The Emperor of Ice Cream

by nivcharayahel

Post-Graduation Day. Giles comforts Buffy with ice cream. They talk.

Title: The Emperor of Ice Cream (1/1)

Author: Jessica (nivcharayahel@earthlink.net)

Rating: TV-14 (language)

Summary: Giles comforts Buffy with ice cream after graduation. They talk. No shippiness here—just a paternal kind of friendship.

Disclaimer: After reading this, I think you'll find it quite clear that I'm not Joss, and I don't own these characters. g I also do not own Grease, CATS, or Wallace Stevens' poem, "The Emperor of Ice-Cream". Natch.

Spoilers: Through season three, I guess, but assume that nothing is safe.

Feedback: Dig in.

Let be be finale of seem.

The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

--Wallace Stevens

The doorbell rang with a grating insistence, and Buffy considered ripping it out altogether as she stomped through the foyer to answer it. "Alright. I'm coming already. Don't get your panties in a—Giles!" Buffy swallowed hard, and locked gazes briefly with piercing eyes before looking down at her feet.

He took in her appearance—track pants and a tank top streaked with blackened grease, pink kitchen gloves, hair tied back messily in a bandana—and nodded. "I see you weren't expecting company."

"I certainly wasn't expecting you," she snapped, then covered her brow with the back of a fluttering hand. "Sorry." She moved away from the door to let him in and, after seeing him cross the threshold, turned her back on him to walk into the kitchen.

Giles followed, lugging a rather large cooler, which he set down on the island. "You've been quite busy."

"Huh?" Buffy called out, her voice muffled.

Giles knelt down beside the oven, which she was attacking industriously with a Brillo pad. "I said you've been keeping rather busy, Buffy."

"Oven doesn't clean itself, you know." She grunted. "And I thought—Mom comes home in a week, and I kinda missed doing anything nice for Mother's Day for the past, oh . . . forever. I should surprise her in a good way for once."

"That's a lovely thought," Giles said gently. "Have you spoken to her since . . . ."

Buffy pulled her head out of the oven, red-faced and panting, and glared at him. "What? You think I'd make her leave town so I can make the giant demon mayor go boom, and then not let her know I'm okay? After last year?"

"Of –of course not, Buffy. I only meant to ask if you'd had a chance to talk with her about—" he waved his hand vaguely through the air between them—"all of it. You've been through—both of you—quite a lot."

Buffy threw the Brillo pad down to the floor and studied the palms of her gloved hands. "Yecch. Why couldn't we get the self-cleaning oven? Now I'm all gross." She took the gloves off, and slapped them down into a sinkful of dishwater, which splashed up to hit her full in the chest. She stifled a scream when the water hit, then looked down at her sopping clothes. "Well, that was predictable. I'm gonna have to go up and change."

"Of course," he replied blandly.

She found she couldn't resist taunting him. With a small grin, she elaborated, "Unless you want the free show, you're gonna have to avert your eyes."

Buffy turned her head to find her Watcher blushing an alarming shade of violet. "Bloody hell! I should leave—"

She giggled. "Nah. It's okay—I was just kidding. I'm gonna go get cleaned up, and then you can tell me what you're doing here." She frowned. "Unless it's something bad that can't wait, like demony prophesies or . . . Giles, did Faith—" Truly worried now, Buffy wheeled around to face him, ignoring her wet shirtfront, her voice cracking as it rose.

Giles cleared his throat roughly and shut his eyes. "It's nothing of the sort. Just

. . . go. I'll be here when you return."

Buffy considered briefly teasing him further—he was so British about it, and it was so much more fun than moping about Angel—but she stopped herself when she saw how put out he already was. That, and the fact her wet clothing was both uncomfortably cold and stank of burnt pot roast, made her hurry past Giles and up the stairs before he opened his eyes again.

When she returned, sporting a clean track pant-tank top ensemble and smelling of papaya bath gel, Giles was sitting on one of the kitchen stools, cup of tea in hand, reading the morning paper. The mess she had made cleaning the oven was gone. In fact, the oven was spotless, and so was Giles.

He looked up abstractedly from the Metro section. "Feeling better?"

Buffy shrugged. "Less greasy." She plopped down on the stool next to his. "So, what's in the cooler?"

"Ah!" He put the teacup down. "So glad you finally asked. It's why I've come today. Open the lid."

He looked at the cooler as if it contained some really old, really musty manuscript. Buffy eyed it—and him—with suspicion. "You brought me a present?"

