__Paint__
By Ann E Berry
"If it isn't one wiggy thing with you, it's another
wiggy thing," Cordelia Chase complained.
"Shh, quiet," Rupert Giles told her sternly as he
painted her cheekbone with delicate, even strokes of
lavender.
"And we get through with another wiggy thing and --
surprise! 'Why Cordelia, here's another really frightening
thing I need for you to do,'" she continued.
"Do you --" Giles said as he traced a fine line of mauve
along the bottom of her jaw "-- or do you not want this to
look right? Be still now." He dropped the second brush next
to the discarded first and picked up clean one and dipped it
into the orange paint.
"Right?" Cordelia complained, even as she endeavored to
keep her face as still as possible. "You call this right? As
if it's going to be a major work of art? What's that you're
using? _Orange_?"
"Burnt umber," he declared. The brush tickled the area
between her lips and nose. Cordelia felt a sneeze coming on.
"I'm going to break this to you gently: Elizabeth Arden
you're _not_. This stuff had better come out. I'm not going
around the rest of the week looking like Bertha the Tattoo'ed
Lady."
"Hold that sneeze. I'm almost done." He picked up a tube
of black and yet another paintbrush. "These are simple body
paints, I assure you. And we're not doing this for your
aesthetic well-being. This spell has a very intricate
symbolic underpinning. Every brush stroke contributes to its
overall efficacy." He painted an intricate glyph in black on
her right breast, then moved to paint a mirror image of the
first over her left breast.
"So why am I always the one who ends up stripped to my
birthday suit suffering these indignities?" Cordelia
demanded, trying to maintain her ire despite his hand gently
cupping her breast as he painted. "Or have you been sneaking
up here for spell castings with Willow too?"
Giles smiled that smile of his and leaned forward to
kiss her very carefully on the lips -- about the only area of
her body that wasn't covered in paint. "I could say that,
unlike Willow, we aren't natural spell casters and therefore
have to make use of ritual crutches, like the body paint,
that she doesn't have to resort to."
"You _could_ say that?"
"Or maybe you just look smashing in nothing but paint
and the altogether."
A smile escaped her lips. "So? Do I get my turn now?"
He suddenly looked embarrassed. Cordelia realized then
that he _had_ been concentrating on her as a kind of canvas.
"Come on, Giles." She reached for his tie. "If we're going to
be casting this thing together --"
"Yes, yes," he said, fending her hands off. He loosened
the tie himself. "That's my favorite tie. I don't want a blue
stripe on it, thank you."
"Then _strip_," she said, and picked up the first brush.
"It isn't exactly the warmest time of year to be running
about the woods buck naked. I'd like to get this done with.
Are you sure nobody ever comes up here?"
"It's a place for druidic rituals," Giles said as he
shrugged off his jacket. He put it on a hanger and carefully
hung it up on the make-shift line they'd strung up between
two trees, next to her blouse on its hanger.
"Druids in California?" she said incredulously.
"As I said, we're not likely to be disturbed." He began
to unbutton his shirt and muttered a "I bloody well hope"
under his breath.
"Because if somebody does stumble across us, they're
really going to think we're cracked."
"What, in California?" He undid his belt and pulled off
his trousers. Cordelia handed him another hanger by the
unpainted tips of her fingers. "All of them, Rupert," she
prompted.
"I don't think --"
Cordelia sighed and reached for his boxers.
"I can manage." He backed off and shucked his remaining
garment. "Satisfied?"
"Eventually, I _hope_," she retorted, eyeing his
unenthused cock dolefully. She picked up her brush again. A
cool, woodsy breeze had picked up again, and he shivered.
"Buck up, Rupert. Once you get used to it, the fresh outdoor
air will be invigorating."
"I apologize for feeding you that line earlier," he said
with another shiver. "Let's not dwell on it now, shall we?"
"The paint helps," she admitted as she slathered red
paint in intricate curlicues up his ribs. "You've been eating
too much junk food lately. I should sign us both up for
aerobics over at the health club."
