The Six Inch Rule
by: GylzGyrl
Rated PG-13
E-Mail: gylzgirl@softcom.net
Disclaimer: Joss, Fox and co. own the characters. I own the story.
Distribution: My sites, Dword. Anyone else, please ask.
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: B/G
Timeline: Season 7. Sometime between "Showtime" and "The Killer in Me". AU at this point [shakes fist Jossward]
Author's Notes: Thanks to Karen for the beta. Gosh it's been so long since I posted anything, I almost didn't even know how to do the headers right anymore J
* ~ * ~ * ~ *
Buffy Summers entered her living room and smiled weakly at her Watcher. Giles was sitting on the floor in front of the couch, a tablet of paper resting precariously on his knee. He tapped his pen against it idly, having long since run out of things to write down.
Buffy slowly made her way over and carefully eased herself down beside him. Once on the floor, she turned to him again, studying his profile. "So, are you The First or what?"
He looked at her sharply, an unreadable expression in his eyes.
She shrugged but kept eye contact. "I'd just like to know. If you are, it'd be a good idea to just come out with it. Cause truth be told, if you are.and that means Giles.my Giles. is dead, I don't know how I'm going to be able to deal with that. If it's true, I don't think I could defeat you." She smiled strangely. "Actually, I could totally kick your ass. I just don't know that I'd care enough to bother if I've lost him." He said nothing for several minutes. Buffy sighed. "Well?"
"I don't know whether to be touched or very very cross with you," he finally said.
"Let's go with touched for tonight, okay? I'm still too sore for anything harsher."
"Alright let's."
"And you still didn't answer my question."
It was Giles' turn to sigh. "Not that The First wouldn't completely lie to you about it, but no, I'm not The First. I am Rupert Giles. The same one you've always known. And very much alive.well for the present moment at any rate."
"Care to prove it?"
"Hmm?"
She got to her knees and wrapped her arms around him, thankful to find him completely solid. Soon his arms came around her too and they simply held each other, silently, for a few moments.
"You really weren't sure you'd be able to touch me, were you?"
She sighed. "I was pretty sure it was you or I wouldn't have said what I did. But. there were doubts. I haven't been able to touch you since you came back from England." She pulled back to look at him but didn't relinquish her hold on him. "You've been so distant." He nodded slowly. She hugged him close again. "So cold. So non-Giles. Well, at least non-Giles-unless-incredibly-pissed-at-me. And that can't be it, cause I've been a good girl for. oh, days now."
"The six inch rule," he said quietly against her hair.
"The what?" She looked up to him again. He smiled as he stood and helped her up.
"The six inch rule," he stated again, patiently, as they sat down together
"Is this some sort of sexual thing?" She watched his face, hoping for a slightly embarrassed smile or a sweet Gilesy blush.
"Don't be silly, Buffy. I didn't say the twelve inch rule, now did I?" Giles smiled wickedly as Buffy felt the warmth of a blush light her cheeks. He sighed and stretched back against the couch. He looked the most relaxed she'd seen him since he returned to Sunnydale. She also noted, absently, that he hadn't let go of her hand since he first helped her from the floor.
"So what are you saying then?"
"This um. this may come as a bit of a shock to you. But, I'm a hugger by nature." She made a show of looking around the room. "What?"
"Nothing. Checking for pods. Go on, you were saying?"
"Honestly, I am. I always have been a habitually tactile person. I suppose it's from knowing at such an early age that so many supposedly imaginary horrors were real. When I'm with someone, especially someone I care about, I like to have that contact. The reality of touch. This type of thing, however, was of course frowned upon somewhat in Watcher Training."
"Imagine that."
"And so, we were taught the six inch rule. Which was that except in combat, training or unavoidable emergency situations, six inches of space was to remain between your body and that of your Slayer at all times."
"That explains why you only started being even occasionally huggy with me after Travers canned you. Of course, I do remember a certain naïve young Watcher stopping me on my first day at Sunnydale High by planting his arm in my way."
"Well."
"And then grinding his tight, manly, tweed-encased body up behind me in the loft of the Bronze later that night."
