Hi Everyone!

Here's the second chapter of this story. There will probably be four chapters in total. This one deals mainly with the relationship between Giles and Olivia. I know this is a touchy subject for those of us who ship Buffy/Giles. However, the way I see it, he is obviously quite fond of her and there has to be an explanation for that. I mean, give the guy a little credit. Surely he wouldn't remain friends with her for so long without a reason, and I don't think their relationship is based solely on sex. I think it's possible to have the best of both worlds- Giles and Olivia friendship as well as a big dose of Buffy/Giles love. I guess this is my attempt at tackling the rather sticky Olivia issue.

To clarify once and for all, however, and let me say this loudly: This is not a Giles/Olivia fic! It's B/G all the way!

Thanks to everyone who gave their feedback after the first chapter. I hope you guys will like the rest of the story.

Disclaimer: As stated in the first chapter, none of good stuff in here belongs to me- well, except for the storyline. Chapter title is from the Queen song Crazy Little Thing Called Love, which was released as a single in 1979.

Rebel Waltz: Chapter 2
Crazy Little Thing Called Love

Camden Town, London, May 1980

They had met in a pub.

Yes, it was the hallmark of doomed relationships everywhere. Rupert found it doubtful that very many people in the world, when asked on their 25th wedding anniversary how they had met their spouse, would reply, "We met down the pub. I was completely pissed!". But that was alright, because he and Olivia didn't have that kind of relationship. Even from that first night, their friendship- or whatever it was- had defied categorization.

One Saturday night, he had been drinking in one of the larger Camden pubs which happened to be attached to a lively nightclub venue. There was a show there that night; one of those bands from the two-tone ska craze that was so popular lately. Madness? The Specials? The Beat? Whatever. It wasn't something that appealed to Rupert. The songs all sounded boring and similar to him. Like they were taking the worst aspects of reggae and boiling them down into a concentrated formula- and doing it far too cheerfully. He had been absently drinking himself along toward numbness, ignoring the persistent beats which could be heard and felt through the walls separating the pub from the nightclub, until he noticed a halt to the music. He didn't much register the fact that the pub was starting to fill up with patrons flowing through the passageway that led to the nightclub until she casually insinuated herself between him and the wall and started angling for the bartender's attention.

Surprisingly, the first thing that caught Rupert's eye was not her height or her rather striking facial features. It was her shirt. A white t-shirt, with a phrase printed across the chest in bold black lettering:

It may be that your entire
life is meant to serve as a
WARNING for others

It was the funniest thing Rupert had seen in awhile, and he felt through the haze of alcohol that it could easily apply to him. He was so engrossed in his contemplation of the rather intriguing shirt that he failed to realize that he appeared, to the casual observer, to be staring at her well-formed and extremely feminine chest.

Olivia was not a casual observer. Nor was she particularly shy. "Oi! My eyes are up here, sweetheart!"

Rupert's eyes shot up, slightly cloudy but suddenly alert, meeting her steady dark gaze. If he wasn't mistaken, there was just a hint of amusement peering out from beneath her raised eyebrow. Rupert wasn't an angel by any means, but it certainly wasn't in his nature to leer at women in an objectifying way- if nothing else, he still had some manners. "I… forgive me. I wasn't… I mean, your shirt-"

Her bubbling laughter cut him off. She smiled widely at him with a row of straight and brilliant white teeth. "No need to get your knickers in a twist. Talk is cheap around here, so you can just apologize by buying me a drink."

And that was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

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Right from the get-go they had found plenty of things to argue about. Their friendship had an adversarial tension, and it had originated from the first night they met. They had gone back to his flat after consuming several drinks each. They had sat on the floor in Rupert's living room and argued about the color of his curtains, about his record collection, about whether the Earth was round… well perhaps not that, but it had seemed like it to Rupert at the time. It might have been that Olivia just liked to be contrary, but he hadn't felt so engaged with another person in quite awhile. Possibly since he had first met Ethan. He had forgotten how good it could feel to have a conversation about something frivolous.

"So you don't like ska, but you like The Clash? Does anybody else here see a problem with that scenario?"

