Work Text:
Not that Giles has any problems with his job. On paper, the salary is lovely and the job is fairly simple.
On paper.
“You know,” says Buffy, who’s sitting on Giles’s desk and eating a good portion of his lunch, “you should maybe consider the fact that you’d do better off in, like, a library. That or you could just not try at this job, because I’m pretty sure Michael would like you a lot better if you didn’t try.”
“Ah, yes,” says Giles, who has had a particularly stressful run-in with Michael. Honestly, the man was trying to spend his entire work day finding out the home address of a model in a chair catalogue, and somehow Giles is the one treated like the office pariah. “Because not trying would make things so much easier for me with corporate.”
Buffy gives him this long look. Then she says, “I’m really serious, though, Giles. Maybe working somewhere else would be good! I think there’s an opening at the public library—”
Giles really doesn’t want to talk to Buffy about why he chose the job that he did, so he says loudly, “How’s Kendra?” and this very neatly changes the subject to the very pretty girl Buffy had met on a coffee run. Buffy loves talking about her love life, and Giles loves listening to Buffy talk—which is sort of the problem.
Buffy isn’t in any way related to Giles, but he was very close to her mother; close enough that, when Joyce died, guardianship of Buffy and Dawn got somehow shifted to him instead of their father. This turned out to be for the better, because Hank Summers very clearly had no interest in being a full-time father, but it did mean that Giles had had to move to America and take care of two very upset teenage girls (a story that, looking back, seems the sort of distastefully sitcom-esque plot that someone like Xander Harris might enjoy watching).
Giles very much dislikes America, particularly Scranton. There aren’t any libraries in their neighborhood, and the commute to and from his home gives him little to no free time. But moving anywhere else would mean seeing his girls much, much less, and—he’s not ready to do that. Not quite yet.
“You are totally zoned out!” Buffy teases Giles, and throws a cherry tomato at his face. He dodges it, laughing in surprise.
“Throwing stuff at Giles?” Michael’s voice comes from around the corner. Giles feels a headache beginning. “Good plan. We should make that the office policy.”
“Wow,” says Willow. “Friendly.” She hands Giles a small, neatly folded note. “Upset coworker is upset about me bringing my girlfriend to the office picnic,” she says, making a face at Buffy. “Not to name names, but hers starts with an Angela.”
Giles sighs. In his opinion, the HR department of this office is thoroughly understaffed; there are at least seven complaints every day, if not more. “And why is Michael here?” he asks Willow.
“I’m here because there’s a meeting in five minutes, Giles,” says Michael, glowering at him, “and if you have something to say, just say it to my face.”
“Thank you, I’ll take that into account,” says Giles thinly, turning back to his desk.
“Thank you, I’ll take that into account,” Michael mocks in what seems to be a bad approximation of a British accent.
Giles feels Buffy’s fingers curl protectively around the cuff of his jacket, hand resting on his wrist. “We’re kinda busy back here, Michael,” she informs him, her voice saccharine-sweet. “Why don’t you go check in on Tara?”
Michael seems to consider this, then stomps away. More often than not, when Giles sees Michael, he’s reminded of a resentful eight-year-old Dawn who had just been told that she couldn’t stay up until one in the morning. This more than takes the edge off of the fact that his boss has a personal vendetta against him.
Buffy lets go of Giles’s wrist. Giles is somewhat grateful for this; Buffy has a rather tight grip. “He’s going to fire you someday, Giles,” she says quietly. “You need a backup plan.”
“Thank you, I’ll take that into account,” Giles quips lightly, squeezing Buffy’s shoulder.
“It’s not a joke,” Buffy informs him, smiling a little reluctantly. “Michael’s a total jerk, and he doesn’t like hearing you say no when he wants to, I don’t know, build a hamster nation in the office.”
“Good lord, don’t remind me,” says Giles with some exhaustion.
Buffy leans down and gives Giles a small, awkward hug, resting her cheek against his before she pulls away. “I just want you to be happy,” she says.
