Buffy dressed herself in some of the clothes that she’d brought over a few days ago, and Xander drove her back home. Dawn was leaving their house, with her school book bag slung over her shoulder, as Xander dropped Buffy at the curb.
“Hey, Dawn,” called out Xander from his car. “Can I give you a lift to school?”
“Sure!” said Dawn, while giving her sister a sidelong look. “I thought you spent the night at home.”
“I did,” said Buffy, “but the Reward magic kicked in this morning, and sent me to Xander’s.”
“What?” asked Dawn. “You guys can’t go a day without getting in a quickie? You’re worse than Riley!” she accused Xander. “And he only had one girlfriend!”
“Dawn!” said Xander. “It wasn’t like that!”
“It wasn’t a ‘quickie’!” said Buffy, before slapping her hands over her mouth.
“I can’t believe you said that,” said Xander.
“You’re the one who told me I can’t lie to her!” said Buffy.
“So, Buffy, how was your ‘not a quickie’ with Xander this morning?” asked Dawn.
“First of all, I can tell you it’s none of your business, if I want to,” said Buffy. She smiled broadly. “And secondly, it was wonderful, thank you very much.” She turned to kiss Xander goodbye. “See you tonight,” she whispered. “I’d give you more than a kiss, but I gotta hurry, if I don’t want to be late for class.” She turned away again and walked quickly up the path to her front door, her ass swaying pleasantly in the jeans that fit her perfectly, thanks to the the magic.
Dawn had gotten into the car, while he’d been ogling Buffy’s ass. “Xander. Xander. Xander!”
Xander started. “Oh! Sorry! I’m supposed to be driving you to school, aren’t I?”
“Yeah, but if you don’t get your mind off Buffy’s ass, I might be safer walking, at night, taking shortcuts through cemeteries.”
“Don’t worry.” Xander started his car, and put it into gear. “My mind is firmly on the road, now.” He pulled away from the curb, without checking for traffic, and a car horn blared behind him.
“Yeah, right!” said Dawn.
“Sorry! So, how are your classes going?”
If there was any downside to Xander’s promotion, it was the paperwork. He was now responsible for setting schedules for the members of his crew, ordering materials and making sure that his crew, and the materials they needed, all reached the site when they were supposed to. He also had to make sure that the proper building permits had been issued from the city, and that the city inspectors had signed off at each stage as the work was done. He now had to spend Monday mornings in the company offices, doing office stuff, instead of building things.
He dropped the last of his paperwork into the department secretary’s inbox (Xander privately thought that she was the one who really ran the company, and if asked to bet on it, would have given odds that she was some sort of demon) and went to talk to Pat.
“What can I do for you, Xander?” asked his boss.
“I’ve got a friend who wants a job,” said Xander. “Told her I’d put in a good word for her.”
“Her?” asked Pat.
“Yeah, she’s a she,” said Xander, “but I think she’ll be a good worker, and she’s a lot stronger than she looks.”
“Any experience?” asked Pat.
“Not really,” said Xander, “but she’s taken a few courses. I think she’ll do good in something like my old job. Start her out as a general labourer, helping out around the site. She’s a fast learner.”
“What’s her name?”
“Faith.”
“Your parolee?”
Xander was a little surprised that Pat knew about that. “Yeah. Is that a problem?”
“Nope,” said Pat. “We’ve got a few ex-cons on the payroll. Has she ever stolen from her employer?”
“You know, I don’t think anyone has ever accused her of that,” said Xander. “If anything, I think most of her problems came from being too loyal to the wrong boss.”
“We can give her a try,” said Pat. “You want her on your crew?”
“I’d love to have her, but I think it would be best for her if she started out on someone else’s,” said Xander. “Let someone unbiased evaluate her. Wouldn’t want anyone thinking she was only keeping the job because of me.”
“You’re not just saying that because you don’t want her on yours?”
“If she’s not working out after the first week, you can fire her, and take her pay out of mine,” said Xander.
“You’re that sure of her?”
“I am.”
“Can she start today?” asked Pat.
Xander blinked in surprise. He hadn’t expected that. He’d thought that he’d have to work to talk Pat into taking Faith on, not that he’d say ‘yes’ so quickly. He briefly considered saying that he’d have to ask her, but then he remembered that this sort of decision was now his. Faith wanted him to make these sorts of decisions for her. “Sure, no problem.”
“Okay then.” Pat picked up a clipboard from his desk, and held it out to him. “Remember the windows that didn’t fit from the Cervantes Road job?”
