There was no stumbling, no fumbling, this time, and no laughing pause from Spike as he questioned his age or his sanity. There was only the two of them, moving to the bed, something both familiar and strange. New, in how easy, how comfortable it seemed.

He wondered if he would worry about that and how fast it had happened, later. Right now, he didn't want to question it. Right now, as they stood beside his bed and Spike sought out his lips once more, he wasn't worrying or questioning. Right now, he was just allowing himself to experience. To feel. Nimble fingers at his collar, for instance, undoing buttons, grazing the hollow of his throat, tracing his collarbone. A hand on his shoulder, gently insisting he sit down, before he fell down.

It was an excellent suggestion, and he complied, letting Spike push him down first to sitting position. Blue eyes stared at him, holding him in place as those hands went back to work on his shirt. Soon it had been removed and he was being gently pushed back to lie prone on the mattress. It occurred to him that he was being taken care of. By Spike, whose one concession to guest-like behaviour the last time his host had been suffering from possible concussion, had been offering to turn VH-1 down to a level that could only be heard a mile away. Now that same rude, Weetabix-hogging vampire was running his fingers over Giles' scalp again, lightly, where he rested his head on the pillow. As if making sure it hadn't hit too hard.

Then again, perhaps Spike just didn't want him unconscious for what was to follow. Whatever the reason, the gentle touches were, like before, soothing away his headache, and Giles let out a sigh as the pain ebbed slowly away, his eyes drooping closed in contentment.

A bright, hot line of not-quite-pain, drawn straight down his sternum, and he opened his eyes in a flash, to see Spike's staring at him, curled-lip grin below them. "No falling asleep on me. Not if you've got a concussion, mate."

"I wasn't falling asleep," he protested mildly, though privately he admitted that he probably would've if Spike had kept up the scalp massage much longer.

"Liar," Spike accused, and bent his head to where the line of heat, drawn by a sharp fingernail, began.

Cool, wet tongue on his chest, tracing the tingling scrape, and the contrasting temperature should have soothed it away, but instead, it was as if the flesh were electrified. Hot and cold together. Giles was unable to restrain a gasp at the sensation, as his skin prickled into goosebumps in the wake of Spike's tongue. Goosebumps weren't the only thing rising in reaction and he shifted a little as his trousers got noticeably tighter.

"Rise and shine," Spike murmured, his hand brushing downwards, and Giles didn't bother to stifle his groan.

"Well, that will most definitely keep me awake," he observed not without humor, groaning again as Spike's fingers brushed lightly over him.

"I'm flattered, truly." Spike's voice against his skin. Cool air unwarmed by human lungs, human blood, tickling the hair on his chest. Then busy fingers again, much more coordinated than Giles felt, working at the fastening of his jeans.

Giles raised one hand and touched Spike's hair. He felt like he should be doing something to reciprocate, not just lie there and feel. But then Spike got his jeans open and brushed his hand against Giles' erection and any actions he might have been planning disintegrated under the sharp ripple of sensation. The only thing in his head was the rushing of blood, the command to his body -- heard and followed -- to arch towards Spike's touch.

Spike whispered against his chest, against his stomach. Not real words, just soft puffs of not-real breath. Followed by the pressure of lips, the swirl of a tongue, then away again. A line of phantom kisses, moving downwards. Giles found himself anticipating the next one, his skin tingling before it was touched, like an itch he couldn't quite reach. He clenched his hands in the sheets beneath him and fought not to squirm.

When Spike freed his erection completely, though, tugging downward on denim, on cotton, there was no choice but to lift his hips. Even though that brought heat and cold and small explosions in his brain, as the wet mouth moved down to take him in. That same soft, almost-kiss, against the head of his cock, cool wet breath. Then touch, engulfing touch, and only Spike's hands, firm against his hipbones, stopped him from pushing up.

Giles moaned as his body reacted to the still-strange sensation of being engulfed in a vampire's mouth, firm and wet, but the only heat coming from the friction of tongue and lips. The enforced stillness of his own body only heightened the tension and made his attention all the more focused on what Spike was doing. That mouth, that tongue, knew more than just how to cut through the layers of self-delusion, the walls of politeness they'd all built up between them. It was sharp enough against his skin, true, circling and stabbing at him -- but there was softness there as well. A mouth built for killing, Giles knew well enough, but like its owner, it had so many other possibilities.

