Summary: Ethan kidnaps Giles and Buffy, and when they escape, they're forced to hide out. Giles chooses to sizzle the Council's books with a five star hotel room. Revelation and romance ensues. Ethan is dealt with, as well as the inevitable Scooby discovery of their relationship when they arrive to celebrate Giles' birthday.

Dedication: Not really a dedication but a wish for Tony's dreams to all come true, for Joss to find a way to give us more Giles and Tony more time with his family...and above all to wish him the best birthday ever. I hear he sang at the PBP...so hopefully he's had a great birthday so far :-)

“Truth or dare?” Buffy challenged.

“Not on your life,” Giles growled, throwing his fourteenth pebble.

“I'm bored. How much longer do we have to wait?”

“Truth,” Giles sighed.

“How old were you when you were…y'know…with a girl for the first time?”

Giles coloured brightly. Even Buffy could see him glowing in the moonlight.

“Truth,” Buffy reminded him.

“If you must know I went to an all boy's school. The first girl I ever kissed, much less 'y'know' was Evelyn Sherbourne. I was seventeen. She was eighteen. It was at a party my parents gave…more like a supper for insufferable…” He stopped himself. “On second thoughts, never mind. Now you know, can we move on?”

Buffy frowned. “But what about Ripper…you know, the candy?”

Giles rolled his eyes, which Buffy also saw. “Yes, the bloody candy. First of all you have to remember that I was not sixteen, and that my behaviour then was a manifestation of magic, my then current life-experience levels, and the worst, most amoral, and unchecked side of my character. That version of me never really existed. A good part of it may have been manifest in different ways during my time with Ethan Rayne, but really…”

“Yeah, well, I didn't really think you were the type to beat up cops or smash windows, let alone…”

He snorted and threw another pebble. “If this demon hasn't presented itself in another half an hour, it's not going to, or we have the wrong blasted cemetery.”

“Thanks for coming with me, tonight,” Buffy said softly. “It's been way too long.”

Giles half smiled, almost ruefully, and took off his glasses. “Yes it has, hasn't it? I wonder how we got quite so lost. At least now things are back the way they should be.”

She looked at him, his cheeks and his eyes lit by the bright moon, and tried to figure out what he was thinking. “They are?” she asked.

He nodded. “Exactly,” he told her, just as a night shadow fell across his face, moving him to look up.

“Oh dear lord…”

Buffy was on her feet swiftly and wheeling around. It wasn't their demon.

“Greetings…”

“You again!!” Buffy exclaimed, just before everything went black.

“Well, this isn't exactly what I mean by 'exactly' Giles grumbled, spitting out dust and straw and pulling himself into a sitting position against the dungeon wall.

“Are you okay?” Buffy asked in a raspy voice.

By the time it crossed his mind that no dungeon should be able to hold the Slayer, he'd turned to see Buffy shackled by one arm to the wall.

“Can't you…?” He winced.

Buffy hauled on the cuff and chain. “No I can't,” she muttered. “I've been trying since I woke up. I don't know what this stuff is made of, but I can't break it.”

Giles squinted, his glasses not having made the journey. He wondered in passing if he might find them in the cemetery later.

“They look fairly ordinary to me…wait…” He moved closer to her and took hold of the chain, and closed his eyes for a moment. “There's a spell on them. Damn…”

“What do suppose he wants?” she asked, flopping back against the wall.

“You, I daresay,” Giles replied. “After all he came halfway round the world for you the first time.”

Buffy snorted. “Yeah, but this isn't usual his modus operandi. He has to have had help this time. Knocking us out and locking us down here is way more like…oh God, I hope not…”

“Ethan,” Giles growled.

“Yeah, how did you…?” Buffy's voice faded as she followed Giles' gaze. “Who let you out of your cell?” she growled.

“Hello, Buffy,” Ethan grinned ferally. “Ripper. Good to see you both again. I'd have sent you a postcard except I was too busy trying to preserve what was left of my mind after the military was finished with it. You really must try one of their lovely little 'rehabilitation' facilities sometime… really.”

“How did you escape?”

“Let's just say I had help,” Ethan drawled cryptically. “Right now, you should be more worried about your own future.”

