"Too late f'r a pep talk.  'M already there."

Buffy stared at him as he wove his way back to the couch.  She eyed the tools that hung behind the sofa and idly wondered how many times she would have to hit him over the head with one of them before she could knock some sense into his brain. 

Opting for less violent approach, she picked up a bottle from the coffee table.  She counted four empty beers bottles and hoped that she could either get him to see thing her way or that he hand enough beer for them both to wash away their troubles for the night.  With any luck, Cave-Buffy would not be making a return performance.

*** ** ***

The morning sun streamed in through the window in all its too bright gory.  Birds sat perched in the trees outside, chirping their annoyingly cheerful songs.  Even the neighborhood children were far too raucous in their loudly shrieked games.  Anya stumbled out of the bathroom and cast an accusatory glare at the half-empty sleeve of saltines that lay on her bedside table.  The crackers were supposed to help.  The books, she decided, were all published by the cracker manufacturers just to boost their saltine sales.

Once dressed, she felt better.  Good enough even to muse over the turn of events that had landed her at the Bronze with Willow and Dawn the previous evening.  She was somewhat surprised that Buffy had been true to her word about smoothing things over with the others.  Things had been tense but it was at least a start.

She rummaged through the closet until she found a dress she decided would work for the day.  She smiled and smoothed her fingers along the soft fabric.  It was going to be a good day.  It was going to be a good day even if she had to traverse demonic realms to hold a gun to the heads of Fate herself and force the two-headed demon to make it so.

*** ** ***

"Buffy?"

Someone was calling her name but she couldn't decide who it was or even if she wanted to respond.  Someone had filled her mouth with cotton and she was almost they had crawled into her head to play an unending drum solo on her eardrums.  Not only that, they had made the sun shine so bright that it was busily trying to burn through her eyelids.

"Buffy, are you okay?"

She tried to roll over but the drumming increased in pitch and fervor and she halted the movement.  With her eyes still tightly shut, she worked at digging through her foggy thoughts.  Dawn, it was her sister's voice that vied with the drummer.  Just Dawn.  Just Dawn talking in an incredibly loud and obnoxious voice.  Funny, but she had never noticed how irritating her sister's voice could be.

"Buffy, if you don't wake up soon Willow and I are going to have to resort to drastic measures," Dawn threatened from a safe distance.  She chose to stay at the door so that she could bolt out of her sister's way should she need to.  Her experience with a hung over Buffy was limited to having heard stories about her romp through Neanderthalism.  "Come on, it's morning."

"Any luck?"

Dawn glanced over her shoulder at Willow.  "Well, if you consider movement luck, not so much.  She seems to be breathing though.  I'd take that as a good sign."

Buffy squeezed her eyes tightly shut against the sunlight and made the attempt to raise a hand and wave at Dawn and Willow.  Her wave ended up being little more than wiggling her fingers but it was all she could manage.

"Hey there."  Willow's voice crashed against her ears with the force of a Tsunami and Buffy blanched at the onslaught.

"Yeah," she muttered as she tried to sit up without having her head fall off her neck.  It was a strange sensation, her hangover.  It was one she had never wished to repeat but she had.  It was all Xander's fault, she decided.  If he had not had the second six-pack tucked into the fridge, she never would have gotten so drunk.

"So, how'd patrol go last night?"

"Patrol?"  The word made some vague amount of sense but she was hard pressed to pin down why.  "No patrol last night," she murmured.  "Too busy with Xander."

"Xander?"  Willow raised her eyebrows.  "While we were with Anya at the Bronze you and Xander got drunk together?"

"Kinda," she admitted as she slowly rose from the bed.  "I don't remember whose idea it was, the getting drunk part, I mean.  I went to talk to him but we didn't end up talking much."

Willow and Dawn shared a questionable look. 

"But hey," Buffy said in an attempt to clear her head of the fuzz that refused to go away.  "How'd it go with Anya?"

Willow shrugged.  "Good I guess.  It was kinda strange though."

"Yeah, Anya was acting weird, weirder than normal."  Dawn had slipped further into the room.

"Just, try okay?"  Buffy steadied herself against the dresser.  "I'm gonna get a shower and then maybe I'll feel more human."

Willow grinned.  "At least Cave-Buffy didn't make an appearance." 

*** ** ***

Xander pressed a damp towel to his forehead.  His hangover had no sense of propriety and kept nagging at him even in the temporary site office with the AC on full blast and the shades all drawn tight against the sun.  His eyes strayed from the paperwork in front of him and came to rest on the photograph he had remarkably remembered to bring with him that morning.  How he had managed to remember the picture when he could barely remember how to drive his car, he did not know.

"Xander, did you look over those changes the foreman sent this morning?"

He glanced up from the picture to see one of the journeymen standing just inside the building.  The man looked nervous and shifted uneasily from foot to foot on the rough carpeting and Xander took pity on his nerves.  "Yeah, I was doing that just now.  When's Jerry coming back?"  He had worked under Jerry on several projects and knew the man's behaviors almost better than his own.

"He said he'd be back this afternoon to talk over the changes before we implemented them."

"That'll be fine then."  Xander returned his attention to the redrawn blueprints and additional notes and let the younger man find his way out of the office on his own.  All he had to do was make it through the rest of the day without doing anything to jeopardize his job and he'd be home free.  Rising, he strode across the room to the water cooler that beckoned to him.

Maybe after he got off work he could swing by the Magic Box and just peek in the window to make sure Anya was doing okay.  It wasn't as if he were planning on going inside, Anya wouldn't even need to know that he was there at all.  He simply needed to see with his own eyes that she was still alive and well.  Buffy may not have accomplished whatever it was she had set out to do the evening before, but she had stirred his concern.