Tabitha stood hovering over a large pot when Spike and Buffy entered her kitchen.

“Hello, dears, I was just going to ring you over at that wretched bed and breakfast. How was your stay?”

Buffy stole a glance at Spike, who winked at her, before shaking her head at Tabitha.

“Is this Grace woman mentally stable? She had a toothbrush hammock in the bathroom….”

Tabitha rolled her eyes.

“That doesn’t surprise me in the least. She’s always popping over here with her bloody tomato soup cake…horrifying thing, that. Blast that interfering next-door neighbor of mine, Grace Bennett! Oh…oh, but I digress…Timmy! Come down here! Buffy and Spike are here! We have to tell them the good news!”

Buffy sighed in relief as Spike wrapped his arms around her waist.

“Good news! Oh…that’s good. Wonderful. Better than that….”

“I think we got the point, Slayer.”

“Right, well, anyway…good news is good.”

Timmy bounded down the stairs, smiling widely at Buffy and Spike when he reached the kitchen.

“Hi! Tabby and Timmy have good news about sending you home!”

Tabitha nodded, waving a hand over the large bowl and motioning for the group to peer into it.

“Now, if I can just get a few more ingredients, I think that everything should be in order. I found this spell,” she said, pointing to an open page in a large tome sitting on the counter, “and I believe it should work to send you home. It’s very old, though, so I think I may have to spruce it up a bit. Oh, the old spells were the good spells, Tim-Tim. The language is really quite beautiful: ‘May Beelzebub's drool seal your eyelids shut.’ Ha! They don't write them like that any more, Timmy!”

Grinning, Timmy stared up at Tabitha.

“Does Tabby want Timmy to go and get the things that she needs?”

Tabitha smiled as she patted him on the back.

“No, Timmy, dear, I don’t think that the blasted fools in Harmony would take too kindly to seeing a living doll walk down to the corner store.”

Spike raised his arm, much to Buffy’s surprise.

“We’ll go. Could use the fresh air…been cooped up too long with the bloody Slayer, if I don’t get out I might go crazy…start knitting little hammocks for kitchen utensils.”

“Right, off we go,” Buffy said, pushing him towards the door. “What all do you need, Tabitha?”

After quickly jotting down a list that included fresh maggots, celery, and rose petals, and handing it to Buffy with a handful of cash, Tabitha smiled when she was met with a quizzical expression.

“Bait shop, dear. Right in town…they always have the freshest maggots.”

“Of course,” Buffy said, her eyes bulging out, slightly. “Be back in a bit!”

As Buffy and Spike headed towards Harmony’s bustling town, Timmy sat down next to Tabitha at the kitchen table.

“Tabby, what if they run into someone in town, like Julian or Rebecca or…Gwen?”

“I don’t think they’ll have any more problems with Gwen, Tim-Tim. Do you want to see what they did to her this morning?”

Timmy nodded feverishly, to Tabitha’s amusement. Standing again over the large bowl, Tabitha moved her hands over the watery substance in sweeping motions before the image of Buffy and Spike’s encounter with Gwen appeared. Tabitha and Timmy laughed heartily at Spike’s dramatic dismissal of Ethan’s former fiancée, but, Tabitha quickly shielded Timmy’s eyes as the mini-movie in the bowl moved into the bathroom.

“Well, that’s enough of that. We both don’t need to be scarred for life, now, do we Tim-Tim?”

“Timmy’s Princess is right…but Tabby, when the real Ethan and Theresa get back, what are they going to say to Gwen?”

“Oh, I’m sure they’ll all have some choice words for each other, dear. But we just have to sit back and enjoy the mayhem.”

--

Willow, Xander, and Giles sat on the Watcher’s couch, staring blankly at the small blonde before them. Xander scowled at flailed his hands in the air.

“So this isn’t Buffy?”

“For the fifteenth time, Xander, no, this isn’t Buffy,” Giles said with a groan, his face buried in his hands.

“And for the first time, it isn’t my fault! I’m so happy I could scream…but I won’t,” Willow said with a nervous smile.

“Yes, Willow, we’re all very glad you succeeded in…not failing…but that’s besides the point,” Giles said, “we have to send this girl and whomever is inhabiting Spike’s body back from whence they came.”

It was Theresa’s turn to scowl, though, she could sense that her host’s mouth pouted in a more distinct manner than she was used to.

“We have names, you know. I’m Theresa…and the man you decided to lock up in the bathtub is Ethan.”

Giles blushed slightly when all eyes turned to him.

