20/46
AUTHOR: BmblBee
RATING: Adult entertainment due to m/m sexual activity
and language.
PARING: S/X
DISCLAIMER: This story is fiction. Conceived in the warped
hive of the BmblBee. She owns none of the
characters or products named and makes no money
from their use.
WARNINGS: Character death. Boys playing with boys.
Vampire/ human contact.
SUMMARY: Xander Harris is dead. Drained by a vampire in
the Longview Cemetery. When his body is discovered
his friends realize that no one has seen or heard from him
in the last five days. Willow comes up with a spell to send
someone back in time to find out how he ended up there
and possibly save his life. Spike is reluctantly recruited.
Banner by BmblBee
3:30 am Saturday morning.
Xander Harris has been dead 4 1/2 hours.
The dank cellar was now as lacking in sound as it was in light.
The quiet breathing and slow heartbeats of two of the three
occupants were the only things that indicated there was any
life left in there at all.
Physically exhausted from the emotional shock and adrenalin rush
of earlier, the women were now having a difficult time keeping their
eyes open. Not even the anticipation of the vampire's return within
the next thirty minutes was enough to spur them to alertness.
Willow had curled up on her inverted wooden crate, afraid to even
go upstairs for a pee for fear of losing it to Buffy in her absence.
She had nodded off, too tired to even dream.
Buffy, on the other hand, had nothing more than a very short
mini skirt between her bony bum and the cold cement of the
basement floor. She had tried leaning on the walls, the shelves
of precious fermented grapes, and even the heavy butcher block
table in the center of the room.
At one point she had dozed off only to be startled awake when her
hand had unconsciously reached for her dear friend, shocked when
she realized the cold, hard, waxy feel was his skin.
Quietly, she laid a hand on Willow's shoulder, whispering as though
Xander may be disturbed if she were louder.
"Willow."
"Hmm?"
"I'm going upstairs to see if I can find a folding chair or even a blanket
or something to sit on. Do you need anything?'
Willow mumbled something unintelligible and lightly shook her
head. Buffy ran her fingers affectionately through the thick red hair
and smiled.
Silently she slipped up the steps and Willow dozed on. Neither woman
noticed the slight twitch in the fingertips of the dead man. It was a
movement, in the dark, that was so slight and subtle that it could have
been easily mistaken for a trick of the shadows.
Buffy reached the top step and eased into the eerily quiet cottage.
Giles was still not back which, considering the elementary errand
he had been sent on, seemed odd.
Looking around, the house she spent so much time in, now appeared
foreign. The lack of light and normal activity made it feel strange
as though this was her first time here.
Buffy wandered over to the mantle of the small fireplace in the living room.
There were pictures there and she picked each one up holding it close to
her face so she could see it in the beam of moonlight that came through the
open curtain.
The first was a copy of one she kept close to her heart and bedside. It was
the three of them. Willow, Buffy and Xander. All smiling their innocence
and trust in a world they had not yet faced. Buffy brushed her fingertips
over Xander's face and knew he would have carried that innocence with
him for years if she had never corrupted him by coming to Sunnydale.
It was her fault he was dead.
A single tear slid down her face as she set the snap shot back in it's place and
picked up the next one.
The next picture, this one in a cheap drugstore frame, was Giles, smiling,
although clearly not happy, standing along side other Council officials in
front of the Council Chamber building outside London.
The upturn of his lips was not reflected in his eyes or stiff body posture
It was the type of picture one is required to have incase a coworker
comes to tea.
The third picture was smaller. It was black and white and obviously
much older. Taken during a simpler time in both the world and Giles life.
He was young, perhaps 10 or 11, and stood with two adults.
Buffy smiled. Her peripheral vision had seen this picture sitting here
from the first day she had stepped foot in this house, yet she never
looked at it. Never really saw it.
The man had to be Giles father. The resemblance was amazing.
Giles had mentioned that he was also a Watcher, and it was
clearly so. Everything about him screamed 'intellectually trained
demon hunter'.
He looked rigid, harsh, unforgiving.
Buffy wondered if Giles was a good watcher because of his father or
despite him.
The woman appeared to be the polar opposite.
Her smile was pure, open and reached to the wrinkles at the corners
of her eyes. Her hands were placed lovingly on the shoulders of the
young boy in the short pants and he leaned, just slightly, back towards
her.
