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She should have known, after a night of difficult sleep and painful cramps, that her other PMS symptoms were going to be a bitch to deal with this month as well. But it isn’t until she stumbles down stairs for something to eat, bleary-eyed and exhausted, that it really hits her.
She takes one look at Giles - standing there in the early morning light from the window, partially dressed for work (sans jacket, and his bracers still hanging down by his thighs), calmly drinking his tea - and tears well up in her eyes. Mortification fills her with this uncontrollable response - a response that Giles has obviously noticed, because concern is filling his face and he’s lowering his mug to the counter.
“Buffy?”
“Shit.” She immediately turns on her heel and goes back up to her room, frustratingly swiping at her leaking eyes and mentally disparaging her hormones. Very rarely does she have problematic periods, and she so isn’t in the mood to be dealing with one now.
And of all the times for Giles to surprise her, he has to do so now.
“Buffy?” He’s followed her up to her room, but hovers outside of her opened bedroom door, hesitating to enter. She can feel his eyes on her, though she’s curled up atop her bed with her back to the doorway.
“‘M fine,” She mumbles into her pillow, clutching it against her.
“You’re not,” He says softly, and she glares toward her window. He’s always known when she’s not on her game, but he’s rarely actually called her out on it, especially so directly. “Are you… not feeling well? You don’t have to come in today; we can easily have the girls pick up more of their book studies in lieu of physical training, today.”
The idea of sparring, let alone with a handful of spatty girls of various ages, is the last thing Buffy feels like doing today, so she quietly acquiesces.
“Okay.”
Giles’ footsteps don’t sound with his walking away, and she steadies her breath as she waits for him to say something else.
“Is- is there anything I can get you?” He asks, and his voice is so gentle that it brings fresh tears to her eyes again. Why does he have to be so nice and wonderful?
“Hey, Buff- oh, hey Giles -” Willow breezes upstairs and into Buffy’s room without qualms, heading into the ensuite as she continues speaking, “I know how you always forget to buy tampons until the day you need one, so here’s extra of mine to hold you over. Oh,” When she comes back out empty-handed, she realizes how Buffy is still spooned around her pillow on the bed, and her tone shifts to one of sympathy. “Bad one, huh? I’ll go get the hot water bottle - I think Xander still has it from when he needed it for his back last week.”
She disappears again and Buffy is relieved and appreciative of her helpful bestie, but embarrassed that Giles just observed that entire moment.
“Oh.” Giles says, and Buffy can only imagine how flustered he probably looks right now - she’s refusing to turn around to face him. “I…” He hesitates again, and Buffy has misinterpreted why, until he finishes his statement, “I was afraid I’d done something to upset you.”
Buffy turns over on her mattress in surprise, pushing herself up onto her elbow to stare at him.
“Why wouldn’t I be?” She blurts, and his brow is furrowed with concern and it’s so cute and she realizes that her eyelashes are still damp with tears so she hurriedly brushes her free hand against her face. “Come on, Giles. I know you think the being open and personable and going on dates and the smoochies and all that will make me happy - and they do - but you had to suspect that at some point I’d want more. Of course hearing that you draw the line at smoochies is gonna hurt my feelings for a little bit. I mean, I’ll get over it, I respect your part in all this, but you gotta give me some time -”
“Wait.” Giles spoke firmly, startling her into silence, and he took a step into the room. “Who said that I draw the line at smoochies?”
“You did.” She tries not to giggle like an idiot at the word ‘smoochies’ coming out of his mouth. They both are looking at one another incredulously now, and the earnesty in Giles’ confused expression makes her think again over the conversation they had last night. “You said that you hadn’t wanted it to happen. That you got caught up in the moment.”
“I had.” He points out. “I’m trying to treat you with respect, Buffy. As a lady. I want to court you, not fuck you on the kitchen countertop after three dates.”
Her eyes widen at that, and he flushes with his blatancy but manages to hold his ground, mostly.
“And what if the lady wants to be fucked on the kitchen countertop after three dates?” She demands, and he looks momentarily startled as well, but then does avert his gaze to the side of the room.
“After calling me gross on more than one occasion, you seemed unready to be reminded that I have a penis.” He mutters wryly, and Buffy gapes at him, before promptly flopping onto her back on her mattress with a groan of dismay, pressing her hands over her face.
“That’s not what I had meant,” She moans into her hands. “Oh God, I’m the idiot.”
Willow chooses at that moment to make an appearance again, and makes a comforting sound when she sees the way Buffy is laying there on her bed, hands still covering her face.
