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It started off as a normal Tuesday. Xander wanted snacks, and they were close enough to Giles’s house to mooch off of some of his food, which was obviously preferable to spending hard-earned money on crappy Espresso Pump pastries. Though they had tried really valiantly to keep it a secret, Giles and Ms. Calendar were total snack connoisseurs, and that meant that the stuff that they had on hand was always the good stuff. Not that Giles and Ms. Calendar actually wanted to share their snacks, but that was beside the point.
“Do you think he got another box like the one his aunts sent him last Easter?” Willow was asking, all but skipping along down the sunlit sidewalk. Just the thought of a chocolate orange was enough to get her going.
“Um, seeing as it’s September, I kinda have my doubts,” said an amused Buffy. “You might just have to wait until Christmas. He did say he’d ask them if they could send you an extra one again.”
“See, that’s what I thought too,” Willow countered, “but Ms. Calendar said something a few days ago about some kind of Watcher holiday this week, so I was thinking that maybe he got a box and he hasn’t opened it yet! And he promised that he’d ask about more stuff for us next time, and you know he definitely would have asked them, because he was all Mr. Grumpy Pants about us eating half the box when he gave it to us to sample—”
“I think it’s Mr. Grumpy Trousers when it’s a British guy, Will,” Oz pointed out.
Willow giggled. “You’re right. Mr. Grumpy Trousers.”
“And that sampling thing is totally on him,” Xander chimed in. “What kinda moron hands a box of candy to a bunch of teenagers and tells them to exercise control? I’m pretty sure I saw Ms. Calendar trying not to laugh at him behind his back.”
“See, she’s on our side,” Buffy giggled. “She wants us to succeed in our intrepid snacking maneuvers.”
“Nah, she just wants to one-up Giles.”
“She can do both! She’s good at doing both!”
“O-oh,” said Willow mournfully.
This got Oz and Buffy’s attention. Xander, however, was still hurrying ahead, focused entirely on the notion of a potentially full box of high-end British candy. “You okay, Will?” Buffy asked.
Sticking out her foot, Willow said, “I scuffed one of the shoes Ms. Calendar lent me!” She sounded positively heartbroken. “She’s never going to give me anything again! She’s going to see these shoes and go oh, wow, Willow, you’re so irresponsible, ruining my favorite pair of shoes with your youthful exuberance—”
“Isn’t Ms. Calendar, like, thirty-something?”
“That’s still older than eighteen!”
“Easy,” said Oz gently, placing a hand on Willow’s shoulder. “It’s not a big scuff. And you know Ms. Calendar doesn’t mind things like that.”
Willow didn’t look comforted, but she did at least look willing to let Oz try and comfort her. Settling her head against Oz’s shoulder, she said mournfully, “It’s just that, you know, with all of us in college now, everything is so different! Ms. Calendar would never have lent me her shoes in high school, but she can do that now, ‘cause she’s not my teacher anymore. And I know that she wouldn’t have gotten mad at me in high school, when I was her student, but what if now that I’m her peer, she feels like she can get mad at me about things like this?”
Over Willow’s head, Buffy and Oz exchanged the best friend/boyfriend Look Of Solidarity that showed up one hell of a lot when Willow got worried about Ms. Calendar not liking her. “Shoe damage is, like, the hallmark of living on the Hellmouth,” Buffy reassured her. “Don’t you remember what happened to Cordelia’s Marc Jacobs heels in junior year?”
“GAH!”
Buffy and Willow nearly jumped out of their skin. Oz raised an eyebrow and peered ahead of them. “Is that…Xander?” he said.
Xander was sprinting back towards them, face completely ashen. “We are LEAVING,” he announced, grabbing Oz’s arm with one hand and Buffy’s with the other so that he could tow them back in the opposite direction. “We do NOT need to be here. We need to be SOMEWHERE ELSE.”
“B-but what about my candy?” Willow anxiously inquired.
“Trust me, Will,” said Xander. “I’m doing you a public service. If you’d seen what I just saw, you would have absolutely lost your appetite.”
“O-kay,” said Buffy, trying not to laugh, and gently (at least, for a Slayer) turned the group back around. “Even if you’re not hungry, Xander, I’m still a little peckish, and we’re far enough off of campus that turning back now means having to skip our little between-class snack break.”
