Title: Freed
Series: What We Are (3)
Author: K.V. Wylie
Spoilers: Mild through 4th Season
Content: Buffy/Giles
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: The characters belong to Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy
and WB. No copyright infringement is intended.
The printer had numbered the pages disgorged from the email. There were ninety-seven on Giles' desk, and Buffy knew there were at least as many on the coffee table by the couch. Buffy tried to read them. Giles brought her something to eat, and she ate without taking her eyes from the pages. Later, he brought her coffee, and it went down inattentively too.
The end result was that she didn't understand a word. It was a frustrated and bleary-eyed Buffy who finally looked up to find Giles arranging a pillow and blanket on the couch.
"Thank you," she said.
"This is for me. I've made the bed up for you. Get some sleep, Buffy. We'll tackle it fresh in the morning." His tone was firm, and she was too wound up to argue.
At the bottom of the stairs, she paused. He sat in the middle of the couch, looking apparently at nothing.
"What is it, Giles?"
"I was just wondering if the corner store was still open. I've had the most extraordinary desire for chocolate all evening."
"I didn't think you liked chocolate," Buffy said, and the moment she said it, it hit her. Looking at a calendar on the wall, she said, "It's the nineteenth. My, um, period's due, and it makes me want…..uh….."
He stared at her in complete horror. "Due when? Tonight?"
"I don't know the exact minute. It's always around the nineteenth. I guess you'll know about it before I do." Buffy couldn't deal with the conversation any more. Leaving him sputtering, she rushed up the stairs. "There's stuff in my purse if it happens," she called, then went into the bedroom and shut the door.
Giles listened to her movements and halting steps above until they silenced. Though he'd remained calm and reassuring for her, in truth he was rather on the edge. What he was and how he felt was tied to his male body, not this small female form. He'd reached for several things tonight, moving on distracted habit, and come up short. Pens, his teacup, the hangers in his closet - he'd missed all by several inches. It had made him feel clumsy and highly disconcerted.
The strength also threw him. Inadvertently, he'd bent a fork and snapped a cup handle tonight. He hadn't dared do more for dinner than pull a casserole out of the freezer and microwave it. He hadn't even made tea, afraid of what he might do to the kettle or its plug.
He cursed softly as he lay back on the couch, and cursed again when he had to shuffle up to the pillow after misjudging where he was in relation to it.
A squeak of a bed coil drew his attention to the stairs, and he wondered what she was doing above. He liked privacy, needed it, especially what little he had left now that Buffy and her friends had made his apartment their headquarters in place of the library. But what remnant of private self could he have, now that his body had been taken for a terribly long test drive by someone else? He knew the feeling of displacement, for he had, in his youth, willingly allowed Eyghon to possess him, but he'd still had some control then. The demon had limits, and he'd never been entirely disassociated from his physical form. What happened this morning was complete severance.
Why had it been done? And had Buffy, in fact, done it?
He didn't doubt the Slayer's power. For all her neglect in her studies, Buffy had made amazing strides. Her progress had not come from effort. It had not, to put it bluntly, been earned. Her gains were disjointed; her advancement hardly smooth. She took what she found, used it, and didn't seem to care if there was more. He'd spent two years fighting her on this point, and given in gracefully during the third. The effort she'd made tonight surprised him. Perhaps, she, too, was more afraid than she appeared.
Giles glanced down at the body he was in, the thin arms and diminutive legs that felt more comfortable curled into a ball than stretched out across the cushions. He'd once seen Buffy's room and the bed this body usually slept in - the lace fringes and pink sheets and stuffed animals carefully arranged on top. She hid romance novels under the stakes in her weapons bag, and, according to Willow, still had her cheerleading pom-poms, carefully preserved. Tonight he'd discovered that she'd worn frilly feminine underwear, and a brassiere with little flowers stitched on. Terribly girlish possessions.
Though she'd given no overt sign of it tonight, he'd seen her frightened in the past - the day they'd discovered Angelus had turned, and the night when she'd pulled Giles out from Spike's burning factory. For all her physical strength, she had piercing frailties.
He heard her shift on the bed again. What in heavens name was she doing? A few unsettling ideas came to mind, and he quickly clamped them down, then took what comfort he could in the thought that she might be wondering the same of him. It was little comfort though, and, for all his self-control (which he believed was better than hers), he'd given into the temptation at the first opportunity. Earlier, in the bathroom, he'd looked…..and not just briefly.
