DISCLAIMER: Joss owns them, not me.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Like I said before, I don't know whether this will be Spuffy or B/A… honestly. I'm not particularly attached to either ship, and it really depends on how it just falls together. For now, I hope you guys will read and enjoy.
CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN: Chapter Three
I can usually tell just by looking at someone how long it should take for me to drive them over the edge. It's a gift. With the model/actor, I could tell it wasn't going to take that much. A small annoyance here, some scar tissue there, and boom, he'd be out of our lives, and Buffy's, in no time.
Anya was on sex talk duty, not that that was a stretch. My mom thought children deserved to know the truth whenever they asked about It. The more Anya knew, the more questions she had, and they weren't normal questions, either. They were totally Giles kid questions.
"Well, if you're not small, Single Syllable Man," she said, her small hands on her hips, "how big are you? Have you ever had sex in a pool? What about in jello?" She pointed her index finger at Parker, and he glanced away, disturbed. "Have you ever had sex in jello?" Anya demanded seriously.
"Green jello?" Andrew asked, and right on cue, he stuffed his finger in his nose practically up to the elbow, and Parker watched in slow motion with a horrified expression on his face, as Andrew held it up to him.
"For you," he said sweetly.
"Mom!" Buffy's voice was loud and panicked. Mom hurried in and shoo-ed Andrew and Anya, the four year old wonder twins, away from Parker.
Buffy, in all her older sister glory, turned to glare at me. She knew me well enough to know exactly what was going on, but the brilliant-beyond-brilliant part of the whole thing was that there was absolutely nothing she could do to stop it. Power was a beautiful thing, especially when I had it, and she didn't.
I kept a perfectly straight face, and with a slight wave of my hand, I sent Willow and Tara in to do their part.
Tara went to stand right in front of Parker, and for the longest time, she didn't say a word. She just stared at him, all serious like.
"Uh, hello?" Parker said. Tara stared at him, her expression never changing.
Buffy knelt down to her level. "Tara, sweetie, can you say hi to my friend Parker?"
"Special friend," I coughed into my hand, and the others picked it up right away.
"Special friend," Lindsey coughed.
Xander sneezed. "Ahhh…ahhhh…ahhh…special friend."
Tara, of course, said nothing. She just stared up at Parker, her eyes wide and not even a hint of a smile on her face. It was starting to freak him out.
Buffy stroked a single hand over Tara's hair and looked up at Parker. "She's shy," she said unnecessarily. Buffy didn't ever yell at Tara. No one did. She never got Tara Giles-ed either. Lucky Tara.
While Buffy was distracted, Willow tugged on the bottom of Parker's pants.
"Psssstt…" she whispered.
He looked down at her.
She tugged on his pant leg again and crooked her finger at him. She smiled, and with her red hair in two long pigtails, she looked completely innocent. Awkwardly, Parker bent down, careful not to touch her or get any closer to the rest of us.
"Your epidermis is exposed," Willow whispered, her little eyes wide and her voice very serious. Xander chuckled.
"That's my Will," he said softly under his breath.
Parker stiffened, and though he tried to look calm, he was definitely a little weirded out. I could practically see the wheels turning in his head as he tried to figure out what exactly his epidermis was. Very conspicuously and trying to be very casual about it all, he looked down at his crotch.
"That's where your penis lives," Anya informed him blithely, from all the way across the room.
"I have one too!" Andrew chimed in. "Wanna see?"
"No!" Mom and Buffy said together.
"Can I do your nails?" Dawn chimed in, right on time. "Pleeeeeeaaaaaaase?" she drew the word out.
My twin was definitely the Gold Medal Champion of Whining.
"My nails?" Parker asked, trying his best to ignore Anya, who was now jumping up and down on the other side of the room, pointing to Parker's crotch, and singing some song that only she could understand. "Buffy," Parker's voice was bordering on panicked. "Why does the brown-haired one want to do my nails?" Buffy, busy making sure Andrew didn't take off his pants, barely heard him.
Parker gave Dawn a big toothy grin. "You're like what, six?"
"Nine," Dawn told him through gritted teeth. She stuck out her lower lip in a pout. "I could make your toe nails really pretty. I wouldn't hurt anything." She batted her eyelashes at him. "I promise."
If he hadn't had the IQ of a garbage disposal, he would have recognized her words as a lie.
Tara, her timing impeccable, spoke up. "I…I…I'd like to play nails, too," she whispered quietly. She shot Buffy a pathetic smile, and Buffy, content that Andrew wasn't about to start streaking, hugged Tara and beamed up at her boy toy.
"Tara says she wants to paint your nails, too," Willow told him. "That means she likes you."
