Title: Rebuilding the Family
Author: Escargoat
Chapter: 2/?
Rating: Well, “R” for right now that should be safe.

Disclaimer: I don’t own, I don’t want to own. Joss, Mutant Enemy, Fox, FX, the WB etc own the rights to the characters. I’m just borrowing them. I’m not making any money either.

Buffy stared at the exposed body of Rupert Giles. An adult diaper was fitted snugly around his hips to prevent any accidents, but the rest of him was laid bare and bandaged before her. Nervously, she wrung out the sponge and started to clean his hand. With gentle strokes, she cleaned the back of it and then the palm. Slowly, she moved to clean his forearm before dipping the sponge back into the water.

When she reached his shoulder, a pleased murmur escaped his lips as she traced along his collarbone. She stilled for a second, but there were no further movements, so she continued with her duty.

It wasn’t until she was cleaning the cut he had received on the top of his left thigh that she became aware of a pair of eyes watching her. She looked up to see Giles’ green eyes actually focusing on the top of her head.

“You know, I’ve had dreams like this before, but they usually don’t hurt this much and I’m generally not wearing a nappy,” he grumbled.

Happy tears started tracking down Buffy’s face. “You’re awake! Awake, and not saying severely disturbing things.”

Giles managed the strength to raise one eyebrow. “Since when has any talk remotely related to my sex life not been severely disturbing to you?”

“Since you threatened to take off Riley’s penis and choke Spike with it,” Buffy said as her body gave an involuntary shudder.

Giles brow furrowed, “I don’t recall doing that.”

“You were kind of not right, last night, after we got you home,” Buffy explained as she moved to sit next to Giles.

A faint smile crossed Giles’ lips at the word home before he quickly looked away. “What other sorts of things did I say?”

Buffy shrugged, “It was all disjointed.”

Giles turned to glare accusingly at her, “You’re lying.”

“And you need to be recuperating your body, not your pride. Don’t worry. I’m not going to make a big deal about anything you said. It’s all past.”

“That might not be so,” Giles replied.

“Okay, care to explain that to the less than knowledge girl here?”

“My delusional state originated in the most part to the large amount of magical energy that Willow withdrew from me. I was in withdrawal so to speak. I could relapse a few more times.”

“You mean crazy, axe murdering Giles could reappear?” Buffy asked concernedly as her hand flew to Giles’ forehead.

“In essence…”Giles paused as Buffy’s hand went from laying against his head to gently smoothing out the creases in it, “Buffy, what are you doing?”

Buff jerked her hand away quickly, “I was checking for a temperature. Or, I... well it always made me feel better when Mom touched my forehead when I was sick.”

Giles swallowed hard. Between the sponge bath and the sudden tenderness Buffy was showing, he was suddenly very glad that his entire body ached. Otherwise one specific part of his anatomy would be aching for an entirely different reason.

“Well, I suppose I better finish cleaning you up,” Buffy said in a falsely chipper tone.

Alarm crossed Giles’ features. “I’m sure that isn’t necessary.”

Buffy looked at him with her own personal glare. “Well, you’ve got four choices here. One you can stink and cause potential infections because you sure can’t clean yourself in this state. Two, I could mortify you and Dawn by having her clean you. Three, I could call Anya, and she could graphically tell everyone she knows about the experience. Or four, you can let me do it.”

Giles sighed and flopped back against the pillows. As much as he hated to admit it, he was barely able to sit up halfway at the moment, let alone do anything that required using both halves of his body at once.

“Good,” Buffy said brightly as she began to clean her Watcher again.

‘’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’

It was a little after three in the morning when Buffy was awakened by Giles’ voice. From the rising and falling timbre of it, she could guess that he had relapsed. With a quick movement, she grabbed her robe and walked down the hall to her room.

Anya looked entirely too grateful when Buffy walked into the room. “He tried to get up when you weren’t here,” she supplied when Buffy’s eyes latched onto the rope tying Giles’ hands to the headboard, “I was going to go get you, but I didn’t want him to try to follow me.”

Buffy merely nodded and sat down on the edge of the bead.

“Buffy,” he whimpered when he saw her but could not get his hands to her.

“I’m here Watcher Guy,” she whispered as she began to smooth out the worry lines in his forehead as she had earlier that same day.

“Buffy?” Dawn’s sleepy voice asked from the doorway.

