Title: Possession 2/4
Author: Saint Buffy
Feedback: is the self-raising flour in the cake mix of fic creation
Disclaimer: Not mine, don't sue.
Distribution: Dee, Gabi, Dword, Dusty, anyone else just ask
Buffy was up early the next morning, suspecting that Giles would be awake too. When she got downstairs she felt a stab of disappointment as she noticed he was already dressed, sitting at the kitchen counter.
"Morning," she said sleepily, still in her pyjamas. Giles looked up from the book he was reading and smiled.
"Hello," he said.
"How was the sofa?" Buffy asked, starting breakfast. Giles got up to help her.
"Fine, thank you," he replied, crossing behind her. Buffy felt herself shiver at his nearness, and distracted herself with breakfast things.
"Good morning," a voice said behind them. It was Joyce. "Rupert, you're round here early," she added, sounding surprised. Giles shot Buffy a look, telling her that she could handle her mother however she wanted. Buffy went with the truth.
"Actually, Giles stayed here last night," Buffy said, eyes on the toaster as she loaded it up. "His bed's been possessed by something."
"Oh," Joyce said, unfazed. "Is there some coffee?"
Buffy marvelled at how far her mother had come, accepting things that sounded completely insane without so much as a blink. She and Giles got the meal together quickly, sharing jobs, each seeming to anticipate the others' movements. Joyce sat at the counter, watching them.
"You two act like an old married couple," Buffy's mother said after a while. Buffy glanced at Giles, thinking her mother had read her mind. She tried to act naturally.
"Why?" she managed.
"Just the way you work together, you know, dividing things without having to talk about it…" Joyce said with a chuckle, "… Anyone would think you'd been living together for years."
Buffy met Giles's eyes and caught an odd expression in them that made her chest tighten. She shook herself and finished the breakfast.
"It's a slayer-watcher thing, I guess," she said, giving Giles another look. He turned away.
"I imagine it must be," he said, voice light.
They never touched, Buffy realised. All this time spent together and she hardly ever laid a finger on him outside of the training room. Sitting at the counter beside him, their legs brushed together lightly and Giles automatically shifted away. Buffy was disappointed. Maybe if they touched more, she would know what she was feeling about him.
Dawn appeared, blinking sleepily, slopping into the kitchen in Buffy's slippers.
"Hey guys," Dawn said before she noticed Giles. "What are you doing here?"
"Possessed?" Anya asked in amazement. "I've never heard of that before." The gang sat around in the Magic Box, discussing the problem of Giles's bed as he researched. Tired from a night of worrying about his home and his slayer and bending himself into a sofa-friendly shape, Giles was hardly in the mood for the teasing he knew he would receive. The pillow he had been sleeping on had smelt slightly of Buffy, a smell that had involuntarily aroused him, adding an even more unbearable angle to a night of relative hardship. Now lack of sleep and frustration was making him feel tense and irritable.
"Maybe it was pissed about not seeing any action since 1973," Xander joked. Giles glared at him.
"That's hardly accurate," he said mildly. Buffy cleared her throat.
"Whatever it is, we need to find a way to get it out," she said. Willow reached for a book, a thoughtful look on her face.
"It could be a ghost, or a manifestation of something like at the Initiative frat house," she said.
"Or it could be something completely new," Giles finished wearily.
"We went round this morning, and it threw a drawer at Giles," Buffy reported. Giles nodded.
"It's getting stronger. That would point to the presence of a mystical being, rather than pure, thoughtless mystical energy," he finished. The gang nodded, all reaching for some of the books on the table. "We need to find a way to, uh, evict it."
It was late in the afternoon before they made any progress. The crick in Giles's neck was joined by an unspecific pain in his back, and then by a redness and dryness in his tired eyes.
"Ooh," Willow said suddenly, in a period of relative stillness. The gang lifted their heads.
"What?" Buffy asked. Willow waved a hand, reading on quickly. She nodded in satisfaction and looked up.
"It's one of two things," she said confidently. "Either Giles has an infestation of house demons, or it's a trapped spirit that has been displaced."
"Of course," Giles murmured, remembering the demons as Willow spoke.
"House demon?" Xander asked, shutting his own book. Giles cleared his throat.
"Small demons that used to be common in the dark ages," he filled in. "They are born with no physical presence, so grab hold of whatever they can. They would be trying to get out of the house."
