Disclaimer: I don't own BTVS it belongs to Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy. (OFC lead). Some direct quotes taken directly from When she was Bad of BTVS season 2.

One week before School would resume the Cine/Summers crew had finally finished unpacking into the house. Joseph and Joyce had both decided since he and Jessica had just settled into Sunnydale not too long ago that he would be the one to move in with Joyce and Buffy. Joseph didn't mind at all because he had some ideas on how he might remodel the place and maybe add another bedroom, finish the basement and possibly add a third floor where he would put a study and a weight room. He had also secretly bought the property next door to surprise his wife, the home owner had mysteriously died while they were away and he had purchased the property at an ungodly cheap rate. Him and Joyce still had a little over a month vacation left and while the girls were in school they would begin tackling the house expansion project.

"Joseph, where did you put the Camera? I want to start putting the wedding photos in order." Joseph looked over at his wife and smiled as he admired her perfect derriere as she bent over looking into one of the unpacked boxes for their camera. He slowly crept up behind her and she squealed and jumped up as he goosed her from behind.

Joyce turned around and hit him on the shoulder as he held both arms up in surrender. The look of innocence not very convincing because it was accompanied by a mischievous smirk.

"Joseph you stop that! What if the girls walk in and see you?" Joyce scolded him lightly.

"Well then they'll know how much I love the women before me," He grabbed her and brought her close and slowly and passionately kissed her breathless.

"Eww, get a room!" Joyce rolled her eyes as she looked at her first born daughter who currently had her hands over her eyes in horror.

"Buffy we are in our room," She stated in exasperation at how immature her daughter was being.

Buffy just smiled and shrugged, "Just came to let you know that I was going to meet up with Willow and Xander tonight."

Joseph looked up at Buffy with concern. "Is Jessica going with you?"

"No, I asked but she didn't want to go." Buffy frowned.

"Please Buffy try to get her to go with you, she has been locked up in that room since we've got back. She only comes out for meals and bathroom breaks, she really needs to get out of the house." Joseph pleaded with his stepdaughter.

Buffy sighed and nodded. Ever since the wedding of their parents Jessica had slowly began to close herself off from the outside world and her family. Buffy knew the nightmares had not stopped for her new stepsister, in fact they had been waxing worse and worse. To the very point where she would have one every night. Buffy would sometimes have to go and calm Jessica down before she could wake their parents. She tried to get her to talk about them or go to Giles about them but she had readily refused to open up to either of them. She hoped she would confide in someone soon because Buffy knew firsthand how holding something like this in could drive one to do unhealthy or stupid things.

Buffy knocked on Jessica's door and waited for her to respond. "Go Away," Jessica uttered barely over a whisper, if not for her slayer hearing Buffy would not have heard her at all.

Ignoring her sister's plea to be left alone Buffy trudged into her bedroom and went over to the bed and sat down beside the sprawled out distraught girl interrupted. "Your father wants you to come out of your dungeon and go mingle with the common folk."

Jessica grunted in irritation. "Buffy you know dam well there is nothing "Common" about the folk in Sunnydale," She rolled her eyes and turned her back to Buffy.

"You know I don't want to be pushy Jess, I of all people know what you're going through with the nightmares and all but you really can't hold all of this in, it will drive you crazy." Buffy reached over to touch Jessica's shoulder but she jerked away from her touch angrily.

"You know if you don't go with me and begin to show some signs of life here your father is going to be in here to ask question you know you're not ready to answer. He is really concerned about you Jess and I would hate for him to start to take measures that…," Buffy trailed off as something that she thought she had buried a while ago began to come to the surface. She blinked back the tears and focused on the matter at hand.

Jessica turned around and glared at her intruder and got up. "Don't worry I won't tell your secret, I forgot this is all about you Buffy."

Buffy looked hurt at the hostility Jessica was showing her but she swallowed that hurt knowing what the underlying cause of it was and it was not her. "That's not what I was getting at Jessica and I think you know that."

Jessica growled in frustration, she really didn't want her father coming in here trying to get her to open up, she wished Joyce would stop trying to get her to see a counselor, she wished Buffy would just stop trying to be big sister and let her alone! She wished these fucking nightmares would just stop already. She ran her shaking hands through her hair and slowly went to her bedroom door and walked out, leaving Buffy wondering if she had lost the battle again today.

"Buffy come on before I change my mind! Let's get this over with." Buffy shook her head and followed Jessica out of the bedroom. Maybe Willow and Xander could bring Jessica out of her bad funk cause she sure as hell was not having any luck with it.

Willow and Xander walked along Buffy's favorite hunting ground, commiserating and playing one of their favorite pass the time games, name that movie. Willow tried to think of a quote quickly while Xander waited rather impatiently for her to take her turn. "Okay, hold on..."

"It's your turn," Xander blurted out.

"Okay, um...," "In the few hours that we had together, we loved a lifetimes worth."

Xander smiled at the easy quote and blurts out his answer quickly. " Terminator."

"Good, Right," Willow said.

