Fic: Together (Giles/Faith) PG

[lilruca]

 
Title: Together
Author: LilRuca
Pairing: Giles/Faith
Rating: PG (?)
Word Count: 868
Summary: Giles thinks about how he got to the happiest day of his life. 

Rupert Giles had many presumptions about the way his life would go; ideas on the things that would absolutely or would absolutely never occur. If he thought about it, he had always been this way, even when he was a young boy. He could still recall being ten years old. There had been two ways he could see his life going at that time, and both had been equally appealing for very different reasons. He would be a fighter pilot or he would be grocer. Then his parents had come to him, had taken both those paths from him, informing him in no uncertain terms that he would be a Watcher.

 

One thing he had given up on was being married. During his rebellious years, the thought of such ties had been laughable. Once he had settled and accepted his fate, it had been something else. He had seen what being married to a Watcher had done to his mother. His father hadn't even been assigned to field duty as he was. No. Family life was not in the cards for him, and that was fine with him.
 

Then she had come into his life.

She was a tumultuous interruption into the defined apocalypses and upheaval that was his routine as Buffy's Watcher. She was chaos personified; all walls and games she shouldn't have known how to play.

It had been a slow development. He'd insisted she move in with him once he'd discovered the seedy motel room she occupied and the methods she resorted to to pay for it. He trained with her, educated her, but he didn't treat her like a child. She wasn't his ward, she was his flat-mate, his partner. He talked to her, and in turn, she began to talk to him.

They fell into a routine of sorts. She was hardly an ideal housemate. She disappeared for days at a time, she drank, she flirted with him almost constantly, she walked around the flat practically nude – sometimes, she was nude. Slowly, she started leaving notes if she was going to be gone, calling to check in with him. She started flirting less and instead of being insulting, their conversations became that much more meaningful. She started wearing a tank top and underwear, minimally, around the house out of a sense of respect for him. Her disappearances waned entirely.

Their first true kiss had been just before graduation and the Mayor's Ascension. She had been playing a double agent and doing a damn fine job of it, but there was no question at all in his mind that she was on their side. She relayed information to him directly, though they were ever careful not to be caught. That night, she had stood before him in their flat, her arms around herself. “G? I...I've told you everything I know, and our play is solid but...if we don't make it...I just wanted to say...thanks. You...” She stopped, unable to put to words the things that she was feeling.

Giles stepped forward and pulled her into his arms. He wanted to tell her that they would be fine. Only a lot of people would not make it. He wanted to tell her he understood, he wanted to say so much more than he knew how. He wasn't very good with words or emotions either. He gently urged her to look at him.

They had kissed before this, of course. She had kissed him on more than one occasion, trying to shock him, to use him, to anger him even. He had kissed her back just to show her she had no idea what she was dealing with. He had told himself it was wrong. Her eighteenth birthday was almost an entire year after Buffy's. And yet...

This kiss was sweet, mournful, full of promise and gratitude and all the feeling and utterances that neither one could express any other way.

The Mayor was defeated and life went on as it had.

Faith's birthday was celebrated with a party and without a Cruciamentum – a bitter note from her fellow Slayer. Slowly after that, they began to actually date. They both tried to keep it casual. They enjoyed each other's company, before long they enjoyed sex. It was certainly more convenient to share a bed, for Faith to satisfy those urges at home than try to find other ways, to try to hide them.

Neither really thought it would last, but weeks passed, then months. They weathered storms neither had ever thought to deal with. It was after Buffy's sacrifice that Giles decided he couldn't live without her, that he couldn't risk her not knowing exactly how much he needed her with him.

He had never thought he would ask someone to marry him, or that that person might say yes. When it happened, he had never thought anything felt so right and he had no doubts about what her answer might be.

Mourning Buffy was a very real and complicated thing, and there was no rush on their engagement. That ended up meaning that Buffy was able to attend their wedding, as Faith's Maid of Honor.

It was the happiest day of his life.