"How?" Buffy asked. Giles looked at her.
"By killing the inhabitants. Once they're dead, the demons possess their body to leave the house."
"How do we know it's not just a spirit, though?" Tara asked softly. "Demon expulsion is different to exorcism."
"We could see if the presence attacks anyone else," Willow suggested. "If it's just after Giles, we're dealing with house demons."
"Why's that?" Buffy asked. "Why are they just after Giles?" The note of anger in her voice made Giles look at her, hiding his glance. She was scowling, he thought, touched at her concern.
"House demons are like vampires," Willow explained. "Only they don't need invitations to get in, they need one to get out."
"And they get these `invitations' by killing the occupier," Giles finished dryly. Buffy scowled again.
"Why don't you just invite them out?" she asked. Giles shook his head.
"They would manifest as physical beings. That would not be pleasant," he said shortly.
"We still don't know that it's a house demon that we're dealing with," Xander put in. He stood up. "I'll go over to Giles' and see if I get hit."
"Are you sure?" Buffy asked. "I should go. If something happens, I heal quicker."
Xander shrugged. "Believe me, if something happens, I'll be out of the door so fast the things wouldn't have a chance of hitting me. See you guys in a while."
"I'm going too," Anya said, abandoning her post by the cash register and striding across the shop floor in a way that deterred anyone from arguing with her. She and Xander left the shop, and Giles got up to take over the till.
"Buffy, Willow, you two concentrate on how to banish a house demon. Tara, could you look into exorcism?"
"Okay," Tara said, and the three women bent over their books again.
Giles looked around the training room, wondering if he could set up a fold-up bed in one corner. It didn't seem as if his current domestic situation was going to be solved any time soon, and he really couldn't keep staying at the Summers' house forever. The couch was murdering his back and anyway, the proximity to Buffy was growing unbearable.
He thought he was used to having her so nearly his but yet untouchable. Seeing her with Riley had made things easier, in a way, made it more straightforward. He couldn't have her because the slayer was with someone else. Since the commando had left things had become less clear, less easy to live with. Staying at her house had been a wonderful, sensuous torture. Feeling her hands on his face, smelling her scent on his pillow- it had left him wanting more. Wanting more of the woman he could never have.
It had been good to throw himself into the problem of his bed. The sooner he sorted it out, the sooner things could get back to normal, and having any problem to focus on was a welcome distraction from his slayer.
The door behind him opened. Giles turned to see Buffy coming into the training room.
"Are they back yet?" he asked. She shook her head.
"No… I guess that's good, right? Unless they decided the bed needed more testing…" Her face took on a look of horror. "I so didn't mean that the way it sounded."
"I think I shall not understand what you're talking about, for the good of my mental health," Giles replied with a smile. Buffy grinned back and wandered closer to him.
"How's the head?" she asked. Giles frowned for a moment before he remembered the injury he had received the previous night.
"Oh, it's forgotten," he said honestly. Buffy stopped in front of him, and he marvelled at how true that was- her presence had driven everything else from his mind.
"Giles," she began, then stopped. He looked down worriedly at her.
"What is it?" he asked. Buffy stood for a moment, seeming to make up her mind about something.
"Nothing," she said, but stepped forward and slid her arms around his waist, turning her head into his shoulder and holding him tightly.
His arms rose of their own accord and tightened around her back, even before he mind could quite register what was happening. He stared over her head, almost afraid to breathe, wondering why she had suddenly entrusted him with her slight weight, leaning entirely into his body. His arms wrapped closely around her, holding her near, and Giles wondered if he would be able to let her go.
"Are you all right?" he asked eventually, thankful that his voice came out as more than a squeak.
"Mmm," Buffy replied, her head still buried against his jacket. His eyes raked the walls, the ceiling of the training room, desperate. "I just wanted a hug."
"You've, er, never really… I mean, you haven't…" She was giggling against him as Giles tried to get his sentence out.
"Stuttery Giles. I haven't heard him for a while," Buffy teased, looking up at him with a fond smile. Giles smiled back down at her, uncontrollably, and then realised the impossible closeness of her mouth to his and stepped back as his body began to react.
"Sorry," he said as she looked surprised. "We should check on progress," he added, and moved towards the door to the shop. Buffy hesitated behind him, and then followed.