Title: An Honest Man 4/4
Author: Sweetdoggie (stirling_summer@yahoo.com)
Disclaimer: No permission has been granted to use the characters.. They are owned by their creator, Joss Whedon, Twentieth Century Fox, UPN, WB, and Mutant Enemy. This story is non-profit and is intended solely as entertainment. No copyright infringement is intended.
Dawn had made arrangements to head back to her tiny dorm room once the semester started. She liked living with Buffy and Giles, but she also liked the independence being a college student actually gave her. She had never understood Buffy’s college identity crisis trauma thing, but she appreciated how her sister always kept her room ready in case Dawn wanted to spend a night or two at home. She wanted Buffy to be happy and she thought that maybe Giles was the man to do that for her, but had decided that they were never going to do anything about it while she was in the house.
Her sister and the Watcher had been dating every night for seven weeks. Giles treated Buffy like spun glass, so fragile that she might shatter if he made the wrong move. He courted her with tiny gifts, flowers, and trinkets that he thought she might like. In return, he received shy kisses, many happy glances, and a lot of hand holding. To Dawn it was pretty obvious that he wanted to make love to her so badly that he might drown from the tamped down hunger for his Slayer, but he had made a promise to her and to himself. Buffy would let him know when she was ready and he wouldn’t act until then. When Dawn had heard this bit of idiocy, she had simply rolled her eyes.
“Geez, and I thought my life was weird. Giles, you need to sweep her off her feet! You know what she’s like.”
“I do, and that is exactly why we must make this her decision. If I pushed her and something went wrong, she would use it as an excuse to never date anyone again, let alone me. Her well-being is of paramount importance, Dawn. That is what must be the bottom line.”
She sighed. “This is what my sister gets for getting involved with a decent guy. When she only dated jerks and buttheads, life was much simpler.”
“Yes, but those early dating years have now made my existence a small variant of Hell. I really do sympathize with Buffy. She has had some very hard incidents in her life. I do not blame her for being cautious.”
“Yeah. I can understand caution, but not with you. You wouldn’t hurt her.”
He put his hand on her shoulder. “And yet I have hurt her very deeply several times, both intentionally and unintentionally. If waiting now is building her confidence in me, then it is time well spent.”
“Well, I’m glad I’m going back to school. The waiting is making me nuts and maybe she’ll be more willing to make a move if you guys are here alone.”
He grinned. “Couldn’t hurt. Will you be all right at school?”
“Giles, I’m nearly nineteen!”
“Nineteen or Ninety, age doesn’t protect one from insecurities and loneliness. Know that we are always here for you, no matter what.”
“Buffy must be nuts. If you were mine, I’d never let you out of my sight.” Dawn leaned over and gave him her best hug.
The Slayer in question walked in just at that moment. “Hey, sis! Moving in on my guy?”
“Hah! As if I’d have a chance! Besides, Giles was just telling me that if I have any trouble at school, I can come home.”
“Absolutely! You know I always keep your room ready. I always will. Even when you get married and have ten kids, your room will be here if you need it.”
“If I am ever so dumb as to have ten kids, you’d better pad that room for me.”
Buffy walked up to them and put her arms around them both. “I am so lucky. I’ve got the bestest boyfriend and the bestest sis in the whole world..”
They both responded with grins and hugs of their own. Dawn finally broke away, leaving Buffy in Giles’ arms. “I gotta get going. My ride is going to be here in ten minutes.”
Buffy frowned slightly. “Humphrey.”
“Yes.” Dawn nodded. “He volunteered.”
“You’ve been seeing a lot of him lately.”
“I’ve been trying to entice him into dating me. It’s hard work.”
“He’s…” she narrowed her eyes in thought, “eleven years older than you.”
“Apparently, I got the fall-in-love-with-an-older-man gene too.”
“He’d better not hurt you or he won’t have to worry about brushing his teeth ever again, cuz I’ll knock them right down his throat!”
“He’s not going to hurt me.” Dawn was patient with her sister. “He’s not a vampire, jerk, or secret life guy. He’s a qualified Field Watcher and has six Slayers reporting to him. Giles likes him.” She used the last as a clinching argument. Giles wouldn’t like somebody stupid.