"No," Parker said flatly.
Right on cue, Willow's face crumbled, and at the exact same time, Tara managed a small sniffle.
Buffy gave each of them a hug. "Come on, Parker," she said, standing up and draping her hands around his neck. "Let them paint you're nails. I'll take it off tonight."
Gag me. I so didn't want to know how she was planning on taking it off.
Parker sighed. "Fine," he said, before looking back at Buffy. "But they don't touch the face."
Buffy traced her hand along his jaw and leaned in to kiss him.
"Aaaaah….aaaaah….aaaaaah…special friends!" Xander, Lindsey, Dawn, and I all sneezed at the same time.
Willow and Tara scrambled off to get the fingernail polish, the nail clippers, the superglue, the duct tape, the permanent markers, and the wax. I turned my attention to Wesley.
"Is the dye ready yet?" I whispered.
Slyly, he slipped it into my hand.
"I increased its potency," he whispered back, "and just for fun, I added a tiny bit of a chromium diphospho…" he paused for a moment, got that I had no idea what he was talking about, and sighed. "A powerful itching powder."
"Excuse me, Buffy," he said louder. "I have some figures I'd like for you to look over. I've been doing a bit of market analysis and…"
Before Buffy knew it, she was following Wesley out of the room. I grinned. That booksmart brother of mine was good for some things, and distraction was definitely one of them.
Mom took one look at us, and smiled. "I'd better go check on dinner," she said. Mom didn't like Buffy's boyfriend any better than the rest of us did. She didn't fool me for a second. She knew that once she was out of the room, Parker was fair game.
"You'll love this pedicure, Parker," Dawnie promised, pushing him into a chair and tearing off his shoes.
"I'll do your legs," Willow said, running back into the room.
"My legs?" Parker squeaked. "Uh…Joyce?"
My mom was already out of the room. She was one smart lady, even if she did love Buffy best.
Casually, I walked over to the chair and sat down on the arm. "You look pretty good for thirty-five," I told Parker, my eyes wide.
He did a double take and forgot all about what my sisters were doing to his legs.
"Thirty-five?!" he shrieked.
"Buffy said she was dating an older man," Dawnie filled in, knowing exactly where I was going. "You've aged well."
"Yeah. 'Cept for the wrinkly things next to your eyes," Xander volunteered helpfully.
"Faith!" Lindsey said sharply. "What are you doing with Mom's face cream? You know she pays to have that imported from France."
I jumped and made sure Parker saw me giving Lindsey my best guilty look. "I wasn't going to use it," I said. I sat it down on the arm of the chair.
With a wink in my direction, Lindsey handed Parker a piece of paper.
"What's this?" Parker asked.
"Just a basic waiver of liability," Lindsey replied. "Sign by the X."
Mystified, Parker did as he was told, and a moment later, the fun really began.
Looking at Parker a few minutes later, I sighed. "This has truly been one of my greatest works of art," I said.
All together, my brothers and sisters cleared their throats.
"One of our greatest works of art," I corrected myself.
"Can we take the tape off of his mouth?" Dawnie asked. "Pleeeeeaaaase?"
With a flourish, I gestured toward him. "You do the honors," I said.
"AAAAAAAAAGGGGAAAAAAUUUUUUUUU!"
That model/actor sure could scream. Buffy made it into the room first, but Mom and Dad were right on her heels. "What did you do to him?" Buffy asked, furious.
I glanced at Parker. His face, thanks to the "face cream" he'd borrowed before we'd duct taped him down, was a nice shade of bright purple, he had some pretty interesting messages drawn on his feet, his hands were superglued to the crotch of his pants, and wax had been spread up and down his left leg.
"We didn't do anything," I said, wide eyed. "He did it himself," Dawnie, Willow, Tara, Xander, and Lindsey chorused with me.
As my parents and Buffy stared in horror at the big purple, screaming mess that had been Parker, every few seconds, one of my little siblings would lean over and pull off some of the wax on Parker's leg and Parker would scream bloody murder, his hands still firmly glued to the crotch of his pants.
"You know," Willow said seriously, "you're going to have to wax the other one if you have a thing for being symmetrical."
I couldn't have said it better myself.
Anya pointed at Parker's crotch and delivered the final line. "Are you making yourself happy?" she asked. "Isn't Buffy supposed to give you the happy?"
I couldn't have said that any better myself either.
Buffy let out a frustrated scream, Parker scrambled out the door, wax still dripping from his legs, and the sound of my dad's voice filled the room.
"FAITH GILES!"
TBC… up next, Angel and Spike, and at reader request, Darla, as the adventures of Faith Giles and her many siblings continue.
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