TITLE: Dashing Through the Snow
SERIES: Ice and Fire (Part 1/12)
AUTHOR: Kerry Blackwell
PAIRING: B/G (among others)
RATING: PG-13
DISCLAIMER: All things Buffy belong to Joss Whedon, UPN, the WB, FOX and Mutant Enemy and 20th Century Fox Film Corporation. I own only my genius (yeah, right!)
AUTHOR'S NOTE: This takes place the Christmas after my first Christmas Challenge fic, "Mistletoe and Wine". (You can find it at http://www.whitehats.co.nz/fic/mistletoe.html if you haven't read it and want to.) So the characters etc are the same. I've tried to incorporate the events that have happened in the Buffy and Angel universes since last Christmas - so long as they don't contradict the future situation I set up last year. If they do (for example, the very major happening that has just occurred over on Angel) then I've just had to ignore them. This is a Christmas fic, therefore it's a happy fic. Don't be looking here for angst!! But there is sniping and some minor quarrelling.
DISTRIBUTION: On my site - White Hats - http://www.whitehats.co.nz/. I'll get it up as soon as I can. Right now I'm more interested in getting it finished!! Gabi, Dee, it's yours if you want it.
FEEDBACK: Well, I'm certainly not going to complain! :-)

NOTE: In response to Gileswench's 2001 Christmas Challenge

Buffy Giles looked out the car windscreen at the snow falling in steadily heavier and heavier clumps and frowned.

"Remind me again how we let ourselves get talked into this?" she asked her husband peevishly.

Giles didn't dare take his eyes off the road. His required level of concentration was going up as steadily as the snow was coming down. All the same, he knew exactly what the pout on Buffy's face must look like. Thirty-odd years of marriage tended to have that effect. And yet the most amazing thing was that she could still shock, stun and surprise him at a moment's notice.

"You know why," he reminded her gently. "Cordelia has been asking us to spend Christmas with her ever since she and Alex got married. And this year she talked Angel into it, Angel talked Bree into it and Bree talked us into it. Besides, you and Cordy are good friends."

"Very good," Buffy agreed. "That's not the point. Christmas is supposed to be at _our_ house. That's the way it's always been."

"Not always," Giles pointed out pedantically, slowing the car to pull out and carefully pass a snowplough whose driver was surely earning his or her wages this Christmas Eve. "There was the year when Joy was two and we went to England."

"And the year the twins ran away to find Santa Claus," Buffy added with a sudden chuckle, her humour immediately improved.

Unable to help himself, Giles laughed with her, but he could still remember the horrible feeling of dread when he'd checked the children's bedrooms and found both Wesley and Brianna missing that long ago Christmas morning.

Beside him, Buffy sobered as she felt his mood change, the dark memory coming to the surface like a haunting shadow. After all their years together there was a link between them; a bond that had grown out of their partnership as Watcher and Slayer, becoming ever deeper and stronger as love and marriage and family were added to it.

"It wasn't your fault," she reminded him. "Those kids always had minds of their own, and were unbelievably stubborn to boot."

"They still are," Giles agreed with a small smile. "They get it from their mother."

Buffy wasn't going to get into an argument over that. "It wasn't your fault," she repeated, as she had many times since their first-born children had woken up around midnight and walked off into the desert together looking for snow and the North Pole.

"I was the one telling them stories about white Christmases," Giles insisted, showing a clear streak of stubbornness of his own. "And off they went."

"They were six years old and it was twenty-three years ago," Buffy said sharply. "We found them. Some wonderful total strangers stopped them, took them in and we all had a fantastic Christmas once we'd tracked them down. Those strangers have been our great friends ever since and twelve years later, they introduced Wesley to Susan, without whom you wouldn't have any grandchildren to spoil rotten. So stop playing the guilt game."

Giles took a left hand turn with care, grateful for Cordelia's clear directions. Without them, they would already be hopelessly lost in the swirling snow. "I love them," he said simply. "When I think what might have happened... Even now, it makes me sick to my stomach."

"Oh, Rupert." Buffy smiled and placed a gentle hand on his thigh. "That's part of why I love you so much. Because of the depth and passion with which _you_ love." She balled her fist and turned the touch into a light punch. "But stop with the 'what ifs'. Kids are kids. They always have been and they always will be. Besides, didn't you do something impossibly stupid when you were six?"

After a moment, Giles began to laugh. "Oh no, love. That's one secret I'm taking to my grave."

Buffy blinked, then twisted in her seat to stare at her husband. "What?" she demanded.

Giles just shook his head and concentrated on his driving.

"What?" Buffy repeated. "What, what, what?"

Another shake of his head, but his lips twitched.

He'd tell her, she knew that. She just had to persist until he felt he'd put up enough of a fight that she'd earned it. Patience not being one of her greatest virtues, she decided to try to push things along a little.

She started ticking his side, right in the spot where she knew he was most sensitive.

The car swerved wildly on the snow-slicked road. Giles fought the skid, muttering swear words under his breath and managed to pull out of the tailspin just before the car went into the ditch on the opposite side of the road. Buffy's hands clamped onto the dashboard in front of her as her stomach tried to work its way up her throat, immensely grateful for the seatbelt she was wearing.

Giles slowed the car to a halt and stopped it safely on the road's edge. He set the hazard lights blinking and rounded on his wife.

"What the hell did you do that for? You could have had us upside down in a snowdrift."

Buffy's face was scarlet. 'I'm sorry," she whispered, meaning it right down to her soul. "I didn't think about the road. You're such a good driver I just kind of switch off about it. I just wanted you to tell me the story."

