"New Ideas" 2/2
Title: "New Ideas” 2/2
Author: Lena
Fandom: Buffyverse
Warnings: Hmm…a little language. Dirty thoughts. Not too much badness going on.
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Joss Whedon is God, and I'm just a lowly worshipper. None of this is mine...blah, blah, blah.
Summary: After spending a lot of extra times with Giles for the first time in a while, Buffy realizes just how much her feelings
for him have changed. The story starts just after Season 5, Episode 1 “Buffy VS. Dracula” but Riley left Buffy over the summer
and Dawn doesn’t appear out of nowhere.
Beta'd by: This is running way late, so it wasn’t betad. If you guys catch something, let me know and I’ll change it.
She woke up in enough time to run to her first class, and her classes blew by. She was nervous about seeing Giles for training at three o’clock. On one hand, she couldn’t understand how she could be nervous, because it was just Giles, but, on the other hand, it was Giles, and, with this whole new concept of having the hots for Giles, she didn’t know if she should dress up or just act like everything is normal. She decided to just try and act normal.
Giles seemed to sniff out that something wasn’t normal as soon as she walked through the door, however. She knew that she was acting a little strange. Well, it was either that or when she was distracted enough so that Giles managed to get one good hit against her with a quarterstaff (they were alternating weapons at the moment) and sent her flying into a bookcase.
Giles ran over to her as she stayed down on the ground for a moment. “Buffy, are you alright? I’m so sorry; I didn’t mean to hit you that hard.”
“It’s alright,” she said, lying without effort. It actually hurt like hell, but she knew that it would pass soon. Right now, though, it felt like a mule had kicked her in the stomach where Giles had hit her. “I’ll be fine.”
Giles helped her sit up and helped her get over to the couch. “Buffy, is everything ok today? You seem distracted. Normally, you would have dodged an attack like that.”
Buffy sighed, and then winced as the breath hurt the hell out of her. “I’m doing alright. My concentration is just a little off.” She looked up at him and smiled. “I think we’re done for the day, though. I have to work to breath here.”
“Are you sure you’re ok? Would you like some tea?”
Buffy laughed. “God, you British people and tea. Sure, why not. I’ll have some tea. Does it really fix everything, or do you just like to pretend that it does?”
Giles just smiled back at her. “Oh it does fix everything. Let me make you a cup and you’ll find out.” She watched him as he turned and walked to the kitchen, and she couldn’t stop herself from looking at his ass as he walked away. Now, for the first time, she understood the phrase ‘I hate to see you go, but I love to watch you leave.’ All these years of fighting on the Hellmouth had done wonders for his body. She couldn’t see too much of it under the clothing that he wore, but, through his jeans, she could tell that he had a good butt. He could probably sell workout videos with that butt.
Then she looked away, mortified over exactly how much thought she had just put into Giles’s ass. Willow was right, she had it and she had it bad.
She was still trying to recover a few minutes later when Giles walked back in with a tray that had a teapot, two cups, and more things to put in tea than she thought was possible. He set it down on the coffee table in front of her, taking a chair that was cornered next to the sofa that Buffy was still sitting on. “So, what do you like in your tea?” he asked her.
Buffy just realized that, in the four years that she had known Giles, she had never sat down and had tea with him before. She wasn’t even sure if she had ever had ‘proper’ tea, as Giles would say. She shrugged at him. “Don’t know, actually. Why don’t you fix it the way you like it and we’ll experiment.”
She watched him as he poured tea into the two cups, and then put two cubes of sugar and some milk into both of the cups. She accepted the cup from him when he passes it to her, leaning back and taking a sip of it. She found that it tasted great. She’d had iced tea before, but never hot tea. It was like hot chocolate, but better, and she never thought that she’d be saying that anything was better than chocolate. “Wow, we should definitely have tea more often if it’s always this good.”
Giles smiled at her. She loved the way that his green eyes crinkled when he smiled. She couldn’t believe that she had never noticed that before either. She really was an oblivious person.
Soon enough she was so wrapped up in conversation with him that she could barely take the time to notice anything about his looks. She was able to talk to him in a way that she had never been able to talk to a boyfriend. Not Angel, not stupid ass-face Parker, and not Riley had been able to relax Buffy enough so that she could talk so freely. She didn’t feel the need to act or be a certain way. She tried to be as mature as possible with Angel, which had totally misfired in the worse possible way. Still so hurt from Angel, she was willing to be or do anything to be with Parker, and that was a terrible mistake. Riley had wanted her to be more normal than she could ever be. She had wanted normal with him, and she had gotten hurt again. She was starting to think that Willow may have had the right idea about rejecting boys forever before the idea of Giles hit her over the head like a ton of bricks.
“Buffy?” Giles’s voice brought her out of her thoughts. “Are you sure that you’re feeling ok? You still seem a little distracted.”
