Work Text:
After Joyce’s passing, the house felt both emptier and more crowded, as if grief itself had taken up residence and fashioned a life of its own. The air inside the Summers home, once rich with joy and the background noise of Joyce’s bustling energy—her measured steps, her music, her soft humming in the kitchen—now seemed to echo with absence, the silence settling heavy over each room. Buffy moved through these days as if underwater, performing her duties and keeping her chin up for Dawn’s sake. But there were moments when Giles would catch her standing at the sink, hands still and eyes fixed on nothing, her entire body gone glassy and motionless. He never intruded on those moments, but he always noticed them, cataloguing each one with the quiet, helpless precision of a man who had spent his life studying things he could not fix.
He moved in not long after Joyce passed. He kept to himself unless approached, wanting to give the women space to mourn, but his presence was a gentle reminder to them that they didn’t have to go through it alone. Buffy seemed relieved to see him when he was around. Slowly, and with patience, Buffy began to orbit him more, and he, her. He found new evidence that the boundary between Watcher and Slayer had begun to shift.
Once, he’d arrived back after grocery shopping to find Buffy asleep with her head on the kitchen table, her hand still clutching a pen, a small pile of papers stained with the ring from her coffee mug. Giles had carefully slid the papers away, set them to dry, and woken her with a gentle hand on her shoulder. She startled, looking up at him with those impossibly wide eyes, and for a moment he saw a flicker of the lost girl beneath the Slayer—a vulnerability so profound it felt like a confession.
The biggest shift in their relationship started with film nights, a ritual Giles had hoped would comfort Dawn but which quickly became more about Buffy. At first, he occupied the armchair and she curled up on the sofa, a blanket pulled up to her chin. Their conversations in these hours were lighter, pointedly so, as if by mutual agreement they’d banished all darkness from the sitting room. Dawn would sometimes drift in and out, making popcorn or shouting anecdotes from the kitchen, but often it was just the two of them, passing the remote back and forth, arguing over whether to watch a romantic comedy or something “with more punching.” They rarely watched anything with vampires. Giles had once used the phrase “busman’s holiday”; Buffy had laughed aloud and told him to stop being so British, but he didn’t mind. Hearing her laugh made his chest tighten in a way he couldn’t explain.
The touches began subtly. Buffy would rest her feet on the coffee table, then let them slide closer to Giles’s chair. Once, she nudged him with her foot in protest at a particularly stuffy line of dialogue, and he’d laughed—a sound that felt out of place in the hush of the house. The next week, when it was time to settle down for film night, she was already on the sofa, having set aside a space next to her just wide enough for him to occupy without it being odd, without it being remarked upon.
Dawn had gone out to a friend’s house, and Buffy had let Giles pick the film. They watched an old black-and-white film, the plot meandering and almost secondary to the fact of their sitting together. Their knees pressed together beneath the blanket, and Giles found himself acutely aware of the heat radiating from her skin. At one point, a scene startled Buffy—an on-screen gunshot, sudden and loud—and she gripped his wrist, fingers wrapped tightly just above his watch. She didn’t let go until several minutes later, and even then her hand stayed where it was, her thumb resting against his pulse point with a kind of quiet deliberateness, as though she’d decided something and wasn’t ready to announce it yet.
The next Friday, Giles returned from Blockbuster to find Buffy in the kitchen, her arms elbow-deep in soapy water, her hair pulled back in a hasty bun. She didn’t hear him come in, and he stood in the doorway for a moment, watching her shoulders move as she scrubbed a plate with unnecessary force. When she turned and saw him, she smiled—tired, automatic, but real. He offered to finish the dishes, but she shook her head, and offered him up for drying duty.
They stood together, passing plates and glasses back and forth, bumping elbows and hips in the narrow galley kitchen. The talk was light, almost silly, so when suddenly Buffy’s laugh turned shaky and she set a glass down a little too hard, it took Giles a moment to register the tremor in her voice.
“I keep expecting her to walk in,” Buffy whispered. “She’d tell me I’m doing it wrong—she’d show me the ‘right way’ to load the dishwasher.” Her hands dropped to her sides, and she shut her eyes tightly, as if bracing for impact.
Giles wanted to comfort her, to offer some well-meaning platitude about time healing all wounds, but he sensed that words would only cheapen the moment. Instead, he reached out and wrapped his hand over hers, grounding her, anchoring her to the here and now. She squeezed back, her grip fierce, and when she finally opened her eyes, they were clear and direct, holding his gaze with a strength that seemed to acknowledge the pain without surrendering to it.
