Transitions - Chapter 59

Their night seemed to have gotten turned around into day, Buffy thought, because as drowsy as they'd both been in their shared bath, by the time they dried off, both she and Giles were wide awake again. They made their planned carpet picnic a bed picnic instead, and sprawled across the duvet eating homemade bread and cheese and grapes by candlelight. The funky apple juice turned out to have quite the kick--Giles warned her against having too much, but the little bit Buffy did drink gave her a small, happy buzz.

She lay back on the bed, her head humming pleasantly, watching Giles's face. He was telling her a story about Egypt, some archaeologist thing he'd done there. It was a funny story, Buffy had to admit, involving sand, bugs, and the world's most evil camel, and to hear Giles tell a funny story at all was definitely something for the record books--but she had a hard time following the plot.

Giles distracted her: that soothing voice, the candlelight flickering in his green eyes, that were lighted now, too, with humor. She couldn't help but reach out, touching his mouth, feeling herself smile, and Giles smile back at her.

"I do ramble on, don't I?" he said, obviously clued in to her distraction.

"No, it's my bad," Buffy answered. It didn't feel bad, though, to be captivated like that.

Giles slid off the bed, carrying their picnic tray over to the dresser and setting it carefully on top. She herself was in her robe, and Giles had on his pajama bottoms, but not the shirt--they were both getting a lot less self-conscious around each other. The golden light slid over Giles's broad shoulders, his bare back, making the scars look not so bad, more like an unusual texture than anything else. Really, he looked good--strong and trim and nicely proportioned. She wanted to make love to him again, and she wanted to talk to him--really talk, no holds barred for once. She just wasn't sure which she wanted to do first.

"What did I do to you in hell?" Buffy blurted out, without meaning to--her mouth seemed to have solved that dilemma for her.

Giles's back stiffened. He put his folded arms against the edge of the tall dresser and leaned against them, head bowed, his whole body seeming to turn in on itself. That wasn't at all the response she'd wanted, or expected.

"Buffy," he said quietly, in that voice that meant, "Don't go any further."

She waited, suddenly nervous.

"You saved me," Giles told her at last, sounding like he was fighting hard to keep the sharpness out of his voice. "That's all you need to know."

"You shut everything away," Buffy told him, after a silence of her own, surprised to hear her own voice trembling. "I love you so much, Giles, but sometimes it's hard to know you."

"Why must we go there? Why now? Can't we let it lie?" he asked, sounding more tired than angry. He turned around to look at her. His eyes had gone shadowy again, and the lines deepened around them. Buffy saw guilt there, and grief--and why shouldn't he be grieving, after all? He'd come home for his mother's funeral, and then there'd been the stuff with the Council, and the weirdness at Mermorgan.

"Okay," she said in a small voice. "We can if you want."

"I saw Jenny," Giles told her, after another long pause. "Well, not actually Jenny, of course. An image, a doppelganger, if you will. She led me across a terrible desert to the mansion." He rubbed his temple with the fingertips of his good hand. "Angelus was there, and he did..." Giles cleared his throat. "He repeated..."

"Like with your back, and your hand, before?" Buffy asked quietly. "Like last summer, when I left you?"

"Like that," Giles agreed. "And there were things. Other things that he'd done..." His voice trailed off, and there was a look on his face Buffy had never seen before, that she didn't even know how to interpret. She knew that Giles had been brave, that he'd never given in, no matter how much the demon hurt him, until that ho Drusilla started messing with his mind...but also that he'd been hurt on levels she didn't even want to think about.

"What kind of other things?" she asked, suddenly afraid that she knew, and that she didn't want to know. Giles looked up with his eyes dark, dark gray.

"I shan't ever tell you," he said, and continued in that gentle, civilized voice she knew so well, "Because it's too much for me--and oddly, I think it might destroy us. Do you understand, Buffy?"

She nodded, not able to talk. She knew she'd guessed right--and that if she ever heard the words confirming it come from Giles's mouth, the guilt really would destroy them. She'd never be able to look into his beautiful, changeable eyes again. Better not knowing.

"And then I had a vision," Giles went on, obviously forcing himself to smile a little. "That you came to me with Moira's sword, and skewered me like a chicken on a spit."

"But why would I do that?"

"It wasn't you," he answered patiently. "It was merely a nightmare. A phantasm." He went on, sounding like he didn't even mean to say the words, any more than Buffy had meant to start this discussion. "You said that you needed to close the vortex."

Buffy found herself having a hard time breathing. The breaths would go into her lungs, but she couldn't remember to take them. "Like with Angel."

Giles gave a single nod.

"And if I'd do it to him, I'd do it to you."

"Buffy, why pursue this?" The edge came back into his voice. "What's the point? It wasn't real, I tell you."

"Don't get mad, Giles. We're only having a conversation." Buffy realized that had come out sounding snippy, though she hadn't meant it to.