Olivia was dissecting his record collection, sitting on the floor and making three piles- records she liked, records she hated, and records she hadn't heard or was indifferent to. The seven inch single of Queen's Crazy Little Thing Called Love went into the 'hate' pile with a scowl. She was leaning against the couch with her legs stretched out, and was now brandishing a copy of The Clash's London Calling.

Rupert shook his head. "The Clash aren't a ska band."

"You have listened to this album, right? Hello? What about 'Rudie Can't Fail'? Or 'Revolution Rock'? Does that ring any bells? Not to mention the Guns of bloody Brixton..."

"But that isn't all they are. They play a lot of different types of music. You can't just call them a ska band because they experiment with some related musical elements."

She sighed and reluctantly put the record on her 'like' pile. "Whatever. I'm right, you're wrong. I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree, hmm?"

Rupert gifted her with a small but genuine smile, and a teasing look in his eyes that said volumes about how strongly he felt he had just won the argument. Her answering glare slowly melted into a grin as he passed her the small bottle of Scotch they had been sharing.

That night, they each enjoyed the company of the other in an undemanding way. Around two o'clock in the morning, Rupert had decided to go to bed. Both he and his guest were tired and somewhat drunk, which could be a dangerous combination when a man and a woman were alone together. Things might have taken a turn for the interesting, but when Olivia had tried to kiss him she missed his mouth by several inches and proceeded to collapse on the couch in a fit of sleepy giggles. Rupert covered her with a blanket and stumbled to his bed laughing, really laughing, for the first time in months.

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The next morning, sporting excruciating twin headaches, they had made a pact to drink less. That was when Rupert stopped frequenting the local pubs so much. Olivia was also constantly bugging him to quit smoking cigarettes, to 'drop that filthy habit' as she would say. Sometimes he wondered whether he kept smoking them now just to annoy her.

They found out things about each other. Olivia was twenty one and split her time between part-time studies and working in her father's shop. She did errands and made bicycle deliveries daily, but generally had the weekends free. She liked photography and Italian food. She discovered that Rupert was slightly pretentious about literature and such things despite his rebellious demeanor, he was picky about his tea, preferred rugby over football, and hated being photographed.

When Rupert had free time, the two of them would go for walks or find interesting restaurants to eat in. They talked about books, drank coffee or tea in the afternoons or on his lunch hour, browsed the markets on the weekend. Once in a great while if they were feeling extra lazy or it was raining too hard they would lie on the floor in his apartment, smoking marijuana and listening to Pink Floyd's The Wall.

In short, Rupert had become quite fond of her. There was a certain ease to their relationship, and she didn't put demands or expectations on him. There was sex as well, quite a bit really. Especially in the first month or two. But Olivia seemed to understand his need for a certain degree of emotional detachment. That, or she simply wasn't looking for romance. Rupert tried not to over think the situation. Why try to fix something if it isn't broken?

For a long time, the only difficult aspect to their relationship was Rupert's need to hide his double life from her. Olivia didn't seem to know anything about vampires or demons or the like, just like most people. And Rupert didn't see any reason to involve her. She already knew he was a bit unusual; if he started making comments about magic and rituals and undead overlords living in disused Underground stations, she might think he had flipped for good. Therefore, as far as Olivia was concerned, he worked at the Museum during the day and for a twenty four hour courier service by night.

He would occasionally slip and make a comment about the darkness in the world or how oblivious people were to the fact that there were bloodsucking fiends all around them, but he was able to successfully pass them off as somewhat radical social commentary. Strangely, she didn't seem to find the comments odd. Sometimes she even agreed with his hastily constructed explanations.

They got along swimmingly in this manner for quite some time. Everything was perfect, really… until she fell in love with him.

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Camden Town, London, August 1980

Maybe it was inevitable that things couldn't stay the way they were, and maybe Rupert had known it in the back of his mind from the moment they met. That hadn't made it any less of a shock, though, when she had declared her love for him. They had known each other for 3 months when it happened. He was fairly certain she hadn't planned to say anything to him, but they were walking along Regent's Canal one Sunday afternoon and it had kind of… slipped out.

