Buffy Summers (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
whattingawhat) wrote2008-08-14 02:10 pm
whattingawhat) wrote2008-08-14 02:10 pm
Entry tags:
As the suns going down [And the days of your easy life]
[Force of Nature]
OOC: Co-written by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
stillacrime and [Unknown site tag]
Danny was sitting outside on the balcony smoking while Buffy watched from inside the apartment. She had her hair twisted up in a knot and she was rubbing at the back of her neck. Danny had been quiet since Angel had left NYC. If it weren't for the way he'd acted when Angel had been around, she might have chalked it up to the giant apocalypse with the tentacle thing he'd seen in the aftermath. Despite the blonde hair and the reputation for being terminally ditzy, Buffy wasn't stupid. Ever since Angel had shown up in NYC, Danny had been insecure and clingy. He'd watched her and Angel like a hawk. He was a good actor, covering things successfully most of the time but by now, she'd figured out how his mind worked. He was a scientist at the heart of everything and he wanted to know the ins and outs of things, how they worked, what they did and how they happened. She'd been putting it off for days, hoping it'd disappear and they'd fall back into normality but thus far, it hadn't happened.
Buffy sighed deeply, bit the big one and stepped out onto the balcony. She leaned against the railing, an attempt at a smile tugging at the corner of her lips. "Hey, Boyfriend. Awful deep brood. Wanna talk?"
Having been mid-drag when Buffy spoke, Danny slowly exhaled and blew a stream of cigarette smoke into the air. "Just sittin' here smokin'. What'd you need to talk about?" He was avoiding. He had been avoiding. He wanted to keep avoiding.
"Want is one of those words..." Buffy started. "I think we have to talk about Angel." She ran her hand along her hairline, smoothing back stray hair from her face, letting her hand come down over the scar on her neck. "It's not what you think." She kind of hoped she was wrong. She hoped that the apocalypse was upsetting him and the Angel stuff was completely imagined, her own insecurities taking flight. However, she knew Danny pretty well and she was almost certain the Angel stuff wasn't in her imagination.
The moment that Buffy said the name 'Angel', Danny's gaze snapped down to the floor of the balcony. He held his cigarette over the small ceramic pot that he used as an ashtray and flicked off the ash from the end. "Not what I think..." He hesitated, not wanting to have this conversation that made his chest tight and every muscle tense and on edge.
After several beats, he looked up to Buffy again and pointed to her with the tip of his cigarette. "So you don't still love him? Cause I can tell you he still loves you for a fact. No questions asked. Anyone's gotta be blind to not see what's goin' on with you two. You're gonna tell me that when you two're in a room together that all the air doesn't get sucked out and that you two don't become the only two in the room? Cause anyone'd have'ta be blind not to see that either."
Lifting his shoulders in a shrug, he looked out over the city, away from Buffy. "I mean if we're gonna talk about it... think I see it pretty clear."
Buffy bit down hard on her bottom lip, tasting blood and sucking it past her teeth. The look on his face killed her. It was like someone had kicked his favorite puppy. "I don't love him like I love you." The words were honest, sincere and straight forward. "It's complicated with Angel. It always has been." She stood there, chewing on her bottom lip, her hand pressed to the scar on her neck and she tried to find the words to explain Buffy and Angel to the man she loved now. "You remember the whole love is pain thing? Well Angel taught me that. They go hand in hand with him. He's hurt me far too much for me to love him the way I love you and I've hurt him. It's a never ending cycle. Forty years ago Angel was living here in New York in the alleys eating rats. Something happened in the seventies he won't tell me about but he completely shunned humans. So he's sucking down rats, doing his imitation of Bob the homeless guy that lives in our alley, only a lot more disgusting and this guy shows up. Messenger from the Powers that Be. He talks Angel into driving down to LA with him. Dinner and a show...or something. Turns out I was the show. He sat in a car with the windows blacked out and watched as Merrick told me I'd been picked in the lottery--you know originally the lottery was like this name drawing. They pull your name out of a hat and if your name got picked they sacrificed you to some pagan god to keep the corn growing or cockroaches away--anyway...he changed his entire life, got a purpose, took a shower, a totally goth sense of fashion and changed his entire existence because he didn't want me to do this alone." She reached up and tugged her hair out of the knot, letting it spill over her shoulders before her hand went back to her neck.
