Transitions - Chapter 58

Buffy had fallen asleep quite soon, her back against his chest and her head pillowed on his arm--so relaxed, so contented, apparently, to lie there with him. Giles watched the varied hues weave their way through the fire and, idly, extended his more magical senses to play with their flickering, all the while listening to his love's quiet breath.

In her sleep, she turned to him, burrowing closer. Giles enfolded her small, perfect body in his arms, burying his face in the silken warmth of her hair. He half-hated to leave this known comfort for the uncertainty of sleep--and yet his need to do so had become undeniable. Waves of drowsiness washed over him, and carried him away.

Giles was back in Whitechapel, in the old house that his own Wild Magic had razed a quarter-century before. He knew full well that he dreamed, and yet, as he stood before a grime-streaked window in the upper-floor room had once been a study, every detail seemed so concrete that the accumulated effect forced him to regard this as reality.

He shivered in the dank, chill air. The room smelled of burnt-out ashes, of mould, and of old books breaking down into dust. The deep, slow heartbeat of evil pulsed from the cellar below.

"Look at her go!" a familiar voice marveled. "Quite the quick one, isn't she, your friend?"

He didn't want to turn his head, but Giles did so nonetheless, knowing exactly what he'd see--and Ethan indeed stood beside him, though not in the sense he expected. Giles could not actually see his old enemy--only darkness, and a Cheshire-cat grin that hung in the air, painfully bright.

Shielding his eyes, Giles glanced away to the garden below, the growth there as tangled and rank as it had ever been--and yet shaped somehow, now, into a maze, along which Moira ran, seemingly unable to work her way free.

The reason for her panicked flight shortly became clear: she was followed, by things, creatures, that had no substance, really, but yet were terrifying in their formlessness--at least, Giles felt that he ought to feel terrified. All he truly experienced was a dull despair.

"Oh, Emmy," he breathed, wanting more than anything to help her, helpless to know how. He turned his head again, expecting Ethan's smile, but Ethan had gone, and Wesley stood in his place, an unfathomable expression on his face.

"That's rather a new look for you, Wesley," Giles told him, momentarily relieved by the sight of the young Watcher. Wesley wore a dark suit of slim, European cut, a crisp shirt white enough to glow in the dark, and a silk tie in varying shades of blue. That blue brought out the colour of his eyes, which were naked, cold, and hard as diamonds.

"You ought to have paid closer notice, Rupert," Wesley told him, reaching forward as if he meant for them to shake hands in greeting--but when Giles returned the gesture, his sometime-friend caught hold of his injured right hand, wrenching and twisting more cruelly than even Angelus or Helena could have thought to have done.

Giles cried out, sinking to his knees on a carpet that seemed composed more of mildew than of cloth. Wesley kept hold of him, crouching down to whisper fiercely into his ear, his cold cheek dreadfully close to Giles's own. "You ought to have heeded me. You took me for nothing. Am I nothing now, Rupert?"

Another vicious twist. Giles cried out, and with that woke from his troubled sleep.

Buffy still slumbered peacefully, though she'd moved away a bit from his now sweat-drenched body. Her head, positioned as it was, seemed to have quite cut off the supply of blood, and perhaps that was the source of the dream--his scarcely-healed hand throbbed.

With all the gentleness he could muster, Giles eased his arm from beneath her and sat cross-legged on the carpet, attempting to massage some feeling back into the offending limb. Buffy, perhaps sensing the change, awakened all at once, rising from her own deep sleep to alertness with enviable rapidity.

"Hey," she said, in a slightly sleep-hoarsened voice. "What's the what?"

"Bad dream. Nothing."

She touched his chest, and then his brow. "Nothing, huh? You're soaked."

"Quite a bad dream, actually."

Buffy regarded him by firelight, then took his wrist into her strong, skillful little hands, rubbing until pins and needles stabbed. Giles made a slight murmur of protest, to which Buffy replied, "Sorry," but did not cease her ministrations.

Just when Giles thought he could bear it no longer, the tingling gave way to a blessed warmth, and he sighed with relief.

"Better, huh?" she said sympathetically. "I guess that'll teach us to go to sleep with my big, heavy head on your bad arm."

