I love how you are building the tension. Have just read nearly all the chapters in one fell swoop and have really loved the story. The Jane Eyre analogy is brilliant.

Love this latest chapter and the gradual build-up to the Spuffy 'ship. Especially liked the Jane Eyre discussion. And oh yeah, can't wait for more!!!

I wonder how long before Buffy removes the Riley blinkers, her denials ain't getting any more convincing but she's fighting all the way, bless her.!

Nice talking they had, good point with two example with opposites attract each other. 

I love "Jane Eyre." It's one of my favorite books. I read it high school, college then I listened to it again as a forty-one-year-old.  There are  definitely differerent perspectives gained with age. Thanks so much for the update. I hope to see more soon

Since I haven't read Jane Eyre I can't comment but hopefully it isn't as bad as Wuthering Heights. Now there is a bad book. Both of my girls had to read it in high school and none of us could stand it.  I wound up reading it for them because they couldn't get thru it. (I hated it!)

Now back to our story....

I think Buffy is missing something, the fights are because of passion. Now that doesn't mean fighting constantly is good for a relationship there has to be common ground but without the passion you don't have love.  In my opinion her and Riley were more like friends with benefits than an actual couple. No matter what Riley says he wasn't comfortable in her world. Sure the demon hunting thing was okay with him. But the magic and the grey areas were out of his comfort zone. In the beginning Buffy and gang were okay with the experiments on demons as was Riley. But when Buffy found out all of it she had serious problems with it. Riley didn't seem to. Even when Adam got out, it was more of another creature to capture than a morally reprehensible act to create him in the first place.

Let's not forget the vamp bites. I mean not for nothing but as the Slayer chances are your going to get bit once in a while. The fact that you didn't die from the bite is a good thing. But I think he would have felt better about it if she had died. To him her living after being bitten somehow got twisted into her enjoying it.

He never understood that her calling had to come first. It also bothered him that even juiced up she was 10 times stronger than him. I think that came from his upbringing and his involvement in the military. He was taught to that he needed to protect, and it pissed him off that she didn't need him to protect her. That she was perfectly capable of handling any number of situations without his big burly self. Spike on the other hand loved her strength, reveled in it. Understood when to step in and when to back off. Him being a vamp gave him a unique perspective on the slayer. As her opposite her understood her calling in ways Riley and sometimes (in my opinion) even Angel never could. Both of them wanted normal for her. How do you have normal? After what she has seen and what she knows how could she ever stop? She would always patrol even if she had gotten married and had kids. It would have been impossible for her to turn her back on all the innocents in the world. Those two never got it.