They stood like that for a long moment, the forgotten glass balanced precariously between them, before Dawn’s voice called from upstairs and the spell dissolved. Giles let go first, stepping back to his familiar distance, but he noticed how the imprint of her palm lingered on his skin.
Film nights grew longer, and the space between them on the sofa shrank until there was none at all. Sometimes Giles would bring wine, just a splash in their glasses, and Buffy would tease him about being a lightweight even as her own cheeks flushed. Their conversation wandered, sometimes dipping into old stories—Buffy’s about high school escapades before Sunnydale, Giles’s about childhood in Bath, his years at Oxford, the disastrous punk band he’d played in. The stories made Buffy laugh in ways he’d never managed back when he was only her Watcher.
It became a pattern: the slow, deliberate escalation of touch. A hand resting, casual but unwavering, on a patched knee. A careful, invisible shape on a thigh. Tucking a stray lock of hair behind her ear. Shoulders leaning in until Giles could feel the steady rise and fall of her breath. Each time, he reminded himself that this was not what Joyce would have wanted, that the world had enough complications without adding another. But each time, it became harder to resist the logic of the gravity drawing them together.
One night, the power flickered out during a thunderstorm. The three of them—the last of the Summers family and their peculiar English stalwart—huddled together on the sofa, eating cereal straight from the box and telling ghost stories by torchlight. At some point, Dawn fell asleep, her head in Buffy’s lap and her feet wedged beneath Giles’s thigh. When Buffy began to stroke Dawn’s hair, Giles shifted his hand to Buffy’s shoulder, rubbing slow, absent circles at the nape of her neck. She leaned into him, and in that darkness, with only the whisper of rain against the windows, Giles understood for the first time that his loyalty, his fear, and his longing had become indistinguishable from one another.
Yet he held back. He always held back. Even as the air between them thickened with the inevitability of their trajectory, Giles maintained a respectful distance, never crossing the invisible line that marked him as her Watcher, her protector. He would not, could not, be the one to push.
Then, one evening—late May, the house heavy with the scent of wisteria—Buffy seemed different. She’d been quiet all through dinner, picking at her food and answering questions with monosyllables. Giles tried to draw her out, but she only offered him a small smile and retreated to the sitting room, curling up with her knees hugged to her chest. When Dawn left for a sleepover, Buffy turned on the television, then muted it, as if the background flicker of light would suffice in place of sound.
Giles sat beside her, careful not to crowd, and waited. Minutes passed. Buffy’s breathing slowed, deepened, but her eyes remained open, fixed on something invisible in the middle distance.
“I miss her,” she said at last, her voice so soft it nearly didn’t reach him. “Today is her birthday.”
Giles nodded, not trusting himself to reply. He ached for her—ached with a complexity and intensity that startled him, even now. It was a feeling far too large and unwieldy to be labeled mere compassion.
She turned to look at him, and in her eyes he saw neither the Slayer nor the lost girl, but someone entirely new, someone balancing on the knife’s edge between wanting comfort and fearing its cost. She reached for his hand, lacing their fingers together, and he was struck by how small and certain the gesture was—how completely unprepared he had been for it.
They stayed like that, side by side, the hours stretching and folding in on themselves until midnight bled into morning. When at last Buffy disengaged, she did so with great reluctance, her thumb tracing the line of his knuckles before slipping away. She stood, padded barefoot to the kitchen, and busied herself with the kettle, her movements slow and deliberate.
For a long while, Giles simply watched her. He watched the way the dim light from the hood over the cooker picked out the gold in her hair, how her small, strong hands moved with absent precision as she measured coffee grounds and filled the kettle. He noticed the set of her shoulders—so often braced for conflict, now collapsed inward, soft and unguarded as if she had finally surrendered the armour she wore for everyone else. There was something painfully intimate about it, a glimpse into a solitude he had never been invited to share. He caught himself wanting to cross the kitchen and wrap her up in his arms, wanting to say all the impossible things he’d never been able to admit, not to her and not even to himself.
Instead, he stood in the threshold, hands in his pockets, inventorying the objects on the kitchen worktop: a chipped mug, a catalogue from the local furniture outlet, Dawn’s untidy stack of battered textbooks. The ordinariness of it made his longing sharper, somehow. He told himself he had no right to impose, no matter how much she might need someone, no matter how much he might want to be that someone.