“Well, he doesn’t know how to control Spike’s demon, and…well, I’m bloody sick of everyone around here stomping about and yelling and screaming and…and eating my Weetabix. It’s…it’s bloody awful.”

With a short salutation, Anya burst into Giles’ home, and onto the couch, sandwiching herself between Willow and Xander.

“So, why did you guys call me to come over here? And, don’t you answer, honey, I know why you want me to come over… after all, all you care about is lots of orgasms.”

Theresa’s eyes bulged out and she walked towards the bathroom.

“You people are insane. I’m getting Ethan, and we’re leaving. This is all too much.”

As Theresa walked out of the room, Anya turned to Xander, cocking her head slightly.

“What? Did I say something wrong?”

“Just…you just come on a bit too strong with the whole ‘orgasm’ thing, honey. Not everyone wants to hear that before they’re introduced.”

“That wasn’t Buffy?”

“No…doppelganger or something.”

“Ohh…she’s a prude doppelganger, then?”

“Sure.”

“I am not a doppelganger or a prude,” Theresa called from the hallway.

“But she does have Buffy’s impeccable hearing abilities,” Giles said.

The group sat in silence aside from the metallic clanks coming from the bathroom. When the clanks ceased and moaning began, Anya piped up.

“Good! She isn’t a prude! I’m proud she’s getting her orgasms in, it’s very healthy to have one on at least a daily basis. So, who is she anyway?”

Giles sighed.

“Well, from what I can understand, her name is Theresa Lopez-Fitzgerald, and his name is Ethan Crane or Window or something along those lines, and they reside in a town called Harmony, which, I can’t seem to find anywhere.”

“Of course not, silly,” Anya said, curling her legs around Xander, “if that’s really who they are, they’re from ‘Passions’.”

With all of the meticulous cleaning he was being forced to do to his glasses these days, Giles was going to need another pair in a very short period of time.

“Passions?”

“Yeah, the soap opera. It’s Spike’s favorite; he talks about it all the time. Wait, what was the last thing you remember the ‘real’ Buffy doing before she went all wiggy?”

Giles tapped the arm of his glasses to his teeth, deep in thought.

“Well, I was trying to read a book, and Buffy was studying for some exam, but we kept being interrupted because of the blaring television that Spike was watching.”

Anya smiled and sighed in relief.

“I knew this reeked of D’Hoffryn.”

“Pardon?”

“D’Hoffryn…old boss from my Vengeance Demoning days…he usually just keeps to the office to do paper work, but he does tend to grant wishes that involve television. It has to be D’Hoffryn…he’s done this before. The worst was this one time, back in the eighties, he sent this wannabe socialite into ‘Dynasty,’ and oh! You should have seen how she came back! Some of those claw marks never healed properly….”

“Anya, please,” Giles shouted. “You can find this D’Hoffryn and undo the spell, then?”

She shook her head.

“No, not really…Buffy and Spike are in another realm…they’ll have to find some way to transport themselves back here, but to get the switch to work, we’ll have to have D’Hoffryn on stand-by to make sure they get back into their proper bodies.”

Willow began to tear up at the thought of never seeing her friend again.

“So, unless they can find a witch, Buffy will never get home?”

“Yep. But I wouldn’t worry about it, Harmony’s chock full of the supernatural.”

Ethan and Theresa sheepishly came out into the living room, hair akimbo. Glancing down at her feet, Theresa cleared her throat.

“Um…Giles, isn’t it? We…uh…we need….”

“What is it,” Giles asked.

“I feel like I’m going to pass out,” Ethan said with a sigh.

“Well that’s because you didn’t take my advice and drink the mug.”

“It was full of blood!”

“Of course it was, you’re…Spike is a vampire, and you’re in his body…you’ll both get sick if you don’t drink up. Think of it as a sign of your machismo…you can pretend you’re in Cambodia,” Giles said, handing over the Kiss the Librarian mug to Ethan.

“Thanks a lot,” Ethan said as he cautiously sniffed at the blood.

Overcome by Spike’s demonic hunger, Ethan downed the blood in one fell swoop. Full of newfound energy, Ethan grabbed Theresa and attempted to pull her into a kiss. She punched his nose, surprised at how far he flew across the room.

“Sorry! But…Ethan…ew. Not kissing you with ‘bloody mouth.’ Come on, let’s get you cleaned up.”

Theresa and Ethan walked hand-in-hand back into the bathroom. When muffled moans were heard through Giles’ paper-thin walls, the remaining group stood and walked towards the front door. Giles sighed as they walked out.

“Dinner is on me tonight. I believe we all deserve it after this…travesty.”

--