Xander ordered Buffy and Faith to carry the pieces of whatever it was that he’d had them building up to their bedroom. Buffy still wasn’t able to think about whatever it was that they had made. It was really weird, and she knew that Xander thought it was quite funny that she and Faith had built these things, but had no idea what they were. She had figured out there there were two of them. For everything she had made, Faith had made the same thing. Some of the parts were big and heavy, too. There was no way that anyone who didn’t have enhanced strength would have been able to carry some of the pieces up the stairs on their own.
It was also weird how they both knew exactly how to put the things together, once they got all the bits into the bedroom. They worked together to assemble both of the…things, helping each other hold large heavy bits in place until they could be bolted to other bits that held them. Once they were done, Xander ordered them to cover both objects with sheets, and stand back.
Xander and Anya stood beside the sheet covered…things. “Okay, Slayers. Once we pull the sheets away, you’ll be able to see, and understand, what you’ve built. You will remember everything that you did when making them. Are you ready?”
“Yes, Sir,” said Buffy and Faith, together.
Xander and Anya pulled the sheets, uncovering a pair of large X shaped St. Andrew’s crosses.
They were about eight feet tall, and made from lustrous wood. The arms were both six inches wide, and thick, and Buffy could remember laminating oak boards together in a criss-cross pattern to build them. She could remember fashioning the padded leather wrist and ankle cuffs fastened at the ends of the arms, and the waist belt attached at the intersection of the arms.
Xander looked back and forth between her and Faith. “Hmmm, Faith first, I think. Come here, Faith.”
“Yes, Sir.” Faith quickly stepped up to her cross, and Xander had her stand on the low step that was built into the base, and spread her arms out, to have her wrists bound to the cuffs at the ends of the upper arms. He fastened the belt around her waist, and then had her spread her legs, with her held in place against the cross by her wrist and waist straps, so he could fasten her ankles in place.
He did the same with Buffy, fastening her to her own cross. The crosses were angled so that she and Faith could see each other, and also see the bed. Xander stepped back beside Anya, and looked back and forth between the both of them. He smiled. “Okay, new general rule, for when you are on your crosses: You can only come if Anya, or I give you explicit permission to do so. No matter what we do to you, you can’t come without permission. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, Sir!” they said as one.
“Good!” said Xander. “Now that that’s taken care of…” He turned to Anya. “Would you care to join me in bed?”
“Always, Xander,” said Anya. He picked her up, and carried her to the bed.
Buffy loved watching Xander and Anya making love. It was one of her favourite things to watch, right up there with watching Xander make love with Faith, watching Faith make love with Anya, and watching Xander, Anya and Faith all making love together, but usually Xander let her finger herself while she watched them, and he didn’t completely forbid her from coming, though he sometimes put restrictions on when, and how often she could do it.
But this time she had to watch, along with Faith, as Xander and Anya made love together in their bed, and she wasn’t able to do anything to relieve her mounting arousal. It didn’t help that she could feel Faith’s arousal, as well, and knew that she was feeling just as frustrated as they watched Xander and Anya sharing multiple orgasms.
Eventually, Xander and Anya turned their attention back to the two Slayers bound to the crosses overlooking their bed. Buffy felt his eyes on her very wet pussy. She suspected that she was dripping onto the base of her cross, just as she could see that Faith was doing.
Xander got off the bed, and came to her. He reached out to her cross, not touching her, and spun it around so that it rotated on the bearings built into the base until she was facing away from him. Then Buffy felt herself tilting back as her cross rotated around the armature that passed through its centre, until she found herself upside down, with her face level with Xander’s crotch.
Her gaze focused on his erect cock, just a few inches in front of her, and she licked her lips in anticipation, knowing how good it would taste, fresh from Anya’s pussy. She felt his fingers stroke against her own pussy, and looked up to see him put his fingers to his mouth, to lick them clean. She groaned in frustation as he stepped away from her, to go to Faith, to spin her around, and upside down, to sample the taste of her pussy, too.
