, caring man in the world." Buffy felt tears sting her eyes. "I almost died, Daddy--and Giles almost died, too, to save me. He was willing to give up everything. For me. You won't even give up a day at your damn job."

"Almost died." Hank still had that bad-taste look on his face. "Your mother told me that man...your 'Giles'...feeds this sick fantasy of yours."

"Well, since mom has told all, you want a demonstration, Daddy?" Buffy moved closer to her father, until she stood only an arm's length away. "Hit me. Hard as you can."

"Buffy--"

"Come on. It's all a fantasy. Giles is some kind of pervert. Hit me. I'll fall down. You'll say, 'I told you so,' and then I'll be all better. I can go back to being your sweet little girl again."

His mouth doing weird things, Hank swung at her, a weak little girly slap. Buffy blocked it easily.

"Geez, Daddy, I hope you can do better than that. Willow could've blocked that one--and laughed at you after. Really hit me. Pretend I'm Giles."

Her dad swung again, a backhander, really trying that time. Buffy blocked that one too, and twisted, getting her dad's arm up behind him, taking him down. Hank lay with his face in the carpet and her knee in his back.

"Now try to get up," she told him.

He tried, and couldn't. 105 pounds of her, and he couldn't budge.

"Now tell me again about my fantasy, Dad--`cause I've gotta say, I'm still feeling a little deluded."

"You're on drugs," Hank said.

"Nope."

"Drugs can make people unnaturally strong."

"What's it like in the State of Denial?" Buffy asked him. "Is the weather good?"

"It's impossible," her father answered. "It...can't be."

Buffy shook her head, and let him up. "Whatever."

"How long...?"

"Remember when I burnt down the gym at Hemery? That was vampires." Buffy couldn't help but smile a little at the look of blind confusion on her dad's face. "What, it's easier to think you're daughter's a sicko arsonist? C'mon, Daddy. I'm the Slayer. I do what I do."

"But if you didn't--" The look on her father's face hurt Buffy's heart a little. He did love her, really--he just wasn't a man who was very good at loving people. If he and her mom got back together, she knew, Joyce was going to end up getting wounded all over again.

Buffy shook her head, remembering how much she'd wanted, once, for that to happen. The getting back together part, not the wounding. How she'd hoped and hoped only for that, for her mom and dad to love each other, for them all to be a family again.

She had a new family now. Giles and Willow and Xander and Oz--even Cordy, in a funny way, because every family needs the bitchy sister who goes off to find fame and fortune.

Buffy still loved her dad, always would, but these other people had maybe become more to her. They weren't blood, but they were the one who, time after time, proved their love, so that she never, never had to doubt it.

"I love you, Daddy," she told him quietly. "But I'm all grown up now. I can't always do what you say."

"When did you ever?" Hank answered, but he smiled, a tiny smile, and Buffy smiled back, the expression feeling, on her face, a little bit sad.

Above them, Joyce stopped yelling. Something hit the floor, really hard.

"I better--" Buffy gestured.

Hank nodded. He sank back down onto the couch, trying to brush the carpet lint from his pants. Buffy hit the stairs running.

Her mom blocked the door, standing with her hands over her mouth, and the biggest expression of horror and out-and-out ewww on her face that Buffy ever saw. Giles was on the floor, trying to get up again and not doing very well--for one thing, he was weak, and in pain. For another, he'd managed to get himself all tangled up in the bedclothes. She could see his naked back clearly, though--and so could her mom.

"I-- Oh-- God-- I--"

Nice to know that the inability to speak in complete sentences in times of stress was a family trait.

Buffy went to Giles and knelt before him, helping him sit. "It's okay," she told him. "It's okay."

"Buffy, you were gone," he said. "I awakened. You were gone."

"I just had to talk to my dad," Buffy told him. "Remember? Like I said." She stroked the sweaty hair back from his forehead. Giles's eyes were a slightly dull green, but the whites weren't as red as they'd been before.

"Oh, yes," he said. "I heard that, did I?"

"You might still have been sleeping." She reached for his injured hand, propping it up across his lap. "How are you feeling? You didn't hit your hand, did you?"

"Wretched. I fell."

"I know, sweetie."

"That horrid woman shouted at me."

"That's my mom. She's not really horrible, remember? She just got a little surprised."

"Ah." Giles thought a minute, that little triangle of lines appearing between his eyebrows as he concentrated. "Joyce. That's your mum. Joyce. We did something once--"

"Don't go there," Buffy told him.

"I remember a police car."

"Really don't go there."

"But I love you, Buffy," he told her, the truth of that so plain in his face Buffy started to cry. Giles touched the tears with his fingertips. "I love you. You're my life."

Behind her, Joyce made a strange, sad, strangled little sound.

"I love you, too, Rupert," Buffy told him, and kissed him very gently, not even thinking, right there in front of her mom.

"Rupert, that's my name," Giles said, a little breathlessly, when she pulled away. "But that isn't what you call me, not usually."

"Uh-huh. That's true. I usually call you Giles."

"That's also my name. Which comes first?"

"Don't you remember?" Buffy asked. Giles thought about that one a long time, so long she almost broke down and gave him the answer.

"The Rupert," he said, finally. "Then it's Henry, then Sebastian. Giles comes last."

Very good! she almost told him, like someone praising a little kid, but she bit it back. Giles discombobulated was still Giles.

"Got it in one," Buffy said.

"Why did your mum shout at me?" he asked her. "I'm meant to be here, aren't I?" He looked so troubled at that, Buffy had to hug him. She did it gently, but even so Giles made a little noise of pain--though he didn't pull away.

"Of course you're meant to be here," Buffy said. "You're meant to be wherever I am."

"You see, I thought so," Giles told her. "Only, your mum seemed to disagree."