Linoleum (set in early Season 2, pre- Cordy and Oz).

Xander

It's 10 AM on a Sunday afternoon, and Xander is looking at linoleum and thinking about sex.

There is a good reason for this, he's sure. He remembers Buffy mentioning something about the shiny, shiny floor when they first entered the kitchen, but his brain had seized up during her story about spending half of the night before waxing it when he first saw Joyce, no, Buffy's mom, not Joyce, just Buffy's mom, her older, very much older, but surprisingly tight and very hot... No. Just Buffy's mom. Not hot.

Anyway. He had come in and frozen for a second in the doorway as Jo... er, Buffy's mom turned to say hello, framed in the light from the kitchen window holding a knife as she sliced hardboiled eggs to make something. The sight of her framed in the light, even with the knife, had stopped something in his brain. The mid-morning sunlight was shining through the glass and he could see the outline of her body through her clothing. Apparently the something in his brain that locked up made his legs go, because his body also stopped until Willow slammed into him from behind and broke the moment. He muttered something and sat down at one of the stools, firm in his resolve, no, not firm, bad word, but positive, yeah, better word, *positive* that he wasn't going to look at Joyce any more.

Buffy's mom, that is. Anyway, so he started admiring the shiny, shiny floor, preparing to say something witty to Buffy to compliment her on her fine waxing skills when he noticed that he really could see a reflection in it. Very shiny, indeed. Unfortunately the reflection was under Joyce, and he now had a worm's eye view of her slip moving under her dress hypnotically as she sliced eggs.

So not good. This had to be one of those tests that girls give boys. He was failing, as usual. Which made sense, this was the only sort of test that Willow wouldn't help him with, which was really unfair of her.

Ooh, she pivoted again. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he had already bet five dollars that her panties were pink. Every time she makes a slicing motion, her slip moves gently across her smooth legs and he wonders what that feels like, silk brushing softly back and forth along her...

"Whatcha lookin' at Xander?" Willows voice asks innocently from across the little kitchen island thingie and as he tries furiously not to look guilty, the stool, formerly rock steady and his accomplice in this, suddenly betrays him viciously and rockets across the kitchen behind him to smack into a wall, while he falls face-first thunderously onto the shiny, shiny floor. Wow. Buffy must have been down here all night, on her knees... STOP IT! Mmm, I wonder if she even has a french maids uniform... AGH! SHUT UP BRAIN! He can hear Willow giggling and he distinctly remembers his last sight, of her giving that 'busted' smile of hers as he fell.

Joyce is now leaning over him and Buffy is also helping him up. His first sight is looking up to see that Joyce indeed has perkier breasts than he would have thought from this angle... GAH! He springs to his feet muttering, "Fine, I'm good! Really good! No concussion, really."

He hears Willow hasten to reassure Buffy's mom, "No really, he hits his head all the time, he's fine, really." She turns to Xander, who is busy accepting his traitorous stool back from Buffy, glaring at it menacingly and adds, "Xander? How many fingers am I holding up?" as she holds up 2 fingers and her thumb. He recognizes this as a trick question that she has played on him since he was seven and correctly answers, "Two. 'Cause thumbs don't count," confidently. "See?" Willow says to Joyce, "No brain damage."

Under her breath, but loud enough to clearly be heard by people in the living room, Buffy quips, "Are you sure?"

For a second Xander wonders if there is blood and runs his hand through his hair, but upon seeing Willows annoyed expression to Buffy he recognizes that he is being picked on and says "Hey!" as Buffy bursts into a 'just kidding!' smile.

Then Joyce is setting a small plate with an egg salad sandwich, lovingly sliced corner to corner, in front of him, "Well, just too much egg salad by one sandwich, it won't fit in the basket. How embarassing. Will you get rid of it for me Xander?" she says with a sly grin. He lights up. "I'm your man!" and just as he realizes how embarassing that comment could be, the first half sandwich enters his mouth and all the pesky thoughts go away for awhile, other than "Mmm. Peppery."

Around the sandwich, he tries to comment on the slicing job and express his thanks at the same time, but all that comes out is "Thankful" which he supposes does the job, if in much less words than he had intended. Joyce looks at him for a second and he swallows hastily to amend, "Sorry, meant you - thoughtful, me - thankful. Two thoughts at once, only one brain..." he interrupts himself with more egg salad and Joyce seems somewhat distracted that he has eaten the first half of her sandwich in two bites. Obviously she never has seen him and Willow doing the Whopper challenge. He always wins.