"And the bitch of it all, the powers that be knew how much he'd hurt me, how much I'd hurt him and they threw us together anyway."
Danny listened, soaking in some things and not quite getting others. There were just some aspects of Buffy's world that he had yet to delve into and know yet. He still did not want to be having this conversation. He wanted it to end. She was basically telling him that although it had been rough, she was Angel's purpose. And while Angel had been here he had noticed her touching the scar that he kissed when it was just the two of them because it was so sensitive. Now that he knew what Angel was it was easy to do the math. And every time she touched it it reminded him that Angel was here no matter what. He was in their lives, in their apartment and even in this conversation with them.
He shook his head slowly. "Don't know what to say yet except yuck on the rats." And anything else he said at that point might fuck everything up. And he just couldn't take that right now.
"Yeah, totally yuck," Buffy agreed. She took his comment as some sort of acceptance of this conversation. It was a conversation they were bound to have eventually, whether either one of them wanted to or not. She takes a deep breath and then lets it out through her teeth. "He saved me...dozens of times. I would have been dead without Angel. A billion years ago...okay really like a hundred and some change, he was evil and he killed this gypsy girl. So apparently the Pak and Sak was out of Boils and plagues. They cursed him with a soul but gypsies are quirky and they like surprises. They added a loophole to his curse. A moment of perfect happiness, he loses his soul and goes back to being the monster he was before. Well understandably right after the gainage of his soul, Angel was a little dazed and he lost the instruction manual. Short of it, he didn't know about the loophole so...I didn't know about the loophole." She paused, running her tongue over her teeth and then over her bottom lip. "I was seventeen. I went to sleep with my boyfriend and I woke up to the jerk. I know, you see it in all the lifetime movies but in the lifetime movies, the jerk just blows you off. Angelus hunted my friends, my family, Willow's goldfish oddly enough and he stalked me. he sent me red roses and sketches he'd drawn of me while I was sleeping. he gave me dead friends when I got bored and killed the woman Giles loved. And he did it so that it hurt more than anything I'd ever felt until that moment. Willow wasn't the goddess she is today but she was trying so hard to figure out the spell to put Angel's soul back."
She smoothed her hair back into a ponytail, her hands staying at the nape of her neck for a moment. "Turned out Angelus couldn't stand to kill me and look me in the eye so he decided the best way to get rid of me was to suck the whole world into hell. By the way, Angelus is Angel's evil twin. So he's gonna suck the world into Hell and he and I are doing this whole Errol Flynn thing and no one ever told me that in the process, Willow was trying to put Angel's soul back. She did it too. Just as the portal to Hell opened. So portals always have this tricky thing and usually they require blood to close them. Almost always the blood that opened them. Well...that was Angel's blood. He was back and he was confused. He didn't remember anything and he didn't see the giant portal behind him that was just getting bigger and bigger. I'm the slayer and when it comes right down to it, I'm supposed to pick the world over the people I love. It's in the contract I didn't sign so I kissed him, I told him I loved him and I shoved a sword through his gut. He got sucked into Hell, portal closes and I disappeared for four months."
She paused, looking up at Danny to see how he was dealing with all of this, her hand straying back to the scar on her neck.
He lit another cigarette with the butt of the last one and had almost smoked it through when she paused in the story that just kept getting worse. As he took in the information, he wasn't sure what he was supposed to do with it all. He wasn't sure how she expected him to react or how he was supposed to react. He was trying to come up with something to say. He was trying to empathize except that he didn't want to because his girlfriend who he loved more than anything was telling him about the other guy she loved who she'd had sex with and then killed... a vampire who found his perfect happiness in her. He didn't want to empathize. He wanted to go beat the hell out of Angel. He wanted to tell Buffy to quit loving some other guy.
