A Christmas one shot set in the future of Anywhere Out of This World, in which Buffy and Spike
have their hands full with their regular lives and their three-year-old daughter Tara. It's difficult
enough corralling her, much less an unwelcome demon visitor.
This story was my submission for the Spuffy Solstice at Spuffy_Haven.
Word Count: 4,353
Rating: PG
Pairings: Spike/Buffy & Andrew/Dawn
Disclaimers: For fun and fun alone. All hail the great and mighty Joss. Also, this story is pure
indulgent fluff, like salt water taffy. For that, I humbly beg your forgiveness.
Many thanks to my beta for catching my errors, even though I opted to keep the decapitated
demon's ability to nod its approval.
Christmas Eve
“Will Daddy be home in time for dinner?” Tara asked from her cloud of fluffy, lavender-scented bubbles.
“Yes, he will,” Buffy said. Checking her elegant-yet-waterproof watch, she muttered to herself, “Let’s hope
so.”
Tara dipped her face to the foamy froth, painting an enormous sudsy beard onto her face.
“Look, Mommy! I’m Saint Nicholas,” she squealed, in her preciously prim English accent, which on normal
occasions gave Buffy endless amounts of joy. But today...
Buffy tried to smooth the crease of concern from her features. One day, she thought. Just one day to go.
Buffy ran the wash cloth over her daughter’s shoulders and into the crease of her neck, resulting in the
delighted giggles of an over-ticklish three-year-old. Once Tara quietened down, Buffy leaned over to pluck the
bottle of No More Tears off the tub shelf.
“Whatcha doing?” Tara asked, suddenly cautious.
Buffy dunked the shampoo bottle under the water. “Nothing,” she said, with mock chipperness.
“You’ve got something face,” Tara shot back, dodging into the rear of the tub.
Buffy brought forth the shampoo. “We have to wash your hair –”
“Bugger that!” Tara shouted.
“Don’t say bugger,” Buffy chided, as she poured a cupful of tub water over Tara’s head.
Tara kicked her legs, churning up waves of bubbly suds. “Oh bloody hell!” she shrieked.
“Don’t say bloody and hell,” Buffy warned again.
“Why the hell not?” Tara screamed. She flounced and flopped, dousing Buffy and half the bathroom while Buffy
dutifully scrubbed palmfuls of fruity tear-free shampoo into her daughter’s ash blonde curls. And she thought
as tried and miserably failed at washing Tara’s hair, that bathing a toddler was very much like battling with a
Kavzok demon, except that the soap smelled infinitely better. But the slipperiness was exactly the same.
Half an hour and a change into dry clothes later, Buffy sat on the toilet seat with Tara, who was wrapped in a
thick towel and humming Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer while Buffy combed tangles from Tara’s hair. Buffy
heard the front door open, followed by the sound of heavy boots tromping up the stairs.
“Daddy!” Tara shouted, squirming from Buffy’s lap. Just outside the bathroom door, Buffy heard Tara shriek
as her father hoisted her high into his arms.
Buffy stumbled into the hall after her, always, it seemed, one step behind her hell-on-Heelies daughter, but
collided with and was caught by her husband, her William, who kissed her – right and proper – hard on the lips.
It was the good kind of kiss, too. The kind that made her dizzy and swoony, but not exactly weak.
When she parted from it, she returned quickly to business. “You, young lady, are not done,” she told Tara,
taking the toddler back into her arms and settling her against her hip.
Then, to her husband, she asked in a private tone, “Did you take care of… the thing?”
William smiled his trademark grin, in which Buffy caught a glimmer of the old Spike. “You could say I came out
ahead,” he quipped. Buffy knew what he meant. Decapitation. Which meant all would be well. Probably.
Hopefully. Unless…
“Do you think there was more than one?”
“Not bloody likely,” William scoffed.
Tara tapped his nose, “Don’t say bloody, Daddy,” she said.
“Oh, right. Bollocks,” he said, and Tara giggled. Buffy did not. Changing the subject and moving down the hall
to get out of range, he asked, “Andrew and Dawn?”
