FIC: Arms and the Man 4/6 (Giles/Buffy) R

[antennapedia.livejournal.com]

Title: Arms and the Man 4/6
Pairing: Giles/Buffy
Rating: R

Continued from part 3.


There was no one in her room when she finally got back. She went through the passageway between their rooms, tapped on Giles's door, and opened it. She peeked in: Giles was sitting in the little armchair. He was in a pair of loose jeans and a baggy t-shirt, and was barefoot. He looked tired but he smiled at her when she came over to him.

"Thought I'd find you asleep."

"Couldn't manage it. Been reading to relax."

He held up a little battered hardcover book she'd seen him with before. The Aeneid, untranslated, his usual comfort reading. Only Giles would read something written in Latin to relax. Though now that she thought about it, not only Giles. She could picture poor Wesley doing the same. Maybe anybody raised as a Watcher, as that rare intersection of warrior and scholar.

"Did you have a good talk with Fabio?"

"Fabio? Oh, Twombly. Yes. Most informative."

Giles didn't seem to be in the mood to share whatever information he'd learned, however, so Buffy prodded. "About... hair care?"

There was the flash of amusement she'd wanted to see. "We talked about training, mostly. Combat readiness. The fellow works hard to be in the sort of shape he's in, even with the boost."

"Any tips?"

"Nothing earthshattering. Lift heavy weights and run."

Buffy made a face. She never lifted weights if she could help it. Running, on the other hand, she liked. She hadn't been for a run in nearly a week, come to think of it.

"Was it weird, talking to him?"

"Why should it weird? I rather like him."

Buffy gestured, hoping he would supply an answer without needing her to say something about Twombly being the guy who'd beaten Giles, disarmed him, knocked him down, and made him lift two fingers in surrender. Giles wasn't rescuing her, was in fact gazing at her and waiting for her. "Because, I don't know, because he looks like he walked out of a storybook only with abs like the cover of Men's Health?"

"Am I supposed to envy that?"

"Yes? I guess? Don't you?"

Giles looked tired. "I do. Of course I do. If that's what it takes--"

"Takes to what?"

Giles shook his head. It was Buffy's turn to stare him down. At last he sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose.

"I suppose, I-- What it takes to get your attention."

Aha. Buffy controlled her impulse to leap on him and kept it light. He was feeling a little down after all. "You think it's muscles I want? Not sure that's what I'm looking for in a guy."

"Oh?"

"I might be looking for a guy who can speak five languages. One who takes a minute to figure out what he's doing before he goes and kills the demon. Know where I can find one of those?"

"Perhaps."

"Bonus if he can fight with a sword too."

"However unsuccessfully."

"I don't give my favor to just anybody."

Giles's face changed. "Oh! That reminds me."

He stood and dug deep into his hip pocket. He opened his hand to her to reveal her necklace. It glittered in the lamplight.

"Thank you for the luck of your favor. It was not sufficient to bring me victory, but it was solace in my defeat."

He was all formal and husky as he said that. Buffy came closer and touched his outstretched hand. Giles looked down instead of holding her gaze. She took the necklace and began to reach around behind her head. Giles stopped her.

"May I?" he said.

Buffy handed it back to him and turned around. He fumbled for a moment with the clasp then it was around her neck. He touched it, adjusted it so the the little cross was centered. She felt his breath on the back of her neck. Then every so gently, his lips, on her nape. Buffy held her breath. He lingered. His lips were warm and soft against her neck. Buffy wanted to shiver. She held herself completely still, so she wouldn't scare him away. His hand came down and rested on her waist. Another kiss, tentative, on her shoulder. She breathed out unsteadily.

He stepped back and Buffy wondered for a moment if he'd turn and flee from this one as well. But no: he turned her in his arms and bent to kiss her again. He was licking at her lips. He said her name as if he were pleading with her. Buffy clasped him tight in response. He gasped in pain and she let go instantly, shocked.

He had a hand on his ribcage, where he'd been kicked. "Sorry, I'm a bit, ah, battered."

"Been there," Buffy said. She touched the bandage on his arm, to show that she understood. "I'll be more careful."

Giles breathed out deeply and shook his head. "You'll forget. In the heat of-- Perhaps I should simply go to bed."

Buffy wanted to argue, but couldn't. She did tend to forget when carried away. She'd bruised Riley more than once. "My bed. From now on. Got it?"

"If you insist," he murmured, but she could see he was pleased.

Buffy left the bedside light on low. She stretched out on the bed, on top of the sheets, and waited for Giles to join her. He did, tentatively, lying facing her with his arm under his pillow. He looked tense. Buffy stroked his shoulder; he was definitely tense. His traps were like rocks.

"You're totally knotted up. Stress monster."

"I suppose I am."

"Massage time. Take your shirt off."

"Do you know what you're doing?" Giles said, eyebrows up.

"I read your massage book. And I have some practice."

"Don't want to be torn limb from limb," he muttered.