"If we can fit it in between averting Armageddon and
cross-referencing the collection on demonology, why not?"
"Don't be snarky." Cordelia stuck her tongue out in
concentration as she carefully painted a glyph on his right
thigh. "Snarky distracts me," she muttered to herself as she
worked.
"Cordelia, this isn't an art project. Just draw the damn
things," he growled.
"Just because it's magick stuff, doesn't mean that I'm
not going to make it look good, Mr. Every Brush Stoke Counts
Guy." Cordelia passed over towards his other thigh. On the
way, she came within licking distance of his cock and gave
into temptation. He gave a strangled gasp, and the member in
question stirred to life.
"Cordelia . . ."
"Don't smear the paint, I know," she said with a
mischievous smile up at him. "I've been sucking face around
my makeup for years now. Nothing will get smeared." She bent
forward to his cock again, kissing and licking it coaxingly
to attention. His hands settled in her hair, tangling it
about his fingers. With most guys, Cordelia hated that, but
with him she always felt as if her hair had mutated into some
priceless commodity. She tossed her head once, to feel his
fingers press against her scalp, then moved forward to take
the head of his cock into her mouth. She carefully put her
fingertips on the ground so she wouldn't be tempted to grab
at him, smudging her just completed handiwork, and pressed
forward to take several more inches of him into her mouth.
"Cora --" Giles moaned softly, grabbing the back of her
head and urging her on.
She smiled around the hot cock sliding back and forth
across her lips, ran her tongue down the base of it, then
nipped at him just enough to make him jump. It had been too
long since the last magick ritual. She was going to have to
put an end to this notion that they ought to save themselves
up for the magick.
He tensed, and she immediately let him slip from her
mouth and grabbed his cock. Two good pumps did it.
"I don't care what you say, we need to do this more
often." Cordelia tried to wipe his sticky seed from her hair.
"Sorry." He knelt to kiss her, keeping his hands to his
sides. "It doesn't hurt to swallow, you know."
"Do you know how many calories semen has in it?" she
complained.
"High in protein, low in fat," he murmured and reached
under to press his hand against her vulva.
"Well, yes," Cordelia admitted. Her eyes were watering
from the sheer pleasure of his finger sliding up and across
her opening. "Gods, forwards a bit." She reached down to
guide and press his hand, then whimpered.
"Like that?" he said, and slipped three fingers deep
inside her.
She gave a throaty yell and barely contained herself
from wrapping herself around him. "YES!"
Giles grabbed her hair, wound it around his fingers, and
yanked her in inches from his face. "Then show your
appreciation," he said in his best Ripper voice. "Come for
me. _Now_."
"Fuck _you_!" Cordelia said indignantly. And came so
hard that she bit her tongue.
They fell apart and sat on the ground, staring at each
other and breathing heavily. "Okay," she said finally,
working her wounded tongue a bit. "That wath pretty good.
Don't you dare think you're going to be making a regular
thing out of ordering me about though."
"Me, order Queen C. about?" Giles said with a smile.
"Right." She nodded emphatically, then pushed herself
back to her feet and craned to inspect her rear. "Ugh, we're
going to have to redo my ass."
"My pleasure," he said and picked up the proper
paintbrush.
"So," Cordelia said as the paintbrush swept wetly down
the curves of her buttocks. "Who did you do this with,
before?"
"Before?" he said.
"Before I became your Watcher understudy. About half of
these old magick rituals of yours involve sex. You can't tell
me you've never done them with anybody before me."
"Why not? My knowledge of most areas of the magickal
arts is theoretical. I can put the erotic side to use more
now that I have a consenting apprentice. You can turn
around."
She turned to look up into his hazel eyes. He offered
her the paintbrush. "You didn't answer my question."
"Do you really want to know the answer?" he said evenly.
Cordelia scowled and plucked the paintbrush from his
hand. "Tell me again what this one is supposed to accomplish?
Lift up your foot."
"You don't need to paint the soles of my feet."
"You're _my_ work, and you're going to make artistic
sense. Lift up your foot."