So when Buffy finally looked over her shoulder at him, he only managed a thin, pained smile. She responded in kind, her eyes shining with an emotion he could not name, and for a moment the gulf between them seemed as wide as the ocean he’d crossed to find himself here. Giles cleared his throat, mumbled an offer to help with the coffee, but she shook her head, her voice airy and flat: “I’ve got it.”
She turned back to the cooker, leaving him stranded in the doorway with his words stillborn in his mouth. Giles retreated, feigning a sudden need to straighten up the sitting room, grateful for any excuse to put a cork in the bottle of emotions swelling in his chest. He folded the blankets with slow, deliberate care, aligning the edges and smoothing out the creases as though restoring order to the house might somehow tame the chaos inside himself.
He stumbled across an old photo under the coffee table: Joyce, Buffy, and Dawn in happier times, Joyce’s hands on both daughters’ shoulders, everyone mid-laugh. He brushed dust from the frame, then set it upright on the end table, next to the stack of books and a wilting bouquet that he had brought home last week. He’d never been good at funerals, had never known the right thing to say in the face of this particular kind of loss. He wanted to believe that just being present was enough, but sometimes the act of being present felt like standing in the way.
When Buffy came back with the coffee, she handed him a mug wordlessly. Their fingers didn’t touch, but the heat from the porcelain seemed to leap across the gap, a brief and dizzying flash. They drank in silence, the only sound the dull hum of the fridge and the rain tap-tapping against the window. She sat beside him on the sofa, not as close as before, her legs tucked up beneath her. He tried to read the expression on her face—a mixture of wariness and openness, of exhaustion and a plea he recognised but dared not name.
That night, he lay awake in his narrow guest bed, the taste of the day still lingering in his mouth, and thought of what it would take to touch her in the way he wanted. Not just physically—to reach across the space and trace the ridges of her collarbone and the curve of her hip—but to touch whatever lived inside her that was so heartbreakingly unreachable, so devastatingly broken. He thought of all the times he’d comforted her as a teenager, as a Slayer, and realised with a painful clarity that she was neither anymore, and that he had become something else as well.
The next day he told himself she needed space. He told himself this as he left the house, closed the door so quietly it barely latched, and stepped into the hush of the street. The rain had stopped but the world was still dismally grey, as if the only colour that existed resided in Buffy’s house. Giles walked slowly, searching for any sign of colour along his route, hands jammed deep in his coat pockets as if they might clutch his resolve.
He meandered towards the Espresso Pump, guitar case in hand, watching his own reflection in the black glass of shopfronts, the ghostly blur of a man who might have belonged anywhere but here. The city felt emptied of people, or maybe it was only that the absence in the Summers house had hollowed him, left him half-lit and echoing. He could feel her, though—her need, her ache—the way gravity feels the moon even at a thousand miles’ removed. He missed her, he realised; he missed Buffy with a desperation verging on grief. He missed her laugh, the way her eyes sparkled when she looked at him, the way her eyes always dragged over him as if checking for injury, the way she sometimes lingered then on his lips. Buffy was mourning her mother, and he was mourning her.
The coffee shop was nearly deserted, just a barista in a beanie wiping worktops and a couple of postgraduates with laptops fighting for the single working power outlet. The open mic was a limp affair: a battered amp, a microphone drooping in its stand, a tiny red sign that said “LIVE!” like it was a demand more than a celebration. Giles ordered tea, though he barely tasted it, and found himself a seat in the corner, the guitar case at his feet a talisman more than a comfort.
He tried to read, to lose himself in a book he’d picked off the rack, but the words danced and broke apart. He thumbed through the battered Moleskine he carried everywhere in his breast pocket, pages scored with lyrics he’d written in a different life—some angry, some desperate, too many obviously about her. He told himself again that she needed space, that he was giving her the gift of absence, but in truth he was hiding, hiding from a world where Buffy was in monochrome, and the cowardice of it made the tea taste bitter.
The host, a lopsided young man with a tremulous beard, called his name and Giles nearly flinched. He unsnapped the latches on the case, his movements deliberate, and cradled the old acoustic with a tenderness that always surprised him. Onstage, he sound-checked himself, and settled on the stool with the practised ease of someone who had learned long ago how to vanish inside the act of performance.
