Underneath the Mistletoe

A Present for Phoenix

Pairing: Buffy/Dean, Sam/Faith

Summary:: Due to a recent revelation about Dawn's parentage and Faith engagement to Sam Winchester, Buffy, Xander, and Dawn are on their way to Lawrence to spend Christmas with everyone's favorite Dark Slayer. But with Dean and Buffy's hatred for each other, and a history that only Faith and Sam are aware of, can this Christmas go by smoothly?

Chapter One: It's a Buffy Christmas!

It was six o'clock and the sun was setting over the placid rolling countryside of Kansas, and the sun was slowly drifting down into the western horizon. Snow covered the empty cornfields extending over the left and right low hills on either side of Interstate 70. Several small farmhouses dotted the countryside, and behind them the pale pink of the coming sunset bloomed across the smog drifting out of the city of Topeka. Which the 2006 silver Volvo sedan, a family car seating five with side airbags and kick ass stereo had passed thirty minutes previously. Not too long ago, but long enough for the car's occupants to begin feeling the anticipation of arrival and the chance to stretch their legs. It had been a long drive down from Cincinnati, Ohio, and the cramped space packed in with oversized luggage was making everyone cranky. In front seat, Buffy Summers sat with her forehead pressed against the glass as she watched the countryside roll by, next to her, hands on the wheel and singular eye staring straight ahead was her best friend Xander Harris, and in the back, crushed between presents already wrapped was Dawn. The youngest Summers crossed her arms over her seatbelt squashed chest as the sedan roared down the highway at reasonable speeds, to be perfectly exact, at seventy miles per hour. She glared through the front window, her eyes boring into the back of her sister's blonde head. She wasn't happy about their current plans to spend Christmas with Faith Lehane and her spankin' new boytoy in the bowel of Hicksville, aka Lawrence, Kansas. Dawn took a deep breath; as she listened to Buffy sigh for the sixth time. She'd been keeping count of how many times Buffy sighed, and after that had gotten boring after the first twenty minutes of the trip, she'd begun to break the sighs down by number every thirty minutes. Buffy was actually at two thousand seven hundred and sixty two sighs since they started the trip three days ago. Dawn frowned. She hated this idea, she hated spending anytime with Faith, and what she hated even more was the revelation by a small surviving sect of the Monks, the ones who had transformed her from living energy into a fourteen year old girl, that Buffy was in fact not her sister, but her mother. Somehow, not much of a surprise. Even though they'd fabricated all her memories to make her believe that she was the daughter of Hank and Joyce Summers, and Buffy's little sister. Then it gets worse. The monks had apparently felt that it was necessary to add in the genetics of a man who Buffy didn't know, and whom Dawn had never met to be her "father". The sent Buffy the message, and apparently it was one Dean Winchester. The brother of Faith's intended. Dawn swallowed, as she once again looked at her sister. No, Mother. So, it'd been inevitable that when Faith had asked, shyly, for them to spend Christmas with them. If Faith can be shy. It was true she didn't fit the standard definition, but Faith's kind of shy involved a lot of run around and misinformation before finally getting to the point. Simply termed, bullshit. Buffy had accepted. Because apparently it's important for me to get to know the man who gave me half of my genetics. Dawn wondered if anyone had told him yet. Hello, Dean Winchester, we'd like to inform you that you not only have a daughter, but she's also a fully grown teenager. and seventeen years old. One that you had with a woman you've never met and never copulated with. Dawn thought. She shook her head. She refused to accept that the man they were headed to meet was her "uncle". Do we know if good ole' Deano is even going to show up? Dawn hadn't asked much about him. She sighed loudly and said.

"Remind me again." She watched as Buffy pulled her head off the cold glass window pane, startled. Dawn knew her sister, Mother. had been having trouble adjusting to their new life-routine. Not that it's changed much. Buffy had been acting like a mom ever since their her mom had died. "Why are we spending our one and only Christmas holiday this year with a tried to kill your sister type and her probably psycho boyfriend?" She swallowed. "I thought that with me gone to university at Berkeley we'd be spending more quality family time."

