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The lady rounded the corner just as Buffy was entering, clad only in one of Giles’s shirts and casually sipping coffee from Ms. Calendar’s mug. “Jen,” she was calling, “do you know where—” And then she saw Buffy and stopped, an expression of polite bemusement on her face, like Buffy was the one who was out of place here.
Generally speaking, when it came to Giles and Ms. Calendar, the first explanation that came to mind was the one that was usually and unfortunately true—like Giles ducking out of a Scooby meeting the same day that Ms. Calendar was wearing a particularly tight pencil skirt and turning back up two hours later with his glasses askew and his tie missing, or that one time that Giles and Ms. Calendar had both been virtually unfindable during lunch, or the five million times that some poor and unfortunate Scooby had had to walk in on the two of them making out, with tongue, up against the library counter. And the thought of Giles cheating on Ms. Calendar was legitimately insane, not to mention that the mystery lady had been calling for Jen to ask her a question, but the mystery lady was also very clearly wearing Giles’s shirt and very clearly not wearing anything else, so the only possible explanation for that was—was—
“Oh, dear Lord,” said Giles, who had rounded the corner and seen Buffy. “Ah—Buffy, it’s—didn’t you—you could have called, you know—”
Ms. Calendar, right behind Giles, made an eep sound and tried to skedaddle. Giles caught her arm. “Buffy!” she said, forcing a smile. “Wow, it’s so nice to see you! Have you met Olivia? She’s—”
“Visiting,” said Giles.
This was, Buffy knew, the moment where she was supposed to very carefully create an opportunity for Giles and Ms. Calendar to deny the elephant in the room. What came out, however, was a very strangled, “In Giles’s shirt?”
“Yes, well, she—the—” Giles stammered helplessly.
“She lost all of her clothing in a tropical hurricane,” said Ms. Calendar without missing a beat.
Giles and Olivia both turned to give Ms. Calendar a jointly disbelieving look. Buffy said, “A tropical hurricane?”
“Yep!” said Ms. Calendar.
“In California?”
“Well, it’s—we’re close to the Equator, right, Rupert?” Giles had buried his face in his hands. “Close enough. Anyway, Buffy, this is Olivia, Olivia, this is Buffy. Buffy went to school at Sunnydale High while the two of us were faculty members there.”
“Ah,” said Olivia, her mouth twitching. “Can see why you’re a bit flustered, then, but—tropical hurricane?”
“Call it Hurricane Sappho,” said Ms. Calendar.
“Jenny, for Christ’s sake,” said Giles into his hands.
“And I stayed the night here,” Olivia continued helpfully, looking incredibly amused, “and Rupert was kind enough to lend me a shirt—”
“And nothing else?” said Buffy.
“I’m not gonna inflict my babe’s horrifying sartorial choices on someone as hot as Olivia,” countered Ms. Calendar.
A statement like that was not exactly dissuading Buffy from her latest and most terrifying theory. “Hold on a minute,” she said. “When you two were all hopped up on band candy—”
Giles raised his head from his hands very fast and tried to run back into the bathroom. Ms. Calendar caught his arm.
“—you and—my mom?” Buffy shrieked. “Both of you and my mom? She made me think it was just Giles but it was both of you? What is wrong with you?” At the suddenly stricken look on Ms. Calendar’s face, Buffy felt a flash of irritation. “I don’t care that you’re—you know—” she made a very complicated hand gesture, “but my mom? And you didn’t tell me?”
“I’m sorry, did you want us to tell you?” said Giles. “Seeing as you seem to be handling this situation ever so well—”
“Ms. Calendar’s the one coming up with Sappho clothing hurricanes, Giles, I’m doing fine with the fact that you two apparently had your second threesome in the last year—”
“I think I’m going to go drink this upstairs,” said Olivia very loudly, already booking it out of the kitchen.
“Buffy, we’ve tried very hard to keep our romantic activities private—”
“I literally walked in on you, like, two seconds away from going down on Ms. Calendar in the stacks that one time.”
“That wasn’t—she was—” Giles looked like he was about to pass out.
“Okay, that actually wasn’t,” said Ms. Calendar. “He was looking for his pinky ring and I kinda just happened to be in the vicinity.”
“That is such a lame excuse!”
“Buffy, when I lie, I am bad at it. Do you think I could come up with a plausible scenario like that off the top of my head?”
This was a fairly good point. Frustrated, Buffy said, “Well, that time Willow found you two in a broom closet—”
“We were looking for supplies!”
“By unbuttoning Giles’s shirt?”
“That—I—needed buttons,” stammered Ms. Calendar.
“See, this,” said Buffy, gesturing to Ms. Calendar. “This is an example of one of those bad lies that you were talking about.”
“Buffy, why are you here,” said Giles, who was now leaning very heavily against the wall as though he was the one who had just walked in on his Watcher basically two seconds after a threesome had very obviously happened.
“You know what?” said Buffy. “Somehow the reason I came here seems twenty times less daunting after having to face up to this, so why don’t I just—”
“Buffy,” said Ms. Calendar—in that soft, funny way only she said it, drawing out the first syllable into something warm.
Buffy exhaled, feeling somewhat chastised (which was ridiculous, considering the situation), and sat down on the edge of Giles’s desk. “Well,” she said. “There’s this student missing.”