Bathwater
by Dr Squidlove
drsquidlove@virginqueen.com

For archive at NoOne Knows and my own site, The Lecherous Tentacles of Dr Squidlove.

Giles takes care of Xander's injuries

Rated... PG-13. Nothing explicit.

Wordcount: 297
Just a little'un, but feedback is love.

All my blings belongs to Joss.

I wrote this for set 26 of gloriana's flashslash exercises, where you're given four words and eight minutes to use them.

I keep trying to extend this, build it into something bigger, but it's not working. It wants to stay exactly as it is.


Bathwater

Prompt 26
Set 1 sponge impact sate character

Xander winced as the sponge slid down his back. It might as well have been sandpaper, the way it caught in every cut. He didn't know how he knew that Giles had his teeth clamped down on his bottom lip, but he did. Maybe because Giles hadn't apologised once, and surely nothing else would keep him from it.

Xander huddled a little tighter, arms squeezing around his knees. That hurt too, stretching the wide scrape on his upper back and twisting the sprained shoulder from his impact with the wall, but he was way naked here. Naked in all sorts of the word, and the medicinal properties of whatever Giles had poured in the two-inch deep lukewarm water in the bath didn't change the fact that Giles, Giles of all people, was bathing him.

Giles had the sleeves of his good shirt rolled up, the only care he'd taken of himself as he knelt on the hard tiles, dipping the sponge in the bathwater and running it down Xander's stinging back, over and over.

He hadn't said a word since ordering Xander into the bath and disappearing to rummage up whatever this potion was. No sorries for Xander's endless winces and whimpers, no press for details, no mild reproaches for ignoring Buffy's and Willow's warnings, and that said everything that needed to be said about Giles' character.

Xander had been sure, this time, that no one was going to rescue him before his latest date-turned-evil was thoroughly sated, but of course, he should have known his friends better than that.

Giles was late, but not *too* late. Giles was never too late.

Another dip, another run of dripping water, another scrape of sponge. Xander turned his face to the wall, and rested his head on his knees.