Dawn felt the pause in the air, one that always indicated Buffy getting ready to speak, but Xander beat it her to it. "We are Dawnster." Xander said. Dawn smiled, good old Xander. He was always there for them, and she already thought of him as an uncle. So why do I need a new one? She didn't think this new guy was going to replace Xander, it was more like she didn't want anyone to come along and, well, get in the way of her already well-adjusted family life. "But with Willow spending a quiet Hanukah in Italy with her squeezable Kennedy, and the house not being move-in-able for two more months in Cincinnati…"

"And the castle in Scotland is scrawling with Buffy's new sisters." Dawn said.

"And Giles." Xander agreed.

"Dawn, could you keep an eye out for Highway Ten?" Buffy asked, suddenly. Dawn swallowed and was about to answer, before Buffy continued her tone taking on the mom voice Dawn knew so well. And has been appearing more frequently since the Monk's startling revelation. "And no good will come of distracting the driver."

"Only if you were driving Buff." Xander said. He turned his shaggy black haired head, and smiled at Buffy. The petite blonde tugged nervously at the neck of her cream colored turtleneck, her bright hazel, almost green, eyes on the road ahead of them. Dawn thought she felt Buffy's lips tug into a half smile, but from her current vantage point there was no way to be sure. "Me, I'm perfectly capable of keeping my eye on the road and mind on the conversation in the backseat."

"I know." Buffy said. "I just don't want to miss the turn."

"You're being awfully serious for someone who regularly enjoys indulging in the Christmas spirit." Xander told her, and Dawn covered her mouth with her hand. "It's the season meant for the lifting of spirits, and a good old mug of eggnog. There's nothing like a couple of presents on Christmas Eve and twenty on Christmas morning to turn that frown upside down."

"And nothing like telling a complete stranger that he's got a seventeen year old child to make that frown a fixation of facehood." Buffy replied. She crossed her arms as she stared out the window. "I should never have told Faith." The last part was soft mutter, one that Dawn barely caught.

"So, this whole crazy get the family together plan was Faith's idea?" She asked.

"Last I heard it was her fiancée Sam's." Buffy said. "But who's really counting?"

"Faith with a fiancée." Xander mused. "There's something with worse odds than an apocalypse never enacting itself on an open hellmouth."

"Yeah." Buffy shrugged. "But it happened."

"And whoever made that bet is probably collecting his or her fortune as we speak." Xander said. He paused and considered the prospect for a moment. "That lucky bastard."

"So?" Dawn asked after the long pause following Xander's statement. She spoke half-hoping that Buffy would finally admit to the whole charade so they could turn the car around and spend Christmas in a hotel, like Buffy had originally planned. "We're sure this Sam Winchester guy is my uncle?"

"Yes, Dawn." Buffy said. "We are."

"Because you guys had me take that paternity test, right? And it turned out that Dad isn't my Dad right?" After Buffy had made the wild and crazy suggestion that they spend Christmas with Faith Lehane and the Winchesters, Dawn had pushed for vacationing with the man she "thought-was-her-father-but-turned-out-to-be-so-not' and his secretary in Paris, France. But Buffy had immediately shot down the idea. Not that Dawn could blame her. Dawn Winchester, somehow that doesn't sound right. But then, Dawn was ready to admit that Faith Winchester sounded even worse. She watched as both Xander and Buffy shifted uncomfortably in their seats, and Dawn continued, knowing she was only digging herself deeper into a hole. "I mean, we know right because Willow triple checked the results and their all matching this Dean Winchester guy, which I think is totally gross and wrong that the Monks made me out of parents who don't even love each other, and…"

"Dawn." Buffy said.

"Yeah?" Dawn's voice trembled as she replied. She still felt like this was some horrible joke. And no one's laughing.

"Enough."

"Okay." Dawn muttered. The trio sat in silence for a good long while after that statement. Finally Dawn attempted to break the silence, as she spotted the white sign and black lettering up ahead. "Oh look!" She exclaimed. "There's Highway Ten!" Five minutes later Xander turned the car onto the off ramp, and the vehicle rumbled as they began to head southerly. Dawn swallowed as she realized what that meant. They were now only twenty minutes away.

