Waiting
Rating: NC-17
Timeline: BtVS S3
Author's notes: Giles/Xander. Sequel to Watching and Kissing Ass. Thanks to Jane Davitt for the beta read!
Feedback: Mer
If it was around eleven at night when Oz had abandoned him to his fate, it must have been after one by the time Xander had been forced to accept that he wasn't going to be able to get a hand free. As the first step to getting the rest of him free, had been the original plan, but somewhere in the squirming Xander had admitted to himself that he'd happily give up all pretense of MacGuyvering his way out if it came with jerking off privileges.
'Cause Oz tongue. Tongue of Oz. As far as Xander was concerned, Ohmygod was now officially one word. Some vague part of his brain was aware that a little more ranting should have been in order, but he'd as much as admitted that he deserved it, after all, and anyway every stupid squirm against the stupid ropes seemed to come with 3-D, surround sound, digitally remastered flashbacks. Wondering what combination of alcohol, bribery and truth or dare it would take to make it happen again kinda took the edge off his righteous indignation.
It was dark in the library, except when the occasional car sent a stripe of high beams past the high window. There's something wrong with blushing in the dark, Xander thought. It seemed wasted. Somebody should see it. Of course, somebody would, come morning. Xander felt another wasteful blush thrill his whole body. Giles would come in, and there would be no way in hell that he could talk his way out of this one. Giles would see him - see it, the giant (or at least, bigger than half the guys on the swim team) throbbing erection that made anything, even the truth, sound like a bad excuse.
Xander wondered if his body kept an extra blood supply for special occasions. How was he managing to keep the most painfully hard cock of a whole career of sexual frustration, and still have enough extra for all the manly blushing? Sorry, liver, hope you weren't doing anything important.
Look, Giles, no hands. Xander decided maybe his superpower was coming using only the power of his mind. Hey, you never know until you try, right? He closed his eyes and tried to recreate the scene. But Oz straddling him, Oz on his knees, somehow got all tangled up with Giles saying something cutting and turning away, Giles simply ignoring him and leaving him that way, shoved in a corner, Giles laughing at him with someone he couldn't quite see.
Xander was aware that these were ideas that one might tend to call, in the vernacular, bad. He tried to conjure happy scenarios instead. Giles sucking him off, Giles smiling when he saw him. Normal sexual fantasies, except for the part where they were about a) a guy and b) who was Giles. Normal-er, anyway. The kind where you don't want to kill yourself until *after* you come, which considering his rope issues was not gonna be his problem any time soon. No joy. He was profoundly glad he didn't have to explain to anyone why he kept coming back to these particular nightmares, teasing them out, lingering over each carefully chosen word. Humiliation felt like sex: no wonder he'd liked Cordelia so much.
Eventually it became too much bother to open his eyes again, just to see the same books and furniture leering at him in the shadows.
Xander had woken up at dawn. This wasn't his usual habit, which was more about the snooze button and the praying to the procrastination gods, but then he didn't usually sleep naked and tied to a chair in a public place.
He'd woken suddenly and completely, with a jolt of anticipation that fell, on the scale, somewhere between Christmas Morning and Big Test that I Didn't Study For. Xander tried, and failed, to imagine what that added up to. Santa bringing report cards? Getting graded on your presents?
In all his scenarios for this morning, Xander realized, he'd forgotten something very important.
We hold these truths to be self-evident: even at 17, no erection lasts seven hours, unless you are Sting and do scary Yoga things that seem like more of a punishment than something to brag about to magazine reporters.
Xander wanted to be turned on. His brain was turned on. Ropes, check. Public humiliation, check. Imminent arrival of hot older guy, check. Thin sounding cover story, check. It had all the right elements, except for bad Casio music in the background, and Xander figured he could skip that just this once.
Unfortunately Xander's body was not cooperating. If there was anything worse than having a blatantly embarrassing hard on in this situation, it was not having one. But the book he was sitting on had sharp corners that that the human thigh was not designed to absorb. His legs had pins and needles. His wrists had rope burn. He had to piss like a racehorse that really had to piss. There were crumbs in his eyes that he couldn't rub away.