Buffy chuckled at the oversized glasses that sat precariously on his
face. She could easily imagine him perfecting the art of polishing
the lenses as he sat at his wooden desk in primary school.
Carefully she returned the picture to it's spot on the mantle and
realized that it all accentuated the fact that there was so much about
Giles that Buffy didn't know.
Snooping was wrong.
Every one deserved their privacy, especially in the sanctity of their
own home.
Blocking out the voice of moral conscience, Buffy hurried upstairs.
The tragedy in the basement drove her to feel closer to those around
her that she still had. She suddenly needed to know Giles. The real
Rupert Giles. She headed for his bedroom.
Sticking her head in the room at the top of the stairs, Buffy ran her
hand up the inside of the wall till it touched the switch. In the blink
of an eye the room was bathed in light.
It was just what she expected. Neat, sparse, browns and beiges.
The bed was perfectly made, a contrast to her own that was
always rumpled, untucked and messy.
Buffy walked over to his dresser and looked at the contents of the top.
Pipe tobacco, cuff links, loose change, and a small bottle of Tylenol.
Turning to his bed stand, she saw a small reading lamp and an opened
up side down copy of A Tale Of Two Cities.
Buffy snorted, the whole room looked perfect. Exact. It was as if
someone designed it to be published on a page in a magazine titled
"Life with Giles".
It all told her nothing. With a shrug of her shoulders, Buffy headed out.
She took one last look as her fingers reached for the light switch. At the
last second she froze. That was it. That was what was wrong.
It was to perfect. It was staged to present itself to any one sticking
their nose in where it didn't belong.
Hurrying back in, Buffy jerked open one of the dresser drawers and
began rooting. She found perfectly folded boxers. SILK! Black, red,
rich, elegant feeling. She found handkerchiefs, five crisp white
linen ones and behind them, four very old cotton ones with the embroidered
initials of E.R.
Shoving all that aside, her fingertips brushed gingerly over the blue steel of
a 9MM Glock. It shocked her, although she couldn't imagine why.
She had seen Giles with knives, swords, axes, and of course stakes of
all shapes and sizes. Still, there was something so humanly deadly about
a gun. It felt so wrong.
Quickly arranging things back to where they were, Buffy closed
the drawer and looked around. She knew where she kept her most
personal things and wondered if Giles was the same. Without hesitation,
she sat on the side of the bed and opened the drawer of the bed side stand.
It was totally out of place with everything else Giles. It was messy,
crammed full and, to Buffy, completely irresistible. She found scraps of
papers with notes, reminders he had written to himself of appointments,
phone numbers, and lists, as well as more photos and, in the back, a short
stack of postcards.
The postcards were bound together with a rubberband and appeared to
be from years gone by. Buffy removed the tie and glanced through them.
The had been sent from all over the world and the script actually said
very little. She suspected they said a lot more.
"Miss you" from Italy 1968.
"Can't wait to see you" from France 1969
"Please come to London for Christmas." 1975
All were signed with the mysterious E.R. and seemed to end around
the early 80's.
She carefully replaced them.
She blushed at the bottle of lubrication but after more digging, found no
condoms. Apparently the lube was not shared. How sad.
"Hey! What are you do foring in my stup?"
Buffy leaped to her feet, slamming the drawer shut as she guiltily faced
the angry man weaving in the darkened doorway.
"Giles?"
Giles pulled open the waist band of his pants and peeked in.
"Yup, it's me."
He giggled at his own joke and stumbled forward.
Luckily her Slayer instincts reacted and she threw her arms out, catching
the Watcher before he fell face first on the hard wood floor.
Buffy sniffed then crinkled her nose in disgust.
"You're drunk!'
Giles freed himself from Buffy's grip and tumbled on to his bed, kicking
his shoes off one at a time.
"Yes, I am. So what. Why are you here Buffy?"
Buffy shook her head in confused anger.
"I'm here because of Xander. You remember Xander don't you?"
Giles crawled up till his head reached the pillow. He could no longer
hold his eyes open and he knew blessed sleep was pressing ever closer.
"Xander? What trouble has that boy gotten himself into now?
Really Buffy, he should.........." zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
Buffy looked down on the sleeping form of her watcher and couldn't find
it in her heart to be angry. He suddenly looked very old and tired and
she knew he would have to return to the cruel reality of the world
tomorrow.
"It's o.k. Giles. We all have to grieve in our own way, don't we?
Sleep well."