I’ve been nominated at the Sunnydale Memorial Fanfiction Awards Round 15, for Best New Author, Best Angst, Best AU, Best Drama, Best Unfinished. Thank you to whoever nominated me!

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Chapter 52 - Reflections

Buffy took a shower after lunch. She was sitting on her bed in her underwear and putting on some lotion when her phone rang.

“Hello?”

“Buffy! It’s been forever!”

She placed the voice immediately. “Cordelia?”

“Duh! Who else?”

“What’s all that noise?”

“Turbulence. I’m coming back from Switzerland. We wanted to stay through New Year’s, but the lodge wasn’t available.”

Buffy suddenly remembered that Cordelia got bored to death on plane and always used her hours to catch up on phone time.

“So what’s new with you? How’s life in the burbs?”

“I’m adjusting. We got the house all settled in. I got registered at the college. Though the town is small enough I don’t need my car half the time.”

“God, I couldn’t live that far away from shoe stores.”

“I think I’ll survive. So how was your trip?”

“I met this fabulous ski instructor! I know, so cliché, but you should have seen him. Tall, blond, killer thighs. I took lessons all day long!”

“Are you still with Justin?”

“Please, he was so last month. I’m seeing David now—you know David, Mr. Wilson the banker’s son? And ohmygod, Harmony made a complete idiot out of herself at the last party we had. She was all over this guy, introducing herself and flirting. He kept looking at her funny, and finally he said something. Turns out that she slept with him last year, and she didn’t even remember!”

Buffy listened as Cordelia caught her up with local gossip, and she chatted about her own life in Sunnydale, steering around the Slayer bits.

She wasn’t really surprised at not hearing from Cordelia before this. Or that she hadn’t picked up the phone to call her. She and Cordy had been more ‘let’s go do things’ friends, rather than ‘let’s talk about things’ friends. Even before this, they would fall out of touch during school vacations, particularly if one of them were out of town.

But there was also something supremely relaxing about talking to Cordelia again. It was like getting a piece of her old life back. She could just gossip and unwind, and not have to think about anything stressful.

“So the lodge was booked, but Mom and I decided that that was all right, because if we went ahead and left, we could make it to New York before the ball in Times Square drops.”

“Well, thank you for outshining my evening.” Buffy laughed. “We’re having a little New Year’s thing at the local club. So not glamorous.”

“At least you’ll be warm. I had to buy a whole new wardrobe, you know.”

“Yeah? Well, I’ll have to buy one soon. I’m getting skinnier,” she bragged.

“That is so not fair! Speaking of not fair, is your love life any better than mine? Any hotties in Sunnydale?”

Buffy paused. Then she decided to go with it. Cordelia didn’t know the half of it, but she had already met him. “Actually, I saw Spike again.”

“The drool-worthy bodyguard? I officially hate you right now.”

“What about your ski instructor?”

“Well, I didn’t get to ‘see’ anything, if you know what I mean. Have you?” she asked slyly.

Buffy didn’t immediately answer.

“Oh, that’s a yes! I knew it! I bet he’s got a real nice—”

“Okay, we are so not going there.”

“But you have gone there. Please tell me he’s good in bed, or I’ll be severely disappointed.”

“Well, I wasn’t disappointed.” Then Buffy quickly added, “Not that I’ve got like tons to base it on, but it would be pretty hard to beat. And that’s all you’re getting out of me.”

“So where is he living?”

“Here. He’s got an apartment.”

“He moved when you did? Oh, he’s got it bad. Reel him in whenever you want.”

“Though he has no decorating sense.”

“Do they ever?” Cordelia asked. “So, what about all the complicated?”

“Well, it sort of is. But…I’ll figure it out somehow.”

“You never told me what that was all about, you know. He’s not a drug dealer, is he?”

“No! Nothing like that!” Something much worse than that. “Anyway, it’s weird right now because his ex-girlfriend is in town and she keeps showing up.”

“God, I hate ex-girlfriends. And they’re always crazy.”

“Totally.”

“Ugh. We’re getting ready to land. You so should have told me this at the beginning. Anyway, we’ll have to get moving, so talk to you later.”

After exchanging a few more words, they both hung up.

Buffy flopped back on her bed, dropping the phone to the floor. Pleasant and distracting as that had been, she couldn’t put off thinking about things anymore.

