Title: Home For The Holidays
Author: Gileswench

(notes and disclaimer with part one)

Buffy picked up her egg nog and took another sip. She looked at Giles - really looked. For the first time, she fully realized what she'd been dancing around the edges of with him for so long. She made a decision.

"Much nicer," she said. "The place looks almost festive now. In fact, I think there's just one more thing we need to do to make it look like Christmas around here."

"What's that?"

The nog returned to the table. Buffy rummaged through the ornament box and pulled something out of it when Giles was busy pouring another drink for himself.

"Giles, put that down and come here," Buffy ordered.

He raised one nervous eyebrow, but followed instructions. When he got to Buffy she moved closer to him. At the last moment, she grabbed a handful of Giles' sweater and hung a glass snowflake at nipple height. Before he could quite grasp what she'd done, Buffy gave a merry laugh and darted away across the room.

Giles narrowed his eyes and smiled in a dangerous manner. He, too, grabbed something from the ornament box and took off after Buffy. For some time, she managed to elude him. In the long run, though, capture was her goal as well as his. A strong hand gripped her arm and nimble fingers attached the effigy of a plum pudding to her pony tail. She looked up at him, challenge in her eyes and a smile on her lips. She flushed at the expression in Giles' eyes, but held his gaze. He pulled her a little closer. Her hands went automatically to his chest to steady herself. His head moved lower. His lips almost brushed her ear as he whispered to her.

"I'm not your stepfather, and I've waited a very long time for you to grow up."

Buffy shivered with anticipation. She closed her eyes and swallowed hard. Her heart seemed to be pounding much faster than it ought to.

"Giles," she said, "in Slayer terms, I'm ready for the rest home. If we wait anymore, we might not get the chance."

"Are you sure about this?"

Buffy looked at him seriously.

"I want yes and I can take no, but I don't think I could stand to have this be a maybe anymore. So you tell me; are we gonna have our Disney ending?"

He shook his head a bit sadly.

"Nobody gets a Disney ending, Buffy. I think, however, I could provide a Disney interlude if you like."

"How long is an interlude?"

"That depends, actually."

"On what?"

"On how long you want it to be," he whispered, his lips mere millimeters from hers.

"Always. I want it to be always. But there's only one way that can happen, you know. You have to come home."

Giles pulled back a bit. His eyes were suddenly guarded.

"What?" Buffy asked in frustration. "What did I do now?"

"Nothing," he lied, stuffing his hands in his pockets.

"Then why aren't we making with the smoochies? Do I have bad breath? Did I suddenly sprout an extra head I don't know about? What gives?" When Giles just turned his back, she took his arm and turned him to face her again. "I don't get it, Giles. One minute you're the king of seduction, and the next you won't even look me in the face. Will you please just tell me what I'm doing wrong? 'Cause two seconds ago, I thought we were about to get seriously couply, and now...I don't even know where you've gone."

"Then take a look around you, Buffy," Giles told her. "This is England. This is my home. You've just ordered me to leave it again, thank you very much." He impatiently unhooked the snowflake from his chest.

Buffy blinked in confusion.

"Well, I don't see how we're going to get all happily ever after if we never see each other and it costs a fortune just to make a phone call. And it's not like I can pick up and leave the Hellmouth, even if I could leave my job and all my friends and uproot Dawn. I'm not really seeing another way, here. Somehow I don't think your buddies at the coven will be thrilled at the concept of poofing you over to Sunnydale every weekend for conjugal visits." When he didn't answer, she reached up and yanked the pudding ornament from her hair. Quite a few strands of long, blonde hair escaped from her scrunchie. She blew out a frustrated breath and tried again. "If you've got a better idea, hey, I'd love to hear it, but if you don't, then...can't you even try? For me? For us?"

Giles closed his eyes and his brow furrowed in pain.

"You think I haven't tried? I've given up my home for you not once, not twice, but three times. I've left England for you twice, and Sunnydale once. I've given up so many things for you, Buffy, and I did it gladly. But there comes a point...I don't know if I can do this for you. I'm tired of being uprooted, as you put it. I want to know where my home is. I'm too old to be traipsing across the planet at your whim."

"Whim? You think I just woke up yesterday and said to myself: 'gee, I guess Giles is pretty much the only guy I know I've never tried to seduce, let's see if I can get him into bed and laugh at him'? Is that what you think? For the record, I wanted to take this a little slower and a lot more seriously than that. I've been doing my best not to think about this for a long, long time, now. I just finally decided if I want to be happy, then I have to stop running and finding substitutes for the man I really want to be with."

"Substitutes? What do you mean by that?" Giles asked.

"Hello! Riley? Spike? Total substitutes." Buffy moved to the sofa and sat heavily. She continued to fiddle with the Christmas ornament in her hands. "Not that I meant to do that...at least with Riley. I still feel kinda bad about that. Not that I'm exactly proud of the whole Spike thing, either." She dropped the ornament and covered her face in her hands. "God, what a mess I've made of everything!"

Giles sat down next to her. He reached over inconspicuously and took the plum pudding from where it had landed on the sofa next to Buffy's leg, then placed both ornaments on the coffee table.

"Why don't you tell me what you mean?" he asked gently.

Buffy shrugged. She turned to face Giles with a self-deprecating smile.

"You're gonna think I'm a complete ditz," she warned him, "but here goes. See...after the whole Graduation thing, I spent a lot of time thinking about you - and I know that didn't translate into spending a lot of time with you, so you can save that guilt trip. Took the cruise, bought the tee shirt. Anyway, Angel had just left, and I was hurting like hell over that. I wasn't ready to move on. Plus it's not exactly like you're always Mr. Approachability. By the time I started noticing that tingly feeling I got around you, well, so many things were changing. And there was the Humbert Humbert factor, too. You weren't my dad, but you were sort of the boss of me and so much older and you'd worked at my school...and I was eighteen. I wasn't ready to be with an older man who actually looked older. Not to mention the fact you'd slept with my mom. There were too many walls; too many things in the way. And it scared me. Really real things do that. But I started thinking, maybe after the Summer, when I got to be College girl, maybe you'd see I was grown up. I thought after a few months or so you might see how well I was doing and maybe be a little proud of me, anyway. So I tried to be what I thought you wanted. Then I came to you for help and there you were in your Hefsuit saying 'go away and quit bothering me, little girl' while Olivia ran around in just your shirt - and did she have anything on underneath that?"

She paused and glared at Giles.

"N - not that I recall," he admitted. "Buffy, you know I regret that more than I can say..."

"Yeah, I know," Buffy said. "I get that now. But then, it just felt like I was never going to be anything but a stupid kid to you. I was still pretty confused about what I was feeling, so I didn't know exactly why it hurt that badly, but well...I got the message to leave you alone loud and clear and I listened - for once."

"You just had to pick that moment," Giles teased her.