Bookends: Deceptions and Delusions
Title: Deceptions and Delusions
Author: il_mio_capitano
Rating: 15+
Characters Buffy, Willow. Post Chosen. Giles has a new life. Buffy won't let go.
Length 1700
Sorry it's been so long since I did one of these. Hope its worth the wait
Series: Bookends. All the Companion pieces in the series are listed here... It might not make much sense on its own.
Not only did his timing suck, but the very fact that Captain Ryan Appleby had called Willow and not herself irked Buffy to no small degree. She was accustomed to the NATO officer requesting her help as his first port of call but, but as her friend spoke in hushed, guarded tones, she found her own phone had no missed calls, and it rankled somewhat.
“I’ll need computer access.” Willow was saying and broke off to ask, “Buffy, can we go to your apartment?”
Buffy hailed a cab - no mean feat from the banks of the Seine at that time of the evening - and they were back at her place in less than ten minutes. Willow slipped off her coat and was behind Buffy’s computer desk in one fluid movement, all the while she spoke into her cell that had remained cradled between shoulder and ear ever since she’d first taken the call.
“OK, I’m online. Damn, these kids are good, Ryan. They’ve masked themselves somehow.”
Buffy shut her front door, switched the lights and stooped to pick up her friend’s coat to hang it on the door hook properly. “Does he need my help?” she asked but Willow merely shook her head as she worked the keyboard professionally. Still chaffing slightly, Buffy squeezed past her weapons chest that doubled as a coffee table and opened her balcony windows. The night air was still warm as she inspected her summer planters by the black iron railings, clipping here, watering there and listening to the yappy dog in the next apartment demanding its supper. Her elderly neighbour indulged that animal far too much.
“That would be awesome,” Willow continued speaking. “If you can find that out, that would be a big help. I’ll hold….OK…Call me back then.” The typing stopped abruptly and Willow flipped the phone shut and sat back in her chair. “He’s calling me back,” she explained and then added. “Sorry about this.”
Buffy smiled with the sort of long-suffering understanding that she’d seen plenty of people bestow on her, closed her windows and sat nervously on the arm of her couch facing her friend.
“So, um. Me and Giles. You didn’t get a chance to say much.”
“Sorry. It’s a lot to take in. You kinda caught me by surprise. I never imagined that you and Giles…that you and Giles…” Willow trailed off, and waved a hand to cover her embarrassment at not wanting to put a verb in her sentence.
“Have been having sex,” Buffy filled in.
“Yeah. That. That’s a lot to take in,” she repeated. “I mean, wow, I sure didn’t see that one coming. Um, I need better words. I mean, at least with Spike there was an obvious attraction and flirting and he was in love with you. Your relationship with Spike came as a surprise, and it may not have been your best decision in the circumstances, but at least there was some history between the two of you.”
“Giles and I have history,” Buffy began, but Willow cut her off sharply.
“Not flirting history,” she declared solemnly and Buffy conceded the point. “So, it is a casual thing then? Like with Spike?”
“No, god, no.” Buffy’s mind filled with comparative memories. With Spike she had embarked on the wild and the whacky, constantly pushing for more but with Giles everything just seemed to click first time. She had chased the tide with Spike, constantly pursuing the impossible to allow herself to feel, and yet every time, satisfaction had slipped further and further away. She was about to express this when it occurred to her that possibly her excesses with Spike weren’t something Willow knew about. Or for that matter would ever want to know about and she didn’t feel comfortable trying to explain the immediate pleasure and joy she experienced every time with Giles.
“It’s very different. I’m not taking advantage of Giles in his vulnerable state if that’s what you think.”
“I didn’t think you were, but are you sure you know what you're doing? He was badly hurt by that vampire - physically and emotionally - is it wise to start a relationship with him? I know that sounds harsh, but you have to think of yourself too, Buffy. I know it’s Giles and we all feel sorry for him, but you shouldn’t do anything out of pity.”
“It isn’t pity. It’s more,” Buffy swallowed her awkwardness; she’d known she’d have to explain this to someone one day. “It’s more like he’s back together guy when he’s with me. It’s like things are back to normal and the horrors of losing his family and Olivia don’t get in the way of stuff.”
Willow leaned forward and took Buffy’s hands.
“Buffy, I’m your best friend and I will always love you and support you, but I'm not sure Giles having sex with you is really an alternative to proper psychiatric help.”
