Chapter Text
It wasn’t unusual for Rupert to be a little out of it on a Monday. Or a Tuesday. Or any day, really. Most of the time, Rupert seemed like he was orbiting around a different sun than the rest of them—entering the staff room and breezing past attempts to make conversation as though they’d never happened in the first place. Jenny had noticed this, and felt a spiteful kind of satisfaction in it: she could add it to the list of reasons Rupert was The Worst Ever, not that she really needed any more of those. (She had slotted it in right between “takes his coffee with milk AND sugar to the point where it doesn’t even really taste like coffee anymore” and “eyes are too green.” It was an incredibly comprehensive list.) But it was unusual for Rupert to stop when one of the teachers—Laura Murray, who was small and slight and somehow managed to make a tight bun look cute—caught his arm and said, earnestly, “Mr. Giles, is everything okay? You’re looking, um, more troubled than usual.” And then she smiled at him.
Rupert smiled back. Jenny did not even slightly care about this, and wasn’t paying attention to any of it. “Thank you, Ms. Murray,” he said, which—what the fuck, Jenny had been absolutely certain that she was the only faculty member whose name he reliably remembered?? And Laura was an English teacher, and everyone knew English teachers went with English librarians like bacon and eggs, and Laura really was exactly Rupert’s type with all the sensible fashions and the perfectly applied lipstick, and Jenny was not paying attention so it didn’t matter. “It’s—um, well, I-I suppose I should start notifying faculty members, shouldn’t I? There’s, there’s a problem with my green card. My colleagues in England are doing the best that they can to resolve it, but it’s looking rather grim.”
“A problem with your green card?” echoed Louise Moran. Now Jenny wasn’t even bothering to pretend not to listen. “Is everything okay? I mean, god, ridiculous question, but—seriously, is it a mix-up with the paperwork kind of problem or is it a leaving the country kind of problem?”
“Louise,” said Laura.
“No, it’s quite all right,” said Rupert. “Comforting to talk about it, actually.” He smiled, sweet and shy, like an actual human person and not the man who was willfully ignoring all eighty-seven of Jenny’s memos. “It, um, isn’t all that clear, actually. Normally, the, the people who secured my green card for me would step in, but I mentioned that I was looking into alternative solutions, and they seem to assume that I have already found a way forward that doesn’t need their help.”
“Alternative solutions?”
“Oh, green-card marriages, assistance from local government, all sorts of impossible things,” quipped Rupert, which made both women laugh. “I intend to try and reach them again, but they’re remarkably difficult to get in contact with. Time differences, bureaucracy, et cetera.”
“Well,” said Laura, smiling playfully, “if it’s a green-card marriage you’re looking for, I could always step up to the plate and help a fellow lit-aficionado out.”
“Aren’t you married?”
All eyes turned to Jenny. Why were all eyes on Jenny? She replayed the last five seconds in her head, realized that she had said that instead of thinking it, and decided to do what she did best: double down. “You’re married, right?” she said. “We all met your husband. Sam, or, uh, Steve, or—”
“Are you talking about my brother Timothy?” said Laura. “The one who came to the end-of-summer barbecue?”
“…Yes,” said Jenny, who no longer had any idea what she was trying to do here. “Your brother Timothy from the end-of-summer barbecue.”
“Very noble of you, Ms. Calendar,” said Rupert casually. “Attempting to save me from a potential bigamist.”
A strained laugh ran through the faculty room. Jenny gritted her teeth, furious with herself for somehow losing an argument with Rupert before it had even started. Recognizing that acknowledging his statement meant accepting defeat, she grasped instead at the other fact they’d been discussing. “You’re leaving?”
Rupert stiffened, looking very intently at her. “…It does seem likely,” he finally said. “I’ll be heading back to England to get my papers in order, and then—well, I can’t see Principal Flutie taking very kindly to his librarian leaving mid-semester. I do intend to return to town, but I may not be able to continue working here.”
“Bob’s a softie,” said Jenny. “Feed him that little sob story about your green card falling through and I bet he’ll hold a spot for you. Besides which, who the hell is going to come and fill in for you? They still haven’t found someone to permanently replace Dr. Gregory.”
“You are remarkably unsympathetic,” said Rupert tightly. Laura and Louise were both starting to edge away towards their table. “Say what you will about Ms. Murray, but at least she was interested in providing me with some sort of solution.”
