Fic: What The Hell(mouth) Happened?
Author: mkcrl120
Disclaimer: All the characters mentioned in this story belong to Joss Whedon or Mutant Enemy or some other people. I own nothing and wrote this just to get it out of my system.
Summary: I'm writing some of these, as I've come up with ideas that I honestly don't know what I'll be doing when the Ultimate series gets that far. In the meantime, these won't go away from my brain unless I do something with them. Warning: It may be a standalone it may be spoilers for something later; only time will tell.
Rating: 15 by English standards (mainly for language)
Setting: Season 3 - I think you'll recognise when.
What The Hell(mouth) Happened? - 10/?
Gile's Place
After School
"And where are the Slayers now?" Ms Post asked from her position on the sofa.
"I believe they're probably at home eating their tea." Giles responded from the kitchen.
"So what productive methods have they come up with for dealing with Jonathan?" Ms Post asked in a sarcastic tone.
Giles brought in a pot of tea and several cups. "So far they've been unable to locate Jonathan. Since he cleared out of Spike's old lair three months ago, he hasn't been seen in any particular area since. I'm afraid we're having to deal with each Jonathan situation as it arises." He comented as he poured them both a cup.
"Really... unable to locate a vampire. These girls shouldn't be in school, or at home eating food with one of their mothers." Ms Post almost spat the word out. "They should be here, with us, now; helping to discover his whereabouts. And the whereabouts of his friend, Mr Trick."
"Jonathan and Trick are their highest priorities." Giles defended his Slayer as he passed her one of the cups.
Ms Post took a sip, "Maybe we should reconsider what we were discussing last week."
Giles put his cup down, and stood up. "You'll do no such thing."
Ms Post wasn't fazed by his outburst. "I'm just arguing over their level of success."
Their discussion was halted, when Giles' front door opened. Jenny Calendar walked in, smiling at both of them as she did so, pausing she looked between, instantly assessing the tension in the room. "So... please feel free to get back to your argument. I was just gonna crash for an hour or so."
"Crash..?" Ms Post replied.
"Yep... crash... sleep... have a kip... grab forty winks... it's what all the cool kids are saying."
Giles met her just before she started up the stairs. "Hard day?"
"Not too bad... classes were fine until detention... then most of the trouble was caused by Xander."
Giles sighed and pinched his nose. "What did he do this time?"
"One of the other kids... a Jack O'Toole was bragging how he'd bagged Faith... and said other less complimentary things too."
"And Xander..?" Giles asked, expecting the inevitable.
"Overheard."
"So they fought and both got sent to detention for you to deal with." Giles guessed.
"Oh no... this was in detention." Jenny corrected him. "Jack hasn't been seen for a few weeks and Xander hadn't done some coursework or something... it was whatever he normally gets sent there for."
"They fought in detention..?" Giles asked. "But Xander never normally gets into fights with his fellow students."
"There were only three of them. Jack was bragging to the other one... probably just to annoy Xander."
Giles still didn't believe it. "He actually started a fight in the school?"
"I got the story off Xander later... Jack kept taunting him, and when I left the room it got worse. Jack grabbed him and threw him over a table. The other guy... Randal something, I think his name was... came to get me once the fight started."
"So Xander let himself get beaten up... that sounds more like him." Giles knew he was going to have to have another word with the boy.
"Only until the other kid left... either Jack said something else or Xander just decided there were no witnesses anymore... that bit Xander wouldn't tell me... by the time we got back, they were standing at opposite sides of the room and just about every chair and table had been knocked over, some were broken. Snyder's going to ask about the furniture, he always does."
"Sorry for that... we'll deal with it tomorrow." Giles promised her, giving her a kiss on the forehead as she made her way to rest before the night's activities would begin.
Ms Post waited patiently til Ms Calendar had gone. "And the fact that you let them have boyfriends."
Giles watched as the door to their bedroom was closed, then he turned to face the other Watcher. "I'll have you know that Mr Harris has done many things which we are to be grateful for. He was the one wh..."
"Resuscitated Buffy allowing there to be two Slayers. I have read the reports you know."
"And you still think him to be a bad influence on the Slayers?" Giles asked incredulously.