Xander took the clipboard. “Yeah…the replacements were supposed to be delivered by this morning. I talked to the supplier on Friday. He swore that they’d be here by today.”
“Seems that the delivery truck met with an accident on Saturday night,” said Pat. “The truck is in the police impound yard. We have no idea what sort of condition its cargo is in.”
Xander looked at the waybill on the clipboard, and recognized the logo: it was the same as the one on the truck that had slammed into Ben’s car a couple of nights ago. He had a sick feeling about this. Could it be that the windows he had ordered had caused that innocent man’s death? He dismissed that thought almost as quickly as it had come. It was just a traffic accident. Ben had just been in the wrong place, at the wrong time. He’d had nothing to do with it.
“Take one of the company trucks, and go get them,” said Pat. “Make sure you check them over, before you sign for them. We want the shipper’s insurance paying for any damage, not ours. Take your girl with you, to help load them, and introduce her to Tony. She can join his crew.”
Xander found Anya and Giles doing shop-keepery type things in the front section of the Magic Box. “Hey guys! Where’s Faith?”
“She’s in the back, meditating,” said Giles. “Is there a problem?”
“Nope!” said Xander. “I’ve just got a job for her.” He passed through the shop, into the back Slayer training room. There he saw Faith, in her spray painted on Slayer suit—minus any of the accoutrements that might break up its sublime lines—standing on her hands on top of a two foot tall, four by four pedestal, with the toes of her bare feet pointing at the ceiling. As he appreciated her perfect ass—one of the three perfect asses in the universe—he silently thanked whatever long dead Watcher had decided that handstands were the perfect Slayer meditation pose. He privately thought that whoever it was had probably been a dirty old man who just liked seeing scantily clad, nubile young women doing handstands, but he was in no position to cast aspersions on that sentiment.
There was only the barest of indications that Faith had noticed his entrance: an almost subliminal tremor in her perfect balance. No one else would have seen it. Xander suspected that even high speed, high definition video surveillance of Faith’s pose could not have detected any change in it, but he saw it, just as he had seen the change in Buffy when he had walked in on her when she was meditating this way. He thought about how that had ended and shook his head. Tempting as it was to fuck Faith before proceeding to pick up the windows, he was on the company clock, now, and it wouldn’t be right.
“On your feet, Slayer!” he ordered.
Faith’s body contorted in a way that, before today, he would have said was impossible, bringing her bare feet down to the floor without her ever losing her balance on her pedestal. Her body seemed to flow as she straightened up in front of him.
“Training’s over,” said Xander. “It’s time for work.”
The light flashed, and Faith’s clothes changed into faded, well worn, and tight fitting blue jeans, and a white t-shirt. There were work boots on her feet, a tool belt around her hips, and a hard hat on her head.
“I got the job?” she asked.
“You got the job,” said Xander. “Now, come on. We’ve got work to do.”
Faith had been a little nervous when Xander drove her to the police impound yard, but the cop keeping watch at the gate didn’t seem to recognize her, and she didn’t recognize him. Either he’d been hired after the demise of the Mayor, or their paths had never crossed before then.
Xander made the cop watch as they unloaded each of the crated windows from the back of the wrecked truck, and opened each crate to examine its contents. Faith was more than a little surprised to find that none of them had been broken. That was largely due to the shipment of mattresses that was also in the back of the truck. They had protected the windows from the brunt of the impact with the intern’s car.
Xander took the measurements of each window, to make sure that this time, they’d gotten the right ones. He also checked them carefully for any sign of damage. His examination found only a couple of small knicks and dents in the window frames, none of which compromised the window’s integrity, or was in any place that would be visible once the windows were installed. He signed for them, and then he and Faith re-crated the windows, and loaded them into the company truck to deliver to the worksite where the windows, and Faith, were handed over into Tony’s care.
Tony didn’t seem to be very happy to have a girl on his team, but he put Faith to work helping the guys installing the windows—helping to lift them into their rough openings, and holding them steady while they were shimmed, levelled, and nailed into place. After that, she was put to work helping clean up the site. The window installation had been the last major bit of work that needed to be done, here. Once the window trim was in place, and painted, this job would be done. All that remained was to get the house ready to be returned to its owners, now that the renovations had been completed, so Faith found herself being put to work sweeping, vacuuming, and doing general cleanup. It wasn’t really what she’d expected, but from the bits of conversation she overheard between the guys, they’d be moving to a new site this afternoon, and then they’d go to work demolishing someone’s bathroom, to get ready to build a new one.
