Tribulations - Ch. 27

It was the perfect thing, to snuggle against Giles with her head on his shoulder, his arm around her back, supporting her. Buffy knew how badly he was bruised from the fight with the vampire who'd once been her dad, and she hoped the weight of her body didn't hurt him, but she couldn't move away, not because she didn't care if he hurt, but because she herself hurt so bad inside that she couldn't stand to be apart from him. She felt like a plant or something, soaking up her strength from the earth, soaking up her ability to go on from him.

"What is it, love?" he asked her, in his gentle, controlled voice, the one that pretty much promised her, in the long run, that everything was going to be okay.

"It's you," she said. "It's how bad I need you."

"I--" She could feel him swallow, and could tell he was fighting some big emotion, or was about to make some big revelation, a thing that, even now, was hard for him. Giles wasn't ever going to be let-me-reveal-my-every-emotion-guy. "Buffy, I-- That is, in London, what the Hellmouth showed me--"

Buffy moved a little to look up at him. She could see his profile, and the one muscle that jumped along his jaw when he got tense, or was suppressing. She rubbed it with her fingertips.

"I know that it showed you something quite similar, and I know that none of it is true...but it showed me a future in which I was a useless fool," he told her at last, so softly she could hardly hear. "I had no job, and no prospects. You'd gone off to college, but that wasn't all. Somehow--I'm not sure how precisely--you were gone from me, Buffy. You'd no need for me whatsoever. I had a vision, even, that Faith stole your body away from you, switched with you, as it were, and yet I was such an idiot I didn't know you. As if I wouldn't know you at any time, or any place, in any form you took. As if you weren't the heart of my heart."

It took Buffy a minute to get what he was saying--that he was actually asking her for comfort, and that his idea of hell was for her not to need him. "Oh, Giles," she breathed. "Oh, sweetie, none of that's real. It's all just lies. You know that." She touched his face again. "Why worry about something that's never gonna come true?"

Giles's eyes stayed shadowy; he didn't look convinced.

Buffy brushed the back of her fingers over his cheek "Please, Giles, don't stress! Tell me that you know it won't happen."

In answer, he held her a little tighter, burying his face in her hair, and Buffy reached up to brush his stubbly cheek again, this time with the palm of her hand. "I'd be nuts to ever think I didn't need you. You're..." Buffy shifted again, until she knelt astride his lap, rising on her knees so that she could look deeply into his eyes. "You know you're the heart of my heart too, you big dummy, and you always will be. You're smart, and you're caring and you're just...Giles. I'll always, always love you, no matter what the Hellmouth tries to tell you, or what Seb or anyone thinks."

Giles got that mildly surprised look, his eyes widening. "What does Sebastian think?"

"That I won't love you forever." Buffy took his face between her hands, carefully, because of the bruises. His irises were showing a clear, pale green, but she could see those dark, worried shadows moving in the depths of them. She bent slightly, and softly kissed his forehead, straightening to look at him again. "And normally Seb's a smart guy too--but this time he's wrong, you know." Buffy ran her thumb softly over Giles's lips. "He's just wrong. You really are my knight in shining armor, and you're the last thing I think about at night, and when I wake up in the morning next to you, I'm so happy. I'm so completely happy. I know now that we'll get through this, same as we got through all the other stuff."

That made him smile, one of those little flickering Giles-smiles, and Buffy smiled in return. Her nerves still hummed in the most pleasant way possible from when he'd touched her before, and she wanted more of that, loving the way it made her feel strong, and alive, and so joined to him. She lowered herself a little, pressing her body close to his, carefully, so that she didn't disturb the bruises, but firmly too. Rubbing herself gently against him, until Giles made a small sound deep in his throat.

"You like that?" she murmured.