He was taking his shirt off anyway. He pulled it over his head and winced. Buffy could see why; he had broad red marks on his rib cage that would blossom into alarming bruises. The fight had been more brutal than she'd thought while watching it. He rolled onto his face and folded his arms under his head. Buffy knelt up next to him. She touched his back, stroked him to let him know she was there, then began to explore.

Solid muscles. Something to dig into with her fingers. There was more muscle there than she'd expected. He had muscles after all; he'd just been hiding them. Where from? Weightlifting? She didn't know what Giles did to keep himself in shape, other than the jogging, but he obviously did something. Had to, to have earned himself lats like those. Riley had felt like this under her hands, though he'd had more sheer bulk. Angel had been bulkier as well. Giles was less sculpted but more brutal. It was beyond wonderful to discover that Giles had been hiding this body.

"So, weightlifting and running, huh," she said.

"Mm. Joined the local YMCA last year. Something to fill the time."

"Did you hang out with all the boys?"

"I left my cowboy costume at home."

Buffy stifled a giggle. She straddled his thighs and leaned forward to get proper leverage. She found the pressure points on his trapezius that had always been the important spots for Riley, and was rewarded by a soft grunt of pleasure. Slayer strength came in handy at strange times. He sighed underneath her and stretched.

"You have wonderful hands," he said, into his folded arms.

"Flatterer."

"Strong. Ow. No, don't stop. That's the spot. You did more than read my book."

"Took a workshop. Couples massage, bring your own sweetie. During that gooey phase with Riley, you know the one."

"Oh."

Mentioning Riley had been a mood-killer, judging by his voice. Buffy cursed herself for a second, then set it aside. Concentrate on his shoulders. Nice shoulders. He had a little scarring across the left one that she'd never seen before. Didn't look like knife cuts, more like claws. What had clawed him? There had been that thing right after her eighteenth, when he'd been all overcompensating. For Giles, overcompensating meant throwing himself in front of a hellbeast to distract it for her. A wave of affection ran through Buffy and she had to restrain herself from leaning forward to kiss his back. Shoulders. Concentrate on those delts.

Then Giles said, tentatively, "He's in Texas, you said?"

He? Oh, Riley. "I don't actually know."

"So that's quite over, then?"

"Yeah. I could swear I told you that."

"You did. I was just, er... verifying."

That explained some of the hesitation, maybe. Maybe it was simply Giles being unsure of himself. The man who stammered and got nervous about asking people out on dates was here, just as much as the man who didn't hesitate about jumping into the ring with a guy guaranteed to beat him senseless. Contradictions. Delicious contradictions. She had him at last, though. He was hers at heart, if not yet in body. He'd kissed her and stayed. And he was in her bed now.

His breathing was shifting, slowing. Buffy slowed and softened her touch against his skin. His eyes were closed again. He'd fallen asleep. Buffy smiled at him and stroked the hair at his temples. Turnabout. She tugged a light blanket over him so he wouldn't wake up cold, then turned the light out. She could see perfectly well without it. She sat on the armchair by the bed for a while, looking at him. It had taken her a long time to see that he was gorgeous. Time and the push from that Slayer spirit coiled inside her, her spirit sister. The strong jaw, the eyes, the crinkle-marks from smiling. The little line between his brows from worrying, maybe about her, or about the world in general. Not a pretty man, but a handsome one, and he would be hers.

Buffy knew she should be satisfied for now. She was satisfied, except that something wasn't settled. She was restless. Not ready for sleep even with this handsome guy half-undressed in her bed. Not even in the least. It was time to hunt.

She changed into dark clothing. Her hair she tied back and hid under a black watch cap. It wasn't that she was sneaking, except she was totally sneaking. She tucked a stake up her sleeve by habit, and also because something was bothering her. Vampires, here? Every time she'd done the honing thing here the answer had been a resounding nothing. Utter safety, for miles and miles and miles. Now... Buffy stood on her balcony and honed, and wasn't sure.

Buffy climbed over the railing and got a grip on the vines. Solid vines, a good hundred years of growth, more than up to supporting her weight. Getting up again would be easy. She let herself drop about ten feet up from the grassy lawn and rolled to take the impact. She followed through and bounced to her feet.

The lane wound around the dormitory building directly to the front gate. The gate looked impressive, all heavy iron. She maneuvered herself around to a spot where she could see inside the kiosk. Inside was a guy in uniform, no doubt with sword like the night before. The stone wall looked easily climbable, but she didn't feel like it. They didn't guard anything beside the front gate, according to what she'd been told, because who would attack a building full of heavily armed extra-strong people? And what did they have that was worth stealing, anyway? Buffy could see the point of not bothering to defend the place. And whatever was troubling her wasn't here. Which way was the town? Vaguely east, and not all that far if she cut across the fields and woods of the order's estate.

She set off at an easy run.

