Title: Snow and Fire
Author: Gail Christison

(notes and disclaimer with part one)

The dinner preparations went almost without a hitch, except perhaps for the egg Buffy dropped, and the lumpy traditional gravy an absent minded Giles had stirred flour directly into, instead of mixing it with water first, and which he deftly managed to pour down the drain and wash away before Buffy came back from taking tea up to their host. She returned to find him whisking a pre-packaged version with boiling water, in a gravy boat.

"I thought you were making gravy the way your mother used to…I didn't think they had instant gravy in the old days?"

Giles gave her a filthy look. "I decided the pan was far too…greasy," he improvised. "This is much healthier, and just as tasty."

"You burned it, didn't you?"

"No I did not!" he retorted indignantly. "I'll have you know it was perfect…" he added, in high dudgeon, then deflated and muttered, "before it got lumpy," under his breath.

Buffy giggled. "You don't remember yelling at me for putting the flour straight in the pan at Thanksgiving, do you?" she prompted, trying to let him off the hook.

He grinned back. "So I did. It was perfect…until you decided it wasn't thick enough."

Buffy made a face. "You don't have to rub it in, Mister Instant Gravy Guy."

Mrs McAllister wanted to come down stairs, but Giles convinced her not to try the ankle too much until it had been X-rayed. Instead a riotous Christmas dinner was had in the host's bedroom with ample participation by Rusty, who felt bound to remind everyone that it was his Christmas too. In the end it was decided that he would have his own plate of trimmings, a little gravy and number of dog treats instead of vegetables, on the side.

The most laughter was reserved for the cracker pulling, to which Rusty took exception, growling and barking at each cracker before and after it was pulled, before shredding all of the remains with great feeling.

"She really enjoyed herself," Buffy observed, swirling the big blue-patterned china plates through the steaming hot, soapy dishwater.

"I think we all did," Giles said contentedly, taking the one he'd just wiped back to its display cabinet and putting it back carefully.

When they got to the greasy pans, they switched places by prior agreement. "I think I was had with this deal," Giles complained, scraping residual baked on pumpkin, sweet potato and beef bits off the sides of the roasting pan before beginning to scour it.

Buffy moved behind him and slid her hands over his hips, so that he made a funny strangled noise and dropped the dripping pan on the sink just as he was about to give it to her to dry.

"I thought it was a great deal," she purred, caressing the various contours of the front of the soft denim jeans.

"Yes, w-well, all right," he agreed, his breath catching. "Perhaps I was a little hasty…"

Buffy was just starting to grin when she suddenly found herself in front of the not-so-pretty dishwater with a scour sponge in her hand.

"And then again," he said very close to her ear, his hands slipping over her own hips and sliding provocatively up her slender body. "Perhaps we both were…?"

She deliberately attempted to get on with the chores, trying not to show how much he was affecting her, but she heard herself groan several times as his sensitive hands played over her soft breasts, caressed her lithe curves. Nor could she stop her body from moving back against his and rubbing itself against him more than once.

Ultimately, with only the last wipe down left to do, Buffy turned and pressed herself against her love's body, barely able to breathe.

"You're evil, Watcher," she growled. "Just plain evil." And moaned as he commandeered her mouth and pulled her off the ground to plunder it. The electricity between them pulsated as they continued to ravage each other, and then Giles stepped toward the cupboard so that her butt slid onto it.

Buffy used the opportunity to capture his hips with her legs, in turn making him growl low in his throat and push himself against her, listening to her almost begging groans as she responded, pushing back, tilting her hips upward as they kissed again, ferociously.

When they finally managed to stop, Giles lifted her down and wrapped his arms around her. After a few moments he finally spoke.

"I'm sorry," he said ruefully. "I can't help wanting you…I love you so terribly, but I shouldn't let things get out of hand like that."

Buffy squeezed her arms tight around him then lifted her head to kiss his chin. "'We', big guy…as in both of us…" She grinned mischievously. "You have to admit though…we're good together, huh?"

"Positively dangerous," he growled. "But with any luck we should be home by tomorrow night. It's not so long to wait, is it?"

She made an almost half serious whimpering noise. "Only forever," she complained good-humouredly, "but I like that. Something in my life that's forever."

Giles' face dropped, and his eyes lost their merriment. "You will have forever," he promised. "If there's any way on God's Earth I can give it to you, you'll have it," he said fiercely.

