Distractions (Giles/Jenny)
Title: Distractions
Pairing: Giles/Jenny
Spoilers: pre-series to season one
Word Count: 1,593
Summary: Five times Giles notices Jenny before "I Robot You Jane."
Author's Note: For ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
sunshine_queen! :)
As the two newest faculty members at Sunnydale High, Rupert Giles and Jenny Calendar are thrown a potluck by the rest of the staff two days before the school year starts. (Teamwork, teamwork, teamwork! Principal Flutie keeps chanting with such manic enthusiasm that the whole staff becomes united in a secret desire to kill him. Wishful thinking, and all.) After forcing them to stand up in front of everyone and say a few words about themselves, the new additions are finally set free to mingle. For about twenty minutes, the two of them have been bound by a solidarity crafted from mutual embarrassment and discomfort.
The meaningful bond is officially shattered ten seconds into their first conversation. She introduces herself as Jenny and he insists upon calling her Ms. Calendar and she decides that he’s a snob and he mentally dubs her insufferable and that’s that, thank you very much.
--
When October comes to a close, they’re both forced into chaperoning the Halloween dance. The music is loud and artless and the decorations similarly so. The whole affair is quite enough to convince Giles that the school is located atop a hellmouth – strobe lights and hormonal adolescents pressing up against one another with so little regard for decorum that he doesn’t know whether to blush or gag. Within five minutes, he is nursing an especially merciless headache.
“Fun, huh?” Ms. Calendar asks, beaming as she approaches him. She’s dressed in a seasonably appropriate orange top and a black skirt that has no qualms about putting her legs on rather shameless display. Her fingernails are painted black, he notes.
“Truth be told, I can’t decide which is more tasteless,” he responds, and resists the acute urge to massage his temples. “The music or the decorations.”
She surveys him thoughtfully for a moment. “Mr. Giles?”
“Yes, Ms. Calendar?”
“You’re gay, aren’t you?”
The surrounding cacophony seems to fade immediately at her words.
“I – I refuse to dignify that inquiry with a response, thank you.” He begins polishing his glasses furiously by default.
“It’s always the cute ones,” she says wistfully, and sighs.
She’s whisked away, laughing, onto the dance floor by one of her students before he’s given the opportunity to explain that there is a distinct difference between being gay and being British. The cute part doesn’t register until a good thirty seconds later.
--
The week before the Christmas holidays, Principal Flutie insists upon a faculty Secret Santa exchange. Giles finds himself to be the lucky recipient of a lurid yellow coffee mug bearing the words ‘KISS THE LIBRARIAN.’
“Ah,” he says faintly. “How . . .” An adjective refuses to present itself. “. . . ah.”
Ms. Calendar winks at him from across the room. He pretends very determinedly not to notice.
--
When the staff email system is installed, it falls to Ms. Calendar to conduct a short seminar regarding how to use it. Giles is not thrilled with this fact, to say the least – Buffy has finally arrived and is already throwing herself recklessly into a great deal of mischief, and in comparison learning how to send letters over the internet seems profoundly unimportant.
Sitting in the computer science classroom, he deliberately pays no mind to her voice – low and warm and charming – and eyes the clock instead. The concept of email doesn’t sit well with him; the idea of abandoned pages, the notion of being so easily stripped of one’s individuality and rendered nothing more than lines of identical text, soulless black-on-white. His eyes wander to the chalkboard: she really does have lovely handwriting – a loopy, whimsically graceful cursive that suits her. He supposes this is meant to be unimportant in comparison to her ability to type Lord knew however many hundred words per minute.
When she finally finishes speaking, he’s one of the first out of his seat.
“You didn’t seem too enthralled,” Ms. Calendar observes at the doorway, and unfortunately, he isn’t distracted enough to miss the mocking lilt in her tone.
“Forgive me,” he responds brusquely. “I’m afraid I don’t share your passion for these . . .” He casts a disapproving glance at the computer on her desk, “—these newfangled dread machines.”
She surveys him for a moment, a smirk playing at her lips.
“Never woulda guessed,” she finally concludes, and moves on to speak to Miss Frank.
Giles finds himself watching her walk away – she really does walk quite nicely – and then abruptly realizes that he is already nearly a quarter of an hour late meeting Buffy in the library.