Xander was well aware that a real hero would brush aside these petty annoyances, not to mention actual torture. But he wasn't a real hero, and anyway it's not like he was saving the world, or defying the enemy, or anything. There wasn't anything else to concentrate on, except whether anyone in homeroom would actually notice that he was wearing the same style-impaired T-shirt he'd had on yesterday, and not a new and entirely different style-impaired T-shirt. The fever of lust that last night had made it impossible to focus on mundane details like escape seemed to have burnt itself out, and now Xander, blowing wistfully on the coals, was stuck thinking "at least my nose doesn't itch."
His nose started itching. It was distinctly possible that this was hell.
There was a lumpy envelope taped to the outside of the library doors, and Giles froze. Even after a year his mind leapt to the last time he'd found an unexpected note... but would Angelus use purple?
Giles untucked the flap of the envelope and withdrew a card featuring a green cartoon alien with googly eyes. Definitely not Angelus. The outside read 'Happy Birthday', which was odd, because his birthday was months away.
In any case he didn't believe he'd ever mentioned it to the denizens of Sunnydale. They already tended to treat him as ancient without further reminders. Willow, he supposed, could have hacked into the school's database to surprise him. It was the sort of thing she would do, except that she'd surely have gotten the date right.
Ethan? It was obscure and slightly unnerving, and therefore the sort of way his old friend would announce a reappearance, although the fact that it hadn't exploded yet was a mark in the 'no' column. With some trepidation, Giles opened the card. Inside it said, "I didn't know when, but every day is like a rebirth, right? Anyway, I left you a present. Oz."
Remaining in the envelope lay the thing that had distorted its shape -- a tiny, sample-sized bottle of lubricant. Giles caught his breath. He tried to tell himself it was impossible, but it was too late, his mind had already presented him with a vision of Oz waiting on the other side of the door, with nothing between them, nothing holding them back.
The doors creaked as they swung inward. The room was empty. Of course, of course, of course it was. Oz was in a committed relationship. Giles was an old fool for feeling disappointed, if a tiny tearing in the chest was what disappointed felt like.
Firmly Giles suppressed a rush of something like hatred. Oz had left him a bottle of lubricant. It was not meant to be cruel. It was thoughtful, even charming. The first, the only gift there had ever been between them, of course it would be something small and half-joking. It was a step forward, really. Giles should be encouraged, if anything, that Oz had wanted to give him anything at all, far less something sexual. Oz was not to blame for the presumptuous leap of fantasy Giles had made.
He almost believed it. No, he did believe it. It just didn't help. Never had the gap between what Giles wanted and what he had been so bitterly apparent. He felt very unsexy, and very old, with a whole day to get through before he could be away from this place, away from unsettling, androgynous, beautiful bodies and teenaged hormones, someplace with other adults heavy with the day's cares and perhaps, if he were very lucky, a drink.
Giles pushed open his office door, tossed the card on the desk, and automatically moved to sit down. Unfortunately the chair was already occupied.
"Xander?" Giles blinked. No, it wasn't a fatigue-induced hallucination. Alexander Harris was tied to his office chair. Naked.
Giles took off his glances and pinched the bridge of his nose, then put them back on. Xander was still there. Giles toyed with the idea of simply turning around and walking back out again.
"Giles! Nice morning?" Xander's bright tones verged on the desperate.
"Would you care to explain what you're doing here?" Giles asked with heavily tried patience.
"No," Xander assured him with what Giles was certain was complete sincerity.
Giles perched on the edge of his desk. "How unfortunate." He left the words 'for you' unstated. "What are you doing here?"
"I... um. There was a thing."
Really he should just keep the Scotch in the office, Giles reflected, and devil take never drinking before noon. Clearly whoever came up with that rule neither worked with teenagers nor on a Hellmouth.
"A demon thing? A vampire thing? A spell gone horribly, horribly wrong?"
Xander, unaccountably, blushed. Giles couldn't help noticing the color spread down his neck and onto his chest. He had a nice chest, a bit broad for Giles' taste but well-muscled, certainly. A pity he didn't exercise his mind half as effectively. "No," he was mumbling, "Not like that! A human thing. Um, more or less."
Giles rolled his eyes. "Animal, vegetable, or mineral?"
Xander blinked. "Humans are animals, right?"
Giles stood up, the better to loom ominously over Xander. It'd been ages since he'd had a good loom. He adored Buffy, but lack of respect for authority was clearly her middle name. Xander's shrinking, however overplayed for comic effect, hid enough of a taste of real fear to be balm for his self-inflicted loss of dignity this morning.