"Sorry you had to put a sword through him." It was all he could come up with. He tried to imagine having to put a sword through Buffy and just couldn't. He was a Detective, a scientist. He didn't deal with swords on a daily basis. And shooting Buffy was not an option... ever.
"Well...you know...he got better, came back from Hell and we started the Buffy and Angel show all over again. He never held it against me, we never talked about it but his last word was my name and his first word back was my name. Time moves differently there. It makes the torture better I guess. He was gone four months and he spent a century in Hell so needless to say when he got back he was a little...pissed off, feral...confused." She shrugged. "Anyway, show must go on only this time we tried the touchless version. It didn't work out very well. He broke up with me in a sewer two days before Prom so that I could have a normal life. I went to Prom without him because there were hellhounds and he showed up in a tuxedo to tell me that it was just for that night. He's not really that bright." She rolled her lips between her teeth and sighed. "And then things went to Hell. He got poisoned and he was dying. Funny thing was, there was only one cure for the poison. He had to drain the blood of a slayer. So a little back tracking, remember me telling you I died once, drowned for just like five minutes? Called another slayer anyway, that slayer died, called another and we ended up with Faith. She was a little insane, she went evil and tried to help the Mayor eat everyone in the city. So my bright idea was kill Faith, feed her to Angel, problem solved." She took a deep breath.
"I nearly did it. She was in a coma for seven months. In the end, she escaped and I went to save Angel. He didn't want to bite me but he was sick and he was dying and I hit him. I hit him over and over and over until the demon took over. He bit me and he still managed to stop before I died but he took a lot and he was fine and I was in the hospital getting a whole new set of blood. Anyway, I got better we stopped the mayor and Angel left me. He went to LA. And I moved on with my life. We saw each other for world ending events, we said hateful things, I hit him, he hit me and we stayed on respective sides of the coast but when I needed someone he was always there. My Mom died and...everyone else just left me with her because they couldn't deal with me losing her. It got dark and I didn't want to leave her grave and Angel showed up. He just held me and made sure I didn't have to spend that horrible night alone. Morning came and he left again."
She raked a hand through her hair. "And then I died and then I came back and Angel couldn't be there for that. He couldn't deal with that and I needed him, more than I'd ever needed him before." She pulled her bottom lip through her teeth and watched him, doing another how's Danny doing check.
Almost before she had finished that last sentence, Danny was shaking his head. He drew another long drag of his cigarette, always uncomfortable with the subject of Buffy being dead. And as he spoke, the cigarette smoke exhaled with every word as he looked up to her. "So you need him, I get it. That goes with what I said originally. You love him. He loves you. You need him. He needs you. Like I said, I get it. Whatever."
Averting his gaze sideways, back out to the city, he shrugged again. He was trying so hard not to lose control of his emotions and it showed. Every muscle was tense exacerbating them beneath his skin in his arms and shoulders. The pulse in his neck was visible if studied close enough. His brow furrowed, taking on the kicked puppy look that he never really meant to have, but was there anyway when he was hurt or upset. "It's fine, Buffy. Whatever."
"No. You don't get it. That's the thing," Buffy told him quietly. "Yeah, Angel is always going to be a part of my life and I can't change that. No we're not just friends because we've been through too much to be that but we're not romantic either. The day he broke up with me in the sewer...I fought him. I told him I didn't want normal. I didn't want to walk in the sunlight with someone, have kids, get married or grow older. The thing is, he was right and I was wrong and you have no idea how hard that is to admit. Somehow he knew that right then at eighteen years old I might think I didn't want all those things but one of these days I'd meet The Guy. Capital letters and with him I'd want those things. Personally, until I met you, I thought it was a cop out because life with me, never easy. Even when I was eighteen." She finally moved from her spot near the railing to sit behind him. Her legs were on either side of him, her arms wrapped around him and her chin rested on his shoulder.
"I love you. I could have a future with Angel if I wanted it. He offered it to me a few years ago and I turned him down. I want my future to be with you. Yeah, Angel and I are...whatever and we're always going to be whatever but I choose you to spend the rest of my life with. Not him. And even when Angel is here, I never, ever doubt that. I picked the right guy."