Anya caught Buffy’s look and got up to deal with the younger Summers. “Giles is having a setback. You should wait in your room, where you can pretend to sleep so your sister doesn’t have to worry about exposing you to the insane British man.”

Dawn took a glance into the room to see a pair of glazed over green eyes darting around helplessly. She shook her head and forced herself to look away. She wanted to think of Giles as the man he had been that afternoon when Buffy had allowed her to come in and visit, not the deranged version laying there now.

“You’re right. I’ll go back to my room. Call me if things get really bad?”

Anya’s face became sympathetic, “Oh, don’t worry he isn’t going to die. But, I can curse Willow for you if you want.”

Dawn looked incredulously at Anya for a second. “Thanks, but no thanks. I’m pretty vengeance wished out.”

Anya shrugged and closed the bedroom door before she started to walk Dawn back to her own bedroom.

Meanwhile, Buffy had managed to calm Giles down enough that she decided to untie him. With gentle fingers, she began to undo the knots. It was a mistake.

The instant his hands were free, the clasped both sides of her face and hauled her in for a kiss.

Shock was quickly replaced with a flash of fear and then anger as Buffy pushed the hands away. It was only when she was halfway across the room did she realize that she had just reacted irrationally. Giles was nowhere near himself, and the kiss had not even been demanding, let alone violent. Definitely not violent enough to compare to Spike’s normal kisses. Plus, she was fairly certain that Giles was going to have a new bruise in the morning, and to top it off, he was crying.

“Hey, there. None of that now,” she tried to say soothingly as she awkwardly patted his arm.

Doleful green eyes stared up at her. “Teacher struck me.”

Buffy’s hand froze in place. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. Giles…”

“Make him stop. I can’t help it that I’m not as smart as the other boys. I don’t want to be a Watcher. I’m no good at it at all,” he whimpered and then moaned in pain as his battered ribs protested when he tried to curl into a fetal position.

Buffy’s face went white. Oh, great. She was really wishing for the psychotic Ripper to come back at the moment. Him, she could deal with.

“Your, um, teacher is gone now… Rupert. He won’t hurt anyone anymore,” Buffy hesitated as she began to rub soothing circles on Giles’ back, “Why don’t you come out and talk to Buffy?” She said as she desperately tried to string together some half remembered ideas from psychology class.

“Buffy?” his voice seemed to hold a lighter tone.

“Yup, Buffy, the gorgeous porch step stander. Why don’t you talk about killing her boyfriends again?”

“My Slayer. It hurts to be apart from you. Oh Lord, why won’t you let me in?”

“Hey, sitting right here. Not that far apart.”

“I love you, so very much,” he whispered as he reached up to touch her cheek.

Buffy grabbed his hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. “I know.” To her surprise, this upset him.

“No, no you don’t. I love you,” he whispered as forcefully as his parched throat and delusional mind would let him.

“Oh. Oh! Oh, Giles, you really need to quit talking when you’re incoherent. Next thing you know, you’re going to be giving me all of your internet passwords and credit card numbers,” Buffy fretted while she tried valiantly NOT to process what had just been told to her.

“I must not speak of it,” he agreed with her even though it was clear he didn’t understand what was going on. “It would upset her to know. You won’t tell Buffy, will you?”

“She won’t hear it from my lips,” Buffy hedged.

He nodded once and snuggled down against one of the pillows. Buffy stayed with him through the rest of the night, listening to his quiet ramblings.

‘’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’

Giles woke up with a sense of unease. Thoughts from the previous night tried to make their way through, but he could only remember the vaguest of impressions.

“Hey, you’re awake,” Dawn bubbled happily.

“So I am,” he responded as he pushed himself into a reclined sitting position.

“You did better, last night I mean. You were only crazy for a little while,” Dawn spoke to fill the silence.

He smiled slightly for her and then glanced about the room. “Where’s Buffy?”

“Showering, and don’t you ever think of anything else?”

He blushed slightly. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“You’re like always talking about her when you’re not really here. I mean, it’s like ninety percent of everything you say has something to do with Buffy. It’s kinda creepy and really sweet at the same time.”

“Oh dear,” Giles said as he cast about for his glasses. “I knew I should have grabbed them when I left,” he groused when he realized that they were still sitting on a table top in England.

“Hey, it’s okay, I mean it isn’t like Buffy isn’t used to dealing with crazy people. Not that you’re crazy, or anything, just you know, not all there when you get all loopy.”

