Tribulations - Chapter 52

Giles came to himself with the most terrifying feeling that he must awaken, and awaken now--yet, when he woke, he found everything quiet, his flat lit by the low, familiar lamplight, the only sounds those of a fairly steady rain against the windows and a soft rustle of pages from somewhere close by.

For a moment, he gazed up at the dark beams overhead, wondering at the source of such a profound alarm. Yet another nightmare, he supposed. One would think he'd be accustomed to them after all this time--and yet his heart raced, his pulse thudding in his ears.

No wonder, really, that he'd slept uneasily: he had somehow managed to fall asleep on the sofa. Fully clothed, no less. Best to make his way to the shower, change, and settle in for a real night's sleep in his own bed, were such a thing possible. If sleep were to elude him, well, there were always the books.

Giles raised his hand to the back of the sofa, meaning to lever himself upright--and there his plans ran aground. Not only did his body seem completely unwilling to perform such an action, the slightest lifting of his head from the cushion sent a wave of dizziness coursing through him, and with it a chill of Arctic bitterness. He fell back again, shivering, wondering what could have possibly occurred. Had he been struck on the head again? If so, he'd no memory. Although that was not precisely out of the ordinary either.

"Hey," said Buffy's voice. An instant later she was at his side, perching, as she often did, on the edge of the coffee table. She'd sounded sleepy, and her face looked more tired still, yet she bent down to kiss him softly, straightening again after an extended moment. "Your fever's down. Seb says you're gonna be okay. Are you? Okay, that is."

Giles frowned a little, trying to remember. Something about the Hellmouth... Something about...wine? That couldn't be right. He drank wine now and then, but always with meals and never to the point of over-indulgence. Besides which, this felt like no hangover he'd ever experienced. "Buffy, where is Sebastian?" he asked, surprised by his own voice. He sounded weak, and creaky, almost humourously so.

"At home. Well, at the Holiday Inn, anyway. With Celeste. You know."

Giles frowned again. Something had happened, definitely. God, why could he not remember?

Buffy rubbed gently at the crease between his brows. "Don't turn into worry-guy on me. Celeste's fine. Completely fine. Okay, so the cut still looks kinda ick, but that'll totally go away, the doctor said. And Seb's a little shaky, but he really came through for you. For us. And you don't remember any of this, do you?"

Giles shook his head--only a little. He'd no wish to set off another wave of vertigo. And yet... He did remember something. Or perhaps remember wasn't the correct word. Sensed? Felt? Frustration began to build in him. Events had taken place, he knew that. Terribly important events. And yet he could not grasp hold of them firmly. His brain, moreover, the dizziness and muddledness aside, felt different somehow. Rather as if he'd gone without sleep for far too long, or been swotting too hard for exams.

"You're uncomfortable there, aren't you?" Buffy asked. "You've gotta be. Look, Xander's napped out upstairs, but I don't have any problem with waking him up. He won't mind the couch."

"No, no..." Giles murmured. "Honestly. Allow Xander to sleep in peace."

Then, there it was at last, one of the things he'd found so difficult to grasp. They, somehow had been with him...no, not with but in him. Sebastian and Xander had stepped in--and Buffy, most of all Buffy, a golden light to his darkness. He'd been offered something once, or had something forced upon him, and the result was...

The result was...

"Ssh," Buffy told him soothingly. "You're getting stressed. I can tell. Don't."

"You saved me," Giles murmured, almost remembering. "I was wrong, it was too much, but you came in, and you saved me."

"The guys did a lot too," Buffy informed him.

"Yes, yes..." he answered, distracted. He'd lost time, and either those memories would come back, or they would not. With that he'd just have to cope. The dregs of his recent dream troubled him far more. There had been something there, quite real, perhaps dangerous... A threat? Not to Buffy, though. Or, at least, not immediately to Buffy...

"Wesley," he exclaimed.

"Yes?" answered a male voice, quite clearly the former Watcher's. Why on earth should Wesley be there, in his flat?

Giles hauled himself upright, regretting the action at once as the room twirled like a carousel and a single great pulse of pain shot up his spine to establish itself as a molten pool directly beneath his skull. Breathless, he doubled up, but Buffy caught and steadied him.

"Wes," she called over his shoulder. "You wanna come over here? I think Giles has something to tell you."