He sighed in annoyance but humored her. "We're going to
be attempting to summon some protective spirits. If we're
successful, I can bind them to Buffy's protection for a
period of time. They're attracted to sexual energy, so we've
set the bait. With the proper ritual observances, we can now
lure them into the circle and trap them in the ritual
object."
"What ritual object? Other foot."
"It doesn't matter. Anything Buffy can carry with her.
I found an electric torch that will do." He wobbled. "Are you
done yet?"
"Just a minute." She smiled maliciously up at him.
"Ticklish?"
"No. As you should know by now. I can only stand about
like a stork for so long."
"Okay, you can put it down." She grabbed the brush for
the blue and moved around to his rear. "You should really
wear jeans more, Giles. What's the point of having a nice ass
if you're going to hide it all the time? Don't you feel
really skanky sometimes -- all this fucking we've been doing
and it's always for _Buffy's_ sake?"
"It's not always for Buffy's sake," he defended himself
with as much dignity as he could muster while naked, smeared
with primary colors with his apprentice dabbling fanciful
embellishments on his buttocks. "But as long as we're . . .
involved anyway, we might as well combine work with play."
"Rupert, maybe sometimes I'd just like a simple vanilla
fuck," she said. "Complete with dinner with candles and
champagne in an ice bucket and a bubble bath in an awful
heart-shaped bathtub."
He jumped. "Don't put that there! If you're done with
the basic designs, we can get this spell underway."
"But I still have to --" Cordelia attempted.
"You are done." He pulled the brush from her hand. "Come
on. The sooner we get this over with, the sooner we can get
to the bathhouse uproad and wash this off."
She backed up to survey her handiwork. "All right. Stay
there a minute. I need to get something from my car."
"Cordelia. . . !"
Cordy fished the car keys from the paint tray and smiled
sweetly at him as she walked off towards her car. His eyes
were glued on her every inch of the way; she didn't need to
watch him to know. She wasn't long rooting around in the back
seat of her car -- knew exactly where to find what she
wanted. She held the brown leather bag away from her painted
body as she sauntered back.
"What's that?" he said suspiciously.
"Nothing," she said, and set the bag down on a flat
stone outside the casting circle that Giles had laid out in
the clearing with white and black quartz rocks. "Where do I
stand?"
"Uhm, there," he indicated, and stepped back to the
opposite side of the circle. "I'm going to try a variation
that Willow worked up of the usual protectors calling circle.
It incorporates Taoist iconology."
"Oh," she said, looking about the circle. "Yin Yang,
right? Shouldn't I be on the female half?"
"We're harmonizing opposites." He set the flashlight at
circle center and stepped back.
Something occurred to Cordelia. "Wait. _Willow_ worked
up this spell?"
"It should be sound," he said. "She ran it through her
computer model."
"And does she know about the _energies_ and everything?"
Giles refused to meet her eyes. "We took everything into
account. Cordelia, Willow knows we've been seeing each
other."
"Oh, well yay! Great, she knows. She, Oz, and we can all
go out on a bowling date sometime. But does she _have_ to be
choreographing our sex lives too?"
He sighed. "If you want to opt out of the erotic spell
castings --"
"No, I don't! They ought to be advertising this stuff on
Love Connection. But I want to be Mary Tyler Moore sometimes,
okay?"
"Your heart-shaped tub --"
"Yes! I want a date, Mr. Giles. With flowers, sappy
movie, lobster dinner at an obscenely expensive restaurant,
and you footing the bill in hopes of getting me in the sack
later on. I want to be seduced, damnit!"
"Well, why didn't you say so earlier?" he said in
exasperation. "Will tomorrow night do?"
"I've got a hair styling appointment. Which I'm truly
going to need after all this. Then my kickboxing class.
Friday night."
"Faculty mixer," he replied with a grimace. "Dean
Whittaker tells us it's mandatory. We'll talk about this
later then."
