Disclaimer: Not mine...

AN: This is a third in a theme I have been caught up in within my several fandoms dealing with diamonds/cubic zirconias, scheming, and childhood. Hopefully it's the last. eyeroll

All that Glitters is not Gold
By Marns AKA Bumpkin
Rated PG

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Rupert Giles walked into the small family run Grocery that he had favored since relocating to Sunnydale to become Buffy's watcher, and was greeted warmly by the older woman behind the cash.

"Mr. Giles, it's good to see you today. We were a bit worried when you didn't show to pick up your order yesterday as you had scheduled. Is there anything the matter?"

Giles smiled. This was precisely the reason that he preferred the small Grocery over the large and soulless chains that others flocked to – this personal touch. Shaking his head that after four years with him as one of her loyal customers she still insisted on such formality, he hastened to reassure the still lively matriarch who ran the store.

"No, Mrs. Northpointe, nothing is wrong. I am terribly sorry to have missed my appointment and worried you, but I was unavoidably detained by matters very much outside of my control. I do hope that you can find it in yourself to forgive me."

Slight creases deepened at the corners of her amused and dancing eyes as she teased him,

"Oh, I don't know… " but whatever else she might have been about to say was lost as the store's front door abruptly opened and the bell attached rang stridently echoing through the store itself.

The new customer breezed into the store rather like a hurricane, all noise, push and inexorable flood just bowling you over.

"Mrs. N! How's it going? Hey G-Man, didn't know you shopped here. This place is the best isn't it? We've been coming here since before we knew you had to have money to actually buy stuff, me and Wills and J…" His voice cut off abruptly and Giles was reminded of the third youngster way back at the beginning that had stumbled on Buffy's secret – the one that Xander had been forced to stake after he had been turned. The Watcher wasn't allowed to brood on the matter for long though, he was distracted when Mrs. Northpointe addressed Xander.

"Xander Harris, you scallywag you, what mischief are you up to today – and don't you bother telling me any nonsense about being a good boy. Remember I know you."

Xander choked and pointed at himself? "Me? Trouble? Mrs. N., you malign me unfairly, I've never been nothing but the nicest and best behaved boy for you…"

Mrs. Northpointe pealed out with laughter. Full throated, full bellied, out and out laughter. Xander's eyes were dancing as he watched, and Giles realized this was an old game between the two. He chuckled, it seemed that the young man's habit of lifting other's spirits with his clowning wasn't just restricted to his 'slaying' friends. It was rather nice to know and see.

"Ah boychild, a big word followed by a double negative – you are in fine form today." She finally managed to calm down enough to get out. But then Giles was hard pressed not to laugh out loud himself as sweet Mrs. Northpointe showed she had a bit of mean streak. Winking at Xander she turned to Giles and said,

"So you know this miscreant do you? Him and his partners in crime – the terrible trio - oh the stories I have about him and his little friends going back to the times they were all still in diapers. Interested?"

Xander was shaking his head frantically. Giles didn't know if the young man was trying to dissuade him from listening to the lady tell her stories or just hopefully have Mrs. Northpointe not get into actually relate the stories in question. He was saying, "G-man, c'mon, you don't need to hear any of this do you? I mean telling tales out of school… it's just not cricket, and since the school's been blowed up good and proper it should mean no tales get told, right?"

Oh and there was that delightful Californian mangling of the English language right on time, with even some bonus mangling of some old Briticisms. Giles manfully resisted the urge he felt when he heard it to whip off his glasses and polish them to a new prescription, but did allow himself a quiet groan. It seemed though that he wasn't the only one that was pained by the native speech patterns, Mrs. Northpointe groaned loudly at the same time he had done so quietly.

"Lord boychild, you just convinced me with that babble. Now hush and let an old woman tell a tale."

This time the person groaning was Xander as he hid his face. Mrs. Northpointe paid him no mind whatsoever, she had an interested audience for her storytelling.

"Going back in time, oh it must have been over ten years gone now…"

x-X-x

Nine-year-old Xander Harris walked into Northpointe Grocery with his two best friends at his side. The three of them seemed to be all big eyes, topped with wild manes of hair, two brown and one red, finished off with thin stick like arms and legs. Little Willow Rosenberg was whispering in a quick and harsh tone in Xander's ear while Jesse McNally just looked on in amusement.