“That bad, huh? Well, here’s the hot water bottle, all ready to go. Maybe Giles has got some Advil in his concussion kit? I’ve got to head out,” She gently rests the weighted and warm bottle atop Buffy’s abdomen and presses a fond kiss to the back of her fingers where her forehead would normally be available. “You coming into the office today, Giles?”
“Er, yes. I’ll be leaving soon myself.”
“Cool.”
Unbothered at all by his lingering presence, she bounces away again, and Buffy lowers one of her hands appreciatively atop the hot water bottle, enjoying the warmth seeping through her pajama bottoms and the palm of her hand.
“How… how did she know…?”
“What I needed?” Buffy figures what he’s asking. “We’ve been synced up ever since we were roomies in college. I don’t often, uh, have bad months, but sometimes there’s a day or two… and it’s hard to hide from a roommate.”
“Ah.”
An awkward silence passes between them, and just as Buffy’s about to remind him about his job that he needs to leave for, she hears him shuffle closer to the bed, and the mattress dips beside her as he sits on the edge. She peeks around her hand just in time to see that he’s reaching for it, and she hesitantly lets him pull her hand into his own. He looks down at it as he thinks, rubbing his thumbs softly over her knuckles. Despite his mind clearly being hard at work, he can’t seem to formulate words, so Buffy slowly sits up again so that she can face him as she gathers her Slayer gumption to speak first.
It puts them quite close together, but she hopes that will help him see her sincerity as she speaks as plainly to him as she can,
“Faith did sort of gross me out in high school, but that was Faith, not you. I just wasn’t ready for those levels of horniness yet, you know?” He looks chagrined at that, and continues staring pointedly at their clasped hands, which she understands. “It’s not that you were ever unattractive - you were just my Watcher. I didn’t see you… like that.” She takes a breath as she prepares to admit something she’s never said aloud to anyone. “And then… something kinda started changing. I dunno exactly what, or exactly when, but you stopped being just my Watcher. You started being Giles. And I started… I dunno, crushing on you a little bit I guess.”
“You what?” He blurts, looking at her askance in disbelief, and she shoots him a rueful smile.
“I tried to hide it with everything I had. Tried to keep my distance when I felt like that wasn’t working. But then there was a gang of vampires on campus, and I needed my Watcher.” Dawning grows in his eyes then, and she squeezes his hand softly. “I thought maybe enough time had gone by, it wouldn’t be so bad, but then I saw you in that robe and my brain sort of… zzrrrt.” She makes a short-circuiting noise, and he winces sympathetically. “Then I saw a half-dressed woman, and you guys… it wasn’t just the satisfaction on both your faces. It was your comfort with one another. The ease that you two stood beside each other. The green-eyed monster reared up and took over my mouth before I could really think about it.”
Buffy glances away sheepishly, but he slowly begins to look more amazed than anything else so she hesitantly meets his gaze again.
“Last night, I… just, from your phrasing, the way you’ve been like ‘mission-is-a-go’ about all this, I sorta told myself that… you like me enough to want to have a good time with me, but you don’t like-like me beyond making sure I just know what it’s like to have a good relationship at least once in my life.”
Giles blinks at her, looking at her so intently now that it makes her nervous, and she swallows and tries to keep herself from pulling her hand out of his.
“Buffy.” He says her name almost gravely, and seems to be awaiting acknowledgement that she’s paying him full attention, she supposes, so she responds,
“Yes?”
“I like-like you.” He tells her plainly, and she blinks. Confirmation that last night had just been a stupid misunderstanding swells in her chest, and her stupid hormones get the better of her again as she feels tears in her eyes again, but she tries to ignore that.
“Giles?”
“Yes?”
“I want to be your friend, I want to date you, smoochies definitely, and I am very happy that you have a penis.” Joy fills his eyes, but after a moment his mouth twitches with amusement, as does hers. “That came out a bit, er, Anya, didn’t it.” She muses, and he giggles.
“A bit.” He admits, and after another beat she snorts with humour, and then they are both giggling lightly, Buffy leaning forward into him so the front of her right shoulder presses against the side of his right. He caresses her hand more fully as their giggles settle down, and then he cards his fingers in between hers. “I’m sorry if it came out… lesser, when I said that I cared for you.” He murmurs, lifting her hand to press a kiss to the back of her palm.
“I’m sorry I got all emotional about you misunderstanding my own horny panic.”
“Horny panic?” He repeats with a blurt, and she straightens slightly as she rolls her eyes at herself and shifts her face away.
“Just ‘cause I didn’t mean for it to happen then doesn’t mean I don’t want it to happen at all.”
