Linoleum (set in early Season 2, pre- Cordy and Oz).
Xander
It's 10
AM on a Sunday afternoon, and Xander is looking at linoleum and thinking about
sex.
There
is a good reason for this, he's sure.
He remembers Buffy mentioning something about the shiny, shiny floor
when they first entered the kitchen, but his brain had seized up during her
story about spending half of the night before waxing it when he first saw
Joyce, no, Buffy's mom, not Joyce, just Buffy's mom, her older, very much
older, but surprisingly tight and very
hot... No. Just Buffy's mom. Not
hot.
Anyway. He had come in and frozen for a second in
the doorway as Jo... er, Buffy's mom turned to say hello, framed in the light
from the kitchen window holding a knife as she sliced hardboiled eggs to make
something. The sight of her framed in
the light, even with the knife, had stopped something in his brain. The mid-morning sunlight was shining through
the glass and he could see the outline of her body through her clothing. Apparently the something in his brain that
locked up made his legs go, because his body also stopped until Willow slammed
into him from behind and broke the moment.
He muttered something and sat down at one of the stools, firm in his
resolve, no, not firm, bad word, but positive, yeah, better word, *positive*
that he wasn't going to look at Joyce any more.
Buffy's
mom, that is. Anyway, so he started
admiring the shiny, shiny floor, preparing to say something witty to Buffy to
compliment her on her fine waxing skills when he noticed that he really could
see a reflection in it. Very shiny,
indeed. Unfortunately the reflection
was under Joyce, and he now had a worm's eye view of her slip moving under her
dress hypnotically as she sliced eggs.
So not
good. This had to be one of those tests
that girls give boys. He was failing,
as usual. Which made sense, this was
the only sort of test that Willow wouldn't help him with, which was really
unfair of her.
Ooh,
she pivoted again. Somewhere in the
back of his mind, he had already bet five dollars that her panties were
pink. Every time she makes a slicing
motion, her slip moves gently across her smooth legs and he wonders what that
feels like, silk brushing softly back and forth along her...
"Whatcha
lookin' at Xander?" Willows voice asks innocently from across the little
kitchen island thingie and as he tries furiously not to look guilty, the stool,
formerly rock steady and his accomplice in this, suddenly betrays him viciously
and rockets across the kitchen behind him to smack into a wall, while he falls
face-first thunderously onto the shiny, shiny floor. Wow. Buffy must have been
down here all night, on her knees...
STOP IT! Mmm, I wonder if she
even has a french maids uniform...
AGH! SHUT UP BRAIN! He can hear Willow giggling and he
distinctly remembers his last sight, of her giving that 'busted' smile of hers
as he fell.
Joyce
is now leaning over him and Buffy is also helping him up. His first sight is looking up to see that
Joyce indeed has perkier breasts than he would have thought from this angle... GAH!
He springs to his feet muttering, "Fine, I'm good! Really good! No concussion, really."
He
hears Willow hasten to reassure Buffy's mom, "No really, he hits his head
all the time, he's fine, really."
She turns to Xander, who is busy accepting his traitorous stool back
from Buffy, glaring at it menacingly and adds, "Xander? How many fingers am I holding up?" as
she holds up 2 fingers and her thumb.
He recognizes this as a trick question that she has played on him since
he was seven and correctly answers, "Two.
'Cause thumbs don't count," confidently. "See?" Willow says to Joyce, "No brain
damage."
Under
her breath, but loud enough to clearly be heard by people in the living room,
Buffy quips, "Are you sure?"
For a
second Xander wonders if there is blood and runs his hand through his hair, but
upon seeing Willows annoyed expression to Buffy he recognizes that he is being
picked on and says "Hey!" as Buffy bursts into a 'just kidding!'
smile.
Then
Joyce is setting a small plate with an egg salad sandwich, lovingly sliced
corner to corner, in front of him, "Well, just too much egg salad by one
sandwich, it won't fit in the basket.
How embarassing. Will you get
rid of it for me Xander?" she says with a sly grin. He lights up. "I'm your man!" and just as he
realizes how embarassing that comment could be, the first half sandwich enters
his mouth and all the pesky thoughts go away for awhile, other than
"Mmm. Peppery."
Around
the sandwich, he tries to comment on the slicing job and express his thanks at
the same time, but all that comes out is "Thankful" which he supposes
does the job, if in much less words than he had intended. Joyce looks at him for a second and he
swallows hastily to amend, "Sorry, meant you - thoughtful, me - thankful. Two thoughts at once, only one
brain..." he interrupts himself with more egg salad and Joyce seems
somewhat distracted that he has eaten the first half of her sandwich in two
bites. Obviously she never has seen him
and Willow doing the Whopper challenge.
He always wins.