She could play like she had a normal life with Cordelia, but not with herself.

Oh, she knew that there was no definition of ‘normal.’ Daytime talk shows assured her that normal didn’t exist. However, she was also fairly certain that most people’s concept of normal, whatever it was, in no way resembled her life.

Things were complicated. Things being Spike. There was no way for things with Spike to be uncomplicated.

Buffy had thought, at first, that she would be able to keep things separate. That whatever she and Spike had in L.A. would stay in L.A.

She’d clearly been an idiot.

Spike had said that she was stuck in him; there was no reason to assume she would become ‘unstuck’ simply because of a change in location. And while she’d been somewhat banking on his obsessive concern for her safety, she made the agreement because there was no one better, no one else who could possibly do what she needed.

Buffy knew that Spike felt something for her, but she hadn’t intended to manipulate him emotionally. She’d been upfront and blunt from the beginning that there was nothing personal involved in this. Yes, she offered up something she knew that as a vampire he couldn’t help but want, but she hadn’t played on any connection between them. She’d actually asked for clarification on his feelings toward her before she proposed her deal.

But she’d known, deep down, that it wouldn’t be as straightforward as just business. What Buffy hadn’t known, however, was what she herself would start to feel again. A door was slowly opening, a door that had been brutally slammed shut the night she saw him kill the girl in the alley.

Whatever she’d been feeling for him was ripped out from underneath her in an instant. Nothing else mattered but that.

She almost welcomed being called. Strange and unwanted though it was, it was something to do, something else to focus on so that she didn’t have to keep replaying that picture in her head. What she told Wesley afterward was true enough. She didn’t want to fight Spike; she was indebted to him. She was attached to him and confused by him; she was horrified and heartbroken. And she didn’t want to see him again, for any reason.

Spike hadn’t given her that option, however, what with his showing up everywhere all the time. She became used to his presence with a sort of accepting annoyance. He was just there, snarky and stalky. Buffy tolerated him, even talked to him, but she couldn’t feel anything when she looked at him. And she hadn’t wanted to.

Then she’d gotten the rude wakeup call the night she had almost died. The night Spike had gone ballistic on the vampire who had her down. The night he’d attacked her the same way until she was able to fend him off.

And a brilliantly insane plan had formed in her head.

And so here they were.

Close once again.

Buffy rolled over on the bed, folding her hands under her chin. Things happened so gradually that she hadn’t even realized it. It was so easy to fall back to something else, something they’d had before everything. And she was, she was falling.

It wasn’t that she thought things were what they weren’t. Since Spike had agreed not to kill, she had perhaps pushed it out of her head slightly, but she hadn’t forgotten. She had never allowed herself to forget.

And that was the problem.

She knew exactly what Spike was and she was falling for him anyway.

He was more than just a vampire. He was…well, Spike. Spike who she had known before she knew anything else about him.

Things had been so much simpler then. When he was just keeping her safe. When by necessity they were spending most of the day together—driving to class, watching TV, eating in her kitchen. How easy it had been when they’d danced, or gone for a ride on his bike. Though as Buffy herself had pointed out the night before, things were eerily the same. He was still keeping her safe. And come to think of it, they had danced and gone for a bike ride just last week.

It felt so natural to be with him, whatever they were doing. It felt right. Real.

She wasn’t the only one who thought so. The things that Spike had said to her last night—

To begin with, the way he had described their one night together.

Spike had wanted nothing more than to be with her, to hold her and treasure her. He felt something for her that he hadn’t felt for anyone. It wasn’t something she’d fully understood at the time, how unusual she was for him. She hadn’t known that what they had was uncharted territory for Spike—something he didn’t think he could have with her. Something he’d been afraid he would break.

Though she remembered how determined he had been not to hurt her, not to bite her that night. He’d wanted to keep her safe from everything, himself included. As they lay together afterwards, she never felt more cherished. Until she was wrapped in his arms last night, listening to him talk about it. Talk about her, in a voice that was just a whisper.

Buffy had been stunned, earlier, when Spike had said that he would choose her over Drusilla. Especially since in the beginning, he told her that he might try to stop her if she was about to stake Dru. Even though he had been drunk and might not have said it otherwise, she’d known in that instant that things had irrevocably changed.

