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xocasper · 2 years

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Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy)

Pairing: Mikey Way x Reader Summary: Kinktober Day Fourteen - Costumes Warnings: NSFW content Tags: oral sex, fingering, riding, dirty talk, light choking kink Word Count: 4894 A/N: cowboy mikey switch mikey mikey mikey mikey mikey

When Gerard initially handed Mikey a cowboy hat, his brows furrowed in confusion. When he got the explanation, his nose had wrinkled as well.

“It was the only thing left in your size,” Gerard sighed, shrugging while Mikey flipped the costume around in his hands.

He scoffed, “Yeah, I can see why.”

“Hey! It’s not my fault you waited until Halloween to get a costume. Maybe if you had planned ahead like most people…”

Mikey cut him off before the lecture could begin. “God, you sound like Mom right now. Thank you for the costume, G. I might as well wear a chastity belt to the party.”

Gerard’s face contorted, “Wow, thanks for sharing. Anyway, I thought that if you had to look dumb for the night, we could look dumb together.”

He wasn’t sure if Mikey would love or hate the idea, but he had snagged the same costume just in case. As he pulled out the exact ensemble, he could see Mikey’s sour expression then into giggles and bewilderment.

“God, that’s somehow worse! We haven’t matched since elementary school,” he cackled, a wide grin on his face. “It’s perfect, thank you. Really.”

Gerard shook his head, feeling the tension shatter as laughter floated through the room. “Yeehaw, motherfucker.”

And now, the two of them had finished setting up for Frank’s annual Halloween party. It had fallen on a Saturday this year, which meant that it overlapped with his birthday festivities. Obviously, this meant the bigger the better, and Frank had probably bought all of the alcohol in North Jersey.

“Jesus, Frank. You’re cleaning up the vomit tomorrow,” Mikey sighed, eyeing the plethora of spirits before him.

Frank flipped him the bird, “Nah, I’ll just get Gerard to do it. I’m sure he’d love to clean up puke.”

“That is not true,” he said indignantly, glaring at the boy from the couch.

Disgust crossed Mikey’s face as he shook his head, effectively ending the conversation. “Whatever. When are people supposed to be getting here?”

Frank rolled his eyes while Mikey peered out the window, spotting the starry sky. October had darkened real quick, the month already chipping away into November. “Soon. You should probably get ready. You too, Gerard.”

Gerard burst into a fit of giggles while Mikey groaned, trudging to his bedroom while his brother trailed behind. Sitting on his bed was the wretched costume bag, containing the stupidly edgy cowboy costumes. What fucking cowboy wears all black anyway?

He couldn’t say he wasn’t grateful for the monochrome, preferring to wear all black than an autumnal checkerboard. Hastily, he tossed Gerard his costume, who laughed again and booked it to the bathroom. Through the paper-thin walls, he could hear Frank laughing, and he flushed with embarrassment as he pulled on the costume.

At least it fits, he decided, turning around in the reflection of the bathroom mirror. He had narrowly missed Frank, slamming the door shut while his friend begged to see his kitschy costume. It didn’t do much for him, but then again, he managed to pick up hot moms as a geeky teenager. He may have remained a total nerd, but he had certainly grown into his features, cowboy costume for not. Bracing for impact, he swung the door open, locking eyes with his matching brother.

“Oh my god, you match!” Frank snorted, pointing between the two of them and running off to grab his camera. “We need family photos!”

Mikey’s eyes widened, “No we do not!”

“Aw, c’mon Mikes,” Gerard said, jostling him. “Just one?”

He frowned, “I look stupid.”

Suddenly, Gerard was hit with a wave of nostalgia, doubling over at the fond memory. Through scattered giggles, he managed to communicate to a thoroughly confused Mikey. “Fuck, do you— do you remember when Mom dressed us up as Winnie the Pooh? And you were… shit, which one were you?”

Mikey cracked a grin, one that soon turned into laughter as well. “Dude, I was Piglet.”

It was a sweet scene, quickly captured by Frank with a soft click, and Mikey couldn’t be bothered to care. Gerard wiped his eyes, “God, it feels just like that. I hated that costume.”

Frank piped up, “Do a spin for me, Mikey!”

This time, he complied, turning around in his goofy costume, and letting his friend snap one more photo before the doorbell rang. It was Ray, and then a few minutes later, Gerard’s coworker. In an hour, they had already gotten a solid turnout, guests pouring through the door and filling the living room. Mikey knew they would get a complaint from the neighbors, but Frank was already rushing to put on his “good mix.”

Rather than worrying, he decided that Frank could at least have tonight. If they got their asses kicked tomorrow, that was one thing, but he was here to have fun. Swiping a cup of cheap beer, he resorted to a corner in the living room, observing the crowd from his station. He didn’t know most of them, but a few people looked familiar. Primarily friends of the band and people Frank would bring over, but there were plenty of new faces. It was both an opportunity and a source of anxiety; while he didn’t really want to meet a million new people, someone could be worth it. That person just so happened to bump into him, and you turned around swiftly with an apology on your tongue.

“Shit, sorry,” you said reflexively, and Mikey almost wondered how often you tripped into people.

You hardly got to look at him before the words came tumbling out, so you took the liberty of checking him out while he murmured some consolation. A playful smile stretched across your face as you scanned his costume, but he took it in stride.

“Aw, I didn’t expect to meet the sheriff tonight,” you teased, mirroring his posture as you leaned against the wall. “I would’ve dressed better for the occasion.”

He shot you a smile, letting his eyes trace over your figure as he spoke. “That would be my brother, but I’ll give you an A for effort.”

“How generous of you.”

He was cute, pulling off the goofy hat and vest impressively well. Even in the dark, you could make out his features–pretty hazel eyes that contrasted irresistibly with his bone structure, strong and defined against plush skin. Mikey himself seemed to be a contradiction, standing shy in the corner, and yet he was quipping right back with confidence.

“I try,” he replied, eyeing you up once more. “What are you supposed to be anyway?”

It was a genuine question, but he didn’t get an answer in the same fashion. “I can be whatever you want, cowboy.”

“Is that so?” he asked, nearly thrown off guard by your flirtiness.

He took a small swig from his solo cup before setting it down on a side table, still watching you with keen interest; not to mention mild shock, floored that he could, in fact, get laid in a cowboy costume. Your jokes were lighthearted, flirty and teasing, and Mikey definitely didn’t mind as the gap between you began to shrink. You nodded and he leaned a little closer, a faint smile flashing across his face.

“Then I guess you’re mine tonight.”

His lips nearly met yours as you spoke, the gap having diminished to little more than an inch. “And what should I call you, cowboy?”

“My name’s Mikey, but you can always call me yours,” he said cheekily, the over-used pickup line sounding brand new coming from him.

You could’ve called him corny, smiling softly and preparing to quip back, but you resorted to murmuring your name. He hardly caught it, but his voice was like honey as he whispered it back, etching itself into your mind as his lips met yours.

The kiss was natural and easy, warmth and spark flowing between the two of you as his lips slotted against yours. He pulled you closer as his hand landed on your lower back, letting your fingers curl around his vest. Gradually, they slid up his chest, your palm smoothing over his cliché badge before meeting the nape of his neck.

Mikey pulled himself from the wall, breaking away from you simultaneously. With a delicate touch, you ran your fingertips across his jawline, tracing over his skin. Leisurely, you tilted his head up, and Mikey was more than compliant as you exposed the length of his neck. He swallowed hard as you pressed your lips to his throat, Adam's apple bobbing as you left a trail of open-mouthed kisses across his skin. His breath stalled as you reached the shell of his ear, leaving a faint hickey just below it.

“Your brother won’t mind if I steal you for the night, right?” you whispered, your breath making him shiver.

He couldn’t resist cracking another joke, deadpan as usual. “I mean, he might arrest you for kidnapping. Sheriff’s duties, and all.”

You beamed, planting a kiss on the top of his jaw. “Then I’m guilty as charged.”

“Fuck,” was all he could manage, breathy and low as you tilted his head forward again.

Smooth and eager, you leaned in, pressing your lips to his. This time it was different, lacking its prior hesitance, now replaced with fervor. His grip on your hips was still secure, and his thumbs toyed with your shirt as you kissed him. Your tongue parted his lips with a tentative swipe, gliding against his with sweet passion. A light moan poured from them like a hymn, soft and pretty, pink tinging his cheeks at your acknowledgment.

“C’mon, cowboy, let’s go somewhere more private,” you purred into his ear, already missing his kisses.

A victorious smile formed on his lips, and he eagerly interlocked your fingers. Weaving through clusters of tipsy guests, he led you to a bedroom door. You were expecting him to take you out of the house, like back to his car or apartment–maybe you weren’t clear enough.

“You sure there isn’t a law against having sex in a stranger’s bed?” you asked playfully, though skepticism was a clear undertone.

He breathed a short laugh and shut the door, sliding your back against it. “Maybe, but that’s not a stranger’s bed.”

“Is it your bed?” you asked, slowly putting it together.

You knew Frank had a roommate named Mikey; how could you not? He talked about Mikey endlessly, and you heard countless stories about him back when you worked together. So after making out with him, you definitely should’ve figured it out. Here you stood anyway, solving things at an arguably inopportune time. Mikey could see the cogs turning and shook his head slightly, amused by the whole situation. “Nope; it’s Frank’s.”

You must’ve looked horrified, as he gave a sudden laugh and let his forehead fall against yours. “I’m joking, hun, it’s mine.”

“You know, Frank used to talk about you constantly,” you said as you gave him a relieved smile.

He nodded, “Yeah? He used to talk about you a lot too.”

“All good, I hope.”

Mikey just smiled back, tight-lipped and coy, pressing kisses to your neck. “He said you were hot, but this,” he said, letting his hands outline your figure. “Is so much better.”

“Did he really?” you teased, leaning your head back to give him room.

You could feel him smile as he nipped at your skin, the warmth of his tongue sealing each mark. “Mhm,” he hummed, mimicking you as he whispered in your ear. “But I bet you look even better with your clothes off.”

“C’mon then, cowboy,” you said, swiping his hat and lightly tugging him back to your lips. “Or I’ll have to turn myself into the sheriff.”

He shook his head with genuine amusement, “Aw, baby, he could never fuck you like I could.”

“Yeah? Prove it.”

Mikey wanted nothing more, taking back his cheesy hat as his palm pinned your wrists against the door. One of his hands slipped away, holding your waist firmly as he leaned in again, his lips meeting yours with fervorous confidence.

Quick and messy became the theme of his kisses, easily fulfilling your challenge with his lips alone. He was fucking skilled, and you knew he got around based on Frank’s word. It showed as he let your arms fall, your hands splaying themselves across his shoulders while his tongue dipped past your lips. You had led the kisses earlier, but now he was in control, swirling his tongue against yours. Pride filled him to the brim, and he somehow became more confident in his maneuvers, letting his knee press between your legs experimentally.

The slightest hitch in your breath drove him wild, and he pulled away gently. “That good, baby?”

You rolled your eyes playfully, ignoring the question and planting your hands on his cheeks to pull him back in. His cockiness was a major turn-on, embarrassing as it was. Flirty remarks poured from him effortlessly, and each word made you heat up. Light touches were even worse, and he nearly sent you over the edge when his fingers began tracing your waistband. Before they could slide beneath the fabric though, you had hooked your fingers around his belt loops, suddenly turning to press him against the door.

“What’s up?” he mumbled, enthused as he settled back against the wood.

You grinned mischievously, “I wanna suck you off.”

Mikey swore to god that was the best answer he could’ve gotten, gladly getting comfortable and moaning a soft curse. Frank seriously should’ve brought you around sooner.

You looked happier than anyone he’d ever seen, pressing a quick kiss to his neck before sinking to your knees. Shit, you looked excited to suck his dick, so pretty and pleased as you reached for the button of his jeans. For a moment, you glanced up, scanning him for apprehension.

“Go on, pretty,” he encouraged, his hips jumping softly. “I wanna fuck you sooner or later.”

Mikey could spin the most basic lines into something magical, confident and impure, causing sweet anticipation to form in your stomach. As much as you wanted him to take you right then and there, he was already reacting so candidly to your offer, convincing you to stay. Besides, he only got better with time, lifting your chin up delicately while you unzipped his pants.

There was something about you that was different–you were confident and enthusiastic, keeping pace with Mikey perfectly. He wasn’t used to this sort of equality, and fuck, was he enjoying it. He spared you another glance, watching as you tugged down his jeans with a hint of wonder in your eyes. Admittedly, he was in awe as well, completely disbelieving that a discount cowboy costume was getting him head.

You started fairly easy, and Mikey watched you like a hawk as you reached towards him. He still had his boxers on, but you didn’t care, tracing the outline of his cock through the fabric. One of your hands wrapped around his thigh, while the other palmed him through his boxers, working him up before they were even off. His erection was already growing, pressing eagerly against your hand while you stroked him. It bordered on embarrassing, but Mikey had a pretty good excuse if you were the cause of it.

Slowly, your hands drifted towards his waistband, and your fingertips traced the brand on it. “You’re so hot like this,” you mumbled, kissing him through the fabric for good measure.

“Yeah?” he breathed, curious. “Like what?”

You grinned, pressing an open-mouthed kiss to the tip of his cock. You received a shuddered groan in response, and you finally pulled down his boxers. “Desperate.”

Comebacks were unthinkable when you were looking at him like that, peering up at him with a mix of wonder and rogue. The look in your eyes was nothing short of devilish, holding strong intention as you placed a gentle hand on his cock. You looked so innocent, holding him ever so sweetly as you promised him blissful sin. It had another shudder wracking through him as you mouthed at the tip, letting precum smear itself across your lips.

You took your time kissing him, up and down the length of his cock, wet and messy as you wrapped your lips around the head. Still, you weren’t satisfied enough to let him in your mouth, running your tongue along the base, warmth flowing through his veins. A whine threatened to spill, but he bit it back, tugging his bottom lip between his teeth while you kitten-licked him. God, it was fucking sadistic how slow you were, watching him eagerly as your tongue flicked across his cock, tasting how bad he wanted you.

Maybe swirling your tongue around him was a little self-indulgent, but he didn’t know, his mouth falling open at the sensation. “You like that, cowboy?” you teased, watching him through half-lidded eyes.

“God, you did not just call me that with my dick in your mouth,” he laughed, cut with a moan as you sucked softly.

You shrugged, pumping him slowly. “You’re still wearing the costume, aren’t you?”

His lips parted to object, but you were quicker, lolling your tongue out and taking him into your mouth. Another wave of warmth surged through him, physical this time, and he moaned something pretty as you took him deeper. Every sound he made was melodic and rare, subtle encouragement that spurred you on further. Before setting a pace, you pulled off, kissing the head delicately as saliva coated your lips. They were spit-slick and swollen as you dropped your tongue out, and you locked eyes with Mikey when you leaned in.

Holy fuck. He must’ve dreamt you into reality, balling his hands into fists as you slid onto his cock, fucking moaning as your lips wrapped around him. It sent a vibration through him, well received as he groaned deeply. His hips jumped slightly, but you pinned them back against the door, sliding him further into your mouth and then out again.

Even if your rhythm had started slow, it evolved into something deep and quick shortly after. You gagged lightly as he gave a sudden jerk, making him smile with a hint of sadism. “Easy there, baby, I wouldn’t want you to choke.”

It was a promise more than a warning, and a sarcastic one at that; the kind that turned you on more than you’d like to admit, making the growing wetness between your legs unbearable. His hands would be on you soon enough though, and the same slender fingers that had nearly slipped inside of you earlier would fulfill their promise. Part of you wished you had given in earlier, but the way he was whining made it all worth it.

He didn’t want to come too quickly, but between your mouth and your hands, it was becoming an embarrassing reality. Luckily, he wouldn’t get the chance, as you were waiting for the exact moment to pull away. Your head bobbed on his cock, quick and needy, torn between breaking him now and waiting until later.

You didn’t have to wait much longer to make a choice, Mikey’s hips giving a sudden jerk before he was moaning a breathy, “Oh, fuck.”

It was as much of a warning as you could get, and you pulled off immediately, Mikey watching you desperately. He was about two seconds from begging you to let him finish, a low moan wracking through him as he stared down at you. Regardless, you just stared back at him, sitting pretty on your knees and almost wishing you had given in. Even if you wouldn’t let him come, it was still one hell of a blowjob, and he heaved a sigh as he slumped back against the door.

“Holy shit,” he breathed, letting his head fall back against the wood. “God, you’re a fucking angel.”

You smiled up at him, one of ironic purity, standing up and sliding your hands up his chest. He wiped your lips with his thumb, and slowly lowered his head to kiss you again. He moved much slower, slightly winded, and you tossed his hat to the side to rake your hands through his hair. He moaned as you pulled him closer, and he nimbly tugged at your waistband. Your touch was irresistible, tugging off his vest before slipping beneath his shirt, the two of you shedding layers and inhibitions as he walked you toward his bed.

A small laugh flowed from your lips, contagious as you dropped down against his mattress. Mikey followed suit, slithering up the sheets and hovering above you. He was truly a sight to be seen, gazing at you with wide eyes covered by tousled hair. His lips were slightly swollen and parted, and his neck was decorated with blossoming bruises. You traced over them with your fingertips while his hands floated toward your panties, tugging them off eagerly.

It was laughable how impatient he had grown, though he tried his best to balance the scale. You watched with bated breath as his fingers dipped past his lips, resurfacing a moment later, shiny and slick. After a night of teasing, you had grown shamefully wet, not to mention restless as his fingers danced along your skin. He was taking his time, but hypocritically, you needed him now.

You thought you could fight the twist in your stomach, cupping his cheek and kissing him deeply while his fingers caressed your skin. It was undoubtedly retribution for earlier, but you had little patience for it. Continuing to writhe in his bed did nothing, and Mikey was very pleased with himself as a subconscious whine left your lips. Finally, his fingers slipped past your folds, receiving a soft gasp in response.

From there, he set a slow pace, crooking his fingers deep inside of you. Had you not been waiting impatiently, it would’ve been nice—intimate, even, but you couldn’t help but wager with him.

“Mikey, I’ll fuck you in the morning too if you hurry up.”

He had to pull away to smile down at you, arrogant and impressed. “Yeah? What’re you gonna do to me?”

You started to respond, but the sudden speed of his fingers caught you off guard. A breathy moan was the only sound you made, causing Mikey to push further. “I know what I’m gonna do,” he whispered, pressing his thumb to your clit.

You looked up at him curiously, and he gave you short kisses as he spoke. “First, I’m gonna eat you out,” he paused, another kiss. “But I won’t let you come. And when you get all needy for me, I’ll fuck you stupid.”

“Really?” you breathed, clinging to your composure. “Well, I’m in control tonight, cowboy.”

If you had any less discipline, you would have given in to his filthy intentions right then in there. But, his fingers were already inside of you and you were too damn close to quit now. Besides, for as good as he looked above you, he’d look even better below you.

Your muscles were wound tight, taut and begging for release as he worked quicker, circling your clit simultaneously. God, he fucking needed you to come, just to see your confidence fade for a moment, replaced by a moment of weakness. Mikey needed to know that he was the cause of it and that he was fucking you tonight.

The quicker he went, the louder you got. With music blaring in the other room, he took it as a fine opportunity to pull everything from you—moans, whines, fucking whimpers, even. And it was no different when you came, Mikey listening eagerly as pretty sounds poured out.

He continued to work his fingers slowly before pulling out, kissing you at the same speed while you fell from the high. After slipping them out though, they landed right back in his mouth, greedily cleaned up by an eager Mikey.

“I’d eat your pussy now if I didn’t wanna fuck you so bad,” he said, leaning in briefly.

You indulged, catching his lips between yours before pulling away with a sly remark. “Oh no, cowboy.”

Confusion crossed his face, but you swiftly rolled him over. “You know what they say,” you told him, hovering over him this time.

Even if he had since stripped his costume, you took the corny song as gospel. Truthfully, Mikey didn’t mind, not when your hand was wrapped around him again, stroking him gently. His cock was still begging to come, hard and leaking in your palm. It was almost pitiful, seeing him so vulnerable. His ego hadn’t faded though, Mikey still confident and suave as you perched over him.

Even as you rifled through his bedside table, he remained stoic, fighting the incredible urge to grind against you. But as usual, he resisted, chewing his bottom lip and inhaling sharply as you rolled a condom on him. He wasn’t exactly known to be patient, anyway.

You drifted towards him again, and his hands gravitated towards your hips, helping you hover above him. You were fucking breathtaking, every dip and curve practically handcrafted as you kneeled in nothing. And yet it didn’t even cross your mind, how you looked to him, too focused on making him feel good to care.

Mikey helped you ease down, groaning at the foreign tightness as you clenched around him. Shuddered curses fell from his lips while his hands squeezed your thighs, pressing his palms to your skin while you ground against him. Regrettably, he let himself slip, and his hips gave a sudden buck at the sensation.

“Holy shit,” you moaned, surprised by the jerk. “You’re so impatient, aren’t you?”

It was teasing, and Mikey rolled his eyes playfully. “You love it.”

“I do,” you told him, grinding your hips towards his. “Shows how much you need me.”

Why the fuck hadn’t Frank asked you out yet?

Mikey didn’t care to ask questions, no matter how curious he was. Not when you were rolling your hips like that, slow and deep, waiting for the right moment to speed up. His hands smoothed over your thighs before lifting you up, bucking his hips as you sank down again. You gave a soft moan and a cocky grin formed on his lips, “Yeah?”

His suffocating self-assuredness continued to fluster you, and you grew warmer as he gave your thighs a gentle squeeze. Every move you made seemed to spur him on, hardly having set a rhythm before one of his hands was sliding up your skin. He moved up your thighs, waist, chest–and then your neck, where he landed gracefully. His thumb brushed over a collection of marks left behind, titling your head back while he gave a gentle squeeze.

The same “I wouldn’t want you to choke,” echoed in your ears as he pulled your hips down again, a whine falling past your parted lips. You had adopted his desperation, lowering your head to catch the determination in his eyes. He wanted you to break—but he would have to break first.

“Easy,” you chided, receiving a harsh buck in response.

For each time he rebelled, your rhythm slowed, and you kept the pattern until he had turned to Pavlov’s dog. Compliance was rare from Mikey, yet here he lay, moaning as you bounced in his lap. He quickly learned his place and simply watched as you took control, massaging your thighs periodically with his eyes glued to your cunt. God, were you a sight for sore eyes, taking his cock like it was fucking made for you, and grinding on him until he could feel the world coming to a stop.

As pretty as you thought he sounded, he couldn’t get over your voice, how you murmured obscenities crossed with his name, dropping faint pleas with a cry of bliss on deck. He tried to fight it off, to hang on a little longer and win this odd sort of battle, but you played dirty.

“Oh fuck, Mikey,” you moaned, letting it echo in his ears.

Clenching his teeth and drawing blood from his lip could only do so much when his subconscious took the lead. With a final jerk of his hips, he was coming, hot and desperate while a proud smile crossed your lips.

“My needy boy,” you murmured, to which he groaned, turned on and embarrassed by the nickname.

It was almost overwhelming for him, the roll of your hips as you worked towards your release, and the sprinkled praise that came with it.

“You feel so good. Fuck, you’re so good to me.”

