blairprovence | FIC Not Even Jimmy Olsen (5/6) (BUFFY) (Reply)

Rising on shaking legs, I made my way to the office door, turning the knob with trembling fingers. I stood in the doorway and watched the combatants study their fallen foe.

Xander stepped forward and prodded the edge of the puddle with the toe of his sneaker. "This is new."

Willow and Cordelia descended the stairs and moved to join him. "That is really gross," Cordelia pointed out as she set her crossbow on the library table. Willow cocked her head to the side and studied the remains, her eyes alive with scientific curiosity.

"I've certainly never seen its like before," Mr. Giles commented, kneeling down to get a closer look. "Its form appears to have completely lost cohesion."

"It's a puddle of slime, Giles," Buffy told him drily as she picked gingerly at her gory tank-top. She glanced over at her discarded blouse and sighed. "Oh, man, my mom just bought me that shirt."

Mr. Giles stood up and patted her arm sympathetically. "Perhaps your dry cleaner will be able to reclaim it." He grimaced distastefully as some of the slime on her arm rubbed off on his fingers, then wiped them clean on his own lost cause of a shirt.

Buffy rolled her eyes at him. "Yeah, right - and what am I supposed to say when they ask what the stuff is that's all over it?"

He pretended to give her question serious thought. "Ah...grass stains perhaps?"

"Ha ha, very funny, humor guy...oh, damn, I just remembered that I don't have a spare shirt here."

He raised an eyebrow. "I thought you kept a change of clothing in your gym locker."

"Two words, Giles - Last Tuesday."

"Oh, yes, right. Well, perhaps I can lend you something. Wait just a moment." He turned toward the office, brushing by me with an offhand 'excuse me'. I stepped gingerly into the outer room, giving the MonsterRemains a wide berth, and moved to stand next to Cordelia, who was regarding Buffy with gleaming eyes and an amused smirk.

"Loving the new look, Buffy. It just screams Garbage Dump." Cordelia herself didn't have a hair out of place to evidence her exertions, presenting quite a contrast to a very much the-worse-for-wear Buffy.

Buffy stuck her tongue out at Cordelia as Mr. Giles emerged from his office carrying two dress shirts. "Take your pick," he told Buffy, holding them up.

She made a face, but pointed to the white shirt on the left. "I'm going to grab a quick shower in the locker room. Be right back." She grabbed the shirt and disappeared out the double doors.

Mr. Giles took the remaining one back to his office. "I, ah, think I'll just change my shirt as well," he said, glancing down at himself with a grimace of distaste He was considerably less goop-encrusted than Buffy, but slime did streak the front of his shirt, and the sliced sleeve flapped annoyingly free. Considering how meticulous his usual mode of dress tended to be, I guessed he found that state of affairs intolerable.

The office door closed as Willow ducked behind the book desk and came up with a metal lunch box. She snapped it open and pulled out a pair of latex gloves and two clear plastic vials, and I decided that my curiosity about what she was doing outweighed my desire to peek through the office window to get a look at the librarian without his shirt on...though not by much.

I mean, think about it - he must be really buff to wield a sword that well.

"Hey, Will," Xander said nervously as she returned to the puddle, "I really don't think we want to be keeping any of it. I'm thinking a monster bonfire would be just the thing right about now. Still got those marshmallows?"

"Here, hand me the sword so I can use it to scoop some of this up," she instructed him, gesturing to Mr. Giles' abandoned weapon. "I just want to make sure it's not toxic or something, since Buffy basically took a bath in it."

"That's a good idea," the librarian said as he reemerged from his office and noticed what Willow was doing. "Oh, dear, I hope it doesn't eat through the linoleum. The custodial staff is quite put out with me as it is."

"Oh, c'mon, Giles," Xander chided, "I told you, they leave the dead rats for people they like."

"Yes, well, if a bit of dust here and there can inspire that sort of response, I really don't think I want to leave this for them to find. There are buckets and a shovel in the book cage, Xander. Would you get them, please?"

Xander groaned dramatically, as though Mr. Giles had asked for the world, but then nodded and walked over to the cage.

Suddenly the library doors swung open, and a triumphant voice called out in an English accent, "I think I've got something."

Cordelia's face lit up like Christmas had come early, Willow rolled her eyes, and Mr. Giles pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. I heard a muffled 'Oh, great' emanate from the direction of the book cage.

The newcomer was a bespectacled black-haired man of about thirty-five years of age, dressed in a formal suit and tie, shoes spit-shined to gleaming perfection. He held up a book in one hand, but stopped cold as he caught sight of the remains of our monster. His smile faded into a little 'o' of surprise. "What happened here?"

Cordelia sidled up to him and threaded her arm through his. "The monster followed us from the Bronze, and it chased me through the halls. I just barely got away. Oh, Wesley, it was horrible." He patted her hand in comfort, and she tightened her grip on him, laying her cheek against his chest.

My mouth fell open at her...well, frankly, her simpering tone, so different from the voice of the Cordelia I knew. *What is she doing?*

A sarcastic voice mimicked from behind me - "Oh, Wesley, it was horrible." Xander reappeared with three stacked buckets and a deep shovel, a scowl on his face as he beheld Wesley and his former girlfriend.

Suddenly, a lot of things made sense.

Wesley was staring down at the puddle with unalloyed fascination. "What is that?"

"That would be the remains of our monster," Mr. Giles replied, and I don't think I was imagining the dislike in his tone.

"But...what happened?"

"It just floated on in here and died on us," Buffy replied breezily as she sailed back through the doorway, apparently having taken the world's fastest shower. "Monsters are so incredibly rude that way." She wore a pair of gray sweatpants, gym sneakers, and Mr. Giles' white shirt, her wet hair caught up in a ponytail. She and Mr. Giles traded smiles.