"A bloody painful one," he muttered, sitting on the end of the bed with his back to her, shoulders bowed.

"Why should it be painful if it wasn't real?" Buffy laid her hand flat between his shoulderblades, feeling the tenseness under his skin.

"At times, the things we think, or feel, or merely imagine are more..." His voice trailed off. "I believe I killed Horace Stanley."

Whoa! Where had that come from. "When?" she asked. "How?"

"When you fainted, in the girls' bedroom at Mermorgan, he was there. The Ripper demon had been inside him, but moved on. Stanley was only a broken old man, but I beat him, and then I learned the spell the LeFaye ghosts taught me, and I called the storm."

Buffy didn't know what to say. "He...umn...he's the one that started this."

"Is that, in your mind, an excuse?"

Buffy knelt behind him, rubbing his shoulders. His skin felt cold, even though the fire made it so that the room wasn't the least bit chilly. "No, not an excuse. Giles, you haven't seen nearly enough movies."

Giles twisted to look at her. "Movies?"

"Okay, Giles, get this: whenever there's a little weaselly evil guy, or a big, mean bully guy in a movie, and the hero is all merciful and lets him go, the bad guy always comes back to bite his butt. It's like the number one bad guy rule. They also mock and point and jeer, and nine times out of ten the heroine gets killed in the process. As the heroine of this story, I have to say you did the right thing."

"What I did was a misuse of magic, Buffy."

"Does it take special fertilizer to grow a guilty conscience that big?"

"Buffy--"

"Ask Moira how bad she feels about toasting the rest of those Watchers."

"Buffy!" His voice came out sharper than ever. Giles twisted all the way around to grip her upper arms--firmly, but not hard enough to hurt her. Even when angry, Giles remembered to be gentle.

She laid her hand over his injured one. "Sweetie, be careful."

Giles hung his head, hiding his expression, which had been angry, confused, troubled, the lines deep across his forehead and around his mouth and eyes. Both hands dropped into his lap.

"Hey, hey," Buffy said soothingly. "I don't treat what you did--or what I did--as nothing. I'm not getting all gloaty--it's just...I guess we see things differently." She touched his face gently, running her thumbs across the lines until they smoothed a little. "I see it as a war. We're the good guys, they're the bad guys. They started it all, and we have the right to defend ourselves. End of story." She laced her fingers behind his neck, pulling him closer. "And, you know what?"

"What is that?" he mumbled.

"The world would have to just get sucked into hell before I'd hurt you," she whispered into his ear, then kissed him. "Yep, sucked right in, like a big vacuum cleaner."

He raised his head, smiling a little. "Technically, that would be in the manner of the dust sucked into a vacuum cleaner. Which we call a Hoover, by the way."

"Really? Even the non-Hoover kind? Weirdos."

Giles gave a small laugh. "What do you call a tissue?"

"A Kleenex. But that's different. You still vacuum, don't you."

"No, we hoover. And I should prefer that you would, in fact, save the world before it was hoovered into hell." Giles face got serious again. "Truly, Buffy. My life is far less important than..."

She touched her fingertips to his mouth, shushing him. "Noble guy."

"It's just--"

"Hush. I love you. Can I ask you one more question?"

"I shudder in fear," Giles told her--and he did, actually, look nervous.

"I promise, after this, I'll stop. Willow told me something, once, and I wondered...was it worse what Angelus did, or that I left, afterward, and didn't say a word to you?"

Giles looked straight into her eyes, and his own were burning. "The worst was that you did leave word, and there was kindness in it for everyone else, and yet only blame for me. That was...I'm not sure if Willow, in fact, told you...it came close to destroying me. I couldn't... I needed..." He bent over with his hand covering his face. Though he didn't make a sound, and his body held perfectly still, Buffy realized that he was crying--even before the tears fell, turning spots of the white duvet-cover translucent.

It bothered her almost more than anything she'd ever seen, and all she could think of to do was put her arms around him, and lay her head on his shoulder, making little incoherent hushing sounds while Giles went on, almost whispering, about how ridiculous he was, and foolish, and how it had been over a year, and silly to carry on so.

"It's everything, sweetie, isn't it?" she asked him gently. "Last summer. This summer. We need a rest." Giles still wasn't making any sound, but she could feel little shivers starting under his skin. Buffy held him tighter. "Come on, lie down beside me. Let me hold you."

He did, burying his face against her chest, starting to take slow breaths that were shuddery at first, then steady, the air warm against her skin. Buffy stroked his hair and kissed the top of his head, running her fingers very gently over the still-slightly-fuzzy spot on the back of his head where the vampire Helena had hurt him so badly. "Does it still hurt?" she asked.

"No worse than anything else." Giles rolled over onto his back, gazing up at the ceiling. "Oh, Buffy."

