Title: My Family and Other Nightmares 4/5
Author: Gail Christison
Pairing: B/G Mostly subtext at first, gradually becoming text
Rating: PG-13
Timeline/Spoilers Not really much in the way of spoilers. Post Chosen

Summary: Luisa asked for a My Family X-over. Giles and Buffy go to meet the Harper side of Giles' family in England, and end up getting roped into helping with the arrangements for Richard's Stag night. A fun fic, not to be taken too seriously :-) Probably much more entertaining if you have seen Tony's episode of My Family, but should still be fun if you haven't. Those who have access to Lynsey's site should be able to get the ep if they haven't seen it.

Disclaimer: Not mine...so not fair <g> BTVS is owned by Mutant Enemy... My Family is probably owned by the BBC...
Feedback: Love to know how I did, especially with the Harpers <g> chriscln@ozemail.com.au
Distribution: Everyone who has permission, Riposte. Anyone else just ask :-)

Author's Note: I have been working on this on and off what must have been well over a year. Apologies to Luisa for taking so long finish it. Thankyous to Ruth and Karen for language and dialect tips, and Gileswench and Luisa for the morale support :D BIG thankyou to Karen for the beta. :-)
Dedication: To Gileswench ...Happy Late birthday, mate :-) And to Luisa. Thanks :-)

Mark shrugged. "They all leave here in one piece. After that they're on their own."

Giles put out the cigarette, his looking saying it all, before he slid into the crowd.

Mark 'Nobby' Sangster watched his old friend suavely introducing himself to a slender blonde before slipping away with her minutes later. As he expected, Ripper was back less than fifteen minutes later, still flicking dust from his sleeves, eyes already searching the room again, finding and settling on a tall, pale brunette. He put out his own cigarette and caught his barmaid's eye.

"Double Scotch, Mindy," he said darkly. The barmaid nodded and scuttled off to find his personal bottle. There would be hell to pay later, but he knew better than to get in Ripper's way when he was pissed...or hunting.

Giles returned some time later, after working very hard to entice the brunette into the ladies room before staking her as she attempted to give him a love bite he wouldn't soon forget, only to see Nick allowing himself to be led away by a frowsy redhead. His intuition pricked, but he wasn't certain. The redhead was wearing contemporary fashions and looked considerably younger than the others. With a glance at Richard, who was chuckling at Ben's happy discomfiture whilst a voluptuous dancer bent over to allow him to stuff a five pound note somewhere interesting, Giles took off after Nick.

The pair were out the front trying to hail a taxi without success when Giles reached them. "Not staying for the rest of Richard's evening?"

"Ah, Rupert...this is Leah. We're just going to find a spot of dancing somewhere. Leah's a mad keen dancer...likes the Bee Gees, she does."

Giles' eyes narrowed. He studied 'Leah' closely. She certainly was pretty in a youthful sort of way, with flashing green eyes and scarlet painted lips. Her skin was alabaster pale, but not unusual for natural redheads. He followed the line of her long neck to the base of her throat. She was wearing a gold chain but it didn't disguise the pale silver scars.

"I don't know, Nick. I think Leah might actually be planning more on dinner, rather than a show."

Leah's eyes flashed. "Who are you?" she demanded. "Nick's taking me out for a good time and if that includes dinner, that's fine by me."

Nick looked from one to the other. Something was going on. Rupert sounded like he had issues with Leah and Leah's tone was halfway between flirtation and contempt.

"Who am I?" Giles drawled, smirking. "Let's just say I...*Watch*...things...things that might require attention by my associate...who is rather partial to making a...*Slaying*."

Leah's eyes widened. "Let's go, Nicky. I think your grandfather is trying to spoil our night."

"Cousin," Nick corrected instinctively. "And Rupert wouldn't stop...Hey!"

Giles had darted out a hand to grab Leah's wrist as she attempted to slip away.

The redhead squealed as smoke curled from the Watcher's strong grip, then vamped.

Nick visibly jumped, his jaw dropping. "What the...? Bloody hell!"

Giles changed hands, releasing his right one to reveal Buffy's silver cross and chain and the cross shaped burn on Leah's forearm, but Nick only got a split second look before the vampire began to struggle, roaring at Giles before vamping out and using her super-strength to wrench herself away from him.

Nick watched, dazed, as his erstwhile date and his musty old cousin fought each other. It wasn't pretty. Neither of them seemed to know the meaning of the words 'fair.' Whatever Leah was, she was bloody strong, and it was all Rupert seemed to be able to do to find ways...dirty ways...to combat her brute strength. It wasn't until she had the older man pinned down and was giving every indication that she was going to actually bite him, that Nick roused himself enough to grab her by the hair and pull her off.