Having his ego stripped from him was foreign, but he wasn’t complaining, whiny and bleary-eyed as you came around him, still moaning soft praise for him. It was no longer antagonizing, turning earnest instead of arrogant, and he could do nothing more than whimper and moan as you rode out your high.

With the little strength he had left, he helped you off, wrapping his arms around your waist as you settled against his chest. It was blissful for a moment, silent and sweet, where the only sound in the room was heaving chests and rustling sheets.

“So…” he breathed, panting softly. “Can I get your number or something?”

You grinned, giving him a brief kiss. “Later, cowboy. I wouldn’t let you get away without it.”

kinktober taglist: @clichedlovers @halloweenbitch2764 @lubbockshusband @cigarettesandalcohols @couldbegayer1234 @doc-martens-enthusiast @yachiiko @becausethedrugsneverwork @enchantinghouseofwh0res @dangerouslittlefairy @chronicallythicc

#mikey way x reader #mikey way smut #mcr x reader #mcr smut

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roseianxiety · 1 year

Text

Always You

Summary:

As a young boy, Virgil often swooped in to save his geeky and timid childhood best friend, Roman, from his bullies. After years have passed without seeing each other, his friend has come home from abroad and now a completely different person than before, and ready to sweep Virgil off his feet. Virgil, of course, falls head over heels for the other.

AO3 - Part 1, Part 2

Content Warning: Swearing, Food mention, Medication mention, slight innuendo

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Chapter Two

"So your old friend now turned hottie just came back from Italy is the reason why you skipped work yesterday? I didn't expect that from you, Virgil, but get it I guess."Remy, Virgil's co-worker, stated with a smirk.

Virgil groaned as he face palmed in embarrassment, "Fucking hell, Remy. Don't say it like that!".

They were chilling behind the counter, waiting for a customer to arrive and order something or whatever. The cafe was relatively quiet, but nothing out of the ordinary.

"Plus, that's not even the reason. I wanted to help mom with housework."Virgil sighs as he leans against the counter, resting his chin on his wrist.

"Speaking of which, how's your mom doing by the way?"Remy questions curiously. Virgil shrugs, "She's been doing well recently, though sometimes she gets really ill so I have to be there with her all the time.". He explains.

"Oof.. That sucks, babes, but I'm sure she appreciates having you there for her anyways."Remy assures him with a sympathetic grin.

Virgil chuckles weakly in response, "Yeah, I'm pretty sure she does.". He pauses before adding, "Anyway, I have to call mom to check on her.". Virgil says before heading to the break room as he pulls out his phone.

•=•

He dialed his mother's number once he reached the breakroom and waited a moment until she picked up. When she answered, Virgil greeted, "Hey mom! How are you feeling?".

"Hello, dear. I'm doing alright, a little bit tired though but nothing unusual. How about you?"His mother answers cheerfully before saying, "Well, I actually had to ask you something...".

"I'm doing alright, not much work going on here. And yeah, what is it? Do you need anything for me to buy?"Virgil queries. His mother hummed before answering, "Well, actually yes, can you buy me my medications once you get home? The ones here are almost finished.".

"Yeah, no problem! Anything else you want?"Virgil replies as he fiddles with the ribbon of his apron.

"Actually, could you also do some grocery shopping? I can't do it since my knees are hurting terribly. I hope I'm not bothering you a lot, sweetie.".

Virgil smiles softly, "Not at all, I wouldn't mind taking care of that stuff myself.". His mother let out a relieved sigh, "Thank you, dear. You're heaven sent. I'll send you the list of the things you have to buy.".

Virgil hummed in confirmation, "Sure thing, mom. Anyway, I have to go back to work now, take care and rest well. Love you, mom.".

"Love you too, dear. Bye!".His mother responded.

Virgil hung up and walked out of the break room. As soon as he got out, he heard Remy chatting with someone, probably a customer, about something.

"–You look good. Do you work out?~"Remy purred. Gosh, is he flirting with a customer again??

"Yes, I do it quite often."

Virgil stiffened slightly when he realized who that voice belonged to. When he finally arrived at the counter, his guess was right. It was Roman.

Roman noticed him walking towards them, and flashed a friendly smile, "Hi there, Virgil. What are you doing here?"He greeted. Virgil gave him a shy wave and mumbled, "Hey, Roman. Uhm, I work here.".

Roman's eyes lit up and grinned brightly, "Really? That's awesome!"He exclaimed. Virgil smiled back shyly at him, his cheeks turning slightly rosy. Roman seemed oblivious to this however as he continued speaking, "Am I bothering you?–".

Virgil shook his head and quickly interrupted him. "Nonono, you're fine. Really, the café is not busy as you can see.". Virgil said, gesturing and the empty place.

"Anyway, what did you order—"

"I already got his order. I'll leave you two while I go make his order."Remy interrupts as he turns on his heel and walks away but not before winking at Virgil playfully.

Virgil blushed heavily and cleared his throat awkwardly before looking back at Roman. "So, uh, what's up?"He said, trying hard not to seem too awkward around the other man.

"I went to find some college to transfer in and I got accepted in that college nearby. Grazie a Dio."Roman explained with a bright grin.

"That's so cool, what's your course by the way?"Virgil asked as he leaned closer towards Roman.

"Film."Roman replied, showing off a confident grin.

"As expected from you,"Virgil said, smiling widely. Roman smiles and rubs the back of his neck sheepishly. After a few moments of comfortable silence between the two of them, Remy was finally done making Roman's coffee.

"Here's your raspberry frappuccino and strawberry cake pop, Roman."Remy announces as he sets them down on the counter top in front of Roman. "Oh, thank you. How much is all of these?"Roman inquired.

"8 dollars and 45 cents."Remy responds nonchalantly.

Roman nodded and pulled out his wallet and took out ten dollars before handing it to Remy. "Keep the change."He says with a smile.

Remy simply stared at him in disbelief but took the money regardless, putting it in the cash register.

"Anyway, I have to go now. See ya later, Virge. And goodbye to you, Remy, it was nice chatting with you too."Roman says before grabbing his drink and cake pop as he heads to the door.

Remy chirps waving at him, "Byee, Roman.".

"Yeah, goodbye, Princey."Virgil calls out which causes Roman to halt momentarily before turning around to face Virgil. Roman smiles lopsidedly at him, "It's been a while since you called me that.". He finally exited the café but not after waving at the two men.

Virgil simply waved back in reply and a small smile planted on his lips.

"You look so smitten it's adorable."

Virgil snapped his head to glare softly at Remy who only smirked at him. "Shut up, Remy." Virgil grumbles softly.

Remy pouted jokingly before chuckling. "Babes, why didn't you tell me your childhood friend was HOT hot? He is eye candy and that herculean body of his is fire! Would smash."Remy gushes about Roman.

Virgil cringes at Remy's comment causing him to roll his eyes in annoyance. "Oh my gosh, Remy. You're disgusting.".

Remy grins and wiggles his eyebrows at Virgil teasingly, "What? Are you jealous I might steal him from you?~". He teased and winked at him again.

Virgil rolled his eyes yet still a light red blush dusted his cheeks as he quickly retorted defensively. "What!? No! You can have him for yourself or whatever."He huffed.

"Aw come on, Viiiiiirgieeee~! We all know that's a lie~".

Virgil sighs deeply and mutters under his breath, "I swear to God, if you don't shut up, I will shove your face into the nearest trash can.".

Remy merely snickers and sticks his tongue out at Virgil, causing the latter to huff and cross his arms stubbornly. "Anyway, you deal with the customers while I clean up the place."The sunglasses-wearing employee says, patting Virgil on the shoulder before walking away from him to clean the tables.

Virgil just lets out another defeated groan, not wanting to deal with the customers but he knew that he'd have to. He was always the one dealing with them anyways.

•=•

Virgil grunted as he struggled carrying two bags of groceries as they were filled up almost completely to the brim. He cursed himself internally as he waddled his way to his house, trying to stop the bags from slipping out of hands.

"Do you need help with that?"A voice behind him called out, startling him. Virgil looked behind him to meet brown eyes staring intently into his own.

"No thank you, I can handle this just fine."He murmured softly and turned back around, hoping the Roman would leave him alone but he didn't.

"Are you sure? They look really heavy."Roman said, stepping a little bit closer and eyeing the bags carefully. Virgil sighed.

"Look, I'm pretty sure I can carry these all alone."he muttered and moved away from him a little bit.

Roman pouted as he stood there looking conflicted, clearly thinking of whether he should continue talking to him or just leave him alone.

Virgil's eye twitched as Roman pouts, unable to resist anymore. He gives up after a moment of hesitation and looks at the Roman. "Ughh, fine. Just carry this one bag for me."Virgil says exasperatedly while holding out one of the grocery bags to Roman.

Roman gratefully accepts it, smiling happily at the smaller male. Virgil blushes lightly and averts his gaze away from Roman.

They walked to Virgil's house in comfortable silence. Neither of them spoke nor attempted to. When they reached Virgil's doorstep, the older man decided to break the silence.

"I'll take it from here Roman. Uhm, thanks by the way."Virgil said as he unlocked the door and opened it. Roman nods and carefully places the grocery bag down.

"You can go home now... Good night, Princey."Virgil finishes as he opens the door, glancing at Roman.

"Yeah, good night too, Virgil."Roman replies, smiling warmly at him. Virgil nods at him one last time before carrying the grocery bags inside, while does that, he hears Roman mutter something softly to him, but he couldn't hear it clearly enough for him to understand.

And as soon as he came back to close the door, Roman was already gone before he could question what the other muttered.

•=•

Roman entered his room, it was the same room he used to share with his brother back then, it was still filled with some of their old stuff. He still wasn't done unpacking his boxes and cleaning the house. The only part he was done cleaning was the kitchen, bathroom and the living room where he was currently sleeping on the last few days.

He starts going through the old boxes he found in the attic, he guesses it was his old toys and books that they left here. And it indeed was. Well, there were some framed pictures and photo albums there too. Now he's questioning why it's been left here or were they forgotten.

Roman flips through the photo album curiously, flipping past old pictures of him and his brother when they were kids, some were family photos and photos of their parents.

It's been a while since he saw these, he felt a pang of melancholy or nostalgia just hit him like a truck. He was happy to see these, happier than ever actually. But he still felt sadness wash over him. It brought back memories of simpler times. Memories of days long past he thought about every single day since then. Oh how he wished to go back in time.

Roman stops flipping the pages when he comes across a certain photograph. He took it out from the plastic sleeve to observe it closer.

It was a picture of a smaller and chubbier boy next to a slightly taller boy, both of them grinning to their ears as they stood side by side. They were in their swimming trunks, seeming as if they just got out of the water, looking happy as ever.

A smile crept onto Roman's face at the memory. It was the summer of 2010, the last time where young Roman and Virgil got to hangout together. The time where everything began to change for the both of them.

--------------------------------------------------

Writing Taglist: @cutebisexualmess (please tell me if you want to be added or removed in the tag list)

#sanders sides #sanders sides fanfiction #roman sanders #virgil sanders #prinxiety #romantic prinxiety #remy sanders #tss fanfic #ts roman #ts virgil #vee writes

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wonik1ss · 1 year

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010. da big bang + halfwritten — SURFS UP ! 🏄‍♀️

As the girls made their way to the bonfire Hanni started to wine.

“ Are you seriously going to have me on a leash the whole time Jin! “. Hanni asked as the leash bracelet tugged her back towards the said owner.

“ Yes for all we know I could let you go and we could all leave with you in a booze induced coma “. The rest of the girl laughed as Hanni spoke again.

“ But Aran will think I’m lame with this on.. “. Hanni sighed as they finally approached and Yunjin un locked her from the leash.

“ Every 15 minutes check in with me and no booze we all are underage !! “. They 18 year old said to the other as she beamed and ran to her soon to be lover.

“ Ok I’m going to find J you guys mingle “. Y/n said as she ran off to find said girl as Yunjin yelled at her to not drink.

“ Mom did you really have to tell them “. Isa said as her family’s car stopped near the shore.

“ Don’t worry Sumin doesn’t know plus we need this we don’t want the diner to go under do we “. Isa mom said as her and her daughter and husband got out of their car.

Their family diner started to go down hill a few weeks before spring break. Isa had to work extra shifts and had to try her best to act like nothing was wrong around her friends. When in truth everything she new was falling around her. Her mom had to find a job in the city, her dad was working part time jobs to pay to keep the diner open.

Will she tried her best to just act normal.. she didn’t want any hand outs and nether did her parents.. atleast that what she thought. But now that they need them.. she started to see their little diner was real king going down.

“ Isa! come over here we need to find more wood “. Sumin yelled as Isa quickly put on a fake smile and ran with her friend to find some more wood.

As Y/n looked around for J she felt someone tap her shoulder. “ Want some fruit punch “. A geeky guy asked her as she accepted it. He looked so innocent there’s no way he would do anything bad to you right?

Well you were practically right the little geeky didn’t know there was an alcohol in the drink.. He just new what the alcohol made him now..

“ J.. wherm are yom “. You drunkly said. Though you only had one drink it really affected you. “ Here Y/n “. J said as she stared at the ocean in aw.

“ Isn’t it pretty “. She said as you stood next to her try to sober up a bit to talk to your crush. “ Ya it really is “. You said as J turned to look at you.

BADUM BADUM..

“ Shit.. “. You turned to J worried as you asked what wrong. “ Nothing I think I need to just sit down “. You nodded as the both of you sat down together. “ You know I wouldn’t be able to see the star if my mom didn’t move us out here “. You said as you laughed. “ With all the new things in the air all I see is a black sky “. J nodded as you continued to speak. “ You know.. I’m actually glad she forced us out here now.. “. You said.

“ Why? “

“ Because I got to meet you “. You said as you turned to J.

BADUM BADUM

J’s face started to blush but you couldn’t see it because of how dark it and become. What was their feeling? It wasn’t anger or sadness so-

“ And your friends too “. You said quickly as you saw the girl stare at you in shock. Her heart stopped.. and for some reason she was really sad you said that.

“ It’s really fun here.. This might be the best summer i’ve ever had “. You said as you began to doze off as your head landed on J’s shoulder. For a second she didn’t move.. you were just so pretty in the moonlight.. you looked like a goodness to her. But sadly the moment ended when J realized the disgusting smell that came of you. For awhile the alcohol was hidden by your perfume but it seems if had worn of by now.

“ Guess Sumin’s dad couldn’t stop the alcohol from coming in “. She laughed as she got up and put you on her back and carried you back to the bonfire.

It was just to much.. Isa tried to have fun she really did but she started to think about her diner.. her life.. it was all going to end..

“ Isa are you ok “. Sumin said as she turned to Isa who sat on the sand. As she walked up to her and sat next to her checking her face she noticed the tear stained cheeks then the cry’s that keep coming.

“ We’re going under.. “. Isa said as Sumin called over the rest of their group J still carrying you to the bonfire.

“ What happened Isa? “. Isa finally looked up and told her friends everything. They sighed as they went in for a group hug as J finally came back. You had just woken up too.

“ What did I miss? “. The younger girl said as Sieun ran to tell her as she nodded and went to hug Isa. “ Where.. am I “. You said as J finally remembered the other person she needed to help. “ I’ll be right back I just got to take Y/n to her friends “. J said as she waved to her friends and got you on her back again.

As you and J approached your friend group she softly let you down and handed you to Yunjin. “ I think you guys should get going the bonfires coming to an end and.. Y/n seems to be waisted “. J said as Yunjin began to fume as she woke you up to help at you. As Wonyoung tried to defend you and Hanni waved goodbye to Aran and gave her a little wink too.

J watched it all happening.. but she could still only think about you under the moonlight..

Shit what was this feeling?

masterlist | next

summary : it was your 1st trip to the sunny beaches of cali. you had never been interested in anything else but surfing.. well that was until you saw the new teen surfing instructor j. she was everything you wanted and more. But with that came a really really REALLY dense girl who would probably never see your feelings.. which is what you thought for now.

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my-cages-were-mental · 1 year

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I posted 4,552 times in 2022

That's 4,552 more posts than 2021!

759 posts created (17%)

3,793 posts reblogged (83%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@on-the-outside

@directlyat-thesun

@geeky-gay-greek

@inthetags

@i-will-sing-no-requiem

I tagged 1,679 of my posts in 2022

#abi answers - 111 posts

#lgbtq+ - 77 posts

#autism - 44 posts

#marvel - 39 posts

#mcu - 33 posts

#neurodivergent - 32 posts

#pride - 30 posts

#adhd - 30 posts

#lgbtq - 28 posts

#heartstopper - 26 posts

Longest Tag: 130 characters

#wtf is it saying my gender is a joke?? that i don’t actually have one?? it’s just nothing?? that’s what the white box means? 🤦‍♀️

My Top Posts in 2022:

found these “this or that” games for autism, stimming, and textures.

See the full post

1,009 notes - Posted August 6, 2022

calling all neurodivergents with sensory issues!! i have a question for you.

do seatbelts bother you?

i’ve recently been finding that the part on my neck bothers me a lot so i’m curious if this is just me or if others have this problem too. i’ve had to start putting it under my arm sometimes because i can’t stand it hitting my neck. the part on my lap is fine but yeah.

1,504 notes - Posted August 5, 2022

let’s talk about the fact that people who get hyperfixations can hyperfixate on that thing more than one time. i’ve seen a lot of people saying that hyperfixations only happen once, and you won’t ever hyperfixate on that specific thing again. however, this isn’t true. you can 100% fall back into an old hyperfixation and become obsessed with it all over again. don’t be ashamed to fall back into this hyperfixation either! it happens more often than you think! it’s not always “bye bye forever” when you fall out of a specific hyperfixation. there’s a chance it’ll be back, so don’t be too sad if you feel yourself becoming less fixated on this specific thing you were hyperfixated on. anyways that’s it for now, if you feel like reblogging and adding anything else go ahead :)

2,527 notes - Posted July 29, 2022

undiagnosed or late-diagnosed autistics, time to reveal yourselves. what is one memory from your childhood or pre-teen years that should have suggested to people that you might have autism, but didn’t.

for me, i made my mom sing me a lullaby every night until i was 12, because i didn’t like the idea of my nightly routine ever changing. if she didn’t sing me one, i would get out of bed, go get her from wherever she was in the house, bring her to my room, and make her tuck me in and sing one to me. i wasn’t able to fall asleep until she did.

3,307 notes - Posted August 29, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

the entire jane with cancer storyline made me sad, but one thing really breaks my heart. jane and darcy never got to say goodbye. they’re best friends and they never said goodbye. neither of them had many other friends. they were each other’s rock in life. both there for each other, no matter what. and they never said goodbye. darcy got left alone. i mean i guess she had jimmy woo but jane was her person. and she lost her. she lost her best friend, and she never even got to say goodbye. don’t mind me i’m just gonna go cry now.

4,073 notes - Posted July 11, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

a personal note from me.

thank you all so so much for everything. i love you all very much, especially you mutuals. you helped make 2022 special for me, and i love you for it. i hope you all have an amazing rest of 2022. not that i’m going anywhere, i’m just trying to be nice. >:) thank you again and ily all very much. 💜

-abi/bee

#tumblr2022 #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review

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thesunshinebehindyourdestruction · 23 days

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Ok so this happened almost two weeks ago but it bothers me a lil so imma write it out

So my brother just got engaged a little bit ago. I love his fiancée, she’s great, and I feel like my brother and I have a good relationship. Like, I hated his guts growing up lol, but by the time we got to high school we got along a lot better and we had a lot of the same friends and we were both geeky and did theatre and I would watch him and his friends play video games and stuff like that. I just feel like we vibe pretty well, and I vibe with him more than I do with my sister (nothing against my sister, she’s cool too). So when Passover came along, my mother invited my brother’s fiancée’s family over for our Seder, so it was me, my parents, my brother, his fiancée, and her grandma, mom, and two siblings. So when her family came over, her grandma shook my hand and asked who I was, and I said I was my brother’s sibling. And she said she was just surprised to see another young person here. No big deal, I don’t expect my brother to go talking about me to his fiancée’s grandma. But then after dinner my family FaceTimes my sister (she’s living on the west coast right now) and we end up passing the phone around so everyone talks to her a little bit. And when my brother’s fiancée’s grandma gets the phone, she mentioned how she’s heard so much about her from my brother. And it’s like, my brother has talked about our sister around his fiancée’s family enough that her grandma would say how she’s heard so much about her, but her grandma also didn’t even know I existed. So idk, that stung a little bit. Like, I thought my brother and I were close, but I guess he’s closer with our sister than he is with me. And ig that just kinda brought out the middle child syndrome.

Like, I’ve accomplished a lot of things that one would hope would make their family proud, I even invited my brother’s fiancée (then girlfriend) to my graduation 3 years ago when I got my masters since I could invite 4 people and my sister was on the west coast. And when my brother and his fiancée first started dating ~9 years ago (the year after I graduated high school), he would ask me to pick them both up from the high school and take them places. I even knew her before she and my brother started dating, like they were both acting in Eurydice and I did sound for the show, so like I’ve known her about as long as my brother has. You’d think after 9 years I would have been mentioned at least once by either of them. Like, I’m not mad or even surprised that I haven’t been mentioned, it just hurts that her family didn’t even know I existed when they knew all about my sister.

Like, there’s nothing I can do about it now. They know I exist now anyway. It just kinda hurts that my brother hadn’t even mentioned me, even when I thought we had a good relationship.

#personal

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similoins · 3 months

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Taeyoung is Jungkook's geeky step-sister as of two years ago. She has big unflattering glasses that's almost comical. She has one friend, Jimin, who receives most of the male attention when the two are together, because Jimin likes to show off what she has. Taeyoung on the other hand, is more reserved and wears less flattering clothes.

Jungkook thinks most people don't know how hot Taeyoung's body is. Jungkook's seen it. Not intentionally, he's not sure Taeyoung even knows. But he's seen her getting ready for school through a cracked door before.

Taeyoung has nice tits, Jungkook thinks they're about a handful big. Her hips are small, but they still protrude.

He tried explaining how nice her body was to his friends, but they doubted him. They told him to take pictures of her and then they'd believe him.

Jungkook had a better idea. He invited his three friends over one night. Taeyoung didn't speak to any of them, she was a bit shy.

Jungkook entered Taeyoung's room that night, not knocking, hoping to catch her in the midst of something. She was sitting criss cross in bed, looking down at her laptop with intent eyes, one hand under her pajama pants, playing with herself Jungkook imagined. She quickly removed her hand from her pants upon Jungkook walking in. Her face flushed as she shut her laptop.

"Why didn't you knock?!" She got out and Jungkook smirked.

"What were you watching?" He asked, and came and sit beside her, Taeyoung scooted a bit away from him, crossing her arms as her cheeks continued to flush.

"What do you want?" She almost whined.

Jungkook mulled over exactly what he wanted to say to his step sister.

"I want you to let me fuck you." Taeyoung's eyes widened.

"Are you serious?"

"Yes, and I know you'd like it too considering what I just caught you doing. Why don't you let me fuck you? Have you ever came with a dick inside of you?" Jungkook ran his fingers under her shirt, along her side.

"You're my brother," Taeyoung just about spit out, having trouble speaking after the ridiculous request.

