Shadow Though it Be: An Excursus – Chapter 22
"Thank you very much," Giles said sarcastically to Elisabeth, once they were within the cover of trees, pacing as quietly as they could among the wet fallen leaves on the path.
"Thank you for what?" Elisabeth was unwilling to be perturbed until she knew precisely what had nettled him.
"For telling Buffy we'd gone to the Doublemeat Palace for lunch. I'm never going to hear the end of it now."
"Well," Elisabeth said, "I'm sorry about that, but not that sorry, seeing as how the alternative was telling her why you were really swearing up a storm when she called."
Xander was skipping to keep within two steps behind them. "Oh yeah? Why was that?"
Giles shot him a glare, Elisabeth gave him a sidelong look, and his question went unanswered.
Elisabeth asked Giles, "Which would you rather have: Buffy twitting you about your choice of lunch date venues, or Buffy making heavy weather of your love life again?"
"They're not the same thing?" Giles checked the safety on his crossbow, a sour expression crossing his face in the darkness.
"Well, one leads to drive-by comments, the other one could possibly lead to my being knocked flat on my ass in a graveyard again."
"Ah, I see. So it's every man for himself."
"Precisely."
"You're right," Xander said. "I really don't want to know."
Giles peered warily around as they entered a particularly dense clump of trees. "I do think we have gotten past that particular danger," he reassured her, absently.
"Well, you're the best judge of that, not me," Elisabeth said, making him look back at her with amusement.
Shadows passed over them as they walked beneath the branches of shedding trees, and grew deeper as they probed further into the wood, away from the soulless light of the streetlamps. Their feet squelched through mud and leaves; Elisabeth said quietly, "I'm sure the vamps can hear us coming a mile away. D'you think they're going to—?"
"Shh," Giles said, raising his crossbow.
Then Elisabeth heard it too: a double thread of voices, ahead of them in the dark wood. "Now would be a good time to get the stake out," Xander breathed in her ear.
"Oh—right," she whispered back, following his advice.
They had stopped on the path. Giles had his crossbow raised, the safety off, his eyes cutting from side to side ahead of them. Elisabeth felt Xander behind her tense in waiting, his shoulders sheltering hers, his attention focused on their flanks, ready for any attack from the rear. Briefly Elisabeth had a mental picture of the image they must be making, like a "Charlie's Angels" silhouette, and had to swallow a hysterical giggle. She coughed.
"Quiet," Giles said, and the hysteria dissolved in Elisabeth's stomach, into plain fear. She gripped Robin the Bold, transferred him briefly to her left hand, wiped her right on her jeans, and gripped the stake again.
The voices grew nearer, and took on a distinctly human timbre. A few seconds more, and they recognized both voices as female. Behind her, Xander relaxed a little, but Giles continued to wait with his crossbow raised.
The voices were crossing the path ahead at right angles; one of them said something in a terse mutter, and then they all heard Anya say distinctly:
"Well, just because he's like a father to you doesn't mean he's dead from the waist down!"
They didn't hear Buffy's reply, and within seconds their presence faded. "I mean, really...," they heard Anya say just before they dropped out of earshot again.
Giles lowered his crossbow and snapped the safety back on; Elisabeth didn't even need to see his face clearly to read the aggrieved eyeroll in his gesture. "Come on," he muttered, and stalked off ahead.
"The Surgeon General should issue warnings to Watchers when they come to the Hellmouth," Xander murmured. "Fighting evil in this town could be dangerous to your dignity."
Elisabeth sucked her lips in and stifled a snort of laughter.
"Are you coming?" Giles called imperiously, from a few yards ahead.
"Yeah," they both answered, and hastened to make it true.
*
"I'm worried about Buffy," Willow said as she moved aside a dripping branch of overgrown rosebush so that she and Tara could pass. "I mean, she's making with the protection so much that I'm afraid something's gonna—something's gonna blindside her. And then," she said with a sad glance at her lover, "I'm afraid that I won't—that we won't be paying attention enough to be her safety net." She heaved a petulant sigh. "I wish there was a book somewhere that listed everybody's to-do list to keep the world running smoothly."
Tara smiled. "On the other hand, you wouldn't like to lose your freedom to something like that."
