Catastrophe
by
Princess McPhee
Disclaimer: I don't claim. Not mine. Bow to Joss Whedon.
Author's Note: Feedback may decide whether I finish this, so please tell me if you loved it, hated it, or somewhere in between!
Summary: An AU version of the events after the 'The Weight of the World'.
Rating: PG, so far.
The next day, while planning their itinerary for the shopping spree, Dawn brought something up that, truth be told, neither of the older girls had actually thought about in a while. "When are you going to ask Gunn and Wes to come with us?" She said, pointing her question towards Cordelia.
Cordy stopped talking for a second, and shrugged. "Doesn't matter. They'll do it."
Buffy grew suddenly a little more serious. "Are you sure? It's a lot to ask of a guy to take three girls shopping."
Cordy flashed her dazzling smile at Buffy, and then returned to a normal expression. "They'll do it. For me."
Dawn grinned. "I hope so."
"Don't worry, Dawnie. We'll make sure you get out of the boring house, I promise."
"Promise?"
"I just said so!"
Dawn smirked. "Just checking."
Cordelia crossed her arms over her chest, and tried to look stern. "Now, do you want to go shopping, Dawnie?"
"Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes!"
It was Cordy's turn to smirk. "Then how should you be treating me?"
Dawn attempted a mock bow in her wheelchair. "With utmost respect, madam."
Buffy snickered, and contagiously, it spread through all three girls like wildfire. Soon they were doubled over with laughter, tears running from their eyes. It wasn't so much that the joke was that funny, but that they needed to laugh. It had been tense around the Hyperion, lately.
There was a knock on the open doorframe, and Spike stuck his head in. "Girls?" He asked. They looked up at him, looked back at each other, and burst into new fits of giggles. The vampire sighed, shook his head, and retreated.
When they had all calmed down a little, they wiped their faces, and Cordy went to talk to the guys. Spike reappeared, looking puzzled, and caught Buffy's gaze. "What was that all about, pet?"
The Slayer waved a hand, dismissing it. "Oh, nothing. Just a little release of tension."
The vampire didn't get it, but he didn't push it, either. In fact, he wasn't entirely sure if he actually wanted to know any more.
Catching Dawn trying to put on a necklace and not quite able to, with the brace on her wrist, he took it from her gently. "I got it, Lil' Bit."
"Thanks."
Since the cast had come off Dawn's arm, she'd been able to do more for herself, but she still had to wear an inflexible brace, and often little, small motions asked for more dexterity than she could manage.
A moment later, Cordy came dashing back into the room, beaming. "They said yes!"
Buffy looked at her ex-enemy and now-friend skeptically. "They did?"
"Yes!"
Dawn looked up as Spike smoothed her hair over the chain on the back of her neck. "Did you have to bribe them?"
Cordy's smile faded a little, but stayed mostly put. "Well, yeah, but so what? They're coming with us!"
Buffy shrugged. "Yeah, I guess it doesn't matter why they're coming. Just that they are. Yeah!"
Dawn looked up at Cordy, setting the piercing gaze only a teenager possesses upon the Seer. "You're not paying them with anything other than money, are you?"
Cordy shrugged, and looked back at her. Buffy, more used to her sister, caught Dawn's meaning. "Dawn!"
"Well, are you?" She ignored her older sister.
"What else would I be paying them with?" Buffy sighed, and waited for Cordelia to realize what Dawn was so rudely asking.
"Oh, I don't know, nude photos, voyeuristic videotape..."
"Dawnie!"
Dawn grinned. "Well?"
"No! And if I were, I wouldn't tell you. It would be none of your business."
"'Course it would be. It's how I'm getting this shopping trip and out of this boring mansion, and I don't want anything to jeopardize it."
Cordelia heaved a sigh almost identical to the one Buffy had made, and looked at the Slayer, who just shrugged. "What can I do?" She said.
"Well, put some duct tape over her mouth, for one thing!"
Dawn mock-pouted. Buffy smirked. Cordy looked irate. And Spike walked in at that very moment.
He took one look around the room, and walked back out.
The next day was a Saturday, and Buffy, Cordy, and Dawn were in there room getting ready to leave for this shopping trip. Wesley and Gunn were sitting sullenly in the lobby of the Hyperion, while Angel and Spike watched them, the former discreetly, the latter, joyfully.
