Title: Progression
Author: Rainne Cassidy
Rating: FRAO/NC17
Pairing: B/G
Disclaimers: Buffy & Co. belong to Joss Whedon, Kazui, Fox, etc.
Spoilers: Helpless
Distribution/Archive: Ask first.
Feedback: Please
Summary: Unofficial sequel to "Passage" by WorstWitch,
http://www.buffygiles.net/p/passagenew.htm

Author's Note: This sequel is unofficial and written without the permission or consultation of WorstWitch. Flashback sequence ( {} ) is copied directly from that work without the author's permission.

His hand trembled slightly as he reached up to gently bathe the blood off her face. She winced slightly as he put a bit of pressure on the wound, and saw a sympathetic expression of pain cross his face as she did so. He didn't stop, though, and soon the blood was cleared away. He stood and stepped away for a moment, returning with a first aid kit from which he drew a number of butterfly closures. He concentrated on tending her injury until it was done, then he sat back on his heels and busied himself putting the first aid supplies away again.

She was silent, watching him move from the table to his office, and then from his office to the checkout counter, the book cage, and back to the counter somewhat aimlessly. He seemed to want to say something, but couldn't quite come up with the words. His hands fluttered uselessly at his sides. She, by contrast, sat perfectly still in her chair, one denim-clad leg drawn up and clasped against her chest. There were a hundred, perhaps a thousand things that could be said right now, but none of them would make things any better.

Buffy cast her mind back over the last two and a half years. She couldn't imagine him not being her Watcher any more. From the first day she met him, there had been a connection between the two of them, undeniable and strong. He'd saved her life more than once, and in return she also had saved his. He trained her, he tutored her, and he fought at her side. She couldn't imagine not having him around, even if only for those things. But there was something more as well.

Outside of the first conversation they had right after it had occurred - what she had come to refer to in her mind as That Time - he had refused to speak of it with her. He was embarrassed, she thought, and perhaps ashamed as well. Despite the life-or-death circumstances surrounding the incident, he was probably still, even now, carrying a boatload of guilt around about it, because that was the kind of man Rupert Giles was. But there was no getting around the fact that it had happened. She had given this man her innocence, and he had taken with it her heart. Now she was suddenly faced with the prospect of losing him, and the sinking knowledge that she had never done anything about it.

Not, of course, that he would have allowed her to do anything about it. She had made a few tentative overtures in the weeks that followed That Time, but he had carefully ignored them, pretended they were simply overtures that any friend might make to another friend. She had gotten the message. And then she had gotten involved with Angel.

She would never forget sitting in his car the night she told him what had happened, and hearing him tell her she would get nothing from him but his support and respect. How her heart had ached, wanting desperately to cry out that what she wanted from him was his love! But at the time, there had been Jenny, and Buffy might be a lot of things, but she wasn't the kind of girl who tried to wreck relationships.

Giles paced, trying not to stare at Buffy, settling for cadging glances out of the corners of his eyes. She was perfectly still, a statue of the Slayer deep in thought, giving no outward hint of what must be going through her mind. Did she hate him? Would she send him away? Fired or not fired, he would never leave her unless she wished him to go.

He had been bound to her since the very beginning, though things had gotten a bit nerve-wracking after the incident on the coast, until he had managed to get through to her that what he had done he could not do again. There was no way that he could be her lover, even if he had believed that she had truly wanted that. He'd had to rebuff her advances as gently as possible until she finally got the message. That had been difficult. but not as difficult as listening to her confess that she had given herself to that vampire, and not completely losing his mind with rage and jealousy. She was his Slayer, she should have been his. but it could never be.

If Buffy were honest with herself, which she mostly tended to be, she understood most of the many reasons why she and Giles could not have been together at That Time. She frowned. What was with the euphemisms in her mind? She could name it. When she and Giles had made love, when she had given him her virginity, or he had taken it, to get her out of the trap in the cave above the sea. She had known sex could be good - she knew enough girls in L.A. who had extensive track records, even at sixteen - but she had never known how deeply a man could touch her when he touched her with the love Giles had shown.

And that was the trouble, wasn't it? She loved Giles, and he loved her, but there were so many obstacles in the way. He was over twice her age, not to mention the whole statutory rape thing and the fact that if her mother had known, Buffy would probably be spending her eighteenth birthday getting released from juvenile detention. Plus, he was her Watcher, and the impression Buffy had was that relations between Watcher and Slayer were something that Just Wasn't Done.

