Part One

Underneath the Masks of Our Smiles
There Are Tear-Stained Faces

You never asked to be here, stalking the streets alongside a woman who insists on stuffing her pockets with stakes and explaining how she wants to inflict her bridesmaid's dress on charity but doesn't because it seems like it's an acknowledgement that Xander and Anya are doomed, but you can't imagine being happier. You don't have to check your stride for her because she walks almost as fast as she talks, and it's the most natural thing in the world to settle an arm around her waist and pull her close.

Wonder of wonders, that makes her shut up and look up at you, and you're all lazy smile and amusement, and a little bit of wishing that she didn't need to wear gloves on winter nights. Your breath can't warm her hands, and enclosing them in your own will only trap her own heat. But you've asked for your share of impossible things, quota filled, move on and leave you on the floor of a cave bloody and broken and ensouled.

It's a happy ending, isn't it? A fairy-tale transformation, with the maiden's kiss leading to the frog's transformation into something worthwhile. And maybe you and your sweetheart can only stroll down the boulevard after the sky's gone dark and murky, and her friends still whet their glares on you, and you spent the first several months composing apologies to the ghosts of everyone you've maimed, tortured, and killed--but hey, you got the girl, right?

So no one's perfect. Otherwise there wouldn't be erasers on the ends of pencils, or necklaces that leave a cross-shaped scar on your skin because your lover forgot to take it off along with her clothes.

Part Two

What Do You Do When
Your Fingers Can't Find the Seams>

Shh, she's still sleeping.

You need a lark. Alarm clocks aren't working out, not when they rouse the Slayer, at least long enough for her hand to snake out and grab the poor thing, then fling it across the room and into the wall. It's the crash and the abrupt loss of the pillow (to bury her head under) that wakes you rather than the interrupted shrill ringing.

Sunrise isn't too far away and you've got to leave this place. Not that she won't let you stay in her house, but the pint-sized one still glares at you sullenly: resentful of how you regained the older sister's good graces. The witch is hollow-eyed and -cheeked, and you've been coached to be patient and understanding with her, but it's a Herculean effort while she dresses in sackcloth and pours ashes on her hair. You'd rather get out of here.

But you're slow in dressing, because your hands want to return to her body and search it for its secrets. They hide along the curve of her breast, between her thighs, tangle with the strands of her hair and the strings of your heart.

The things you've done for her....

You'll never have a century to prove your devotion to her, like you had with Dru. Not even the decades of a normal human lifespan, not the Slayer. Her courtship demanded heroic feats, grand gestures. Your glass mountain was in Africa, and its name was change. You balanced on that slippery slope for a while, long enough to coax her into accepting you, but now you're sliding. You're falling back into familiar old rhythms: mostly-faithful sidekick, bedmate, dispenser of sarcasm, punching bag on her particularly bad days. You still live on pig's blood.

Shh, don't tell. Really, nothing's changed at all.

Part Three

Have There Ever Been Questions
You Wanted To Unask?

"Slayer."

"Spike, I--"

"New demon in town? Need a babysitter? Sister burned down the kitchen?"

"No, no. No disaster."

"Well, something's wrong."

"How can you tell?"

"These muscles? All tense and knotted."

"...That feels good."

"So what's the problem?"

"Everything. Everyone. I don't know."

"Everyone?"

"Yeah."

"Including me?"

"Well, yeah."

"What's wrong with me?"

"For starters, you're my undead boyfriend whom none of my friends likes. --Hey! Why'd you stop?"

"If you're going to break up with me, you're not going to get a complimentary massage for it."

"I'm not dumping you. I'm just stating a fact. It's one of those things that makes life a little too much to handle on some days, along with the best friend who's still pitying herself for trying to end the world, and the other best friend who stalks a vengeance demon. Not to mention the little sister who didn't really exist until a couple of years ago. Sometimes I just wish everything were normal, and sometimes that includes you. Okay?"

"So you're saying that the soul's not enough."

"If you think about it, a vampire with a soul is even weirder than just a vampire."

"If you're trying to be reassuring, you're going about it the wrong way."

"Sorry. Just had to unload."

"Buffy, my crypt is a an open refuge to you from anything except myself."

Part Four

Try Laughing. For Real.
It Hurts, Doesn't It?

It never fails to astound you that you can bring her to her knees in front of you, and she will let her mouth linger on you in ways that make you wind your hands into her hair and break your words off into sharp, brittle pieces. When she slides her lips away and smiles up at you, you're barely coherent, so all the things you want to say--the names of flowers with scents less fragrant than hers, how the hummingbird wingbeat of her pulse soars like music to your ears, the winters that could not withstand the heat that flares off her skin--are left unsaid.

When she rises, your hand moves down to the nape of her neck and you tilt your head for a kiss. Your tongue traces intricacies in her mouth that you hope she understands, because she has stolen all other language. Her nails tear runes into your back. To repay her in pain you capture her nipple between thumb and forefinger and twist. She writhes, grinding her hips against you, crying out throaty invitations.

You press your thigh between hers. Her legs part, then rise along your body, even as your hands skim down her sides. You palm her buttocks, then lift her up, take advantage of her borrowed height to close your mouth over the sweetness of her breasts.

Her heels dig into your back, as though you're her steed, and you somehow carry her a few steps, enough to push her back into the wall. Her fingers tighten on your shoulders as she settles lower, but you preempt her and drive yourself into her.

Sometimes you think that you're a joke, a caricature of a lover--that this is all there is, sex and guttural calls and the pounding pace she demands. You don't dare withhold from her to tease her, to force her to beg, because you're afraid that she won't.

"I love you," you say, like always; but like always, it's a ritual reserved for after her eyelids have fallen and her mouth is slack against your kiss, so that you can tell yourself that she doesn't answer because she's asleep.

Part Five

Cry All You Want, Baby.
They Can't Tell in the Rain

Once upon a time there was a vampire and a Slayer. And the vampire loved her very, very much. And he used to love another vampire and he tried to kill the Slayer several times and then when he tried to save her he failed, but still. He loved her, and he told her so.

And after many trials she believed him and consented to his love. But the trials didn't stop.

They come in the form of insidious thoughts and an omnipresent sense of déjà vu, as though the days that flow like water are all in a rut. There must be something more, you know, but it eludes you, and eventually you no longer believe in it. This is all you have, all you can get, all you deserve.

Even this much is ephemeral. For all her powers, the Slayer is a mortal woman--oh, so mortal. Every wound and drop of blood is a step closer to the inevitable. One day there will be a last sigh, an unseeing stare, a chill to the skin that wraps over stiffening muscles. Because even little happinesses have an expiration date.

And you, you'll live ever after.

- The End -