How could he speak, or even think, in the midst of this? Had their ritual atop the Hellmouth been fruitless, rendering Willow's protection spell null and void?

A chair scraped across the floor, sending an additional shiver of torment up his backbone. Wesley's presumed footfalls sounded like the firing of cannons. Giles pressed his hands over his ears. This was too much, entirely too much--and yet he knew something of import depended upon what he conveyed to the younger man.

"The bond...the LeFaye bond..." he gasped. "I...that is, I saw...sensed some disturbance, some danger.... Moira..." Well, that was putting things succinctly. Giles forced himself to raise his head, trying to meet Wesley's eyes but, with hardly so much as a rustle, Wyndham-Price had already gone. Slowly, Giles's feeling of panic faded.

"Wow," Buffy said. "Very bat-out-of-hell-like. Very anti-Wesley. Is something going to hurt Moira? Should I get on the case?"

"Perhaps... I'm hardly..." The room had set up a precipitous see-sawing motion. Giles could actually feel himself turning green, his skin icy, heart racing.

"Okay, that was clear, sweetie. And you are not feeling good, are you? C'mon--" Buffy pushed on his shoulders, trying to force him to lie flat, but Giles resisted her. He squeezed shut his eyes, willing the horrible motion to go away and leave him in peace. Which, to his surprise, it eventually did.

Giles began to breathe again, cautiously, as the pain in his head ebbed as well, the molten burning subsiding to a far-more-tolerable ache. He looked up to see Buffy regarding him with great, anxious eyes.

"It's all right, love," he told her gently. "I'm quite all right."

Buffy slipped to the sofa beside him, tucking up her legs beneath her, her body pressed against his chest. One hand went to the back of his neck, probing at the tight, aching muscles there with a firmness Giles found simultaneously painful and relaxing.

"So..." she said. "Do you want me to go haul Xander's ass out of our bed so that you can get some real sleep?"

Giles shook his head cautiously, then reached forward for the bottle of water he'd spied on the table. Once he began to drink, he hardly felt he could stop, though Buffy's hand on his arm cautioned him and he lowered the bottle once more. He'd been sleeping too long, still too long--and, in truth, he feared the return of his dream. "Although I know you are more than capable of...er...hauling Xander's ass..."

Buffy giggled. "Giles, you so can't speak American."

"Thank you," Giles answered drily, smiling as a grin of almost giddy relief spread over Buffy's face. Yes, this is what she needed from him: the banter, the return to something like normalcy. She appeared so weary, his love, and so in need, just now, of reassurance. Giles raised a hand to stroke her hair, which felt, uncharacteristically, flat and lifeless. "You've been terribly worried, haven't you, love?"

Buffy gave him a glare of mock ferocity. "Giles, you scared the pants off me! I thought your brain was melting or something."

Giles cupped his hand round the back of her head, pulling it gently down to his shoulder. "But for you, Buffy, it might well have done so."

Buffy let out a little sigh, content to accept his comfort. Her body pressed into his, warm and deceptively soft, and despite his words and apprehensions he might easily have fallen back to sleep right there.

"You know what I want?" Buffy said plaintively.

"What is that, my love?" Giles answered, knowing quite well what it was she must desire--peace, and freedom from this constant anxiety.

"A really, really long, hot shower," Buffy told him. "Followed by, like, a ton of Chinese food. The really fattening kind."

Giles laughed aloud, the warning bolt of pain that shot through his head not dampening his amusement. "Buffy, you never cease to amaze me."

She raised her head, eyes sparkling. "Ha! I got you on that one, didn't I? Bet you thought I was gonna wish for world peace or something. And I do. But not right now. Right now I'm definitely coming down on the side of the Chinese food."

"And I'm afraid I'll have to support you in that." Giles laughed again. "Why don't you call the place you like so much? If they're open, that is. What's the time?"

"The one with the really pink sweet-n-sour sauce? Giles, you are a god. And it's only a couple minutes after nine. They're gonna be open." Buffy had already bounced to her feet and begun to riffle through the telephone directly. "Only, was that one the Golden Lion, the Golden Dragon, or the Golden East?"

"Dragon, I believe." By way of experiment, Giles hauled himself to his feet. The room took a neat little turn, but then held still, which he chose to interpret as a positive sign.

"We have money, right? 'Cause I'm gonna order the entire menu."