The guys on the site were acting like…guys. Most of them managed to keep their eyes off her tits and ass, most of the time, but a couple…
The worst was Vince. He didn’t seem to be able to lift his eyes above her bust-line, when he deigned to talk to her, and some of the things he said about her, when he thought she couldn’t hear him, had her wanting to introduce his face to her fist, but she refrained. Doing something like that, after Xander had vouched for her to his boss, would probably get Xander in trouble, and her fired.
She drew the line when he tried to slap her ass, though. Her hand snapped back, grabbed his hand, and twisted.
Vince cried out in pain, and dropped to his knees, with Faith holding him by his thumb, which was bent so far back that it was almost touching his forearm. She held him like that, using only one hand, for several seconds, before she let him go. Vince collapsed the rest of the way to the floor.
“Next time, I break your arm,” she warned him. Faith looked around at the guys who had all stopped working to stare at her, and Vince. “That goes for the rest of you, too: you can look, but don’t touch.”
The rest of the morning went smoothly. Not only did the guys treat her with more respect to her face, but most of the snide comments when they thought she couldn’t hear her stopped too.
She was still happy when Xander came back to have lunch with her.
Buffy’s morning classes passed without incident. She had decided that the layered approach was the best way to handle dressing for school, just as she had done with her mother yesterday morning. A nice tight t-shirt—that felt very nice against her breasts, and nipples—with a loose blouse over top of it so she could choose when, and how much people could see. She kept the blouse buttoned up in class, since it wasn’t really fair to distract the professors, or the other students that way. During her free periods she could unbutton the blouse, and tie the tails of it together beneath her breasts, so that it framed her tits nicely, drawing the eyes of most of the guys, and quite a few of the girls, to her bosom. She liked showing herself off that way. She fantasised about doing it without the t-shirt, but however much fun it might have been, for a while, she figured that it wouldn’t be long before the campus cops showed up to make her cover up, and possibly take her away, in handcuffs… She shifted to a fantasy about Officer Harris arresting her for indecent exposure. She smiled, and filed that one away to tell Xander about later. Maybe he could make it come true for her.
She met up with Willow and Tara for lunch. Their eyes were certainly drawn to her tits when she first approached their table, though she was a little disappointed to see that they didn’t linger there for long. They both seemed to be a little embarrassed by their interest.
At first their conversation seemed to skirt around the the vast elephant that they could all see sitting at the table with them. Buffy smiled to herself. It seemed that ‘Sunnydale Syndrome’ extended beyond the supernatural. There were some things that no one wanted to see.
“So, did Tara take Anya’s advice?” she eventually asked.
“What?” asked Willow.
“Anya told Tara yesterday that you needed a good spanking,” said Buffy. “Did she give you one?”
Willow and Tara’s blushes were all the answer that Buffy needed.
“Did it do any good?” asked Buffy. “Did you enjoy it?”
“Yes,” said Willow, in a tiny voice.
“So, you see what it can be like, getting a good spanking from someone you love, when you deserve it.”
“Yes,” whispered Willow.
“Will, look at me,” said Buffy. “I love Xander. He loves me. He doesn’t do anything to me, that I don’t want him to do. Can you accept that?”
“Yes,” said Willow, “It’s just…”
“It’s just that you always thought of Xander as yours,” said Tara.
“What?” asked Willow. “No!”
“Sweetie, I know you better than that!” said Tara. “I know that you love me, and that you loved Oz, but Xander…Xander holds a very special place in your heart. He is your first love, and you don’t like to share.”
“It’s not like that!” said Willow. “I never—”
“Will, it’s me,” said Buffy. “For the first year I knew you, half the conversations we had, when Xander wasn’t around, were about how you wished that he’d notice that you were a girl, and not just ‘one of the guys,’ and for the second year you spent half your time complaining about him being with Cordelia. And then there was that thing that brought Anya to town.”
“But I don’t feel that way about him any more! I’m with Tara now!”
“Not even a little bit?” asked Buffy.
Willow looked guiltily toward Tara.
Tara smiled back at her. “It’s okay, Sweetie.”
“One thing I’ve started to learn, over the last couple of weeks, is that it is possible to love more than one person, at the same time,” said Buffy. “And as long as you are open, and honest with everyone about it, and everyone respects and cares for everyone else, it just gets better and better.”
“Okay, I still feel that way about Xander, sometimes,” said Willow. “And sometimes, I think that Anya’s not good enough for him, and as for Faith…”
“She’s changed, Willow,” said Buffy. “She’s not the girl she was last year, or when she went to work for the Mayor. She’s Different.”
“I wish I could be as sure as you are,” said Willow.
