Title: Cousinly Coffee Capers
Rating: PG-13
Author: Bastard Snow

WARNING: SPOILERS FOR SEASON ONE OF VERONICA MARS! SPOILERS FOR SEASON ONE OF VERONICA MARS!

Disclaimer: I don't own anything.

A/N: Yeah. This one had been rolling around in my head for a while, but I finally found a scene that said "You must write me now." So I bumped thisone up the list.

A/N 2: Also, as always, thanks to Drake for the beta.

Feedback: Yes, please!

"Guess this is it," Riley said. He wiped his hands on his pants.

"Nervous?" Buffy asked.

He nodded. "It's not every day you tell your aunt and uncle that their dau… oh hell."

"What?" Sam asked.

Riley shook his head. "I forgot to tell you guys. My cousin, Cindy… she's not really my cousin."

"What?" Buffy asked.

"Well, she was switched at birth with this other girl," he explained. "So, she's really kind of different than the rest of the family. Like, entirely. Maybe we should wait for the others, so they're not taken off guard."

"Ri, honey," Sam said, "You can't put this off forever."

"Yeah," Buffy added. "Plus, I just told Willow and she's telling the others."

Riley looked up, surprised. "You what? You… how?"

Buffy tapped her temple. "Willow's very own psychic cell phone."

"And you can just call her?" Sam asked.

"No, she's the only one who can initiate. But she was telling me how she tricked Xander into asking Faith out to dinner. We were discussing how this might affect the group dynamic."

"I thought you were a little quiet on the ride over here," Riley said. "Okay, well, I guess we better do this then."

"Oh wait," Buffy said. "I need names before we go in."

"Are you sure we shouldn't wait for Willow?"

"Why? They'll be here in ten minutes."

"Yeah but… Mac is Willow's kinda people."

"As in she's a witch?"

"As in she's really smart and reads a lot of books."

"I'm smart."

"And the last time you read a book was…"

"Recently!" Buffy protested.

"Buffy," Sam said, "Vogue doesn't count."

Buffy opened her mouth to protest.

"Neither does Cosmo," added Riley

"Can we just go inside already?"

Riley sighed and knocked on the door.

The door opened and a dark haired young woman, maybe seventeen years old, answered the door a few moments later.

"Hey Riley, Sam," she said, cheerily. "Oh, who's your friend?"

"Mac, this is Buffy," Riley said. "She's an old friend from the college days."

"Okay," Mac said. She seemed a little confused, but ushered the three of them into the house. "I thought you said we were gonna do cool stuff that my parents wouldn't approve of."

"Um… we are. That's… kind of why she's here. Is Aunt Natalie around?"

Mac shook her head. "She and Dad had to go to L.A. all of a sudden. Some distant cousin on Dad's side died and left him a toaster or something."

"That's so weird."

Riley turned to Buffy. "What is?"

She looked up at him. "You have family. I never connected the fact that you existed with the idea that you had, you know, living relatives."

Mac pointed at Buffy. "Is she… high, or something?"

"No, she's just Buffy," he explained.

"I'm not sure whether I should be thanking you or offended."

"So," Mac said. "What's… going on?"

Riley coughed. "Well, Mac – "

"Hold on." Buffy looked confused. "Your name is Cindy, right?"

"Yeah."

"So, Riley, why are you calling her Mac?"

"Her last name is Mackenzie. And… I don't know. She's just kind of always been Mac."

"Okay," Buffy said. "Weird. The guys are here."

"What?" Mac asked.

There was a knock at the door.

Mac and Sam went to get the door. Riley turned to Buffy. "Did you turn psycho between here and Colorado?"

"Listen, I dealt with two Willows, being thrown in jail, Xander and Faith being all weird and sexual tensiony, and nightmares about Graham jerking off a bunch of college guys. I'm doing my best, okay?"

Riley looked stunned. "Graham doing what?"

The rest of the group walked in.

Mac looked around. "Okay, now I'm really confused. Are you having a kegger or something? Isn't it a little early in the day for that?"

"Um, no actually. I mean, no, we're not having a kegger, yes it would be early in the day for that. Everybody came here to meet you."

