I’LL BE HOME FOR CHRISTMAS
 
PROLOGUE  - Parent – Teacher Conference (from sb_fag_ends) 
 
“I really don’t have time for this.  You’d think by the time your kid was in high school, she wouldn’t need Mom coming in to help her out.”  Buffy flew into the building lobby and looked back and forth.  “English class, English class, which way is that wing?”
 
A passing student smiled at her. “Hi, Mrs. Summers.  What are you looking for?”
 
“Oh, hi, Jeanne. I’m looking for Joyce’s English teacher.  A Mr…. Patterson?”
 
“Oh yeah.” Jeanne’s face took on a dreamy expression.  “Mr. Patterson. I wish I’d gotten him this year…”
 
“Well, you’d be welcome to him,” Buffy muttered. “Were do I find him?”
 
“He’s down that hall. Second room on your left.”
 
“Thanks.”
 
“No prob. Tell Joyce I said hi.”
 
Buffy was already marching down the indicated hallway, stopping when she got to the second room on the left.  She rolled her eyes at the cartoons pasted all over the closed door, then raised her hand and knocked.
 
“Come in.” The warm voice didn’t do much to ease Buffy’s impatience, but she did find herself smiling as she entered the room and focused on the man behind the desk. “What can I do for you?” he asked, raising an inquisitive eyebrow.
 
“I’m Buffy Summers. Joyce’s mother? I need to talk to you about—” She froze. Smiling back at her, was a man who could have bleached his hair and passed for Spike.  If Spike had lived into his 40s and was… human.
 
When Buffy said nothing, but continued to stare, he shuffled the papers in front of him and sighed, as if her reaction was a familiar one.
 
The sigh, and the accompanying knowing expression, snapped Buffy out of it.
 
“I’m sorry. That was rude. It’s just that you look so much like someone I… I used to know. I’ll be all right.” She laughed in embarrassment. “Thank God you don’t have a British accent or I’d be dragging you to the window to see how the sun affects you.”
 
He raised his eyebrows. “Well, that is a new approach. Not the ‘haven’t we met before’ aspect of it, but the dragging me to the window to see if I… what? Tan? Freckle?” 
 
When Buffy’s face went white, he lost his confident aspect. “Ms Summers? Are you all right?”
 
“No. Yes.” She shook herself. “Of course I’m all right. You just startled me, that’s all. It’s really an amazing resemblance.  But of course you aren’t…. and he’s… gone. And has been for years.”
 
He cocked his head at her, and she tried not to let him see how she was reacting to that gesture. But he had.  “And if I’d had a British accent? As a rather large number of my aunts, uncles and cousins do? What then?”
 
“Heh.’ Buffy forced another laugh, regaining control of herself and remembering why she was there. “Well, then I guess we’d be back to my dragging you into the sun,” she said. “But you’re safe. I just wanted to talk to you about Joyce’s zero on her last assignment.”
 
“I’m quite sure I’m safe,” he said, standing up and visibly taking in her petite frame with an appreciative gaze. “I may not be a Neanderthal, but I do think I have a good fifty pounds on you. I doubt you could drag me anywhere I didn’t want to go.”
 
“You’d be surprised,” she responded with a genuine grin. “I didn’t really come here to threaten you, though, I just wanted to explain about our somewhat… unusual… lifestyle and why Joyce really needs a few more days on that assignment.”
 
“Perhaps you would be willing to explain it to me over dinner this evening?”
 
Buffy’s eyes widened in surprise, although his expression indicated he was just as surprised as she was by the invitation. She studied his bewildered face for a moment, then smiled and nodded.
 
“That sounds like a wonderful idea. And you can tell me about your relatives that do have British accents.”
 
“If you’ll tell me what the sun has to do with anything.”
 
“Maybe. When we know each other better,” she said with a wry twist to her mouth. “That’s probably not something I want to share just yet.”
 
He frowned, but nodded. “Shall we say 7:00? At the Golden Goose?”
 