What struck him, after the initial queasiness at knowing he was looking at himself, was how very beautiful she was. Ironically, her beauty seemed ethereal, translucent, more fitting of a nymph than a warrior. He'd realized then that she didn't know how terribly lovely she was. If she did, she would certainly carry herself better, hold her head higher, and not rely on those undersized garments of hers to make herself feel attractive.
He heard her footsteps go across the bedroom floor, and he sat up when they were followed by the sound of a door. She'd crossed the floor quickly, in agitation, and he cursed again, only this time at his inability to figure out the reasoning behind all of this. There was a purpose; he was sure of that. But what was it?
He stood, intending to go up to her, and stumbled over his shoes that she'd left on the floor. As he bent to pick them up, he scowled at the thought that they weren't really *his* shoes anymore, that his feet no longer fit to them.
That's when it came to him. As he stared at the shoes in his hands, he heard his father's voice in his head, punishing him for the umpteenth time for getting into a fight, and cautioning him that you couldn't really understand someone until you'd walked a mile in their shoes.
Giles sighed. His father hadn't meant it this literally, but the Powers That Be were not known for their subtlety. And, as the higher powers were pretty well uninterested in Watchers, this was obviously meant for…..
He looked towards the ceiling.
---
After leaving Giles downstairs, Buffy went into his bedroom, found a jogging shirt and another pair of sweatpants, and changed in the dark, her gaze fixed firmly away. Then she got into the cool bed and pulled every single sheet over her.
She felt the same, inside. It was only when she moved that she could tell it wasn't her body. It was big and cumbersome. There was too much weight, too much height. It didn't move as fast and the tops of door jambs looked alarmingly close.
She lay there for a long time, listening to city noises outside and a clock downstairs. She truly hadn't been able to make sense of what she'd read. Not all of it was in English, and it contained many of those pompous words that smart people like Giles used. But, more than that, it spoke of mysticism she could hardly apply to herself.
The title of Slayer was hers, yet she was a nineteen year old, precariously flesh and blood human. She babbled around people she didn't know, received bad marks in social science classes, and liked stuffed animals on her pillow. She was not a magical creature. Giles was, more than she. He'd called demons. She couldn't even make a pencil float. Not even a golf one.
The clock rang one. She sat up. She was tired, but she couldn't sleep, not in this body. It wasn't hers; it was not…..home.
Buffy looked down and caught the glint of a streetlight on Giles' ring. In frustration, she yanked it off and slapped it on a table. 'Damnit!' she thought. 'He must know how to change us back. Why won't he? He's the spellcaster!'
Buffy brought her hands up, *his* hands. She held them open before her and the sight brought to memory a spell she'd once seen him do. In the library, he'd once stood by the stacks with open hands.
With that image before her, Buffy whispered a spell, a small one she'd heard Giles teach Willow, one that brought water out of the air.
As Buffy said the words, she almost felt something, a flutter over her palms. She tried again, and an angry spark of static jumped from her hands to the quilt. It ran down the blanket and extinguished against her shins.
She jumped and rubbed her legs, but the movement created more sparks. They fizzled up her legs and across her groin. Her eyes widened at the feeling they produced.
'Oops,' she thought. 'Bad idea. Bad, bad idea.'
Though it explained a few things. It explained why Willow would take to magic if she hadn't seen Oz for a few days, and why Giles made only token objections when asked to do a spell.
"Geez, he must have spent those Eyghon years permanently horny," she mumbled. "Or maybe it was a two year orgasm."
She stared at a neutral part of a wall while waiting for the sparky feeling to subside, thankful for the thick quilt which hid any sign. Feeling it was gross enough. She didn't want to *see* it. And she felt spooked about it happening in Giles' body when he wasn't actually *here*.
Buffy glanced sharply at the door. And he'd better not be up to anything similar downstairs or she'd strip his hide off of him…..once he was back in his own body, of course.
When her heartbeat eased back to normal, she got up and went into the bathroom for a drink of water. Giles' bathroom lights were on a dimmer switch, which she'd kept at the bottom setting all evening. It had kept most sights away from her.
Straightening up from the sink, she forgot and looked at her reflection in the mirror. Even in the pale yellow light, she could see much too much.
Then she thought, 'No, I want to see.'
She turned the switch so high, it buzzed, and the light glared down at hospital brightness. There, at a height she wasn't used to seeing, was her, but not her. Giles stood in the mirror, except her blue eyes looked back at her.
