Title: The Assistant 17/?
Author: Sweetdoggie
Email: (stirling_summer@yahoo.com)
Pairing: B/G
Rating: R
Summary: Merrick didn’t die. A/U
Spoilers: Up to mid-season 2
Disclaimer: No permission has been granted to use the characters. They are owned by their creator, Joss Whedon, Twentieth Century Fox, UPN, WB, and Mutant Enemy. This story is non-profit and is intended solely as entertainment. No copyright infringement is intended.
Notes: Pretty much A/U right from the start. I don’t know how many parts this will be but I’m not going to leave you hanging. The rating is me being ultra-conservative. 99% of all the sex takes place off scene. B/A fans—it never happened

“Merrick and Joyce did it? Oh my God!” Xander hopped around the room making ick sounds.

Buffy rolled her eyes at her friend. “Knock it off, you dope.”

“Eeeeuw! That is wrong on so many fronts I can’t even list them all. Ick, ick, ick.” He continued hopping.

“Yeah, and it was so right when you were Hyena boy and ate the school mascot, wasn’t it?” Buffy chided.

“That was different. I was possessed.” He protested.

“Yeah, and they were drugged. They really care about each other. You need to accept that.” She told him calmly.

“B, but they’re having a baby. A baby, Buffy!” He held his head in his hands. “They are old and they’re having a baby.”

Buffy looked sad for a moment. “Yeah. Sometimes I wish…Oh, well. Maybe this is the Powers that Be’s way of making up for me dying. Mom will have another kid to love and raise and this one will be normal. Merrick will be the best dad ever. Giles will be there for them too, you know, after. It will be good for him too. I’m not seeing a down side here, Xand.”

He looked at her, at the sadness in her eyes. She didn’t talk about her mortality very often, but when she did, the pain of her existence as the Slayer leaked through. He didn’t have the heart to continue his protests in the face of her struggle. “Sorry, Buffy. I’m really sorry. It just wigged me for a minute, that’s all.”

She smiled sadly at him. “Sure, I understand. As long as you’re over it by the time we all get together tonight, it’s OK.”

He nodded. “I’m cool with it now. Uh, when do you tell Willow?”

“She should be here in half-an-hour.” She handed him a coke and a bag of chips that he absently tore open and began to eat.

“Why did you tell me first? I mean you guys are best girl friends and all.” He munched another handful of chips.

“You deserved to be told by me.” She explained. “If I told Willow, even if I swore her to secrecy, how long would it be before you knew everything?”

“Uh, twenty minutes?” He guessed.

“I love her to pieces, but secret girl she’s not.” Buffy grinned.

“Are you going to tell Cordy and Oz?” He asked curiously.

“Well, they’ll have to know, but I was kind of hoping you guys as significant others could do that duty. Oz won’t be a problem, but Cordy is going to freak. I’m not sure she wouldn’t say something that I might have to slay her for and I figure, let’s just not go there.”

“Good idea.” Xander complemented.

Willow was slightly wigged when Buffy told her, but dealt with it better than Xander. “Well, I knew they were attracted to each other, but I thought it was more of a ‘unattached adults in a group of teens’ thing. So, uhm, what are they going to do?”

“That’s the hard part.” Buffy admitted. “Merrick won’t leave me and our house is full up. And I’m not real sure about living with my mom again, even if we are both married. I know it’s selfish, but I haven’t lived at home one way or another for nearly a year. But I guess the bottom line is, Mom can’t live alone, waiting for her husband to drop by occasionally. So, we talked things over and we’re all moving to a bigger house.”

“Wow, that really is big news.” Willow said looking a little shell-shocked.

“Yeah. It’s kind of a weird break all around. Mom pregnant, getting a quickie wedding, Merrick being a dad at sixty. By this time next year, I’ll be a big sister. Freaky.”

The others took the news better than expected. Oz gave a slight smile. “It will be good for both of them,” was his comment. Cordelia, surprisingly, didn’t make a big fuss either. “Other than the fact that it’s old people having sex, it’s not that bad.” She admitted. “Joyce has been pretty cool about the Slaying and everything and I’ve always liked her. Merrick is, well, he’s dependable and that’s important.” So the official Scooby gang was expanded to include Joyce with minimal fuss.

They spent a week looking for a house before they finally found a Victorian monstrosity on the edge of town. It was covered in gingerbread clapboards that screamed for paint, had a yard that would have pleased a herd of buffalo, and was rumored to be haunted, but it was big enough. The men were all very excited with their find, but Joyce, Buffy, and Faith stood outside the mansion and just stared at it.

“Well, uh, it’s big.” Buffy finally offered.

“Six bathrooms.” Faith added.

“Three floors, plus basement and attic. Thirty-six rooms.” Joyce said non-committally.

“And they’re all gonna need dusting every day.” Buffy added gloomily.

“The guys are really happy, though.” Faith said.

“They did try very hard to find a place that would fit all of us.” Joyce added.

“Kitchen’s nice. Big enough for all of us at the same time.” Buffy tried to sound upbeat.

“Did you see the oven?” Faith asked her. “It’s big enough to roast half a cow.”