"Step brother, you know how it goes. Are you going to let me fuck you or not?"

"No. What if mom or dad hear?"

"They're out of town, remember."

"What about your friends?"

"They'd love to watch." Jungkook said into her ear, pulling her closer into him around her waist. He breathed into her ear. "Let me fuck you. I'll even let you choose how you want it. I can fuck you in all the ways you want to be. You can trust me, tae."

Taeyoung gives in and let's Jungkook undress her. She tries not to think about their parents or Jungkook's friends as he massages and sucks her tits. As he grabs her hips and pulls her into him.

0 notes

clarktooncrossing · 5 months

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Giraffe's Eye View: Christmas Specials Special (2023) | A Muppet Christmas Carol

Chestnuts are roasting on an open fire. Jack Frost is nipping at your nose. Mom and dad can hardly wait for school to start again. All the dogs in the neighborhood somehow learned to bark Jingle Bells in sync. Yet retail workers are still more annoyed with Mariah Carey. Snow is getting shoveled, tossed, and formed into sentient beings leading parades without permits. It makes for an excellent distraction as the Krampus abducts children for bad behavior. Fruitcake is exchanged only to find its permanent home in the garbage. Terrorists have hijacked the Holiday office party right before your boss can give you a Jelly of the Month Club membership as your bonus. And of course, the Turducken has returned to wreak its fiery vengeance upon an unsuspecting world! If all this doesn’t put you in the Christmas spirit, perhaps these following Holiday specials will!

Greetings people of today and robots of tomorrow! It is I, Santa Clark, your geeky giraffe friend with a deep love of Christmas! My obsession for the yuletide is rivaled only by Maleficent’s hatred for it, which is saying a lot considering she once teamed up with Mad Madam Mim to kidnap the literal Spirit of Christmas. Yes, that really happened. I know this due to my annual pilgrimage to the Island of Misfit Specials, home to obscure or nerdy festive media ranging from movies, TV episodes, and comics. It’s no easy journey. Constantly I find myself confronted by sinister snowmen, genocidal gingerbread men, and worst of all, crappy commercials. Getting stabbed in the foot by a candy-cane wielding cookie is one thing, but I swear I’ve seen that ad for Wilbur’s White Elephant Gift Emporium more times than I’ve seen Miracle on 34th Street! Sometimes at night I catch myself reciting that jingle. Wilbur’s White Elephant Gift Emporium: Where Christmas meets Convenience! Huh, maybe Maleficent had a point.

Nah, my deep-rooted appreciation for this time of year can weather even the most moronic marketing! It helps that most of the merry media I’ve seen have put me in the perfect Holiday mood! Examples include the time a Ninja Turtle found himself trapped in a truck full of stollen toys, a drunk department store Santa stumbling onto a wish-granting magic bag, Big Bird nearly becoming a popsicle, Gwenpool waking up in a world where Galactus took the place of jolly ol’ Saint Nicholas, a terrifying tree stump trying to slaughter some saps over a stupid ship war, and the year when Death gave the Little Match Girl the greatest gift of all. Needless to say, I thought I had seen it all. That is, until I took my friends on a trip to the Island, tasking them to find me new, strange, seasonal specials to review! Some of them were fair, finding me festive favorites as comforting as coco in front of the fireplace. Others were fiendish, wanting to feed off my misery like Gremlins after midnight. Regardless of how naughty or nice my companions were, I’ve compiled all of their suggestions into a makeshift advent calendar! So stay tuned everyday until Christmas to see how badly my buddies can shred what little sanity I have left.

On the twelfth day of Christmas, my buddies gave to me...

Jim Henson was dead, to begin with. In life he was a storyteller, bringing life to the felt friends from Sesame Street and The Muppet Show to delight audiences around the world. He was also a director, creating fabulous new fairy tales in the form of The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth. Not too shabby for a guy who didn’t think he could build a career off of puppets. With Kermit on his arm the world would know Jim as an artist, optimist, visionary, innovator, comedian, winner of the Best Beard Award, and friend. When he died, the rest of the world wept tears. The same could sadly not be said for Richard Hunt, the company’s first openly gay puppeteer who had provided life to roles such as Scooter, Beaker, and Sweetums the Ogre. Yet these losses were felt by the caring colleagues they left behind. So when they were approached by Walt Disney Studios to produce their own take on A Christmas Carol, all of them sought to prove that life continued after death. With Jim’s son Brian acting as first time director, did they succeed?

Considering two of my own friends wanted me to review A Muppet Christmas Carol, I’d say that’s a resounding yes. Heck, I’m surprised it was only Hobo and Young (YoungSamurai18) who wanted me to assess this adaptation, everybody and their grandmother loves talking about it. Still, I didn’t want to deny Hobo the chance to contribute to this special, so I convinced the geeky, gaming gecko to pick Power Rangers instead. Jee, thanks for selecting something of equal quality. That left the wrestle-maniac wide open to pile-drive his pick right into my skull. At last, I’m free to sing this picture’s praises to the high heavens! Nothing can stop me from cementing this cinematic classic as the seasonal staple that it is! From the highest mountains I can shout that this is the greatest thing in the history of the-

Yeah, I think it's okay.

Assuming all of you haven’t left by now, let me explain. None of this comes from a hatred of Henson, as I hope the opening made clear. In fact, I love the Muppets. Their show would play on a constant loop in my house whenever I wasn’t watching the original Muppet Movie, which happens to be one of my all-time favorite films. Both it and this movie were scripted by Jerry Juhl, a man I believe knew these characters better than even Jim did. That same understanding is shown here too since every character is cast as the perfect counterpart from the book. Kermit the Frog (Steve Whitmire) unsurprisingly portrays Bob Cratchet with Miss Piggy (Frank Oz) acting as his wife. 'Acting' being the keyword here. No doubt Kermit kept reminding her that their marital bond was fake only for Piggy to bring up the wedding from Muppets Take Manhattan. Joining these two is Robin (Jerry Nelson) as Tiny Tim and three original characters standing in for their kids. If you thought adult Piggy was a handful, wait ‘til you meet her identical twin daughters. Her genes must’ve karate-chopped the crap out’a her husband’s!

If that all wasn’t amazing enough, we have Fozzie (Oz) as Fozziwig, a pun so perfect I’m convinced the entire film was made around it. His normal hecklers, Statler and Waldorf, also fill in the roles of double Marleys magnificently. I could go on, but I know you’re all waiting for me to mention the actual best part of this movie: Gonzo the Great (Dave Goelz) as Charles Dickens! Oh my gosh, that is too amazing for words! You can keep Dan Stevens, this little blue weirdo is the definitive on-screen Dickens. People already loved Gonzo before this flick, but now? He may as well be the main Muppet! Every time he’s on screen narrating the story or interacting with Rizzo (Whitmire) you’re glued to his every word. You can tell he’s loving simply being here and that enthusiasm is infectious! That alone makes this movie worth a watch.

Still, what would Mr. Dickens's story be without ghosts? Here it was decided to produce new puppets for the parts in place of choosing old classics. First there’s Christmas Past, a strange, uncanny specter brought to life via a water tank and a green screen. She’s also the most unsettling of the trio, looking like a reject from Labyrinth. The only reason she doesn’t haunt my nightmares is her sing-song voice provided by Jessica Fox. Not to mention her colleague is a right jolly old elf. I always laugh when I see him, in spite of myself. Of course I’m talking about Christmas Present (Nelson), this version easily being the best. He’s larger than life, endlessly kind, and absentmindedly can only focus on the present moment. Like Dory he forgets whatever was mentioned mere seconds after it happened. Unlike Dory he doesn’t belittle his coworkers behind the scenes. If nothing else, he at least gets the best song on the soundtrack. Finally we're left with a lackluster Christmas Future, looking like some tall doofus in a hood. Whenever I see him walk around I expect him to hit his head on something before hearing Robert Groves yell, “Ow!”

Having said that, he’s still more lively than Scrooge. Yup, we’ve reached the point where your respect is thrown off the windowsill. Michael Caine is a fine enough actor, even making for an awesome Alfred. However, his Scrooge leaves something to be desired. When he was cast in the role, Caine decided to treat the material as seriously as Shakespeare, a decision I ultimately believe hurt his performance. Dude refuses to emote for a good chunk of the runtime. His best scenes are when he’s angrily shouting at his book keepers, crying over losing Belle (Meredith Braun), or at the end when he’s singing about his newfound sense of purpose. Otherwise he seems bored. Worse, it appears as though he’s faking emotions. Some may argue that’s what acting is, but I’d argue great actors can make you feel along with them. This wasn’t a problem for Tim Curry in Muppet Treasure Island. It wasn’t a problem for former Scrooges like Jim Carrey, Starlight Glimmer, Chris Bean, or any of the freak’n ducks! All of them are puzzle pieces placed perfectly to enhance the overall picture while Caine was forced in. Nothing against him personally, he’s just not one of the great Scrooges of cinema, at least not to me.

Despite that, I get why folks love this retelling. On my list of Christmas Carol adaptations it ranks number eight. Everything else about it has stood the test of time terrifically. The puppet performances are phenomenal, the script smartly streamlines the story for all audiences, and the music by Paul Williams is the Swedish Chef’s kiss. Unsurprising, really, given this man almost won an Academy Award for writing Rainbow Connection. All of this makes for a good introductory film. Chances are you first saw this when you were a kid and it’s what introduced you to both the Muppets and A Christmas Carol. It’s why you’re so happily familiar with both now and eagerly await to share this movie with your own children someday. When that day comes, I hope you all enjoy that Christmas feeling together. After all, it is a movie from the heart! Made with a special kind of caring with the ways of love made clear!

Get it? They’re the words to the song! Wakka Wakka! Ah. whatever! Now I’m in the mood for more classic Disney Christmas specials...

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dorothygale123 · 3 months

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So, there I was, minding my own business, when Pinterest decided to draw my attention to THESE:

I WANT THEM SO BAD. However, I have made the responsible, adult decision not to get them because I don't have any more space on my shelves need them. I don't. I don't need them, really.

REALLY.

But that cannot and will not stop me from gushing over the mythological creatures they feature, so here we are.

First up, this cutie.

A pretty easy one, as it's just a nine-tailed fox. Here it's labeled as Jiu Wei Hu, but it's also called the Huli Jing. Known in Japan as the kyuubi or youko and Korea as the gumiho, this little guy shows up all over East Asia. Honestly foxes could take up their own post several times over, so I'll leave it here for now.

Next up, the chonker!

Once again, this little guy has another name. Here called Di Jiang, I am far more familiar with him as Hundun, a primordial chaos god that has a lot to do with the founding of the universe. As you can see, he look a little.... wierd. For starters, he has no face. In fact one of his more famous myths has to do with exactly that. See, Hundun was just chilling in the center of the world when 2 gods started to visit him. They felt really bad for Hundun, not having a face and all, so they decided to 'help' him by carving holes into his flesh. The idea was that he would be able to see, hear, eat and breathe with them, but after the seventh hole Hundun died. Looks like cutting holes into people to reorganize their biology can have unforseen medical consequences, what a surprise.

Next!

Wen Yao was pretty hard to get any info on, but from what I can tell it was a carp with wings (possibly on the back of the model) and was an omen of good harvest, hence the rice.

Next.

When I first saw this one, I thought it might be a pair of fenghuang (Chinese pheonixes), as they also often come in male/female pairs, but it's actually a different creature entirely. The Man Man, also called the Jian Jian or Bi Yi Niao are a pair of birds that resemble pheasants, except they only have one eye and one wing each. They are very romantic figures, with the obvious symbolism of a person's partner completing them. Awwww.

Next.

This here is Xing Tian. I have a whole post on him and what his deal is, so feel free to check that out.

Continued in Part 2

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bishiglomper · 6 months

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I am sick of my cheap ass phone 😤

Since i cant play pokemon tcg i thought I would redownload Duel Links.

Aha, Ha. Yeah, no. My phone has been at 90+ capacity for a few years despite only ever having 3-4 apps at a time. Duel links wanted like 5GB.

So I said fuck it, and did a factory reset. Because even after deleting literally every app not linked to Google manually, it was still over 90.

It took for-fucking-ever to download, but juuuust managed to get duel links on there 👀💦

Disabled a few features i dont use system-wise and managed to squeeze tumblr back in too

You know i used to have yugioh AND pokemon go. At the same time. Wtf did they do. My phones can't keep up with this shit.

Thankfully my bro and sister have divulged that they were planning on getting me a new phone for Christmas. So i just gotta wait a little bit.

Honestly mom needs one more desperately than I. (It stopped being able to make calls..) Shes actually using my previous phone. Because that one got too outdated for pokemon go too..

So that ones probably about 7 years old and it started as a refurbished tracfone. Ive had my current one for maybe 3? years. Also a tracfone. We didn't spend more than $25 on each phone.

I think Sissy is looking at $50+ ones this time though... so that's cool

I think i remembered to back up everything but I did find out I lost my ringtone... 😣

It was the opening instrumentals to my favorite Chichiri Song. It was just a very cheery peppy little tune. 😊 And no one but me and the fam knew how geeky it was 😌

I need to replace it. I'm only gonna be stuck with this phone for another 1.5 months but the tones pre built into the system are either too annoying or not loud enough for my deaf ass 😐

I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO REPLACE IT WITH

..Anybody recomend any good Beetlejuice snippets, maybe? 👀

#just rambling #need a new phone

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shelby-love · 2 years

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PETER PARKER | “Blood and Silk Sheets”

Requested: no Published: January 2nd, 2022 Pairing: Established tasm!Peter Parker x Reader Prompt(s): none Warning(s): none Word count: 2.3k Author’s note: My obsession continues. I’m having waay too much with his character. Also Trixie!

☇ my navigation

While at it please read my “Way Too Far From Home” one shot because it does not want to appear in the tags no matter how many times I repost it.

"How was school today?"

You stopped fiddling with the asparagus in the corner of your plate. Your mother's cheerful voice had you reaching for your cup of water if only to give work to your mouth, so you didn't have to engage. It needed ice cubes, the water, because room temperature with steak for dinner was not a good choice. Still, you downed it because it meant no immediate answer was needed.

Placing the high glass back on the table, you managed an awkward smile and said, "Good."

Because it was just that.

Good.

Nothing new, nothing special. Only grades and exams and a shit ton of assignments.

"Just good?" She enquired innocently, cutting her steak delicately.

"The steak's nice," you said instead. Your mother's eyes went ablaze at the lack of response, and just as she opened her mouth to demand intimate detail about how your day went, your younger sister jumped out of her seat and pointed at the TV.

"Look mom! Spider-Man!"

"Trixie-" Your mother began to tell her to stay put, but with no avail.

The child of destruction had already leaped for the sofa, throwing herself over the armrest to get a better view of the TV. She rolled over twice between the fluffy blanket before she was happily settled in to watch…

The news.

Your heart leaped in your chest.

But your mother was watching you.

Don't show it. Don't show it.

Don't give her a reason to suspect. Don't let her know you're interested (rightfully so) in what had happened to the masked hero. Especially not for the sole reason that it will give her ammo.

The woman had her suspicions.

"HE'S BLEEDING! OH MY GOOD MOM–"

Your eyes widened ever so slightly, and you dug into your mashed potatoes like a lunatic.

"Several eyewitnesses have confirmed what many already knew. Spider-Man had fallen down thirty stories and is currently…"

"How awful," your mother mused, cradling the wine glass in her hand. She never had a thing for peace makers that weren't wearing a badge, "Doesn't Peter know him?"

Should have just given it to me straight, you thought. "No, Peter just takes pictures of him."

"Just pictures?"

"Yeah?"

"You sure?"

You gave her a look, "I'm pretty sure I would know if my boyfriend was friends with Spider-Man."

"Not just friends but," she began conspiratorially, but waved a hand. "Never mind."

Then, just as fate smiled your way and your mother began succumbing to the wine and lack of interest in your geeky boyfriend (for who she did not know just fell thirty stories!) a sound so close to a falling table reasoned in the hallway.

Your room.

Not the hallway.

"What was that?"

The steak turned ashen in your mouth.

Your little sister felt as though it was her duty to pipe in from the couch, "Maybe there's someb-"

"A lamp!" You blurted out with vehemence, "The white one from Ikea. I must have left the window open. I should probably-"

You were already running across the living room. "Y/N! Come back here this instant!"

Trixie was cackling on her spot as if she didn't leap off the dining table herself. "Zero manners." You leaned into her face to say the words and snatched the pillow beneath her, ruining her tangled bliss.

"Hey!"

You took two stairs at the time, barging through your room as if you knew a burglar was in there. Scanning the desk, on which the white lamp laid undisturbed, you turned to the beanbag in the corner.

Nothing.

Then the bed.

First thing you said was, "The sheets!"

"What?" Asked Peter groggily, as if he had slept nicely before you came raging through. He twisted in his Spandex suit to release pressure on the silk sheet you were so desperately trying to get away from him. "Your boyfriend's bleeding and you're worried about sheets?"

"They're silk," you said as if it answered everything, gathering the flowery pattern that kept slipping away. "And you'll heal."

He brought out a hand and webs shot out, grasping your wrist and pulling you to the bed when you almost teleported to the other side of the room. Peter was so out of it he just nuzzled himself against your fallen body and murmured an almost drunken, "You smell soo nice babe."

"Stop it," you were still hugging the sheets in your arms, willing yourself not give him any attention. You were so angry you could bite his ear clean off.

Stupid invasive thoughts.

"Y/N? Who are you talking to?" Your mother's voice hollered from downstairs.

Fearing she would trek her merry way upstairs and find you in bed with a bloodied red and blue man (who still wore his mask), you released the sheets and grabbed Peter's wrist. You lead the dangly muscle clad arm to the direction of the door handle, "Shoot."

"What?" He mumbled in your neck, sending tingles running.

"Just…" You tried to ignore his warm breath, "Just shoot your webs Peter for the love of everything–"

Pop.

The door handle became a sticky mess, connected to the wall and door by unbreakable web. You sighed in relief and fell back against the pillow. It was silk too, but you didn't have time to strip it clean. "I need to see those wounds."

He groaned.

"I'm serious Peter," you told him. "Take off your shirt. Or suit. Or whatever. Now."

"So bossy."

You snatched off his mask yourself, revealing a Peter Parker with nasty cuts all over his face. Upon seeing the look on your face, he brought his bloodied lip out in an innocent, broad smile as his cheek rested squished on your pillow. Blood trailed his face like tears.

"Let me get the aid kit," you announced. "Clothes are coming off. Now."

"Yes ma'am," he smiled, muttering a happy, "Don't have to tell me twice."

The aid kit was placed underneath your desk, settled in a big shoebox that once housed knee-high boots but had to give up the space in order for the emergency kit to settle in. "You have an aid kit in your room?"

You felt his eyes on your bottom as you pushed out the white leather chair and crouched beneath the big desk, half expecting to rattle your head against it because of his watchful eyes. His footsteps creaked the laminate flooring as he fought his suit, hopping from one foot to another. "Be quiet!" You said and retrieved the kit. “And yes, I do have an emergency kit in my room because you keep coming to me injured! Now take off the suit.”

"I'm trying," Peter said beneath the suit that now clawed at his face, acting as a mask when it wasn't. "I really am babe." He added when he felt your own fingers attempting to grasp his suit. Every time you pinched a spot, the skintight cloth found it rebellious to slip right through.

"How do you even get this thing off?" You asked him, breathless at the lack of sudden air.

"Lots of practice." He replied helpfully, his body unmoving as he allowed you to dot all over him. You found a good grasping spot just above his collarbone and yanked, feeling the material finally work alongside you. "And a vicious girlfriend. Ow."

When at last the suit fell apart, you exhaled in relief but blanched at the sight of his chest.

He kissed your worried face away. "I'm fine."

"No you're not," you stated, pushed him down on the bed.

"Oooh kinky."

"Shut up," you couldn't help but laugh, reaching for the aid kit. "You fell down thirty stories."

"You saw?"

"No," you shook your head grimly, settling his head on your lap. "I heard. On the news."

He visibly cringed, no doubt feeling terrible that you had to found out that way. Was he in the wrong for not telling you that his today's adventure was probably going to end with him in pain? Yeah, probably, he thought.

"Mom's been a pain in my butt though," you told him with fake chirpiness, dabbing the antiseptic on his nose. He seethed but said nothing, being an obedient boyfriend after putting you in such a frenzy. "Almost told her that the punk she calls Spider-Man might very well be her son-in-law. God she's infuriating."

Peter smiled big and wide, having heard nothing of what you said save for that one label.

"And Trix?" You began droning on, "It's like she wants mom to know. Ever since you told her who you were…"

Peter liked your sister. Liked the filterless kid with all his might. Even the purple temporary color in her hair that she always begged you put on her. He thought it was cute that she already had such a strong personality. Smart mouth and dye in her hair.

And his biggest fan.

Then a knock on the door. Your head whipped mid wound cleaning.

"It's Trix," Peter supplied.

You threw a bandage at the door. It didn't make it farther than Peter's knee. "Go away!"

"Please!"

Throwing Peter's head off your lap (gently) you stood up and brushed the creases off your pants. His blood blended with your dark shirt, so you were less worried about traumatizing your sister. You took a step toward the door before Peter pulled you to him. "What are you doing?" You whisper-shouted, careful not to touch his injuries after you landed on top of him.

He mouthed one word. Kiss.

"What for?"

Peter rolled his eyes, "To make it better. It's a condition."

"Oh? A condition?" You looked him in the eyes, tilting your head. "You're setting up contidions?"

"It's in the contract," he supplied, running a hand beneath your loose shirt. "Y'know, no big deal."

"Really? No big deal?"

"Mhmm."

You were about to make his wish come true when he raised his head and stole one for himself. Then another. And another. "Peter…" You said in between each kiss, giddy despite the fact worry cruised through your veins. "You're impossible."

"I know," he replied proudly and settled back, his torso naked for all to see. Not wanting to traumatize your sister, you at last grabbed the silken material you so desperately tried to save and threw it on him.

"Behave," you pointed a finger, grabbed scissors off the desk and yanked them into the web. "I believe it's in the contract."

"No it's not."

"Oh I think it is," you told him with a light smirk, "It's under mutuality of obligation. Both parties agree that Peter Parker must listen to his girlfriend at all times," you pointed at yourself with the scissors. "Aka me."

His chuckle was the last thing heard before the web broke apart and a small body of a child barreled through, ear first and then the rest of her body following.

"Were you eavesdropping?" You asked your sister after grabbing her by the elbow to prevent her fall.

Trxie fixed you a stare, "No I wasn't."

"Yes, you were," you and Peter said at the same time.

Her jaw went slack, "Peter!"

You rolled your eyes, shutting the door after peering into the hallway in search for your mother. "Great now we have an audience." You said after shutting it.

"How are you feeling?" Trixie asked him, ignoring you. "I saw you on TV."

"Yeah, yeah I'm fine Trix," he told her banged up. "No big deal."

"I knew it," she said, proud to have guessed right. If only she saw what lay beneath the sheet her hero was covered with. Trixie turned to you, "Mom's sleeping."

"Hallelujah."

"So, Trix," Peter tried to sound casual as you leaned against the table with your hip, daring him with your eyes to tell her how much it hurt. "H-how's it going?"