“Yes, thank you Dawn. I’m fairly certain that your sister has rubbed off on you. You’re starting to ramble.”

“Yeah, but at least I’m not as bad as Willow.” Dawn stopped and looked down at the floor embarrassed.

“It’s quite alright, you know,” Giles assured her.

Dawn shook her head. “Is she really Willow anymore? I mean, for the longest time I wasn’t sure that Buffy was Buffy, and now Willow?”

“We all make mistakes as we grow, Dawn. It is just that not all people have the large opportunities to do so that the, ah, ‘Scooby Gang’ has had.”

“Buffy told you about the kleptomania, huh?”

“Among other things.”

“She told you about what Spike did!” Dawn’s voice sounded very surprised.

“That she slept with him? Yes. We had a bit of a moment to talk before Willow broke the hold I had on her. I’m very sorry for what happened after I left, Dawn,” Giles apologized to the younger Summers.

Dawn waved a dismissive hand. “You’re here now, right? And I’m thinking that you really wouldn’t have been able to stop Spike from trying to, you know,” she trailed off with a little shudder.

Giles tilted his head to one side as he tried to grasp what exactly Dawn was trying to say. As his slightly muddled faculties tried to go over the way she had phrased things, she took his tilting head as an inquiry into what she had said.

“I mean, he’s a vampire, and you’re just a normal guy. I mean, you’re brave and everything, but I don’t think you could’ve stopped him from trying to rape her,” Dawn spit the words out quickly.

His eyes widened. “He tried to rape her?” he rasped out in what should have been an angry tone, but sounded far more like a mind who had been beaten senseless just a couple days earlier.

“Yeah, I thought you knew.”

“Buffy only told me that she’d been having relations with him. Although, we did not exactly have much time to discuss anything,” Giles again reached for his nonexistent glasses.

“Don’t be mad,” Dawn pleaded, “I’ve already done the mad bit with Buffy, and she’s trying to do better. Plus I think it kinda happened right before Tara, you know.”

“I’m not mad. I’m not even disappointed, really, I’m just sad. When Buffy came back from the dead, she had problems, and she did deal with them eventually. I had hoped that she would do better, but I can’t exactly judge her for her mistakes when I have Randall, Ethan, and Eyghon hanging over my head. I just had hoped that she would do better.”

“And that’s different from disappointed how?”

“Disappointed means that I expected her to do better. Sad just means that I hoped. I knew that I had to leave, but I also know Buffy well enough to know that she never makes life easy on herself, or the people around her. She’s a marvelous woman, but flawed that way. And if I know her as well as I think I do, she’s blaming herself for Spike’s actions.”

Just as Dawn was about to respond, Buffy poked a wet head through the door. “Sleeping Beauty’s awake,” she commented as she came in, flopped her butt down on the edge of the bed and placed her head on Giles’ forehead. “Dr. Buffy says you don’t have a fever,” she turned to look at Dawn, “And Sister Buffy says that you shouldn’t be in here unless you want to see Merry Olde England in all its glory.”

Dawn snorted. “You joining a nunnery?”

“Out, now,” Buffy commanded as she pushed her sister out the door and closed it behind her.

Giles shifted uncomfortably. “Buffy, you really don’t have to…”

“You are so getting bathed. Giles, I had to change your diaper last night. I think I can handle bathing you. Besides, you’ll start to smell. Until you can sway on your own two feet, I’m bathing you. I thought we covered this yesterday.”

“That was before,” he hesitated.

“Before Dawn told you about Spike? And don’t look surprised, I have Slayer hearing, and you guys didn’t even notice when I was standing right there with your bathwater.”

“I just don’t want you to be uncomfortable.”

“Yeah, well you should have thought about that before you kissed me,” Buffy snapped back defensively.

“What?” he asked although he was very certain that he didn’t want an answer.

“Last night, you kissed me. I think you thought I was Jenny,” Buffy lied.

“Oh.”

“I kind of shoved you away a bit roughly. I think I might have hurt you,” Buffy continued to talk.

“I’m fairly certain I’m not going to notice. I’m a bit sore all over. One more bruise isn’t going to make much difference.”

“Have I mentioned the whole sorry thing lately? I never meant for this to happen, it’s just that, I didn’t know what to do.”