He played three songs. The first was an old punk anthem, his fingers finding the changes instinctively, muscle memory overriding the years. It felt like a greeting to his younger self, a reminder of a wildness he’d never entirely lost. The second song was softer, a melancholy ballad he’d written in the aftermath of his father’s death, the chords simple but the lyrics raw with the ache of being left behind. In the waning notes, he saw Buffy’s face, the way she’d looked at him that morning—unguarded and trembling on the edge of hope—and the feeling was so acute he almost missed his entrance for the final song.
The third song, the one he never meant to play, was hers. Or, more precisely, it was about her, though he’d never admit it to anyone. The progression was gentle, hypnotic, the kind of melody that burrows quietly into memory. He sang softly, barely above a whisper, the words so private he thought no one else would notice them. But the postgraduates glanced up from their laptops, the barista paused mid-wipe, and for a moment Giles felt like the whole world was listening. He closed his eyes and let the song finish, the last chord lingering in the air long after he’d stilled the strings.
When it was over, there was no applause. The host, sensing the hush, simply nodded and called the next performer. Giles packed up, hands a little shaky, and left without tasting the rest of his tea. The street outside was darker, the walk home longer than it had any right to be. He clung to the ritual of the return: the measured steps, the deliberate unlocking of the door, the careful closing behind him so as not to wake the house.
Giles set his guitar case down by the doorway. The house was dark except for the kitchen, where a single light burned. Buffy stood at the sink with her back to him, both hands wrapped around a mug he recognised as his own, the one with the chipped handle. She hadn’t heard him come in, or if she had, she gave no sign of it.
He didn’t speak at first. Instead, he crossed the room slowly, stopping just behind her—close enough that he could feel the faint warmth radiating from her body, but not yet touching. The scent of her shampoo and the faint herbal notes from her tea filled the small space between them.
“Buffy?” he murmured, voice low and rough from singing earlier.
She didn’t turn around, but after a long moment, she leaned back into him. Her back pressed against his chest, slow and deliberate, seeking his solid warmth through the thin fabric of his shirt. Giles inhaled sharply at the contact, his hands hovering at her sides before settling lightly on her hips. She fit against him perfectly, the curve of her body moulding to his as if she belonged there.
Neither moved for several heartbeats. He could feel the steady rise and fall of her breathing, the way her muscles gradually relaxed against him. His thumbs traced tiny, unconscious circles on her hips—the same lazy patterns they’d been drawing on each other during those quiet film nights. The tension that had been building for weeks crackled in the air now, thicker than ever.
Giles lowered his head slightly, his breath warm against her ear and the side of her neck. “You seemed far away,” he whispered, voice barely above a breath. “I didn’t want to intrude…”
Buffy let out a soft, shaky exhale and leaned back more fully, her head tilting until it rested against his shoulder and her body melting against him. The movement pressed her against the front of his trousers. He felt himself harden at the contact, and a quiet, involuntary sound escaped her lips—a response, he thought, to the change in him. Giles gripped her hips, his hands tightening just slightly—not pulling, just holding—as he fought the urge to grind forward.
Buffy’s back pressed into him, her shoulder blades sharp but yielding under the thin cotton of her shirt, and he could feel—more than see—the way her breath moved through her body. It struck Giles in some distant, lucid part of himself that she was smaller than he remembered, or maybe it was that he only ever truly noticed her size when he was this close.
He wanted—desperately, selfishly—to keep her there, to hold her until the sun came up or the world ended, whichever came first. His hands flattened at her waist, mapping the play of sinew and bone beneath her skin, the remembered geometry of all those times he’d stitched her wounds or steered her through a training routine. Those had always been practical touches, clinical, even when the undercurrent had been anything but. Now there was no pretence, no reason to pull back or make an excuse. He let himself enjoy the friction of her, the way her muscles bunched and softened under his thumbs as he circled them over her hips.
Buffy held herself perfectly still for a few seconds, as if she’d gone dormant. Then she let out a tiny, involuntary sigh—a half-sob, half-laugh that sounded like it surprised her as much as him. Her head tipped back, brushing his collarbone, hair falling loose over his arm. Giles buried his face in the slope of her neck, inhaling the scent of her and something beneath it: sweat, salt, the faintly metallic tang of adrenaline that never seemed to leave her for long. The intimacy of it made his hands shake, and he had to steady himself against her body or risk withdrawing altogether.
“I love you, Giles…” she murmured, the words catching on her tongue.
