CINNAMON HEARTS
by perletwo
Giles shuffled furtively through the aisles of the 24-hour drugstore, waiting for the crowds at the front to thin out a bit so he could find his prize in relative privacy.
The chocolates shelf looked like a cyclone had hit it, of course. The stuffed-animal bin wasn't much better, only a few forlorn-looking - good God, what *were* those supposed to be? Gorillas? Aliens? He shuddered and turned away.
Sidling up to the front, he glanced and picked at the remaining holiday items, feeling distinctly silly as he did. After all, why should anyone care if he was buying Valentine items? It wasn't as if she was going to - Heavens, who was that?!
No, it couldn't be, he reassured himself. The flash of curls he'd seen peeking up above a shelf were blonde, and she wasn't a blonde today. More a mix of her auburn and blonde hair, making a smooth cap of cinnamon...
Looking away from the sudden vision of her face floating before him, he glanced down at the item he'd idly picked up. A tall coffee cup with red hearts on it, filled with little red cinnamon hearts in a cellophane bag that had seen better days.
"Giles?"
He jumped, sending candy spilling out a hidden tear in the bag.
"...So anyway, the point is, I can't believe I didn't get a single Valentine," Buffy rambled as they trudged through the cemetery. "not that I wanted one, not, um, like that, but -I mean, aren't teenage boys always supposed to get crushes on the hot older-but-not-too-much-older teacher chick? Hey! I practically jumped the bones of that RJ guy with the magic jacket, and I don't even get a card?!"
Spike trudged along silently at her side, staring straight ahead.
"Say *something,* Spike. I'm doin' all the work here."
"Wouldn't've thought you'd want all the frills 'n' bows, Slayer. War on 'n all."
"Well, no," she admitted. "But, it would've been nice to be thought of. Good for morale. And what about you, Mr. Love-You-to-Death? You couldn't even come up with a card or a box of chocolates or a cheesy poem?"
He flinched slightly. "Wouldn't'a been chocolates," he mumbled, and when she stopped to stare at him, he added reluctantly, "Bad associations."
"Really." Her eyes narrowed.
" 'S not like you're givin' me anything either, Slayer," he said defensively, and they trudged on.
"Anya! Wa-wha-what are you doing here?" Giles shifted, swallowed hard. "N-not that there's anything wrong with being in a drugstore at 11 o'clock at night, I-I-I am myself after all..."
She held up a box of L'Oreal. "Because I'm worth it. Of course." In her other hand she clutched a red gift bag in a death below the handles, holding the edges of the paper together in a death grip. "Yourself?"
"What? Oh." Mind racing, he held up the mug. "Discovered you were quite right, after all. The coffeecups at Buffy's house are entirely too small."
"Uh-huh. Course I'm right." She glanced from his hand to his face and back again. "And the candy?"
And, he realized suddenly, she was blushing. Anya? Embarrassed? By *anything?* He glanced again at the bag in her hand. Was she trying to snag Xander back again?
"Well. Well, I liked the mug. Better than the - the other mugs. Back there." He shrugged. "The candy's just there. Left over from the Valentine rush."
"Mm. Yeah. Figures. Nobody ever likes the cinnamon hearts."
He looked up, surprised. "I do. You don't care for them?"
"No, I like them fine. It's just nobody ever buys them. After all, it's not like they're chocolate. And who wants to settle for plain old cinnamon - " she rolled her eyes up towards her hair and back again, comically "- when they can have chocolate?"
"Well. Their loss is our gain, I say." Giles caught a few stray hearts that had fallen in the rim of the cup and offered them to her. "And, um, that?" He nodded toward the red bag.
"That? Oh. This! Well. It was on sale!" She smiled and popped a few hearts in her mouth, and they turned to the register.
A few dozen yards later Buffy asked, "How can you have bad associations with chocolate, anyway?"
Spike stopped, shuffled his feet. "I got you some for your birthday, few years back. Tried to practice talkin' to you, an' ended up beatin' em to mush in frustration." He turned away, looked back again. "I was gonna give 'em to you anyway, an' the Bit caught me. Teased me about it. So we went an' broke into the Magic Box instead, Li'l Bit 'n me."
Buffy's face flushed a dull red. "That was the night Dawn found out she was the Key?"
"Yeah. So, my track record with givin' chocolates 's'not so hot, y'see." They resumed trudging, falling silent once again for another several hundred yards.
"I was wrong," she said suddenly, and he looked up sharply. "About that night."
"That night?" He shook his head, and she squirmed.
"You're gonna make me say it, aren't you? Okay. I'll say it. I told you you had no right to be the one with Dawn when she found out about a thing like being the Key. I thought you wouldn't take good enough care of her. Um, emotionally, I mean." She looked up suddenly, directly into his eyes. "I was wrong."
About forty seconds later he finally managed to clamp his mouth shut again.
"And I'd've liked my chocolates, even if they were from you," she muttered. "Nice to be thought of, y'know."
"Thought that counts, then?" His scarred eyebrow quirked up.
"Well, yeah. I mean, I'd just turned 20. That's like, what in Slayer years? 150?" He chuckled, and she smiled, the tension between them suddenly lighter. "Not like I'm gonna get that many boxes of chocolate in my life, that I can just be turning them down right and left. Besides, worse comes to worst, it's still chocolate, right?"
"Right." Still smiling, they walked on in silence, but stepping a bit lighter. "Slayer?"
"Yeah?"
"Guess maybe you did give me somethin' after all." His head tilted to one side.
"Maybe. And maybe you gave me something too." Both his eyebrows went up. "Raincheck? Next birthday? Chocolates?" And she gave him a dazzling, brilliant smile, giggled and took off running ahead of them.
When Spike managed to collect his breath again, he took off after her at a dead run.
At the Summers house, Giles padded quietly through the darkened living room. In his hand was his old, standard-sized coffee mug, which he was holding very still to keep the cinnamon hearts inside it from rattling.
Stealthily he slipped the mug down onto the floor, setting it beside the pillow on Anya's bedroll. Then he crept away to his own kip.
Leaning against his pillow was a familiar red gift bag, now with a wad of white tissue paper sticking out of the mouth.
Frowning, he picked it up, pulled out the tissue-paper plug and looked inside. Then reached in for the object it contained.
It held a shopworn box of Twinings tea bags, a sampler box of different flavors. Earl Grey, orange pekoe, Darjeeling...
He smiled, glanced at Anya's bedroll, then back at the box in his hand. Fought down a laugh, and turned to take the box into the kitchen.