Title: Ever Aftering 2/3
Author: Gail Christison
Rating: NC-17 for romantic and erotic sexual situations. English spelling. Aussies do, y'know
Summary: Sequel to Recognition. Buffy and Giles continue their romance and love and silliness ensues. And sometimes it just gets a little hot ;-)
Spoilers: Not really
Disclaimer: All belongs to Mutant Enemy and Joss. I'm just borrowing for a little while :-)
Feedback: I'd love to know what you think. chriscln@ozemail.com.au
Distribution: All those who have permission. And my site, http://www.wickedsky.com/oncemore within the next couple of days.
Author's notes: This is a combination sequel of Recognition for those who asked for one, and a birthday fic for the wonderful and talented Gileswench, which had to include certain challenges which I'm sure you'll spot when you're reading the story :-)

Big thank yous to Liz, Cindy and Wench, for their encouragement and a special wave to Karen for her great beta at short notice.

Happy Early Birthday Wenchy!!!

They stopped and looked at each other.

"No singing," Buffy warned.

"Not a note," Giles agreed, a twinkle in his eye. "Clothes. Food." He looked her lovely form and tender curves up and down. "I'm absolutely ravenous and you look almost good enough to eat..."

"Fine," she agreed, getting into the spirit of things. "Mop, clean...while I forage for sustenance to feed the inner Giles."

"Typical," he muttered as she pulled on the shirt he'd discarded and wandered off leaving the rest of the clothes and shoes in a soggy pile on the floor, and, after a beat, followed her, completely nude, out into the hallway to go to the broom cupboard and retrieve the mop.

"What kind of television station is this?" Buffy's voice called from the living room. "I can't find the remote."

"The only one I watch these days," he rumbled over his shoulder. "And it got lost somewhere between going into storage and coming back."

"It's English TV," she muttered disparagingly. "Even your cable is stuffy."

Buffy looked around the kitchen. It was almost exactly the same, except he'd invested in a new refrigerator and a microwave, and there was no alcohol on the breakfast counter anymore. By the time she'd opened and closed every cupboard door and explored the entire refrigerator, she knew two things. First, Giles' idea of provisioning was uniquely Giles'. And second, it was going to be a really weird meal.

She gradually made a little stockpile on the cupboard of things she thought she might be able to turn into a meal. The most unexpected was the can of mushy peas. Who knew they put the stuff in cans? When she finally opened it, it was Buffy's express opinion that that was where it should have stayed.

At that point something caught her attention on the television, which she'd been happily ignoring until then. A woman had baled a man up against a stable wall. Buffy looked twice at the man, then made her way over to the screen in time to see the woman plunge her hand inside the man's pants while she was yelling at him about getting it up.

"You guys sure aren't shy about what you put on television," she yelled. "Have you got a hunky relative in the acting business, by any chance?"

"Don't be ridiculous," Giles called back stuffily, finally emerging from the bathroom. He padded across the living area in nothing but a damp towel, turning to the screen merely as an afterthought, just in time to see a woman pushing a tall chap to the ground and straddling him.

He continued to watch for several moments longer, enjoying the inviting smells and the sound of sizzling that had begun to emanate from the kitchen. With a last look at Buffy, who was cracking eggs into a frying pan, and another at the fellow on the screen, now looking very pleased with himself on the stable floor, Giles smiled to himself and took the stairs by twos.

When he came back down in grey sweat pants and a black Harry Potter t-shirt Buffy had bought him as a joke on a very silly mall outing, because she'd decided that Harry looked exactly like Giles would have at the same age, there was an array of food on the breakfast counter and the smells were making his stomach rebel furiously against its currently 'empty' status.

"It looks rather like breakfast," he joked, surveying the bacon, egg, toasted English muffins, donuts, milk and juice.

Buffy turned from the stove and brought another dish with her.

His face lit up like a little boy. "You found them. I brought those tins from England, but I didn't expect to use them any time soon."

"You didn't? Then why did you buy them?" she asked, perplexed, and added the now steamy porridge of microwaved mushy peas to the other food.