Willow folded her arms. "That's what's annoying me. There should be freedom and cheat-sheets."
Tara smiled again. They crossed a rank of graves into a host of shadows.
"On the bright side, what about Giles?" Willow said suddenly, snapping out of her reverie. "He looks pretty chipper, don'tcha think? Pretty conquer-the-worldy? You think they've done it yet?"
Tara thought it over. "No; not yet, I don't think."
"But there's still that big sex vibe, right?"
"Oh yeah."
"Much as I hate to say it," Willow said with lofty eyebrows, "I think Anya's right. Giles needs a little, y'know, tender companionship just like anyone else. I only worry about—well—"
"Getting her home alive?"
"Yeah." Willow frowned. "This was supposed to be a cheering-up topic." She roused herself with an effort. "So d'you think they'll do it tonight?"
Tara's smile pursed subtly, like a cat's. "I think so. At least, I think they should."
"Yeah." The shadows grew deeper, and Willow instinctively drew her stake as they moved forward.
"They make a cute couple," Tara said. "And, I think they've been good for each other."
"Give or take a few shattered crystals." Willow peered ahead into the darkness. "She brings out his sense of humor, which is a nice change. Sometimes Giles shellacks himself in irony. It's not good for him."
Tara agreed with a nod. "And I think he's been good for her too. I think she's wanted a man around who acts like a grownup."
Willow made a wide-eyed grimace. "Well, Giles is that, all right."
Tara ran her hand over the top fronds of a bush, gathering rainwater over her fingers. "Well, a grownup man is definitely the best kind to lose your virginity with.—Not that I know personally—" She held up her wet hand reassuringly, but she had lost Willow at the first sentence.
Willow stopped dead, looking at Tara.
"What?" she shrieked.
*
As they moved through the shadows, Elisabeth wondered if Giles's total silence meant that he was brooding again about his loss of dignity, and if that further meant that all her work on his back was being undone. Though of course it would cost her nothing to massage him again if it was necessary. Maybe she could persuade him to accept a proper massage, with aromatic oils on his skin. It would certainly put the best cap on an arduous evening of slayage. Her eyes sized up his silhouette moving ahead of her, and the odd impressionistic glimpses of texture through the shadows—his jeans pocket—the heel of his boot—his graceful elbow bulked by his leather jacket—the black-matte glint of his crossbow—
We have to worry about surviving the arduous evening of slayage first, Elisabeth reminded herself, forcing her breathing into a slower rhythm.
Though there didn't seem to be much slayage of any kind, arduous or otherwise, in the offing tonight. Giles's silence seemed suddenly like the eternal attentiveness of radar dishes nestled in tropical forests, poised to receive extraterrestrial messages that never came.
"Xander," Elisabeth whispered over her shoulder, "aren't there usually vampires on the scene by now? Not that I'm anxious to see one, but—"
"You never know," Xander murmured back. "We always have to play it by ear."
"And I would think," Elisabeth said, "that this is a good place to catch newly-turned vampires, but not old ones. Are we expecting a new generation of vamps?"
"Yeah," Xander said. "Buffy says that the nest she raided two nights ago had had plans to turn a bunch of people and whoop up on the town."
"Ah," Elisabeth said. "So when we get through here…."
"Buffy will go look for the older vamps."
"So we get to help kill the nestlings."
"So to speak. You're not insulted, are you?"
"Are you kidding? I'm highly reassured," Elisabeth said, and cannoned into Giles's immobile back.
"Ouch, Rupert. I didn't know you'd…stopped…."
She peered around Giles's elbow into the clearing they'd just stepped into. Facing them were several dark human shapes, backlit by one of the white streetlamps, their elongated shadows curving over the ground toward them.
There was a slight rustling in the trees behind them, and Elisabeth knew that the hunters had become the hunted.
"Oh, shit," Xander said from behind her. "I hate this part."
One of the shadow-owners reached up a hand and brushed crumbles of dirt from his hair. "I think we've found what we're looking for," he said, in a soft gloating voice.
For answer Giles unsnapped the safety of his crossbow and raised it, aiming, waiting.