She scooted closer to his head, and he grunted in pain, masking the action by coughing. Your eyebrows reached your hairline.

"Good," Trixie's hair fell beside his. "How are you doing?"

"Oh," he sounded surprised. "I-I'm doing good Trix. Doin' real good."

"Then why'd you fall down thirty stories?"

You couldn't help but laugh.

"I saw everything," she announced proudly, twisting until her cheek lay in her palm, elbow digging into the bed and everything. Peter, who still rested on his back looked at her from the corner of his eye. "Somebody filmed you and they played it on the news. It was in slow motion and everything."

"You probably shouldn't have seen that," Peter told her. "Too graphic."

"So what? I can take it."

"You're eight Trixie."

"And you're eighteen and can't even do your job right."

"O-kay, Trix," you came in between, grabbing her leg and yanking her toward you. "That's enough. Thank you for bruising his ego."

"Yeah, thanks Trix." Peter added, suddenly sour.

"No problem," she said, confused as to why she was unrightfully being kicked out but still proud to receive thank yous.

"Yep," you lead her by the shoulders, "Thanks for the audience kid."

Just as you were about to close to door in her face did she announce, "Mom said you're driving me to school tomorrow."

"Sure," you said, done with dealing with her. "Might even let Peter swing you there if you leave me alone."

Her eyes sparkled, "You promise?"

She already had a finger out. You rolled your eyes and looped your pinky through hers. "Now leave us alone."

"Done!" She skedaddled back to where she came from.

"Impossible," you muttered after her and closed the door. "Can't a woman have any peace-"

Peter suddenly stood incredibly close to you, some of his wounds already healed. "Thanks for the help Y/N but I really need to make my payment."

"It's in the contract?" You asked him, watching him nod eagerly. "All right then. Come and collect."

He swooped in and kissed you long, hard and good.

Note: If you enjoyed reading this fic do check out my other work by clicking on one of my masterlist links. If it’s not a bother leave a like, comment and/or reblog. It gives me motivation and lets me know that you liked what I wrote. <3

If you would perhaps want to read some of my work earlier, you can check out my AO3 profile, I’ll always make sure to tell you guys when a fic is posted on there in advance!

Lastly, if you wish to be tagged under any of my future fics go to my tag list ! I no longer take requests through ask, dm, comments anymore. Once on my tag list post you’ll find a link to a Google Form that you have to fill out in order for your request to be valid! x

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lokisprettygirl · 2 years

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Love is Selfless, It's Kind (Loki x Female Reader) (Part 38)

Summary: Mean loki is mean but he is also afraid out of his mind So he gives you an ultimatum.

Warning : 18 + , Smut, Angsty angst, mean loki, soft loki, scared loki, over protective loki, degradation, Dacryphilia , almost 5k words eeks, let me add possesive toxic behaviour here as well

Taglist : @colifower @rinacreateart @christineblood @the-wounded-healer05 @lokiprompts @geeky-politics-46 @sharklover927 @virtualstrawberrydinosaur @huntress-artemiss @rat-p1ss

Next morning when you woke up, you were hungover to say the least, you haven't felt this hungover since forever, ofcourse not including the time you drank that asgardian wine. Loki wasn't in the room so you made your way out to the living room, you don't remember much from last night but you do remember that he took care of you and he cuddled you? Yess to that. When you stepped off the bed, everything still spun around, you quickly made your way to the kitchen and there he was cooking something.

He didn't smile when he looked at you and it did hurt you, you almost forgot about his silly punishment that you didn't feel like you deserve, it's been six days, how long he's going to keep this up? You hopped yourself up and sat down on the countertop, your head felt heavy and you felt nauseous. "Did you water the plant?" He asked you as he glared at you "Noo I'll do it later" you told him. You haven't missed a day of watering that herb and you can't or it will die and so would you fifty years later or tomorrow or just today from the Hangover or murderous mom or probably your dad would pop out of somewhere to burn you alive.

"Go do it now" he said sternly and you groaned "Thanks, good morning to you too lo" you mumbled as you stepped down the counter "It's not really a good morning for you is it? Just felt futile to say it" he snickered and you glared at him "Don't give me eyes, do the thing you're told to do, and then come back to drink this" you saw him straining a liquidy stuff in a cup and you went back to the room to water it, in three weeks the plant has grown a little bit "Hey plantie, how are you today" you mumbled and you could feel the leaves moving, it always did whenever you'd talk to it. It was a leaving breathing thing, Magic right "Don't tell Mommy frigga but her son is being a real dee eye see kay these days" you whispered and more leaves fluttered around you.

"I know, soft baby kitten lo is hibernating somewhere, I don't know where" you huffed and the plant nodded in yes "If you're done complaining of me, come out, you're supposed to drink it while it's hot" you heard Loki's voice and go back to the kitchen "what is this, I'm hungover lo" you groaned as you put your head down on the dining table "And I'm trying to fix that, it's a tea, with ginger , lemon and other midgardian herbs , you'll feel better" he told you as he sat down and sipped on his tea. It didn't taste like how you make it, even though he made it exactly how you did.

You sipped on the ugly looking concoction he made, it didn't taste bad thankfully and it indeed helped with the nausea. He was sipping on his tea in his usual royal posh manner, he was scrolling something on his phone. There was a time when he didn't understand how the phone worked, you taught him, now he's using that cellular device to ignore you "I can feel you staring y/n" he mumbled and you snapped out of your thoughts "Soo?" You glared at him

"So what?

"What am I supposed to do if you can feel it? My boyfriend is pretty I am going to stare, what's your problem?"

He almost had to use to magic to stop the smile that was going to creep over his face at that. You're adorable and he's hating this but you still don't understand why he's doing this.

"My problem is that, we have a rehearsal dinner to attend and you have to go see maximoff and others so I have to drop you there, then I have to get ready myself, it's already 2 pm, so drink your tea and get ready so I can fulfill my responsibility" he told you in one go and then he went back to scrolling on his phone..

"You don't have to drop me if it's such a task lo, I can call a cab" you huffed as you got up and he glared at you again "Ahhuh and then what ? you die? Because you manage that when you are on your own somehow" he snapped back and you teared up. He's being awfully mean and you just didn't expect this kind of talk from him. That's your soft baby lo right ? You're so spoiled because of his softness that everything he's doing in last few days just feels criminal "Right I forgot I'm useless" you mumbled and it earned you more glares , he placed his phone down and walked over to you, he placed his hands on the back of your head and used his thumbs to make you look at him.

Your teary eyes broke his heart "Never ever say that again sweetheart, am I clear? " He wiped the tears that fell from your eyes and you nod in yes, then he leaned down to kiss your forehead and this is the most he's going to touch you today so you both savored it "Get ready, don't make me spank you" he whispered and then he went back to your shared room. Maybe he should have just done that instead of doing whatever torture this is.

Once you showered you got dressed up, you kept your face bare since you'd have to do it when you get ready for the rehearsal dinner, you packed your dress and make up products in a bag, loki was already dressed up and he was waiting for you in the living room

When you came out he couldn't stop staring at you, that's his sweet princess, all bare faced and pretty like she's supposed to be. He wanted to go smother you in affection and gentle sweet love making but ofcourse he didn't do that. "I'm ready" you mumbled and he took the bag away from you "Wait just a second" he went back to the room and took the plant and kept it in his vault. It's too risky to leave it here all alone. If someone is after him or you, he can't take any risks.

On the way to the tower he didn't say anything and neither did you but the silence was killing you "I'm going back to work after the wedding gets over" he glared at you when you said that "No you're not" you chuckled when he said that "Umm Sorry..What did you say?" You huffed "I said..No you're not going back to work" he answered nonchalantly.

"Well you can't decide that" you crossed your arms "I can and I will silly girl" Maybe you shouldn't have said anything at all, should have just kept quiet. He was right, you haven't learned anything at all, nothing. Nada. This punishment is only making you act out more.

When you both reached the tower, you went inside quickly, you finally had an access pass. Yay. You went to the 14th floor and everyone was there except tony and pepper. Argh they're probably being nasty with each other. You saw Eddie and hugged him, then venom scolded you for almost dying again especially when he wasn't around. "Only die when i is around, so I can get inside and fix you" venom told you and you chuckled. You could feel loki burning holes in your back. Clint and others were watching and laughing at something so you joined them "What are you guys laughing about?" You asked him and he laughed again

"Just old footage from missions and stuff" he told you and you nod "Wait you want to see his clips when he came here, I bet you have seen the leaked viral one" he asked you and you chuckled "The ant has no quarrel with a boot one ..oh yeah" loki sat down next to clint, and he connected his laptop to the tv so everyone can watch "This is humiliating" he huffed and you pout at him "That's him in Stuttgart, when he hypnotised me and later I realised he was doing it on purpose, he was trying to get caught" you almost gasped as you saw him in all black overcoat with that scarf on, where is that scarf? his hair used to be longer at the time "Woww that's hot" you gasped audibly and wanda smacked your arms.

Loki had a small smile on his lips as he watched you. Only you could enjoy him committing senseless enormities "Oh wait this is the fun one, it happened right here so enjoy the hd view" Clint turned on a video and Loki's eyes widened "Oh no no stop that.. right now" he said as he panicked

"Enough, You are, all of you are beneath me.. I am a god, you dull creature, and I will not be bullied by..." He looked so mad, so hot but then you saw hulk smashing him repeatedly on the floor again and again, like a piece of cloth, you stood up and everyone else just laughed but you got really worried for a second "Puny god" you watched Bruce or hulk pass by and then you heard him wincing and was he making that noise? That Sounded like an injured dog "That was pathetic brother" thor said to loki and he was just totally completely embarassed .

"That was awesome" you turned to look at him "Haha enjoying my misery y/n?" Loki asked you and you just smiled "No that was truly awesome, not for you I'm guessing but, you got smashed like that by hulk? And you survived that? Who could have survived that? Like you're so strong and durable and almost indestructible.. wow I'm just wowed lo" he wasn't expecting you to say that, for a second he thought you'd make fun of him, he forgot that you're his princess and you'd find your reasons to be kind to him, he got up and then he hugged you "Thank you princess" there he was your sweet baby lo, but he was gone as swiftly as he came when he realised that

"Okay enough of this if we are not ready and at the venue by the time, Pepper is going to burn this tower down with all of us inside" nat reminded everyone and all of them scurried off to get ready. You left to his room as well to get ready and he followed you, he just wanted to fuck you right now after what just happened but he can't not until you learn your lesson.

"You know when we resume the fucking sesh, I wouldn't mind being the dull creature, and be beneath you my god, you're so fucking hot when you're mean lo" you winked at him and he could feel himself hardening but he won't give in to your tricks, he's the master of trickery "Get ready" you sighed as you heard him, it took him 5 minutes to get ready himself and he laid down on his bed and used magic to calm himself down, now he can't stop picturing you on your knees, doing whatever he would ask you to, being a sweet little whore for him. "Lo? Lo? how's the dress?" He snapped out of his filthy thoughts as he heard you "what?" He asked you confused "How's the dress?" You twirled around a little and he wanted to kiss you so bad right now "You look beautiful" he mumbled and then you went to finish your make up. The venue was few miles away and they had to leave on time.

Once you got your make up done, you saw him on the bed, his eyes were closed so you assumed he was taking a nap, he kept his hands behind his head and he looked scrumptious. You walked over to him and you crawled up on him carefully to not wake him, you placed your thighs on either side of his waist, he smelled so good, and he looked so good and he left you all frustrated two days ago. You leaned down and sucked on his neck, as soon as he felt you he moaned and then he tried to pull you away "Get off y/n" you placed your index finger on his lips as you shushed him up and you continued sucking and nipping on his neck.

He groaned and he flipped you around "Sweet whore, you really think you can play the god of mischief? I know what you are doing and it's not working" he kept your hands above your head and wrapped your legs around his waist and then he humped into your heated core, you moaned so loudly as you felt the friction "Godd loo please fuck me babyyy I need you please" you whined and he just snickered in response, he wants to, desperately but he won't give in "ahh look how pathetic you look right now, I relish this sweet y/n , I can make you suffer like this forever if I have to" you knew he was going to stop again once you're close but you still enjoyed each n every movement of his hips.

"mmm no pleaseee daddy, I'll be good I promise, I'll do whatever you want" you mumbled in a last attempt to coax him but he didn't budge "Oh stop with your tricks silly girl, you promised me before and you broke it" he kept his head in the crook of your neck or he'll end up kissing you and making love to you. He grabbed your chin with his one hand and rubbed his thumb over your lips messing your lipstick all around your lips "You're ruining your makeup but you don't really care in the wake of your whorishness do you?" He whispered in your ear and you whined "I'll let you ruin me in everyway you want daddy" he groaned loudly as he heard you. His hips kept moving in the center of your core, he was trying so hard to resist you.

"Then let me ruin you properly darling" you almost celebrated internally as you thought he was going to fuck you finally but he had other plans "Now I'll bring you closer to the release if you'd allow me to wipe your face clean, the face you have worked so hard on in past hour" he said to you and you looked at him "Umm do I get to cum ?" You asked him and he grinned "That's upto me but keep your wager on no" he answered and you huffed, he's so mean, but it was kind of hot "Okayy" you whispered and he couldn't believe this

"Oh little whore, you're really desperate for release aren't you? Would do anything huh? " He asked you as he conjured a piece of cloth in his hand, it looked the same as your makeup removing wipes "Last chance pathetic whore" he whispered as he bucked his hips into you again "Pleease please keep moving" you begged to him and he chuckled "Oh look at you..fuck darling.. norns" he whispered and then you felt the wet wipe on your forehead first, he would feel bad about ruining your hardwork, but you seemed so willing and desperate he wanted to destroy you.

"Ohh fuckk please" why this was so hot to you? Why him ruining your face like that made you dripping wet? You felt the wipe smudging your eye shadow all over and you moaned, his one hand still kept your arms over your head, so you couldn't even touch him. You felt bound and at his mercy and you loved it.

"You wanted to be beneath me you dull creature? You sure look it right now my cock desperate whore" he whispered filthy things in your ear as he ruined your face slowly, he didn't stop until all the colours meshed with each other and you looked all messed up for him. He stopped the movement of his hips once he was done with his work and you whimpered, he saw you tearing up and he placed soft kisses over your closed eyes "Fuck you look so broken, my love" he chuckled and you just sobbed quietly "make me cum please lo ..god please" you felt so hazy and floaty you just wanted to cum "oooh didn't I ask you to put your bets on no?" His voice so dark and evil you wanted to smack the shit out of him in the moment.

"You're so meannn" he leaned down and kissed your forehead "I know I am, but you're soaking wet right now, what does that say about you ?" He got off the bed and you look completely debauched "Sweet love, I can use magic to control my urges, but what about you hmm? How long do you think your mortal fragile body can take this?" He was fixing his shirt, tucking it inside his pants as he talked. You were panting heavily, he stopped right before you were about to cum and it frustrated you so much, you looked so beautiful. So his.

"Fix your face and change your underwear?" He chuckled and you rolled your eyes "I'm giving you twenty minutes, if you're not downstairs by then, I'll leave without you, you can come with wanda" he kissed your forehead before he left and you threw the pillows away in frustration.

Ofcourse you took more than twenty minutes, you had to wash your face and do it all over again. He sighed as he looked at the time, he didn't want to leave you but he can't make empty threats. You are not taking him seriously anyways. "Wanda can I trust you with this? I need her to be safe" loki called wanda as he left for venue "Why are you not taking her again?" She asked him confused and he sighed "I have something important to do" he lied and she assured him "Don't worry I have got my girl, and Clint and vision would be with me, nothing to worry about" she told him and he hangs up

Is he going too far with this? He wasn't really thinking clearly, you want to go back to work after you almost died again. You haven't learned shit yet. When you went downstairs you looked for loki but he wasn't there but you got a text for him

Precious baby lo: When will you start taking my words seriously y/n?

He left without you, of all the things he have done and said to you in the past week, this is what hurt you the most. He left without you, he didn't take you with him. He didn't wait for you. You saw wanda approaching you, she looked so pretty in her little red dress. She took you towards the car, on the way Clint and wanda were making random jokes but your mind was distracted. Also this is the first time you were seeing vision in a human form and he looked good.

When you reached the venue, most of them were there, thor was chatting up with jane and lo. You went towards them and she hugged you. Loki looked at you but you didn't look at him at all, you ignored him and walked away to greet Tony n Pepper. Finally the wedding was here, just one more day. Throughout the dinner rehearsal you ignored him and stayed with others, you could feel his eyes on you but you didn't care, your self respect rose out of nowhere. He left you.

Loki knew you'd throw tantrums when you'd see him, probably a snarky remark or two but he didn't expect you to ignore him like he didn't exist. He was confused. The tables were turned. He saw you at the bar sipping on an orange juice like a child and he walked over to you "So you made it here safely " he said to you but you didn't respond, you felt too hurt.

"Silent treatment I see" he said again and you smiled at him "This is what you want right? You want me to be good? I'll be good, I'll be quiet, I won't say anything, thanks for leaving me again" your voice choked up as you spoke. Where is this coming from? He didn't leave you, he just left..oh fuck.

You stepped off the bar stool and you made your way to the bathroom, he ran his hands through his hair as he saw you walking out. He have hurt you for real this time. He did take it too far, he followed you as you made your way to the bathroom and when he got inside he saw you crying and his heart broke "Y/n" you wiped your tears as you heard him "Whatt?" You yelled and he walked towards you "I didn't leave-leave you" he explained himself and you chuckled "Yeah you just left me at the tower, what happened to protecting me? You didn't care about that huh" you snapped and he glared at you "I left you with people I knew you'd be safe with"

"Yeah whatever I'm done with this loki" you told him and he grabbed your arms to turn you to him "You're done with this? You? Are. Done with this?" He pulled you closer to him, your faces mere inches away from each other "Yes..fuck you" as soon as the words left your mouth he kissed you roughly , you felt his lips moving on yours and you responded once you realised what was happening. He was kissing you "Well fuck you too darling, you honestly give no fucks about what I want, do you?" He mumbled between the kisses and then he lifted you up as he walked you straight towards the nearest wall and he wrapped your legs around him.

"I do, why would you think otherwise? I did what you wanted me to do, she threatened to kill herself what I was supposed to do let her die?" You screamed a little and he glared at you. He took off your panties and shoved it in his pocket then he unbuttoned himself and thrusted inside you in one quick motion, you gasped as you felt his cock inside you after long 6 days "That's exactly what you were supposed to do disobedient slut of mine" he moved in and out of you, fucking you roughly against the wall, you threw your head back as you felt the sweet sensation building up "Well I can't leave people to die like that" you responded and he punched the wall next to you, it cracked, you winced as he did.

He kissed you again and he pulled the straps of your dress down so he could squeeze your bare breasts, you moaned as you felt your orgasm approaching and this time he didn't stop, he kept fucking into you, it's been too long and he needed to cum inside you too "Cum now insolent little princess" he whispered in your ear and you did instantly, you arched your back and grabbed onto him tightly as you worked through your orgasm, he let go too as soon as he felt you shaking and writhing, as soon as he had the snug warm feeling of your cunt squeezing him. He kissed you softly all over as you both tried to calm down.

Then he put you down slowly and you could see his eyes tearing up, he used his magic to clean you both up and then he passed you your underwear. You awkwardly put it on, he walked towards the sink and he leaned his arms against it, he was still hyper and breathing heavily "Lo babyy" you walked towards him and he finally pulled you in for a hug, he lifted you up and placed you on the edge of the sink as he hugged you tightly "I do understand and I do listen baby, I made a mistake" you mumbled as you kept your head down on his shoulder "You have no idea what it's like for me princess, you have no clue how I felt when I saw you falling from the building , you could have died again and I...I'm living in fear of losing you every second of my life.. You just don't understand how hard it is for me.. you won't unless I would die right in front of your eyes" you kept your palm over his lips as you heard him, you can't imagine losing him like that ever.

"I know I don't, and I'm sorry that I don't, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have gone that day without you, I panicked and I'm sorry about that, what else do you want me to do or say lo? What do you want me to do?" You asked him and he sighed "I need you to listen to me princess, I need you to do what I want you to do, I am sorry I have made your life difficult, I have made it full of uncertainties I know, but I can't protect you unless you'd listen to me, I can't keep you safe if you would be so careless, you have to help me keep you safe " he cupped your cheeks and looked right into your eyes as he spoke "lo I.." he cuts you off before you can speak further "or you can..you can let go..I told you you'd be safer without me.. whatever happened with your mother, it's not as simple as it might look, something is happening I can feel it sweetheart, and it has something to do with me, I just need to figure out what, but this is going to be your life with me unfortunately, I can either keep you safe on my own terms or I can let you go and be free" you cried and shook your head as you heard him, anxiety filled every fibre of your being as he talked about letting go again "Don't say that please, I can't be without you loo please, I love you" you kissed him and he kissed you back lovingly and then he pulled away

"I know, I love you and don't you ever think that I can be without you either, but I can't do this your way, you don't want to be chained, you want to be independent and I admire that but I can't have you going out on your own for now, you have to allow me to control your life sweet girl, that's the only way I can keep you safe and alive, you're my everything and I need you here with me but if me having such power over you scares you or you want your freedom back, just go..go wherever you need, I'll help you sweetheart, I would give you everything you'd need to start a life on your own, you can keep the house darling, I'll still be there for you but as a friend, a well wisher, but you won't be mine and I won't control you. You'd be free from me and this relationship that only brings you more harm than I am worth "

Your heart broke with each and every thing he said, how could you even think of leaving him? How could he think like that? You can't, you belong to him and he's yours, how did you two get here again after everything? you felt him kissing you again and then he stepped away

"Dont make hasty decisions my love, take your time, but just know if you choose to be mine, I'll be the one who'd control every aspect of your life from now, you won't get to make your own decisions, don't take my words lightly, take your time with this please, I'll be at the party"

He wiped his tears and then he looked at you one last time before he left you to ponder over this.

#loki #loki x female reader #loki x reader #loki x reader angst #loki x reader smut #loki x reader fluff #loki x reader insert #loki x reader fic #loki x you #wanda maximoff #thor #clint barton #venom #the avengers #pepperony

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yellowocaballero · 3 years

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Buffy the Vampire Slayer fic: Buffy’s Mom falls for a real estate scam and plunges them all into hell.

“So,” Buffy said, excruciatingly slowly, “find out anything interesting at work today?”

Mom slowly unzipped her purse and dug through its voluminous depths before dumping a fistful of brochures on the table. Upside down, Buffy could read SUNNYDALE DOESN’T HAVE TO BE SUNNYHELL: 10 TACTICS FOR SURVIVAL and DEMONS, DEMONS, DEMONS...AND YOU!.

“I have the manual in my backpack,” Buffy said sympathetically. “Want to take a look?”

“I’d rather get drunk, thanks.”

Buffy understands how this Slayer thing works.

Wake up, go to school, save the world. Never tell anybody who you are and what you can do, let your Watcher dictate your life, and then die in three years. Sunnydale will not be any different, and there’s no way it has a good hair salon.

But there’s definitely something weird about Sunnydale, and it’s not the Hellmouth. It might be the vampires at the nightclub and the demons in her math class. It’s probably the nerdy girl who writes manuals on the undead, the dweeb with a stake watching out for any suspicious ‘Watchers’ or ‘Slayers’, and the overly confident Queen Bee who might single-handedly be fighting crime. It’s definitely the overly Catholic vampire divorcee with a soul.