“Please don’t bring me into this,” whispered Laura through her teeth.
“Okay, first of all, I said nothing about Laura,” Jenny shot back. “Laura’s an angel. I was clarifying a point of confusion. And second of all—”
“Even if she was married, she clearly didn’t intend to marry me,” said Rupert loftily. “Have you never heard of a joke, Ms. Calendar?”
“Are you kidding me?” said Jenny. “This coming from you? Your humor is so dry that a desert-dweller would have trouble setting up shop there!”
“Desert-dweller,” Rupert repeated, half to himself, and sort of smiled. “That is funny.”
“It’s an insult. Go to hell.” Jenny slammed her padfolio down on the nearest table and stalked out of the faculty room.
The hallway was dead silent for all of five seconds. She heard a familiar tread behind her and whirled, heart in her throat, angry for a reason she didn’t know how to explain. “You don’t get to leave!” she burst out, and found herself face-to-face with a bewildered Laura. God, this day kept getting worse and worse. “Oh. Shit. Laura, I—”
But Laura was looking at her with her head tilted, a small, thoughtful smile playing across her face. Simply, she said, “Jenny, I’m not actually planning to marry Mr. Giles. You know that, right?”
“I know what a joke is,” said Jenny testily, leaning back against the lockers and staring resolutely ahead of her.
“Okay,” said Laura, sidling up to stand next to her. “Well, do you want to go back in there? I think Mr. Giles is back to pretending that people don’t exist.”
The thought of seeing Rupert again—seeing him and knowing that at some point she wouldn’t be seeing him—
“I have papers to grade,” said Jenny, ignoring the expression on Laura’s face, like she knew something that Jenny didn’t. Fuck that. Jenny was perfectly aware of how weird and irrational she was being, and what it made her look like, and she didn’t care, because the fact that Rupert was leaving mattered more than what she looked like right now. She hurried past Laura and down the hall, making a sharp right turn towards the stairwell.
And what was she supposed to say, anyway, in the face of this? Their relationship was one of spite and antipathy. It didn’t matter that he was leaving. It wasn’t the kind of thing that was supposed to make her feel like she was losing something. She wasn’t losing anything, because she didn’t like him. The whole point of thinking about him all the time, thinking about what she’d say when she’d see him, how she’d feel when their eyes met (electric, and furious, because he did this thing where he pretended he didn’t know how to make eye contact, and it would take him ten minutes sometimes before he would actually look at her), all of that was because he was a fucking thorn in her side and she couldn’t get rid of him.
She was going to be rid of him now. But it wasn’t—it wasn’t the way she’d wanted it. If she’d even wanted it at all. Except she had to have wanted it at some point, because it was an indisputable fact that Rupert was fucking intolerable. She knew she hadn’t changed her mind about that. But—
Why wasn’t it sitting right with her? Him leaving, and not wanting to leave? The implication that he would be staying here, in this tiny one-Starbucks town, but that something was pulling him away? Maybe it was that she’d had to pack up her life in Los Angeles after a call from Enyos in New York, and she’d wanted to be there. She was the best version of herself there. Just the thought of someone not getting to choose whether or not they left—
That was it. That was what this was. Laura had probably thought—well, it didn’t matter what Laura had thought, because Laura was totally off base. Jenny was just projecting all of her frustration about her uncle shoving her into a costly, frightening, frustrating move to a town she hadn’t chosen, and this thing with Rupert was upsetting because it reminded her of how out of control her own life was. And she was getting all bent out of shape about not seeing him because—because—
“Ms. Calendar?”
Jenny whirled. Her heart was pounding so hard that she felt sure he could hear it. “…Rupert,” she said, slightly strangled.
“You left your—” Rupert held out the padfolio somewhat tentatively. It looked unusual on him. “Um. This.”
Jenny took the padfolio without comment, hugging it to her chest and waiting for Rupert to leave. He didn’t. He was looking at her like he was trying to puzzle her out. For the first time, she was struck with the horrible possibility that he might have jumped to the same completely incorrect conclusion as Laura, and it was this that inspired her to blurt out, “I’m just—I don’t think that you shouldn’t have a choice.”
Rupert’s eyes widened and he blinked a few times. Jenny wanted to snatch her words back out of the air. “That’s…very kind,” he started, which was already horrifying to hear from him of all people. “But—”
“We should get married,” said Jenny.