"You okay?" She wiped the wetness on his face with the backs of her fingers.

"Feeling faintly ridiculous, actually."

"Nah, it's just you and me here, babe. We don't have anything to hide from each other, right?"

Giles's gaze moved to her face. "I'm not extremely well-practiced in...ah, I suppose I might say, sharing of myself. My emotions."

"Yeah, you and five billion other guys." She traced his mouth with her index finger until he started smiling. "Do you feel better, though?"

"I suppose I might. Beneath the shame."

"You are the man of many moods tonight." Buffy leaned over him, looking again into his eyes.

"Someone keeps provoking me," Giles said, giving her a real smile, the kind that lighted his face. "And, frankly, there are methods of provocation I far prefer."

"Which is the polite Giles way of telling me to shut up and quit bugging you?" Buffy laughed.

Giles reached up to brush the hair back from her cheek. "No, not at all. Only that we could now, perhaps, safely change the subject." He moved suddenly, and with a single quick motion had Buffy flipped over onto her back, his body over hers, supported on his elbows. His hands cupped her face.

"I think I know what subject you like," Buffy told him.

"I enjoy many relaxing hobbies," Giles told her, and bent his mouth to hers for a deep, warm kiss, his tongue slipping in to explore. He tasted a little salty, like tears, and a little tangy, like the hard cider they'd drunk earlier. He was letting a little more of his weight than usual rest against her. Buffy found that she liked the feeling--that nearness, that heaviness. She surrendered to the kiss, forgetting to breathe again until Giles pulled away, sliding down her body.

"Hey!" Buffy said, but then his lips closed over her right nipple, his tongue moving around its surface in slow, tender circles. Pleasure streamed through her.

Giles raised his head. "Such as cross-referencing." He moved to her left breast, and Buffy wove her fingers through his hair again, loving its softness.

She laughed quietly. "I remember that. Halloween."

"You distracted me." He kissed a line down her stomach, then slipped his arms in around her waist, resting his cheek against her. "Whilst Willow tiptoed in to--er--liberate Cyril Quartermass's Watcher Diary from my office."

"So, Clueless Giles wasn't so clueless after all."

"Actually, I often was--but not in that case." He kissed the inside of her thigh, just where it met her body, and Buffy couldn't help but give out a little hum of pleasure. She felt him smile against her.

Buffy sighed, knowing the earlier drama was all over, and maybe he actually did feel a little better--and then Giles wriggled back up beside her, kissing her throat while his hand moved between her legs, stroking her with touches light as feathers.

"Cheater," she said.

Giles raised his head to give her a look of innocence.

"Well, you are," she told him. "There I go, trying to have a serious, meaningful conversation, and you go all guy on me, trying to distract me with sex."

"I can stop," he answered, as Buffy shivered and pressed down hard against his fingers.

"No, Mr. Giles," Buffy said. "Please continue."

"You wouldn't happen to have one of those green monstrosities close to hand, would you?"

Buffy rolled over him, and found one in the drawer, quick as lightning. Her hands shook as she put in on him, and then they were rolling around on the bed like people in some cheesy movie, kissing and laughing and touching, playing with one another in a way they never had before. Letting go of all their earlier anguish. It felt wonderful, like having no weight, like being filled with helium, floating and floating. Somehow, big as the bed was, they got too close to the edge, and just as Giles entered her, came sliding down, duvet and all, hitting the floor with a loud thump, Buffy astride Giles's lap, still connected to him.

For a minute, they held perfectly still, faces buried against one another's shoulders to hold in the giggles--only Giles's version of giggles were deep and quiet and rumbly, like bears' laughing, if bears did, in fact laugh.

A rap sounded on their door, followed by Seb's soft, concerned voice. "Dad? Buffy? All right in there, are you?"

Celeste's voice followed. "Oh, for heaven's sake, Bastian, come away. Can't you tell they're inside shagging like bunnies?"

"But I'm afraid--"

"If you go in there, you'll be more afraid, love." A string of mumbled words followed, as if Celeste might be making an interesting suggestion.

"Oh, all right then," Sebastian answered, sounding perky.

Since they were on the floor already, they decided they might as well stay there. Buffy wondered who had the room below them? Probably, knowing his luck, poor Xander.

Giles laid Buffy gently down on her back, pillowing her on the cover. His eyes held hers as he moved strongly above her, filling her completely, as he always did, not only physically, but with such a total joy that Buffy wondered how she ever could have thought of loving another.

Synchronized as always, they came within seconds, and while they were still joined, Giles rose to his knees with her astride him. He held her fiercely, as Buffy held him in return.

"I'm never gonna leave you again," she whispered in his ear. "You know that, don't you?"

Giles held her even tighter, not saying anything at first, because they both knew what she was, and how short her life might be, but at last he ran a gentle hand over her hair, and told her, "Yes, my love. I know."