Thanks for the reviews for the last chapter :) Short bit again, but I'm gonna do my best to post regularly throughout October with the hope of getting it finished for Halloween.
Willow went around the living room lighting candles with a long thin stove lighter, craning her neck first this way and then t
Willow went around the living room lighting candles with a long thin stove lighter, craning her neck first this way and then that so she could keep Oz in sight as she told her tale.
"I've never seen anything like it before, and I've been a ghost!" she gestured emphatically with the lit pointy thing, her voice rising with excitement as she remembered.
"They weren't ghosts though, were they?" Xander said. He'd moved to the other end of the couch now Willow wasn't sitting there; which was less weird than him and Oz sitting so close to each other in just their underwear. "They were… what were they again?"
"Poltergeists, I think Giles said. Spirit manifestations of the children this old woman had abused while she was looking after them. Buffy and Riley woke them when they were having lots of the sex and stuff." She grinned before asking, "Do you remember Riley?"
"Vaguely." Oz nodded. "Big guy? Psyche TA?"
"That's him." Willow nodded too. "He and Buffy started dating just after you, uh, left…"
She refrained from adding the 'me' to the end of that sentence. After all, it wasn't like he would have forgotten and she'd made her peace with his decision when she'd chosen to stay with Tara, no need to bring it all up again. She carried a couple of apple scented candles from the bookcase to the coffee table and lit them.
"And they woke up really cranky!" she continued.
"And horny… scarily horny." Xander shuddered. "I will never be able to play an innocent game of Spin the Bottle ever again."
Oz smiled. "What did they do?"
"Well, I didn't see Spin the Bottle," Willow said a little enviously. She'd never played the game before, and while the grown up part of her brain told her it was silly and childish and she had missed absolutely nothing, something deeper admitted it would have been nice to at least have been asked, just once in her adolescent years, to play. "But they made everyone act weird. There… there was an orgasm wall apparently," she blushed a little at saying that word in front of Oz. "And… and some people were kissing indiscriminately."
"While others were in a closet cutting their hair off," Xander put in.
"And little ghost boys were getting baptised in baths," Willow remembered with a frown.
"And people were just zombie-ing out and speaking all biblical and stuff," Xander said.
"And when I put my hand on Tara's knee, she, like, totally freaked out and ran off." Willow's frown deepened and she set her gaze on the quiet television.
She'd been talking about Tara a lot tonight. It was only natural, she supposed, after all they were swapping ghost and horror stories of the last few years with Oz, and Tara had been around for most of them. Like the time Jonathan had become Super-Jonathan, and the time they'd brought Buffy back from the dead… they probably should have left that one to last. The sex-ghosts were a good story, but it wasn't going to top Hellions and ripping people from the beyond. Although, Oz hadn't looked very happy when Willow had described the feeling of the snake coming out of her mouth so maybe it was better to finish with something a little lighter.
"And then, when all that fun was over," Xander had taken up the story in her silence. "The house started shaking, like the Earth had chosen just that spot to quake on, and we all had to run for our lives."
Shrugging the discomfort away, it wasn't like Kennedy was around to get upset about it anyway, Willow came back to the couch and perched on the arm next to Xander.
"But once we were outside, we realised Buffy and Riley were still in his bedroom," she said.
"They kept on going right through the earthquake?" Oz grinned. "That takes some stamina."
"I think they thought the earth was just moving for them." Xander grinned back.
"But it wasn't, obviously." Willow tucked her bare feet under Xander's thigh; it was getting chilly. Underwear parties in Cleveland in the Fall were not a good idea, she decided. "So then we went to get Giles, and he was…" she paused so that Oz would get the gravity of what she was about to say. "… Singing!"
Oz cocked his head at her slightly. "In the shower?"
"In public!" Xander said with another shudder. "And there in lies the horror in this story."
"I thought it was the horny ghost children."
Xander shook his head and Willow leaned forward enough to hit his shoulder.
"He's a good singer! And he plays the guitar! You're just jealous."
"You'll have to forgive Will. She has a little crush on AcousticRock-Giles."
"I do not!" She denied hotly, feeling her cheeks growing warm. "I just think it's kinda sexy," she admitted in a quieter voice.
"I always figured," Oz said.
"What?" Willow asked in alarm. "What made you figure that?"