“Aren’t we supposed to be careful about making wishes out loud?” asked Tara.
Buffy shrugged. “Not anymore. According to Anya, a vengeance demon won’t go near anyone who’s received a Gimmel Reward, or any of their friends. It’s much too risky.”
“Well, it’s nice that some good has come of it,” said Willow.
“That’s the least of the benefits,” said Buffy. She was distracted for a moment, admiring the ass of a pretty girl who was carrying her lunch tray to a neighbouring table.
Willow’s eyes followed Buffy’s. “That’s another thing! Now you’re looking at girls the way…” she stopped, blushing.
“The way you do?” asked Buffy.
“Well, yeah.”
“See! Another plus! I get to enjoy watching twice as many people now, though I must say, since Xander won’t let my lie to you, that two of the top four sexiest women in the world are sitting across from me at this table right now. And I noticed the way you were both checking out my tits, when I first arrived.”
Willow and Tara both started blushing, again.
Buffy went home after lunch, to drive her mother to the hospital for her appointment with Dr. Isaacs. While Joyce was with the doctor, Buffy decided to go check on the man that Faith and Xander had brought into the hospital last night.
She slowed as she approached the hospital reception desk, not happy to see who was standing by it. She was about to turn, and walk away before she was spotted, but it was too late.
The man turned around, and saw her. “Miss Summers. What an unexpected pleasure.” He didn’t seem to be overly surprised, or pleased to see her.
“Detective Stein,” said Buffy, “What brings you here? Visiting a sick friend?”
“No, I’m working,” said Stein. “What are you doing here?”
“I accompanied my mother, when she came in for an appointment with her doctor.”
“So, it has nothing to do with the man that Harris and Faith brought in last night?” asked the detective.
“I thought I’d check and see how he’s doing, since I was here,” said Buffy. “Xander said he looked like he was in pretty bad shape. So, how is he doing?”
“Much better, it seems,” said Stein. “He was feeling well enough that he walked out of here this morning, without telling anyone who he was, where he was going, or where they could send his bill.”
“Oh,” said Buffy. “That’s too bad. I really kinda wanted to talk to him.”
“What about?”
“You know, stuff,” said Buffy. “Just make sure he was alright.”
“That’s it?” asked Stein.
“That’s it.”
“You wouldn’t happen to know anything about what happened to him?”
“Nope,” said Buffy. “Xander said that they just found him, when they were out for a drive. Said he was pretty delirious, and wasn’t talking any sense at all, so he brought him here.”
“And just where did Harris and Faith find him?” asked Stein.
Buffy didn’t think it would be a good idea to point Stein in the right direction. There was also a body present at the place where Xander and Faith had found the man, and if Stein found it, he’d have even more awkward questions he’d want to ask. “They didn’t tell me,” she said, which was true. If it weren’t for her connection with Faith, she’d have no idea where they had found the man last night.
“Where can I find Harris, and Faith?”
“I’m not sure. Xander’s at work, and tends to move around between sites. You’ll have to talk to his employer, to find out exactly where he is.”
“And Faith?”
“I think she’s at the Magic Box,” said Buffy. She knew that wasn’t true, but it was where she had been told Faith would be today, when she’d last seen her that morning.
Stein didn’t look like he believed her, but that seemed to be his default expression whenever they talked together. Buffy couldn’t really blame him for that. Most of the times they talked, she was lying about something to him.
“Alright then. Have a nice day, Miss Summers. I’m sure I’ll be seeing you around.”
“Goodbye, Detective,” said Buffy. They both turned, and walked in opposite directions away from the reception desk: Stein toward the main entrance, and Buffy to the elevators that would take her back up to Dr. Isaacs office. As soon as she got into the elevator, Buffy pulled out her phone to call Xander, to tell him that the man had disappeared, and that Detective Stein would probably be showing up soon, to talk to him.
“Okay, thanks Buffy,” said Xander. “I’ll call Faith, to give her a heads up too, and make sure we have our story straight for when he talks to her. How’s your Mom doing?”
“I’m just on my way back to the doctor’s office to find out,” said Buffy. “Hopefully, it will be good news.”
Joyce was talking with another doctor, in the waiting area outside of Dr. Isaacs office when Buffy got there. “Now remember,” he was telling her. “Nothing solid to eat, or medication, after midnight tonight, but you should take one of your pills before you go to bed, whether you feel like it, or not, to make sure you get a good night’s rest. You can have one caffeinated beverage in the morning, but nothing at all to drink after ten. We’ll see you back here at two pm. “
Buffy didn’t like the sound of that. “Hi, Mom, what’s going on?”