Spike opened his mouth to say something, and Angel turned and shushed him before he could utter a sound. Spike glared, absolutely sure that there had to be some way to evade 'sire radar', but he hadn't found it yet. So he sat back in his chair, glowering, but within seconds, the looks on Gunn and Wes's faces put the gleeful smirk back on his own.
The girls emerged a moment later, Dawn in her wheelchair, Buffy now with crutches instead of a walker, and Cordy following them, uncharacteristically patient. They were all glowing with excitement, Dawn especially, and Wesley took one look at their happy faces and couldn't bring himself to ruin their day. Gunn didn't seem to feel the same moral obligation.
Standing, Wesley put a pained smile on his face, and held his arm out for Cordy. "Shall we go?" He asked, each word sounding like it was taking incredible will to force out. Spike smirked harder. Gunn went wordlessly behind Dawn's wheelchair, and the five started for the door.
"Have fun!" Angel called, trying to force sincerity into his voice, and trying to keep the mental smirk out of it.
Spike felt no such need. He looked pointedly down at his watch, which showed ten-thirty in the morning, and then back to the girls. "See you about dinner-time?" He asked, grinning.
Gunn turned to him and simply shot daggers out of his eyes. Wesley faltered a little, seemingly stunned, but managed to mutter "yes, ah... I suppose..."
And then they were gone, and the vampires had the whole hotel to themselves.
The first sentence out of the older vampire's mouth was, "Don't say it."
"Say what?" Spike played the innocent almost well enough to be believed, if it weren't for the smirk that hadn't left his face since this whole idea had taken form.
"Whatever it was you were going to say. I don't want to hear it."
"You mean, the fact that you treat your employees this way?"
Angel sighed, and put down the book he was reading to stare at his grand-childe. "Spike, they're not my employees. I work for them now, remember?"
Spike grinned. "Yeah, Peaches, I remember. You went out and had yourself a proper vamp-style unlife for about a day, and then got all guilty and went groveling back to their feet."
Angel just glared.
Spike just continued to smirk.
At one, the girls were getting hungry, and Wes and Gunn were thoroughly bored. When the procession exited the last shop they'd been in, the Englishman perked up, looking at the large bags Cordy and Dawn carried, Buffy needing her hands to wield the crutches. Surely, this was all the shopping they could afford to do on Angel's money, he decided.
Gunn was a little more skeptical, and rightly so. Wesley's face fell so fast it was almost comical, as Cordy proclaimed cheerfully, "Lunch break!" She studiously ignored their plight, and Dawn seemed to buy into the same strategy.
Buffy was a little more considerate, since these weren't her friends, and she didn't feel like she could burden them without guilt, as Cordy and Dawn did. Cordy didn't seem to have any qualms about her behavior, saying that they owed her several times over for the visions, and Dawn, with typical teenage oblivion, stated that it was just shopping, it couldn't kill them.
"Are you guys okay?" She asked. "Do we need to take a break?"
Well, she might feel a need to be considerate, but that didn't mean she wanted to stop shopping.
Wes put on a pained smile, and shook his head. "No, no. We're quite alright. Shall we go to lunch?" He asked, taking a few bags from Cordy and heading for the car. The others followed cheerfully, chatting about their purchases, and what they wanted to do with them.
After a quick lunch in a cute little Mexican food place, the girls directed Gunn, who was driving, to another shopping center, and the guys settled in for another round of standing outside boutiques and waiting to carry bags full of clothing. Buffy was looking a little shaky on her feet as they all piled out of the car, and Wesley insisted that she exchange her crutches for the walker, which she did, but not without protest. Gunn put Dawn back into her wheelchair, and Cordy pushed it as they all headed into the middle of the center.
It turned out that this particular shopping center, being in the middle of radical LA, had a magic store. Chaperoning the girls to their first destination, Wesley and Gunn left them trying to pick lingerie, the former rather red-faced by that point, and went to check out the magic shop. Gunn, more unflappable, just smiled and told Cordy that he liked the see-through set, to which she said, "Bite me!"