Like driving aging ex-Watchers crazy, Giles thought in an increasing sensual haze. The urge to move, to thrust into that mouth was becoming overpowering, irresistible, and still Spike held him down. His fingers scrabbled for something besides sheets to touch, and managed to reach soft hair. Didn't manage not to tangle in it, but somehow even acting on its own initiative, his body knew enough not to pull a vampire's hair while said vampire was swallowing his cock. How bright of it, Giles observed absently. Twenty years of Watcher training hadn't been for naught, after all.

Somewhere in him, there was an ache at that thought. That even with his brain firing randomly, he could remember. Couldn't shut away the question of what that twenty years had really been for. But here, now, it was a small ache. One he almost thought he might learn to live with. Especially in moments like this, with Spike's hair under his hands, Spike's mouth surrounding his length and Spike's hands holding him down, holding him still. He knew he was going to have bruises, he was straining so hard against that grip, needing to move so badly, needing just as much to be restrained. Needing...

Needing something more. "Spike..." he hissed, and he didn't know, really, what he was asking for. Something to bring it all to a head? To an end? Something.

A tilt of the head, and eyes, still bright blue, looking at him. Sparking with something that might not quite be evil enough to be called evil. The equivalent of a smile from a mouth that was otherwise occupied. Then Spike lowered his face again, and ever so gently tightened his mouth. Until the touch of lips became the touch of teeth. Until the touch became pricking, and the long draw down the length of his shaft became a sweet, hot aching scrape.

Everything disappeared in a white hot surge of pleasure. Giles' whole body arched upwards and he poured out his climax in a speechless yell.

There was darkness, for just a second. A fuzzy sort of darkness, that wasn't nearly as disturbing as that which he'd seen when' he'd been knocked to the ground tonight. Just blueblack nothing, for a few comfortable moments. Then a sharp voice. "Hey, none of that, now. I don't want to be the one to explain to those brats how you died. Even if I could come up with a convincing story about delayed reaction to internal injuries."

It took him a couple of tries but Giles got his eyes open again. "'M not dead," he protested. "Feel too good to be dead." All of his aches and pains had faded, were hiding somewhere beneath the surface. Endorphins were wonderful things.

"As a dead person, I officially take offense at that." Spike had moved up the bed, and was crouched over him, staring down. Not quite grinning. Too intense for a grin. The look was almost hungry, which should have frightened Giles, and didn't. Which should have frightened Giles as well. "As an evil one, I guess I can't argue."

"You, not argue? That's a refreshing change." Giles raised a hand and ran a finger along the curve of Spike's mouth. "You look like you're expecting something."

"And you look like you'll expire of natural causes if you try to give it to me." Spike moved closer, pressed his body against Giles. "But I'm always willing to be proven wrong."

Giles shifted, arranging himself more comfortably beneath Spike's weight. "I'm not entirely certain that shagging a vampire would fall under natural causes," he mused as he slid his hands down over Spike's hips. "But I'm not quite that old and broken down as that."

"Mm-hmm. Can you move your hands, then, whippersnapper?"

What? Giles glanced down at his hands, which seemed to be in perfectly acceptable positions, each cupping half of Spike's denim-clad backside. "Er?"

"Paralyzed. I knew it. Damn. Self-help it is, then." A hand not his own crept between them, fiddling with Spike's fly, and Giles understood. Snorted, and knocked Spike's arm away.

"You could've just said so," he chastised as he worked on getting Spike's jeans open.

"Thought I did. Not my fault if your brains are slipping."

It wasn't worth dignifying with a reply, not when Spike himself was slipping into Giles hand. A squeeze of definitely not paralyzed fingers was the only reply he needed to make, and produced a satisfying hiss from Spike.

Giles watched Spike's face as he moved his hand, stroking the silken hardness in a grip that was just tight enough. This was the part that had so unsettled him the first time -- the thing that had shook him from his determination to leave. The look in Spike's eyes, the expression on his face, the openness he would have never had imagined the vampire capable of.