"Xan-der, you can't do this! It's like stealing! You know that's not a real diamond, you just pried it out of one of your mom's old broken 'dress up' rings."

Xander whispered right back, "Willow hush, you're going to ruin everything! And I know it's not real, what do you think I am? Stupid? And it's not stealing when all I'm doing is making a trade, tit for tat - understand?"

Willow huffed but didn't say anything else, which was just as well since they had reached the cash register by this point. An enormous grandmotherly woman was manning it and Xander used his best winsome smile on her. Of course since she had known him all his life, it might not have the effect he was hoping for but nothing ventured, nothing gained. Mrs. Northpointe smiled kindly back at him and his friends. Xander was reassured that she probably hadn't heard their whispered conference.

Of course he was going to be disabused of this notion in the not so far future, but as far as Xander was concerned, everything was just ducky. The smile on his face altered slightly from winsome to beguiling as he began to speak,

"Mrs. N, just the lovely lady I was hoping to see. Have I got a deal for you!" Xander's tone of voice and cadence would have done a snake oil salesman proud. Willow was wincing and Jesse was doing his best to hide his snickers behind a raised hand. Xander glared at both of them for a second under the cover of fishing in his pocket for the fake diamond before returning his full attention to his 'mark'.

Holding up the glittering bauble, Xander started into more of his pre-thought out patter. "What you see here Mrs. N is a jewel of stunning size and umm…" he paused fumbling for a word.

"Radiance." Willow whispered with a sharp jab of her bony elbow to his ribs.

"Oof, yes – radiance, exactly. Now, I am offering this lovely specimen of beauty to you in exchange for the paltry price of three chocolate bars and three sodas, and perhaps some penny candies?" And again the wide, bright, shit-eating grin was displayed. Hope springs eternal after all.

A muffled snort came from above, then a cough. Then the grandmotherly woman's voice, clear enough even if it seemed a bit on the strained side.

"Xander Harris, how can I turn down a deal like that? The three of you can go on and choose yourselves a chocolate bar and soda each, and I'll make up a bag of the candies for you to share. How's that sound?"

"Wonderful!" Xander, Willow and Jesse made quick work of picking out the goodies they had been allowed to get and then Xander made a solemn production of handing over the 'diamond' in exchange for the brown bag of candies.

The three of them didn't hang around afterwards, they left calling out "Bye!" behind them as they streaked out the door, goodies in hand.

x-X-x

"… they never pulled anything like it again, but after they left I called my husband down and told him about it. I swear we have never laughed so hard. They deserved the treats for giving us such a good laugh, it was better than any comedy club." Mrs. Northpointe said as she finished telling the story.

Then she seemed to remember something and popped the cash, "Oh, here – I still have the proof right here." And she fished out and held up the 'diamond' she had gotten such a good deal on.

"Omigod! You still have that?" Xander squawked, face utterly red with his embarrassment. Then he asked forlornly, "Why do you still have that?"

Giles lost it. He lost any modicum he ever had to his claim of English reserve and started to howl with laughter. And then he laughed even harder as with a wink in his direction Mrs. Northpointe opened a large drawer underneath the cash register and fished out a tape. Holding it up she said,

"Hell, boychild I still have the security tape from that day."

Xander's face was… priceless.

-End-

AN Afterword: Okay I think this was the driving force behind the others. This story is actually fairly close to something my own son did. Scary but true – my son took an old Cubic Zirconia from a pendant I had somewhere, pried it out of it's setting, spit polished it up to a nice shine and went to the corner store (where I used to go as a kid), he then proceeded to try and convince the store's owner that it was a real 'diamond' and that the chocolate bars he wanted, for him and his buddy in exchange for it was a real steal. He was 8. Anyway, she gave him the candy for giving her the best laugh she had in ages, she let him keep his 'Diamond' too. Then she promptly called me and had me come down to watch the security footage. I nearly died laughing myself, he sounded so smarmy - charmingly so, and polite, but damn smarmy.