"No, we're going to settle it now. We can't do Saturday,
because my auditions are that night. And Sunday I said I'd
help Xander pick out a birthday gift for Aura. But Monday
night --"
"I promised to start Buffy out on a few minor defensive
spells. I've already put her off twice."
"Can't Willow do that?"
"Best if she learns from a man, I'm afraid. Those
harmonizing energies again."
Cordelia glared at him. Hard.
"For god's sake, Cordelia. She's my Slayer, not my
apprentice. No, we won't be delving into the erotic side of
the magick arts together. Can we get on with the spell now,
before I freeze my bum off? I promise we'll work something
out."
"How do Watchers ever get around to having kids?" she
groused. "Oh _go_ ahead. _Anything_ to get warm again."
"We can smear the paint all we like as soon as we're
done with the spell." Giles gave Cordelia a Ripperish smile
that curled her toes. She took an unconscious step towards
him, but he flung a hand up, palm outwards, and yelled,
"Arretez!"
"What the --" But he only looked hard into her eyes and
launched into a long magickal spiel. At least this one was in
French, and she could follow more than one word out of
twenty. Cordelia stepped back to her spot and tried to focus
on harmonizing her energies. He was _so_ going to have to
crawl, later, for this bit of bossiness.
Fluffy sparks began to flutter about the circle like
an electrical dust storm. She started violently as a couple
of them tangled in her hair. They were somewhat angrier than
your average static electricity. The paint at least seemed to
be acting as a good insulator. She dropped her hand to cover
her pubic hair.
At center of the circle, a agitated cloud of sparks was
coalescing about the flashlight, roiling about it as if
assessing its suitability. Cordelia frowned. Giles should
have said earlier what they were going to need. She could
have told him that the buzzy light things weren't going to be
happy with this K-Mart special.
Giles was focusing so hard on his litany that he was
scowling fiercely. She felt a thrill. Outside of the bedroom,
he didn't often get worked up to this level of intensity, but
when he did she could come from just watching him go at it.
"_Entrez-vous!_" he intoned, targeting the cloud of
buzzy light things with an intense willpower. "Je vous
commande!"
The buzzy light things whirled into a furious funnel
cloud. The funnel spun erratically, jerked hard to one side,
then slowed to sink with a sticky reluctance down into the
flashlight.
"We did it!" Cordelia took a step forward.
"Wait!" Giles yelled at her -- but the light things had
already broken from the enchantment. They exploded outwards
away from the flashlight, whirled about the rim of the
circle, rolling and collecting into a furious loose
electrical sphere. Cordelia yelped as they flowed over her.
She heard the voices of electrons in her ears; the smell of
ozone seared the inside of her nose -- and then they'd passed
her by and collected in a small whirlwind around the brown
bag she'd set at the edge of the circle.
"Hey!" she shouted. "No! Bad spirits! I spent a month's
pay on that!" She leapt to circle's edge and grabbed at the
carrying strap to drag the bag to safety.
The buzzy light things hummed like ten trillion angry
bumble bees.
"Leave it!" Giles yelled. He leapt to scoop her up and
away. "They've decided on their object. It's suicidal now to
intervene."
"Crap," Cordelia said, as she flung an arm around his
shoulders and leaned to look back at the bag. "And I'll bet
that the Watcher's Council won't reimburse me for _this_
either."
"I did have a cheaper focal object for the spell," he
said ruefully, and set her back down on her feet. "They liked
your bag better. What's in it?"
"Of course they'd prefer the bag. They'd obviously clean
up on 'Let's Make a Deal'." Cordelia glanced at him, then
looked away. "It was a camera. A Minolta digital camera."
"A _camera_?"
"Well pardon me for wanting a few mementos of my Watcher
training." She surveyed his smudged body paint and frowned.
"Not that it matters now. Are the spirit thingies settled
in?"
Giles approached the bag carefully and poked it with his
bare foot. A faint luminescent glow puffed up, then settled
sleepily down in again. "They appear to be happy in their new
quarters. I suppose a camera will be as good a magickal focus
for Buffy as the torch would have been."
