Title: Words Spoken and Unspoken
Author: Beadtific
Email: beadtific@yahoo.com
Pairing: B/G
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: These characters are not mine, I'm just playing with them. They are Joss Whedon's bless his balding little head.

Summary: Giles visits Buffy in Rome, and he's not happy. Buffy has no idea why.

Many thanks to Elizabuffy for the speedy beta. And before you ask, yes, I'm still working on "The Bond." I just got stuck again.

~~~

Buffy snarled at the burbling fountain as she passed it. It was stupid and happy and bubbly, and she hated it with a fine, burning hate - for about ten seconds, then it was way too much effort. Weary, she navigated the cobblestones that had once been pretty and lent her street an air of rooted time and history that she found oddly comforting. Tonight, in heels, she cursed them and tried not to twist the ankles that were struggling along in stiletto-heeled boots.

'Stupid weapons bag.' No matter what her strength, it was overfull and awkward and kept banging against her leg, giving off little suspicious clatters. Okay, big suspicious clatters, but it was three in the morning and who was awake to care, anyway. She hefted her suitcase, its rolling wheels useless across the cobblestones and having rebalanced herself, soldiered on, only to slip right as she was nearing the doorway of her apartment building. She was startled to feel a strong, warm hand catch her under the arm.

"I see your taste in ridiculous footwear hasn't changed a whit," said a rather angry-sounding, familiar voice. Having regained her balance, Buffy turned to find her former watcher already reaching for her suitcase. He knew better than to attempt the weapons bag.

"Giles! Hey!" Buffy's cheer was immediately replaced by indignation, "Hey!" she said defensively, heels teetering on the cobbles. Giles looked really, really not happy to see her. "Hey?"

"Yes, I got that bit," He marched off ahead of her, heading for her apartment.

"Well, helloooo to you too!" 'What the heck?' She trotted to try to keep up with him, but his longer stride - and evidently, really pissy mood - had put him way ahead of her. So, she took her time getting to her door. If he was in a mood, let him stew a minute. It wasn't like she'd done anything wrong.

Still, for some reason, her stomach clenched in familiar anxiety. Pissy Giles wasn't a Fun Giles – though of course the Fun Giles' moods had been a little scarce for, say the last *forever*.

Muttering to herself, she reached her door, opened it and brushed passed him, leaving the door wide open. She switched on a few lights, and turning, realized he was standing in her doorway and felt a frisson of sudden fear - then she saw the healing bite wounds on his neck and her knees nearly gave out. She let out a little squeak, trying desperately to sense over rising grief if he were undead and if she'd ever issued a "mi casa es su casa" invitation and *how* she could possibly -

He snorted and deliberately crossed the threshold. "The bite marks would be gone if I'd been turned," he reminded her acidly, "so you will not have the inconvenient task of staking me this evening"

"*Inconvenient?* What the hell? Giles –" Still reeling from her earlier scare, Buffy could feel the beginning prickles of tears and she was so not going to let him make her do this when she didn't even *know* what she'd done wrong.

"Yes," he spat, though he affected a casual air as he leaned against her door and crossed his arms. "Wouldn't want to trouble you."

She was totally lost, and flapped her arms at her sides in frustration. "What?"

He prowled forward, and the anger in his eyes nearly made her step back. Then she saw the hurt there as well, and did step back, frightened of whatever had hurt him this badly and was still rolling through his veins.

"*I nearly died, and you didn't come; you didn't even bloody call.*"

The tears did flood her eyes now, and she bit them down. "I didn't know. Andrew said you'd be okay. Told me go ahead with the mission." Her voice wobbled and she hated herself for it. "He said you were fine – just groggy and out of it. Told me it was another bump on the head. Told me to meet Cho An in Hong Kong and go from there."

"He what?" The anger washed out of him, leaving hurt and confusion behind. "That idiot did what?"

"Um, he sent me to supervise getting rid of the big nest of Polgara demons in Pyong-Yang? Making lots of shish kabobs out of the Pyong-Yangies, Pyongies? Yangners? Whatever."

His lips twitched briefly in a smile, but his eyes were still painful to look into.