Ms Post seemed to consider her response carefully. "I find him a distraction... not only to your Slayer but also to mine. How you choose to deal with your own charge, is for the moment your responsibility. But when it affects mine..." she drifted off.
"And how pray is he supposed to be affecting yours?"
"He is friends with her... he is the one who persuaded her to attend this school."
Giles dismissed that argument, knowing Joyce had been the one that had done most of the persuading. "And how is furthering her education a bad thing?"
"She's a Slayer... what use do either of them have for skills that are designed to help them after school?"
Now Giles was getting annoyed, his voice was raising involuntarily. "You're suggesting that they just abandon even the hope for a normal life? Why don't they just lie down and die now?"
"I'm sure that your intentions to allow them to have friends, family, hobbies and so on are well meaning. In fact, I would go so far as to agree that they probably do provide psychological help for accepting what they are." She cut off his reply before he began it. "But training them to be the best Slayer they can be... now that would actually increase their life expectancy."
Giles hated this topic, and he was never impressed at how un-emotional Ms Pst could be in regard to the Slayer's lives. "I'd prefer them to enjoy what they can... people do say that quality is better than quantity afterall."
"Some do not agree with you... Travers for instance." She informed him.
Giles bit his tongue. He'd had enough run ins with Travers over the years.
Ms Post continued on. "What sort of Slayers are unable to find a group of vampires in a town this size?"
"As opposed to finding an inanimate mythical glove in a town this size." Giles countered.
"If those vampires come into possession of that glove... you will regret it. Trust me, you will regret it."
Later
The Bronze
Cordelia was here with some of the cheerleading team. So far she hadn't seen any of the scoobies arrive yet. 'God, it's dull being here this early.' she thought to herself. The cheerleading team had been roped into helping setup the Bronze for the beginning of the buildup to the team's last game of the term, which meant they were still there when the doors officially opened and all the students started to arrive. 'Glad to see I was right... you should never arrive somewhere at the very beginning, it's practically the dictionary definition of loser.'
'One more game,' she thought to herself. 'And after Thursday's game we have one more week til it's over. Yay for the Christmas holidays.'
She was disturbed from her thoughts by Amber arriving. "Isn't this so cool?" Amber told her, waving a hand towards all the decorations.
"Kinda lame really." Cordelia informed her.
"You should be showing school spirit." Harmony said as she arrived.
"They don't win anything." Cordelia reminded them both, then thought about it. "Do they?"
"Well admittedly they haven't had a particularly good season..." Amber began, but got distracted when the football team started to arrive. "Hmmm... Gary's here." she pointed him out, hoping Cordelia might be interested.
"She only wants you to go for Gary, so that Jason will be easy pickings." Harmony said, pointing at who Gary was standing next to.
"Tell you what... why don't the two of you go for Gary and Jason and see what happens." Cordelia responded. Nothing seemed less interesting to her at this point, than having to listen to the quarterback on a night when they're celebrating the football teams below average performance. 'I actually choose to cheer for these people.' She reminded herself with just a hint of shame.
Scanning the crowd for someone interesting, she spotted Devon trying to attract her attention. 'Loser...' she thought, she had had a brief thing for Devon before Xander. Her band member phase she'd considered it. But here, there were rumours about what she and Devon had got up to in her parent's hot tub. She was pretty sure they were exaggerated, that was to be expected, and normally she'd have clamped down on the exaggeration herself... but she wasn't sure how far they had gone. Or even if any of it were true.
Ignoring Devon she spotted the guy that Buffy herself had been chasing earlier that year. 'What was his name..? Oh yeah, Scott. Buffy and him hadn't worked out because of all the Slayer activities that he wasn't involved in. Well, if Buffy got my guy, I'm gonna show her I can make it work where she couldn't.' She had a little smile to herself; realising that she was in a semi-competition that only she would ever know about.
'A little short... but we can work around that.' She thought as she walked over to him.
"Hi." She introduced herself. "Don't you think it's a little early to be making an appearance."
"Hey Cordy." Scott replied. "I'm just here with a friend. He's had a bad time of it lately... you may have heard, his girlfriend died in mysterious circumstances."
'Vampire attack.' Cordelia thought to herself. "You here trying to cheer him up?"