Moisture pricked Buffy's eyes. She hadn't meant to be serious, or to remind either of them of that part of their lives. She resented the fact that it would never leave them alone…that even simple teasing or jest could lacerate, because of it.

"We'll do it together, like we always have," she told him. "Only we'll be even better, because you won't have to tell me twice from now on, and you'll be able to lecture me around the clock…from when we wake up in the morning, until we go to sleep each night after you've made love to me."

That brought creases to his sombre face, and a reluctant smile to his lips. "Every night?" he asked, with mock incredulity.

"Oh yeah," she grinned back. "Every night. And after serious Slayage, maybe twice."

"Good lord," he said with feeling. "Perhaps I am too bloody old after all."

Buffy trailed her fingers over the granite hard contour of his jeans. "Oh yeah, way old," she growled appreciatively. "Totally past it…so far past it, that part of me wants nothing more than to forget where we are…wants you to just take me...right here, right now." She made a small sound when she felt his reaction through the soft fabric.

"P-point taken," he stammered, not sure if moving was a good idea. "B-but since we can't…would you settle for eggnog instead?"

It was such a silly, helpless thing to say that Buffy found herself giggling, and when their eyes met, she lost it completely, dragging him along with her. After that, they were both lost in a giggle fit that tried over and over to subside, right up until they inevitably looked at each other again, and were lost…again.

By the time they'd giggled themselves out, the tension had passed and they left the kitchen comfortably in each other's arms, to enjoy the rest of their Christmas by the fire.

"You're going to make me sleep in the Barbie bed, aren't you?" Buffy sighed as they climbed the stairs contentedly some time after midnight.

Giles pulled her closer and kissed the top of her head with a casual possessiveness that spoke volumes.

"I don't want to," he told her honestly. "But I'm not sure either of us can behave for another entire night together."

"Don't want to behave," she muttered, in CaveSlayer's pouting tones.

He squeezed her shoulders again as they made the landing. "Neither do I, love; neither do I."

"You know, it's really weird, but you're kind of special, you know? Waiting isn't exactly big with my generation…not for anything."

Giles snorted. "You don't have to tell me. Three years at that bloody school provided evidence enough of the countless shortcomings of today's youth."

They turned to each other in the hallway between their rooms. "Hey, I'm allowed dirty slams about my age group. You're not," she teased, then grew serious. "I want to stay with you," she said softly.

Giles turned, rested his head against his door. He didn't want to go to bed alone, either. After a beat, he turned.

"Can you feel it?" he asked cryptically.

Buffy frowned slightly, but paused to think before she automatically questioned him, and in the process stretched out her Slayer senses, as a matter of course.

"I can feel how 'undemony' this place is," she told him a few moments later. "I can feel you…upstairs or downstairs, inside or out…whether we're together or not." She cocked her head to one side. "I can feel the cold…and I can feel how much we want each other…"

"Undemony," he quoted. "Yes, that's it. Untainted. Buffy, there's something about this place…"

Buffy's eyes widened a little as she stretched herself even further, extending into places barely brushed by her earlier forays into the furthest reaches of Slayer consciousness.

"I feel it too, but I don't know what it is. I-I don't think it's scary, but that really settles it. We're not separating. I promise I'll be good. As long as you promise to be really, really bad when we get home."

Giles stared at her wide eyes and serious face for a moment, then laughed at the same time she did.

"As bad as you want," he promised. "But first we have to get through this night. Do you think, perhaps, one last check on Rhiannon?"

Buffy started to nod, then stopped and frowned again. "My room, Giles. It's a kid's room…it's Christmas and there's no kid…no pictures of a kid. I looked at the gifts under the tree downstairs: all to Rob, and even to Rusty. Nothing else. And she hasn't even asked…"

Giles frowned. "Perhaps the child is at boarding school, or stranded by the storm…"

"Or dead?" Buffy asked quietly.

"Perhaps," Giles said heavily. "But there has been no evidence of that, either."

"Dog, cat, one big horse, one little horse. Not two big horses, one little horse," Buffy mused.

"Pony, Buffy," Giles corrected, amused.

"Huh?"

"Little horse?"

"Oh. Pony. Right. Giles, I think I'm going to look around again after I check on Rhiannon."