"I meant," Giles articulated icily, "that I'm tired of playing twenty questions. What. Happened. Here."
Xander made prolonged eye contact with Giles' belt buckle. "Um, well, the thing is... you know the thing with me and Willow right?" Xander flicked a glance up at Giles' expression, gulped, and continued in a rush. "Last night Oz said he wanted revenge which was fair so I let him tie me up but then he said he got me 'cause Willow did and did this thing with his tongue and then left me here and I couldn't get out and I really have to pee so could you just untie me and we can both pretend this never happened?"
Giles turned away to clean his glasses to hide the smile tugging the corners of his lips. I left you a present, indeed. Oz was turning out to be as inventive as Ethan had been, once upon a time. Giles wondered if the saying about gift horses and mouths applied to boys as well. Xander was just about at the right height to suck him off. But given the lubricant, that was clearly not what Oz had in mind. And it wouldn't do to be ungrateful.
Giles put the glasses back on and took a very deliberate, slow survey of the naked boy before him. Xander's blush returned and deepened. Ignoring the end of the boy's spate, he asked curiously, "A thing with his tongue? Blew you a raspberry, perhaps?" Or just blew you? Although that scarcely counted as revenge, to Giles' mind. More a consummation devoutly to be wished. Still, to a straight boy always touchy about his masculinity...
Xander shook his head so that his hair fell into his eyes, as if he could hide behind it and disappear. "You don't want to know. Trust me."
Giles allowed a hint of the steeliness of his Ripper days to creep into his tone. "If I didn't want to know, I wouldn't have asked."
The blush was clearly becoming a permanent state. "I don't know what its called. Like French kissing, only, um, not your mouth." Ah, now that was a fascinating insight into Oz's tastes. Not to mention fuel for fantasies for weeks at least.
"Rimming," Giles supplied absently, well used to correcting the deficiencies in the Slayerettes' vocabulary.
"How did you...?" Xander broke off. "Never mind. Never, ever tell me." He looked up through his lashes and met Giles' eyes for the first time in the conversation, and held the eye contact, in seeming contradiction to his words.
Giles looked around for whatever it was Xander didn't want him to notice. It wasn't far afield. The boy's cock had half-hardened where it rested on his thigh.
Well. That was interesting.
"I see." And you see that I see. And you're desperately hoping I'm too British to mention it, aren't you? How do all you innocents think the British get laid? Giles mused. Outwardly he continued briskly, "Well. Let's get you untied."
And then he dropped to his knees before Xander matter of factly. The boy gaped at him. Giles, sitting back on his heels to be nearly eyelevel with Xander's cock, smiled and began to untie Xander's ankles, to lend verisimilitude to an otherwise compromising position. Then he leaned in to begin undoing the far more intricate series of knots at Xander's torso.
God bless Oz for thinking to put these in the front. Having Giles doing God knew what just behind him out of sight might have increased Xander's fear, which would be entertaining, but it couldn't compare to the intimacy of this. The sleeve of Giles' shirt just brushed over Xander's cock, seemingly by accident, as he worked. Giles knew his breath would be warm on Xander's rope-sensitized skin. Undoing knots pulled tight by hours of struggling was an exacting task. Giles had no intention of rushing himself.
He could have cut them in an instant, but if pressed he'd maintain that he had no weapon nearby that he'd trust so close to human flesh. A battleaxe is hardly a precision tool. As to why he hadn't simply untied Xander's wrists and left him to finish the rest himself, well, he could hardly see them at that angle, now could he? It was weak, Giles admitted to himself, but perhaps the boy wouldn't think to ask. Judging by the cock now thoroughly hard and presenting an impediment that was hard for Giles even to pretend to ignore, he wouldn't be thinking at all.
With only Xander's wrists still bound, Giles sat back on his heels and glanced up at the boy's face. He picked up the little tube from the desk behind him and put it in Xander's palm. "Oz left me this," he said, and untied the final knot, then stood up and stepped away from the boy, giving him plenty of room.
Xander brought his hand up to examine what he'd be given, and paled. "Oh no. No way." He stood up shakily and backed up couple of paces, as if he meant to run out into the school hallways naked. "I'm not... I mean, I might have... but I don't want to do anything anal."
