Title: Aspect of the Demon
Author: Sweetdoggie (stirling_summer@yahoo.com)
Pairing: B/G
Rating: R
Summary: What if it were Giles who got the aspect of the Demon?
Spoilers: season 3
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.

Since it was a school night, Buffy asked Giles if he would mind patrolling with her so he could help her with her homework. He agreed and they had set off for a prolonged tour of several of Sunnydale’s many cemeteries. Several dusted vampires later, he was quizzing Buffy about the parts of the cell when something tore out of the bushes and attacked him, knocking him backwards off a tombstone.

Buffy leaped onto the demon, pulling her dagger and making a long slice across its chest. Blood sprayed from the wound, but because the creature was turning when she cut it, the majority of the flow hit Giles and totally missed Buffy. He swore and wiped the disgusting flood from his face while the Slayer finished off the beast.

“Are you OK?” Buffy ran to him running her hands under his jacket and along his ribs to check for damage. “It didn’t get you, did it?”

“Other than being covered in demon effluvia, I’m fine,” he assured her, though he did feel a bit odd. He opted not to mention it to her or she’d have him in the emergency room before he could blink.

“I do think I had better head home, though. I definitely could use a shower.”

She nodded. “I’d burn those clothes. Well, I mean, I would anyhow. They’re majorly ugly, but now they got that demon flu stuff on ‘em, eeeeuw.”

He smiled. “Yes. Quite so.”

“I’ll walk you.”

They were about a block from his apartment when he could have sworn he heard Buffy say something to him.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Huh? I didn’t say anything.”

>Wouldn’t it be cool if he did take off his clothes? Oooo. I’ll bet he’s got a nice chest. I know his butt’s totally of the good.<

The look he gave her was inexplicable.

>Look at that face. Isn’t he just too cute? I like his lips. Stop it, Buffy. You know he’d freak if he knew what you were thinking about him.<

Giles was freaking. Something very strange was going on. They arrived at his apartment. “Would you like to come in and have a cup of tea?” he offered politely. “I’ll go clean up if you’ll make it.”

“Tea? Sure. That would be great.”

>Tea? Tea isn’t what I want from you, Watcher-mine! Can I watch you clean up? Or better yet, can I help?<

They entered his flat and he practically ran into the bathroom, breathing heavily. He locked the door and showered, getting all traces of the demon off his body. He wanted to see if this mind-reading phenomenon still worked. After dressing rather more quickly than normal, he hurried downstairs to the kitchen, where Buffy was involved in tea preparation. “Guess you must have really wanted that tea, huh?”

“Y, yes.” He left it at that. “Um, I need to research what that demon was that attacked us tonight. It wasn’t familiar.”

She nodded. “OK, I’ll help.”

>Crap! Another research session. Doesn’t he realize that all I want to do is rip his clothes off and have my way with him? Stop it, Buffy. You’re supposed to be in love with Angel. Huh. Big dumb broody feel-sorry-for-myself Angel. Well, Angel is good looking…Giles is good looking and smart. Smart is such a turn on. Willow was right about that. Oooo. Goody, he has to get a book off the bottom shelf. Look at the way those pants fit. That butt is just begging for me to bite it.<

Giles straightened up rather quickly and practically flung a book at her. He sat in his chair and let Buffy take the couch. Two hours of research with her thinking things at him nearly drove him mad. He had no idea that she was such a raging mass of hormonal impulses. It was even more disconcerting to have those impulses directed at himself. At one point, she had lapsed into a fantasy about Slayer/Watcher sex that had him squirming in his chair, desperately trying to fight down the raging erection her thoughts caused him.

Finally, he stood up and faked a yawn. “We aren’t finding much tonight. Why don’t you head home and we’ll take this up again tomorrow at the library?”

“OK, if you’re sure.” >God! He smells so good. I just want to lick him all over like a lollipop. I’d love to have sex with him in the library.<

Giles walked stiffly to the door and slumped against it after she had left. What was he going to do now? He could suddenly read the mind of his Slayer, his charge, and she lusted after him. His own fantasies of sex with Buffy paled beside hers. Who knew the child, no, scratch that, woman was so versatile? If he were ten years younger, hell, even five years, he’d give it a go, but she was so much younger than he, it would be wrong to give in to his feelings. He tried not to listen to the tiny voice screaming in his head that said it wouldn’t be wrong since she obviously wanted it too.

His sleep was short and troubled by thoughts of shagging his Slayer till they were both too weak to move. He let his mind rove; thinking things that made him blush, even though he was alone in the privacy of his bedroom. Finally, in desperation to get rid of the persistent erection throbbing between his legs, he took matters into his own hands, crying her name as he climaxed.