Behind him Elisabeth pulled her cross out of her pocket and gripped it in her left hand, Robin the Bold still clutched in the sweaty grip of her right. She used the top of the cross to push her glasses up on the bridge of her nose. One of the vampires noticed her motion: she saw a shadowy smile cross his demon face. Surely, she thought, it wasn't her they were all staring at.
Another of the vampires spoke, this time from behind them. "Looks like the van of crusaders has a sweet, chewy center."
Shit, Elisabeth thought.
"Then I get a taste," said a female voice from their left.
"Everyone gets a taste," the first vampire said.
"Where the hell's Buffy?" Xander muttered, digging in his pocket for his cross. "They keep up this mixed metaphor of chewy centers, I'm going to kill for a Snickers bar."
"Xander," Giles said softly, "when I give you the word you get Elisabeth out of here."
"Out which way?" Xander retorted in a hiss. "They've got us surrounded."
"I'll open you a way to my right. That's the direction we last heard Buffy."
"Okay," Xander said.
"You don't find Buffy, just get her out of the cemetery and into a house."
"Right."
"Rupert—," Elisabeth said.
"You're not to engage them," Giles murmured to her, "unless it's absolutely necessary."
"Understood," Elisabeth whispered. "But, what about y—"
From afar off, a shriek cut the chilly air, startling everyone: "What?"
"Now!"
Giles cocked to his right and shot his first bolt; before it hit its target he was reloading with a savage jerk of the arm; Xander snatched Elisabeth's upper arm in an almost bruising grip and hauled her along with him. They barreled through the echo of dust left by Giles's kill, with two vampires close on their heels. "What—about—Rupert—" Elisabeth uttered breathlessly, trying to keep her feet as Xander dragged her along.
"He'll be all right," Xander grated back, "he's the one with the damned crossbow—"
A vampire lunged into their path. "Shit," Xander said again, and used his momentum to bowl the vamp over, leading with his stake. As they scraped past the vamp clutched at Elisabeth's waist; she backhanded him with the cross in her free hand, and saw him scream in rage as the welt bloomed across his face—he let go, and Xander pulled her on.
Another figure, compact and agile, suddenly blocked their path. Xander raised his stake.
"It's me," Buffy said. Anya appeared at her shoulder. "Xander—" Anya said—but the two vampires were upon them, and Anya lost what she was going to say as Buffy shot forward and engaged them.
It was quick. Buffy wasn't fooling around, and she dispatched the first vamp against a tree without ceremony. The second vamp uttered, "The Slayer—" and tore off through the trees to his escape. Buffy rounded on Xander, who had bent to grip his knees. "More of them," he said hoarsely, heaving for breath.
"Where's Giles?" Buffy said sharply.
Xander lifted an arm to point back the way they'd come, and Buffy took off in a sprint.
Elisabeth marked with her eyes where Buffy had disappeared through the trees, and stalked off at a near trot, following her.
"Wait a minute," Anya said, but Elisabeth did not answer or stop.
"Elisabeth—Elisabeth, come back," Xander called. "Where are you going?"
"To help," Elisabeth said, beginning to jog.
"But Giles said—"
"Giles said to get to Buffy," Elisabeth said, jogging faster. "Buffy's this way."
Xander was trotting to catch up with her, coughing to get his breath back in the crisp air. "Yeah, well, safety is that way." He pointed behind him.
"Where Buffy is is safer," Elisabeth answered shortly, and lurched into a sprint considerably slower than the Slayer's but too fast for Xander to keep up anymore. He slowed to a trot, and then a walk, clutching the stitch in his side. "Elisabeth!" he called after her.
When Elisabeth reached the clearing again she found that the scene had changed considerably. Willow had her hands up, pinning a vamp invisibly to an obelisk while Tara swooped in with her stake; Buffy was fighting two vampires at once; and Giles had put his back to a large tree and was digging in his satchel for a fresh arrow as a large vampire advanced upon him.
Giles glanced left; Elisabeth's eyes followed, to see what he saw: a vampire barrelling toward Willow from behind. "Willow!" Elisabeth shouted, as Giles cried, "Look out!"
Willow turned in time to avoid the worst of the vampire's blow, but Giles paid dearly for his selfless moment: his vampire reached him and struck the crossbow from his hand, then backhanded him, knocking him to the ground. Elisabeth had her mouth open to cry his name in horror, but her throat had dried to a salt.