Her eyes narrowed as she watched him continue to pace and sneak glances at her whenever he thought she might not notice. He wasn't her Watcher any more, was he? He'd been fired. And she was eighteen now, so that neatly handled the whole statutory issue. In fact, the only issue that still remained was the fact that he was so much older than she, and the elephant in the room that was his betrayal of her - an elephant that would remain in the room unless they did something about it tonight.

Giles stopped pacing when Buffy narrowed her eyes. It was a sure sign she was about to do something definitive: probably finalize their separation. He felt his heart constrict at the thought. Never to see her again, even in an ancillary capacity, would be intolerable to him. But he would bow to her wishes. After everything that lay between them, he could be honest enough with himself to admit that he loved her enough to do whatever she wished.

Buffy stood and walked over to him. She stared into his face for a long time, clearly measuring something in him, and just as clearly satisfied with whatever she was finding there. Without saying a word, she reached up, wrapped her hand around the back of his neck, and pulled his lips down to meet hers.

Whatever he had been expecting, it wasn't this, but he didn't struggle or try to break her grip; in fact, he slid his arms around her with a vague sense of relief. There was also wonder, and a small voice in the back of his mind saying, I remember this. He melted into her embrace, welcoming her touch, reveling in her forgiveness. And he found himself weeping when she released him.

She stepped back from him, studying his tear streaked face, and gave a slight, unreadable smile. Then she spoke for the first time since Travers had left the library. "Take me home, Giles," she said softly. Something of his disappointment must have shown on his face, because her lips twitched and she clarified: "Your home."

They made the drive in silence, their only contact her hand lying gently atop his on the gearshift. When they arrived, he let her in without a word, and he closed and locked the door behind him. He paused there, his hand still on the solid, warm oak, and pondered briefly the step he was contemplating taking with her. Buffy. His Slayer. No, not his Slayer any more; and yet, still his in a very real way that she would never be anyone else's.

Her voice interrupted his desperate musings. "We never really talked about it," she said softly.

He took a deep breath and turned to face the inevitable. "No," he agreed, not even pretending not to know what she was talking about. "We didn't."

"I was too young," she said, pushing her hair back off her shoulders as she spoke. "And neither of us was ready for something like that. And you were my Watcher, and it wouldn't have been right."

"All of those reasons," he said, nodding slightly, "and a thousand other both valid and not. It could never have worked, then."

She nodded as well. "No, it couldn't have." She walked toward him. "But it can now."

"Buffy," he reached out and took her hands, "you don't have to do this simply to keep me here. I haven't any intention of leaving, no matter what Travers said."

"I know you don't," she said simply. "This isn't about that."

He reached up, unable to stop himself from running a hand through her hair. It was as silky and soft as he remembered. "What, then?"

Her fingers tightened slightly on his. "This is about us. It's about coming full circle. It's about things we need and things that bring us closer together." She made a small sound, frustrated by her inability to clearly articulate herself. "It's about us."

He closed his eyes, his expression showing pain. "I don't deserve this."

"It's not about deserving," she said, her voice softer now. "I don't either. I've hurt you, you've hurt me. Maybe we're even, maybe we aren't. But we're both hurting, and we have to stop hurting and start healing." She reached up to him, pulled him down into another soft, sweet kiss. "We need this."

{"I can't do this!" he pleaded, knowing that he couldn't free himself from her superior strength. He could only appeal to her to release him, allow him to flee her presence before he betrayed her so horribly ...

"Giles," she demanded, arms closing around his neck, more gently, but ready to grab him again if he tried to abandon her. "Please. It has to be you," Buffy whispered, kissing him for the first time, her mouth whispering across his rough chin, her gaze intense. "Nobody else can do this for me. I don't trust anybody else. It has to be you ..."}

Their words echoed that last time; his token struggles easily overcome once again by the face of her calm acceptance and her steady, smoldering desire. He gave in, buried his hands in her hair, his face in the crook of her neck. A sound like a soft sob escaped from him as he breathed in her scent, and then finally capitulated, pressing a soft kiss to the flesh beneath his lips. "Oh, God help me," he whispered. "I love you, Buffy."