More often than not, Giles has to wonder how on earth Hank Summers walked away from a daughter like Buffy without looking back. Granted, Giles didn’t exactly choose to be Buffy’s father figure, but he wouldn’t change anything about his situation for the world. The only problem with that is the fact that Buffy wants Giles to change, without realizing what those changes might mean for him.
Reluctantly, Giles says, “I’ll consider—”
“Yes!” Buffy beams, sunshine-bright.
“This isn’t a promise, Buffy, I’ll merely begin to look in the newspapers for alternative employment,” says Giles carefully. “That doesn’t mean that I will take any of those opportunities.”
“I’ll take what I can get!” Buffy hops off the desk, tugging on Giles’s sleeve. “Meeting in two minutes,” she reminds him, skipping out of the office to meet Willow at the door.
Giles hesitates at his desk for a moment, looking over at the one framed photo next to his computer. It’s a picture of him with Buffy and Dawn, taken at Buffy’s high school graduation. There was a gas leak that day, one that led to what Dawn calls “the school blowing up” and what Giles calls “a brief fire in the back of the auditorium.” Buffy’s diploma is a little singed, and she’s a little rumpled, but she’s thrown her arms around Giles’s neck and is giving him an impromptu kiss on the cheek. Dawn’s giggling, looking up at them both with her hands over her mouth.
Sometimes, Giles worries that he can’t possibly be enough of a parent to Buffy and Dawn. He keeps the picture on his desk to remind him that he can.
Giles gets a call from Dawn’s school in the middle of Michael’s meeting.
“God, Giles, who’s even calling you?” Michael demands as Giles hurries outside. “You don’t even have a life outside this office, who would you think—”
Ignoring this, Giles flips open his phone, heart pounding. Dawn’s school never calls, not ever. When Buffy was in high school, Giles got an alarming amount of phone calls about her starting fights with particularly unsavory football players, but Buffy took martial arts in high school and Dawn’s such a small thing—
“Hello, is this Rupert Giles?”
“Is Dawn all right?” Giles demands anxiously.
There’s a startled silence, and then the man on the other end of the line says, “She’s fine, it’s just that it’s parent-teacher conference week, and Dawn put down your number for a meeting with her computer science teacher tonight, so I’m calling to—”
“Oh,” says Giles, horribly embarrassed. He supposes that this is what he gets for not checking the family calendar. “Yes, of course. My apologies. It’s been a rather stressful day at work.”
The man laughs. “I can definitely relate,” he says. “This secretary job isn’t a cakewalk. I’ll tell Ms. Calendar that you’ll be in tonight?”
“Thank you, yes,” Giles agrees with some exhaustion, and hangs up, steeling himself for a moment before he walks back into the meeting.
Faith and Tara are having their own private conversation via eye contact, smiles, and what might be blinking in Morse Code. This is actually a very smart call on their part, because Michael has a tendency to ask leading questions about “gal pals” and honestly, generally, he’s sort of just awful about everything personal in this office. Giles thinks longingly, sometimes, about his non-paper-company job in the British Museum, where he had colleagues he respected and some measure of a social life and everyone knew what emotional boundaries were.
“Who was that?” Michael asks, looking ready to mock Giles.
Giles doesn’t mind, really; he gets the sense that Michael mocks anyone who tells him no, and he doesn’t take Michael’s opinion all that seriously anyway. It is a bit bothersome to be called out in front of his colleagues, though, and he’s still coming down from the rush of worry about Dawn, so he says irritably, “The woman I slept with last night was calling to tell me how good it was, Michael, who do you think it was?”
Faith and Xander both start laughing. Next to Giles, Buffy taps his shoulder and mouths Dawn? Giles nods, and Buffy grins a little, then settles back into her seat to watch the rest of the meeting. In this office, meetings are more like spectator sports.