Maybe Buffy didn’t understand as much as she thought she did. But hey - at least she doesn’t have to worry about a secret identity, right?

The rest of this 20k story under the cut. I have no explanation for this.

In retrospect, the house had been suspiciously cheap.

Buffy and her mom hadn’t really been in a position to complain. They were caught in a strange, all holds barred standoff of mutual resentment and guilt: Buffy, for getting expelled from school for reasons that were totally not her fault, and Mom, for divorcing Dad and having to find a job on the quick that pulled them all the way to Sunnydale, California.

Of course, it was hardly as simple as that: Buffy secretly wondered if Dad had bounced because she was just too much trouble, and she knew that Mom thought Buffy was a delinquent because of her subpar parenting and the trauma of divorce. Yeah, as if divorce was her problem right now.

So when Mom drained her savings to buy a gorgeous and cheap house in the middle of Lame Street, Suburbia, Boringville, Buffy tried only to complain about the stupid stuff. And if Mom got on her case for being distant and only talking about her closet, then she just totally wasn’t getting that Buffy was trying to help. Sometimes not bothering your mom meant just not telling her stuff.

Buffy started school only half a week after they moved in: barely enough time to get their boxes unpacked and then sit around exhausted from the strain. Mom complained about her aching back, and Buffy badly pretended that the fridge was too heavy to lift. She knew that this dumb year had knocked a screw loose, because she caught herself wishing she had read some of Pike’s geeky Spider-Man comics. Kind of a Secret Identity For Dummies type deal, except Spider-man was fictional and she was not nearly that lucky.

She needed more than a weekend of lying in bed exhausted and flipping through Teen Beat before starting school. She had to put together the perfect outfit, carefully apply her best makeup that won her Homecoming Queen at the 8th grade dance, and try desperately to make up some kind of amazing backstory that had no demons, vampires, ghouls, or ghastlies. Buffy Summers had moved to Losertown because she wanted some more sun, get away from the yucky LA pollution, rediscover nature…

“Remember, honey,” Mom had said, smiling that new smile in the idling and sputtering car in front of the weirdly gigantic suburban high school. “This is a fresh start, okay? Everything’s going to be different from now on.”

“Is that supposed to be comforting?” Buffy asked. “That’s not comforting.”

Mom didn’t drop the smile, but she didn’t need to. It was so pained and fakey-happy. It was new and awful, but somehow it wasn’t all that different from her old smiles. Maybe Mom had always been fakey-happy, and Buffy had been too busy being fakey-happy with her to notice. “Please, Buffy. I’m just asking you to try.”

“I’m trying, I’m trying!” Buffy slid out of the seat, slamming the car door behind her. “What’s the worst that can happen? I’ll burn down two cafeterias?”

“Don’t even joke.”

Buffy walks onto the campus of Sunnydale High with her chin held high, her hips swaying seductively, ready to conquer high school - and, maybe, even her own life.

Twenty steps in, somebody is already staring at her. Buffy assumes this is because she is just that sexy and cool.

Thirty steps in, an entire group of kids kicking a ball around are staring at her. Buffy’s ego is through the roof, although she’s also a little uncomfortable.

Thirty five steps in, some nerd in a Hawaiian shirt loudly yells, “Holy shit, is that a new girl?”

And then everybody’s staring, and Buffy promptly loses control over the situation.

Ten minutes later, Buffy’s found herself mobbed by a group of girls with teased hair lead by a particularly bossy and tall girl who was quick to assert that her name was Cordelia, she lived in the North side of town, thank you very much, and where did you buy that eyeshadow? Anyway, so, like, what are you doing here?

“Uh,” Buffy said, hemmed in on all sides by a ring of gawking students. Was this their first time seeing a girl from LA? “Going to...school?”

Cordelia gives her a look of abject sympathy, ready to put five dollars in her tin cup on a street corner. “So you’re here because you’re stupid, huh?”

“Aw, Cordy, lay off,” the nerd in the Hawaiian shirt said, pushing through the crowd and cheerfully ignoring the looks of mild disdain everybody was bestowing upon him. “You call this a Welcome Wagon? Wait ‘til first period to scare her pants off.” The nerd smiled brightly at her, in a way that he probably thought was winning but was painfully teenage boy awkward. He held out his hand. Buffy eyed it warily. “Xander Harris, Mr. Welcome Wagon, can I show you around? Get you a drink? It’ll be from the vending machine, so ten percent chance you’ll get Cherry Coke, but guaranteed it’ll be cold!”

“Ugh, Xander, don’t threaten a girl with Cherry Coke.”

“How can I threaten her when you’re standing right next to me, Cordelia!”

A short, painfully adorable red headed girl in a fuzzy sweater tugged at Xander’s garish sleeve, expression softly folded in gentle recrimination. “Xander! Be nice.” She smiled sweetly at Buffy, assailing her eyes with a bright pink butterfly hair clip. “I’m Willow Rosenberg. Uh, I like your hair. And your shoes. And your makeup is nice.”

“Thanks,” Buffy said reflexively, “I like your…”

“Take your time,” Willow said magnanimously.

“Points on the good taste, fresh meat,” Cordy said, somehow also magnanimously.

She crossed her arms, taking a long hard look up and down Buffy. The crowd around them held their breaths, waiting for her verdict. Buffy straightened, pushing her chin up and setting out her shoulders. She’s known dozens of wanna-be Queen Bees in her life, but somehow Buffy had the sense that there was only one Cordelia. Nobody in the world but Pike had ever recognized that there was only one Buffy. There was no way she was going to out-popular this girl who clearly held the school in an iron fist, but Buffy didn’t back away from vampires and she sure as hell didn’t back away from girls who wore that shade of purple.

Finally, Cordelia decreed, “She has potential. I give her two weeks.”

Buffy instantly shot back, “Ye of little faith. Want to bet?”

“Didn’t the principal ban the dead pool?” Willow asked, distressed.

“The what?” Buffy asked, having admittedly not known what the bet was.

“One week,” Cordelia amended.

Buffy was growing increasingly concerned. Kids around them were audibly making bets. One short boy wearing another unfortunate shirt was clearly acting as bookie. “One week of what?”

“Survival,” Cody said, grinning brightly and happily, “like, duh.”

“Excuse me, hello, hi, I’m Buffy Summers. Wonderful to finally make your acquaintance. I like your hair. What did Cordelia mean by survival?”

Willow stared at Buffy, wide eyed and confused. She looked around, as if Buffy could possibly be speaking to anybody else, but all she saw was the math class talking loudly amongst each other and horsing around. The math teacher wasn’t even trying: he was just sitting at his chair, feet on the desk and snoring away with a magazine over his eyes.

They were three periods in, and half of the classes so far had been like this. Buffy’s homeroom was a flop - the teacher didn’t even bother trying to introduce her, and she was put under the thumbscrews by gawking kids grilling her for her life story again - and her first period actually seemed to involve some English, but second period Science was just half a period of limp lecturing before passing out some worksheets. Mom had been promised a good school district! So much for the propaganda that these nice suburbs had good schools.

“Uh…” Willow pointed to herself and Buffy nodded very slowly. “Yes! Yes, right, um...I’d ignore Cordelia, really. She comes on a little strong.”

“Yeah, her and half the school.” Buffy held up a completely blank notebook, devoid of everything but a dozen phone numbers. “Half the guys here are losing their minds meeting a girl they haven’t known since kindergarten.” Somewhat anxiously, Buffy felt the need to assert, “I mean, that’s also my total good looks. I had, like, five boyfriends freshman year.”

Willow’s eyes goggled. “Wow! Five boyfriends?”

“In a row,” Buffy promised.

“Wow. Life outside of Sunnydale really is different, huh.” Willow seemed a little distressed by this, as if there were a million other things happening outside of Sunnydale that she had no methods or means of witnessing. “Well, don’t listen to Cordelia. She’s a pessimist. I’m sure you’ll do just fine here. And - and people live longer than a month all the time! For example - I’m fifteen years old. That’s much longer than a month. One hundred eighty six months, if you wanted to get specific -”

“Okay, nerd.” At least someone here could do math. With the quality of this education, it was a miracle she could do double digit multiplication. “Look, as fun as it is being - sorry, did you say live?”

“Until old age,” Willow swore up and down. “I promise! If you follow every guideline in the handbook and follow all municipal laws, then your chances of making it a year are 80%! I would know, I helped write it! My mom’s on the committee. She says it teaches civil engagement -”

Buffy had a headache. Maybe it was a good thing that math wasn’t happening today - she couldn’t take two things that killed her brain. She had thought her first day at school would be a stressful, harrowing ‘Rumble in the Jungle’ type thing - not a murder mystery, with her as the corpse! “What handbook?”

Willow stared at Buffy, eyes wide and jaw slack. Her eyes widened and widened, until they were as circular as quarters. Panic bloomed across her expression.

She abruptly whirled around in her seat, grabbing a nearby pencil and lobbing it at a blonde boy laughing with his friends in the back of the room. “James! You stupid jerk!”

Her pencil’s aim was true, and it hit James squarely on the forehead. He moaned and massaged the red skin, grimacing. “Damn, Willow, what’d I do to you!”

“Your stupid mom’s real estate company is what you did to me!” Willow said, with a soft fury that somehow fit in perfectly with her fuzzy sweater. “They ran that con again, didn’t they! The Mayor outlawed that! There was a municipal ordinance!”

“You and your municipal ordinances,” James complained, before he caught sight of Buffy. His eyes widened too as he obviously put the pieces together. Real estate con plus new girl plus suspiciously cheap house equalled…? “Oh, shit. Mom totally ran the con again.”

“What con?!” Buffy yelled, two seconds away from hysteria.

But James just looked grim, and his friends glanced at each other nervously. A group of girls on the other end of the dinky classroom started whispering. “Mom hooked some suckers from the big city.”

“She didn’t pass out the flyers,” Willow indicted.

“Wait,” another girl said, leaning over, “new girl hasn’t read the brochures?”

“Please tell me you’ve gone to the orientation,” Willow begged Buffy.

“What the fuck are you people talking about?” Buffy asked blankly.

“Ugh, I hate my mom,” James said glumly. “She does this all the time. It’s just to meet her dumb quotas. She’s totally gonna get the firm in trouble. She lists the house for dirt cheap, she gets some...I dunno, recent divorcee or something, and then she conveniently doesn’t tell them about the demons. Like, you’re supposed to put the Hellmouth on the listing. It’s in the zip code. You don’t need the bonus that badly, Mom, God. Your dumb real estate company’s a money laundering front for the vampires anyway!”

“Oh,” Buffy said, “is that all?”

***

Willow was a sweet girl, and she was appropriately horrified on Buffy’s behalf that she was a) scammed into buying a house for more than its market price of zero, and b) didn’t know about the demons.

She was so distressed about it that Buffy didn’t have the heart to tell her that she had already known about the demon thing. It looked like everybody knew about the demon thing. Buffy was beginning to feel a little self-conscious that she had only found out about the demon thing a year ago. Like, had the rest of the world found out about it when they were twelve and she just missed it? Was she late in finding out about the demon thing? That was so embarrassing. She felt like such an idiot.

But Willow was giving her such a well-rehearsed and educational speech about how yes, demons are real, and vampires do lurk in the night, and how you probably shouldn’t walk home alone in Sunnydale. But we’re very culturally competent here at Sunnydale, and we value diversity in our residents! Half the swim team were fish men, and they won championships every year! And she tutored a Brachen demon named Brad in math, he was super nice! It was about tolerance and coexistence, or so Willow preached.

Willow’s explanation lasted the rest of math and extended into lunch, and she was clearly very tickled to hold the attention of the hot and exciting new girl. She quietly pointed out all of the kids walking past them in the halls who were perfectly nice demons!, but also stay away from the Hyena boys, please, they were not very nice demons. As a general rule, if they’re part of “the Debate Team”, don’t talk to them. You could try talking to “the Book Club”, but they mostly just hummed ominously. “The Knitting Club” was best left unmentioned.

Xander, when he caught up to them during lunch in a move that was so clearly instinctual that Buffy automatically understood the two were best friends, was far quicker to tell her exactly who were the dicks in Sunnydale, which was most of them (“But not murderous jerks”, Willow stressed). Xander clearly relished in telling her the gory details, while Willow just screamed ‘girl who desperately wants to be helpful at all times’.

“I know!” Willow said, stopping in front of the cafeteria double doors so she could whirl around. “Let’s go to the library! I know we have three copies of the orientation manual in there. It’s very important that you memorize all of the demons who are chronic hunters, Buffy. We have some nice safety tips in there, too. You can borrow my bear mace until you get your own!”

“I love girl talk as much as the next guy,” Xander said, effortlessly steering them both in a completely different direction than the sweet siren song of food, “but can’t we avoid the library? The new librarian gives me the creeps.”

“It’s not his fault he’s English,” Willow said loyally. “He seems really nice.”

“He’s a liar.” Xander stressed the word, shaking his hands in the air - as if it was an unbelievable thing, alien and disturbing in this chronically honest Sunnydale. “You heard the guy! He won’t stop going on about how he’s just ‘a normal librarian’ and that he found the Hejarrak demon like that!”

“He could have!”

“It was beheaded! He was holding an axe!”

“Is the librarian a demon too?” Buffy asked, alarmed. Willow and Xander were quickly leading her down a hallway with an ominous set of public school double doors at the end of it, and Buffy could swear that she felt a slight aura of evil and malevolence emanating from within. It had to be a library. Only libraries were that evil. “How much of the staff are demons here?”

Xander’s expression darkened. “Does Snyder count?”

“We need to give him a warmer welcome,” Willow insisted, stopping them all in front of the double doors of the library. Buffy could swear that it stank of sulfur. “Just because everyone’s saying -”

“Just because he is -”

“You don’t know -”

“Your attitude’s awfully funny, Willow, considering that Rule #24 of your handbook is to ‘always listen to rumors’ -”

“I like to give people the benefit of the doubt!”

“Fifth grade dance class,” Xander threatened.

“All ballerinas are evil,” Willow protested, pushing open the library doors and pulling them all inside. “I’m not going to let this town erase my faith in human and monster nature, Xander! If you look for bad everywhere you go, bad is all you’re going to find.”

“Bad’s everywhere we go,” Xander said flatly, following her inside and leaving Buffy to catch up. “It’s bad all the way down.”

The school library was strangely nice, for a school library. There was hardly a textbook or graphic novel in sight, which was both a relief and slightly a bummer. Instead, the shelves seemed to be stocked with...thick tomes. It was like the entire library was the reference section. People actually checked out books from here?

Buffy floated closer to one of the shelves as Willow made happy small talk with the highly suspect librarian. He was...a middle aged white man in a vest, who looked like he’d rather be alphabetizing his tea than working in a public school library. He looked a little intimidated by Willow, as if her five foot two jumper-wrapped glory was more terrifying than any hellspawn.

She squinted at the shelves, working hard to pick out the creased black titles in the leatherbound spines. Magik Moste Evil. Five Hundred and One Curses and Incantations. Death of a Salesman.

“What is wrong with this school,” Buffy whispered.

Was it her? Did this shit just follow her wherever she went, like Karen McNeil to her Justin Timberlake. She thought Sunnydale would be an escape - an escape from the looming and lurching LA, from the blood and ghost of Merrick frowning with disapproval down at her. She couldn’t believe she felt guilty that she was leaving - as if she was running away from all danger to waste the rest of her life in a suburban pit. Where ‘hellhole’ meant poky shopping mall with bowling alley carpets.

Xander sidled up next to her, leaning on the front of the bookshelf as she perused the side. He crossed his arms, giving the library a seemingly instinctual once-over before glancing at Buffy. He cocked an eyebrow and smiled at her, but his attempts to look cool and suave were paper-thin. They barely hid a real anxiety and tension in him, a strange cousin of Cordelia’s hidden steel and Willow’s hidden passion.

“Don’t let Will’s everything fool you,” he said. “I once saw her stake a vamp with her bat mitzvah Torah.”

Somehow, Buffy couldn’t fight a grin. “The fuzzy kitten sweater’s the last thing they ever see?”

“You don’t live that long being that nice unless you’re a bit of a badass,” Xander said proudly. That, at least, was genuine - the guy who started bragging about how great his best friend was the second she was out of earshot. But when he glanced back at the enthusiastic librarian talking to an equally enthusiastic Willow his expression darkened a little. Buffy couldn’t quite identify it - something left of bitterness and right of caution. “Not to be rude, but you seem - well, normal, right?”

Buffy couldn’t hide the bitterness from her voice, either. She felt way too young to be this bitter. It was going to give her wrinkles. “I used to be.”

“Yeah, you gave up all intellectual rights to that when you moved here.” Xander tightened his shoulders uncomfortably, eyes not leaving Willow. “But popular girls like you know how important gossip is. And everyone and their bartender’s saying that Mr. Giles over there is a complete and total Watcher.”

Buffy’s brain short-circuited.

Xander drastically misinterpreted the expression on her face, because he jumped in to clarify. “Not in a creepy way! Except, yeah, in a creepy way - look, Watchers are like the weird nerd sidekicks of Slayers.” At Buffy’s mounting horror, Xander quickly said, “Not like the band! Wait, that’s probably not what you’re worried about - I mean, Slayers aren’t bad. But they’re like these complete Terminators whose sole purpose in life is to kill demons and slay vamps and everything. They’re totally demon boogeymen.”

“Wow,” Buffy said, panicking completely, “sounds...good! Sounds like a good thing to have around. I love having, you know, bodyguards against vamps and stuff. Very multipurpose people, Slayers!”

“Yeah, you’d think. But the last thing we need right now is some Batman charging in and stirring everything up. Sunnydale has rules! A balance! And if you don’t know the rules, you’re fish food. When people like Slayers don’t know the rules, we’re fish food.“ Xander glanced over at Mr. Giles again, frowning. “Wherever a Watcher is, a Slayer’s gotta follow. So much for a normal school year.”

“I don’t know,” Buffy said. She was giving up all hope of a normal school year too. She didn’t know why she even tried. Hope was just a flashing neon sign to the universe - ‘hey, come on down here and stomp all over me!’. “Maybe she doesn’t really get a choice in this either.”

“What -”

“Buffy!”

Buffy and Xander jumped a foot in the air, but it was just Willow. She was still standing at the circulation desk, waving enthusiastically at Buffy and beckoning her closer. But behind her, the librarian seemed just as surprised. His jaw had dropped, and Buffy watched his gold wire-rimmed glasses fall on the desk.

It felt strongly as if she had just walked into her new dentist’s office. Buffy felt like such an airhead for not even realizing. British? Tweed? Book-crazy? Freak? That checked off every single Watcher box for sure.

But it felt stupid to think that way, too. She didn’t even want to think that way. She would rather remember Merrick as special. One of a kind, just like her - the last in a long line of idiots. She wanted to think of tweed and think of him; think of a bristling mouche and remember the way it would shake when he yelled at her for some stunt or another. Every time she held a stake, she heard his voice in her ear: thumb this way, hold it like that, keep your elbows in, for god’s sake.

Ugh, was the tweed a uniform? Truly unfortunate.

“Mr. Giles, this is Buffy Summers.” Willow gestured proudly, as if she was a magician in a sparkly leotard. Buffy glared hard at Mr. Giles before walking up and standing behind Willow, arms crossed. “She needs some of your demon prep manuals, please!” She lowered her voice, looking around the completely empty library surreptitiously. “She’s new.”

Mr. Giles looked like a stiff breeze would knock him over. He obviously looked her up and down - not in a creepy way, but definitely in a ‘am I sure I’ve got the right address?’ way. Buffy wondered if he had been expecting someone a little less short and blonde. “I see,” Giles said weakly. “The new student. Yes, yes, I’ve - I’ve heard of you, yes. I mean, I heard you were coming. That we were receiving a new student, yes.”

“What, is it a once in a year occurrence?” Buffy asked sarcastically.

Xander popped up behind her, grinning brightly. “We had one in the eighth grade! What was his name, Will?”

“Henry...something?” Willow frowned. “Or was it Hank?”

“Could have sworn it was Jeeves.”

“Hank Jeeves or Henry Jeeves?”

“We can check the gravestone after school!”

“Oh, good idea!”

“Oh my,” Giles said.

“Yikes,” Buffy said.

“But I’m sure that won’t happen to you!” Willow said quickly, apparently only distantly aware that she was being objectively upsetting. She gave Buffy two thumbs up, her grin strangely identical to Xander’s. Slightly desperate, definitely manic. “Not with my handy dandy manuals!”

“Yeah, Mr. Giles,” Buffy said pointedly, glaring as hard as she could at Mr. Giles and hoping that Slayers had laser vision, “I could use some manuals. To teach me about how to defend myself. Against vampires.”

Mr. Giles looked at her blankly. He looked down at a painfully cheerful Willow, then up at a highly suspicious Xander with his hands jammed in his pockets.

“Hm,” Mr. Giles said. “This is a very interesting situation, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” Xander said pointedly, “it’s pretty interesting how you’re an academic, Mr. Giles. Would you say that you like studying demons? For, hypothetically, demon killing purposes? Or watching purposes?”

“I’m sorry,” Mr. Giles said, still apparently somewhat overwhelmed. He stepped away from the desk, bending down and hefting out a truly thick stack of spiral bound manuals before dumping them on the desk. They made Buffy sneeze. “I’m still not familiar with the cultural mores of America. Is killing demons a taboo around here?”

“Turnabout’s fair play,” Xander said flatly. “Personally, I’d love to have Ms. Rambo come in and knock off some of those monsters like Darla.” Willow made a face. Buffy wanted to make a face too, if only at the tacky name. “But I remember what happened the last time someone decided to play demon hunter. That’s a no thank you from me, buddy.”

“I miss the arcade,” Willow said mournfully. “They never rebuilt it.”

“Miss the arcade? Damn, Willow, I miss the Petersons!”

Buffy and Mr. Giles exchanged looks. He twitched an eyebrow at her. Buffy grimaced, before jerking her head towards the door.

“I do believe lunch will be over soon,” Mr. Giles said suddenly. He tried to smile reassuring at Willow and Xander, but it came out more like Buffy popped a lemon in his mouth and told him to swallow. “You two should hurry on back to your classes. Ms. Summers, if you’ll stay behind, I can write you a late pass and give you a - crash course, if you will, on Sunnydale.”

“You’ve lived here for a month, dude,” Xander complained. “What makes you think you know anything about Sunnydale?”

But Mr. Giles just smiled thinly. “As it happens, demon academia is my specialty.”

“I knew it!” Willow cried, excited. Xander grimaced. “Of course a demon academic would move to Sunnydale! I bet this is, like, field work. Teenage Demons In Their Natural Habitat: A Compendium! Do you need a co-author? I have notes!”

“Do you really?” Mr. Giles asked, fascinated despite himself. “My studies have been rich on the theory, but woefully lacking on the practicals.”

“Wow, is that the bell?” Buffy said quickly. She gently took Willow’s shoulders and steered her in the direction of the library doors, leaving Xander to play catch-up. “You two are probably really busy, I wouldn’t want you to be late to your next class -”

“We’re never busy,” Willow said proudly.

