Title: War Stories
Author: babies stole my dingo (agilebrit)
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Rating: PG-13 for mention of sex.
Length: Short short (under 1000 words)
Disclaimer: Joss is the genius behind these characters; I am but
a lowly follower. I make no money from any of this, so please don't sue
me.
Written for: AppomattoxCO requested a Giles&Anya fic, set
during a slow day at the Magic Box, during which they trade war stories.
"Bugger all, Anya, would you stop prowling about, please? You're
driving me quite mad," Giles said, looking up from a big leather-bound
book.
The Magic Box was absolutely dead. They hadn't had a customer all
day, and Anya wandered around the shop, dusting, picking things up and
putting them down again, and sighing loudly at regular intervals.
"Well, I'm sorry, Giles. It's not my fault the customers have gone
poof and I don't have anything to do."
He took his glasses off and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Well,
it's nearly lunchtime. Shall we order out for something? Chinese?
Pizza?"
"I haven't had pizza in awhile. Let's call Pete's."
After it was delivered, they sat at the research table. "Mmm, this
is good," Anya said through a mouthful of cheese and sausage. "You
know--" She swallowed. "--the pizza guy reminds me of one of the
unfaithful men I was summoned to do vengeance on, back in the day. What
was it he did?" She took another bite, musing. "Something dumb, like
sleeping with the Maid of Honor the night before the wedding. Oh, and
she got pregnant. His wife was quite unhappy about that."
"I'm almost afraid to ask what you did to him."
"She was really creative. We tied him up and fed his left testicle
to a piranha, and his right one to a Chihuahua, while he watched. He
thought fish were boring, and he hated little yappy dogs. We gave him a
reason to hate the dogs and taught him that he was wrong about fish.
And then she wished for him to have a disease that made his penis rot
off." Bite, chew. "Good times."
Giles carefully put his pizza slice down. "Remind me to never upset
you."
"Don't be silly. I couldn't do anything like that to you, Giles.
Well, not unless you made me really angry. It's not like I have any
powers anymore anyway." She waved her pizza in the air. "What about
you? Ever do anything wild and crazy in your errant youth? You must
have."
He smiled a little. "There was this time--" He stopped abruptly.
"That is neither here nor there and completely irrelevant to my current
station in life."
"Your current station in life," she said, munching, "is that of a
lonely, stuffy, expatriate Englishman, who hasn't had an orgasm in
years, running a magic shop with no customers."
"Yes, thank you so much for the reminder."
"Come on, Giles, tell." She grinned mischievously. "If you don't,
I'll start prowling around again."
"Well, we can't have that, can we? All right. One of my classmates
at Oxford was a bit of a bully. He was on the rowing team and got away
with bloody everything. His girlfriend was an absolute little cow who
came from money. One night, Ethan Rayne and I turned them into trolls
in the middle of an--" He coughed. "--intimate moment." At the same
time, Giles and Anya chorused, "Eelsbane." Giles choked back a laugh.
"We changed them back the next day, and let them know that messing
about with us anymore was likely to result in effects that were
more...lasting."
"Not bad vengeance for a couple of amateurs," Anya judged. She eyed
him. "You wouldn't do anything like that to Xander and me, would you?"
"Certainly not." He lifted his brow. "Unless I somehow needed to
prove that I'm not as stuffy as you lot seem to think I am."
Now it was her turn to put her pizza down with a gulp, just as the
bell above the door rang. She gave Giles a bright smile and left to
help their first customer of the day, while he cleaned up the remains
of their lunch and reflected that maybe they weren't so different,
after all.