She nodded back and turned to leave. “Seven it is. See you there.” She gave him another dazzling smile as she walked to the door.
 
“Yes you will,” he said to himself as she disappeared from sight. “You most definitely will Ms I-would-drag-you-into-the-sun Summers.”
 
 
 
CHAPTER ONE
 
“Joyce? Are you home yet?”
 
“I’m right here, Mom. Where did you think I’d be?”
 
“I don’t know. Here, I guess.” Buffy sighed and dropped her purse. “Okay, so I went in to talk to your English teacher today and—”
 
“Mr. Patterson?  He’s yummy, isn’t he?” At Buffy’s narrow-eyed stare, Joyce hastily corrected herself. “I mean if you’re, you know, old like he is. Not that a lot of girls don’t care that he’s old, but I do. I mean, he’s as old as you are and that’s just…. Not making this better, am I?”
 
“Let’s review, you’ve managed to refer to your English teach as ‘yummy’, then said that he’s too old, which doesn’t bother some of your friends as much as it does you, because you know he’s as old as your elderly mother.  Did I miss anything else I should be concerned about or offended by?”
 
“I’m just going to go do my homework now,” Joyce mumbled, turning her face back to the books on the dining room table.
 
“Well, make part of that homework a rough draft of the essay you owe Mr. Patterson. Just in case I can talk him into accepting it a few days late.”
 
“Isn’t that what you went in there for today? To see why he is being such a pain when all my other teachers—”
 
Buffy flushed and turned her face away. “It was, but I… we… got sidetracked, so I didn’t get to it. But we’re going to meet… later tonight… for dinner. And we’ll talk about it then.”
 
“You’re going out with Mr. Patterson? Like on a date?” Joyce’s expression was an interesting mix of horror, admiration, and curiosity.
 
“We’re just meeting for dinner,” Buffy said primly. “It’s not really a date, date. At least I don’t think it is…”
 
You should go get cleaned up,” Joyce said firmly. “And wear something less ‘I teach girls to kill things with their bare hands’ ish.”
 
“It’s not a date,” Buffy said firmly. “I’m just meeting your teacher for dinner so we can discuss school stuff.”
 
“Uh huh. Go change clothes anyway.” Joyce went back to her books.
 
XXXXXX
 
Buffy took a deep breath before she entered the restaurant, steeling herself to ignore how much Joyce’s teacher looked like Spike and to stick to discussing why her daughter might have occasional incidents outside of school that would prevent her from turning work in on time.  With luck, he wouldn’t want her to go into too much detail about why Joyce might have to miss school.
 
She pushed the door open and looked around, immediately spotting Mr. Patterson on a barstool. So much for not being reminded of Spike. As soon as he saw her, he slid off the stool and carried his drink to a small table nearby. She walked to it quickly, smiling at him when he held a chair for her before sitting himself.
 
“Thanks. Didn’t mean to interrupt your drinking.”
 
“You didn’t. I just wasn’t sure if you’d be on time… or even here, for that matter, so I booked a table, but I was prepared to amuse myself if you didn’t show.”
 
“Why wouldn’t I come?”  Buffy frowned at him. “We didn’t get anything discussed or settled this afternoon.”
 
“Well, except that if I had the British accent many of my relatives do, you would want to expose me to sunlight.  Don’t think I’m forgetting that.” He tipped his glass at her and asked, “What would you like to drink?”
 
“What are you having?”
 
“A moderately priced Jack Daniels label. Would you like some of that?”
 
Buffy shook her head and shuddered. “A world of no,” she said. “I’ll have a glass of white wine… a chardonnay, not too oaky.”
 
“A woman who knows her wines. I like that.” He smiled again and signaled the waitress over to put in Buffy’s order.
 
“I don’t really know anything,” she admitted. “I just figured out a few things I usually like and I stick to ordering one of them.”
 
“And she’s honest. More to like.” He cocked his head at her, the intense perusal making her squirm uncomfortably. 
 
