Eggnog and Pancakes
By Sauscony
E-mail: sauscony@forty-two.co.nz
Rating: G
Pairings: Buffy/Giles and others
Summary: Reply to a 2000 Christmas Challenge
Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel characters are copyrighted ©20th Century Fox, Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, UPN and the WB, and are used without permission. No copyright infringment is intended.
Susan Giles peeped through the open bedroom door, completely unsurprised to see a small figure asleep between the two adults. She was just trying to decide whether to leave all three sleeping or attempt to extract the littlest one without waking the other two, when Miri solved the problem for her.
She sat up, rubbed her eyes and yawned, then saw Susan standing at the door. She opened her mouth to say something and Susan hurried to forestall her.
"Shhhh," she whispered quickly. "Shhhh," she repeated and put a finger over her lips. Nothing if not quick, Miri nodded solemnly and pretended to zipper her mouth shut with her fingers.
Trying not to laugh, Susan beckoned to the little girl and Miri scrambled out of the bed with the same ease she had clambered into it and padded across the room to the door, trailing Albert Bear behind her by a firm grip on one of his paws.
Susan pulled the door shut and made sure it was firmly closed. "Good girl," she whispered to Miri. "We'll let Gran and Grandad sleep some more." She swung her daughter into her arms and gave her a kiss on the cheek. "Happy Christmas, Kitten."
At the magic word, Miri's eyes lit up. "It's morning and I went to sleep. Did Santa come?"
Seeing her mother's confused look, Miri explained patiently, "Gran said if I went to sleep again, Santa would come."
"Ah." Susan smiled as she started down the stairs. Blackmail. It works nearly every time. "If you've been that good, darling, I'm sure Santa came."
"Can we look?" Miri asked. Seeing her mother starting to shake her head, she added quickly, "Albert Bear wants to look, not me."
At that, Susan really had to laugh. "You know we don't open presents until everyone gets here, Miri. But since Albert is so desperate, maybe we could just peep through the door and see if the tree is all right."
"For Albert," Miri repeated.
"For Albert," Susan agreed with as close to a straight face as she could manage. "Then we'll go and help Auntie Joy and Aunt Dawn. They're making breakfast for everyone."
Hazel Winters almost collided with Miriam as she walked through the front door at the same moment the little girl came hurtling along the corridor. She stepped back a pace to avoid being flattened, but the miniature tornado came to a sudden, screeching halt when it saw her.
"Hazel, Hazel, Hazel," Miri carolled happily and trapped her in a hug that barely reached past her knees.
Knowing what was expected of her, Hazel pulled the girl into her arms and settled her on her hip. "Oouuf," she breathed in her soft voice. "You're getting too big to carry around, young lady."
"I'm a big girl now," Miri agreed cheerfully and wrapped her arms around Hazel's neck to make sure she couldn't be put down again.
"Sure you are," Susan said as she reached the pair. She smiled at the older girl. "Merry Christmas, Hazel."
Hazel flashed her a brilliant smile, one that lit her face and filled her eyes, sparking a light in them that made their odd blue-green colour more astounding than usual. With her fine, beautiful face, a sweep of auburn hair women would be prepared to kill for and a figure that tended to have the same effect on men, Hazel Winters could easily have been a model or if a movie star if she hadn't had other responsibilities. Susan, with the wisdom being ten years older gave her, thought it was to Hazel's credit that she had always laughed off any such suggestions with genuine amusement. At eighteen, she finally seemed to have convinced people that she had other plans for her life and now just wanted to be left alone to get on with it.
"Happy Holidays, Mrs Giles." She smiled down at Miri. "Has the ragamuffin been good this year?"
"Judging by the pile of parcels under the tree, I guess she must have been," Susan answered with a chuckle while Miri nodded vigorously. "And my name is Susan - I think you're old enough to call me that now."
"Oh." Hazel looked momentarily uncertain and Susan gave her a stern look.
"I mean it," she said firmly. "Susan. Now, Miri and I were just on our way to help with breakfast. Want to join us?"
"Sure," Hazel agreed, and seeing the look on the other woman's face added hesitantly, "Susan."
The Giles family kitchen was - and always had been - much larger than the casual visitor might expect necessary for a family with only three children. But, as anyone who wasn't a casual visitor would know, to Rupert and Buffy Giles the word "family" encompassed a lot more than their immediate relatives. The size of the kitchen - and the rest of the huge old house - reflected that and the Giles home had been filled to overflowing and beyond many time over the years.
There were only two people inside when Hazel walked in, still carrying Miri on her hip, and they both looked up as she crossed the slate tiles, her footsteps echoing quietly around the room.
The younger woman immediately abandoned her mixing bowl and hurried across the kitchen to envelop her niece and her best friend in a shared hug. She kissed Hazel on the cheek, Miri on the top of her head and grinned. "Happy Christmas, both of you." Joy Giles, just twenty-one the past September, flicked a glance at her sister-in-law who was still standing in the doorway and added belatedly, "You too, Susan."
"Hi Hazel." Dawn Summers didn't stop sifting flour, but she did give the newcomers one of her trademark smiles; the one that any of her readers would have recognised immediately from the dust jackets of her books and the website Joy maintained in what she jokingly referred to as her "copious spare time". Since Joy was a professional site designer and was paid handsomely for the job, Dawn never even bothered to respond to the gibes, just gave instructions to her niece about what she wanted done next and expected it to happen.
Hazel smiled back as she set Miri on her own two feet again. "Merry Christmas, Aunt Dawn. How's the new book?"
"Don't ask," Dawn declared dramatically. "My stupid hero has decided to fall for the wrong girl and I'm going to have to rewrite half of it."
"She been moaning about ever since she arrived," Joy told her friend in a theatrical whisper. "Mom said we should just ignore her."
"I just don't know what happened to respect for one's elders," Dawn proclaimed with a sigh and Joy giggled.
"We respect you, Aunt Dawn," she insisted. "We just make fun of you, too."
Dawn shook her head. "Hear me changing the subject. How are your Moms, Hazel?"
"Baking," Hazel answered in a deliberately horror-movie tone of voice. "When I noticed there were more spell books than cook books on the counter I decided it was time to get out before the house blew up or something."
"I only remember one major fire," Dawn said mildly, absently patting Miri on the head and trying to steer her away from the bowl of pancake batter.
Distracted, Miri looked up. "Can Auntie Tara make fires? Would she make one for me?"
"No, she would not!" Susan declared firmly, pulling her away from the big centre bench and keeping a firm grasp on her daughter's shoulders.
"Actually," Hazel said, "It's your Auntie Willow who makes fires, but she only does it on very special occasions."
"Or when her spells go wrong," Dawn muttered.
"Hey," Joy protested with a laugh. "That's my friend's mother you're insulting there."
"Adoptive mother," Dawn pointed out pedantically.
"Whatever," Hazel answered, grinning. "Battle axes at fifty paces?"
Dawn flicked flour in her direction instead. "Condiments at dawn!"
Joy and Hazel exchanged understanding glances and charged, approaching the woman they both called "aunt" from different sides. That was when Dawn realised what she had just said.
"Hey!" she protested, backing into a corner and taking the mixing bowl with her as if that provided some kind of protection. "I didn't mean me. I only meant the time of day. You know, dawn, as in just as the sun comes out." She gestured in the direction of the kitchen window where the sky was shading from sunrise pink to the blue of day. "Like now."
Joy stopped suddenly in mid-step, her face gone serious. "Where's Bree? She said they'd both be here for breakfast."
Susan glanced out the window. "Well she'd better hurry up, because there's going to be a whole lot of sun, real soon."
