Fic: The Great Random Xander Story - Iteration One (13/?)

[m_mcgregor]

Yet another NSFW installment, folks. Please believe me when I say I didn't plan for this story to be quite so full of the sex, but somehow it just kind of snuck its way in there. Enjoy, I guess.

Oh, also, a few quick things:

1. If you made a submission to the list of random ideas recently, check back because I just made my responses and I need clarification from some people.

2. If you submit anonymously, leave some kind of pen-name! Crikey, I'm getting tired of adding "Anonymous 15" to the list of credits. Make one up, I don't care.

3. If you have yet to submit an idea, please: no more "Xander dresses as character X just like at Halloween" ideas. I already allowed way too many on the list, and really, haven't we all had enough of this plot device? Let's move on.


I asked all of you out there to submit to me a bunch of ideas for things that could happen or become true for Xander. Then I used a random number generator and the AXIS (Alternate Xander Idea Selector - thanks, learnedhand_dj) to choose three random consecutive episodes and three random ideas, and I wrote a story based on those ideas.

Authors: please feel not only free, but actively encouraged to attempt your own Great Random Xander Story, using the AXIS listed above. I can tell you from personal experience, it's actually kind of fun and a very interesting writing exercise. Writing a story where you know at least two more major changes are coming but you don't know what they are going to be or when they will occur is pretty wacky. Try it out, and be sure to share your results with the rest of us!

This is the first attempt at that story, but will not be the last, so keep submitting your ideas. (We're up to about 150, I believe. New goal is 200!) First chapter and author notes can be found here

On with the story:



The party was in full swing when Willow and Faith arrived. There was drinking, snacking, laughter, music, and the occasional happy squeal or scream. The house itself seemed in pretty good condition considering the entire basement had collapsed just a few months earlier, and there was no sign of anything demonic or evil.

Still, Willow wasn’t feeling entirely enthusiastic about her decision to come. For one thing, she had come with Faith, and that meant that everyone (well, every guy) they’d talked to on the way to the party had said a variation of pretty much the same thing to Willow, who was dressed in a miniskirt and halter-top combo that Faith had picked out for her.

“Hey, hi! I like looking at your legs and breasts in that outfit, but your friend is much hotter than you so I’m going to be looking at her whenever I can!”

For another, Willow hadn’t done well with large crowds since her curse. A big part of her just wanted to stay home all the time. Learning the intimate secrets of anyone she talked to could get very uncomfortable very fast.

On the other hand, she had promised Faith she would come, and she really did want to get out and have some fun for once. It had been a while since the whole gang had hung out together, and she was looking forward to it.

Faith leaned close to Willow as they entered the party, bringing her mouth to Willow’s ear. She spoke over the loud music. “We should find the others!”

Willow just nodded back to her, so Faith took Willow by the hand and began to lead her through the crowd. With her synch rates having risen so much lately, Faith was more than capable of muscling her way through the crowd.

Willow was surprised by just how active the party already was. There were several couples making out, including two girls that she thought she recognized from her History class. A game of spin-the-bottle -- it seemed a little childish to Willow -- had started up in one corner, and there was a small crowd laughing and moaning happily off against one wall.

They found Jonathan after a short time. He was standing at the snack table and was struggling at holding three drinks at the same time when Faith came up behind him.

“Hey, Jon!”

Jonathan turned and nearly dropped his cups, but managed to keep them from spilling everywhere. “Oh. Hey, Faith! You came!”

“Said I would.” Faith grinned, then pulled Willow closer into view. “I brought Willow.”

Jonathan’s eyes widened slightly and he looked Willow up and down. “Oh. That’s not good. I’m going to embarrass myself in front of Cheryl now.”

He winced and looked away. “Sorry, Willow. I-I didn’t meant to say that.”

“It’s okay,” Willow said. “I-I’ll try not to stick around too much.”

“Screw that,” Faith said. “We’re partying tonight. Jon’ll just have to deal.”

“Y-yeah, I’ll deal,” Jonathan said, paling slightly. “Even though I really don’t want to. I’m just saying that to make you feel better, Willow.”

“It’s not working,” Willow muttered to herself.

“C-come on,” Jonathan said, gesturing to a small circle of chairs off to one side. “I’ll introduce you guys.

Faith gave Willow a nudge with one elbow, and the two of them followed after Jonathan. There were three girls sitting in the circle of chairs: one had long reddish-brown hair and a dimple in her chin, one had large expressive eyes and long blonde hair, and the third was a somewhat mousy young woman with long brown hair. Willow thought she recognized the one in the middle with the reddish-brown hair as the girl who had invited her to the UC Sunnydale Wicca Group meeting that she’d missed so many months ago.

“All they had was fruit punch,” Jonathan said by way of apology as he approached the three girls. He did his best to hand the three cups to each of the girls. The girl in the middle took her cup almost haughtily and took a tentative sip before making a sour face.

Jonathan cleared his throat and gestured to Faith and Willow. “Oh, I should, uh, introduce you guys. Um, Willow and Faith? This is Cheryl, Tara, and Nicole. Cheryl, Tara, and Nicole? This is Willow and Faith.”

“Hi,” Willow said, waving at the three girls. They offered her polite smiles in return, although Cheryl was glowering.

“Transcendia,” Cheryl said firmly.

“Oh, r-right. Um, her name is Transcendia.” He looked to Willow. “Only it’s really Cheryl.”

Cheryl did not seem at all happy about that.

“S-so how did you guys meet?” Willow said quickly, hoping to keep the conversation away from her curse.

“At our weekly meeting for the Daughters of Gaea,” the mouse haired girl, Nicole, said in a cheerful tone. “Normally we don’t allow guys, but Jon knew this really empowering moon-spirit ritual that we used to totally bless our bake sale.”

“You used a moon-spirit incantation to bless your bake sale?” Willow asked. “Isn’t that a little dangerous?”

Nicole and Cheryl both laughed at that, while Tara made a slightly embarrassed face.

“Oh yeah, real dangerous,” Cheryl said, rolling her eyes. “We might have like summoned up a demon or something. Oooh!”

“We didn’t use the primary injunctive pattern,” Jonathan said under his breath. “It was just for show.”

“Oh,” Willow said, nodding. “Oh, okay.” She did her best not to make eye contact with any of the girls, but couldn’t help but look them all over. When she did, she caught eyes with the blonde girl, Tara. The girl smiled at her, and Willow smiled back.

“You’re v-very pretty,” Tara said. A blush came to her cheeks at that, but Willow dismissed the compliment, as she heard similar things most days. “I-I think your aura is the most beautiful I’ve ever seen.”

That she hadn’t heard before.

“Can you please cut it out with the aura stuff, Tara?” Cheryl asked.

“Sorry,” Tara said, lowering her eyes. Willow watched her for a moment, but wasn’t sure what to say. Could that girl really read auras? That was impressive, if true. And didn’t it have to be true, considering she’d said it to Willow?