The waitress brought her wine and asked if they were ready to order. Mr. Patterson turned his warm smile on her, saying, “Not yet, we aren’t. We need some time to enjoy our drinks and get to know each other. Give us a little while, would you, darlin’?”  Rather than take offense at the familiarity, their server simpered and giggled her agreement. When she’d left, he turned back to Buffy to find her staring at him the same way she had in his classroom earlier in the day.
 
“You’re doing it again,” he said, raising his glass to her. “Shall we make a toast to whoever it is I remind you of?”
 
“Oh God. I’m so sorry. I know that’s really rude, but….  I’m sorry. I really am.”
 
He continued to hold up his glass. “Well if we can’t drink to him… whoever he is, can we drink to the fact that he’s not here and I am?”
 
Buffy shut her eyes and bit her lip. “I’m sorry. This was a bad idea. I just wanted to talk to Joyce’s teacher. I didn’t know you were going to look so much like… or that I wouldn’t be able to handle it after all these years. I’m sorry,” she repeated.
 
He set his glass down on the table and reached across it to put a hand over hers.
 
“No. I’m sorry. It was obvious yesterday that my appearance was causing you some trauma. I should never have asked you out. Not until we knew each other better, anyway,” he finished with wry smile that Buffy refused to identify as a smirk. He gave her hand a little squeeze then withdrew his and drained his glass, signaling the waitress for another drink.
 
Buffy sighed. “Can we start over?” She held out her hand to hand to him. “Hi. I’m Buffy Summers, Joyce Summers’ mother, and I’d like to talk to you about some extenuating circumstances that might cause her to be late with assignments.” Before he could do any more than accept the handshake, she went on. “She isn’t not going to do them. It’s just that sometimes she might have to be… out of town… with me, and she’ll be turning them in late. She can’t help it, and I hate that it might affect her grade.”
 
Still holding the handshake, he responded, “Hello, Ms. Summers – may I call you Buffy? I’m Bill Patterson, Joyce’s curmudgeonly English teacher. It’s nice to meet you, and I am certainly willing to hear what you have to say.”
 
With every bit of strength she could summon, Buffy managed not to flinch at hearing his name was a version of William. Instead, she smiled as she dropped his hand and reached for her glass.  She took a ladylike, if very hearty drink from it, then set it down and met his gaze.
 
“Okay. Let’s get this parent-teacher conference back on track.”
 
“Dinner first.  Or during,” he added quickly when she started to frown. “We will talk about Joyce and her grades, I promise you. But I did ask you out because I wanted to see you again, so can we at least pretend it’s a date?”
 
Buffy laughed and nodded. “We can pretend it’s whatever you want. I at least owe you that for being so rude so often.”  She opened her menu and tried to focus on picking something to eat. She could hear him chuckling to himself. “What?”
 
He was gazing at her with a bemused smile on his face.
 
“Just laughing at myself and my ego,” he said. “And a bit ashamed that it took so long for me to realize that you weren’t staring at me and becoming speechless because….” He let his voice trail off. “Comes of working in a building with a mostly female staff and a lot of hormonal students, I guess.”
 
“Trust me, I’ve already heard that many of the girls think you’re ‘yummy’,” Buffy said with a smirk of her own. “If the teachers think you’re yummy too, I can see why you thought you’d knocked me speechless with your good looks.”
 
He blushed and ducked his head, suddenly appearing as abashed as a little boy. “Kind of ridiculous, isn’t it?”
 
“No. It’s not.”  She wondered how much to share with him. “The… man… that you look so much like. He was very… attractive. And he knew how to work it so that women liked him. Kinda like you just did with our waitress,” she said with a quick grin. “I probably would have stared at you even if you didn’t look so much like… somebody else. But I wouldn’t have been speechless,” she added quickly as he started to visibly recover his apparently normal confidence. “I’m way too old to lose my ability to focus just because I see a set of killer cheekbones and pretty blue eyes.” She blushed as she realized how much she’d just given away.
 