“What are you going to do with us?” Giles growled under his breath.

“Ah well, young Dracula has already earmarked our Buffy for his personal attention. And I get you, dear Ripper. Except my plans are rather less romantic than his.”

Giles scrambled to his feet and lunged at Ethan, who back pedalled quickly up the stairs and barked something. Two very large Fyarl demons came down the steps to flank him.

“Behave, Rupert,” he said smugly, “or I'll have you fitted with a matching set of irons to go with your bit of skirt's. She's grown up quite nicely, Ripper. Tasted the sweet fruits yet?”

Giles lunged again and found himself collared by one of the Fyarls and hurled across the dungeon, hitting a wall and sliding down it, only to find when he finally dragged his bruised body into a sitting position, that the Fyarl still had half his new black shirt caught in its claws.

“Blast! Not another one,” he growled.

“Giles, are you okay? Is anything broken?”

“Only my shirt,” he snorted, and winced. “However, the rest of me is nicely pulverised now and will probably be a delightful shade of purple and blue tomorrow.”

“Touching,” Ethan drawled, and withdrew, along with his henchmen, before they could ask any more questions.

Buffy moved as far as the chain would let her, but was still feet away from Giles when it ran out.

“Are you sure you're okay? And what is it with Fyarl demons and black shirts?” she asked when she realised he was only wearing the collar, sleeves and a ragged panel on the right side of his chest. The rest was gone.

Giles discarded the rags and shivered a little. It wasn't freezing…what in Sunnydale ever was? But it was dank and cool as dungeons were wont to be.

“I can't get to you,” Buffy eventually pointed out when he showed no sign of getting up. “So maybe you could come back over here?”

“What…Oh…s-sorry,” he said, drawing himself back from his involuntary mental trip into his youthful past with Ethan. He scrambled up gingerly and came back to sit alongside her, leaning against the wall to which she was chained.

“Well that explains the spell on the manacles,” Giles offered, when he'd recovered from the discomfort of his rapidly discolouring right side.

“Yeah,” Buffy agreed glumly. “Wait 'til I get out of this. This time I'm going to kill him, very, very dead. And you're not going to stop me, okay?”

Giles tried to chuckle and winced. “I'd like to see that, but I think our first priority right now is how to deal with Dracula. Are you confident you can handle him?”

“Totally,” Buffy said confidently. “But um…what are we going to do about those?”

“Oh dear lord,” Giles repeated as Dracula's women crept down the stairs.

“Are you confident you can handle them?” she asked dryly, before starting to haul on her chain again.

“Um…I…well,” he stammered as the women approached him. At least this time they wouldn't have the opportunity to rip all the buttons from his shirt. He detested needlework. “Ladies!”

Buffy stopped trying to break her chain and whirled around in time to see one of the women take hold of the now open sides of his fly and rip them apart, shattering the zipper, and the other two haul the legs of his jeans over his already shoeless feet, so that Giles was immediately divested of his pants and his dignity.

Acutely aware that Buffy was watching, he struggled to focus through the overwhelming influence all three of them were exerting on his mind.

“No!” he cried, and struggled to get up, only to have a pair of hands slide up his chest, another up his thigh, and the third inside his boxers.

“NO!” he shouted.

Buffy realised then that he was really trying to fight the thrall and started to talk to him.

“Giles, you can do it. I'm over here. Remember? I really don't want to see you get it on with the Dracubabes!” she shouted. “C'mon, try harder! You don't need them. Evil, remember? Giles! Buffy, over here! Remember me?”

“Buffy?” he called as he was being brought almost to climax. His mind clung to the sound of her voice.

“I…I…” He lunged, trying to throw them back off him, but they were vampires, with vampire strength and all he succeeded in doing was getting the hand out of his boxers. The realisation that he still had a raging erection mortified him, but there was nothing he could do about that.

“Giles, try to fight it! You can do it…! Do it for me…for Buffy, Giles. I need you!”

He twisted violently just as two of them were sliding their hands back under the band of the boxers and bit the arm of the one holding him down. She yelped and let go in sheer surprise. Giles used the opportunity to leap clear, wincing at the pain from his bruises as he moved across the room to where Buffy was dragging at her manacles.