“You can read auras?” Willow asked, leaning slightly forward. “Really?”

Tara nodded. “Yes. Since I was six. It’s because I’m part demon.”

Tara froze. “I-I-I--”

“You’re what?” Faith said, narrowing her eyes at Tara. Tara’s face was turning pale, and she looked wildly from Faith to Willow.

“I-I’m part demon,” she whispered. “I’m an abomination. Excuse me!”

She nearly flew off of her seat. Willow watched her disappear into the crowd.

“She’s such a weirdo,” Cheryl said, rolling her eyes.

Faith leaned in towards Willow. “You think I should go after her?”

Willow shrugged. “I-I don’t know. She didn’t seem dangerous, but if she’s a demon, then yeah, maybe.”

Faith sighed and leaned back. “Damn it. I didn’t want to do any Slaying tonight. Did you see which way she went?”

Willow gestured off towards the other side of the house. Sitting up straight, Faith took a deep breath and rolled her shoulders. Then she stared out into the crowd. As she did so, her right eye began to flash through a series of neon colors: red, yellow, blue, green, and finally settling on a light purple.

“I don’t see her,” Faith said as she scanned over the crowd with her internal M-Specs. “No demons at all.”

“What-- what is she doing?” Nicole asked as she stared at Faith’s eye. “How are you doing that?”

“Glow in the dark contacts,” Faith said dismissively. She didn’t bother to look at Nicole, but instead looked to Willow. “You think maybe she was just crazy?”

“Maybe. She seemed nice, though.”

“I guess.”

Shrugging, Faith relaxed back in her chair. Her eye returned to normal, and she crossed her legs out in front of her at the ankle. “Well I’ll scan her up if I see her, but I don’t think she was fo--”

A scream interrupted her, and it was not the kind of scream Willow expected to hear at a college party. Faith stiffened and Willow and Jonathan both looked around wildly.

“Scratch that,” Faith said as she got to her feet. Barely a moment later, the floor began to rumble. People screamed as furniture began to move across the floor. A girl ran across the foyer, and large clumps of her formerly long red hair trailed behind her as she went. Glass exploded and more screams filled the air.

“It’s an earthquake!” Cheryl screamed. “We have to get out!”

Students scattered in every direction. Jonathan tried to cover Cheryl’s head as he ushered her outside. Books were falling off shelves as students tripped over one another in an attempt to get out. Willow nearly fell over a half-destroyed coffee table on their way out, but Faith grabbed her by the arm and hauled her up, keeping her from a nasty spill.

“Okay, that was weird,” Faith said when she, Willow, and Jonathan gathered outside the front entrance a few minutes later. “Any ideas?”

“The Hellmouth?” Willow suggested. “It tends to get earthquaky when it opens.”

“I think I’d be able to tell,” Faith said. Her false eye flashed through its multiple colors again. “Xander told me Hellmouth vibes come off like sick-purple, and I’m not seeing that.”

“It could be a haunting,” Jonathan said. He had a series of light scratches across his face and his hair was a mess, but he seemed otherwise unhurt. “O-or maybe a poltergeist. Or it could be a confluence of, uh, demonic energies, but that would only happen if the house had sigils carved into the foundation beams, and that’s really a distinctive style of the mad architect Mauricio Culo, and he never built anything outside of the northeast.”

“Uh, right,” Faith said. She looked down and then scowled when she saw half of her jacket had been torn. She ripped it off and tossed it away. Willow could see that she was bleeding across her shoulder, but she didn’t seem to care so Willow said nothing. “Is everyone out at least?”

“I don’t know.” Jonathan said. “Did anyone see Buffy or Xander? They were here earlier.”

“They were?” Willow asked.

“Yeah. They were, uh, kind of all over each other so they didn’t really talk much. They said they were going upstairs to look at something, but that was before you guys got here.”

“Great,” Faith muttered. “So we got a haunted house and two horny teenagers trapped inside? That always ends well in the movies.”

“M-maybe they got out the back,” Willow said. She brought her wrist up and activated her Scooby Watch. “Buffy? Buffy, are you there?”

Static crackling was her only reply.

“Xander?” Faith tried, accessing her internal comm device. “Xan, you there? Hello?” She sighed. “Nothing.”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” Willow said quickly. “They’re probably fine.”

“I want to agree with you, but I can’t,” Faith said. She sighed again, but then whirled around quickly. Her hand shot out and she dove into the shadows. A moment later, she dragged a frightened young woman out into the light.

“Tara?” Jonathan said. “What did you do?”

“N-nothing!” Tara exclaimed. “P-please, let me go!”

“No way, demon-girl,” Faith said, easily holding Tara in place. “Not until you tell us what you did to our friends.”

“I d-d-didn’t do anything! Please, I j-j-just want to h-help!”

Faith grunted at her, then looked at Willow. Grabbing Tara by the back of the hair, she pulled her upright and forced her to look at Willow. “Tell her.”

“W-what?”

“Tell her you didn’t do it, otherwise I’m going to start cutting pieces off of you.”

“I-I-I--”

“Better hurry,” Faith growled. She shook Tara slightly, causing Tara to cry out. Finally, she looked to Willow.

“I-I didn’t do it!” she cried.

“Then what the hell are you doing here?” Faith demanded. She shook Tara again, forcing her to look at Willow.

“I-I wanted to help. There’s something d-d-dark in there. It was taking control of people.”

“Why would you want to help? You’re a demon.”

“Only partly,” Tara said. Tears were filling her eyes. “P-please, I don’t want to hurt anyone. I just want to help.”

“Faith,” Willow said in a quiet voice. “I think you can let her go.”

With a slight shrug, Faith released Tara, half-shoving her away. “Fine. So what do you mean, it was taking control of people?”

“People were going crazy,” Tara said, sniffing slightly. She looked to Faith and blushed. “Th-they were doing things. S-sexual things.” She looked to Willow. “People were having spontaneous orgasms and feeling each other up.”

“I don’t know,” Faith said. “It sounds like a good party to me.”

Two hours later, Faith found herself standing in front of Lowell house once more. It had undergone a transformation in that time, and was now covered in thick vines and plant-life. There was a strange reddish energy that Faith could make out thanks to her internal M-Specs, and her normal Slayer senses were screaming at her that something bad was going down in there.

It was her job to get inside, get Xander and Buffy, and get out. They’d found out that Lowell House used to be a home for wayward teens, and that the woman who ran the house had been ruthless in forcing the children who lived there to repress their natural urges. The current theory was that their residual psychic energy had created a series of poltergeists, and that those poltergeists had been woken up by the presence of powerful lust.