Buffy followed after, trying in vain to continue combing Tara’s hair. “They’re ETA is the same, plus or minus
time to pick up the wine. You know how Andrew is…”
William cast a backward glance, complete with eye roll. “Did they mention gifts?”
Buffy grinned at that. “They did.”
“And?” he asked.
“Not made in this century,” she said. “And when I asked if it was difficult to wrap, Dawn said, all with the
mystery and the cryptic, potentially.”
William leveled his eyes with Tara’s. “Weapon,” he said with a smile. Tara nodded her assent, and Buffy cut
her eyes to William as if to say, Ix-nay on the eapons-way.
To which his eyes responded, Way of, luv.
And rather than launch into their standard argument on the subject and ruin a perfectly good holiday, Buffy
took Tara from his arms and turned back toward the bathroom.
“I’ll just get her dressed,” she said. “The guys’ll be here soon and we want her to look her Christmas best.”
William hated it when she did that. He stood in the hallway, sucking his teeth, generally sulking, when he
heard a knock, barely audible, on the front door.
He went downstairs, crossed the entry hall and threw open the door, hoping to spook whoever it was on the
other side, but especially if it was Andrew, who always went in for a good show of nerves when caught off
guard.
However, William found nothing at the door but an icy front step and rat’s tail of brisk wind.
Odd, yes, but he thought nothing of it. And even if it was something, he pitied it if it had designs on him and
his. William went back inside to fetch a Guinness from the fridge while he waited for his girls to finish up with
their wholly unnecessary beautifications.
Dawn regretted wearing the pointy-toed mules from the moment they left their flat. With their five-inch
heels, they put her four inches taller than Andrew, which he had once said made her ‘hotter than habanero
salsa’, but now they made her feel like she was making full use of her height in her displeasure with him. That,
and the ice made her like a walking insurance claim in the making.
Still, she persisted in plodding along in her graceless strides with him several paces behind and apparently
oblivious to her anger as he spent increasing intervals locked in intense multilingual conversations on his
iPhone.
She got that he was important. He reminded her enough. Muy importante, mi Corazon, he would say. It had
been a turn on for them both. But once again, he had not come through for her on something muy
importante. Two things importante, actually, and she was counting. Not that he cared… He was too busy
being Master of the Universe.
Dawn got to the driver’s side door and tugged hard on the handle, nearly slipping as she had been using much
of her energy to stay upright, only to find the door locked. Without missing a beat in his conversation,
Andrew clicked the unlock button on the fob, allowing Dawn to enter. She seethed as she pulled the door open
and dropped into the cool leather seat of her pewter gray Jaguar Cabrio.
Andrew lowered himself into the passenger’s seat in a flurry of gray plaid scarves and Burberry trench coat.
He was fastening his seat belt when he leaned over and whispered, “I put the gifts in the trunk. The world is
ours, mia fresca.”
And then he returned to his phone conversation.
World is ours, my elegant mule-clad foot, Dawn thought. There were at least two gifts not in that trunk. The
two most important, by her reckoning. She groaned internally over the grimly satisfying thought that at least
she wouldn’t be disappointed alone.
Tara, all scrubbed pink and dressed in a reindeer jumper, crawled under the Christmas tree, inspecting every
package for the trillionth time. She knew how many she had: 16. She knew her Mommy and Daddy had two
each. Auntie Dawn had three. Uncle Andrew had two, plus a stocking full of licorice whips, which she had been
sneaking since the day after Thanksgiving. There were also gifts for Auntie Willow, Auntie Rachel, and Uncle
Xander. The important part was that most of them were for her. At three, Tara was perfectly clear on that
point.
After checking all of the brightly wrapped packages, she sat beneath the tree with her favorite – all gold and
tinsel with a tinkling bell on top – while William and Buffy busied themselves with the final touches of the party,
which neither was particularly great at, but was better than talking because talking would lead to arguing…
William had taken the trash down to the curb, and when he returned, he found Buffy in the hallway watching
Tara under the tree, a tiny smile on her lips. Whatever anger he felt melted away, and he wrapped his arms
around her waist so that they could watch their daughter together.