Buffy looked up at her Watcher. “What do you think of him?”
“Well, as to the age difference, who am I to talk? As for the rest of it, Dawn is quite right. He’s a very conscientious young man and I do like him. I don’t believe he would be so foolish as to deliberately hurt our Dawn.”
The Slayer looked mollified, but secretly determined to keep an eye on the young Watcher. Dawn had moved all her stuff to the front hallway and Buffy and Giles helped her get it outside when Humphrey knocked to retrieve the younger girl. Buffy wouldn’t humiliate her sister by quizzing the guy she liked in front of her, but she did invite him to dinner on Saturday, supposedly to thank him for helping Dawn out, but really to study him and his intentions carefully.
He accepted gratefully. Any Watcher would jump at the chance of dining with the Slayer and her Watcher. Though literally hundreds of girls had been called to be slayers, only Buffy was The Slayer.
Dawn rolled her eyes behind his back knowing full well what her sister was up to. “We’d better go, Humph, it’s a long drive.”
Buffy and Giles stood on the curb, waving and watching till they were out of sight. She turned to him and grinned.
“Wow. I feel sorry for mom now. It’s really hard sending out your one chick from the nest.”
“Dawn will be fine. She’s rooming with two other Watcher-in-training girls. They should keep themselves out of trouble.”
“She’s all grown up.”
“Getting there,” he conceded.
She wrapped her arm around his waist. “Why don’t we go have a cup of tea?”
“You took the words right out of my mouth.” They laughed and went back inside.
~*~
Buffy was gathering her courage up to ask Giles to make love with her. It had been two months and a bit and she was starting to feel very sexually frustrated. They would come so close, but he always pulled back, saying that it had to be her decision made when she was not hampered by a flood of desire.
They were sitting down to breakfast one Saturday morning; Buffy was nibbling on a piece of toast. Her Watcher had just finished preparing tea for both of them and had joined her at the table. He looked at the newspaper by her place. “Anything interesting in the news?”
“More scandal from the Royals. Same old, same old. I didn’t even read it.”
“One does get rather tired of such endless drivel.”
“So, you have plans for the day?” She stirred her tea.
“Only insofar as I wish to spend it with you.”
“Good, because there’s something we need to talk about.”
He looked suddenly concerned. “What? Is Dawn all right?”
“She’s fine. I, um, just wanted to talk to you about, um…” she mumbled something he couldn’t understand.
“I’m sorry? I didn’t catch that last bit.” Giles was terrified that she wanted to break up with him. Perhaps he wasn’t a satisfactory boyfriend? He had tried to be perfect for her, but he was such an imperfect man that he realized the futility of his efforts early on. There was no way she could ever learn to reciprocate his feelings and now she was trying to find a way to let him down gently. He steeled himself for her words, knowing what was coming next would break his heart.
“We’ve been dating each other for two months…” she began hesitantly..
He nodded wordlessly, unable to say anything that would bring his dream to an end.
“You know I didn’t want to do it, at the beginning. I was very worried about how it would affect our relationship…”
“I know.”
“We’ve been together like that for two months now and I think we are ready for a change.”
“Ch, change?” he whispered.
“I’d like to make love with you.”
“Whaaa?”
She looked up at him shyly and found his mouth open and jaw about to hit the table.
“I thought you were breaking up with me!”
“No. I just think we’re ready to risk making love to each other.”
“Wh, when?”
“Whenever you want?” She looked a little surprised.
He took a bite of toast, washed it down with the rest of his tea, and stood up. “OK, I’m ready!”
She looked at him and felt a grin begin somewhere in her toes and work its way up her body till it hit her mouth. She started to laugh and when she saw the look on his face it made her ill-timed hilarity even worse. Soon, she was doubled over gasping for air as bellow after bellow of laughter rocked her frame. Giles stood by looking by turns shocked, eager, pleased, and uncomprehending.
“Buffy? Are you all right?”
She finally dragged herself to her feet and threw herself into his arms. “God, Giles. I just love you so much! Let’s go make love.”