Once she settled behind him there was no way he couldn't lean back just slightly against her. He had never been able to not respond to Buffy. From day one they had responded to each other. "You picked a guy who's nothin' in your world. Picked a guy who can't get or fully accept everything about your world. Why would you do that? Why would you choose to be with a guy like me? There's no way I compare to him. You're somethin' special and amazing and I'm pretty damn average and skeptical."
"I picked a guy who can love me without hurting me. I picked someone who taught me that love doesn't have to equal pain. I picked a guy that even when he doesn't understand or accept, he's there anyway. I picked a guy who knows what I am, knows what I do and still thinks I'm special and amazing. You're not nothing in my world. You're part of this little conglomeration including Dawn that make up my whole world." Buffy kissed his shoulder then turned her head so she could lay her cheek against his back.
"It's okay for me to fallible in your world because I'm just your girlfriend. I'm not the savior of the world or your reason for being or the reason you fight. I'm not Buffy the Vampire Slayer or The Slayer. I'm just Buffy. I like that. You love me for what I am but you love me for who I am too."
Part of him relaxed and softened as she spoke because it was all true. He loved her more than he had loved anyone in his life. Even with the monologue of events she had just given him, it still hurt. He was pretty sure that nothing could make that situation better. There was a third sometimes seen and sometimes unseen party in their relationship, someone that Danny couldn't see how he was winning out against. Buffy and Angel were a force of nature. Regular guy couldn't battle a force of nature.
"Yeah, yeah... I love all of you. I'm gonna be fine, alright?" He tried to reassure her. "Just don't quit lovin' me too, okay?"
She felt it when he relaxed against her and she knew that in some way things were going to be okay. Things had changed between them slightly but maybe they were on track anyway. "That's never gonna happen, Boyfriend," Buffy promised him as she kissed his shoulder again. "Just stick with me. I know it's not normal but that doesn't mean that it's not right."
"Look, I don't know much about what's right here and what's not. What I do know is that I love you, Summers." And that, in itself was a force of nature. Not quite so violent and tumultuous, but still a force of nature by his standards.
OOC: Co-written by
stillacrime and [Unknown site tag]Danny was sitting outside on the balcony smoking while Buffy watched from inside the apartment. She had her hair twisted up in a knot and she was rubbing at the back of her neck. Danny had been quiet since Angel had left NYC. If it weren't for the way he'd acted when Angel had been around, she might have chalked it up to the giant apocalypse with the tentacle thing he'd seen in the aftermath. Despite the blonde hair and the reputation for being terminally ditzy, Buffy wasn't stupid. Ever since Angel had shown up in NYC, Danny had been insecure and clingy. He'd watched her and Angel like a hawk. He was a good actor, covering things successfully most of the time but by now, she'd figured out how his mind worked. He was a scientist at the heart of everything and he wanted to know the ins and outs of things, how they worked, what they did and how they happened. She'd been putting it off for days, hoping it'd disappear and they'd fall back into normality but thus far, it hadn't happened.
Buffy sighed deeply, bit the big one and stepped out onto the balcony. She leaned against the railing, an attempt at a smile tugging at the corner of her lips. "Hey, Boyfriend. Awful deep brood. Wanna talk?"
Having been mid-drag when Buffy spoke, Danny slowly exhaled and blew a stream of cigarette smoke into the air. "Just sittin' here smokin'. What'd you need to talk about?" He was avoiding. He had been avoiding. He wanted to keep avoiding.
"Want is one of those words..." Buffy started. "I think we have to talk about Angel." She ran her hand along her hairline, smoothing back stray hair from her face, letting her hand come down over the scar on her neck. "It's not what you think." She kind of hoped she was wrong. She hoped that the apocalypse was upsetting him and the Angel stuff was completely imagined, her own insecurities taking flight. However, she knew Danny pretty well and she was almost certain the Angel stuff wasn't in her imagination.
