Sam laughed under his breath as she asked if he was drunk already. Though he wasn't exactly at the stumble over his own feet state of drunk yet, he could definitely feel his body relaxing in his seat that would prove horrible if he needed to pass a finger-to-the-nose sobriety test.
"No, not drunk. Still holding my own against you, lightweight," he teased. He looked up, smile fading a bit as she mentioned them saving each other. Honestly, he had always thought it was Buffy who saved him, not the other way around. She had seemed so natural in her own skin--playing both normal girl and Slayer, but now, tonight, he finally realized that she had felt as alone as him in their world.
"If I was your normal, we obviously had issues," he said with a faint smile, taking another long drink from his beer.
And then she asked the question that he had forced himself to stop thinking about months ago. The ultimate of the "what ifs" that haunted him about the choices he had made in his life.
You ever wonder what would have happened if I'd stayed, if Mom hadn't been sick?
He used to wonder all the time, and honestly, he still had fleeting thoughts about those things whenever they had a long conversation or saw each other after months apart. In his head, he could have seen them becoming more than the friends they currently were, and he could see himself loving her to the point where she would be the only girl who could matter to him. He had loved Jess with everything in him, and he would have married her like he had planned, but he knew deep down that he would have been trying to achieve the normal he knew he couldn't have with Buffy with Jess.
He studied his bottle, taking another drink, before exhaling slowly and looking up at her. Buffy had her gaze focused on the beer bottle she was currently peeling the label from, and honestly, it made it easier. made it feel like she was less likely to laugh in his face for being such a girl.
He could easily lie, but he couldn't. And maybe it was the alcohol or maybe it was because it was Buffy. But he spoke nothing but the absolute truth when he said, "Every damn day."
They'd had issues alright, both of them. Buffy with her residual ones from Angel and making the scary step of leaving the Hellmouth to go to college, Sam with the one's from breaking away from the fight with Dean and his Dad.
She hadn't been in-line for making a friend-slash-potential-boyfriend thing but--Sam had just kind of happened. And before Buffy had known where she was, she'd found someone she trusted completely. And she didn't do that easy.
"Yeah, well, we're both freaks," she told him with a resigned smile. Both freaks together and totally something she could live with. Totally something she'd liked living with until the call home.
Her Mom had told her to go back to Stanford almost as soon as she'd walked in the door of her hospital room. Buffy had smiled, hugged her, and said she wasn't going anywhere until Mom was a-okay again - fighting fit, one-hundred-and-ten-percent.
She should've known the minute she'd said it that she was totally jinxing herself. Buffy had never made it back to Stanford and slowly, she'd begun to pick up the threads of the life her Mom had left a gaping hole in.
Did she think about what would have happened if she'd never gone home? If Mom had never been sick? Only every day since the moment she'd got that phone call. Did she resent them for it? Not even a little. She'd done what she'd had to, then and ever since, and it had brought her back on Sam's path.
So she asked him. It was a topic they usually avoided - a little too heavy on the angst there, thanks. But now... She wondered. And maybe the beer had loosened up not only her tongue but his too because he answered anyway, his voice soft.
Every damn day.
Buffy looked up at him then, nodded because she didn't trust herself to not say something stupid right after he'd admitted that. When she was sure she wouldn't, Buffy sighed, "That makes me kinda sad. For both of us. 'Cause... I was..." she frowned at her inate lack to string together a coherent sentence - yeah, what was her 'saying something stupid' theory again?
"Me too," she murmured, "Every day. I thought about coming back even when I was sorta happy, which is... Pretty sad, huh?" She laughed, suddenly feeling a little nervous. It wasn't like she'd been falling over herself to admit that...
To say that Sam was relieved was an understatement. He was glad that he hadn't been the only one haunted by the "what ifs" of their relationship this whole time.
"That's not sad," he said with a small shake of his head. It was hopeful. She'd still had hope, and he had given up on his, trying and failing at moving on to another girl, another life.
"I'm gonna...I'm gonna probably regret telling you this cause it makes me a complete asshole but..." He took another drink, trying to find courage at the bottom of his bottle. "I loved Jessica. More than anything, but I... I would have hurt her in the longrun. Because, just...no matter how much I loved her, no matter how much I could have tried, she just...."
He swallowed hard, not sure how she would respond to the words that were tumbling out of his mouth. "She wasn't you."
And there it was. That ball of guilt he'd kept hidden in the pit of his stomach after Jess' death, that he had unwittingly made Jess his Buffy substitute.
She was pretty sure that was sad and suspected Sam was just being nice by saying otherwise. Who admitted, potential ability to blame it on the alcohol or not, that you thought about a life you could've had all the time?