Since she had come back last summer he had looked at her differently. She had proven that she was an adult; fully capable of living on her own with the new confidence she’d gained in her abilities. He made a deliberate effort to hold her at a distance, to continue to think of her as a vulnerable child. However, reading her thoughts was clearly revealing that Buffy was all grown up now. He needed to find out what demon had done this to him so he could reverse the effects before he went mad with unslaked desire.

Getting to the library was an interesting experience. Snippets of thoughts wafted through his mind like the smell of greasy fries that always hung over the cafeteria. He was glad for the relative peace of his library. Not ten minutes after he arrived, Xander, Willow and Buffy entered like Storm Troopers, if, that is, Storm Troopers could be said to giggle and laugh as they pushed their way into the room.

“Hi, Giles!” Willow sang as she headed for their table.

“’Lo, G-man!” Xander, even at eight in the morning, was still irritating, Giles noted.

“Giles! Did you get any sleep last night?” Buffy asked him, standing hands on hips. “You have dark circles under your eyes. I know what that means. You researched without me!”

Giles blushed at the memory of what else he had done without her. Thank God she hadn’t gotten the demon blood on her. He dreaded to think what the outcome might have been if she could read his thoughts.

>Giles looks tired. I wonder what he and Buffy were researching? Why didn’t they call me? I like to research. Huh. Asking Buffy to pick up a book is like asking me to Slay. We can do it, but how lousy are we at it?< Willow’s thoughts were making Giles smile. She was always ready to help out. He wondered if he could find someone to sponsor her to be a Watcher? She was wasted in civilian life. He made a note to speak to Wesley.

>OH, man. Buffy looks hot in that outfit. I know what I’d like to do to her when she wears that! What if she actually started to notice me as a guy? What would I do? What if she came over to me and put her hand on my chest and leaned over and kissed me with those lips? Uh oh! Better think of something else! Mr. Happy is getting way too excited. Willow’s right, Giles does look tired. He must have been up all night, reading. Buffy doesn’t realize what a great guy he is. I wish he was my real dad. Oooo. If he were my real dad, then I’d be British and I’d have a cool babe-magnet accent. Maybe I could be like James Bond. Would I look OK in a tux? I bet Buffy would have sex with me if I was British.< Giles noted that Xander’s babble was just as fragmented as his speech could be. He frowned at the thought of the boy still pining for Buffy, but racked it up to teen hormones. Besides, he was hardly one to talk of someone slavering in lust over his Slayer.

Buffy was gazing blankly at the library table. Before last night, he would have assumed that she didn’t have a thought in her head, but what she was actually thinking about was having sex with him on the library table. >Yeah. I’d just walk in and we’d be studying or something. Will and Xand would have to leave for some reason and then Giles and I would be here all alone. Pretty soon, we’d look up at each other across the table and before we knew what we were doing, we’d kiss each other. My hand would slip behind his neck so I could touch that soft-looking hair. I wonder how he tastes? He smells so good. Like tea and leather and some special Giles-scent. He doesn’t know I can smell him even when he’s across the room and it makes me all hot. I’ve got to stop thinking about this or my classes are going to be hell today. Good thing Angel isn’t here. He could smell me. He’d know I wanted somebody, bad. He’d look around and see Xander and Giles and wonder who could have got me like this. He probably would believe it was him. I can’t believe I thought he was gorgeous. Well, he is good-looking, but he has the brainage of a sheep. Geez, not that I’m one to talk. I’m just the dumb blonde Slayer lusting after her Watcher. Oh, crap! Here comes Wesley. Boring. I can feel myself slipping off into a coma just looking at him. What is with that hair gel? He uses more than Angel.< Giles heard her mental laugh as the other Watcher entered the room.

“Good morning all. Are we researching something special today?” He seemed inordinately happy, Giles reflected. I wonder if he actually made some progress with Cordelia?

Wesley looked around. >Well, I see they’re excluding me again. I wish I could make these people like me better. Stop it, Wesley. You don’t need them to like you. But I want it! Look at how they respect Mr. Giles! Why can’t I have that? I’m not the disgraced Watcher! I’ve been good. I passed all my classes at the academy with high marks—well, except physical combat, but who knew Watchers would be expected to go out into the field so much? Look at that outfit Buffy has on! It’s a disgrace. I’m surprised her mother lets her out of the house dressed like that. Wouldn’t Cordelia look good in that outfit? I could run my hand up her thigh and grip her butt…< Giles hid a grin as Wesley sat down rather abruptly.

Buffy had grabbed one of the demon gazetteers and was looking at the pictures. “Hey, Giles? Isn’t this what we ran into last night?”

He bent over her shoulder to look. “Yes, I believe you are correct. What does it say about it?”

