__The Freaky Hand Of Fate__
By Beadtific



Something was off with their Bond; that was the only rational explanation. He was relatively certain it should not be this intense; the pain was enormous. Otherwise, he felt certain that the phenomenon of the mystically-enhanced Watcher/Slayer Bond would have died a quick death. No one would have been fool enough to bind themselves to a slayer wearing torture devices day in and day out.

“You would think,” he with exasperation, “that you would have flown enough by now to know that the human foot swells during airline travel. Why you wear those ridiculous heels, I have never understood.”

His fiancée, who had been scowling at her own stylishly sandal-clad feet, rolled her eyes at him, “And non-human feet don’t?”

“Not if they have hooves, I suppose,” he said sullenly. Buffy snorted.

“Okay, I admit, they’re not the most comfortable traveling shoes, but they’re practical in other ways.”

“Pray tell, what?”

“The heel can be used as a stake, see,” she said, waggling the stacked, wooden heel at him, “And it’s much easier to do this.” She leaned up and gave him a peck on the cheek. Partially mollified, the Englishman slipped an arm around her waist and pulled her closer to plant a forgiving kiss on her mouth.

“Don’t you have some shoes in your carpetbag?” he gestured to the tapestry carryall he’d given her. She’d insisted on keeping it by her side.

“Um, no, just some other necessities: girly stuff,” she replied evasively, and Giles decided he’d prefer not to know exactly what that entailed.

“I see. Do promise me that you’ll change to something more comfortable when we get our luggage. For both our sakes.”

“I will, Rupert. I was in such a hurry when we were packing, I didn’t think it through. Sorry about your toes.”

“I had no idea how painful women’s footwear could be. How any of you can walk is a mystery that passes understanding.”

“Okay, Mr. Stuffy, we’ll chalk this experience up as another instance of how we need to not feel each other’s pain.

“I am not stuffy,” he said stuffily, looking down into her eyes. She grinned at him.

“No, but you are way too easy a mark.” Her lover growled and bent to nuzzle her neck. A loud buzzer sounded, causing both of them to jump.

“Ooh,” Buffy said happily, “here comes the luggage.”

“About time,” Giles muttered, stretching his toes.

In the roughly thirty-six hours since their bonding, they had caused one another pain several times, quite by accident. The first incident, of course, was the self-inflicted lump on his head, from when he had felt himself blacking out while making love with Buffy. That afternoon, his beloved had whacked her shin quite hard on the coffee table while running for the telephone. The sudden flare of pain in his own leg startled Giles so much, he nearly slipped in the shower. The last had been when he uncharacteristically nicked himself while shaving, and Buffy had wandered into his bathroom with a puzzled look and a hand on her throat. “Huh,” she said, watching him dab at his Adam’s apple, “I didn’t think it was a bug bite.” Giles had removed her fingers from her throat, and the relief he felt when there was no blood nearly made his knees buckle.

All sensations of shared pain had faded for the indirectly injured partner shortly after each accident, but both Bondmates were shaken by the possibility that the deepening connection between would translate into more serious physical pain or fully manifested injuries. Right now, it seemed a sympathetic warning system indicating the Bondmate was injured. None of this had ever come up in any of the research he had done regarding the Bond, though he was the first to admit his knowledge was incredibly incomplete.

\\It would be bloody inconvenient if one of us wound up with a broken leg or a sucking chest wound; how are we supposed to help each other if the Bond transmitted that much pain?// Giles thought to himself as they mechanically wound through the customs line. Healing through the Bond was part of the legend, but he really had no idea how it worked; was Buffy’s slayer healing was something they would or could share? Neither wanted to find out the hard way.

“It does suck that you couldn’t get into the restricted archives, and now that the council is so much rubble.” Buffy said, as if continuing a conversation.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Stuffy,” she pointed out, and he made a face at her. “Not that I can read your thoughts or anything, but I can feel you worrying.” She playfully scratched the center of her chest; they had both agreed that the Bond translated worry into a rather itchy feeling. “I figured that you, Mr. Tenderfoots, were worrying again about the less fun aspects of our situation.”

Giles gave a rueful little smile, “You’re absolutely correct.” He drew a breath to continue, and realized the very crowded, very public nature of their location. Buffy made a teasing a face at him and put a finger over her lips.

“You’re in a remarkably good mood for someone who just made a ten hour trip in inappropriate footwear.”

“I know,” Buffy said with a little bounce of her knees. “My eyeballs feel pickled, my hair itches, my feet hurt and my mouth feels like I choked down a bout three quarts of vamp,” she caught herself, and grimaced her way into a word substitution, “damp, damp dog hair, but I’m ridiculously happy.”

“That’s very good to know,” he said in the low voice that made her insides quiver. A flush of desire ran through her and she looked at him from underneath her lashes. He was giving her a very private smile, and she felt her breath catch. Evidently, Giles wasn’t the only easy mark.

“Tease,” she pouted.

“Toe-mangler,” was his silky retort. Taking her hand in his, Giles led his snickering fiancé to their turn at the customs desk.

“Are we there yet?” her sleepy voice asked plaintively.

Giles smiled as he guided their rental car through the Somerset countryside towards Devonshire. “Bath for baths,” Buffy had ordered, knowing his flat was about thirty minutes away from the Bristol airport. Giles had to agree that being clean again was marvelous thing.