Xander turned back to Anya, who was now sitting up, with her legs crossed, on their bed. He smiled at her. “I think it’s time to get some of your frozen goodies out of the fridge,” he said.
“Oh, yes! I think that our Slayers will really enjoy that!” Anya bounced off the bed, and nearly ran from the room.
Xander turned back to Buffy. “I think I’ll start with you.” He stepped up to her, and this time, it was his mouth that came down onto her pussy, and he placed his cock close enough to her face that she could lick it. Buffy took full advantage of his position to lick as much of her mistress’s lingering taste from Xander’s cock as she could, before she opened her mouth wide, to take him all the way into her throat.
Buffy was deep into enjoying the feel of Xander’s mouth on her pussy, and his cock in her mouth when she felt a new sensation through her link with Faith: a strip of icy cold along Faith’s slit, and she knew what Anya had gone to get.
Since Xander didn’t really need condoms, as condoms, anymore, Anya had taken some of them, filled them with water, and frozen them, making half a dozen ice dildos. She was using one of them on Faith, now. Buffy felt it as Anya slid the latex covered shaft of ice into Faith’s cunt.
She wanted to come, but she couldn’t. Xander had ordered it. The combination of sensations was nearly overpowering: Xander’s mouth, his cock, the icy shaft in Faith’s pussy that was quickly becoming a source of exquisite pain.
Xander pulled away from her, and she felt the shaft of ice leave Faith’s pussy. She saw Anya’s snatch as she stepped into the place that Xander had vacated, and she felt the icy shaft pressing into her own cunt. That was accompanied by the feeling of heat, as Xander drove his cock into Faith’s chilled pussy.
The step that was built into the base of the cross was just the right height to lift Anya’s pussy up to the proper height for Buffy to be able to tilt her head up to lick at it, while Anya pistoned her ice dildo into Buffy’s snatch.
It seemed like an eternity, or only a few minutes, before Anya pulled the ice dildo out of her pussy, and she felt herself being turned around again. Buffy’s head swum in disorientation as she was spun around into an upright position and Xander’s hot cock replaced the ice shaft in her pussy. She felt a shaft of ice driving into Faith’s cunt, again.
Buffy lost count of how many times Xander and Anya traded places, Anya’s ice dildos alternating with the heat of his cock. She’d been on the verge of coming most of the time, but without Xander’s permission, which he was still withholding, she couldn’t. Xander was driving his cock deep into her again when her phone started to ring with the tune that said it was her mother calling.
Xander’s mouth came away from her neck, where he had been kissing her. “Anya, you wanna get that?”
“Okay, Xander.” Anya left the last of the ice dildos in Faith’s pussy, and went to the shelf where all of their phones were lined up in their charging stands. She picked up the ringing phone, and pressed the ‘Talk’ button. “Hello, Joyce.”
She listened for a few seconds. “Yeah, she’s here, but she’s a little tied up, right now. … Yes, I was speaking literally. Do you want to talk with her? … Alright.”
Anya brought the phone over, and held it up by Buffy’s ear, while Xander continued to fuck her. “Hello, Mom?” Buffy tried to keep the squeak out her voice. She couldn’t believe that she was talking to her mother, while Xander’s cock pumped in her pussy.
“Buffy, can you come over to the house for dinner, on Friday?” asked her mother.
Xander was close enough that he could hear Joyce, and nodded at her. “Uh, yeah, Mom. Just me?”
“Yes, Buffy. I think we need to tell Dawn the truth, and for that I think it should just be the three of us.”
Buffy looked at Xander, and he nodded at her. “Okay, Mom. I’ll be there. You want me to bring anything?”
“No, I’ve got it covered,” said her mother.
Xander mouthed “Saturday” and drove his cock even deeper into her.
“Oh!” said Buffy. “We’re having a painting party on Saturday, and inviting the whole gang. You wanna come? See our new place?”