She looked so miserable and woebegone that Giles couldn't help himself. He leaned across and kissed her lightly on the forehead. "No harm done, love. We're okay." He kissed her again for good measure, on the lips this time. "But please, Buffy, try to _think_ before you act."

She sighed, sounding very much like the teenager he had first met. "You've been telling me that since I was sixteen. You'd think I'd have learned by now."

Giles shook his head, cradling her cheek gently in her palm. "It's all right love. But no more tickling, promise? The light's starting to fail and I'd really like to get to Cordy and Alex's in daylight and without any accidents."

"No more tickling," Buffy agreed quickly. "Ever."

Her husband started the engine again, checked carefully for other traffic and pulled back onto the road. "Just not while I'm driving," he amended. He tossed a quick, fiery look in her direction. "There's a time and place for a bit of a tickle."

Buffy laughed, just as he had intended her to. "Rupert Giles, you dirty old man."

"Dirty old lady," he shot back with a grin.

"But all yours," she pointed out. "Yours and yours alone."

"I'm glad to hear it," he chuckled. "Imagine if I'd been married to someone else's dirty-minded woman for over thirty years."

She leaned back in her seat, smiling. "I don't want to be anyone else's. Only yours."

"And I only yours," he agreed softly, taking one hand off the wheel for a moment to brush his fingers along her arm.

Buffy reached across with her other hand to lace his fingers in hers, giving them a squeeze before letting ago again, freeing his hand and thereby absolving herself of any blame in the case of any other driving mishaps at the same time.

Ten minutes later, they turned down the road that should, according to the signpost and their scribbled directions, take them to the Williams' winter home.

"Nearing journey's end now," Giles commented, and if there was some doubt in his voice, it was mostly outweighed by confidence.

Buffy heard it all the same. "If we get lost we can just give them a call and get someone to come out and find us." She gave him a wicked look. "And just in case we don't, you'd better hurry up and tell me about that stupid thing you did when you were six so you get the story told before we arrive."

Giles grimaced. "I thought you'd have forgotten about that," he suggested hopefully.

"No such luck," his wife proclaimed cheerfully. "Spill, Watcher mine."

He smiled at the old title, one of affection now rather than fact. "Do I hafta?" he whinged, borrowing his words from Miri's latest favourite phrase and his tone of voice from the way she said it.

"Yes," Buffy said simply and then pulled out her biggest gun. "No Christmas nookie until you do."

He sighed. "I ran away to sea on a home-made raft," he muttered, hoping he'd get away with the barest of facts, but knowing he didn't have a chance in hell of doing so.

"What?" Buffy demanded around giggles.

Giles shrugged and capitulated. "My uncle gave me a copy of _Swallows and Amazons_ for my sixth birthday."

"The sailing book you used to read to Wes when he was little?" Buffy broke in.

"Yes," Giles agreed. "Now stop interrupting."

His wife motioned zipping up her lips and tossing the key out the window into the snow.

Giles smiled at her antics. In some ways she would _always_ be a teenager and he loved that about her as much as he loved the grown, mature woman she had become.

"I loved it," he continued. "And I wanted to have a sailing adventure of my own. So my best friend William and I built ourselves a raft. It was a rickety old thing that shouldn't even have floated." He smiled slightly at the memory. "Unfortunately, it did."

"For some reason I can't remember, my birthday party wasn't until the following weekend. So while all the other boys were playing 'Pin the Tail on the Donkey', Tom and I sneaked out to try out the raft."

He changed gear on an uphill slope and flicked a glance at Buffy. "To make a long, and probably boring, story short, instead of falling apart on contact with the water like any self-respecting home-made raft should, I actually managed to get on it and find myself suddenly floating downstream without any way to control the raft. William panicked and went rushing back to the house for help.

"I made it all the way to the river, got caught in the current and wound up stranded right in the middle. Of course, at that point the raft decided it had had enough and started to fall apart. Just as I was sure I was about to go down for the third time, I got hauled out of the water by a fisherman who must have been a giant - or quite possibly an ogre - in a former life and he dragged me to shore in his equally oversized fishing net.

"I was trying to regain my dignity when my father arrived and gave me the dressing down of my life. When we arrived home, I discovered that I was still wearing the paper birthday hat my aunt had put on me at the start of the party. My mortification was complete."

He laughed, but there was the slightest of edges to it. "William was sent home on the spot. I was sent to bed without any supper, and all my friends ate my birthday cake and played party games while I listened to their laughter from the exile of my bedroom."

Buffy didn't know whether to laugh or cry. "Poor Giles," she said gently, and spoiled the moment a second later by adding, "But if you try to tell me Joy takes after me one more time, I now have evidence to use against you."

"I think we'll have to share equal genetic blame for Joy's childhood exploits," he answered with a chuckle.

They were both still grinning as they finally turned off the road into the Williams' driveway. The drive had been cleared of snow and twisted around a stand of trees before reaching the house. Giles drove around the final bend and there was their destination in front of them.

The house was brightly lit by Christmas lights in the upstairs windows, with an added welcoming yellow glow coming from the lampstand at the front door. A curl of smoke climbed lazily from the chimney and snow had settled in the window frames, making the entire building look like something out of an old-fashioned Christmas card.

"That is _not_ a cottage," Buffy insisted with a startled gasp. "Cordy said it was a cottage."

Giles blinked, but nothing changed. "Bloody hell," he agreed succinctly.

NEXT