It felt good to be out at night again, hunting. All that sparring had been fun, but it wasn't what her power was for. Her power was for this, for running silently along the lane, leaping over the ditch, side-tracking into an orchard, and dodging through the trees at breakneck pace. She breathed in the sweet air of nighttime country. This place was gorgeous at night, with the moon nearly full and the owls hooting. The knights were on a beautiful piece of countryside. According to what Giles had said, they'd been here for hundreds of years. That remaining castle tower had been Norman era, he'd said, and that made it the oldest building Buffy had ever been near in her life. And they'd been here ever since, guarding themselves magically, training knights, and sending them out into the world to fight dragons. They seemed good. They felt good, if Buffy trusted her Slayer senses. So what was bothering her?

Vampires?

Not nearby, if so. Or muffled. Or maybe it wasn't a vampire at all. Maybe it was. People were talking. Two people. A man's voice, one she didn't know, and a girl. It was Ellen's voice. Buffy's skin crawled. What was Ellen doing outside at night?

"What's she like?" the man's voice said.

"The Slayer? What do you want to know?"

"Can she possibly be what they say?"

"I haven't seen her do anything. She keeps stakes in her bag, but--"

The voices came closer. Buffy saw two figures in motion in the orchard. Ellen and somebody else, somebody tall. Coming right toward her. Without thinking she leapt straight up and grabbed onto a branch over her head. She pulled herself up and kept right on climbing until she had some foliage in between herself and the ground. The tree was an apple tree, an old one. She found a branch wide enough to flatten herself along and shimmied out until she could see the conspirators. What were they doing? Why were they talking about her?

The second person, the man. Buffy squinted and recognized him. It was the boy who'd been loitering in the hallway with Ellen that first night. What were they doing now? They'd stopped and were grabbing each other. Then she realized they were kissing. Buffy pressed a hand across her mouth to stifle the giggles that wanted to escape. Here she'd been thinking doom and gloom and evil plots, and it was as simple as two people sneaking out of the dorm to make out. She hoped they weren't going to do much more than that, because she didn't want to be trapped in the tree as a reluctant voyeur. She even went so far as to wonder if she could manage to leap to the next tree over, squirrel-style, without making too much noise. No freaking hope, she decided. Just then they mercifully broke the clinch and walked on, hands in each other's pockets.

Buffy listened until they were well out of the orchard, then made herself stay where she was for a little longer. Then she scrambled down from the tree. She brushed dirt and bark from her jeans and trotted off back the way she'd came. The town would have to wait. She'd been silly enough already tonight. Maybe she'd just needed the run. The last few days had featured way less activity than usual for her, and she hadn't hunted at all since she'd left Sunnydale. She should try to get in a workout in that yummy gym.

She scampered up the vines to her balcony and popped over the railing again. She slipped inside and pulled the balcony door nearly shut. Giles was in her bed, rolled onto his face with his arms under his pillow. She undressed silently and crawled back into bed with him as quietly as she could. Giles shifted and turned toward her, awake after all. He flung an arm over her and pressed himself against her.

"C'mere," he said. "Wondered where you'd got off to."

Buffy smiled. The wakeful Giles might be nervous, but the half-asleep one was already hers.

Buffy slept in, curled up cozily with Giles. She woke once when rain began to spatter against the balcony doors, but when she woke again it had stopped. The skies were cloudy but clearing. The air smelled fantastic, all damp and green and fresh in a way that Sunnydale never smelled at this time of year. When she got out of her shower, Giles was in her rooms talking with Ellen, who had circles under her eyes. Buffy held her urge to giggle in check, remembering Ellen in the orchard and remembering her own adventures in sneaking out to see boyfriends. She'd been up late, but Ellen had probably been up later.

Ellen was holding a bundle of clothing for Giles. His uniform for the day, she explained.

"Uniform?" Giles said.

"They want you to squire properly, I think. There's a formal dinner tonight. I can explain what you need to do."

Giles held up the trousers and looked at the waist.

"They should fit," Ellen said, but she sounded doubtful.

Giles bundled it all up under his arm and disappeared into his own room to change. Buffy watched his back vanishing through the doorway, deprived once again of the pleasure of watching him get dressed. He came back with a sardonic look on his face: he was wearing more or less what Ellen was, only the patch over his breast had more ornamentation on it. The pants were baggy but the shirt fit well, at least to Buffy's taste. Giles probably thought it was snug.

"So, get squiring! Um. Sharpen stakes for me? I'm not sure what to do that's knightlike."

"They're sparring today," Ellen said. "At the ring. Probably all day, if you want to watch. I think that's what most of the knights are doing."

Buffy wasn't sure she cared about that, but then Giles looked at her and she could see he was eager. "Sounds good," she said. "So long as we hit breakfast first. I need my OJ."

There were more people at the sparring pit than there had been yesterday. Buffy counted a couple dozen people then stopped bothering. It was as Ellen had said. Most of the knights were there, lounging on the bleachers watching the sparring, or heading into the pit to take their turn. Buffy could see a few pairs dotted throughout the crowd, full knights in athletic clothing with their dark-clad squires beside them. A handful of pages were there fetching water and wrangling the combatants.