"What? What is this, like, an intervention or something? I'm not even addicted to anything."

"Well, they say denial is one of the first signs," Xander said, wincing as Willow elbowed him in the stomach. He snickered. "Sorry."

Riley glared at Xander, then turned back to his cousin. "Listen, Mac, we're not here about a—you don't have any drug problems, right?"

She rolled her eyes at him.

"Right. Okay. You did something yesterday. Do you remember?"

"I did a lot of things yesterday."

"Something out of the ordinary."

"Jeez, Riley," Buffy said. "Stop being cryptic. Giles isn't even here."

"Mac, yesterday, you –"

"Did you know you look just like Trina Echolls?" Mac asked, turning to Willow. Willow's eyes shot wide.

Riley sighed, picked up a glass of water and chucked it at his cousin as hard as he could. She caught it with her right hand, without even looking.

"What the hell!" Mac yelled. "Are you crazy? Why are you throwing things?"

"How did you catch that?" Riley asked, quietly.

"What? You hurl a glass at my head and you want to know how I caught it? Are you insane? I just caught it!"

He continued looking at her.

"Right?"

Mac looked around the room. Everybody was conspicuously looking away from her.

"Right?"

"Mac," Buffy said, stepping forward. "We've got a story you need to hear."

----------

Logan Echolls pulled up outside the address Veronica had given him. He was vaguely aware that this 'Mac' person existed, but couldn't recall ever having seen him. He shrugged and stepped out of his yellow Nissan XTerra. He was walking towards the house when suddenly, a brunette girl about his age ran from the house, crying and yelling at a much taller blonde man who followed closely behind her.

The blonde man was quickly followed by another group of people; a ridiculously hot brunette, a ridiculously hot blonde, a dude with an eye-patch, another very attractive brunette and –

"Trina?" Logan asked, surprised.

"Son of a bitch!" she yelled.

"Mac, calm down," said the tall blonde one.

Logan turned away from his sister and back to the matter at hand. "Are you Mac?"

The young woman looked up at him. "Logan?"

"You're Mac, right?"

"Yeah."

The tall blonde one stood straighter. "Look, do you mind? This is kind of a family matter."

"Yeah, I can tell, what with my sister being here," Logan said.

"Logan, can you take me to Veronica's?"

"What?" he asked, confused.

"Mac, come on," said the tall one.

She turned and looked at Logan, pleading in her eyes.

"Sure."

He helped the girl into his car.

"Hey," the tall blonde guy called. Logan turned to look at him. "You touch one hair on her head and I will kill you in more painful ways than you can imagine."

Despite the chill that ran down his spine, Logan smirked. "What if I touch a hair somewhere else?"

The blonde guy lunged at him, but two of the others held him back. Logan waggled his eyebrows then slipped into his car and took off.

A couple minutes into the drive, he turned to the girl in his passenger seat.

"So," he said. "I'm Logan Echolls. Although, you obviously know that… especially with my sister being at your house. Why was she at your house?"

Mac wiped the tears from under her eyes. "That wasn't your sister."

"Well, not to contradict you, but I've known my sister a while longer than you have. That was her."

"Not to contradict you, but your sister isn't a lesbian witch, so I think I know what I'm talking about."

Logan frowned. "Well, she's not a lesbian, anyway."

Mac stayed silent for a minute. "What were you doing at my house, anyway?"

"Veronica gave me your address, I wanted to ask a favor."

"A favor?"

"Yeah a computer thing. I hear you're the one to talk to."

Mac smiled a little. "I guess."

"So, listen, I hope you don't mind me prying, but what was that all about back there?"

She looked out his window. "Family stuff."

----------

"That didn't go quite like I planned," Riley said, plopping down on the couch. "Sam, could you call and see if there's a GPS read on a –"

"Whoa, whoa, you don't wanna do that," Xander said.

"Why not?" asked Sam.

"She took off," Buffy said. "She's, what seventeen?"

"Yeah," said Riley.

"She doesn't want to be found," said Faith. "We just dropped a bomb on her. Give her some room."

"Who's Trina Echolls?" Willow asked.

"What?" asked Sam.

"She said I look like Trina Echolls. Who's that?"

