“By the way, where the heck were you two last night? I went to your place before work this morning and it was deserted.”

Giles looked up from the eggs he was scrambling. “We…ah…”

“We found a good place to be somewhere that's else while Drac and Ethan are still in town,” Buffy told Xander easily. “Remind me to tell you about it later…five stars,” she teased.

“Ooh, sounds lovely,” Tara and Willow said almost in unison.

“Oh, yeah,” Buffy grinned. “Anything on Ethan's miraculous escape from our so-called military, yet?”

“Not yet,” Willow said, rapidly punching keys. “Not so easy breaking U.S. military encryptions. Not exactly city hall, you know.”

“Sorry,” Buffy said meekly.

“I've got everything for the spell though,” Tara offered helpfully and Willow grinned at her before flicking her gaze straight back to her screen.

“When do you want to do the spell, Giles?” Buffy yelled.

“Later,” he growled. “When I'm not likely to let the eggs catch or the toast burn.”

They all chuckled.

“Sounds like a plan,” Xander yelled.

The response was a resounding humph from the kitchen.

When they had all eaten except Willow, Tara and Giles started on the preparations for the spell while Buffy and Xander sorted weapons. And when Anya complained of being left out, Tara whispered in Willow's ear for a moment, then turned and asked the ex-demon to help her do the relatively simple spell on Giles and Buffy

It was another half an hour before Willow finally decrypted whatever she was working on.

“I'm in,” she squealed. “Now, it just has to be the right…Whoa…”

They watched her work at speed.

“I'm into the administrative records of the place Riley told Buffy that Ethan was being taken to. I mean, I'm good, but even I can't access secret or top secret stuff…I mean the protections on that stuff is just scary…”

At which point everyone realised that there was only one way she could know that…and Willow coloured a little.

“Willow!” Giles prompted shortly.

“Oh, okay. Like I started to say, Ethan's name appears in several places in the admin records. They had to move him to the infirmary three times. Twice it was very bad. And there's a lot of official correspondence with some address in Manchester in England. The last reference is in an inventory of damages and their replacement costs, after he escaped.” She gave a date, only a couple of months previously. “By the look of it, he didn't hurt anyone. He just vanished, but after they discovered him missing they found broken locks, glass cut out in places, and the tyres on six army vehicles slashed,” she listed. “Oh…damn, I've been detected,” she pouted as the connection was severed and her browser complained of not being able to find the URL. She logged off and huffed in frustration.

Giles sighed heavily. “Well, at least we know he hasn't been out long. And by the sound of it, he had a get away vehicle, hence the slashing of the tyres of the others. That means he was definitely helped.”

“By Dracula?” Xander offered.

“Possibly,” Giles conceded, “but why on earth would Dracula deliberately seek out or choose Ethan…and how the devil would he know about him?”

Xander shrugged.

They all sat in silence, contemplating.

“Oh, oh!” Willow's voice eventually broke the silence. “I ran a check on the hotel Ethan stayed in last time. There's no one there registered under his name, but there is a Phillip Randall. Wasn't Phillip the name of the guy who came to see Giles…y' know, when Eyghon…?”

“Yeah, we got it. And Randall was another one,” Buffy said darkly, watching Giles and remembering the significance of those two names, particularly the last one. “That's him all right.”

“Yes, yes, it probably is,” Giles said distractedly, his mind obviously in a far different place. “Ethan would hate staying in a damp, draughty castle…and he doesn't much like vampires, either.”

“Okay,” Buffy said when everyone else fell silent. “We're outta here. I'm going to teach Ethan the meaning of the word Slayer,” she growled, grabbing the back of weapons she and Xander had assembled, and marching toward the door.

Giles got up and looked at the others apologetically. “We'll be fine. It's only Ethan. I'll call you when I can. Continue to try to find out what you can about Ethan's associates and anything we might be able to use against Dracula.”

Buffy kicked the hotel door down without pausing.

“We may have to pay for that,” Giles sighed.

“My treat,” Buffy muttered, striding into the room.

Ethan was watching BBC America and eating Indian take out. He leaped up and back-pedalled, spilling Lamb Korma all over the floor and knocking his beer flying.

“Shit!” he yelped, then back-pedalled a little more. “Ripper, fancy seeing you here…even the Nancy-boy vamp couldn't find you two last night.”

“Where is he?” Buffy demanded.

Ethan shrugged. “Probably pissed off back to Romania. He was climbing the walls after you left. Hunted for you until dawn, and came back so distrait he didn't even eat me…which I gathered was the original plan... He said he couldn't feel you any more; that he'd lost you. 'Course he bloody lost you…I knew I should have used Obsidian Demons instead of stupid Fyarls.”