"Last time we discussed mushy peas you rather implied that you weren't fond of them. I thought I'd probably have to eat them for supper one night while you were off patrolling."

Buffy smiled fondly. "Except we mostly patrol together and we usually have dinner before I go, or supper together when I come back. I don't know if I like mushy peas or not. Everybody was making me crazy that day and you and your mushy peas weren't helping. You were so cute in your apron though. It was the best day..."

"Does that include the nice Indians and all the damage to my apartment...?" he drawled.

She repressed a giggle. "Um, no. I didn't mean that part. I was thinking about us making dinner ...doing things together that didn't involve weapons or spells or ickiness of any kind. It was...nice...while it lasted."

He smiled again. "Yes it was, though I've never met anyone with less natural guile when it came to getting what you wanted, which was me to clean up all the mess after you had your Thanksgiving."

Buffy frowned. "Translate?"

"You weren't very good at being sneaky," he said gently. "I daresay it's not in your nature."

Buffy rolled her eyes, well aware that being sneaky wasn't the only thing she wasn't good at, especially that year. "I guess there has to be a plus in there somewhere. Do you usually put anything on this green stuff?"

Giles looked at his peas. "Salt, freshly ground pepper...and a little Worcestershire sauce. It's in the cupboard above the refrigerator. Do you know that Australians put a hot meat pie in a large bowl of mushy peas and serve the lot with tomato sauce...er...ketchup? They call it a 'pie floater'," he added, obviously enamoured of the idea.

Buffy looked up from assembling the earlier listed items. "You've been all the way to Australia?" she asked, trying not to think about the gastronomic nightmare he'd just happily conjured.

"Unfortunately, no," he admitted. "But there was a girl, a number of years ago...I learned a great deal about the place from her. One of these days I'll take you there, and we'll both have a pie floater somewhere."

"As long as it doesn't involve crocodiles or that weird guy who chases them," she said, picking up the plates and carrying them to the coffee table in the living room.

Giles followed with the glasses and the peas.

They ate in relative silence, only really discovering how hungry they were as everything disappeared apace.

When Buffy finally sat back after bringing Giles tea and coffee for herself, to sip at the steaming mug, she finally noticed his old guitar across the room, standing alongside his arm chair.

"Do you still sing in public?"

Giles looked up from the orange juice he was demolishing. "No. I...I...um, the need to reassert that part of myself has been quenched, so to speak. I do like to stay in practise, though." He frowned. "Though not of late."

"Could I see you play? I mean...I've never heard you sing. Willow thought you were pretty cool, though," she added lamely.

"Really?" He was trying to look annoyed but was unable to keep the gleam of amusement from his eyes. "I rather imagined that it would...what was that appalling expression of yours...freak you lot out...was that it?"

"Wig us out," she supplied, wanting to giggle but going redder and redder as she remembered how accurate his imagination had been. "And yeah, it did...me, I mean. I thought it was scary." She looked up at him, and into the eyes she loved so much. "You used to hide who you really were, at first behind major tweediness and big glasses and stuttering and acting like you were ten years older than you really were. Later, you just seemed to forget you weren't old. I mean, whoever heard of a gorgeous forty-something guy having a midlife crisis? That's something guys who think they're past it do to prove they're not."

"It wasn't that kind of midlife crisis," he pointed out touchily. "I wasn't having problems with my libido or my masculinity. I was, however, horribly adrift and uncertain where my future, if any, lay. The past seemed so much more reassuring and solid. You were, rightly, my whole life...my work, my career...my...my love..." he added, reddening sweetly, "then the Council took almost all of it away...except you. And then, suddenly, for a time you weren't there, either."

Buffy watched the flash of real anger and hurt in his eyes, realising exactly how painful that period, and her ignorance, must have been for him.

"Play for me," she said softly.

The flashing subsided and he searched her now too-bright eyes. After a small, but loud silence, he got up and retrieved the instrument, paused, then sat in the armchair to tune it.

