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Author's Chapter Notes:
Panta_Rei again.

WOW--ya'll are wonderful. Suzee'll thank you like mad once she gets back, but I'll go ahead and give everyone a big THANK YOU right now for the reviews you left for Chapter Four! Because, you know, I have a bet to win. *g* So don't forget to review this chapter, too, please!

Also--*koff SMUT IN 3-5 CHAPTERS koff*
Chapter 5


They sat down to diner just about ten minutes after Buffy joined them, Joyce staying true to her word not to keep William up too late that night.

Normally he would have told her that it was fine, that he was used to staying up late even. But not tonight. Tonight he was just hoping to get out of there as soon as possible.

Being alone, whether it was in a home with Buffy, the girl he was fairly certain he was secretly (at least secretly to everyone who was not him) in love with, or not—being alone would give him a chance to get his thoughts together and figure how exactly he was going to handle the entire situation.

And he did need to figure it out because there was no way he could go on living there and never talk again. They’d ship him off to some mental hospital if he tried that. And between the two places everyone made jokes about being shipped off to (mental institutions and convents) he’d much prefer the convent, even if there wouldn’t be any chance of sex happening there.

And he really needed to stop thinking about sex (because that led him to thoughts of sex with Buffy) and start thinking of a way to get himself out of this mess he was in.

If he could just get through the next few hours, through dinner and maybe drinks, then he’d be okay—he’d have the entire night to come up with a plan.

But, he realized quickly, he still had those hours…still had to get through dinner.

And now, he knew just how he was going to do it.


“William,” Joyce said, after they’d all served their plates, William carefully nodding his approval when asked if he wanted a certain dish. “Are you doing all right? You haven’t said a word since we sat down to eat.”

Time to put his plan—tentative though it might be—into action.

“Just fine, madam.” He threw the last word in for effect. “I was simply collecting myself. You see, dear, I have promised a close friend of mine that I would aid her in learning how to do a proper North London accent. Now, since I, myself am from around Yorkshire, it takes some practice. I was merely getting into character, if you will.”

Buffy looked at him like he were insane.

Rupert looked at him as if he were trying to figure out just what to think.

Joyce, ever the mother, looked at him as if he were the best person in all the world. “Oh, William, that’s so sweet of you. This girlfriend of yours must be very grateful.”

Well, that wasn’t exactly what he’d wanted to get out of it. He couldn’t have Buffy thinking he had a girlfriend.

‘Typical,’ Buffy thought, completely unaware of the falseness of her mother’s statement. ‘First Spike’s probably married and now William has a girlfriend. Are all hot English guys taken?’

“She’s not so much a girlfriend,” William explained. ‘And not only because I just made her up.’

Buffy didn’t want to hear him explain anymore why this person wasn’t ‘exactly’ his girlfriend. She wanted, whether she would consciously admit it or not, to just change the topic and forget all about any girlfriend, fiancé, or wife William might have.

“So, are you helping her learn it for a play or something?” Buffy asked, trying to act genuinely curious.

He hadn’t even considered how hard it would be to carry on a conversation with the girl. Not one where she had no idea who he was—well, other than her step-father’s half brother (there was no way he was calling himself her uncle because that would be even more wrong than the thoughts he was currently having as he looked at her in that tight little black dress).

“It’s, yes,” it was taking an effort to stay in this accent—one that was, thankfully, fairly close to a real North London accent, “it’s for a play she’s auditioning for. She’s done the preliminary audition but now, before they make any final decisions in terms of call backs and the like, they want to see who can do the accent.”

“Well, if she’s from England, shouldn’t it be easier for her? I mean it’d be easier for me to do a Southern accent than it would be for someone from say, Ireland to do one.”

Why in the world hadn’t he thought this out more?

“She’s, she’s actually from….Montana,” he said quickly. “So, it’s more learning an English accent and the differences…like someone from England wanting to learn a Southern accent would need to learn the difference between Southern and Midwestern.” He didn’t think his explaining was going very well. Which, he guessed was to be expected, especially given that he was making it all up as he went along.

“Well, that’s very kind of you, William,” Joyce said—Rupert was still looking like he was trying to figure out what to think of the recent turn of events.

“I just like to be helpful,” he replied, blushing, seemingly in modesty, but really because he was ashamed of lying to them about something so stupid.

They, Joyce and Rupert, were basically his family and here he was lying to them so that they wouldn’t know that he’d been having phone sex with their daughter for months.

Wasn’t he just a shining example of morality and good conscience?



Something wasn’t right, Giles decided after they’d settled into near silence to eat their meal.

William had been looking at Buffy out of the corner of his eye whenever he thought that they weren’t looking and he seemed to blush whenever he looked at her for longer than a few seconds.

That wasn’t really what bothered Giles though; the idea that William would be attracted to Buffy was not at all far fetched, she was a young attractive woman and William was a fairly young man himself.

What bothered Rupert Giles was that William had been acting strangely ever since Buffy’d come into the house. Not strange like a man would if he were nervous around an attractive woman, but more like….more like he was hiding something from her. Pair that with his newly acquired accent, and….

Giles had no idea what was going on but he planned to at least try to get to the bottom of it by the end of the night.

For now, though, he’d have to do his best to ignore that and just enjoy dinner with his family and getting to know William.





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