“This isn’t why I came here, Buffy,” Riley said.

    “Isn’t it?” Buffy said, looking down on him amidst the broken eggs. They’d been in, of all places, Spike’s abandoned crypt. They’d destroyed the eggs after Buffy had tracked Riley down. The so called “Doctor” was a dead end – he always used local muscle, and had probably skipped town already. Her heart to heart with Riley’s new-squeeze had not been cordial. She’d gone on about how hard it was for Riley to get over Buffy.

    Then why the fuck did he run off? Buffy had gone to Riley to get answers, but all she’d gotten so far was annoying memories of Spike – another asshole who’d claimed he loved her, and then skipped town. Dust still counted as abandoning her, when he’d promised to watch Dawn. She deserved to get something out of Riley for dredging this all up. “Come on, lover. Let’s get it on.”

    “No!” Riley tried to get up.

    “What? I thought this was what you wanted. Me to need you, right? Your blood, your body. Need you the way I never needed you before. Well, how’s this.” She ground her hips over him, and felt his cock give a reluctant twitch.

    He looked disgusted. “Will you get off me! This really isn’t why I came here!”

    “Could have fooled me,” she said. “Oh, Buffy, I have this job, and here change into this in front of me, all adorable and awkward in the car , and oh, I’m married, but I’m not gonna tell you that, or even what the fucking objective was? Isn’t that supposed to be part of the briefing when you call someone in? Bull shit. You just wanted some sweet slayer between your legs.”

    “Get off me, you crazy bitch! I don’t want to fuck you!”

    Buffy got off him roughly enough that he grunted. She must have pinched his balls. “Then why did you come here, Riley? To get under my skin? To show off your new perfect girlfriend and your new perfect job, and show that you didn’t need me?”

    “I... I had this demon I had to...”

    “Bullshit!” Buffy snapped. “You needed me to walk in and break a few eggs? You know you could have called me, and just let me deal with it. My turf remember? Or you could have just come, done your job, and left. Hell, you could have been straight with me when you first walked in the door, instead of being all coy and, ‘I really need your help’ when what you needed was a good kick in the balls.”

    “You’ve always been just fine at that, Buffy,” Riley said with clear anger in his face.

    “Oh, so that’s it,” Buffy said. “You felt your balls all busted, so you came back here to inflate them in my face? Well fuck you, Riley!” Buffy hit him. She hit him so hard in the face that he went flying, and landed against the wall. She came up and stood over him. “You wanted to show me how good you had it, so that I’d feel sorry that I didn’t stop you from leaving. And you want to know what the joke is, Riley? I did.”

    He looked up, dazed. “What?”

    “I ran after you. I pelted with all my pretty little slayer strength and tried to wave down your majestic helicopter, because I was a prissy little girl who thought I needed a normal man in my life, and my friends said you were the kind of guy who comes along once in a lifetime. And you know what I say now? Fucking good!” Buffy bent down and picked him up. “If I never see another pissant insecure fuckhead like you in my life, it’ll be too fucking soon! You lying, cheating, self-deluded addict. You gonna put all your problems on me, you self-centered asshole? Because I didn’t love you enough? I did, Riley. And you know how I know I did? Because I can’t anymore.”

    “What?”

    “That all you can say? What? What?” Buffy mocked. She hit him again, and again. “I can’t love anymore. I can’t live. I can’t breathe. And I can’t even kill myself and go anywhere but hell!” She stopped hitting him. She’d broken something in his face, she knew. “Maybe I should send you there, you self-centered prick. Would you like that?” She came up close to him, held him against the wall, breathed into his ear. “I could bite you. You like that, don’t you. I could bite out your jugular. I’ve seen enough vamp bites, I know how to do it. I’ve got no fangs, but I’m more than strong enough. You like being bitten by murderers, don’t you Riley. Don’t you!”

    “Get away from him!” Buffy turned to see Riley’s wife Samantha with a gun trained on her.