“Sure, Buffy, I’d like that. Sounds like fun.”
“Be sure to bring a bathing suit,” said Buffy. “It’s supposed to be a nice day, and the pool is open.”
“Okay, Buffy. I’ll see you Friday.”
“Alright. Bye, Mom.”
“Goodbye, Buffy.”
Anya took the phone away, and put it back in its charger.
“That was very good, Buffy.” Xander started to pump harder into her. “So good, that I think you can come, now.”
“Oh yes, Xander. Yes! Yes! YES!” Her orgasm caused her whole body to quiver, and quake in her restraints. It seemed to last forever, and was over much too quickly.
When her body finally went limp, Xander was still there with her, with his hard cock deep inside her pussy. He kissed her gently, before he pulled away. “Why don’t you take Buffy down, Ahn, while I take care of Faith.”
“Of course, Xander.” Anya started pulling at the straps binding Buffy’s ankles. “And then maybe they can give me some orgasms, to make up for all the hard work I did with those ice dildos.”
“It will be my pleasure, Mistress,” said Buffy. Soon she found herself on the bed with her face between Anya’s legs, licking her pussy, and listening as Xander finally let Faith come, too.
There were things that Xander wanted to do for Buffy, but that he knew that she had to do for herself. He wanted to be there with her when she told Dawn the truth about what they had learned about her origin, but for some things he knew he couldn’t be there with her, and this was one of them. Dawn had to hear this from her mother and her sister, and from no one else, so he dropped Buffy off in front of her house, kissed her goodbye, and drove away.
Dawn was watching out her bedroom window for Buffy and Xander’s arrival. She knew that her mother had wanted this to just be a mother and daughters night, without Xander, or anyone else, but she hoped that Xander would come in to say hello when he dropped Buffy off, and she had put on a nice dress in anticipation. She left the window, to hurry downstairs, as soon as she saw his car pull to a stop in front of the house.
Buffy walked up to the front door of her house, carrying the apple pie she had baked the other day, and wishing that Xander was with her, but she knew that he, and her mother, were right.
Dawn opened the door before she was half way up the walk, and her face fell as she saw that Buffy was alone. She looked around quickly, and saw the back end of Xander’s car turning the corner onto Hadley street. “Xander didn’t want to come in?” she asked.
“Mom wanted this to be a family night,” said Buffy. “Just the three of us.”
Dawn harumphed, as only a teenager could harumph, and crossed her arms below her breasts. “He still could have come in to say hello.”
Buffy smiled at her sister. “You’ll see him tomorrow. You are coming to our painting party, right?”
“I guess.” Dawn had switched over into teenage apathy mode, pretending that she didn’t care, one way or the other. She looked at the pie in Buffy’s hands. “What’s that?”
“An apple pie,” said Buffy. “I baked it myself.”
“So, you plan to poison us, and collect your inheritance?”
“Of course not,” said Buffy. “Turns out, it’s just as easy to make two or three pies, as it is to make one. Xander really liked the one we ate yesterday.”
Dawn considered changing out of her dress, since Xander hadn’t come in with Buffy, but she figured that would be too obvious. Her mother knew that she had changed into it after she had gotten home from school.
Instead, she set the table, while Buffy helped her mother in the kitchen getting dinner ready. A month ago she wouldn’t have believed that Buffy could be competent in a kitchen. There had been a time when their mother had tasked Buffy with making Dawn’s school lunches, but that hadn’t lasted long, since Buffy hadn’t even seemed to be able to make a basic PB&J sandwich without messing it up, somehow.
But now it seemed that Buffy was actually becoming a pretty good cook. Even the apple pie, which had gone into the oven to warm while they ate their main course, smelled delicious, and it tasted even better when she ate her slice, with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top.
There was an unpleasant undercurrent through dinner, however. Dawn didn’t know what it was, but something seemed to be bothering her mother and Buffy. She got really nervous when, after dinner, her mother had Dawn sit on the sofa, between her and Buffy.
