(The next evening just after sunset) Tuesday, November 23^rd, 2010, 5:15pm:

“Tell me again why I’m ‘ere…” Spike requested as he followed Buffy through the crowded supermarket, pushing the cart – the cart they had to retrieve from the ditch at the very back of the parking lot because there were no others to be had; the cart with one wheel that wasn’t quite round; the cart which made an irritating sound … krrr-punk, krrr-punk, krrr-punk … as it rolled across the well worn floor of the grocery store.

“Because we never do anything together anymore and Willow and Tara said they’d watch the kids for us…” Buffy explained as she led them to the only empty aisle in the store – the health food and vitamin aisle.

“So … grocery shopping is the best you could come up with, is it?” Spike questioned, cocking a scarred brow. “No one can accuse you of not bein’ a bleeding-heart romantic …”

Buffy sighed as she stopped and pulled the grocery list out of her purse. “It’s not the best I could come up with, it’s just… it’s just what needs to be done – Thanksgiving is in two days, if you recall… and we’re gonna have a house full of people demanding to be fed. The Revolutionary War will look like a game of tidily-winks compared to what will happen if we don’t have a turkey and all the trimmings for them…”

“You just wanted help fighting grannies over the best turkey in the bloody case…” Spike accused.

“You always could see right through me,” Buffy sighed, rolling her eyes. “Tell you what … how about we split up – you get the potatoes and the stuffing, I’ll get the green beans, French’s onions, cranberries, and yams,” Buffy directed, looking down her list. “Then we’ll get the turkey together – what could be more romantic than picking out some nice carrion together to feed our family?” she quipped and Spike rolled his eyes.

“Anya’s supposed to cover the desserts, Willow and Tara are getting a Honey Baked ham and baked beans, Lorne’s bringing the beverages, Clem, of course … finger foods and snacks, Faith and Giles are on clean-up duty … Did I miss anything?” she asked, looking up at Spike.

“A partridge in a pear tree?” Spike wondered with a smirk.

“No – that’s at Christmas … wrong holiday, dear,” Buffy informed him. “But, that’s not far off, so you can look forward to this romantic getaway again very soon!”

“Oh, my mistake … this is the ‘ritual sacrifice with pie’, an all American holiday memorializing the theft of the ‘purple mountains majesty, amber waves of grain, and fruited plains’ from their rightful owners and a subsequent marked decline in fashion sense which included belt buckles on bloody hats; not the classic European holiday where a fat Peeping Tom in a red suit spies on you all year and records everything you’ve done that’s naughty so he has something to keep him jolly when Mrs. Claus has a bloody headache …” Spike quipped, taking pieces of sermons from Willow and Anya and adding his own theory about Jolly Saint Nick to it.

“Only you Yanks would put two major holidays so bloody close together! Gets confusin’ it does … trying to keep the thievery and illegal surveillance straight…” 

“I’m sure you’ll figure it out…” Buffy cajoled. “Potatoes and stuffing,” she reminded him sternly. “Synchronize watches … meet back here in …” Buffy looked at an imaginary watch on her wrist “… fifteen minutes.” Buffy headed off in search of yams, leaving Spike with the shopping cart. “Oh … and don’t lose that cart!” she barked over her shoulder.

Spike sighed and rolled his eyes before heading off in the opposite direction to fulfill his mission, guarding the shopping cart with his very life – hopefully he wouldn’t meet any resistance from the grannies in the store, he may just have to take them out. krrr-punk, krrr-punk, krrr-punk…

Spike was waiting for Buffy when she returned to mission headquarters, the still deserted health food aisle, her arms laden with a large bag of frozen French style green beans, a couple of cans of jellied cranberry sauce, a large can of French’s French Fried Onions, and three giant cans of candied yams. She dumped her cache into the cart and examined Spike’s conquests …

“Spike! What’s this?” she exclaimed, picking up his items. “Stove Top stuffing!? Instant potatoes!? This is Thanksgiving! They didn’t have Stove Top stuffing and powdered potatoes! You were supposed to get real potatoes and real breadcrumb stuffing … stuff!” she informed him.

