Slowly awakening in her bed, Buffy Summers still remained mostly half-asleep while luxuriating in their hard-fought victory over Glory only last night. There'd been some regrettable costs to the Scooby Gang from this, among them the loss of Spike when that vampire and Doc mutually offed each other, but the blond hellgoddess had finally been put down for once and all. Though, instead of the Slayer triumphing in this, Glory's doom had improbably been brought about by the most ordinary of their company, one Xander Harris.

Right after Glory had been stunned by the wrecking ball smashed into her by Xander, that young man then jumped out of this construction crane he'd just used. Running over to the dazed woman lying on the ground, Xander ruthlessly stabbed her with a strange enchanted dagger which none of the Scoobies had ever seen before. Glory's body next changed into an equally-dead corpse of a somewhat familiar guy which Buffy and the others finally realized was Ben Wilkinson, a local hospital intern they'd met and interacted with earlier in Sunnydale.

All of the surviving minions witnessing the death of their worshipped deity promptly ran away, leaving the exhausted Sunnydale humans the master of their battlefield. Leaving Ben's body behind for the authorities to take care of, Buffy and her friends had staggered back to the Revello house and collapsed there onto various bed and couches of the Slayer's home where they'd fallen fast asleep. Along the way, a bleary Xander had promised to tell everybody in the morning just how he'd gotten hold of a weapon powerful enough to kill an actual divinity, albeit one with extremely bad dress sense.

Stretching out in the bed, Buffy next rolled over to bestow a loving kiss on Dawn's cheek where her younger sister was still deeply dozing while sharing their bed in that sibling's room. Neither had wanted to be far away from each other, considering how they'd nearly lost each other last night. Willow and Tara were doing the same in Buffy's room, while Xander and Anya had stayed in Mom's old room. Giles was napping downstairs on the living room couch, from what a drowsy Buffy remembered.

Muzzily watching with a tender smile how Dawn yawned in her sleep after receiving that kiss and then snuggled further into her pillow, Buffy was distracted by the appetizing smells coming from the kitchen downstairs. Her stomach growled in yearning for a huge breakfast, enough to satiate even a Slayer's appetite. This morning urge encouraged a barely-conscious Buffy to get out of bed, pay a visit to the adjoining bathroom, and lurch out of Dawn's room, all without waking up the other girl.

Her eyes still at half-mast throughout descending the stairs, Buffy next shuffled into the kitchen, just barely registering the other person in there cheerfully addressing her, "Hey, Buffster! Coffee's ready for you, over there!"

Instantly seizing the steaming cup of coffee resting on the kitchen counter, Buffy drained three-quarters of this life-giving fluid at one gulp. Almost as if a curtain had been lifted from her mind, Buffy's awareness sharpened into clear focus as she filled her mouth with the remaining coffee while idly glancing sideways at—

Spewing out every drop of caffeine in a classic spit-take into the kitchen sink, Buffy then screamed at the top of her lungs, "XANDER, WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?!"

She then whirled around to put her back to the same man she'd just shouted at with horror, furiously blushing all the while.

Buffy heard from over her shoulder a confused answer from Xander, "Making breakfast, of course. What's the matter?"

Sputtering wildly, "You…, you…," Buffy was interrupted in that shocked rejoinder by several pairs of feet thundering from upstairs towards the kitchen and also a disheveled Giles swiftly appearing in this food-preparation room's entranceway. Holding his glasses in one hand and a short sword in the other, Giles almost did himself a serious injury when he halted only at the very last moment the reflex action of resting the sword blade onto the brim of his nose. Hastily switching to either hand the contents of these, Giles finally put on his glasses and gawked with utter incredulity at where Xander was standing in the kitchen and sending in turn this Englishman a very resigned look.

Before Giles could actually find the words to reprove that little blighter behaving so indecorously, Dawn, Willow, and Tara all in their nightclothes and appearing quite concerned at what'd just alarmed them from the kitchen skidded to a halt behind Giles after rushing downstairs. Peering past the older man's body, these girls had their mouths simultaneously fall open in their mutual bogglement.

At that exact point, everyone in the kitchen and just outside this room next heard from the second floor an irate woman's voice, "SHUT UP DOWN THERE! PEOPLE ARE SLEEPING!"

Sighing, Xander called up to the ceiling, "SORRY, AHN! BREAKFAST WILL BE READY IN A COUPLE MINUTES!" He brought his head down to inform the others, "Look, I'll explain at the table to get it over with already. Why don't you all go sit down there, and I'll bring the food when it's done?"

Still keeping her gaze firmly fixed towards the opposite wall, Buffy snarled, "Does that include you wearing pants then?"

In the kitchen, a completely-nude Xander glanced down at his exposed body, before saying just a bit grouchily, "Yeah, now that I've satisfied the curse, I can get dressed."

"Curse?" abruptly chorused Buffy, Willow, Giles, and Dawn.

