My first Buffy fic. This is COMPLETELY alternative universe, i.e. all human. I know this is weird, but Spike, Connor and Angel are brothers and Giles is the father. Freaky? Yes.

"And this is my daughter, Buffy,"

Spike's head landed with a soft 'thunk' against the side of the car and one eye popped open.

"Hn?"

Shifting his shoulders so that he could get some more space, he wriggled down further and crooked his head against his seatbelt, shutting his eye. There was nothing to see anyway. Just the same thing he'd had to look at the entire journey; the inside of the car. His Dad's faraway voice to his left had stopped talking and he guessed by the still body across the car from him that Connor was still asleep too. He got a brief shot of his younger brother Connor's knees, then slid back into a painful and serene sleep.

"Boys, come on, wake up,"

Next thing he was awoken with a sharp click and he fell to the side, head hitting the cool air outside the car and pulling him awake.

"Whoa,"

"Come on Will, wake up. Angel, Connor, up you get, we're here. Sorry about them Mrs Summers. They're just tired from the journey. Angel come on, wake up, you've got your foot on the box with the keys in,"

"Oh no, it's fine. And please, call me Joyce,"
Spike pulled his head up, catching a blur of blonde-framed face peering down at him from an expanse of lawn to his left. Confused, he rubbed his eyes and sat up. The car was easy on the eye around him, dim in the evening night. But it wasn't warm and stifling as it had been before, it was cool and the air was thin. The doors were wide open.

"Dad?"
"We're here,"

The familiar face of his Dad appeared in his view, as well as one of his father's hands that he was trying to conspicuous flap about to get Spike to move.

"Come on Will, get up. And poke Connor for me,"

Spike leant across the seats dutifully and stabbed his younger brother under the ribs.
"Ah! Hell!"
His father's face loomed again, but this time it was glaring.

"Get. Up. Now. Please son,"

It disappeared and Spike pulled a face at his father's tweed-plaid back. The fragmented pieces slotted together, albeit painfully and slowly, to make the complete picture in his aching head

Moving. America. Ridiculously long bloody journey.

He scrabbled with his seat belt and felt a whole weight spring off him as he undid it. God it was going to be nice to be freed from the car.

"Idiot," Connor grumbled, kicking a leg out and catching Spike on the ankle.

"Just try me," Spike threatened half-heartedly, voice scratchy from misuse, and no meaning behind his words. He arched his back and felt his vertebra pop wonderfully.
"Get up Cave Man," he called, kicking the back of Angel's seat.

"Shut up Spike," Angel grumbled, rubbing the back of his hand over his face. He noticed the company that Spike hadn't had time to register and pulled himself from the car to be polite. Connor pulled a face from where he was still strapped in, arms waving blindly and back curling as he stretched from sleep.

"Where are we?"

Spike, who'd awoken almost fully and was sat up with one leg dangling from the car and his arms crossed, replied in a bitter tone: America. New home.

"Really? Wow,"
"Yeah. This is it. Bloody suburbia. All the sodding same,"
Connor turned his head this way and that, trying to see what was 'all the sodding same'.

"Look at it," Spike continued, "Perfectly cut lawns, nice little hedges, dinner at five o' clock, 'how was your day darling'. Ugh,"

Connor just frowned.

"Come on squirt, get out the car," Spike eventually sighed. Connor tried to stand out of the car but was pinned back by his seatbelt and ended up tilting head first into nothingness.

"Well done," Spike chuckled, stabbing Connor's seatbelt free. It didn't have the desired effect, and Connor fell limply like a sack of bones onto the pavement.

