Between them, they'd managed to map out the rudiments of a battle strategy during the early hours of the morning, before Buffy, yawning hugely, had dropped off for a few hours of sleep in the rear seat. Giles had traded places with her in the afternoon, his fatigue such that even her 'adventurous' manner of driving wasn't sufficient to keep him awake. They'd made rather good time, actually - only two stops for gas at carefully selected pay-at-the-pump stations, and more frequent restroom breaks off of convenient backroads. Over the past six months they'd developed a comfortable traveling rhythm, preferring to avoid contact with other people while on the road, eating out of a well-stocked cooler in the trunk and training in out-of-the-way fields.

Buffy tossed a few experimental side kicks toward the forest, then segued into a graceful flip and spin combo, relishing the stretch and pull of taut muscle. She hoped Giles wouldn't mind staying put for a few hours - they'd been on Pacific time since the beginning of the trip, and it was midnight in the forest just outside Phoenix with about seven more hours driving ahead of them. They'd decided to make contact with their target at 10 a.m., which gave them three hours leeway, and, as she gazed out at the dark vast sea of trees in front of her, Buffy couldn't think of anywhere in the world she'd rather spend the time.

But Giles had been in a semi-hostile mood all day, and he would probably disagree with her suggestion just for the hell of it. Sighing, she turned back toward the hood of the car to recheck the atlas. They had missed the turnoff to highway 60 a few miles back, not noticing the error until signs had indicated they were almost to Theodore Roosevelt Dam, and Giles had made several sarcastic cracks about her navigating skills. She saw no need to provide him with more ammunition by getting them further off track, especially since she had no idea why he was being so contentious in the first place. And, frankly, his attitude was really starting to get on her nerves - these few hours might possibly be the last they would have alone together before meeting a painful death at the hands of Tarakan assassins, and the last thing she wanted was to spend them fighting.

Buffy leaned forward against the hood, planting her elbows on the quilt she'd spread across it and squinting down at the barely readable map. The electric lantern's light was feeble and had a distressing tendency to attract bugs, but the moon added more illumination, creating a lovely, almost romantic atmosphere. She traced highway 88 with her finger and tapped the map, satisfied with her plan - southeast on 88 to 10 through Phoenix and onward, no problem. She closed the atlas and turned off the lantern, leaning over the side of the hood to place them on the ground, then hauling herself back up to lay down. The residual heat from the engines still warmed the metal hood, giving the quilt a toastiness that was welcome in the night's chill. She wore only a light hooded sweatjacket over her tanktop and sweatpants - subscribing, after countless car miles touring the nation, to the comfort school of travel wear. She closed her eyes and let the chirping of the crickets lull her into a doze, idly wondering why it was taking Giles so long to commune with Mother Nature.

"Dammit," Giles cursed under his breath as he tripped over his third tree root in as many minutes. The batteries in his flashlight had failed while he was in the middle of doing his business, so to speak, and he was having difficulty making his way back toward the car without falling flat on his face. He'd lost track of the roll of toilet paper while stumbling around root number two, and, frankly, this little midnight forest odyssey wasn't doing much to improve his sour mood.

A mood which he'd been taking out on Buffy, he knew, in a vastly unfair manner. But she didn't realize just how contrary all of this was to his most basic instincts as both her Watcher and the man who loved her. He was taking her back to Sunnydale to die, almost certainly, and everything inside him screamed for him to turn the car in the opposite direction and never look back, despite the consequences to Willow. But Buffy's conscience (and his own, most of the time) would not allow them to do that, and so the miles rolled by, bringing death ever closer to them. He felt as though the air were being squeezed from his lungs, inch by painful inch - so he smoked, sulked, and made smart remarks, ruining what most likely would be their very last day together.

<Pillock,> he rebuked himself as he emerged into the clearing. <It ends now.>

He stopped just short of the car, momentarily struck by the charming picture Buffy made curled up in a ball atop the hood. She was so dear to him, his Slayer, such a vital part of his heart, such a precious piece of his soul. It had come to the point that he literally could not imagine his life without her in it - without her smile, her instinctive generosity, her ready laugh...without all of the things that made her so ineffably Buffy. Did she know that? Had he let her see how important she was to him?

Well, if he hadn't before, he would do so now, he resolved. She would know the depth of his feelings for her before the end came. So he approached the car, reaching out to touch her shoulder. "Buffy?"

She grinned sleepily and stretched like a cat, rolling over to regard him through half-lidded eyes. "Hey...did'ja get lost?"

His lips twisted in a wry smile. "Something like that. The batteries in my torch failed."

She rose up on her elbows and cocked her head to the side. "It's a *flashlight*, Giles - repeat after me - a *flash*light*..."

He sat down on the hood, scooting upward until he was lying right next to her. "I've always wondered about that, actually," he murmured. "So far as I can see, it does not 'flash', per se."

She nudged his shoulder playfully. "Yeah, well, it's not on *fire*, either, which means it's not a torch, Englishboy."

"Mmm." He tilted his head back to look up at the heavens. "The stars are lovely tonight, aren't they?"

She moved over next to him and laid her head on his chest. "Yeah, they are...Are you okay, Giles?"

"I'm fine...well, no, I'm not, actually, but I'm sorry I've taken my poor mood out on you."

"S'okay," she murmured, snuggling closer.

"It isn't," he disagreed. "I've spoilt our last day alone together with my horrid disposition because I'm upset that it's our last day alone together, and if there's anything more illogical than that, I wish you would tell me."

She giggled. "You're allowed to be the illogical one every once in a while, Giles - not *often*, but every now and then. It really is okay."

"I just-" he reached over to caress her arm with his free hand, "...you must understand, Buffy...every instinct I possess is telling me to lock you in the boot, turn the car around, and drive all the way to the Atlantic."

She considered his words for a moment. "I really don't think that would be at all comfortable," she commented finally, "and the word is *trunk*, not boot. Trunk, Giles." "Buf-"

"Sorry, I didn't mean to sound flip." She sighed. "Look, I understand, all right? Don't you think that I feel the same way? That last gas station we stopped at, I found myself looking at those Porta-Potties by the side of the road, wondering how long it would take you to get free if I locked you in one of them and took off in the car."

"Oh, that would be *beyond* cruel," he replied, smiling slightly. "At least there's food in the boot - and it smells marginally better."

"Mmmmph." They pondered the stars for a few more minutes, Buffy's fingers tracing lazy circles across Giles' t-shirt clad chest. "Look, I just...I get why you're angry, all right? I'm angry, too. But I don't want to spend our last few hours alone fighting, okay? We can just make a pact - we'll save up all our arguments, and if we're still alive a week from now, we'll have a marathon mad session and then shag 'til dawn. Deal?"

His chuckle was pained, but heartfelt. "Deal." They quieted and simply held each other as the minutes crept by, content to listen to the varied sounds of the woods, which were magnified by the night's utter stillness. Buffy could hear the muted beating of Giles' heart through the thin material of his shirt; she pressed closer, relishing the reassuring sound, and tried desperately not to wonder how few beats it had left before the end came.

She bit her lip and blinked back tears. <If only he'd never met me, he might have lived forever...>

As though he'd read her mind, Giles brought his hand up to stroke her hair. "It's all right, Buffy, really it is." His hand slid down to caress her cheek. "Perhaps I've never told you this, but I want you to know that despite what might happen in the next few days, I wouldn't change anything about our past." She raised her head to look at him, her eyes gleaming in the moonlight. "Well, that's not true, exactly," he amended, "there are a few things that I might alter - the Band Candy incident, for one, and I do regret never having the opportunity to punch Snyder. But on the whole, I've been very happy these past few years."

She squeezed his chest. "You don't have to say that."

"I know I don't." He ran his fingers through her ponytail, separating the silken strands and working his fingers underneath the elastic band. "If you'll remember, though, you'll note that I've never said anything to you just because I've thought you wanted to hear it, and I'm not about to begin doing so now." The band snapped off and her hair fell free, whipping slightly as a sudden breeze blew up. "I honestly find it quite difficult to remember the life I led before I met you, but I do recall that it was rather empty in comparison. So even if it meant that I would live to the ripe old age of one-hundred and twenty, I would never regret coming to Sunnydale to be with you, and that *is* the truth."

She buried her face in his chest. "Oh, Giles..."

He kissed the top of her head. "I love you, Buffy," he told her softly.

Buffy felt the tears begin again, but she suddenly didn't care whether or not he saw them. She raised her face to his and kissed him soundly. "I love you, Giles. I love you so much..."

The moisture on her cheeks rubbed off on his, and he brought his hands up to smooth her tears away. "Please, don't cry, Buffy," he murmured, ignoring the lump in his own throat. "We're here, we're together - let's just think about that right now, all right?"

Buffy nodded and kissed him again, lingeringly. Then she swung her leg over his waist, scooting upward until she was lying directly on top of him. "We don't need to get going right away, do we?" she asked breathlessly.

Giles smiled into her eyes. "Not right away, no."

"Good." She leaned forward and kissed him again, more deeply this time, as his hands searched for the zipper to her jacket. Finding it, he pulled the silver tab down, and she shrugged her arms from the sleeves, flinging the garment off to the side. Her tanktop followed suit seconds later, leaving her bare to the waist. She bent forward and attacked his neck with her lips and teeth as his hands began to work their magic on her breasts.

For a moment their relative positions cast her back to their first time together, on a rain-swept night in a dingy hotel room in Boston, when she'd finally had enough of living inside her own skin. The loneliness had become too much to bear, and she'd crawled into bed with him at 3 a.m., waking him with a passionate kiss that had stolen his breath away. He'd fought her at first, as she had known he would, still trying to protect her in every conceivable way - physically and emotionally - even from himself. But long days on the road together had allowed her to discern the need and longing he'd kept so carefully hidden, so she had persevered in the face of his objections, eventually triumphing over his dwindling conscience. They hadn't slept apart since that night, forever entwined in each others arms, embracing tightly to keep their living nightmare at bay.

In the months that had followed that first evening, she'd mapped his entire body with her lips and fingers, coming to know his every scar and sinew, curve and hollow. He held nothing of himself from her, as generous with her as he'd always been, and she'd returned his devotion with utter abandon, sharing with him things about herself that she'd never shown anyone else, even Angel. They had truly become each other's other halves, incomplete unless they were together, never more content than when locked in a passionate embrace, shutting out the dawn.

"I love you," she whispered again, her voice low and urgent with need. She pulled back to help him remove his t-shirt, nearly ripping the side seam in her haste to get it off of him. Then she attacked his chest, licking and biting in a frenzied fervor, while he slipped his hand inside her sweatpants to cup her through her panties. She rewarded his clever fingering with a low, breathless moan. "God, Giles."

"Hurry," he mumbled in return, his breath coming in short pants. Immediately understanding the verbal shorthand, she rolled off of him to shuck her pants. He hastily did the same, and they came back together, drawn as though by magnetism. His erection was hard against her thigh, and she brought her hand down to stroke it, making Giles groan. "Have I ever mentioned," he asked breathlessly, "that you're very good at this?"

She grinned as she nipped at his earlobe. "I've had such agood teacher," she replied, her hot breath making goosebumps on his skin. "He has a very *hands-on* approach."

"Lucky him," Giles muttered, cupping her buttocks in his hands. "*Very* lucky," he added as she rubbed up against him, brushing his thigh with heated moisture. "You're so wet."

"For you," she sighed as his lips found her breast again. "Only for you."

Want and need raged between them, guaranteeing that the preliminaries wouldn't last long. In times past they had spent hours on end in bed together, slowly bringing each other to burning heights, but that wouldn't happen this night. Their need was too strong, their underlying fear too potent, their mutual sense of impending loss far too painful for a gradual seduction.