Gunn had just grinned and replied, "Don't tell Angel that. He might take you up on it." Then he and Wes had left a spluttering Cordy and a grinning Buffy and Dawn in Victoria's Secret, and headed across the center to their destination.
Wesley worried a little about leaving the girls, when their instructions from Angel were to keep an eye on them at all times, but Gunn pointed out that if they were to get in trouble for it, the only thing they would have to mention was that the girls were shopping Victoria's Secret, and Angel would only be able to splutter and blush himself. Wesley reluctantly conceded the point, and they went off in search of some more rare herbs that they were lacking, having used up in the last spell they cast.
At five-thirty, the group piled back into the car, five new bags among them, and a sixth, tiny one from Gunn and Wesley's magic store shopping. Cordy protested mightily as Gunn shoved bags into the trunk, telling him that he was ruining some of the finer clothes they'd bought.
"Well, what do you want me to do? There's no room left in here! You cleaned out every shop in LA!"
Cordy put her hands on her hips. "We did not! And don't squash the lingerie!"
Gunn smirked. "Might make for some interesting body... shapes if I bent them just right, huh?"
Cordy smacked him warningly. "Just... don't!"
"Don't what?"
"Don't squash the lingerie, in fact, don't squash anything, and don't make jokes about women's boobs!"
Gunn's smirk still firmly in place, he just looked back at her. Nothing could deter his happy feelings now that the shopping trip was finally over. He mentally promised himself never to take another bribe from Cordelia, it wasn't worth it.
Cordy glared at him a little more, and then went around to the side of the car and got in, slamming the door behind her. Buffy turned around and noticed the glare. "What's wrong?"
"He's squashing our clothes!"
This elicited another smirk-filled argument between Gunn and Buffy, one which Wesley tried to mediate without success. Eventually, Gunn threw up his hands and walked away, telling Buffy that she could do it if she was so picky.
"Good luck getting all that stuff in there without squashing it!" He told her as he stalked away, not really angry, but certainly frustrated and a bit confused. He could never understand women, and he didn't seem to be getting any better at it.
Then again, Wesley kept telling him that demon-hunting was not the best way to meet normal women, and he was probably right.
But since when was Wesley's advice the one to take in regards to dating?
When they returned to the Hyperion, a rather pleasant surprise awaited them. Angel and Spike had apparently managed to put aside their differences, at least temporarily, and fix dinner. Buffy and Dawn, unaware that either vampire could cook, only gaped at the elaborate feast, while the others smiled and patted the chefs on the back.
After sitting down to their meal, Cordelia and Wesley offered to do the dishes, and the others sat chatting quietly for a few minutes. When the Seer and ex-watcher rejoined them, sliding back into their seats, people went quiet for a few moments, wondering what they should do with their evening.
Eventually Angel dug out a few bottles of old liquor from his cabinet, prompted by Spike's insisting that his sire still had to own something 'fun'. Cordelia, Gunn and Spike dug into the Scotch as soon as it appeared, Buffy, Angel and Wesley slightly more hesitant, but eventually joining in.
An hour later, they were all a little tipsy, and Angel took away the alcohol bottle, denying refills. Dawn was bordering on the edge of tipsy herself, having stolen from Spike's glass when he wasn't looking, but she did her best to act normal, not wanting to tip the adults off to her condition.
At ten-thirty, the Monopoly board came out, but with so many people, the game was over pretty quickly. At midnight, they again sat, at a loss for what to do with the rest of their evening. No one suggested going to bed.
Eventually, with a smirk on his face, Spike piped up. "I have an idea."
Buffy looked at him warily, and Dawn eagerly. Cordy glared at him as well as she could, thoroughly drunk as she was, and Wesley looked nervous. "What?" Dawn asked.
"Let's play truth or dare!"
Angel looked down his nose at his grand-childe. "How old are we, Spike?"
Spike shrugged carelessly. "I forget. It's hard to remember after the first century." He chuckled. "C'mon! You're never too old for truth or dare." Leering across the table at Buffy, he spoke holding her gaze with his ice-blue eyes. "Besides, we might learn some... interesting things."
There was silence at the table for a few moments, then Dawn piped up. "C'mon! It'll be fun."
Reluctantly, Cordelia nodded her head. "I guess we could. I mean, maybe I could get some good blackmail material..."
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