The moment that Buffy said the name 'Angel', Danny's gaze snapped down to the floor of the balcony. He held his cigarette over the small ceramic pot that he used as an ashtray and flicked off the ash from the end. "Not what I think..." He hesitated, not wanting to have this conversation that made his chest tight and every muscle tense and on edge.
After several beats, he looked up to Buffy again and pointed to her with the tip of his cigarette. "So you don't still love him? Cause I can tell you he still loves you for a fact. No questions asked. Anyone's gotta be blind to not see what's goin' on with you two. You're gonna tell me that when you two're in a room together that all the air doesn't get sucked out and that you two don't become the only two in the room? Cause anyone'd have'ta be blind not to see that either."
Lifting his shoulders in a shrug, he looked out over the city, away from Buffy. "I mean if we're gonna talk about it... think I see it pretty clear."
Buffy bit down hard on her bottom lip, tasting blood and sucking it past her teeth. The look on his face killed her. It was like someone had kicked his favorite puppy. "I don't love him like I love you." The words were honest, sincere and straight forward. "It's complicated with Angel. It always has been." She stood there, chewing on her bottom lip, her hand pressed to the scar on her neck and she tried to find the words to explain Buffy and Angel to the man she loved now. "You remember the whole love is pain thing? Well Angel taught me that. They go hand in hand with him. He's hurt me far too much for me to love him the way I love you and I've hurt him. It's a never ending cycle. Forty years ago Angel was living here in New York in the alleys eating rats. Something happened in the seventies he won't tell me about but he completely shunned humans. So he's sucking down rats, doing his imitation of Bob the homeless guy that lives in our alley, only a lot more disgusting and this guy shows up. Messenger from the Powers that Be. He talks Angel into driving down to LA with him. Dinner and a show...or something. Turns out I was the show. He sat in a car with the windows blacked out and watched as Merrick told me I'd been picked in the lottery--you know originally the lottery was like this name drawing. They pull your name out of a hat and if your name got picked they sacrificed you to some pagan god to keep the corn growing or cockroaches away--anyway...he changed his entire life, got a purpose, took a shower, a totally goth sense of fashion and changed his entire existence because he didn't want me to do this alone." She reached up and tugged her hair out of the knot, letting it spill over her shoulders before her hand went back to her neck.
"And the bitch of it all, the powers that be knew how much he'd hurt me, how much I'd hurt him and they threw us together anyway."
Danny listened, soaking in some things and not quite getting others. There were just some aspects of Buffy's world that he had yet to delve into and know yet. He still did not want to be having this conversation. He wanted it to end. She was basically telling him that although it had been rough, she was Angel's purpose. And while Angel had been here he had noticed her touching the scar that he kissed when it was just the two of them because it was so sensitive. Now that he knew what Angel was it was easy to do the math. And every time she touched it it reminded him that Angel was here no matter what. He was in their lives, in their apartment and even in this conversation with them.
He shook his head slowly. "Don't know what to say yet except yuck on the rats." And anything else he said at that point might fuck everything up. And he just couldn't take that right now.
"Yeah, totally yuck," Buffy agreed. She took his comment as some sort of acceptance of this conversation. It was a conversation they were bound to have eventually, whether either one of them wanted to or not. She takes a deep breath and then lets it out through her teeth. "He saved me...dozens of times. I would have been dead without Angel. A billion years ago...okay really like a hundred and some change, he was evil and he killed this gypsy girl. So apparently the Pak and Sak was out of Boils and plagues. They cursed him with a soul but gypsies are quirky and they like surprises. They added a loophole to his curse. A moment of perfect happiness, he loses his soul and goes back to being the monster he was before. Well understandably right after the gainage of his soul, Angel was a little dazed and he lost the instruction manual. Short of it, he didn't know about the loophole so...I didn't know about the loophole." She paused, running her tongue over her teeth and then over her bottom lip. "I was seventeen. I went to sleep with my boyfriend and I woke up to the jerk. I know, you see it in all the lifetime movies but in the lifetime movies, the jerk just blows you off. Angelus hunted my friends, my family, Willow's goldfish oddly enough and he stalked me. he sent me red roses and sketches he'd drawn of me while I was sleeping. he gave me dead friends when I got bored and killed the woman Giles loved. And he did it so that it hurt more than anything I'd ever felt until that moment. Willow wasn't the goddess she is today but she was trying so hard to figure out the spell to put Angel's soul back."