Buffy had dusted one of her vampires. Xander's voice shouted from behind her. Tara had staked their first vamp and was now jumping to help Willow with the other. Two silent demon screams cut through Elisabeth's insides.
Giles was almost up, his glasses askew, a cross in his fist, his teeth bared in a snarl. The vamp brought a big paw back to sweep the cross from his hand.
Elisabeth found herself running toward him. ("No!" cried Xander from behind.)
Giles was up. He advanced the cross and opened his mouth to cry in shrill Latin:
"Minutum cantorum, minutum balorum, minutum carborata descendum pantorum!"
It was enough to puzzle the vamp for the few more seconds it took Elisabeth to reach him from behind. She raised Robin the Bold and drove for the center of his back, left of his spine, right in the spot she would feel her own heart to be.
Except that her sweaty hand slipped its grip on the stake and her strength was not enough to drive it in more than half an inch. "Oh, damn," she muttered, as the vamp let out a crescendoing growl.
Splashy footsteps, many of them, thudded behind her, and a huge impact caught her from behind, knocking her forward, the vamp under her howling with rage as they all went down. She lost hold of Robin the Bold just as another impact knocked the breath out of her—she felt a sharp pain as her chest, weighted from behind, forced the stake deeper into the vampire under her—
The vampire exploded into dust, and quite suddenly Elisabeth was on the ground in two inches of murky water, her chest still pressing the stake into the rain-softened mud. She tried to speak, but she had no breath to do anything more than croak.
"Ow, Buffy!" Xander said in her ear.
Everything was dark and clouded, and it seemed that whoever was on top of her was taking forever to get off. She couldn't quite breathe. Her insides felt dirty from the close contact with the demon's scream. Plus she had the distinct impression that she was very wet.
There was a wriggling scramble above her, digging the stake harder against her chest, and she managed to puff out a small cry of pain. The weight lessened, then lifted altogether, and she felt Xander's gentle hands grasping her arms and lifting her to her feet. "You okay?" she heard him say.
She coughed, then went into a hard spasm of coughing, and got her breath back. "I think so," she croaked, putting a hand to her chest where the stake had bruised her. She looked down to see if she was bleeding, but then realized she couldn't see much of anything: her glasses were splashed liberally with mud. She took them off and began to wipe them on the tail of her black shirt, her fingers cold and fumbling. "So," she said to the blurred shape that was Buffy, "guess I'm two-for-two in the category of dumb patrol antics, aren't I?"
Buffy shrugged. "Actually, I think you're improving."
"Yes," Giles said dryly, "I found her antics this evening rather useful, myself."
"Giles," Willow said, "what was that spell you used on the vamp? I didn't recognize it."
Giles ignored her. Elisabeth smiled, lifting her glasses to put them back on, but then realized that, far from cleaning them off, she had rubbed even more mud on them from her shirt. "Give them here," Giles said, pulling out his handkerchief. Elisabeth handed them over without quibbling. She pinched a little of her shirt and pulled the fabric squelchily away from her skin. "Jeez," she said. "I don't think I've been this muddy since my mother let me and my sister turn the hose on her empty garden patch in our swimsuits."
She blinked a bit of mud out of her eyes and looked up to see Xander staring at her with an oddly vacant look on his face. She frowned at him quizzically, then blinked again, understanding. "I was eight," she told him. "It was not sexy."
It was Xander's turn to blink. "Oh," he said. "Right." He looked away, only to catch Anya's glare—and Giles's, which was considerably more potent.
"Hey," he said, "don't tell me you didn't go to the same mental place."
"Yes," Giles said, rubbing the second lens furiously with his handkerchief, "but it was my mental place."
Anya grinned.
"Speaking of mental places," Buffy said, rolling her eyes, "I have an escaped vamp to track. Is everyone okay here?"
"Yeah," Willow said, picking bits of mud and leaves off her patchwork sweater. Tara nodded in agreement, reaching to brush her off from behind.
Giles finished cleaning Elisabeth's glasses, gave them the glance-through, and handed them back to her. "How's that?"
