She looked stricken. “Aren't there some, like, native remedies? Something you could whip up…even some magic, maybe? I know you can do it: I have our Eyghon talk etched into my brain. C'mon, Giles. There must be something else we can do!”

Again, Giles shook his head slowly. “If we were in the Amazon, perhaps, or if I had my books…I-I'm sorry.”

Buffy's fingers tightened around his and she rested her head against his shoulder. “We'll get you through this. We have to.”

While she could still afford to leave Giles alone, Buffy collected food—as much as she could find, to last for the next few days. Fruit; a number of live crabs, their claws trussed with bits of Giles' twine; live razor clams found by treading on one in the mud while chasing crabs, for that night; two new eggs just laid by mother duck to replace the stolen ones, and a half a t-shirt full of nuts Giles had been planning to try. They looked like a greeny-yellow version of a macadamia when you broke open the shiny, spherical, ebony shell. He hadn't been able to bring himself to risk the health of either of them while they were building, and had postponed the tasting ever since the day they'd first seen them, on their way back from harvesting cane.

She brought the turtle shell to the campsite. The crabs and whatever else that came in with the tide every day had skun it clean and on one of their breakfast forays Giles had worked it over with sand as an abrasive before leaving it to dry in the sun for the last couple of days. Even with her Slayer strength, it took a bit of work to fill the big shell and carry it back to camp, up the slope, but she managed. She also arranged a new bed of leaves, covered in layers by new 'banana' leaves to make a slightly softer sleeping surface for him. More than anything, she wished she had a blanket to cover him with. It was what you did when people were sick…

After eating some of the clams and a couple of pieces of fruit at her insistence, he lay down on it without argument, next to the fire she'd built, something she'd become very good at under Giles' tutelage. While he slept, she sat beside him working on a new entrance panel to replace the old one.

Giles was right. It was a simple technique and so long as she was willing to redo new things several times if necessary, like tying joints together, she was able, eventually, to replicate his work. The hardest part was unlacing the old panel and putting the new one on. Even pulling out the posts for the original doorframe was easier. She didn't want to cut the old twine used in the lacing, because she needed to recycle it where possible for the new work, so the knots had to be undone.

Giles continued to sleep so heavily that his breathing became almost stentorian. Buffy continued to work to put the energy she would have used worrying herself to death about Giles to good use while circumstances permitted. Measuring and cutting cane for the roof panels didn't take long. By the time the light was failing, she'd lashed a cross member to the two support poles for the roof, and laced her new roof panels to it, and to the base frame. She was certain Giles would want to strengthen it as soon as possible, but at least if it rained or stormed, or got really hot, they had some shelter from the elements now.

The small, triangular spaces in front and back she would worry about in the morning, if Giles' condition hadn't changed.

Buffy went and checked him for what felt like the hundredth time. Sometimes all she did was listen to his breathing, especially when he stopped snoring for any length of time. At others she would check his brow, or sponge his face, but he never stirred, not even to go to the bathroom or for a drink of water.

Nothing had changed. He wasn't snoring any more, but he was breathing deeply and rhythmically, and his brow still burned.

She moved her food store, Giles' wallet, glasses, which he was still only using for close work lest he break or lose them, and keys and all the spare weapons, as well as her growing assortment of seashell implements, into the new shelter. Since she couldn't yet secure it, she covered the food, particularly the crabs, with 'banana' leaves, the only protection they had against forest moochers for the time being.

After a quick visit to the stream to wash her cooking stone, herself and the all-purpose t-shirt so that she could use it to bathe Giles when necessary, Buffy was ready to settle for the night. She moved her sword and her favourite stake next to him, built up the fire to last for several hours on the deep bed of hot coals beneath it, and did one more perimeter check before settling herself on the ground next to him.

He was starting to get restless again…and hotter. Buffy dipped the cloth in the turtle shell, soaking it in cold water, and bathed his brow again. She stroked it slowly and tenderly, making soothing noises until he gradually fell back into a deep sleep, and continued to watch him for a long time afterward. The heat radiating from him was beginning to really frighten her.