As usual, Giles walks down to his car with a small gaggle of people. Buffy seems to have made friends with nearly everyone in the office, and it’s a bit much for Giles, but he’s comforted by the eventual feeling of driving away from that building with only Buffy in the car.
“I kinda think you should quit,” says Buffy, which is what she says almost every day as they’re leaving work. “I mean, I know you say it doesn’t bother you, but Giles, this kind of work could drive someone crazy.”
“You seem to be doing fine,” says Giles, gentle but pointed. “And besides which, the pros of staying here far outweigh the cons.”
“You could move—”
“I’m not uprooting Dawn in her senior year.”
“We could all move, then,” Buffy persists.
“Everything quite all right?”
Buffy shrugs, then says with some effort, “Maybe it’s not getting to you, Giles, having Michael ragging on you all the time, holding the office together with lots of behind-the-scenes busy work, but it’s getting to me. You could do so much better than this dumb office in this dumb town, and no one in that office appreciates it.”
Giles considers this. “If you like,” he says finally, “I’ll start looking for alternative employment. Will that make you feel a bit better?”
“Yes,” says Buffy. “Look, Giles, I-I get it, okay? You want us all to stick together. I want that too. But I’m super bendy—”
“Flexible?”
“Yeah, that. I can find a job somewhere else.”
“All your friends are here,” Giles reminds her.
Buffy smiles a little. “Yeah,” she says, “but your friends need to make it into the equation too, Giles. And if you don’t have any right now, I’d say that your cons are the ones that are starting to outweigh your pros.”
This is a frustratingly good point. Giles doesn’t want to let her know this, though, so he says instead, “I might have to drop you off at home, I’ve a meeting with Ms. Calendar.”
Buffy’s eyes widen. “Hold on,” she says, “Ms. Calendar? You and Ms. Calendar are meeting tonight?”
Giles blinks, then stares, very abruptly putting two and two together. “Ms. Calendar,” he says slowly, “as in Jenny Calendar?”
“As in Jenny Calendar, Willow’s old computer teacher, the one she brought as a special guest to last year’s Dundies?” Buffy’s grinning hugely. “You have a date with Ms. Calendar, Giles?”
“It’s not—” Giles is fairly certain that he’s smiling too, and is somewhat annoyed with himself for doing so. “She’s apparently Dawn’s teacher,” he says. “She wants to meet with me tonight for parent-teacher conference week—”
“Oh my god, that’s such a cover-up,” says Buffy with an amazed laugh. “Dawn’s getting, like, an A plus plus in computer sciences. Ms. Calendar figured out that Dawn’s your kid and she wants to say hi and ask you out.”
“Buffy,” Giles begins, hoping he isn’t blushing.
“I’d bet you an exorbitant amount of money that I’m right,” Buffy finishes, and leans back in her seat, looking extremely pleased with herself.
“Thirty dollars,” says Giles without thinking.
Buffy blinks, then laughs again. “You’re on,” she says, and holds up her hand. Giles high-fives her a bit clumsily as they drive.
Dawn’s sitting on the front steps when they pull into the driveway, and she hops up with clear relief. “I left my keys at home,” she says, skipping over to pull Buffy and Giles into a three-person hug. “How was work?”
“I’m still trying to get Giles to quit,” says Buffy, draping an arm over her little sister’s shoulder as they walk towards the house. “Also, did you know Ms. Calendar wants to meet Giles tonight?”
Dawn immediately starts giggling.
“You okay?” says Buffy bemusedly.
Barely managing to hold back further laughter, Dawn wheezes, “I know! She saw a picture of Giles in my binder—you know, that awful one we took on Lake Michigan—and she was immediately like Is he your dad? And I was like yeah, he is, and she was like wow, and then she got all blushy, and then she wanted to know the next day if he could come in to see her for teacher reasons.”
“Pay up, Giles,” says Buffy, grinning.
“The awful one on Lake Michigan?” says Giles, horrified.
“She liked it!” Dawn reassures him. “She said you looked sweet.”