"Aaron Echolls's daughter," said Xander.

They all looked at him.

"What?" he asked. "I watch the news. Famous actor gets arrested for killing a seventeen-year-old girl, it makes some headlines. CNN, man. That stuff's on all the time."

"Do I look like her?" Willow asked.

Xander shrugged. "Never saw a picture."

Willow pouted.

"Guys, can we focus?" Sam asked.

"Sorry," said Willow and Xander.

"So, what can we do?" Riley asked.

"Wait," Buffy said. "It's all we can do. If she's not back in an hour, we'll go look."

Sam stroked Riley's arm gently as he settled into the couch.

"I hate waiting."

----------

Logan pulled his XTerra to a stop in front of the building where Mars Investigations resided.

"Well, I had fun. We should really do this again some time."

"Thank you."

"Huh?"

"For driving me over here. Thank you."

"Oh. Uh, sure. Come on, we'd better go see the little woman."

Mac raised an eyebrow at him.

They climbed the stairs to Mars Investigations.

"Hey guys," Veronica greeted as they walked in the door. Logan walked over and gave her a quick kiss on the lips.

Mac raised an eyebrow. "So then, the hair touching is out?"

"The what?" Veronica asked.

Logan glared at Mac. "Ignore her, she's just making crazy talk."

Veronica regarded her boyfriend coolly. "So, what brings you two here today?"

"Just had to get out of the house for a while," Mac told her.

"Everything okay?"

Mac shook her head, but didn't elaborate. There were some things that were probably too weird even for Veronica. And there was no way Logan was getting in on this. Mac really just needed to clear her head.

"I'm gonna go for a quick walk," she said, standing suddenly.

"I'll go with you," Veronica said, grabbing her jacket from the hook.

"We'll make a party of it," Logan suggested.

"No, you can stay here," said Veronica. "This is just a girl walk."

Mac smiled at her, and they walked out of the office.

"Okay!" Logan called after them. "I'll just stay here… in your office."

Mac heard a door open.

"With… your dad… ah, hell."

"So, what's up?" Veronica asked once they were on the street. "You weren't in school today."

"Family in town," Mac explained.

"Ah. Did you guys do anything fun?"

Mac shook her head.

"Do you wanna talk about it?"

"Not at the moment."

"Did you hear that Weevil's gang got beat up?"

Mac perked up. She had nothing in particular against Weevil, but his gang wasn't made of the friendliest people in the world.

"Really? By who?"

Veronica grinned. "Well, they told him that it was an out-of-town biker gang that outnumbered them."

"It wasn't?"

Veronica shook her head. "Two people. Some dark haired girl who Wallace said was 'so hot' and a taller guy with an eye patch. He actually showed up at school today, to give Weevil some money to repair one of the motorcycles."

Mac groaned and planted her face into her hands.

"What?" Veronica asked.

Mac held her hand up above her head. "Guy about this tall? Wearing flannel? Patch over the left eye?"

"Yeah…" Veronica said, confused.

"He's a friend of my cousin.. Name is Xander. The girl is probably Faith, since I don't think Sam is much into beating up biker gangs."

"You know these people?"

"I just met them today."

"What is your cousin doing hanging out with people like that?"

Mac shrugged. "Apparently, I'm people like that."

"What?"

"Veronica, do you believe in weird stuff?"

"How weird?"

"Vampires and demons."

"No."

Mac sighed. "Then there's not much more I can say."

A Ford Explorer pulled up to the two girls, and Xander rolled down the rear window, looking every bit the skeezy twenty-something hitting on some high school girls. "Afternoon, ladies. Either of you interested in a ride?"

Mac heard a smack from the car.

"Ow!" Xander yelled. "Would you stop hitting me? You're always so violent. Jeez." He turned back to them. "Anyway. We tried to convince Riley to wait at least an hour before scouring the town for you, and I could have held him down, but he is after all a grown man."

"You could have held him down?" Mac asked. Her cousin was a large-ish, very in shape man.

"Well, I could have had Buffy do it. Listen, if you need some more time to decompress, or whatever, we can come back, or meet you somewhere else. Riley just wanted to make sure you're okay."

