E-MAIL: palaskar@ix.netcom.com
SUMMARY: Somewhere else, Willow Rosenberg has a brother. This is a peek into their lives. No, it's not what it looks like.
DIST/ARCHIVE: Ask first
DISCLAIMER: Buffy, and co. don't belong to me, they belong to Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: This one's for Melissa, who took pity on me.
"Buffy, is it very wrong to want to kiss your brother?" Willow asked.
Buffy did a spit-take that would have done Danny Kaye proud. Onstage, the Dingoes played unperturbed.
"Well...yeah! As in, illegal and immoral, and all those things."
"So, hypothetically speaking, if some girl had kissed her brother, and couldn't stop thinking about it..."
"Whoa, whoa! Why are you saying this? Why are you asking this? I mean, you can't...have..." Buffy let her words trail off as she grasped Willow's situation.
Willow cowered. "I didn't!"
"You did!"
"Well okay, I did, but it was purely innocent! I mean, we were helping each other get dressed for Homecoming, and we sorta started to stare at each other, and...what am I saying?! This is wrong! I -so- do not want Zeke."
"Which is good. Which is right. Which is...Willow, are you even looking at me?"
Willow was staring at Zeke on the dance floor, watching him flail about as Cordelia let him indulge his geekiness in a rare moment of sympathy as they danced.
Suddenly, their eyes met, and Zeke stopped dancing. Cordelia spoke to him.
"Zeke! Hellllooo, Earth to Zeke! What's with you? You've been like this ever since I lost Homecoming queen. And it's awful sweet of you to get all mopey over me, but I just gotta say, I've gotten over it."
"Well, maybe I haven't! Maybe I've been scarred for life! Maybe Homecoming was this big, life-changing event for me, and now that it's happened, everything's all different!"
She laid a consoling hand on his shoulder. "Gee Zeke, I never knew that you cared about me so much." She looked at him with genuine concern.
A slow dance came on. Cordelia drew him close. "C'mon, everything'll be fine," she said, laying her head on his shoulder.
Back at the table, Willow watched them and angsted. "Oh god. I'm doomed. The therapy alone for this is going to bankrupt me."
"Will, it's not that bad," Buffy said.
"Think so?"
"No, not really, but I'm your best friend, I gotta say stuff like this." Buffy tried to cheer her up with a smile. "I mean, at least the feeling isn't mutual, right?"
Willow looked at her quizzically.
"It isn't mutual, is it? Please tell me it isn't mutual."
"I don't know," said Willow. "We've never talked about it."
Zeke and Cordy finally started to come over.
"Maybe you should," said Buffy.
*****
Later that night at the Rosenberg home...
Zeke heard a knock on his bedroom door. Who the heck could that be? he wondered as he staggered out of bed and walked toward the door on auto-pilot. I mean the only person who would want to knock before entering my room... His hand reached for the door of its own accord. Oh God.
He opened the door, and there was Willow, standing in her pj's.
She immediately looked away when she noticed that he didn't have his shirt on. He did the same, for although pajamas were hardly the pinnacle of sex appeal, he was afraid that if he started to stare, he wouldn't be able to stop.
"We need to talk," she said.
"What about?" he asked, feigning ignorance. That always worked before.
"You know exactly what about," she said. "The hall. Now."
"But Mom and Dad might see us!" he protested.
"Do you want me in your bedroom?" she asked pointedly.
"Halls are good. I like halls. They make great mints," he blathered. "So, uh, where to begin."
He realized she was looking patiently at him, waiting for Big Brother to provide the answers to this problem like he always did.
"It was a fluke," he began. "And there are very strict rules against fluking!"
She nodded. "But it's not like we're actually attracted to one another."
"It's not?" he asked blankly. "It's not!" he added a little too late.
"Oh god," she said. "You don't actually find me..." She searched for a neutral phrase, "...appealing, do you?"
"Well actually..." he demurred.
She sighed. "Zeke! This can not go on. We have to tell somebody."
"Oh, like Mom?" he said sarcastically. "I'd just love to hear her Neo-Freudian analysis of this...'What you are experiencing is perfectly natural. The libidinal urges of the adolescent male...' Gyah! I just thought of something worse, what about Dad? He'll kill me!"
"You? What about me?! His one and only daughter, lusting after her own brother! The scandal'll get him fired from rabbinical position, then we'll fall on hard times, and Mom and Dad'll get divorced, and we'll be separated in the settlement, only to get together when we turn 18 and start a family, who because of us being twins, have children with three heads and multiple personality disorder!"
Zeke hadn't said a thing. In fact, he hadn't moved.
"Don't just stand there, say something!" she raged.