At that point Cousin Rupert uncorked a small bottle and threw the contents in her face as he scrambled to his feet. Again the smoke...and Leah scratching at her face, trying to get off whatever was burning it.

"No, wait...What..?!" Nick shouted as Rupert followed up by pulling a wooden stake from his coat and slamming it into Leah's chest just as a cab finally pulled up. She disintegrated in a cloud of dust and both men coughed as the taxi immediately squealed its wheels and fled the bizarre scene.

Leon grinned widely at Giles as Nick and his cousin came down the steps to the door of the club, still dusting themselves off. "Nice work, Mister Giles. Couldn't've done better me'self."

Giles continued to brush off his pants and shake his sleeves. "Perhaps you should have," he growled at the bouncer as they passed him and pushed the door open.

"Rupert, mate, where've you been? I think Misty here wants to have my baby," Richard grinned dopily and stuck another five pound note in the band of the sequinned panties of the voluptuous, semi-clad bottle blonde sitting on his lap. A more than half-drunk Ben was stealing glances from across the table at the almost-certainly augmented chest jiggling as the nymph in question giggled.

Nick surveyed the glasses on the table and the view of Richard's companion and looked pained. "I'm going to get a drink," he grumbled and nodded when Giles put in an order for a Scotch.

Ben watched him go through a squinted eye. "I thought he disappeared with that...that...go-go dancer."

Giles pulled up a chair. "He almost did," he said cryptically and cast an eye over Misty, who was looking from him to Richard and back, obviously confused.

"It's all right," Richard said jovially. "That's me smarter half. 'E won't bite...'e only looks like me," he added, already sniggering at his own joke.

A moment later Giles was satisfied that the flush of colour in Misty's cheeks, the un-affected heaving of her spectacular bosom indicating breath, and the faint sheen of perspiration on her otherwise perfect throat absolutely precluded her from the ranks of the un-dead.

He sat back, accepted the glass Nick put in his hand and watched as the younger man put beers in front of the others and introduced himself to their guest with his usual enthusiasm. Giles half smiled. Nick was unsquashable, or at least not for long. He supposed he would have to explain sooner or later, but he was grateful that the boy wasn't making a fuss...yet.

"Great party," Ben said suddenly, raising his glass.

Nick shot a glance toward Giles before smiling tolerantly at his inebriated father and raising his own.

Richard struggled to drag his attention from the curves set so perfectly at eye level, to finally raise his own.

"To Ben," Giles said unexpectedly, raising his own nearly-empty whisky glass.

"Ben," Richard echoed happily, tilting his empty pot at his suddenly sickeningly smug cousin.

"Yeah." Nick tilted his as well, sliding yet another glance toward Rupert. "Cheers, Dad."

*******

"That's not how you spell vampire."

"Sure it is...I mean, it's how it's supposed to be spelled...you know, the proper way."

"If it's not in the dictionary, you can't have it."

Buffy rolled her eyes and wondered for the dozenth time what Giles was doing. Whatever it was had to be infinitely better than playing games with Susan, the Scrabble Nazi, and watched by Abi, who'd returned early. Buffy suspected that Janey probably wasn't any fonder of Cousin Abi than her father, Ben, was.

Susan finally looked up from her dog-eared dictionary and smiled evilly. "Not there. Take it back."

Buffy removed her points bonanza and settled for making the word 'vamp'...of the human kind from the 'v' already on the board, rather than hold things up any longer than necessary, and drew her new tiles.

The older woman's competitiveness was only exceeded by her impatience. She grinned smugly as she made the word 'post' by building on Buffy's 'p'.

Buffy added another moderately scored word to the other side of the board, and sighed, wishing Giles was there. She sat up a little when she drew an 'x', her first major value tile, only to subside again when all the other letters turned out to be one pointers.

Susan then spent forty-five minutes agonizing over her next word to finally settle on funny, with the 'y' on a double letter score, a fact which seemed to please her nearly as much as winning the lottery. The gloating was worthy of an eleven year old triumphing in a schoolyard scuffle.

Buffy pointedly ignored her and stared at her own rack of letters. Something was playing at the edge of her consciousness...a word Giles was prone to dropping into conversation and which the letters in front of her were calling to. Not only that, but they were demanding to be set around the word 'post', meaning they would cover the, currently, only usable triple word score on the board. There had been a tense but silent battle between both women to be the first to find something long enough to reach it. She looked from the letters to the board and back again a half a dozen times before his voice intoned the syllables in her head.

