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kaymickbee.livejournal.com) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
summer_of_giles2008-06-30 03:37 pm
kaymickbee.livejournal.com) wrote in summer_of_giles2008-06-30 03:37 pm
FIC: JUST AS GOOD (1/1, FRT)
Title: Just as Good 1/1
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kaymickbee
Pairing: Giles/Faith, Giles/Buffy
Rating: FRT, some language and sexual sitch
Word Count: 2100 words
Disclaimer: I thought Joss wanted me to have them.
Summary: Takes place in Joss Whedon’s season 8 comic universe. This story refers to the story arc “No Future for You,” issues #6-9. Basically, Giles calls upon Faith to take out a renegade Slayer.
Author's Note: I haven’t written a fic since![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
summer_of_giles 2007. I apologize for any continuity errors as this is not beta’d.
Dedication: To all us girls who ever worried about not being good enough.
Thanks: tokatekat1010 & elizabuffy for doing so much to keep this fandom alive.
“I have to start over.”
It had been two months. In a normal lifespan, perhaps that wasn’t a lot of time. Perhaps it was no time at all to mourn another loss. But to him, never knowing if the next hour would come, much less tomorrow, it was too long to wait on her. She was gone.
“What did you say?”
Ahem. The meeting was supposed to start in five minutes, and leave it to Buffy to be on time for once.
“I just... There is a lot of information, here, Buffy. I’m just trying to focus my thoughts so we can have an efficient discussion.”
What a crock.
She handed him a steaming mug and he gratefully swallowed the bitter black coffee as they took seats together.
“You look tired,” she said.
“Aren’t we all?”
“Some more than others.”
Giles allowed himself to look at her. He thought it would be too painful, after so many changes in both their lives. But he found it was the same. She still had a sweetness that contradicted her own reality; she still had a smile that permeated his carefully structured boundaries.
He kept staring at his notepad, but smiled. “I’m fine, Buffy.”
“Of course you are. And so is she.”
“Who told you?” But Giles knew. Damn him.
“Xander was a little freaked.”
“I never should have let him trick me into…”
“What?” Buffy said. “Trick you into having a good time?”
“Nothing good ever comes of Tequila at two a.m.”
“Is that how it happened with Faith?”
Damn her, too, Giles added to himself. And anyone else under the age of thirty-five who couldn’t understand something more than an inch deep.
“Sorry,” she said immediately. “I have no right.”
He wanted to be mad, but found himself lacking the energy for it. “No, you don’t,” was all he could muster.
“I guess Faith and I are more alike than I ever wanted to admit,” she added.
“I don’t see that.”
Giles had kept his eyes firmly fixed on his agenda, but now he heard a tiny sucking in of Buffy’s breath, and when he glanced at her, it appeared his words had hurt her.
“Everything all right?” he asked casually.
“It’s fine.” She was short now. “I shouldn’t intrude on your relationship with her. It’s private. And I hope everything works out.”
“Buffy, you needn’t worry. I no longer have a relationship with her.” He wasn’t sure he ever did but found admitting that to be unnecessarily masochistic.
“Oh.”
“But I do appreciate the thought. Oh look, it’s Xaaaaander.” Giles said, not withholding a trace of hostility.
“I didn’t do it,” came Xander’s answer.
“Yes, you did.” The teasing lilt returned to Buffy’s voice for the moment. “No more high end booze and secrets for you, Xan-man.”
Giles snorted and glared at Xander.
“Oops,” Xander said.
“Indeed.” Giles set down his pen and any outward appearance of business-mindedness. “Can I not even have a modicum of respect for my privacy once in awhile?”
“I respect your privacy,” Xander protested. “I just… I just didn’t know it was private.”
“Oh, c’mon,” Buffy said. “You can come up with something better than that.”
“I guess I was a little worried,” Xander mumbled. “I sort of… remember how Faith can be.”