Consequently, neither heard the sound of a droning, unearthly voice coming from the slick, frozen alleyway
outside. If they had, they would have thought it sounded like metal nails driven into blocks of solid ice. And
they would have known that something bad was on its way.
They’d crossed Highbridge and encountered thick traffic, as Dawn expected but still felt irked by it. Andrew
shut off his phone and holstered it in time to squeak at a close passing articulated lorry.
“Relax,” Dawn snapped. “I’ve got this.”
He looked over at her and realized for the first time the sourness of her mood. He should have guessed. The
shoes were a dead give-away. She wore them when she wanted the physical upper hand, or foot, as was the
case.
“Something wrong, mia bella?” he asked, trying to sound meek.
“Nothing.”
“Rowr,” he said to himself.
“What was that?”
“Just, you sound… tetchy,” Andrew said.
She took her eyes off the slippery road and fixed him with a withering glare. “Tetchy?” she asked. “Define
that.”
Andrew laughed weakly. “Touchy,” he said. “It means… touchy.”
“Well, then say touchy,” she said. She cut across two lanes of traffic, and he felt the Jaguar fishtail slightly
before its four-wheel suspension system and state-of-the-art tires gripped the icy pavement. Cars behind
them swerved nervously and blared their horns. Dawn merely tossed her glossy curls over her shoulder and
continued to stare down the busy street.
“This is because of the book,” Andrew said. “Right?”
She cut her eyes to him. “How could you not get it? You said you had it, and then… it just poofed away?”
“My source dried up,” Andrew said with a sigh. “I’ll still get it; it’ll just be a tad late.”
“A tad?” Dawn asked.
“A smidgen.”
“A smidgen? Andrew, Christmas is tomorrow. A smidgen isn’t good enough.”
Andrew stared at his gloved hands. “I know it, Dawnie,” he said, sounding defeated.
“Don’t Dawnie me,” she said. She knew that her temper over the book was just the tip of the colossal
emotional ice berg, but it was all she could focus on. If she even thought about the other thing… Her eyes
narrowed and her tone went so shrill only dogs three counties over could hear her complaints.
“I’ll get the book,” he said.
“It’s too late,” she hissed.
Minutes later, they slalomed into the slot in front of the Flat. Dawn was out of the car and up the front steps
before the car had come to a full and complete stop. She left Andrew to tend to the packages. Besides, with
her shoes, she was likely to plow headlong into the hedgerow, and she felt she’d already scrapped enough of
her dignity for the evening.
Andrew hastened to catch up to her, because he already felt out of her good graces and lagging behind would
only worsen things.
Neither noticed the skittering, scrabbling sound of dry, brittle bones on the sidewalk, nor did they hear the
grating metallic sound of an agonized voice keening in the low wind.
Willow arrived shortly after Andrew and Dawn. Having spent most of the last six months in New York, she had
taken on some of the city’s brisk mannerisms particularly in the way she dressed and wore her hair, but
mostly she was just Willow, quirky and curious and bubbling over with holiday spirit.
In the kitchen, she spruced up the sherbet punch with a dose of rum while Dawn fussed over Tara and Buffy
rolled napkins.
“So he said his source dried up,” Dawn said over Tara’s head.
“Dried up, as in literally?” Buffy clarified. “Because that happened to that one guy. Remember?”
Dawn, Willow and Buffy inhaled simultaneously. Remember, indeed. Who could forget the guy who flash
mummified right in the middle of Andrew’s office? Talk about plague of Egypt. Buffy shuddered.
Dawn said, “I’m pretty sure he meant in the regular sense. Anyway, the gift we were planning to give is a big
No Go. I’m sorry.”
“What about me?” Tara asked. “You got my gift?”