She shoved him behind her without lingering on the view…well, not too much…and confronted the vampire women.

“So who wants to be dust, then?” she invited, drawing the small stake she always carried concealed there, from the cleavage of her low-cut t-shirt.

They hissed at her, and looked longingly at Giles before wafting up the steps and vanishing.

“I think they broke your pants,” Buffy offered, looking at the crumpled jeans on the floor.

Giles didn't answer.

She started to turn.

“DON'T turn around,” he growled.

“So you can talk?” she asked, complying.

“Oh, Hah, bloody hah,” he retorted, shivering. “I suppose you thought that was funny. If I had been a woman and those male vampires it would have been a different story!”

Buffy hadn't actually thought it funny at all. Gross, perhaps, and assault at best. She swallowed, realising now exactly how distressed he was.

“Sorry, Giles. I didn't think it was funny at all. It's just that you don't…I mean, you don't usually let stuff bug you, you know? You didn't last time…”

“I hardly think almost being raped in front of you constitutes 'stuff' do you?” he growled.

“I-I guess not,” she said. “Do I have to keep talking to thin air?”

“Yes, you do,” he retorted and went to retrieve his pants, muttering about the shattered zipper as he limped back to the corner farthest from Buffy with them.

In spite of herself she turned to look, and her breath caught. Never had she contemplated that there might be such a male body under his clothes. His shoulders were wide, and lightly muscled, his back broad and mostly smooth, and his waist short, but tapered, in a British sort of way, to a very respectable butt in the tiniest, shortest black satin boxers Buffy had ever seen.

“Wow,” she said, before she could stop herself.

He wheeled, his eyes flashing, and Buffy saw the pattern of the emerging bruises on one shoulder, and down the same side, in the moonlight filtering through the tiny, barred window.

“I thought I told you—”

“Chill Giles!” she cut him off. “I'm not sixteen any more. And this isn't Sunnydale High, Toto. Me, remember? Slutty the vampire slayer…been there, seen that.”

He snorted angrily. “I don't care what you've seen. Allow me at least a shred of dignity, if you please.”

At that Buffy's eyes pricked and she wheeled immediately. “I'm sorry,” she told him. “I didn't expect a guy your age to be…you know…embarrassed.”

The pants back on, but without any way to close them, and his feet shod again, Giles swore softly and padded over to where she was facing the wall.

He turned her. “Had I been with anyone but you I wouldn't have given a damn,” he confided softly.

She looked up slowly, found his gaze and caught her breath in her throat again. “But it's okay, really,” she told him. “You fought them, and they're gone. And I-I know I rag on you a lot…but Giles…wow…now I know what Olivia comes to Sunnydale for…” she teased.

“Came,” he corrected. “The Gentlemen were the last straw, I'm afraid.” His expression grew sheepish. “And I'm aware that I am by no means 'wow.' You're just trying to cheer me up…” He stopped, the expression on her face telling him that she was doing anything but. He felt his face glow again. Not in his most outrageous dreams had he ever considered that Buffy might find him attractive…

“What are we going to do?” she asked, holding up her manacled arm, and letting him off the hook.

“At this moment, I don't know. Ethan's magic is far stronger than mine, and, frankly, I wouldn't know where to start with a spell of this type.”

Buffy frowned, trying to think the way Giles had spent years trying to teach her to.

“Does it have to be broken…Ethan's spell? Can you do another spell instead?”

Giles looked puzzled. “Another spell? What—?”

“You're always helping Willow with those 'poof' spells of hers when they go wrong …you know, making your cash register, your statue, your Greek cookery book disap—”

“My what?” he exclaimed. “Nobody told me that my new cookbook has been consigned to another of Willow's demon dimensions!”

“Oh…ah…it's not. She got it back. It's on the shelf next to 'Human Sacrifice in the Eleventh Century', where it always is,” she told him hastily. “But…you know that spell, right? Could you make my bracelet here go to one of those dimensions?”

Giles forgot the cookery book. “It might work,” he said softly. “Ethan is sloppy, and it's been so many years he thinks I've lost it.”