He swept her up against his body and carried her back to his bedroom. He undressed her and lay her back gently on the bed, stepping back to remove his own garments, eyes on her the entire time. She lay on her side watching him, head propped up on her elbow, a little smile on her face.
“I do hope you had no other plans for the rest of the day, my dear.”
“Nothing that can’t be postponed,” she rejoined.
He threw himself on the bed with a jaunty bounce, causing Buffy to giggle. Cupping her face with his large hand, he stroked her jaw. “I love you desperately, my dear girl.”
“I love you too, Giles. More than I ever thought I’d love somebody again.”
“More than Angel?” he asked, cursing himself for his insecurities.
“More, and differently.” She reached out her hand and stroked it down his side, resting it momentarily on his hip. “When I loved him, I was a sixteen year old kid, yeah, weight of the world on my shoulders and all that, but still just a kid. He was attractive to me because it was soooo romantic. The ensouled vampire in love with the girl sworn to kill his kind. Eeurgh! It’s enough to make me barf.”
Giles laughed. “Well, I hope you don’t feel like, er, barfing when you look at me.”
She ran her eyes over his form. “No, barfing isn’t what comes to mind,” she agreed. “In fact…” She sat up and rolled him to his back straddling his hips. “Ravishing comes to mind.”
“Oooo! You’re going to ravish me?” He sounded intrigued.
“I had in mind sort of mutual ravishing,” Buffy told him, leaning down to kiss him. She pinned his shoulders to the bed and proceeded to do just that. Finding the sensitive spot just under his ear, she licked him and then breathed on the damp skin, feeling him give a delicious shudder.
Giles let his hands come up and wrap around her waist, marveling the entire time that she was so very tiny, yet so very powerful. He stroked down her hips and thighs finding her strength exciting. He cupped her breasts and gloried in how her nipples puckered as he touched her.
Her skin was as smooth and satiny as he had always dreamed and, giving in to impulse he bent and licked her side, confirming that she tasted as good as she felt. He felt fevered as he touched and stroked her as if desire for her was burning him from the inside out.
Buffy couldn’t believe the feelings he evoked in her. Who would have thought that her tweed-clad Watcher could ever make her feel like this? She panted with desire for him, arching into him even as he entered her body with his own. Physically, he filled her completely, but it wasn’t just on a physical level that she felt him. He had somehow managed to enter her consciousness as his body melded with hers. She could feel him with her heart, brain, and soul as well as within her body. The connection arced between them like a high voltage power line. As they climaxed, the fuse blew and they were literally knocked into unconsciousness by the feedback.
They awoke within seconds of each other. Buffy pushed herself off of him and flopped loosely onto the bed. She heard Giles groan and managed to lift her head.
“What…Was…That?”
“I can barely think. Give me a minute.” He tried to turn to her but his brain hadn’t reconnected with his body yet and he just flopped limply for a second before giving up. “Did it seem to you that we were joined on a metaphysical level?”
“Yeah. I could feel you inside my head. Were you really there?”
“So it seems. How extraordinary.”
“Got a theory?”
“Not yet.”
“Is this going to happen every time we make love?”
“I hope not. I doubt if our hearts could stand it.”
“See. I told you this would happen.”
“What?” He sounded astonished.
“I knew if we made love, something would happen. What do you want to bet that now we’ll never be able to touch each other again or something? Damnit!” She worked up enough strength to punch the pillow lightly.
“Don’t worry, love. We’ll figure this out and everything will be all right.” He managed to turn to her and pull her rather loosely against him.
She began to cry and he stroked her back, pressing her against him. They drifted off to sleep. By the time they woke again, the after-effects of the strange melding seemed to have dissipated. Giles got up and walked to the bathroom to relieve a rather pressing matter. He stopped to wash his face and hands then brush his teeth. His grasping hand broke his toothbrush in half as if it were a twig. The broken pieces fell into the sink and he picked them out with a curse. Digging around in the medicine cabinet produced another brush. He put paste on it and stuck it in his mouth when it too broke. Giles spit the paste out of his mouth and swore. It woke Buffy.