It unnerved Giles even now, though some animal instinct of self preservation made him capable of hiding it, of looking back at Spike with his own face set in what he knew was a mask of determination. Behind that though, it still shook him. This thing Spike had, when he wanted something, when he enjoyed it. Those rare cases when he loved. A complete tossing of his whole self into the endeavor, fangs, fists, fear. Everything.

The vampire who could slouch idly on the sofa watching television, the very portrait of abject sloth, when he was bored, depressed, had nothing -- was a completely different creature here, now. In the gold lamplight of Giles' bedroom, here was Spike, all of him, in Giles' hand. It was exhilarating, intimidating, and quite possibly addictive. The fact that that thought didn't frighten him like it should have just proved to himself how far he was already gone.

He tightened his grip, a mere whisper of tension that made all the difference between comfortable and *more*. Else. Other. Comfort wasn't a part of this moment, not in the widening of Spike's eyes, or the steady bellows of Giles' own lungs, breathing for him when he'd forgotten entirely to do so.

Steady his breath might have been, but each one rasped, and he heard it in his ears as loud as Spike's low groan. Felt both scrape through his body like raw fingernails on... perhaps not that image, but there it was, anyway. Spike's hands clutching at his shoulders like they were clawing their way out of something small and cold and dark, and Giles' breath scrabbling its way up to meet them. The intensity was a tangible thing, surrounding them cloyingly, smothering, bearing them both down under its weight. Involuntarily Giles' grip tightened once again and Spike let out a sort of gasp as he arched his back, though it was uncertain if he was trying to move away or closer.

Whatever Spike's intent, his movement drew Giles up as well, one hand supporting himself against the pillows, one reaching for as much of Spike as he could take inside his palm. A tight, jerky slide that was almost as involuntary for Giles as it must have been for Spike. Giles felt his fingertips brush against tightly-drawn balls, heard Spike make a noise like something was dying off in a forest somewhere and he'd been the one who killed it -- then Spike's tremor was shuddering through them both.

The tension slowly dissolved in the aftermath and Giles pulled the suddenly loose-limbed vampire down to kiss, the action slow and lazy and easy. "Was that what you had in mind?"

"Mrrhrm?" Spike murmured, the sound not one that could ever have been mistaken for an intelligent answer.

"Brain slipping a bit?" Giles snarked gently.

"Mm. S'around here somewhere."

Giles chuckled, a little surprised at how good he felt at this moment. He yawned, and Spike grinned at him, inhuman body recovering its strength, inhuman brain recovering its wits, at a completely impolite speed.

"Tuck you in, shall I, Watcher? Or did you want a story first?"

"I shudder to think what you would consider a bedtime story." He yawned again. "Besides, I can't sleep. Concussion, remember?" Though he was quite sure that Spike wouldn't have risked blowing his.mind, if either of them believed he was really in danger.

Spike looked thoughtfully at him, then nodded. Surprisingly -- somehow, Giles could still be surprised by such a gesture from Spike -- he reached up and stroked the fingers of his left hand very gently through Giles' hair. "I seem to recall you just need somebody to wake you up and shake you every few hours, make sure you've not snuffed it. I'm game for that. And hey, if I happen to fall asleep on you and you do that walking into the light thing, at least I'll have breakfast in bed."

"That doesn't exactly overwhelm me with confidence, Spike," he replied, though his eyes were already closing as Spike continued stroking his hair.

Spike, lying on top of him, seemed to weigh twice as much as a man his size should, but Giles couldn't seem to find the desire to shift, to shake off his blanket of stone-heavy naked vampire. It was comfortable somehow. Just one more thing weighing him safely to the bed, letting him drift without fear of floating away. He drifted off into sleep so gradually, so comfortably, that he wasn't even aware of letting go.

*****

She's jumping rope. One. Two. Three. The twisted cord hits the hardwood floor of the training room with a smack, each time. The toes of her tennis shoes reflect in the wood as she jumps. Floating there for a split second before she comes down. He counts the cracks. Four, five, six.

"You're not jumping high enough," he tells her, sitting on the sidelines. "What if I'm an Ogdra Wyrm, coming to get you from the ground? Burrowing up, out of the earth? You've got to get higher."