Which just gives him all the more reason to resent Jenny Calendar. Damnable distracting woman – he really can’t stand her in the slightest.
--
The new band instructor is a succubus. Three students and a faculty member have already perished throughout the course of the past few days. Buffy’s just called with word that she’s followed her back to her lair, and is sorely in need of a bit of back-up. Needless to say, time is of the essence.
Giles is striding across the parking lot, forcing himself not to break into an all-out run (which is the sort of thing that inspires suspicion and panic) as he draws nearer to his Citroen. His fingers have just met the door handle when he hears her.
“Hey!” He looks up to see Ms. Calendar approaching him, impractical shoes clicking evenly against the pavement.
“Um,” he says, because it is more polite than ‘for God’s sake, not now, you blasted woman.’ “Hello.”
“Listen, would you mind giving me a ride home?” she asks. “My car’s in the shop, and Mr. Foster was supposed to do it, but I haven’t seen him all day.”
“Yes, well, you wouldn’t have,” Giles mumbles distractedly.
“What?”
“Er, nothing,” Giles amends as convincingly as he can. “I expect he’s, erm, just fine. Fear not.”
“Okay,” Ms. Calendar says slowly.
He’s about to refuse, but thinking up a legitimate reason to refuse her (beyond the relatively true “I don’t like you”) requires a presence of mind that he lacks at the moment, and for some reason he cannot bring himself to do the logical thing – namely, to take off screeching out of the parking lot without the faintest explanation.
She looks particularly lovely today. He has an unpleasant suspicion that this might be the reason he’s still standing here.
“Oh, fine,” he obliges irritably, climbing into the car and reaching over to open the passenger’s seat door. “Get in. But I’m in quite a hurry, and—”
“No problem,” she says casually, as though this isn’t a matter of life and death. (Although to be fair, he supposes he can’t blame her for it when she doesn’t happen to know that.) “My apartment’s right down the street.”
“Excellent,” he grumbles, and starts the car. They go tearing across the parking lot with impressive speed.
“Other way,” she points out awkwardly.
He curses under his breath and switches the turn signal.
“Just keep going,” Ms. Calendar instructs. “And you’re going to take a right down here.”
“Phenomenal,” Giles mutters, and hopes that this little detour hasn’t resulted in any casualties yet. “I’ll have you know that this is very much out of my way.”
“Sorry,” Ms. Calendar says, sounding (understandably) taken aback.
“And I really do have some very important business to tend to,” he continues, more because talking distracts him from how bloody terrified he is than because he actually feels the need to berate her for daring ask for a ride home.
“Oookay.”
“And this would hardly be a difficult walk if you didn’t insist upon wearing those ridiculous shoes,” he rants on.
“You noticed my shoes?” She sounds surprised at the notion that he would pay that much attention.
“That’s irrelevant,” Giles snaps.
“You know, if you were really so against the idea of driving two minutes out of your way, you should have just said so,” Ms. Calendar points out, not without a touch of fierceness. “I would have waited around for someone else.”
“Well, it’s too ruddy late for that, now, isn’t it?” Giles points out.
She lets out a short, indignant laugh. “You’re really charming, you know that?”
“Not nearly as much as you are, I’m sure,” he retorts darkly.
“Oh, no,” she counters, nothing short of scathing. “Don’t even try. You’re waaay more charming than I am, Snobby.”
“This is a profoundly stupid conversation,” Giles announces, scowling.
“Agreed,” she snaps, crossing her arms in front of her chest.
He takes the right. The silence is very, very awkward, and he’s frustrated to realize that he now feels a considerable amount of guilt in addition to the stress and terror that have already overtaken him.
Wonderful.
“You can, er, turn on the radio, if you’d like,” he ventures after a moment. It’s the closest thing to a peace offering he can come up with at the moment.
She’s silent for a long time before answering, “’kay.”
When she leaves it on a station playing something as blaring and mind-numbing as the horrible mess of sounds that had been featured at the Halloween dance, he is reasonably certain that it’s an act of revenge. He grips the steering wheel until his knuckles go white and focuses all of his energy upon not shouting at her, or perhaps just bashing the damned radio in. All the while, she sits there, arms crossed, a hint of a triumphant smirk upturning her mouth.
By the time he drops her off, the succubus seems a most welcome change of company.
groggy