"You haven't a big, heavy head," he assured her, but Buffy only smiled, and touched her fingertips lightly to his cheek.

"You're still freaked out, aren't you? What was it this time?"

Giles gave a small, rueful laugh. "Wesley, actually."

"Wesley? Well, I guess that would give me a wiggins." Her smile became playful. "Though who knew you had such Wesley-fear? We always thought you just wanted to punch him in the nose."

"I never..." Giles began, then smiled slightly. "Well, perhaps now and then. He's not a bad chap, though, really. It's just..." He shuddered, unable to escape the belief that his dream, somehow, by its very vividness, must contain a sort of reality--yet doubting, at the same time, his own abilities in the field of prophecy. "There was--er--a juxtaposition of events that rather unnerved me."

"Yeah," his love told him, laughing at Giles's choice of words. "That clears things right up, as far as I'm concerned. How 'bout if I fix us a nice bath in that enormous bathtub, sweaty guy, and then we actually go to sleep in our real bed, instead of on the floor? I'll even promise not to cut off the circulation to any major body parts." She rose to her feet in one easy motion, drawing him with her, and once up, bundled him into his dressing gown like an indulgent mother preparing her child for cold-weather play.

"There you go," she said, smoothing his lapels with her palms, her bright eyes gazing up into his.

"There I go," Giles echoed, unable to resist the temptation to stoop for a kiss, the anxiety of his dream already ebbing. He watched Buffy draw her own robe over her lovely, golden nakedness. Hand-in-hand, they tiptoed to the bathroom, where Buffy twisted the taps to start the water, and Giles carefully locked the door--the last thing they needed was for Xander, or someone, to walk in upon them.

Giles stood gazing down at her, as Buffy gazed up at him, neither of them speaking--perhaps, he thought, they'd both too much to say. Hardly daring to breathe, he slipped the fabric back from her shoulders and stooped to kiss the soft skin he'd uncovered, the flavour of her, as always, like honey with a hint of vanilla and rose-petals. Lightly, he traced the line of that shoulder with his tongue-tip, savouring the sweetness of the woman he loved.

Buffy shivered, giggling a little. "You really are back, aren't you?"

Giles considered, and found that although the horror of recent events still lingered, he was able, at last, to shut those memories safely into their own small, secure rooms. The corridor of his mind contained many such chambers, each with its strong lock and door, each better never to open.

"Yes," Giles assured her, "I am indeed." He straightened, gazing down again into that open young face, those wide eyes turned up so hopefully to his. He touched her lips with his thumb, then bent to kiss them, their softness parting.

Buffy pulled away suddenly, with a sound of distress, and for a moment Giles felt devastated--what had he done?

"The water," she exclaimed, frantically closing the taps--the tub indeed stood brimful. Even Buffy's slender arm, questing for the stopper, caused small dribbles to spill over the lip.

"Disaster averted?" he asked.

"Just barely! Two seconds more, and it would've been flood-city--and with our luck, gallons would have gone whoosh through the ceiling, straight down onto someone's bed. Then watch everyone come running to fix the broken pipe, while we stood here in our birthday suits. Or our soaking-wet bathrobes."

"Imagine our chagrin." Giles laughed softly, entirely relaxing once again. "Thank heavens for your reflexes, my love."

Then it was Buffy's turn to laugh. "What, you thought I suddenly found you all oogie?" She grinned up at him, eyes sparkling. "You did, didn't you? Silly Giles."

Giles's mind translated her unique word "oogie" into "ogrelike"--which was, he assumed, more or less what she'd meant.

"I thought," he confessed, "That you'd suddenly come to your senses and realized that you stood alone and half-clothed in an English bathroom with a forty-five year old former librarian."

Buffy stooped to return the stopper to the drain, then straightened once more, her face thoughtful as she shook the water from her arm. It seemed to Giles that he could see her doing mental calculations, and that caused him another qualm--he'd been a mature man already the year of her birth, born into a very different country, an entirely different world.

"I always wondered," she said, taking a towel from the warming rack.

"Wondered?" Giles asked--wondering, himself, what she was getting at.