Buffy was never so glad as to see the metal cuff and chains vanish into the ether when Giles was done. It had taken half a dozen aborted attempts to succeed, but she was now free.

Before she realised what she was doing, she had thrown her arms around his neck. “You did it!” she exclaimed ecstatically. “Thankyou, thankyou, thankyou!”

For just a moment, Giles allowed himself to hold her, feel her warmth against his bare chest, and then he put her down and smiled self-consciously.

“We must…we must have a plan of escape,” he managed.

“Um…yeah,” Buffy said awkwardly, realising what she'd done and whose neck and chest it was. “How about I kill Ethan really dead, and we escape?”

Giles tried to snort, but chuckled instead. “It could work,” he said ruefully, provided Ethan and your vampire boyfriend don't complicate things.”

“Eiww, please!” she exclaimed. “Lame-O, clichéd Euro-vamps are so not me. I can't believe he ever had me in thrall…way too much like the Master.” She shivered. “I'm just glad I kicked both their asses.”

“Yes you did,” Giles said softly, remembering, painfully, both the event and the aftermath of Buffy's fight with the Master.

They smiled awkwardly at each other. The memories were no less painful now than they had ever been.

“We must wait our chance,” Giles said finally. “As much as I want to get out of here…and to watch you kill Ethan very, very dead,” he quoted dryly, “it must wait and so must we. Sooner or later I would expect someone to feed us, or at least to bring water. Ethan is a bastard, but he's not an animal. When it comes, we'll make our move.”

He started to move away.

“Don't go,” Buffy said suddenly. “Sit with me…please?”

Giles cocked his head to one side. “Buffy, nothing about this would normally frighten you,” he pointed out.

“I'm not scared…technically,” she agreed, looking him up and down and trying not to notice how incredible he looked, with the moonlight on his shoulders and hair, his bare chest graced with just the right amount of golden brown chest hair tapering all the way down to the black boxers, now peaking out of the roughly pulled on jeans where the fly was broken, and the flaps hung open. “I just hate dark, nasty, closed in places, and, well…is it so hard to believe I might want your company?”

“Frankly, yes,” he told her, amused, but came back anyway and sat down stiffly against the wall.

“Your bruises are worse?”

“Very observant of you.”

“I'm sorry,” she said, sliding down to sit alongside him.

They sat together in silence for what seemed an eternity, but what in reality was, according to Giles' watch, just an hour and a half.

Buffy finally spoke. “Maybe Ethan's an animal after all…?” she offered.

Giles made a 'humph,' noise, but didn't speak.

It was strange sitting almost shoulder to shoulder with him, smelling his faint musk cologne, and a couple of other scents that were probably deodorant or aftershave or something, mixed in with his natural male scent.

Buffy found herself wanting to lean her head against his shoulder and only just stopping herself from doing so.

“Tired?” Giles asked, catching the movement in his peripheral vision.

“Um, no,” she squeaked then grabbed the opportunity with both hands. “That is…yes, very,” she lied and rested her head against his bare bicep. She didn't count on her body's reaction to his touch, to the intensified male scent of him near her nostrils. It was too late to follow her instinct to sit bolt upright, so she managed her histrionics silently, closing her eyes against the realisation that she was indeed attracted to her Watcher. Not just attracted, but turned on in the worst way.

Alongside of her, Giles had closed his own eyes, barely able to concentrate on keeping his reaction to the faint herbal scent of Buffy's hair, or her light perfume, or the warmth of her cheek on his cold bicep, from gravitating to his loins. Since her fateful prom night, he'd grown more and more aware that he was in love with her, wanted her…but had refused to allow himself to acknowledge it in any conscious way, lest he accidentally let her see…

Only when challenged by Maggie, or by Spike, had he slipped and let his true feelings show. And none but the two of them had been witness. Up to now, his secret had been safe…

Buffy knew she was either going to have to move away, which she didn't want to do, or do something before she exploded from the tension.

Giles felt the fingers on his stomach long before he realised Buffy had moved. He jumped a little then drew a shuddering breath as she traced his navel and let her fingertips follow the trail of body hair up to his chest, where they stroked and touched and twirled the soft hairs…until he groaned involuntarily.