"I-I did, and it won't last forever, so open the lid."

She did, just a crack, then let it snap shut when a billow of cold, white smoke spilled out onto the floor. "Jeez, Giles . . . my very own fog machine. I can invite the gang over and play CATS, the Musical with them."

The glasses came off, then, and the handkerchief came out, and Giles was cleaning the lenses so forcefully that he nearly snapped a temple piece.

Buffy sighed heavily. "Guess that's not what you were going for."

"No."

"Sorry. I seem to be having a bad lifetime tod—" She had started to lift the lid again as she spoke, and as the dry ice fog cleared, she was brought up short by what she found inside. She squealed. "Ice cream. Lots of ice cream . . . ." She reached in for one of the pints and held it up for inspection. "Giles! This is hand-packed Ben and Jerry's White Russian."

He raised his glasses to glance through them at the carton. "So it is."

Buffy put it back in the cooler, and took a quick inventory. "No, I mean this is hand-packed." Off of Giles's perplexed look, she added emphatically, "You know, by hand."

The corners of his mouth lifted. "That would be a generally understood meaning of the term."

But Buffy was too excited to catch him twitting her. "And half of these are flavors that you can't even get except at the scoop shops. And the closest one of those is . . . ."

"In Oxnard," Giles finished for her. He put his hands in his pockets and rocked slightly on the balls of his feet. "It's not that far away. I realized I didn't know what you liked, so I got one each of as many flavors as they could fit in the cooler. I thought you could share some with your friends, or with your mum when she returns."

"But why . . . ." Buffy began, then remembered their conversation just before the prom a couple of weeks before. She was in the book cage, grabbing weapons to go after Tucker's hellhounds, and Giles had offered her ice cream to soothe her broken heart. A heart she had only thought broken at the time—that was before Angel had left town for real. For good. She sniffled back tears. "Oh."

"I try very much to be a man of my word, Buffy," Giles said quietly. "And I believe I promised you ice cream."

She gave him a watery smile. "Thanks. Would you—would you help me put these in the freezer? I think I may have thrown out enough junk to make room for it all."

They worked silently, and when they had finished stowing it all away, Buffy chose two pints, grabbed a couple of spoons, and sat down. Giles stood on the other side of the island, just looking at her.

"Sit," she ordered, gesturing with a spoon to the stool beside her. "Eat."

He did as she commanded, taking a bite before picking up the container to read the label. "Cool Britannia?" He quirked an eyebrow at her.

Buffy smiled shyly. "Yeah. It seemed . . . right. That you get that one." She added quickly, "You don't have to eat it if you don't like it."

He took another spoonful. "No, no. I like it a lot. It's kind of like . . . strawberry trifle, I think."

"'Kay."

"You have no idea what that is, do you?" Giles grinned widely.

"Nope."

He clucked his tongue. "Then you're missing out."

"If it's English, and it's supposed to be food?" She poked him lightly on the chest with an index finger. "I'm thinking not so much."

Giles grumbled, because it was expected of him, but said nothing.

"Mmm . . . now, Phish Food. That's not to be missed."

"Good Lord! They've made a flavor of ice cream that tastes like fish food?"

Buffy laughed at him. "No, Giles. P-H. Phish. Like one of the bands you won't let me work out to anymore." They both smiled a little at the memory of simpler times, but then Buffy thought of how much had changed since then, and her smile faded. "And I'm just getting that you were faking that bit of stiff-upper-lippiness, and—look—" she said quickly, holding up her spoon so Giles could see the contents. "They've put little fudgy fishies in there, see? Cute."

"Ah. I do see. And what's that white streak?"

"Marshmallow fluff." Buffy put the spoon in her mouth before the ice cream dripped on the counter. "Mmm."

They finished off their pints, and Buffy threw them into the trash can across the room from where she was sitting. ("Scooore!" "Brava, Buffy!" "You haven't been to many basketball games, have you?" "None. Why?" "They're not like the opera." "Jolly good show, then." "Giles!")

She sat back, contentedly, rubbing her stomach in lazy circles. "Well, that's two down and . . . lots more to go. How much did this cost you, Giles?"

He squirmed. "Surely your mother has taught you it's impolite to inquire after the cost of a gift."

"Sorry. Don't go all stuffy on me, Giles. I thought you were done with that, since—" Buffy frowned. "Never mind."

But it was too late. The easy camaraderie was gone, again. Giles's eyes shuttered, and he replied testily, "You can say it. Since I got fired and Wesley arrived to take my place and show me what an insufferable prat I'd been all that time."