Susan watched with widening eyes as Buffy laid an 'e' and an 'x' in front of the vertical word 'post' which she'd made earlier. The problem was, the 'x' now lay on a double letter score she'd had her own eye on. Her jaw clenched.

"That's not a word," she snapped.

"I'm not done yet," Buffy pointed out serenely.

Susan's expression went from startled to fuming as the younger woman went back for more letters from her rack. One by one they were laid: u,l,a,t, and finally 'e', to cover the triple word score.

"You...you...you can't. Post was my word...you stole my word!" she shrieked idiotically in a high-pitched, strangled squeak.

Abi finally leaned over from her tabloid magazine and peered at the board. "Actually I think that's a real word. I think I heard David Attenborough say it once, on telly."

Susan glowered.

"'Expostulate'," Buffy pronounced, Giles' mellifluous tones once again whispering it in her ear. She shivered a little imagining the small puff of breath on her earlobe as he formed the 's' sound.

The older woman's nostrils pinched, casting sideways glances at her own thirty point lead as Buffy calculated her score.

"Double letter score for the 'x'. That's sixteen, plus twelve for the rest: twenty eight. Triple that: eighty-four..."

Buffy enjoyed the sight of the colour rising in her nemesis's face as she held her next thought for several moments, then showed her empty rack. "And fifty more points for using all seven letters. Total: one hundred and thirty-four."

Susan's eyes bulged and her jaw clamped. "Very...nice, dear," she managed, looking utterly manic. "Would you like some tea?"

Buffy stared straight back at her, undaunted. "Tea? Shouldn't we be doing something a little more adventurous than tea tonight?" she asked, ignoring the fact that *Scrabble* wasn't exactly burning up the town, either. "I mean, does anyone really think the guys are drinking tea...?"

"Yes, and Elizabeth and Phillip will be here shortly, and they're bringing the corgis..." her companion conceded ill-temperedly. "All right, Ben's been saving a bottle of beer for a rainy day...or there's a quarter of a bottle of amaretto in the living room cupboard...with the Christmas brandy." She glowered at the game board again. "To hell with it, we'll have the lot. Abi, get some glasses..."

*******

Giles sat back in the lovingly-polished antique brown leather arm chair and drew slowly on his Monte Christo. Ben and Nick had gamely attempted to do justice to their cigars before surrendering and settling into their own chairs with snifters of fine cognac, lost in a fugue of inebriated contentment.

Richard happily alternated between his B and B and a fat Cohiba, whilst keeping up a steady patter of self-satisfied commentary on his evening, Misty's sterling qualities, and his intention to have 'the best honeymoon yet' with the magnificent Miss Gina Beresford.

The evening continued to be a success, not least because they'd been able to convince Richard that Misty wouldn't enjoy being asked to leave a Gentleman's club, not to mention the fact that Nick hadn't made any attempt to find out what exactly happened outside the nightclub, even though Giles knew that the occasional puzzled glance from the boy meant that he would be doing a lot of explaining later.

"So what's the story?"

Giles was jolted from his pleasant oasis of peace by the one voice he'd just decided wouldn't be heard from any time soon.

"About what?" Ben inquired sleepily.

"About Super-Rupert, the monster killer," Nick drawled, alcohol blurring his voice a little, but not disguising the growing resentment in it.

Richard sat up with a jerk, then looked around furtively before slumping back down in his chair.

"Super Rupert? Nick, you've had too much brandy," his father decreed, snickering.

"She wasn't human," Giles said quietly, ignoring his cousin.

"Apparently not," Nick snorted, "since she'd fit nicely into a Dust-buster about now, assuming she hasn't blown halfway across London."

Giles sighed. "Now really isn't the time."

"Course it is. You fight like you've been doing it all your life...like a commando....an...*old* commando, but still."

Giles raised an eyebrow but continued to contemplate his drink. "I *have* been doing it all my life. But now is still not the time." He looked up when he was answered by silence.

Nick looked into the green eyes for a long moment, then shrugged, his gaze sliding away. "Later, then."

Ben opened both of his eyes fully for a moment. "Does anyone have any idea what the hell they're talking about?"

"Nah," Richard muttered, almost too quickly.

Giles studied his look-alike cousin with narrowed eyes.

"Perhaps it's time we moved on. It's been a very pleasant evening, but I think we've all had enough for one night. I'll drive, since I've limited my intake to one an hour, for just that purpose."

Nick sat in the front with Giles but couldn't contain himself any longer.

"You a copper or something? Private dick?"

"Something," Giles said calmly. "I've trained for almost all of my life to fight creatures like the one you saw."

"So...what was it?"