Silence. Or not. For the first time, every noise, every call, every singing insect in the forest seemed like a cacophony. She could even hear that cat calling in the far distance, and another one answering it from even further away, moments later. Nature's kind of silence, she decided, looking down at Giles, was way overrated…

Sword and stake on the ground between them, Buffy curled up against Giles. If she didn't have a blanket for him, she could at least share a little bodily warmth…except he was radiating enough for both of them. She snuggled in tighter, her head on his shoulder, her leg once again hooked over his right one. It meant the sword and the stake were kind of under her, but she considered that preferable to having to reach blindly for them, or having to leave either weapon where they could be picked up and used against them.

She almost laughed to herself. Fat chance. The most intelligent thing they'd seen so far was probably Giles' cat. Otherwise all they'd seen was a collection of seabirds, shellfish, some elusive fish, reptiles, their ducks, a few hints in the canopy of small furry things moving around, but nothing that ever seemed to come down to the forest floor, and once or twice just glimpses of something deer-like darting through the trees much further upstream. And of course their turtle shell meant there were some of those around the place, too. Somewhere. Maybe.

Sleep was a long time coming, which made her all the more groggy when Giles began thrashing about a few hours later. This time bathing didn't seem to help. He was so hot, and his eyes were moving under his lids like he was in some kind of demented REM sleep pattern. Buffy took his wrist when nothing else worked, and tried to get a pulse. It was pretty pointless, but it kept her from screaming. One hundred and seventy beats a minute. She dug into her memories of Giles muttering about her fitness levels during and after training…especially if she hadn't done any for a month or so…and whimpered. One hundred and seventy was very bad at any time…and horrible when you were supposedly at rest.

And he was getting hotter…

He was still muttering, delirious and periodically throwing his arms around as though fighting something, when she ran out of water. She stared at the shell, trying to decide what to do. She really didn't want to leave him to collect more, and the bathing wasn't working anyway, but she had to get the terrifying fever down, somehow.

Buffy had super strength, so much so that she could bend steel a la superman, if she wanted to show off, but nature had gypped her in the size stakes. When it became apparent that carrying Giles the regular way was never going to work, she positioned him and then herself, so she could pull him up and over her shoulder in a fireman's carry.

Giles roused a couple of hours later, wondering if he'd had an accident of some kind.

“Buffy?” He shifted a little, his head pounding and the rest of him feeling like hell. He was up to his waist in water, except that his head was resting against…

*Oh, Lord.*

“Buffy?” He said again, more loudly.

“Huh?” Buffy was roused from a dream that she was in a bubble bath with Giles, drinking Chardonnay and Mocha. Then reality came into focus.

“Giles? You're awake?”

His voice was weak and halting. “I am. Tell me…tell me there's a good reason I'm… taking a bath in the middle of night.”

“I didn't know what else to do.” She carefully drew him off her chest and helped him into a sitting position.

After a moment to let the nausea and exhaustion subside, he looked around. “Well, I must say this is an original idea.”

“Nah,” she admitted. “Saw it in a movie…one of Will's. Kid trying to save a horse.”

Giles was sagging. Buffy drew him against her shoulder.

“Rather…dangerous exercise. Any visitors?”

“A few new ones, all of which passed on by. Nothing totally scary…well, except maybe one pair of glowy red eyes downstream a bit, but whatever it was didn't come any closer. One cool thing…there are fish in here…I saw this flash in a pool of moonlight. It was a big fish, with a shiny blue strip on its side. I saw plenty of them, until I obviously fell sleep like a dork. You could have drowned…”

“Buffy…”

“Yes?”

“I'm not sure I can move my legs.”

Buffy's face registered alarm, and then chagrin. “I think that makes two of us.” It took her a good ten minutes to get enough circulation back into her lower body to get successfully to her feet. When she was confident that she was going to be steady enough on them, she bent and used all her strength to lift Giles to a more-or-less standing position.