The newcomer's expression hardened as he beheld their interaction. "That *isn't* a proper report, Buffy."

Report?

Her lip curled in a slight sneer, and she pointed at the puddle. "Monster," she said in a pedantic tone usually reserved for small children and the incredibly dense. She moved her finger until it pointed at Mr. Giles' sword, which Willow was using to scoop up goop for her vials. "Sword." Then she gestured to Mr. Giles. "Killed it."

"You fought the monster," Wesley said to Mr. Giles, his tone censorious.

Mr. Giles offered him a charming smile of all teeth and no friendliness. "Well, we would have waited for you, but we had no idea how long you'd be." Sarcasm fairly dripped from his words.

"And I have a lot of homework tonight," Buffy chimed in, grinning a bit herself. "So sorry you missed it - maybe you could catch the next giant, floating, glowing creature. Or not."

Willow finished her sampling and stood up. "I'm going to take these down to the chem lab and run a few tests."

"I'll go with you," Xander offered quickly, and I wasn't sure whether he had made the offer to accompany her to get away from Wesley and Cordelia or just to duck out of bucket duty. But I did see a brief flash of anger cross Cordelia's face at his words. "I'll be Beaker the Bodyguard," Xander added in a passable imitation of Beaker the Muppet's voice. Willow laughed.

"Take some stakes," Mr. Giles advised, and Xander snatched a few from the library table before following Willow out of the room. Then the librarian turned to regard Wesley expectantly. "You said you'd found something."

"Yes!" the man replied, gently disengaging his arm from Cordelia's grip. He handed the book to Mr. Giles. "In the Systimon text. Chapter seven."

Mr. Giles opened the book and quickly skimmed several pages. "No, this can't be it."

"You can't know that for certain," Wesley retorted, apparently affronted by the swift dismissal of his theory.

"Hey, he killed it, you never even saw it," Buffy pointed out, immediately leaping to Mr. Giles' defense. Which, of course, made me wonder who Wesley was that made Mr. Giles require defending. "Anyway, why does it matter?," she added. "It's a pile of goo now."

"Well, we do want to make sure we don't have to worry about meeting its friends and family sometime in the future," Mr. Giles told her, and she sighed and nodded.

"Point. But I have really got to get some studying done tonight, Giles. My English grade is on the critical list, and Mrs. Marsden isn't likely to think fighting a floating monster is a good excuse for homeworklessness."

"Yes, she does rather lack imagination, doesn't she?" he agreed. "You needn't stay, Buffy. We'll handle it."

"Well, I'll help you clean up at least," she offered, moving to the buckets Xander had unearthed. "Um, what are we gonna do with it once it's scooped?"

"If Willow says the remains aren't toxic, I vote for pouring them down the industrial sink in the shop room." Buffy nodded and picked up the shovel.

"Good plan. You want to give me a hand, Cordelia?" She smiled impishly as she asked the question, and I got the feeling she was expecting Cordelia's exact response.

"I really, really don't." Cordelia flipped her hair back and unleashed a devastating smile toward Wesley, but he was too distracted to notice as he rooted through the volumes on the central table. She glared after him in visible frustration.

"I'll help you," Mr. Giles offered, reaching for a bucket.

"Worried about me mucking up your shirt?" Buffy quipped as she scooped up a shovelful of MonsterGuts.

He smiled. "Well, now that you mention it, I don't suppose it would be very smart of us to let anyone else see you wearing that. It might raise questions we wouldn't want to answer."

"Oh, Harmony told me everyone already thinks you guys are sleeping together," Cordelia interjected blithely. They froze simultaneously, then turned to stare at her. "You know," she continued, "on account of the fact that you two are together, like, all the time."

"What!?" Buffy exclaimed, her shovel clanging against the bucket, sending goo flying. I jumped out of the way.

"Half the student body apparently thinks you're boffing the librarian," Cordelia confirmed in a breezy tone. "Aphrodisia asked me about it a couple of weeks ago."

"She-" Mr. Giles stuttered, "She what? Wh-what did you say to her?"

Cordelia gave him a what-do-you-think-I-said glare. "Duh! I told her she was mental. But I don't think she believed me."

"But that's- that's ridiculous!" Mr. Giles looked poleaxed. Buffy had recovered a bit of her equilibrium, and she shot him a speculative glance.

"Is it?" Cordelia replied, sneaking a coy glance toward Wesley, who was listening to their byplay with an expression of ill-concealed amusement on his face. "Young American girl, handsome older British guy...I could see it happening." Abruptly Wesley flushed beet-red and buried his face back in his book. Cordelia sighed.

"Oh, for God's sake," Mr. Giles muttered under his breath and turned back to his bucket. Buffy stared at Cordelia for a moment, her mouth still slightly open in shock. Finally she glanced over at Mr. Giles again, but he was glaring down at the puddle. Shaking her head, she picked up the shovel and began to scoop.

They worked in silence for a few minutes before their gazes accidentally met. "Cheer up, Giles," Buffy urged, her lip curling with muted humor, "at least they don't think you've got the hots for Xander."

He rolled his eyes and finally smiled. "Good point. It's all right, Buffy, I can handle this." She raised an eyebrow. "The cleanup, I mean," he clarified. "Why don't you walk Cordelia and her friend to their car, and then go on home. I'll be fine."

"Well, if you're sure," she agreed doubtfully.

"I'm sure. Wesley and I," he smiled grimly, "have a few things to discuss." I noticed that Wesley looked distinctly nervous to hear that. I couldn't blame him.

Buffy snatched the remaining stakes from the table and gave her sword a fond farewell pat. "Come on, you two. 'Tess of the D'Urbervilles' is waiting for me, and she hates it when I'm late."

Part 6