Giles continued to stare at the road. "Things that go bump in the night. Think about it, boy. How many living things do you know that can only be killed with a stake through the heart...or fire, or-"

Nick guffawed. "Leave off. There's no such thing as vampires."

"Oh, really?" Giles drawled back. "And all your prospective girlfriends morph into monsters and turn to dust when someone stakes them in the heart, yes...?"

The younger man froze, then cleared his throat loudly and fell silent for long moments.

"All right, then why doesn't everyone know they're about, then?"

"Because they prefer it that way," Giles pointed out. "But there is someone who is born to fight them...well, actually there's rather more than one now, but that's another story. For thousands of years, there has only been one. I, and my father before me, and his mother before him, have been trained specifically to watch over the one...chosen."

"Like the only ones...? Like our family is something real special?" Nick asked eagerly, coming to life again. "Can I be one too?"

Giles almost smiled. *God forbid...*

"No, not the only ones. And no, it's not for us to choose," he said gravely. "You might not have been chosen for the same reason your grandmother wasn't, or Richard's mother," he added, metaphorically crossing his fingers against the white lie.

"Gran said you were chosen and I wasn't, because I was too thick, like mum."

Both Giles and Nick jumped. Ben's soft snores continued in the background.

"You know?" Giles finally managed.

Richard shrugged. "Yeah. I overheard stuff when you ran away from Oxford. Gran filled in the gaps. Buffy, right? After she took care of my...'little problem' shall we say, I figured you'd finally managed the brass ring. You always were the only useful one in the family. Probably because you weren't a bleedin' Harper."

Again Giles tried not to chuckle. He had to admit that for a complete prat, Richard was still the most pragmatic of the Harpers.

Nick squared his shoulders at Richard. "Oi...Don't knock the Harpers...they produced me, after all."

Both the older men snorted at the exact same moment, then Giles cleared his throat.

"I think Richard simply meant that I had more opportunity than he did...or your father for that matter. The line now runs through the Giles family, ergo it was only to be expected that it would most likely continue through my father, rather than his sisters."

"Probably would've helped if they had half a brain between them," Richard observed. "How does that work, anyway? There's your dad, stuffy and all, but obviously a brain the size of a football...and then there's Maisie and Eloise. It just doesn't add up..."

"Genetics," Giles offered. "They took after Alicia Tindall, my great-grandmother. Remember, my-our-grandmother, Laura Tindall, introduced the line to the Giles family when she married Grandfather Giles. The Tindalls had been watchers for about seven generations before that, but only my Grandmother carried the line, through her father, Simon Tindall."

"Yeah? Dopey cow too, was she, this Alicia?"

Giles expression was halfway between mildly pained and nasty indigestion.

"I wouldn't say that exactly. From all reports Alicia was a lot like Abi. As a matter of fact Abi is quite like the portrait of Alicia that used to hang in Gran's house."

"Dopey cow," Richard and Nick affirmed in unison.

Giles closed his eyes briefly in a pained sort of way, before returning his attention to the road. "I'm sorry you had to find out about the girl that way, Nick, but it was far preferable to have you in one piece and asking these questions, to the alternative."

"You mean with all my blood sucked out, like?"

Giles rolled his eyes. "At the very least."

"So is London full of these things?" Richard asked. "Like am I going to have to wear really big ties or carry sharp sticks or something from now on?"

"Not really," Giles admitted. "There's no active Hellmouth here at the moment, so activity is low. However, it is always prudent to be prepared if you're going to be on the streets after dark. A small, sharp stick, well concealed, is never amiss."

Nick leaned forward. "Hellmouth? Sounds cool. What is it?"

"It is most definitely *not* 'cool'," Giles retorted. "It's a portal to the demon dimension, and all manor of evil is attracted to it, from all parts of the globe. It's not somewhere you want to be."

"You sound like you know a lot about them," Nick persevered.

The Watcher's eyes grew distant. "We lived on one in Sunnydale for seven years, give or take."

"We? We who?"

"Him and Buffy, that's who," Richard piped up. "There's something funny going on with 'er."

That sent Nick's mind skewing off in ridiculous directions. "You dirty old...!"

Giles' left hand reached out and fastened itself around the young man's throat, eliciting a squeaked 'sorry,' before letting go.

"Buffy and I have only recently become 'involved'." Well it was true enough, though not strictly in the sense the others would assume. "Until then, we simply worked together as Watcher and Slayer, as chosen by the Council of Watchers, to fight enemies such as you saw tonight."

Nick's brow furrowed in concentration, and perhaps consternation. "But...but that would mean Buffy was like twelve or something when she started...slaying."