“Oh, God,” he groaned and threw up as he swayed, fortunately away from Buffy.

“Oh, gross,” she complained before her brain caught up with her mouth.

“Sorry,” he croaked, barely able to stand.

Tears pricked her eyes. “No, don't be. It's not your fault. Besides,” she added, holding him even more tightly and watching the current, “it's already halfway to the ocean. I'm going to try to get you back to camp now and get a fire going. It'll be dawn soon.”

It was no good. He wasn't going to be able to walk. Even Giles conceded that he didn't have a lot of choice in the matter, instead simply closing his eyes again and enduring. The fireman's carry was a lot harder going back, especially the uphill bit, but she was eventually able to lower him to the ground near the fireplace.

Once the fire was blazing again, Buffy peeled off her wet clothes…well, almost all of them. Giles looked up at her when she finally approached him.

“What?”

“They've gotta come off.”

He looked down at his dripping clothes and bare feet. “Yes, they do,” he said wearily.

They worked together, but Buffy had to do almost everything. The overwhelming intimacy of even unbuttoning his shirt, pulling it out of his jeans and slipping it off his shoulders, let alone undoing the pants again, this time without the shield of humour, was almost more than Buffy could deal with.

They were both shivering when they were done, Giles continuing to do so even as he dozed fitfully on the leaf bed Buffy shifted him to, in nothing but his wet boxers.

“Stupid,” Buffy muttered to herself. She hadn't intended to fall asleep. They were both probably going to end up with pneumonia…or whatever the hell the equivalent was there…

She moved closer to the fire for several minutes, letting her body completely dry out and warm up in the radiant heat, even though it was starting to sting some, a fact which she was carefully ignoring. She reckoned she deserved the discomfort.

Her bra and panties, however, remained damp long after it started to feel like she was barbecuing. She sighed, removed the bra and hung it on the rack with the other sopping things, and went back to Giles. He was starting to warm up but only on the side closest to the heat. The rest of him was damp, or soggy, or both.

Buffy sat down on his cold side and started to pull him into her arms to share the heat she'd absorbed from the fire, until he started to pull back.

“Wha…?”

“You've gotta warm up or you going to get sicker.”

“Buffy…? Why am I undressed?”

“Yeah, it's me. I dumped you in the creek, remember?”

His voice was slurred. “Bloody hell.”

“Yeah. Bloody hell. C'mon, snuggle time. He hadn't opened his eyes and still didn't as she drew his unresisting body against hers so that his head was resting above her right breast, and the rest of him was more or less between her legs.

Somewhere in the fog he became aware of the sensation of skin on skin…a lot of skin. At the same moment Buffy started to move, wriggling them a little closer to the fire, distracting him from his thoughts and reminding him that his head felt like a watermelon…a throbbing watermelon.

“Aspirin,” he muttered.

“Yeah, right,” Buffy said softly, stroking his hair. “I'm sorry I can't make it better. If it helps, you're way cooler than you were before.”

“There's…surpris-z-ze. Arse...froz'n…”

She half smiled and reached for his wrist to do another pulse.

“Your pulse is back down to ninety-seven. Are you getting warmer?”

“Mm.”

She looked down at the tawny head with its growing number of grey hairs: hairs now mostly damp from the water or stuck to his sweaty brow. She couldn't decide if it was a good or bad sign that he was starting to perspire so much, but she wasn't about to let him chill again. Their clothes would take the rest of the morning to dry, even with her use of Slayer muscle to wring them out after she took them off. The only thing for it was to get comfortable and hope that by the time they woke up, the fever had broken.

'Comfortable' finally came down to making sure Giles was in a good position to stay as warm as possible, and that he wouldn't be too stiff and sore when he woke up. Buffy lay on her side with her body pressed hard against his, her shoulders turned enough so that she could cradle his head on her chest…which started out fine, with his face in the hollow of her shoulder. Until, restless and uncomfortable in his delirium, he ended up with his cheek cushioned against the soft curve of her breast.