"If she breaks it by hitting things with it, she's going
to be _so_ dead," Cordelia replied. She moved to help Giles
kick the black and white quartz perimeter of the circle
apart. "Are we done with the breakdown now?"
"Not quite." He pulled her close to his chest and ran
his hands hard down the sides of her back to grab and rub at
her buttocks. "We need to break up the lines of the body
paint as well."
"Finally something to get warm," Cordelia said. She
grabbed his head and proceeded to make a mess of her
paintings across his face.
* * * * *
His hands moved up and down her body, rubbing to the
bone everywhere. Cordelia gave up trying to be delicate in
his grasp and wrapped herself around him, opting for maximum
skin contact. He grabbed her under the arms and pulled her up
to his mouth so they could taste one another as well.
Growling softly, she hiked her legs up around his hips,
forcing him to take her full weight. He staggered, then
pressed his arms around her ribs to steady her for a tongue
tonsillectomy.
Halfway into plundering his mouth, Cordelia became aware
that she was riding just over his erection. She dropped one
long leg down the back of his so she could slither down his
body to greet it. He murmured her name into her still
staticky hair, and she wrapped her hand around his cock to
push it to her passage.
They moved together with a mutual exclamation of
appreciation, and Cordelia grabbed at his ass to urge him on.
They were making an uncoordinated mess out of each other's
body paint, but in her lust-hazed brain, she thought the
effect was extremely nice.
"_Harder_," she yelled at him, and dug into his ass with
her fingernails.
"Damn!" Giles exclaimed, looking over her shoulder. "We
didn't get them locked down!"
"Wha-?" She half-turned -- as far as she could get under
the circumstances -- only to be blinded by a the blizzard of
light descending on them. "The spirits!"
"Attracted to the sexual energies!" he panted, and stuck
a finger straight up her ass.
Cordelia squealed and came violently, spasming
uncontrollably in his arms. Her orgasm excited the light
things. They swarmed up and down her skin in a hyperkinetic
frenzy. It felt like a multitude of tiny moth wings stroking
her flesh -- and to her horrified embarrassment, Cordelia
felt her sexual tension beginning to build again almost as
soon as the orgasm died.
It didn't help that her lover was climaxing right after
her. She felt his hot seed pumping up into her; it was like a
drug suddenly, and she needed another hit. Cordelia wound her
fingers behind his neck as she wriggled to get him even
further into her. The feeling of desperate and insatiable
need panicked her even as it stimulated her. "Rupert?" she
cried out fearfully. "I am _not_ into orgies. Get rid of
them! Please?"
"One minute," he panted into her hair. She could feel
him hardening inside of her again. "Don't climax until I tell
you."
"Fuck!" she yelped as he pulled back then thrust hard
into her. "How the hell am I supposed to -- oh _gawd_." Her
head lolled back, and he bit at the underside of her jaw.
"They . . . get their . . . charge from the . . .
dissipation of sexual energy," he explained through the
excited light thing buzz. "If we can build up the tension
enough . . ." Cordelia gasped as he thrust into her to the
hilt again. ". . . can weaken them."
"Oh great," she wept, and pushed at his chest. "Slow
down. I can't --" She snuffled again.
"Shhh," he said, waiting until she drifted back from the
edge.
The buzzy light things fluttered around them restlessly.
Cordelia's skin felt wired, feverishly hot. She reached up to
wipe the damp hair from her forehead and locked eyes with her
lover. They peered at one another silently for a long moment.
She felt herself starting to sweep out to the edge again.
Giles' fingers dug hard into her butt, and he growled deep
down in his throat. Then, just as she was weeping with the
frustration of fighting the sweep of the tide, the fuzzy
light things dimmed and began to fall back.
Giles immediately rattled off a bewildering barrage of
French. Teetering on her tortured pinnacle, Cordelia only
recognized that the words were making the buzzy things fall
back, and back, until they were circling in a slow whirl
around the camera bag again.
"Now?!" Cordelia panted, bracing herself against his
hips.