“Well, I guess since we eat so much, that isn’t a bad thing.” Buffy grinned. “Besides, there’s enough room so that we have more privacy. And the baby will have it’s own room when it gets here.”

Joyce touched her stomach, still unable to believe what the home pregnancy tests had indicated. Even after having the pregnancy confirmed by a doctor, she still felt that her life had taken on a surreal aspect. Merrick, once he had gotten over his shyness and embarrassment, had been feeling damned proud of himself. He was sixty and had managed to father a child in only one night. He couldn’t help feeling very macho and strutted around his two friends just a little. They grinned, slapped him on the back and envied him his good luck.

The women eyed this display with rather jaundiced expressions. Merrick wasn’t the one who would be throwing up for the next few months. He wasn’t the one who would have to deal with the gross physical distortion of his body or the parasitic sapping of his strength by the growing fetus. Of course, he would never know the feeling of carrying another life inside his body. Maybe it was a respectable trade off.

Giles and Buffy had decided to check out the house’s reputation for being haunted and had spent several nights there with no results, ghost-wise. They did manage to stake a vampire that had been living in the basement of the deserted building. It was rather disappointing, Giles admitted. “A good haunting would be something unusual for us, while a vampire is simply run-of-the-mill.”

Buffy had gotten her favorite slaying shirt dusty when she had staked the creature and was not in the best of moods. “We so do not need diversity in our evil, honey. I am perfectly content to go on staking vamps. Not looking to branch out.”

He looked down at her and blinked absentmindedly. “Oh, er, yes. Quite.”

Buffy gazed around the basement where the vamp had made its lair. There were piles of wallets and purses that the thing had collected from its victims. She walked over and picked up a couple. The dead person’s I.D. was still tucked safely inside. “Should we give these to the police?” She asked. “People have a right to know that their missing person isn’t ever coming home.”

He looked at the evidence of more than one hundred deaths. “I suppose you’re right. Sighing, they walked back up the stairs and made the call.

Two officers arrived half-an-hour later. Buffy was mildly surprised as it generally took threats of impending apocalypse to stir the police once the sun had set.

The taller cop looked around the house, suspicious. “So, you say you just happened to find a cache of purses and wallets?”

Buffy didn’t like his attitude, but this had been her idea so she dealt with it. “Yeah. In the basement.” She indicated the cellar door with a flick of her hand.

“And how do you happen to be in this house, at night, by yourselves?” The second officer asked.

“We bought the place and we’re trying to get it habitable. We were going to look through the whole house tonight and see if there was anything obvious that needs to be repaired before we move in.” She thought it was a pretty good excuse for spur of the moment.

The two officers, not being entirely new to Sunnydale, drew their guns before entering the dark stairway. Buffy came behind them and turned on the light. It startled them so badly she was nearly shot before they got themselves under control.

“Watch it, lady.” The first officer barked. “Stay up here and don’t move. You too, buddy.” He indicated Giles.

Giles nodded and pulled Buffy back from the door. They leaned against the hallway wall and talked quietly while they waited. Soon the officers were back with a garbage bag filled with ‘evidence’.

“We’ll be taking this along with us for tonight. We may have an investigative team come out and sweep the grounds tomorrow in the daylight. Thank you for your cooperation.” They hopped back into their patrol car and pulled out onto the street.

“Huh.” Buffy said. “Well, that was less than satisfying. Do you suppose they’ll actually do anything about notifying families or just toss the evidence into the nearest dumpster?”

“Hard to say, really. I suppose they will give it some casual attention, but not a great deal.”

“Yeah, they wouldn’t want to find out that there really are vampires and that they like to bunk down in good old Sunnydale, would they?” Buffy was cynical after three years of Slaying. She turned to her husband. “Why doesn’t the Council publicize the fact that monsters really exist? Wouldn’t it be a lot easier to protect people and fight the bad guys if people knew about them?”

He sighed sadly. “Unfortunately, attempts to make plain the actual nature of the world we live in have uniformly proved to be disastrous. Either the whistle-blowers are stigmatized as cranks and crazies or a witch-hunt begins where many innocent people are injured or killed to feed the terror and bloodlust of the mob.”

Buffy looked glum. “Too bad. It would really help out if more people knew. They could stop doing dumb stuff that leaves them victims.”

He patted her on the back. “Not to sound bitter or cynical, love, but in reality, people are infinitely capable of the most appalling acts of stupidity. Look at that group of children earlier this year playing at being vampires. If you hadn’t saved them, they would all have died horrible deaths. Were they the least bit grateful?”

She shrugged. “No. Most of them were mad because I’d taken away their chance to be one of the ‘Lonely Ones’. What dopes.”

“People are much happier not knowing, even when that ignorance leads to their deaths.” He said sadly.

She nodded her agreement. They finished walking through the house and found nothing else untoward. “You know, when I first saw this place, I thought it was going to be a disaster, but now, I’m thinking, not too bad.”

“Yes, it will be rather nice to have a bit of privacy in our marriage.” He admitted.