"I would have come, you know that. If I'd known. You *know* that."

Giles sighed and walked past her, "Well, obviously I didn't, since I came here to make a fool of myself." He stood in front of the window that looked down into the courtyard.

"Um, yeah, couldn't you have just called to yell at me? Phone yelling works, too. Though I guess I wasn't in cell range a lot of the time."

Buffy could tell by the movement of his shoulders that he was polishing his glasses. It gave her a warm, happy kind of feeling, in spite of his rotten mood, and she realized how much she missed him.

"I suppose I had to come see for myself."

"See, now you're losing me again."

"Precisely."

"What?" She'd crept closer to him and now stood at his side. He'd tucked his glasses in his jacket pocket, and had now gone on to rubbing the bridge of his nose. "Giles. I'm right here."

"Yes, that too."

"You're just not making any kind sense, you know that, right?"

He shoved his hands in his pockets and half-turned his face to her smiling ruefully. "Bear with me, I'm still being an idiot."

"O-oka-ay Would. You. Like. To. Sit. Down?" She said, eyes wide and earnest, speaking the exaggerated speech reserved for tourists and idiot watchers, trying to coax a chuckle or even a snort out of him.

"I never meant it to happen. And I not like this."

Giles' voice was low, confessional - sad and…something - and for some reason it made her feel kind of shivery. "Um, the bite? No, no one does…like no one *expects* the Inquisition." She was trying. 'An eye roll, I'll take an eye roll.'

"Oh good lord," he moaned, and covered his eyes with his hands.

"Okay, not the bite? Tell me what? Help me out here."

He growled in frustration and asked the ceiling, "Have you no idea? Has the bleach in you hair eaten into your brain at last?"

"*Hey!* What is with you?"

Suddenly she was in his arms, crushed against his chest, his lips millimeters from hers. She gasped a little, and had time to catch the glint in his eyes - something that caught the breath in her throat - before Giles captured her parted lips, and pulled her into a deep, searching kiss.

A few moments later, he settled her on her feet. "That."

"Oh," Buffy said in wonder and swayed on her feet. It sort of felt like the top of her head had come off. She put her hands out to steady herself and found Giles' chest. She blinked at him a few times, and swayed again.

"Right," he swept her into his arms and carried her down the hall.

"Where?" She managed to squeak.

"I'm getting you out of those bloody boots."

Shaking off the kiss-and-shock-induced fog, she poked him a few times in the chest. "Seem pretty sure of yourself, mister."

In an instant, he'd set her on her feet. "All right, then." Buffy looked at him in confusion.

Giles waited for her to speak, and when she didn't, he cupped her cheek and rubbed his thumb across her lower lip. She willed her eyelids not to flutter closed. "I'd like to point out that I was carrying you so you wouldn't break your neck in those ridiculous shoes. You seemed a little unsteady on your feet."

'Okay, that's way too smug.' "You caught me off guard." Buffy folded her arms firmly against her chest.

Giles mirrored her posture. "And I suppose that's why you kissed me back? Fighting me off with your tongue?"

All she could do was blush and try not to fidget. "So, you're here to be cryptic, sarcastic, yell at me for something I had no way of knowing, malign my footwear and then shove *your* tongue down *my* throat?"

"No, you silly woman, I'm here because as the blood was being sucked out of me, all I could think of was how simply furious you were going to be, because I had been rather careless, and the moment I woke up in hospital, I wanted nothing more than to see your face. And it wasn't there. So, I waited, but you didn't come."

"I'm so -."

"Shh, I know," he reached out to cup her cheek again. "So, I simply had to come. I was afraid – afraid you didn't care, or had walled yourself off again, or taken up with another overdressed, undead imbecile, and that made me utterly, *utterly* furious, and shortly thereafter, rather a colossal idiot."

"Why?" she whispered leaning her face into his hand and reaching up to cover it with her own.

"Well, you see, I love you. And I was afraid I might have lost you again before I even had a chance."

"Oh my god," her voice was a breath. She stared up at him with wide, astonished eyes, but never let go of his hand.