Buffy hissed with pleasure as she impaled herself on him, delicious fulfillment gorging her to her very bones. She rocked back and forth gently, once, twice - finding the rhythm that suited them so well, that brought them to the highest peaks as quickly as possible. The old car creaked on ancient shocks beneath them, adding a squeaking accompaniment to the slap of moist skin. Buffy gripped Giles' hands tightly as they pressed against one another, creating maximum friction, their strengths well-matched in this as in everything else. Their gazes met, two pairs of eyes dark with lust and concentration. Sweat beaded on their bodies, running in rivulets to meet and combine, creating a miasma of love and desire with a scent all their own.

A starburst blew up behind Buffy's eyes as she came, and Giles' hoarse shout seconds later accompanied his own release. Buffy collapsed on his chest, breathing heavily. "L-love you," she muttered incoherently, still nearly insensate with sated desire, but with a desperate need to make him *know*. "Love you..."

Giles, gasping for air, trembling with the aftereffects of a mind-blowing orgasm, could only nod in reply. He wrapped his arms around her back and pulled her flush against him, responding to an elemental bone-deep need to keep her safe, to place himself between her and peril. They remained that way for a very long time as their heartrates returned to normal and the night air cooled their heated skin.

It was Buffy who finally broke the comfortable silence. "Giles?"

"Yes, love?"

She smiled against his chest at the endearment. "I know that you...I know you had doubts about this, that when I...well, when I showed up in your bed that night in Boston..." She bit her lip, running her hand up and down his arm to reassure herself of his solidity. "I know you didn't want to do this," she continued, stumbling over the words. "I know you were just trying to be there for me, then, to give me what *I* needed. So, I just wanted to thank you for caring that much, even though you thought it was a very bad idea." She grimaced as she finished talking, unsure whether she'd made clear what she wanted to say, or simply somehow managed to insult him.

He caressed her back in reassurance. "I didn't think it was a bad idea," he disagreed, "in fact, I thought it was a very *good* idea...for me. Don't ever doubt that I wanted you very much, all right? I just wasn't sure that *you* wanted it for the right reasons, that's all. And I have certainly never regretted that night, nor any of the ones that followed."

She hugged him again. "Me, either. And, just so you know, lust, love, and friendship *are* the right reasons to do this in my mind, and we had all of those and then some." She rose on her elbows to meet his gaze. "Right?"

He smiled as they began to extricate themselves from their embrace. "Right."

After one last kiss she rolled to his side, sighing as her gaze landed on the stars again. "Guess we should get going, huh?"

His sigh echoed hers. "Probably. We'd best leave ourselves a bit of time once we get to Los Angeles - we might have trouble finding our destination or meet with some traffic on the way."

"Traffic? In L.A.? Count on it." She leaned over the side of the hood to retrieve their hastily discarded clothing, then paused, staring down at the ground.

"Is something wrong?"

"You could say that. Um, Giles? Were you aware that you parked in a big ol' puddle of mud on this side?" Her shoulders began to shake with laughter.

He groaned and collapsed back against the hood, his laughter joining hers, and the cheerful sound of it rang out across the clearing.

Cordelia Chase was bored.

It wasn't an unusual state of mind for her to be in these days, and she'd become rather adept at hiding it from the people she'd met in Los Angeles. Not that it took much effort to conceal her true self from them, really - the people she'd come to know while pursuing her non-starter acting career were generally too self-involved to notice her, and the ones she'd met while attending college part-time were...well, they weren't what she would call perceptive.

Case in point - Stephanie Kanelos, perky new sorority sister, who'd been nattering on about interior decorating for over an hour as they stood in the upstairs hallway of their sorority house. Cordelia had found it necessary to bite her lip repeatedly to keep from telling the girl that she didn't *care* what color the hallway was painted, or whether or not it would complement an Autumn skin tone. Of course, Cordelia herself was a Summer and a Winter, which meant they could never agree, anyway.

As her mind wandered, she began to consider just exactly when it was that she'd stopped caring about so many things that had previously mattered to her a great deal. It had always been a dream of hers to go to college and join her mother's sorority, conquering the university campus as easily as she had ruled Sunnydale High. It had *mattered* to her, in some indefinable way, and now suddenly it didn't, and she couldn't figure out why that was - she just knew that the realization of the change in her made her vaguely unhappy.

<I've been hanging around Angel too much,> she chastised herself, frowning slightly at the mental image of her erstwhile boss. She probably needed to start spending just a little more time around the living, but, unfortunately, she required a job in order to finance the lifestyle to which she had become accustomed, and he paid much more money for much less time and work than would any other boss she might be able to find. That left her free to do other things - like attempt to become an actress, which hadn't worked out so far, or join her mother's sorority, which she had done.

And, thus, her boredom.

She sighed, mentally wishing that Angel would beep her and remove her from the vicinity of Stephanie's tedious ruminations - perhaps with some news on Willow's whereabouts. He'd been in Sunnydale for several days now, doing what he could to aid the search effort. Cordelia hadn't gone with him - mainly because he hadn't asked her, not because she didn't care. In fact, she had found herself worrying about her former friend quite often in the past several weeks as the passage of days made it more and more unlikely she would be found unharmed. Angel had informed her that Oz and Xander were going crazy with worry, an assertion that Cordelia had no trouble believing. They'd all been insane enough after Buffy and Giles had left, and that hadn't even been a kidnapping.

She wondered if Buffy and Giles knew about Willow.

"Cordelia?"

"Wh-hmm? Did you say something?"

Stephanie regarded her strangely. "Are you all right?"

"Fine," she replied impatiently. "What is it?"

Stephanie held up another paint sample. "Well, I-"

"Cordelia!" a voice called from down the hall. She turned to see Karen Simmins rushing toward them. "There you are! There's someone here to see you."

Cordelia frowned at the brunette. "Who?"

Karen shrugged. "She wouldn't tell me her name. Kinda creepy, though. Wouldn't think that *you'd* hang with someone like that, but, well..." Her voice trailed off suggestively, and Cordelia bit back an icy retort. Karen had never made a secret of the fact that she didn't like Cordelia - her attitude reminded Cordelia eerily of Harmony - and they never let a chance to snipe at each other pass by unremarked.

But the characterization of her visitor as 'creepy' had Cordelia thinking about weightier matters than Karen's bitchy attitude. Angel had insisted on bodyguards for everyone in the weeks after Buffy and Giles had disappeared, concerned that the Tarakans would make an attempt to use their friends to draw them out, but as the months had gone by the protection had fallen to the wayside. Cordelia had railed against having her own protectors from the very beginning, arguing that anyone who knew the slightest bit about her relationship with Buffy wouldn't think harming *her* would bring the Slayer back. They'd be more likely to target her mother, or Angel, or Xander...or Willow.

She'd been proven right, hadn't she? They'd gone for Willow, hadn't they?

So why was she suddenly wishing for a stake or a cross or even a watergun full of Holy Water...though they would probably be useless against a non-vampire foe, anyway, come to think.

"Where is she?" she asked, her tone resigned.

"In the lounge downstairs."

Cordelia turned her back on her 'friends' and descended the staircase, trying to mentally visualize the lounge's interior and any knickknacks that might be used as a weapon. But the room was empty when she entered. "Hello?"

And suddenly she was *there*, appearing as if from thin air.

"Hello, Cordelia."

Cordelia felt her heart stop for a brief moment. "Buffy?" she whispered disbelievingly.

Buffy smiled thinly. "Yeah. It's me. How are you, Cordy?"

"Better than *you*," Cordelia automatically replied with her customary tactlessness. She wasn't trying to be insulting, however; the visible changes in Buffy were startling to see. Her slender frame, never robust even in the old days, was now painfully thin. Her skin was pale and makeup-less, dark circles shrouding her eyes, and her blonde hair was done up in a haphazard ponytail. She wore a skintight baseball shirt with the number twelve printed across the front in large blue type and a pair of well worn black jeans, topped by a battered leather jacket. Scuffed Doc Marten boots completed the look, and Cordelia suddenly understood why Karen had thought her 'creepy'. Buffy looked, for the first time in Cordelia's recollection, overtly menacing.

And rather impatient.

"Seen enough?" Buffy asked, arching an eyebrow.

"Um, I guess so."

"Good," she replied. "We need your help, Cordy."

Cordelia blinked - of all the words she had never expected to come from Buffy's mouth...."My help?" she squeaked.

"Yes," Buffy replied, glancing behind Cordelia through the doorway. "We can't talk about it here, though. Your 'sisters' seem to be very curious."

Cordelia turned to catch a glimpse of Karen and Stephanie before they disappeared from view. <Dammit.> "All right, fine. Where do you want to meet?"

Buffy seemed to appreciate her quick understanding of the gravity of the situation. "Somewhere nearby, but a place you don't go usually. A pancake house or something - Giles and I haven't had breakfast yet."

Cordelia couldn't squelch a sudden grin. "Giles is with you? He's all right?"

A strange little smile ghosted across Buffy's lips. "He's fine - but we thought he wouldn't blend in Greekville. He's waiting in the car. Can you think of a place?"

Cordelia frowned. "Yes, I-..." She walked over to one of the wall cabinets and extracted a phone book. "Here we are," she said, pointing to an entry without naming it, in case curious ears hadn't really departed. "Do you want me to write it down for you?"

Buffy glanced at the entry. "No, I've got it, and I can find it, no problem. Ex-L.A. girl, remember? We'll drive around a bit, make sure neither of us is being followed, and then meet you there...uh, that is, if you can get away right now?"

Oh, well, she didn't really like psychology class anyway. "Sure, no problem." The Slayer turned to leave, and a sudden horrible thought occurred to Cordelia. Was she going to have to break the news to Buffy? Or was Willow's disappearance the reason for Buffy's *re*appearance? Angel or Spike certainly would have discovered if the Tarakan contract had been canceled. And if it hadn't...well, Willow was one of the few people who could bring them back out of hiding, wasn't she? "Buffy? Is...is this about Willow?"

Buffy's shoulders tensed visibly. "Yes," she said, turning back, and Cordelia flinched at the dark pain in the Slayer's eyes. "Don't call anyone, all right? We need to talk first."

"Sure, okay," Cordelia agreed, suddenly unwilling to let Buffy leave quite so soon. "So, um, tell me something - how did you know I'd be here?"

Buffy's expression softened a little, as if she understood Cordelia's mixed emotions upon seeing her again. "Well, Xander told me this was where you were going to school before we left, and I remembered you talking about joining your mother's sorority, so we took a chance."

A dim memory emerged from the back of Cordelia's mind - a cold winter afternoon inside the library, Buffy training with the attack dummy, Xander telling stupid knock-knock jokes...and Cordelia doodling greek letters on a notebook. And Buffy had remembered that? Abruptly Cordelia felt slightly ashamed. She'd always assumed that Buffy had only heard about one quarter of the things she'd said and then dismissed them as pointless babble. Had she misjudged *everyone* she'd known in high school? "Oh. Well, look, I'll do whatever I can to help you, okay?"

Buffy nodded, offering Cordelia a wan smile of gratitude, before slipping from the room, her steps silent on the thick carpet.

Cordelia exhaled gustily as she felt her heart begin to beat again. "Oh, my *God*," she muttered, swaying back against the arm of one plush couch. Buffy was back - Buffy was *here*...and she needed Cordelia's help. The thought was staggering. "Wow."

"Old friend?" Karen's voice interrupted snidely.

Cordelia looked up to find the other girl lounging in the doorway, sporting her usual sneer, but for the first time since Cordelia had met Karen, she felt absolutely no desire to insult her. Because she wasn't important - Cordelia had better things to do. "*Good* friend," she corrected, brushing past the other girl. "See you around, Karen."

Willow Rosenberg was bored.

If anyone had ever asked her what her state of mind would be in the event of being kidnapped by fiends bent on murdering her and her friends, bored wouldn't have even been on the list. Terrified, horrified, fearful, frightened, panicked, petrified, paralyzed...and all accompanying synonyms, yes, but definitely not bored.

