DISCLAIMER: Giles and Cordelia belong to Twentieth Century Fox, courtesy of Joss Whedon and Warner Brothers. If you wish to archive or link to this fiction, please ask permission first.
DEDICATION: This fic was written for Brenda as a birthday present (belated because I'm such a sluggish writer). Brenda has graciously given me permission to spread the loving about. Thank you Brenda!
CONTENT WARNINGS: This segment is rated a very definite NC-17 for sexual content. If you are under 18, or are uncomfortable with this type of material, please return to my Fanfiction Index.
"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 the 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.