"Your age, exactly." Slowly, Buffy untied the belt of her dressing down, allowing the garment to drop unheeded to the floor, the pale fabric frothing round her feet like seafoam. "Not that it's a big."

So lovely, Giles thought. So exquisite, my American Venus.

Buffy's hands rose to work the belt of Giles's own robe, parting its folds. Her fingers traveled gently over his chest, tracing recent bruises and cuts, outlining old scars, as concentration drew a pair of shallow lines between her brows.

"Rather a wreck, I'm afraid," Giles said, attempting a tone of gentle humour, even as, in his mind, he contrasted his rather battered self to her own smooth perfection.

"You--" Buffy glanced up again, emotion brimming in those sapphire eyes. "You really need to not treat your life like it's nothing."

"I don't," Giles answered.

"Do you know many times I'd go down into hell for you?" Buffy's small hands caught hold of his shoulders, gripping hard. All the laughter had fled from her expression. "Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds, Giles. But don't make me do that again, okay? 'Cause it wasn't easy for me, either."

"I--" He felt overwhelmed suddenly, at a loss for the words to say to her. "I know, my love. And as many times as I tell you that you needn't attempt it, you would inform me that you must."

"You're so right!" Buffy nodded. "You know that's true."

"I know," Giles admitted. He could scarcely bear for her to look at him with all that bare emotion in her face, all that fear and hope and anxiety. All that love. "I will try--" he answered carefully, "To be more cautious in the future."

Suddenly Buffy's mood lifted, and she laughed again. "Giles, what am I gonna do with you? Let's not waste our nice warm water. You get in, and I'll get in. We can get all snuggly, and both pretend nothing bad's ever gonna happen again, okay?"

"All right," Giles answered, giving her a brief smile. He hung his own dressing gown on a peg on the back of the door.

"Did anyone ever tell you--" Buffy began, her eyes sparkling again, this time with mischief. "That you have the cutest butt for an old guy?"

"You, young lady," he answered, "Are incorrigible. 'Old guy,' indeed!"

"Hey, watch it with the 'young ladying,'" she exclaimed, half-serious.

"And why is that?"

"'Cause that's what my mom always used to call me when I was in trouble. I think they teach them that one in mom-school. You know, 'Where do you think you're going, dressed like that, young lady?' or 'What kind of grades do you call these, young lady?' For the two of us to be standing here naked, and for you to be saying it to me, is pretty much wiggins-worthy."

"I'd no idea," Giles assured her. Buffy imitated her mum's voice very well indeed. "And is there, perhaps, also a secret meaning to 'old guy,' of which I'm not aware?"

Buffy raised her arms to encircle Giles's neck, and bestowed upon him a brief, teasing kiss. "See, that's what you're not getting," she informed him, with another sweet brush of a kiss. "It means handsome. And distinguished. And brave. And mature--mostly."

"Only mostly?"

Buffy laughed and kissed him again. "The biggest mostly is that you're mine, all mine, and I love you so much it should be against the law."

Giles couldn't stop himself from grinning--foolishly, he felt, and uncontrollably. "Miss Summers," he said, "The feeling is entirely mutual." He stepped into the warm water, drawing her along with him, her small hand inside his large one. When they lay down together, she fit perfectly against him, and his contentment, too, was perfection.

The warmth loosened his muscles and moved softly over his skin, the water itself bearing the light, unmistakable scent of lavender. Buffy's head rested on his chest--hardly any weight at all, really. He stroked her silken skin, breathing in the perfume of her hair. The touch of her, and the slight movements of her body against his, kindled in him a sleepy arousal.

"I think," Giles told her, "That I could lie here forever."

"We'd be the worst prune people in the world," Buffy answered, with another small movement-- then, in a bit, said, "I could stay here forever too. Giles--?"

"Hmn?" He could scarcely raise the energy to actually speak, but it was a lovely languor that gripped him now, miles away from the painful exhaustion that had, lately, been his all-too-familiar companion.

"Are you happy? Really, truly?"

"Buffy," he answered, and meant every word, "I have never been happier in my life."

The events of his unpleasant dream seemed so far away, they might never have been.