Chapter Text
She would show Giles: he always said that she was clumsy and excessively loud when she tried to reconnoitre. There had been a weekend on which Giles had been doing a major rearrangement of the library system, including a search of every classroom and hall for unreturned books; he had told her that he would be somewhere on school premises both days from eight until four and that she should try to surprise him at least three times each day. It had been humiliating: she had knocked him down nine times, Slayer strength being what it was, and she had claimed the victory each time, but Giles had pointed out acerbically that he had always heard her coming and been ready for her, and that if her target had been a demon rather than a middle-aged Englishman armed with nothing more dangerous than a ballpoint pen and a stock inventory, she would have been in trouble.
So she had been thinking about her sneaking-up-on-Giles techniques, and she was going to surprise him tonight. She had been tired and irritable all day; she would feel better if she managed to score one over her Watcher.
She climbed the school gate; so yeah, O.K., it shifted under her foot and rattled, and the padlock rang against its chain, but she didn’t count that. She hadn’t really started her exercise, she told herself. It didn’t begin until she was inside the school grounds.
A piece of gravel turned under her foot with a crunching sound, and she froze. O.K., she would give Giles that one, mentally at least. She didn’t intend to mention it to him, of course, and it wasn’t like he would know, but yeah, she needed to be more careful about where she put her feet.
She dodged from one patch of shadow to another, hiding for nearly a minute behind Giles’ car and levering herself up by its fender. The springs creaked; maybe she shouldn’t have done that? Still, a cooling car made all kinds of noises; there was no way anybody could tell if that was just normal, or the sound of somebody there. She eased sideways through the darkness to achieve the wall, stepping softly to the library window.
There was somebody inside: the lights were on, but the blinds were pulled down, and Giles was always careful to make sure that the glass was completely covered. If she really concentrated, she could not so much hear as feel a vibration in the air, telling her that there were two people inside, talking. Would be Giles and Xander, she expected; things hadn’t been good for Xander at home in a long time, and he was spending less and less time there, more and more time at the library or at Giles’ apartment or at Willow’s. Well, cool: she would sneak up on both of them. She’d have Xander as a witness that she could surprise Giles. No way would her Watcher be able to be as dismissive as he’d been the last few times they’d done this exercise.
’Kay. She had to think this through. She couldn’t see in through the ground level window, so she couldn’t tell where Giles was. He said she could if she would just centre herself and allow herself to feel him – he said all Watchers and Slayers could do that, that if they wanted to, each of them could know where the other was. She was so not cool with that as an idea, she just found it kinda wiggy. She wouldn’t practise it; Giles pushed her, but she dug her heels in. He swore that it would give her only an idea of which direction he was in, not that it would give her details of precisely what he was doing and where; he added dryly, “Buffy, I have no more desire to have you conscious of what I’m doing in the bathroom than you have to be conscious of it. It will only tell you that that’s where I am.” And it wasn’t like he would lie to her, and yeah, O.K., she hadn’t thought of that one, but she could see why he might think that she was bothered about it. She wasn’t... well, after he’d said it, she was. But before that, she’d been bothered about him knowing... stuff. She didn’t want him to be able to know that sometimes when she said she was staying home to catch up on her schoolwork, or studying with Willow, she wasn’t. She was pretty sure he guessed it, but he couldn’t know. And yeah, she did believe him when he said that he wouldn’t know what she was doing, she did believe him, except that when she looked at the little box that lived at the back of her underwear drawer, the one she’d bought when she’d been to her dad’s one spring break, with the... the thing that she’d bought in the shop she’d got into using fake ID, she just...
No, he wouldn’t know, and she believed him when he said so, but...
She did not want Giles knowing that she had a vibrator, particularly not one looking like that, and she really didn’t want him thinking that she used it. Even though she’d only used it twice. The thing ate batteries.
So, no thank you, she was not practising that.
It did occur to her that possibly Giles did practise it, and could tell where she was. That would certainly explain how he had known she was coming when she did the exercise. He had said he couldn’t; he had said that they both needed to do it to begin with until they could find each other automatically, and that he couldn’t do it without her doing it too.
At least, she thought that was what he had said.
Not that it mattered; there were two people at least in the library, and most likely they were Xander and Giles. That was the point. So, sneaking up. Through the window, not so likely. Giles wasn’t exactly... he was all librarian-guy, and Watcher-guy, and yeah, he knew a lot, but street-smart? Not so much. She could out-think him on those terms any day. What he did have, though, was experience, and Giles’ experience didn’t have him leaving windows open after dark. Yeah, sure, she could break a window, get the drop on him before he caught up – probably, although he was quicker than most people would expect an old guy to be – but he got all pissy when he thought she was just using Slayer strength what he called unnecessarily.