    “Well, if it isn’t the blushing bride,” Buffy said. She stepped away from Riley. “You gonna kill me, Betty Crocker? You know why he came here, don’t you. It wasn’t for your demon.”

    “Riley, get behind me,” Samantha said. “She’s insane.”

    Buffy laughed. “I really really wish I was. Enjoy him, Betty. Keep him away from vampires. He’s got a nasty habit.”

    “He loved you,” Samantha said.

    “Right, right. Took him a whole year to get over me. Then he shouldn’t have been a mentally abusive prick, crying over his pathetic lot as a normal human – oh, wait – military trained commando, and accusing me of cheating on him, while he was off cheating on me with a bunch of fucking vampire whores.”

    Samantha looked surprised.

    “Oh, he didn’t tell you that, did he.” Buffy smiled as she walked away. “Good luck with him, baby. You’re gonna need it.”

***


    “Why’d you do it, Xander?” Buffy asked.

    “I... I don’t know. I couldn’t go through with it. The wedding... forever. Anya...”

    “The vision was false.”

    “Yeah, I figured that out,” Xander said. “But still, it shouldn’t have been that easy to scare me off. And if it was... I just.... We just weren’t ready. I couldn’t face it, that whole future, stretching out in front of me, like this unending train, and no way to get off.”

    Buffy sat down on the couch next to him. “Yeah. It just goes on and on, down this dark tunnel, and there’s no way to escape. There’s no light at the end, just deeper and deeper into the black...”

    “Oh, god, Buffy, don’t cry,” Xander said. “Don’t cry. C’mere.” He put his arm around her, and pulled her close.

    Buffy was almost angry. Don’t cry. I’m miserable, Buffy thought. At least let me cry! But he’d meant it as a comfort, so she didn’t rip his throat out. She deserved a warm arm and a sympathetic shoulder, and someone to lie to her and tell her it was going to be all right, like Xander was doing right now. “You could step off, Xander,” Buffy said through her tears. “I can’t.”

    “I know,” Xander said. “We weren’t trying to hurt you, Buffy. I’m so sorry.” He kissed her forehead.

    It felt good, and Buffy wasn’t used to good feelings. She lifted her face and kissed him back, warmly, on the lips. Then she did it again, and again, and again.

    Xander’s body reacted as she would have expected it to react, even though he himself seemed a little bewildered by what was happening. “Um... um, Buffy,” he said, as she pushed him backwards on the couch.

    Buffy kissed him and kissed him, pushing up under his shirt, quietly ignoring him as he half-heartedly tried to push her hands away.

    “Buffy... this... uh... this really wasn’t what I came here for...”

    “Come on, Xander,” Buffy whispered down at him. He was hard beneath her – his body wanted her, like it had always wanted her. “It was always this. Wasn’t it always leading to this? From the beginning? The first time you brought me back... your lips on mine... have you ever forgotten?”

    “Oh, god!”

    Buffy knew she wasn’t playing fair. She was pulling up teenage fantasies and manipulating him with them as surely as if she’d gotten him drunk. She was using him. She didn’t want to be with Xander, she didn’t love him as anything more than a friend. But his body felt good, and that felt good to her, and she didn’t care enough. “Fuck me, Xander. Do it. Make it complete. You knew it would come to this. You always knew.”

    Xander was lost. With a groan of defeat he rolled over, kissing her with abandon, his head completely thrown.

    “Harder!” Buffy kept saying. “Harder!” Over and over again. She bit him and scratched him and wrapped her legs around him, pulling him inside, desperate to feel... anything.  

    He was inside her when she heard the crunch. Her legs wrapped around him, her arms around his back, trying to pull him ever closer, hard and harder, in a fury of passion. Something gave, and everything from Xander’s hips downward stopped moving. “Ugh! I can’t move! I can’t move my legs!”

    The doctors said he never would again.