Disclaimer and Notes: see Prologue
Spike’s brain
by Belladonna
~Chapter 2~
Assignment: Inventory
“Alright, Buffy, you can do it. You know that you have to and you will face them right now. Tell them the truth about you and Spike.” Buffy took another deep breath, which did wonders in not-calming her down and entered the Magic Box, facial expression in handy that was worthy of one walking towards execution.
“Hi guys, I have something important to tell you…” Buffy started as she walked through the door, but got interrupted mid-sentence by a really fuming Anya who without greeting shoved a dust cleaner in her hands and her towards the shelves next to the door.
“Ahn, don’t you think you are overreacting?” Xander pleaded with her.
“No, I’m not.” The ex-demon returned snappishly and began rearranging the candles on the display again. “That’s what Bridal Magazine says and I’m going for it. And you, start dusting!”
“Excuse me?” Buffy was stunned at this. “But if someone had the pleasure of telling me what the heck is going on here? I thought it was an emergency?”
“It is.” Anya smiled brightly towards her. “It is a matter of highest and foremost importance, so that I can open the shop again soon and earn more money.”
“Do I speak for everyone when I just say, huh?” Buffy couldn’t get rid of the thought that Anya now finally had gone crazy. The other assembled and present Scoobies had stopped when Buffy entered the shop but a deadly glare of the current owner made them resume their assigned tasks quickly again.
“Anya thinks she’s going to be burning in hell.” Xander tried quietly to explain. “Because of something she read in one of these stupid marriage magazines she’s reading. And now she’s trying to get it out on us. I personally think she’s PMS-ing or something.”
“I heard that. For your information, that will be no sex tonight for you buster and it will not change my opinion about it, Xander Harris!” Anya told him, ignoring the whispered “At least you want it again.” from Xander. “I have called upon this meeting to make you help me with the inventory and seasonal clean-out. By employing you, I won’t have to pay you any money and can write it off taxes.”
“And here I thought you liked us.” Spike commented grinning from the upper level. “Hello, Buffy.”
“Hello Spike…Spike? What are you doing here? It is day out there.” Buffy sputtered out.
“Oh, I hadn’t noticed.” Spike returned casually. “With me almost burning up out there to come here helping the ex-demon chit with the bloody inventory. Which I am doing out of my great unselfishness of course.” He added for good measure, also because Anya was shooting daggers out of her eyes towards him. “Besides, I think I should do that sometime in my De Soto too. The car’s just full of dead bodies to be thrown out”; at this all heads flew instantly to face him shocked. “Oh, bloody hell, that was a joke! I thought it a real killer. So, Slayer, what are you doing here and what was so important to tell us?”
“Uh, nothing of interest.” Buffy replied too quickly. “I came because Anya called, that’s all and because she said it was a matter of life and death which this certainly is.”
“Yes, I will loose money should this take much longer than today, so continue dusting!” Anya instructed her, completely ignoring the sarcasm in Buffy’s answer. “All of you!”
“Yes, Ma’am!”
And so they went on dusting…
A little while later they had stopped cleaning and now continued on counting the items. Anya of course had a watchful eye over them, not wanting to get her valuable items destroyed or damaged. If she had to give special price offers on them because of that, she’d be very pissed to be put mildly.
Now Anya, being the current owner of the Magic Box after Giles had left for the mother country, or in more understandable terms, England, sat on a chair behind the counter and glanced down at some printouts in her hand, probably the list of the whole inventory and downstairs items as well as the listing of all the shipped out supplies and stuff. If the others had looked closer, they would’ve noticed that she wasn’t exactly looking at these printouts but rather at the glossy bridal magazine lying on top of them. But for the moment they just feared the wrath of Anya if she would notice them not doing the inventory.
Smiling a little too cheerfully and with too much sexual undertones for her comfort, Spike edged closer towards Buffy and lightly ran his fingers over her bare arm. It felt like electricity and tingled pleasantly but she jerked her arm away quickly.
“Don’t do that, what if someone sees us?” She scolded him fearfully, completely forgetting that she actually had intended to tell the others about their relationship.
“But someone actually has seen us already, luv.” Spike reminded her, thinking of the day when Xander had caught him exercising in his crypt. Or that was it that Xander still believed having seen Spike doing back then.
“Well, not me.” Buffy shot back, a blush creeping into her cheeks.
“If you want it to play that way, fine with me!” Spike snapped and turned around, almost throwing some vases off the shelf in the wake of his grand departure. It would have been one, if Anya had not intervened.
“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” If her eyes could have shot out daggers, Spike would have been impaled beyond recognition by now. At this even the Big Bad Spike was, felt intimidated by her.
“Uh, downstairs?”
“Good answer, and don’t steal those spices again or I will change them with something that will make you loose some body parts.” Anya glanced down at him to make sure he understood completely and that there would be no misunderstanding whatsoever, then added “Important body parts. And you’ll never know when this change will have happened.”
“Right, I’ll go counting then.” Spike swallowed hart. Said body parts were really something he’d rather not loose at all. Instead he gulped down another unnecessary breath of air and slowly backed away from her. “Er, downstairs, as in the basement.”
Willow snickered from behind one shelf and the others joined in, but instantly shut up when they saw Anya.
“Right, counting. I’m already on with it, doing some more counting.” Willow hurried to add. Buffy turned around facing Anya.
”What are you doing actually?” She asked the former vengeance demon curiously. She hadn’t seen her dusting or counting either, except for the money which she would never let anybody else than her touch.