But she was. She was even desperate enough to wish for Quentin Travers to return to issue another round of vague but ominous threats, just so she'd have someone else to talk to. She had long since exhausted her personal repertoire of happy thoughts, and had even grown tired of her gloomy ones. Plus, she was suffering from internet-withdrawal, Oz-withdrawal, and magick-withdrawal, not necessarily in that order. Travers' compatriots had done something to her holding cell, and none of the spells she had tried had worked, not even partly.

She'd been locked in that room for three weeks, two days, and fifteen hours. Travers had last visited her two weeks, one day, and ten hours ago - when he had departed in a huff after she'd thrown her tenth shepherd's pie at him, in a fit of both personal and culinary outrage. He hadn't visited her since that day. Meals appeared through the slot in the door every few hours, the private bathroom took care of her other needs, and she'd watched so many hours of mindless daytime television that she was actually beginning to *care* whether or not Bo and Hope Brady got back together.

<I've got to get out of here,> had become her mental mantra - except when other, more frightening thoughts crept in, like the ones concerning her second deepest fear - that Buffy and Giles would find out what had happened and come back to try and save her.

The only thing she feared more was that they wouldn't.

Cordelia irritably waved off the cheerful waitress again, wondering - not for the first time - how someone in such a crappy job could seem so happy about it. The woman had already filled Cordelia's coffee cup three times, and seemed annoyingly determined to harass her customer into ordering a 'good, healthy breakfast', which apparently included something called 'grits' that looked like a pile of greasy liquid styrofoam. Cordelia wouldn't have eaten *that* even if her stomach hadn't been tied in nervous knots.

Where were they?

She was having serious second thoughts about agreeing to wait until after talking to them to call anyone. What if something had happened to them after Buffy had left the sorority house? The Tarakans could have nabbed them at anytime, and there was damn little that *she* could do about it - any kind of rescue mission would definitely be a job for Angel...

Idly she wondered what his reaction would be to seeing Buffy again. He wasn't over her yet, if Cordelia was any judge. And, of course, she was.

A shadow fell over her sidewalk table, interrupting her silent reverie. "Hey," came Buffy's quiet voice. "Let's go inside."

Cordelia looked up at Buffy, shielding her eyes from the sunlight with her hand. "Why? The weather's great today."

Buffy's expression was grim as she glanced up and down the street. "We're too exposed out here. Come on."

Obediently Cordelia collected her coffee cup and got up to follow Buffy. "So where's Giles?" she asked as they began to thread their way through the brunch crowd.

"Right here," another quiet voice said, this one tinged with amusement.

Cordelia did a double-take as the image of the tall, leather-jacketed individual to her left resolved itself into Giles' familiar figure. Her jaw dropped. "Wow, Giles, what happened to you?"

Buffy selected a table toward the back of the restaurant and took a seat, her back facing the wall. Giles slid a chair around to sit next to her, gesturing politely for Cordelia to join them. "I've been letting Buffy do my shopping," he said, a smile hovering about his lips. "It appears she isn't fond of tweed." Buffy grinned as she snagged a menu.

Cordelia just gaped at him, her eyes taking in his earring, unshaven cheeks, leather jacket, well-worn jeans and faded t- shirt, and it occurred to her that she had never seen him in anything even *resembling* casual wear. But there he sat, right in front of her, looking like a slacker born and bred, and suddenly she remembered the old photograph Xander had found in the library, a picture of Giles decked out in black leather holding a guitar.

She sighed mentally. <Add another one to the list of people I never really knew at all...> "Well, you...uh, you look really good," she finally managed, smiling gamely. He *did* look good - but it was sort of freaking her out. He was *Giles*, after all.

"Thank you," he replied in a tone that was only slightly sardonic.

The perky waitress chose that moment to reappear, popping up so suddenly that Cordelia jumped in her seat. "What can I get you folks?" she asked as she topped off Cordelia's coffee cup once again, ignoring the girl's negative headshake. Cordelia sighed and reached for another packet of creamer.

Buffy handed her the menu. "One number two, one number three, with one coffee, one tea and two orange juices." The waitress beamed, clearly delighted that *someone* wanted actual food, and skipped off toward the kitchen.

"That woman is *way* too happy," Cordelia muttered after she had departed. "Don't you want anything to eat, Giles?"

Buffy regarded her bemusedly. "The number three is for him, Cordy. What, did you think I was going to eat two meals by myself?"

"You could use them," Cordelia replied bluntly, eyeing Buffy's slender frame. "So, you order Giles' food for him now?"

Buffy and Giles shared a glance before Giles returned his attention to scanning the crowded restaurant. "I know what he likes," Buffy finally said. "We've eaten a lot of breakfasts in the past six months, Cordy."

Cordelia nodded and sipped at her coffee, trying to appear as though nothing were out of the ordinary. She was getting some really weird vibes from the two of them, but she supposed that was to be expected. They'd been through quite an ordeal together, after all. "So, have you guys just been wandering the country this whole time?"

"Something like that," Buffy replied as the waitress delivered their drinks. She downed her glass of orange juice in one gulp, then nudged Giles, pointing to his glass. "Drink up, Giles. You need your vitamin C."

"Mmph." Giles picked up the glass and took a drink withoutever leaving off his rapid scanning of the crowd.

Cordelia glanced over her shoulder and frowned. "Okay, Giles, I give up. *Who* are you looking for?"

Giles reply was as disturbing as it was succinct. "Tarakans. It's not wise for us to tarry too long here together - perhaps we should get down to business."

Buffy nodded her agreement. "Cordy-" she paused as the waitress delivered their plates and shook her head to the offer of syrup. "I told you we needed your help," she continued after the waitress had gone.

"Yeah - but you didn't tell me *how*. What could I possibly do for you?"

"The odds are against us getting Willow back without assistance," Buffy replied, "so we need to contact the guys for help, but we had to figure that the Tarakans would be watching and waiting for that." She glanced at Giles. "We thought that it was unlikely that you were being watched, though. You haven't noticed anyone strange following you, have you?"

Cordelia shook her head. "No. But then, no one ever noticed anything like that - that's why we cancelled all the guards. Unfortunately for Willow, I guess."

Giles frowned down at a forkful of eggs. "Guards?"

"Yeah. Angel put them on all of us after you two disappeared." She watched them carefully, but neither one reacted to the mention of Angel's name, their expressions remaining impassive. "He figured that some of the Tarakans might try and use your friends to force you to come back. Which I could never figure out - it's not like anyone knew how to get in touch with you to tell you." Her tone wasn't accusing, but Buffy winced anyway. "How *did* you find out about Willow?"

"The last Tarakan I killed told me all about it," Buffy replied tonelessly, spearing a bit of hashbrown with her fork.

The only thing Cordelia could think to say to that was, "Oh."

Giles polished off a piece of toast and finally met Cordelia's gaze, his own calm and distant. "You've been in regular contact with Angel, then?" he asked in an even voice. Buffy sipped at her coffee and contemplated a piece of bacon.

<Oh, this is awkward...> "Uh, well, yeah...he's sort of my boss, actually." She bit back a sudden smile as Buffy choked on her coffee.

Giles raised an eyebrow. "Your boss? As in, he performs some sort of job and you aid him in this endeavor? Tell us, what exactly does Angel *do*?" His blithe tone injected the question with exquisite British sarcasm, and Cordelia noted Buffy's stifled grin.

"Well, he's a professional brooder," she told them, acknowledging the inherent irony in a 9 to 5 Angel, "and then sometimes he's a private detective."

Giles' lips twitched, and Buffy emitted a choked laugh. "Is that a cliche?" she snorted, nudging the man beside her playfully.

"And what is it *you* do?" Giles asked, leaning over to deposit his extra piece of toast on Buffy's plate. She made a face at him but dutifully picked it up and began to butter it.

Cordelia studied them silently for a moment. Normally, Giles' question would have annoyed her as being insultingly dismissive of her skills, but she understood where Giles was coming from. And she also had a feeling that the two of them hadn't laughed much in the last six months, so she decided to go along with the joke.

"I insult him, of course," she replied, tossing her hair over her shoulder. "And sometimes I file things."

Buffy's smile became a full-fledged grin and Giles chuckled. "Fair enough," he said. "So you can bring us in contact with him, then?"

She shrugged. "Yeah, sure, if that's what you want. He's in Sunnydale right now with Oz and Xander, doing the looking and searching thing, but I can call him. It wouldn't take him more than a couple of hours to get back here."

Giles nodded. "All right. But we shouldn't risk revealing our whereabouts over the phone. Can you get him back here without mentioning us?"

Cordelia thought for a moment. "I guess so. He's been back and forth a couple of times since she disappeared, checking out leads and stuff. If I tell him something urgent has come up, I'm sure he'll come back."

"Today?" Buffy persisted.

"Sure, I guess." Cordelia regarded her thoughtfully, wondering at her apparent eagerness to see her ex. Cordelia had been under the impression that Buffy had come to prefer a bit of distance from Angel in the weeks before she and Giles had left. "Why does it have to be so fast? Is there something you're not telling me?"

Buffy and Giles traded glances. "We're on a deadline," Buffy finally confided, leaning toward Cordelia and lowering her voice. "We have reason to believe we've only got three days to get her back, before the Council punishes her."

Cordelia frowned and held up a hand. "Wait a minute, wait a minute - I thought the Tarakans took Willow to bring you two out of hiding. You're telling me the *Watcher's* Council has her? *Why*?"

Giles leaned back against the wall, sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. The gesture was so familiar that Cordelia's breath caught in her throat, mental images of newGiles and oldGiles warring together in her mind. Giles was oblivious to her reaction as he responded to her question. "The Council took Willow as bait, yes, but they also took her because she's the one who helped us discover the contract on our lives in the first place."

"And that miffed them," Cordelia concluded, nodding her understanding.

"Majorly," Buffy agreed. "There's going to be a tribunal thingy somewhere in or around Sunnydale in three days, and they're going to do the judge, jury and executioner bit. We have to get to Willow before they sentence her."

The word 'executioner' sent a cold chill down Cordelia's spine. "What kind of sentence?" she asked. Buffy's grim expression was all the answer she required. "All right, I'll call Angel and get him back here. Where do you want to meet him?"

Buffy glanced at Giles and shrugged. "I don't know. Giles and I haven't got a place to stay yet - we went straight to the university when we got into town."

"Then how about the office building?" Cordelia suggested. "A two birds with one stone kind of thing. I know there's a pull-out couch and a cot in one of the upstairs rooms, and one of the bathrooms has a shower." Buffy raised an eyebrow. "Some of the places we go are pretty yuck-worthy," Cordelia elaborated. "I think Angel has ruined even more of my clothes than you did."

"But Angel is one of the people the Tarakans are probably watching, and I would assume that includes his place of business," Giles pointed out, dismissing Cordelia's wardrobe concerns. Buffy nodded her agreement, frowning.

"Well, there's an underground entrance," Cordelia told them doubtfully. "It comes out at the back of a club we sometimes go to. Do you think they'd know about that?"

Buffy bit her lip. "Maybe." She glanced at Giles again. "But I don't think they'd suspect that *we* could know about it. The Tarakan I talked to made it pretty clear that they believe we aren't in contact with anyone back home. That's probably why they never bothered taking anyone hostage before the Council found out that Willow was the one who broke into their files."

"I suppose...that makes sense," Giles agreed slowly.

"Okay." Cordelia extracted a small pad of paper from her purse and wrote down an address and phone number. "Here you go. Oh, but listen, the club doesn't open until 4 o'clock-"

"Well, it should take Angel about that long to get back from Sunnydale," Buffy interrupted. "Don't worry, Cordy - we'll be fine until then. It's a big city, after all."

Cordelia nodded and rose from her chair. "All right, then. I wrote down my beeper number, in case something comes up. I'll get hold of Angel as soon as I can, but I'll be in chem class until three - feel free to interrupt it, though." She drew her purse up over her shoulder, feeling curiously reluctant to leave them. "You're sure you'll be okay?"

"We'll be fine, Cordy."

"Okay." She regarded them silently a moment longer. "I- ...it's good to see you guys." She ducked her head, as if embarrassed by her show of sentiment.