Willow swooped in and took Tara from Dawn. “Of course we did! Lots of goodies and plenty of sugary treats.
You’ll have to take it up with the Tooth Fairy at a later date, but for now, we’ve got you covered.”
Tara squirmed happily. Dawn patted her niece’s shoulder and sighed.
“There’s something else, huh?” Buffy asked.
Dawn looked past her sister, into the dining room where Andrew and William were talking idly. William looked
mildly amused and uncomfortable in his olive green cable knit sweater. Andrew seemed ill-at-ease, too, like he
was trying to mull ways to solve his current gift crisis, not even aware of the other, much graver infraction.
“After all my hinting and planted clues, you wanna know what he came up with?” Dawn asked.
Buffy nodded that she did.
“A cell phone,” Dawn said, sliding her iPhone, the twin to Andrew’s, onto the bar.
Buffy and Willow stared at it. To Buffy, it looked like the gleaming black monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey,
but could see how her sister might be disappointed.
“Not exactly the romantic gesture of the century,” Willow conceded. “But, it is shiny.”
“Yeah, but…” Dawn said. “I didn’t want a ring tone. Besides, lately… all I’m getting is busy signal. I’m starting
to think maybe I should take that grant position at Stirling University.”
Willow covered Tara’s ears. “Shhh! Don’t even say that.”
But Buffy and Dawn stared at each other, almost reading each other’s thoughts. They said, I know how it
feels. I know what you mean. And you have to do what’s right for you.
The moment was broken when Xander burst into the kitchen singing “Good King Wenceslas”, his arms laden
with presents, a cherry red Santa hat perched at a jaunty angle upon his head.
And with all the noise and party-making, no one took note of the creature that slithered over the garden wall
and onto the front step. Inch by excruciating inch, in clambered toward the front door, and if it had a mind,
its only thoughts would have been bent on hunger, pain, death, and more pain.
Dinner passed uneventfully, despite some really delicious cranberry salsa. Tara could hardly sit still, knowing
that all of her gifts were quite within reach and only time stood between her and what she most desired.
And so finally, they gathered around the tree and, with Xander playing Santa Claus, the gifting began. Tara
had begun on her fourth package when the lights in the house suddenly flickered like guttering candles in a
staunch breeze.
After a tensely alert moment, Willow released her breath and said, “It must be getting awfully cold out there.”
“Right,” William said, sliding from his seat beside the window. A muscle in his jaw twitched, and Buffy knew he
felt it too. Not just wind or extreme cold, though both were present, but something else. Something, she
realized, she’d been feeling all evening.
Buffy met him in the hallway. “Swords,” she told him.
He nodded. “In the basement. Scythe?”
“Got it.”
Dawn lingering in the archway between the entry hall and the dining room. “Guys?”
“It’s nothing, Dawnie,” Buffy said. “Just keep Tara occupied while we do a sweep, okay?”
Buffy disappeared upstairs; William vanished into the basement. Dawn looked over her shoulder at Tara and
Andrew, who were crawling like guerilla soldiers through the debris of wrapping paper. Keeping Tara
occupied: not really a problem.
William met Buffy on the back patio. Every surface, every blade of grass glimmered with a sharp-edged clarity
under the bright light of the silver moon. Fans of frosty tracery feathered across the panes of the doors and
windows, and the surface of the birdbath, which had frozen solid.
“See, pet. Weapons,” William said, as if he had been waiting all evening for the chance to say it.
Buffy rolled her eyes and took point, striking across the yard with the Scythe out in front of her. “She’s
three, William. Can’t we spare her the harsh, brutal reality until, I dunno, high school at least?”
“Can we?” he asked, slipping behind her, a katana in one hand, a dagger in the other. The moon turned each
blade to cold silver flame as they crossed the yard, anything but inconspicuous. She cast a backward glance,
to find that his hair and eyes gleamed with the same brightness as the deadly metal, and it reminded her again
of what he was, what he was made to be. He was her love, her husband, the father of her child, but he was
weapon, too, created to protect and defend.