“That’s what I was saying.” He says, and they stare at one another for a moment.
“God, how can we be speaking the same language but hear each other so differently?” She chuckles again, more ruefully this time, and he croons a noise under his breath and gently cradles her head in his hands, now pressing a warm kiss to her forehead.
“I think I know a language we both understand.” He murmurs against her skin, and suddenly heat is sparkling down her spine as he gently rubs his thumbs against the dampness beneath her eyes, before following his thumbs with his lips, slowly kissing her previous tears away.
Buffy sucks in a breath in surprise, sliding her hand against his back to steady herself, but just as he nuzzles his nose against hers a harsh twinge pulls at her abdomen and she winces sharply. Frustrated by the distracting pain, she leans back from him and holds the hot water bottle against her stomach from where it had dropped into her lap, grimacing through the cramping.
“Let me see about that paracetamol,” He presses one more kiss against her forehead before getting back up from her bed, and she laments the loss but curls back onto her side anyway, spooning around the hot water bottle as she watches him leave the room.
Giles like-like’s her.
She’s grinning like a doofus when he returns, but he merely quirks his eyebrow at her with mild curiosity as he passes briefly into the bathroom to fill up a glass of water for her.
“Here you go,” He sounds much more sure of himself as he sits on the edge of the bed again, much closer to her now than he had the first time, and holds out the glass and a pill for her to swallow. “If you need another later, I’ve left the bottle on your counter.”
“Thanks, Giles,” She feels a bit shy that he’s taking care of her now, after all that, but he rests his hand atop the side of her hip as she sits partially up again to take the anti-inflammatory, and it comforts her. She takes an extra drink of the water before sliding it onto her bedside table and nestles back down into her pillows.
Giles lingers for a moment, and she wonders what he’s thinking. She’s very aware of the weight of his hand atop her hip, and how his palm completely covers the side of her hipbone and his fingers loosely wrap around the curve of it. She’s too achey to be horny today, though; her guts twinge again and she closes her eyes as she breathes through it.
“I’ll call around lunchtime, and check in?” He offers, and she nods without opening her eyes.
“It’s no biggie Giles, really. I’ve had months like this before. They just don’t happen often.”
The mattress shifts and the weight of his hand on her hip hardens for a moment just before she feels his soft lips against the curve of her cheek, kissing her for a few breaths before he quietly leaves.
As she starts to fall back asleep she can feel her emotions threatening to overwhelm her again, but she’s okay with it this time because they’re the soft and gooey kind, and it’s been ages since she’s felt this soft and gooey about a boy.
A man. A manly man, really. With man stuff.
Buffy giggles to herself, and then huffs at herself with derision a beat later.
“Freaking hormones.”
… … …
“Buffy? …Love, wake up.”
“Mmph?” She lifts her head from the pillow, disoriented. The light coming through her bedroom window has shifted slightly, and Giles is in her room again.
Actually, Giles is lounged across her bed beside her, sitting up against her headboard with her extra pillows propped behind his back.
“How long ‘ave you been there?” She squints at him, rolling over from her stomach to her side and palming her hair in a half-hearted attempt to get the bedhead in order. She’s sure she looks entirely unattractive right now, and probably has lines across her cheek from how hard she’d been sleeping.
“Not long,” He answers, but the warm look on his face says otherwise.
“Nng, hold that thought,” She grimaces before he can say anything else, and quickly slips out of bed and heads to the bathroom. Her movement had… loosened some things, and she’s desperate to feel fresh again.
Taking her time freshening up, she even makes sure her hair and face are in order before she rejoins him in the bedroom. He’s still laying there, his ankles crossed leisurely and his shoes off on the floor beside the bed. Buffy hesitates as she nears the end of the bed, but he pats the empty spot beside him invitingly.
“Come on then. I’ve brought you lunch.” He tells her as she settles back in, mirroring his position sitting with her back against the headboard, and she brightens as she watches him twist toward the bedside table and pull a tray that she hadn’t noticed before onto his lap.
“You did?”
“You need to eat something, and I thought you might like some soup.”
“You brought me soup?” She wonders, touched, even more surprised as she watches him carefully open up a takeout container before passing it into her eager hands along with a spoon. “Oh, it smells amazing,”
“From that deli you like beside headquarters,” He explains, and she shoots him a grateful look.
“I could kiss you.”
“Let’s not spill your lunch all over your bed,” He replies with a pleased flush to his cheeks, and turns his focus toward preparing his own lunch for a moment.
“You came all the way back home just to have lunch with me in bed?”