Buffy watched a pair of women fence in the pit, facing off against in each other in 5-minute rounds as Giles had done with Twombly the day before. They held practice swords and wore full body armor, but it was as violent as her vamp fights usually were. Buffy pulled her feet up under herself, hugged her knees to her chest, and watched with an analytical eye. They had good skills and were evenly matched. Buffy couldn't decide which one was likely to win. She thought she'd met the one with the blonde ponytail last night, but she hadn't seen the woman with the dreadlocks before.

"German school," Giles murmured in her ear. "Fairly standard European style. Vulnerable to mixed-mode fighting. Think what a kick would do right now."

"Assuming they're not fighting that way 'cause of a rule."

"Eric said--"

"Oh, it's Eric now?"

Giles ducked his head. "Well, we did have that talk last night. Anyway, he said rules vary. The two combatants can agree to fight any way they wish."

"Speak of the devil," Buffy said. Fabio Braveheart was there in full gear, leaning against the far gate. The match between the two women ended in victory for the one with the dreadlocks. Twombly opened the gate and clapped the victor on the back as she went through. Giles sat up straighter. Buffy watched him watching Twombly and grinned. That was a serious case of man-crush if she'd ever seen one.

Twombly moved into the center of the ring and greeted his opponent. The knight he was fighting was a little guy who fought with a heater shield and a one-handed sword. Well, little in comparison with the six and a half footer. Twombly had the same two-hander he'd used yesterday with Giles. This match went on much longer than the one with Giles had and it got pretty fierce at some moments. The two were evenly matched; Giles had been badly outmatched. Buffy found herself getting a little steamed about that mismatch as she watched, in fact. It had been so unfair. Giles had been going to lose no matter what.

Giles didn't seem to be pissed off. He was completely absorbed in the fight. She saw his hand hand tighten on the wall. He leaned forward. Exciting, yeah, watching those two guys scramble around in the sand beating the crap out of each other.

Maybe it was what she'd thought earlier, Conway testing his character. Or maybe it was to show him a taste of what he'd get if Saint George bestowed his gift on him. Make the point the painful way about super strength. Though Giles needed that lesson less than any other man would. He lived with a Slayer.

"You wanna be like him," she said, suddenly.

Giles shot a glance at her. "Yes. Do you mind?"

"It's okay by me. He's kind of sexy." Giles turned to her and stared. "Going to grow out your hair?"

Now he figured out that he was being teased, and he aimed a withering glare on her before turning back to the fight.

Twombly won. Of course he won. He always won. He accepted the congratulations from his foe graciously then took a victory lap around the ring. He stopped below them and waved to Giles. He took his helmet off and shook his hair free. He really was magnificent.

"Did you see what I meant?" he said, addressing Giles. "Mobility is crucial."

"Yes. You remind me of Buffy, a little, in your willingness to take a beating to gain an advantage."

"I remind you of this little thing?"

"The Slayer," Giles said, and the pride in his voice was unmistakable. Twombly looked at Buffy and seemed to see her for the first time. Buffy favored him with her scary smile, the one she used on vamps right before staking them. He didn't know to be scared by that smile.

"Fight me," he said, and Buffy was shocked. "I've never met a Slayer and who knows if I'll live to meet you again? Fight me."

Buffy stole a quick look back at Giles to see what he made of this challenge, but his face was completely blank. What did she want? Oh, heck, she knew what she wanted.

"Okay," Buffy said, and she grinned.

"Wonderful! I'll wait for you." He leapt out of the ring into the viewing stands and sat himself down in the front row, still wearing all his gear.

The next sparring match began while Buffy headed back to the locker room, Giles and Ellen in tow. Now there were more people in it, changing, stretching, men and women both. Ellen gave Buffy her own gear, extracted from her locker. It was a little big but stretchy tights were more or less one size fits all. She tried to refuse the protective gear, but Ellen insisted she wear it, claiming it was a rule that none of them dared break. Giles in turn insisted that he be the one who strapped her into it. He double-checked every strap and fastening, strangely zealous.

She went out to the ring feeling a strange mixture of anticipation and nerves. There was a fight in progress, right on the other side of the gate, but she didn't much feel like watching it. Instead she tried to remind herself of everything Giles had ever told her about sword-fighting. Guard stances, named moves, foot positions. Oh crap. Too late for that.

Their names were announced by a guy standing in the place where Conway had sat for Giles's match yesterday. Twombly hopped down into the middle of the pit and shook himself, like he was a giant dog. Buffy turned around and leaned her back against the gate.

"Oh my god, he's huge," she said.

"You don't have to fight," Ellen said. "You're not one of us. You're not a knight."

She blushed bright red but Buffy gave her the stink-eye anyway. "As if."

"She is the Slayer," Giles said. Ellen didn't seem to get it. She would soon enough, or so Buffy hoped. Twombly looked even bigger to her now than he had yesterday.

"See you on the flip."

Buffy vaulted over the door without bothering to wait for Ellen to open it. She trotted to the center of the ring. It had rained off and on that morning and the sand in the sparring pit was damp and heavy under her feet. It wasn't soggy, though. There must be good drainage under here, secretly.

"Hail," Twombly said to her, gravely.