Buffy, however, thought she understood, that she knew what Dracula had sensed. “Then he's gone,” she said, more as a statement of fact than a question.

Ethan grunted. “This morning: castle, concubines, the whole lot…gone. There was nothing but ankle-biters playing baseball on the vacant lot when I went back a couple of hours later to tell him you were nowhere to be found.”

“What exactly was in it for you?” Giles asked dangerously.

He shrugged again. “A chance to do for you, for a start. Power…and possibly something better than this banged up middle-aged carcass of mine.”

“You were going to let Dracula turn you,” Buffy guessed. “He offered you eternal unlife…”

Ethan looked uncomfortable. “Well it had its drawbacks, but the benefits were irresistible. I've grown rather tired of being me…especially after my little visit with your military mates.”

“Yeah, well being you just got a little more tiresome,” Buffy announced, closing on him.

“Ripper, mate, you wouldn't let her attack an unarmed, unwell man?” he yelped, alarmed.

Giles crossed his arms and smirked. “Wouldn't I?”

“Shit,” Ethan said again, and scrambled over the furniture between him and freedom, only to have Giles block the door.

A moment later Buffy collared him by the scruff. “I should make you bleed,” she said through her teeth. “But Rupert taught me a lot of things, not least of which is that I don't ever want to become you!”

She jammed him in a chair, picked up the brightly coloured travel strap from his luggage and put it around his chest and arms and the back of the chair, drawing it painfully tight before locking it down

“Call them,” she told Giles, who quite happily called the others to ask them to arrange a pick up for Ethan.

Ethan looked up at her pitifully. “I know you hate me, but you don't know what it's like…they didn't ever intend to release me…or any of the others. They were experimenting on us…interrogation techniques…torture,” he whimpered, his eyes haunted.

Buffy saw Giles' head come up and the look in his eyes.

She moved away from Ethan and drew Giles to the other side of the room. “You think he's telling the truth?”

Giles nodded. “Ethan is an excellent liar, but not when he's terrified and I can tell you now that he's terrified out of his wits.”

“I'm guessing you're not thinking 'good riddance'?” Buffy asked grimly.

Giles shook his head, his eyes still almost as haunted as Ethan's. “Not even him,” he whispered.

“You can't want me to just let him go?”

Giles ran a hand through his hair.

“How about Willow 'poofs' him to another dimension?”

“Buffy, you're not helping…”

“Sorry,” she said contritely.

Then her eyes lit up.

“Well, I thought we handled that well,” Buffy announced when the apartment was quiet again. “And Wes has changed so much. He's actually bordering on hot now.”

Giles shot her a look, then chuckled. “He's certainly much more self assured and confident.”

“Nice of him to go, seeing as the Council aren't paying him.”

“Well at least they paid for the ticket. He'll be able to go home, visit family, friends,” Giles sighed, “so his time won't be entirely wasted.”

“The Council was fast,” Buffy observed.

“Bloody fast. I should have known they'd have a standby team here…probably in preparation for unforseen circumstances, such as Faith escaping, or being released prematurely, or you getting…well, a new slayer needing to be called…or either of us turning rogue…”

“You mean now that you have all their money?” she teased.

He smiled back. “Something like that. At least they took Ethan off our hands quickly. And Wesley will see that he actually makes it all the way home.”

“Not that you wouldn't really mind someone pushing him out of a plane?” she teased.

He chuckled. “Such lovely visual imagery you conjure, love.”

“Actually, I can think of a lot of other things I'd rather be conjuring…or doing right now,” she growled and walked into his arms.

“As can I,” he agreed, his mouth meeting hers in a passionate greeting, just as the lights failed.

“Fuck!” Giles' extremely irritated voice growled in the dark.

“Put me down for at least one of those,” purred a much lighter female one.

“You're not helping.”

“I wasn't trying to. Is there a fuse thingy somewhere?”

“The streetlights are out too. It's a blackout.”

“Oh…blackout…you know what they say about blackouts,” she said playfully. “There's only one thing to do…”

“Mm,” he growled provocatively and slid his hands underneath her top.

“Sing,” she teased.

“Do what?” he exclaimed, exasperated.

“Willow says you're sexy when you sing. Sing while you're making love to me…I'll make it worth your while,” she promised in a sultry tone.

“When you put it like that,” he groaned as her fingers closed around the aroused member she'd already liberated from his pants. “But I don't sing well a Capella.”