It was one of those things that started with a phrase like 'that's one of the things I love most about you' or 'see, that's why I love you so much'. Rupert couldn't remember exactly how it had come out. It sounded innocent enough and probably would have gone unnoticed by both of them, if not for his reaction.

He had frozen up. His feet stopped moving, and he looked at her with a stunned expression on his face. Rupert's mouth moved as though trying to form words, but his brain couldn't calculate what to say. He wasn't ready to have this conversation, but his choice in the matter had just been taken away by her words and his obviously negative response. She tried to backpedal at first and write it off as something inconsequential. The more aghast he looked, however, the more Olivia found herself unwilling to let the matter drop. In fact, she was getting a little angry. Her words were fierce, but softly spoken.

"Come on, Rupert. Is it really so terrible for me to be in love with you? Is it such a surprise?"

He looked at the ground, into the murky gray waters of the canal, at anything but her face. He shook his head slowly, willing the confusion to shake itself away. "You aren't in love with me, Liv. You don't even know me. Not really." He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose.

He could feel the change in her posture without even looking. When she spoke again, she was using the hands-on-hips voice that came into play only when something really rankled her. "I don't know you? What have we been doing these past months then, Rupert? If it had just been sex all the time I could understand, but… God, do you not care about me at all?"

She had stepped closer to him, and he flinched when he felt her hand touch his face. She finally looked into the swimming green of his eyes, finding layers of pain there that would take ages to peel back. She knew there were things in his past that he wouldn't, couldn't tell her. He whispered, "You know that isn't what I meant."

Olivia pressed her forehead against his, trying desperately to convey the depth of her emotion. "So let me love you, Rupert. I can see you're not ready, but I can wait…I can help you..."

She put one hand over his heart and softly brushed the fingers of the other across his lips. "Just… won't you just let me in?"

Rupert stood still for a long moment, breathing unevenly. Slowly he took both her hands in his and held them lightly in between their bodies, proceeding to lower them to her sides and gently release them. "I… I'm sorry, Olivia. I can't do this. I can't."

Turning away from her, he screwed his eyes shut and hugged himself as though bracing for an impact. He was waiting for her to attack him, either physically or with words. But the blows never came, and when he finally turned around he could just barely see her figure retreating in the distance. She didn't look back, and Rupert assumed he would probably never see her again.

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Camden Town, London, September 1980

He was fairly sure his suspicions were proven correct when he didn't see or hear anything from Olivia for a few weeks. He missed her, but he knew he didn't really have a right to be upset. He understood why she couldn't be around him. He felt lonely sometimes without her to talk to, but there was nothing he could do to change the way things were. Rupert wasn't emotionally equipped to deal with something like this when he could barely look after his own mental well-being half the time. After her declaration, he had thrown himself even more into his training with Archie. Days melted into weeks, and before he knew it a month had gone by.

One Saturday afternoon in early September found Rupert in his flat making a pot of tea and wondering what to do with himself for the rest of the day. He was hungry, but didn't really feel like going out. He was restless, but couldn't think of anything compelling to fill the time. He was startled out of his doleful thoughts by a knock at the door. His eyebrows knit in confusion as he strode across the room to answer it, pushing one sleeve of his oxford shirt up over his elbow. He certainly wasn't expecting any visitors. He pulled the door open without looking first to see who it was.

Olivia was standing there, with a bag of Indian takeout in each hand.

She cleared her throat and didn't quite meet his eyes. "I know how bad you are at feeding yourself on Saturdays sometimes. I brought you the Vindaloo, because I know you think Chicken Korma is shit."

They looked at each other for a long moment, and Rupert felt the understanding stretch between them like a sturdy rope connecting ship to shore. He invited her in.

"So... did you miss me, then?" She asked.

Rupert smiled.

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Well, that's it for this installment. I feel a little bad for Olivia, but romance just isn't in the cards for her and Giles. Don't worry, I'll start tackling the B/G parts of the story in the next chapter. I just felt like some development and exposition was necessary to kind of show what Giles is going through at this point in his life. Stick with me here and I promise it's going to get good!

Reviews are cherished and appreciated, including critical ones as long as they are constructive! I would love to hear from anyone who is enjoying this story. I'm definitely having a lot of fun writing it! ;)