Giles almost… almost… felt himself flushing under the embarrassment, having had intimate relations with a past lover of Xander’s. But it was rather more fun to watch Buffy redden at the same thought, though of something quite different than shame.
“I need more coffee,” she said shortly and pushed away from the table.
“Wow. Her panties are definitely twisted up this fine morning.”
Giles lost the bit of humor he had just allowed himself. “Xander, we are not having this conversation. Or any other for now.”
“Giles, don’t be mad.”
“Oh, but I am.” He crumpled a random piece of paper. “You are not in high school anymore. Sometimes conversations are serious. Sometimes people have complicated matters at hand. Sometimes, things that are told in confidence are expected to stay that way. And how in the hell could you possibly think I would want Buffy to know about what happened between Faith and me?”
Xander’s eyes finally registered understanding. “I guess I just didn’t think…”
“Correct.”
“But Giles? I don’t think Buffy is mad at you. I think, when it comes to Faith, she just always feels…”
“She feels competitive. I understand that. But there are other issues at hand, and I simply have to ask that you respect my request for discretion and not press me as to why.”
“OK.”
Xander still could take on a puppy-like demeanor when he wanted, and Giles refused to let it melt his irritation. “Tell the others the meeting is postponed until tomorrow.”
~.~
“Got to go. Thanks and all, ‘til later – f.”
That’s all her note had said.
It wasn’t as if she had professed love, or even that he had hoped for it. It was, quite simply, that he had believed the time with her had been something more than what her sudden exit would indicate.
After Faith’s operation to stop Genevieve was over, she’d stayed with him. They talked about helping the new Slayers together, about more missions of the unique and dangerous kind, but before anything, she needed some time. He saw in her a familiar masque, one that was struggling to cover brokenness, disappointment, lack of direction. He knew it all too well from his years with Buffy, but it was different with Faith… less dramatic, less visible, and more explosive. He treaded carefully around her, not asking too many questions or even allowing himself to be overtly friendly or helpful.
And then one night, after she’d made a guest appearance in the kitchen as he prepared dinner for himself, she’s stopped everything in one movement, crossing the floor, encircling her arms around his back, and kissing his mouth so fully and intensely that he wondered if he would ever breathe again, or if he’d ever want her to stop.
Their interaction, he could admit, was fairly one-note even after that encounter. She didn’t like to talk, but she frequently asked him to tell her “stories,” and she was willing to listen for hours at a time as he spoke of growing up in Bath, his wilder days at Cambridge, his hesitance to take his place in the Watcher’s Council. She wanted to hear everything about him up until his relocation to Sunnydale; she already knew all she wished to know about that.
He found himself entranced by her willingness, her desire, to listen to him. She would often walk around the room, picking up books or straightening objects while he talked. Sometimes she would putter in the kitchen to refill his tea, and sometimes, she would simply lie on the couch, the floor, or even in his lap, and listen with her eyes closed. She never fell asleep, even if he found he was in danger of boring himself into a coma.
She remained silently captivated and craving more.
After so many years, so many women, so many attempts and failures, he’d never experienced something like it.
Nor, he now believed, would he again.
~.~
Buffy Summers, in this latest phase of her life, did not hurry often. She did not chase down anyone for answers unless lives were truly in peril. She sometimes did not even return phone calls, and it had been a long time, maybe her lifetime, since she’d met a man worthy of her walking across the room.
On this night, though, hours after Giles canceled their status meeting at the Council, she walked into a random conference room, saw him sitting at the end opposite the door, and had to consciously stop herself from running to him.
She’s pressed Xander all damn day for more details of what had happened between Giles and Faith. She could pretty much count herself obsessed with it.
And she could get the attraction, on both sides. Faith was dark, sexy, magnetic. Giles was dark, intelligent, dashing. She hated both of them sometimes, but ultimately, they were the two people she cherished the most for their nearness to her soul. They got her at her core, in a place no one else could touch.
