Transitions - Ch. 16

Their jet, a 747, was the biggest one Buffy had been on in her life--not that she'd done so very much flying. A few trips to visit her Aunt Eileen in Illinois pretty much summed it up. Her mom hated to fly, and her dad always seemed to be too busy, which meant she'd spent almost every day of her life in California, and knew nothing, really, about the outside world. She couldn't believe she was actually going to a foreign country. She couldn't believe she was on a plane that actually had an upstairs and a downstairs.

Buffy really wanted to go exploring, but that would have been childish. Curious as she was, she didn't want to embarrass Giles. Not that he looked like he'd mind so much.

Maybe later, she thought, trying hard not to bounce up and down in her seat like a little kid with the nervousness and excitement.

Even with all the people who'd waited with them in the checkout line, their flight didn't seem too heavily booked. They didn't even have a third person in their row. Giles had insisted that she take the window seat, while he took the aisle--Buffy felt kind of bad for him. This one had more leg-room than those she'd taken to Aunt Eileen's, but the insides of airplanes just weren't set up for guys his height.

"Comfortable?" she asked, knowing Giles would lie.

"Lovely," he answered. "And you?"

"Peachy." Buffy tucked the bag of Skittles Xander had given her for the flight, her paperback romance novel, three fashion magazines and an extra bottle of water into the seat-pouch. Giles maneuvered himself out of his seat to stow her carry-on bag in the overhead bin, along with his own.

"Didn't you bring a book?" Buffy asked him.

Giles smiled at her. "I thought I might nap a bit. Clear my head."

"It's a long flight. I doubt even your ability to nap that long."

He smiled again.

"I guess there are videos, too," Buffy told him. Actually, it was kind of cool: the back of each seat had a little TV screen, and a quick glance through the in-flight magazine had told her she'd be able to choose from six different movies during their trip, and some TV shows too. Obviously it had all been designed by someone who hated to get bored, but even with all that entertainment Buffy knew she'd be climbing the walls by the time they hit London. She had the worst time keeping still.

Giles not wanting to read bothered her. When she pictured him in her mind, he always had a book in his hand. Buffy tried to tell herself that he wasn't reading because his eyesight was still screwed up from the concussion--Will had taken her to this one doctory Website, and they'd looked some stuff up. Sometimes, she'd read--or Willow had read, and translated--it could take a while to get over that sort of thing. Just because Giles hadn't seemed to suffer any bad effects from the nine million other times he'd been hit on the head didn't mean this time would be the same. Or maybe--and Buffy didn't like to think this--she just hadn't noticed all those other times.

No, Buffy told herself, This is the worst. If he'd been like this ever before she would've seen. Even as blind as she'd been about most things Giles, she wouldn't have been that unobservant.

She was looking for things to stress about: she admitted it freely.

Buffy felt nervous for no good reason that she could figure out, but despite what Giles had told her earlier, he looked perfectly calm. Maybe he'd just been making conversation, though that wasn't really like him. Or else trying to distract her--that she could buy. Giles often tried to distract her, with varying degrees of success.

Buffy wished she could figure out why she was acting so mental. Was it the stuff with her mom, or leaving her friends unprotected? Going out of the country--or just leaving Sunnydale?

For the past year, that had been all she wanted. To leave Sunnydale behind. To say goodbye to the Hellmouth. To turn her life into a great big game of Anywhere But Here. Now Buffy felt the way she always did after waking up from one of her prophecy dreams: as if something huge was hanging over her head, some gigantic stormcloud of evil that was going to open up and catch her without an umbrella.

Which was stupid, really, because for the last week Sunnydale had been deader than dead. Deader than undead. Buffy had dutifully gone patrolling every night, to all twelve of the cemeteries and every vampire hot-spot she could think of: nada, zippo, zilch. She knew the nasties would come back--they always did--but for right now, between Mayor Wilkins's bungled campaign for demonhood, and her very own Wild Magic man, Sunnydale was not a happenin' bloodsucker town.

Still, it felt wrong to leave, even for such a short time.