Giles made an exasperated sound. "Buffy was called at the age of fifteen and I was sent to her after her first Watcher was killed, to train her, guide her and provide her with everything she might require to fight the forces of evil. She was sixteen. And if you tell anyone any of this, I will personally come and point out the error of your ways...do I make myself clear? Both of you? Richard, is Ben awake?

There was a moment of silence and then the sound of soft snoring.

"Give it up, Ben," Richard advised, poking him in the ribs. "You 'aven't been asleep for the last ten minutes at least."

Ben opened one eye, then the other. "You don't seriously believe all that lot?"

Nick thrust his head back against the headrest and stared at the roof. "You didn't see him fight that bit of vampire skirt, and you didn't see her disintegrate when he shoved that stake through her chest. Trust me, it's got to be true. Besides, Richard's seen stuff too."

Ben sat up and stared at his cousin. "Why didn't you say something before?"

"What? They were assisting me with some personal business. At the time I wasn't to know they weren't just black belts in Ty Kwan or Kung Fu or Fo-bo or whatever it's called.

"Kung Fu, Tae Kwon Do, and I believe the last is supposed to be Tae Bo, an infomercial exercise program," Giles translated distastefully. "I trust that you heard what I said about keeping this to yourself, Ben?"

"Yes, I can just see me telling all my patients that my cousin kills vampires for a living and wasn't it lucky that he was there to apparently impale my son's pickup and disintegrate her like Marvin the Martian in a Bugs Bunny cartoon?" Harper retorted in a gradually rising, mildly hysterical voice.

"Well, it was and all," Nick said defensively. "You should have seen her when she changed. She would have sucked me dry in a minute. You wouldn't have me here now if Rupert hadn't saved the day."

Ben slumped in his corner. "There are some things we just have to bear," he muttered.

*******

"Really, Buffy..."

"Yeah, yeah...I know. Don't mix your drinks. How was I to know that...uh...well, more than one...possibly several...amaretto shots after two glasses of beer was going to be a bad thing? And I didn't have that much Christmas brandy..."

Giles watched her place the improvised icepack back on her head. He suspected that the headache was more likely a result of the periodic, and violent, throwing up she'd been doing, starting with the sojourn on the side of the M4, on the way home, and continuing into the night. He knew from experience that one's head could go from perfectly fine to feeling like it had been blown off after the effort thrust on one in expelling the toxic contents of one's stomach, particularly after an unaccustomed binge.

"No comment," he said, trying not to smile.

"I heard that smirk," she growled. "It's not like you look all crispy fresh and sparky either, bucko."

"You've spent entirely too much time around Xander," he muttered, well aware that his eyes were red and that he was looking well overdue for his bed. To be expected at three-thirty in the morning, after the kind of evening he'd had.

"So how did your night go? I meant to ask earlier...but I was kind of busy being nauseas and decorating the bushes."

Giles helped her as she slowly tried to sit up.

"Rather well, all things considered."

"Things?"

"Um, yes." He suddenly looked a little awkward. "There was some...business...that had to be dealt with. Unfortunately you weren't there, so it fell to me to take the situation in hand. Anyway, Nick knows...he saw...and now so do the other two. I believe they understand the gravity of the situation, or at least how insane they would sound trying to convince someone else..." He cleared his throat again. "They won't say anything."

"*Nick* knows?"

Giles winced. "Um, yes. He was leaving with a young woman, who..."

"Never mind. I can fill in the rest," she sighed. "So...you took out a vamp on your own? Way to go, Giles."

He looked sheepish. "Several, actually. They were working the nightclub we were visiting. Not overly challenging, given their usual arrogance: all of them assumed immediately that I was a doddering old fool, completely unaware of their intentions."

Buffy put down her ice pack suddenly, the headache momentarily forgotten. For some reason it annoyed her greatly that Giles and 'old and doddering' should be thought of in the same universe, let alone the same sentence, and that surprised her even more. Despite the red eyes and the weariness he looked really something in those clothes...something definitely *not* old.

"Yeah, like you look like you're on your last legs," she retorted and stood up, wincing as her head throbbed nastily, then frowned, making it hurt more, when she finally noticed some things. "I thought you said you were fine?"

Giles raised an eyebrow in question.

She came to within inches of him and touched a cut near the corner of his mouth, and then traced several grazes on his cheek, his forehead and his throat, where vampire fingernails had torn the skin.

The spontaneous gesture was so unexpected that Giles froze, swallowing when he felt her breath on his chin.

"Y-yes, well, I, um...just a few grazes. Nothing to worry about," he managed, trying to maintain a calm exterior.

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