"Upstairs. I'll fetch it." Perhaps he was being optimistic, but one had to start somewhere. Cautiously, Giles left the support of the sofa and ventured out into the room, trying to be surreptitious in his use of the various pieces of furniture he touched in passing as he sought to maintain his balance. The stairs loomed before him like a mountain, but they had to be faced, and at least he'd the bannister to help him on his way.

Giles found himself completely winded by the time he reached the top, and shuddered at the thought of the effort he'd have to expend to get himself back into any sort of condition. He leaned in the doorway, allowing himself a moment--or two--to catch his breath.

As Buffy'd told him, Xander slept sprawled across the bed, the sheet twined round his legs in a manner that surely could not be comfortable. Deep in his slumber, the boy's face revealed much: he appeared troubled, weary, even defeated. Silently as possibly, Giles crossed the loft, freeing the covers from their twisted state to spread them more smoothly over Xander's sleeping form. His young friend shifted restlessly, muttering something that Giles could not make out.

"It's all right, Xander," he said softly, bending over the boy. A dark bruise marked Xander's left cheek, and a clipped patch in his hair showed quite a sizable lump bisected by a short line of stitches.

"You are a brave and foolish young man," Giles added. "And I hope that one day you'll learn that you've nothing to prove to us."

Xander's eyes opened to slits, gazing muzzily up into the darkened room. "Ouch," he muttered.

"Your head? I can certainly sympathize." He laid a hand on Xander's shoulder. "Go back to sleep now. We'll have food in a bit, if you're hungry."

Xander murmured something else, a string of words that Giles could not immediately decipher, before slipping once again into his no-doubt troubled dreams.

Giles moved quietly about the loft, collecting the promised cash from the night stand drawer, then complete changes of clothing for himself and Buffy. By the time he'd made his way downstairs once more, his love had apparently completed her call and taken herself off to the bathroom, where the shower hissed steadily and Buffy's voice could be heard singing snatches of what he presumed were popular songs.

Smiling, he rapped on the door.

"Come in!" Buffy shouted over the sound of the water. "Unless you're Xander. In which case, go away and use the one upstairs."

Chuckling, Giles slipped inside. "It's I," he told her, setting his bundle of clothing down on the closed toilet lid. "Would you mind very much if I joined you?"

"Mind?" Buffy's water-beaded arm emerged from behind the closed curtain. "Get yourself in here!"

Giles shed his own clothes, wondering at exactly which point all his self-consciousness had dropped away, and made his way, somewhat unsteadily, into the bath. Buffy turned to face him, glistening with moisture, her wet hair dark. She looked very thin, he thought--her ribs showed beneath her skin as she reached up to embrace him.

"I hope that you did, in fact, order the entire menu when you rang that restaurant," Giles told her, raising his voice over the noise of the water. "And I shall have to see that you eat every bit of it."

"Don't worry," Buffy answered. "You won't have to tell me twice. And you..." She gave him a look of mock sternness. "I could say the same thing."

"Mmn," Giles responded, reaching for the puff of pink plastic netting that Buffy used to scrub herself. He squeezed a generous dollop of rather alarmingly magenta liquid soap into the center, working up a lather as he turned his love out of the direct path of the spray.

Buffy watched him a moment, then moved closer, lying against him with her cheek pressed to his chest as he rubbed the puff--what Buffy referred to, somewhat vaguely, as a "scrunchy thing"--in gentle circles over her back. She hummed against him, soundlessly, reminding Giles of a contented kitten. The humming changed its pitch as he turned her, thoroughly soaping her breasts, her stomach, down into the vee of her thighs. Despite his weariness and the persistent ache in his head, the feel of her, the texture of her soap-slick skin, excited him. How long had it been since he'd touched her like this? How long since they'd been allowed to spend time together, alone and in relative health.

"Are you gonna--" Buffy said, a bit breathlessly, turning to him, "Finish what you start here, mister?" She took the puff from his hand, rubbing it in a broad stripe down his chest. Giles could see why she liked the feel of it.

"Not the pink stuff..." he started to say, then stopped himself. Why not stay in the moment, here with her? Buffy laughed, and Giles laughed along, opening himself up to her ministrations, the touch of her fingers and the warm foam on his skin. He bent down to capture a kiss, exploring Buffy's mouth, her soft, moist lips and slippery little tongue, as he felt he had not done in an eternity. Her breasts rubbed against his chest and he slipped his hands up and down her sides, slowly, sensuously, wishing that he could taste every inch of her glistening, satiny skin.