“I am not going back in there,” said Xander. “That is a den of sordid horror.”
Searching her brain for the root cause of Xander’s positively theatrical disgust, Buffy landed on what she felt was the only possible option. “Xander,” she giggled, “is this ‘cause you saw Giles and Ms. Calendar kissing?”
Xander shuddered.
“You do know we’ve seen that, like, way too many times, right?” Buffy teased. Now even Willow was cracking a smile, and Oz looked pretty amused himself. “It’s kind of hard not to walk in on them. I don’t see why you’re being such a drama queen about it now.”
“You don’t understand,” said Xander. “It was—they were—”
“You know what?” said Willow, pointing the toe of her shoe and grinning down at it. “I think that the shoe thing doesn’t seem so scary after all. I mean, Xander had to see Giles and Ms. Calendar kissing, which we all know is the singular most terrifying thing ever—”
“Yeah, it’s not the vampires that scare me, it’s two consenting adults sharing a loving smooch,” Buffy chimed in, jostling Xander’s shoulder. He sent her a sour look. “Aww, c’mon, Xander! You’ve gotta admit, it is pretty funny to see you freak out about a kiss.”
Xander opened his mouth, furrowed his brow, and shut it again. “No,” he said. “You know what? I could win this right now, but I’m not going to, because I love you guys too much to subject you to even a secondhand account of what I just saw. I’m a grown man now. I no longer live in a state of idyllic teenage delusion. And I am begging you to at least let me go home.”
“Tough breaks, kiddo,” said Buffy, standing on tiptoe to ruffle his hair. “The Snack Brigade doesn’t allow for deserters.”
Giles met them at the door, opening it before they’d even knocked. He stared with wide, wild eyes at Xander, who appeared to be looking anywhere but at him, and said in a very strange tone of voice, “Hello, Children. I Would Like To Remind You That This Is A Home, Not A Library, And That Barging In When I Am Not Expecting Visitors May Lead To—”
“Giles, it’s ninety degrees out,” said Buffy incredulously. “Why are you wearing your three-piece suit?”
“And even if it’s not ninety degrees, you’re never wearing your three-piece suit!” Willow added. “You said last year that you think it makes you look stuffy and un-fun!”
“Actually, I said the un-fun part,” said Ms. Calendar. She was wearing a cute little floral skirt and blouse, which was almost as weird as Giles’s three-piece suit—not because it was something that Ms. Calendar wouldn’t wear, but because Giles and Ms. Calendar’s mutual unemployment usually meant that both of them were dressing casual when the kids came to call. “Hi, Xander. How’s it going?”
“Please don’t look directly at me,” said Xander.
“Okay, weirdos,” said Buffy, sending Xander a reproving look. “Xander saw you guys kissing and he’s being totally deranged about it. What’s up with you guys?”
“Kissing?” said Giles. “Yes. Yes, we were kissing. Kissing is what we were doing.” Ms. Calendar elbowed him in the side. “We’re very normal.”
“A convincingly normal assertion,” said Oz.
“No, I mean, like, what’s with the suit and the blouse and everything?” Buffy waved a hand towards Ms. Calendar’s artfully selected ensemble. “I don’t think I’ve seen you guys actually dressed since the school blew up.”
“A-ah, well—” Giles sent a clear help me look towards Ms. Calendar. When this didn’t get him anywhere, he said feebly, “We…wanted to add something new…to our routine?”
“We did,” Ms. Calendar agreed with great relief. “We absolutely did. You know, unemployment’s intensely monotonous these days, and a little bit of whimsy keeps the spark alive in any relationship, right?”
“Spark seems like it’s doing just fine to me,” said Xander flatly.
Giles went magenta. Ms. Calendar buried her face in her hands. Buffy glanced between them and Xander, completely lost.
“Giles, did your aunts send you a box of candy for the Watcher holiday this week?” Willow asked hopefully. “Because—”
“Do you want a chocolate orange?” said Giles. “I’ll get you a chocolate orange. Jenny, you keep the children company, I just have to go find that chocolate orange—”
“I can find it!” said Ms. Calendar hastily, already halfway to the stairs leading up to Giles’s loft bedroom. “You have absolutely got to let me come.” Giles dissolved into a coughing fit. “Oh my God, Rupert,” said Ms. Calendar, going bright red. “Let me come with you to get the damn orange. I cannot believe you—”
In what appeared to be a panic maneuver, Xander knocked over a nearby stack of books.