She smoothed her hair back into a ponytail, her hands staying at the nape of her neck for a moment. "Turned out Angelus couldn't stand to kill me and look me in the eye so he decided the best way to get rid of me was to suck the whole world into hell. By the way, Angelus is Angel's evil twin. So he's gonna suck the world into Hell and he and I are doing this whole Errol Flynn thing and no one ever told me that in the process, Willow was trying to put Angel's soul back. She did it too. Just as the portal to Hell opened. So portals always have this tricky thing and usually they require blood to close them. Almost always the blood that opened them. Well...that was Angel's blood. He was back and he was confused. He didn't remember anything and he didn't see the giant portal behind him that was just getting bigger and bigger. I'm the slayer and when it comes right down to it, I'm supposed to pick the world over the people I love. It's in the contract I didn't sign so I kissed him, I told him I loved him and I shoved a sword through his gut. He got sucked into Hell, portal closes and I disappeared for four months."
She paused, looking up at Danny to see how he was dealing with all of this, her hand straying back to the scar on her neck.
He lit another cigarette with the butt of the last one and had almost smoked it through when she paused in the story that just kept getting worse. As he took in the information, he wasn't sure what he was supposed to do with it all. He wasn't sure how she expected him to react or how he was supposed to react. He was trying to come up with something to say. He was trying to empathize except that he didn't want to because his girlfriend who he loved more than anything was telling him about the other guy she loved who she'd had sex with and then killed... a vampire who found his perfect happiness in her. He didn't want to empathize. He wanted to go beat the hell out of Angel. He wanted to tell Buffy to quit loving some other guy.
"Sorry you had to put a sword through him." It was all he could come up with. He tried to imagine having to put a sword through Buffy and just couldn't. He was a Detective, a scientist. He didn't deal with swords on a daily basis. And shooting Buffy was not an option... ever.
"Well...you know...he got better, came back from Hell and we started the Buffy and Angel show all over again. He never held it against me, we never talked about it but his last word was my name and his first word back was my name. Time moves differently there. It makes the torture better I guess. He was gone four months and he spent a century in Hell so needless to say when he got back he was a little...pissed off, feral...confused." She shrugged. "Anyway, show must go on only this time we tried the touchless version. It didn't work out very well. He broke up with me in a sewer two days before Prom so that I could have a normal life. I went to Prom without him because there were hellhounds and he showed up in a tuxedo to tell me that it was just for that night. He's not really that bright." She rolled her lips between her teeth and sighed. "And then things went to Hell. He got poisoned and he was dying. Funny thing was, there was only one cure for the poison. He had to drain the blood of a slayer. So a little back tracking, remember me telling you I died once, drowned for just like five minutes? Called another slayer anyway, that slayer died, called another and we ended up with Faith. She was a little insane, she went evil and tried to help the Mayor eat everyone in the city. So my bright idea was kill Faith, feed her to Angel, problem solved." She took a deep breath.
"I nearly did it. She was in a coma for seven months. In the end, she escaped and I went to save Angel. He didn't want to bite me but he was sick and he was dying and I hit him. I hit him over and over and over until the demon took over. He bit me and he still managed to stop before I died but he took a lot and he was fine and I was in the hospital getting a whole new set of blood. Anyway, I got better we stopped the mayor and Angel left me. He went to LA. And I moved on with my life. We saw each other for world ending events, we said hateful things, I hit him, he hit me and we stayed on respective sides of the coast but when I needed someone he was always there. My Mom died and...everyone else just left me with her because they couldn't deal with me losing her. It got dark and I didn't want to leave her grave and Angel showed up. He just held me and made sure I didn't have to spend that horrible night alone. Morning came and he left again."