"All right." Giles shrugged, half turning as if the conversation were over. "Too bad, really. It's been a long time since I've gotten properly fucked."
He moved over to the desk and glanced down at one of the papers on it, at random. An overdue book list, as it happened, but it served to signify that he'd put the matter out of his mind.
He counted off the seconds in his head, then turned to glance at Xander as if surprised to find him still there. "Yes?"
Xander was staring at him. Giles smothered another smile. Really this was almost too easy. "Can I help you with something?"
"You... I mean, I assumed..." Xander floundered to a halt.
"That I was a top?" At Xander's continuing blank look, he added in an exasperated tone. "It's quite self-explanatory if you think about it for a moment."
"You... want me... to ... with you."
Giles put down the piece of paper. "Do try to complete a sentence. I ... wanted you... to fuck... me, yes. But since you're clearly not inclined to do so, I suggest you get dressed before going to class."
Xander swallowed. "This isn't happening."
"So you said."
"No, I mean, this isn't happening. I'm still asleep. I have a really high fever. Someone made a wish and now I'm in the alternate porn universe."
Giles considered the hypothesis. "Not that I'm aware of."
"Yes." Xander suddenly grinned, and Giles was reminded that he did, actually, like this boy. "I want to fuck you, yes. See, complete sentence."
"Very good," Giles said approvingly. He unbuckled his trousers and lowered them, then simply bent over the desk. The wood pressed uncomfortably into his erection.
"Should I... is there something I'm supposed to do?"
Giles stifled a sigh. "Put the wet stuff on your cock. Come over here and put your cock in me. It's not complicated."
"Just like that? Won't it hurt?"
"Yes, now come on." It felt like ages that Giles lay there, arse up and exposed, like a schoolboy awaiting a spanking. He wondered if the boy had taken one look at his old body and decided he couldn't bear to go through with it. But then he heard fumbling and the unmistakable squelching sounds of a wet hand slicking over skin. And finally, eons later, he felt the tip of Xander's cock rest gently against the pucker of his arse.
The boy took a firm grip on his hips, but he still hesitated until Giles impatiently bucked his hips backward. And then, with a groan, Xander finally bloody well pushed.
It burned. Of course it did, it always burned, but Giles had forgotten how much. The angle was off and he canted his hips until Xander stopped meeting resistance and could slide inside. Another unbearable pause, and then the feeling of fullness slowly and hesitantly receded.
Giles wondered if it were possible to die of frustration. "For God's sake, I won't break. Just do it."
"Thank you, Mr. Nike," He could've sworn he heard the boy mutter, but then he was finally being fucked hard and fast and it no longer mattered what anyone said. The boy had no technique at all, missed the prostate more than he hit it, and clearly had never considered reaching around to do Giles the courtesy of some direct stimulation. He just drove in with a single-minded desperate eagerness to come. It was perfect.
Giles' hips slammed into the edge of the desk and he knew he'd have bruises there. He wondered what Oz would think when he saw them, whether he'd be quick enough to realize the significance of what they implied. He rather thought so. Assuming, of course, that Oz wasn't somehow already watching the scene he'd engineered. The thought only made Giles hotter.
It was a short step from there to closing his eyes and imagining the boy inside him was Oz, Oz's slender hands gripping his hips to get a fraction of an inch deeper instead of Xander's strong ones, Oz using his body with sheer selfish lust. Even fogged as it was, Giles' brain failed to encompass that final image. It just wasn't Oz's... style. Xander was so much like Giles himself that it made him wince, responding to shame and lust like Pavlov's dog. But Oz was incapable of forgetting his partner. If Oz fucked him like this, dirty and rough and impersonal, it would be because Oz knew he needed it just like that, and after he would have to face those clear, unshockable, curious eyes.
Xander shuddered and came deep inside Giles, then pulled out immediately, before he'd even softened completely. Ah, homophobia. "I... I gotta go. I'm late," he stammered awkwardly, scrambled into his clothes, and hopped out into the library, buttons undone and shoelaces flying. Giles would be prepared to bet anything that it would be years before the two of them would be alone again.
Giles slowly peeled himself up off the desk and straightened his own clothing slowing and methodically. He hadn't come, but he resisted the temptation to finish himself off. He wasn't seventeen any more, he could wait and let Oz reap the rewards of his kindness.