White toes, white soles, reflected in the golden-brown wood. She jumps, increasing the pace of crack as the rope hits, scrape as it makes the round and comes back up over her head. "I can't get any higher than this, Giles."

"Well, then the Ogdra Wyrm is going to have a good day." He stands. Walks over and picks up a staff. "We'll have to work at that." The next time the rope hits, he says, "Drop it," and he holds the staff out. An inch above the last invisible mark she made in the air when she jumped. "Now. This."

"That's way too high. I can't."

"There's a Wyrm at your feet."

"And I couldn't jump it if Ben Affleck was on the other side of it, naked and calling my name. It's too high, Giles!"

"Nonsense."

"I can't jump that high." She crosses her arms, stands there, one leg bent before the other. Lips set straight. "I can't do it just because you're the Watcher and you say I can. It doesn't work that way."

He raises the staff another inch. "Jump, Buffy."

"Are you even listening to me? I can't do it. I'll fall!"

"You're the Slayer. You're *my* Slayer. You can do anything." He raises it higher. It's at her knees. Gnarled wood, bare tan knees below denim shorts. She shakes her head. He raises it higher. "Jump."

"No!"

"Jump. There's a giant green snake eating your toes, Buffy, Just jump!"

"You're deaf!" she shouts. "You've got beans in your ears!"

It's just above her kneecaps now. "I can hear you. And the Wyrm is eating your ankles."

"Giles, I --" She looks at him, now, instead of the staff. Her eyes are all pupil, round and black, the faintest ring of green around them. He's falling towards them, crouching in front of her. "I'm scared. What if I fall?"

"It's just a stick, Buffy."

"Will you catch me?"

He wants to say yes, but he knows he can't. Knows if he says yes, she'll never jump, not really. "Jump, Buffy." Inside, where she can't hear, he says it, though. Yes. If you fall, I'll be here. Always. I'll always catch you.

"I--"

The roaring of an express train, rumbling beneath the floor. If the underground were running under Sunnydale. If it were alive, and huge, and hungry. It bursts through the floor, wood splintering. Glistening maw gaping wide

"Jump, Buffy!" As it surges toward her, a sinuous roaring ribbon of green, Giles raises the staff. "Now! You can do it!"

She jumps. White tennis shoes, reflected in the crumbling remnants of polished wood. Knees bent under her. Hair spread wild around her face, as if she's floating in space, because she's just that high. Over the staff. Over the Wyrm. Higher than the pommel horse. Arms outstretched, frozen in the air of the training room, smiling. "Giles, look! I did it!"

Buffy smiles, as the floor crumbles away to nothing, as the monster hisses its frustrated hunger at him, and dives back down into the dark. She smiles, even as she tumbles back down, and he's running to catch her. Because she knew, after all, she must have known, that he would. But it's like moving through treacle. The air sucks at him. The floor grabs at his shoes. She's smiling, and he's reaching for her, and he can see that he'll never get there in time, no matter that he's only a step away.

She's worried now, not smiling anymore. "Giles?"

No. He isn't going to make it and can only watch helplessly as his Slayer falls into the darkness below.

Except she doesn't. Somehow the fall turns into a dive. She flips in midair, long hair flashing gold behind her, as the dive becomes a steep graceful climb. Suddenly Giles is watching Buffy soar.

Her laughter rains down on him from the starry sky above him, the ceiling evaporating into a clear, cold night. "I can fly, Giles! You taught me to fly!"

She is breathtaking as she goes higher and higher -- and Giles suddenly realizes that she's not coming back. He opens his mouth to call to her. He is her Watcher; he knows if he orders it she will come back down to the ground where he can see her, touch her, watch over her.

The words are on his lips, but he doesn't speak them. She's so happy, so free above him. If he calls her back she'll lose that. Be weighted to the sticky earth that holds him where he stands. He can't do that to her, even if it means losing her.

So he simply stands there and watches her fly. Long after she is out of sight, Giles continues to stare up at the stars.

*****
Part 11:

Consciousness came upon him tentatively, the darkened landscape of his dreams echoing with a low, rough voice that was gentle at first, then louder. Concerned. Trying to tell him something, or ask...