His hands dropped at last to her warm posterior, kneading that firm flesh as he drew Buffy closer and closer still, lifting her against him, his own arousal increasing to the point at which he could not have stopped what they'd begun to save his own life.

At which point, Buffy sank to her knees. He'd momentary flash of worry--after all, she must be as weary as he, if not more so--but then Giles felt the warmth of her mouth upon him, taking him into her not with timidity but with a completeness of passion that sent his own spiraling upward to new heights. He wanted, more than anything he'd wanted in his life, to be sheathed in her, lost in her...

He cried out, lights spinning in his vision, sinking to his own knees even as he lifted Buffy gently backward. She lay against the sloped end of the tub, thighs open before him, her hair darkened and shining with the wetness, the water beating down upon them both.

Giles braced his hands against the sides of the tub, entering her in one smooth motion. Buffy's hands clutched at his shoulders as he drove into her, her mouth opening to be captured again. Her every move mirrored his, magnified his, her passion meeting and feeding his passion until they'd both gone so far that could be no turning back.

Buffy's spine arched, her sex tightened around him in delicious shudders, and Giles could not help but follow her, crying out as he found his release, a moment that stretched out into eternities of all-consuming joy.

For a long while, Buffy clung to him, and Giles held her in return. Tenderly this time, despite his breathless delight. Something had happened between them, in another place, that he did not quite understand, something that had brought them to this--the spectacular lovemaking being perhaps the least of its manifestations. Giles's earlier anxiety had departed altogether, leaving him, instead, at utter peace, with a certainty, a profoundness of love, respect and caring for this young woman that abandoned the totality of what he'd felt for her before behind in the proverbial dust.

Once, he would have said that he could not have loved Buffy more. Now he knew that hadn't been true. Somehow, through some agency, they'd achieved a new level of completeness, one he could only marvel at, with humble thanks for whatever force allowed such sweetness to exist in the world.

"You feel it too, don't you?" Buffy asked him, voice hushed, her eyes brimming with an echo of his own joy.

Giles sat back on his heels, reaching behind to shut off the taps before he helped her to sit, then to stand. Buffy pulled him upright, steadying him when she staggered a bit, a smile flashing like lighting across her lovely face. "I feel it," Giles answered solemnly.

"Maybe you'll think I'm crazy, and I don't want to rush things..." she murmured, pressing her cheek, once more, against his chest. "Or maybe I do. Maybe that's the whole point." Buffy pulled away a little, gazing up at him. "I don't want to wait, Giles. I want to be with you now. Not in two years. Not in four years. Now. I want to be your wife. Is that too scary?"

"Scary?" Giles could not help but smile. Truly, what was the point of waiting? This, the emotion between them, was not going to end. To ebb or fade or twist into something neither one of them could recognize any longer. This was Shakespeare's ever-fixed mark, that looked on tempests and was never shaken.

A bit of Xander's humour flashed in his head, It looks like Caution Man, but the noise he makes is funny.

"No, my love," Giles said, pushing back the curtain, drawing Buffy behind him as he stepped out onto the bath mat. "Not scary in the least. If you are certain..." He looked down into her eyes and knew he'd no reason to complete the thought. "I'm yours," he said, smiling. "That is, if you will have me."

Buffy flew into his arms with abandon and Giles, quite contradictory to his usual nature, spun her round, clasping her close. Not the best idea, perhaps, at the moment, but they were unhurt as they tumbled in a tangle of arms, legs and damp, laughing bodies.

"I love you," Buffy cried out, sitting atop him with her wet hair tumbled all over her eyes. "I love you, Giles." She bent down to claim another kiss, her mouth seeking his hungrily.

"I could not love you more," he told her, once she'd straightened again. For a moment, their eyes met in all seriousness, and then the laughter began again, only to be interrupted by a firm, if distant knock upon the front door.

"Oh, God!" Buffy giggled. "I totally forgot! The Chinese food!"

Giles, struggling up from underneath her, could not help but laugh himself.

He went to the door extremely damp, uncharacteristically tousled, but decently, if hastily clothed. The young man delivering their food blinked a bit at the generosity of his tip, but Giles could not stop himself from grinning, he suspected, very much like a fool.