What was wrong with her today. Rupert was staring at her like he thought he had hallucinated her last sentence. After a moment, he appeared to decide that he had hallucinated her last sentence, because he nodded a little to himself as if to say yes, of course, this is the kind of thing that happens in Sunnydale (which, well, it was, but unfortunately not in this case), and then said, “It really will get sorted. Um. I think. The business with my—my, ah, connections, it’s largely a miscommunication, and it should be relatively easy to sort out after I’ve flown out to London and—”
“We should get married,” said Jenny, significantly louder.
Rupert gave her this look, then said, “I am giving you an out, Ms. Calendar.”
“I’m not taking it. Marry me.” Jenny’s heart was threatening to hammer its way out of her chest. “You shouldn’t have to leave.”
“This from you?” said Rupert. “You, who have made it repeatedly clear that you want nothing to do with me?”
“Excuse me? You’re the one who takes every possible opportunity to avoid me!”
“Because you endlessly harangue me at every turn—”
“—because you are avoiding me, and this is beside the point,” Jenny persisted.
“I’m of the mind that it is exactly the point, actually,” Rupert muttered under his breath.
“I heard that.”
“Good. I intended you to. What in God's name are you on about?”
“Exactly what I said.” Jenny hugged the padfolio so tightly that it threatened to break. “If you want to stay, you should get to stay. And I’m the one you talk to the most on staff—”
“—because you endlessly harangue me at every turn—”
“That’s not a no, Rupert.”
“I—” Rupert colored, hands fluttering up to remove his glasses. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “This is absurd,” he said, half to himself. “Patently absurd. Why on earth—why on earth,” he looked beseechingly back up at Jenny, “would you want to do this for me?”
Jenny’s stomach twisted. She didn’t like the way that he’d said that. “I’m not a monster,” she said, hurt. “I don’t like you, but that doesn’t mean you don’t deserve to be here.”
“You don’t like me, but you’re willing to marry me,” Rupert countered. “We would have to live together, Ms. Calendar. Not to mention the fact that I’ve already told half the staff about the trouble with my green card—”
“Rupert, would anyone on staff think you were green-card marrying me?” Jenny pointed out. “That I would agree to that?”
“It’s a more plausible solution than you—than this,” said Rupert, gesturing between them so violently that he sent his glasses flying out of his hands.
Jenny caught them. Quick and light, she moved forward, standing on tiptoe to carefully replace Rupert’s glasses atop his nose. She had never been this close to him before—close enough to see the star in his eye, the scar across his forehead, the way his lips parted. She catalogued every detail in the nanosecond before she stepped back again. “People have sex,” she said, simple, conversational. “Hate sex, maybe, but it’s sex. Good sex. Good enough for them to do stupid things like get married so that they can keep having sex. It would be hard to keep hate sex going with an ocean and a country between them. And these are two people who have repeatedly gotten into big, disruptive, unprofessional arguments in a hell of a lot of places, so it wouldn’t be hard to believe that they might make another really dumb decision. People get married for less.”
Color had risen to Rupert’s cheeks. She’d expected him to interject, stammer something British about how improper the very subject was, but he was just watching her as if entranced. She waited for him to object, but he didn’t. He wasn’t objecting. He was looking at her, now, like he was seeing her for the first time.
The thought of sex with Rupert made her draw back. “It’s not actually going to happen,” she said sharply, almost afraid. She didn’t know what to do with the thought of him wanting her.
“No,” said Rupert a little hoarsely. He cleared his throat. “No, I—no. Of course not.”
“But I’m just saying,” said Jenny. Her own breath was coming a little ragged. She didn’t want to examine that too closely. “It’s not impossible.”
“No,” Rupert echoed. “No, it’s not.”
She hadn’t expected that. “You—what?”
Rupert swallowed hard and straightened up, his eyes on hers. “I’ll marry you,” he said. “If you mean it.”
Jenny wasn’t sure if she had. She’d said what she was thinking and doubled down before she could think through all of the implications. If she had thought about it, she would have said that she couldn’t possibly imagine a world where she’d be okay with tying herself to anyone like that, least of all Rupert, who was so astonishingly traditional that she halfway expected him to ask her to give up her job and get to work in the kitchen. Except she’d spun a sordid little story where they were getting married to keep him in the country so that they could have sex, and he hadn’t stumbled back from that. And now he was saying he would marry her. None of this was going according to plan.