After a moment to deal with that, Buffy found herself trying to imagine the reactions of the gang, were they to find them like that. The vision of Xander's reaction made her giggle softly to herself, while Willow's took longer to figure out.

For one thing it made her remember a couple of things she'd have preferred to remain forgotten. One was Faith's comment back in high school about Giles being cute… along with her 'I'd have him in a minute' attitude…a wig-some moment if ever there was one. The other was Willow and Tara's glowing report about Giles' singing at the Espresso Pump and how sexy it was. Buffy remembered how weird that made her feel: creeped by the idea of them being turned on by Giles, who had after all, been their school librarian and her Watcher, but…her brow furrowed. God, she'd had the exact same reaction to both Faith and Willow as she'd had to Olivia when she saw her in Giles' shirt: jealousy: mucho, mega jealousy.

At the time, however she'd called it 'wigging' because the other alternative simply hadn't borne contemplation…not with all the pining for Angel, and later, the Riley fiasco. She closed her eyes. …And let's not forget just plain stupidity: a Buffy specialty from way back…

Giles moved again, and Buffy suddenly realized three things: one, that whisker burn on a tender breast wasn't much fun; two, that she was actually half-naked, holding a half-naked Giles; and three, that his face was only centimetres from her right nipple and his breath was making goosebumps all over her body...

And *she wasn't hating it…*

As dawn began to break, she finally went to sleep, still in shock about number three.

Giles woke mid morning, disturbed not so much by the filtered sunlight as by a raucous dispute between unidentified birds in the canopy. He had the mother of all hangovers and his feet were cold. He could smell the fact that the fire had gone out, and that Buffy hadn't started breakfast yet. At the thought of her name, something else came into focus.

The shock took several seconds to subside enough for him to start thinking about how he was going to deal with the fact that he was in Buffy's arms, his face so very comfortable against the softness of a breast. Her breast? Her right leg was also hooked over his hips as though to hold him hard against her body, which it was.

After a moment to wait for his headache to subside to an understated ache instead of feeling like an axe had been put through his head, and a bit of concentration to convince his gorge that he wasn't really still nauseous, he began to assess the situation as rationally as possible… or as rationally as he could with half of his body in pain and the other half now embarrassingly aroused.

Buffy's steady, deep, breathing told him both that she must not have had much sleep and that she wasn't yet aware that he was awake. His cheek, despite the stubble, told him that she was impossibly soft and silken, and he could smell the sweetness of the tender flesh upon which he was resting.

*Well, that didn't help anything…*

He moved uncomfortably, suddenly aware that boxer shorts were going to disguise exactly nothing this morning and that his wandering thoughts had just made the situation exponentially worse.

Waves of unpleasant weariness and nausea rolled over him as he tried to concentrate. Whatever had made him ill had made a proper job of it. He felt shocking…well…for the most part at least. He wasn't surprised that laying in the arms of a beautiful woman after so long without any female companionship might arouse him to such a degree, but what did shock him was that *Buffy* was doing this to him.

Of course he loved her. He knew he loved her, but he'd never been willing to explore that beyond Travers' interpretation of what he'd seen. Up until now it had been enough to be there for her, to 'play the father' as it were, if it came to that, particularly after Joyce's death, and because of Dawn. It was all Buffy had wanted of him, and he'd been happy to do it, to a point. He'd known since the discovery of the prophecy about the Master that there was nothing he wouldn't have done for Buffy. And while she had been a child, a student, or somebody else's, that had been more than enough…

Or had it?

Why had her ill-fated liaison with Riley caused him so much pain? Why had he spent most of that time wanting to throttle the boy? And how was it that the manipulative Spike had been able to see inside his soul and torment him with something even he wouldn't acknowledge to himself at the time? It had worked so beautifully too. Fool.

Giles froze. And now he had. He'd just stepped up and declared himself…to himself.

*Oh, God*.

Buffy shifted a little and moaned softly.

Giles started conjugating verbs in Latin.

Shortly after that there was no more thinking.