“I don’t believe that. You’re so much better than all of this. And you know that you are. If I thought for a moment that whisking you away from here would have solved your problems, I would have done it.”

Buffy ignored him and began to wash his feet.

“Buffy,” his voiced quietly commanded her to look up at him.

“What, Giles? What do you want me to say? That I screwed up? ‘Cause I’m thinking you can get more than one witness to that.”

“No, I want you to say that you’re going to be Buffy again.”

“Who do you think I am?” she replied as she returned to her task.

“I think you’re trying to be someone you aren’t. I think you’re trying to be who Xander and Willow and Tara and Anya and even Spike wanted to you be. But you aren’t any of those things. You aren’t even what I want you to be. You are who you are, and as long as you are trying to meet their expectations, you won’t, because you can’t. You’ll be no better than that bloody robot. Almost but not quite you.”

She sniffled a bit. When she started paying a little bit too much attention to his toes, he pulled his foot out of her grasp. Instinctively, she glared up at him. He smiled back.

“Was that so hard?”

Buffy grabbed his other foot, “No, but it took me a long time to get there.”

“A fast turnaround was an unrealistic expectation of you. As was expecting you to run this house when you haven’t a college degree to get a job with.”

Buffy shrugged. “I had to learn somehow, and it wasn’t like Willow could afford someplace else when she was going through the whole magic addiction. Not afford and get the money legally anyway.”

“Still, I shouldn’t have left you with the entire mess. As I said earlier, even adults need help. Sometimes I think they need more than children do.”

“You mean kind of like the fact that you need to be bathed?”

“You would pick the single most embarrassing scenario, now wouldn’t you?” he teased good naturedly.

Buffy smiled a tiny smile in response.

They remained in silence for a while. Buffy meticulously washed Giles while he meticulously focused on jostling sore muscles to keep himself from reacting in an unseemly manner. It would do no good to have Buffy see him in such a condition after what Spike had tried to do to her. She would obviously need time to recuperate. And even more evident was the fact that once she was past what she had done with Spike, she would not be looking for the companionship of a middle aged, confirmed bachelor.

At that thought, Giles let a despairing little sigh.

Buffy looked up from her progress on his right hand. “You okay?”

“Yes, yes. Fine. I’m a bit mortified by the thought of you changing my, ah, diaper, but otherwise I’m fine.”

Buffy blushed. “Well I didn’t look. Not really. I mean more of a quick look to make sure every thing was clean, after I you know... No groping or ogling or taking naughty pictures to put on the internet.”

“Yes, well I’m feeling stronger today. Hopefully my brain will be able to handle the signals to move my body back tomorrow, and you’ll just need to assist me to the bathroom. In fact, I’m quite sure that I could clean certain areas by myself if you’d be so kind as to leave me with the wash basin.”

Buffy looked down at her hands and nodded. “If you need anything,” she began.

“I shall call for assistance immediately. I do appreciate the help, Buffy. But there are just some things that I would prefer to be able to do on my own.”

She nodded and quickly left, closing the door behind her. She stood outside his room listening to his occasional grunt when he obviously moved the wrong way. After about twenty minutes, she heard his noticeably weaker voice call her back in.

She poked her head in to see him reclining against the headboard. He looked a bit pale, but oddly comfortable.

“Before you make any crude comments, I assure you that I was no doing anything untoward whilst I was in here.”

Buffy shook her head. “I forgot how stuffy you can be. What with the whole showing up and saving the world with spiffy magic tricks and long, trendy jackets thing.”

“Trendy? Are you certain that you didn’t suffer more damage in the last fight? I was certain that you would never use that word to describe anything that I owned.”

Buffy poked him on the arm. “I’m being nice. Now, I’m going to go get new water so I can shampoo your hair. Try not to think up any new snarky comments while I’m gone.”

Giles merely nodded and watched her go. As much as he regretted certain decisions, he had to admit that Buffy had matured through her last ordeal. She still had the same teasing tone that she had always had, but she had not become unhinged at the idea of having to assist him. Then again, why should she? He was really nothing but an old man to her. One she could easily break in half should she so choose, and certainly extremely non-threatening as far as his sexuality was concerned.

“Ta-Da. Nice warm water and my secret stash of shampoo and conditioner,” Buffy interrupted his thoughts as she re-entered the room.

He looked inquisitively at the obviously brand name bottles. “Really, Buffy, I’m sure that my hair will be fine with whatever generic brand you normally use.”