Watching him, Buffy thought how perfect it felt, to be there, with him, in this place, enjoying the small silly sounds he was making with the guitar while he was trying to get it to sound the way he wanted. Just watching the handsome head, listening, bent over the battered instrument and knowing he was hers...and she his, made her stomach tighten at the wonderful enormity of what had happened to them, and how very precious it was...

Finally, Giles looked up. "It's as good as it's going to get. I think I need a couple of new strings. It's been in storage for far too long." He caressed his fingers over the patina of the well-loved instrument. "I've missed the old girl."

"Your guitar is a girl? All that touching...I'm jealous again," she teased gently.

He grinned back, Buffy's heart flip-flopping and swelling alarmingly, as it was occasionally wont to do when he smiled like that: like the sun just came up in his eyes. It always hit her in the tear ducts, because it always reminded her that in all their time together over the years, she'd never seen him truly happy. She swallowed hard, not sure she'd ever forgive herself for her part in that.

"I think I can arrange to make it up to you afterward, if you like?" he teased back in his best lecher's voice, looking her lithe body up and down mischievously.

"Promise?" she managed, only just keeping the wobble from hers.

"Promise," he vowed, grinning wolfishly again, and started to play.

No one knows what it's like
To be the bad man
To be the sad man
Behind Blue Eyes

No one knows what it's like
To be hated
To be fated
To telling only lies

But my dreams
They aren't as empty
As my conscience seems to be

I have hours, only lonely...

Buffy didn't know the song, but she sat entranced by his voice, and the words, their meaning slowly seeping into her soul and dragging her back to a past in which he truly had been one of the loneliest people she knew. In all the time they'd known each other, she'd never seen him have personal visitors at his apartment, and apart from Jenny, Ethan, Olivia and some guy who found books for him, there didn't seem to have been anyone else in his life. She shivered, and refocused, seeking the comfort of his face, his voice, and letting the last chorus of his song wash over her.

No one knows what it's like
To be the bad man
To be the sad man
Behind Blue Eyes...

Giles looked up from the fading echoes of his last caress of the strings and realised that Buffy's eyes were glistening from more than just the light of the room.

"It wasn't that good," he told her, a little self-consciously, despite the reassuring tone.

Buffy nodded. "Yeah, it was. And so are you. You love it, don't you?"

"Pardon?"

She gestured toward the instrument. "Music...singing..."

"Oh, yes, I suppose I do. I always have, really...paths not taken and all that."

"Like flying planes and being a grocer?" she teased gently, still willing her tear ducts to behave.

He smiled back. "Rather like that," he agreed. "I was about your age the last time I seriously entertained ideas of being a performer...it seemed so much more...human... than all that relentless training, essentially to guide an adolescent girl to her inevitable death."

They were both quiet for several moments.

"Do you have a favourite?" Buffy finally broke the silence and the tension.

"Uh...? Oh, this?" he grinned, touching the guitar. "Several," he admitted, "but although I like quite a lot of what's around now, I'm afraid I haven't learned to play most of them."

She smiled. "Like who...?"

He shrugged. "The Goo Goo Dolls have done some good stuff. I like a lot of Sarah McLaughlin's work...Little Feat..."

Buffy chuckled. "Almost into the twenty-first century. There's hope for you yet. What was that song called? The one you just played?"

His smile faded. "It's an older one: Behind Blue Eyes. It's the song Willow and the others heard."

"I wish I'd heard it back then," she said wistfully. "But I wasn't ready for what you were trying to tell me, was I?"

He looked at her curiously then shook his head.

"I guess that's why it was so easy for Spike. He knew I wasn't just blind, but stupid as well, and what it was doing to you."

Giles snorted. "Pillock."

"You say that a lot."

"I do not."

"Yeah, you do," Buffy teased. "Especially about Spike. But you also said it about the last three people I had job interviews with and that boy who wanted to take Dawn to the Bronze."

"It was a perfectly accurate description...in every case," he defended.