Joyce

She mechanically slices eggs, thankful that she could do this with her eyes closed, since they actually are. She loves her daughter dearly, but she suspects that this friend of hers has been checking her out since they entered the room. She saw him freeze in the doorway and recognized that look. Hank used to look at her like that when he would come home to find her in lingerie waiting in the bedroom doorway. Forget that thought. Another life.

She finally works up the courage to glance over and he is staring intently at the floor. Thank God, she must have been imagining it, because he is regarding the floor with the same thunderstruck intensity he was giving her in the doorway. Perhaps he just normally looks like a puppy that has been hit by lightning...

Willow and Buffy have both taken her aside previously to inform her that Xander eats like a horse, or a starving man, or perhaps a starving horse? and that he is going to need extra sandwiches or else he'll end up eating half of theirs.

The girls have been talking about the floor, since teenagers can talk forever about anything it seems, especially if it is long-distance, and she has been ignoring them, distracted with her own tasks, and worries about Xanders apparent interest in her ass. 'Jocelyn Summers!' a startled voice exclaims in her mind, and she recognizes Evelyn Matheson, her dearly departed grandmother giving her trademarked scandalized exclamation. She takes a moment to wonder how Evelyn gave birth to her mother in the first place, given that she apparently considered sex to be an unnatural act inspired by the devil.

The crash is hard enough to make the window rattle and little magnets fall off of the refrigerator. She has no idea where the knife she was holding went to, but she wants to join it. Looking around, Xander is lying face-down on the floor and after checking to make sure her knife isn't sticking out of someones eye-socket, she helps him get up. He flinches away from her as if electrocuted 'hey, there's that lightning-struck look again, must be his version of a normal expression' and springs to his feet. She notices that he has two large veins on his temples as he is briefly face to face with her, and she wonders why his brain could possibly need so much oxygen. Buffy has righted his stool, which somehow managed to fly all the way to the door, and Willow appears to be holding back a cough, but is fooling nobody. Willow is now hurriedly reassuring everyone that Xander is fine, that he bumps his head all the time and Joyce avoids saying 'so that's what happened' as he counts her fingers. Buffy then says what Joyce was thinking, God love her and shut up Evelyn, she's my daughter and can decide what's appropriate all by herself.

She turns back to her egg salad and makes a sandwich for Willow, a sandwich for Buffy, which she'll probably just throw out, she thinks I didn't see that face she made, two sandwiches for Xander and a third sandwich for Xander that she just puts on a plate. Slicing it she wonders briefly if he wants salt or pepper on it, and she ends up putting a dash of salt on one half and a dash of pepper on the other, figuring that he'll say something if it isn't right. She hands it over to him, noticing absently that her hand is still trembling from the recent scare and he bungles a 'thank you' mumbling something about two thoughts in only one brain. In her head she completes the sentence 'two thoughts and only one brain *cell,*' supressing a smile. Evelyn mutters darkly somewhere.

As she turns she notes that Xander has already finished the first half of the sandwich, apparently having failed to notice the salt and pepper disparity. He is almost religiously absorbed in the food, and she smiles to herself as she realizes that all she has to do is shove food into his hands whenever he comes over and she'll never have to worry about him staring at her ass. She asks, redundantly if he is enjoying the egg salad, wondering idly if he can tell it isn't tuna and tabasco at that speed, and he mumbles something completely incomprehensible. Willow replies, "He wants you to know he loves it and needs a drink," as she pours him a glass of milk without being asked. Or asking for that matter, but I did tell her to help herself... He takes a large drink and reaffirms what Willow has already said. Not for the first time, she hopes Willow and Buffy remain friends for a long time, since this girl demonstrably has enough brains for two people.

Putting away the bowl, she notices that her hand is still shaking. She looks over at the kids, who are completely calm and have completely forgotten Xanders fall. Figures. She'll be jumpy for another half-hour at least and it might as well have happened in another lifetime for them.

Willow

Oh My God! He's actually checking out Buffy's mom? That's gonna stop...

"Oops," Willow mutters by way of pretense as she elbows Xander fiercely in the back, as if bashing furniture out of her way as she enters the kitchen. As usual for when she hits him as hard as she can (aren't kidneys supposed to be sensitive?), he doesn't seem to feel it and just side-steps out of her way with a mumbled, "Sorry." She shoots Xander a look, but he has ensconced himself on a stool, leaning on his hands and studiously staring at the floor. Good, she thinks, he can't get into any trouble that way. After some incredibly tedious fishing-for-complements from Buffy about the whole 'up all night waxing the floor' story, she turns to see if Xander has gotten *that* visual yet, only to see him still staring at the linoleum. She looks over Buffy's shoulder to about where he is staring and has to resist a sudden urge to chuck something at his head as she sees Joyces slip reflected in the tiling.