“I thought it sounded like a good idea,” He muses before carefully tasting a spoonful.
“Great idea.” She assures him, scooting closer so her shoulder presses against his while they eat. The tasty soup and his gesture warm her from the inside out, and she doesn’t realize how hungry she is until she’s tipping the container back to sip out the last of the liquid at the bottom.
“Finished?” He had himself a moment before, so can freely take her garbage and set it aside on the tray, moving that back to the bedside table. “Would you like anything else?”
“No, that was perfect.” She sighs happily and wriggles a little bit so she can rest her head against his shoulder. “I really should do some laundry while I’m here all day, but I could honestly nap some more.”
“The laundry can wait.” He murmurs, pressing a kiss against her hair.
Buffy pulls the abandoned hot water bottle to her lap, but it is no longer hot and she sighs as she flops it aside on the mattress again.
“Ugh. They need to find a way to make these things hot again with the touch of a button.”
“That would be a heated blanket.” Giles chuckles, and she pouts a little without opening her eyes.
“But those don’t have the weight.” She whines. He chuckles again, softer this time, and she feels him reach overtop of her to snag the bottle and pull it away. He doesn’t get up though, and she squints an eye open to see him setting it on the floor beside the bed.
“Would it be alright if I stayed?” He asks, shifting as if he wants to move further, and she opens her eyes completely as she sits up to let him.
“You don’t have to go back to work?” She wonders, watching as he rearranges her pillows behind her and then his own.
“I um, I took care of all of my meetings this morning,” He admits, and pats her pillows gently, encouraging her to lie down again.
“You did?” She smiles lopsidedly as she follows his lead, and now they’re both lying on their sides, facing each other. He still looks like he’s waiting for her to kick him out of the bed, until she reaches her hand up to rest it atop his cheek. She slides her fingertips against his skin and he relaxes, a soft smile hinting at his mouth, and she can’t resist wiggling closer to kiss him gently.
He kisses her back, slow and tender, until they let it come to a natural end.
“You taste like veggie soup,” She teasingly wrinkles her nose at him as she moves her hand to his chest, and he chuckles as his tongue swipes against his lips.
“And you taste like pumpkin.” He tells her, and she rolls her eyes.
“It’s squash, Giles.”
“Squash is a drink.”
“Brit.” She huffs.
“Colonial.”
“Colonizer.” She raises her eyebrow challengingly at him, and he giggles.
“I believe we shall call this an impasse.”
“For now,” She warns him, certain that he can see the twinkle in her eye as his own are mirroring it. When she shifts to nestle closer against him to rest, he covers her hand with his to halt her.
“Turn over,” He shifts his chin slightly, and she raises her eyebrows at him.
“Sorry?” She questions, and he flushes slightly but gestures with his chin again.
“I’d like to, um, hold you. If that’s alright.”
“Oh!” She’s surprised that he’s asked, but shifts around to her other side without further hesitation. “You wanna do the big spoon thing, sure, I can get behind that. Er, in front of it.” She snorts out a giggle and he huffs a breath of air against her hair as he tucks himself close behind her.
“You are incorrigible. Allow me to try something…” His hand shifts lightly atop her hip, even lighter than he’d held her there earlier this morning, and she can still feel the short distance between them behind her. Impatiently, she wriggles harder back against him. “Oof.”
She smiles at his startled grunt and sighs contentedly as his warmth immediately seeps through her pj’s. He brings his knees in behind hers and maneuvers his arm beneath her neck in a way that won’t cut his circulation off, and she finds his relaxed bicep more comfortable than her own pillow.
Or that could just be the hormones.
His other hand firms around her hip and then he slides it forward and up a little, splaying his palm over her lower abdomen. She’s still trying to get her brain to stop needlessly cataloguing the way his larger frame feels like it completely surrounds her when she next registers this, and it’s way better than any hot water bottle or heating pad.
“Oh, God yeah,” She can’t stop herself from groaning with pleasure as the very warm weight of his hand soothes the cramping in her uterus.
Giles chuckles again behind her, but it sounds tinged with a high-pitched desperation and he squirms just slightly. She’s not sure if she’s felt a twitch in his trousers or if that’s just his moving around, but she has to claw at her reserve not to arch her butt into him more firmly and encourage some more movement.
Not that she’s horny. She’s just curious. But right now, filled with warm soup and being cradled by warm, big man is making her feel drowsy - and apparently neanderthal-ish - so she settles down and closes her eyes.
Just another little nap, for a couple more hours… then she might see about the laundry and being a functioning human again.