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Ms. Calendar cornered Giles the day after Billy awoke from his coma, grabbing his arm and wrestling him into a storage closet of all fucking places. Before Giles could say a word to her about impropriety, she demanded sharply, “What the hell happened yesterday? Oh, for God’s sake, Rupert, stop twitching, no one can hear us—”
“Yes, of course, that’s exactly my problem with you dragging me into a broom closet,” said Giles, a searing electricity burning through him at the look in Ms. Calendar’s eyes. “Do you have any idea what people will think if they see us both in here?”
“Stop dodging the question.”
“I’m not dodging the question! I am posing a far more pressing question than, than—”
“How is the possibility of some random sophomore thinking we’re having sex on campus more important than the fact that I don’t know what happened yesterday, you clearly do, and you’re not telling me?”
“It’s been less than a day, Ms. Calendar, and I had no idea you wanted to know in the first place! You can hardly act as though I’ve been deliberately withholding information when I’ve not even had the chance to, to—” Frustrated, Giles exhaled. “I thought we were on better terms,” he said, more plaintive than he would have preferred, and more vulnerable than he enjoyed.
Ms. Calendar went a brilliant vermillion and stared him down with the force of a supernova. “Rupert,” she said through gritted teeth. “What. Happened. Yesterday?”
It was becoming extremely clear to Giles that there was no way to get out of this circuitous argument without answering Ms. Calendar’s question. Somewhat put-off by his utter inability to knock her off-kilter, particularly when she seemed to be writing a bloody manual on sending him sprawling sideways, he said, just as resentfully, “Nightmares.”
Ms. Calendar took this in. Her shoulders were still up, defensive. “Nightmares?” she repeated.
“Nightmares,” Giles confirmed testily. “The magical theory behind it is fairly complex—”
“Is that supposed to insinuate that I wouldn’t be able to follow it?”
“It is not. It is me telling you that I don’t feel like giving you a multiple-paragraph explanation in a broom closet. The magical theory behind it is fairly complex, but the important aspect is that a traumatized young boy’s coma combined with the magical energies of the Hellmouth to create a, a nightmare world. All of our nightmares were brought to life—”
“Not all,” said Ms. Calendar.
Giles blinked. Then he took a second look at Ms. Calendar. What he had initially assumed to be defensive anger did not look like the expression he had become intimately familiar with over the course of the last semester. Defensive, certainly, but anger was hardly visible—if it had ever even been present at all. “I’m sorry?”
“Not all our worst fears, though,” said Ms. Calendar. “Right? I mean, some were left out.”
“I…” Giles frowned, bemused. “I can’t imagine why any would be.”
“But some were,” Ms. Calendar persisted.
“Perhaps some—some latent, subconscious—”
“No,” said Ms. Calendar. “Some nightmares that people have were not actually coming to life. They got all of the other ones, the vampires, the marriage, the disapproving uncle, but the big one, the recurring one, the terrifying one, did not come to life. It wasn’t like I didn’t know that nightmares were coming to life,” she continued, stepping back from Giles and attempting to pace around the three square feet of closet space between them. “I mean, come on. That part was obvious. But what I want to know is why certain nightmares were missing if this was happening all day.”
Giles had absolutely no idea what was happening. “…Disapproving uncle?”
“SOME PEOPLE HAVE ISSUES WITH THEIR FAMILY,” said Ms. Calendar, loudly enough that Giles felt certain she would be heard through the closet door.
“Ms. Calendar, I…” As he did with the children, Giles tried his best to discard the unimportant bits of communicated information and hone in on the useful aspects. As ever, this did not work with Ms. Calendar. Absolutely all of her words refused to leave his mind, despite his best efforts to dispassionately dissect them. “I’m not sure that I can help you,” he finished, surprised by his own apologetic sincerity. “My own experiences yesterday ran through absolutely all of my recurring concerns. No stone left unturned, and all that.” He laughed nervously, then winced. “Sorry. I—”
Ms. Calendar pressed her lips together and stared at him with those blazing eyes. She let out an inarticulate syllable and shoved her way out of the storage closet, slamming the door behind her.
“Ms. Calendar—” Giles tried the knob. It didn’t open. Belatedly, he remembered that this was not a storage closet he had the key for. “Wonderful!” he said, and resigned himself to his fate.
Jenny stalked down the hall, heart pounding, and all but sprinted into her classroom, slamming the door shut behind her. She had lived every nightmare she’d ever experienced—that awful one with her walking down the aisle to Angelus, the one where she was dousing Uncle Enyos in kerosene, the one where she was married to a faceless man and locked in her family’s shitty little kitchen. Every nightmare except one. The important one. The one she kept fucking having.
It wasn’t a long dream. Simple. She was sitting in her apartment, and Rupert was there. Sometimes he was making tea, sometimes he was in the easy chair with one of her books, sometimes he was curled up on the sofa, watching television. One of the dreams had had him bring her out a sandwich. The details shifted, and she could never make them out, but he was there, in her goddamn house, and after some time, he would get up from whatever he was doing and kiss her temple and say Jenny.
And then she would wake up with an honest-to-God ache in her chest, a humiliating, frustrating, fucking pathetic thing. Waking up hurt worse than the nightmares where Enyos was burning and it was her fault, where Angelus was gripping her wedding veil like a chain, where she was a ghost of what she’d been. She closed her eyes and she could feel the warmth in the way that he had said her name.
It wasn’t something she wanted. Not at all something she would have chosen. She didn’t like people in her home or in her heart, and Jenny wasn’t a name that meant anything to her. And for it to be Rupert of all people, even if he had proven to be more complicated and interesting than she’d expected…he was an ass. Prideful and stubborn and difficult. Dreaming about anything like that, waking up with that unsettled feeling…it could only ever have been a nightmare.
No other explanation. No reason for it to have been missing from yesterday’s pantheon of horror.
None whatsoever.