"_No_," Giles gasped, and shifted his grip from her
thighs to make an obscure series of gestures at the small of
her back. The spirits settled and dimmed. "Yes, now!" he
shouted.
She shrieked as she began to convulse around him. A
splinter of a second later he grabbed her hips and ground her
to him as he pumped into her. She wound her arms up and down
his back, then allowed herself to pitch after the throes of
her peak into hot light and then unconsciousness . . .
". . . you all right? she heard Giles whispering to her
an eternity later.
"Let me find my head first. I think it blew off
somewhere back there," she muttered. His arms were still
tight around her, was the first thing she noticed. Then that
they were on their knees and a pebble was digging sharply
into her ankle. He'd slipped out from her and was now
cradling her against his chest. She heard the thundering
beating of his heart and realized then that the incident had
frightened him as badly as it had her. "Did -- did you get
them locked down this time? How could you let that happen?
What were you thinking about anyway?" she said, trying to be
irritable and failing.
"You," he admitted, and loosened his grip on her enough
to nuzzle at her hair. "One of the dangers of sex magick --
one does tend to get distracted. Many practitioners play it
safe by choosing a partner they're not terribly physically
attracted to. Or by having a third party monitor."
"Forget that," she said, and bit at his ear none too
gently. "_You're_ just going to have to remember to think and
fuck at the same time."
"As will my apprentice," he growled, and shifted his
grip to her thighs. They toppled sideways to the ground,
kissing.
Cordelia rolled hard to pin him underneath her, then sat
up straddled over his belly to glare at him. "That's the
third time today you've referred to me as your 'apprentice'.
We're supposed to be equal partners."
Giles looked up at her in surprise. "I'm the older and
more experienced Watcher. And you're still in a position of
learning --"
She leaned down and gave him a tongue twisting kiss,
easing her body down as she did so until they were lying
belly to belly. His hands moved to her shoulders, but she
grabbed at his wrists and pinned them up over his head.
"Admit it," she said, between kisses to his throat. "I've got
you wrapped around my little finger."
"Oh, _do_ you?" He hooked a leg around hers and tossed
her over and under him, pressing her down with the full
weight of his body. She yelped as her head hit a rock. "Watch
it, will you?"
He eased up almost at once. "Sorry."
Cordelia worked an arm loose from under him and reached
back to pull the pebble out from under her neck. She examined
the dirty white quartz distastefully, then threw the rock to
one side. "You see what fucking around in the Great Dirty
Outdoors leads to?" She scowled at her fingernails, then
waved them in front of him. "Broken and grotty nails."
Giles nipped at her fingers, and she snatched them away.
"I'll pay for the manicure," he promised.
"_And_ the pedicure, _and_ the hair," she insisted. "Not
to mention the sauna and facial I'm going to need to get all
this yellow dust and paint out of my pores."
He ran a hand down her flank and smiled at her tenderly.
"What?!" Cordelia demanded. "If you think you're going
to --"
He bent and began to lick and nibble a slow line down
the underside of her chin to her throat.
"-- I'm going to . . ." she arched her head back
". . . you'll have to . . ." She whimpered as he lingered
between her breasts, then continued on down towards her
stomach. "You brat. Don't --" He moved on down her stomach,
pushing her legs apart when he reached her vaginal lips.
Cordelia shuddered as he breathed on her. She grabbed
his head, streaking his hair with clumps of coagulating green
paint. The mess gave her a perverse satisfaction and she
worked her fingers into his hair to smear more paint in,
lifting her legs to settle them on his shoulders. He licked
and nipped at her like a starved man at a feast. She thrashed
under his attentions, and began to keen. She was embarrassed
by her own capacity for noise during sex and usually fought
to control it, but he always managed to wring it out of her
anyway.
As she felt herself peaking, she dropped her knees down
off his shoulders and hauled stickily at his hair. He
obligingly crawled up along her body and entered her without
preliminary. Cordelia shrieked and came almost immediately,
clawing frantically at his back. She dropped back in an
pulsing aftermath and watched with a dizzy affection as he
hovered over her, thrusting into her while he stared into her
eyes with a wild, very un-Watcherlike intensity. He gave an
strange snarling-sad cry as his own climax caught up with
him, then settled heavily on top of her.