That even when you were happy - and she'd admit there'd been a lot more of that in the previous year than she'd had that year before - there was still something kind of... Missing.
It had been simple with Sam. Simple and kind of easy and okay, they'd been living the Mother of all Double Lives but even when that had come out it'd been okay and she'd realized that maybe love didn't have a whole armful of angst attached onto it all the time.
She blinked at him, wondering what he could possibly regret telling her when he himself knew everything about her and then some and--Then, he told her.
She'd long since learned to not think about how much he'd loved Jess. It'd been easy to see that when she'd seen him after her death. There were just certain things Buffy didn't feel like agonizing over all the damn time. Jessica Moore - a pretty, bubbly blonde girl she'd met only in passing - was one of them.
Sam being with her was another.
Sam telling her that he loved her more than anything but she just wasn't her - Buffy Summers, Queen of the Freaks - was--Something else entirely.
"You're--You mean--" Buffy blinked, aware that her death grip on her now empty bottle of beer was tightening. Pretty soon it would smash in her hand and blood was not something that needed adding to this equation.
She placed it on the table between them, trying to still hands that shook. She could kill a demon without a weapon with those hands, twist the head off a vampire - and it took a guy - a great guy, nonetheless - like Sam Winchester to make her previously centred calm be uncentred.
"What are you saying?" Buffy asked, feeling a little dizzy and knowing it had nothing to do with the alcohol. "That she was... You tried to make her into me? 'Cause I'd left?"
Or, the other entirely scary thought that was rattling around inside her head right now. That maybe Sam had felt something for her too - that she hadn't just imagined it all or, y'know, hoped.
Sam watched as Buffy fidgeted with her bottle before finally pushing it away before it exploded into shards of glass in her tense hands. His throat felt suddenly dry as he watched the relaxation from earlier fade as she went into full alert mode, and he feared that opening up that can of worms had placed a nail in the coffin of their friendship.
No more drinking and talking for him. Never again.
He took another drink, finishing off his second beer much quicker than his first. And he slowly poured himself another shot, giving him something other than Buffy to focus on as he talked, the words coming out in a alcohol-induced tumble with the edge to his voice more calm than he actually felt right now.
"I was... I was so close to the American dream, you know. White picket fence, 2-point-5 kids, stupid dog I'd have to walk every night cause the damn kids wouldn't, dream job at some prestigious lawfirm. I could fucking taste it, but...."
He stared down at his poured drink, studying the shot like it was the most interesting thing on earth as everything he'd bottled up for months suddenly lie on the table between them.
"I never tried to make Jessica you. I couldn't. That would have been--" What? Kind of a dickish thing to do to Jessica? Too hard to stomach for him when he missed Buffy? "She couldn't be you, and you couldn't be her, and as much as I thought I wanted Jess, in the end, I didn't want that stupid American dream life. I just--"
I just wanted you.
He held back, eyes still focused on his untouched shot, hoping that his drunken ramble hadn't scared off the only girl who knew him and loved him for him.
She remembered talks where Sam had expressed the exact same want she had - about hanging up their stakes for good and leaving this fight behind. Being safe. Having the 2-point-5 children and the white picket fence...
It had taken her Mom dying and her severe sense of Slayer Duty to kick in for Buffy to realize she was never going to have that - it was a dream, a way far off, never-going-to-be-attainable dream...
Yet now it was.
She hadn't had much time to process it, really. Two days since she'd activated every potential slayer in the world - from now on every girl in the world who might be a Slayer, will be a Slayer - and she didn't have to be. Not any more. Not a dream, now, she realized...
Right as Sam realized that he'd had that, that he was so fucking close, and Buffy's heart ached for him all over again.
"Sam--" What was she supposed to say, sorry? Of course she was sorry. No matter how much it had hurt, she'd wanted that for Sam because he'd wanted it too... And wasn't that what loving someone was all about? About having them be happy, even if they weren't with you while they were happy?
She sighed, wondering if this new-found elasticity of Sam's tongue was just from the alcohol when he said it.
Her head snapped up. Sam was looking at the shot he'd poured, not drinking it, and the whole bar seemed to bleed away. No more country music, attentive waitress, or talking patrons. Just Sam and Buffy. And whatever he'd been about to say.
"You just what?" Her voice was barely more than a whisper. She wasn't sure Sam had even heard her so Buffy reached out, placing her hand on his arm. "Sam, look at me."
He did. He wasn't finding it hard to focus, he wasn't all-out drunk. "You said wanted," she murmured softly, holding his gaze, "Is that... Wanted as in, past-tense?"