Enter Buffy and Xander. There was little doubt in anyone’s mind that there nonstop grope-a-thon had triggered the release of the poltergeists, and from what they’d learned from Tara and a few others they’d questioned from the party, Buffy and Xander were in a bedroom upstairs. If they could get them out, maybe they could break the power the poltergeists held.

That was assuming Faith could get inside. The last time she’d tried, the poltergeists had tossed her right out on her ass. This time, however, she had some magical backup. Willow was back in their dorm with the maybe-a-demon-chick Tara, and along with Giles and Jonathan they were going to work some kind of mojo that would let Faith get inside. All she had to do was keep her internal comms open and wait for the call.

Faith took a deep breath as she stood in front of the house. Her internal systems were running at high efficiency, and she was getting better and better at feeling them out. Information flowed from her implants into her mind, and Xander said that would probably happen even more as her synch rates increased. She could feel the air currents flowing around her. She could switch between spectrums with a thought. She knew the precise internal temperature of her modified VEM core, and had a heads-up-display that provided vital statistics to her at all times. She was in her new battle mode; the one Xander had upgraded for her just a few weeks ago. She was still getting used to it.

She looked down at her left arm. Normally it appeared to be a fully human and unblemished arm, but now it was a skeletal arm made of silvery Cordamite and threaded with a networked MCD matrix. That was new too. If she concentrated just right, she should be able to--

Her arm whirred, and a green spark flashed. Faith blinked, and when she looked back her arm was not just an arm anymore. It was an armory. A directed plasma discharge cannon was situated above her forearm, and there was a tracking laser built into her wrist. Along the side of her arm were four mini-barrels, each connected via a positron relay to her internal MCD storage of ammunition. She could fire six-thousand rounds per second of corrugated Cordamite bullets for up to seven minutes before she would start to overheat. Finally, there was a jagged Cordamite saw-blade that ran down the entire length of her arm. It could be extended -- and put into chainsaw mode -- with a single thought.

Faith felt a momentary thrill as she stared at her arm. Somewhere in the corner of her brain, a cluster of bio-mimetic nanites were helping her to recite the exact specifications of her own build.

It was overkill.

She liked it.

Most of her new systems weren’t worth a damn in close quarters combat against demons and vampires, thanks to the probably-magical protection that meant swords and crossbows were always more effective than plasma-blades and railguns. Still, brute force was brute force, and while it didn’t give her an unstoppable edge, it was still nice to have.

One of her onboard warning systems flared, and Faith reacted immediately. Her eye flashed into combat mode, and she watched as the red light shimmered. A moment later, her comm system opened and she heard Willow’s voice in her head.

“Faith? You there?”

“Here and ready,” Faith said. “You just do it? I saw some weird light.”

“Y-yeah, we think so. I don’t know how much time you have, so--”

Faith was already moving. She kicked in the front door and extended her blade as she went. The Cordamite chainsaw blade ate through the thick vines covering the doorway, providing her with a clear path. Her Slayer senses were running in overdrive, even as her cybernetic ones were overclocking. Time seemed to slow down as she was fed information both mystically and cybernetically.

The vines seemed to press in on her as she went. They were growing even as she watched them, and the tendrils reached for her as she moved. Some grasped at her arms and legs, scraping the skin as she went and revealing the metallic components that made up nearly half of her body underneath. She grit her teeth and slashed at more of the vines.

“Faith!” Willow’s voice echoed within her, slightly tinny through the comm. “We lost control of them! They’re coming back!”

At that same moment, Faith was lifted off her feet by an unnatural force. She was slammed back against the wall and grunted with the impact. Vines whipped and slashed at her as the house began to rumble and shake once more. Faith screamed wordlessly and hacked back at the vines, and her chainsaw-arm roared as it tore through them.

Faith clawed at the ground with her real hand as the force dragged her backwards. “Will! It’s got me!”

“Faith!”

Struggling against the invisible force, Faith was dragged kicking and screaming up the stairs. She had just enough time to hear a male voice moaning and a girl voice giggling from behind a bedroom door before she was pulled across the hallway and into the bathroom.

“Let me go you son of a bitch!” Faith roared as the vines lashed at her body. “Buffy! Xander!”

She was hauled up off the floor and deposited into the bathtub. It was half-filled with murky water, and Faith had only a moment to realize what was happening before she was forced down into the water. The invisible force kept her head under the surface as she kicked and screamed and tried to free herself.

Warning lights flashed in front of her false eye. A klaxon sounded inside of her head, and her arm flashed and twisted through six different configurations as she tried to fight her way out. She blasted the tub with everything she had, but the same invisible force that held her down kept it from being damaged. Bullets ricocheted all over the room, but none of them managed to pierce the tub.

[WARNING. INTERNAL OXYGEN LEVELS DEPLETING.]

Faith snarled as the vision in her left eye wavered. Xander had insisted on installing several emergency systems into her onboard computer, and this was all she got? Some disembodied voice telling her what she already knew?

Screaming and panicking, Faith thrashed and flailed as best she could against her invisible attackers. How long had it been? A minute? Two? She couldn’t hold out forever. Even a Slayer had to breathe.

[WARNING. INTERNAL OXYGEN LEVELS DEPLETING.]

Faith screamed. Water filled her lungs. More warnings scrolled in front of her eye and sounded in her head. Her mind was overwhelmed by data as she felt her systems struggling to maintain themselves. Her chest ached and she was desperate for air as she felt her heart--

She felt her heart beating normally. Her lungs burned, but her heart was beating on as if nothing was happening. Faith frowned from beneath the water.

[WARNING. INTERNAL OXYGEN LEVELS DEPLETED. INITIATING OXYGEN-SAVER MODE.]

Her vision cleared. Her lungs still ached, but Faith felt the lightheaded panic fade away.

[OXYGEN-SAVER MODE INITIATED. REMAINING OPERATION TIME BEFORE RECHARGE REQUIRED: 194 HOURS]

Faith blinked. She felt fine. There was no desperate need for air, despite how her lungs felt they should be filling. Her heart was beating normally. Her vision was clear. She was perfectly fine.

Able to think without panicking, she quickly looked from side to side. Sunken-cheeked apparitions stood over her. The dull-eyed children stared down at her, intent on seeing her drown. Faith stared back up at them, then let out a gurgling curse and gave one of them the finger. It didn’t seem to react.

Okay, so she wasn’t going to drown. Xander had seen to that. If this whole thing wasn’t his and Buffy’s fault, she would have to thank him when this was over. Of course, he could have told her that she didn’t actually need to breathe.

Then again, maybe he had. She tended to zone out when he got really technical about what he’d installed in her. She figured she’d just learn it as she went. Maybe it was time to rethink that.

Sighing inwardly, Faith tried to get up once more, but the invisible force continued to hold her down. She let out a few more gurgling curses, then looked to her cybernetic arm. With a shrug, she let it revert back to its normal state. Xander wasn’t going to be happy to know that even with all her onboard weaponry, she still couldn’t fight her way past a stupid fake-ghost.