With a grin that does it's level best to not be the essence of pure malice, she startles Xander and sure enough, he jerks, his arms pressing down reflexively on the edge of the stool in front of him, causing its back end to rocket out behind him, precipitating him violently into the floor. I've never specifically thanked God for physics before... The whole house seems to shake. Buffy tenses, hands clenching, nostrils flaring, and not for the first time she feels a twinge of fear for her best friend, as if she is in the presence of a dangerous animal. She is still thinking this while Buffy and her mother help Xander up and retrieve his wayward stool, which he looks at like a venomous serpent. He also notices that he stood up far too fast, so much that he looks dizzy and he is furiously avoiding looking at Joyce now. Good. Serves him right.

Although she likes when he gets that faraway look in school, because it is the only time she can stare at him and get that faraway look herself, imagining that he is looking at her and not Aura or Buffy or one of the other 2.5 billion girls he gets that look for...

She reassures Joyce that Xander isn't hurt, doing the old 'how many fingers am I holding up' thing, which is much safer than the 'who is President' thing, ever since he got it wrong that time.

And so she has a twinge of guilt for that thought when Buffy makes a smart comment about Xander and brain damage and she shoots Buffy her best 'withering' glance, which probably comes out as mildy annoyed, but it is enough that Xander notices and leaps to his own defense. Well, metaphorically anyway, mostly he just sits there and says 'hey.' Buffy smiles and he forgives her in about 1/20th of a second. Damn him.

Joyce has now handed him a sandwich, and Willow has seen that she has packed him two more for the picnic. Good woman, we might actually get some. She gives him a look hoping to communicate that he should take small bites, but he does, taking two whole bites to eat each sandwich half, which is a vast improvement over his insistence that one can eat a Whopper in only one bite. She still has no idea how he does that, and his attempts to show her almost made her ill.

He is struggling to answer Joyce regarding the quality of her egg salad. Why do people always wait until your mouth is full to ask that? She sees the trapped look on his face and gets up to get him a glass of milk, answering for him, leaving unspoken that Xander will eat anything that isn't on fire. And like it. Well, that isn't true. She found out when they were 12 that he didn't like brussel sprouts, but when she pretended to like them, he suddenly claimed to love them. She really doesn't like brussel sprouts at all, but she has her dad make them every time Xander eats over, since she is willing to suffer a brussel sprout or two just to watch Xander attempt to choke them down. It usually takes three glasses of milk to finish a single helping and he always insists that he loves them.

She wonders if there is a Chinese hell for people who torment their friends unmercifully and if she will be able to get a window seat.

Buffy

All.freaking.night. 'I want this floor to be so clean that I can see myself in it!' her mother had insisted. Floor-wax Nazi. How exactly was it Buffy's fault that yogurt got *everywhere?* It was her mother who insisted on getting those huge tubs of plain yogurt to mix real fruit into instead of neat little one-serving cups. It would have been a much smaller mess with only a single-serving...

Whoah, traffic jam. Way to go battleship Willow! Wow, that's gonna leave a bruise. And he is apologizing to her? Weird, and so not fair. No one ever apologizes to me after I whale on them.

Ah, egg salad. Disgusting. Nope, no celery. Good. I don't need food I can floss with, thankyouverymuch.

Willow is beginning to get that fake enthusiasm thing going, obviously the floor-waxing funny has left the room. She is looking over my shoulder like she wants to distract me so that she can jump out the window or something, I better shut up now.

<CRASH!>

*KILL.*

What? Xander! If he bleeds on this floor I'll strangle him! Oh no, what if he cracked a tile? I'll have to pry it up and match the color and replace it and grout and something, something, something. I wonder what grout is anyway? Oh, yeah mom, he's fine, *I've* hit him harder than that, with a desk even, about which we are *not* going to talk...

Boy, he's testy. Willow is doing the 'count my fingers' thing to prove that he is fine. Why'd he say two? Oh, thumbs don't count? Why didn't I know that? Have I been getting it wrong? And how can she tell if he has brain damage anyway? Rut-roh, she's giving me 'the look.' I must have said that out loud. Why does mom looks amused? Is there some rule that says mothers get to be amused when their daughters embarass themselves? Yeesh, my mom must be getting overtime then.

Oh gross! Don't talk with all that egg salad in your mouth! At least he likes it. Good, he'll be willing to get rid of the evidence when I don't eat mine.