“What’s the problem, Giles?”
“I was going to brush my teeth but these bloody, cheap toothbrushes keep breaking.”
She giggled. “That happened to me when I first got my Slayer strength. It was so funny! I didn’t know what was happening and snapped about four brushes in half before I realized that I was simply pressing too hard on them.” There was a moment of silence. “Uh, Giles? Do you feel stronger, by any chance?” He heard the bedsprings creak and a second later she joined him in the bathroom.
“Push against my hand as hard as you can, OK?” she asked him.
He stuck his hand out and pushed and while she didn’t move, for the first time since he had met her, he felt she was making an effort with him.
“Wow. You are like totally strong now. That’s definitely Slayer strong.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yep. You are at least as strong as one of the newly Called girls.”
“So… I would say this is definitely a result of our joining.”
She looked at him. “Well, duh.”
His eyes gleamed. “You aren’t too big for me to take over my knee, you know. And now I’m strong enough to do it!”
She snorted. “You might have the physical strength, but you don’t know how to use it yet. I could still take you.”
“We shall have to put that to the test.”
“How about after we get cleaned up, eat, and do some research?”
He chuckled.
“What?”
“I can hardly believe that my Buffy is suddenly the voice of reason.”
“Maybe you got my strength and I got some of your gigantic brain power. Heh, heh. If that’s the case, I made out like a bandit!”
She helped Giles get dressed, remembering her own first efforts to control superhuman muscle. They still went through two shirts when he accidentally ripped the arms out.
“I’m thinking T-shirt, Rupert.”
He stood looking down at the several pieces of material that had formerly been a long-sleeved shirt and ruefully agreed with her. He went to his dresser and tried to open the drawer but pulled too hard and sent the contents flying around the room. “This is going to get old rather quickly,” he told her with a frown. “How long did it take you to control yourself?”
“A couple of weeks for the day-to-day stuff, but I still have to be careful with my personal contacts. Sometimes I hug people a little too much, ya know?”
Since he had been on the receiving end of some of those bone-crushing hugs, he knew exactly what she was talking about.
“This poses a rather large problem for me, then. How am I supposed to carry on my work at the Council when I can barely dress myself?”
“We’ll go work out after breakfast. Physical conditioning will help you with the control issues. Merrick helped me as soon as we began training.” She paused for a moment. “Do you think this is permanent?”
“I have no idea. It feels permanent, however.”
Buffy pulled on a pair of sweat pants and a t-shirt. “Let’s start out with a jog.”
Six hours later, they flopped bonelessly onto a training mat. Giles had apparently also inherited Slayer stamina with his great strength. “As tired as I am, I have to admit, I feel better than I have for twenty years.”
“Really?” She rolled over on her stomach to look at him. “Can you imagine what sex is going to be like with neither of us holding back? Maybe we should find a nice private field or something. I wouldn’t want to bring down the house.”
He looked at her with a gleam in his eyes. “How about here? This is our private training room. Nobody would come here without an invitation. Well, Willow and Xander would, but luckily they are on the other side of the world right now.”
“That is lucky, isn’t it?” She straddled him. “I suppose we owe it to ourselves to experiment, right? All in the name of science.”
“Oh, yes.”
At the end of the next hour, science was satisfied and so were they. Forgetting to be worried about the effects of their previous joining had helped. Their connection had been wild, fulfilling and fun, but it hadn’t sent jolts of lightening through their bodies—a fact for which they were devoutly thankful.
“I may never walk again,” Buffy told him softly.
“Did I hurt you?” His voice was concerned.
“No. But I haven’t had unrestrained sex like that for a long time. Parts of me are very aware of that fact.” At his continued expression of worry, she rolled over and put her head on his chest. “I’m fine. I wouldn’t have traded this for all the tea in China.”
“It was something, wasn’t it?”
“I’ll say.”
They rested for another fifteen minutes before gathering up their clothing and heading for the shower.