That’s when a thought occurred to her. Faith turned her head and looked at her right arm. That was still real. It was the only real limb she had left. It wasn’t a cyborg arm with all kinds of super technological wizardry built in. She had no HUD telling her the exact specifications of the arm at all time. There was no bio-feedback providing her with inhuman data whenever she used it. No. It was just her arm.

It was the arm of a Slayer.

Faith curled her right hand into a fist and punched out to one side. Her fist went through the simple porcelain of the tub with absurd ease. Water poured out of the newly created hole, and Faith sat up when the invisible force seemed to vanish in a heartbeat. Coughing past the water in her lungs and the very disconcerting click-click-whirr as she tried to start breathing on her own again, Faith tumbled out of the tub and fell onto the floor. She crawled a few feet to the wall and then used an old towel rack to help pull herself up.

After sucking in a wet, gurgling breath of air, Faith doubled over and coughed out what looked to be about a gallon of murky brown water. She smacked her lips and grimaced when she was done. She didn’t like to think about what she’d swallowed.

Looking around, Faith could see the vines were closing in around the bathroom. The poltergeists had released her for the moment, but there was no telling how long that would last. She had to move, and she had to move quickly.

Her arm reconfigured to blade-mode with a single thought, and Faith launched herself out of the door. Vines lashed and grabbed at her as she sprinted down the hallway and towards the bedroom door. She cried out a few times as she lost a fair amount of skin, but pressed on regardless. Finally, with one tremendous hacking cut at the largest swath of vines, Faith lurched forward and kicked the bedroom door in.

Her mouth dropped open.

There, nude, sweaty, and frozen in mid-thrust, was Xander Harris. Underneath him was an equally nude, equally sweaty, and a very oblivious Buffy Summers.

Also on the bed were two other girls. One had Buffy’s left breast in her mouth, although her eyes were wide and she was staring at Faith in horror. The other was straddling Buffy’s face even as one hand was down between her legs. Like Buffy, she seemed completely oblivious to Faith’s presence, and was rocking her hips back and forth on Buffy’s mouth.

“Faith?” Xander said in a hoarse, exhausted voice. “Um, private time?”

Faith looked from Xander, to the first girl, to the second girl, to Buffy, who was by then struggling to get out from underneath the mass of limbs and sweaty nakedness. Rolling her eyes, Faith turned around and limped back down the hallway.

Buffy had never been so embarrassed in her entire life. It was bad enough that she was always telling Willow everything she and Xander did together, thought together, or fantasized about together, but to get caught by Faith was something else entirely.

At first, the night had seemed like a dream come true. Whether it was her dream or Xander’s specifically didn’t really matter any more. All Buffy knew was that for months now she had been fantasizing about having another girl in bed with her and Xander. In her wildest fantasies that girl had always been Willow or Faith or even Cordelia, but when she and Xander had arrived at the party and saw Jenna and Melanie (both of whom Buffy knew from her History class) making out in the corner, things had just kind of spiraled from there.

She and Xander had been talking about it for a while now, or rather, she would talk while Xander would think. They had been trying to work up the courage to talk up a girl at the Bronze for a few weeks, so when Jenna and Melanie seemed interested in them, it was all Buffy could do to keep from dragging them up to bed right then and there.

Buffy blushed a little as she looked around the lab. She’d had her first lesbian experience tonight, and it had been good. It had been really, really good. Xander couldn’t stop thinking about it, and Buffy knew this was not going to be the last time they had another girl in their bed. She couldn’t wait until the next time.

If only every one of her friends didn’t know about it! It was so unfair! Why couldn’t she and Xander just have private sexy times like anyone else? It wasn’t any of Willow or Faith’s business what they did in bed, or out of bed, or in the bathroom at the Bronze, or at Mulligan Cemetery during a slow night, or once in the middle of Sunnydale Cineplex Theater 3 when Xander got turned on by Angelina Jolie.

But no, everyone had to know all about her sex life. It was hard enough to come to terms with all the new feelings and desires she had. Did she have to share it with the group?

“Buffy?”

Buffy blinked and looked up into Xander’s face. “What?”

He gestured to the display, even as his mind went over the last few seconds. Buffy realized she had completely zoned out and hadn’t been paying attention to his thoughts. The realization of that made her feel icy inside. Now she was getting so distracted that she wasn’t even doing her favorite thing ever: listening to Xander!

This was the best night ever made into the worst night ever.

Grumbling quietly to herself, Buffy tapped a few inputs on the display. Xander cleared his throat.

“Um, okay,” Xander said. “All your readings are totally human. There’s no demon here.”

From her position on the medi-bed (the one that Buffy had built herself, as she was always happy to tell anyone who would listen), Tara frowned a little. “I-It must be broken.”

“Nah, I’m telling you, I got nothing off you either,” Faith said. She was sitting at the table with one elbow leaning against it. She was covered in dozens of cuts and scratches, and the silvery metal of her internal components were visible from beneath a few of the deeper cuts. Buffy had tried to convince her to go take some time in the protein tank to heal up, but Faith had refused.

“You can trust them,” Willow said from her position next to Faith. “Xander’s got really good demon detecting programs.”

“Well I cribbed some of them from the Initiative,” Xander said, but he was thinking of the seventeen different protocols he had written from scratch in order to determine demon physiology. Buffy purred happily, closing her eyes and enjoying the thoughts. That was just what she needed right now. “But yeah, they’re pretty good. If you were a demon, we’d be able to tell.”

“B-but I can read auras. A-and do magic.”

“Will and Jon can do magic,” Faith said. “I’m the Slayer. Buffy can read minds. People around here can do weird shit. Doesn’t mean we’re demons.”

“Well, technically Buffy’s part demon,” Xander said. “Or at least her mind reading was catalyzed by a protein marker introduced by sub-angiotropic demon cells infilitrating her DNA and causing buffy-wave mutation.”

“That’s how he says I got an aspect of a demon,” Buffy clarified for Tara’s sake. She gave her a serious look. “I’m not a demon.”

“Well, technically...”

“I’m not a demon,” Buffy said more firmly.

Xander held up his hands. “Right. Not a demon.”

“Darn right,” Buffy said, and because she felt how much he wanted it, she leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. Faith cleared her throat, and Buffy blushed. She wasn’t allowed to kiss her boyfriend now?

Sullenly, Buffy sat down on a workbench beside the medi-bed. She tried to feel bad, but it was very difficult because Xander kept thinking about how cute she was when she was sulking. Her spirits lifted slightly, and she looked up at him out of the corner of her eye. He winked at her, and she stifled a grin.

“The important thing,” Willow said a moment later. “Is that Tara’s not a demon. Right?”

“Right,” Xander said, nodding at Willow. “She’s one-hundred-percent human, and you look really sexy in that outfit.”