“What’s wrong,” she asked. “Are you sick again, Mom?”
“No Dawn, it’s nothing like that, but there is something that we need to tell you.”
“What?” asked Dawn.
“A couple of weeks ago, Faith found a monk when she was on patrol,” said Buffy. “He’d been held and tortured by ‘the Beast,’ who was trying to find where he’d hidden ‘the Key.’ Then a few days ago Faith and I ran into some crazy ren-faire reject knight guys who were looking for the Key, too, and seemed to think that I had it…”
Dawn listened as Buffy told her what the Knights of Byzantium told her about the Key, and wondered what this had to do with her.
Then Buffy told her about her trip to the astral plane, and what she’d seen there.
Dawn’s breath caught in her throat. “You’re saying that I’m not real.”
“Of course not, Honey,” said her mother. “You’re as real as anyone else, and we love you. You just came to us by a different route.”
“One of the things that I realized, while I was on the astral plane was that I still loved you.” Buffy gave her a hug. “I said it then, in an environment where I couldn’t lie. You are still my sister, and I love you.”
Dawn shrugged off Buffy’s arm, and stood up. “I have to think about this.” She started toward the stairs.
Her sister tried to follow her. “Wait, Buffy,” said their mother. “Give her some time on her own.”
Dawn locked her bedroom door. She wasn’t real. She was some sort of thing that some crazy monks had created. The reactions she’d been seeing from people: the crazy guy outside the Magic Box, her mother — not really her mother — the day she first got sick. It was all true. She wasn’t real. She shouldn’t be here. She wasn’t alive.
There was one thing that had made her feel alive over the past week. She quickly stripped off her dress, and panties, and went to the drawer where she kept the dildo that Anya had given her.
She took the dildo to her bed, and lay back on it. She opened her legs, and rubbed it over her pussy. She turned the vibrator up to its highest level, and pressed it against her clit. That was usually enough to make her come in less than a minute, but tonight she needed more.
She had yet to go “all the way” with the dildo. She hadn’t needed to. The vibrator against her clit, and the outer lips of her pussy had always been enough to get her off, so she hadn’t gone further. She had always stopped when she started to feel a little pain when she tried to push it past her hymen. But pain was part of being alive — only the living could feel pain — so this time she didn’t stop. She pressed the dildo past her hymen in one strong thrust.
It hurt, but it felt good, too — feeling the dildo vibrating deep inside her. She pulled it out, and stabbed it in again.
She wanted to cry out, but Buffy and her mother were just downstairs, and Buffy would hear any noises she made. She rolled over in her bed, and buried her face in her pillow, to stifle any noises she was making.
The initial pain was fading, leaving only the wonderful feel of the vibrating dildo deep inside her. The pain was something that she missed, in a way. You had to be real to feel pain.
She came with her face buried in her pillow, but it wasn’t enough. The dildo was still inside her, still vibrating, but it wasn’t enough. It was just a thing, like she was just a thing. She needed something real inside her, and there was only one person who could do that for her.
She rolled onto her back, and pulled the dildo out of her pussy. She could see that there was blood on it. That proved that she was alive, didn’t it? Only the living bled, but it wasn’t enough.
She got up off her bed, put the clothes she’d been wearing earlier in the day back on, and opened her window.
Buffy knocked gently on Dawn’s bedroom door. It was time for her to go back home, but she wanted to check in on her sister, first. There was no response. She knocked harder, and listened carefully, but she couldn’t hear anything.
“Dawn?” she called. “You in there?”
There was still no answer, so Buffy tried the knob. The door was locked.
She pounded harder on the door. “Dawn! Open up!”
No response.
A normal person would have needed a tool to unlock the door from the outside, a screwdriver or a coin to fit in a slot, and twist, but Buffy could do it with her thumbnail. She opened the door, and looked inside.
The room was empty, and the window was open.