“Maybe we can’t, totally,” Buffy said. “But we should try. Besides, Dawn says your gift is on back-order. So
to speak.”
She sensed rather than saw his shrug. “Gift's not a gift till it’s given,” William said. “I’m not concerned.”
Buffy grinned at that. “You’re not?”
Again he shrugged. “It’s not presents that make Christmas,” he said. “You know that.”
Buffy arrived at the back gate. She crouched, listening beyond, realizing that they had not done so well at
keeping a low profile if they meant to sneak up on a potential threat. She said, “I know our daughter is
basking in a fountain of material wealth as we speak.”
She pressed her ear to the icy wooden planks of the gate. “I don’t hear anything,” she said. “Let’s check the
front and get back inside. I think I heard Andrew mention bread pudding.”
Buffy pushed open the back gate. Several whip-like tentacles shot around the gate, lashing around her arms,
the Scythe, her legs and her neck. William leapt forward, hacking with the dagger and slashing crosswise with
the katana. The tentacles fell away, sizzling and hissing acrid black smoke. Buffy stumbled backward, her feet
tangling under her body. William dropped the dagger, catching Buffy in the bend of his arm.
“What the?” she gasped. They looked down at the writhing tentacles on the ground before them. More
snaked forward, waxy and white, like blind worms seeking warmth. Buffy got her footing and stepped beyond
the gate to have a better look. The curling, twisting masses of ropy tentacles of were attached to a severed
demon head, whose bulbous eyes stared angrily forward at them.
“Give me back my body,” the demon demanded, its garishly pink tongue lolling out of its saliva slathered
mouth.
“Or what? You’ll lick us to death?” William asked. “I killed you once. Don’t make me do it again.”
Buffy glanced at William, then back at the demon. “This is the demon you killed?”
“Uh yeah, Slayer. ’S’why it wants its bloody body back,” William said.
“Well, we have a problem,” Buffy said. And the demon nodded in agreement.
“Go on.”
“He’s not exactly dead, is he?”
William shrugged, then swept his hand in a gesture to indicate the obvious. “Buffy, I lopped off its head.
Standard demon procedure...”
This was followed by a piercing shriek coming from inside the house. She glared hard at the demon. “Excuse
me,” she said, and she darted back across the frosty lawn to the back door.
Inside, the lights had gone out. The front door had burst in on its hinges, scattering the entry hall with
chunks of splintered wood the size of Hot Wheels cars. Dawn had screamed once, but had then scrambled
under the table with Tara tucked protectively under her body the way a penguin guards its eggs. This left
Willow, Xander and Andrew to head off whatever beastie came through the front door.
Willow took the head of the triangle, a firebolt spell floating and crackling above her fingertips. Xander and
Andrew fell in behind her. Xander wielded a broom handle. Andrew had his iPhone. Willow had to admit that the
waving, segmented white tentacles that protruded from the headless demon body did creep her out, but
really, they had seen worse.
“Hey, Headless!” Willow shouted, trying to get its attention.
It jerked in the direction of the sound of her voice, then stumble-stepped over the threshold into the entry
hall.
“Have you no manners?” she asked. “It’s Christmas, which I don’t celebrate personally, but even I have the
decency not to turn up all uninvited.”
“Will,” Xander said over her shoulder. “Blast it to bits, please.”
“Right,” Willow said. She unleashed her firebolt and incinerated the demon body in an aesthetically pleasing
array of colored sparks. Under the table, Tara had squiggled out enough to catch the tail end of the show and
she squealed with pleasure. At nearly the same moment, Buffy charged through the back door, only to see
that the worst of it had passed. The demon was toast.
Xander swept up the demon’s ashes, which formed a fine gray powder on the tile floor of the entry hall. He
was happy to do it, he said. No one wanted any trace of the creature left behind for Tara to come in contact
with. William scoured the backyard once more to be sure that the demon’s head had disintegrated along with
its body with Willow’s spell.
And when they were all sure they were in the clear, they sat in silence around the dining room table.