Giles debated for several days before deciding that he needed to tell the Council what had happened. He had been researching for hours but still hadn’t come up with a reasonable explanation for the change. He also found out that with his increased physical abilities came a slight reduction in his ability to stay still for extended periods of time. He looked up from a book and glanced at his Slayer. If this was how she felt all those years in Sunnydale when they would research well into the night, he wondered that she hadn’t gone mad. It increased his respect for her willpower and self-determination. He told her so.
She grinned up at him from her own book. “It had to be done. Sometimes the energy just burns through you, though, and you have to get up and move. School was much harder than research. It seemed that those classes were endless and there was no escape.”
“Allow me to apologize for all the times I told you that you weren’t applying yourself. If I had had an inkling of what you were experiencing, I would have given you a medal for perseverance.”
“Hey, don’t worry about it. No big.” Secretly, she chuckled over the fact that he found sitting still to be such a chore. She had nearly a decade of experience at fighting down her body’s natural urges. He was a total newbie. It was fun to have the shoe on the other foot for a change. “Why don’t you run around the block a couple of times? That’s what you always recommended to me.” She hid a grin.
“You’re loving this, aren’t you?”
“You have to admire the poetry of it, Giles. Yes, I guess I kind of am.”
“Wench!” He got up and stalked her around the room.
“Now, Giles!” she said, backing up while laughing.
He feinted left and she dodged right and he caught her and threw her over his shoulder. When she wiggled, he slapped her bottom. She used her position to reach down and grip his tight butt in her hands. He yelped when she gave it a squeeze.
“Payback is Hell, Mr. Giles.”
“Let’s adjourn to my room. We’ll see who pays what, eh?”
~*~
Informing the Council that Giles had obtained Slayer strength and stamina was every bit as embarrassing as he had suspected it would be. Buffy wondered if a portal might conveniently open so that she could slink away into it. The Council, being what it was, wanted a full accounting. Blushing, Giles relayed his courtship of his Slayer and her eventual return of his affections. He told of their glorious joining and what had come from it.
They asked for a demonstration of his strength. He bent a steel bar at their request. There was some conferral. The Council librarian, one of the few remaining Watchers from the previous generation, spoke up.
“I’ve read about this happening before,” he told them. “Watchers and Slayers are both creatures of magic. We aren’t merely a group of bureaucrats organized to help one girl fight the forces of darkness. We have and are magic in our own right, though we seldom remember our origins. At first, the Powers that Be assumed that the Slayer would be enough, but she was one and Evil was everywhere. She needed to fight, but also needed to learn, to be guided, to have the burdens of daily life removed so that she could be the ultimate warrior. The Powers sought out men and women with magical aptitude and taught them what they would need to know to assist the Slayer. From that original group came the first Watcher. He went to the Slayer and partnered with her. Under his direction, she prospered, though like all Slayers, she eventually died. The Powers were pleased with their experiment and sent the Watcher to the next girl, and the next and so on.”
“My supposition is this: when the Watcher and the Slayer fight as these two have fought, side by side, back to back for years and defeat many formidable opponents, the magic of their beings become fused together. They saved each other’s lives many times, thus creating a bond to overlay their already mystical joining from the Powers. When Dr. Giles and Ms. Summers took the final step and made their union one of flesh, the Powers sealed it with their approval and blessing.”
“As far as I know, this has happened only three times in history. In the previous two instances, the Slayers didn’t live long enough to experiment or leave much of a record behind—and when the Slayer died, so too did the Watcher. Circumstances have changed rather dramatically since those days, however, and our Slayer gives us every reason to suspect that she, and her Watcher, will be around for a very long time, indeed.” He stopped, paused, took a drink of water, and looked sternly at Giles. “I would make a suggestion, however. English gentlemen, however long they have been living in the wilds of America, do not seduce young women. Rupert, you need to marry the girl.”
Giles paled, then blushed again as he turned to his Slayer. “It would be my honor. Buffy? Would you please make an honest man of me and be my wife?”
She looked confused and flustered, then fixed him with a gimlet eye and finally nodded her head. “I think the honor would be mine, Rupert Giles.”
The elderly Council librarian mused over the strange workings of fate. The Powers bestowed their blessings where they were needed. Who knew what the future held for this extraordinary couple?
END