“Oh, Buffy, this is Dr. Kriegel. They found something in my MRI. They’re going to be doing an ax— ex—”
“Excisional biopsy,” said Dr. Kriegel. “The growth is small enough that we’re just going to take it out, rather than doing a standard biopsy, and then maybe having to do a second procedure, if it turns out that the growth isn’t benign.”
The next afternoon, Buffy and Dawn watched as their mother was wheeled through the doors toward the operating room. Joyce was awake, and raised her head to give her daughters a reassuring smile, and a wave, before the doors swung shut, blocking off their view of her.
Buffy gave Dawn a hug. “She’s going to be okay,” she told her. She was talking to herself, as much as she was to her sister.
“Of course she is,” said Xander, wrapping his arms around both of them. “Summers women are strong. Joyce’ll be fine. Now, come on and sit down.” He was there, along with Anya, Giles, Willow, and Tara. The only one missing was Faith. She’d wanted to come too, but Xander hadn’t thought that it would be a good idea for her to take an afternoon off, on her second day at her new job. Buffy could still feel Faith through their link, though, so she was there in spirit.
They took over the longest sofa in the waiting room, with Xander sitting in the middle of it with Buffy and Dawn on one side of him, and Anya on the other. Xander’s arms were around Buffy and Anya’s shoulders while Dawn leaned in against Buffy. Willow and Tara sat together on another sofa.
Giles alternated between sitting by himself, and getting up from time to time to pace. When the pacing earned him some annoyed looks from the others, he volunteered to go to the coffee shop to pick up drinks and snacks for everyone.
It was nearly an hour later when Dr Kriegel came back out through the doors from the operating room, with a smile on his face. Buffy and Dawn nearly lept to their feet, and rushed to meet them.
“The procedure went well,” he told them, before they could ask. “We removed the growth. I was able to fully visualize it, and we got it all. Your mother is in recovery, right now, and will be awake in about half an hour. You’ll be able to see her then. We should have the lab results back by then, too.”
Buffy gave him a hug, putting a little too much Slayer strength into it. “Thank you, Doctor.”
“Oof! Oh, well, you’re welcome,” said Dr. Kriegel, only to “Oof” again, as Dawn gave him a hug almost as strong as Buffy’s.
It was a little over half an hour later when Buffy and Dawn got to see their mother. Joyce was awake, and a little spaced out on the pain medication she had been given. Dawn sat beside her on the bed, with her mother’s arm around her, while Buffy stood at the bedside holding her mother’s other hand.
“We have the lab results, and the news is pretty good,” said Dr. Kriegel. “We removed a low grade oligodendroglioma. We caught it early, before it could grow large enough to do much damage to any of the surrounding tissue, and the prognosis is excellent. If we had waited even a couple more weeks, there’s a real chance that it might have damaged some blood vessels, which might have led to an aneurism, even after a successful surgery, but there’s no possibility of that happening now.”
“So, she’s going to be okay?” asked Buffy.
“This sort of thing has a high incidence of recurrence,” said Dr. Kriegel, “So we are going to want to keep a close eye on your mother in the future, but for now, I’d say that she’s going to be fine.”
“Thank you, Doctor,” said Joyce.
“My pleasure. We are going to want to keep you overnight, for observation, but I expect we’ll be able to send you home in the morning. Until then, you need to rest, so you two…” He looked from Buffy to Dawn. “…can say goodbye to your mother now, and then you and your hoard of friends can clear out of our waiting room.”
“Yes, Doctor,” said Buffy. “Thank you, again.”
“Just doing my job,” said Dr. Kriegel, “but if you’re not gone in five minutes, I’ll have the nurses chase you out of here.” He left the room.
“I’m glad you’re going to be okay, Mom,” said Dawn, giving her mother a hug.
Buffy leaned down to kiss her mother’s cheek. “Me too.”
“So am I,” said Joyce. She yawned. “Sorry, I’m really sleepy.”
“Then we’ll be on our way, and let you get some rest,” said Buffy. “Give the others the good news.”
Dawn kissed her mother, and got up off the bed. Buffy put her arm around her shoulder, and they headed for the door.
“Buffy.”
Buffy turned back toward her mother. “Yes?”
“Why don’t you invite Xander, Anya and Faith to spend the night at our house, you can use my room.”
“You mean that?” asked Buffy.
“It may be the drugs talking, but yeah. I think you all need to be together.”
Buffy went back to give her mother another kiss. “Thanks, Mom.”
“You’re welcome, Buffy.”
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