Yet, she’d shut them both away time and time again. Why should she be so surprised, so angry, that they’d found each other? And how could she think it be anything but too late for her to make something better of the mess she was left with?
Yet, she crossed the room to him, restraining urgency, pressing toward a great unknown.
~.~
On the night Faith had come to him for something more, he’d talked to Buffy on the phone. It was a routine check-in and at the time, there hadn’t even been anything out of the ordinary going on. Even so, he’d been guarded against Faith knowing who was on the phone and even more guarded against Buffy knowing Faith was staying with him. Something else had happened between them after the Genevieve mission, and he trusted it best they not hear one another’s names.
But Faith knew, just as he was sure that Buffy had known. Faith had gone for a run and come back in silence. He went to bed, as always, exhausted by his work and generally any interaction with Slayers.
And he was just dozing when Faith came, just as intensely as she had first kissed him in the kitchen, but this time with the intensity boiling underneath her skin. At first she stood at the foot of the bed, and then she crawled toward him. She uttered only seven words, seven sad words that spoke across a chasm: “I’m just as good as she is.” And then she took off Giles’ pants and made love to him in a desperate way that reminded him of grief and jealousy and need all at once. It enveloped him and caused an addiction.
And it had only lasted a month, less time than she’d been away from him now. Far less time than he’d loved Randall or Jenny, than he’d entertained Ethan or Olivia, than he’d avoided Joyce. But Faith, well, nothing had ever been quite as good as she was to him.
~.~
Giles looked up as Buffy reached the square inch of air in front of his face. Her eyes held their familiar smolder and her posture was already making demands. He rolled his eyes and looked back down to what he was doing, steeling himself for a lecture.
“Do you still want her?” she said.
“Buffy, that is…”
“Private, I know.” She actually reached his chin and pointed his glance to her. Dammit if her touch didn’t still scald him a bit. “I still want to know. I want to know why she is better than I am, what she has that I don’t… why she has this power that I never had.”
“Buffy, what…?”… the fuck, he wanted to add. Was he the latest in a string of the wants she only wanted when she couldn’t have them?
Before he finished the question, her mouth was on his. And he took it. And he compared.
~.~
Faith sat in the darkened room, running her boot through the ashes. That day, the day she’d had to take care of baby vamps, the day Giles called her to take out Gen, that was a day everything changed for her, again.
So she came back her, where the kids had been, where she’d felt like, once again, she’d just staked herself. She was sick of stabs in the dark, of blind fury.
Giles had shown her she wanted more. And her natural response was to hate him for it.
~.~
“What are you doing?” Giles managed to ask in the moment Buffy took her mouth from his. She looked at him with passion and contempt. It was almost terrifying.
“Just this.” She grabbed the hair from the back of his head and pulled him fiercely toward her, kissing him again.
He waited until she was done, knowing it was pointless to try and stop her. There was clearly something she needed to get out of her system.
And isn’t that a problem you share? Don’t you need to get her out of yours?
Buffy didn’t smell like Faith, sound like Faith, kiss like Faith. But she was there, and for whatever twisted reason of her own, she wanted him right now.
So he melted into her and decided that for now, she would do.
Author:
kaymickbee Pairing: Giles/Faith, Giles/Buffy
Rating: FRT, some language and sexual sitch
Word Count: 2100 words
Disclaimer: I thought Joss wanted me to have them.
Summary: Takes place in Joss Whedon’s season 8 comic universe. This story refers to the story arc “No Future for You,” issues #6-9. Basically, Giles calls upon Faith to take out a renegade Slayer.
Author's Note: I haven’t written a fic since
summer_of_giles 2007. I apologize for any continuity errors as this is not beta’d.Dedication: To all us girls who ever worried about not being good enough.
Thanks: to
katekat1010 & elizabuffy for doing so much to keep this fandom alive. “I have to start over.”