“It’s got some totally unpronounceable name but it says if you get it’s blood on you, you can get infected with an aspect of the demon. Oh uh, that doesn’t sound good. You got coated in the stuff last night. What does it mean, aspect? Are you gonna get a tail or something?” >I wonder what you could do with a tail in bed?<

“I, I, that is, um, I believe it means I will take on some characteristic of the beast we fought. I think I know what it must be, as well.” He hated to tell them. “Since last night, I keep getting flashes of thoughts from, ah, people.”

“You can read our minds?” Willow squeaked. >Oh no! What if he finds out that I had a crush on him! Oh no! I just thought it and so now he does know! I am so out of here!< “Gee, uh, look at the time. I really gotta go. Bye!” She swooped down on her books and raced out the door before he could say another word.

Xander was a little slower on the uptake, but no less disturbed. >He probably heard me thinking sex thoughts about Buffy! No, I’m still alive, so maybe he didn’t. But he might. I think about that all the time. I gotta get out of here!< The young man stood and beat a hasty retreat from the library, not even stopping to make an excuse.

Wesley was next. “Oh, ah, that is, I just remembered I left something in my car.” He raced off, door swinging behind him.

Only Buffy was left. “So, you can read minds now?”

He nodded. “Not all the time, apparently, but strongly felt thoughts…yes, I’m afraid so.”

“Then you probably know how I feel about you, right?”

“I have been getting, um, glimpses, as it were.”

“And?”

“Buffy, although I am deeply flattered, I am twenty years older than you. Society would have a fit should we become, ah, closer than we now are.”

She nodded. “I know. I’m willing to put myself through that, if you are. It would be worth it to me, if I had you. How do you feel about me, Giles? I don’t have the mind thingy going on, you know.”

He paced around the room. She was his Slayer, she deserved the truth, but she was only eighteen years old. If he told her how much he loved and desired her, wouldn’t he be taking her choices away from her? But she was the Slayer and fated to die young. No other man could give her the love and devotion he could. He was so torn. If only he knew what to do!

Buffy walked up to him and put her hand on his back. “I know what you’re thinking,” she told him softly. “You’re thinking, I’m too young, people would talk, that I should save myself for some boy I might meet if I should live to be twenty. But I know I could live to be a hundred and I would never find anybody I love like I do you.”

He ran his hands through his hair till it stood up. She’d never seen him so disheveled.

“While you are still in high school, I can not countenance a more personal relationship between us. However, when school ends, if you are still of the same mind, we might try d, dating?”

“I’d like that, Rupert.” She hugged him from behind, pressing her face into his jacket. “For now, I guess, since you aren’t going to ravish me on the library table, why don’t we get you de-aspected, or whatever it’s called. How do we do it?”

He patted her hand and they walked to the bookcase, pulling off several volumes of lore. In less than an hour, they had found the cure. He needed a dose of medicine made from the heart of another demon.

“No problemo, Watcher-mine. I’ll patrol tonight if you can hold out that long.”

“I’m seriously thinking of going home ill. The barrage of thoughts is rather hard to take.”

“OK, I’ll check on you before I patrol. I may have to ask for Angel’s help.” Unbidden, her thoughts centered on the vampire. >Geez, he’ll get all needy on me! I hate that. I mean, come on he’s like 245 years old, grow up already.<

Giles hid a grin. “Take care.”

“Now that I have something to look forward to, you bet.” She loped off to her class.

Giles developed a raging headache the minute he hit the hallway. Thoughts bombarded him till he thought he might faint with the pain. He concentrated on a mantra taught to give mental control back to Watchers but he still heard someone plotting to kill all of the students. He couldn’t tell who it was or if they were male or female, but it sounded deadly serious. Staggering down the hall, he made it to Buffy’s classroom. He leaned against the door, face pale, and sweat running down his neck. Finally, he gathered up his strength and opened the door. Buffy turned around in her seat and saw him. She took in his illness with one glance and leaped from her desk to catch him, totally ignoring the teacher who demanded she take her seat.

“What’s wrong, Giles?”

“Too much input. Get me out of here, please.”

She cleared a path through brute force and intimidation and got him out of the building. He relaxed slightly when he was away from the press of the student’s minds. “I thought you were going home.”

“I was on my way when I heard someone think about killing all the students. I don’t know who it was or what was planned. You need to protect them.”

“I’ll get you home first, then get the guys on it. Maybe Angel can find the demon on his own since he owes us.”

“No! You find the demon. Don’t trust him.”

“OK. But I need to get back to school if I can today. I have to warn the guys.” She guided him into his car and fished the keys from his jacket pocket. The Citroen only had one speed-slow, so she was in no danger of running lights. At one point, she thought she could have pushed the damn car faster than it was moving, but they finally got to his apartment.