"Wow," Cordelia managed, as she finger combed at the
paint clumps in his hair. "What was that? _Four_ times? Bet
that's some kind of record for someone in your age bracket."
"If you know of some gentleman in your own age bracket
who's done better, let me know," Giles said with a dry, if
smug, satisfaction. They lay in sleepy silence for a while,
then he moved to take his weight off of her and to push the
hair from her face.
"None of the guys I know have the benefit of magick,"
she retorted. Then admitted, "None of the girls either." She
turned that over in her head a moment and frowned.
"Yes?" he prompted.
"Sometimes --" she began, then looked at him. "Do you
think that's all that's here? I mean, I can deal fine with
the sex and all. But sometimes it seems as if that's all
there is between us. The magick, I mean."
He continued to stroke her hair. "Is that what the
dinner date and the heart-shaped tub were all about?"
Cordelia shoved at him. Reluctantly, he pulled back,
slipping out of her, and lay back down by her side. She
rolled away from him to stare at the silent woods. The sun
had gone down, but the sky overhead was still blue. The dusk-
time shadows were gathering among the trees, and the wind had
picked up. She shivered. After a moment, Giles eased an arm
around her and drew her close into his body. "It doesn't
matter," she finally said. "I mean, what's real anyway? Was
what I had with Xander ever very real? I thought so at the
time. And you know what? Maybe I don't even care."
"You're afraid," he said, stroking her belly with his
fingertips. "So am I, I think." They lay for another few
minutes, and finally he ventured shyly, "What do you want,
Cora?"
She blinked the wind-stung wetness from her eyes. "I'm
cold and grubby and tired. What do you think?"
"Always the practical girl," he said, and she heard the
affection in his voice. "Come on then."
They sat up. Cordelia tried to comb the tangles out of
her hair despite the fact that it was clotted with semen, and
dirt and twigs, and paint. Dirt was half plastered to the
paint on her body. She had never in her life been so
absolutely filthy.
"Well this is a new experience," she said thoughtfully
as she examined her arms with a combination of distaste and
interest. "Let's not make it a regular part of the repertoire
though, Giles. I'm going to be a week recovering."
He stood and reached down to pull her to her feet.
"You'll feel better when we get cleaned up." He knelt to
pick up the flashlight.
She turned towards the line where their clothes were
hanging then stopped and frowned. "Oh great."
"What?"
"Okay, Mr. Older-and-Wiser Watcher Man. Here's one for
you. How are we going to get dressed to walk up to the
bathhouse, when we need to wash this paint off before we can
put on our clothes?"
He smiled in a superior way, took her shoulder and
pointed her towards the car. "Towels and dressing gowns in
the car. Back seat."
"Oh," she said. "Great!" She started to hoof it over to
the car, then stopped and turned back towards him. "The car's
locked."
"You have the keys. You used them to get your camera
bag," he said as he moved about, continuing the breakup of
the circle.
"Giles. Look at me?"
He turned to look at her, and smiled.
"Not _that_ way. _Look_ at me. Just where do you think I
put those car keys?"
"Oh!" he said, and turned to look at the camera bag.
"Why on earth did you lock the car out here anyway?"
"Habit," Cordelia said in annoyance. She moved to pick
the camera bag up by the strap and reached for the zipper. An
angry humming rose up from the bag.
"Leave it!" Giles hastily snatched the bag from her and
set it back down on the rock. "You're not going to be able to
open it again until the spell dissipates."
"Which will be _how_ long?"
"Three, four months. If we did the spell properly."
"Three or four . . . How am I supposed to get my car
back home?" She thought a moment, then frowned. "How are _we_
supposed to get back home?"
"We can walk down the road to the ranger's station and
call Xander for a ride." Giles sighed. "Though we'll have to
get dressed regardless of the paint."