"Well he owned a bunch of classic vinyl for one; he obviously had a good ear for music…"
"Oh, that kind of figuring, that's okay then." Willow breathed a sigh of relief, with no idea why.
Why would it matter if Oz figured out she'd had a totally innocent crush on Buffy's Watcher in high school, that had admittedly resurfaced for about fifteen minutes when she'd watched him performing at the Espresso Pump? Just like why would it matter if Kennedy caught her saying Tara's name more than once per nostalgic conversation? It wouldn't. She was just on edge because things were weird. Oz was back, and that was strange-making all on its own. And Kennedy was being… awkward, or maybe just Kennedy, she hadn't figured that out yet. And where was she anyway?
Willow glanced at her watch. It wasn't really late yet, but she'd been back hours! It would have been nice to get a message, if not a phone call, from her girlfriend to say where she was and an estimate on what time she'd be back. She leaned to the side to pick her beer from the coffee table and took a long desolate swallow. Maybe Xander was onto something with his drowning the pain thing.
"So what happened after that?" Oz prompted her, seeming to sense her mood change.
"Well the usual research thing," she shrugged. "Then we went to see the old lady."
"And what an old lady she was," Xander grimaced. "She seemed like a sweet old Grandma to start with, but I tell you, if any chick should be forced to live in a shoe, it was her."
"Yeah she was horrible," Willow agreed. "But Anya pushed her for the dirt and we got to the bottom of it. And then while me, Tara and Giles called up the ghost kids – which was way spookier than I like my spooks if you're wondering…"
"Ahn and I went back to the house," Xander said. "Then, some much strenuous cutting through thorny vines and yours truly nearly getting drowned in the bath tub later, we eventually made it to Riley's bedroom door."
"And?" Oz was leaning forward, engaged in the tale.
It was a rare sight and Willow loved him like this. He'd always saved this level of interest for the more life-threatening monster discussions or their own heart to heart's and it was nice to have him hanging on her every word again, or in this case Xander's, but same difference.
"Well, knocking got us nowhere but stabbed by more vines, so I opened the door…"
"What were they doing? Had they realised what was going?"
Xander's eyebrows went up at the first question. "Well they were doing what any normal healthy people do when they're behind their bedroom door, and no, no clue whatsoever, as was proven by the five minutes Buffy spent shouting at me about privacy and the rules of knocking."
Oz chuckled and reached forward to grab his beer from the table. "If I'd known the rest of Freshman year was going to be so interesting…"
He left the sentence hanging, casting an almost sheepish glance Willow's way. It was an unusual expression on him, but totally endearing. Strangely, it made her need to mention Tara yet again.
"Interesting in a really bad way. It was so interesting I'm surprised Tara ever even spoke to me again! It freaked her out a lot; she still wasn't really used to our lives back then."
"See, now I think of that night more fondly." Xander smiled, surprising her. "Before the party, Anya was on the verge of realising I was never going to make her happy and she was about to leave me for greener orgasmic pastures. Until, that is, the little hormonal, homicidal phantoms made her forget that stellar idea." Xander's smile turned sad, but it was still a smile. "Maybe I should have just let her go."
"No," Willow said firmly, prodding him with her toes. "You shouldn't have."
"Might have saved her a lot of bother in the long run."
"You would have robbed her of a lot of happiness too," Willow countered.
Xander shrugged and said quietly, "What is it Watchers say, the end justifies the means?"
"Only the bad ones or the ones who think they have no choice."
Xander shrugged again. "Well I wouldn't really know, not being one and all."
He sounded bitter, and Willow didn't know why. Long gone were the days that she could read him like a book. Actually, she still could, but there were passages in that book that took time to translate and a spur of the moment interpretation could lead to her getting it completely wrong.
Oz made a small noise like he was clearing his throat, probably aware of the sudden tension in the candle-lit room.
"That's some ghost story, but now it's my turn." Willow gave him a grateful smile over Xander's head as he changed the subject and he returned it with a warm smile of his own. "So, I was in Istanbul, chasing down a shape-shifter. He was supposed to be primo when it came to fluidity and I was hoping he'd teach me a few things. The address I had was for an abandoned monastery, only when I got there I could tell it wasn't as abandoned as everyone thought…"
Thanks for reading. Feedback and Concrit welcome. More soon!
