Author-JELLO
Disclaimer-I don't own the characters mentioned in this fan fic. Either Joss.W. or someone else does. If I did own the characters I can tell you I would be on a yacht right now instead of writing this and I wouldn't even need a disclaimer!
Please R&R.

**Reality Bites**

Buffy Summers walked into the room looking bewildered. It was a Saturday morning in Sunnydale and all, as usual, was not well.

" Oh hell!" cried Buffy, looking around her desperately. She had lost the remote control and Young and the Restless was about to come on. She had recently taken a Spike-inspired liking to soap operas, and tried to never miss a show. Suddenly inspiration struck.

" I must have left it in that box of Twinkies!!" She smiled at her clever reasoning and dipped a hand into her new best friend to remove the remote. " Thank god I found you my slightly Twinkie incrusted friend!"

While Buffy is watching her soaps I should take the time to explain that she had come a long way from her former self. In fact, months of endless TV watching had turned her figure into a Weight Watchers' dream 'before' shot. It was the after part that was the problem. Even Spike, her former stalker, had sworn off Buffy worship on Sundays until further notice. The Bronze made her pay forty dollars every time she came in because they said she took up the space of four mid-sized customers and three children. Not that kids appeared there very often but still.

There was a knock at the door.

"Daaaaaawwwwnnnn......could you get that?" hollered Buffy
"I'm resting!" She popped another Twinkie in her mouth.

Dawn opened the door to find Giles standing on the porch.

"May I see Buffy, Dawn? It's extremely important."

"Sure, Giles."

"Thank you, but.....may I ask why you have handed me this copper rod?"

"Oh, well Buffy doesn't take kindly to being woken up. Sometimes you have to poke her a bit to get her to respond."

"Oh. Oh dear." Giles looked at the rod in his hand in dismay. "Slayer, you have to stop this. It's madness, it's...it's..oh bloody hell!" He prodded Buffy harshly with the rod.God bless Dawn

"Five more minutes Mom......ZZZZZzzzzzzz"

"Buffy wake up!"

"Hmmmmm? Oh, Giles! Nice to see you again....." her voice trailed off as she yawned, revealing six extra chins and horrible Twinkie breath.

"Buffy get off your lazy ass and do something! In two weeks the council will replace you with a new Slayer, someone who doesn't kill vampires by sitting on them! And what will happen to you then, huh? And are you forgetting Dawn? Is it doing her any good to watch her sister recreating 'The Blob'?"

"Oh... oh sure..*yawn*...right after a little nap...."

"No! Now!" He whistled and Willow, Spike, Xander, and Tara came in with a stretcher they could hoist Buffy onto to transport her.

**20 minutes and some strained muscles later**

"Hey.GUYS!!! Why can't I ride in the car with you? Can someone please get me off the hood???!!!"

"Drive a little faster, Xander, the appointment is for 10 o'clock sharp!" called Giles to the front of the car.

"I can't see very well! The hood is sinking around my ears! Plus it took us ten minutes just to get the wheels to stop turning while going nowhere!" Xander said, indicating the appalling weight above them. "Giles, is fat camp reeeaaalllyy necessary?"

A sharp crack was issued above their heads.

"Absolutely" said Giles.

***

"Buffy I want you to meet your new drill sar..i mean camp counselor, Justin Timberlake. You'll like him." consoled Giles.

"Yeah, he's a bloody poof, just like the whelp here."

"Yes, a bloody p...dammit Spike, shutup!"

And so they left poor Buffy to her fate. They left in high spirits, convinced she was in good, if not clean, hands. Only Buffy saw the cruel glint in Timberlake's eye when he sneered at her.

"Alright Loser, let's start with some pushups...and..1..1..1 and a 1/2 ....oh for God's sake move it! I haven't got all day!" with that he put on an N*sync record-the old one. Buffy cringed at the sweet, sloppy lyrics. That night Buffy set a world record for pushups.

***

And so the weeks passed by, Buffy working her butt off (literally), and the smug Justin pushing her nose to the grindstone. The council held off replacing her at the pleading of Giles, but it was by the grace of God, and the hope of smashing Justin's jaw in at the end of her torture, that she kept going. Soon, she was her fab, fit self again! And Justin was seeing a procession of cosmetic surgeons to have his face restructured. That Thursday, the Scoobies came to pick her up. Not expecting miracles in just one month, they brought rope to tie her to the car hood again.

"O my God, pet, you look gorgeous! That is..uh..not as ugly as before." the flustered Spike announced. Murmurs of approval waved through the small crowd.

"Yeah well don't think you're getting off easy. Nobody pokes a Slayer with a rod to wake her up and gets away with it! Now who's first?" The Scoobies ran for the car, all except for Spike, who had never poked her with that rod.

"So Slayer, did you learn anything from the soap opera/fat camp fiasco?"

"Oh sure..." said Buffy "Reality bites." Then, for no reason at all other than they should be together, Spike and Buffy kissed passionately and walked toward the car....and the sunset.

The end