Their host was fast asleep when Buffy peeked in.

When Giles finally found her again, Buffy was sitting at the big leather chair in the den, where the farm accounts were obviously done, and most of the house's books were located, in big bookcases.

"Buffy?"

She looked up very slowly from the photograph album she was looking at and turned it around.

There were a lot of somewhat dated pictures of a young couple. A turning of the pages saw more than half of the pictures of the young man in a uniform. A few more were primarily of the young Rhiannon on her own, in various stages of pregnancy and then the book ended, unfinished.

Buffy stood up and went over to the only glass-fronted cabinet in the room, and Giles followed. She pointed to the medals in it, the blown-up photograph of the young marine, signed, 'love, Andy.'

"If that's her husband, who's Rob?" she said softly.

"An excellent question," Giles almost whispered. "But I don't think we should impinge any more upon Rhiannon's privacy. If she wanted us to know, she would have told us. The explanation could be as simple as remarriage, but somehow I don't…" He looked around the room. "I think we should go to bed."

Buffy climbed into the big bed in a T-shirt and his last pair of clean boxers and immediately wriggled right over into his arms.

"No sexual tension being had while wearing Rupert Bear shorts," she announced playfully. "Anya again?"

"Actually, no," Giles said quietly and Buffy immediately sensed a withdrawal.

"You said it was okay," she said softly. "I can wear tomorrow's underwear instead. It's a little racier, and it means you'll just have to deal with me being underwear-less on the way home," she added, teasing gently, but he barely smiled.

"No, it's fine, love. Wear them," he told her, but didn't enlarge.

Buffy sat up straight. "Not if they were a gift from someone special."

He shook his head. "They weren't a gift." I only bought them recently, as a matter of fact, from a catalogue. To celebrate an anniversary, and someone who used to tease me mercilessly about my name and that bloody bear."

"Ethan?"

"What? Lord, no. Ethan never had a childhood. I think he was born old."

"Then who?" she asked, frustrated.

Giles stared into a distant place. "My sister," he said very softly and smiled. "My little sister…Sophie. She was a merciless teaser."

Buffy wasn't sure why, but she knew somewhere, somehow, Giles had lost his Sophie.

"You said 'anniversary'. Birthday?" she asked very gently, knowing that it wasn't.

He sort of shook his head, an almost-movement of someone far away. "The last time I saw her," he said very calmly. "She was thirteen. I was twenty-one."

Buffy suddenly realised something else. "It was vampires, wasn't it?"

Giles closed his eyes. "A somewhat irritated demon, actually. My father's Slayer had killed its family. It was looking for Anna…the Slayer, they said, but found only Sophie, home alone from school with a cold," he recounted, his voice sounding almost incredulous of fate's cruel twists. I was away at Oxford…"

It was Buffy's turn to close her eyes.

Giles had never mentioned his family to anyone. He'd never discussed his rebellious past, even, with anyone except her. She knew that was so, because Jenny Calendar had said as much to Willow…out of frustration that Rupert wouldn't let her in, wouldn't open up. When Will had let slip, out of sheer surprise, Jenny had pretty much resented that Giles had confided in her, Buffy, about Eyghon, and his dark years, and no-one else, not even her. If he hadn't told Jenny, Buffy knew in her heart that he wouldn't have told anyone…

She opened her eyes again, their blue-grey depths glistening, and drank in the profile of the man she loved.

"I'm sorry…about Sophie. I'm sorry about us…"

He looked at her quizzically.

"Slayers," she qualified sadly. "We never seem to be there for you…never seem to bring you anything but pain."

His eyes grew very bright. "You're wrong," he said softly and drew her into a tender embrace. "You've brought me more joy, more happiness than you will ever know."

They held each other for a long time before parting.

"I'm still sorry," Buffy told him, touching his jaw. And they both knew what she was referring to.

He nodded. "The past is irrelevant now. All that matters is the future. And right now," he added, watching her eyes droop, "you're almost asleep sitting up." He drew her down with him, and smiled when she curled up against him and kissed the vee of chest where his pyjama top was open.

"I love you so much, Rupert Giles," she murmured and pressed her cheek against the same spot.

A look of great love and tenderness came into the green eyes, and he brushed her temple with his lips. But he didn't sleep for a long time…not until long after Buffy's breathing became rhythmic and deep.