She bit her lip, watching him as her heart jack-hammered in her chest. He didn't speak, didn't even move and Buffy decided then and there that she was too impatient to wait for when they were sober (drunken kisses being something of a past-history between them).
Not that drunk, she rationalized, leaning over the table and pressing her lips to his gently.
It wasn't comfortable - there was a table digging into her stomach, after all - but Buffy didn't care. Because he'd been saying that very thing, right? That he'd wanted her.
She could only hope that it wasn't just past tense talking or this would turn out to be very awkward.
"No, not drunk. Still holding my own against you, lightweight," he teased. He looked up, smile fading a bit as she mentioned them saving each other. Honestly, he had always thought it was Buffy who saved him, not the other way around. She had seemed so natural in her own skin--playing both normal girl and Slayer, but now, tonight, he finally realized that she had felt as alone as him in their world.
"If I was your normal, we obviously had issues," he said with a faint smile, taking another long drink from his beer.
And then she asked the question that he had forced himself to stop thinking about months ago. The ultimate of the "what ifs" that haunted him about the choices he had made in his life.
You ever wonder what would have happened if I'd stayed, if Mom hadn't been sick?
He used to wonder all the time, and honestly, he still had fleeting thoughts about those things whenever they had a long conversation or saw each other after months apart. In his head, he could have seen them becoming more than the friends they currently were, and he could see himself loving her to the point where she would be the only girl who could matter to him. He had loved Jess with everything in him, and he would have married her like he had planned, but he knew deep down that he would have been trying to achieve the normal he knew he couldn't have with Buffy with Jess.
He studied his bottle, taking another drink, before exhaling slowly and looking up at her. Buffy had her gaze focused on the beer bottle she was currently peeling the label from, and honestly, it made it easier. made it feel like she was less likely to laugh in his face for being such a girl.
He could easily lie, but he couldn't. And maybe it was the alcohol or maybe it was because it was Buffy. But he spoke nothing but the absolute truth when he said, "Every damn day."
Reply
She hadn't been in-line for making a friend-slash-potential-boyfriend thing but--Sam had just kind of happened. And before Buffy had known where she was, she'd found someone she trusted completely. And she didn't do that easy.
"Yeah, well, we're both freaks," she told him with a resigned smile. Both freaks together and totally something she could live with. Totally something she'd liked living with until the call home.
Her Mom had told her to go back to Stanford almost as soon as she'd walked in the door of her hospital room. Buffy had smiled, hugged her, and said she wasn't going anywhere until Mom was a-okay again - fighting fit, one-hundred-and-ten-percent.
She should've known the minute she'd said it that she was totally jinxing herself. Buffy had never made it back to Stanford and slowly, she'd begun to pick up the threads of the life her Mom had left a gaping hole in.
Did she think about what would have happened if she'd never gone home? If Mom had never been sick? Only every day since the moment she'd got that phone call. Did she resent them for it? Not even a little. She'd done what she'd had to, then and ever since, and it had brought her back on Sam's path.
So she asked him. It was a topic they usually avoided - a little too heavy on the angst there, thanks. But now... She wondered. And maybe the beer had loosened up not only her tongue but his too because he answered anyway, his voice soft.
Every damn day.
Buffy looked up at him then, nodded because she didn't trust herself to not say something stupid right after he'd admitted that. When she was sure she wouldn't, Buffy sighed, "That makes me kinda sad. For both of us. 'Cause... I was..." she frowned at her inate lack to string together a coherent sentence - yeah, what was her 'saying something stupid' theory again?
"Me too," she murmured, "Every day. I thought about coming back even when I was sorta happy, which is... Pretty sad, huh?" She laughed, suddenly feeling a little nervous. It wasn't like she'd been falling over herself to admit that...
Reply
To say that Sam was relieved was an understatement. He was glad that he hadn't been the only one haunted by the "what ifs" of their relationship this whole time.
"That's not sad," he said with a small shake of his head. It was hopeful. She'd still had hope, and he had given up on his, trying and failing at moving on to another girl, another life.
"I'm gonna...I'm gonna probably regret telling you this cause it makes me a complete asshole but..." He took another drink, trying to find courage at the bottom of his bottle. "I loved Jessica. More than anything, but I... I would have hurt her in the longrun. Because, just...no matter how much I loved her, no matter how much I could have tried, she just...."
He swallowed hard, not sure how she would respond to the words that were tumbling out of his mouth. "She wasn't you."
And there it was. That ball of guilt he'd kept hidden in the pit of his stomach after Jess' death, that he had unwittingly made Jess his Buffy substitute.