“That would make me a lot happier if I didn’t know you were picturing somebody else’s cheekbones and eyes,” he said with a smile.  “But I’ll take what I can get.”
 
“I’m pretty sure you can ‘get’ whatever you want,” she snorted. “Mr. ‘yummy’ Patterson.”
 
“Given my current job where teenage girls, their frustrated married mothers, and seriously devoted spinsters are my usual contacts…. inappropriate and illegal offers aside, you’d be surprised how hard it is to get a legitimate date around here.”
 
Buffy laughed. “So, you’re saying I’m just a default date? Not a teenager, not married, and not a spinster. Yay me.”
 
He laughed along with her. “I’d be worried about having insulted you if I weren’t confident you have a perfectly good mirror at home that tells you how beautiful you are on a daily basis.”
 
Buffy smiled her thanks at him and went back to the menu. When she’d made her choice, she glanced up to see him still watching her.  Something about the expression on his face sent a chill up her back.
 
“Mr. Patterson? Bill? What’s wrong?”
 
He shook himself and blew out a sharp breath. “Honestly? I have no idea. I just suddenly felt like… it’s crazy. It’s nothing. Having a real date is obviously going to my head and I’m losing it.”  He smiled at her. “What are you having?”
 
They placed their orders and ordered another round of drinks while they waited for their food.
 
“So, let’s get this out of the way,” Bill said. “What is it about Joyce’s life that makes her miss so much school?”
 
“I have a… an unusual job. Mostly, I can do it here in town where we have a small… um… west coast training facility. But it requires me to travel occasionally. Not really often, but sometimes. And I have to take Joyce with me sometimes. I used to have people I knew I could leave her with, but they’ve moved away. And she’s old enough now to come with me and… contribute.”
 
“Surely she can do her school work online?”
 
“Well, sure. Yes… sometimes. But sometimes… we aren’t always where we can get internet – believe it or not. And sometimes we’re… too busy.”
 
“Joyce is too busy? I thought it was your job that required you to travel?”
 
“Well, it’s sort of an… inherited… position. One that… We didn’t realize Joyce was … but now I know she is, and I can’t leave her out of…. just because she’s my daughter.”
 
“Well, that cleared things up nicely.” His expression didn’t bode well for his cutting Joyce any slack, and Buffy gave him her most charming smile – tinged, more than she realized by a slayer’s intimidating stare.  He pulled back and frowned.
 
“Look. The bottom line is, my daughter has to travel with me when I – we – have jobs to do somewhere else. I had a very hard time keeping up with my high school work because of the job, and I don’t want my daughter to have the same problem keeping her grades up when she works so hard at them.”
 
“You’ve been doing your job since you were in high school?”
 
The conversation came to a halt as their meals arrived and they began to eat.
 
“Okay. This isn’t going well. Like I said, what I do isn’t… it’s something you’re just born to do. And when I was in high school there was only one of me. There were a couple of other girls for a little while, but mostly it was all me.  Joyce is lucky. There are lots of…. us… now. So she doesn’t always have to go with me, and I don’t even have to go myself very often, so….”
 
“You’re a slayer.” His expression was shocked, but his interruption was definitely a statement not a question.
 
Buffy’s eyes went wide and her face lost all color. “How do you—”
 
“Don’t go catatonic on me, now. And this has nothing to do with whether or not I would catch fire if the sun was out. I have a niece who said she could have been a slayer.”
 
“Could have been?”
 
“She was told she had a choice, and she chose not to take the one that would have taken her away from her family when she was only fourteen. She stayed home, finished school, got married, and had her own kids. But she told me about it once. To be honest, I thought she was putting me on. I listened and nodded, but I really didn’t believe or understand what she was saying.”  He frowned. “Although Josie does beat me fairly regularly at arm wrestling. That’s a bit disconcerting…”
 
Buffy smiled and placed her elbow on the table, hand ready to clasp his in a test of strength. She raised her eyebrows in challenge. He shook his head and sighed.
 