“Huh?”

“Never mind. “Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all—”

The audible whack of an open palm on bare skin followed.

“Um…poor choice?”

“Uh-huh.”

He slowly removed her top, and the sport bra underneath, and ran his hands over her soft curves before starting to sing softly, and with deadly seriousness:

It's amazing how you can speak right to my heart
Without saying a word, you can light up the dark
Try as I may I could never explain
What I hear when you don't say a thing

The smile on your face lets me know that you need me
There's a truth in your eyes saying you'll never leave me
The touch of your hand says you'll catch me whenever I fall
You say it best… when you say nothing at all…

He finished two full choruses before his own shirt was off, and his pants on the ground, both their mouths far too busy to worry about singing.

They ended up on the couch, Giles sitting and Buffy straddling his lap. For all that they couldn't see each other, the sensation and the forbidden nature of making love in the living room…right out in the open…was so erotic for both of them that they swiftly came to orgasm.

Buffy was slumped, her arms around Giles' neck, her face buried in his hair as they basked in afterglow, when she heard something.

She lifted her head.

“Giles…?”

“I heard it.”

They separated. Giles grabbed his jeans off the back of the couch and they moved hand in hand across to the archway leading into the hallway and the kitchen, where he located the hall closet by feel and after a few seconds, his camping torch. As an afterthought he hefted the big chainsaw lying in the bottom of it.

“Wouldn't a crossbow be better? And why do you have a chainsaw in your closet, anyway?”

Giles chuckled. “Contrary to popular belief I do use my fireplace from time to time, you know. And I haven't been on speaking terms with an axe since I was a boy, chopping wood for my grandmother.”

“So what are you going to do if there are bad guys? Rev them to death?”

“Actually, my intention was to make a noise so that if it's simply looters they'll know someone is home and hopefully move on,” he explained, amusement in his voice.

“Oh, yeah. Looters. I was kind of thinking vampires of the campy cape type, or Fyarl demons. I forgot about the regular bad.”

They crept back down the hallway and across the living area to look out the window. Giles couldn't see anything outside, so they waited a few moments until they heard murmuring again, and movement…and then scratching at the front door.

Everything happened at light speed after that. Giles had already primed and choked the saw, which he kept in perfect condition.

The front door opened, he started the saw first attempt and flourished it as Buffy swung the light at the door, hiding her naked body behind his larger one.

“Hi…Giles…”

The apparition of Willow stared, as did the discernable faces of Tara, Anya and Xander.

Willow's entire attention was taken up with a half naked, chainsaw wielding, Giles, dressed only in jeans hastily pulled on, the fly still hanging open, revealing the top of the dark male hair underneath.

“They were worried about the power failure…Xander thought it might be Dracula, come back for Buffy…” Anya managed, infinitely less phased than the others and growing more amused by the moment.

“No…no Dracula…we're um…fine,” Giles finally managed, having killed the saw as soon as the light had revealed their intruders.

“Actually, the main reason we um…”

Everybody froze as the lights came back on.

“Oh my God…” Xander muttered as the women gasped.

“Oops,” Buffy squeaked. “Can you all, um, close the door and wait five minutes?”

Willow pulled the door closed almost catatonically.

Both Buffy and Giles roused from their mortification and scrambled for their clothes, Giles not bothering with his underwear, kicking the boxers under couch instead. When they were both dressed they turned to look at each other, breathing hard, their eyes wide.

A moment later they were both laughing. Buffy threw her arms around his neck and they kissed lovingly.

“I don't care what they say,” she told him. “Whatever they say, it's not going to stop me from loving you.”

He touched her face and smiled tenderly. “They're just going to have to cope, because I have no intention of loving you any less, either.”

Buffy's face glowed and she grinned back at him. “Well, we better let them in then, and find out why they all came back.”

When the door swung open again, they were all pretty much standing with the same expressions on their faces as they were when it closed. They filed in, wide-eyed and silent, except for Anya, who was smiling smugly.

“So,” Buffy said. “Comments anyone?”

“Is he good?” Anya asked immediately, Xander turning the colour of a tomato and Willow and Tara developed a sudden, giggling, interest in the floor.

“Better than good,” Buffy confided playfully. “Look, everyone, we're in love, just like you guys are with each other. I mean really in love…”

Willow and Tara both looked up at the same time, and their eyes lighting up as the romantic nature of the situation gradually became apparent.

“…And we have been for a lot longer than we realised. Can you…can you just deal…for our sakes? I mean, in a way we're all family…we're all still here for each other, aren't we?”