"Yeah... I don't think he's enjoying it though. No offense but what did you want?"
"I was wondering. I was thinking. Oh god, how to do this... Have you ever thought about you and me..?" Cordelia said, after deciding that she was used to being the one that was getting chatted up, not the other way round.
"You mean if we'd continued dating?" Scott asked.
'I've dated him already..?' Cordelia thought confused. "Yeah... did you ever wonder why we ended?"
"You broke up with me, started dating Jake..." Scott answered.
'Least it wasn't Larry,' she thought to herself. "I'm very sorry about that."
"It was only two dates, I thought we had something... Guess you thought it was time to go through a football player phase or something." Scott said, not ashamed to show she'd hurt him at the time.
Unfortunately, Cordelia had no real memory of the event so defending her actions were nearly impossible, she was about to leave when she saw something in his eyes that might mean the attraction was still there. "Yeah... well, like a lot of girls, I grew out of that... eventually." She giggled a little bit at the last word.
"So what are you saying?" Scott tilted his head as he asked the question.
"I'm wondering if you'd be interesting in taking up where we left off."
"I would... but I think I need to spend some time with my friend."
"What if I could get a date for him too?" Cordelia asked.
"It's hasn't even been two months yet... I don't think he's ready." Scott looked past Cordelia and where Harmony and Amber were practically drooling over some football player. "And I don't think they're his type."
Cordelia took a look at the the group by the bar, "Don't worry... I'll think of someone else."
Scott smiled. "Tell me who first okay... but otherwise I don't think there will be a problem with it. We can only try, eh?"
Cordelia smiled back, "Course we can... we're only human..." Then as he left she muttered under her breath. "Well most of us anyway."
Same Time
Giles Place
Ms Post had finally gone. Stating she was going to be doing some more research of the glove. Giles went upstairs and entered his bedroom.
Jenny was sitting on the bed crying, she held her head in her hands.
Giles quickly moved over to comfort her. "Jen... what's up?" he asked, sitting beside her on the bed.
"My family wants me to move back home. Said my time here is done." She replied, not looking at him.
"I don't know how to break this to you... but you're twenty eight."
She laughed. "Its not that simple. They could disown me." She curled up into his arms.
"It's okay... it's okay." Giles kept repeating reassuredly.
Same Time
The Bronze
"So Faith..." Cordelia said as she approached the group.
"Hey C." Faith replied.
"Like the decor." Xander commented.
"Very... what's the word?" Buffy began.
"Footbally." Xander finished for her.
Cordelia ignored them, "Yeah... not important. I need to speak to Faith here."
"Me... what about?"
"How would you like to go on a double date?"
Faith's mouth just dropped open.
Buffy smiled at her. Xander was trying to stop a smirk becoming a proper bout of giggles.
Faith looked around, "I'm not... I don't..." She made an attempt at slapping Xander, "I'm not interested in the football types." she swung again playfully, this time making contact.
It was enough to set him off. "You and Cordy..." were the only coherent words as he broke down next to them.
Buffy hit him herself. "Ignore him, he's just being an ass. I think you should consider it."
"Who's the guy?" Faith asked.
"A friend of Scott's," Cordelia responded. "His girlfriend died recently... didn't say what of, but in this town the odds have always got to be..."
"Vampire." Faith said aloud.
"Another we failed." Buffy looked down at her feet. Xander immediately went into comfort mode, wrapping his arms around her.
"Okay... I'll consider it." Faith responded.
Elsewhere in the Bronze
Scott was sitting with his friend. "So what do you think?" He asked, trying to make conversation after the last five minutes of silence.
"About the band or the team?" the other guy responded.
"Either..."
"The team's always sucked... this shit just fluffs there overly inflated egos."
Scott smiled, at least if he was bitching about the football players he might be coming out of his funk. "And the band?"
"Music's still okay. Gone downhill since they lost Oz though."
Scott clenched his fists at the thought of his own insensitivity, he hadn't realised it was the same band. "I know he was your friend, man."
"Not mine. He was Debbie's." The guy replied, "So you're sure about this... I'm not certain I'm ready to get back on the dating seen yet."
Scott smiled at him, "Pete... trust me. You can say 'no' at any time."
End chapter ten