Shooting them a very exasperated stare, Xander snapped, "What, you really think there wasn't any cost paid by me for getting my hands on that knife which took care of Glory?" Xander then made a shooing motion with the spatula held in one hand. "Like I said, you'll get the whole story at breakfast."

All without looking in his direction, Buffy sidled past Xander turning back to the stove with its pans filled with cooking eggs and other foodstuffs. When she reached the entranceway, Buffy pushed Giles backwards into the living room with her palms pressed onto his chest, glaring over his shoulder at where Dawn was regarding with sheer fascination what had to clearly be Xander's bare butt there—

"Upstairs, you! You're not old enough for this!"

Dawn scowled in turn at Buffy, but the younger Summers sister nonetheless allowed herself to be escorted, along with Willow and Tara remaining oddly silent, back up to their rooms to put on their clothes.

Several minutes later, finally-clad in sweatpants and a t-shirt, Xander put the last filled plate onto the dining room table and took his seat at the head of this table. He examined all the intent Scooby Gang faces turned his way from their own chairs, except for Anya more preoccupied with slathering a toasted English muffin with raspberry jam.

Eyeing Rupert Giles, Xander told him, "It all started with one of your books of magic about a year ago that I was shelving in the school library. When I put it there, a couple sheets of paper stuck together came loose from the back part of the book."

From Giles came an apprehensive, "Why wasn't I informed—"

Xander interrupted Giles, "Oh, the book wasn't damaged at all. Probably some wizard or witch put the papers in there a real long time ago and then forgot doing this, but the important part is, I read them. Guess what? They were magical instructions on how to do various stuff, written down by somebody named Magister Perrelle—"

This time, it was Xander's turn for his announcement to be interrupted, as Giles then groaned and put his elbows onto the table so this former SHS librarian could drop his head into both cupped hands.

"Not Perrelle the Prankster," huffed Giles in actual pain.

"Who?" a mystified Buffy wanted to know, just as obviously as did the other young women, even those such as Willow and Tara much more familiar with the mystical arts.

Still with his head in his hands, Giles said without looking over at anyone, "Perrelle was a contemporary of Merlin, and in some areas of magic, that British wizard far exceeded Merlin in successfully creating noteworthy enchantments and other spells. Unfortunately, as suggested by his appellation, Perrelle also possessed an extremely wicked sense of humor. In order to effectively cast these same spells, the practitioner has to agree to endure a particularly eccentric curse of some kind for the rest of their lives."

"Why didn't you ever discuss this before with us, Giles?" Willow wanted to know.

Giles responded with more than a little embarrassment, "We – that is, about every other native of my home island involved with magic – really don't want to talk about it. It's just too silly."

Tara hesitantly joined in, "It c-can't be that bad."

Finally straightening up in his chair, Giles sighed and glanced at Xander. "Was there any mention in those papers of the Bear Love Spell?"

"Yeah," wonderingly admitted Xander. "You mean, that really works?"

Giles glumly nodded. "Unlike Miss Madison's miscalculated spell, Perrelle's enchantment to make anyone fall in love with you performs without the slightest flaw. However…it also causes every single bear within a hundred leagues to become totally besotted with you."

The entire table erupted in raucous laughter, save for Giles eyeing them all with justified irritation and Anya licking a stray drop of jam from one finger.

Switching his glower towards a snickering Xander, the older man grumped at him, "Apparently, you managed to cast one of Perrelle's spells in order to acquire the enhanced dagger which ended Glory. I'm not familiar with that one, or its accompanying curse. Would you like to share?"

Those seated at the dining room table immediately quieted down in order to eagerly watch how Xander suddenly became definitely bashful. Eventually, Xander shrugged, knowing he had no choice but to spill the beans.

"Okay…you saw it all—"

"Yeah!" Dawn enthusiastically interjected, followed by a loud "OW!" from her when Buffy elbowed her hard in the ribs.

Xander only rolled his eyes before continuing. "Actually, the spell's curse is a lot more specific than that. I don't really have to take my clothes off every time I fix something to eat. Nope, that Perrelle guy laid down one gonzo rule instead, probably because he knew no dude with any sense at all would try it that way."

"What way?" came from an impatient Buffy, wanting to know why this morning there had been a stripped to his skin Xander Harris in her kitchen.

This very same man resignedly answered the Slayer, "From now on, whenever I fry up a load of bacon in a pan on the stove, I've got to stand close there totally starkers with a fork in one hand to turn over the strips and the other hand to cover up, uh…"

"Little Xander" blandly contributed Anya, reaching out to the plate holding about a dozen slices of fried bacon which'd stopped sizzling and spattering in their hot grease mere moments ago. Taking a single slice of bacon, Anya then bit it in half with sharp teeth and munched away before she finished swallowing this.

Smiling around at the subdued table, a former vengeance demon next cheerfully declared, "Yummy!"