"I never taught you how to fly," he found himself saying earnestly. "You always knew."

Something shook him, very carefully. Holding him by the arms. "Come on, you stubborn bastard. Wake up for me, now."

Wake up? It took a few minutes for the sense of the words to penetrate and a few minutes more for him to remember how to open his eyes. He found himself blinking blurrily up at worried blue eyes in a sharp featured face. Memory caught up a few seconds later. "Spike?"

"Right in one. That's a start. Now -- how many fingers?" An indeterminate number of white things fluttered in front of his face.

"I've no idea. You're moving them too fast, and anyway, I've not got my glasses on." He didn't actually recall taking them off, but a fuzzy glance, still blinking, showed them folded neatly next to the lamp on the bedside table.

Spike stood up beside the bed, looking relieved. Or perhaps just tired; it was hard to tell, having to squint at him in the low light. "Thought you'd gone off, for a minute there."

"No, still here." Giles pulled himself into a half sitting position, his head still aching, but not as badly as it had earlier. "I was dreaming."

"Yeah." Spike looked at him speculatively. Or possibly... Giles sighed, and reached for his glasses. Looked again. Now Spike's expression was slightly amused. "Gathered that. Something about flying lessons?" He grinned. "Do have to admit that last time was pretty close."

"No." Giles hesitated, but then said, "It was Buffy." The images, the feelings of the dream were still very much with him as he spoke, and he wondered if this sense of bittersweet acceptance would last. "She was falling, but at the last moment, she learned how to fly."

Spike turned his head, the sharp silhouette of his profile broken, his face in shadow. "It's a nice thought." He made 'nice' sound like a noise one might make when finding something small and dead beneath the sofa.

"That she might be happy?"

Spike snorted and moved away, turning his back. He walked to the edge of the loft railing, and leaned on it. "Which is so bloody likely, innit. When was she *ever* happy?"

"There were moments," Giles replied, memories of Buffy smiling so brightly it lit up her whole being coming to the surface of his mind. He also realized how long it had been since he'd seen that expression. "But it had been a while," he admitted.

"Half the time when I can't stand to look at the Bot, it's because it reminds me of her," Spike said. "But not when it smiles. Don't think I've ever seen her smile like that. Not at me, anyhow, not when she wasn't under a bloody spell."

"She was smiling like that in my dream." Not the Buffybot's painted on smile, which was never quite right -- but the one it had been built to emulate.

"It's a nice thought," Spike said again, more quietly. This time, there was no poison in the word. Just a sad, uncertain exhaustion. Giles wondered how long he'd slept, and if Spike had been watching him all this time.

"You look tired," he observed, tracing the line of bent shoulders in the shadows, no longer even remotely surprised at the concern he felt. He still wasn't sure what lay between Spike and himself, but that there was something he no longer even had the desire to deny.

"You think?" Spike turned around and mimed primping for a mirror he'd never be able to use. Even that action was cut off halfway through, and his arm fell to his side. "'Course I'm tired. I'm supposed to be sleeping during the day and killing things at night. Now I'm making toast in the afternoon, babysitting at night, and shagging into the wee hours of the morning. Not exactly the standard vampire sleeping schedule."

And nursemaiding a broken down Watcher probably wasn't helping matters any, Giles thought. "I suppose not," was what he said, non-committally. "If you want to get some rest now-"

Spike looked at him. "Odd as it might seem, I don't actually *want* to wake up to find a dead person in bed with me. At least not *you*."

Right. His alleged concussion. Giles was surprised to realize he'd forgotten all about it in the last few minutes of conversation. It didn't seem to hurt quite so much anymore. Or maybe he was just getting used an aching head. "I'm touched," he said, the words coming out less sarcastic and more sincere than he had expected. "But I don't think that's a serious danger. I'm feeling...better."

Spike raised an eyebrow. "The miraculous healing powers of vampire-shagging?"

That surprised a laugh out of him. "Anything is possible."

"Probably wasn't the brightest idea in the first place," Spike reflected. "Could've shaken your brains loose."

"It's probably not on the list of recommended treatments for possible concussion, I suppose. But I did say I feel better."