Willow lowered her eyes and blushed. “Um, th-thanks.”

“He’s right,” Tara said as she gazed at Willow. “You’re beautiful. I’d love to kiss you. Oh!” She gasped and covered her mouth with one hand.

“Don’t let it stress you,” Faith said with a laugh. “Will’s got this curse where everyone always tells her the truth.”

“R-really?” Tara asked.

Willow nodded sadly, and the others all nodded their confirmation as well.

“How? I m-mean, curses usually need to be triggered, don’t they?”

“We believe it was a demon by the name of Anyanka,” Giles said. “From what we can gather, she is a high level vengeance demon utilizing the power of the wish.”

“Vengeance demon?”

“They’re kind of like evil fairy godmothers,” Jonathan said. “Instead of granting you a wish that’ll make you happy, they grant a wish to make others suffer.”

“I’ll say,” Buffy muttered. That stupid wish had caused her no end of humiliation.

“I-it can’t be removed?”

“We would need to summon Anyanka forth and bind her power,” Giles said. “A risky proposition, and potentially fatal if done improperly.”

“Oh,” Tara said. She looked from Giles to Willow. “Um, I-I know a little about binding magical power. M-my mom showed me. Maybe I could help? It would give me an excuse to spend more time with you, because I really like you.”

Buffy had to stifle a gasp as Xander suddenly realized that Tara had a crush on Willow. He briefly imagined them making out. Buffy bit her lower lip. It would be so sexy to watch them make out.

“Um, I-I guess so,” Willow said. “Jon has a whole bunch of books about Anyanka back in the library. We usually go through them on Monday and Wednesday nights after patrol. You could come help, i-if you wanted.”

“I would love to,” Tara said, a shy smile coming to her face. She looked to Faith. “U-unless I’d be imposing.”

Laughing, Faith shook her head. “Nothing to impose on,” she said. “Is there, Will?”

“Uh, I-I don’t really--”

“Here,” Xander said. He tossed something to Tara, who caught it clumsily. She frowned down at the device in her hand. “It’s a Scooby Watch.”

“A what?”

“Portable MCD Mark III, personal comms device, timekeeping device, global positioning tracker, miniature VEM, and onboard multi-spectral analysis and computer system. That one’s upgraded to Buffyware three-point-eight. It’s the latest model.”

“Um...”

“I’ll show you how to use it,” Buffy said. “It’s pretty easy once you get used to the interface, and it’s really nice to have a portable MCD. You won’t have to carry your books to class anymore.”

“MCD?”

“Matter capacitation device,” Buffy clarified. “Basically it creates a parallel pocket dimension of anti-willows surrounding a universal neural cascade matrix which dematerializes consituent atoms into a bifurcated flux tetrahedron. The resulting matter analysis is stored as ultra-vibrational proton modules in a crystalline spheroid of hyper-dense dataquads, stacked ninth-dimensionally in a vertion loop that allows for easy re-assembly upon ignition of the Cordamite catalyst. One button stores, one button releases. It’s pretty simple, really.”

God that was hot, Xander thought. Buffy grinned at him, and this time she was the one to wink at him.

Xander groaned as he arched his back until something popped. He let out a heavy breath and relaxed slightly.

It was late, and he’d been working for hours. His subvocalization experiments were coming along well, but he had a long way to go before he had a real working prototype. He would have to work many more hours before he solved the problem of involuntary muscle reflex.

Sighing, Xander pulled his Froggles off of his head and blinked as his eyes adjusted to normal vision. He swiveled in his chair and glanced up at the holo-display. It was late. Very late.

It had been a day since the party at Lowell House, and Xander was still reeling from what had happened. Buffy had been talking to him about having another girl in bed for weeks now, but he had never really believed she would make it happen. But she had. It had happened. It was a real thing that he, Xander Harris, had actually engaged in.

He was getting hard just thinking about it, and he glanced around just to be sure Buffy wasn’t around. She wasn’t, of course. If she had, she’d have been all over him before he even realized he was aroused.

Smiling to himself, Xander pulled off his labcoat and tossed it on a hook by the door. He exited out of the secondary lab and headed out through the long hallway that passed through the blunted tesseract of his labspace, and then made his way out to the main lab. It was quiet, and he was alone. The medi-bed was empty, and had been hardly used since Faith had moved out.

He was very proud of her for that. She was doing so well. Her synch rates were skyrocketing, and she was adapting to her upgrades with extreme ease. He had big plans for Faith. The work the Initiative was doing in regards to cybernetics was child’s play, but they had given him a few ideas. He’d already worked in some weapon systems, but he could do so much more than they could ever imagine. Having an MCD built into her systems would provide Faith with the ability to almost literally reconfigure her entire body depending on the situation.

He was going to make her into more than just a Slayer. He was going to make her into a Cyber-Slayer.

No, that sounded stupid. A Bionic Slayer? No. A Terminator? Obviously not. Maybe a Robo-Slayer?

Well, he’d think of something. It had to be cool, whatever it was. He was going to make sure that Faith was the toughest, most unkillable Slayer in the history of the world, even if it did go against his sensibilities to outfit her with a simple steel sword attachment and auto-crossbow configuration. Stupid demons and their stupid magic kept making mockery of his advanced weapon designs, and he was getting pretty sick of it.

Xander made his way up the stairs, noting to himself the precise distance where his calculations suggested Buffy would begin to hear his thoughts. That distance had been increasing at a slow but very predictable rate. She couldn’t quite hear him when she was upstairs and he was in the lab, but she was getting there.

He was genuinely and almost consistently amazed by his relationship with Buffy. He never could quite figure out how she so easily accepted being able to read his mind. He knew his thoughts. He knew that he thought about how much he loved her, but he also knew he thought about other things. Sometimes he thought about other girls. Sometimes he thought about being annoyed with something Buffy did or said. Sometimes he thought about wanting to just be left alone for a little while.

She didn’t seem to care. In fact, she seemed to actively encourage him to fantasize, and judging from last night, was more than willing to see those fantasies come true. As for his less-than-flattering thoughts about her from time to time, she could sometimes get a little depressed when he thought them, but for the most part she seemed to accept them as part of who he was. It seemed impossible, but there it was.

She actually seemed to love him, and he was terrified that he was going to screw that up someday.

Their bedroom door was closed when he got upstairs. The room was dark when he opened the door, but he could see Buffy’s nude body (he suspected she slept nude just because she knew how much he loved looking at her naked body) curled up around the sheets in the center of the bed. He smiled at that. She always slept in the center when he wasn’t in bed with her.

Xander stripped down to his boxers and gently slid down onto the bed. Buffy murmured in her sleep and reached her hand out to go over his chest as he lay down beside her. It didn’t take her very long to cuddle up beside him and press her face into the crook of his neck.