It had been two months. In a normal lifespan, perhaps that wasn’t a lot of time. Perhaps it was no time at all to mourn another loss. But to him, never knowing if the next hour would come, much less tomorrow, it was too long to wait on her. She was gone.
“What did you say?”
Ahem. The meeting was supposed to start in five minutes, and leave it to Buffy to be on time for once.
“I just... There is a lot of information, here, Buffy. I’m just trying to focus my thoughts so we can have an efficient discussion.”
What a crock.
She handed him a steaming mug and he gratefully swallowed the bitter black coffee as they took seats together.
“You look tired,” she said.
“Aren’t we all?”
“Some more than others.”
Giles allowed himself to look at her. He thought it would be too painful, after so many changes in both their lives. But he found it was the same. She still had a sweetness that contradicted her own reality; she still had a smile that permeated his carefully structured boundaries.
He kept staring at his notepad, but smiled. “I’m fine, Buffy.”
“Of course you are. And so is she.”
“Who told you?” But Giles knew. Damn him.
“Xander was a little freaked.”
“I never should have let him trick me into…”
“What?” Buffy said. “Trick you into having a good time?”
“Nothing good ever comes of Tequila at two a.m.”
“Is that how it happened with Faith?”
Damn her, too, Giles added to himself. And anyone else under the age of thirty-five who couldn’t understand something more than an inch deep.
“Sorry,” she said immediately. “I have no right.”
He wanted to be mad, but found himself lacking the energy for it. “No, you don’t,” was all he could muster.
“I guess Faith and I are more alike than I ever wanted to admit,” she added.
“I don’t see that.”
Giles had kept his eyes firmly fixed on his agenda, but now he heard a tiny sucking in of Buffy’s breath, and when he glanced at her, it appeared his words had hurt her.
“Everything all right?” he asked casually.
“It’s fine.” She was short now. “I shouldn’t intrude on your relationship with her. It’s private. And I hope everything works out.”
“Buffy, you needn’t worry. I no longer have a relationship with her.” He wasn’t sure he ever did but found admitting that to be unnecessarily masochistic.
“Oh.”
“But I do appreciate the thought. Oh look, it’s Xaaaaander.” Giles said, not withholding a trace of hostility.
“I didn’t do it,” came Xander’s answer.
“Yes, you did.” The teasing lilt returned to Buffy’s voice for the moment. “No more high end booze and secrets for you, Xan-man.”
Giles snorted and glared at Xander.
“Oops,” Xander said.
“Indeed.” Giles set down his pen and any outward appearance of business-mindedness. “Can I not even have a modicum of respect for my privacy once in awhile?”
“I respect your privacy,” Xander protested. “I just… I just didn’t know it was private.”
“Oh, c’mon,” Buffy said. “You can come up with something better than that.”
“I guess I was a little worried,” Xander mumbled. “I sort of… remember how Faith can be.”
Giles almost… almost… felt himself flushing under the embarrassment, having had intimate relations with a past lover of Xander’s. But it was rather more fun to watch Buffy redden at the same thought, though of something quite different than shame.
“I need more coffee,” she said shortly and pushed away from the table.
“Wow. Her panties are definitely twisted up this fine morning.”
Giles lost the bit of humor he had just allowed himself. “Xander, we are not having this conversation. Or any other for now.”
“Giles, don’t be mad.”
“Oh, but I am.” He crumpled a random piece of paper. “You are not in high school anymore. Sometimes conversations are serious. Sometimes people have complicated matters at hand. Sometimes, things that are told in confidence are expected to stay that way. And how in the hell could you possibly think I would want Buffy to know about what happened between Faith and me?”
Xander’s eyes finally registered understanding. “I guess I just didn’t think…”
“Correct.”
“But Giles? I don’t think Buffy is mad at you. I think, when it comes to Faith, she just always feels…”
“She feels competitive. I understand that. But there are other issues at hand, and I simply have to ask that you respect my request for discretion and not press me as to why.”