His fingers slid up, cupping her ribs as if to confirm this was not a dream and she was real, alive, and steadily breathing. He registered everything at once—the warmth of her back against his chest, the small restless shift of her weight from foot to foot, the way she hadn’t yet asked for what she wanted but her body was already leaning toward it. Giles let his hands explore lower, tracing the outer seam of her jeans with the same care he once reserved for rare books or ancient weapons. He felt the heat of her thighs beneath the denim, the slight quiver of her muscles. Acting on instinct, he pressed his palms against them, a gentle squeeze, wanting to feel her flesh under his hands now that she’d granted him this silent assent.
He leaned in, his breath warm on her neck, and pressed his lips to the spot where her pulse fluttered. His tongue gently swept out, drawing a languid line up to her ear, tracing the salt and sweet of her skin. His hands, steady and sure, began their climb, fingertips mapping the curve of her hips as if they were uncharted territory. He took his time, each touch deliberate, like a cartographer drawing lines on a map. As his fingers brushed against the edge of her denim waistband, he felt the heat of her radiating through the thin cotton of her shirt. A low, pained groan escaped him as his senses awakened, the world sharpening into vivid colour.
Buffy reached down, her knuckles brushing his as she fumbled with the button of her jeans. He caught her hand, stilling it with his own. For a moment they hovered—suspended, both of them waiting for a sign that this was all right, that they wouldn’t be struck down or transformed by what was about to happen. The kitchen clock ticked once, twice, and then Buffy laughed again, quieter this time, as if a weight had slid off her shoulders.
He dipped his head and pressed his lips to the hollow just below her ear, feeling her shiver in response. “I love you too, Buffy.” Her hand found his, squeezed, and together they manoeuvred the zip down. The sound was obscene in the silence, and Giles felt his face flush, but when he looked at her reflection in the darkened window before them he saw nothing but hunger, clear and naked and real.
With her jeans undone, he gave her time—his palm flat against her stomach, unhurried, feeling the small involuntary contractions of her muscles beneath his hand. He moved slowly, tracing the ridge of her hip bone with his thumb, then inward, grazing the soft skin just above the waistband of her underwear. His fingertip found the elastic and followed it, not crossing, just mapping the border of it. Then he let one finger dip beneath, barely, into the warmth there—and stilled. He exhaled through his teeth.
Buffy pressed insistently against his hand, craving more contact, but Giles held firm, maintaining a deliberate, languorous pace. His mouth wandered over her skin, lips grazing the delicate curve of her neck, tongue tracing the shell of her ear, teeth gently scraping her collarbone. Each touch was careful and slow. There was no rush, not now.
She made a small sound—a plea, not a command—and he let his hand slip further, past the waistband, until his palm rested flat against the front of her underwear. The cotton was warm and slightly damp. He paused there, just feeling her, before drawing two fingers slowly downward along the fabric. She was swollen against his touch, the thin material doing almost nothing to conceal it, and the sheer intensity of the heat radiating through made his breath catch. She jerked at the first deliberate stroke of his fingers, a short, helpless motion, her breath catching audibly in the quiet kitchen.
“Are you certain?” he whispered against her ear, barely audible. The words landed strange in the air between them—clipped, formal, almost Victorian—absurdly chivalrous given where his hand was.
Her answering gasp was immediate, open-mouthed and hungry, and she pushed against his hand as though she could fuse herself to him.
He obliged her, letting his hand drift lower with a patience that bordered on torment. His palm pressed firm at first, cupping her through the soft cotton, his thumb stroking slow and deliberate lines along the seam. Buffy’s head bowed, her hair tumbling forward, her hands braced white-knuckled on the worktop as she swayed her hips to meet his touch. She made a low, frustrated noise—not quite a growl, not quite a whimper—somewhere between hunger and surrender. Giles smiled into her hair, the sound going straight to his chest, and he drew the moment out, refusing her the immediacy she craved.
He traced a slow, meticulous circle over her, feeling the heat of her build with every pass. The fabric was dampening under his strokes, and the scent rising from her undid something in him he had spent years carefully filing away—wanting, needing, his whole body suddenly insisting on what his mind had long since learned to deny. He moved his hand in counterpoint to the subtle roll of her hips, enjoying the way she strained against his restraint, the way she tried to coax more friction, more contact, with every desperate shift of her body.
Buffy’s breathing grew shallow and reckless, her back arched, her spine a perfect line of tension beneath his hand. He mapped her with his free hand: one palm splayed across her stomach, feeling the taut ripple of muscle beneath her skin, the other tormenting her with a slow, featherlight pressure. She seemed to vibrate with anticipation, as if all the Slayer strength in her body was wound up in the effort not to grab his hands and force them to move faster.