God, he loved her. As annoying as it sometimes was to have absolutely no privacy from Buffy, it was all worth it when he could slide into bed and have Buffy Summers snuggle up beside him. He was fairly certain he would kill for such a thing, and was amazed that he didn’t have to.

“Xander,” Buffy murmured.

“Go back to sleep,” he said, although he knew saying anything out loud was unnecessary. He kissed the top of her head, and she sighed happily.

“What time is it?” she asked as she nuzzled against his chest. Her arm went around him and she pressed herself against him.

After three, he thought as he closed his own eyes and let himself sink back into the bed.

“You promised you wouldn’t stay up so late,” Buffy reminded him. Her voice was tired and slightly higher-pitched than normal. It was extremely cute. Buffy smiled happily and hummed against him. “You’re not getting off that easy. I don’t want you working so hard.”

Xander sighed at that. It was important work. If they the whole gang was outfitted with SVNGs, then there would never be a worry about getting kidnapped or separated. The last thing he wanted was for Buffy or Willow to die or get hurt because they couldn’t call for help fast enough.

“I don’t care,” Buffy said somewhat haughtily. “I don’t like it when you work too hard, Xander. You get all stressed out and your thoughts get kind of messy. It’s not good for you.”

He had no idea how he could possibly get stressed out. Not when she was around. Not when he was having sex with Buffy at least twice a day, and not when Buffy pretty darn well insisted on using her mouth on him at least once a day. Who could be stressed when Buffy Summers was fulfilling his every fantasy? By God, he’d had not a threesome, but an actual foursome just the night before.

“Ooh,” Buffy cooed as Xander thought back to how it had looked when she was kissing Jenna. He could not think of a sexier thing he had ever seen in his entire life. The only way it would have been better if is Willow had been there. Or Faith. Or Cordelia. Or Ms. Calendar. Or Pamela Anderson. Or--

Buffy was suddenly on top of him, and her lips crushed against his own. He could feel the hardness of her nipples against his chest as she pressed herself against him. One hand slid down his chest, past his belly button, and to his rapidly hardening penis. She gave it a squeeze -- a perfect squeeze. It was always perfect with Buffy.

She knew exactly how to kiss him, how to hold him, how to touch him, and how to stroke him. At no point did he ever have to tell her what worked and what didn’t. She just knew. She felt it, and she loved it. When he felt good, she felt even better.

How could he possibly live without any privacy, with Buffy constantly in his mind? This was how. Because it was a two-way street. He had no privacy, but he also had full understanding. Buffy Summers understood him better than anyone in the entire history of the world had ever understood anyone. She knew him inside and out. She knew what he liked, and what he liked, she liked. It was absolute perfection.

“Yesss,” Buffy hissed as she began to slowly pump at him. “So good, Xander...”

“Buffy,” he groaned. A thousand thoughts filled his mind, and they were all about her. She kissed him again, and her hand slid away from him. It was replaced a moment later by the tightness of her. They both moaned together as he entered her. For him, the warm, wet tightness of her was heaven. How could it possibly feel for her, to experience everything he experienced and then feel her own body’s sensations as well? No wonder she loved it. He was already addicted to it, and he only felt it once.

While his thoughts were all of Buffy, they were not all about what he was doing with her, at least not directly. There was some part of him that wondered about her. She had been very embarrassed at getting caught at Lowell House, and it had seemed to him that she might want to slow down. They had been getting more and more sexual lately.

He wasn’t complaining, of course. Buffy Summers was eagerly pushing him to engage in every sexual fantasy he had ever imagined. It was just that sometimes he wasn’t sure if he was being fair to Buffy. After all, it was access to his mind that was driving her to such things. Was Buffy really Buffy anymore, or was she just a--

Buffy pinched his nipple in between two fingers -- hard. Xander gasped and stared up at her in shock.

“I’m me,” Buffy said firmly. “I’m not a demon, I’m not brainwashed, and I’m not from an alternate spacetime.”

“I--” Xander said, but winced as his nipple continued to throb. “Jeez, Buff! That hurt!”

“Just because I want to do stuff, that doesn’t mean it was your idea,” Buffy said, glowering down at him. It felt very strange to be inside of her and yet still be on the receiving end of an Angry-Buffy face. He was used to seeing Happy-Buffy face when in this position. “I’d be happy if you didn’t think you were turning me into a slut.”

“W-what? I don’t--”

“I do what I do because I want to do it.”

Except she wanted to do it because he wanted her to want to do it, and she felt that desire and it fed back into her own mind, causing her to want to do it as--

“Xander,” Buffy growled.

“I’m sorry, Buff, it’s just that...you? Me? Two other girls? I don’t think you’d do that on your own.”

“I didn’t do it on my own,” Buffy said. “I did it with you. Because I wanted to.”

“Because I wanted to,” he amended for her.

“I can’t do something because you want to do it?”

Not when it was something she wouldn’t do on her own.

Buffy rolled her eyes. “Why wouldn’t I do it on my own? Xander, last night was th sexiest thing I’ve ever done in my entire life. I will never, ever forget it, and we are definitely going to do it again.”

They were?

“Oh yeah. Definitely. Just thinking about it makes me...ooh.” She flexed herself around him, and Xander went cross-eyed for a moment. “Yeah. We’re doing that again.”

As good as it felt, it was just further proof that Buffy wasn’t her--

“Xander! Why do you have to be like this sometimes? I’m not some brainwashed slut, okay? I love you. I love you in pretty much every way there is to love someone. Just because we’re experimenting doesn’t mean you’re brainwashing me. It just means you had an idea and I thought it was a good one. A really good one. That we’re doing again sometime.”

“But--” he began, but it was too late. Buffy had already read his arguments in his head.

“Xander,” she said, lowering her face towards him. “Remember two weeks ago at the Bronze? When we did it up in the rafters?”

How could he forget? He had never been so terrified in all his life. There they were, up in the rafters high above the dance floor where anyone who looked up would be able to see them. Buffy had been rubbing her bottom up against him when he had the briefest, idlest thought. He’d thought about how it had felt to press his dick into that tight Slayer ass, and about how Buffy had loved the experience every bit as much -- if not more -- as he had.

That was when Buffy had slowly slid her jeans down. Five minutes later, and with lots and lots of coaxing, encouragement, and assurances that they would not be caught, Xander Harris was giving Buffy Summers anal sex right there in the Bronze.

“God that was hot,” Buffy said as Xander reminisced. “It was so tight. Mmm. We have to do that again too.”

“I don’t know...” Xander said, swallowing nervously.

“That’s the point, Xander,” Buffy said, and she began to roll her hips, causing Xander to slide back and forth within her. She hummed pleasantly and closed her eyes. “That wasn’t your fantasy. That was mine.”

“W-what?”

“You didn’t stop worrying the whole time,” Buffy said in between moans. “But I loved it. Until last night, it was the hottest thing I’d ever done.”

