Living the Dream by Adrienne88

Chapter #1 - Chapter 1 and Epilogue

Living the Dream Joan Hawkins has the perfect life. A house in the suburbs, a loving husband, two perfect children, a white picket fence. Joan gets up every morning at 6 o'clock to make breakfast for her family. She has an alarm to remind her to take her pills because she forgot once and they had to replace the fridge door. Every Wednesday Joan goes grocery shopping while the kids are at school. Sometimes she sees two people: a redheaded woman and a man in an eyepatch who look at her for just a moment too long. She tried to talk to them once, but they both seemed really sad and the woman started babbling until the man pulled her away and Joan never did catch their names. Now when she catches them staring she smiles at them and keeps pushing her cart. Joan has strange dreams. In her dreams people call her Buffy and she has superpowers. Buffy has a sister and friends who look just like the strange people at the supermarket. Buffy saves the world and kills demons and falls in love with vampires. Joan told her husband about the dreams and he wanted to bring her to a doctor, but Joan likes the dreams so she stops talking about them and pretends they went away. Sometimes Joan wonders. Whenever she opens the new fridge door or takes her medicine or catches those people staring. But they're just dreams and monsters don't exist and her name is Joan not Buffy and she's an only child and she's never even been to California and when she wakes up crying it's just hormones and the hinges on the refrigerator were faulty and people who stare are just rude and she's just a normal girl with a normal life. Isn't that what she's always wanted? ************************************************************* Epilogue "Buffy!" Joan freezes. She knows that voice. Knows without turning around, without looking, exactly who it is. She also knows that if she does turn around it will change everything. It will make it all real and there's a very good chance that she's gone insane. It's really a very serious choice that requires a great deal of thought. But she's already turning around and his name comes out in a breathy little sigh and Joan doesn't think she's ever sounded like that before. "Spike." Then he's kissing her and suddenly she's Buffy. And Buffy doesn't care that she's kissing a vampire in the middle of the drug store parking lot. And she knows that she has a million things to figure out and she was supposed to buy Advil but it doesn't matter because it's Spike and he's here and now he's murmuring in her ear and he's holding her and it just feels so right. And all those things she needs to figure out? They can wait until morning.