She put them on. "Pretty good," she said, looking up at a streetlight. "I'll give them a thorough washing later."
"You should carry a handkerchief."
"Didn't need one in my home dimension," she retorted with a smile.
"I think we're fine, Buffy," Xander said. "You go on."
"Okay. Thanks, guys." Buffy gave them all a wave and strode off, disappearing finally through the cemetery gates.
"Well," Xander said, heaving a sigh, "that was certainly enough excitement for me for one night. Come on, Anya, let's go home."
"Are you sure it was enough excitement?" Anya said as he put his arm around her.
"Ohhh yeah."
"You mean you don't even want to have sex?"
He blinked. "Who said anything about not having sex?"
Still bantering, they headed toward the cemetery gates, leaving Willow, Giles, Elisabeth and Tara all looking at one another.
Giles bent finally to pick up his crossbow and examine it for damage. "Yes," he said wearily, "let's all go home."
"Goodnight, Giles," Tara said. "Goodnight, Elisabeth."
"Goodnight, Tara, goodnight Willow, goodnight John-boy," Elisabeth said, making Tara grin. Willow, however, was silently giving Elisabeth a calculating look, until Tara pulled at her hand and she said, "Oh! goodnight."
*
Some ten minutes later Elisabeth and Giles were walking slowly home. Giles was fiddling with his crossbow. Elisabeth was cold, wet, and giddy.
"How is it?" she asked, gesturing at the crossbow. "Is it okay?"
"Oh," Giles sighed, smiling, "it'll live to fight another day."
"That's good." Elisabeth stared at the mechanism for a moment. "Have you ever read Michael Herr's Dispatches?"
Giles, who was getting used to Elisabeth's apparent non-sequiturs, merely answered: "Book about the Vietnam War, isn't it?"
"Yeah." Elisabeth chose her words, staring at the crossbow. "There's this part where Herr is talking to this officer of some kind, and the officer is pointing out this combat helicopter. And the officer says: 'That is sex.' And that was totally opaque to me. I didn't see how a helicopter could possibly be sex, I mean, except metaphorically. But—" She stopped.
Giles raised his eyebrows and looked at her with interest. "Yes?"
She was still staring at the crossbow. "Oh, nothing. Just that I think I'm getting the idea." She looked up at Giles at last. "I know what you're thinking," she said.
"I doubt that you do," he said.
"I bet I do, too," she said loftily. "You're thinking: 'What do they teach them in these schools?'"
He blinked. "Actually, that was rather what I was thinking."
"Toldja. In these schools," she informed him with a facetious grin, "they teach you that it's possible to find the erotic in everything. Then they let you go out and do it."
"Do it...meaning, find the erotic in everything?"
"Yes," she said, with a slight blush. "Most papers nowadays are dedicated to delineating the sexual politics of every text under the sun—a great deal of fun, you must admit."
"But it hardly plumbs the deeps of scholarship," he said, playing along.
"Yes, but those who do otherwise are usually extremely bitter, so you can't trust any of them. We are knaves all." And she skipped ahead of him, declaiming: "As soon seek roses in December, ice in June; hope constancy in wind, or corn in chaff; believe a woman or an epitaph; or any other thing that's false, before you trust in critics."
He was laughing. "Is that Donne?"
"Donne? No, it's Byron: 'English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.' My favorite lines: Bowles! in thy memory let this precept dwell—Stick to thy sonnets, man! at least they sell." She was gesticulating dramatically as she quoted, and paused when she saw the indulgent smile he was giving her.
"What?" she said. "Don't the Scoobies quote poetry after they come off patrol?"
"No," he said. "Xander sometimes sings 'The Best of Queen.'"
"Ah," Elisabeth said. She whipped Robin the Bold from her belt loop (she had been careful to retrieve him from the puddle she'd dropped him in) and held the stake like a microphone: "'Weeee are the champions, my frie-ends—'"
"Yes, yes, just like that. You can stop now."
Elisabeth grinned at him.
"And it's rather tempting fate to claim victory when we're not yet home," he said.
"Ah. Good point." Elisabeth stuck Robin the Bold back in her muddy belt loop.