“Yes,” Giles joined in. “We're sorry you were given such a shock, but we weren't expecting anyone to return tonight. We thought we were going to be alone. Of course no one was expecting a power failure, and—”

“Rupert, babbling,” Buffy said softly, kissed his chin and leaned against him so that he slid an easy arm around her.

“So…you two are together now,” Xander said dazedly into the new silence.

“We got that part,” Anya told him. “So are we going to give it to him, or are we going home? I think I want to go home now and do what they've been doing.”

With that, Willow and Tara seemed to snap back to normal. “We came back because it was Giles' birthday yesterday, and we all forgot.”

Buffy turned a little to look up at her lover. “You didn't tell me it was your birthday,” she told him slightly miffed voice.

He looked down at her and smiled indulgently. “I-it never seemed to come up in the past. I'm afraid that the only one who ever realised before today was Willow.”

“How did you find out, Will?” Buffy asked, suddenly feeling incredibly stupid…and guilty.

Willow went even redder than Xander and regarded the floor again. “I…um…well, I used to have this…um…” she stammered.

Tara looked at her lovingly. “Willow used to have a huge crush on Giles when she was a kid.” She looked up at Giles. “She kind of broke into the school records to find out how old how you were and whether you had a…um…significant other,” she said shyly.

After a beat Giles smiled placidly. “You never told me,” he told Willow's bent head.

She looked up slowly and swallowed. “It was a crush. I'd have died if you found out,” she said sheepishly.

“Hey,” Xander suddenly spoke up. “I was of the impression that a certain other impressive male type was your main pinup back then?”

Everyone grinned except Willow. “Not pinup, Xander. I would have run over Giles' crumpled body…” She looked around momentarily. “Sorry Giles.” Then she turned back to Xander. “…To get to you if you'd only asked me…even once.”

Xander had the good grace to look guilty. “Maybe we should do the present now?” he muttered self-consciously.

“So you guys can deal?” Buffy asked when they fell silent again.

The girls nodded, Anya's grin widened, and Xander's shoulders scrunched just a little.

“Me? More like rewinding and erasing,” he told them. “With a little denial on the side.”

Everyone laughed and a large gift-wrapped box was produced, hefted by Xander.

“Isn't that the gift-wrapping from the Magic Box?” Giles asked suspiciously.

“Yes,” Anya said cheerfully. “It's from all of us. Everyone paid…except Buffy.”

He sighed, and gave it up, releasing Buffy to accept the extremely heavy box and carry it to the coffee table.

“What's in here?” he asked, amused, as he tore the paper off. “A statue of Isis? Matched bowling balls, perhaps…? I say…”

Their grins widened.

“What on earth made you decide I needed one of these?”

“Because you don't have one, and we can't live without ours now. “How can we make popcorn when we're here, or cups of coffee and hot chocolate, or heat the TV dinners really fast?”

Giles snorted softly and looked at the smallish machine.

“You have to like it,” Anya went on. “We especially looked for one without lots of buttons and things so you could work it all by yourself. See…just a little dial and one button to start it.”

Xander's looked like he was going to die of embarrassment. Everyone else almost exploded trying not to giggle.

“Yes, thank you, Anya,” Giles muttered. “It's a very thoughtful gift, and I thank all of you. And you can rest assured I shall certainly be able to operate it. I don't know why I've never bothered before, except that I am a creature of habit, and well settled into mine. I shall still make my tea with leaves and a kettle, but I look forward now to instant hot chocolate, a warmed blueberry muffin for breakfast occasionally and er…popcorn …whenever I fancy a bowl while I'm watching the telly.”

“Whenever we're watching the telly,” Buffy corrected softly.

Giles turned around swiftly and scanned her face.

After a couple of beats they both smiled at each other.

“Whenever we're watching the telly,” he repeated as she came to his side and slid her arm around his waist. He curled one of his around her shoulders and drew her close, deciding suddenly that this was possibly the best birthday he'd ever had, bruises and all...

Everyone smiled, genuinely happy for them, especially Giles, except for Xander, who was still busy muttering about bad visual places and being scarred for life.

At that point Anya produced bags of popping corn and bullied the incoherent Xander into carrying the microwave to the kitchen, with the other two tactfully bringing up the rear.

In fact…Giles decided as they automatically turned into each other's arms and Buffy reached up to kiss him with eyes so filled with love it frightened him…

…After all was said and done, he would have consider buying bloody Ethan Rayne a beer the next time they met…

…as they inevitably would…