"I did not grind. And all right, I admit that sometimes you'd get me angry or infuriated enough that all my training would go right out the window."
"Where it belongs."
"And I'd revert back to a form of expression more true to myself. But on the whole."
"On the whole, you could seem quite cold at times."
"Which was exactly the point. Watchers have to have the ability to make cold decisions. The rule was created as a way to always place a physical reminder of the expected demeanor of the Watcher/Slayer relationship. To impose a distance."
"So all of a sudden, you've decided to live the rule?"
"I don't want to give the Potentials the wrong impression. Should any of them live to become realized Slayers, it is now questionable if they will even have Watchers. I know that Robson has started taking the younger heirs of the old Watcher families into hiding but who knows if that will be enough."
Buffy watched him intensely. "And?"
"Though I dearly hope that we don't lose so much as one more of these girls, I don't want them to expect affection from me that isn't there for them." His eyes met hers. "I have just one Slayer. To me, there will always be only one girl in all the world."
Buffy sighed. "Sometimes, you just say the most perfect things." She snuggled closer. "You know, I thought being the Chosen One meant I'd be alone. And then Kendra showed up and I saw how well you two got along. She was so obedient. The Slayer I thought you deserved. And I couldn't wait to for her to go back where she came from. I didn't want the competition and I didn't want to share you, you see."
He rubbed his cheek on the top of her hair, letting her continue at her own pace. "Then of course there was Faith. She was no more obedient than I was, but then she went and hit on you. Right in front of me!"
"To which, if I remember correctly, your response was some creative form of Ewww."
"Well I was 17, Giles. What was I supposed to say? Keep your paws off my Watcher you little East-Coast slut? Yeah, that would have gone down well."
"It's just possible it wouldn't have irreparably damaged my ego if you had."
"Uh huh. Which would have been followed by a two hour stream of embarrassed stuttering where I could only make out the words 'inappropriate' or 'indecorous' "
"Or I could have scared the Hell out of you and taken you up on it."
She smiled and met his eyes. "Scared the Hell out of us both you mean."
"Indeed."
"And now, I'm not even the Chosen ONE anymore. I'm running a halfway house for the Chosen Masses. And I don't think I've ever felt more alone."
"You're not alone Buffy."
"I don't know if I am or not. The only time I don't feel alone is the five or so minutes of the day when you're with me. I need my Watcher back, Giles. I need my friend. I need your advice. I even need your criticism."
"You'll always have that," he teased.
"And I need to be held like this, Giles. The only times anyone ever touches me anymore is when I'm in a fight."
"Buffy."
"What I want to know is, are you going to back up what you've said? Do I still mean that much to you? If we somehow manage to survive all this, are you staying or going back to England?"
He met her eyes sadly. "I'm not sure."
She disentangled herself from him and stood, hurt evident on her face. "Then you're here because of the Potentials, not because I needed you. I guess I was right all along. I am alone. I guess you're their Watcher now. Goodnight."
Before he could even get a sound out of his throat, Buffy had slammed the front door behind her.
******
Giles startled awake the next morning as a sunray struck his eyelids through one of the gaps in the borded-up living room window. No sooner had he opened his eyes and moved out of the way of the intruding daylight when he heard the door open. He stood and walked toward the entryway.
There Buffy stood with her back to him, wet, bloody and shivering, trying to shut the door silently so as not to wake the whole house.
"What happened?"
Buffy spun, startled by the closeness of his quiet voice. He could see now that the blood on her shirt had come from a gash on her forehead. She quickly hid any emotion from her face and met his eyes with the cold expression that she used to wear daily only a year ago; the one that had haunted him every day he was away from her.
She shrugged matter-of-factly. "Patrol," she said flatly and began to ascend the stairs.
"Could you." he sighed, taking a moment to contain his anger. "Would you please elaborate?"
"No actually, I wouldn't. I have to take a shower and get to work."
"But you haven't slept."
"Won't be the first time that's happened." She began to climb the stairs again.
"Buffy."
