Driving through downtown San Diego with three maple syrup-infused kids in the backseat of his SUV was harder than it would seem, even if they were strapped down in their respective booster and car seats, Xander thought. It was different than any of the other many, many challenges he had faced in his relatively young life, but one he was looking forward to for his own brood, if and when he had one. He just had to find the right woman to have one with, for a start. It was just a hard proposition to find someone not already connected to the other part of his life, the Scooby part, who wouldn't completely freak when finding out about that essential side of him and run, as he realistically acknowledged any sane person would. He pushed away thoughts of Anya before he could get broody about it.

Most of the time, Willow and Tara's girls were extremely easy to care for. The exception, it appeared, was when you sugared them up, something Tara reminded him about before he took them but he should have known anyway from his childhood experiences practically growing up with Willow, who definitely had passed on some of her more uniquely Willowish traits to her children. Consequently, they often struck him as miniature versions of his best friend. That was particularly true of Kera and Danielle, who sported bright red shocks of hair, unlike Lily, a brownish blonde like Tara, though the middle child definitely had her own Willowish quirks. He glanced with amusement at his rear view mirror that he'd angled slightly down to catch the top of six-year old Lily's head on the passenger side of the backseat. Lily had not stopped talking since they'd left the restaurant, having a very animated discussion about the many things going on at her new school with Dani, who had had her first birthday party last month. Xander couldn't see the baby in her rear-facing car seat, though her voice in the form of short and random words and noises provided a rhythm section to Lily's steady melodic chatter. On Dani's other side, the eldest, ten-year old Kera, was stoically sitting in her booster seat, her eyes screwed shut and her hands over her ears as she tried to block out her sisters' steady chattering.

Xander was tempted to bring them back to his apartment, let the two little ones calm down a bit (and avoid letting Tara see them in this state), but Kera had wanted more books from her library having exhausted the small pile she'd initially packed for her stay with their uncle, the restaurant was only a couple of miles from their house, and all three wanted to say hi to their mom.

"Okay, Lil, remember what we talked about…"

"Don't tell Mommy how many pancakes I had for breakfast!" the child piped up.

"Very good," Xander affirmed.

He pulled into the side driveway of his friends' two story Victorian and steered toward the rear carport, pulling his Ford up besides Willow's Volkswagen. By the time he had opened the rear door by Lily, Kera's popped open and the little girl sprung out and made a beeline for the backyard gate that led to the back door into the kitchen. "Whoa, Kera! Wait for us!" Lily slid out and stood by his side as he released Dani's harness and carefully plucked the toddler from her seat.

Carrying Dani in one arm and holding Lily's hand with the other, they caught up with Kera who held the gate open for her uncle and sisters. As a group, they made their way to the backyard porch where Xander fished in his pocket for the house key Willow and Tara had given him. Before he could pull it free, a bit of movement in the window behind the sheer curtain stopped him. Peering in to try to focus beyond the curtain, he realized he was looking at Tara's bare back as she sat on top of the heavy oak breakfast table he had made them as a house-warming present five years ago. Her robe was down her arms so that it covered her bottom. Tara was cradling something between her legs, and her shoulders reflexively hunched and relaxed, rhythmically. Then, the hand on Tara's thigh, which definitely was not Tara's given the angle, came into view, squeezing her far up the inside of her leg, but mercifully moving outward, to grasp her at the waist…

Xander's eyes widened and he snapped back from the door as if physically slapped. Glancing down at his nieces who looked up at him expectantly, the shock quickly turned to anger.

It was a foreign feeling, this intense disgust directed to Tara. And then the sadness—profound, somehow simultaneously sharp yet dull, feeling the emptiness on behalf of his best friend since childhood.

It took him a long moment to get his wits back. "Uh, silly me. You know what? I forgot the key. I'm such a dummy, I think we need to go back to my place to get it."

Kera huffed a little impatiently. "Why don't we ring the doorbell and Mom will let us in?" she asked reasonably.

"Mommy should still be sleeping," Lily piped up.