***

"Is this good enough?" Faith asked, as she re-positioned the Christmas tree for the umpteenth time. She'd just moved it from the center of the room to the front near the window. "This way the folks on the street can look in to see it. But is that something we want? People looking in? Actually it seems kind of creepy to me. Maybe I should move it." Her tirade paused as she remembered the tall man standing behind her. "What do you think?" Sam Winchester, with messy brunette hair and puppy dog brown eyes capable of making any girl between the age of twelve and fifty melt away in the immediate first glance, covered his mouth and hid a smile as he watched his fiancée. For some reason he couldn't fathom, he found her uneducated charm completely and utterly adorable. Especially the fact that she could pound his face into a distinct and bloody pulp. The woman formerly known as the Dark Slayer on the other hand held the tree still in a moment of indecision. Faith Lehane wasn't used to having visitors, and she was even less used to celebrating Christmas with anyone other than herself. Or spending it with some fun partner for a night of drunken dirty, naughty, sexy, and, more often than not, perverted fun. Except for that one time Buffy invited me over. And then she'd spent the evening watching over Joyce and the little annoyance who had once been known as Buffy's sister, while the other slayer tried to stop Angel, the then love of her life, from committing suicide. And that time, like every other gets to be known as the Faith Lehane way of making great Christmas memories. Or the way she made all her memories. Blood, guts, destruction, death, it's not just a Buffy party. Hopefully they could get through this Christmas without that. But two hunters and two slayers around at the same time? What are the chances? Still, Faith wanted things to go well. She wanted Buffy to approve, and while their relationship had gotten better since the Mayor, the stealing of Buffy's body, the stint in prison, and fighting the First, Faith knew that she and Buffy were still nowhere near being best friends. Might be nice someday though. Deep in her cynical heart, Faith cherished the idea of spending a friendly night with Buffy in front of the fire with a warm glass of eggnog and sharing their war stories about the Apocalypses they'd stopped. Hopefully before she and I get put into the old Slayers Home. But it was a dream Faith knew was so far fetched that she kept it deep in the cockles of her heart, and only ever let it out… Now. She'd all but jumped chance given to her by the revelation of Dawn's parentage to take the opportunity to once again try and repair her relationship with Buffy. Which means, as much as I hate it, that everything has to be perfect.

"Like I said about the last fifty places you put the tree." Sam said, as Faith stepped back from the tree and he walked forward to put his arms around her. "With three of those times being in this exact spot." Faith frowned, her black eyebrows bending inward to create a toughened expression on her squared face. She didn't turn around, instead she pulled away from his hold slightly and elbowed him. Sam coughed as the breath exploded out of his mouth, forced by a gentle hit from his super powered girlfriend. "It's fine." He wheezed.

"Fine is not good enough for, b." Faith said, as Sam, who had recovered from his momentary lack of breath, kissed the back of her head. "It needs to be perfect."

"Then it's perfect." Sam said. Faith looked up at him and glowered. Her dark, almost black eyes glittering beneath the incandescent bulbs of the overhead lamps, and the twinkle lights wrapped around the front window.

"You're just sayin' that to put me in a better mood." She said. "So that way I'll stop this show, pull out the naughty nurse outfit, and bang you a good one before Buffy finally manages to pull into the driveway." Sam raised his eyebrows as he looked down at her, his lips twitching as he held back a laugh. His arm tightened around her shoulders. "And it ain't gonna work."

"I think you meant Buffy plus, what were they called again?" The lines on Sam's forehead tightened a bit as he frowned in concentration.

"Scoobies." Faith replied. "And it ain't gonna be the whole crew, just Xander."