A yowling roar announced the attack. It also gave the Slayer the split second needed to roll out of a dead sleep, sword in hand, and turn toward it, position pinpointed from the sound by her subconscious. Giles also instinctively rolled into a sitting position, only to find himself vomiting helplessly again, and enraged by his uselessness.

Buffy circled, still trying to focus and catch up with her warrior reflexes, but without taking her eyes from those of her adversary. It yowled again, a challenge, a declaration. Buffy didn't really care. All she knew was that it wasn't going to touch Giles…

When the stand-off looked like continuing indefinitely, and with Giles still in difficulty, she finally lost patience. Swinging the sword up in front of her, she took off toward the feline, screaming at the top of her lungs.

It stared mesmerically at its two-legged attacker for about a second then decided on a tactical retreat. When Buffy finally came to a halt it had vanished into the undergrowth. She stood for a moment, a little lost after every fibre of her body had geared for a battle…only to be denied. Happily denied, but still…

By the time she got back to Giles, he'd finished being ill and was sitting with his brow resting on his knees.

“Are you okay?”

He slowly lifted his head, revealing even darker and larger circles under his eyes and deep lines grooved from their corners, almost down to his mouth.

“May one ask what exactly that was?” He croaked, trying unsuccessfully to ignore her state of undress. “I don't remember t-teaching you that p…that particular technique.”

She shrugged. “Part Xena, part temper, pretty much.”

His head dropped down onto his knees again. “Americans,” he muttered.

By then the adrenaline had subsided enough for Buffy to remember that she was standing there all-but-naked, having a discussion with Giles.

She wheeled, mortified, and pulled on her damp tank top before re-starting the fire. The jeans were just too damp, still, though the morning sun was getting hotter and hotter. She went down to the stream to fill the turtle shell instead. Hauling it back was not fun after the night they'd had, but it meant a supply of clean water close by for Giles, and it took her mind off…other things.

A short time later he felt a gentle hand on his back and looked up again.

“I'm going to clean you up, now.”

Too tired to argue, Giles bore her wiping the bits of leaf matter and dust from his back, then watched her as she sponged the sweat and dust gently from the hair plastered to his brow and washed his face, throat and chest.

Buffy's cheeks were flushed, a subtle contrast to the colour she was building up from being in the sun so much…a soft pink blush on creamy tan flesh…and the merest hint of sunburn on her nose. Ill or not, he also hadn't failed to notice that she was avoiding looking back at him. Understandable, perhaps, after that vision he saw earlier. Yet…

When she was done, she helped him move closer to the turtle shell. With great care she cupped her hands, doing as he'd done for her, and brought the water to his lips, suppressing a surprised tremble at the feel them on her palms. Four times she brought the cool, clear fluid to his mouth, each time acutely aware of his touch. When he was done, she eased him into a more comfortable position then slipped away wordlessly, spending several minutes tidying up where he'd been ill, before excusing herself to go down to the stream to get cleaned up.

While she was gone, Giles made an effort to try to move back to the bed of leaves under his own steam only to be startled by how weak he was.

Buffy washed swiftly in the cool water, not wanting to be away too long but still shaken by the events of the last couple of days. She didn't know who she was any more, and even scarier…she didn't know who he was, either…

She found him still sitting where she'd left him, head again resting on his drawn up knees. Behind him the sun was shining on their shelter.

“Did you see?”

The voice was quiet and close to his ear.

Giles lifted his head slowly, visions of her lovely, unclothed form in his mind's eye.

“I…” But she was pointing toward their shelter. He managed to squint at it. “Oh…oh. S-splendid. You've almost f-finished it.” He looked down again and swallowed. That had been close.

“I thought if the weather turned nasty it would be bad for you if we didn't have any shelter. I didn't expect to fall asleep in the stream and nearly freeze you to death,” she told him unhappily.

He managed a faint smile without looking up. “I think it safe to s-say that one is in no peril of such a fate in a tropical rainforest, not even through excess b-bathing.”