Jennie Calendar leaned against the open door to Rupert Giles' office, just watching him work. As usual, he was so completely engrossed in what he was reading he didn't even notice she was standing there, his dark bespectacled head bent over his papers, his jacket casually draped over his chair. She shook her head. What fascinated her so much about this shy tweedy bookish British technophobe? Why couldn't she fall for a nice normal guy?
*Because, Jennie,*, she told herself, *there is something about a man all buttoned up. You always wonder what he's like underneath.* She flushed, remembering one of her more vivid dreams. He had the annoying habit of invading her thoughts even when she was working.
Unaware of her attention, Giles continued to work, reading over some file. He seemed so much younger when he wasn't worn out from chasing demons and cataloguing tomes. To her surprise, he started to hum and then sing aloud. "There's a somebody I'm longing to see..."
"I hope that he turns out to be..." Calendar sang automatically. Giles turned startled towards her, his manner back to status quo. "Why, Rupert Giles, I didn't know you could sing, " Jennie said bemused. "And a nice tenor at that."
Giles said, blushing. "Sorry, it's just the song."
"A Watcher's theme song?" Jennie asked teasing, coming to sit on a cleaned off edge of his desk.
"My mother thought so," Giles said, barely noticing her sudden closeness. "But she was a bit of a romantic when she married my father." Jennie noticed a wistful smile cross his face, then a sudden sadness in his eyes, as if remembering the harder times that befell his family later.
Jennie said, "Well, she has good taste in romantic songs. You can't go wrong with Gershwin." She continued with the female version with a touch of irony. "Though he may not be the man some girls think of as handsome..." Her soft alto trailed off. "I've... forgotten the rest."
"And you kidded *me* about hidden talents," Rupert teased. "Where has that lovely singing voice been hiding?"
"Four years of choir, I'd better be able to carry a tune," Jennie snapped.
"So why are you here?" Giles asked, glancing at the clock. "Working late on some problem with the dread machines?"
"Can't I visit my favorite Watcher for no reason?" Jennie said mockingly. Then she amended. "I was upgrading the Macs with some new software. I finished early and saw the light on in the library. I thought you might be hungry." She added. "Since I doubt you stopped to even consider dinner while cross-referencing your files..." She indicated his papers with a wave of her hand.
"For your information, I *wasn't* cross-referencing," Giles said with annoyance. "I was merely researching a new cataloguing technique."
"And *that* made you break into song?" Calendar asked.
"And you don't while rewriting your code?" Giles asked.
"No, never!" Calendar retorted hastily, remembering humming "People Will Say We're in Love" from Oklahoma the other day while helping Willow. Even her star pupil had given her the oddest look.
Giles said in an equally mocking tone. "What never?"
"Well, hardly ever." Calendar said.
They looked at each other and laughed. Maybe they weren't quite so different as Jennie had thought originally. But then, the events of the last year had radically changed their perceptions of each other. He wasn't that "stuffy old Mr. Giles" anymore than she was that "awful Calendar person" they had both so resented.
After a moment, Calendar reminded him. "Dinner?"
"Oh, all right," Giles agreed, standing up and putting on his jacket, "but not Mexican this time."
"What did you feel like?" Jennie asked standing.
"Italian."
Jennie said, suppressing a giggle. "At least we won't have to worry about vampires ruining the evening."
"Vampires will be farthest thing from my mind," Giles assured her.
"Who could ask for anything more?" Calendar responded.
Rupert Giles offered his arm to Jennie Calendar and brushed his lips against her cheek. Suddenly she wasn't quite so aggressive or quite so confident. He sang softly as they headed out the library door:
"They all laughed and said we never could be happy.
They laughed at us -- and how!
But ho-ho-ho --
Who's got the last laugh now!
Jennie smiled. That was her Rupert -- old fashioned but thoroughly unpredictable. And she wouldn't have it any other way