Spike’s brows shot up. “And the pilgrims had jellied cranberries, canned yams, and frozen beans, did they?”

“Don’t be ridiculous … everyone knows they didn’t have freezers back then …” Buffy argued. “It’s just that these are nicer than the fresh ones … the fresh ones have been picked through.”

Spike snorted a sarcastic laugh and shook his head. “Soooo … you’re sayin’ they did have cranberries laden with sugar and canned yams, then? Just popped down to the supercenter and picked ‘em up, did they?”

Buffy rolled her eyes and crossed her arms over her chest. “You can’t tell me they didn’t preserve stuff back then … in glass jars with those lids that come apart … I saw it on ‘Little House on the Prairie.’ That’s practically the same as canned from the store! Why do those lids come apart, anyway? I never could figure that out…”

“They’re in two pieces because you don’t leave the outside ring on once … oh, bloody hell! What bloody difference does it make?!” Spike exclaimed, raking a hand through his hair in frustration.

“Slayer … if you want a genuine first Thanksgiving meal then we need to get a bloody thirty-aught-six and go back to the B&B up in the mountains,” Spike argued.

“Huh … why? What’s a naughty … thirty … thing?” Buffy questioned, dropping her hands to her hips.

Spike rolled his eyes … again – any moment now they were gonna roll out of his head. “A thirty-aught-six is a bloody rifle and we need to go shoot some Bambi … ‘cos that’s what they really had at the first Thanksgiving … there wasn’t any bloody turkey and cranberries and pumpkin pie … and there most certainly weren’t any frozen beans or jellied cranberries or sodding canned yams!” Spike informed her. "And sugar? You can bloody well forget that! Be lucky if they had a spot o' honey."

Buffy frowned, sticking her bottom lip out in a deadly pout. “How would you know?!” she asked indignantly, crossing her arms over her chest.

Spike smirked smugly, widened his eyes, and tilted his head before mimicking her by crossing his arms over his chest too.

“Oh no you were not!” Buffy exclaimed, dropping her arms adamantly. “I don’t believe you were at the first Thanksgiving!”

Spike shrugged his head and one shoulder nonchalantly. “Believe what you want, pet…”

Buffy opened her mouth and drew in a deep breath as she prepared to argue with him, but then stopped. What year was the first Thanksgiving, anyway? He couldn’t have been there… no … no way… it had to be before he was even born … certainly before he was turned … right?

Shit! … Columbus sailed the ocean deep … no … how did that go, now? Ocean ... wide ... no … blue! That’s it!  In … something-something ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue… Now … what was the ‘something-something’?  If only Annie were here … she’d know.

Spike raised his brows and waited as he watched her mind whirl, utter consternation playing across her features as she thought. He pursed his lips together and tried to keep a straight face while she kept running the rhyme over and over in her head … but ‘something-something’ was all she could ever come up with. Stupid, useless rhyming thingy …

Finally, Buffy gave up. “Fine … but you can explain to everyone why we have instant potatoes and Stove Top stuffing …”

“No worries,” Spike assured her. “With your cookin’, it’d be an improvement.”

“Humph!” Buffy exclaimed indignantly, punching him in the arm. “You better watch it, buster! You’re this close to breaking out that ‘Kiss the Cook’ apron again!” she informed him, holding her thumb and forefinger about a quarter of an inch apart to show him how close he was.

Spike laughed and rubbed his arm where she’d hit him – it really was just too easy to take the piss out of her. “If ya injure me, I won’t be able to help you fight off the blue-hairs in the turkey aisle,” he reminded her.  “I’ll have you know I had to fight off two geriatrics just for the bloody stuffing … and I’d wager one of them ladies … and I use that term loosely, escaped from Alcatraz!”

“Poor baby … I do hope you weren’t injured too badly by the little old ladies you accosted,” Buffy replied sarcastically, rolling her eyes.