“Nope. Not gonna work. You need serious herbal remedy after that fight. Believe me, I’ve been beat up lots, and there is nothing like a good foamy lather and soft, bouncy hair afterwards.”

With one look at her face, Giles consented. Soon he found himself rearranged on the bed so that Buffy had his head over the basin. Within seconds, he felt the warm water soak into his hair, wetting it down against his scalp. Then he felt her hands move away and quickly return to start working through his short strands.

Perhaps he should pretend to be infirmed a little longer, he mused as she worked up a lather.

“Like that?” she asked.

Giles eyes shot open from their half closed positions. “What?”

“You made a little humm-y noise,” she explained.

“I suppose it is rather relaxing,” he choked out as his face began to turn red.

“Good. You need to relax. And sleep, Anya’s doctor demon friend said so.”

“You had a demon look at me?”

“Well, it was going to be kind of hard to explain you to the nice ER nurses. Especially when you’re supposed to be in England.”

Giles said nothing in response, and Buffy continued to rub his scalp. It felt funny. She was used to scrubbing her own silky locks, but Giles’ hair felt totally different. It was shorter than she had ever worn her hair, except for maybe when she was a baby and didn’t have long hair… But beyond the length, the texture was different. It was a fine texture for the most part, but the patches where gray was beginning to set in were coarser. Idly, she wondered if her own hair was going to be coarse when it went gray. Then again, she probably wouldn’t live to know.

She covered her sigh by rinsing out the shampoo and applying the conditioner.

She saw Giles’ nose wrinkle. She said nothing. It wrinkled again, and she stifled her chuckle.

“Oh, now really Buffy. Must you make me smell like a bloody fruit?”

“It’s got vitamins, minerals and lots of hair care goodness to it. Your hair will thank you for it. Besides, who’s going to know that you smell like a tropical rainforest?”

“I’ve been in a tropical rainforest. It doesn’t smell like that.”

“Spoilsport. I suppose this means you aren’t going to let me moisturize you?”

She felt him tense underneath her hands. She almost kicked herself for saying that, but she had to know. His delusional mind had declared his love for her, but his tenseness proved that his rational mind really was in love with her. Or at least, he was still interested in her sexually. She wasn’t sure if he could love her after what she had done in the months since he had left.

“You’re being rather quiet. I would think you’d at least have a comment about the amount of gray hair I have,” Giles said after a moment.

“I’m just thinking. And gray looks good on guys. It makes them look distinguished.”

Giles simply snorted in response.

“Well it does. Women just look frumpy.”

“You only think that because you don’t want to have sex with a woman. There is nothing wrong with gray hair on a woman.”

“How do you know I’m not secretly gay?” Buffy said simply out of a need to get back into their comfortable pattern of arguing and away from her own thoughts.

“Because all of your romantic liaisons have been with men. Unless Xander was correct about you and Faith,” Giles let the sentence dangle waiting for her reaction.

“Hey, a little frisky dancing and synchronized slaying does not a lesbian make. You’re just horny that way.”

“Well, you must admit, the threesome potential is quite astounding. Assuming a normal man could survive having two slayers at once.”

“Giles!”

“You are the one who brought up your sexual orientation. Besides, aside from the fact that Faith became, evil as it were, I think that you would have made a very fetching gay couple.”

“Maybe you should put the Faith being evil thing back in there. I think that the whole sort of good, sort of bad thing might be my big attracting factor. Or maybe I just make them bad. Maybe I’m what drove Faith to be bad.”

“I would like to take this opportunity to say that Spike was evil and killing people long before you were born. You did not cause that, Buffy, it was already there.”

Buffy looked down as the eyes staring up at her. “When did you learn the new technique?”

“What new technique? If you recall, I used this technique to help you deal with Acathla. You just respond more quickly now.”

Buffy responded by rearranging him back into a normal position. She set the water aside and grabbed a towel. With a quick rub, she dried the excess moisture from his hair.

“I’m rather certain I could have done that myself.”

“Yeah, but I wanted to take care of you.”

“In that case, you could have given me a shave.”

“I didn’t want to take that much care of you,” she replied as she turned around to put the towel down next to the basin. When she turned back around, Giles was sleeping. With a soft smile, she began to move out of the room. After a second, she moved back and placed a chaste kiss on his forehead.

“Pleasant dreams,” she whispered before leaving.

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