“OK.”
Xander still could take on a puppy-like demeanor when he wanted, and Giles refused to let it melt his irritation. “Tell the others the meeting is postponed until tomorrow.”
~.~
“Got to go. Thanks and all, ‘til later – f.”
That’s all her note had said.
It wasn’t as if she had professed love, or even that he had hoped for it. It was, quite simply, that he had believed the time with her had been something more than what her sudden exit would indicate.
After Faith’s operation to stop Genevieve was over, she’d stayed with him. They talked about helping the new Slayers together, about more missions of the unique and dangerous kind, but before anything, she needed some time. He saw in her a familiar masque, one that was struggling to cover brokenness, disappointment, lack of direction. He knew it all too well from his years with Buffy, but it was different with Faith… less dramatic, less visible, and more explosive. He treaded carefully around her, not asking too many questions or even allowing himself to be overtly friendly or helpful.
And then one night, after she’d made a guest appearance in the kitchen as he prepared dinner for himself, she’s stopped everything in one movement, crossing the floor, encircling her arms around his back, and kissing his mouth so fully and intensely that he wondered if he would ever breathe again, or if he’d ever want her to stop.
Their interaction, he could admit, was fairly one-note even after that encounter. She didn’t like to talk, but she frequently asked him to tell her “stories,” and she was willing to listen for hours at a time as he spoke of growing up in Bath, his wilder days at Cambridge, his hesitance to take his place in the Watcher’s Council. She wanted to hear everything about him up until his relocation to Sunnydale; she already knew all she wished to know about that.
He found himself entranced by her willingness, her desire, to listen to him. She would often walk around the room, picking up books or straightening objects while he talked. Sometimes she would putter in the kitchen to refill his tea, and sometimes, she would simply lie on the couch, the floor, or even in his lap, and listen with her eyes closed. She never fell asleep, even if he found he was in danger of boring himself into a coma.
She remained silently captivated and craving more.
After so many years, so many women, so many attempts and failures, he’d never experienced something like it.
Nor, he now believed, would he again.
~.~
Buffy Summers, in this latest phase of her life, did not hurry often. She did not chase down anyone for answers unless lives were truly in peril. She sometimes did not even return phone calls, and it had been a long time, maybe her lifetime, since she’d met a man worthy of her walking across the room.
On this night, though, hours after Giles canceled their status meeting at the Council, she walked into a random conference room, saw him sitting at the end opposite the door, and had to consciously stop herself from running to him.
She’s pressed Xander all damn day for more details of what had happened between Giles and Faith. She could pretty much count herself obsessed with it.
And she could get the attraction, on both sides. Faith was dark, sexy, magnetic. Giles was dark, intelligent, dashing. She hated both of them sometimes, but ultimately, they were the two people she cherished the most for their nearness to her soul. They got her at her core, in a place no one else could touch.
Yet, she’d shut them both away time and time again. Why should she be so surprised, so angry, that they’d found each other? And how could she think it be anything but too late for her to make something better of the mess she was left with?
Yet, she crossed the room to him, restraining urgency, pressing toward a great unknown.
~.~
On the night Faith had come to him for something more, he’d talked to Buffy on the phone. It was a routine check-in and at the time, there hadn’t even been anything out of the ordinary going on. Even so, he’d been guarded against Faith knowing who was on the phone and even more guarded against Buffy knowing Faith was staying with him. Something else had happened between them after the Genevieve mission, and he trusted it best they not hear one another’s names.
But Faith knew, just as he was sure that Buffy had known. Faith had gone for a run and come back in silence. He went to bed, as always, exhausted by his work and generally any interaction with Slayers.
