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summer_of_giles2015-06-06 04:08 pm
HERE TO WATCH GIRLS, CHAPTER THREE: GET IT DONE ( PART 3 OF ABOUT 15-20)
Title: Here to Watch Girls
Author: ProtoNeoRomantic
Betas: Gilescandy & porkwithbones
Rating: NC-17 (work as a whole)
Paring: Giles/Willow, Giles/Buffy, Giles/Cordelia, Giles/other female characters
Word Count: 1627 (this chapter)
Chapter Three: Get It Done
Giles stood a moment, gathering his wits, forming a tentative plan to go after the Slayer, to catch up to her and talk to her somewhere where they actually might talk, to make her understand. Like in public where she can scream 'rape' and have you arrested, or in private where she can break you in half? He didn't have much of an answer for that, but it didn't change the fact that he needed to find a way. Hey I told you, I am the way, man! The only 'out' of this is by helping me. Bugger off. Not my scene, man; I'm strictly about that front door action. The better to muck up my existence. Hey, If you don't roll them dice, it don't punch my ticket. I'll punch your ticket for you, you watch. You and what Slayer? Because trust me, that one is not about to come to your rescue.
And of course, it was true; she wouldn't. But—! Rupert was stabbed by guilt as he had a dreadful, but brilliant idea. See, this is why I love fucking with humans! It's that devious, egg-sucking mammal brain of yours! Always finding a way to slink under an obstacle. Pillock, Giles sneered, almost aloud. He truly hated himself for even considering putting into action the plan that had formed unbidden in his mind, but, incubi notwithstanding, he desperately needed the Slayer's cooperation to thwart whatever other evils were soon to emanate from the Hellmouth. Although he had made his formal request for reassignment to the Council nearly three weeks ago, their idea of taking immediate action was to try to schedule a meeting to discuss it by end of the month with an eye towards working up a proposal for the next quarterly meeting. Meanwhile, all the signs and portents he'd been reading, together with the relevant prophesies and the information he'd managed to get from the demon itself, pointed to a crucial mystical upheaval here in Sunnydale within days, possibly less. Which meant that Giles, not his eventual replacement, would have to be the one to deal with it, or rather, to see that it got dealt with. And once he had had his one and only idea for gaining the Slayer's cooperation, once he had seen the logic in it, he couldn't unsee it.
Buffy was very unlikely to come to his aide for any reason, considering what had just happened between them. But come to the aide of an innocent in danger? That she still very well might! It was far too much to ask, of course. Especially of a girl he knew could refuse him nothing. Really, under the circumstances, it was truly indecent. Cruel even. And yet...
While he stood debating thus... Dithering like Hamlet you mean? Asexual Shapeshifter. Hey! That's hitting below the belt! If it's your belt, who'd notice? … the library door opened.
“I'm telling you, man,” argued a pale, lanky young man—whom he only knew to be 'Jesse' somebody because he was with Xander Harris, an oft mentioned 'friend' of Willow's—addressing his perennially confused companion with cheerful stridency, “Whatever you said to that girl, this morning must have really pissed her off. You're just lucky she didn't ram that thing right down your throat.”
“Well...” the hulking (yet somehow functionally gangling) sub-adult prat admitted sheepishly, “I may have accidentally propositioned her for sex, but she seemed pretty cool about it at the time.”
“You mean 'at the time' that she ran off so quick she forgot something she wanted to kill you for having like two hours later?” Jesse prodded skeptically.
As he watched Harris struggle to do that small bit of very simple math in his head, Giles had the uneasy feeling that he knew, far too well, the young lady of whom they spoke. “Did you want something?” he asked with politely half-concealed impatience, ready to serve the boys' book related needs as quickly as possible, the faster to rid himself of his witless and therefore unwitting rival. Oh for God's sake! Hey, pal, that was your POV, not mine.
“I need...” Xander consulted a note scrawled on the inside of his hand, “Theories in Trig? Willow told me I need it to try and understand the math.”
Giles's senses tautened. “You've seen Willow? This morning?”
“No,” Xander replied, clearly puzzled. “I talked to her on the phone last night, why?”