Finally, William spoke.
“I didn’t know its body would come a-calling for its severed head,” he said.
Buffy shrugged. Tara had fallen asleep on her lap, and her damp curls clung to her forehead in darling gold
swirls. “No one knew,” she said. “Besides, we’re all fine and Tara witnessed a light show she’ll never forget.”
“Nobody better mess with my godchild,” Willow said, blowing on her knuckles, then rubbing them on her collar.
Xander puffed out a sigh. “Why is it we can never have a normal holiday?”
“That’d be boring, of course,” Dawn said. She glanced across the table at Andrew, who looked nervously from
her to his phone and back.
“Well, I’m going home,” Xander said. “Joyeaux Noel, Feliz Navidad and Happy Hanukah.” He tipped a salute to
Buffy and stepped out of the dining room, into the entry hall.
They all heard his abrupt intake of breath, and rushed to the hallway to see what was the matter.
Maya stood in the hallway, her blond curls glinting in the moonlight, a cherry red Santa hat sitting on her head
at a jaunty angle.
“Hey, y’all,” she said. “Merry Christmas.”
Andrew broke rank and hugged her clumsily. “You were gonna call,” he said.
“I was, but… I just had to come,” she said.
“You found it,” Andrew said.
Maya flashed an enigmatic smile to William, then Buffy, and then the rest. “I found it.”
Maya passed a worn volume bound in cracked red leather to William. The faded script on the spine read, The
Rare Published Works of Lesser Known Victorian Poets, 1848-1901.
“What is this?” William asked.
“To page 964 you should turn,” Andrew said.
William spread the book open on his palms. Willow took Tara from Buffy’s arms so that Buffy could stand with
him and watch.
As they turned the pages, slowly at first, then faster as the anticipation of what they might find built with
each moment, Dawn leaned over to Andrew.
“Maya was your contact,” she whispered.
Andrew flashed her a knowing grin. “I had to keep it a secret. I didn’t know if she would wanna come back,
but when she found the book, she couldn’t resist.”
Dawn felt sheepish, but appreciated Andrew’s attention to a grander design. “You’re forgiven,” she said,
and she bent to kiss him.
William managed to turn the thin, clingy pages to number 964. There, in tiny but legible print, was a brief
poem titled “Ode to a Yellow Butterfly” by a poet named William Pratt.
With trembling fingers, William touched the letters, disbelief clear in his eyes.
“It’s you, right?” Maya asked. “The location and the dates are right. They list a date of birth, time of death
unknown.”
“It’s me, but…” William scanned their faces. “How? I tossed it out as rubbish.”
Buffy touched his arm. “Just like you, to not understand your own worth,” she said. She kissed him.
“This,” he said to Andrew and Dawn. “I dunno know how you did this, but it’s a bloody good gift.”
Buffy nodded. “Much better than an ancient weapon,” she said.
“Yes, much,” William said.
Hours later, after Xander temporarily replaced the front door with the one from the hall closet, he and Maya
remained awake to study the twinkling lights of the Christmas tree, making up for lost time. Buffy and William
tucked Tara into bed and turned in for a long winter’s nap. Willow stayed in her old suites on the third floor of
the Flat. Even Andrew and Dawn agreed to stay the night in Andrew’s old room, a place both familiar and
painfully small to them considering how much they had grown in the last three years.
As they climbed into the narrow bed, Andrew said, “I still have a gift for you.”
Dawn eyed him obliquely. She said, “Just because we’re in our old room doesn’t mean you have to, ahem,
unwrap anything.”
He fidgeted with the seam of the sheet. “Not that, silly,” he said. “Something else. Something…”
“Muy importante?”
“Si, mia farfalle,” Andrew said.
Dawn rolled to face him. “I’m just gonna let you surprise me, Andrew. Okay? You’re very good at that.”
Andrew grinned, then nodded resolutely. “Make it so,” he said. And they fell into a comforting and much
deserved rest, knowing that Christmas was just a few hours away.