Joyce
She
mechanically slices eggs, thankful that she could do this with her eyes closed,
since they actually are. She loves her
daughter dearly, but she suspects that this friend of hers has been checking
her out since they entered the room.
She saw him freeze in the doorway and recognized that look. Hank used to look at her like that when he
would come home to find her in lingerie waiting in the bedroom doorway. Forget that thought. Another life.
She
finally works up the courage to glance over and he is staring intently at the
floor. Thank God, she must have been
imagining it, because he is regarding the floor with the same thunderstruck
intensity he was giving her in the doorway.
Perhaps he just normally looks like a puppy that has been hit by
lightning...
Willow
and Buffy have both taken her aside previously to inform her that Xander eats
like a horse, or a starving man, or perhaps a starving horse? and that he is
going to need extra sandwiches or else he'll end up eating half of theirs.
The
girls have been talking about the floor, since teenagers can talk forever about
anything it seems, especially if it is long-distance, and she has been ignoring
them, distracted with her own tasks, and worries about Xanders apparent
interest in her ass. 'Jocelyn Summers!'
a startled voice exclaims in her mind, and she recognizes Evelyn Matheson, her
dearly departed grandmother giving her trademarked scandalized exclamation. She takes a moment to wonder how Evelyn gave
birth to her mother in the first place, given that she apparently considered
sex to be an unnatural act inspired by the devil.
The
crash is hard enough to make the window rattle and little magnets fall off
of the refrigerator. She has no idea
where the knife she was holding went to, but she wants to join it. Looking around, Xander is lying face-down on
the floor and after checking to make sure her knife isn't sticking out of
someones eye-socket, she helps him get up.
He flinches away from her as if electrocuted 'hey, there's that lightning-struck
look again, must be his version of a normal expression' and springs to his
feet. She notices that he has two large veins on his temples as he is briefly
face to face with her, and she wonders why his brain could possibly need so
much oxygen. Buffy
has righted his stool, which somehow managed to fly all the way to the door,
and Willow appears to be holding back a cough, but is fooling nobody. Willow is now hurriedly reassuring everyone
that Xander is fine, that he bumps his head all the time and Joyce avoids
saying 'so that's what happened' as he counts her fingers. Buffy then says what Joyce was thinking, God
love her and shut up Evelyn, she's my daughter and can decide what's appropriate
all by herself.
She
turns back to her egg salad and makes a sandwich for Willow, a sandwich for
Buffy, which she'll probably just throw out, she thinks I didn't see that face
she made, two sandwiches for Xander and a third sandwich for Xander that she
just puts on a plate. Slicing it she
wonders briefly if he wants salt or pepper on it, and she ends up putting a
dash of salt on one half and a dash of pepper on the other, figuring that he'll
say something if it isn't right. She
hands it over to him, noticing absently that her hand is still trembling from
the recent scare and he bungles a 'thank you' mumbling something about two
thoughts in only one brain. In her head
she completes the sentence 'two thoughts and only one brain *cell,*' supressing
a smile. Evelyn mutters darkly
somewhere.
As she
turns she notes that Xander has already finished the first half of the
sandwich, apparently having failed to notice the salt and pepper
disparity. He is almost religiously
absorbed in the food, and she smiles to herself as she realizes that all she
has to do is shove food into his hands whenever he comes over and she'll never
have to worry about him staring at her ass.
She asks, redundantly if he is enjoying the egg salad, wondering idly if
he can tell it isn't tuna and tabasco at that speed, and he mumbles something
completely incomprehensible. Willow
replies, "He wants you to know he loves it and needs a drink," as she
pours him a glass of milk without being asked.
Or asking for that matter, but I did tell her to help herself... He takes a large drink and reaffirms what
Willow has already said. Not for the first time, she hopes Willow and Buffy
remain friends for a long time, since this girl demonstrably has enough brains
for two people.
Putting
away the bowl, she notices that her hand is still shaking. She looks over at the kids, who are
completely calm and have completely forgotten Xanders fall. Figures.
She'll be jumpy for another half-hour at least and it might as well have
happened in another lifetime for them.
Willow
Oh My
God! He's actually checking out Buffy's
mom? That's gonna stop...
"Oops,"
Willow mutters by way of pretense as she elbows Xander fiercely in the back, as
if bashing furniture out of her way as she enters the kitchen. As usual for when she hits him as hard as
she can (aren't kidneys supposed to be sensitive?), he doesn't seem to feel it
and just side-steps out of her way with a mumbled, "Sorry." She shoots Xander a look, but he has
ensconced himself on a stool, leaning on his hands and studiously staring at
the floor. Good, she thinks, he can't
get into any trouble that way. After
some incredibly tedious fishing-for-complements from Buffy about the whole 'up
all night waxing the floor' story, she turns to see if Xander has gotten *that*
visual yet, only to see him still staring at the linoleum. She looks over Buffy's shoulder to about
where he is staring and has to resist a sudden urge to chuck something at his
head as she sees Joyces slip reflected in the tiling.
