And that strange kid obsessed with spiders, Wendall, had been surprisingly helpful. Buffy was glad her mom had thought to hire him.
She'd been working in the shop for almost a whole week and was painting her nails during a particularly quiet hour – on what had to have been the dullest day in the whole of history – when the shop phone rang next to her.
She jumped, her surprise causing her to smudge her previously perfectly applied varnished fingernails.
“Dammit,” she cursed, reaching for the phone with one hand and bringing the other up closer to her face to inspect. “Hello?” Her tone was clearly annoyed as she answered the call.
“Well, my sweet. It sounds like a little birdie woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning. How dreadful for you.”
“Dru?”
“Yes, love.”
Buffy felt her mood lift instantly. “Well hey! It's good to hear from you again so soon. What's up?”
“I'm afraid I'm calling to ask you for a terrible favour. Awfully rude of me, I know. But I am prepared to bribe you with copious amounts of chocolate brownies.”
“Go on,” Buffy prompted, both amused and intrigued.
“Liam and I are moving into our new apartment today-”
“Really? What's wrong with the one you're in now? It's so pretty.”
“Pretty it may be, but it's by no means big enough for both us and a baby.”
“True,” Buffy mused. “What do you need my help with?”
“Manual labour. We need an extra pair of hands to move our things. I'm not much use, I'm afraid. Liam won't let me lift anything heavier than an apple at the moment. Sweet, but incredibly annoying. Bless him.”
Anything sounded better than sitting in the empty shop, and with the promise of chocolate brownies, Buffy could hardly say no. “Of course I'll help. Wendall will be here in half an hour. He can watch over the shop for a while. I'll be there as soon as I can.”
Buffy may not have been so eager to share her time and her hands had she known who else Drusilla had persuaded to pitch in.
“Oh, it's you” she acknowledged with distaste as she passed Will in the hallway of Drusilla and Liam's old apartment building, carrying a heavy looking box of belongings towards the elevator.
“Hello to you, too,” he replied with a roll of his eyes, barely even slowing down his pace to greet her.
Liam, who had wandered out into the hallway to meet Buffy, glanced at her with entertainment shining in his eyes as Will disappeared around the corner. “So...you guys fall out or something?”
Buffy huffed and folded her arms across her chest, miffed at the way Will had so easily dismissed her. “Or something.”
Buffy cheered silently in gratification when Drusilla announced that it was time for a snack break – three and a half hours later. She moved into the new living room and sat down next to Liam on a packing box, accepting the cup of tea that Drusilla handed her with a grateful sigh.
“There was actually an alternative motive for asking for the two of you specifically to help us out today,” Drusilla announced mysteriously, as she sat on another box near her brother.
“Yeah?” Will answered, sounding only mildly interested. “Do tell.”
“Maybe she would if you wouldn't interrupt her,” Buffy muttered under her breath.
Will merely tossed her a disdainful glance and stuck his fingers up in her direction.
“Children, don't fight,” Drusilla scolded. “Or I won't tell you.”
“Sorry,” Buffy and Will mumbled together.
Drusilla and Liam looked over at each other with budding excitement, and then back at the other two.
“We want you both to be our baby's godparents,” Liam blurted out.
There was a second of silence, before Buffy gasped and clapped her hands, bouncing up and down on her box with delight. “Oh my God! Are you guys serious? This is so huge!”
“Of course we're serious, Buffy,” Drusilla replied. “There's really no one else in the world we could possibly want more.”
Buffy threw her arms around Liam, and then leaped over to where Drusilla sat and did the same. “I'll definitely be your baby's godmommy! Thank you so much for asking me!”
Drusilla patted Buffy's head and then looked over her friend's shoulder to where her brother was sat, looking a little shell shocked. “And you?”
“You want me to do it?” he answered questioningly, his face twisted into disbelief.
“Sure we do, buddy,” Liam replied. “Why not?”
Will shook his head and smiled shyly. And Buffy, much to her consternation, felt a little tug on the strings of her heart. “I just never thought I'd be the kind of guy someone would ask...Are you sure? You know I'd always be there for the li'l munchkin anyhow, what with me being uncle and all.”
Drusilla reached a hand out to Will's arm and squeezed it tightly. “We'd be honoured.”
“No, I'm the one that'd be honoured.” He took Drusilla's hand from his arm and held it in his own. “Thank you. You too, Liam. Thank you, really.”
Buffy smiled as she watched him, feeling for the first time in all the years that she'd known him that actually, there might just be the tiniest little bit of humanity in him after all. Who knew that the guy even had feelings?