“There’s a difference between sweet and hot, though,” Buffy’s saying to Dawn as they enter the house. Over her shoulder, she tosses a bright, happy smile at Giles, then makes a little motion with her hand towards the car.
Giles stands there for a moment, still smiling a little, then belatedly remembers that he has to drive to the meeting. Running a hand through his hair, he hurries to the car, wishing he wasn’t still in his work clothes but deciding that there isn’t much he can do about it at this juncture.
Giles has seen Jenny Calendar approximately three-and-a-half times.
The half time was the first one, chronologically speaking, during a field trip that he’d somehow been roped into chaperoning. As the class had been leaving the school for the bus parked outside, Giles had happened to look over his shoulder and catch sight of her teaching in a poorly-lit classroom, a beautiful smile on her face. He’d thought about her for a bit longer than acceptable on the bus ride over. She radiated joy, he remembered thinking, and it wasn’t common for a Scranton teacher to look so at home in their job.
The first time, of course, the one that really counted as the first, was the Dundies, where they had a philosophical debate about the merits of technology that ended with Jenny saying, “You know, you’re the first person I’ve met in a while where I really like disagreeing with you.” Giles still very much understands what she meant by that. There’s something in Jenny that matches something in him; some sort of mutual frustration at their mutual loneliness. Jenny was at home in her job, very clearly so, but to Giles, it seems a bit like she doesn’t know how to be at home anywhere else.
The second time was an accidental encounter at a public library. Jenny was with someone else, and Giles wasn’t, so the whole thing was a bit awkward and stilted with the third person there. But then Jenny shooed that person away (tactfully and subtly, but it was still fairly noticeable to Giles) and told Giles that she’d looked into a few of the books he’d recommended at the Dundies, and she’d really liked the first two but the third was truly awful, and this ended up sparking a whispered argument that went on until Jenny’s friend came back over. Giles remembers feeling happy for the rest of the day after that.
The third time—well. The third time was actually at the office Christmas party. Jenny had come as a guest, and spent most of the time in the break room with Willow due to Michael’s immediate interest and subsequent horrible flirting. Giles is of the mind that Jenny has very good instincts, though it doesn’t take much to know that Michael is someone to be avoided. He didn’t actually see Jenny all that much then, but he knew she was there, and a mixture of shyness and apprehension at attracting Michael’s attention kept him from going to the break room to say hello.
Giles is thinking about those meetings as he parks his car, chest full of a dizzy apprehension. It could be said that, in a way, this is the first time he’s seeing her where it feels like something’s possible.
He stops by the front office to nod at the man behind the front desk. “I’m Rupert Giles,” he says. “By any chance do you know—”
“Ms. Calendar’s office is down the hall.” The man gives him a small smile. “And I’m Riley. Good luck in there—she doesn’t call a lot of parent-teacher conferences.” He goes back to his paperwork, leaving Giles to digest this new information, smile a bit to himself, and exit the office, hurrying down the hall.
There’s only one classroom with a light on, the door propped open. Tentatively, Giles pauses in the doorway.
Jenny Calendar is putting on lipstick in the reflection of a small compact mirror. She doesn’t notice he’s there until he clears his throat, at which point she jumps and the lipstick zags across her face. She yelps, turning, and then groans. “Oh, no,” she says.
Giles tries not to laugh. “You’ve, um,” he motions to his face, “got a, a bit of lipstick there.”
Jenny presses her lips together and nods, looking resigned to her new fashion choice. “Yeah, I figured,” she says. “It’s just been that kind of day.”
Giles digs in his pocket and finds a small, white handkerchief, crossing the room to hand it to Jenny. She looks down at it, then back up at him with an amused smile. “Thanks,” she says. “Sweet of you.”
“Of course,” says Giles, inclining his head. Then, belatedly, “I’m, I’m here about Dawn, if that wasn’t evident?”