“Okay, what is going on?” Buffy demanded, torn between laughter and outright bemusement. “You are all acting super weird. Xander—”
“If you want that chocolate orange, Willow, you’re not to let Buffy ask any more questions,” said Giles, and all but ran for the stairs.
“Oh, you are not leaving me here!” snapped Ms. Calendar, sprinting after him.
Buffy was expecting to be able to share a confused look with someone, but Xander was clearly avoiding eye contact, Oz’s brow was furrowed like he was thinking about something, and Willow’s eyes were wide and thoughtful in the way that meant that she was just on the verge of figuring something out. Resigned to her cluelessness, Buffy wandered over to the couch, sitting down and idly picking up the nearest book to flip through.
“What’cha reading?” Willow peered over Buffy’s shoulder. “Oh,” she said. Then, “Oh,” in a very different tone of voice, and finally, “Oh no. Oh no oh no oh no. Xander—” and grabbed the book from Buffy before she could get a good look at the title.
Opening her mouth to protest, Buffy was distracted by the return of a still-flushed Giles. “Well,” he said. “Found a leftover orange from the Easter parcel, Willow, so hopefully that will suffice—”
“Xander walked in on you and Ms. Calendar having sex!” Willow shrieked. “In the living room!”
Ms. Calendar, who had been coming down the stairs, tripped two steps from the landing and almost fell down the rest of the way. Giles seemed to be trying to edge back up the stairs himself.
Buffy stared incredulously at Giles, at Xander, and then at the book that Willow was holding. The 90s Witch’s Guide to Tantric Sex was printed in hot pink on the cover. “Oh my god,” she said, feeling positively queasy. “Xander, you saw Giles and Ms. Calendar—you saw them—”
“This is why I ask that you children knock,” said Giles through his teeth, looking utterly miserable. Ms. Calendar’s attempt to keep herself upright on the stairs had blocked his escape.
“You know what?” said Xander. “I think that you guys should be able to keep it in your pants. I think that it would be way better for all parties if you just tacitly accepted the fact that we’re definitely going to come over at some point. It worked fine in the library—”
“Yes, Xander, because the library was a high school,” said Giles, “and we were not engaging in actual sexual intercourse in our place of employment!”
Ms. Calendar responded to this by giving Giles a Stop Lying To The Children look. For the sake of her own sanity, Buffy decided to ignore that. “But in the living room?” Willow persisted.
“Where Rupert and I decide to have sex in our apartment is absolutely not a conversation that we are going to be having with any of you,” said Ms. Calendar very loudly.
“God, Willow, you were right,” said Buffy, horrified. “Everything is different in college.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” said an exasperated Giles, shoving the chocolate orange in Willow’s direction. “Jenny and I are in a long-term relationship. If you four don’t wish to walk in on us when we’re—”
“Doing the dirty?” Oz supplied.
“Stop that, man,” Xander whined.
“—then knock on the damned door,” Giles finished. “Now. Any other questions before we put this mortifying incident behind us?” Willow raised her hand. “Yes, Willow?”
“Giles, if you’ve been saving this since Easter, I don’t want to take your chocolate orange,” said Willow earnestly, handing Giles the chocolate orange again. “I feel like you’ve been through a lot today and probably need this a lot more than I do.”
Giles looked like he might melt. “…Thank you, Willow.”
“What about me, Willow?” inquired an injured Xander. “What about what I’ve been through today? How come Giles gets a chocolate orange when I had to see him bending Ms. Calendar over the—”
“NO DETAILS!!!!!” shouted Buffy, clapping her hands over her ears.
“Come over any time, you said,” Giles was saying to Ms. Calendar. “Rain or shine, you said. We’ll always be there if you need someone to talk to about adjusting to the heavier workload of higher education—”
“Oh, shush,” said Ms. Calendar. “You’re the one who keeps buying the snacks they like so that they think they’re stealing from us.”