She helped him upstairs and peeled his jacket off before he could raise the strength to protest. Kneeling at his feet, she pulled off his shoes and socks and then began working on his shirt. He clutched it to him like a virtuous maiden about to be ravished by a dark knight.

“W, what are you doing?”

“I’m undressing you.”

“W, why?”

“So you can take a nap and start to feel better so that when I come back later with the demon cure juice, you can be up at top form to help us figure out the potential killer at school? Ring a bell?”

“Q, quite.” He helped her peel the shirt off his back, leaving him clad in his trousers and a tee-shirt.

“Take your trousers off,” she told him, judging his embarrassment level to be high enough.

“A, after you leave.”

She rolled her eyes but walked to the door. “Rest! No research. Do you understand?”

“I speak English, Buffy. Of course I understand.”

“Good, because if I come back here and you have your face in a book, you’re going to be sorry!”

“Go. I’ll be fine.”

Buffy looked at him carefully as if memorizing him somehow and then left. She ran back to school and found her friends waiting in the library.

“Somebody wants to kill all the students—keep your eyes open. This is going to take all of us.”

“How could somebody kill everyone?” Xander said reflectively. “I mean, when you think about it, killing a bunch of people is hard work.”

“A bomb?” Willow offered.

“I don’t know. Is that the only way?”

“No. I guess poison would work, but everybody would have to ingest it somehow.”

Xander looked up, startled and horrified. “The cafeteria!”

They stood as a unit and ran through the halls to the Alfred Packer* Memorial Lunchroom. Buffy told Willow to take one side of the room and she’d take the other. Xander was assigned to go behind the scenes and check out the kitchens.

He was in time to see the Lunch Lady, a figure of menacing proportions and a maniacal scowl, dumping lye into a simmering pot. She was muttering some sort of crazy diatribe about killing everybody.

Xander yelled at her, diverting her attention. Her eyes glinted insanely and she picked up a large cleaver and started towards him. He ran out onto the floor of the cafeteria screaming that the food was poisoned and overturning trays and plates as he ran. She followed after him, swinging the sharp blade in vicious arcs. She cornered him between the hot entrees and the drink spigot and raised the cleaver dangerously over his head.

Thinking quickly, he grabbed a chafing dish of hot brown meat ‘surprise’ and threw it in her face. She screamed as it burned her and Xander used the diversion to swing his strong fist into her chin. She went down like a sack of potatoes and he kicked the cleaver away from her now limp hand as Buffy fought her way across the mass of screaming students.

Snyder arrived and shot a look of pure hatred at Buffy. He would have had the police arrest her simply for being there but too many witnesses said that she had nothing to do with the disturbance. Xander told his story to the police, evidence was gathered up, and the Lunch Lady was handcuffed and led away.

They closed the school for the rest of the day and Buffy sent the others to Willow’s house to wait while she tracked another demon to save her Watcher’s sanity.

It took six hours of sewer crawling, but she finally found the demon’s mate. They fought and she simply pushed her hand through its chest cavity and ripped out its still beating heart. As it dropped to the ground in a puddle of goo, she stuffed the heart into a zip-lock bag and ran to Willow’s place.

A very few minutes later, they had mixed up the antidote and Buffy ran to her Watcher’s apartment on legs that were quivering with exhaustion. It had been a very long day. Giles was delirious when she found him. Tossing and turning on his bed, he held his head and moaned as the pain of a thousand foreign thoughts pounded into his skull. She tipped his head back and forced his mouth open, subduing him by force as he could no longer recognize her. The potion must have tasted awful because he tried to spit it out. She solved that problem by holding his mouth and nose shut till he had to swallow or suffocate. As soon as she felt him accept the liquid, she released her grip on his face. His body shuddered and spasmed but the potion took affect and the eyes he opened minutes later were clear if tired.

She stroked his sweaty hair back tenderly as she held him in her arms. “Are you OK, Giles? No more bad thoughts?”

“I appear to be fine, and free of the aspect of the demon. Thank you, Buffy.”

She placed a tender kiss on his forehead. “You are so welcome, Watcher-mine. You are so welcome.”

Buffy straightened his sheets and tucked him back into his bed. “You sleep, Giles.” She stood.

Suddenly his hand was clutching at hers. “Don’t leave me, Buffy! Please!”

She soothed him tenderly. “I’ll stay. You just sleep. Shhh. Just sleep, Rupert. I’ll be here when you wake. I won’t ever leave you.”

He didn’t need the aspect of the demon to know that she was speaking the absolute truth. His body relaxed and he drifted off into a deep, dream-free sleep, Buffy curled up at his side.

END