They walked along; despite his word of caution, Giles's grip on the crossbow was lax, and his stride was comfortable. Elisabeth leaned her head back and took in the stars through her slightly-smudged glasses. Her blood felt like shaken champagne in her body. Lower in the sky she spied the moon, delicate in its last phase, a bright sliver against the dark.
"Y'know," she said, gesturing at it, "I've had this simile in my head since I was a kid, and I haven't been able to shake it. Whenever I see the moon like that, I always think of a silver toenail clipping. Isn't that disgusting?"
He snorted and started laughing.
"Which makes me think," Elisabeth babbled on, "that maybe T.S. Eliot wasn't such a crackpot after all, using such stupid similes for such beautiful things....Let us go then, you and I, while the evening is spread out against the sky like a patient etherised upon a table—"
"Oh, God," he groaned, still laughing, "not the Eliot."
"Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets—"
"Oh, please—Elisabeth—"
"Streets that follow like a tedious argument—of insidious intent—to lead you to an overwhelming question…." She skipped ahead of him again, looked back at him; he was grinning, and he quirked his eyebrows back at her.
"Oh, do not ask 'What is it?' Let us go and make our visit," Elisabeth finished, triumphantly.
"You know," Giles said, still smiling, "I think I prefer the Best of Queen."
Elisabeth got out her stake-microphone again. "'Anght—anght—anght—another one bites the dust—'"
"Or," Giles said hastily, "I could take my chances with the Eliot."
"Well," Elisabeth said, dropping the act, "anyway, we're home."
"Thanks be to God," Giles said with a snort, digging in his pocket for his keys.
"Oh, do not say, 'Bad kitty!' Let us go and prowl the city," Elisabeth sang at him, skipping through the court to Giles's front door. He laughed so hard that in the end she had to take the keys from his feeble fingers and unlock the door for them. Her own fingers felt dipped in electric current as she swung with him over the threshold.
"Home again, home again," she sighed.
*
While Giles put away the crossbow and the arrows he'd retrieved (to be cleaned later), Elisabeth shrugged out of her wet jacket and headed for the bathroom. She returned to the kitchen with Giles's bottle of shampoo. "Behold the magic," she told him. With him watching over her shoulder, she took off her glasses, turned on the tap, and began to rub a daub of shampoo onto each of the lenses. She hummed tunelessly as she worked it into a weak lather and scrubbed at the smudges with her thumbs, inside and out. "Get me a paper towel, would you?"
He was ready with the paper towel when she rinsed the lenses clean and turned off the tap at last. "There," she said finally, showing him the result. "And God said, Lo! let there be clean eyewear."
"Amen," Giles said gravely.
She grinned at him, but instead of putting her glasses on her face, she folded them and set them down on the counter. "Hints from Heloise," she told him.
He smiled. "It looks," he said, "as if the patrol was a success."
"It certainly looks that way," she said, mock-seriously.
"You seem to have come off without any bruises this time."
"Yeah," Elisabeth said. "…Wait. No, not quite." She felt for the tender place over her breastbone. "I think there's one where my chest drove the stake into the vampire."
He winced. "Ouch."
She lifted the neck of her black shirt and peered down at her chest, squinting past the dimness and the mud. "Yep. Pretty nasty, looks like."
He hesitated. "May—may I see?"
"Yeah," Elisabeth said, "if I can—hang on—" She attempted to pull down the collar of her shirt to show him, but it wouldn't stretch far enough. "Oh, hell," she muttered, and peeled the muddy wet shirt off altogether. "It needs to hit the laundry bin anyway."
She wadded up the shirt and dropped it onto the bar counter, then turned to him with a frank, grave expression on her face. His eyes did not meet hers, and she turned her own to look down at herself, at her pale skin smudged with mud, at her damp red cotton bra, and the round, angry black bruise just above the cup line. The area around the bruise was mottled red and purple, like a nebula.
"You don't think anything's broken?" he asked softly, staring at the bruise with a thoughtful frown.
"No," Elisabeth said. "The crunch I felt was a skin-crunch, not a bone-crunch."
He winced sympathetically. "It does look nasty. You should put some ice on it."
She gave a little whiny groan. A flicker of a smile touched his mouth in response, but he did not take his eyes away from the bruise. "I suppose it would be counter-intuitive to touch it," he said thoughtfully. Then paused.