Buffy opened her mouth in a wide "O" of indignation. "You were so not a—what you said—as bad as Wesley."

Giles rolled his eyes. "Thanks. Be that as it may, I was still a tea-swilling tightass," he said bitterly.

Buffy snorted and said, in dry, mocking tones, "How could anyone tell under all that tweed?"

"How—no, of course. I suppose one couldn't." Giles stood, and turned to Buffy, red-faced. "Enjoy the ice cream, Buffy. And try to get some rest. I'll just—" His jaw twitched, for a moment, until his clamped his lips firmly together. He headed for the front door in great strides, and was nearly to it before Buffy overtook him, blocking the way.

"Giles! I was just teasing. I'm sorry."

"Yes, I understand. But I really have somewhere else I need to be now, and if you'll just—"

"No," she said, her voice ringing with a determination that made Giles step back, angling his upper body away from her.

"No?"

"No. Not until you tell me what's going on."

"What's 'going on'?"

"Yeah. You were all—sweet and supporty—with the ice cream." Buffy spoke rapidly, nervously, afraid he would interrupt. "And then we were all talking and relaxed and stuff, and it was nice. And then you turned into Mr. I-Can-Insult-Myself-But-Don't-You-Dare-Tease-Me Guy, and I wanna know why."

"Buffy, for God's sake, I—what the hell did you just call me?"

Her brow furrowed in unconscious imitation of his. "I called you Mr. I—" She stopped short and glared at him. "Gah! Stop trying to weasel out of this conversation, Giles."

"And what, precisely, is the conversation we are meant to be having?" he bit off angrily.

Buffy dropped her eyes to the floor. "I don't know."

She stood there for a long moment, eyes large and round and still downcast, her arms crossed around herself in a tight embrace. With a small sigh, Giles spread his feet slightly and planted them on the tile floor. "Buffy," he said quietly, his voice rough. Then, with a quick shake of his head, he tried again. "Buffy, what is it?"

He was looking at her again, with that gently appraising look that drove her mad precisely because it held no judgment. She attempted staring him down, but quickly gave up. Her eyes darted around the corridor, searching for . . . "Oh! That mirror is so dirty. I'll just—"

Even with her slayer intuition, Buffy didn't notice the arm shooting out to block her path until it was too late. Giles grasped her shoulder, gently turning her until she was directly in front of him. They stood there in silence, and he waited until she looked up at him of her own accord. She held her breath, certain he was going to say something that would cause it all to come tumbling out before she could stop herself.

"I don't know if you'd agree, but I don't think you've had enough ice cream yet."

He smiled at her briefly, before returning to his usual impassivity, and held her firmly as she swayed. "Breathe," he reminded her.

She exhaled forcefully, her vision of Giles's face shimmering slightly, and inhaled deeply and slowly. She did this a few more times before he was back in focus and she located her voice.

"More ice cream? You know what my mom would say about that."

He shrugged. "Why didn't I suggest it sooner?"

"How do you know my mother so well?"

"She likes Kahlua and Pepsi, for reasons I can't begin to comprehend. And Seals and Croft," he said, grinning broadly.

"Ewww," Buffy said, and shuddered. If Giles had not been looking at her so closely, he would have missed the flicker of amusement that passed across her face.

"Precisely my point. Your mother is a fine woman, Buffy, but I fear she is sorely lacking in taste." He gazed past Buffy's head, into the middle distance. "Well, except for—"

"Ewww! Ewww!" Her hands in the air, she made an end run past Giles, back into the kitchen. He followed her, chuckling softly.

"Don't you dare tell me any more! I swear, after you two . . . I don't know if I should enter a convent or blind myself."

"As if you lot have been so very considerate of my mental health over the years."

Buffy snorted. "Yeah, well at least we are teenagers. You guys were like . . . a really bad revival of Grease. Performed by old people." She frowned. "Okay, kinda like the movie was, and at least you guys weren't singing, but it was still very wrong." She grabbed a pint of Cherry Garcia and a spoon and took it into the living room, where she leapt onto the couch and glared at him. "Very wrong."

Giles sat in the chair across from her. "Hmm. So if I'm John Travolta in this little scenario, and your mum's Olivia Newton-John, then who would Principal Snyder have been, I wonder?"

Buffy carefully chewed on a cherry, then swallowed it. "I think he wanted to be Rizzo, and he really, really wasn't."

Giles laughed at this—a real laugh that started as a deep rumble and grew into a roar, then trailed off into helpless giggles and sighs.

