Eight
A couple blocks down from Veronica's apartment complex, the group was on the beach for Xander, Willow, Cordelia and Oz's last night in Neptune. "Dingoes Ate My Baby" played at the Pit Saturday and Sunday night, and the rest of the band got a ride back to Sunnydale from the whole, two groupies who followed them on the road. In a few hours, Oz was going to drive back his van with their equipment, Willow riding shotgun so she didn't have to listen to the two, lust bunnies.
They were seven people among about a hundred on the beach, having a mostly informal, neighborhood, "Independence Day" bash. There was a bonfire, and some fireworks going off every now and then, in between the patrols of Neptune's finest. Veronica was snapping shots of all this with her camera, Willow and Oz walking with her through the crowds.
"Impressive lens," he commented.
Veronica smirked. "Thanks, Oz--I like to think so."
"How come you're taking pictures again?" Willow hadn't worked that yet.
"Because I just couldn't bring myself to break our V.P.'s heart; he looked so, adorably hopeful. He wants you to *believe* he's stony and unflappable, but inside? There's this fragile, little boy who only wants some love. Who could say no?"
The redhead was still confused. "The Vice-President?"
"Eh, I'd call *that* less adorable and more...constipated," Veronica told her. "Vice Principal."
Well, that made more sense.
"Last Tuesday, when I was still with..." She didn't have to say the name. "...I, uh, had lunch with him because he's taking summer classes, and as soon as I set foot on campus, the man had me cornered, begging me to get candids of students celebrating America's birth. Wants a front-page for the 'Back-to-School' issue of the Navigator.
"I tried to warn him his definition of 'teenage celebration' was probably written by someone in the '50s wearing *thick*, rose-colored glasses, but..."
"'Ronnie!" Dick Casablancas called her name, coming over holding a plastic cup in his hand.
Veronica sighed and shook her head--not this. "Isn't this what the upper-crust would call, 'slumming it'? The beach with the 24-karat sand is all the way over yonder."
"Uncle Sam says we're all rich today--on patriotism," he declared. "Yellow, brown, uh, darker brown...and white trash."
He gave her a "finger gun," and she gave him a not really amused smile back.
"And beer is beer, no matter what the color of your keg," he went on.
"Poignant," Oz said sarcastically, but because it was him, you couldn't really tell.
"The Smurf gets what I'm sayin'." Dick used his beverage cup to point at the blue-haired Oz. "It's all in the name of 'Four on the Fourth,' anyways."
"Like you hafta go to four, different parties before midnight?" Willow tried to deduce.
"Close. I hafta get *trashed* at four, different parties before midnight. Where's the challenge, you ask? Keeping score of how many I've already been to, and not blacking out till the finish line." He outlined the simple yet complicated goal. "Pretty sure this is stop number dos."
"And you're facing this Herculean task all alone?" Veronica wondered with some (sarcastic) surprise.
"Stag all the way," he confirmed. "Tried to get Logan to make the rounds too, but, he hasn't been feeling it since you went all 'Heche' on him. Didn't she like, get bored or whatever?"
Veronica felt anger begin to rise.
Dick held up his free hand. "Hey, both know Logan's totally better off."
She attempted to go be elsewhere, but he wouldn't shut up.
"Whoa, wait...in the spirit of the night, maybe Buffy and me oughta finally work out the tension, so you two can get all..." He stopped speaking just long enough to play "porn guitar." "Trust me, V, you don't want her bringing any regrets into the sack. And you could hang out the whole time. In case she needs help--"
"--raising Old Glory to full mast?" She finished for him, barely containing her now-seething anger.
His dopey grin didn't help matters. "Just pretend I'm that ‘special friend' you keep stashed with your, you know, woman junk. Except like, realer."
"Shucks. Can't."
Veronica's arm made the appropriate motion as she said this, and she then blinded him by snapping a picture and letting the flash go off in his face. Before he could recover, she took her Taser out of her bag, and shocked him to the ground with it. Yep. That was enough pictures.
She, Willow and Oz started heading back the opposite way, where their other compadres were.