Buffy smiled at Cordelia, enjoying her discomfiture. "It's good to see you, too, Cordy. And...thanks."

Cordelia flashed Buffy an abashed grin and quickly turned to leave. When she reached the front door, she glanced back for one last look at them - and stopped in her tracks, stunned by what she saw.

Giles had slipped his arm around Buffy's shoulders and was leaning toward her, murmuring something into her ear. Buffy grinned in response to whatever he said and fed him a bite of eggs from her fork. They looked easy and comfortable together, and far more intimate than they ever had in Sunnydale.

<Could they have...?> Cordelia wondered, blinking in disbelief. She quickly turned away and shook her head. <No, they wouldn't have.> She stepped out into the sunlight and set off toward her car, her mind still on the scene back in the restaurant.

<Would they?>

Even in southern California, a trip to the beach in December is a chilly proposition. The wind whipping over the water bit into the thin cotton of their shirts, but Buffy didn't seem to notice. She stood on the shoreline, hands in the back pockets of her jeans, staring out over the water. Giles sat on the hood of the car a hundred feet behind her, studying the way the afternoon sun made her hair glow.

After a few minutes of peaceful contemplation, Buffy turned around and trudged back toward the car, her bootprints marring the smooth perfection of the beach. She hopped up on the hood and sat next to Giles. "Isn't it beautiful?" she murmured, returning her gaze to the water.

"Yes," Giles replied, but he was still looking at her. "Are you all right, Buffy?"

She nodded slightly, her eyes faraway. "I used to come here a lot," she told him dreamily. "When I lived in L.A. When Mom and Dad were fighting all the time and I couldn't stand to listen to it anymore. There's a bus line that ends about three miles from here, and sometimes after school I would ditch cheerleading and ride out here." She glanced over at him. "It's not a popular beach - it's too far out of the way, and the surfing usually sucks. So there was never anyone here, especially in the winter."

"Sounds lonely," Giles commented, studying her face. To his attentive ears the echo of pain in her voice from her parents separation was very clear.

She raised her cheeks to the sun and closed her eyes. "It was, sometimes. But I think that's what I came here for, the aloneness - and that's why I never brought anyone with me. Not that any of my friends would have understood it." A small smile curled the corner of her mouth. "And they wouldn't have been caught dead riding the bus." The smile faded. "I guess I sometimes felt like none of them really knew me very well. But here on this beach, I didn't have to be Buffy Summers, cheerleader, or Buffy Summers, fashion queen, or Buffy Summers, trophy girlfriend...I could just be Buffy Summers, *me*."

"Everyone needs places like that," he agreed quietly, reaching over to take her hand.

She nodded and bowed her head, staring down at their intertwined fingers. "After I found out I was the Slayer, I didn't come here anymore." She shrugged. "I didn't have a lot of time, for one thing. And I guess I didn't feel like I needed it any longer - because Slaying made me special, gave me something to feel proud about. Until the end, after I burned down the gym, when I started feeling like being Buffy Summers, Vampire Slayer, wasn't any better than being Buffy Summers, prom queen." She shrugged again. "And then Mom and Dad got divorced and we moved away." She raised her head to look out across the water. "I can't even remember the last time I came here."

He drew his arm up around her shoulders, pulling her close. "Why did you want to come here today?" he murmured, keeping his tone light so she wouldn't feel pressured in any way.

She bit her lip. "I...I wanted to share it with you." She glanced at him. "But I'm not really sure why."

Giles raised her hand to his lips and kissed her fingers softly. "Whatever the reason...thank you, Buffy."

Buffy leaned over and kissed his cheek. "No, thank you." She nuzzled his ear, inhaling the sweet male scent of him. "You know me better than anyone in the world, you know that? Better than my Mom, better than Will..." She laid her head on his shoulder. "You know *me*. I think you're the only one who really does."

He smoothed her hair with his palm. "You must know that the reverse is also true, Buffy. I've never-...no one has ever..." He paused, trying to find the words, but she rescued him from his fumbling.

"I understand, Giles." She wrapped her arms around his waist and snuggled closer. They sat that way for almost half an hour, watching the waves play on the beach as clouds chased one another across the sky.

It was Giles who finally broke the silence. "You're nervous about seeing Angel later, aren't you?" His tone was quiet, undemanding, and filled with understanding.

She pulled away from him, as though to protest his conclusion, but then paused and reluctantly nodded. "I am. I don't know what I'll say to him."

"You should say whatever you feel, Buffy."

She closed her eyes. "I don't want to hurt him. But I-...I think I know how he'll react to seeing me again, Giles, and I really don't want to deal with it. I made so many promises to him...and I don't know that I've kept even one of them."

Giles was almost afraid to ask her to elaborate - he'd always avoided internalizing her more passionate declarations about the vampire. Had she promised to love Angel forever? "I don't think Angel expects anything from you, Buffy. He left so you would get on with your life."

Buffy bit her lip, wondering - a bit late - if it had been a good idea to get into this at all. "Look, I know that's what he said, and I know a part of him really meant it...but a part of him expected me to never get over him." She shot Giles an uneasy glance, but went on anyway, "Just like a part of me expected him to never get over me."

"I'm sure he hasn't," Giles murmured, eyeing her. "In fact, I'm quite positive that is an entirely impossible proposition."

She smiled miserably at his compliment, uncomfortably aware that her relationship with her undead ex was one of Giles' least favorite subjects. "But that's not all, Giles." She took a deep breath and braced herself. "I'm not...not sure how I'll feel when I see him, either." She glanced at him quickly out of the corner of her eye, clearly nervous about his reaction to her words.

Giles experienced a pang of something he refused to examine closely, and instead chose to concentrate on reassuring Buffy. "Buffy...it's all right, sweetheart. Feel how you feel, that's all you can do. It won't change what I feel for you. And it won't hurt me." She looked up at him, her eyes brimming with unshed tears, and he managed a smile. "I promise you, love."

"I love you, Giles," she told him, swallowing thickly. "And I-...I don't think I love him anymore. I really don't."

He couldn't hold her gaze and glanced away toward the water. "It's not important."

"It *is*," she insisted. "I don't *want* to love him, Giles. Loving Angel *hurts* - it always *did*. I mean, think about it, Giles - how much of the time was I actually happy when I was with Angel?"

Giles didn't really want to examine the past that closely, painfully aware that Angel had been her paramount obsession for over two years. "I don't know."

Buffy snorted, a sound so unexpected that he almost smiled. "Nice attempt at nice, Giles, but you and I both know that it was months of disaster versus days of fun. It's like I didn't think it was real unless it hurt, you know? And I know that when I was loving him, I didn't consider anyone else's feelings. That wasn't healthy, and it wasn't nice." She reached for his hand and squeezed it regretfully. "Especially with regard to *you*. And even with all the crap I put you through, and even though you had the right, you never tried to make me choose between you."

"Maybe I was afraid to," he murmured, then found he wished he could take the words back as soon as he'd uttered them.

Buffy ducked her head guiltily. Had she really made him feel so unimportant as all that? How could she have been so insensitive? "I deserved that, I guess," she replied softly.

His tone was chagrined. "No, you didn't."

She reached for his hand. "It doesn't matter, anyway. There isn't a choice to make now, don't you see? I'm with you now. I want to be with *you*."

Giles disengaged his fingers from hers. "You're right, Buffy," he agreed, keeping his tone even, "you don't have to make a choice. In fact, it isn't really necessary for you to tell him anything about us at all."

"I don't want to hide how I feel about you," she retorted indignantly, grabbing his hand again.

He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Buffy, the next few days are going to be very difficult for all of us, that's a given. So whatever you need to make it easier for you to do what you have to do, I support one hundred percent. That's really all that matters to me."

"I know it is," she told him. "But in order to get through it, I'm going to need you, and I don't want to keep us a secret. Giles, this might be the last few days we ever have on earth, okay? Let's not let the past - the past that's *gone* - mess up what we have now."

"I appreciate what you're trying to say, but you...you loved him, Buffy," Giles said, pausing slightly over the choice of verb tense. Buffy caught his hesitation and grimaced. "You loved him very much. You offered to sacrifice yourself for him - I don't know that I've ever known a more noble act." Or a more horrifying one, he didn't add.

Her smile was pained. "Are you sure you don't mean a more *melodramatic* act?"

"Don't belittle your feelings," he replied, squelching his own odd, sudden urge to smile at her self-deprecating statement.

"They're mine, Giles," she pointed out. "I can belittle them however I want. And you know, if these past few months have taught me anything, it's that life is a *precious* thing, and I should be a lot less cavalier about throwing mine around like that." It was as close as she could come to admitting she might have made a mistake during the Ascension, but it was enough for Giles.

He offered her a significant glare of wholehearted agreement, then decided it was time to abandon weighty emotional topics in favor of something less painful. "'Cavalier'?" he mocked lightly.

"You've been so good for my vocab, Giles," she replied, grinning at him, clearly equally willing to leave the tough subjects behind. "My own walking thesaurus."

"Thank you very much," he sniffed, stifling a smile.

She tilted her head to the side and studied him for a moment. "So, are we done with the excruciatingly painful soul- searching for a little while?"

He closed his eyes briefly and sighed. "God, I hope so."

"Good," she said, bending down to unlace her left boot. "Because we're on a beach, and we're in violation of international beach rules." She kicked one boot away and began to attack the laces of the other.

He raised an eyebrow. "Those being?"

"Number one - the 'no shoe' rule," she replied, stripping off her socks and hopping to the ground. "Number two - the 'no jeans' rule," she continued, unbuttoning her jeans, sliding them off, then kicking them away. She stood before him clad only in her long-sleeved baseball t-shirt and pink panties. "And number three - the 'you must go into the ocean' rule." She flashed a grin at him before turning to race toward the water, slim legs flashing in the afternoon sun.

"The water's *freezing*, Buffy!" he called after her, but she just waved him off, plunging into the surf, arms upraised. She waded out until the water was waist-deep, twirling in unending circles as the waves swirled around her. Her hair gleamed golden in the afternoon light.

Giles swallowed past the lump in his throat and attempted to memorize the picture she made - a grinning, dancing water nymph shining in the sun. The chill that had enveloped his heart as they had spoken of Angel began to thaw a little as he realized that nothing could alter the memories of the months they'd spent together, not even the re-entry of Angel into their lives. And a small, secret, selfish part of him smiled in satisfaction at the knowledge that he and Buffy had shared something that she and Angel never could. He allowed his gaze to roam her slim figure, admiring the way her curves were outlined in stark relief by the dripping, clinging cotton of her shirt.

Smiling, he kicked off his boots and shucked his jeans, looking up in time to be on the receiving end of one of Buffy's thousand-watt grins. He jumped off of the hood, clad only in boxers and t-shirt, and quickly crossed the sand toward the water. The grains were cool and gritty between his toes, and the spray kicked up by the wind was cold enough to sting, but he was determined to ignore any discomfort. Buffy wanted to play, and he wanted to join her.

The icy shock of the water stole his breath for a few moments, but he persevered until he was standing next to her, facing seaward, arms upraised, eyes shaded against the bright ferocity of the winter sun.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?" Buffy called, raising her voice to be heard over the surf.

"*You're* beautiful!" Giles shouted back, suddenly incapable of repressing a mile-wide grin. She looked so incredibly *alive* standing there.

Buffy turned to face him, her eyelashes dripping sparkling water down the blooming color of her cheeks. Her wet hair was plastered against her head like a golden skullcap, and her white teeth gleamed brilliantly as she grinned back at him in sheer, unadulterated joy. "I love you!" she yelled, wading toward him. She reached up to wind her arms around his neck. "I love you!" he captured his lips with hers - cool and salty - and molded her body to his, bouncing upward in the water to wrap her legs around his waist. Her warmth was furnace-hot compared to the icy water, and he gave himself over to the kiss, drinking her in like hot chocolate.

