Author: Ivy
E-mail: ivy_marsh@yahoo.com
Disclaimer: Yeah, right.
Rating: Light R-ish, but just for some bad language.
Feedback: Please. I’m seriously needy. :)
Distribution: Sites that already have my stuff, like Amor Numquam Finit, feel free. If you want it, ask. I promise I’ll say yes.
Notes: For Ducks, because she was the first person to send me feedback last time, and I’m her minion. :) This is short and angsty- wa hoo!
At midnight on a lonely Monday, Buffy lay in her bed and could not sleep.
Prom. The event of all high school events, and Buffy had the perfect—perfect!—dress that was sexy and expensive and beautiful. And she had thought she had the boyfriend to go along with it.
Buffy reflected bitterly that Angel had never gone to a school event with her. She had actually been stupid enough to believe that she would be getting her one perfect high school memory, complete with accessories like the boyfriend on her arm. She remembered, once upon a time, she had been fond of teasing Angel, saying that if she brought him anywhere, all the girls in her class would hit on him. He had been distant, avoiding the subject, trying to change the conversation.
Well. That should have been a sign. And that was before prom.
Jesus. Stupid tears. Buffy had cried so many of them. She let them roll down her face now, wetting the pillow. She was silent, for fear of waking up her family.
She remembered seeing her mom a couple of nights ago, kissing her goodnight. As Buffy left the room, she had heard Mom say to herself, "Huh. No mention of Angel. I guess it finally petered out."
It had not petered out. It had crashed.
God, she thought, I wanted to see him in a tux…I wanted him to give me a corsage…
I should do something. I should patrol. I should go out.
Yes. I’ll go out. I’ll take put on some clothes and take a stake and walk around in the dark, not crying. Wonderful.
With half-hearted enthusiasm, she hopped out of bed and pulled on the nearest available clothes: jeans, white T, sneakers. Basic Buffy clothes. No prom dress for the Slayer.
On her way out of her room, she passed by her vanity, taking in the mess. Nail polish, stakes, crosses, jewelry, hair brushes, blah blah blah…
Angel’s hair gel, lying on her dresser.
Angel’s t-shirt, crumpled in her hamper.
She pressed her hands against her face tightly, staring at the things that reminded her of him. She kept her body tight and cried.
The bathroom. Fuck. The bathroom. She walked in hurriedly, and saw other things. A toothbrush he had left there, more gel…God, and even some shampoo she liked and had borrowed once. She left the bathroom, the bottle in her hands.
She stood in the middle of her bedroom and felt the world tip because she missed him so much, saw him so much in that little room. They had been a couple. Couples shared things and couples also gave them back at the end of the relationship.
Except she had thought—childishly, God, so childishly—that there would never be an end.
Without even realizing what she was doing, in the next second she had found a shoebox and started flinging things inside. Clothes, fuck, hair stuff, fuck fuck, my life is ending, weapons, I hate him, fuck fuck fuck, I hate the smell that he left on his things, fuck…
Briskly, she put the top on the box, lifted it, and—feeling like she was carrying the weight of the world in her hands—left her room, closing the door behind her. And yet, in her mind’s eye as she walked away, she still saw every single kiss she had shared with Angel there.
**********
"Angel."
Her voice, not questioning, was loud in the hollowness of the mansion. He wasn’t in the living room. She knew she would hear her—sense her—so she sat on one of the couches and waited, clutching the box in her lap.
After a heartbeat, he appeared from the bedroom, wearing pants and his feet bare, hair mussed.
"Buffy?" He looked surprised, which hurt her. Every time she had stopped by late at night before, he had always acted like he knew she was coming anyway.
"Yes. Hi." She closed her mouth, because she was afraid that if she talked too much, looking into those dark, still so deeply, deeply, caring eyes, she would start crying again.
He didn’t make any move to come closer to her. "What’s up?" he asked, motioning towards the box.
She got up and approached him. "Your stuff," she said simply, and allowed herself to sniff, just so he would know that she had been crying.
"My…stuff?"
She handed him the box. "Yes. Couples have things at each other’s houses, they break up, they give the stuff back. Twentieth century. Get with the program" She looked away and crossed her arms.
He bit his lip and looked at her, but she refused to let him stare her down, so he looked down at the box instead.
"What’s in here?" he asked softly.
She shrugged nonchalantly. "Stakes, crosses, holy water, some clothes…you know."
He opened the box, glancing at her once more. "Thank you," he said quietly. "But you could have just kept this. It’s not important."
"No," she disagreed, "because I have to move on, remember?" She moved away from him, not bearing to look at his eyes any longer. She sat on the couch again. "How can I go off to college to fuck normal boys if I have your junk lying around?"
He flinched at her harsh words. "Buffy…"
She was finally breaking against her will at his tender tone. "Don’t give me the kicked puppy look, Angel." Then, softly, "…Please. I can’t handle it."