And the way Spike talked about her now—

He wanted her. Not sex, not just her body, but her.

Though she hadn’t exactly expected how he’d described drinking her blood.

Buffy shifted her position, putting a hand to her neck. She absently rubbed it. As things progressed between them, she’d become aware that there was more to the moment than him wanting Slayer blood (which he no doubt did), more to it even than him getting up close and personal with her. But in a strange way, she hadn’t minded. It was something, something she had with him that was slightly unexplainable.

However, she hadn’t realized the depth of it on his end until last night.

—your blood is you—

He desired her blood because it was part of her. She remembered that Spike had wanted to taste her just as desperately after they’d been together, before she was ever the Slayer. It was a different kind of intimate connection. To a vampire, her blood was another part of her to know. The blood she gave him now hadn’t become a substitute for something he couldn’t have; it was something he wanted anyway because he wanted her.

If she didn’t want him as well, that perhaps would have had her offering up her arm instead. The way they did it, she gave everything to him.

—you’re mine and nothing else—

She realized now that when she offered her blood, she offered every piece of herself. And he became lost in it.

—when I taste you, the world stops—

And so did she.

Funny how she could almost believe that everything was going to be okay, that it would all somehow turn out fine, even when he had his fangs in her throat. There couldn’t have been a more vampire-like thing to be doing, and yet she felt perfectly comfortable with it. Comfortable with him, even while intimately knowing what he was.

She had never pretended that he wasn’t what he was. Instead, she had wished. Wished that things could go on so easily between them.

No matter how Buffy had tried to keep her guard up in the beginning, there was something so disarming about Spike. The way they were bantering and laughing, even as they argued about Angelus and Drusilla on that first day that Spike had come to Sunnydale. After almost a month of not seeing him, her anger and her hurt had cooled, and she had been prepared to deal with him in the light of their agreement.

Except that the more time she spent with him, the more she started to remember what she had liked about him in the first place.

But she never forgot. Even as he was saying things that made her want to curl up in his arms forever, she couldn’t forget. Blood was life, and vampires needed blood to survive.

But there was more to it than blood. She had realized that even more fully after her offer of more blood this morning, when Spike had snapped that she wasn’t food to him. He didn’t just want blood; he wanted to kill. Some part of him needed that, and while he could put it on hold, he didn’t want to do it forever, didn’t even think that he could.

Buffy had hoped so desperately last night when she asked if either one of them—he—would change, hoped and wished that he would say what she wanted to hear.

He hadn’t.

And she was not going to cry again just thinking about it. Buffy hopped up from the bed and went to her closet in search of something to wear. But she found herself staring blankly at the clothes as her thoughts drifted right back to where they’d been. Spike.

Of course he still wanted to do vampire things. He was a vampire. Some ridiculous part of her asked her why she thought he wouldn’t, why she thought he would stop just because she asked him to.

She wished she could be enough for him. Some dark part of her mind wished that his devotion could be enough for her.

But Buffy knew it couldn’t. As much as she would want to stay, as much as she would want to be with him, she couldn’t. If he started killing, it wouldn’t matter. Not that she was particularly trying to take some high moral stand for the sake of being good. It was simply that she’d feel sick watching TV with him after he’d been out doing some casual murder. Simply that she might retch as he kissed her if she had to wonder whose life had ended on his lips that night.

Unless something changed drastically, she was going to leave him after all was said and done. Killing him wasn’t a possibility (if she even could kill him, which was an entirely different story); sending him away was the best that she could do. She would leave him and he would leave.

Buffy swallowed as she realized the path she’d just laid out for herself. She was going to get her heart broken. She felt it even now, what it would do to her.

If she were sensible, she would distance herself now, cut herself off from him as much as possible to make it easier in the future. But she knew she wasn’t going to.

It was all going to come crashing down eventually. There was no reason she couldn’t enjoy the now. No reason to deny herself what she would wish she could recapture later. She didn’t want to regret the time they had together. She wanted to be with him, be near him, whether it was completely a good idea or not.

And it probably wasn’t.

Buffy didn’t see a happy ending, but right now she didn’t care.

She wasn’t going to pretend, but she decided that she also wasn’t going to dwell on the inevitable.