"Hey," she said. She met his outstretched hand with hers and pretended to wince when he squeezed her a little too hard. He smiled at her just long enough to make her decide to win a little more decisively than she'd been planning to.

The referee or whatever he was stood between them and explained the rules of the match to her. There weren't many. They were expected to hold back enough to prevent permanent injury to each other. The fight went until one could not continue, or until one fighter was able to administer a mock coup to the other. Or until one of them surrendered. Fat chance of that happening.

The referee vanished and a bell rang. It was on.

Giles had warned her. The guy was huge and fast and strong, inhumanly so. Not at vamp levels, but then he was trained in a way vamps almost never were. It took her by surprise anyway. He was on her and inside her guard instantly. Buffy parried and backpedaled, watching and thinking. He was huge. She was fast. Faster than him? She attacked and an instant later regretted it. That was her sword, held in the relaxed grip Giles taught her, flying out of her hand. Her sword was way the hell over on the opposite side of the ring. Forget about it. Buffy scrambled but he was chasing her and she had nothing to use to defend herself.

He struck like lightning in a clear sky. She dodged but he kicked and caught her in the face. Physics was what it was. She went down and saw stars in the blue mid-day sky. Into them loomed a helmeted head, peering down at her.

He laughed. He laughed. It wasn't a mean laugh. It was an "I'm going to win just like I always do" laugh.

She called on the Slayer inside and pulled on the power lurking there, the way she had sometimes in the past in emergencies. Fighting the Master, fighting Angelus. It had taken fear of death to get her in touch with that power before, but now it was hers in all ways. She'd accepted it. She knew who she was. She was the Slayer. And that meant no penny-ante knight of Saint Curious George was going to kick her in the face.

"Now I'm mad," she told him.

He spun his sword lazily and stepped forward to administer the mock coup. Buffy sprang to her feet and kicked the sword out of his hands mid-spin. Her second kick was aimed at his face, but he blocked high. Buffy dropped low and kicked up. And if her foot accidentally caught him in the athletic supporter area, who could blame her? Just passing through. Backwards roll and she was on her feet. He was bent double, but an uppercut to the jaw straightened him up fast. Time to finish him off.

Buffy ran up his chest and did a little spin-kick off his face. He went over backwards. Then she did a forward flip and landed with both feet on his chest, right over his solar plexus. That was just to be sure he was out, and not in any way as revenge for Giles, nope. His sword she drove all way down to the hilt into the dirt next to his head, and that she knew was gratuitous. But if he'd been a demon, he'd have been dead three ways to Sunday.

Whatever that meant.

Buffy bent over him to check that she hadn't overdone it. His eyelids fluttered open. She said, "Yeah, not so much with the cracks about hiding behind little girls, huh? Do you get it now?"

"You are magnificent!"

Twombly's voice was slurred despite the enthusiasm. Buffy hauled him to his feet, but he went right down again onto his butt. Then he turned and puked. Oops. She'd definitely overdone it.

"Little help here?" she said. But the medical guy was already in the ring with her, flinging himself on the man trying to breathe again while he writhed on the ground. Buffy wondered briefly if she ought to regret it, but Giles gave her the tiniest of smiles as he came up to her. She followed him out of the ring to the locker room. He knelt at her feet and unlaced her protective gear and that's when he let the smile flash out full-strength. So the man-crush didn't overcome his dedication. Revenge was sweet, and it was okay with him if she was the one to get it for him.

Giles did all the work of removing her armor while she stood distracted, talking to people. Everybody was pleased she'd kicked Twombly's ass, though not in a mean way. He didn't seem to have any enemies. What you saw with him was what you got, apparently: big muscle-bound guy who lived to fight evil. It was refreshing to think about that, refreshing to talk to other people about the fight. They were fellow enthusiasts, in some ways, fellow warriors, fellow practitioners of a dangerous art. For these people it was as it was for her and for Giles, about the defense of humanity.

By the end of the afternoon, she'd seen each of the knights at least once in the ring, some more than once. They fought with swords, with knives, with staves, bare-handed. Buffy felt no need to accept any further offers to fight, but lounged in the bleachers with Giles and Ellen, watching the matches and commenting. It was one of the best afternoons she'd ever spent, and when it ended for tea in their rooms she was disappointed.

Giles-brewed tea was almost enough of a consolation. She hadn't realized how hungry she was after that workout.

"What's next?" she asked, while Ellen cleared everything away. Having a page wasn't bad sometimes; at home she'd have been doing the clearing.

"Feast night," Ellen said. "Because everyone's here. Lady Amanda made it in at last from the Himalayas. Sir Eric will be happy to see her."

"Cool. We invited?"

"You are. Mr Giles will be squiring."

"And you?"

"In kitchen, probably." Ellen rolled her eyes. "Just for another year and then it'll be the kids doing it."

Buffy groaned. "Time to dress for trench warfare again."

Ellen was confused, but Giles laughed. Buffy vanished into the shower to get herself ready.