Buffy snorted. "I'll give you Spike, and Flynn was just being sixteen, except with ...really...bad...hair and the eyebrow ring with the chain going to the nose thing...and chin tattoos...not exactly a fashion statement, I grant you...but the others had good reasons for not giving me a job. The real estate guy...was it really so unfair that he got upset when I accidentally formatted his hard-drive? I mean I was supposed to be trying to prove I knew how to work a computer," she pointed out sheepishly. "Or...or the book store guy...I mean it's not his fault that there was a vamp in the crime section. How was he to know why the books fell and where all the dust came from? And my best chance so far...the guy in the flower shop...he really liked me and he didn't mind that I didn't know what a streth...strel..."

"Strelitzia," Giles filled in.

"Strelitzia was," Buffy repeated. "Anyway I like 'Bird of Paradise' much better...or what a lobelia, was, or that baby's breath isn't just something that comes out of a rugrat's mouth. It would have been a nice job, with the flowers and everything, and he was kinda cute."

"He was a pillock," Giles growled, remembering the way the young man's tongue was almost hanging out in anticipation of working alone in the store with Buffy.

Buffy shrugged. "I'm the Slayer. It's not like he was going to get a chance to try anything funny."

Giles blinked. "You knew he was...well...you *knew?*"

She stared back at him for a moment, amused disbelief in her eyes then burst out laughing. "Of course I knew. If he'd been any more obvious I'd have had to wipe the drool off the counter." She wandered over to his chair, took the guitar, stood it by the arm, and slid onto his lap. "He was harmless, but you looked positively dangerous...like you do when you're mad at Ethan. I don't think you should come to any more interviews."

Giles curled his arms around her. "As long as you promise that you'll wait until you find something with a little dignity, something you can enjoy and which, preferably, does not come with the possibility that you might have to stake the boss at some future date."

"Promise," she purred, nibbling an ear. "Did I ever tell you how hot your bad boy side makes me?" she growled.

He made a low noise in his throat as she explored the shape of his ear with her tongue. "No, I don't believe you have," he managed to murmur.

"I like it," she told him. "When I remember that time in the library...when you had Ethan by the throat...I knew then why Ethan called you Ripper."

"You liked it even then?" he asked, surprised.

She shook her head. "I was scared of it then. Now...now it's just hot. You were lucky I waited until we got home that night after the flower shop..."

Giles stopped to remember the events of that day. They'd gone home after the interview and things had been a little tense on the way, he was certain, because he'd ruined her chances of getting the job by intimidating the little snot out of offering it to her. It wasn't until they'd reached the house and he'd gone to take a shower that Buffy had appeared to forgive him, joining him there moments after he'd stepped into the water. He felt a stirring in his loins as he remembered the searing passion of their lovemaking in the shower, perhaps the most erotic and powerful he'd ever known, leaving them both exhausted and drained when they were done, not to mention with one or two bruises from their exuberance against walls, in the tub, on the tiled floor...

Buffy shifted a little, then grinned and moved so that she was straddling his lap. "I see you remember that night," she purred, moving provocatively against his straining crotch.

He groaned. "You're going to be the death of me."

"Maybe," she grinned, moving even more erotically and pulling back to look at his face. "But what a way to go."

Giles' features transformed, his eyes narrowing, his mouth pulling into an ironic line, the feral power so intense Buffy shivered just watching that mouth curl upward into an enigmatic grin.

...And then shivered again as his fingers slipped inside her thigh and found their target, making her gasp and moan as they were drawn over the damp fabric, before a finger slid along the edge of the lace and pulled hard, snapping the narrow hip strap and allowing him, in one or two deft moves, to clear all obstacles, and to guide her to him, almost snarling when she felt his body's insistent query and groaned, before plunging herself onto him.

Buffy vocalised her pleasure, caught up in the animal intensity of the coupling, beautiful and wild as she matched his male dominance with Slayer need, both of them becoming more and more aroused by the power of their passion and the unfettered physicality of what they were doing.

And when Giles finally stood up and carried her to the living room wall, lifted her by the buttocks, her legs still curled loosely around him, and looked up at her, they acknowledged both the adoration and the lust in each other's eyes...before he thrust himself into her again and she threw back her head, roaring her exaltation, wrapping her arms around his neck and driving herself onto him as he took her.

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