Schmoop ficlet: Summers women
Author Brutti ma buoni
Title Peanut Butter Badness
Pairing Buffy, Vi and Dawn, plus OC Spuffy kids
Rating PG
Prompt Baking cookies, at schmoop_bingo
Word Count 560
A/N Set in the Rulesverse, late in 2013, when Buffy has come back to Slayer headquarters following a serious injury. This is not the Buffy-copes-with-it fic, but it's a start.
“No vanilla. Dull.”
“You don’t want to go with vanilla? In spice cookies?”
“Vi, listen to the voice of experience. People don’t want boring, predictable cookies. They have shops for that. People like surprises. Contrasts. Things you don’t get in the shops. Peanut butter would be perfect.”
“You don’t think that’s kind of a disgusting thing to put in gingerbread cookies?”
“Girls, girls, no fighting over the baking.” Buffy was aware of exactly how much she sounded like a mom with those words. Still struggling to find the right words to treat Dawn and Vi as a couple. (It’s great. It’s really great. I’ve met Dawn’s girlfriends before. I like Vi... Just... I have no damn clue what it is, I just sound like I’m patronising them all the time).
Buffy was a mom, of course. But her kids were sensible, and didn’t let Aunt Dawn’s weird recipe ideas worry them. Annie was cutting out non-peanut-butter gingerbread men with deep concentration. Rorie was eating cookie dough, which was probably the least damaging thing a two year old could do in this, with all the sprinkles, raisins and other tiny things laid out for decorating later.
It was nice. Really nice. She needed these moments of false normality. When no one remembered that anything had changed.
When she could sit, and just be Mom/Buffy/the Slayer again.
There was a little spat, when Annie asked for the gingerbread women shapes, so she could cut out some matching girls. Vi opined that skirt-wearing shapes were potentially sexist, or at least gender-role-stereotyping. Dawn threw flour over her and said she was making way too much of the politics of cookies, and that skirt-wearing figures could be men anyway. And Annie insisted that no, only girls wore skirts.
Which was how cookie baking led into a discussion of transvestism and pantomime. Which was educational, at least, though Buffy wasn’t sure Annie really got the argument. (Rorie started eating the chocolate sprinkles during this part.)
Decorating was fun. Icing all over, lots of sparkles on the first batch of gingerbread non-skirted-but-non-gender-specific figures. And a few iced in black, with white faces and bloody mouths. “Daddy gingerbreads!” crowed Annie.
Then the second set came out of the oven.
“Look, Annie, here are the mommy gingerbreads.” Dawn was smiling as she brought the cooling cookies to the increasingly messy prep area.
Whereupon Annie snapped off the right leg of the figure nearest her. And continued until all the figures were one-legged.
“Now they’re like my Mommy,” she said.
It passed. The great big gaping pang of being Different, of being reminded. Dawn agreed that the cookies looked much more like Mommy now, and started Annie on a lengthy exercise of decorating the figures to look like some of Buffy’s more thrilling outfits. Complete with stakes, now and again.
Vi nibbled on one of the pile of discarded legs. Then apologised. Then laughed, because eating someone’s baked dough amputation was probably not worth apologising for. She was very, very carefully not comforting Buffy. Who was, of course, not in need of comfort. Because she was fine, one-leg or two.
What the hell. Buffy reached out for an amputated leg of her own. They were pretty good. Tasty vanilla undertones. Absolutely no peanut butter.
“We should never let Dawn be on cookie duty alone.”
“Never,” Vi agreed. Adults and equals on this issue.
*
Title Peanut Butter Badness
Pairing Buffy, Vi and Dawn, plus OC Spuffy kids
Rating PG
Prompt Baking cookies, at schmoop_bingo
Word Count 560
A/N Set in the Rulesverse, late in 2013, when Buffy has come back to Slayer headquarters following a serious injury. This is not the Buffy-copes-with-it fic, but it's a start.
“No vanilla. Dull.”
“You don’t want to go with vanilla? In spice cookies?”
“Vi, listen to the voice of experience. People don’t want boring, predictable cookies. They have shops for that. People like surprises. Contrasts. Things you don’t get in the shops. Peanut butter would be perfect.”
“You don’t think that’s kind of a disgusting thing to put in gingerbread cookies?”
“Girls, girls, no fighting over the baking.” Buffy was aware of exactly how much she sounded like a mom with those words. Still struggling to find the right words to treat Dawn and Vi as a couple. (It’s great. It’s really great. I’ve met Dawn’s girlfriends before. I like Vi... Just... I have no damn clue what it is, I just sound like I’m patronising them all the time).
Buffy was a mom, of course. But her kids were sensible, and didn’t let Aunt Dawn’s weird recipe ideas worry them. Annie was cutting out non-peanut-butter gingerbread men with deep concentration. Rorie was eating cookie dough, which was probably the least damaging thing a two year old could do in this, with all the sprinkles, raisins and other tiny things laid out for decorating later.
It was nice. Really nice. She needed these moments of false normality. When no one remembered that anything had changed.
When she could sit, and just be Mom/Buffy/the Slayer again.
There was a little spat, when Annie asked for the gingerbread women shapes, so she could cut out some matching girls. Vi opined that skirt-wearing shapes were potentially sexist, or at least gender-role-stereotyping. Dawn threw flour over her and said she was making way too much of the politics of cookies, and that skirt-wearing figures could be men anyway. And Annie insisted that no, only girls wore skirts.
Which was how cookie baking led into a discussion of transvestism and pantomime. Which was educational, at least, though Buffy wasn’t sure Annie really got the argument. (Rorie started eating the chocolate sprinkles during this part.)
Decorating was fun. Icing all over, lots of sparkles on the first batch of gingerbread non-skirted-but-non-gender-specific figures. And a few iced in black, with white faces and bloody mouths. “Daddy gingerbreads!” crowed Annie.
Then the second set came out of the oven.
“Look, Annie, here are the mommy gingerbreads.” Dawn was smiling as she brought the cooling cookies to the increasingly messy prep area.
Whereupon Annie snapped off the right leg of the figure nearest her. And continued until all the figures were one-legged.
“Now they’re like my Mommy,” she said.
It passed. The great big gaping pang of being Different, of being reminded. Dawn agreed that the cookies looked much more like Mommy now, and started Annie on a lengthy exercise of decorating the figures to look like some of Buffy’s more thrilling outfits. Complete with stakes, now and again.
Vi nibbled on one of the pile of discarded legs. Then apologised. Then laughed, because eating someone’s baked dough amputation was probably not worth apologising for. She was very, very carefully not comforting Buffy. Who was, of course, not in need of comfort. Because she was fine, one-leg or two.
What the hell. Buffy reached out for an amputated leg of her own. They were pretty good. Tasty vanilla undertones. Absolutely no peanut butter.
“We should never let Dawn be on cookie duty alone.”
“Never,” Vi agreed. Adults and equals on this issue.
*