"I'm okay," she said, nodding.

"Hey, hold on, wait," called Buffy's voice from inside the Explorer.

A door opened on the other side, and she came running around. She pulled Mac to one side. Mac was so surprised that she barely resisted.

"Is this girl your friend?" Buffy asked, glancing at Veronica. She had approached the SUV and was talking to Xander.

"Yeah," Mac said. "Why are you and Xander talking to me, and not Riley?"

"It was part of the agreement. We've handled similar situations, we kind of have an idea of how to, you know, react to people? Where as Riley's been in the military for years, and is so wound up that you're his cousin he can't think straight. So, we all came to look for you and he doesn't get to talk."

"Oh….kay."

"So, Veronica. Do you trust her?"

"I guess, yeah."

"Well, listen. I've done the slayer thing for a while now, and this is an important lesson to learn. Trust your friends. Rely on them. Sometimes, things get bad. And they won't always understand what you're going through… but sometimes you don't need someone to understand. Sometimes you just need someone to listen, or to take your mind off of things."

Buffy sighed. "Being a Slayer… it's not like this cherry gig where you get to go around beating people up for fun and making them do what you want. It's not like a free ticket. It's hard, and it's nasty, and you don't get recognition for the good work you do, and sometimes it seems too much. Friends can make it better."

"I… I thought you said there were lots of us now."

"There are. Hundreds. But that doesn't mean it'll never be lonely."

"How do you do it? I've been, like, strong for a while now, but I haven't known about any of this for more than a couple hours, and already it's like this huge weight."

"Well, we're trying to help with that. The school in Cleveland –"

"Cleveland? Have you guys ever considered that pitch? 'Come, leave sunny, temperate, southern California to go to Cleveland. We've got Drew Carey, a crappy football team and winters colder than a witch's teat!'"

Buffy smiled. "It's better than it sounds. And I happen to know – from word of mouth, not experience – that a witch's teat is actually pretty much the same as everyone else's."

Mac looked up at her. "You know, she really does look exactly like Trina Echolls."

Buffy rolled her eyes. "We're getting a lot of that these days."

The sound of giggling drew Mac and Buffy's attention back to the Explorer. Buffy smiled, contentedly.

"The old charmer," she said.

Mac looked at Buffy curiously. "You ever date him?"

Buffy turned to Mac, surprised. "Me? No. Xander's like a big fluffy bunny of an older brother."

"Fluffy bunny with an eye patch."

"Yeah, well, the fluffy bunny part comes when you get to know him, and only if you don't try to kill his friends. Listen, there's no pressure about coming to the school. We've got some materials for you and your family to look over, and a little bit of fun jewelry to keep you off the mystical radar for the most part. Plus, the nearest Hellmouth to you is in… are you closer to Cleveland or Calgary?"

"Uh… Calgary. I think."

"Well, those are the closest. I mean, there's not even one in the entirety of Mexico. So it should be pretty quiet around here, as long as you don't venture too close to L.A."

"Really?"

"Yeah. Major cities usually have a pretty big demonic presence. But we've got friends around, I'm sure Riley will give you some contact info. Angel in L.A. Oz in New York… other people… anyway, they're around. Plus, we've got slayers all over the country, and we're contacting more all the time."

"But I'm still a freak."

"Well, sure," Buffy said. "But where's the fun in being normal?"

Suddenly, Buffy stood up straight. She turned to the SUV and locked eyes with Xander, and nodded.

"Gotta run. Emergency."

Buffy turned to go, but Mac caught her by the arm. "Wait. I want to come."

"I don't know," Buffy said. "You're not trained at all. It's going to be dangerous."

"Buffy, come on!" Xander yelled from the SUV.

"I'll stay back, out of the way. I just… I want to see what I've been gotten into."

Buffy sighed, nodded, and led Mac to the car. They got in and buckled their seat belts.

"Now?" Riley asked, gunning the engine. "She runs away when we're talking, but the instant there's danger, it's all 'hooray for Slayer?'"

"Shut up and drive, Riley," Mac said, harshly.

Xander did his best to hide his snort of laughter. It didn't work very well.

----------

End Chapter 3