At the first real moan—a sound so vulnerable it threatened to undo him—he relented. He hooked a finger under the edge of her underwear and slipped inside. The heat and wetness there surprised him. He parted her folds with exquisite delicacy, his fingers moving with the same reverence he reserved for rare artefacts. She was soft and slick, the flesh yielding under his touch, and he let his fingertip linger, exploring, memorising, learning in real time what made her shudder or gasp.
He pressed in, slow and gentle, then retreated to circle her with the pad of his thumb. She bit back another moan, pushing onto her toes, and he had to steady her with his other arm around her waist. At that, Buffy twisted to look back at him, eyes bright and wild in the kitchen light, her mouth open as if she wanted to say something but couldn’t find the words. He kissed her shoulder, her neck, the delicate ridge of her jaw, his hand never stopping its rhythmic stroking. She was grinding into him now, needy and insistent, and he let the tension between them climb higher and higher, wanting to see how far he could take her before she completely unraveled.
“Please,” she rasped, her voice ragged with desire. The word was so unlike her usual bravado that Giles felt a wave of fierce, protective tenderness flood through him. He responded by pressing his finger inside her, slow and sure, the heel of his palm grinding against her clit with each careful movement. She clamped around him, her whole body tensing, and then she let out a cry. He quickened his pace, matching her rhythm now, feeling the wet heat of her grow with every passing moment.
When she came, it was sudden—a hard, shuddering snap that left her slumped over the worktop, gasping, her hands trembling. Giles held her upright, his own breath shaky, stunned by the sheer force of her pleasure and by the fact that he had made this happen, that she had let him. He eased his hand out from between her legs, delighting in the slickness coating his fingers.
Buffy made a small, wordless sound and reached behind herself, catching his wrist and squeezing it in silent thanks. He chuckled, low and hoarse, and then bent to murmur into her ear, “You’re beautiful.”
Her answering smile was lazy, sated, but still hungry. “Don’t stop,” she whispered, pushing her arse back against him in invitation. He was only too happy to comply.
Giles eased her jeans and underwear down to her knees, unhurried, his hands smoothing over her hips as he went. He leaned back then, just to look. The kitchen light caught the curve of her, the soft give of her waist flaring out to the full round of her backside, and he felt his breath leave him. He took his glasses off and tucked the arm between his lips, both hands returning to her skin—tracing slow, open-palmed strokes across her, feeling the warmth radiating up through his fingers. He curved a hand around one cheek and squeezed, and the flesh yielded so perfectly under his grip that the sound he made was almost involuntary.
He reached for his glasses, still tucked between his lips, and set them on the worktop. His hands found their way around her hips to her front, cupping her mound with a firm, deliberate pressure and drawing her back flush against him. She would be able to feel all of him—the hard, insistent length of him against the small of her back, and the wet patch darkening the fabric at the tip. She breathed his name, barely a sound, and tilted her head back to find his mouth. The kiss was slow and graceless, both of them distracted—his hips rolling forward in a slow grind that pressed her harder into his hand, and she moved with it, helpless, rocking between the two points of contact.
Buffy broke away from the kiss, her lips parting with a soft, slick sound, her breath already coming in ragged gasps. She kept her gaze locked onto his, her eyes wide and dark with a mix of challenge and need. Slowly, deliberately, she leaned forward, the old porcelain sink creaking under the weight of her elbows.
Something broke loose in him. He sank to his knees behind her, his hands steadying themselves on her hips before sliding down the backs of her thighs—unhurried, reverent. He pressed his mouth to the soft skin behind her knee, then worked upward in slow, open-lipped kisses, feeling the warmth of her intensify as he climbed. His thumbs drew her apart with the same careful deliberateness he’d used before, and he stilled there, close enough that his breath fell directly against her. The smell of her hit him like a physical thing. His voice, when it finally came, was barely recognisable—low and rough, scraped out of him. “Can I taste you?”
Buffy groaned an answer. Her knees were already shaking, thighs trembling with the effort of holding herself upright, and she gave up on standing entirely, folding forward over the cool porcelain rim of the sink. He pushed her jeans further down to her ankles, the denim whispering against her skin, and then his hands were back—sliding up the insides of her legs with agonising patience, thumbs tracing the soft inner seam of her thighs until they stopped just short of where she needed them. He leaned in and pressed his mouth to her outer folds, lips soft and unhurried, deliberately skirting her clit.