“Well, ta ever so for your concern for m’ health and well-bein’, Slayer … I almost get dusted fufillin’ the mission you sent me on and that’s all the bloody sympathy I get?” Spike asked indignantly, pursing his lips together and glowering at her. “I’d rather battle a legion of Fyarl demons than face humans under the holiday-shoppin’ hex … bloody ruthless, they are … fight dirty, too. They'll run over ya with them soddin' electric buggies! Should need a bloody license to drive one 'a them!”

“Oh, you poor baby. Did the wittle, ole wady scare the big, bad vampire?” Buffy baby-talked him, pursing her lips together and shaking her head from side to side like she was talking to MacKenzie.

Spike narrowed his eyes and glared at her, his hands on his hips. “You’d be singing a different tune if I was a big, fluffy dust bunny right about now…”

“Ok, I’ll bite … what was the ex-con-granny armed with … a cane?” Buffy questioned sardonically.

“For your information, she had a bloody wooden handbag! Size of a soddin’ breadbox, it was, and painted with the most God-awful picture of a green frog sittin’ on a lily pad eatin’ a fly. Splintered into a dozen pieces when she hit me over the bloody head with it … any one of which could’ve embedded into my heart and dusted me right there in the stuffing aisle,” Spike informed her indignantly, rubbing the back of his head for emphasis.  “‘Clean up on aisle nine!’ … would’a been all you'd a' had to remember me by…”

Buffy rolled her eyes and shook her head. “I should’ve known better than to bring you on a romantic outing … you’re insufferable … and apparently a hazard to yourself and others.”

“I do m’ best, pet… on all counts,” Spike smirked as he started pushing the lopsided cart towards the dreaded turkey aisle. “Ya got a plan for this mission or is it just fists and fangs …GRRR-ARGH … smash and grab?” he asked with wide, sparkling eyes, hoping the ill-tempered frog lover had moved to the turkey case … payback would be sweet.

Buffy shrugged. “I figured you could distract them by doing a striptease while I picked out the best turkey. Plus – bonus – if you’re good enough, we might even get enough money stuffed down your pants to pay for everything.”

Spike rolled his eyes. “I’m never gonna live that down, am I?”

Buffy smiled at him in triumph. “Not if you live to be a million…”

**~**

“Annie!” Buffy called when they came in laden down with their supermarket bounty. “Anne Joyce!”

Annie came running down the stairs in a panic … she never got called ‘Anne Joyce’ unless something smelly was about to hit the fan…

“I didn’t do anything!” she asserted immediately when she got to the bottom of the stairs.

“Fill in the blanks…” Buffy instructed her as Annie followed her mother and father into the kitchen. “In blankity-blank ninety two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue…”

Annie looked at Buffy like she had lost her mind – a pop quiz? At home? During Thanksgiving break? “Uhhh … In fourteen hundred ninety two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. He had three ships and left from Spain; He sailed through sunshine, wind and rain …” Annie filled in the blanks and continued the poem.

“You are such a liar!!!!” Buffy screamed at Spike who had started laughing and moved to the other side of the kitchen table, out of reach.

“I never said I was there … you assumed!” Spike pointed out.

“Your eyes said you were there!” Buffy accused, throwing a box of stuffing at him.

“My eyes don’t talk, pet …” Spike asserted, deflecting the box of stuffing with one arm and still laughing.

“Oh, your eyes talk … they prattle endlessly! You are sooo gonna pay for that,” Buffy threatened, throwing another box of stuffing at him.

“Promises, promises …” Spike teased, catching the stuffing easily and moving towards her.

Buffy shook her head and rolled her eyes, but couldn’t keep a smile from turning up the corners of her mouth. “Be careful what you wish for…”

“Careful’s m’ middle name, pet,” Spike assured her as he pinned her against the counter at her back, putting one hand on each side of her and leaning his body against hers.

“What are m’ eyes sayin’ now?” Spike purred seductively, his blue eyes smoldering – speaking as only his could do, right to Buffy’s heart.

“If there are gonna be smoochies with tongues … can I go now?” Annie asked from the kitchen doorway.

“Run for your life…” Buffy advised, waving a hand dismissively towards their daughter as her smile widened.  Annie barely escaped … retreating into the great room just before Spike leaned down and captured his ever-confounding wife’s lips with his.

**~**