She thrust her pelvis against him, using the buoyancy of the water as a springboard in time with the sweeping of her tongue. He felt consumed, devoured, as though she was branding him, claiming the last infinitesimal bit of his soul that was still his alone. He gave it over freely, driven by the desperation of their last few days together to marry their spirits and hearts in time with their bodies. She was vibrant and alive in his arms, but even as he devoured her heat he could not banish the ever- present fear of losing her that had haunted him for months.

He slipped his hands underneath her shirt to stroke her smooth skin, imprinting her with the stamp of his fingertips, pressing hard enough to bruise were she someone other than the Slayer. She moaned low in her throat and squeezed him more tightly, scissoring her thighs to tighten around his waist. Her kisses became hotter, more urgent, burning against his lips.

"Buffy!" he gasped, pulling away for a moment, his mind whirling dizzily.

"What?" she murmured as her mouth travelled over his cheek to bite his earlobe. She sucked it inside her mouth, then traced his ear with her tongue.

"My-*ah*...*t-toes* are frozen," he replied nonsensically, awash in a sea of pure sensation. He nipped at her neck, tasting the salty sweetness of her skin.

She chuckled into his ear, her voice low and sexy. "So? What do you need your toes for?" she asked, giving his ear another nibble.

"Nothing," he replied. "But *other* things are getting rather cold as well...things that *you* might feel a *need* for sometime soon..."

She pulled back to stare at him, and he grinned at her, eyes sparkling. Comprehension dawned and she started to laugh. "Well, come on then," she exclaimed, unwrapping her legs and splashing backward. She tugged on his hand, towing him toward the shore.

They stumbled from the surf onto the beach, both giggling uncontrollably. Buffy, grinning impishly, struck out suddenly with one foot in an attempt to catch Giles off guard and send him crashing to the ground. He dodged, lightning quick, and tried to return the favor, but she danced out of reach, whirling and laughing. "Come and get me," she taunted, smoothing the wet t- shirt against her body provocatively.

"I'm *trying*," he replied feelingly, which only made Buffy laugh harder.

"Like what you see, do you?" she asked, raising the hem of her shirt slightly, giving him a glimpse of the tantalizing white skin of her belly. "All ya gotta do is catch me, WatcherMan."

He feinted, then dove, nearly capturing her arm, mainly because she wasn't trying very hard to get away. Skipping sideways, she picked up a handful of wet sand and lobbed it toward him, hitting him smack in the middle of the chest. "Oh, you'll regret that," he vowed, scooping up his own handful.

"Ooh, mud-wrestling fantasy," she replied, throwing another ball of mud.

"I'm thinking that perhaps we stayed in too many hotels with x-rated television," he quipped, his own missile striking her leg a glancing blow.

"If this were one of *those* movies, I'd be naked and you'd be a six-foot tall blonde woman with enormous boobs," she informed him breathlessly as she dodged another lob and ducked under his arm.

He paused mid-turn, frowning. "I think I saw that one," he muttered thoughtfully, pretending to search his memory.

She choked on a laugh and shoved him from behind. As he fell he reached back and grabbed her hand, and they went down on the sand in a tangle of arms and legs. Giles rolled over and pinned her underneath him. "Gotcha," he told her.

"Still cold?" she asked, smiling up at him, looking adorably disheveled.

"Getting warmer," he replied, then leaned down to kiss her - deeply, languidly, allowing his lips to map the contours of hers.

They broke apart breathlessly a few long minutes later. "Giles?" Buffy murmured while her right hand delved beneath the waistband of his sopping boxers.

"Yes?" he replied, his voice rising an octave as her cold fingers found their target and gave an experimental squeeze.

"I'm glad you're not a six-foot tall blonde woman with enormous boobs," she told him. She released him after a brief caress and began to tug on his shirt.

He burst into laughter as he rolled off of her into the sand and yanked his shirt over his shoulders. He tossed it away, then reached for the hem of her top. "Buffy?" he murmured as he pulled the material upward over her head.

"Hmmm?" She licked her lips and went to work on his boxers.

"I'm glad, too." She giggled into his mouth as his lips reclaimed hers. A few moments later their remaining clothing lay piled in the sand beside them, and they were lost in one another once again.

The wet gritty sand at her back presented a bizarrely sensual contrast to the warmth of his skin, and as they moved against one another, she could feel their bodies digging a hollow underneath her. She ran her hands up and down his back, relishing the feel of taut muscle. Giles didn't have the shape of a bodybuilder - his strength came from their daily workouts and long years of fighting experience, newly tempered with the tinge of deprivation. Any excess fat that had ever graced his frame had burned away in the past six months, leaving a long, lean, rangy form, battle-scarred but unbowed. He was perfection in her eyes, seen through the lens of love, and to her pleased surprise she had discovered a deep hunger for his body that stole upon her at the oddest times.

They fit together as though made for one another, her petite frame hiding a strength that overmatched his own and made them equals in an intimate embrace. Their movements were instinctive, their caresses proceeding without need of guiding words. He knew just where to touch her to drive her absolutely crazy, and she possessed an innate seductiveness that excited him as no one ever had.

Buffy bent her knees, pulling her thighs up to increase her leverage, then locked her ankles behind his back. "Now," she demanded impatiently, unwilling to delay any longer. She could feel his straining erection against her belly. He was toying with her, holding himself away even in the face of her iron grip.

"Say please," he gasped, nipping at her right breast. Sweat beaded on his forehead. The chill of the winter afternoon could not penetrate their mutual heat.

She choked on a laugh, her fingernails biting into the skin of his back. "*Now*, you sonofa- Oh, *God*!" Her voice rose to a scream as he plunged deep within her. She clung tightly to him, matching her thrusts to his, fast and furious. Blood pounded between them, the beating of their hearts and bodies utterly in sync. He filled her almost to overflowing, penetrating deeper than he ever had before, branding her with his body as she had branded his. She gave herself over to him completely, trying to reassure him with her actions as she hadn't been able to do with words. "Love you, love you, love you," she chanted in time with each thrust, squeezing her inner muscles around him, knowing it would drive him absolutely wild.

They came together, simultaneously, their twin shouts ringing across the deserted beach. Buffy felt his warm seed fill her, an amazing sensation she'd only recently begun to experience sans a barrier of intervening latex. She felt deliciously complete, utterly one with him, as though she'd taken a piece of his soul inside her womb.

Giles collapsed on top of her, spent and panting. "Lord, you feel good," he gasped.

"Well, you feel heavy," she replied, but when he made to climb off of her, she tightened her grip on his shoulders and twined her legs around his, ensuring that he wouldn't slip from her body. Together they rolled to the side until she was laying on top of his chest, her naked back caked with gritty grains of sand. The seawater and heat between them had combined with the sand to form a thin sticky glue of sex and sweat, bonding their skins along with their bodies.

"We're going to have sand in some *very* awkward places," Giles observed as they settled into a comfortable embrace.

She giggled agreement. "You know, that's the part they never mentioned in all those movies that neither of us ever watched."

"Hmph." They were quiet for a moment. "Do you remember the one with the green alien women?" Giles wondered eventually.

"The six-foot amazon huge-boobed alien women?" Buffy asked. He nodded. "Nope, sorry, don't recall that one at all. But I *do* remember the one with the Texas cowboy with the *really* bit six-shooter - you know, the guy who wore his spurs even when he-"

"I remember," Giles countered, cutting her off. "I'm going to have to watch four hundred consecutive hours of opera to cleanse my brain of those images."

Buffy yawned. "Count me out." They drifted off into a mutual doze, enjoying the lazy afternoon somnolence. Buffy idly wondered whether or not the sun was strong enough to give her bare backside a very awkward sunburn, but she was so comfortable against his chest that she decided not to worry about it. She lay in Giles' arms and simply relished their time together.

"What are you thinking?" she asked eventually as she traced idle circles across his right bicep.

"I'm thinking that it would be damn silly for a man my age to get arrested for indecent exposure on a public beach..." Giles chuckled, the rumbling of his laughter sending fizzing vibrations through her spent body.

She kissed his chest. "It was worth it."

"Seconded," he agreed, smoothing her damp, sand-dusted hair. "And what are *you* thinking?"

She was silent for a moment, remembering the final moments of their lovemaking. "I'm thinking that we haven't been very careful," she finally said. Her voice was very quiet.

Giles tensed and glanced up and down the beach, but the sand was still deserted, gleaming white in the afternoon sun. "The Tarakans don't know where we are," he reassured her. "Don't worry."

She bit her lip, turning her head to lay her cheek on his chest, hiding her expression from his view. "I'm not talking about the Tarakans. I meant...well, ever since I told you about Willow, we haven't been *careful*."

It took Giles a moment to understand why she placed special emphasis on the final word, but then he sucked in a sharp breath of comprehension. "Oh," he said, shocked at himself. He had been insistent since the very beginning of their sexual relationship that they be vigilant in the use of birth control - adding a baby to the living nightmare that was their lives would have been the cruelest kind of child abuse, and he had known how hard it would be for Buffy to terminate a pregnancy. So they had been careful, even when desire had driven them to the brink of madness. But Buffy was correct - neither of them had given protection a thought since her revelation about Willow's abduction.

"Giles?" Buffy ventured hesitantly.

"It's all right, Buffy," he told her, for lack of anything better to say.

She bit her lip miserably. "I guess even our subconscious minds believe we're gonna die, huh? They're not real worried about us being around in nine months."

"I...don't know." He hugged her tightly. "Maybe it's just that...we're clinging to every bit of life we can, while we can." He kissed the top of her head. "But that isn't to say I'm giving up, Buffy. I'm well aware of how dangerous this is, but I'm conceding nothing. I will do whatever I have to do to get you through this alive." His voice was fierce.

She scooted upward and buried her face in his neck. "Me, too, Giles," she murmured as she settled against him. "I'll do whatever I have to do to make sure you're okay, too. But I-" she paused, took a deep breath, and plunged onward, well aware of how much he would hate hearing her next few words, "...I don't want to survive this if you don't."

"Don't say that!" he snapped angrily, incensed by her matter-of-fact martyred tone. He knew that Buffy was far more likely to live through the coming battle than he was, being both a Slayer and considerably younger. The thought that she might just throw her life away after the fact was galling. Could she make a split-second decision to allow her own death during a moment of emotional devastation? Yes, she was very capable of it - she'd already lost too much in her young life. But it was something Giles could not allow - he simply had to find a way to prevent her from giving up like that.

And suddenly an idea came to him - a vastly unfair idea, but he couldn't permit himself to care. "If you are pregnant," he began slowly, choosing his words with care, "if you are carrying my child, then you would need to keep on living, wouldn't you? For *our* child's sake." He left unspoken the assumption that she would decide to give birth to the child - they both knew she would never choose to abort his baby should he die in the next few days. His words tasted bitter in his mouth, because he knew he was condemning her to the life of loneliness that was her greatest fear...but she had to live. She *had* to.

Buffy froze in his arms. "That's blackmail," she retorted icily, her fingernails digging into his skin.

"Perhaps," Giles replied calmly. "It's true, nevertheless, isn't it?" <Please, forgive me, Buffy...> He knew that once she'd survived long enough to discover whether or not she were carrying his child, she wouldn't find it nearly so easy to end her life. She would live...

Buffy shoved away from his embrace and rolled off onto the sand. "I can't believe you," she muttered under her breath as she snatched up her scattered clothes. "I can't believe you'd ask me that."

"I'd do anything to keep you alive," he told her quietly, gaining his feet. Dried sand cascaded down his body to the ground.

She refused to meet his gaze, turning to stalk back toward the car. "And you, Giles?" she returned bitterly over her shoulder. "If I die, and you live, will *you* go on to greater glory and happiness?" Her angry tone said she already knew his answer, no matter what lies he might tell her.

<No,> his heart automatically replied, but he managed to stay his tongue. "I'd have to, wouldn't I?" he said instead, not really answering her question.