He opened his mouth against her and licked—one long, slow stroke of a flat tongue from her clit all the way up to where she was most private, and the sound that came out of him was not something he would have recognised as his own voice. She was warm and slick and tasted faintly of salt, and he pressed in again, hands spreading her wider, thumbs dimpling into the soft flesh of her as he worked—unhurried, thorough, relearning her with his mouth the same way he had with his fingers.
The angle was awkward, his neck craning, but he worked with it—tilting his head and using the flat of his tongue in slow, broad strokes while his finger sought its way inside her. She clenched around him immediately, tight and insistent, and the sound that escaped him was low and involuntary. He curled his finger forward, searching, until he felt the soft ridged patch of her interior and pressed there—not thrusting, just a steady, pulsing pressure, his knuckle rocking in small increments while his mouth worked around it.
He felt her begin to flutter against his finger—small, rhythmic contractions—and held his pace exactly, not quickening, not relenting. Her thighs closed around his head as he worked his tongue upward, circling the tight furl of her, and the cry that tore out of her was sudden and unguarded. She came in a long, shuddering wave, clenching hard around his finger, and he felt the warm rush of her coat his hand as he worked her through it, stroke by careful stroke, until the trembling slowed and her breathing began, raggedly, to return.
He hummed against her, low and satisfied, and drew his finger slowly from inside her. He kissed her once—soft, unhurried—before rising to his feet, his right hand trailing up the length of her spine in a firm, steadying press that kept her folded forward over the sink. He brought his left hand to his mouth and closed his lips around his fingers, one at a time, his eyes falling shut. The taste of her settled on his tongue, warm and salt-sharp, and the sound he made was quiet and private, as though he had forgotten she could hear him. Buffy turned her head to watch over her shoulder, her breath catching at the sight of him like that—unhurried, unguarded—and felt herself clench helplessly around nothing.
“Giles—“ The word came out broken, barely a word at all, more breath than sound. He didn’t need the rest of it. His hands moved to his waistband, unhurried despite everything, undoing his belt and then the button and zip beneath it with the same deliberate patience he’d used on her. He pushed his trousers and boxers down together and they dropped, pooling heavily around his ankles.
His cock sprang free and caught against her backside—the contact sudden and wet and jarring enough that he had to press his forehead between her shoulder blades and breathe. He was already close. He had felt it cresting when she came, the clench and flutter of her pulling at something in him that had taken everything he had to hold back.
He pushed his hips forward, his cock dragging a slow, wet line across her skin where it caught between them. He exhaled sharply through his nose—something between a huff and a groan—and reached down with his left hand to take hold of himself, knuckles grazing her as he angled the tip to her entrance. He couldn’t resist: he drew it down through her folds once, feeling how slick she was, how the soft heat of her parted so easily around him. The sound that came out of him was low and undone. She clenched visibly around nothing, her body already trying to pull him in.
He nudged the tip against her entrance—just the head, barely breaching—and had to stop there, his hands tightening on her hips. The heat of her was extraordinary, close and wet, and he eased forward with the same deliberate patience he had used for everything else that night, watching himself disappear into her inch by inch. She made a sound low in her throat as she stretched around him, and he felt it—the resistance of her, the way she gave incrementally, reluctantly, until finally his hips were flush against her and there was nowhere left to go. Neither of them moved. He could feel her pulse around him. He ran his tongue across his lower lip and tasted her there still, salt and warmth, and closed his eyes. When he finally drew back, the drag of it pulled a sound from somewhere deep in his chest—low and wrecked, scraped out against his will. He stilled with just the head of him inside her, feeling the soft clench of her around the tip, the slick heat of her coating him. Then he pushed forward again—the same unhurried stroke, but easier now, her body opening around him with a warmth and give that hadn’t been there before, and he had to press his lips together hard against the sound that wanted to come out of him.
He curled over her then, chest coming down against her back, his breath warm at her nape, and went still—hips flush against her, buried to the hilt, not moving. His mouth found her neck again. His arms came around her from behind, taking her weight against him. One hand spread flat across her stomach. The other travelled down, fingers parting through soft curls until he found her clit, still swollen, and began to move in slow, deliberate circles. A sound escaped her. Her hips started to answer him. His lips brushed her ear: “Buffy. I’m close.” She rocked back harder against his hand.