"Mmn," he answered, his hands coming around to cup her bottom, caressing her through the knit cloth of her cotton boxers, kneading her, before his fingers slipped up underneath, stroking her skin until all the nerve endings once more came tinglingly alive, his touch traveling from the small of her back, down her thighs and up again. Buffy arched against him and Giles licked her bare stomach, drawing a line with his tongue-tip that made her shiver, pulling a little on her boxers so that he could explore the hollow of her navel, that touch making a little arrow of pleasure shoot down between her legs.

This time his left hand stroked its way up the top of her thigh, and when it found its way back beneath her shorts, his thumb brushed against the rising nub of her clitoris.

"Turn around?" Giles said, helping her to turn even as he made the request.

Buffy sat astride his lap, facing away from him, feeling his growing hardness under her bottom. She squirmed a little, rubbing him, smiling as the firmness increased.

"Soon enough," Giles breathed into her ear, then explored its whorls with his tongue. He bit on the lobe, then kissed down the side of her neck to her shoulder, where he gave another of those gentle bites. One of his hands lay softly on her lower abdomen, the other parted her unbuttoned shirt, kneading first the left breast, then the right until the pleasure began to shoot through her in steady streams and she was rocking against him, moaning softly in her throat.

The hand that lay on her stomach rose to slip beneath the waistband of her shorts, gliding over her bare skin, his fingers parting her damp curls until they slipped into the hollow between her legs and lay there quietly for a moment, just touching her.

Buffy pushed against the touch until his hand stirred, stroking the slick opening to her passage. She could feel him move beneath her, his hardness adding to her arousal nearly as much as the motion of his fingers over her secret folds, and over her nipples, which now almost ached with pleasure.

Giles bent forward slightly to kiss the nape of Buffy's neck, even as two of his fingers slipped inside her, moving in rhythm with the circles his palm made over her nipple. The pleasure seemed about to explode everywhere, but Buffy didn't want that, didn't want to come without him inside her. She pressed down on his hand, stopping his motion, feeling the little shudder of her passage walls around his fingers.

"What is it, love?" he breathed.

Buffy half turned to him, pleading with her eyes. "Please?" she murmured, and Giles read her meaning perfectly. He always read her meaning perfectly. He shifted her gently off his lap and onto the chenille throw beside him, sliding down from the sofa until he knelt before her, between her parted knees, looking deeply into her eyes with a smile playing over his mouth, even though the rest of his face maintained a perfectly Giles-like seriousness.

She lifted up slightly to let him draw down her shorts, which he did slowly, tantalizingly, his hands gliding over her skin. Buffy found herself breathing fast, and wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling him close for a kiss, which Giles returned deeply, passionately, once more exploring her mouth until she nearly came just from the interplay of his tongue against hers. Her hands worked feverishly at the button of his pants, then with the zipper, trying to be careful not to snag the rock-hard erection that zipper concealed, finally working both the pants and the shorts beneath them down over his hips. Giles's cock nearly sprang into her hand, hot and solid and alive with the fire of his arousal.

Buffy drew her fingertips down the shaft, ready to guide him inside her, but Giles stopped her with a touch, reaching instead into his pocket for the condom she'd forgotten. She took it from his hand, unrolling the flesh-colored latex over his penis, feeling the organ jump again at her touch.

"Okay?" she whispered.

"Close," he answered hoarsely, breathing hard while, for a few seconds, he grasped himself firmly with one hand. Buffy felt so close herself that it was like not breathing, as if she couldn't breathe again until his body joined to hers.

Giles smiled shakily and moved her forward to the very edge of the couch, arranging a pair of cushions behind Buffy's back until she could lounge back comfortably. One hand on each of her thighs, Giles bent forward to kiss her again, the silky hair on his chest rubbing against her sensitized breasts, the hardness of his cock pressing against the softness of her stomach. Buffy reached down to touch him, moving the tip to her opening. With a little shudder, Giles pushed up inside her, holding himself still just for a moment after that penetration.

Again, his eyes looked to hers, and Buffy felt her own eyes pleading, even as, of their own will, her legs wrapped around his hips, pulling him closer, her feet stroking the backs of his thighs.