Reply
That even when you were happy - and she'd admit there'd been a lot more of that in the previous year than she'd had that year before - there was still something kind of... Missing.
It had been simple with Sam. Simple and kind of easy and okay, they'd been living the Mother of all Double Lives but even when that had come out it'd been okay and she'd realized that maybe love didn't have a whole armful of angst attached onto it all the time.
She blinked at him, wondering what he could possibly regret telling her when he himself knew everything about her and then some and--Then, he told her.
She'd long since learned to not think about how much he'd loved Jess. It'd been easy to see that when she'd seen him after her death. There were just certain things Buffy didn't feel like agonizing over all the damn time. Jessica Moore - a pretty, bubbly blonde girl she'd met only in passing - was one of them.
Sam being with her was another.
Sam telling her that he loved her more than anything but she just wasn't her - Buffy Summers, Queen of the Freaks - was--Something else entirely.
"You're--You mean--" Buffy blinked, aware that her death grip on her now empty bottle of beer was tightening. Pretty soon it would smash in her hand and blood was not something that needed adding to this equation.
She placed it on the table between them, trying to still hands that shook. She could kill a demon without a weapon with those hands, twist the head off a vampire - and it took a guy - a great guy, nonetheless - like Sam Winchester to make her previously centred calm be uncentred.
"What are you saying?" Buffy asked, feeling a little dizzy and knowing it had nothing to do with the alcohol. "That she was... You tried to make her into me? 'Cause I'd left?"
Or, the other entirely scary thought that was rattling around inside her head right now. That maybe Sam had felt something for her too - that she hadn't just imagined it all or, y'know, hoped.
Reply
No more drinking and talking for him. Never again.
He took another drink, finishing off his second beer much quicker than his first. And he slowly poured himself another shot, giving him something other than Buffy to focus on as he talked, the words coming out in a alcohol-induced tumble with the edge to his voice more calm than he actually felt right now.
"I was... I was so close to the American dream, you know. White picket fence, 2-point-5 kids, stupid dog I'd have to walk every night cause the damn kids wouldn't, dream job at some prestigious lawfirm. I could fucking taste it, but...."
He stared down at his poured drink, studying the shot like it was the most interesting thing on earth as everything he'd bottled up for months suddenly lie on the table between them.
"I never tried to make Jessica you. I couldn't. That would have been--" What? Kind of a dickish thing to do to Jessica? Too hard to stomach for him when he missed Buffy? "She couldn't be you, and you couldn't be her, and as much as I thought I wanted Jess, in the end, I didn't want that stupid American dream life. I just--"
I just wanted you.
He held back, eyes still focused on his untouched shot, hoping that his drunken ramble hadn't scared off the only girl who knew him and loved him for him.
Reply
It had taken her Mom dying and her severe sense of Slayer Duty to kick in for Buffy to realize she was never going to have that - it was a dream, a way far off, never-going-to-be-attainable dream...
Yet now it was.
She hadn't had much time to process it, really. Two days since she'd activated every potential slayer in the world - from now on every girl in the world who might be a Slayer, will be a Slayer - and she didn't have to be. Not any more. Not a dream, now, she realized...
Right as Sam realized that he'd had that, that he was so fucking close, and Buffy's heart ached for him all over again.
"Sam--" What was she supposed to say, sorry? Of course she was sorry. No matter how much it had hurt, she'd wanted that for Sam because he'd wanted it too... And wasn't that what loving someone was all about? About having them be happy, even if they weren't with you while they were happy?
She sighed, wondering if this new-found elasticity of Sam's tongue was just from the alcohol when he said it.
Her head snapped up. Sam was looking at the shot he'd poured, not drinking it, and the whole bar seemed to bleed away. No more country music, attentive waitress, or talking patrons. Just Sam and Buffy. And whatever he'd been about to say.
"You just what?" Her voice was barely more than a whisper. She wasn't sure Sam had even heard her so Buffy reached out, placing her hand on his arm. "Sam, look at me."
He did. He wasn't finding it hard to focus, he wasn't all-out drunk. "You said wanted," she murmured softly, holding his gaze, "Is that... Wanted as in, past-tense?"
She bit her lip, watching him as her heart jack-hammered in her chest. He didn't speak, didn't even move and Buffy decided then and there that she was too impatient to wait for when they were sober (drunken kisses being something of a past-history between them).
Not that drunk, she rationalized, leaning over the table and pressing her lips to his gently.
It wasn't comfortable - there was a table digging into her stomach, after all - but Buffy didn't care. Because he'd been saying that very thing, right? That he'd wanted her.
She could only hope that it wasn't just past tense talking or this would turn out to be very awkward.
Reply
Leave a comment