In a split second they were both sitting bolt upright, apart, silent.

For another hour they sat in silence, until the dungeon door opened again and they both scrambled to their feet, Buffy taking point and waiting to see who was there.

As Giles predicted, it was a Fyarl with a bucket and a platter of what looked like meat and bread.

It put the bucket down on the floor and sat the platter on it, before making several rumbling noises.

“It says we're to eat and drink. Ethan's orders,” Giles translated.

Buffy looked sideways at him.

He shrugged. “I have no idea,” he admitted, but I suppose I had to retain something from the experience.” He looked up when it growled again. “Oh, um…it's just realised your chains are missing.”

“Show time,” Buffy declared and leaped out at the oncoming demon.

The fight was a tough one, with Giles wishing there was some way he could help when Buffy was thrown against a wall for the third time. Then he spied the silver tray.

Buffy ran at the Fyarl and launched herself, feet first, catching it in the solar plexus before it had time to work out what she was doing. As it staggered backwards, she was surprised to see Giles stride into view wielding a silver plate, and bash the creature over the head with it. It reeled again and Buffy landed several more blows, knocking it to the ground, before Giles hit it again, finally bringing the edge of the rectangular, fine metal platter down across its throat.

“Gross!” Buffy exclaimed as a spurt of green shot across the room.

“But effective,” Giles growled and threw the tray away. They both drank from the bucket before slipping up the steps to the closed door. Giles listened at it.

“I don't think there's anyone out there. It's a thick door, but surely someone would have heard the fight, if they were on the other side of it?”

Buffy closed her eyes. “There's no one there. Ethan obviously thought the chains would hold me, and that you wouldn't leave…me…” she trailed off and looked up at him. Ethan was right, and Giles' expression was telegraphing that fact in no uncertain terms. She cleared her throat and tried the door.

As expected it wasn't locked and they made their way swiftly along the deserted corridor to the stairs that led up to the castle itself.

“These places usually have a secret exit,” Buffy muttered, looking up the spiralling steps. “You wouldn't happen to have any good ideas…?”

Giles took a last look up the stairs, which could only lead to Dracula and Ethan, and then back down the passageway to the junction they'd passed. “Come on,” he said finally.

One end of the new passageway off the junction led to a torture chamber out of which they had both backed with speed and horror. The other end didn't seem to lead anywhere until Giles had lifted a torch out of its holder, to light it with the cigarette lighter he always carried. The moment it was clear of its holder, the end wall began to move.

“Way to go, Giles!” Buffy exclaimed happily.

They had gone at least a mile across country before they realised that nothing was familiar, or known to them.

“So where are we?” Buffy said, when they stopped, breathless, Giles' torso glistening with sweat, her own chest heaving with the effort of the pace they'd set themselves, despite their injuries.

“If Dracula manifested his castle in the same place he did last time, and we're not on the side of it where Riley and I entered, I'd say we're either headed for the harbour, or North Sunnydale.”

Buffy shrugged. “There are lights ahead. We'll find a phone, or something.”

But while there was a housing estate, there were no public telephones to be found.

Buffy finally knocked on the door of a house whose lights were still burning. A curtain drew back moments later and a figure checked her out. Then the door opened.

“You couldn't help me, could you?” she asked the young man. “I need a telephone. I'm lost and I have to call my friends to come and get me.”

He looked her up and down and smiled. “Sure,” he agreed and ushered her inside. Giles rolled his eyes. Moments later he heard crashing noises inside, then silence. Then, a few minutes later, Buffy emerged and slammed the door behind her.

“What is it about your sex that makes them see every woman as an open invitation?” she growled.

“Not all of us,” Giles qualified. “Did you hurt him very badly?” he asked, straight-faced.

“I think I broke his coffee table…with his nose,” she muttered. “Xander's going over to Will and Tara's right now to get Will to run Romeo's phone number. When they get the address he'll drive your car over here…wherever here is…and pick us up.”

Giles took both pieces of information with the same straight face, and hoped that Romeo wouldn't have the presence of mind to trace Buffy's call or to attempt to press assault charges.