"Great. We're never going to hear the end of it. And I
just bought that outfit. Not to mention that it's 'dry clean
only'." Cordelia turned towards the clothesline by the circle
side and stared.
A hideously ugly gremlin-y looking creature had torn her
blouse off the line. It now had the garment twisted about its
long claws and was sniffing at it with a slobbering interest.
"Hey!!!" Cordelia started indignantly towards the thing,
but Giles grabbed her shoulder.
"Back into the circle!" he said urgently, even as the
hideous thing looked up at them.
"But my blouse!" Cordelia protested. Giles yanked her
back and hastily began to reconstruct the circle with the
side of his foot. He muttered a spell under his breath,
seasoning his lines with some well-chosen expletives.
The thing's mouth dropped open, revealing multiple rows
of thousands of needle sharp teeth. A trail of green drool
slithered down its chin. "Gitty!" it said quite clearly, and
grinned. It dropped down to all fours and shambled towards
them.
"Euwww!" Cordelia hastened to help Giles. "What is it!?"
"Bloody Rock Demon," Giles said, and pulled her to the
circle's center. "They're notorious sexual predators. Except
they've never been seen before this, outside of a small
region in the Black Forest. We must have attracted this one
in along with the protective spirits."
"We reeled one in all the way from Germany?" she said,
staring at the demon with horror as it fondled its rock-hard,
mace-like member and mewled at them longingly. "So what do we
do now?"
Giles sat down on the ground. "We wait here chastely
until it goes away."
"Hey! Hey, you leave that alone!" Cordelia yelled at the
demon, who'd returned to paw her underwear down from the
line. It paused in the act of slurping down her bra and
looked hopefully in their direction. She lobbed a rock at it.
The projectile bounced off the thing's forehead with a sharp
crack and ricocheted off into the woods.
"Fickugrom," the demon said, and stuffed her panties
into its mouth. It moaned ecstatically, then reached for
Giles' clothes.
"There goes my favorite tie," Giles sighed.
Cordelia made a strangled sound and sat down next to
him. They watched wordlessly as the demon devoured the last
of their clothing. "Tell me," she said, as the thing shuffled
around the perimeter of their circle trying to nose its way
in and stopping every so often to wave its penis enticingly
at them, "Why did I ever decide to become a Watcher?"
"I'd been wondering that myself," Giles said. "Don't
touch me like that, or we're never going to get it to go
away."
She folded her arms across her knees and set her head on
top of them.
"I wondered when you asked me to help you become a
Watcher," Giles continued. "You never did give me a reason."
"Okay then," she said. "Why did you agree then? After
all that arguing you did to talk me out of it --"
"You have a right to follow your own destiny," he said
quietly. "You're intelligent, courageous, tenacious as hell.
You're a fighter, and you have a boundless openess and
curiosity about the world. The Watchers are desperately in
need of people with those qualities."
"Okay," she nodded. "I'll give you that. But why did
_you_ say yes?"
The rock demon sat back on its haunches and howled
angrily, before fading back into the forest shadows.
"Wait here," he said, and rose to step cautiously
outside the circle perimeter. Cordelia followed him. They
looked down at the few pitiful scraps left of their clothing.
"Well, damn," she said. "Now what?"
"I suppose we'll have to play Adam and Eve." He looked
dubiously at the scrub brush around the place.
"Forget that," Cordelia said suddenly and decisively.
"If we're going to go Native, we're doing it in style." She
strode across the clearing and grabbed a brush from the paint
kit. "Com'on, lover. I'm going to finish making a Cordelia
Chase original out of _you_."
He stood staring at her for a long minute, and then a
small smile touched his lips.
"Well?" she demanded. "_What?_"
"You asked me a question," Giles said, and took her in
his arms. The kiss was long and tender. Mindful of the still
unexhausted hormones between them, they pulled reluctantly
apart. He held her gently at arm's length and looked into her
eyes with a passion that staggered her. "Answered?" he
whispered.
Cordelia nodded.
He nodded and stepped back. "Then have at me. I'm all
yours."
She lifted her paintbrush, and smiled at him.
* * *