"It won't take too long to go back to my place and get the key," Xander offered hopefully. He desperately wanted some time to figure out what to do. He barely had the presence of mind to steer the group around, away from the door hoping fervently Tara would not make a moany or otherwise sex-induced noise—something he and Buffy had teased Willow and her relentlessly about back when they had come for an unannounced visit at the small apartment the two women with just the one baby lived in during their college days, with its apparently thinly insulated walls and doors before the witches discovered a good sound-proofing spell.

Kera looked at her little sisters, then skeptically raised an eyebrow at Xander. Clearly she was reminding him of how long it took to get the two little ones packed and settled into the truck this morning. Surely he wouldn't leave them alone in the car even for the two minutes it would take to go enter his condo and retrieve the key? "We're here already, Uncle Xander. I really need my books, and we were going to wake Mom up anyway, remember? By making her breakfast?"

Damn, the raised eyebrow look was like looking at a miniature Tara. He cleared his throat. "Well, how 'bout that, though? We wouldn't be able to surprise your mom, huh?" Not that they really needed any more surprises today, he thought darkly. His surprise quota was full for the day, and it wasn't even 8 in the morning.

Kera paused a moment, her eyebrows knitted before purposefully concluding, "It's the lesser of two evils, Uncle Xander. We'll lose too much time going back to your house."

Xander was pretty sure he knew with whom the ten-year old had developed her logical debating skills. He considered playing the adult card and pulling out the presidential veto before the temptation passed and he conceded. "Yeah, okay, you're right, Kera. Let's go to the front. We can ring the doorbell." He took Lily's hand once more and waited for Kera to lead the little troop back to the front of the house. Their slow pace would buy him another minute to figure something out.

"Oh gods, Willow…" Tara bit her lip. Her hips moved of their own accord, asking for more of her lover's tongue as it danced just on the surface of her wet pussy, begging for it to fill her.

Willow prodded at her lover's clit, before taking the throbbing button between her lips and wetly sucking. The fingertips of one hand began a slow, circular tease of Tara's entrance where liquid was starting to pool.

"Nnnnngh…" was all Tara could say.

Willow enthusiastically attended to Tara, quite proud of herself. She loved the noises she drew forth from her lover. It was like she was sucking the moans out of her beautiful woman. She continued her efforts with giddy enthusiasm.

As much as verbal language had escaped her, Tara's hands were very much vocal, running her fingers through and stroking Willow's fiery red hair from her face, praising her lover for the spectacular way she was pleasuring the blonde. She began to play with Willow's ears and the redhead laughed as she was very ticklish around them. The vibrations must have gone straight through Tara's core as she gasped, throwing her head back.

"Sorry, babe, are you okay?"

Through her redhead-induced haze of lust Tara realized the tongue fucking and sucking had stopped. She looked down to peer through half-lidded eyes at the impish grin on her lover's pixie face. Willow's mouth, chin, cheeks, and the tip of her nose were shiny with Tara's cum. Tara just pulled the other woman firmly back into her pussy and rubbed herself on Willow's face until the muffled "okay" reached her and the tongue-lashing resumed…

It wasn't Xander's place to tell Willow, of that he felt fairly sure. Except it was his duty to do so. Damn it! All the time Willow had been in that hell dimension, and Tara had dutifully, steadfastly insisted she would return, that Will hadn't died when the charter plane carrying her and Faith went down off the coast of Scotland… Despite the pressure to do so from Buffy, from the insurance companies, from Willow's company, to accept the devastating loss for the sake of their daughters, so Kera and Lily could at least be taken care of financially after losing the family's main wage-earner. All the time Tara had stubbornly, irrationally refused to give up the remote feeling, the hope that her life hadn't been irrevocably shattered… It didn't make sense.

But Tara was his friend, too. What did he owe her in this mess? What doubt could he find that he could give her the benefit of? Resentment coursed through him. Why was he even in this position? He could give Tara a chance to come clean herself…

Then they were at the front door. Xander was a use-your-gut kind of thinker. He always had been, and for the most part it had worked for him. He doubted he would ever change how he approached the various crises from minor to downright apocalyptic the gods threw at him. He took a deep breath and jabbed at the doorbell before he could think of it any more. He would figure it out when he saw Tara face to face. Maybe seeing her kids would be enough to remind her of what she was losing going down this road…