"Giles? Are you okay?" She reached out a tentative hand to her watcher, who was red-faced and clutching his abdomen. "Giles!"

With a hiccuping, hitching breath, Giles finally managed to speak. "I'm fine—I just—God, Buffy! I'm never going to think of that little toad again without seeing him in drag singing 'There Are Worse Things I Could Do'."

"Well, it could be worse."

Giles, who had his hand underneath his glasses to wipe at his eyes, stopped what he was doing to ask, "How could that image possibly be worse?"

Buffy shrugged. "He could have been singing, 'Look At Me, I'm Sandra Dee'."

"Actually, hmmmm . . . ." He tilted his head to one side, looked skyward, pursed his lips. "No. I think I would have respected him for that."

Buffy nearly choked on her ice cream. "Say what?"

"Well, it takes a sense of humor to get up in a little nightgown and sing a song that mocks virginity just for the hell of it—especially if it's Snyder—don't you think?"

"Oh. My. God. I can't believe you!"

"What?"

"Giles! Nightgown, virginity, and Snyder in the same sentence?"

He rubbed his ears, which were ringing from the shrill force of her words. "Yes, I can see how that might be disconcerting—"

"Especially if you're not concerted in the first place." Buffy pushed her spoon violently around the bottom of her pint, biting her lower lip as she crushed the chocolate chunks under the edge of the spoon's bowl.

Giles waited.

"Okay, yeah, funny picture—Rat-Boy dressed like a woman, and singing and stuff. And he did ask for the mocking, by being so, so mean and weird and full of himself—even if he is dead now and we shouldn't talk about him that way . . . ."

He kept waiting.

"In the library, when I came for that sword Kendra left to kill Acathla. . . ." She looked down at her hands, squeezing the cardboard container, watching the ice cream ooze slowly toward the opening. Gently, Giles touched her forearm, and she stopped. He took the pint from her and rested it on the coffee table. He leaned back in his chair and waited.

"Snyder was there. Couldn't wait to kick me out of school. He was so excited about it, it was like . . ." her face wrinkled up in distaste, "like sex for him, you know? And the only thing I could think of to say to him was, 'You never even had a single date in high school, did you?'"

Giles quirked an eyebrow at this bit of news. "That's the best you could come up with?" he murmured.

She looked away from him and said, her voice painfully tight, "Yeah, well I was kinda busy at the time, what with the world saveage and . . . trying to find you."

As hard as he tried, Giles couldn't stop himself from looking down at his right hand, watching slightly crooked fingers as he slowly curled and released them against the arm of the chair. He surfaced from his reverie at a loud sniffle from Buffy.

"Oh, dear." He was about to go to her, to comfort her, but she was already closing herself off. He cursed himself for his inattention—for letting the chance to reach her once again slip away. He sat back, tried to focus his attention outward.

"He—" Buffy began. She drew her legs up to her chest. "Angel. Angel hurt you."

Focused as he was on watching for another opening, it took a moment for her words to register. He stole another glance at his hand. Shivered. "Don't you mean Angelus?"

She shook her head. "I think I mean Angel. Angel did that to you."

This time, when Giles stopped himself from reaching out to her, it was to keep from shaking her for doing this to herself. For doing this to him. He forced himself to answer her calmly. "Yes. Angel hurt me and a number of other people. Including you." Bastard hasn't stopped yet, he thought bitterly.

"You don't like him." And now, although she remained closed off—curled up in a ball on her mother's sofa—her gaze was fixed on him.

"It would be much simpler if I didn't."

Her eyes widened, and she took a moment to process this piece of information. "Oh. Mom and Xander acted like they couldn't wait to see the Hellmouth hit him in the ass on the way out, and I thought after everything, that you'd . . . ."

"That I'd feel the same?" Giles concluded.

Buffy nodded.

He slipped an index finger under the collar band of this t-shirt, worrying at the seam. "While it's certainly true that I find Angel's move to L. A. something of a . . . a relief, given the circumstances, I can't say I'm entirely happy about it, either."

She pulled her head up from her knees and blinked. "I must've lost my Watcherspeak dictionary. Translate?"

"You're allowed to tell me how much you miss Angel. He was a friend to me, before, and an ally, and . . . I will miss him, too."

"Oh." Buffy opened her mouth, shut it. Opened it again. "Oh."

"I take it that's not what you were expecting me to say."

She shook her head as she pulled the scrunchie from her hair, so that it hung in a still-damp curtain around her face, obscuring her view.