Buffy rolled her eyes. “Hey, it’s not that cynical a deal. Besides, he won’t see a therapist”.
“Can't you make him?”
“Physically drag him there and make him keep appointments? You sound like Ryan.” Willow’s eyes invited more from her. “Ryan thinks Giles is going to do something apocalyptically stupid someday. He says he’s bottling things up.”
“Maybe he is,” her friend replied carefully but Buffy was ready for that.
“I’ve told Ryan what I’m telling you: he won’t do anything stupid,” she argued. “He’s too sensible. He’s too Giles. He would never do anything that would hurt anyone else.”
“But we know he’s angry and is getting into fights with vampires…”
“And winning them,” Buffy interjected, brushing past what, even she knew, was a lame argument. “You don't know what's going on with Giles.”
“Only because you are keeping him from us.”
“I’m not.”
Willow raised a conciliatory hand and continued, “Ok, he's keeping himself from us, but you are enforcing it. You're his human shield.” Her friend broke off and blushed. “And I so need to stop picturing the two of you together because it's messing with my reasoned arguments. Damn. What I mean is: you said you weren’t taking advantage of him, but is he using you? Think about it, please. He wants to be alone so you make us all back off, he doesn't want to see his doctor, so you say we have to give him time. I think he's hiding behind you, Buffy, regardless of the sex.”
“I’m helping him,” Buffy insisted. “I know what he's feeling, how lost he is inside himself, because it’s how I felt when you first brought me back. It’s beyond grief, it’s beyond everything. Honestly, I know what I’m doing with Giles, what is best for him, and you’ll just have to trust me.”
“Ok and I do. But with hindsight, Buffy, when we brought you back, we probably should have gotten you some psychiatric help. Might have spared us the part where you nearly killed us all in the basement.”
“Hey!” Buffy exclaimed. “That wasn't my fault. That was the demon.”
They smiled and Buffy rose to the windows and pulled the curtains. “As long as I can keep him safe, then Giles will work through this thing and come back to us. We just need to give him time and not rush anything. We just need to be patient with him.”
“And have sex with him?” Willow added mischievously.
Buffy couldn’t resist embracing the light relief and suggested, “Maybe not all of us on that last part.” Then she thought of the awkwardness of her last visit and two nights spent in Giles’ spare room. “Actually, maybe not any of us on that last part. He’s trying to end that side of things between us.”
Willow grinned ruefully. “So this bombshell you drop on me is all past tense?”
“I’m not sure he’s right in trying to end it.”
Her reply was met with a mildly censorious look. “No, means no, Buffy.”
She thought back to the intensity of the last thirty minutes of her visit. She remembered her bag packed and waiting by the front door, the carpet beneath her shoulder blades and the proximity of the table leg to her head, how the frustration of two nights apart, yet under the same roof, hadn’t all been one sided.
“He hasn’t actually gotten to ‘no’ yet. That’s still a work in progress for him.”
Willow’s cell rang and spared Buffy further explanation. She glanced at the phone and smiled for her friend to take the call. Ryan’s quest for the teenage hell raisers was on high alert again, so she rose to put the kettle on for them both. It looked like they had a long night ahead of them. She did understand what Giles was going through. What he was feeling. Even if sometimes, she wished to god to know she knew what he was thinking.
“Do you have the title? Yes, if it’s unique enough I can track that book. Title me... Wow. That’s a snappy best seller, give me a sec.” Willow keyed in what sounded like the longest named volume in publishing history. “Got it! There’s only one copy in England at the moment. I’ll work on a locator spell, hang on. Oh, I’ve found a reference catalogue of what it is… It seems to be a book on European heresy written in the fourteen century from the standpoint of yay! Go heresy!...Author excommunicated quite literally for his sins…Pretty boring from our point of view. Oh hello! It’s got a chapter on summoning and I don't think it means the Faithful for services.” Buffy smiled at Willow’s joke. “Summoning the dead. Specifically vampires, oh, specifically lots of vampires. That's not good is it? Norfolk, England. I've got a fix and your team isn't too far away. OK, OK, I’m sending co-ordinates to you now. Damn, Ryan, these kids must be nuts wanting to summon a lot of vampires….What do you mean?... You told me they were just kids…so who then? Ryan?”
Willow found herself cut off and frowned at Ryan’s rudeness but Buffy was already frantically snatching their coats.