Giles gave a little gasp and pushed in deeper, making Buffy gasp too at the heat inside her. Her hands rubbed over his chest as his grasped the wooden rim at the back of the couch, and the rhythm of their motion increased.

"Harder," Buffy panted, "Harder," wanting it that way for once, because it made her feel strong and alive, filled with him, moving with him in power and unity, her muscles contracting and releasing, their breaths harsh with the force of their lovemaking. The moment of their release came with a feeling like fire, like an explosion, like the ending of one world and the beginning of the next.

Buffy clung to Giles with every bit of her strength, biting down hard on his shoulder as he cried out and his hot seed burst inside her, his powerful hands sliding beneath her bottom and holding her body fast to his, both of them panting raggedly, simultaneously sated and aflame.

Behind her, in the silence that followed, Buffy heard a door slam, and another person's breathing, nearly as harsh as there own--then a small, startled cry of, "Oh!" that could only belong to her mom.

Coming down from the most extraordinary climax of her life, it was all Buffy could do to keep herself from laughing.

He could process the information, just couldn't deal, and so Xander did what any sensible young man who'd recently run something like twenty blocks from a crazed evil vampire who'd once been a wussy, but pretty nice, guy, one who'd happened to be their friend, then later walked in on the two people he counted on absolutely in that sort of situation, only to find them having hot sex--the kind he himself had only dreamed about having sometime in his life--on the living room sofa. He went cold, then burning-hot, then cold again, his eyes rolled back in his head and he dropped down in a dead faint.

The next thing Xander knew, he was stretched out on that same well-broken-in couch with a cool cloth on his head, and Giles's warm reassuring hand on his shoulder. It made him want to laugh, uncomfortably and hysterically--but Xander started to cry instead, and ground his face into the cushions, not wanting Buffy or her mom to see him.

"Joyce, Buffy, if you would give us a moment." Giles's voice was just as warm and reassuring as his touch. He waited until the women's footsteps had gone away, and until Xander had stopped crying, until he spoke again.

"All right are you, Xander?" He didn't sound mad about the walk-in, and his voice didn't sound judgmental at all, certainly not as if he thought Xander was some kind of girly-man, but Xander still felt ashamed. He hadn't meant to cry--certainly hadn't meant to lose it and faint, but he'd done both, like the worst kind of wuss there could be.

Somehow, looking at Giles made things both better and worse. He was sitting on the edge of the coffee table with his pants on now, but no shirt, and he had a pretty good body for an older guy--not exactly Harrison Ford, but close enough--with muscles and medium-thick chest hair, the gray in that hair somehow just making Giles look that much more manly. The bruises didn't make him look weak either, more like he could survive a lot and pretty much take it in stride. Feelings of relief and embarrassment and shame shot through Xander's body, until he thought he'd faint again, or throw up, or something equally humiliating, but Giles just gave him one of those small, tense Giles-smiles and stroked the cool cloth over Xander's face, wiping away the hot tears as if they'd never been.

Giles himself didn't seem embarrassed at all. After a couple minutes he went looking for his shirt, pulling it over his head.

"Nice timing, huh?" Xander joked shakily.

Giles did one of those soundless laughs. "Actually, I was glad you didn't burst in a moment earlier--though five minutes later might have been preferred." He sat on the coffee table again, slipping one big, warm hand behind Xander's head. "Ready to try sitting now?"

With Giles's support, Xander sat. The room got spinny for a second, but then settled down. Giles handed him a glass of water to drink and Xander gulped it. His chest felt like he'd been breathing toxic fumes. He hadn't known he could run so fast. He'd expected to die, completely expected it, and at the thought his stomach gave a funny sideways lurch and he threw up the water he'd drunk, all over himself and all over Giles. That made him start to cry again, and to hate himself even more than he had before.