As she had done before, she touched his cheek. A blondish beard prickled her fingertips, ending abruptly at the mouth and the sweep of his nose. She traced the lines that started between his eyebrows and ran down under his eyes, and paused at the shadows that also lay there.
With a quick, jerky movement, she pulled off the shirt. He had hair on his chest, a dark trail that went down his stomach. His shoulders and arms looked strong, *were* strong she realized. These arms had once carried her from Amy Madison's house, carried her through a hallway, holding her so securely she knew she would never fall.
It was while looking at the arms that she saw the first scar. A line of puckered white skin went across his right shoulder. She shifted slightly, saw that it ran over his shoulder blade, becoming wider and more ragged looking. She turned again and saw that it hadn't ended there, that it still went further, going down his back alongside his spine, and looking worse and worse.
Looking like the mark of a whip.
Did he have another mirror? She scrounged through the bathroom cupboard and found one, a hand-held mirror that was probably part of a brush set. She turned her back to the large mirror, into the glaring white light, and held the small glass in front of her eyes.
Her breath stilled in her lungs. He had more than the one scar. Far more. A pattern of whip marks went down both sides of his back. Circular scars dotted one side, impressions from something that had been burned into his skin. At the base of his spine, creeping down below the waistband, were hollows that looked like gouges.
Buffy suddenly bent down, knowing that she was going to drop the small mirror and afraid it would shatter. It thumped onto the mat at her feet and reflected back to her the sight of her blue eyes.
She dropped further to her knees, squeezing her eyes shut, swaying forward until her forehead connected with the wall.
"You bastard, why didn't you tell me?" she cried softly. Wet streamed down her face, stinging her skin. The tears ached. They were being pulled from deep inside, as though the owner of this body hurt so deeply that he had been afraid to cry, afraid that if he allowed himself to feel the pain, the tears would never stop coming.
"You bastard," she cried once more, knowing why full-well. She groped for the mirror and shoved it back in the cupboard before frantically tugging on the shirt. Then she went downstairs, not caring how much noise she made, her big awkward feet thumping on every step. He was down there, awake, looking like such a little thing in the middle of the couch.
"What did you do?" he asked, worried and afraid.
"I looked. I looked at what Angelus had done to you."
"Let it go."
"Giles, it's my fault!"
He grabbed her, pulling her down to him. "We've hurt each other, Buffy. We could spend our lives circling this ground over and over, but it wouldn't do us any good. Let it go, Buffy. *I* have."
"But I keep doing things, like *this*!" She gestured between them. "I'm the one who did this and I can't switch us back. I just keep hurting and hurting you."
"Good God, Buffy, no you don't." He had to get up on his knees to hug her, but he did so, holding her in a tight grip. Giles tilted her face up. "This is an experience I never conceived. In a way, it's almost a miracle. You're looking at it the wrong way."
"The wrong way, huh?" Buffy wiped her eyes. "I've read some of your books. I know, as far as Slayers go, I'm hardly the ideal."
"Well, you're not like most other Slayers," he agreed. "You're going to be one of the ones that lives."
She wanted to clutch onto his words, but some miserable part of her drew her away from him. "Giles, I'm not smart. I must have a…..guardian angel or something. I don't understand all of these things I'm supposed to understand."
"It's not to understand, Buffy. It's to feel, to *know*. Leave the books to me then. You have survived, not because of my knowledge. Because of your own. When you face a demon, you know you can defeat him. Your belief keeps you alive." Giles gestured at the papers on a coffee table and on his desk. "There is more to the Slayer than killing vampires and what little is written here. She is a balance against evil. She is….." he paused, then said, "She is like a hawk in flight."
Buffy shook her head. "Not me, Giles."
"Yes, you," he said firmly. "As the hawk's wings are held aloft by air it does not see , so too are you held up by more than yourself. To know that the air is there, even though you can't see it, is to be able to take it and use it. When we were in the Camminata degli Angeli, it was….." he searched for a word. "Permitted for you to be there. This--" Giles gestured between their bodies. "This was not meant as punishment. I believe it is a wake-up call. It is a push for you to extend your wings, to find that you are held up by more than yourself, and that you are more than the form you are in." Giles held up his hands. "It appears that I have your strength. I have your musculature, but I do not have the rest, all of what goes in to making you the Slayer. Given time, you would adapt my body to what you need, and you would break any handle you desire out of its door." He took her hands in his. "I can't give you the process for this, Buffy. I can only give you what tools I possess as Watcher. It's your right to every tool I have."