"Look, why don't you just pretend you're in England okay? That'll make it a lot easier on you when you go back there. You're not here. You didn't see the blood and don't care to know what it was I faced on patrol that made me not come home all night. You're not even bothered knowing that maybe I didn't make it home at all. You've got a pocketful of new, young potentials to think of. Girls with their whole careers ahead of them and not a one living an unnaturally prolonged life that allowed this whole damn situation with The First to occur. Go make perfunctory inquiries about their well-being, Giles. You're wasting your pseudo-concern on me." She stomped up the stairs and slammed her bedroom door, no longer caring who she woke.
Giles was trembling with anger and stormed up the stairs after her. He was about to reach for her doorknob to her room when a soft, unmistakable sound stopped him. Buffy was crying; sobbing hard into her pillow, he guessed by the muffled sound. Despite himself, his anger melted into grief and understanding. There was a reason she was lashing out at him so venomously. He had hurt her terribly without ever meaning to. Just as she'd started to open up to him, he'd all but shut the door in her face. He swallowed past the lump in his throat and went back downstairs.
**********
Giles had stayed out of Buffy's way when she left for work and again when she came home. Even preparing dinner, they had worked side by side in perfect silence amongst the boisterous exchanges of the others milling about them. After dinner, Buffy had announced to the room that she was going to be patrolling around the Thistlemont Watershed, a natural preserve on the far west side of town. There were many places within it that the Bringers could be secluding themselves without even the Park Services officers ever finding them. So far, that was her big plan; kill all the Bringers, if possible, until they found a way to physically harm The First. The only time she had made even fleeting eye-contact with Giles all day was when she announced her strategy. He wasn't sure if it was to seek his approval or simply to show him who was in charge but it didn't last long enough for him to concern himself with it.
Buffy went upstairs to get changed for Patrol. When she came back down, she noted that Giles was no longer in the living room. She yelled her goodbye to the others and exited through the front door only to find Giles standing on the front porch waiting for her with his weapons bag slung over his shoulder. Her eyes narrowed and she began to walk away from the house. Giles followed.
As he kept step near her, she sighed. "I don't remember inviting you."
"I don't remember asking if you did."
"What if I just took off running?"
"You told me where you were going. I'd meet you there."
"And what if I decided not to go there?"
"I'd go there and look for Bringers anyway."
"By yourself?"
'What do you care?"
"I never said I did."
"No you didn't. You were so busy maturely not speaking to me that you never did mention that."
She laughed humorlessly. "What do you want from me, Giles? You don't care about me any more yet you're offended that I'm not acting like everything's just peachy keen between us? Like nothing's changed?"
"I do care about you, Buffy."
"Yeah," she said quietly. "You probably do in some way. But not like you used to." Giles stopped to look at her but she kept walking without losing a beat. He followed a few paces behind the rest of the way to the main gate of the Watershed parking lot.
Buffy jumped over the locked chain link gate effortlessly and started walking down the path towards the nearest buildings. Giles took a few moments longer as he had to actually climb over. When he caught up to Buffy again, she barely spared him a glance.
"Could you have made more noise?"
"Couldn't you have waited?"
"I thought if I went on, maybe you'd just take off. After all, history suggested."
"Yes well, at least when I do take off, history suggests I'll at least let you know first which is more than I can say for some people."
"I was 17."
"And you think you're acting older than that right now?"
"Oh here's a good idea Giles. Why don't you come on patrol with me against my wishes and then distract me a lot."
"I notice you don't find it distracting taking the time out to throw your witty barbs my way. It's only when I have a valid point back that."
She turned on him. "Look. Why are you even here?"
"Here as in?"
"As in all of it. Here on patrol. Here back in Sunnydale. Here in my life again. You don't want to be here. You don't act like you even slightly like me anymore."
"Rubbish."
"And you know, I'm pretty sure I can allow the First to decimate the Earth and slaughter me in the process without any help from my long distance ex-Watcher."
Giles sighed. "Where is all this coming from? I may have pissed you off the other night but even I couldn't have done this bang up of a job."
"No, actually, you pretty much did do a bang up job. But you're right, it's not all about that."
"Then what? Talk to me."