"Willow, honey?" came a voice from behind her. "What are you talking about?"
Willow turned around.
"Hi Mom," she squeaked.
Ira Rosenberg emerged from their parent's bedroom. "What's all the ruckus about?" he asked.
"Hi Dad," said Zeke. "See, Will and I were having a little discussion..."
"I heard your 'little discussion,'" said Sheila Rosenberg. "Ira, I think it's time we told them."
Oh no, thought Zeke. Here it comes.
Oh no, thought Willow. Here it comes.
"Ira, get Zeke's papers," said Sheila.
Oh great, they're disowning me, thought Zeke.
"Why don't you both come down? It's late, you look like you could both use a cup of hot tea."
After they had all settled down a bit, and drunk some tea, Ira arrived back with the 'papers.'
"Zeke," his Dad said, "your mother and I have something we have to tell you."
A funny notion danced around in the back of Zeke's head, but before he could bring it to the fore, his Mom spoke.
"Zeke," she said, "you're adopted."
Stunned relief spread over Zeke's and Willow's faces. Then --
"Yes! No three-headed children for us!" said Zeke, jumping to his feet. Then he noticed Mom and Dad looking at him. "Uh, what I meant was --"
"Nevermind Zeke, it's a perfectly natural reaction," said Sheila.
"Maybe we should start from the beginning," said Ira. "You see, I'd always wanted a son, but we found out that your Mom couldn't have children after she had your sister."
"So we approached some various adoption agencies...but the paperwork was awful, so when this couple approached and offered to sell --"
"Whoa," interrupted Willow. "Sell?"
"Yes, sell. It would have been us or some Armenian couple that got AleXander--your brother--here. We figured it was the best thing for all involved."
"So my real parents--my birth parents--didn't even care enough to...?" The words disappeared into the quiet oblivion of not-caring.
"Zeke," he said. "That's not my name, is it? What's my name, the one that I was born with?"
Wordlessly, Ira handed him the birth certificate.
"AleXander LaVelle Harris," Zeke read. "You mean I could have had a normal name, and not have lived a Zeke all my life?" He thought of his life on the Hellmouth. "I could have had a normal name, and a normal family, and a normal life." He sat down on the couch, dejected. He regarded the birth certificate. "Alex, you lucky dog, you."
Willow looked at him sympathetically. "Knowing you Zeke, you would have ended up with some wierd name anyway. Like Scooter. Or Stretch. Or Xander."
"Xander?" Zeke asked. "Where'd you come up with that?"
"It's the opposite of Alex," Willow explained. "Alex. Xander. See?"
"So that's me, the opposite of Alex. The opposite of normal," he said. "Explains a lot. Normal guys don't want their own sister."
"I'm not really your sister," Willow pointed out.
"Oh yeah, so we'll just start dating," Zeke said. He noticed the look on his Dad's face. "I'm kidding, Dad!"
"So what am I supposed to do with this?" Zeke asked.
"It's knowledge," said Ira. "It's a tool, a thing. What do you want to do with it?"
"Right now, I just want to chuck it in the fireplace and let it burn," Zeke said.
"Be a shame," said Ira.
"Look," said Willow. "Could Zeke and I talk? Alone?" Ira and Sheila exchanged glances. "They'll be no kissing or other non-siblinglike acts."
Zeke and Willow watched their parents leave the living room, and head upstairs.
"So," Zeke said. "You and me." He looked sadly in her eyes. "You think if I had been Xander, we would have gotten together?"
"I dunno," she said. "I doesn't really matter. We can't change the past," she reminded him. "But we can make the future," she added. "I, I just have so many feelings for you it's wonderful knowing some of them aren't wrong. Not officially."
"Yeah," he said. "Me too." He sighed. "I just--I just wish I had known sooner, y'know. We've spent our whole lives dancing around each other."
"Who says we wouldn't have?"
"Oh right, like I could be that stupid."
She smiled at him knowingly.
He got up, looking thoughtful.
"Zeke?" she asked. "Where are you going?"
"Be right back," he said, disappearing into the kitchen. He returned with two wineglasses and the leftover champagne from New Year's.
"Zeke, what's that for?" She had an absurd image of him seducing her.
"A toast," he said, pouring out the last dregs of the old year's wine. "To us. To our future together."
He put the empty bottle down. They knocked their glasses together, ringing them like bells, then drank the wine in a single pull.
"So Ms. Rosenberg," he said. "I don't know about you, but I feel like going to bed."
"Zeke!" she exclaimed.
"It's been a long night, I'm tired, and we have our whole lifetimes ahead of us," he explained. "C'mon, Will."