“I have the responsibility of this whole operation.” She practically beamed at this. “I oversee you and make sure that you work properly. That is called sharing of responsibilities; see you work and I oversee. I have the most work with that, being the one in charge and everything.”
Buffy rolled her eyes. “And how did you get that great idea?”
“I read about it in a book.” Anya’s face lit up completely now. “It was about becoming a successful business manager and how to get your life as comfortable for yourself as possible.”
“I see, but wouldn’t this inventory thing take much shorter time if you actually joined us in counting and all that?” Willow asked confused, having joined the conversation once more and way grateful for a short pause.
“I do my part and you do yours, so hush back to work little worker bees.” Anya ushered them to start working again, her patience and potential chance of opening the shop again in the afternoon fading. “You just cannot appreciate what I do here, this is not fair. And I do work here, I go over the lists of the shipments and all that.”
“Ahn, calm down, please.” Xander tried to soothe her, but she got herself worked up by now at the for her extremely startling thought of money loss that she wouldn’t listen.
“They won’t help me, they question my authority and on top of that I am going to hell!” She wailed.
“You are going where?” Came the unison reply from Willow, Tara and Buffy. Xander only groaned at this, he had been on the receiving end of this accusation already earlier this morning.
“I am going to burn in hell!” Anya repeated. “This is what the last issue of Bridal Magazine says, and when it is in the newspapers it’s got to be true.”
“And why does Bridal Magazine say that?” Buffy asked her incredulously. She spotted the mentioned paper right on top of the printouts Anya was studying. “And why does it lay right on these papers you were supposed to go through?”
“This is important, it is my wedding and I will make it a perfect one! A day no one will ever forget!” She announced, pointing her finger angrily towards her fiancé now. “And now I am going to be sent to hell and it is all your fault!”
“Xander?”
“What has he to do with this?” Now was it Tara’s turn to look confused. She had thought them to have a happy relationship and all with getting married soon.
“He made me sleep with him!!” Anya shouted out.
“He what?!”
“I never made you sleep with me, Ahn.” Xander defended himself, somehow it gave him a strange sense of déjà vu. And in a certain way it was, since he already had said that on this very morning. And wasn’t it always her who constantly ranted on about the orgasms she got from him, in front of all the others? “Besides who believes in that today now anyway?”
“But it is all your fault! And now I am going to burn in hell and, and…”
“Huh, hell? And in what does who believe in still?” Buff asked baffled. She was completely dumbfounded and even she wasn’t that blonde.
“Anya has decided to explore the religious side of her humanity a bit more.” Xander explained. Or at least he tried, but how could one explain something one hasn’t even understood in the first place? “And now she has read in some stupid magazine…”
“They are not stupid; they are useful resources in planning my wedding!” Anya interrupted him angrily. Xander wasn’t so sure anymore that the PMS option was completely out of consideration.
“Anyway, she thinks now that she is going to burn in hell or something because she won’t go as a virgin into marriage.” He finished. The others burst out laughing.
“She what?”
“This is not funny!” Anya complained. This was serious. Didn’t anybody understand her dilemma?
“But it is. I mean you can search with a magnifying glass these days to find a bloody virgin out there.” Spike told her, barely suppressing his laughter for the moment to get his sentence out.
Apparently not.
“Anya, why do you think so much about this, I mean you were a demon before.” Tara tried to explain. The fact of her demon time would not make her go to hell? “It doesn’t matter whether you’ve had s-sex before marriage or not; nobody goes to hell these days anyway.”
“And it is not like Xander would love you less because of the fact that you aren’t quite untouched anymore.” Willow added, to which Xander frantically nodded.
“That is right, I love you, Ahn and I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Besides, I would go to hell with you.” He told her. “I actually am no longer a virgin either.”
At this Spike burst out in laughter once more and the others joined him. It simply sounded too funny to hear that from Xander, the one who constantly turned beet red when his fiancée bluntly told them about the multiple orgasms she got from him. And now he discussed his virginity, or more the lack of it, in front of all of them – without blushing at all.
“Alright, there is nothing else to see here.” Anya told them, having calmed down again, smiling. And can you say mood swings? “Go back to work, there is money to be lost once I won’t open the shop again tonight. But of course I will see that this is written down as a full day in the report to the IRS. It after all is a full day, night business not included.”
So the day from now on went rather uneventful, one of the non-mentionworthy parts were Willow throwing some candles off the shelf and having to get an eye to eye with the out for vengeance Anya – or rather pretty pissed Anya because of now not being able to sell said candles for overly high prices to unsuspecting customers like usually, Tara already having gotten a major case of an allergic reaction to some of the dustier herbs for magick spells and Buffy nearly falling from the upper level almost breaking her neck in the process. Then there had been of course the incident with the sunlight spell, accidentally going off next to Spike – no harm had come upon important parts of him. So you see, nothing of interest or any event worth mentioning had happened at all.
In the evening, just shortly after the sun had gone down, they finally had finished their work. They all were sitting now at the table in the Magic Box, sipping at a cold drink and more than glad should they not have to move for a week now. Well, that was once they got home which of course required moving from them.
“So, are you happy with us helping you sweetie?” Xander asked, gently embracing Anya after they now were done. And she had calmed down enormously since they both had disappeared for a short while into the basement, ushering Spike out there to help the others upstairs so that they could be alone. “I mean completely voluntarily that is.”
“Yes, and now that I see you doing that so well, you can come helping me for the huge summer sale out and next year’s inventory.” She had a completely content smile on her face at that idea. “Oh, think of all the money I’ll be able to earn and save by that.”
That earned her a collective groan from everyone.
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