“Here, Buff. Let me get that for you,” Will offered to Buffy another hour later, sliding the heavy box she'd been carrying towards the bedroom from her arms into his.
“Uh...thank you,” she said, puzzled at his display of gentlemanliness. Just when she thought she had the guy figured out...
“No probs.”
He walked into the bedroom and deposited the box on the floor. When he came back out Buffy was running her hands through her frazzled hair. “Boy,” she said with a beaming smile – something he'd never expected her to direct at him. “I sure don't remember Dru being such a slave driver. Girl sure knows how to work a crew.”
Will chuckled. “Well, the reason you don't remember is because you're not her big brother, and consequently – her servant.”
“She ran you around a lot when you were kids, huh?”
“Kids? Who said it ever stopped?”
Buffy laughed, feeling only slightly weird to be talking to him without wanting to hurt him. She looked around guiltily for signs of Drusilla and Liam, and then smirked naughtily when she discovered there were none. “So I was thinking of sneaking away for a couple of minutes to get a cold drink and a totally earned rest. Wanna join?”
Will grinned, deviously.
Less than five minutes later, the rebellious pair were sitting on the edge of the roof of Drusilla and Liam's new apartment building, happily sipping at the cold, refreshing bottles of pop Will had purchased for them from the handy drinks machine in the hallway.
“Heaven,” Buffy blurted with a sigh, putting her empty bottle on the floor. She looked out in front of her and hummed with pleasure. “The view from up here is amazing.”
The building was so high up that the pair could see the whole of Sunnydale. With the setting sun casting a pink and orange glow to the sky, the effect was magical.
Will nodded in agreement. “Yeah, they picked a great place.”
“Not hard to do in Sunnydale.”
“To be fair.” Will tore his gaze away from the view and glanced over at Buffy. “So, how's your mum doing these days?”
Bufy looked at him in surprise, wondering why he cared.
He shrugged in reply to her unspoken question. “What? She's a nice lady. I spent a lot of time over at your place with Xander when we were teens, remember? I always liked Joyce.”
Her eyes twinkled as she smiled over at him. “Mom's doing fine, thank you for asking. Coping amazingly with the whole prison situation, as always.”
“She always was good in a crisis,” he reminisced. “Remember the time you and Dru got lost in the woods when you took it up in your heads to go camping?”
Buffy cringed, remembering how much trouble they'd been in when they'd eventually been found. “Yeah. She had the search parties organized and going before the cops had even put their hats on.”
“She's a great woman.”
“I'll tell her you asked after her.”
He studied her closely. “And what about you?”
“And what about me what?”
“Well...what are your plans? For after, I mean. When Rupert and Hank are back from prison and you don't need to stick around to run the shop for your mum any more. What are you gonna do with yourself then? Head back out?”
She very nearly questioned Will on his knowledge that it was she who was running the shop while her fathers were away, but stopped herself with the tiniest shakes of her head. Of course he knew. This was Sunnydale, after all. Home of the gossip and chatter.
Shrugging, she looked back out at the view, her gaze appreciative. “Who knows? Being back home feels kinda nice right now. Maybe I'll stick around and settle down. Get a job somewhere, and an apartment. There's no place like home, right?”
Instead of replying, Will snorted and smirked at her in obvious amusement.
“Something funny?” she asked, the middle of her brow creasing together as she wondered what she'd said.
“No, just...you're not the type of girl I'd imagine would ever be able to settle down, that's all. It'd take a brave man to get involved with such a flight risk.”
Buffy opened and closed her mouth, genuinely surprised by his comment and...oh God, hurt.
What the hell did he mean – not that type of girl? And flight risk? Just because she liked to travel? Just because she wanted to see the world? Did that automatically mean that she'd never be able to stick around in one place? That she'd never commit? That no one would ever want to be committed to her?
Wow.
Just when she'd been thinking that she might be wrong about Will, he had to go and reveal his true dickish nature all over again.
Stupid fucknut.
Standing up suddenly, she brushed down her clothes of any imaginary dirt, debating for a second on whether or not to say something to Will. She thought better of it after deciding that it wouldn't do much good anyway, considering how damned ignorant he was.
Instead she simply turned and walked away, her nose in the air and the shoulders set straight.
Will looked up as she left, confused by her abrupt departure. “Hey,” he called out. “Where are you going?” He frowned when she ignored him and pulled a face. “What the bloody hell did I say?”