"It doesn't matter how many Bringers we kill. We could kill them all and it's not going to make a difference, is it?"
"We don't know that."
"Don't we? And my being brought back may have made all of this possible, but it's not as easy as my death being able to end it, is it?"
"I'd say not, judging by the fact that the First sent the Turokhan after you."
"Then what do I do Giles? Cause I've got everybody looking to me to have all the answers and. I just don't. I don't know how to defeat this. I don't even know if it's possible."
A smile quirked on his lips. "So you look to me for the answers." He hoped to get a smile back. It was a vain hope. Buffy's eyes narrowed.
"You know what, my mistake. Forget it."
He sighed. "Now hang on. I didn't mean it like that. I was just tryi.."
"Shh," she put her hand over his lips. "Look over there. That larger warehouse shed past the ridge? I'm thinking that's the best place for Bringer hunting."
"Why?"
"Well, it's the largest structure that far from the main complex."
"Oh I see."
"Plus, that weird supernatural glow coming from the crack around the doorway? Dead giveaway."
"Nice to see you still hone." This time when their eyes met, they both smiled.
"Stay close behind and try not to get knocked out," she teased.
The two of them crept through the trees and large bushes to the side of the path leading to the building. Once they were up close, Buffy could see a large group of pallets piled behind the warehouse. She pointed it out to Giles. "We take a few with us when we climb up and we ought to just be able to see in that window."
"Well actually I think I."
"Okay fine Stretch. You can just climb up but I need the extra pallets, okay?"
"I could always lift you when we get to the window."
"I don't think so."
"As you wish. But you must realize that carting those pallets up the other stack will cause a lot of extra noise. Not to mention."
She sighed. "Fine. We'll go with your plan."
Carefully, being as quiet as they could, they moved closer to the building. The two of them scrambled up the pallets, freezing for a moment whenever any of them creaked under their weight. Making it to the window without being discovered, Giles peered in. His eyes widened. "Oh crap."
"What?" Buffy whispered. "Giles?" He didn't respond. Buffy raised onto her tippy-toes in a futile attempt to see. "Dammit Giles, lift me up."
He snapped out of it and put his arms around her. If she felt he held her a little tighter than he needed to, the notion was quickly forgotten as she looked into the window. Her mouth fell open in silent shock. To say it was crawling with Bringers would have been an understatement. The interior of the warehouse was wall-to-wall with the black-hooded minions of The First.
"Oh God," she breathed unsteadily. "Giles? Giles put me down." He did as bidden. Without another word, she descended the pallets and began to walk off into the night. Giles watched her silently for a moment or two, then followed behind.
Quietly, she made her way toward the water. Just when Giles got a little anxious that she might walk right out into it, she veered off to the left and entered a small pumphouse on its bank. As he got closer, he could see that it was little more than a roof with two walls, made of well-worn wood. Some large pipes snaked their way along one wall. Buffy had settled on the ground against the wall facing the pipeworks.
Giles walked to her side. When he got close enough to see her face, his concern grew exponentially. He crouched beside her. "Buffy?" he whispered, afraid she'd slipped away from him into catatonia.
Slowly, her eyes met his; one tear escaping her lashes. "Giles." she sounded so helpless, so hopeless, it terrified him.
He tucked her hair behind her ear and smiled tenuously at her. As their eyes locked, the bond between them that had been so brutally beaten down surged back to life, stronger than ever. At that point, he cupped her chin and blinked away the tears that threatened. "Yes you can," he said.
"But."
"No. Listen to me. The First hasn't won anything yet. It assumes it has. It's written you off. Underestimated you. Everything we've met in the past 7 years that has done that?" Her eyes glistened as she hung on his every word. "Dead." He smiled. For a moment, she returned it. "I know it's been hard. I know you've felt.you feel alone. But I'm here. If you'll let me be."
"For now," she whispered, looking away.