That, and when he had to pay for the repairs.
So no, not the window. That meant the roof, and the skylight, and getting through not only the metal lock but also the wards. Well, the wards were meant to keep out the vamps and nasties, not her, so they wouldn’t actually stop her, but they made her skin crawl. And the lock... O.K., she would try not to break the lock. Giles had taught her how to pick a lock.
Giles had some really odd ideas about necessary life skills. He’d tried to teach her how to hotwire a car too, but that went wrong because she didn’t really understand how the ignition worked.
She wrapped her hand around the drainpipe and looked up. Easy climb. Easy. The brickwork was uneven, so there were plenty of toeholds, and the pipe was braced into the concrete every few feet, so it would take her weight. She could go up that like climbing the stairs. Then four steps took her to the skylight and...
No. She lay down, cautiously, on the roof, wriggled across the tiles, and eased over the skylight. Even in the dark, Giles might spot movement. She worked herself slowly into position, and looked down into the library. It was an odd angle: she could see most of the main space, and she was looking straight through the glass into Giles’ little office. Under her hand, the metal catch of the skylight lock was cold; she worked her nail file out of her pocket and began to tease the hasp. Giles had suggested, drily, that she buy a Swiss Army knife; she preferred a manicure kit, and after a moment’s consideration, he had shrugged and observed that it seemed to have most of the same implements. The catch gave gently beneath her fingers, and she eased the skylight open, no more than an inch. She wouldn’t throw it back until she was absolutely ready to go: Giles would feel the cold outside air if she did. She wanted to wait until he was actually beneath her before she dropped in on him.
It was fun, startling her Watcher. Didn’t happen often but it was fun.
Xander was dead underneath her; he said something she didn’t catch, and Giles came to the door of the office. He looked... God, he was pissed about something. Weird, but she could tell just from the way he stood. Most of the time, he rounded his back, trying to make himself look smaller, she suspected, but when he was pissed, or when he was taking duty in the hall, or actually, when he was fighting the vamps, he stood up straight, head up, shoulders down, total in-charge guy, and he looked like that now. She bit her lip and eased the skylight another half inch. If Giles was pissed about something, she wanted to know what it was before she went in there.
“That’s insolence, and I will not put up with it. I thought I had made that plain last time.”
Oh, just great. He was pissed at Xander, not at the world in general, so he would almost certainly end up pissed at all of them. Xander never did know when just to shut up – he was talking again.
“But Giles, I...”
“Did I not?”
“Yeah, but...”
“But nothing. Since we need to repeat the lesson, we will.”
Huh? And for goodness sakes, didn’t Xander have the sense to back off and grovel some? They all knew that whatever they had done, Giles could always be brought around – bought off – with an apology and some puppy-dog eyes. Well, maybe... Actually, maybe that was only her and Willow. Puppy-dog eyes from Xander to Giles weren’t likely to be that much use. On the other hand, Xander’s half-shrug and sideways look weren’t likely to do anything to improve Giles’ temper. Even she thought he looked insolent, and generally she would side with Xander against Giles any time.
Only... what on earth?
Giles was glaring at Xander, who was giving that half shrug again.
“Fetch the stool.” And somehow the way Giles said that... It didn’t sound like just a request, it sounded like a threat, but Xander was looking around him and going off towards one of the kick-stools that were scattered through the library for the benefit of the more height-challenged kids. Giles could reach the top shelf of all the bookcases. Buffy couldn’t. What on earth was going on?
Giles was... Giles was unfastening his belt. She could hear it, hear the whick-whick noise of the loose end flicking out of the loops on his pants. She shifted cautiously to get a better look; he was doubling the leather, allowing it to dangle from his hand.
“Well? What are you waiting for? You know what to do, you’ve done it often enough.”
Xander was leaning against a table, and actually, Buffy could just see why Giles was annoyed, because even the way he stood was... she had never seen Xander throwing such attitude. She didn’t believe what her panicked mind was telling her was going to happen, but if it was true, then she could well believe that Xander had been asking for it.
Of course, she ought to interrupt. Interfere. If Giles really intended to... Giles couldn’t possibly be meaning to do what she thought he was, because, because nobody did that sort of thing these days. Because Giles didn’t do that sort of thing. Giles didn’t even send people out of the library for talking during study periods, or give them detention for losing books. Giles could not be intending... And anyway, Giles wouldn’t have any right to do that sort of thing to Xander. Xander could just say no, and Giles wouldn’t be able to... Xander didn’t do that sort of thing. So she didn’t need to interrupt because whatever was going on, it wasn’t that.