'Every tool,' Buffy thought, 'but not your heart.' Then, she realized, if he was willing to give his life, she already had his heart.
"Buffy, close your eyes," Giles said. "Stop looking at me and at yourself. Just feel. Do this and you will know that you are the Slayer. There is no other, and it has not been taken away from you."
She tried, closing her eyes so tightly that she could see veins throbbing behind her eyelids. "This is hiding," she said. "It's just not looking at the bad."
"What bad?" Giles asked, holding his hand over her brow, in case she tried to peek.
"What I did. Changing us."
"Buffy, I told you to move on from there."
"Move on," she muttered. Thinking for a moment, she said, "Giles, if we stay this way, how will we face anyone?"
"Now you're going too far forward."
"You *told* me to."
"I didn't tell you to burrow from one pit into another. It's time to let go."
They quieted. Buffy leaned into his gentle touch on her face and listened to his breathing. After a few moments, she realized they were breathing in synchronicity, and the small pulse in his palm was her own. "It doesn't matter what body we're in," she said. "It's still you and me."
"Yes," he agreed. "Find yourself, Buffy. Where are you?"
"Here." She pressed her hands to her chest and looked down as he took his hands away from her. But it was still his chest under her touch. She was still in his body, and he was still in hers.
"I can't do it," she said. "I don't know how."
"You're still thinking of yourself as this." Giles gestured down her body. "Don't worry, Buffy. We'll try again in the morning."
She wanted to hug against his side, press her face against his chest, but she was too tall and his chest was, well…..she breathed out tiredly. "Giles, why do you put up with me?"
He smiled, but so quickly that she almost didn't see it. "I don't know," he teased.
She looked down into his eyes, his green eyes that were all him. "I'm glad you do. I don't deserve it."
The amusement faded. "Stop it, Buffy. I have as many regrets."
"So you haven't left yours behind, Mr. Let-Go-Of-The-Past," she said. It occurred to her that maybe he was waiting on her. "Ok, we both stop together."
"All right," he said, and this time she saw the smile.
"This marriage thing I did, do you want me to try to break it, I mean, after I fix the first thing?"
"If it pleases you."
"You don't care one way or the other?" she challenged.
"I do," he replied quickly. "But--"
"Don't tell me stuff you've said before."
He touched her cheek tenderly. "Buffy, I don't have the right."
"You do. I'm your wife or….." She looked down at herself. "Or husband."
He started laughing. She hugged him, feeling it go right through her.
"Strange girl," Giles said.
She laughed too, then became serious as she pulled back to look in his eyes again. "And you're mine, right?"
"Yes."
The quiet word made her heart pound. "And it really doesn't matter to you, I mean in bed, if it's a man or a woman?"
Startled, he looked down at his body. "I've never applied that to myself before."
"But it's me," Buffy said. "We'll turn the lights out."
"Buffy--"
"I love you."
"You do?"
It was not doubt she heard in his voice, but awe. She leaned forward and kissed him. There was no male or female in the lips, just softness.
He responded, pulling her down to him with a hunger she didn't know he had. "I love you, Buffy," he said against her mouth, before kissing her again, his tongue sweeping against hers.
Arousal tingled over her, prickling the hairs on her skin and coursing down to pool in her groin. "Not here," she whispered, but she didn't know if she could walk, not with that extra bit between her legs that was feeling heavier and heavier. How did men move around with those things there?
He reached behind him to turn off the lamp, whether to save her or both of them from the sight, she wasn't sure. He got up off the couch, then helped her up. Buffy wanted to reach down and hold what was between her legs steady so that she could move, but the curtains were open and it wasn't so dim that he wouldn't have seen her.
"This is kind of awkward," she finally admitted and pointed down. To her surprise, Giles chuckled.
"One gets used to it." He pressed his hand against her groin, then took her other hand and led her up the stairs. "Do you want me to close the curtains?" he asked in the bedroom, for streetlight shone over the sheets.
"No." Buffy leaned down to kiss him, then reached under his sweater for the clasp of his bra. She let it drop to the floor, removed his sweater, and tugged off her tee shirt. The sweatpants and underwear went next, each of them doing their own. Then she took his hand and pulled him down onto the bed with her.
"I'm not sure which one of us I want to touch," Giles said.
"What's that word you like?" she asked. "Oh, quandary. It's a quandary."
But he was looking in her eyes. Nowhere else but there. "I only see you," he said at last.
They kissed again and she pushed him down gently, covering him with her larger body. Her hand went down his chest, but when she encountered breasts, she broke the kiss.