Of course, that couldn't have anything to do with her own issues--her Sebastian-envy, and her out-and-out terror at the thought of meeting the rest of Giles's family. Oh, no, the misgivings must be...what was that word Giles called it, that meant kinda-sorta the same thing as prophecy? Buffy could feel herself scowling.

"Buffy?" Giles said to her, in that warm soft voice that always--at least recently--made her feel melty. She wanted to ask him what the word was, but then she was afraid he wouldn't know, and that would upset him. More than anything else, she didn't want to upset Giles.

Precognition, that was it. Knowing what things were going to happen before they did. Buffy let out a sigh of relief.

Giles had been unfailingly kind and considerate to her--even earlier in the day, when she knew her obsessiveness had pretty much gotten on his last nerve. Her brain drifted onto a subject guaranteed to take her mind off other things: the way he kissed her; the way be made love to her. Okay, so she did need to make at least a little effort not to get completely carried away--but that was just, WHOA!

Giles. Her Giles. Stuffy, boring, bookish Giles, did the kind of things women wrote in to Cosmo about. In the fantasies column. Stuff they wished their husbands or boyfriends would do to them.

Compared to him, Buffy had to admit, Angel had been a pretty ho-hum lover. And she so wasn't used to a relationship where she got to be both a taker and a giver. Where love meant caring and concern, but not a constant sense of fear and anxiety, like something with sharp little teeth gnawing non-stop on her heart.

Giles took her hand, content with her. Happy with her, even if this wasn't a happy occasion.

Buffy still didn't like the tired, washed-out way he'd been looking ever since that bad night. She kept thinking that if she just loved him hard enough, nagged and cajoled him hard enough, he'd get back to the way he'd been before.

Before the vampire Helena. Before the bad magic. Before the weird twisted forest sprang up in the heart of Sunnydale. Before her own stupid, good-intentioned mistake that got her captured. Before he'd almost died, only a week and a day before. It really wasn't fair of her to keep at him--the poor man just needed a little bit of time to recover, more than he'd been given.

The bruises she'd left on him had hardly even faded.

"Didn't you at least want to leave your pills down here?" Buffy asked. She was afraid of him hurting; she didn't want him to hurt. Sometimes she worried about herself--that half of that feeling was her kindness and concern for Giles, but the other half was because, if he was still hurting, he couldn't look after her. She hated that any part of her felt that way--that she could have such weak, girly, thoughts inside her. Buffy banished them from her head.

"I don't care for the way they make me feel," Giles answered.

By which he meant, Buffy knew, that he'd rather be in pain than even the teeniest bit out of control. Sure, he'd seemed a little spaced back at the airport, but not bad. Not embarrassing or anything. Even now, sitting there beside her in his gray three-piece suit, he looked sober and restrained. As usual, he was watching her, that kind, tender look in his gray-green eyes, those little lines crinkling the corners. Their joined hands lay on the armrest.

Buffy ran her thumb over the healing cuts and scrapes on his knuckles. "I guess you can always change your mind."

"Perhaps," Giles answered, which was his way of saying, "No." Suddenly, he said to her, "Tell me something from your life."

"Huh?" Buffy wasn't sure what he meant.

"Tell me the first thing you remember."

Buffy tried really hard to narrow it down to one thing--then it came to her like the burst of light from a flashbulb: her old back yard, and the kiddie pool. The weird blue rubbery smell of the plastic, the water that started out cold, then heated up fast in the sun, the little cartoon fish and seahorses printed on the bottom, that got ripply every time she splashed--and her mom, calling her name. Her mom, not all that much older than she was now, smiling and saying, "Buffy! Buffy!" And her yelling back, "Mommy!" with perfect trust and love.

As the jet taxied down the runway and threw itself into the sky, Buffy started crying. "I should've been better," she sobbed. "I should've worked something out. Something I said coulda made it better."

Giles pulled her close, and she cried onto his nice gray suit. "Not a safe topic after all," he said, half to himself.

Once the plane leveled out, a flight attendant came over to them. "Is your daughter all right?" she asked Giles.

"Fiancee," Buffy choked out.