"And my niece." Sam said. The word sounded strange on his tongue. But then, believing that a set of monks had created a little girl out of a bunch of energy and chosen to combine the genetics of a Vampire Slayer with, of all the possible people in the world, his brother still sent his brain reeling. He had a niece. He had a seventeen-year old niece who attended UC Berkeley, the college rival of his alma mater. It wasn't that he didn't trust his girlfriend, but when Sam had first heard the news he'd been forced to check it out himself. He blamed his natural Winchester curiosity for that. So, when Faith hadn't been watching he'd taken the time and looked her up on Facebook to see what Dawn Summers looked like. And she's got Mom's nose, Dean's mouth, and my ears. That had sealed the deal for him more than anything else. Dawn Summers, while being young, thin, and pretty had the appearance of a Winchester. A Winchester not raised on guns.

"I know Dean won't like it." Faith sighed. "But he is coming right?"

"He said he'd show. He called four days ago to say he'd finished hunting a Shapeshifter in Denver, and that he was on his way." Sam said. Faith raised an eyebrow as she looked up at him. "What?"

"He called four days ago?" She asked. "And he isn't here yet?"

"Knowing Dean he probably got lost in a bar on the way here."

"And in some two timing blonde skank."

"Most likely three or four." Sam said. His brother's player ways were well known to both of them, and especially to Faith. After all, we met because she slept with him first. That had of course been on one of the few missions she'd had post-Sunnydale Apocalypse with Buffy. Not the best way for Dean to make a first impression. According to Faith, Buffy pretended like that little encounter had never happened, and Sam knew Dean acted the same way. "I think I heard him mention a brunette." He watched Faith smile, and shake her head.

"Good ole' Deano." She said. "Takes him five days to make it, and he'll probably turn up drunk on Christmas Eve." Not that Faith normally minded, Dean was a good time, and hell of a man in bed. He was one of the few people she'd met with the strength and tenacity to keep up with a Slayer. Even Sammy took a few practice runs before he really got up to snuff. Now though, Faith preferred Sam's tendency to rotate between being gentle and expressing his rough and tumble nature. "Not that I would mind, but…"

"It's not the best way to make a first impression." Sam nodded. "Especially not on his fully grown offspring." That he doesn't know he has. Sam hadn't found a good time yet to tell Dean, and with each and every attempt, his courage to do so decreased. Sam could just imagine Dean's reaction. What the fuck? Was the most likely. Especially with Buffy. Dean professed a strong hatred for the blonde slayer. Or at least he does on the surface. Sam, for his part, believed that it was a standard case of the clichéd profession of hate to cover up being madly in love. Or at least madly in lust. He had no idea how Buffy felt on the subject, but he hoped it was something similar. Sam glanced at Faith; a thoughtful expression had come over her features. Sam knew her well enough to know that anytime Faith became thoughtful he was either in trouble or that trouble was brewing. Worry began knotting in his stomach.

"You told him, right?" Faith asked. Her dark eyes shot back to him, and Sam released his hold. "Dean knows he's got a kid running around, right?" Sam turned and started heading for the basement. "Sam?"

"I'm going to get out the decorations." Sam said, and then he made his hasty retreat.

"Shit." Faith muttered. She stared at the tree for another long minute, then she walked forward to move it again. It'll all work out. She thought. It'll all work out. 'Course there was also the fact that three months ago, Dean and Buffy had probably slept together on that random mission where they'd chased down a Mohra demon hell-bent on raising the long dead spirit of it's master Mavrek and his armies. Faith chewed her lip. Things could be better. And true to B's form, they can always get a lot worse. Faith just hoped it wasn't hellmouth worthy worse.

A/N: I wrote this as a Secret Santa Present for my friend Phoenix on Paradise Lost, so, while I don't support the Faith/Sam ship (being more of a Buffy/Sam fan myself), I wrote it because he likes it, and it's important to give people presents that they will like. I decided to post it here because I think it's important to share. I just want you all to know that it was a bitch to write, Joss Whedon has a very specific writing style and dialogue pattern that if thrown off sends the characters spiraling out into orbit and makes the writing sound like crap. So I hope I got the wackiness in properly. If there's one thing I hate it's characters who don't sound the way they're intended to. Kripke is a tough man to imitate and Joss doubly so. Anyway, that's enough bitching from me.

Tell me your feelings, like it? Love it? Hate it? I always love reviews, so leave me some!

Happy Holidays my lovely readers!