Looking sheepish, Jenny ducks her head. “Uh, Dawn’s doing great,” she says. “I kinda pulled the teacher card ‘cause I wanted to see you.”
I owe Buffy thirty dollars, thinks Giles, who’s suddenly blushing a bit himself. “Oh?” he says.
“Yeah.” Jenny’s grinning. “I’m definitely glad I didn’t have to wait an entire year to see you at next year’s Dundies, but I never got the chance to give you my number.” Her smile turns a little self-conscious. “Too direct?”
“No!” says Giles with immediate vehemence, and grins at Jenny’s startled, delighted expression. Awkwardly, he adds, “It’s—quite direct, but, but certainly not unwelcome.”
Jenny smiles and steps a little closer. “Good to hear,” she says.
“You missed a bit of lipstick,” says Giles, feeling daring, and takes the handkerchief from Jenny, pressing it gently to her cheek. He feels her smile a second before he sees it.
“You’re going to tell me about the date, right?” Buffy demands as soon as he gets home. Over her shoulder, Giles sees Dawn perk up on the couch.
“Frankly, Buffy, it is none of your business,” says Giles with as much dignity as he can muster. As an afterthought, “And it wasn’t a date.”
“Whatever you want to call it,” says Dawn, climbing off the couch to face Giles, “you’ve got that same blushy look you got while you were dating Olivia, and that definitely means something.”
Giles tells them both to go to bed (it’s nearly midnight, honestly, why on earth are they still up) and heads in the direction of his bedroom himself. He’s halfway to taking off his jacket when his phone buzzes in his pocket. Pulling it out, he sees a text from Jenny.
is it too soon to wish u gnite?
not at all, Giles texts back, suddenly very grateful for the crash course on texting lingo that Cordelia had roped him into.
The next day is, as always, spectacularly awful. Michael has taken it upon himself to prove to everyone that he’s twelve times more capable than some poor soul he met at a gym the other night, and is attempting to lift reams of paper over his head while challenging others to do the same. Faith seems to be openly stealing office supplies while Michael is distracted, but Giles can’t bring himself to really care, even though it’s technically his job to.
It’s halfway to lunch when the office door opens and Jenny steps in, waving to a startled-looking Willow. Pausing by reception, she says to Tara, “Hey, I’m here to—”
“Jenny!” Michael turns, grinning. “Jenny Jenny, who can I turn to—you know that song, right?” Jenny looks at Michael in a flat, deliberately disinterested sort of way that very clearly catches him off guard. “What brings you to our humble abode?” he flounders, but it’s clear he’s lost his touch.
“Rupert left his handkerchief,” says Jenny, and looks past Michael to smile warmly at Giles. “Kinda wanted to bring it back to him, in case he, y’know, needed it.”
Giles is somewhat unused to being the center of attention in the office, particularly when it’s related to a lovely woman showing up under flimsy pretenses just to see him again. He smiles awkwardly back. “Thanks,” he says softly.
“No prob.” Jenny tries to side-step Michael, but this doesn’t really work. “Excuse me,” she says, sounding mildly annoyed.
“Him?” Michael sounds seriously affronted. “He’s—British! And, no offense, but Jenny, you could do so much better than him. You know he’s got kids, right?”
“Yeah, I teach his daughter,” says Jenny smoothly, finally managing to mostly get around Michael. But Michael sticks his foot out—almost definitely an attempt to step in front of Jenny again—which ends up inadvertently knocking Jenny into Giles. She laughs, grabbing his shoulder to steady herself. “Wow, sorry!”
“No, ah, prob,” says Giles, trying to sound cool. It doesn’t work, but Jenny grins anyway. “Would you like to—”
“Let’s step outside,” Jenny agrees before he’s even finished, and her fingers grasp the corner of Giles’s sleeve, steering him around a still-indignant Michael and out the door. “So,” she says, as soon as they’re out in the hallway, “this is very clearly just a ruse for me to ask you out on a date. Think anyone picked up on it?”