“Mr. Finkel noticing if anybody’s late to class is the first seal of the apocalypse,” Xander said.

Mr. Giles just looked alarmed. “Is it really?”

“Sorry,” Xander said, “black humor is our blood and butter around here. Get it, Wills?”

Willow patted his arm reassuringly. “You are so funny and clever, Xander. Women love you.” She perked up, spinning around in excitement to face Buffy. “I know! Why don’t you come to the Bronze with us tonight? That’s our local nightclub slash teen hangout slash only hangout thing. It’s totally safe, I promise - there’s a treaty and everything. I wouldn’t walk home alone, but that’s what we’re here for! Think of it as a bona fide Sunnydale tour!” She faltered a little, her own words catching up to her. “I mean, if you aren’t busy. You really don’t have to, I know there’s a lot of unpacking and...stuff. Or if you want to go with Cordelia, that’s fine.”

Buffy had the feeling that Willow and Xander were social suicide. Willow was a geek and Xander was a nerd, and they both looked like they had wandered out of the wrong end of a thrift store. They obviously didn’t hang out with any other friends during lunch, and would rather spend their time in a stuffy library with a creepy librarian just so they could help out the new girl. If Sunnydale was going to be Buffy’s fresh start, then spending her time hanging out with these two was falling on her face right at the starting line.

But Willow was smiling at her so hopefully, as if she was already imagining all of the good times they would have if she said yes, and Xander was smiling so wryly, as if he had already accepted that she would say no. And, somehow, Buffy found herself saying, “I’ll be there with bells and my dancing shoes on. I don’t need to, like, bring a shotgun, do I?”

Willow squealed with excitement, jumping up and down and clapping her hands. “Don’t worry, I can bring the weapons! This’ll be so much fun! I’m so -”

The bell cut her off, and all four of them jolted. Buffy pasted a big smile on her face, quickly made something up about how excited she was, and finally vanquished Willow and Xander from the library. They waved goodbye enthusiastically, whispering with heads together as they pushed open the doors and vanished down the halls.

But Buffy’s hearing was supernaturally keen, and she heard Willow whispering excitedly to Xander as they disappeared. “ - real friend! And she’s -”

If Xander replied, Buffy didn’t hear him. Mr. Giles interrupted her, coughing slightly for her attention. She turned around to see him leaning on the circulation desk, twisting his glasses between his fingers in a strange show of anxiety. Merrick had always been so confident and sure. Mr. Giles probably wasn’t half the Watcher Merrick had been. But Buffy was always half the Slayer she should be, so maybe they were a good fit.

“I have to say, this assignment isn’t quite what I was expecting.”

“God, tell me about it.” Buffy sighed, leaning against the circulation desk with her arms crossed. The library really was nice. It would probably be cozy if you found books comforting. Buffy’s favorite books were the very heavy hardback ones that made good improvised weapons. “So much for my painfully normal civilian life. I’m Plain Jane compared to these people.”

“Yes, I’ve found the students quite eclectic so far.” So that was why he was terrified of Willow - was it the sweaters or the repressed bloodlust? “I suppose there’s no need for introductions, then. I am glad that you’ve finally arrived. I’ve found myself rather drastically underprepared for this assignment. It’s far more dangerous than the briefing implied.”

“God forbid demon hunting be dangerous,” Buffy said flatly. “Look, Mr. - what’s your first name?”

“It’s Rupert, actually.”

“Look, Rupert -”

“It may be more appropriate for you to call me Giles -”

“Look,” Buffy said, and Giles shut up. “Rupert. I’ve tap danced to this before, okay? You’re the Chosen One, no more little buddies for you, stop wasting your time on hair care and go make with the Slayage. Was that the speech you wanted to give me?” Giles’ silence was incriminating. “Stellar. I’m sure this is the beginning of a wonderful working relationship. I dearly look forward to you trying to control my life. I will cherish our training sessions where you try to hit me with a stick. I’ll try to shed a single stoic tear when you die.”

Silence stretched through the library, both of them standing together and far apart. Buffy knew she was coming across all defensive, but she didn’t care. He wasn’t going to get attached to her - Merrick had made that very clear - so she didn’t have to get attached to him either. Nothing in life really lasted all that long - homes, marriages, schools. Slayers, Watchers. Better to just work hard, play hard, and live life to the fullest. Buffy had a lifetime of living to get in for the next - three years, max, so she was going to get her money’s worth. And maybe a good life insurance policy.

Finally, Giles said, “Mr. Merrick was a well regarded member of the Watcher’s Council. I had quite a bit of personal respect for him. He talked highly of you, you know.”

Buffy’s throat closed up, and she rubbed hard at her eyes. “He thought I was an idiot.”

But Giles just hummed. “He thought I was an idiot too, so I’m afraid you’re in good company. What was it he said...oh, yes. ‘She’s a frightfully stubborn, hard-headed girl. But she’ll make it.’ He had a great deal of faith in you, Buffy.” Buffy rubbed harder at her eyes, and Giles’ voice softened. “I know we’ve just met, so forgive me for saying so. But I agree with him. And if you let me - I fully intend on making sure that you live to graduate from this blasted secondary school.”

“I don’t even know what that is,” Buffy croaked, rubbing hard at her eyes. She sniffed, and finally turned around to glare hard at Giles. He straightened, expression somber, but she just jabbed a finger up at him. “Don’t give me the no friends speech.”

Giles abruptly looked very uncomfortable. “You must dedicate yourself to your training -”

“Oh, it’s not as if this place gives homework anyway, I can multitask. I can work on other homework!” She grabbed the manuals, dragging them closer and flipping open to a random page. She frowned down at it. “‘Hellmouth 101’? Nobody’s explained what a Hellmouth is yet.”

“The manuals are rather useful, aren’t they?” Giles asked eagerly, but Buffy just stared at him blankly until he deflated. “They’re a sort of weak point between hell dimensions and ours. Think of them as...if demons and demonic activities are fruit flies, then hellmouths are rotten apples. The supernatural always arises as a sort of chaotic element - a natural consequence of the ineffability and unpredictability of the universe, one might say - but a hellmouth feeds antimatter into the surrounding area in such drastic quantities that reality itself weakens. The unpredictable proliferates itself, and arranges into atomic structures and malevolent background radiation. Of course, that’s a drastic oversimplification.”

Buffy stared at Giles blankly. Giles sighed.

“Hellmouths are demon magnets. They are also Slayer magnets. It’s no coincidence that you’ve found yourself here, Buffy.”

“What, was suburbia my destiny?” Buffy paused a beat. “God, that’s more depressing than the five year life expectancy.”

“The Powers That Be certainly keep its employees busy,” Giles said, faux-philosophical and definitely nonsensical. Buffy was beginning to get a taste of who Giles was: somebody who desperately wanted to be a perfect Watcher like Merrick but knew that he wasn’t even close. “I suppose this is an unconventional assignment for the both of us. No need to keep the secret of the supernatural or worry about keeping our actions covert. Although judging from some of the unsavory rumors that have been flying around about me -”

“You mean the true ones?”

“ - I’m afraid that Slayers and Watchers don’t have a good reputation in this town.” Giles hummed thoughtfully as Buffy crossed her arms and looked away. “I’m somewhat surprised. I would have thought the townspeople would view a Slayer as a savior. Instead, she seems to be somewhat of a...loose canon. I suppose I can’t blame them for their distrust of powerful and maverick supernatural entities. Although I wouldn’t call us maverick, precisely -”

“It’s stupid, isn’t it?” Buffy asked suddenly. To her horror, her throat was kind of thick. This was such a stupid thing to be upset about. Bad things should have a limit - like, max time to be upset about something is a hundred hours. And then it doesn’t bother you anymore. That should be how it worked. “This is the worst town in America. It’s on a hellmouth. There has to be something in the water that makes all the other kids freaks, and I’m the freaking new girl again. But I’m not alone here, Giles. I don’t have to pretend demons aren’t real, or that the world isn’t terrible. But I’m still the Slayer. The one place where I can fit in...and I’m still a freak.”

It was obvious that Giles didn’t know what to say. She didn’t blame him. He was, like, fifty. Middle aged men didn’t worry about being freaks or not having friends. There was no way he understood how she felt. Adults were always looking at her, a hot and popular teenage girl, and totally writing her off. She was dumb, flighty, irrational, and none of her problems mattered. Demon hunting was the only important thing to them, so it must be the most important thing to her too.

But it was Buffy’s life. It was all she had. She wasn’t going to give it away to people who ran through Slayers like toilet paper, and she wasn’t going to let them design it for her based on what they thought was important. Even if her life wasn’t important to all the old farts across the pond, it was important to her.

Killing things and almost dying every night was easy. It was life that was hard. And even Merrick had known that Buffy never took the easy way out.

“In that case, we better get to it,” Giles said finally, uncomfortable with her teen girl feelings. He put his glasses back on, shifting through a large stack of books until he drew out a slim leather bound notebook. “Now, I’ve drafted up a training schedule for your Slayer duties. I think five hours a day and two hours of patrolling per night ought to be sufficient, don’t you? Eight hours on weekends?”

“Yeah, sufficient to kill me. Big pass.” Buffy grabbed a pen and scribbled over his itinerary, eliciting a mournful sound. “Sign me up as a library assistant for seventh period. You get three hours after school and a two hour patrol. Fridays off, that’s party day.”

Giles looked scandalized. “There are no days off when fighting the forces of evil, Ms. Summers.”

“Tough nuts. You’re lucky I’m giving up cheerleading for you.” Granted, the hours were probably still less than cheerleading, but that was why Buffy knew she could do it. Slaying was easier on her knees, anyway. “You get five hours on Sunday but Saturdays are mine.”

“The weekends are the most valuable time - I have field trips planned!”

“I will go on strike, Giles.”

And, somehow, they figured everything out just like that.

Maybe Giles wouldn’t be too bad. Maybe school wouldn’t be too hard. Maybe becoming a Slayer hadn’t stolen her ability to make friends. Maybe she’d survive to graduation.

A girl could dream, right?

********

Mom picked her up from school, which was so weirdly embarrassing Buffy silently swore to figure out the school bus. It was bad enough she was the new girl. The last thing she needed was people to see her Mom’s rinky dink SUV. Dad had gotten the Mercedes in the split.

Mom wasn’t looking so good. Her perm was totally ruined and her unfortunate suit jacket was balled up in the back of the seat. Buffy silently sat in the passenger seat as Mom easily peeled away from the school, joining the scuttling streams of high school drop-offs and meandering between high school drop-outs.

They sat in silence for a few minutes before Mom apparently remembered that mothers and daughters talked sometimes. Her voice was hoarse and strained, as if she had seen the unseenable a few times too many today. “How was school, honey?”

“Oh, you know.” Buffy shrugged. “New girl disease. They had to quarantine me.”

“That’s nice,” Mom said vaguely.

Halfway home, Mom turned off the main street and stopped in front of a liquor store. She unbuckled her seat belt as Buffy stayed in the passenger seat, feeling exceptionally awkward.

“Hitting the happy juice a little early, Mom?”

“Mom’s just celebrating her new job,” Mom said, still vague and distant. “Just a little one woman party. Stay in the car, honey.”

She came back with a bottle of whiskey ten minutes later. Buffy appraised it thoughtfully and resolved to steal it later. Pike had taken great pains to educate her on the best booze. He was a fantastic influence and a good friend, no matter what Mom had said.

“So,” Buffy said slowly, “how was...work?”

“Oh, you know,” Mom said. “Very boring.”

The rest of the car ride was spent in silence. Buffy, who had spent five whole minutes mentally composing the thrilling tale of her first day of school so Mom could make all the appropriately horrified noises, felt a little cheated.

Buffy and her Mom used to be close. She couldn’t even blame the whole Slayer thing for this one: they stopped really getting along when she entered middle school. But elementary school overflowed with memories of Mom. There were albums on albums of Buffy in elementary school dressed up in increasingly adorable outfits engaging in painfully adorable extracurriculars, and Buffy’s early childhood memories were crowded with Mom. Horseback riding lessons, dance team, choir, tennis...Mom always stood at the sidelines of each game, and she always spent the entire drive home criticizing the moms of all the other girls. Honestly, why did Helen let Rebecca out of the house dressed in dinosaur pyjamas?

But Mom got bored of that after a little while, and Buffy started focusing on cheerleading, and suddenly Mom was spending all of her time at the Monday book clubs, Tuesday wine nights, Wednesday volunteer service at the food bank, Thursday wine nights, and so on. It wasn’t as if they never saw each other, since Mom stayed at home and did basically 100% of any actual parenting, but it was really obvious that Mom found the stay at home thing boring. She used to have a very exciting job, or so she would tell Buffy all the time. She used to manage art galleries. Isn’t that so refined?

She had been thrilled to get right back in the saddle. This whole thing was very exciting for Mom. She had been such a terrible mother to Buffy the last few years, which had to be the reason why she became a JD, so time to finally hit those special mother-daughter notes! Finally, freedom from the shackles of financial comfort and not needing a job: time to be feminist! This was her Live, Laugh, Love moment, and Joyce Summers was getting her groove back!

Honestly, kind of sad.

Two hours later, Mom was sitting at the kitchen table with a glass of whiskey on the rocks staring into the distance and Buffy was reorganizing her closet for the fifth time in a blatant avoidance tactic. She should probably put the heels in the back of the closet, no matter how cute they were - oh, no, not the Marc Jacobs, these were surprisingly comfortable and an excellent getaway shoe. What about dancing clothes? Could this clutch hold a stake?

After Buffy regretfully stuffed the purses that couldn’t hold stakes in the back of her closet - the sacrifices she made for Queen and country - she laid out her nightclub clothes for later that night. That took another twenty minutes, because your first time at the local nightclub was a time for impressions. She picked the rad baby blue number, totally tight and very slinky with a surprisingly good range of motion and shoulder stitching that didn’t impede her torso movement. She was all about the fashionable and the functional. Modern girls really could have it all. Of course, she’d have to figure out how to manage the purse situation…

Buffy leafed through her Cosmo. She organized her makeup. She tried to do homework, before realizing that nobody had really assigned her any.

She went downstairs and stood in front of the kitchen table. Mom was on her second glass of whiskey. She stared directly at Mom. Mom took a robotic sip of her whiskey.

“So,” Buffy said, excruciatingly slowly, “find out anything interesting at work today?”

“I have the manual in my backpack,” Buffy said sympathetically. “Want to take a look?”

“I’d rather get drunk, thanks.”

“Oh-kay,” Buffy said, feeling a little as if she had lost control of her life. “So...are we moving or what?”

But Mom just buried her hands in her hair, pulling them through the carefully and primly permed wheat blonde brands and thoroughly ruining it. She didn’t even seem to care anymore. “What, and sell the house we just bought? To who? I have no money, no savings. What am I going to do, go crawling back to your father?”

Okay. Buffy stepped back, a slimy worm of awkwardness writhing in her gut. “So what are we going to do?”

“I don’t know,” Mom said. “I’ll...find a buyer, somehow. See if there’s a return window. Raise hell. Maybe sue.” Mom brightened a little, the idea of legal action always comforting. “I still have that card from Wolfram & Hart. This has to be fraud, right? We bought this house under false pretenses. There has to be something…”

It should have been good news. Buffy could kick back, relax, and let Mom worry about it. Money, real estate, bills and work was all Mom’s job. Buffy had way too many responsibilities on her plate for any fifteen year old, but at least she wasn’t paying a mortgage. Small favors.

They could leave. Escape Sunnydale and leave it behind, brochures and manuals all. Giles would probably be forced to follow her, wherever she ended up. She wouldn’t leave behind the vampires, but that was fine. She probably wouldn’t leave behind the demons, but at least there’d be less of them…

What would she be leaving behind, exactly? Demons existed wherever night fell. The only thing she’d be abandoning was people who understood her. Kids who didn’t make her pretend to be normal. Xander and Willow.

“I don’t know,” Buffy found herself saying. “It’s not all bad. The life expectancy is actually pretty good if you compare it with Medieval England.”

“Oh, so long as we’re better than Medieval England, Buffy!” Mom gestured sharply with her hands in frustration, vague and ineffectual. “We can’t possibly stay here. Half the people at the grocery store had hatchets in their shopping carts. The graveyard has a hot dog stand.The co-director of the art gallery has a Brachen demon for a husband! I don’t even know what a Brachen demon is!”

“They’re really harmless and squishy, but watch out for the spikes,” Buffy said reflexively, before pausing a beat. “According to the manual.”

“We aren’t like the people here, Buffy!” Mom cried. “We’re - we’re normal people!”

It shouldn’t have hurt her feelings. Mom didn’t mean it like that. Buffy was a normal person, and she was darn proud of it. She liked all the things normal girls liked and some dumb Slaying night job wasn’t going to take that away from her.

But Buffy couldn’t help but think about Rebecca in dinosaur pyjamas and Willow in fuzzy sweaters and Cordelia in abrasive surety. Maybe in Sunnydale you had better things to worry about than whose daughter got the most ribbons in horseback riding.

“You’re right, Mom,” Buffy said finally, with a fake pep and chipperness natural to any cheerleader. “In Sunnydale, we’re the freaks. Looks like we better get used to it!”

An hour later - way before typical party time but before sunset, which was probably the point - Buffy was out the door with a vague explanation about a party. Mom had never required more than that (“Honey, I can’t possibly keep up with all of your parties”), which was useful with the whole demon slaying thing. Willow had even helpfully drawn a very detailed and precise map, complete with a large circled warning at the top (“DO NOT LEAVE AFTER SUNSET”) and a suggested list of weapons. Buffy liked the cut of Willow’s jib.

The map took her all the way down to the Bronze, which was predictably disappointing. It was a smallish run-down building sandwiched between a Pizza Hut and Blockbuster, sagging under the weight of days that weren’t necessarily better, but definitely less leaky. Buffy wondered morbidly if the Blockbuster’s horror movies were filed under ‘slice of life’. The entire town had a truly weird abundance of alleys, feeding into Buffy’s already growing theory that the place had been built by demons, and Buffy knew that if you took a wrong turn behind the building you were stuck wandering through a maze of alleys with vampires hanging at the end of each one looking for drunk teens. The lengths people would go just for some watered down beer.

Willow and Xander were waiting for her outside. Xander was dressed in a predictably terrible over-long dress shirt and jeans, while Willow was engaged in an actually painfully adorable tank top, ruffly skirt, and capri pants situation. The only bizarre aspect was the fact that Cordelia was locked deep in an argument with Xander as Willow calmly read a book next to them. Other teenagers milled around, with what looked like Cordelia’s posse huddled a safe distance away from the carnage.

The distinct smell of teenage musk assaulted her nose, heavy with the sweet scent of heat and sweat and sweltering air. The ebb and swell of the bassy music from inside the Bronze was already assaulting her ears - nightclubs had become impossible since the Slayer thing, definitely the worst aspect of the entire deal - but when she finally got close enough she could make out the details of the argument.

“ - treaty, they’re not going to do anything.”

“Are you even listening to what I’m saying?” Cordelia was dressed to the nines in high heels and a dress just as slinky as Buffy’s, although it was obviously much tackier. She was holding her own suspiciously long clutch purse, hitting it against her thigh in a move that was somehow threatening. “Hello? My intel is totally reliable. We gotta shut the whole place down tonight.”

But Xander just scoffed. “First off, the Bronze didn’t close when the fires of hell rained down upon us last Valentine’s Day. And second off, nothing’s going to happen! Vamps talk a big game, but even the biggest bad’s not going to risk getting a lifetime ban from the only decent cocktail place in the town. Your intel just fell for the shittalk.”

“You know, you actually used to care about this crap.” Cordelia crossed her arms, expression pulled tight as she stared down Xander. “You used to actually try and help people. Now all you do is sit around and mope.”

“Cordy, that’s not fair,” Willow protested weakly.

“And you used to have a spine! What happened to you two?”

Xander’s expression darkened, face barely illuminated by the buzzing neon of the lurid sign and the soft golden trickles of twilight. “You know full fucking well what happened.”

“For God’s sake, Xander, Jesse was months ago! Just get over it!”

Judging from the way that Willow hissed, it was a low blow. But Xander’s mouth just twisted unhappily, as if Cordelia wasn’t saying anything he didn’t already know. “I know that you have an excess of expendables, Cordy, but I don’t got that many friends to lose. So sorry, not sorry, but a terrible side effect of caring about people is moping a little bit after they get eaten. I know you can’t relate.”

“You’re an idiot,” Cordelia condemned. She hit Xander on the arm, ignoring his exaggerated wince. “Moping’s a real ugly look on you, Xander. And it’s a real ugly look on me, so listen to what I’m freaking saying!”“Christ, it’s hard to miss your infernal harpy screeching -”

“I’ll show you harpy, you trash bag in plaid -”

It was downright impossible to tell if those three were in a frenemies situation, if they genuinely couldn’t stand each other, or if they cared about each other too much to be normal about it. Buffy couldn’t begin to interpret it. She had her own rotating cast of expendables, flushed down the drain as surely as this Jesse was. Maybe she didn’t know how to care about people, especially in their weird and awkward way - where you couldn’t share a civil word, but they were the first one you asked for help. But it was awkward listening to this, and Buffy had already thought about death more than enough for one night.

“Hey, guys!” Buffy said, artificially chipper and trying hard to come across as if she had just gotten here. “So, does the Blockbuster shelve horror movies in the slice of life section, or would they go in the comedies?”

Everybody whirled around to face her, and she watched all traces of fury drain from Xander’s expression as his jaw dropped. Willow flushed a very deep red, opening and closing her own mouth before hiding behind her book. Cordelia just scanned her quickly and made a somewhat approving noise.

“Seven out of ten,” Cordelia said. “Not bad but you could do better. Go sleeveless next time and emphasize the biceps. Guys here are into muscular girls.”

“Muscular girls,” Willow whispered. She abruptly stuffed her book in her rainbow tye-dye tote bag, which clinked ominously. “I mean, hi! Nice night, isn’t it?”

“I can definitely confirm. That’s why this twig here can’t find a date.” Xander instinctively dodged Cordelia smacking him on the arm with her clutch. “Now that the gang’s all here, and if Cordy doesn’t have any more death threats, maybe we can get a little dancing in!”

“Oh, forget it.” Cordelia stalked forward, pushing past Xander and Willow as her posse roused themselves into action. But she waved them away, stopping only for Buffy. She jabbed a finger at her, expression intent and oddly furious. Buffy noticed for the first time that a strand of her hair was eskew - a little less than perfect. Maybe even frazzled. “This is your problem now. Try not to get those losers over there or my guy on the inside killed. All the stress is making me break out, I need an emergency face mask.”

Before Buffy could process why anybody but Giles was telling her not to get anyone killed Cordelia was already striding off, high heels clicking confidently against the pavement until she disappeared into the crowd. Buffy watched her go, the image of that one vagrant hair sticking stubbornly in her mind, before Willow grabbed her hand and dragged her inside.

The Bronze was like every loosely carded club: a little run down, with a cracked dance floor and a staticy karaoke machine singing a siren song of entertainment. A band staffed by three pimply college students were grinding out fuzzily distorted notes on antiquated guitars, providing a wobbly rhythm for the partiers that had already started migrating to the dance floor.