Dinner was in the great hall next to the castle fragment. Giles led her there at the time he said was right. He was wearing the uniform he'd been in all day but his body language had changed. He was being careful to open all doors for her and hold them. He was a polite man even when under stress, but the two of them had never stood on ceremony with each other. This was different. He was squiring, and that meant he stood just behind her and to her left and was silent.

The hall was old. Buffy knew this without having to be told. The heavy wooden beams arching across the ceiling told her that, as did the simplicity of the stone walls of the building. So did the castle tower just beyond it. This was the oldest part of the grounds. The knights had been meeting and feasting there for centuries. And they were ignoring it all: wandering in, talking to each other, absent-mindedly handing glasses to pages darting around among them. And it wasn't just the young knights, the ones who had come in from wherever their questing had taken them. She saw the armorer there, with his patch and his long gray braid, talking to Whiting.

Buffy spotted other men and women in the uniform of squires, each of them following their knight around. An evening of high ceremony, Conway had said, much higher ceremony than usual. They celebrated two events in their lives with ritual: the knight's dubbing and his or her death. Both events got the order's full attention.

Dinner wasn't quite what she'd expected. It was neither the whole roasted pig carousing thing movies showed, nor a white tie restrained thing with six different kinds of fork. The knights ate a lot of food and talked a lot, but were perfectly well-mannered about it. The dinner seemed better attended than the funeral. Buffy counted chairs. Forty people, maybe, seated at the long table that ran down the middle of the hall. And then more: about a third of the people at the table had people in dark clothing standing behind them. Buffy was the youngest person with a squire present. Most of the squires were young, more like Buffy's age than Giles's. She was doing the role reversal, as usual.

Buffy was aware of Giles behind her through the whole thing. Two hours, standing behind her chair, coming forward to pour water for her or to refill her wineglass. He held her chair for her again when she stood up when it was all finally over. She wasn't sure which one of them it was more of an ordeal for. He'd only had to pay attention to her, while she'd had to talk to the guy who'd taken her into dinner about how much he liked archery. It hadn't been all bad; the archer had been friendly and enthusiastic, like Xander on a tear about Babylon 5. The woman across from her had been one of the people she'd met in the refectory and she'd been friendly too. The older guy to her left hadn't talked to her at all. After a while she placed him as one of the men who'd been in the room when they'd met Conway the first time. She had no idea what his name was, but it didn't seem to matter.

After dinner they all filed out of the dining hall and into another, smaller room further down the hall. This room had a different flavor. There were benches, old battered wooden things, lined up facing a dais. Behind the dais was a huge painting of a man in armor fighting an odd, coiled-up dragon. He was shown thrusting a long spear into it from horseback. Saint George himself. Buffy slipped herself into a back bench for lack of any better idea. She wasn't sure she was supposed to be there. The pages and squires weren't; Giles had vanished along with them.

Conway spun silently along the aisle and levered himself up the shallow steps onto the dais. The conversation fell silent.

"We are here to discuss the candidate Rupert Giles," he said. No introduction, no greeting. Straight to the point.

"What is there to discuss?" someone said. He stood and Buffy saw it was the man with the long braid, from the workshop, the one who'd been making a shield.

"The Slayer."

That was Whiting, standing up from a spot in the very front row. Buffy shifted on her own bench in embarrassment and considered booking out. Nobody was staring at her, though, tucked away in the back the way she was. She hoped it didn't look like she was sneaking, because she wasn't. Not this time.

The shield-maker shrugged. "What about her?"

Whiting said, "Accepting Rupert Giles to our number is tantamount to accepting the Slayer as one of us."

"She is our sister in arms," the shield-maker said, and he sat down again.

Conway said, "They are both free agents. I propose they join us, since they seem to wish to."

"It's beyond the simple fight of human against demon. It's about politics. You know this."

"Does that matter?"

"It does when it pits us against the Council."

Silence fell. Then a woman's voice said, "Don't see why it should."

"Pure naivete. They want her back in their control and we must not intervene."

"I don't care." Twombly stood. He was once again in a nice suit with his hair reined back. Sitting next to him was a darkly tanned woman that Buffy hadn't seen before. "I'm sponsoring him."

"If I choose to allow it," Conway said.

Twombly strode up the aisle and got right up in Conway's face. "Choose? It is not your choice."

"Unprecedented," said a man in the back. "The decision is not yours. It never is." The murmur got a little louder.

A woman on the other side of the room said, "Seems a lot of bother over a single candidate. Are we so hard up for them?"

"He'll be worth the trouble," Twombly said.

Whiting shook his head. "I'm not so sure."

Twombly turned to him, hands on his waist. "You supported his candidacy."

"From what I knew of the man at Oxford. His career has been questionable since. To say the least. It shook me when I learned of it."

There was no arguing with that. Buffy'd known about the demon-raising, and about having to kill his friend, but she hadn't known about the wetworks thing. From the viewpoint of somebody who didn't know the Council was bad news, it would look bad that they'd fired him, too. For that matter, would her career look good? She hadn't made the smartest decisions about Angel. And the Initiative deal had put her on the side of demons. Sort of. Briefly. The enemy of her enemy was her friend for a day.