"A little homesick already, I fear," Giles said, and handed Buffy one of his clean, soft handkerchiefs to dry her eyes.

Buffy felt really stupid. She'd made a scene, and probably embarrassed the heck out of poor Giles.

"I had a big fight with my mom," she said. Oh, great--that sounded really mature. But she could hear herself saying the same words at sixty, when her mother was pushing eighty-five--they would disagree, and fight, and love each other all the time, when her dad was hardly even a memory.

"Better now?" Giles asked her kindly.

Buffy blew her nose--then she didn't know what to do with the handkerchief--it didn't seem exactly polite to hand it back to him. She settled on pushing the damp piece of cloth into her pocket.

The flight attendant had kind of a combination expression on her face--one part pity for Buffy, another part meanness for Giles. She hoped he wouldn't notice, but he did. She could tell. His mouth tightened just for a minute.

"Yes, I'm fine now, sweetie. Thanks," Buffy told him. "Thanks," she said to the stewardess, hoping the woman would just go away, and quit giving Giles that bad look.

Finally, she did.

"I'm really sorry," Buffy told him.

"No need," Giles answered with a sad little smile. "I suppose we must become accustomed to such expressions of disapproval. We'll see them often enough."

"No, you'll see them, which is SO not fair. It's not like I'm an injured party here." Buffy rubbed the stone of her ring, almost like a good luck charm, and told him her memory.

"I do like your mum," he said, when she'd finished. "She's a lovely woman."

"Just don't like her too much," Buffy replied, teasing him.

"Ah--er--as Willow might say, 'That was a fluke.'" Giles freed his hand from hers to tug at the knot of his tie, looking distinctly uncomfortable.

"So, no more fluking with my mom?"

"Not even a possibility." Giles's smile brightened. "Though you'll never let me forget, will you?"

"Oh, I might let some time pass without mentioning--just to lull you into a false sense of security. What's your first memory, Giles?" she asked, without thinking. What if he couldn't remember? What if she stressed him out again?

But he told her about his baby sister, looking down on her in her crib, when he was only a little, little kid himself. He'd always seemed so completely grown up to her--like if he'd ever had diapers, they really had been tweed. But as he talked about Clarice, she could see him so clearly as a boy it was almost like a vision. It made her think of what vamp-girl Maria had told her, about what happened to Clarice and Giles's other sister, Marianna. What had happened to their dad.

All the worst things in her life: her parents' divorce, all the Angel stuff, the assorted Slaying-related traumas--they were bad, bad things, but they didn't compare. She hoped she'd never have something in her life that compared.

God, none of the stuff she'd obsessed about, or cried over, compared to half the stuff Giles had been through. The stuff he continued to go through.

"I know I should have said it a thousand times already," she told him. "But thank you. And I'm sorry."

"For what are you thanking me?" Giles blinked, surprised. "And why should you be sorry?"

"For everything," Buffy answered. "Just...for everything."

Giles continued to look confused for a few minutes, and then it slowly sank in. "Oh," he said. "That. Buffy--"

"Ssh." She stretched up to kiss him. "And aren't you supposed to be napping?"

"I'd rather do this, I believe," he said, and kissed her back, so deeply and thoroughly Buffy felt her toes curl with pleasure. His hand rested on her thigh, stroking gently up and down the soft fabric of her slacks. Buffy started to get that warm feeling--in the pit of her stomach, and lower too.

Giles pulled back, looking down on her, a glint in his eye that was starting to get a little bit familiar. "Still feeling nervous?" he asked.

"Now that, Mr. Giles," Buffy answered, "Was an effective distraction."

The glint was still there, but amazing tenderness too. She couldn't believe Giles, of all people, had been willing to kiss and touch her so openly, with no apparent embarrassment. Maybe his broad, wool-clad shoulders did partly shield them from prying eyes, and he'd counted on that--or maybe he was just feeling contrary, the way he did sometimes.

Maybe he loved her so much he no longer cared about propriety.

They were supposed to stay their first night in England at Sebastian's, before they took the train up to Salisbury. If Sebastian put them in separate beds she was gonna die.