Her hands found the edge of the worktop and gripped. The grout bit into her palms. She could feel it gathering in her—not sharp, not sudden, but deep and tidal, a pressure that started somewhere behind her navel and radiated outward until her thighs were shaking and her breath had gone completely shallow. Her knuckles whitened. She bore down against it and tried, uselessly, to hold still.
Giles’s teeth grazed the taut cord of her neck, a primal urge that sent a shockwave through her. He drove into her, a single, consuming thrust that seated him to the hilt. Her inner walls convulsed around him, a pulsating vice that threatened to shatter his control. She cried out his name, a ragged, desperate sound that echoed through the room as she surrendered to her climax, riding it out on his length. He let go, a guttural groan tearing from his throat as he spilled into her, the force of his release bordering on violence. He tried to burrow deeper, hips pressing flush against her, seeking a depth beyond physical possibility. His orgasm was a storm surge, leaving him boneless and spent. He wrapped himself around her like a living shield, his free hand slamming onto the worktop beside hers, knuckles white with strain. He hadn’t warned her about this—his copious release—but it was evident now, overflowing from their joined bodies in thick, opalescent rivulets, dripping onto the tile below.
He held her like that for long, endless minutes, their bodies locked together, the sweat cooling on her back as Buffy’s breathing steadied and Giles’s hot pants eased against her hair. They were both trembling, a sympathetic resonance that seemed to run through the foundation of the house, as if the act had left the very walls unmoored.
The first words were almost an apology—not for what had happened, but for the breaking of the spell. “Are you…?” Giles began, the question incomplete. His hand, shaking, smoothed the hair from her neck, thumb brushing the place where her pulse fluttered like a trapped bird.
“I’m okay,” she said, and Giles was startled to find it was true—for both of them. He braced her as she stood, her jeans bunched around her calves and his length still buried inside. She shifted tentatively, her hips circling, a slow aftershock that sent them both shuddering.
They disentangled at last, Giles pressing a final, reverent kiss to the nape of her neck before stepping back, easing himself free of her with a slow, careful withdrawal that left her gasping at the sudden emptiness. His hands hovered, uncertain, before he offered her the dish towel from the counter—a small, absurd gesture made sincere by the trembling of his fingers.
Buffy took the towel, her fingers brushing his. The rough friction of the cotton against her skin was a grounding force, a harsh tether pulling them both back to the ordinary world. She cleaned herself in a heavy silence, the only sound the steady, rhythmic drumming of the rain against the windowpane. Giles turned away to afford her a sliver of privacy, pulling up his trousers and fastening them with movements that felt clumsy and entirely alien after the profound shift that had just occurred.
When he turned back, she was dressed, though her jeans remained unbuttoned and her hair was a wild, tangled halo around her face. She looked exhausted, completely hollowed out by the sheer force of what had passed between them, but the glassy, unreachable stare that had haunted her for weeks was gone. In its place was something soft, and startlingly present.
She didn’t say a word. She simply closed the small distance remaining between them, stepping into his space and resting her forehead against the centre of his chest. Giles exhaled a shaky breath, one he felt he’d been holding since the day Joyce died. His arms came around her, wrapping her in a fierce, protective embrace, his chin resting lightly on the top of her head. He let his eyes fall shut, listening to the steady, reassuring thud of her heartbeat against his own.
They stood there until the kitchen grew cold, until the residual adrenaline entirely faded, leaving behind the bone-deep ache of their shared exhaustion.
"Come on," Buffy murmured eventually, her voice muffled against his shirt.
She stepped back and caught his hand in hers. Her grip was unquestioning, a solid anchor cast in dark waters. She led him out of the kitchen.
She guided him up the stairs, past his narrow guest bed, and straight into her room. The house was still quiet, the absence of her mother still a heavy, unmovable weight pressing against the roof. It was a reality that a single night of passion could not erase, and neither of them pretended otherwise.
But later, as Giles lay beneath the duvet beside her—Buffy’s back pressed flush against his chest, his arm draped heavy and secure across her waist—the silence felt entirely different. The grief had not vanished; he knew with the cynical certainty of a Watcher that it would be waiting for them in the morning light. Yet, as Buffy’s breathing slowed and deepened into genuine sleep, her fingers loosely twined with his, Giles felt the suffocating grip of his own fear finally begin to loosen. The house was no longer just an echo chamber of loss. The world was still broken, but as he buried his face in the scent of her hair, he knew, finally, that neither of them would have to navigate the quiet alone.