"Okay. Let's see..., It's a madhouse! A m-," Xander slumped as Willow interrupted his Charlton Heston Impersonation.

"Planet of the Apes," Willow said.

"Can I finish, please?" Xander looked at her almost impatiently.

Willow held her head down smirking at how Xander seemed to really be getting into this game. "Sorry. Go ahead."

"Madhouse!" Xander finished anticlimactically

Willow waited a few seconds to make sure he was completely finished with his unfortunate impersonation, obviously it was a beet too long and Xander gestured wildly with his hands for her to answer.

"Planet of the Apes," Willow eyed him as he shook his head in the affirmative. "Good. Me now. Um..."

"Well?" Xander asked as he slowly lost his patience for this game.

"I'm thinking. Okay. 'Use the force, Luke."

He looked at her incredulously. "Do I really have to dignify that with a guess?"

She sighed at her lack of imagination on that one. "I didn't think of anything. It's a dumb game anyway."

"You got something better to do? We played rock-paper-scissors long enough, okay? My hand cramped up,"

Willow smiled. "Well, sure, if you're ALWAYS scissors, of course your tendons are gonna stretch,"

"You know, I gotta say, this has really been the most boring summer ever," Xander interrupted.

"Yeah, but on the plus side, no monsters or stuff," Willow jumped up to sit on the stone wall they were walking along side.

He leaned on it next to her, looking off towards the graveyard. "I know, but I'm so restless! I'm actually glad school is starting again."

"Yeah, and that has nothing to do with a certain girl that we both know that is a

vampire slayer?" Willow missed Buffy and Jessica as well but she knew that all the attention she was getting from Xander would cease once the object of her best friend's affection returned.

"Please. I'm so over her," Xander lied ineffectively especially since the next words out of his mouth betrayed those sentiments. "Did they, uh, say when they were getting back, about which I don't care?"

I haven't heard from them after the wedding. I mean, I got a couple of postcards from them from here and there after they went site seeing with the parents and when Buffy stopped by to visit her dad for a bit, but then, like, nothing," Willow frowned.

As Willow and Xander and Willow continue their talk about their traveling friends, those same friends slowly walk towards them in the distance. All talk amongst the two cut off since they had left the Summers home. They both stop in their tracks as they notice the more intimate stance that Xander took with Willow.

"Well Shit, it's about damn time!" Jessica said as she and Buffy both smiled, That's until they took notice of the uninvited guest that both their friends seem to be oblivious to.

"Well Shit!" Jessica's tone that of terror for her friends. They both took off at a run to save them.

The playful intimacy between Willow and Xander became ever so slightly less playful. Xander smiled at her and walked closer to a bewildered Willow.

"I got a movie for you," Xander takes his ice cream and dabs his cone at her, leaving ice cream on the tip of her nose.

She stared at him wryly. Wondering in hope if this was turning into something more, something somewhat romantic like she always dreamed it would.

"Come on," he dabs at her nose again. "You're Amish, you won't fight back because you're Amish, I mock you with my ice cream cone, Amish Guy..."

"Witness," My nose is cold," Willow gazed at him as her hope continued to rise.

"Let me get that," he leaned forward intimately as if he intended to lick the ice cream from her nose.

She reared back, laughing. "Xander!" She yelled his name, shocked that he would be so forward with her. It sent something tingly to her nether regions.

"What can I say? It makes your nose look tasty," He smiled and dabbed her nose with a napkin making the distance between them that much closer, her arms go unto his shoulders as they gaze into each other's eyes intimately.

Xander moved closer into Willow's space, their faces right into the awkward almost-kiss-zone. A moment of realization of what they were about to do, and they stop. To Willow's disappointment their heads separate.

The vampire Standing virtually in the kiss zone between them almost seems disappointed himself as he leered ravenously at them. On the other side of the wall from them the vampire's tuxedo hangs from him is evidence of his fresh rising.

Willow and Xander rear back in fear, Willow clumsily jumps from the wall she was sitting on as the vamp vaults over the wall effortlessly. He saunters over to them with hunger in his undead eyes. Xander steps in front of Willow blocking the vamps path to her.

"Willow, go!" Xander yells as he stands ready to fight off the hungry newly risen vampire. The vampire springs at him and Xander steps back and slugs it. The unfazed vampire grabbed at his neck, pulling Xander in to drain him.

Willow frantically searched in vain for a weapon of some kind, in her desperation she grabbed a hold of the vampire arms trying to pry him off of Xander.

Suddenly a hand clamped down on the vampire's shoulder as someone else pulled Willow back to safety. Their savior Pulls back and spins him around, straight into the path of a lightning fist followed by two roundhouse kicks. The vampire pounces at his attacker who effortlessly flips him onto the ground.

Buffy then turns to a shocked Willow and Xander smiling. "Hi guys."

The vampire recovered quickly and tried to sneak up behind her in a sneak attack. Buffy sidekicked him without looking, catapulting him back into a tree which impaled him on a broken branch sticking out of it, dusting him. "Miss me."

Jessica rolled her eyes in annoyance at Buffy's over dramatization.