“B-but you hated getting caught,” Xander said, then gasped as a shock of pleasure shot through him. Buffy shook at the same moment and let out a little squeal as she began to pick up the pace.

“I-I hated getting caught, but I love the idea of getting caught,” she said as she began to bounce up and down on him. Xander’s hands went up to her breasts and began to knead them insistently as Buffy held his wrists and pressed him against her. “H-harder!”

He began to thrust up to meet her. If there was one thing he had learned in the last few months, it was that Buffy liked it hard and she liked it rough. Sometimes she got so wild that he simply could not keep up, like the time they’d tried spanking for the first time. His hand had never been so sore in his entire life, and still she’d demanded more.

“S-see?” Buffy said as she bounced harder and harder. “That’s me! Not you! I’m some kind of crazy sex freak even without you to give me ideas! Oh! Y-yes! Harder, Xander! P-pull them! God, yeah!”

He couldn’t hold out much longer. She was so tight, so warm, and so Buffy. She moved with such perfection. Every movement only enhanced his pleasure, and his pleasure only enhanced her own. He closed his eyes.

“Think about me and Willow kissing!” Buffy exclaimed as she reached up and ran her fingers through her hair. “Think about me eating Faith’s pussy! Think about how much you love me!”

He did all of those things, and then he came. Xander gasped Buffy’s name as she screamed his own. As always, they came in unison, although she came twice as hard as he did from experiencing both his orgasm and her own. When it was over, she was breathless and collapsed on top of him.

“I love you so much,” Buffy whispered as they both panted and tried to catch their breath. “So just be happy that I think you have good ideas, okay?”

“Y-yeah,” Xander said breathlessly.

“And no more working late,” Buffy said in a chastising tone. Her eyes fluttered closed. “You always come to bed and think something sexy and then we wind up doing it, and then suddenly it’s four AM and I have class in three hours.”

“Sorry,” he said, anything but. He wrapped his arms around Buffy’s sweat-slick body and then kissed her on the cheek. She smiled and rested her head against his chest. They both began to doze.

Then Xander had an idle thought about how sexy it might be if Buffy decided to clean him off with her tongue, and her eyes slid opened.

They didn’t fall asleep until five AM.

“And Tara found this really neat charm in the book of Shamanistic Principles, so we’re probably going to try it out tomorrow night,” Willow said as she, Buffy, and Faith all strolled through Hamberton Memorial Cemetery.

“That’s good,” Buffy said as she looked around. She had her M-Specs on and her plasma-blade in one hand, although it was not ignited. Sighing, she looked to Faith. “You see anything?”

“Nada,” Faith said, her right eye flashing through its multiple colors. “It’s dead quiet.”

“Is it me, or is patrol getting really boring?” Buffy said with a sigh. She pulled her M-Specs off and quickly used her Scooby Watch to store them in her MCD. “It’s been so quiet lately. I don’t like it.”

“Hey, no news is good news, as far as I’m concerned,” Faith said. “Besides, you oughtta be happy. Sooner you get patrol out of the way the sooner you get to go home and get all freaky-deaky with Xander.”

“We’re not talking about that right now,” Buffy said as she blushed slightly. “Or ever.” Her eyes flicked involuntarily to Willow. “I really can’t wait to get home and do this new thing we’ve been doing where I suck him off after he cums inside of me -- darn it! See, this is why I can’t hang out with you, Willow!”

“You just need to get over it, B. Everyone does sick shit in the bedroom.”

“I-I don’t,” Willow said.

“Then you ain’t doing it right, Will. It’s not sex unless you hate yourself a little afterwards.”

“Oh that’s healthy,” Buffy said, rolling her eyes.

“Do you really hate yourself after?” Willow asked, looking at Faith with concern.

“I-- shit. Well, yeah. Sometimes.”

“You really shouldn’t,” Buffy said.

“Whatever. I don’t want to talk about it,” Faith said, but when she glanced at Willow she added. “Yes I do. I really want to talk about it. Just not with Buffy around.”

“Oh so it’s cool for you guys to know all about my sex life, but I don’t get to know about yours? That’s fair.”

“Nobody said any of this is fair,” Willow said. “But it’s complicated.”

“Yeah, except somehow I’m always the one admitting stuff like Xander did me in the butt up in the rafters at the Bronze two weeks ago! Argh! See? Argh!”

“Damn, B. For real?”

“We’re not talking about this!” Buffy cried. She stalked away from the two of them, but then spun around and glared at Willow. “Willow, I’m trying, I really am, but I don’t know how long I can do this. We have to cure you, otherwise I won’t be able to ever spend any time with you. And I really, really miss you.”

“I miss you too,” Willow said. The entire night’s patrol was supposed to be an attempt for the three of them to spend some quality time together, but as always, Willow’s curse was making it very uncomfortable. “T-tara thinks she might have found a binding protocol that would work, so it’s not like we don’t have any leads.”

“Well we need to find them faster,” Buffy said. “I want my best friend back. I want to be able to talk to you without telling you how I masturbate while thinking of you naked while I suck Xander’s penisaaaarrrghh! I hate this stupid curse!”

“Chill, Buffy,” Faith said, holding a hand out towards her. “We’re gonna cure her. It’s just taking some time.”

“Yeah well time sucks.” She sighed and crossed her arms. “We should all just be able to be normal friends. Or as normal as a Slayer, a cyborg, and a witch can be. You know what I mean. I don’t like that there’s this...this thing going on.”

“This thing?” Willow asked.

Buffy sighed and tried not to look at her, but while eye-contact tended to trigger the curse, it was not always necessary to do so. “This thing where you and Faith hang out and me and Xander hang out but we never all just hang out together anymore. This thing where Faith hates me or something and you’re on her side and I’m worried we won’t ever be friends again.”

“What? No! Buffy, we’ll always be friends.”

Buffy shrugged. “Maybe. I’m just left out. You two live together and you’re all super best friends now.”

“You’ve got Xander,” Faith said. “You two aren’t exactly jumping at the chance to hang out these days. Too busy fuckin’ each other all over town.”

“Hey!”

“I’m just sayin’, it’s a two-way street. If we don’t hang out, it’s cause you never want to hang out.”

“I-I want to hang out,” Buffy said, her brow furrowing sadly. “You guys are my friends. I love you both. You know that.”

“I guess,” Faith said sullenly. She crossed her arms and looked anywhere but at Buffy.

“We know that,” Willow said firmly. She looked to Faith. “Right, Faith?”

Faith sighed and lowered her arms. “Yeah! Fine, I know that. Buffy loves me.”

“And you love Buffy,” Willow said. Faith glared back at her.

“Yeah. I love Buffy. I hate her fucking guts too, but I love her.”

“Whoa, what?” Buffy said, taking a step back. “You hate me? What did I ever do to you?”

Before she could say a word, Faith turned and stalked away from them. Buffy and Willow watched her go.