She snorted, and he knew she'd seen through his ruse. "Hypocrite!" she muttered. "You're a hypocrite, Giles - using a phantom child to blackmail me into a life without you." Suddenly she whirled on him in all her glorious naked fury. "*Fine*, then," she spat, her eyes shooting sparks, "I'll make that promise if you will, Giles. I'll swear to live without you, if you'll swear live without me." She raised her chin challengingly, daring him to refuse her. His word would bind him, she knew, as surely as their possible child bound her.

He licked his lips nervously, but there was really only one reply he could make - and he knew it. It was the price he would have to pay to bargain for her survival. "Agreed." The word tasted of ashes in his mouth.

"Fine!" She turned her back on him resumed her angry stalk toward the car, still muttering under her breath. "Stupid, selfish sonofa...And now I have to see *Angel* as if this whole damn thing wasn't bad *enough*..." Her voice faded away to only a few recognizable curse words, and Giles grimaced regretfully.

It was going to be a long few days.

The club to which Cordelia had directed them was a few steps up from the places they had become accustomed to frequenting - but not too many. It carried the same Wasn't Here/Didn't See It seedy ambience of their former haunts, and Buffy had the feeling that all manner of criminal activity would be overlooked by the management, so long as it didn't result in broken furniture. The bored bouncer at the door hadn't given them more than a glance as he'd let them in, even though they'd been carrying two overfilled dufflebags, and Buffy's request to the bartender for a beer had been filled with nary a murmur. She had glared challengingly at Giles when she had ordered it, daring him to argue, but he had only rolled his eyes and made for a booth at the back of the room. The decor was dark and vaguely gothic, which would, of course, appeal to vampires, and Buffy had been about to make a joke about it before she remembered she wasn't speaking to Giles. After what he had pulled on the beach, she had decided he deserved *months* of the silent treatment.

She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. He was absently rolling his beer bottle between his palms and staring at the front door with blank, unseeing eyes, a slight frown marring his forehead. The tips of his ears were pink with sunburn, and he still smelled faintly of ocean. They'd cleaned up as best they could with a towel and a bottle of spring water, but Buffy still felt vaguely grimy in a beach sort of way, and the residual salt in her hair was making her scalp itch. They were both dressed in wrinkled t-shirts and faded sweatpants cadged from the pile of marginally clean laundry in the trunk of the car, and the look was a bit too casual for the general tenor of the club. However, the place had few patrons as of yet, and no one paid much attention to them. Buffy was getting nervous anyway, though, because Cordelia was over fifteen minutes late.

"Do you think something happened to her?" she finally asked, worry forcing her to break her self-imposed silence - but if he gloated about it, she was planning to hit him.

"No," he replied, glancing at her, no trace of triumph in his tone. "If memory serves, Cordelia was never one for arriving anywhere on time." His expression as he looked at her was regretful without being apologetic, and Buffy felt a bit of her ire drain away. She knew he was no happier about their predicament than she was - and she understood completely why he'd extracted such an incredibly unfair promise from her earlier. Her own urge to protect *him* was equally strong, and she knew he would find it as difficult to go on living without her as she would without him. So they found themselves in a stalemate, since neither of them could find it within themselves to give way.

But there was really no point in wasting what little time they had left together being mad, was there?

"Well, I think Cordy's probably changed a bit since high school," Buffy allowed, "but I can't quite picture her undergoing a complete transformation. She probably stopped at the mall or something."

They shared a muted chuckle, then went back to quiet contemplation of the tabletop, the silence between them laying much easier this time. Buffy scooted a little closer to Giles in the booth, and her foot struck one of the duffles under the table. They'd stuffed a minimum amount of clothes, a sampling of spellbooks, and all the weapons that would fit inside the bags, just in case they wouldn't be able to get back to the car, which they'd parked in a six-story garage many blocks away. Their ancient auto had been stolen back in Mississippi, and though the odds weren't good that local cops would make the connection, they preferred to leave nothing to chance. All their other belongings were locked in the trunk, but there was nothing among them to identify their owners.

Sighing, Buffy reached out to take Giles' hand in hers. He raised an eyebrow, and she frowned at him. "Remember we agreed to store up all the mad until *after* we saved the day? Don't think you're getting out of this one, Mister. I'm thinking I'll be needing some serious hand-to-hand combat practice when all of this is over." Her dark look conveyed all he needed to know about how punishing the experience would be, but he managed a smile anyway, appreciating her insistence that they would *have* a future.

"I'll look forward to it." Movement at the club's entrance caught his eye. "Here's Cordelia," he said as the young woman entered. The brunette paused by the door to speak with the bouncer, who waved her back toward their table. A supercilious- looking blonde followed her inside, and Buffy and Giles tensed in unison.

Cordelia appeared distinctly unhappy as she approached the table. "My car's on the fritz," she blurted before they could say anything. "And the only person around that I could get a ride from on short notice-" the blonde girl caught up to her and eyed them with interest "-well, was *her*." Buffy recognized the girl as one of the sorority sisters who had been lurking in the lobby of the house that morning. "This is Karen," Cordelia added grudgingly.

"Nice to meet you," Karen said, somehow managing to turn the innocuous statement into an insult. "And you are?" Her gaze lingered on Giles, mildly appreciative, but her glance at Buffy was filled with contempt as she took in Buffy's still-damp hair and wrinkled clothing. Buffy bristled at both the girl's scornful scrutiny and her admiration of Giles.

"Friends of mine," Cordelia interjected, clearly hoping to forestall a confrontation. "I told you that. This is...um, Harmony, and, uh, Jonathan."

Buffy barely managed to suppress an eyeroll, but it wouldn't do to undermine Cordelia's lie, lame as it was. She and Giles nodded at the girl, a tad more stiffly than was considered strictly friendly.

"And where do you know Cordelia from?" Karen asked, a predatory gleam in her eyes. Buffy suddenly saw the girl's interest in them for what it was - a snooping expedition about Cordelia. She wondered just how much the blonde knew about her erstwhile friend from Sunnydale.

But before Buffy could say anything Giles replied to Karen's question. "Mensa meetings," he told her in arctic tones. "Thank you *so* much for bringing Cordelia to us. You may go now." The girl stiffened and automatically stepped back, and Buffy had to stifle a giggle. Ripper in action was always interesting to see.

Karen mumbled something to Cordelia and spun quickly on her heel to head toward the door. Cordelia watched her leave, a slight smile on her lips, then slipped into the booth across from them. "That was cool. Can you teach me how to do that, Giles?"

"Years of practice, Cordelia," he told her. "You said your car is not functioning?"

"No, but then, it hardly ever does. It's a piece of junk - even worse than yours was," she added, eyes twinkling. "I keep trying to convince Angel that I should get a really nice car as a part of my job, but he's Stingyman when it comes to giving me money. And Doyle's even worse, but only 'cause he likes to gamble it away."

"Who's Doyle?" Buffy asked, taking a swig of her beer.

"Doyle's...Doyle is complicated - and out-of-town at the moment, God knows where. He's sort of a friend of Angel's." Cordelia saw the disbelief flicker across Giles' face and squelched a smile. Angel having friends - not exactly a normal concept. But then, Doyle wasn't exactly normal. "Don't worry about it. He's not important right now."

Giles nodded, accepting that. "Did you get hold of Angel, then?"

"Yes. It took a little while, though, so he won't be here for a couple more hours. Oh, and he's bringing Oz along."

Buffy frowned. "He is? Why?"

Cordelia shrugged. "I don't know - I didn't ask, just in case you guys were right about the Tarakans or the Council listening in on our phone calls. If Angel and Oz have figured out some way to find Willow, I didn't want to tip anyone off."

"Good thinking," Buffy told her. "It'll be good to see Oz, anyway. Can we get going? I'm dying for a shower."

"Sure," Cordelia replied, sliding out of the booth. "You do look kinda slagged. Where have you guys been, anyway?"

Buffy and Giles each hefted a dufflebag over one shoulder and carefully avoided looking at one another. "We went to the beach," Buffy told her.

Cordelia raised an eyebrow as she led them toward the back of the club and a wooden door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY. "In the middle of winter? Why? There's nothing to do there."

"Oh, that's not true, there's always...*stuff*," Buffy said. She and Giles exchanged satisfied grins as they followed Cordelia through the door.

The entrance to Angel's office building from the underground tunnel was located in a basement workout room. An array of paper targets decorated the back wall of the makeshift gym, and a large shelving unit to the side contained a vast array of weapons - crossbows, swords, stakes, and a few more exotic devices that Buffy didn't recognize. The floor was covered with a battered maroon exercise mat, and a few old pieces of workout equipment were shoved to the side of the room. Lack of ventilation left the place smelling musty and slightly sour.

"Nice," Buffy told Cordelia, her voice dripping irony.

"Hey, *I* don't come down here," Cordelia replied. "Angel's tried to make me, but the only thing I'm good at is the crossbow."

"I remember," Giles told her as they crossed the mat, "but I also seem to recall you doing quite well with stakes upon occasion."

Cordelia just shrugged, but she was clearly pleased by the compliment. She gestured to the door one flight below them as they began to climb the stairs. "That's the parking level - room enough for six cars or so. Angel needed indoor parking access to make sure he could avoid the sunlight - I think that's why he picked this building. Anyway, maybe we could sneak your car in here somehow, just in case you guys need something you had to leave behind."

Giles nodded as they reached the landing of the second level of stairs. "That's a good idea."

Cordelia beamed at him as she shoved the ground floor door open. "Here we are," she told them with a mocking flourish. "Classy, huh?" The lobby contained a few sagging couches, a scarred wooden desk set, and an unidentifiable work of semi-art hung high on one wall. The walls themselves were light green over beige carpet, and the overall ambience was one step up from seedy. In short, Buffy thought, the room looked like a 1940s noir movie stereotype of what a detective agency should be.

"Oh, very nice," Giles commented, not bothering to squelch the sarcasm.

Cordelia rolled her eyes. "Tell me about it." She led them back down a short hallway, gesturing to a door on the left which stood half open. "Conference room," she noted as they obediently glanced inside. The room contained a large wooden table, five chairs, and an old television set and VCR atop a stand in the corner. After a quick perusal they proceeded onward toward the elevator at the end of the hall. "The building has three floors," Cordelia continued as the doors closed and the car rose upward with a jerk. "First floor - well, you pretty much saw it. The second floor has Angel's office, Doyle's - I guess I can't really call it an office, but sometimes he takes naps in there - and, oh, there's also a kitchen-lounge thingy. And by the way, don't drink anything from the green bottles in the refrigerator, because it may *look* like V-8 juice but it's not. Trust me."

Buffy grimaced as the elevator dinged for the third floor. "Up here is mostly storage," Cordelia told them as they emerged into another hallway. She pointed to the door at the far end of it. "That's the bathroom with the shower, and over here is the office with the foldout couch." She led them through a door on the left, into a small room that contained a couch, a lamp, and a table topped by a small television. Cordelia opened the single closet to reveal shelves of linens, pillows and a rollup cot on wheels. "I think this is pretty much all you'll need. There are towels and stuff in the bathroom."

"Shower." Buffy uttered the word like a prayer, glancing over at Giles. "You don't mind if I go first, do you?" She was already kicking off her tennis shoes.

Giles smiled. "Be my guest."

She dumped her duffel on the couch and extracted a smaller bag from within. "I've got to get this salt off of me - I feel like a pickled herring or something." She made for the door, shooting a smile toward Cordelia. "Thanks, Cor."

"Sure," Cordelia replied as Buffy disappeared down the hall, then she turned to Giles. "I guess I should show you how to pull out the couch - it's a little tricky, which is a nice euphemism for really old and kind of broken."

"Well, thank you very much for your help, then," Giles told her as they removed Buffy's duffel and the couch cushions and set them on the floor. A few moments of tugging and swearing later, they'd managed to unfurl the mattress. Cordelia went to fetch linen and pillows from the closet as Giles untied his shoes.

"The cot's not that big," she told him over her shoulder, "but it is at least as comfortable as the pullout, which isn't very, really - so I guess Buffy should take it, since she's shorter than you are."