There was a pregnant pause in that big, open room. He said finally, "You liked this. You should keep it."
She looked at him and saw the leather, battered book he was holding out. Byron poetry. Angel had read some of it to her once because she was studying one of Byron’s poems in English. She had been frustrated and tired, unable to concentrate on the words, and then he had read it to her from his own copy, and she had understood, the words had actually touched her. She remembered the kisses that night; how that had been the first time he had ever touched her-
No. Not really the time nor place.
Unable to help herself, she crossed the room and took it from him, clutching it to her chest. "Thank you," she said quietly.
He nodded and they stood together in silence for a long while. Her heart was heavy in her chest.
Finally, she said expectantly, "So?"
He looked at her. "What?"
"So, what about my stuff? I know I’ve left a ton of junk lying around here. Clothes, homework…"
He stared at her for a moment before relenting. "Hold on." He left the room briefly and came back with his own box.
Ah. So he was prepared for this, she thought, and she wasn’t sure what hurt more, giving him his stuff or getting hers back.
She accepted it and looked inside. Some school books, hairbrush, a few random earrings, and…
"Angel. No," she heard herself saying loudly, holding out a photo of herself she had given him, one of those "Mom-made-me-do-this" studio photos. She had written xoxoxo on the back, and he had actually framed it, bastard. "I gave this to you. Gifts, you keep."
He nodded once, slowly, and said, "I know, but you always said that picture was your mom’s, and she would miss it."
"Yeah." Her voice was empty. "Well, thanks. It can be a gift for her."
They were quiet.
Then, in the next second, to her own horror, she had dropped her box with a thump and had her hands covering her face as she began sobbing.
"Buffy…" The look in his eyes hurt her even more.
"No, Angel…" she mumbled through her tears, turning away. No. He can’t see me like this. It isn’t fair that he’s so fucking stoic, because he’s the dumper, and I have to be the dumpee.
I can’t believe he’s leaving me. I can’t believe he’s actually leaving me.
The box of her things, the photo, had been the proof; no longer would she have his t-shirts around to smell. She wouldn’t have anything of his, anymore.
"Buffy," he was saying.
She heard herself keen, "Oh God…" her face crumpling with tears, as she struggled not to lose it in her ex-boyfriend’s living room.
In a millisecond, he was there, his hand a soft pressure on her shoulder, and then before she could stop herself she had turned and buried her face in his chest, and his arms were around her. She cried into him for a while, letting herself feel, remember…pretend that they were a million miles away, a million years in the past…
No.
"Please," she gasped finally through her sobs, and then she found the strength to wrench herself away from him. "Please. I can’t do this. You can’t just- just hold me, and comfort me, and pretend it’s going to be all right, and then leave me!" She was angry now. Anger was good, even if it was combined with the pitiful tears.
He met her gaze unflinchingly, although he did look sad.
"Then go," he said, very quietly.
"Why are you doing this to me, Angel?" Her voice was confused, furious. Her eyes were large and watery. "Why? Tell me." He didn’t say anything. "Tell me!" she demanded loudly, knowing she sounded like she bordered on insanity and not caring.
He turned away, and she quivered with the wanting and the hating and all the other emotions that were running through her body at that moment.
"…Fine. I- I just want to know," she said very quietly, after a moment, her voice shaky with tears, "I just want to know if you will tell me where you’re going, in case I ever--" She broke off. "A phone number. Something."
Not looking at her, he nodded. "Of course," he said, softly. She nodded a little.
"Goodnight," she said, to his silent back, her voice vacant of emotion just the way she wanted it to be. He did not reply.
She left the mansion quietly, shutting the door behind her with barely a whisper.
When he turned back around after she was gone, he saw that she had left the framed picture on the table behind, her face in the photograph smiling up at him in the darkness.
***********
Buffy was wrong.
She knew she couldn’t go to college and fuck other boys, even if his junk wasn’t lying around.
She walked herself home that night, cold and crying, and lay in her bed, lonely. Lonely.
He was still everywhere. He was everything. The cryptic guy, the guy in black, who warned her and watched her back, the guy she loved and killed and saved a thousand times, the guy she knew everything about, from his buttons on his coat to the whorls on his fingertips to his soul---everywhere. People saw his beauty and his strength and his sadness, but a large part of him was hers, and only hers. His pain. His struggle. His warmth, generosity, the surprising sense of humor…a part of her. A part of her.
She loved him so much, her heart ached and it hurt to breathe. In her mind, she saw his hands…heard his laugh…the way he spoke to her, fought with her and against her…the way he never made her feel like a freak…the way he looked at her, and saw her as beautiful.
She remembered the way that he had held her that night.
Weeping silently in her room, she read the book of Byron poetry. When she finished, dawn was rising.
End
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