"Buffy--" he started, but she smiled.
"It's not what you think. Faith and I once, you know."
"I'd wondered," he said, sounding amused again. "So what is it?"
"The feelings are different. This, um, *your*….." Buffy went up on her knees and looked down. She could see the shadow at her groin. Sensations coursed and centred there, creating an urgent, full feeling.
Giles took her hand and placed it on her penis. She moaned at the warmth on the shaft. "I can feel it," she said delightedly.
He moved his hand with hers, rubbing down and back up the shaft to the tip. "That's the best spot," she whispered, her fingers pressed just under the head. "Right here."
"I know."
She giggled. "Your turn." She moved their clasped hands to his sex and into the soft curls. "Here," she said happily. "And here."
She moved his fingers down into the folds, to the entrance, and then up to the swell of the clitoris. She heard his breath catch as she touched just underneath the bud, and her own breath caught in return.
"It's weird, huh?" she asked.
He nodded, almost beyond words. Arousal he had often felt, but not in these secret, deeper places. Then, in a movement that thrilled him, she bent down and kissed there.
Buffy felt his heart pound hard, its echo in her own chest as she kissed between the lips of his sex, her tongue pushing so deeply inside that he jumped. God, it tasted sweet, but was it him or her? Then she decided she didn't care and kissed up to the clitoris jutting out for her touch. He jerked as her mouth enclosed it. An answering ache surged in her groin.
'Something has to happen,' she thought frantically, not knowing what to do, only that she had to do it *now*.
Giles, feeling her urgency, pulled her up until their lips met, then reached down to press the tip of her to the entrance. On instinct, she pushed in.
And cried out.
"Giles!" she whimpered, suddenly up on her hands to stare at him. "It's so….."
"Buffy," he said softly, for the abrupt plunge in had taken him by surprise too. He'd thought she'd go slower. It was easier for him though, for he'd been on the receiving end of a man before.
Buffy closed her eyes, her throat raw from her hard draws of air. She felt her sex enclosed in the tightest way possible, yet she had no wish to pull free. If anything, she felt driven to press further.
She let her weight fall on him in an attempt to get deeper. "Giles….."
He began kissing her, tenderly urging her to move, one hand on her hip to direct her. She pulled back, but the demanding need to thrust down overcame her.
She pushed so hard that he murmured in protest.
"Sorry," she managed. She should do something for him, she thought, so it wouldn't hurt. She stilled, though every fiber of nerve and muscle ached for movement. Then she reached down between his legs and touched. Her fingertips rubbed over the bud, creating a pulse within him that she could feel. The passage around her began to constrict.
His kisses became wild.
"I can't….." she panted into his mouth, but he was lost in pleasure. She felt him tense, then cry out himself. She began pounding into him, flying, thrusting raggedly, her sex becoming something fiery and terribly hard.
"I'm…..I'm melting into you!" she groaned as something in her began spilling out in deep gelatinous streams, and the climax was intense and sparkling, like nuclear fission making a rainbow.
Afterwards, it felt raw. She held onto herself as she pulled free.
"Buffy," he said.
"Yes," she replied, feeling wonderful and languid.
"Where are you?" He put his hand over her eyes.
"Here," she whispered, touching him. "And you're here, where you'll always be." Being so sure of him, she was exhilarated.
He lifted his hand away, and Buffy found herself on the other side of the bed. Her blonde hair sparkled around her face and her *own* hands were before her, her own legs, her breasts…..*her*!
Beside her, looking as though he'd been slam-dunked, Giles blinked in quiet shock.
"Giles, did you feel that?" she asked, bewilderedly, excitedly.
"Um….." he started, and coughed as he found his male voice again.
She grinned. "Wow! Do you want me to do it again?"
---
Buffy woke to a face full of sunlight. She blinked, then rolled against Giles sleeping beside her. She cuddled against him, happy to be the shorter one in the relationship. It made it more snuggly for her.
He stirred. She raised her head to look at him, then put a hand out of the covers to touch his jaw and the two days worth of beard covering it. He'd been somewhat restless a few hours earlier too, when she'd stole downstairs to locate - and dump - every bottle of scotch she could find. It was as if, even in his sleep, he knew she was up to something.
His eyes opened at her touch. "Morning," he said with a soft smile.
"Hello." She lifted the covers to peek down at him. Yes, all the parts were there.
His gaze turned suspicious. "What do you want now?"
"All of it," she told him. Then, laughing, she dove in for a kiss.
END