She raked a hand through her hair. "And then I died and then I came back and Angel couldn't be there for that. He couldn't deal with that and I needed him, more than I'd ever needed him before." She pulled her bottom lip through her teeth and watched him, doing another how's Danny doing check.
Almost before she had finished that last sentence, Danny was shaking his head. He drew another long drag of his cigarette, always uncomfortable with the subject of Buffy being dead. And as he spoke, the cigarette smoke exhaled with every word as he looked up to her. "So you need him, I get it. That goes with what I said originally. You love him. He loves you. You need him. He needs you. Like I said, I get it. Whatever."
Averting his gaze sideways, back out to the city, he shrugged again. He was trying so hard not to lose control of his emotions and it showed. Every muscle was tense exacerbating them beneath his skin in his arms and shoulders. The pulse in his neck was visible if studied close enough. His brow furrowed, taking on the kicked puppy look that he never really meant to have, but was there anyway when he was hurt or upset. "It's fine, Buffy. Whatever."
"No. You don't get it. That's the thing," Buffy told him quietly. "Yeah, Angel is always going to be a part of my life and I can't change that. No we're not just friends because we've been through too much to be that but we're not romantic either. The day he broke up with me in the sewer...I fought him. I told him I didn't want normal. I didn't want to walk in the sunlight with someone, have kids, get married or grow older. The thing is, he was right and I was wrong and you have no idea how hard that is to admit. Somehow he knew that right then at eighteen years old I might think I didn't want all those things but one of these days I'd meet The Guy. Capital letters and with him I'd want those things. Personally, until I met you, I thought it was a cop out because life with me, never easy. Even when I was eighteen." She finally moved from her spot near the railing to sit behind him. Her legs were on either side of him, her arms wrapped around him and her chin rested on his shoulder.
"I love you. I could have a future with Angel if I wanted it. He offered it to me a few years ago and I turned him down. I want my future to be with you. Yeah, Angel and I are...whatever and we're always going to be whatever but I choose you to spend the rest of my life with. Not him. And even when Angel is here, I never, ever doubt that. I picked the right guy."
Once she settled behind him there was no way he couldn't lean back just slightly against her. He had never been able to not respond to Buffy. From day one they had responded to each other. "You picked a guy who's nothin' in your world. Picked a guy who can't get or fully accept everything about your world. Why would you do that? Why would you choose to be with a guy like me? There's no way I compare to him. You're somethin' special and amazing and I'm pretty damn average and skeptical."
"I picked a guy who can love me without hurting me. I picked someone who taught me that love doesn't have to equal pain. I picked a guy that even when he doesn't understand or accept, he's there anyway. I picked a guy who knows what I am, knows what I do and still thinks I'm special and amazing. You're not nothing in my world. You're part of this little conglomeration including Dawn that make up my whole world." Buffy kissed his shoulder then turned her head so she could lay her cheek against his back.
"It's okay for me to fallible in your world because I'm just your girlfriend. I'm not the savior of the world or your reason for being or the reason you fight. I'm not Buffy the Vampire Slayer or The Slayer. I'm just Buffy. I like that. You love me for what I am but you love me for who I am too."
Part of him relaxed and softened as she spoke because it was all true. He loved her more than he had loved anyone in his life. Even with the monologue of events she had just given him, it still hurt. He was pretty sure that nothing could make that situation better. There was a third sometimes seen and sometimes unseen party in their relationship, someone that Danny couldn't see how he was winning out against. Buffy and Angel were a force of nature. Regular guy couldn't battle a force of nature.
"Yeah, yeah... I love all of you. I'm gonna be fine, alright?" He tried to reassure her. "Just don't quit lovin' me too, okay?"
She felt it when he relaxed against her and she knew that in some way things were going to be okay. Things had changed between them slightly but maybe they were on track anyway. "That's never gonna happen, Boyfriend," Buffy promised him as she kissed his shoulder again. "Just stick with me. I know it's not normal but that doesn't mean that it's not right."
"Look, I don't know much about what's right here and what's not. What I do know is that I love you, Summers." And that, in itself was a force of nature. Not quite so violent and tumultuous, but still a force of nature by his standards.