“What was that about?” Buffy asked, frowning as Faith hurried away. “She hates me? Why?”

Willow frowned and shrugged. “I-I don’t think I should say.”

Buffy turned towards her. “What? No way, that’s not fair. I spill my guts to you every time we talk but you can’t tell me why one of my best friends hates me? I would do anything for Faith. Why would she hate me?”

“It’s not my place to tell...” Willow said waveringly.

“If I don’t know why she hates me, then how can I ever fix it? What did I do?”

Willow turned back in the direction Faith had gone. There was no doubt in Willow’s mind that Faith had fled rather than be compelled to tell Buffy the truth. Willow was under no such compulsion, and yet she wasn’t sure she could keep silent. Was it fair to Buffy to let Faith hate her without knowing why?

She wasn’t sure that it was.

“Xander was her best friend,” Willow said in a low voice. “Her only friend. She kind of feels like you stole him from her.”

“What? That’s crazy. Xander’s still her friend.”

“Is he? They don’t spend a lot of time together anymore. He’s always with you.”

Buffy stared at Willow. “What?”

“Well he is.”

“So what? He’s my boyfriend! We spend time together! We live together! Wh-what do you want him to do, not spend time with me?”

“No, Buffy, I’m just saying that Faith feels like you took her friend. M-maybe even someone who would have been more than a friend. I think she had a crush on Xander even before the explosion, and after he saved her life? She’s confused. She loves you. You heard her. She really does. She’s told me before how much she loves you and Xander both for saving her life and being her friends. But she can’t help how she feels. Nobody can. Trust me, if there’s one thing I’ve learned from this curse, it’s that people can’t control their feelings.”

“Yeah,” Buffy said with a sigh. “I know. Xander can’t control what he thinks or what he feels. This one time we were having sex and right when he came he thought about my mom naked and it was like the grossest thing I’ve ever felt. But how can I be mad at him? He can’t help what he thinks. I know that. I just...I didn’t know she hated me.”

“She doesn’t always,” Willow said. “She’s just upset sometimes. And she’s right, you know. You don’t hang out with us very often.”

“That’s because I always tell you stuff that I don’t want to tell you,” Buffy said in exasperation. “You think I want you to know that I had an orgasm while the image of my naked mom was in my head? I would rather die, but I just told you twice now! This is not easy for me, Will. I mean sure, I get turned on by having sex in public and potential embarrassment, but not like this!”

Willow blushed and looked away from her. “Oh. Yeah. I-I mean you’re right. I understand.”

“There has to be something I can do,” Buffy said after a few moments of awkward silence. “I don’t want Faith to hate me, and I don’t want the two of you to be cut off from me and Xander. I just don’t know what to do. I’m not going to stop doing sexy stuff with Xander, but if I don’t then I’m going to keep telling you about it.”

“Well, um, m-maybe, maybe that wouldn’t be so bad,” Willow suggested.

“What?”

“Well, um, there’s one thing I noticed from living with Faith. Most of the time I don’t notice that she’s telling me the truth, because she knows she has to and she’s just kind of okay with that. She hardly ever just blurts out embarrassing stuff. Sometimes, yeah, but most of the time she’s just kind of naturally honest with me.”

Buffy raised an eyebrow at Willow. “What are you saying?”

“Well, m-maybe if you just, uh, if you just told me what you don’t want me to know, then you wouldn’t blurt it out when you don’t want to.”

“And how is that any better? I still tell you stuff that’s private.”

“Yeah, but you wouldn’t tell whoever else was around when we hang out,” Willow said. “You could tell me in private, and then I’d be the only person to know, and you wouldn’t feel compelled to tell me later in front of company.”

“You’re saying I should tell you all my secrets in private so that I don’t tell you all my secrets in public?”

“Um, yeah. I guess I am.”

Buffy sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose with two fingers. “Will, the stuff I do with Xander and the stuff I want to do with Xander isn’t stuff I want to tell anyone. I have a hard enough time telling Xander what I want, and I know for a fact how he’ll respond to just about anything I tell him. I don’t think I could handle it if you knew how much I like it when he fucks me in the ass or how I really want to convince him to let me spank him someday.” Growling, Buffy smacked the sides of her head a few times. “Darn it! See? This is what I’m talking about? How am I supposed to look at you now, Will? You’ll think I’m a freak. I think I’m a freak.”

“You’re not a freak,” Willow said. She put a hand on Buffy’s shoulder. “Believe me, Buffy. I get stopped by people all day in school who tell me stuff that’s way worse. Some people are pretty plain and PG, but a lot of people aren’t. You really couldn’t tell me anything that would ever shock me. I’ve heard too much. We’re talking gouge-your-ears-out-and-notify-the-authorities stuff. There’s nothing you could tell me that I haven’t already heard a hundred times.”

“I don’t know,” Buffy said, her hands fidgeting slightly. “I’d have to tell you how bad I want to kiss you sometimes.”

“You’ve already told me that,” Willow reminded her. “Um, a lot, actually.”

“Oh. Yeah. I do, you know. Want to kiss you. Especially if Xander was watching.”

“I know, Buffy. A-and, um, that’s okay. I’m not going to do it, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with you. Actually, there’s a lot of people who want to kiss me. You’d be surprised.”

“No I wouldn’t,” Buffy said earnestly. “You’re really sexy. Xander thinks about you a lot, and you’re always my favorite girl he thinks about. W-well, other than me. I think I’m becoming a kind of narcissist because the sexiest girl I can think of these days is me. But you’d be number two. You’re really hot.”

Her ears turning red, Willow looked away from Buffy. “Um, thanks.”

“See? See, this is what I mean! This is uncomfortable!”

“N-no, it’s not. I’m just--”

“Super uncomfortable,” Buffy said. She clenched her jaw and looked away from Willow.

“I’ll work on it,” Willow promised. “And I promise not to be judgmental. Isn’t it worth trying, at least? Otherwise we’ll just never spend any time together ever again, and I-I would hate to lose you, Buffy. I love you.”

“I love you too,” Buffy said without hesitation. There was a brief pause, and then Buffy threw her arms around Willow. “I really love you, Will. You’re my best friend times a million. You also smell really nice and I’m probably going to tell Xander about how I hugged you later when we have sex.”

Willow tried not to pull away too quickly. “Uh, okay.”

They pulled apart, but Buffy kept her hands on Willow’s waist. “Okay. We’ll try this. Only if you ever start thinking I’m a sick freak, you have to tell me so we can stop.”

“I will. I won’t, but I will.”

“And then afterwards you have to help me come up with ideas to make Faith stop hating me.”

“That’ll be a lot easier.”

Buffy took a deep breath. “Okay. Um. W-where should I start?”

“How about with this: Buffy, what don’t you want me to know?”

Buffy blinked at her, opened her mouth, and began to talk.