"Oh, you think?" Elisabeth said, playfully sarcastic—then she too stopped.
There was a silence; then he straightened away from her a little, without raising his eyes from her breast. She watched his face, watched the pink come into his cheeks; watched his eyes take on a faint shine.
She reached for his hand, lifted it in both hers, and placed it upon her chest so that it covered not only the bruise but a fair portion of her collarbone as well. Then she reached for his other hand and arranged it gently next to the other. As she did so he raised his eyes to hers, and there they stood for a moment. Then deliberately she reached up and removed his glasses, dropped them lightly behind her on the bar counter, placed her own two hands along his face and brought it down to hers.
He stood acquiescently for a long moment exactly where she'd arranged him, kissing her back. But as the kiss progressed, as they stood reacquainting themselves with one another's taste, he trembled and moved his hands instinctively, to caress her, to explore her skin.
Her response was a quivering welcome, unmistakable, unequivocal; he gathered her in, stroking her, and she made a little pained sound in her throat as she moved close.
In no time at all, they found themselves exactly where they had left off the night before, and then some. At the same moment they realized it, and with an effort they broke their kiss to look one another in the face, breathing hard.
"D'you think anything's changed?" she asked him.
His voice, answering, was as husky as hers. "No."
They met eyes a moment longer, searching; then they made a mutual facial shrug and reached hungrily to kiss again.
With that last obstacle overwhelmed like an inadequate levee, they put up no resistance at all to the impulse that urged Giles to anchor her against the bar counter, or Elisabeth to seek the soft spot at the nape of his neck. His fingertips found the furrow of her spine; her lips the hollow under his jaw. Then he sought her mouth again with his own—
There was a sudden odd, unpleasant taste and a squeaking crunch between Elisabeth's teeth. She pulled back. "Ouch," she whispered. "Graveyard mud in my mouth. Not my favorite dish."
"That can happen," Giles said, leaning in again; but she had caught sight of his face, and began to laugh breathlessly.
"Somehow I have smeared mud all over you," she said. "Look at this." She wiped a finger along his cheek and held it up to show him. He gave it a little snort.
"I don't care," he uttered. He bent close again, but she leaned back.
"Well, I do," she said. "I think I need to take a quick bath."
"Oh, please don't say that," he said.
She laid her hands along his face once more and smiled into his eyes. "I'll make it worth your while," she murmured.
He melted, so that his whole body was conformed to hers. "Please...?"
She drew a breath and made the judgement. "Definitely a bath."
"It goes well with my mental place," he said, pleadingly.
"I can see that. But it doesn't go so well with mine." He gave her a question-face and she added, "First time out of the gate, and I want to be clean."
He made a look of deep pain and let his head fall forward. "Oh, Elisabeth." But he let her slip out of his arms and out of the kitchen. He raised his head in time to see her kneeling by her pack, drawing out piles of dirty clothing. "This is pathetic," she muttered. "I have no excuse leaving my laundry this long." She rose to her feet again, carrying her bag of bath things. The wet places on her red bra, he noticed, had dried and faded a little.
When she passed the kitchen doorway he said, "Shall I put your things in the washer?"
"If you like," she said. "Oh, look at that lip. Poor, poor man. I told you I would make it worth your while."
His look changed subtly from pitiable to winsome. She laughed in delight and continued down the hall. The bathroom door closed gently, and within moments he heard her start the bathwater.
It was all very well, he thought, promising to make it worth his while; but clearly she had no idea of the effort it took to call a halt to the screaming velocity of every pulse in his body. He drummed his fingers hard on the bar counter. Well, he had better make himself useful. He went into the livingroom and sat down with her pack. He sorted her laundry into two piles, lights and darks, and carried the load of lights down the hall into the utility area. He dropped them into the washer, and poured in a cup of detergent after them.
He was waiting for her to turn off the bath taps so that he could start the load, when the import of her words finally caught up with him: her blend of knowledge and inexperience, her blush at Spike's taunting, her endearing propensity to throw away the game—all these things took one weighty shape, as of a puzzle becoming a whole picture—to lead you to an overwhelming question—
"Oh dear," Giles said softly.
*
Chapter 23