“Today, Xander.”
Only it seemed that it was that. Xander pushed off the table and slouched over to the stool he had retrieved from European History (18th to 20th Century), and then... Then he bent over and put his hands on the step.
“Legs straight.”
She clapped her hand over her mouth just in time to stop the sound of shock emerging, but they wouldn’t have heard her anyway, not over the crack of Giles’ belt against the seat of Xander’s pants. For a weird, dislocated moment, she wondered if Xander was thinking that he should have worn jeans today; those pants from the look of them were cotton, and not any too thick, and that had to have hurt, surely?
Yeah, it did: Xander yelped at the second one, and twisted at the third. “Ow, Gi-iles!”
There was a moment’s silence, and Giles said incredulously, “I beg your pardon?”
Another silence, and Xander looked down between his hands at the surface of the stool, and said nothing.
“The use of my name in that fashion, with no honorific, is not a right, Xander. I thought you knew that.”
Huh? They all called him Giles; the difficulty was remembering not to do it during school hours.
“It’s a concession on my part, to those people I think deserve it. Just at the moment, Xander, do you think you deserve it?”
Xander muttered something towards the floor.
“I beg your pardon, I didn’t catch that.”
“No, sir.”
“You may have another six for your presumption, on top of the three remaining for your impertinence and the one we shall repeat because you moved.”
Xander half straightened, looking over his shoulder. “Six?”
“Certainly. I don’t honestly see any reason for me to break with British tradition: I am English, after all.”
“I’m not,” muttered Xander rebelliously.
“Indeed. I quite see the conflict. It is certainly unusual that the British, who have embraced the metric system with competence, if not with enthusiasm, should administer punishment in dozens, while the Americans, who are largely still using the units popular in the British Empire before the standardisation of Imperial measurements in 1824, and who view the Système International d’Unités with deep suspicion, find the base award of six to be foreign and bewildering. Nonetheless, Xander, six. After your remaining four.”
And what the hell, but Xander was just bending over again, hands on the stool, not arguing, not bolting for the door, not trying to knock Giles down and yell for help because her Watcher had flipped completely. Not even yelling at the wicked cracks of that belt across his ass, and definitely not moving again. A yelp or two, and his hips shifted and squirmed; one foot came off the floor as he twisted, but his hands were fixed to the stool, and that had to be hurting, surely?
“You may stand up.”
He was slower about that than she might have expected; he straightened his back as carefully as Giles did when he’d been bending to get at the lowest shelves. Giles, on the other hand, didn’t generally grab his ass, and rub, frantically.
“What have you to say?”
From this angle, she couldn’t quite see Xander’s face; he sounded odd as he said, obediently, “Thank you, sir,” but she couldn’t work out... His voice trembled, but she didn’t think he was crying.
She didn’t know what it was, any of it, except deeply bewildering. Giles spanked Xander? And... obviously this wasn’t the first time. How long had this been going on? And why? What sort of relationship did they have that Giles told Xander to bend over, and Xander just did? It was like, she knew that things weren’t great for Xander at home, and she could totally see that if he needed an adult to rely on, Giles was way better than Tony Harris.
Well, in terms of reliability, a paper cut-out would be better than Tony Harris. So yeah, she could see, kinda, that Xander might have attached himself to Giles. But this?
She began to edge off the roof. Surprising her Watcher seemed less of a thrill than it had done earlier, largely on account of her Watcher having surprised her, like totally. She had no idea what was going on but it was...
Hot. And that was a surprise too. Giles being all bossy and definite and just telling Xander what to do, and Xander doing it. That was definitely hot. She wasn’t blind, she knew that her Watcher was a good-looking man. Miss Calendar had obviously thought so and her mom, and she was so not going there, and she knew that Willow had just the tiniest crush. So the clothes were just totally not cool – except that when he had worn the jeans and the boots and the leather, he might have been cool, ‘k, but the rest of that evening she was just not going to think about. Not cool clothes. But the body, and this was something else she wasn’t thinking about except that she was, the body was in good shape for a man of his... well, really, for a man of any age. There had been a vote taken in the cafeteria one lunchtime across two tables of the cool girls, about whether Mr Giles in the library had a better ass than Mr Cutler in the gym who worked out all the time, and Giles had won. She’d kept that snippet in reserve for some time she really really wanted to embarrass Giles.
But yeah, Bossy Giles was hot when he was being bossy at other people. And the discovery that Bossy Giles could do that, could spank Xander and get Xander doing as he was told...
Buffy might never look at Giles the same way again.