Giles put a hand out to stop her from rolling the cot out of the closet. "I think we can handle it from here, Cordelia."

"Are you sure? Because if you don't get it set up just right it tends to close up while you're lying on it - which is really embarrassing, let me tell you. And kind of painful."

He smiled at her. "I think I'll be all right." He took the sheets from her hands and set about making the bed. "It's been quite a long trip - I think we'll just try to get some sleep while we have the time to spare. How long do you think it will be before Angel and Oz arrive?"

There was a note of...*something* in his voice as he mentioned Angel's name, but Cordelia couldn't quite put her finger on what it was. She glanced at her watch. "Well, he told me he was going to leave at...oh, I guess you could get about two hours in. He said he'd call when they reached L.A., so when he does I'll come up and wake you. In the meantime I'll be down in the lounge studying if you need anything."

"That sounds fine. Thank you." He waited until she'd left the room before turning back to the bed and finishing with the sheets, stuffing two of the pillows into pillowcases. Satisfied that the couch/bed was as comfortable as he could make it, he stripped down to his boxers, grabbed his shaving kit and headed for the bathroom.

Steam billowed out into the hallway when he opened the door. The bathroom was white-tiled and tiny, with a chipped porcelain sink crammed in next to the toilet, across from a small shower stall sporting a Betty Boop shower curtain. He could see the ghostly peach form of Buffy through the clear plastic.

"It's like showering in a closet, Giles!" she called over the running water.

"Is that your way of telling me that it wasn't built for two?" he asked as he turned on the sink faucet and extracted his razor from the shaving kit. Buffy gave a little shriek as the shower water cooled momentarily, and he stifled a laugh. "Sorry!" he called.

"Sure you are," she grumbled, peeking around the curtain to give him a good glare. "Say you're sorry like you mean it or I'll flush the toilet while you're in here."

"Abject apologies," he told her, grinning and turning back to the sink. "Blast!" he added as he realized that the steam had completely clouded the small mirror.

The shower ceased, and one slim arm snuck out from behind the curtain to snag a towel from the rack. A moment later Buffy stepped out onto the mat, the towel wrapped around her. "Your turn." She glanced from his razor to the mirror and chuckled. "Having problems?"

He shook his head and stuffed the razor back into the kit. "Perhaps I'll grow a beard."

"Oooh, no," Buffy disagreed, "I hate stubble burn. Why don't you let me give you a hand?" She reached for the shaving cream, then cursed as her towel began to slip. "Hand me that, would you?"

He held the can up out of her reach, eyeing the recalcitrant towel with appreciation. "Before I let you near my throat with a razor, I want you to reassure me that we've no outstanding issues to resolve."

She rolled her eyes and snatched the razor from the kit. "Oh, *please*, Giles. I have *much* more inventive ways in mind to off you." She stood on tiptoe to give him a quick kiss. "Many of them involving...um, *overexertions* of some kind on your part. Now sit down on the toilet."

He handed her the can of shaving cream and obeyed her instructions. She plopped herself down on his thighs with a satisfied smirk, feeling his customary reaction to her nearness through the thin cotton of his boxers and the terrycloth of the towel. "Now, hold still." She squirted out a handful of foam into her palm.

"Just a second," he murmured, leaning forward to run his lips over her throat. "Missed a bit of water there," he added, licking her earlobe.

Buffy arched her back a bit as her skin briefly pebbled with shivering goosebumps of desire. "Mmm, thanks." Wrenching her attention back to the task at hand, she daubed a generous dollop of cream across his cheeks and chin, finishing with a smear on the tip of his nose. She giggled at the comical picture he presented, and he growled at her. "Sorry."

"Sure you are," he told her, mimicking her earlier words. "I'm warning you, do a good job or else." He slipped his fingers under the edge of the towel and tugged menacingly.

"Oooh, threats," she replied, carefully running the razor down his right cheek. She wiggled her backside provocatively, enjoying his involuntary groan.

"Stop that," he whispered as he smoothed back her wet hair.

"Make me," she murmured, staring deeply into his eyes.

Deciding to answer her implicit challenge, Giles pulled on the material, and the towel fell away. Buffy's eyes never left his as she slowly set the razor on the sink, rose, and kicked the cloth away. He scooted forward on the toilet lid and allowed her to tug his boxers down. She tossed them after the towel and braced her hands on his shoulders, pushing him back on the seat until she had room to straddle him. He moaned as she settled herself on his lap again, positioning her center tantalizingly close to his erection without actually touching him.

"You excel at torture, you know," he informed her tensely.

"Well, you've been a bad, bad boy," she replied, leaning toward him for a slow, deep kiss, unmindful of the shaving cream. "Never let it be said that I'm not a merciful woman, though." Abruptly she scooted forward, impaling herself on him.

"Oh, God," they moaned in unison.

He wrapped his arms around her waist and thrust upward, but she pushed him back, disrupting his attempt to gain leverage. "No," she told him, her voice hoarse with strain. "You haven't had your shave yet."

"Buffy-"

"Shh," she admonished, reaching for the razor again with trembling fingers. "Relax."

His muscles were rock hard with effort as he strove to restrain himself. "I don't believe that's possible," he informed her tightly.

She stroked the razor down his left cheek. "The sooner you let me finish, the sooner you get your reward," she told him, her warm breath against his ear making his hair stand on end. "Do you want your reward, Giles?" she asked in a low, sexy voice.

His answer was another semi-coherent moan. She scraped the area around his chin clean of stubble, biting her lip as her tiny shifting movements embedded him more deeply within her. "You know," she gasped, trying for a conversational tone, "I've been thinking about something."

Jaw clenched, eyes screwed painfully shut, Giles asked, "Wh- what's that?"

"These past few days," she murmured, carefully shaving his upper lip, "We haven't been able to get enough of each other..." She squeezed her inner muscles to illustrate her point, and he moaned again. "I've been wondering i-if we've turned into a pair of nymphomaniacs."

"Could be," he muttered as his hands slipped down to squeeze her buttocks, and it was her turn to moan. "Are you finished yet?"

One last stroke of the blade, and then..."Done," she told him, tossing the razor into the sink, where it landed with a clatter. Giles immediately drew his hands up under her arms and lifted her off of his lap. "Wha-" she began, then gasped as he dropped her down again, impaling her more deeply than before. "*God*, Giles!"

He nipped at her neck, biting without breaking the skin. The excess shaving cream smeared into her wet hair, but she didn't care. She clutched him to her, rubbing her breasts against the crisp hairs on his chest, relishing the feel of skin on skin.

The air in the room was thick with steam and heat, giving it the feel of a porcelain sauna. The cool tiles under her toes were slick with moisture, but she managed to keep her balance, levering her body into even closer contact with his. The only sounds to be heard were their choked moans of pleasure and the slap of damp skin, interspersed with the periodic drips of water from the shower.

"I'm going to-" *groan* "-need another-" *hiss* "-shower!" Buffy grunted hoarsely.

"I'll share," Giles gasped, thrusting harder. "No problem." His hand delved between their heaving bodies, his fingers deftly finding her clit and pressing hard, all without interrupting their driving rhythm.

She opened her mouth to scream, but his lips covered hers, capturing the sound. He emptied his seed into her in a sticky gush, warm fluid leaking out to bond their skin together. She collapsed bonelessly against his chest, gasping for air. "Def- definitely nymphos," she wheezed when she'd managed to draw sufficient breath to form the words.

He nodded, smoothing her damp hair down her back. "But what a way to go, right?"

She grinned against his neck. "Right." They were silent for a little while as their breathing calmed, then she kissed his shoulder. "I believe you said something about sharing a shower?"

He hugged her tightly against him. "So I did."

Buffy was tired - very tired, in fact - but for some reason she still found it impossible to fall asleep. She lay curled on her side in the lumpy foldout bed, staring up at the shrouded window, mesmerized by the few pinpricks of light that somehow managed to find their way through the heavy navy curtains and the black blinds. Though outside it was a typically bright California afternoon, the thick coverings on the window made the room feel like night. Clearly this was the place where Angel rested when he found himself trapped at the office during the day, and the idea that the vampire had slept in the very same bed upon which she now found herself lying had plunged her mind into whirling confusion. Angel would be arriving very soon, and she still had no idea what she was going to say to him.

Behind her, Giles sighed in his sleep and shifted restlessly on the mattress. She rolled over slowly, moving carefully so as not to wake him, and studied his shad wed face. He was frowning slightly - tense and worried even in sleep - but, with his hair rumpled, glasses off, completely naked, he still appeared years younger than the tweed-clad man she'd met so many years ago in the library. An irony, really, because she knew he felt he'd aged about a thousand years since that day, just as she did.

She reached out to gently rub the skin between his eyes, smoothing away the worry lines. He nuzzled into her palm and turned his face toward her, seeking her affection even in sleep. A wistful smile curled her lips, half-grateful for the chance she'd had to love him, and half-bitter for all the time they'd lost - and still stood to lose, if Willow's rescue two days hence went badly.

Willow.

The thought of her pretty red-haired friend caused a shaft of pain to stab through Buffy's chest. Of all the people she'd left behind, she'd missed Willow the most in the months after she and Giles had hastily departed Sunnydale. Oh, the absence of her mother had been a constant ache, of course, and she knew Xander's goofy jokes would have been a welcome tension reliever on many, *many* occasions - but Willow had been her best, truest friend almost since the moment they had met sophomore year, and it was her loss Buffy felt most deeply. They had shared everything - from classes to dreams, confidences to sorrows. They had shared endless evenings of brownies and movies, an unceasing procession of study cram sessions, and innumerable dances at the Bronze. They had clung to one another the night Ms. Calendar had died, grieving for a friend and teacher and regretting harsh words and time lost. Willow had listened to Buffy as she'd cried over her one night with Angel, then later recounted with awe her own first time with Oz. They'd made plans to be roommates at UC-Sunnydale, to relish together their new freedom and adulthood and all the things that came with it. And then suddenly all of that had been taken away, and Buffy found herself without her dearest friend. At times, it was a loss she felt so keenly it was painful - such as the morning after she had made love to Giles for the first time, when the urge to call Willow had been almost unbearable. She'd finally discovered that the only way to mute the pain was to try and mute the memories, and she had dutifully proceeded to stifle all recollections of their friendship the minute they happened to come to mind. She'd been marginally successful at it, too, and had gotten even better as the time passed.

And then the Tarakans had taken Willow, and for an entire week Buffy had wavered between the choice to tell Giles and try to mount a rescue, and the choice to leave her best friend's fate in the hands of the Watcher's Council. In the end, Buffy had almost decided to trade Willow's continued survival for Giles' precarious safety. She had *almost* been willing to let Willow die to keep him from harm.

How would she ever be able to face Willow again? How could she look into the other girl's trusting eyes knowing what she had been willing to do?

<See, Will, it's just that I *love* Giles so much...>

And lying there in the bed next to him, studying his face in the shadowed room, she felt even worse...because she couldn't bring herself to regret it. Faced with a straight-out choice, confronted with a bald-faced either/or situation - she would choose Giles over Willow in a heartbeat - she knew it. She wouldn't even have to think about it.

And she knew that if Giles died in the next few days, and she herself managed to survive somehow, she would resent Willow with every fiber of her being for the rest of her days on Earth.

Just another good reason why she really did not want to outlive the man. But he'd forced her into that damn promise...

Buffy shivered in the cool air, drawing the sheet up to cover her breasts, but it didn't help ease the chill inside her heart. She scooted across the mattress toward Giles and laid her head on his shoulder, slipping one arm across his chest and easing her left leg over his thighs. He turned toward her, automatically gathering her near, seeking closer contact even in sleep. The heat of his skin warmed her instantly, and she snuggled against him, closing her eyes and willing herself to sleep.

Safe in his arms, if only for a little while longer.

