MISTLETOE AND WINE
Peppermint Tea
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.

"This is just wonderful." Lisa Carstairs smiled at her hostess, her accent reminding Buffy of Rupert's. It wasn't the same. In fact, it was very different, but she could hear a resemblance anyway. "I love peppermint tea."

"And chamomile, and jasmine, and rosehip, and lemon, and just about anything else you can think of," her partner Kelly added with a fond smile.

Without thinking, Lisa stuck her tongue out at him, and then looked mortified. "Oh, I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have done that."

"Don't worry about it," Xander told her with a shrug. "There's been more name calling, tongue poking and hair pulling around here than anyone can count."

Lisa shook her head. "I'm sorry," she told Buffy again, before her gaze moved to Giles. "I really am."

"Although I wouldn't have put it quite that way, Xander is right," Giles reassured her. "We've already survived just about everything there is to survive."

"Except an attack of killer bunnies," Anya added darkly.

Startled, Lisa stared at her. This was her first Scooby Christmas; her first American Christmas in fact, and in the five months since she had moved to the States with Kelly, she still hadn't quite gotten the measure of his mother. When she confided that to him, late one night, he had just laughed. "Don't worry," he had told her, pulling her closer. "Dad once told me it took him about fifteen years. And we're just used to her 'cause she's our Mom."

Lisa hadn't been sure if that helped or not. She'd met Kelly four years previously, when he'd been travelling around the world. He was staying at her parent's camping ground in New Zealand and she had been home for the holidays at the same time. They were both blown away to discover there really was such a thing as "love at first sight" - and that it had decided to hit each of them around the head with a very, very large brick.

Their son Alex, safely sleeping in a travelling cot in Joy's bedroom, was eighteen months old now, and at the beginning of the year they had decided it was time he was introduced to his American relatives. She was getting used to this new country, but she still found a lot of things very different from her small town, small country background. And she was getting rather tired of people telling her she had a lovely accent and asking if she was British or Australian.

"Don't worry about it," Buffy insisted, stirring her own tea with its unusual spoon. "Just enjoy the tea. It's Christmas, you're family and nobody is going to be offended over anything."

You're family. She meant it, Lisa realised. Completely and totally, just as Kelly's parents had when she, Kelly and Alex arrived on their doorstep, shattered and exhausted after a succession of late flights and missed connections. Her own family was close, but she had never experienced anything like this - this sprawling, extended, unique definition of a family. For the first time since she had stepped off the plane at LAX, Lisa began to feel like this strange new land was going to be a home.

"What's the base tea, Giles?" she asked, ignoring Kelly's theatrical groan beside her. She liked tea; she liked brewing it, experimenting with it, trying new things - and this was totally new. "Earl Grey?"

"That's right," Giles agreed with a nod. Rude though it had seemed at first, he had insisted she call him Giles, and now, only an hour after meeting him, it already felt right.

"And using candy canes to flavour it - that's brilliant. How did you come up with the idea?"

Buffy exchanged a private, amused look with her husband. "It was an accident," she said simply. "We were clearing up one Christmas and I managed to knock one of the left over candy canes into the pot of tea Rupert was brewing."

Giles smiled at her, a soul-melting, wicked smile that just about made her dissolve into a puddle of ooze right there and then, and she had to struggle to keep a straight face. Nobody but the two of them knew the full story behind the tradition of what their children had come to call "candy cane tea", and they had no intention of ever telling.

Everything she had just told Lisa was true - if a little lacking in the details. It had been the Christmas the twins were six and yes, she had been doing the tidying up while Rupert made them tea. He had come up behind her, wrapped his arms around her waist and set the teapot down. It was when he brushed aside her hair and started kissing her neck that the handful of candy canes she was planning to put in an empty tin slipped from her fingers to fall to the bench with a clatter. And that was when one landed in the teapot.

Neither of them had cared. She turned in his arms and lifted her face to his, and his teasing kisses had grown more serious. A whole lot more serious. To the point where one soft brush of his lips on the nape of her neck soon turned into full on, mind-blowing sex on the kitchen table. They had made Joy while the tea turned minty and went cold.

A year later, Buffy was trying to comfort a howling, three-month old Joy, while trying to stop Wesley and Brianna from coming to blows over the Chemistry set Dawn had been stupid enough to give them as a joint Christmas present. Rupert came into the room and handed her a cup of tea with a candy cane resting in the liquid instead of a spoon. He didn't say anything, just kissed her, brushed his hand softly across Joy's baby curls and went to break up the twins before they did each other any serious damage.

People thought Joy was named after Buffy's mother, and she and Rupert were quite happy to let them go on believing that. Joy instead of Joyce, to avoid any confusion. But they knew better. Their girl was their Christmas Joy and she always would be. And every year, there was peppermint tea at Christmas.

"Serendipity," Giles added to Lisa, but his eyes were on his younger daughter. "A fortuitous coincidence."