And he was just dozing when Faith came, just as intensely as she had first kissed him in the kitchen, but this time with the intensity boiling underneath her skin. At first she stood at the foot of the bed, and then she crawled toward him. She uttered only seven words, seven sad words that spoke across a chasm: “I’m just as good as she is.” And then she took off Giles’ pants and made love to him in a desperate way that reminded him of grief and jealousy and need all at once. It enveloped him and caused an addiction.
And it had only lasted a month, less time than she’d been away from him now. Far less time than he’d loved Randall or Jenny, than he’d entertained Ethan or Olivia, than he’d avoided Joyce. But Faith, well, nothing had ever been quite as good as she was to him.
~.~
Giles looked up as Buffy reached the square inch of air in front of his face. Her eyes held their familiar smolder and her posture was already making demands. He rolled his eyes and looked back down to what he was doing, steeling himself for a lecture.
“Do you still want her?” she said.
“Buffy, that is…”
“Private, I know.” She actually reached his chin and pointed his glance to her. Dammit if her touch didn’t still scald him a bit. “I still want to know. I want to know why she is better than I am, what she has that I don’t… why she has this power that I never had.”
“Buffy, what…?”… the fuck, he wanted to add. Was he the latest in a string of the wants she only wanted when she couldn’t have them?
Before he finished the question, her mouth was on his. And he took it. And he compared.
~.~
Faith sat in the darkened room, running her boot through the ashes. That day, the day she’d had to take care of baby vamps, the day Giles called her to take out Gen, that was a day everything changed for her, again.
So she came back her, where the kids had been, where she’d felt like, once again, she’d just staked herself. She was sick of stabs in the dark, of blind fury.
Giles had shown her she wanted more. And her natural response was to hate him for it.
~.~
“What are you doing?” Giles managed to ask in the moment Buffy took her mouth from his. She looked at him with passion and contempt. It was almost terrifying.
“Just this.” She grabbed the hair from the back of his head and pulled him fiercely toward her, kissing him again.
He waited until she was done, knowing it was pointless to try and stop her. There was clearly something she needed to get out of her system.
And isn’t that a problem you share? Don’t you need to get her out of yours?
Buffy didn’t smell like Faith, sound like Faith, kiss like Faith. But she was there, and for whatever twisted reason of her own, she wanted him right now.
So he melted into her and decided that for now, she would do.
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Love this bit:
Giles allowed himself to look at her. He thought it would be too painful, after so many changes in both their lives. But he found it was the same. She still had a sweetness that contradicted her own reality; she still had a smile that permeated his carefully structured boundaries.
Giles and Buffy, the two of them are never going to get it figured out.
And this:
And anyone else under the age of thirty-five who couldn’t understand something more than an inch deep.
What an amazingly descriptive way to put that!
As always, the world would be a better place with more of your fic in it!
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Really, if I could ever muster a G/F/B story, maybe THEY'D get it right!
As always, the world would be a better place with more of your fic in it!
You know how to make me feel loved :)
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heh Oddly, that would work for me. ;) //goes off to ponder with wicked little thoughts and evil plot bunnies//
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This really hurts to read: the pain of all buffy faith and giles. But damn it's good and its really fits the S8 comic canon.
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Ouch.
You blew me away with this. I never thought I'd be so in love with a fic where Giles settles for Buffy.
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I've always loved Faith, with her tangled-up past and all her emotional baggage. It made her such an interesting character.
Your writing is excellent. Words and ideas flow so naturally. The voices sound so true.
Thanks for a great story.
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(Anonymous) 2008-07-02 09:55 pm (UTC)(link)no subject
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I mean, I seriously loved:
“Buffy, what…?”… the fuck, he wanted to add. Was he the latest in a string of the wants she only wanted when she couldn’t have them?
Before he finished the question, her mouth was on his. And he took it. And he compared.
I'm even feeling inspired to write instead of roleplay. That's impressive. I've gone fic resistant lately lol
I guess that's enough gushing like a fangirl. :">
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Lovely...and more than just a little fucked up. Which is fitting for Giles and even more so for Giles with Faith.