Whiting was on a roll with the topic. He said, "We get a man with uncertain morals, an unbreakable oath to a power not ours, and we anger the Council into the bargain."

Twombly said, "We gain a lion of a man and this little Slayer."

"Would we truly gain her?" Whiting said. "She belongs to another Power."

"We could ask her. She is in the room with us," Conway said. The room went silent. They all turned and look at her.

Buffy waved. "Yeah, sorry, I'll leave if you want me to."

"Stay," said Conway, at the same moment that Whiting said, "Yes, go." Buffy stayed put.

"To answer your question, I belong to me. I work for myself. Giles works for me. We fight evil where we find it. The end."

"There you have my objection in a nutshell," Whiting said. "Do we want a man who'll forever be answering to another power? Or a man who answers to us?"

"I don't get it. Didn't you guys answer this question the first time you talked to us? We're on the same side. Us versus demons."

Conway said, "I have a question for you. Why do you want him to become one of us?"

"He thinks it'll make him a better fighter. I can never get him to stay home instead of fighting, so if he's out there getting hit on the head, I'd rather have him be juiced up on whatever you guys are juiced on."

"It doesn't matter to you that your Power is different from ours?"

Buffy reached within and found that the Slayer spirit had the same reaction she had. She could almost see it as well as feel it inside: she and the Slayer within were shrugging as one. "Whatever," she said. "We fight the same way."

"Do we truly? Do you know what it is to be like us?"

Conway said, "You may yet die in bed, Gerald. She will not."

"Didn't," Buffy said, quietly. "Died once already."

"Died?" Whiting was surprised. Conway was not. It was probably in her file. For Whiting's benefit, Buffy decided to explain.

"Drowned by a vamp. Another Slayer was called. That generally means deadness for the previous occupant. Got CPR just in time."

"The Slayer line moved on? But that means--" Whiting covered his mouth with his fingers and paced away from Buffy.

"What does it mean, Gerald?"

"There is another Slayer operative." Whiting's answer sounded reluctant.

Buffy said, "She's sort of in jail. Not very big with the mental stability or on the being on the side of the good guys."

"Does this change your view?"

"No." Whiting paced away again. He came to a stop just behind Conway's chair.

"Does it bloody matter what we think? He is the only one whose opinion matters." Twombly pointed to the painting on the wall behind Conway. The saint, then. The Power. Whatever it was.

Whiting cleared his throat. "We cannot have this conversation with an outsider in our midst."

"You're right, Gerald. Miss Summers, my apologies."

Conway sounded, as usual, as if he were not in the least sorry but at least this time he was bothering to be polite. Buffy bore no grudge against him for it, however. She waved to him and to Twombly, ignored Whiting, and made her way out of the hall.

Giles wasn't in their rooms. She dug up the mystery paperback she'd brought for plane reading and sprawled out in the armchair Giles had been reading in the night before. She found the page she'd dogeared on the plane. She was about at the part where the detective, a thick-necked weightlifter named for a poet, would inevitably discover he was completely wrong about who'd done it or possibly even what the real mystery was. Normally it would be sort of comforting to read a story where the bad guys always lost and justice always prevailed. But she couldn't sink in. Giles wasn't back yet, and somewhere a bunch of knights in a room were debating whether he should be allowed to join them. Or try to join them. And something was itching at the back of her neck. It wasn't a vamp tingle like she got in Sunnydale every night. It was more that she was reminded that vampires existed after a few days of blessed silence and peace. England had to have them, she supposed. Where was the nearest big city? She should dig up a map. Giles had one in his bag.

Just as she stood up from the armchair to go find it, the doorknob rattled. The door opened to reveal Giles. They smiled at each other. He looked a little goofy and sappy, in fact, not that Buffy minded.

"The festivities over?" he said.

"All over but the shouting," Buffy said, thinking of the mulish look on Twombly's face. "Did you get anything to eat?"

"Me? Oh, yes. Just now. There's a table in the kitchen where they fed us. One middle-aged man and a cluster of teenagers."

"You must have felt right at home."

Giles rolled his eyes. "At any rate, I am released from my squiring duties."

"So."

"So."

"I guess we go to bed, then."

His gaze flickered to her and hovered. His hand was on the door to his room, but he made no move to open it, nor to return to her.

"Change and come back here to me."

"Ah," he said and dipped his head to her. He went into his little bedroom and shut the door.

Buffy changed into something she could sleep in or easily take off if things went that way. Pajamas seemed like they'd set the wrong mood. She didn't go for the negligee, though she'd packed one. Giles had never seemed to appreciate that side of her, or register it, really. He'd always reacted more to her Slayerness, if that made sense. Which it suddenly did. That was a puzzle piece snicking into place in her head. Watchers needed Slayers as much as Slayers wanted Watchers.

She pulled out a tank top she'd been saving to wear on a hot day. It showed off her shoulders and arms. She considered them in the mirror of her bathroom as she brushed her teeth. She wasn't a bulky chick by any measure, but those arms had visible muscle in them. She had to end up with a guy who liked that. With a guy who didn't mind that she'd always put demon-hunting first. With a guy who also put it first.