The trouble with making the stop at his flat, other than irking his landlady by giving nearly no notice to turn up the water heater, was that his previously buoyant sweetheart had fallen asleep after her shower, and didn’t want to move when it was time to go. The long travel and heightened emotions of the last few days had caught up with her, as they had Giles.

Unfortunately, they had promised Veronica they would be in Clovelly this evening to stay at the coven for the duration of their trip. The village was only about a two-hour drive from his flat, so he dug his grinder and his French press out of the cupboard, and rummaged through the icebox for some coffee. Normally he loathed the stuff, but he was extraordinarily sleepy. He looked speculatively at the electric grinder a moment, wondering if it would wake Buffy. He peered through the kitchen door to where she was lying in the sitting room, smiled at the sight of her sleeping with her nose buried in his jacket, and gently closed the kitchen door.

The coffee only slightly helped Giles’ weariness; he was far more tired than he realized. He grimly looked at the espresso-strength grounds in his press and remembered a long-ago night when he had actually eaten coffee grounds, chased with cola, to stave off sleep and its attendant nightmares. Despite the unpleasant associations, the Englishman felt himself smile at the memory; it had been right before his first trip to the coven. What a mess he had been. He was certainly not bad off enough to resort to the vile concoction; better to make another fresh cup and take it with him. Besides, he detested cola.

After trying several different methods of cajoling Buffy awake, Giles finally scooped her in his arms and buckled her into the car, wondering grumpily why he hadn’t thought of that in the first place. His mood improved when his beloved woke up when he slammed the boot shut, and murmured sweetly to him as he started the car, “You’re a very nice Rupert.”

She had slept peacefully for about an hour, and woke, rather predictably, at dusk. Despite all his training, and their years together, it still amazed him when she did that – no matter where she was in the world, no matter how tired or soon her arrival in a country, at dusk she woke to prepare for duty. Tonight was no different.

“Where are we?” she said, trying to snuggle into his shoulder despite the fact the car had both bucket seats and standard transmission. It looked terribly uncomfortable to Giles, but she seemed happy enough.

“About an hour away, dearest.”

“Oooh, I’m dearest again.”

“I wasn’t that grumpy.”

“Yes you were; all brown and grumpy.”

“Brown?’

“Yeah, not very, but yep, a little brown,” she said, touching her chest again, indicating the Bond. “Worry is itchy, grumpy is brown, anxiety feels spiky and hope is a very pretty rosy color.” She turned her face and kissed his shoulder. “I figured that one out after you proposed.”

Giles felt he had enough command of the car to lean his cheek briefly against her hair. “You felt that?”

“Mm, it leaked into the Bond big time, though you were trying to hide it. There was a huge surge of it when I opened my earrings, and the anxiety nearly dropped out. I was meaning to ask you about that.”

Giles chuckled, “Well, I could see your face light up when you saw the shape of the box – very like a ring box, I realized at the time. I suppose if I’d been concentrating, I might have felt some hope coming from you. But I certainly felt the sharp stab of disappointment, deep gray by the way, when you did open it, and I took that as confirmation of my cue to propose.”

“You sneaky thing, you.”

“Tactical.”

“You know, they’re the same color as you,” she said, touching one of her earrings.

“Yes, they are very close to my earring,” he said, touching his own, which he had not removed since their first night together. “I rather liked that.”

“No, the earrings are the same color as your Bond. Exactly.”

He desperately wished for a place to pull over so he could look into her face for this conversation. They’d been quite busy preparing for the trip, and then couldn’t discuss things properly on the plane. “That’s very interesting,” he said meditatively. “Yours is purple, with a bit of gold.”

“I sound like one of those Easter eggs,” she whined, thinking of the Cadbury chocolates whose commercial Dawn howled with laughter over every spring.

“No, dearest, it’s very beautiful, like an amethyst with spun gold around the edges. I suspect that since it’s different for each of us, it may have something to do with our essences or auras. We’ll ask Veronica what she thinks.”

They drove through the evening for a long comfortable moment, enjoying the scent of the spring air coming through the windows.

“It is interesting, though,” Giles said, stirring slightly, “I was so drawn to those earrings. I initially thought to get you a new cross. Dead boring gift idea, now that I think of it. But those earrings struck me as just the perfect thing – it was as if after I saw them, I didn’t see anything else in the case.”

“Whoa, now,” she said, laughing, and sitting back in her seat to look at him. “I know you, Rupert Giles. You’ve been going over every second of the last couple of days, and maybe even weeks and months, looking for Bond signposts in whatever. Don’t you tell me you see the Freaky Hand of Fate in buying me a pair of earrings?”

“They are quite unlike anything I would normally buy,” he insisted stubbornly “I was drawn to them. They were beautiful, sleek and full of life, like you. Anyway, you brought it up.”

“All red and sporty.”

“What?” he almost turned to look at her quizzically

“I haven’t heard you so defensive about a purchase since you got your convertible.”

“It did seduce me, I tell you, the little tramp.”

She leaned over and traced a finger over the rim of his ear. “I’m not a car.”

“Thank heavens not,” he purred, warming to her touch, and began thinking ahead for a place to pull over. Discovering what the Freaky Hand of Fate had done with them could wait just a few minutes more.

* * *