"Ow,"
"William what are you doing? Come and say hello," Spike's father hissed as Angel smoothly kept the neighbours' attention away from his brothers. On the outside, the scene looked rather comical. A few quiet nosey neighbours stood with their evening wine-glasses in their hand at their front windows, watching the family as it moved into the neighbourhood. The Sedan was parked on the curb, with all four doors and the boot wide open. The boot overflowed with cardboard boxes that were filled to bursting point, and behind the car the moving truck spilled it's contents onto the house's lawn. Connor was unfurling himself from where he'd hit the street in a crumpled ball, and Spike was stretching his long legs as he stepped from the car. Rupert Giles was talking once again politely with the neighbour Mrs Summers and her daughter Buffy, whilst in the background, giggling with a friend who'd stayed over the night, her second daughter Dawn hung over the hedge that partitioned the two houses and eyed her new neighbours. Angel, Rupert's eldest son, stepped back to allow his father to continue the conversation and started to dig around in the car for the things he'd need that night.

Spike reached back in the car for the water after the curt hello he'd given to his new neighbours, but found it gone. He then found it in the hands of his younger brother, who was washing his mouth out.

"Connor,"
"What? I need the water. My mouth still tastes of sick," he mumbled, wiping the back of his mouth with his hand and then taking another deep swig. Spike pulled a face at being reminded of Connor being car sick, and allowed his brother to have as much water as he wanted.

"We'll be going then," Joyce, a woman with wavy blonde hair that was lightly feathered with grey, waved a smooth hand and put her arm around her daughter's shoulders slender shoulders, "If there's anything you need at all, just come and ask us. We'll be up for a while by now I should think, Buffy rented a film,"

Buffy was too busy watching the muscles in Angel's back ripple as he dug around inside the car for CD case.
"Goodnight,"

She was jerked from her little reverie by her mother stepping back towards the house. She stumbled, helped by her mother's arm, and tried to turn it into a little petite skip backwards, "Goodnight," she said too, giving a little wave. They disappeared behind the hedge, and Dawn and her little friend were whipped from sight with a whisper off: Don't stare Dawn. The front lawn of the Summers resident was quiet, and Rupert let his shoulders sag. He'd sort of hoped Joyce would have a husband she'd put forward to help him carry the stuff in. The guys in the removal van seemed to have found some sort of magical barrier baring them from taking the furniture indoors and were instead dumping it all on the grass. Sure, he had his three sons, but they were uncooperative, particularly with each other. He turned to give them a once over, to decide whether they'd embarrassed the Giles name on their first impressions.

Angel's hair was rumpled and flattened from the journey, and he was already starting to spike it up again as he collected his clothes from the suitcase in the boot for the night. He looked his usual self, although he was a little bit round-shouldered from the tired of the journey. His midnight-blue t-shirt was creased as much as it could be, and his jeans were riding low. He looked as respectful as Angel could after an incredibly long journey.

Spike was looking his usual self as he kicked a box out of the way to get to the suitcase everybody had stuffed their clothes for that night in. His hair was as dyed as ever, but after the journey the curls were starting to show and there was even some of the tell-tale brown whispering out as the ghost of what his hair used to be like. Giles hated William's hair. Spike was just as crumpled and creased as Angel was, his black clothes hanging off his tired frame. Giles' youngest, Connor, looked tired and numb. The poor boy still looked peaky from the travel sickness that had riddled him all the way over from England. His hair was shaggy and messed up, and he swayed as he walked.

Overall, they looked like a sickly rabble.

Great impression for the neighbours.

Inside the house, things were sedate and calm. Connor had gone to bed the minute his bed had been made up, barely able to fall into his bedclothes before collapsing heartily under the duvet. Angel and Spike had helped their father heave everything inside, and were up rootling in boxes until about four in the morning. Half of the family's coffee cups were already used up and Spike had already managed to lose the remote control for the television which had been hastily erected almost immediately.

Giles eventually went to bed in his big, lonely four poster, whilst Spike and Angel stayed up to bicker half-heartedly with each other and work out how good American TV was. They went to sleep to a late-night gangster film on the sofa, heads very nearly touching, the spiky brown and half-tousled peroxide blonde lolling close together.