Human teenagers sat around rickety tables and competed to see who could talk the loudest, pushing each other and laughing. The scene could have been plucked out of a shitty club in LA if it wasn’t for the distinctly non-human contingent lurking around the corners.

As the Slayer, Buffy had a pretty good vibe for demons. She thought it was woman’s intuition until Merrick had started rambling about the resonance of supernatural energy. There were definitely some demons at the bar wearing a human face - older than the rest of the partiers, sipping a dark amber liquid and talking quietly amongst themselves. A large, thin table in the center, splitting the dance floor and the table area, had vampires sitting on every seat, drinking out of opaque water bottles and shoving each other. But there were far more obvious contingents too. A group of men at the corner pool table had scales all up and down their skin, and a giggling group of women had tough red skin with nails way longer than even the most unfortunate pedicure.

Willow caught her goggling, and she quickly launched into an explanation as Xander steered them towards a small table closer to the back that seemed to be their standard hangout spot. “The Bronze is where all the teens and demons hang out! The adults all go drinking at Montgomery’s, and I think the community college students hang out at a bar on campus. There’s another nightclub on the other end of town, but they don’t let anyone under 21 in there. I hear some really hardcore demon stuff goes on inside.” She looked around obviously before leaning in and lowering her voice. “They say that some of the college students and the demons hook up.”

“This town is insane,” Buffy said flatly.

“There’s grinding,” Willow whispered, alight with the lure of forbidden knowledge.

“Drinks, drinks, who wants drinks!” Xander yelled, clapping his hands. “Enough about demon sex, Willow, we’re getting smashed and hitting the dance floor. I have a fake ID and dubious morals.”

“They don’t even ID here, Xander.” Willow squinted at Xander. “And since when do we dance?”

“I bet Buffy likes to dance,” Xander hinted desperately. “And I’d never leave her alone on the dance floor, would I?”

Willow sighed before turning to Buffy, the picture of long-suffering. “You don’t want to date him. You’re a beautiful young woman and you can do better.”

“Why, yes, Willow, you’re a great best friend, who’s always there for me in my time of need, who just wants my happiness -”

“Trust me, I’m aware,” Buffy said. She reached out and gently patted Xander’s hand in sympathy. “You seem nice, but not on your life. Let’s just be friends.”

Xander looked a little as if his night had just started and it was already ruined. “Okay, to be clear, I accept this friendzone and I’m happy with the friend. This is the last you’ll hear of it from me. But you don’t even know me! I’m not a hideous man! I could be boyfriend material!”

“The only material you wear is polyester,” Buffy said sympathetically. “Trust me, it’s nothing personal. You just aren’t my type.”

“What is your type?” Willow asked, strangely focused. Buffy wondered if she had memorized a list of ‘things girls talk about’ from her American Girl magazine before she left the house. “I bet you dated the quarterback in your old high school.”

“Lacrosse captain,” Buffy said humbly. Willow made appropriately impressed noises as Xander muttered something about how he could do sports. “But I’d say that I like tall, dark, and handsome. He has to be thoughtful, you know? Sensitive. And really into poetry.” Buffy may or may not have had an extremely formative crush on Hamlet as a child. “Oh, and he has to be older. Older is mandatory. Seventeen at least.”

“Wow,” Willow whispered, eyes wide. “You are so cool, Buffy.”

Buffy tossed her hair. “Of course, I’ve been settling until now. Mr. Lacrosse couldn’t recite anything more complicated than the Fresh Prince theme. I’m looking for a guy like…” Buffy scanned the room, picking through the guys at light speed. She found herself skidding to a stop at the corner, her attention caught by a man tucked in the corner of a booth. “A guy just like him.”

He was perfect. Strong chin and piercing eyes. His hair was dark and elegant, and she could see his well-toned muscles from across the room. He had a quiet, intent expression on his face - as if he was thinking about the secrets of the universe, or reflecting on the nature of man.

“Wait.” Willow craned her head to follow Buffy’s line of sight, struggling to connect the dots. “Angel?”

Xander instantly and reflexively grimaced. “Ugh. Hate that guy.” Then he paused a beat, Buffy’s words clearly processing. “Wait. Angel? Buffy, I’m sorry, I know you’re new here, but that’s Angel.”

Okay, so maybe not a perfect guy after all. “What’d he do?”

“Technically nothing,” Xander complained, as if this was an unforgivable crime, “but seriously. It’s Angel. He’s, like...the me and Willow of vampire society. Except a thousand times more awkward. He sits alone at the cafeteria table in Dracula’s castle, if you catch my drift. He’s just embarrassing.”

Wait. Rewind. “He’s a vampire?”

“What’s Angel doing here?” Willow pushed herself up in her seat, squinting over the room. “He hates being in places where other people exist.”

“Humans and vampires don’t really hang out much, but those guys get so cliquey.” Xander rolled his eyes, propping his elbow on the table. “There’s basically around three main gangs. They’ve been around since we were kids. Tons of random vamps are always just happening naturally, but either they join one of the gangs or one of the gangs kills them because they ate someone on Main Street or North Avenue or something. There’s always a gang on top, and that shifts a bit. Lately it’s been Darla and her crew reigning over us lowly humans.”

This was all very West Side Story. The scene in LA was nowhere near this organized. Vamps weren’t really smart enough to keep up any city-wise hierarchy or organization. Someone elects themself king of the hill and they get their head ripped off the next week. Vampires were too cannibalistic, backstabbing, and impulsive to form up anything as complicated as groups. “So who’s Angel with?”

Xander grunted, making a wavy hand gesture. “He, like, hangs around Darla? I think they’re the kind of exes who hang out just to bitch at each other and, like, go shopping.”

“But he’s really nice,” Willow said quickly, despite the mental image of Angel carrying Evil Vampire Boss’ Nordstrom bags. “You know, for a vamp. And for someone who married Darla. At least I think he’s nice. He doesn’t talk much. I think he’s scared of teenagers. And maybe everything?”

“Yeah, he’s a nice guy who’s terrified of kids and not Darla.” His tone soured a little, the cheerful explanation of local politics curdling. “She’s been daring lately. Raiding the fucking high school. Who even does that, anyway?”

Willow squeezed Xander’s hand, and they sat in silence for a second. Buffy picked at one of her cuticles, glancing sideways at Angel and searching for ways to change the subject. For nerdo supreme, he was really cute…

“I can’t believe a guy that hot isn’t popular.” Buffy sighed, propping her chin on her hands and unapologetically staring at him. She could look at that jaw for days. What a shame about the evil thing. And the mid-twenties thing. She liked old, but not that old. Guys who were that old were great to look at but terrible to date - something about not being able to get a girl their own age was very unsexy. “I swear human blood has to be the best moisturizer.”

“Oh, but that’s the thing about Angel. I think it’s why none of the other vampires like him. He doesn’t even drink -”

“Whoah, whoah, whoah! Angel on the move, guys! Angel on the move!”

Sure enough, Angel had stood up from his booth and was undoubtedly making his way towards her. Willow’s jaw had dropped. Xander was making big ‘X’ gestures with his arms, trying to make Angel go away.

Sirens were ringing in Buffy’s head. Two dual impulses raged. Hot guy alert. Hot guy about to flirt with her alert. But he was a vampire. She was a Slayer, technically, and she should be killing these guys. They definitely killed people and Buffy did not date murderers. Or loser twenty somethings.

One day in this town and it was doing something to her already. She had staked dozens of vamps, maybe hundreds, but after barely an hour in a crowded nightclub where demons hustled each other at pool and vampires chugged blood from water bottles it all seemed so...normal. Not benign, not harmless - but just a facet of life, as easy and confusing and terrifying as everything else.

She would let him flirt with her and then let him down easy in a show of virtuous piety. Merrick would turn in his grave a little, but he wouldn’t spin like a shirt in a washing machine. That was the important thing.

Angel almost ran into a teenager and mumbled a lot of apologies before promptly almost crashing into a table. They all winced.

“He’s not meant to be in public,” Willow said sadly. “It’s like seeing a Husky in a desert.”

“Or a Mormon in Sunnydale.”

The band’s set ended with a show-stopping riff that sounded like a screaming banshee, and Buffy and Angel winced as one. As the room clapped listlessly he finally made it to their table, grabbing the high surface as if it would anchor him against the roiling tides of B.O. and drunk teenagers.

The hottest guy Buffy had ever seen looked straight at her and said, “You! You’re blonde!”

“Uh,” Buffy said, as Willow and Xander gave her sympathetic ‘I told you so’ looks. “It’s natural?”

“And you’re here with Willow and Alexander,” Angel said, clearly proud of himself. “Great. I was worried. You all just look the same, and - oh, hi Willow, Alexander.” He squinted at them as Willow waved happily and Xander rolled his eyes. “Did you two get taller?”

“Yeah, from when I was twelve,” Xander bitched. “And for the last time, it’s Xander. Ex ay en dee -”

“Hi, Angel! We were just talking about you.” Willow conveniently did not mention what they were saying about him. “Buffy, this is Angel. He’s really nice. He’s always walking people home and keeping an eye out for little kids. He’s kind of like a guardian angel, so that’s why we call him Angel!” She lowered her voice, still completely audible. “And I couldn’t pronounce his name when I was six…”

“He decapitated this vamp who caught me and Willow on the way home from the playground when we were six,” Xander elaborated. Angel looked a little embarrassed. “He’s always doing stuff like that. Just hanging around outside of elementary schools like the weirdest stalker of all time -”

“I’m Buffy Summers,” Buffy said firmly, sticking out her hand. Angel looked at it in complete and abject confusion before human social norms caught up with him and he hastily shook it. Buffy was beginning to worry that he wasn’t here to flirt with her. “New girl extraordinaire. I have a stake in my purse, so can I help you?”

Angel hastily dropped her hand. Smart man. “I’m just here as a favor to a friend. She told me to, uh - ‘handle any trouble?’. Which I didn’t really want to do, but it’s hard to argue with Cordelia -”

“Cordelia?”

“Oh, right!” Willow said, who really should have mentioned this sooner. “Aren’t you two friends?”

Angel grimaced. “I didn’t have a lot of choice.” Everybody nodded in understanding, even Buffy. “Anyway, but now that you’re here I can go, right? I really don’t want to get in the middle of all of this.”

The pounding bass and the rise and fall of voices made it hard to think, much less process what Angel was saying. It was his posture that tipped her off more than anything he said - the way that was subtly leaning back from her, how he was almost wringing his hands. The way he always kept an eye on her, as if she was a venomous snake in the grass.

Both of her friends were making confused noises, but Buffy ignored them. She grabbed the front of his navy blue cotton t-shirt, pulling him sharply in.

“Who else knows.”

Angel held his hands up in a ‘please don’t shoot’ pose, not bothering to fight her grip. She knew it was like iron, and her fingers were already tearing through the fabric. “Nobody! Look, I really don’t want any trouble -”

“Then who told you?”

Angel winced. “Cordelia?”

Okay. What?

“Uh,” Willow said, “what are we talking about -”

“Why the violence,” Xander said, “but please don’t stop on my account -”

“And do you want to tell me why Cordelia knows?” Buffy asked pleasantly.

“I think she just figured it out. It’s Cordelia, you can’t hide stuff from her.” Angel tugged lightly at her hand, and she reluctantly let him go. He huffed, frowning down at the holes. “Look, she told me to come here in case you weren’t coming. She said you’d be blonde and hanging out with Willow and Alexander. So you’re here to take care of this, right?”

Buffy felt dizzy. She really did feel like an airhead sometimes. Why did she ever expect that she’d get one night of fun? The universe must disapprove of underage drinking. It had to be punishing her somehow. “I just came here to dance, Angel.”

But Angel just frowned in confusion - as if a Slayer dancing at a nightclub was outside the range of his comprehension. As if it was only natural that vampires and demons liked partying the night away, but all Slayers ever wanted to do was stake vamps and polish their guns. As if there was no situation in which a Slayer would want to do something so normal and fun as dance.

“I don’t -”

He stopped short. His nose flared a little, and he obviously sniffed the air. Buffy automatically did the same, and felt her own heart stop. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the vampires sitting at the long table in the middle of the room stiffen, a tension rippling through all of them.

Despite the bad lighting, crowded atmosphere, and drunken revelry, the humans of the Bronze caught onto the thickening anxiety in the air. They stopped what they were doing and looked around, moving closer to each other and grabbing their large bags. A few women slipped out of their high heels.

A hand grabbed her arm and Buffy almost twisted it off, but it was just Willow. She was calm and composed, but every inch of her was on edge. She held a finger to her lips, her fingers digging in just a little too hard on her arm.

“Everything’s going to be just fine,” Willow whispered. “But you can’t panic, okay?”

Xander had Willow’s tote bag on his lap, and Buffy caught a large wooden handle poking out of the corner. “I can’t believe Cordelia was right,” Xander muttered. “And that cannot be the last thing I think before I get eaten.”

And Xander was right. It couldn’t be the last thing he would ever think, and Buffy couldn’t be the last person Willow ever touched. Buffy gently shook Willow off before reaching out a hand across the table. “Do you have a knife in there?”

“Okay, you’re more likely to stab yourself with that, how about a nice stake -”

“Condescend, much?”

Doors slammed open.

Every door. Buffy had already counted three exits when she walked in - front door, back service door, and fire escape - along with an entrance to a kitchen that might serve as another building entry point. The invading parties clearly had no interest in being quiet, or being subtle about blocking off all of the exits.

Buffy grabbed her own clutch, subtly unclasping it and putting it on her lap as more and more vampires strode in. They were clearly vampires - if the smell didn’t give them away, then the scattered assortment of twisted faces did. Buffy hated looking at their ugly-ass faces, but some part of her was thankful for them. She hated killing things that looked too much like people.

Nobody moved, and the living barely breathed. Buffy counted a vampire at each exit, and four other vampires filtering in and parting the dance floor like Moses and the red sea. The vamps had to be familiar to everybody else in the room, because even the vamps sitting at their table looked uncomfortable. The jukebox’s crackling music slowed to a stop and fizzled out, waiting for a new quarter.

Finally, a woman entered. She was platinum blonde and making a truly risky fashion decision with a semi-slutty Catholic schoolgirl outfit despite clearly being in her late twenties. She had a game face on, and wherever she walked everybody tripped over themselves to get out of her way. In their first active sign of fear, Willow shrank back and Xander’s fist clenched.

“Hello, Sunnydale!” Darla - because only someone with the name Darla wore a Catholic schoolgirl outfit - crowed. She easily jumped on stage, kicking aside a stray microphone stand and scattering it. “How are we feeling tonight?”

Silence reigned. Darla’s eyebrow ticked, and she grabbed the base of the microphone stand.

“I said, how are we feeling?” She threw it into the crowd, sending teenagers screaming and scattering. Her cronies laughed, exaggeratedly snapping and snarling at a group of young girls as they cowered. “That’s more like it. Don’t kids these days know how to have fun?”

A vampire in a trucker hat nursing a beer stood up, moustache bristling. “Darla, the hell’s wrong with you? You don’t go making trouble at the Bronze.”

“Because of the treaty, right?” Darla said, sickly sweet. Her voice was awful, reedy and high with a plastic falsetto. “That pathetic treaty? The same one that says we should roll over for the weak? That’s funny. I always thought the strong had the right to rule the weak.”

A demon in the corner opened her mouth, then closed it. Her friends leaned in and whispered to her. The ones playing pool were muttering unhappily to each other. None of the humans moved.

Darla made a gesture, and one of her vampires - Buffy counted ten in the room, outnumbering the other group of vampires - eagerly grabbed a pool cue and cracked it in half. He jammed it in the middle of the pool table, dragging it down and ripping the thick green velvet. He was grinning and laughing. Another of her vampires had chased off the bartender, grabbing a large handle of vodka and throwing it at a wall. It shattered explosively, raining glass shards and alcohol over the heads of the red demons. They all shrieked, shielding their eyes from the glass.

From where he was standing at her shoulder - when had he gotten behind her - Angel muttered, “Oh, real mature.”

Darla heard him. She stopped short, head swivelling to look straight at Angel. Straight at Buffy, and she felt Darla’s sicky yellow-eyed gaze pierce straight through her.

“Excuse me?” Darla said pleasantly, and the room froze. Buffy resisted the urge to step away from Angel and out of the line of fire. “What are you even doing here, Angelus? You hate being seen in public.”

“I wanted some sun,” Angel panned. But he slouched away from the group anyway, rubbing the back of his neck and projecting a self-effacing and sheepish air. “Look, Darla. Don’t you think this is more trouble than it’s worth? You’re already on top. You don’t need to knock over beer bottles to frighten people.”

But Darla just sneered, the motion pulling naturally into the ridges of her face. “The Angelus I knew would have never -”

“Oh, here we go again.”

“ - never settled for being the biggest fish in the pond. He would have become king.” Darla’s dark eyes flashed, and another vampire jokingly lunged at a shrieking girl. “Why coexist when you can dominate? Queen of the Hellmouth doesn’t sound so bad to me.”

But Angel just rolled his eyes, as if the rant was as familiar as a slutty Catholic school girl uniform. “We were King and Queen of Bristol for two months before we got bored. That was ten times as hellish as California. If you’re that bored then just go turn yourself another boyfriend.”

“Your jealousy isn't as sexy as it used to be,” Darla said loudly, propping her hands on her hips. Xander pinched the bridge of his nose hard. “You know, Angelus, I’ve been taking pity on you. I felt sorry for you. I am a good Christian and I was a dutiful wife until I dumped your ass, and in sickness and in health I’ve been tolerating your tragic mental illness.”

Angel looked exceptionally pained. “Darla. I’m not mentally ill. It’s called having a soul.”

“Tautology doesn’t suit you, dear.” Darla sniffed, crossing her arms. “But this is the 21st century, Angelus, and I’m a liberated woman. I’ve found a much...stronger man.” Somehow, Buffy wasn’t surprised that the evil vampire only had a rudimentary understanding of feminism. “Things are going to change around here. I’m going to shift the entire balance of power in this godforsaken town.” Darla smiled, flashing her teeth in the fuzzy white spotlights. “I’m bringing in a real player. Then we’ll see if you finally start obeying me again.”

She made a cutting hand gesture, and a vampire lunged for Willow.

Buffy was fast. She wouldn’t have made it a year if she wasn’t. She had her stake out as the vampire leapt, and was out of her seat almost as quickly. But Angel was far faster than she was.

So it was so quick that even Buffy could barely see it. Angel reached out a single hand and grabbed the vampire’s neck, and in one smooth motion he twisted the vamp’s head straight off his neck. A horrible crack and a crunch echoed through the Bronze, the sound of neck snapping and a spinal cord shearing into fragments, and the vampire sloughed into dust.

Angel opened his hand and let dust trickle down onto the pile on the floor. He had barely even moved - one hand was still in his pocket, and his posture was still languid and loose. Buffy had never seen a vampire display that kind of speed or strength, much less while staying so placid and calm. It wasn’t a show of force or an intimidation tactic - he had just seen a danger and removed it.

“Don’t involve me in this,” Angel said simply. “I’m retired.”

That was it.

Sunnydale had monsters that Buffy had never seen before. New flavors of monster jumping out from every corner. Familiar dangers standing twice as powerful . Giant warring vampire gangs and entire civilizations of demons just underground. A vampire so powerful that she commanded the town and still wanted more, and her ex-husband who was so powerful that he didn’t have to.

And the moment a Slayer arrives in town, whispers of a more powerful monster appear on the horizon. Buffy knew how this would go. A force of Light appears, and a force of Darkness arrives to beat it back. And she’s left on the defensive again and again, fighting off the next monster after monster. Making her life miserable so they could knock over just a few more teen clubs.

It was Buffy’s first night on the town. It was Buffy’s fresh start. And she wasn’t going to put up with this.

She was already standing with stake in her hand, halfway to save Willow, so she just shifted the stake to her left hand. With her right, she leaned over and grabbed the wooden handle poking out of Willow’s tote bag. She withdrew it to find that it was an axe: gleaming and sharp, well-kept and twice as long as her forearm. She gave it an experimental swing before turning to face Darla. Good heft.

Darla, for her part, just laughed. She looked down on Buffy, powerful and strong, the spotlights shining down on her and illuminating her platinum blonde hair like a halo. “Why, I think you’ve inspired someone! Have we found a new hero in Sunnydale?”

How must this have looked to her? A fifteen year old girl, small for her age, in a tight dress and high heels standing against a monster with a warped face and a twisted ego. She tilted her head up and looked straight at Darla, facing her down.

Darla’s grin faded somewhat. For just a second, she looked almost disturbed.

“Who are you?” Darla asked.

Buffy walked forward and easily hopped up on the long table. Its far end pushed almost directly up against the stage, and Darla obligingly moved to step down and stand on the other end. Two of her gang moved to stand at the sides, snarling and snapping their teeth at her.

“I’m new in town,” Buffy said simply. “And you’re the baddest bitch here, huh? In those thigh highs?”

Darla grinned, teeth dripping with pearly spit. “You must be awfully brave to stand in front of California’s greatest vampire in that dress. If you’re a do-gooder hunter, I suppose we’re just lucky you aren’t wearing camo.”

“I knew a girl like you in sixth grade,” Buffy said, seemingly randomly. She stepped forward, and Darla stepped forward too. Not for much longer. “She was really big shit in elementary school. Everybody wanted to play My Little Pony with her, she won every tennis competition, and for six sweet years her life was perfect.” Buffy twirled her axe in her hand. Darla’s eyes followed the motion. “First day of sixth grade, she insulted my hair. And by the end of sixth grade, she was eating alone during lunch.”

“I’m sorry,” Darla said pleasantly, “What are you talking about?”

“There’s a new bitch in town, Darla.” Buffy looked around the room, letting her eyes rake over each and every vampire and demon before snapping back to Darla. “And this Little Miss Slayer doesn’t want plaid within two hundred feet of her.”

Buffy moved.

She threw her stake at the vampire to her left, piercing his heart with perfect aim. The second she saw him start dissolving she turned to the vampire on the right, kicking down and spiking her heel directly into the flesh of his eye. The vampire screamed, a horrible and blood curdling moan of pain, and Buffy swung her axe in an arc and chopped through his head straight into his neck. She gave the axe a good yank, pulling it out of the corpse as it dissolved into nothing, and continued advancing on Darla.

She was distantly aware that the vampires around her were retreating fast. Everybody was retreating fast - the entire room making a hot break for the exits as they left Buffy and Darla to their showdown. She hadn’t really anticipated getting in a fight with the top dog of the town her first day in, but in retrospect it was probably good business sense. It was better to strike an intimidating first impression. Made sure they didn’t fuck with you. The vamps in LA never really got scared of her, mostly because of her absolutely dismal performances her first few weeks out. Time for her fresh start.

Darla was fast. She didn’t have a weapon, but next to her speed Buffy felt almost clumsy swinging the axe around. They exchanged hot and fast blows, so rapid that Buffy didn’t even have time to think about them or plan them out. She swiped for Darla’s gut and Darla jumped back - Darla grabbed her wrist and tried to break it as Buffy socked her in the face - Buffy made another swing with the axe and Darla grabbed the handle - Darla tore the axe out of her hands and snarled -

Buffy kicked her solidly and forcefully in the chest, throwing as much weight behind the blow as she could. But somewhere Merrick was calling her an idiot girl, and as Darla topped off the table Buffy overbalanced and fell right with her.