"He's not going on the front page, is he?" Willow blushed.
"I'm betting someday," her boyfriend said without a doubt.
Of course, he didn't say which front page.
Dick's words about getting bored, even if he was an idiot, made the redhead remember she had something to say. "Veronica?"
"Yeah, Willow?"
"If you hurt Buffy, I will beat you to death with a shovel." Willow's "resolve face" was present.
"Uh..."
Then Willow smiled. "A vague disclaimer is nobody's friend."
She and Oz walked ahead of the flabbergasted blonde, who, when she returned from the gruesome, visual place said, "That was scarier than Wallace...and possibly Dad."
________
"Uh, okay, sharing yay. To...digest this thing we know now, me and my fellow male need...time. Over there," said Xander to Mac and Buffy, pointing away.
He was just informed about the new couple, and Mac provided verification.
But he wasn't moving. "Yep, right over there."
Wallace pulled him away. "'Cuse us."
This was a plan, you see. Because if Veronica and Buffy had told them together, they wouldn't have been able to process, and just stared at the two girls for a good fifteen minutes, imagining...situations. And then one of the girls, or both even, would feel the need to seek a violent resolution. This was just the safer course of action.
While the boys got into a two-man, football huddle some feet away from their claimed encampment on the beach, Buffy and Mac watched with some curiosity. Cordelia watched with wariness.
"Do you think I broke them?" Buffy posed to Cordelia and Mac.
"If you didn't, I'm willing to," the cheerleader swore, keeping an eye out for her boyfriend's reaction.
Mac was on the fence. "Too soon to tell." Beat. "I thought I broke Willow; she didn't know what a 'Purity Test' was."
"Oh no," Buffy gasped, trying not to smile as she imagined it. "You told her?"
"You're the one who told her to ask me how I afforded my car," Mac reminded her.
"That's...okay, true, but I thought you were gonna be vague about it, and just say you provided a...service, that kids were willing to pay money for. And not go off-cliff with."
The slayer received an odd look, and sighed.
"All right, what happened?"
Mac grinned. "Nothing really...other than her taking it."
Buffy's jaw unhinged. "Willow took...? No. *Willow*?"
Cordelia was just as bowled over. "*Rosenberg*? Red hair? Wears overalls from OshKosh B'Gosh?"
"Fear of frogs?"
"Hand to the 'Cloud Hippie.'" Mac gestured appropriately. "After she finished hyperventilating, she said she was going to be a senior, that she was great at tests, and that it was time she faced her fears. Of sex. Might've been a ‘darn it' somewhere, too."
"She said the word 'sex'?" The shocks just kept coming for Buffy.
"Well, her eyes did," admitted Mac. "You had to be there."
"Um," Buffy hesitated, but then she asked, because she had to, "what'd she score?"
Mac held out her hand and smiled mysteriously. "Gimmie fifty bucks."
Buffy's eyes narrowed at the extortion. "Rats."
Cordelia started reaching into her purse, but the slayer slapped her hand.
"*No*."
________
In the huddle, Xander and Wallace were still conferring.
"So it got heard? By both of us?" Xander asked, quietly. "We're absolutely earwax-free and positive? 'Cause sometimes I'll just be moseying, status enjoying its quo-osity, when outta nowhere...bam! 'Buffy's Gay! Buffy's Gay With Cordelia! No! With Willow!' Then I flog myself in harsh, harsh punishment."
"Please don't ever explain what that means," requested Wallace. "But this ain't that. No doubt in my mind," he spoke for himself. "We heard what we heard, X, and we heard *right*."
They took a moment to smile at their luck and appreciate this development, but then Xander had to address their predicament.
"What play do we call here? Because if we're not watchful with the words, Buffy'll probably break our legs. One bone at a time."
"Or we step back, don't say *anything*, she *still* breaks our legs, and Veronica juices us up with 50,000 volts, 'cause they'll think we're gettin'...preoccupied," Wallace added.
"Big ol' duh. And *then*, my girlfriend's gonna run me down with her car," Xander said, and they both knew there was nothing they could say or couldn't say to make this go well. "We're screwed."