“Well, let me put it this way. I think I just figured something out.” She smiled at him.
“Oh? Is it a good or a bad thing to have figured out?” Giles smiled back at her.
“I’d call it a good thing, a very good thing.” She looked down at her watch. “I kind of need to run. I need to do some homework before patrolling tonight. So, are we meeting tonight at ten o’clock still?”
Giles nodded. “Yes, in the same cemetery that we started in the night before.” He stood up and walked her to the door. “I shall see you tonight, then.”
Before she left, Buffy stood up on her tip-toes and kissed him on the cheek again, but this time hung around for the extra second to check his reaction. She was pleasantly surprised that he didn’t look horrified by it like she had feared he would. “See you tonight,” she said, practically floating out the door afterwards.
That night, Buffy had gone through a little extra effort to get ready for patrol. Of course, she couldn’t exactly go out in a skirt and heels, but a little extra make-up and curls in the hair wouldn’t arouse too much suspicion, would it? She ended up picking out a silk blouse and a good pair of jeans to go out in, with a pair of black boots. She knew that all of these nice clothes would probably be covered in dirt before the end of the night, but the she figured that the thought still counted.
She met Giles out at the cemetery at the appropriate time. He smiled at her when she walked up. “You look nice tonight. Is there anything that you’re celebrating?”
She smiled when he complimented her. “Well, I’ve got something that might be worth celebrating.”
“What would that be?”
“If I told you, then it wouldn’t be a surprise.” She started to walk through the graveyard. “I’ll tell you about it later, okay?” She hoped that she would be doing some celebrating tonight, anyway, and not crying on Willow’s shoulder about how Giles rejected her and how she could never face him again.
He nodded, and they started patrolling through the first of what would be six graveyards tonight. It was impossible to hit all of the twelve graveyards in one night and still get enough sleep to function the next day. What Giles had thought of was to check which ones had burials in them the day before and go to those. That usually got them going to six a night, sometimes more, and sometimes less.
That night was far busier than the night before. The night before, they had only found three vampires in five graveyards. Tonight, they found a large group of vampires in the first graveyard, preparing for something or another that looked like it could be important. Buffy wasn’t really interested in the why or how, as much as how great these vampires would look as little piles of ashes under her boots.
She watched Giles in action. He had brought an axe tonight, and she could barely stop watching him swing it to lop off the head of a vampire to do her own duty. When she finally managed to turn her head away from him, she came face to face with a vampire. With a few kicks and a nicely placed piece of word to shove through his chest, he was quickly dust.
“So Giles, how are you doing over there?” Buffy asked after that vampire was dust, glancing over at him for a second before turning her attentions to the next vampire that came toward her.
She saw him aim his axe at another vampire’s head, taking it off in one clean swoop. “I’m doing just fine over here, Buffy.” Without missing a beat, he swung the axe again into another vampire’s chest, bisecting him. “I actually have something that I need to ask you.”
Buffy launched a series of punches at a vampire, sending him sprawling onto the ground. “Are you sure that this can’t wait?” What could be on his mind that he needed to ask now? “I mean, life and death peril here.”
“The problem with that scenario is watching you right now…I was wondering if I could…maybe we could get a cup of coffee after we’re done here?” Even though he was sparring with another vampire who had thought to bring a sword to the battle, Buffy could see the slight blush in his face.
“Wait…are you asking me on a date?” She paused just for a second too long, taking a roundhouse kick to the chest that sent her falling to the ground. She watched as Giles dispatched the sword vampire with an axe to the head, while Buffy used her stake to throw into the remaining vampire’s chest.
She stood up and brushed herself off, not even looking as the vampire turned to dust. “That’s what you get for getting my shirt dirty,” she snapped at the pile of ashes. “I try to look nice and they still kick me around.”
“You didn’t answer my question.” Giles walked over and brushed some of the grass off of her back. She closed her eyes and smiled at the sensation of his hand brushing down her back gently to get the blades of grass off. “Ever since we made up with each other earlier this year, I’ve…I’ve basically dug my head out of my arse and noticed how much you’ve grown. You’re went from the flighty teenager that stayed in the library to begrudgingly train to a responsible woman who juggles both college and slaying with seeming ease.”
“I juggle this because of my fabulous Watcher, Giles.” She turned to look at him. “And I’m juggling with good grades this year, I might add. I’d like to think that I’ve dug my head out of my ‘arse’ as well.” She tried to mimic his accent with the last sentence, and failed miserably, which caused Giles to laugh. She then smiled coyly at him. “You don’t ask a girl out on a first date for coffee, Giles. Maybe a dinner tomorrow night would be more appropriate, don’t you think?”
She watched as a broad grin swept across his face. “I do believe you’re right. Dinner it is.”
For: secondalto / Katy
The request: patroling with banter, Scooby involvement (choose your
Scoobies), tea.
Unwanted: OOCness, major character death
Highest rating preferred: any