Title: Roadtrip Music

Author: Jedi Buttercup

Disclaimer: The words are mine; the worlds are not. I claim nothing but the plot.

Rating: PG.

Summary: B:tVS, SG-1. Jack is treated to some of Dawn's musical repertoire. 700 words.

Notes: Spoilers for SG-1 season 7 and general Buffy. Originally posted as two separate challenge ficlets; part two in particular because maevebran has an ironic idea of roadtrip music, and I thought someone else might enjoy the joke.

Gently Down the Stream

"FOUR-teen bottles of beer on the wall, FOUR-teen bottles of beer..."

Jack pulled the phone back and pressed it to his ear. "You see? You see what I've had to put up with?"

The woman on the other end made amused sounds. "Has she been like that the whole time?"

The brunette in the passenger seat grinned smugly, still singing. "...pass it around, thirteen bottles of beer on the wall..."

Jack glared at her quellingly, but it had even less effect on her than it ever had on his team. Of course, that could be because he was skinny and eighteen now, not forty-something and military-honed... or maybe just because she was his girlfriend and knew better. "No. First it was 'The Wheels on the Bus', then 'The Hole in the Bottom of the Sea'..." He sighed theatrically.

Buffy laughed. "What, no 'Song that Never Ends'? She must really like you."

He made a disgruntled noise, and she sighed. "Willow has a lead on the guy threatening her; it'll be tomorrow, tops."

In the background, Dawn cranked up the volume. "ELEVEN bottles of BEER on the wall..."

Jack groaned. "It better be. She hates being protected for her own good."

Roadtrips are the Worst

"Our mountains," Dawn sang softly from the passenger seat of the car, staring out at the endless gold and green fields passing by, interrupted only by the occasional cow or marshy pond. "Are very pointy. Our prairies are not...."

She could practically feel Jon's eyes boring into her from the driver's seat, and couldn't quite keep the corner of her mouth from curling up in response. "The rest is kinda bumpy. But man do we have a lot...."

"For crying out loud," he groaned. "The Arrogant Worms, Dawn? Really?"

"Well, Canada is really big," she replied, turning to give him her best innocent look.

"The last time I 'kidnapped you for your own good' was years ago," he complained. "Haven't I suffered enough already?"

For all his griping, though, she could see the smile twitching at the corner of his mouth too. They'd been at this for a lot of years, after all. She made a point of finding ever more ridiculous or earworm-y songs to taunt him with, and he put up a big fuss before caving and 'making it up to her' later on. The rather rocky start to their relationship might have torqued their idea of flirting just a little; but hey, why fix something that wasn't broken?

She lifted an imperious eyebrow. "So you're saying it was some other clone spaceship pilot who was overheard telling my sister that he was going to make sure I took a vacation, whether I liked it or not?"

"Hey, you were the one that reminded me what happened last time Buffy took point on a suspected alien infestation in a resort town."

"And you were the one who suggested this might be one of those cases where we should get forgiveness rather than permission," Dawn sniffed.

"...Is there any way I'm going to win this argument?" he sighed.

"Nope," she replied, then started singing softly to herself again. "We've got a whole lot of land; we've got a whole lot of land...."

"Only a few more kilometers to Moose Jaw," he interrupted her, hurriedly. "Then on to Swift Current, and finally Banff... who named these towns, anyway? That's not a name; it's the noise Night Crawler makes when he teleports in the old X-Men movies."

"The resort town you complain about, and not the alien who's planning to land there on a holiday weekend? What was that you were saying about the ratio of consonants to vowels just the other day?"

"I don't know; my memory of that conversation sort of gets derailed about the time you start singing the supercalifragilistic song. Why don't you tell me?"

"Even though the sound of it is something quite atrocious?" she half-sang in response; far be it from her to pass up that opportunity.

"D'oh," he said, with a mock wounded expression. But his right hand crept across the seat between them; and she knit her fingers with his with a smile.

She stood by her point, though. Canada was really big.

Go to: Top | Short B:tVS Xovers | Fan Fiction Index

© 2014 Jedi Buttercup.