Sloth

Down in the basement, a TV blared.

Bad dialogue, with long, loud intervals praising the merits of drugs, detergents and hygiene products. Passions was on again.
Yesterday it was cartoons and reruns, last night ESPN, then WWE, then Skinamax and action movies and in the early morning, infomercials. Little Tubby Boy bouncing up and down, showing what aerobics could do for YOU.
Not. At least, not for Spike and not for Xander.

Glumly, Dawn and Buffy stirred the undissolved sugar in their tea, trying to ignore the sounds..

The doorbell rang. No-one answered it. It rang again. Willow trotted down the stairs, stopped and looked curiously at the sisters in the kitchen. Neither made any move toward the door.

Willow grinned wearily. "You're not going to answer that?"
Buffy snorted and took another gulp of her iced tea.
"As if."

The doorbell rang again. Willow pulled a glass out of the cabinet, dumped in ice cubes from the freezer and joined the sisters at the kitchen counter.

"So" she said brightly, reaching for the pitcher of tea.
"You think they can hear that?"
Dawn rolled her eyes.
"Duh, vampire hearing."
And, duh, Xander's built in junk food locating device." Buffy added.
Willow raised her voice slightly to compete with the desperate groans and calls for help drifting up the stairs accompanied by a full choir caroling about whiter whites.

"You think that'll do it?"
Buffy shrugged. "Well, ONE of them had to come upstairs to call in the order."
Willow stared at her in consternation. A blush slowly climbed her neck, right to the roots of her hair.

"What?" Dawn said sharply. "Willow, you didn't.."
No! " Willow said frantically, looking guilty.
Buffy said sternly. "Wills, you know they have to fight the transformation for themselves. They have to want to be human."

"No, really I didn't. Totally not fighting any
"be as you are"curses on our friends in the basement, Missy. Cuz, that would be.. Bad. So I'm.. Not.. Not doing anything at all about it.
Not magically. Or..you know, physically."
She glanced pointedly at Buffy's top, white eyelet lace, low-cut, with several buttons left undone.

Buffy held up a warding hand.
"Hey! What they don't see can't interfere, right? Besides," she smirked, "it's hot."
"It's not that hot," Dawn disagreed.
Smugly, Buffy tugged the non-existent collar lower..
"Yes, it is. I quote "Hot enough to make a dead man walk" unquote."
"Eeuw."
"And also, not working," Willow added with a smirk of her own.
"Well, they can't SEE it," Buffy grumped. "It would work if they could!"

The doorbell rang again. Something thumped hard against the door. A muffled voice called out in despair. They clearly heard "extra sauce" followed by words that sounded suspiciously like "pizza" -or maybe "wings".
In the basement the chorus of groans momentarily drowned out furious accusations of "Homewrecking slut!" on the television.

Buffy glared at Willow, " And anyway, so not the point here, Wills, what did you do? Who ordered delivery?"
"Nobody" Willow squirmed under identical stares of disbelief.
"Except, you know, I might have.."
"Might have what?" Two Summers women armed with ice cubes are more intimidating than one, Willow noted, cringing.
"LentXandermycellphoneyesterday!" she squeaked.
"He said, he..he had to call about a job. I thought it was a good sign."
Dawn dropped her head to the counter in despair.
"Oh, Willow."

Outside the thumping stopped. Footsteps retreated down the walk.

Dawn looked up again, cautiously hopeful.
"Talk about dodging a bullet" Willow muttered. All three girls exchanged relieved looks.
They all waited for the slam of the delivery car door.
Nothing. Dawn leaned perilously far on her stool to peer out the window.
"He's not getting in the car. He's got.. Like a radio thingy. He's just waiting."

They exchanged puzzled, nervous glances.
Then,the Slayer's ears caught faint, familiar strains of music. She looked hard at the basement door.
Willow, did you put the Mighty Mouse theme song on your cell phone ?
"Uh, yes?" The footsteps came back up the walk, and continued around the house.
"N-no,"Buffy breathed. "He wouldn't dare."

All three heard the basement window shatter. Several small thuds followed.
The girls stared at each other in uneasy surmise, until a thick, nearly unintelligible voice drifted up the stairs, counterpoint to passionately insincere avowals of fidelity.
"Bloody hell" "Oi! The sauce- Whelp, can y'reach the sauce? 'Spouring all over the carpet, wasted like."
Another barely recognizable voice grunted a negative.
"Let's hear it for the determined demonic delivery boys of Sunnydale." Dawn sighed.
Buffy groaned, as the first voice said philosophically,
.." not like it matters. 'Ere! Don't stretch yerself mate, you'll drop the.."
another thud,
" Dammit, I can get it" and another thump.

Two voices groaned horribly.
"Now what will we do? One asked plaintively.
"Who cares, mate, telly's already on Passions, innit? What'd we need ta change channels for?"
Willow perked up and Dawn's eyes lit hopefully until the other voice sighed.
"I..s'pose..." They drooped again.
After a long, hopeless silence, broken only by the soft clink of melting ice cubes, Buffy growled and leapt up. Her chair hit the wall. The subsequent trickle of plaster from the ceiling falling into their drinks startled Willow and Dawn out of their misery.

"I. Have. Had. Enough." Buffy glared at her sister and her best friend, daring them to stop her.
"They will get up on their own two feet. They will beat this curse. And they will Clean. That. Rug."

With the grim determination that fired a rocket launcher at Sunnydale's Ascending Mayor, the Slayer flung the freezer door open, yanked out a bag of ice and stomped toward the basement.
Putting on her best Resolve Face, the Witch levitated the sweating pitcher of cold tea and marched after her.
The Key shrugged. With a wicked grin she grabbed two icy bottles from the fridge and followed Witch and Slayer down into the darkness, shaking the beer furiously as she went.

She ran into Willow at the bottom of the stairs, knocking her into Buffy so hard the ice fell from her numbed hands onto the empty couch. Neither said a word.
Dawn's apology died on her lips as she followed their shocked stares up, to the pipes that ran like a Sunnydale City planner's blueprint all over the ceiling.

"Oh, no." Buffy breathed, tears slipping down her face.
"It's too late."

Two shapeless furry bodies hung above them, four sets of paws clung to the pipes.
Still fixed on the flickering television screen, one pair of golden eyes glowed in a comical white mask, and one pair of sad brown eyes peered through shaggy dark fur.

Dawn whimpered.
Two long tails dangled down, inches above the remote and cell phone that lay in the center of the floor, near a spreading pool of greasy sauce.
One still strained lazily toward the remote just out of reach.
The other long tail waved at them, dipped languorously into Willow's floating pitcher and drifted, dripping, up into the tiny mouth under those familiar yellow eyes.
A soft slurp, followed by a spitting sound startled them all.

"B'dy Hhh..ll.Red, "The rough voice slurred. "s'not bl..d. s'Tea!"
One brown eye, glinting red in the light from the stairs, rolled hopefully toward the pitcher.

"T..?" the deep voice chirped hopefully. "Sweet?"

The dark tail abandoned its desultory quest for the unreachable remote, wavering at the pitcher instead as Willow shuddered.
The yellow eyes fixed firmly on the two bottles still in Dawns hands, and a pale tail yearned past the slayer, falling short.
"C'mere, B..t. Cl..s.r."

Shaking her head in denial, Dawn backed away. Buffy was right. They were too late.
The transformation was complete.