Giles returned to her wearing the same pajama bottoms and t-shirt he'd worn the night before. He favored her with that shy smile and paused with his hand on the light switch. He clicked it off and leapt toward her. Buffy met him halfway and they were kissing hungrily.

What was it like to kiss her Watcher at last? At last, at last, that's what the Slayer spirit inside her was saying in its wordless language. He was hers and he ought to have been hers before now. She took a fistful of his t-shirt and pulled him against her hard. He groaned.

"Mmm. I like that. It's a thing for me. Do you have a thing?"

"I have many things." He rolled his eyes at her slang, as he always had.

"What's your favorite thing?"

"Perhaps you will discover it. Perhaps not."

"Oh, you're going to be like that, are you? Now I have to find out."

"I would never interfere with any pleasure of yours," he said, solemnly, but his eyes were crinkled.

Buffy followed her hunch and moved fast, before he could react. A hand shoved against his chest and a foot hooked around his ankle, and he was falling back onto the bed. She was on him, pushing him down, straddling him. She pinned his wrists with her weight. The threat of supernatural strength was in her grip, but he had the advantage of at least sixty pounds on her, and leverage from his longer arms. He could make her work hard to keep him down if he wanted, mortal though he was. She knew this from experience. Why wasn't he using them on her now? Instead he lay under her, muscles tensed just enough to make her have to work to hold him down. Interesting.

"Didn't know you were kinky."

"Only very slightly kinky."

"So I haven't found your thing."

"Not quite."

But close. Buffy shifted herself and leaned down to lick his lips. His mouth opened easily to her. She kissed him deeply and tried to figure it out. It wasn't the struggle, though he didn't mind that. It was maybe the way he yielded to her. He liked his women bossy; she'd known that since watching him with Miss Calendar. How bossy did he want her to get? She licked his neck and then bit, gently at first then harder, just short of breaking the skin.

Giles held himself very still. Buffy licked where she'd bitten him and he moaned.

"God," he said, and he shuddered. She was close to his thing, then. She tried kissing him again, this time with a little tongue involved. He seemed to like that a lot. She had this plan to seduce him right away, get to the mutual happies phase so it wasn't looming or taking up too much of her attention. The way it was right now, matter of fact, with that feeling of wanting him constantly tugging at her.

Then she realized Giles wasn't kissing her back any more.

"Buffy?" His voice was tentative. She let go of his wrists immediately. "Would you mind terribly if-- that is, I can't concentrate."

"What's wrong?"

"Bad case of nerves."

Buffy shifted herself off of his hips and knelt on the bed next to him. She should have guessed that what she'd been hoping for wasn't going to happen just then. It probably wouldn't happen until the situation with the knights had been resolved one way or the other.

"I'm easy to please," she said. But Giles shook his head.

"Not, not about you. About the Order. Joining them. Been torn between anticipation and fear all day. It's all happening so quickly. Am I making the right decision?"

"I get it," she said. "Rain check on the smoochies?"

"Afraid so." When Buffy made a tiny pouty sound of protest, he said, "Believe me, Buffy, I don't mean to tease you. I just--"

"Are teasing the hell out of me. It's okay. I'll return the favor some day."

"I shan't complain," Giles said, under his breath, but Buffy heard him clearly, no doubt as he'd intended.

They got out of bed to get under the sheets properly. Buffy folded the blankets down. Giles pulled his t-shirt over his head and winced. He dropped the shirt onto the floor and turned back to her. Buffy laid a hand on his side gently. Last night's red marks had blossomed black and purple. She made a sympathetic noise.

"Look at you. All bruised up."

"Bruised and sore." He sighed.

She gave him one last slow kiss, then turned around so they could sleep spooned up. Giles draped a heavy arm over her waist. His hand rested over her belly. Buffy laced her fingers through his. He might be nervous, but she wasn't. A little turned on, a lot comfortable. There were no demons anywhere near the sanctum of St George, and there probably wouldn't be any. She could wait. He wanted it as much as she did, so he'd be hers after the ceremony. She'd make him hers one way, then make him hers in another way.

Giles shifted his hand to lift her tank top. His fingers traced around her belly button, right on the edge between ticklish and erotic. Buffy drew in a shaky breath. Make that a lot turned on. He trailed his fingers down her stomach, down to the waistband of her panties. Inside, further down, until his fingers rested just over her sex. Buffy moved, then, and pressed her own hand over his.

"May I? I'd like to."

Soft voice, breathy, tempting. But Buffy tugged his hand up and back to its resting place against her stomach. "No. I want to wait for you."

"I don't need--"

"I have definite plans for our first time, and they include good times for you."

"You do, do you."

"Yes. So just chill out and get some sleep."

Giles's breath was warm against the nape of her neck, her shoulder. He nuzzled her. Soft lips, scratchy chin. "You are the strangest girl," he murmured.

"You like me like that."

"Indeed I do."

Continued in part 5.