Buffy could also smell blood, which worried her for a moment, but she soon saw the source, on the dildo lying on Dawn’s bed. She heard her mother coming up the stairs, and figured that Dawn wouldn’t want her mother seeing that. She went to the bed, and flipped the sheet over to cover the dildo.
Dawn’s resolve to go to Xander, and demand that he make love to her to prove that she was real faltered as she passed through the park near his apartment building. What if he said no? What if he just laughed at her, and called her a silly little girl?
Most frightening of all, what if he said yes?
Buffy phoned Xander to tell him that Dawn was missing. He quickly took the matter in hand, proposing a plan of action. Joyce would stay at home, in case Dawn came back on her own, while Buffy went out to search for her. Anya would stay in their apartment, in case Dawn decided to come there, while he and Faith went out to search as well. He would call Willow and Tara, to get them looking, and Buffy would call Giles.
Xander found Dawn in the park, sitting on the swings, slowly swaying back and forth. “Stay here,” he whispered to Faith. “Call Joyce. Tell her she’s okay, we’ll bring her home soon.” He knew that Faith’s link to Buffy had already transmitted the news to her that Dawn was fine.
Dawn was still slowly swaying back and forth in her swing when Xander took a seat in the swing beside her. “Hey,” he said.
“I’m not real,” said Dawn. “I shouldn’t be here.”
“And yet you are,” said Xander.
“Am I?” asked Dawn. “How do you know?”
“Ultimately?” asked Xander. “I don’t.”
That didn’t seem to be the answer Dawn had been expecting. “You don’t know if I exist?”
“No,” said Xander. “The only thing that I know, for certain, without any question or doubt, is that I exist, now. I think that I’m sitting on a swing, beside a girl named Dawn Summers, but I can’t prove that she existed ten seconds ago, or one second ago, or even right now. I could be delusional. The entire universe I perceive might have just come into existence half a second ago, and everything that I think I know about coming up to talk to a girl on a swing might be a fabrication of some other being that wants me to think these things. For all I know you are just a figment of my imagination, but didn’t that French guy Descartes…” He pronounced it Dezkarteze. “…say ‘cognito ero sum’?”
“Descartes,” said Dawn, giving the correct pronunciation, “‘I think, therefore I am’?”
“Precisely,” said Xander. “Only you can say for certain if you exist. If you think, you are. All the rest is the stuff that dreams are made of.”
“You think that everything is just a dream?” asked Dawn.
“The last few weeks, more like a wet-dream,” said Xander. “I don’t believe it is, but I can’t prove it isn’t, at least not to me. I do know that you aren’t dreaming me, but I can’t prove that to you, either.”
“Okay,” said Dawn. “So, now I know that I exist, and I’m going to assume that you exist. I want you to prove to me that you think that I exist. Xander, make love to me.”
Xander’s feet came down onto the sand under the swings, halting his swaying back and forth.
“Dawn, I—”
Dawn hopped off her swing, turned herself around, and moved in to sit astride his lap. “No, Xander. Prove you think I’m real. Make love to me now, here.”
Xander looked her in the eyes for a moment, and then his hand came up behind her head, and pulled her face toward his, and then down a bit.
Xander’s lips touched her forehead. “Dawn, I don’t make love with real fourteen year old girls.”
“Would you make love with me, if I were older?” asked Dawn.
Xander seemed to consider the question for a few seconds. “You’ll have to ask me that again, after your eighteenth birthday.” He took hold of her waist, lifted her off his lap, and stood up. “Now, come on. Let’s get you home. Your mom is pretty worried about you.”
“She’s not really my mom.”
“Of course she is,” said Xander. “She loves you. Your sister loves you. Buffy can’t lie to me, and she told me that she loves you.”
Faith appeared next to her, opposite Xander. “And I know exactly how Buffy feels about you, and I can also say that she loves you.”
“Just because those monks made her feel that way.”
“We were there in the astral plane with her, when all that the monks had done to us was stripped away,” said Xander, “and she still loved you. Our feelings for you didn’t change.”
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