But then she saw the look in Rupert’s eyes, and recognized it. That badly hidden desperation. That shame. He was trying to look as unaffected and aloof as usual, but it wasn’t working, and it tore at Jenny’s heart in a way that she hadn’t anticipated. She didn’t like seeing him like that. She liked seeing him sharp, angry, unapologetically himself. She liked how it felt when he stiffened in response to her teasing attention.
“I mean it,” she said. It came out gentler than she had ever heard herself around him.
Rupert gave her this wobbly little smile and ducked his head. “Thank you,” he said. “Truly. I—there are more lives than just mine that will be helped by your kindness, Ms. Calendar, and—just—thank you,” he finished, breathlessly, as if a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. “Thank you. I can’t possibly say it enough. If this—if it works—”
Oh, he looked so different. The authentic sweetness in his expression, in his voice— “Sure, fine, okay,” said Jenny, hoping to God she wasn’t blushing. “Whatever. Look, let’s drive to my place together tonight, see if we can really sell this whole married so we can keep having sex thing. I think me being all weird about Laura asking to fake-marry you can really only help sell the whole thing. And then we can—I don’t know. You can stay over. We can figure this out.”
“You—” Rupert looked astonished. “You’d be willing to let me do that?”
“What,” said Jenny, nettled, “you’re okay with fake-marrying me, but you don’t like that I’m the kind of girl to bring a guy home?”
“No,” said Rupert immediately. “No, it’s just—I’m a belligerent, unpleasant colleague who you have had nothing but negative encounters with, and you’re—well—” He made a few very confusing hand gestures.
Jenny followed them with a furrowed brow. “A juice box?”
“Small,” said Rupert. “Physically. If anything were to happen—”
Jenny stared blankly at him. “You’re concerned for my safety and you think I shouldn’t invite you over,” she said, “because you’re a shitty coworker who’s bigger and stronger than me?”
“…Yes,” said Rupert.
Wow. Well, apparently Jenny wasn’t the only one being incredibly weird today. “Isn’t the fact that you are concerned for my safety a point in your corner?” she observed.
“It would be,” Rupert said dubiously, “if not for the fact that you extended the invitation before I expressed my concern.”
“Look, we’re not actually married,” said Jenny testily. “You don’t have to pretend that you actually care about me just because I’m helping you out.”
“I…” Rupert looked stricken. “You, you think I don’t care about you?”
“You don’t care about me, you don’t care about my job, et cetera.” Jenny waved a hand.
“Then why on earth would you be offering—?”
She didn’t fucking know. “It’s the principle of the thing!” said Jenny helplessly. “You shouldn’t—you know how much I care about rules, and—fairness, and—and—just—look, I want to help,” she finished. “Okay?”
Rupert didn’t look completely satisfied with this, but he didn’t press. “Tonight, then,” he said. “After school.”
“Tonight,” Jenny agreed, meeting his eyes almost defiantly.
He moved forward before she realized what he was doing. Taking her hand, Rupert pressed it between both of his, looking at her with quiet intensity. “Thank you,” he said again, very seriously, as if more than just one guy’s green card hung in the balance. His thumb stroked the back of her hand, unconsciously, like that kind of gentleness was just a part of him.
Jenny felt the impulse to pull her hand back and fought it down. She wasn’t sure whether it was the instinct or repressing it that unnerved her more. Something in her was starting to unknot, though, because he was here, he wasn’t going anywhere, and just that notion was calming her down enough to realize how absolutely deranged she’d been over the course of the last fifteen minutes. She had just proposed to Rupert Giles of all people, and somehow also intimated that she didn’t find him attractive, even though she’d spent the last three weeks entertaining incredibly explicit fantasies regarding all the different desks and supply closets and lockable doors she’d take advantage of if hate sex was a thing that he’d entertain. Could this plan go anywhere that wasn’t disastrous?
Jenny considered this question, and solved it just as she solved everything: by ignoring it. She’d come this far. She had no intention of backing out now. (And absolutely none of that had to do with Rupert, who was still holding her hand and looking at her like she was some kind of unknowable yet indisputably marvelous cosmic entity.) “It’s not a big deal,” she said, and forced a laugh, pulling her hand back. “Anything for a colleague, right?”