“Oh, erm, yes...” Giles stammered, feeling like an idiot. Which was how he felt a lot lately. When he wasn't feeling like a villain or a helpless thrall. “Well, if you do see her tell her I'd... like to speak to her after school. Not here!” he added a bit too abruptly, drawing an even more suspicious look from both boys. “In... well... erm, in the... the computer lab. I need her to show me... something about computers.” They were looking at him like he was standing there naked with his cock in his hands, trying to convince them there was nothing amiss. No they're not, that's just your guilty imagination. Shut it! Hey, just tryin'a help.
“So, uh, yeah.” Jesse said at last, attacking the incredibly awkward silence boldly and with moderate success. “The math books are... where again?”
“Oh, yes, erm... that section just there,” Giles indicated, pointing the boys towards the depths of the stacks, still collecting himself. “Fourth row along on the other side and second from the bottom.” As they disappeared from view behind a thin screen of bookshelves, Giles turned to walk away. But he hesitated, thinking he should retreat to his office before any more young women could come calling and yet feeling that he must go and find Willow at once. While he stood mired in uncertainty—A.K.A. Dithering—the boys began to converse as if they were now completely alone, the vaguely human shaped component of the school system that they'd just encountered being out of sight and therefore out of mind. Given the topic of their conversation, Giles could not help but listen.
“So Willow did finally call you back then?” Jesse asked. “I thought maybe you'd just bumped into her or something.”
“No, she called back,” Xander explained, “after about the five hundredth message. But it was weird. She got all serious and started talking about how we've always been friends and how she isn't that close to any other girls but that she needed someone to talk to. I thought she was finally going to tell me what she was crying about at lunch the first day back and why she's been avoiding us ever since. And—I know I shouldn't have, but I got nervous—I... made a joke. I told her if she was trying to propose the answer was 'yes'.” Giles managed to hold his curses in only by venting his anger in the very rough handling of some unfortunate books that had gotten in his way. But if the boys heard him slamming the volumes about, they didn't seem to notice. “Then I laughed and she didn't and, all of a sudden, all she wanted to talk about was math. So we did. And then I didn't know what else to say, so I just told her we should maybe go to the Bronze tonight, the three of us, hang out, but she said she didn't know, all hurried like, and hung up. She didn't answer when I called her right back though.”
“You jerk,” Jesse said with a rather light combination of frustration, censure, mild amusement, and friendly affection. Then, “Well we should go anyway. There's some new band tonight that's supposed to be good, and I bet Cordelia will be there.” More slamming instead of cursing followed as the two boys discussed Ms. Chase as if she was theirs to accept or reject, Xander taking the position that she was more trouble than she was worth, while Jesse countered that a girl that hot was worth a lot of trouble. Privately, Giles thought that they were both probably right.
Cordelia Chase, queen bitch of Sunnydale High, was made out of sex and obstinace. When he'd realized there was no other way to avoid her repeated incursions into the library, supposedly in search of books, he'd tried hiding in his office, telling her through the locked door to help herself to the books and sign them out in the log. It had worked on every other female student who'd insisted on spending more than thirty seconds in the library since his first encounter with Willow had alerted him to his condition. But it hadn't worked on Cordelia. She had waited him out, continually insisting that she needed his assistance desperately.
When she'd finally coaxed him to open the door a crack, and somehow gotten on the other side of it with him; Cordelia had been no less aggressive than the Slayer. Thankfully, she had been both more playful and less physically strong, leaving him spent, but not covered in bruises as he was now. And unlike Buffy, she had not blamed him, but taken all of the credit herself. At the time, in fact, she had seemed so pleased with her conquest that Giles had feared he'd acquired another regular patron. But that had been more than two weeks ago, and she hadn't darkened his library door since. Giles had been extremely relieved for more than just the obvious moral reasons. Cordelia was clearly a young woman who knew what she wanted and was used to getting it by whatever means necessary. He'd have hated to have seen poor, sweet Willow get crosswise with her, especially over him. It was bad enough getting her mixed up with Buffy. Which was exactly what he was about to do.
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