Spike laughed, half-heartedly. "Yeah. Well, if that was a request for a refill, I'm afraid the pharmacy's closed. Unless *you* want to wake up next to a dead person. More than usually dead, that is."

Giles watched him, saying nothing for a moment, then folded back the covers. "That was rather what I had in mind."

"You what?"

"Waking up next to a dead person. I wasn't saying, 'I'm fine now, you can head on home.' I was saying, I think it's safe to let me sleep; why don't you join me."

"Ah." Spike made no move to approach the bed.

"Did you think when I invited you into my bed, I only meant it for when you're too shagged out to wake up and go elsewhere?"

"The thought occurred, yeah."

Giles shook his head. "I didn't. I meant..." Spike looked back at him, one eyebrow raised, giving no ground. Giles sighed, and began again. "When I invited you into my bed, I hadn't meant to attach any constraints to it, other than our own desires."

Spike nodded slowly, but moved no closer. "Guess I sort of assumed that if I was the one who was bribing you to keep your arse around here -- with my arse -- that you wouldn't be interested in much else."

"I see." He supposed he shouldn't be surprised; they hadn't talked about it, not really, and the way they had come together... "You mustn't think very highly of me, then."

"No, that's not..." Spike shook his head. "I just figured..." He blinked. "I don't know what I figured. It was me who made this about tit for tat, wasn't it."

"We haven't really discussed the specifics."

"Is this the part where we talk about where our relationship is going? Cos if so, would you mind waking me when it's over? I've got an invalid to keep an eye on."

Giles felt the corners of his mouth curve upwards. "That wasn't quite what I had in mind."

"Well, 'discussing' things tends to sound a bit like something you do over flavoured coffee. You had other plans?"

"I thought perhaps you might like to sleep with me." Giles indicated the turned-down blanket again. "We could always wait until morning to unpack the flavoured coffees."

"You don't actually --"

"No. I have Gold Blend. And tea. And brandy. And a vampire who's about to slide down my bedroom railing and fall asleep on the floor."

"Am not."

"Spike, would you just get in the bloody bed?"

A brief flash of surprise flickered over Spike's face before he grinned. "Well, since you asked so nicely..."

Giles might not have been aching, anymore. Much. But exhausted still definitely applied. If it hadn't, the sight of Spike walking to his bed, stark naked, and slipping beneath the covers, might have moved him beyond merely appreciating it, to actively trying to keep the vampire awake. As it was, Giles merely slid over, removed his glasses again, and reached for the light.

Darkness made it so much easier. This being together in bed, purely to be together in bed. Not tearing each other's clothing off, not wrapped in mindless post-coital lassitude. Acknowledging, sleepy as they were, that Spike was molding himself to Giles' body, pulling up the blankets to cover both of them, for reasons other than sex, whatever they might decide those were, later.

It was less awkward this way, not having to look at each other. Giles could shut his eyes, and merely feel his fingers lightly brushing against the softness of Spike's hair. The press of skin on skin, too languid to be arousing; just the comfort of touch, something he hadn't felt regularly in far too long.

He was drifting off, uncertain whether Spike was awake or asleep, with no breathing in the room but his own to listen to. Spike's chin was tucked somewhere near his shoulder, an arm across his chest, and it was the simplest thing in the world to fall back into that place with the dark sky above him. To imagine, though he wasn't quite asleep, that he saw stars over his head.

The voice, soft and low, wasn't surprising when it blew across his skin, echoed between his ears. "What did she look like? When she was flying?"

"Happy," he said just as softly. "She looked happy."

Silence greeted that answer, and Giles had almost fell back asleep again before Spike spoke again. "Wish I could believe that."

He hadn't any answer. Giles wished, as well. Not only for Spike, but for himself. For all of them. He wanted to believe that what they had done was the right thing. That what *she* had done was the right thing. The most he could know for certain, though, was that they had to make do with what they had now.

"She looked beautiful," he offered, not knowing how that was supposed to comfort either of them.

Quiet gust of laughter. "See, now that I'll buy.

"Go to sleep, Spike."

Sharp teeth bit at his shoulder, lightly, then a head rested against him. Giles lay in the dark, and waited for the stars to return.

finis