He traced his thumb over her cheekbone and she blinked, then continued staring. "Buffy? Is this unwelcome? Do you want me to go?"

She just kept staring into his eyes, her breath shallow and quick in her chest. Buffy was having trouble forming thoughts, and just stood there in hopes one would drift by or that Giles might pick her up again. Her knees weren't going to last for very much longer.

He crossed that half-step between them, "May I kiss you again? Or shall I go?"

The quicksilver flash of her expression - desire at the first question and dismay at the second – made him want to laugh out loud. But Buffy's eyes had dropped to his lips, and then looked back up to meet his, full of want and need and a hope that pierced his heart.

So, he did a first kiss properly this time, stroking her hair and sliding an arm slowly around her waist. He looked down into her face until the rather tremulous hope eased into something a little more confident and a lot more breathless, then he brushed his lips gently over hers.

Buffy inhaled sharply in anticipation, shivering against his lips, and it took all the will he had to not just devour her from the mouth down, right there. He pressed the kiss slowly deeper, teasing her with small nips and flickers of his tongue until she whimpered and surged up into his arms, urging him closer. Her tongue flickered across his lip, and as he met it with his own, she shivered again, and his own moan was muffled against her mouth.

They only separated because breathing was still essential. She smiled, stepped out of his arms and tugged him down the hall.

"Buffy?"

She stepped close and looked up into his eyes – humor and joy making them sparkle. "You said you wanted to see my face when you woke up. Come with me, and that will happen. Though I'm warning you…no laughing at the bed hair."

"Buffy, I can assure you that if I wake up with you in the morning, laughing at your hair will be the furthest thing from my mind."

Her smile was one of slow wonder and then she rolled her eyes at him. "Promise anyway."

"You have my most solemn oath."

"Come on then," she said, her voice soft

She led him to a room that was quite unlike her old room in Sunnydale – still feminine, but no longer girlish. Buffy turned to Giles and caught a sudden, concerned expression.

"Uh-oh, the return of Responsible Giles," she snuggled against him, then leaned back and looked him in the eye. "You're not going to tell me that you came in here, swept me off my feet…quite literally in fact, and are now all blah blah blah, 'we should take this slowly'?"

"Well, it's just…"

She stood on her toes and put her hand over his lips. "Shut up. *Shut.* *Up.*" Buffy stared him down until he nodded his head, and removed her fingers."

"You nearly died. I just found out. And you love me. I just found out. I'm not going to say it, not right away, because it…I'm not just going to say it because you need it to be absolutely rock-solid true when I do. But you gotta know, Giles, you have *got* to know that I'm all ready half way there. I mean, really." Her breath caught and her eyes grew bright, "Whatever is happening - you hit me fast and hard and I want to keep falling, 'cause it's *you* right here with me."

"That is more than worth the wait." His voice was husky.

"See? You just gained a couple inches past the half-way mark." She began to unbutton his shirt, her fingers trailing lightly over each inch of newly-bared skin.

"So, you plan on keeping a running tally? I'm afraid it will only lead to wildly romantic gestures on my part."

"You know," she said, blushing, "I'd have said that 'Giles' and 'wildly romantic' were two - I mean three - words that were never going to meet up in the same sentence…but you just flew cross-continent to kiss me."

"To be fair, I flew cross-continent to *yell* at you, but this is turning out so much better." He hissed a little when she opened his shirt and ran her hands down his chest. The bruises were mostly faded, but still told of strong arms clamped across his chest, holding him still. She glanced up to his neck, her eyes stricken.

"Giles, I –"

"Shh," he brought his hands up to cradle her face. "It's over. I'm still here."

Buffy's breath hitched in her chest as it truly hit home just how near a thing it had been. "Don't go. Don't ever go."

"I love you," Giles replied reasonably, as if that would erase the fear for both of them. ' Too.' His hands sketched a comforting trail across her shoulders and down her spine. And that seemed to be adequate solace, though her smile was a little sad as she tilted her face up for a kiss.

'No more sorrow, not tonight,' he thought as he picked her up and carried her toward the bed.

"Feeling a little wild, romantic gesture coming on?"

His smile was answer enough.

END