She looked at him with a grin. “Well, yeah, there’s that, but actually I was thinking I like the tower. It’s cool.” She squeaked as he lunged at her and began tickling her ruthlessly. Finally, when she was laughing so hard she could no longer defend herself, she surrendered. “OK, OK, you win! It will be great to have some privacy for a change.”

He hugged her and slapped her bottom lightly. “Don’t you forget it, miss.”

“It’s going to be weird living with mom again, especially since this will make Merrick my step dad.”

“Yes, I imagine that it does feel odd.” He admitted.

“Well, it would have been stranger if I had ended up married to him and not you.” She said, swiping some dust off a table.

“Did you ever think about that possibility?” He asked her quietly.

“After you guys told me about bonding and everything, I realized what it meant. I was very, very grateful he had sent for you. Not that I don’t love him, but not like that.”

“You would have, had you bonded.” He said.

“Yeah, I know. I probably wouldn’t have minded. But let me tell you, it’s way better being married to you than to a guy forty years older than me.”

“Yet, I myself am twenty years older than you.”

“Uh huh, but that’s still well within the realm of normal for a relationship. Forty years and people start looking at you as if you married him for his money or stock options or something.”

“Merrick would never think that.” He assured her.

“Oh, I know. But nobody wants people to think bad thoughts about them. And you know that sooner or later somebody would have said something mean about him to me and I’d have had to slay them.” She shook her head. “Much better this way.”

He leaned over and gave her a very deep kiss. “I certainly think so.”

The refit of the house was a slow process. None of the men felt comfortable hiring strangers to come in and do the work, so they ended up painting it from top to bottom themselves. The women agreed that the men looked very cute in overalls and paint caps.

Buffy and Faith mowed down the front lawn using a pair of scythes they found in a shed in the back of the property. Joyce, being pregnant and not deemed sturdy enough for heavy work was given the task of cleaning the kitchen with the help of Willow and Oz. Cordelia and Xander vacuumed endlessly. As the month drew to a close, the house actually became livable.

Their old homes sold rather more quickly than they had supposed they would so there was a mad week of packing and moving to the new place that left all of them exhausted. The first night in the new house was uneventful except for the amount of Chinese food that they ordered and consumed.

Faith and Wesley were given the third floor, Buffy and Giles took the second, and Merrick and Joyce, in deference to his health and her pregnancy were given rooms on the first. Buffy had taken to home repair like a duck takes to water. She watched endless shows on TV about how to fix squeaky floors or stop windows from sticking. At first, Giles simply smiled indulgently, but even he was impressed when they found the kitchen faucet leaked like a sieve and Buffy was able to replace it herself.

Joyce settled into the group with some trepidation. She had been excluded from this aspect of her daughter’s life since Buffy had been Called at fifteen. It seemed odd to include her now. As it turned out, she had a real flair for research once she got over what she called the weirdness factor of it all. Joyce had noted with some surprise that not one of the Scoobies seemed to resent her presence. It had struck her as odd and she had spoken to Merrick about it.

“They just accept me, John. I don’t get it. For years, Buffy kept every detail of her life away from me. Now, I know almost too much about it.”

Her husband smiled tenderly at her. “Our little family has learned the value of acceptance, Joyce. You are far from the strangest thing they have come across in three years on the Hellmouth.”

“Well, I guess.” She didn’t sound convinced. She sighed. “ I suppose it must just be a combination of all the strange changes in my life. Sort of piled up on me.”

“I can understand that.” He comforted.

“Well, I’m having a little trouble adapting to the idea that for the second time in my life, I’ve had to get married.”

He raised his eyebrows but said nothing. “I wasn’t much older than the children when I met Hank. He was handsome and sweet and swept me off my feet. I got pregnant the first time we had sex. He was a decent guy and married me right away. Buffy was born six months later. Our folks paid for us to go to college. They never thought we would stay together and they wanted us both to have an education to fall back on. Those first years were hard. We loved each other but weren’t ‘in love’ anymore. We had a baby, went to school and played house. Hank was faithful for years, but I know he resented being tied down so young. Hell, so did I. He started having little affairs. Nothing serious, usually it was no more than a dinner out with some woman or other he’d met at work. I always knew. Hank was a worse liar than Buffy, if you can imagine. When she was thirteen, he went completely off the tracks and had a full-blown affair with his secretary. We fought constantly after that and he moved out when she was fourteen. We divorced when Buffy was fifteen and it was a huge relief for both of us.”

“Does Buffy know any of this?” Merrick asked quietly.

“No. We thought it best never to tell her. She knew he was having an affair, though.” Joyce added thoughtfully.

“I’m sorry this has worked out like it has, Joyce. You deserve to be courted and cosseted. I would have liked to do that for you. I never thought that I would find someone after all these years, you know. The Council doesn’t encourage field Watchers to marry. We have to be available to bond with our Slayers. When Buffy bonded with Rupert, it freed me in a way that I hadn’t felt since I was a lad. As far as I’m concerned, the band candy incident simply precipitated a situation that was already in progress.”

She looked at him, touched by his declaration. “It’s good of you to say so, John, but…”

He shook his head. “No buts, Joyce. I’ve been blessed and that’s all there is to it.”

She smiled. “OK, you’ve convinced me. Now, where are those children of ours?”

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