“Oh, no, you were very suave,” says Giles, grinning ridiculously. It feels odd, being this happy on company time. He feels like he’s cheating the system. “You can keep the handkerchief, it’s a spare.”
“I’m more of a Kleenex girl myself,” says Jenny, pressing the handkerchief into his hand. “Besides which, what if you meet some other lovely computer teacher with lipstick on her cheek?”
“I’m positively certain that there’s just the one,” Giles answers, looking down at the handkerchief. “Did you—wash this?”
Jenny grins. “Yeah,” she says. “Hopefully I did it right? I googled a lot of information about handkerchiefs and then I gave up and took it to a Laundromat.”
“You’re very thoughtful,” says Giles, soft and a bit shy.
“You’re very cute,” says Jenny, looking directly up at him with a flirtatious smile. “I’ve got more than a few ulterior motives.”
This is when Giles becomes somewhat aware of the fact that Michael is standing in the doorway, staring daggers at them both. “Ah,” he says, more exasperated than genuinely upset. “Hello, Michael.”
“Get back to work, Giles,” says Michael, “we’re not paying you to bother everyone who shows up in this office.” He motions towards the door, then gives Jenny a winning smile. “Jenny,” he begins.
“Oh, no, I’m bothering him,” says Jenny, her hand moving to a startled Giles’s shoulder. As an afterthought, she adds, “Decisively not you.”
Michael seems somewhat taken aback by this. Then he says, “Well—I’m his boss, and, and he has to come back in right now or he’s fired!”
“Pretty sure you can’t do that,” says Faith from behind Michael, and is immediately waved off.
Jenny gently taps Giles’s shoulder. “How’s tonight?” she asks. “I get off at about four pm, if you want to drive by and pick me up from work.”
“I’d like that quite a lot,” says Giles, feeling a rush of butterflies.
“Cool.” Jenny squeezes Giles’s shoulder, blushing ever so slightly, and lets her hand drop, turning on her heel and walking down to the elevators. Michael looks a mixture of furious and hopelessly confused. Over his shoulder, Giles sees Buffy giving him a very visible thumbs-up and mouthing You totally owe me thirty bucks.
“Right,” he says, feeling lighter than he has in a very long time. “I’ll get back to work.”
“You can’t put that picture up,” Michael says about three weeks later, indignant and scowling next to a thoroughly amused Tara.
“And why on earth not?” says Giles calmly. The picture is of Jenny, taken on her phone at her request. She’s wearing a floppy sun hat she’d wanted to try on, beaming at the camera from the doorway of the small store she and Giles had been exploring.
“It’s creepy,” says Michael. “Why would you put up a picture of a lady you don’t even know? Where did you even get that, Giles? Are you stalking her? You probably would, knowing you—”
“Jenny’s my girlfriend,” explains Giles, who has had this conversation about three times in the last few days and hasn’t yet gotten tired of witnessing Michael’s determined denial. “The picture is from our date two days ago, and seeing her in my workspace makes me happy. Any other questions?”
Michael glowers. “I’m calling David Wallace,” he says finally, storming off.
“You do that,” Giles calls after him, then nods to Tara.
“Jenny seems nice,” says Tara, giving him a sweet, shy smile. “It was n-nice to see her at the Dundies with you, even if Michael doesn’t seem too happy about it.”
“She’s lovely,” says Giles, and means it. “Very thoughtful, and it of course doesn’t hurt that Michael is quite bothered by the fact that his love life is now the least functional in the office.” He doesn’t say anything about the Tara-Roy-Faith thing that seems to be unfolding; it’s not his place, and he gets the sense that Tara doesn’t really want to think about her own love life at the moment.
Tara giggles. “Definitely a side benefit,” she agrees, and hurries back to reception. Giles turns back to his desk, gently adjusting Buffy and Dawn’s picture until there’s room on his desktop to place Jenny’s as well.
Scranton, as it happens, is a bit different when there’s someone to lend a handkerchief to. So to speak.