"Ssh," Giles told him softly. "Ssh, son, it's all right. You're home now. You're safe." His hand rested on Xander's shoulder, squeezing lightly, until Xander got himself under control again.

"Why don't you take a shower, Xander. Use the time to compose yourself. I'll leave fresh clothes for you outside the door." His hand slipped around Xander's bicep, helping him get up, steadying him as they walked toward the downstairs bathroom.

"I...I didn't mean..." Xander choked out, but when he looked up, Giles's eyes were gentle, understanding.

"Take all the time you need," the older man said.

Xander found himself crying again in the shower, thinking about what he'd seen, and what he'd guessed, but when he came out again, clean and dressed in an oversized pair of Giles's sweats, he'd managed to force himself to be dry-eyed. He had a hard time walking into the room where the others waited, all of them sitting in a line on the couch: Joyce looking confused, Willow sleepy, Buffy sympathetic. Only Giles seemed ready to hear what Xander was about to say, a look of weary acceptance haunting his shadowed green eyes.

Xander sat down beside him on the coffee table, staring at his own bare feet instead of his friends' faces. He knew that what he had to say was bad, worse than bad, and he didn't want to say it. He wanted to drop straight into denial, and pretend that none of it had been real.

"So, Wesley...?" Buffy began, in a little voice.

"Got turned," Xander said flatly. "He's a vampire."

"You're sure it was Wesley?" Willow asked. "For sure, sure, I mean? It was dark, right? And you must have been scared--a vamp jumping out at you like that?"

So far, they knew no more than he'd told Joyce. He'd run to her place, Buffy's old place, the closest one he could think of, more through instinct than anything else--the kind of animal instinct that takes over when you're doing your damnedest just to stay alive.

"It was Wesley." Xander hardly recognized his own voice, it sounded so completely lifeless and dry. It came to him, suddenly, that maybe, despite the minor blood loss and the bite wounds in his neck, that maybe he hadn't been about to die after all, that the vampire who'd been a Watcher had let him get escape, that the chase had only been to scare him, and for show. He raised his face, looking at Giles, completely appalled.

Of course it was only for show. Wesley was a vampire. He was strong and didn't need to breathe. Xander knew he himself wasn't all that good a runner, and the vamp could have caught him any time.

"Oh, man," he breathed. "Oh, God!"

Once again, Giles touched his shoulder, saying quietly, "What is it, Xander?"

Xander found himself rubbing the bridge of his nose, a gesture he must have caught from Giles himself. He didn't know how to say it, but then he heard his own alien voice talking again.

"I...I...uh...went there to, to find Moira, only I just found her purse. On the table. Her purse on the table." Xander's eyes sought Giles's, begging for understanding.

He got it. Giles's face went dead white.

"Did...ah...did you see her?" the older man asked, as if it was nothing, as if he was asking Xander no more than if he'd seen someone at the movies. But that was just Giles, and his lifetime of scary Watcher training, all that uber-repression. When Xander looked closer, he saw that his friend's hands had begun to shake.

"Oh, God," Willow echoed. She reached out to touch the back of Giles's left hand with her fingertips. "Oh, Giles."

"What is it?" Joyce Summers asked, clueless. "If Mr. Wyndham-Price is a vampire, then Buffy can just...umn...stake him, right? It's awfully sad, but..."

"No, Mom," Buffy told her quietly. "That's not what Xander's saying at all."

"Then, what...?"

"If Moira..." Giles began, then swallowed hard. His eyes had gone all red. "That is..."

"If Moira's a vampire," Buffy finished for him. "We can't fight her, can we, Giles?"

Giles took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. They'd turned gray, a color Xander had never seen before. He tried to imagine what it would feel like if the same thing had happened to Willow--how he'd felt when he thought that Willow had been turned a few months before--he knew this was worse, though. A thousand times worse. Because Will was shaping up to be a hell of a witch, but she wasn't any Moira, not yet.

"No," Giles said softly, "I'm afraid we might be no use against her at all."