With a
grin that does it's level best to not be the essence of pure malice, she
startles Xander and sure enough, he jerks, his arms pressing down reflexively
on the edge of the stool in front of him, causing its back end to rocket out
behind him, precipitating him violently into the floor. I've never specifically thanked God for
physics before... The whole house seems
to shake. Buffy tenses, hands
clenching, nostrils flaring, and not for the first time she feels a twinge of
fear for her best friend, as if she is in the presence of a dangerous
animal. She is still thinking this
while Buffy and her mother help Xander up and retrieve his wayward stool, which
he looks at like a venomous serpent. He
also notices that he stood up far too fast, so much that he looks dizzy and he
is furiously avoiding looking at Joyce now.
Good. Serves him right.
Although
she likes when he gets that faraway look in school, because it is the only time
she can stare at him and get that faraway look herself, imagining that he is
looking at her and not Aura or Buffy or one of the other 2.5 billion girls he
gets that look for...
She
reassures Joyce that Xander isn't hurt, doing the old 'how many fingers am I
holding up' thing, which is much safer than the 'who is President' thing, ever
since he got it wrong that time.
And so
she has a twinge of guilt for that thought when Buffy makes a smart comment
about Xander and brain damage and she shoots Buffy her best 'withering' glance,
which probably comes out as mildy annoyed, but it is enough that Xander notices
and leaps to his own defense. Well,
metaphorically anyway, mostly he just sits there and says 'hey.' Buffy smiles and he forgives her in about
1/20th of a second. Damn him.
Joyce
has now handed him a sandwich, and Willow has seen that she has packed him two
more for the picnic. Good woman, we
might actually get some. She gives him
a look hoping to communicate that he should take small bites, but he does,
taking two whole bites to eat each sandwich half, which is a vast improvement
over his insistence that one can eat a Whopper in only one bite. She still has no idea how he does that, and
his attempts to show her almost made her ill.
He is
struggling to answer Joyce regarding the quality of her egg salad. Why do people always wait until your mouth
is full to ask that? She sees the
trapped look on his face and gets up to get him a glass of milk, answering for
him, leaving unspoken that Xander will eat anything that isn't on fire. And like it. Well, that isn't true.
She found out when they were 12 that he didn't like brussel sprouts, but
when she pretended to like them, he suddenly claimed to love them. She really doesn't like brussel sprouts at
all, but she has her dad make them every time Xander eats over, since she is
willing to suffer a brussel sprout or two just to watch Xander attempt to choke
them down. It usually takes three
glasses of milk to finish a single helping and he always insists that he loves
them.
She
wonders if there is a Chinese hell for people who torment their friends
unmercifully and if she will be able to get a window seat.
Buffy
All.freaking.night. 'I want this floor to be so clean that I can
see myself in it!' her mother had insisted.
Floor-wax Nazi. How exactly was
it Buffy's fault that yogurt got *everywhere?*
It was her mother who insisted on getting those huge tubs of plain
yogurt to mix real fruit into instead of neat little one-serving cups. It would have been a much smaller mess with
only a single-serving...
Whoah,
traffic jam. Way to go battleship
Willow! Wow, that's gonna leave a
bruise. And he is apologizing to her? Weird, and so not fair. No one ever apologizes to me after I whale
on them.
Ah, egg
salad. Disgusting. Nope, no celery. Good. I don't need food I
can floss with, thankyouverymuch.
Willow
is beginning to get that fake enthusiasm thing going, obviously the
floor-waxing funny has left the room.
She is looking over my shoulder like she wants to distract me so that
she can jump out the window or something, I better shut up now.
<CRASH!>
*KILL.*
What? Xander!
If he bleeds on this floor I'll strangle him! Oh no, what if he cracked a tile? I'll have to pry it up and match the color and replace it and
grout and something, something, something.
I wonder what grout is anyway?
Oh, yeah mom, he's fine, *I've* hit him harder than that, with a desk
even, about which we are *not* going to talk...
Boy,
he's testy. Willow is doing the 'count
my fingers' thing to prove that he is fine.
Why'd he say two? Oh, thumbs
don't count? Why didn't I know
that? Have I been getting it
wrong? And how can she tell if he has
brain damage anyway? Rut-roh, she's
giving me 'the look.' I must have said
that out loud. Why does mom looks
amused? Is there some rule that says
mothers get to be amused when their daughters embarass themselves? Yeesh, my mom must be getting overtime then.
Oh
gross! Don't talk with all that egg
salad in your mouth! At least he likes
it. Good, he'll be willing to get rid
of the evidence when I don't eat mine.