They both landed ignobly on the deserted floor, Buffy catching a big mouthful of vampire ash. Mega gross. For just a second, they looked at each other - both in equally vulnerable positions, the only weapon in the room on the other end of the table, and both equally without backup or help. It was a quickdraw, and they were both paralyzed with tension.

Darla was faster than Buffy. Darla was stronger. Buffy did not have a weapon. Buffy did not fancy getting killed in this tacky nightclub.

“My third removed fledgling has killed two slayers three times as skilled as you,” Darla snarled.

“If your fledgling’s here I’ll fight them too,” Buffy said pleasantly. “Are you still paying child support for that?”

They both lunged forward at the same time. They both missed each other, skidding on the ground, and somewhere along the way they both made the same decision.

Darla made it for the back exits and Buffy made for the front. Neither of them were winning today, and neither of them felt prepared. Buffy sure didn’t. One stake out of her hands and one lost weapon did not a victory make.

Merrick’s first lesson, taught as he threw a vampire at a terrified fourteen year old gripping a piece of wood like a pencil: always run from a fight if you aren’t confident you’ll win.

She burst out of the front of the nightclub, panting hard and wiping sweat away from her brow. There was a thick crowd of teenagers and demons loitering around the front, talking excitedly to each other or shaking from fear. Groups of vamps were huddled together, arguing furiously. The doors clanged against the wall and everybody stopped and stared at her, eyes wide. Half of them were slowly backing away - vampires, demons, and humans all.

“Rule number one,” Buffy yelled, making the crowd shirk back. “The treaty will now be enforced. Comprende?” Everybody nodded very quickly. “Good. Now get out of here, the new sheriff’s cranky.”

The crowd dispersed with equal speed, although Buffy could have sworn some of them made pig noses at her. The only ones who stayed were Angel, leaning against a street light that illuminated his pallor with a sickly yellow glow, and an uncertain pair standing in the middle of the cracked pavement.

Xander and Willow stared at her with wide eyes. Willow was clutching her tote bag to her chest, and Xander was holding a large hunting knife slack at his thigh. They were both looking at her as if they’d never seen her before. As if she was a ghoul rendered frightening because it was unfamiliar; a novel terror in their endless parade of misery.

The adrenaline abruptly drained out of Buffy’s system, and a wave of exhaustion overtook her. She stumbled forwards, toeing off her splintered and cracked heels, and she let her stockings scrape against the pavement. She slowly bent down and picked up the heels, letting the straps dangle from numb fingers.

“You two better get going,” Buffy said blankly. “It’s only getting darker.”

Willow’s arms tightened around her tote bag, hugging it protectively. Xander put a hand on the middle of her back. “Buffy…”

“Go!” Buffy yelled, her voice hoarse and cracking, and Willow and Xander went.

She watched them go, Xander gently steering Willow along, and waited until they turned a corner and disappeared from sight before she tore her eyes away. So much for that.

Slayers were not human. Buffy was possessed by a migratory demon spirit or something. She didn’t know, she had fallen asleep while Merrick was trying to explain it to her. Slayers were created by humans to protect humans, harnessing and enslaving the primal demonic spirit so it could serve humanity and act as their defender against evil. The birth of Slayers had been cruel, and its cruelty propagated itself.

Sometimes Buffy could swear that humans understood that she was cruel. Not many humans ever saw her doing her thing, but the Watcher’s Council had always treated her with a kind of distant revulsion. And when she did her saving people thing in front of humans, they never really looked that relieved or happy. They only ever looked like Xander and Willow: frozen stiff and scared, because they had seen a demon in the body of a girl.

How was it, in this strange little town where the natural and supernatural twisted so closely around each other that they became indistinguishable, that Buffy still didn’t belong?

Buffy strode forward, letting her stockings scrape across the pavement. Angel didn’t move or say anything - he just watched her walk past him, then stop and turn to look at him.

His eyes were dark and lifeless, like any vampire’s. But they were weirdly sad - a look no vampire ever had. It was a strange fit on his face, like the two elements were at war with each other. Uncomfortable in his own skin.

“Did you know that was going to happen?” Buffy demanded.

Angel raised his hands again, but this time the gesture rang so fake it was almost mocking. “Do I look like I can stop Darla from doing anything? I did everything Cordy asked me to do. I would have defused the situation if you hadn’t been there to help.” He lowered his hands, looking at her with a strange and blank intensity. “I try to help where I can, you know.”

“Oh, puh-leeze.” Buffy scoffed, somewhat offended. “You eat people. You don’t get anything besides an ego boost out of trying to help them.”

But Angel just blinked at her. “Did nobody tell you?” I got here last week,” Buffy bit back, irritated and grumpy and really needing a hot bath. “Tell me what?”

“Darla mentioned it.” He was still staring at her, and Buffy realized for the first time that he didn’t blink. Vampires didn’t need to blink. It made sense, but - well, she had never quite stopped and looked at one long enough to notice. “I don’t eat people. I have...ah, I have a soul.”

Buffy stared at him blankly.

Angel shrugged. “Witch’s curse.”

Buffy stared at him some more.

“So...that means you shouldn’t stake me?”

Buffy pinched the bridge of her nose, hard. Why couldn’t this night be over? “You’re walking me home. That’s a story I have to hear.”

********

The story, as it was, turned out to be way more interesting than she would have liked.

Sunnydale rolled up its sidewalks at night. The Bronze was located near the center of the town, deep amidst shopping centers and plazas and car repair places and Goodwills, but every parking lot was empty and there were no shoppers. Sometimes she saw shambling figures lurch down the street, but they always took one look at Angel and continued on their way. Buffy knew that soon they would be taking one look at her and continuing on their way. Despite everything, she was kind of looking forward to it.

There were no stars, but that was familiar. Streetlamps flickered and hummed, and cicadas ground their eternal chirps and whirls in the night, but that was familiar too. The only unfamiliar thing was Angel, and how the world felt abandoned and empty except for Buffy and Angel.

“Darla turned me ‘round...that was during the Cromwell thing, I think, so mid 1700s. She turns a lot of men, but after a little they usually disappoint her and she eats them. I was, ah...very incentivized not to disappoint her.” His mouth twitched in strangely placed humor. “For decades I didn’t really understand why she picked me. Blessed me, empowered me, cursed me, whatever. It took a long time before she finally ‘fessed up. Apparently she had walked into Galway and asked the first barmaid she saw who the nastiest motherfucker in Ireland was. And that led her to me.”

“Jeez,” Buffy said, impressed despite herself. “I’d hate to see her at speed dating competitions.”

“You know, that’s exactly what Cordelia said. I spent the 19th century…” Angel trailed off, pausing a beat. “To be clear, staking me would be very rude and I’d hate for you to try.”

“You’d hate for me to succeed,” Buffy corrected.

But Angel just smiled thinly. “Try.”

“Will you get to the point, already? If we’re going through every year of your ridiculously long life then I’ll have to invite you in for coffee. And you are not scoring an invite to Casa de Buffy.” Never mind the fact that two hundred fifty, closer to three hundred, was insanely old. Buffy had never met a vampire that old. Vampires could theoretically live forever, but the vast majority were way too stupid to last more than fifty years. The idea that she couldn’t kill Angel, even if she really wanted to…

“I’m getting there,” Angel chided gently. “This information is important if you’re going to be dealing with Darla. Darla and I...we were pretty awful.”

“Big whoop. All of you are awful.” Buffy had seen some shit. She wasn’t new at this. “Murder, death, killy stabby kill, the works. I get it.”

“I was a sadist, Buffy,” Angel said plainly, and Buffy shut up. “You’re right. The average vampire’s a bloodthirsty, murderous monster. They kill to sustain themselves, and like any animal they take great pleasure in eating. I liked eating, obviously. Eating people’s great. Still great, honestly, even if the guilt kind of ruins it these days. But I mostly liked killing. I wouldn’t even bother eating half of them.” Angel sighed, burying his hands in his jean pockets. His tone turned almost wistful. “I would spin some bullshit to Spike and Dru about how the abject despair of seeing your entire family massacred or something tenderized the flesh. Those two are pretty stupid, they’ll believe anything. People are so pumped up on - what’s the little thingamagummies in your blood called? Cortisol? They’re so pumped up on cortisol by the time you’re eating them that they all taste the same anyway. Spike would, like, philosophize about it. Man, Dru picked a dumb one.”

“What do I look like, your priest?” Buffy asked. She didn’t bother to keep the disgust and horror from her voice. It was bizarre to look at that broad, solemn face, and know that hundreds of people had looked up at that same face as it killed them. Their families. Tortured them to death. People just like her, except for one important detail. “I don’t need the play by play. So what, you ate the wrong person and a witch stuffed the human back inside Vampire Ted Bundy’s body. That fucking sucks for you, I guess.”

“That’s what I’m saying,” Angel said, almost patient. As if he was trying to teach her something. What did he possibly have to teach, Marauding 101? “A soul isn’t you. I’m not the human Darla killed. I am the exact same vampire who pillaged his way through Europe for hundreds of years. A soul is a conscience. It’s the voice in your head that tells you right and wrong. It’s...regret. I was given the ultimate punishment for my sins, far worse than any Hell could possibly give. I understood what I had done.”

“Which made your wife divorce you,” Buffy said, straight-faced.

“Which made me go completely insane for decades.” Angel sounded a little defensive about the divorce thing. Still a touchy subject after a hundred years, huh. “She...took care of me, I guess. Until I snapped back to it. She was so excited. Everything’ll go back to normal, Angelus. This is our fresh start, Angelus.” Angel’s tone soured a little, scraping his foot against the pavement. “I tried. I was different, but - I could still be with them. The people who had always made me feel so good, who had worshipped me. We could just re-brainwash Spike and Dru into loving us - they had gotten a little rebellious, but you just have to be firm with Spike. All I had to do was suck up my reservations and start eating again. Maybe orture some people every few months. It would be fine.

“But I just couldn’t. I wasn’t that person anymore. I tried to be him, and I couldn’t. I wanted to be that demon again so badly. That’s - I could excuse everything else I did. I didn’t have a soul. And before that, I - I was just a dumb kid, kids make mistakes. But there’s no excuse for that.”

“So what are you doing in Sunnydale?” Buffy asked. She actively decided not to ask for elaboration on half of that. She knew that she didn’t really want to know.

“I left for a few decades, found myself, yadda yadda.” Angel made a circular gesture, sweeping away decades with one hand. “And then I realized I needed to repent. There was a lot of tele-evangelism at the time, which is of the devil and everything, but they had a point. Are you Catholic, by the way? Protestant?”

“Not answering that.”

“Yeah, sorry. Anyway, I decided to...make up for it, I guess. Or at least stop running. Darla’s my responsibility, so when she moved here I did too. I’ve been doing what I can since then.” He scrubbed the back of his neck, suddenly self-conscious. “The Bible talks about redemption. Not that anybody reads the Bible anymore, but - right, but it talks about it. You achieve redemption through atonement. So I don’t do any of it anymore. Haven’t tortured anyone in years. I just keep my head down.”

Keep your head down?

Buffy stopped short, and Angel stopped too. They were underneath a streetlight, and without her heels she was left craning her head to look up at him. He was a foot taller than her, no matter how small he hunched or how much smaller he tried to make himself. He held himself too still, and stared too blankly with eyes long dead. If he had a soul, she couldn’t see it in his eyes: only in his face, which always seemed just a little sad.

“So what you’re saying is that you were a supervillain, and then you dropped out of the game to hang out with your ex-wife,” Buffy said flatly (“Please stop calling her my ex-wife”). “That’s not joining the good guys, Angel. That’s just giving up! That’s dropping out! If you really feel so bad about your puppy torture, then why didn’t you help me in there? You don’t stake vamps, you just scare them off. You could rule this place and clean it up, but you just run errands for Cordelia!”

“Buffy, you’re young. You have no idea how young you are.” Angel’s expression creased as Buffy scowled at him. “And you’re never going to grow much older than you are now. It’s convenient that way. You know those Watchers don’t tell you anything on purpose, right? They keep all of it from you, because so long as you’re reliant on them they can control you. Trust me. I would know.”

If Angel was expecting a denial or a fervent defense of Watchers, he didn’t get one. Buffy just stood there fuming, because he was right and there was nothing she could do about it.

“They sold you this lie about good and evil,” Angel continued. “That you’re made for good and us demons are created for evil. I mean, hey - demons, hell, Satan, right? I swear, we need to update the terminology.” Strangely enough, this looked like a pet peeve. “I would know better than anyone if I’m an emissary of Satan, right? I’ve never even met Satan. If I ever met Satan, I’d get mad that he was telling me what to do. And Hell isn’t in dimensions, it’s on a heavenly - anyway. Thinking of it as God and Satan, good versus evil is easier. But I’ve met demons who lived a holy life. There are humans who were far worse than demons, Buffy. I’ve met humans who were worse than me.”

“What are you saying?” Buffy asked. Her heart was thumping hard in her chest - why? What was so oddly terrifying about Angel’s words? So strangely liberating? “That they cut my life expectancy by sixty years for no reason? That I just exist to hurt people and be hurt?”

“Yep.”

Buffy punched Angel on the arm. It was like hitting a lamppost. Before Slayer powers.

“Real inspirational, buddy. I can tell that soul thing really helped your pep talk skills.”

“But that’s what I’m saying,” Angel complained, rubbing his arm. “None of it matters. It doesn’t mean anything. What your life means is just between you and God. And He only judges you on the life you’ve led. Do you get what I mean?”

“No! I’m not Catholic!” Buffy threw up her hands, walking forward and away from Angel. The gritty cement dug into her stockings, and she knew that she was tearing holes in them. She’d have to throw them out. If that was the total casualty count of a night she was lucky, but somehow it filled her with so much frustration and pain. She couldn’t have anything. She had nothing. “Ugh, you know what? Fine. You’rethree hundred and I’m barely in high school, what do I know. I’m sure you’ve figured it all out. But at least I’m doing something. You’re giving yourself the grand prize for not being a terrible person.”

Angel jerked back a little, strangely surprised. “Do you have any idea how difficult it is for me not to kill people? I’m doing the best I can.”

“No, you aren’t! I want to stab catcallers on the street too, but I don’t!” Buffy had no idea of how to phrase this. She didn’t know how to make Angel understand. She didn’t even know if she understood. So she just walked away instead, fighting the urge to stomp. “This isn’t something you can be neutral about. You can’t play both sides, Angel. You’re a coward.” She stopped short and turned around, because she wasn’t the kind of person who called someone a coward without looking them in the eyes as she did it. “Beating yourself up over doing the wrong thing is easier than doing the right thing. I didn’t step in back there because I was in danger, or because the Watchers made me. I don’t care about duty, or - or responsibility. I just can’t stand watching powerful people push around the helpless.”

“You’re not like them, Buffy,” Angel said. From this far away, he looked more like a smear of black clothes and pale skin under the yellow light. He fit strangely in his surroundings, out of place and strange. As if he belonged to a different time, and never should have left. “You’ll always be between two worlds. You’ll live another three years on average in struggle and misery, and then one day a demon will get lucky. You have to abandon this while you still can.”

“Do you know what I think!” Buffy yelled. Her voice was swallowed up by the cicadas and the night, but she didn’t care. Yelling at Angel wasn’t raging against her fate or his stupid little Catholicism, but he was the only one standing in front of her. “I think if none of it matters, and if my life is so short and pointless, then - then all that matters is what I do with it! If all I do is make sure that Willow lives until one hundred and eight, or that Xander finally finds a girl who’ll tolerate him - even if they hate me, even if they don’t care about me - then good! That’s the point of my life! And you don’t get to tell me what to do with it!”

She could probably stand here arguing with him until the sun came up, but Buffy’s eyes were gritty and her fists were sore, and she had better things to do than argue with someone who’d already given up.

So she turned around again and kept walking. After a few seconds, she heard Angel walk to catch up with her. He didn’t say anything to her, and she didn’t say anything to him, but they walked each other all the way home.

***

The next morning, after Buffy fielded Mom’s annoying interrogation about why a man in his mid-twenties had walked her home through fervent assertions that he was annoying, Buffy stopped by the library before school.

Everybody stared at her as she walked through the halls. Buffy found herself unconsciously imitating Angel and hunching a little, trying to make herself seem less like the unholy lovechild of Rambo and the Terminator, but it didn’t work and she didn’t respect Angel anyway. So she stood straight instead, and kept her eyes fixed in front of her even as the other students scrambled to get out of her way or avoided eye contact.

Giles wasn’t going to be happy, but - well, they both knew it would happen soon enough. Judging by the rate that gossip spread in this town (although Darla hadn’t seemed to know about the Watcher rumors - maybe high schoolers could keep a secret after all) Mom would know soon enough, so Buffy should probably have that talk. She really didn’t want Mom to find out about the mystical destiny thing from the grocery store clerk.

But when she pushed open the doors of the library, she didn’t see Giles. Or Giles wasn’t the first thing she saw. He was easy to find, standing in front of the circulation desk holding a very thick book and a very wicked stake, but it was Willow who Buffy saw first - Willow, who was standing at the front of the table in the center of the room, who turned around when Buffy came in and looked straight at her.

They locked eyes, and Buffy found her breath catching. She didn’t know why. She didn’t know why she wanted to look away from Willow so badly - in shame, in guilt, in fear - and she didn’t know why she couldn’t.

Then Willow ran forward and hugged her, squeezing her tight, and Buffy knew why.

She separated from Buffy, smiling brightly. There was something tired and stressed about it, but it was nothing like Willow’s smiles from yesterday. There was something firm in it, strong and determined. Whatever had been missing in Angel yesterday was in Willow, and it had transformed something about her.

“Good, you’re here! Come on, I was just talking to everybody about our game plan.”

Game plan? Everybody?

When Buffy looked over Willow’s shoulder, she saw that every seat around the table was occupied.

Xander sat closest to her, and when he saw her looking he raised a hand in a faux-jaunty greeting. Across from him sat Cordelia Chase, who was back to her usual pristine self in an admittedly nice mod dress and chunky earrings. She was impatiently tapping her fingers against her arm, but there was a terrifyingly thick manual lying flat on the table in front of her, completely marked up and annotated in color coded highlighters.

Behind her sat Angel, who just weakly lifted a hand in greeting before letting it drop. That was probably why Giles was standing so far apart from the group, and why he was holding a stake.

“Hello, Buffy,” Giles said, perfectly pleasant. “Do you mind telling me why Angelus is in my library?”

“Oh, relax, worst he’ll do is bore you to death.” Cordy smacked on her gum, waving a careless hand towards the sadistic serial killer. “Get on with it, we only have twenty minutes before class starts and I have studying to do.”

“You can take your online classes whenever you want, you know,” Xander said brightly. “You don’t have to take them at all, actually!”

“How do you want me to get into Yale, Xander? Let me know how you want me to do that and I’ll get right on it.”

“What’s this?” Buffy asked weakly, and everybody shut up. “Why are you all…”

“Why do you think we’re here?” Cordelia demanded, as if Buffy had asked the stupidest question possible. “You’re the Slayer. Giles over there is your babysitter. We’re the ones who would prefer to cut down on the almost getting eaten alive every two seconds, thanks.” She slapped Angel on the arm, who just pulled a pained expression. “And he said he’s here to make sure I don’t get myself killed. Thanks for that, by the way, didn’t know you cared.”

Angel slouched in his seat, looking around in complete discomfort. “Is this what a high school looks like?”

“Do I want to know how much education you finished before you had the worst sexual experience of your life?” Cordelia asked flatly. Angel opened his mouth. “Never mind. I’m signing you up for my online classes. Sharpening the mind reduces the risk for Alzheimer’s, you know.” Angel stared at her blankly. “Ugh, shut up, I know you don’t know what Alzheimer’s is.”

“Now that we actually have a Slayer around to help keep us alive,” Xander said loudly, “I think it’s our job as law abiding citizens to help her. You know, hold them down as she punches them.”

“We can help teach Buffy about Sunnydale!” Willow said eagerly, moving to sit down next to Xander. Her backpack was already sitting on the table, stuffed and overflowing with books. “We’ll teach her the rules, and together we can see what demons need slayin’ and what demons need - you know, crisis mediation. We can help keep the peace!”

“I’m sorry,” Buffy repeated, struggling to connect all of this in her head - the nerds, the Queen Bee, the vampire, the Watcher, and her. What put them all in this room? This wasn’t the way it was supposed to work. “You aren’t possibly suggesting...what I think you’re suggesting.”

She looked at Giles, as if he would interpret the entire situation into something that made sense, but he obviously didn’t understand either. He rubbed at his temple, keeping the stake pointed away from his forehead.

“It appears some of your friends have volunteered their help,” he said mildly. “Normally I’d never allow such a thing -”

“Who cares about what you allow or not?” Angel said, somewhat nastily.

“ - but I don’t believe I can stop them.” Especially not Angel, went unsaid. Giles deflated a little, and Buffy realized that he was looking to her for answers. This was so far beyond his wheelhouse - either of their wheelhouses. Maybe, in the entire sordid and sad history of the Slayers, it was the first time this had happened. “I believe this one is up to you, Buffy. Of course, should they die, on your head be it, but -”

“Oh, no, really?” Xander said. “Something might be dangerous? Say it ain’t so, G-Man, I’m quaking in my boots.” He glanced at Buffy, sharp and quick, and she wondered if he looked like this before Jesse had died. “One girl against this dumbass town’s bad odds. I think helping her out increases our life expectancy.”

“It’s not as if it’s not scary,” Willow said fervently. “It’s super, duper, mega scary! But the scariest thing is - you know, not being able to do anything about it. Or not being able to help. Being a kid in this dumb town, you always feel so helpless and alone. But the Slayer’s a kid just like us, and she can punch Darla in the face! Watching her yesterday, I felt like I could do anything too!” She faltered just a little, uncertain for the first time. “And Buffy’s so nice, and her taste in clothing is so good. We can’t make her do this all alone. That just isn’t fair.”

Buffy burst into tears.

She couldn’t help it. She didn’t even try. She didn’t even know why she was crying. All she knew was that it wasn’t fair, and that a dozen people had told her life wasn’t fair but only one person had ever volunteered to help. There was no good or evil, no mystical destiny or fate - just Willow and Xander and Cordy and Angel and even Giles, who wanted to help.

And then Willow was hugging her again, and Angel was asking in a panic why she was crying, and Cordy was berating him, and Xander and Giles were talking over each other, and Buffy cried and cried and cried in complete and total relief.

#buffy the vampire slayer #btvs #buffy summers #angel #buffy #my writing #i have not seen buffy in an exceptionally long time but every second is burned into my memory #this show is the bedrock of my family and an aspect of my soul i am not always proud of #if you've ever wondered why im like this buffy is partly to blame #so: i'm completely capable of writing these teens in character and i want you to know my decisions are on purpose #i understand angel on a very deep level. the epic divorce man is a choice.#LET! ANGEL! BE! CATHOLIC!#I also gotta establish that I gratuitously overused italics while writing this in order to get the voices of the actors down #and tumblr formatting kills that. so you're missing out on a lot.

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