Cordelia sighed and tossed her Entertainment Weekly across the coffee table, annoyed that news of Tom Cruise's latest film hadn't been enough to engage her attention for even a few short minutes. In the two hours since she had come downstairs, she'd waded through half a chapter of chemistry, a Cosmo, and an Elle, though if pressed she wouldn't have been able to recall a single sentence from any of the three. Her thoughts were entirely engaged with the two people upstairs and the upcoming arrival of her erstwhile boss - and, more to the point, the collision course upon which they were all travelling.

Angel still loved Buffy, that much she knew without question. But did the Slayer still love Angel? Cordelia wasn't sure - and, furthermore, she couldn't decide whether or not it would be a good or bad thing if Buffy did still love him. And somehow Cordelia had managed to temporarily forget all the good reasons why *Giles* wouldn't want to see Angel again, either - though they had quickly come rushing back to her when he'd mentioned Angel's name earlier, beginning with Ms. Calendar's death and ending with the vampire draining Buffy on graduation day. Cordelia didn't know if the librarian had even spoken to Angel since that incident, but she knew Giles must have been furious about it - Wesley certainly had been, and he had never been anywhere near as attached to Buffy as Giles was. But the replacement Watcher had been deeply angered about Angel's actions when she had gone to visit him in the hospital after the Ascension, and she honestly couldn't fathom Giles feeling any less strongly about it, since Buffy was his life, after all.

The thought of Wesley brought an accustomed wave of pain, and as was her practice Cordelia resolutely put him out of her mind. It was easier that way.

Her cellular phone rang, breaking her depressing reverie, and she snatched up the receiver with something akin to deep relief.

"Hello?"

"Hey, Cordelia," came Oz's laconic greeting over the background sounds of heavy traffic. "How are you?"

"Fine," she told him, feeling a nervous flutter begin in the pit of her stomach. "Are you guys almost here?"

"Yup," he replied. "We're gonna stop to pick up some pizza first, though. You want to split a veggie supreme with me?"

A smile came unbidden to her face at the memories his words evoked - the two of them had always been the ones to share a pie during late night research sessions, eschewing the cholesterol- laden meat-lovers special that Buffy, Willow and Xander had relished. "I'd like that," she told him. "Oh, but- um, can you bring a large pepperoni and cheese, too?" She regretted the words almost as soon as they left her mouth - though she felt a bit proud of her instinctively generous impulse toward Giles and Buffy, anybody listening would probably wonder why she wanted a whole other pizza - especially if Oz made a big deal of asking why she was suddenly eating meat.

But Oz, being Oz, did not. "No problem. See you in a few."

"Bye." She laid the phone down on the coffee table and rubbed her forehead tiredly. "Guess it's time to wake the napping people." She rose from the chair and headed for the elevator.

<I wonder if Oz is coming because they've figured out a way to find Willow? If they have, maybe we can get her back without Giles and Buffy turning themselves over to the Council...>

She wondered about that as the elevator rose. Some kind of trade was the only plan she herself had been able to come up with, and though she realized her grasp of tactical maneuvers was infinitely inferior to that of just about everyone else in their little group, she still couldn't figure out what other plan they might have in mind. The Council would hardly hold a conclave while entirely undefended, and surely many of the Tarakans would be there, counting on Willow's peril to draw their prey back home. An armed rescue attempt would be difficult at best, entirely futile at worst, and Buffy and Giles would be numbers one and two on everyone's target list.

But if Oz and Angel had somehow come up with *another* plan, one that didn't involve Buffy and Giles offering themselves like sacrificial lambs...well, that would be a good thing, right?

She exited the elevator, strode down the hall and knocked softly on the door to the office/bedroom. "Buffy? Giles?" There was no reply, so she knocked a little harder. "Buffy?" She heard a murmur from inside the room, something that sounded vaguely like 'Come in'. She turned the doorknob and pushed the door open.

"Buffy?" she called again.

"Shit," came a muffled curse, and she caught a flash of white cotton in the shadowed room...and something else, too. "I said, 'In a minute'!" Buffy repeated crossly.

"S-sorry," Cordelia stuttered, stumbling backward, stunned by what she'd seen.

Or what she thought she had seen...She braced her hand against the wall, her mind racing.

A moment later Buffy emerged from the room, clad only in an oversized white t-shirt, one that looked suspiciously similar to that which Giles had been wearing earlier. Her hair was tousled, having dried in her sleep into corkscrew curls, and she blinked sleepily, one hand held high to shade her eyes from the harsh overhead lights of the hallway. "What is it?" she wondered, yawning.

"Oh, uh-" Cordelia paused and cleared her throat, "I, um, talked to Oz, and they just got to LA. They're going to pick up some pizza, and then they'll - um, they'll be here soon." No need to remind the Slayer just who - besides Oz - was a member of the *they*.

Buffy's expression hardened slightly. "Oh. Well, thanks for telling me. I'll get Giles up." She turned to re-enter the room, but Cordelia stopped her with a hand to her arm.

"I told Giles that cot was kind of tricky," Cordelia essayed shakily, generously offering her willingness to suspend disbelief. Not that she ordinarily believed in concealing the facts for tact's sake, but if what she suspected about Buffy and Giles was true, things were going to be even more complicated than she had previously assumed they would be. And that, frankly, had already been pretty *damn* complicated.

<And Giles has a much nicer ass than I ever would have dreamed...> Stop it, Cordelia, she instructed herself. No tangents. Concentrate!

Buffy turned back to look at her, a slight smile curling her lips. "We didn't need the cot, Cordelia. But you already figured that out, didn't you?" Her forthright tone was challenging.

Cordelia sagged against the wall and closed her eyes briefly. <Oh, God - Angel's *so* not gonna like this...> "You're sleeping with Giles?" she finally managed to squeak.

Buffy nodded, her gaze never wavering from Cordelia's face.

"B-but...but..."

Buffy raised an eyebrow. "Yes?"

"But he's *Giles*!" Cordelia burst out. "The librarian from our high school! I mean, he's your *Watcher*, Buffy. Isn't that like - like he's your *Dad* or something?"

Buffy chuckled, at both Cordelia's openmouthed incredulity and the idea that Giles' feelings for her were parental in nature. "Not hardly. And I know exactly who he is, Cordelia. He's my best friend. He's the man I love." Buffy stopped speaking, allowing her words to sink in for a moment. She tilted her head to the side and regarded Cordelia calmly. "Any more questions?"

Cordelia blinked in confusion in the face of Buffy's composed demeanor. "Well, *yeah*! Like, what about Angel?"

An expressionless mask immediately shuttered Buffy's face. "What about him?" she asked tonelessly. She turned back to the door without waiting for a reply, leaving Cordelia alone in the hallway.

A very shaken Cordelia, who suddenly felt totally convinced that they were all - all of them - utterly and completely doomed.

Buffy stood next to the bed and gazed down at Giles' sleeping face. He was lying on his side, hands curled beneath the pillow, the sheet drawn up around his waist. She was rather surprised that he hadn't awakened at Cordelia's knock earlier - he was usually an incredibly light sleeper, startling at every little noise. But he *had* done the lion's share of the driving on their long trip from Houston, and perhaps he felt a little more secure now that they'd reached their destination.

<And it's not like he's worried about how he'll react to seeing *his* ex-honey,> she thought ruefully. <Although...I can't imagine that he's looking forward to seeing Angel, either.> Maybe sleeping was his way of avoiding the situation.

<Well, time to face the music.> "Giles...Giles, wake up."

"Mmmph," he murmured, rolling over on the mattress and burrowing his head into the pillow.

She took a moment to appreciate the smooth perfection of his back before settling down next to him and reaching for his shoulder. "Hey, babe, wakey, wakey. Time to exit snoozeland."

"Don't want to," he muttered against the cotton pillowcase, eyes still closed, a small smile curving his lips.

She leaned forward to nip playfully at his ear. "You have no choice, buddy. And if you don't get your fanny out of that bed this instant, I'm going to employ the tickle torture."

He groaned and rolled away from her. "No, not that. Anything but that."

She chuckled and slid across the bed after him. "Knew that'd get you," she told him, trapping his torso between her thighs and holding his wrists above his head. "We do need to get up, though. Oz called - Cordy says they'll be here in a few."

His expression darkened as he remembered for whom they happened to be waiting. "Oh. Well, I suppose we should get dressed then."

"In a minute," she replied, not letting him up. She waited patiently until he met her gaze. "I love you, Giles."

The chill in his eyes warmed fractionally, and he managed a small smile. "I know you do. It's all right, Buffy."

"Good." She leaned down for a quick kiss, then rolled off of him. "Let's get going, then."

He sighed and rubbed his forehead, mentally bracing himself for the ordeal to come. "Yes. Let's."

Cordelia paced nervously across the scuffed linoleum floor of the lounge, her thoughts racing a mile a minute. The sight that had met her eyes upstairs was still burned into her brain - Giles' bare backside, the rumpled sheets on the bed, and Buffy wearing only her Watcher's t-shirt. They had looked very cozy, very natural together, and Cordelia could tell that this wasn't exactly a recent development in their relationship. She wondered how long it had been going on.

She wondered how Angel was going to take it.

She sighed and collapsed into one of the overstuffed chairs. It didn't appear to her as though Buffy particularly cared to keep her changed relationship with Giles a secret, but, then, she hadn't exactly given Cordelia permission to spill the beans to Angel, either. Unfortunately, it also didn't appear as though Buffy had given any thought to cushioning the blow for him, and Cordelia felt uncomfortably as though she ought to give her boss some kind of warning. Ambushing Angel with the news that his true love had moved on to a new love didn't seem like a particularly productive way to begin their rescue effort.

She heard a door close downstairs and closed her eyes, wondering if she should try abject prayer for the first time in her life.

A few moments later footsteps in the hallway alerted her to an imminent arrival. Oz entered first, toting a liter of soda and a large leatherbound book, followed by Angel carrying two pizza boxes.

"Hey, Cordelia," Oz greeted her as he set his burdens on the coffee table.

"Hi, Oz," she replied, moving her magazines out of his way. "Was the traffic bad?" Not that she cared, really, but she couldn't even bring herself to *look* at Angel.

Oz shrugged as he stood up, soda bottle in hand, and headed for the small kitchen at the back of the room which housed the refrigerator - and the ice. "We made good time, since Angel let me do the driving."

Angel offered the werewolf a half-smile, accustomed to the dry irony of Oz's humor. Cordelia couldn't help but contrast their easy rapport to the relationship Angel used to have with Xander. She wondered if Oz was able to be so friendly with the vampire because he'd never been in love with Buffy like Xander had - or maybe it had something to do with some kind of affinity between supernatural creatures of the night. Oz wasn't any fonder of Xander's use of the nickname 'Wolfboy' than Angel was of 'Deadboy'. <That's it,> she thought, <they share an 'anti- Xander' bias - which probably explains why I can get along with both of them...> She grinned to herself.

"Why'd you want the extra pizza, Cordelia?" Angel asked idly, lifting the lid to one of the boxes and inhaling the aroma. He rarely ate pizza with her but seemed to enjoy the smell. "Have you decided to give up vegetarianism?"

"Not...exactly," she told him, carefully choosing her words. "The pizza's not for me, Angel."

Angel raised an eyebrow as Oz emerged from the kitchen carrying two cups of soda. He set them down on the coffee table and regarded Cordelia curiously. "So who is it for, then?"

The reply came from behind Cordelia, from the vicinity of the doorway that led into the hall. The two of them had arrived so silently that Cordelia had missed the telltale footfalls signalling their coming, as had Oz and Angel. "I'm guessing it's for us," Buffy offered calmly. "Cordelia?"

"It's for you," Cordelia replied flatly, without turning around. Her gaze was locked on Angel, who'd gone more pale than she'd ever seen him - and for him, that was saying something. The boxes fell from his nerveless fingers, and it was only Oz's quick reflexes that saved their dinner from crashing to the floor.

Angel's mouth hung open, his eyes dark with deep shock, and the single word he uttered emerged in a tone so soft that they wouldn't have heard it at all but for the complete silence enveloping the room.

One word, in a voice which held such fragile hope that Cordelia found it painful to hear.

"Buffy?

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