"I love you, too, Giles," she assured him, her hand rubbing his back gently. "Now come upstairs with me."

She led him up the stairs, laughing with her eyes, and he followed, wondering how on earth this had happened to him. At the top of the stairs, she backed across the loft. Making sure he was watching, she shrugged the straps of her overalls off, and the whole works slid down her body to puddle around her ankles on the floor, leaving her clad only in a slightly grubby white tee shirt and a pair of green silk panties. She toed her shoes off somewhere in the pile of denim.

He shrugged out of his braces and worked the buttons of his shirt, trying to hurry out of it and instead getting caught in a tangle of braces and cuffs. Still laughing with her eyes, but not with her mouth, Buffy came over and helped him. He found himself moments later in his undershirt, almost breathless with her half-naked nearness.

Her nimble fingers dropped to his belt buckle; she worked the catch and then the button and zipper underneath. His pants slid to the floor as hers had and he toed his shoes off as well, stepping out of the pile of fabric to reach down and remove his socks.

Her hands slid under his undershirt, pulling it up until he had to stop and raise his arms for her to pull it off over his head. Clad now only in his boxers, Giles reached for her hands and pulled her close, holding her against him while he struggled to comprehend the enormity of what he was about to do.

It wasn't as though this was the first time either of them had made love; it wasn't even as though it was the first time they had made love together. But there was something so monumental about this step. It was the fact that now, suddenly, there were no real barriers to their actually making a go of things, if she wanted. Certainly there were perceptional barriers: his age, his position as her Watcher, what would their friends think, what would the neighbors say; but he didn't care about those things. He was her Watcher, bred for this over the centuries, and this was what he had been born for: to serve her.

Buffy felt that he was trembling again and rubbed her hands across his back to soothe him. It was a huge thing they were about to do, even if it wasn't the first time. It might as well be, if not for the fact that she perfectly well knew that Giles couldn't have forgotten, even if he was Represso-Guy. She made soothing noises as he shivered in her arms, supporting him with her own strength until he was able to stand again on his own, and then suddenly he was taking hold of her shirt and pulling it over her head.

Rational thought fled as he bared even more of her body. The analytical part of his mind insisted on cataloguing the differences he saw in her now; she was thinner, her breasts were not as full and rode higher on her slender frame; she was perhaps an inch or so taller now. His hands worked the clasp of her bra and then that scrap of fabric was fluttering to the floor even as his fingers skimmed over her flesh and under those silly, impractical panties, sliding them with the soft hiss of fabric down her legs. Then he was lifting her in his hands, carrying her to the bed, where he sat her on the mattress and laid her back, kissing her deeply.

Her arms came up lazily to wrap around his neck, provoking once again echoes of that time in the cave, and she abandoned herself to the fantastic obscenity of the things his lips and tongue were doing on their way down her neck to her collarbone. Her breath caught in her throat when his mouth made its way to a tender nipple, licking and sucking around the pink tip until it was rock-hard and almost aching, then crossing over to do the same thing to the other one. She made small sounds of pleasure as his mouth worked on her flesh, and he smiled into her skin as he began to lick and nibble a trail farther down, toward her navel.

The skin on her stomach pebbled up into gooseflesh as his tongue and lips found their way to her navel, the very tip of his tongue sliding into the indention and moving sensually against her stomach. Buffy felt the warm rush of arousal between her legs and her thighs parted on their own as he kissed his way toward her mound and knelt between her legs. Even so, she still jerked, startled, when Giles pressed his lips against the soft flesh of her inner thigh.

He looked up at her across her body. Her eyes were wide, uncertain, and he smiled slightly at her. "It's all right," he said softly, reaching out to touch her secret flesh gently with one finger. "I won't hurt you. I won't ever hurt you again, Buffy, I swear it." He closed his eyes against his own pain, determined to focus on her, and opened them again to find her expression softening into acceptance. He leaned forward them and traced her folds with the tip of his tongue.

She lay back and let him have his way, not that it was a hardship. The sensations he was bringing to life in her were exponentially greater than before, or even her one time with Angel. Her back arched under the determined working of his lips, teeth, tongue and even fingers. She could hear her own voice making sounds of pleasure, as though it was were coming from a great distance. Her entire being was focused on his mouth in a place where she'd never even imagined someone's mouth being. She had certainly known that it was a thing that was done, but no one had ever done this to her before, and she was lost in the pleasure.