"So screwed," Wallace agreed, feeling his heart rate go up. "But I got your back if you got mine."
"Together we stand?"
"Divided we fall."
Taking a deep breath, Xander made it official. "1-2-3..."
And then in unison, "Break."
________
"So, and pardon the pun," Veronica began to ask as she went to her girlfriend upon return, "was it a hard sell?"
"Now I don't think I wanna know the answer." Buffy made an "eww" face.
"Yeah, no way does that deserve a pardon," Mac advised, making a similar expression. "You hang it with a crappy rope? Then let it choke to death. For days."
The new couple kissed just as Xander and Wallace rejoined them all, and the males were stopped cold by what they saw. When looked at expectantly, they were too glazed over to respond. Lightning could have stuck them dead right then, and they would've gone happy. Finally blinking, they looked at each other.
"That's...that's...so not fair." Xander said to him. "I mean, they're...with the...*there*-ness. Nobody could fight that."
"Not even the Village People?" Mac inquired. "Andy Dick? Rip Taylor? Bruce Villanche?"
"I stand by my sentence," he stated.
"Preaching to a ex-choirboy." Wallace understood. "We gotta go. 'Fore it's too late."
Xander nodded. "'The Fennel' speaks a wise truth." He pronounced "Fennel" like the sausage. Then he ran away, calling, "Best'a luck!"
"Damn, X! Wait up!" Wallace took off after him. "And call me that again? I take you *down*."
Once they were a good distance away, Cordelia glared at the blondes. "Thanks so much for the 'lipstick and butch' PDA--now I have to go kill my boyfriend," she sighed and started to walk. "Way to be considerate of other people."
"'Considerate'?" Willow repeated incredulously, trailing after her. "You and Xander...it's-it's like naked stuff! But with clothes!"
Cordelia smirked. "Well, now we know how you answered *that* question on the purity test. Do you watch Cinemax alone, or is Oz there?"
Willow looked back at Mac, hurt.
Mac went to keep pace. "I didn't tell them anything!"
Veronica and Buffy looked at Oz. He looked back at them.
"Go," they told him.
"Thanks," he replied, hurrying to catch up.
"Our friends are strange," Buffy realized after her eyes couldn't follow them down the beach anymore.
"Funny you should mention that," Veronica segued, "Does Willow threaten all of your significant others with a shovel?"
________
"I won't get bored," said Veronica without preamble, as she and Buffy walked the surf away from the noise of the parties.
Buffy's eyebrows shot up in question. "O...kay. I guess I...feel better now?"
"Know what? I never brought it up--it's stupid." Veronica tried to erase it. "Just something Dick said."
The slayer immediately went into "fight mode."
"Where is he?"
"Easy, Biff," Veronica said calmingly. "It's been handled already. I should know just to listen to the voices in my head when he starts talking, anyway."
"Why, what do they say?"
"To burn things," Veronica answered nonchalantly. "And that we should go on a date tomorrow night after work."
"I like whichever voice said the second thing," Buffy told her. "The first, not so much."
Veronica nodded. "Yeah, that one's kind of a scamp. We can be glad he's the submissive type.
"So we'll call your mom in the morning, go do our shift, and then you can pay for me to eat...sound good, Butch?"
"'Lipstick,' you mean," smiled Buffy sweetly, in a way that wasn't sweet at all. "Think you're backwards."
"Am I?" Veronica pretended to think it over. "No...no, I don't believe I am."
"You are if you ever," Buffy yanked the camera out of Veronica's hand and ran a bit with it, "want this back!"
"All my voices? Out for blood." Veronica stood there taken aback. "Who just goes and fondles a girl's several hundred dollars worth of Nikon without an okay?"
Buffy took a picture.
"C'mon, smile! We have memories of coupledom to capture. *Happy* memories! Can't be bored of me yet, Marsipan."
"You're lucky you have a real purdy face, Dumbers, that's all I hafta say," Veronica said faux-begrudgingly, watching some fireworks go off before chasing after her.
There was no getting bored of this.
________