"I can't do anything to stop this from hurting you, Buffy, but if there is anything I can give you in the way of . . . a sympathetic ear, I hope you will allow it."

She did not answer this. For minutes, they sat, unmoving, silent. Then, with a speed that startled Giles nearly out of his seat, Buffy jumped up and, sweeping up the mangled ice cream carton on the coffee table, dashed to the kitchen.

There was a clatter of cardboard hitting tile flooring, and a sharp string of curses, before he followed her.

Sticky pink ice cream and mashed chocolate cherries pooled near her feet, and Buffy stared at it, crying.

Giles moved swiftly toward her, his hand stretched out to reach her. But she flinched when he touched her shoulder. She cried harder.

He cleaned up the mess, and still she cried. When he had finished he stood before her, opening his arms to her.

"Buffy," he began, but before he could think of what he should say to convince her to accept this comfort, she moved into his embrace awkwardly, as if someone had pushed her into it.

She held on to him tightly, and he winced at the pinch he felt in his ribcage, but held her tightly in return, and rocked her, forming soothing, nonsensical sounds until her sobs abated, and her breathing evened and slowed.

Finally, he moved her away, at arm's length, and smiled down on her as he brushed away with his thumb the strands of hair that stuck to her cheeks.

"Did that help at all?"

"A little."

Giles gestured with his head, toward the sink. "Why don't you splash some water on your face, then come sit with me again?"

This time, when she came into the living room, Giles was sitting in her spot on the couch. Buffy sat down beside him, as close as she felt he'd allow, and he put his arm around her shoulders.

"There," she said, nodding firmly. "That's better. God, I must be, like, five years old—crying over spilled ice cream like that."

"Buffy," he admonished.

"I know, I know. Just a little post-getting-weepy-on-my-Watcher humor. It's good for the soul."

He pulled her closer to his side, so their legs touched from hip to knee. "Also an excellent strategy for avoidance, I dare say."

"Hey, Mister! It's not like you ever make with the talking about bad, hurty things in your life—except when you want me to beat up Ethan Rayne for it."

"Duly noted," he answered soberly. "But we're not talking about my problems right now."

She pouted even as she dipped her head down to rest against his shoulder and threw her arm across his chest, snuggling in as she pointedly did not think about how weird this was—all this touching. Like he wasn't her former Watcher, or her school librarian. Like he was a just a friend who could hold her because she was sad and she needed it. Because there was no one else who could do it.

"Fine. I miss Angel, and Mom, and Xander, and Dad, and I miss Willow even though she's still here, but she's with Oz doing the shiny happy couple having lots of sex thing, and it all just makes me want to scream and throw sharp pointy things, and with the evil undead laying low, even that's not helping." She took a deep breath, and finished with a practiced whine, "Life sucks. There. Is that what you wanted?"

Giles laughed, and she could feel the vibrations in his chest. "Everything I wanted and far more, really."

"I probably shouldn't have told you that part about Willow and Oz."

"I'd say not."

"I'm sure I meant to say that they were doing something not at all naughty. Like barn raising. Or a quilting bee."

"Yes, because they are fine, upstanding young Amish people."

"If everyone were a punked out, demon-raising hooligan," Buffy said, yawning, "the world would be a very boring place to live in."

Giles glared at the top of her head. "I suppose it would be."

Buffy smiled. "But if you hadn't ever been a punked out, demon-raising hooligan, you'd be giving me some boring speech now about 'you're too young to know what love really is' . . . ." She yawned again, and stretched as well as she could without moving from where she was tucked against him. "And 'it's for the best' and 'you'll be happier without him'."

"Finally, my sordid youth is redeemed."

"Instead you just brought me ice cream. You let me say mean things, and cry all over you, and you only gave little speeches. Little speeches with big words, but you're working on it, and I respect that . . . . " she teased. Then, in more serious tones, "Thanks, Giles. It helps."

"You're welcome, Buffy." He ran his fingers slowly through her hair, and she sighed. "Do you think the sugar's worn off enough for you to sleep now?"

She closed her eyes. "Yeah. Can you . . . can you stay? Like this? 'Snice."

"Sure," he said.

As sleep wrapped around her, at the corners of her awareness, Buffy noticed Giles placing a pillow in his lap, guiding her head to it, putting the throw from the back of the couch over her legs and pulling it up to her shoulders.

"I'll stay just as long as you need me, Buffy," he said.

She was already asleep, and did not hear.