For his part, he found that he was able to lose himself in the taste of her, in the joy of the sound of her voice crying out. She tasted like freedom to him, and he reveled in the sweet manumission he found in her body. He wrapped one hand around her hip to hold her steady, two fingers of his other hand carefully holding her open under his mouth. His tongue swept across her clit gently, worked its way all around the tender flesh, and then delved into her opening, sliding in as far as he could go. When he did this, she suddenly stopped breathing for a moment and then came with a warm rush, giving voice to her pleasure in soft, breathless cries.

He paused as she came down, not wanting to overstimulate her, and stood, shucking his boxers as he did so. When she opened her eyes, lazy and glazed with pleasure, she almost purred at the sight of him standing between her legs, his cock erect and straining for her. She raised her arms to him, and he took her hands, leaning over to kiss her. She tasted herself on him and liked it, raising her hips when his heavy erection brushed across her mound. "Please," she whispered, her hands stroking the flesh of his back. "Please, Giles."

He reached for the drawer of the night table, but she caught his hand and brought it back to the mattress. "It's okay," she said breathlessly, raising her hips again invitingly. "I'm on the pill."

He quirked an eyebrow. "You are?"

She nodded, then grinned slightly. "Mom took one look at Angel and I was at the doctor's office the next day."

He couldn't help but grin back. "Your mother is a wise woman."

He reached down between them and opened her a little with two fingers, supporting himself on his other hand, and slowly entered her. She was hot, and wet, and very tight, and he forced himself to move at an excruciatingly slow pace when her face tightened in discomfort.

It had been a year exactly since the last time she'd done this, and she could tell it; it didn't hurt quite as much as it had in that cave by the sea, but it definitely hurt, and she was grateful for his thoughtfulness in moving slowly. At last, though, she felt his hips press against her own and she knew that he was completely inside her. The very thought of that made her body shudder. He was perfectly still inside her, giving her a chance to adjust to his intrusive presence, and once she thought she was ready, she moved against him carefully, experimentally.

He responded by pulling back and sliding forward again, and she gasped, her fingers tightening against his back. "Oh, God."

He smiled, kissed her again, and began to move, slowly, building a rhythm and giving her time to find it and move into it with him before picking up the pace just a little. His arms on either side of her shoulders supported his weight and he was able to watch her face as he thrust into her. The play of sensations across her face was intoxicating to watch. He began to move a bit faster, thrust a little harder, and he both marveled and reveled in her responses.

Before long, he was driving deeply into her, thrusting hard, and she was pushing back against him, wanton in her desire. She was crying out her pleasure with each thrust, incoherent vowel sounds of gratification, and he was grunting slightly with effort, sweat coating both their bodies and making them slide together where their stomachs touched. Then he changed the angle of his thrusts slightly, and she gasped, stopped breathing, and screamed, coming hard around him, her entire body writhing beneath him as her inner muscles clamped and released, clamped and released, pulling him into his own hoarsely-shouted climax.

When it was over, he gathered her in his arms and held her close as their breathing and heart rates slowed. She gave a soft whimper when he, softening, fell out of her, but she snuggled closer to him, holding him tight and placing a soft kiss on his chest. There were no words between them, but then, there were none needed. They dozed slightly for a little while before he felt her slide out of bed.

He raised his head slightly and felt his heart clench when he realized she was collecting her clothing. "You're leaving?"

She nodded. "I need to go check on my mom and make sure she's okay," she said, pulling on her underclothes. "And I need a shower, because I'm filthy." She pulled her tee shirt on and stepped back into her overalls, tugging the straps over her shoulders, before walking over and leaning down to kiss him thoroughly. "But if you don't mind. I think I'll come back afterward." She glanced at the bedside clock. "It's only ten. I could be back here by midnight or one o'clock."

He threaded a hand through her hair and kissed her again. "I would very much like it if you came back," he said softly. "But please. be careful. Would you like me to give you a ride?"

She smiled, then turned and collected her shoes. "Then I will. And I don't need a ride; I'll be all right. See you soon." And she was gone. Moments later, he heard the front door unlock, open and then shut. He lay back on the bed, breathing in the smell of sex and Buffy that filled his loft. Then he closed his eyes. She would be back soon, and he would never let her go again.

--fin--