"Buffy, all we have is right now." She met his eyes again. "I know that we will defeat The First. But I can't predict what we're going to have to go through to do that. The choices we'll face, the casualties we'll suffer; that's all up to fate right now. That's why I told you I didn't know if I'd go back to England or not. Because I simply don't know what's going to happen. I may need to go back and stay awhile to help get the remaining Watchers organized and started on the right path. The Hellmouth could go inactive from all this and maybe we'll both be going to England. I just don't know. It wasn't said to hurt you. It wasn't said because I care about.because I love you any less."
He took her hand in his and sat beside her. "Time, distance, not even death has ever changed your place in my heart Buffy. Nothing ever could."
"Not even my incredible bitchiness?" she asked soggily.
"Not even that." He encouraged her to hug against his chest. "Doesn't mean I didn't want to choke the living hell out of you though."
She laughed and then covered her mouth with her hand as the sound echoed into the night. She muffled the rest of her laughter against her Watcher's chest. When it had subsided, she smiled up at him. "God, how did you do that?"
"What Love?"
"Giles, I just looked into a window and saw.Armageddon. It was like being awake for a premonition of how myself and some of my closest friends may die. I thought I was gonna lose it completely there for awhile. And here I am not ten minutes later. and my sides are sore from laughing so hard."
He squeezed her to him, kissing her forehead. "I could stand to hear your laughter more often, even ill-timed. Unless of course I happen to be naked."
"I like the sound of that." She slid her fingers through the gaps in his shirt between his buttons, loving the touch of his warm skin beneath.
"Laughing at me naked?"
She shook her head. "Just the you naked part." She began to unbutton his shirt.
"Bu-Buffy!"
She pulled herself to her knees and kissed him hard as her fingers continued their task. She then pulled back to look at him. Flushed, eyes closed, soft wonderful mouth open slightly. It only made her want to kiss him more. As she moved to do just that his eyes opened and fixed on her.
"Buffy we can't!"
She straddled his lap with a smile. "Can't?" She asked innocently.
"W-well, not here for God's sake!"
"Chicken?" She raised her eyebrow.
"Plucked and cooked."
She touched his cheek tenderly. "You said it yourself. We only have right now. What if something happened on the way home and we never got to. And quite honestly, with a house full of teenage girls, what are the odds we'd even get to then?"
"But with an army of Bringers so close?"
"What's wrong Giles? Are you a screamer?"
Resigned to his fate, he gazed into her eyes. "When properly motivated, yes."
"Ah well, I'll just have to take it easy on you then. This time. I mean, don't get used to it or anything." She started kissing her way down his neck when he surprised her by flipping her onto her back and covering her body with his own.
She smiled up at him in amazement. He lightly traced her lips with her fingers. "The only thing I plan on getting used to is the feel of your skin under my hands."
She slid her arm around his neck and brought him closer to her mouth. "That, you should get really really used to, Rupie."
He looked at her indignantly as she grinned. "Rupie? Dear Lord, what have I gotten myself into?"
"Trouble mister. And loads of it." She kissed him leisurely.
******
Buffy and Giles entered through the kitchen door of the Summers' house. The first rays of morning sunlight followed them through the door. Molly was pouring milk on her cereal and held up her hand to shield her eyes from the intruding light.
"Buffy! 'ow'd patrol go las' night? Bag any 'oodies?"
She grinned. "Not a one."
"Oh," she said, disappointed. "Then why'd ya look so pleased wif yourself?"
The blonde just shrugged and moved to the refrigerator. As Giles closed the door, Molly turned her attention to him. "What's wif 'er then? She looks like.," she gasped and sprang from her seat. "Oh Mr. Giles! You're 'urt!" She tilted his head in her hands and observed two angry red scratches on his neck, both wet with a small amount of blood.
"Oh yes." He cleared his throat, blushing. "Um, that."
Buffy was at their side in a moment. She gently placed her hand around Molly's wrist and moved her slightly away from Giles. She then hugged to his side as his arm came around her.
"What was that for?" Molly asked.
"The six inch rule," Buffy stated.
Molly crossed her arms over her chest. "Oh yeah? Well what about you?"
"I'm the exception," she stated smugly, looking up into her lover's eyes.
He smiled and caressed her face. "You always were."
They kissed deeply as Molly gave up on breakfast and left the room as quickly as she could.
The End