“Just my luck. I meet a beautiful woman and she kills things for a living.”
 
“Actually,” Buffy said, “now I mostly teach younger girls how to kill things. They pay me for that. But every once in a while….”
 
“Every once in a while you have to go help out… and Joyce goes with you because she’s one too.”
 
Buffy sighed. “That’s pretty much it. I really wasn’t planning to tell you all that, but since you guessed….” She glanced up at him. “Still think you’re on a real date with an eligible woman?”
 
He shrugged and finished off his third drink of the night. “Are you married?”
 
“No.”
 
“A teeny-bopper?” She just rolled her eyes at him. “Right. Sixteen-year-old-daughter, so not a teenager yourself. A confirmed spinster?”
 
“I feel like one sometimes, but no. Not a spinster.”
 
“Well then. I’m calling it a real date with an eligible woman.”  He raised his hand for another drink, cocking his head when Buffy frowned.  “I have a rather large capacity for alcohol for a man my size,” he said, his voice not as warm as it had been. “And the bartender is much too generous with ice for me to be even feeling it yet. So how about you take that ‘are you a lush?’ look off your face?”
 
“He drank a lot,” Buffy said without other explanation. “And he drank the same brand you do. And you look a lot like him.  Not exactly. Now that I’m seeing more of you, but—” She broke off when he wriggled his eyebrows at her, his “you could see even more of me” more than obvious in the semi-leer.
 
“Now that!  See? That! That’s just like Spike.  And you… you’re not him. You can’t be him because I saw him dust.  And even if he was somehow brought back… and don’t think I didn’t think of trying it…. he wouldn’t be… you would have to be…” She stopped, putting a hand over her mouth. “Oh God. I’m so sorry.  Again.  I shouldn’t have… I didn’t mean to dump all that on you.”  She raised damp eyes to his. “I think I should just go home. Before I let out any more secrets. You just are too much like him… and not enough him.”
 
“Please, Buffy. Finish your meal. Have another glass of wine.  And please stop apologizing to me!  We have an unfortunate situation in which I remind you too much of someone you’ve lost, but I’m your child’s teacher and you will sometimes have to interact with me. I can’t do anything about looking somewhat like your…. this man who meant so much to you. And I can’t do anything about other things I might do that would remind you of him, because I don’t know what they are until I see it in your face.”
 
He reached for one of her hands again, holding it gently. “But as much as I don’t want to continue causing you pain, I also don’t want to give up a chance to get to know you better. If having secrets you don’t think I should hear is what’s standing in the way of that, just keep them to yourself. I can handle it. For now.” He sighed. “I know what you are – more or less – I know why Joyce may be occasionally absent, I know that I look very much like someone you cared about deeply and that he is dead. I’m guessing he may be Joyce’s father?”
 
Buffy slumped in her chair. “He is,” she said, shaking her head, “but I’m pretty sure you aren’t ready for that story. I haven’t even told her yet, although I guess she’s old enough for it now. At least she knows about portals and time dimensions and stuff like that.”
 
Bill blinked but didn’t ask for an explanation.  “Okay. You’ll tell me when you’re ready. Or when you think I’m ready?” He gave a wry smile when she nodded and smiled back. “I’m guessing you live a pretty exciting life. Do you think you could manage to not be bored to tears dating a middle-aged high school teacher?”
 
Buffy laughed softly and pulled her hand back. “You have no idea how many times in my life I’ve wished for somebody as normal as a teacher, or doctor, or lawyer, or just about anything but a—” She stopped. “But that’s not my life. Not yet, anyway.”
 
“Maybe it could be.”
 
He frowned at his almost empty glass. “I wonder if I was wrong about how strong these drinks are? I’m not in the habit of suggesting to women I might be just what they’re looking for. Not on a first date, anyway.”
 
Buffy snorted and bent her head to finish her food.  “Maybe I remind you of somebody.”