Cravingly Yours
Disclaimer: Joss Whedon, et al., own the wondrous Buffyverse. All I own is my brain. Trade?
Summary: Buffy craves vitamins. Tara craves sleep. Dawn craves attention. Willow craves m-magic markers. Unfortunately, no one ever gets what they want if the Mouth (of Hell) has anything to say about it.
*
She had a sudden craving for orange juice.
It wasn't the most helpful thought, Buffy acknowledged, as she ducked under the swing of another flailing purple arm. Still, the thought gave her a small boost of adrenaline, and with a quick promise of fruity beverage goodness to herself, Buffy applied a concentrated burst of violence to finish off her latest slayee.
She had dubbed it the Purple People Eater when she caught the thing trying to shove a confused vampire into its gaping purple maw. The nostalgia that sight brought on must've led her to a thirst for long-forgotten childhood beverages, and thus to the thought of a tall glass of Sunny D.
After all, Buffy reasoned, her days had become severely lacking in vital vitamins. Mornings were reserved strictly for black coffee and bright orange cow-hat uniforms, and falling asleep at the grill was the pressing concern that, rather counter-productively, kept Buffy awake at night.
The thought of orange juice was reluctantly set aside when a chorus of tingles alerted her to several approaching vampires, before lewd catcalling and emphatic growls belabored the point. Buffy sighed, and told herself that she'd buy herself an entire case of Sunny D someday, lack of money be damned, if she could finish off this party of five without getting vamp dust in her hair. Her reasoning entailed a complex system of budget-balancing involving showering, water bills, time loss, job endangerment, juice, and, oddly, vacuum cleaners.
Twenty minutes later, Buffy was leaning over a gravestone trying her best not to puke her innards out, food of any sort driven indefinitely from her mind. Drunk vampires, Buffy noted, were both overzealous and unfriendly. They were also too incoherent to follow the rules. That is, they had clawed around like really lame fledglings, and used smashed bottles and knuckle rings instead of fangs. Buffy almost felt affronted on behalf of other vampires, but she was too busy clutching her cut up stomach to really care all that much.
It'd become slightly unfair when it came out that the drunk vamps had been wrestling buddies prior to vamping. Buffy didn't want to know what kind of vamp would want to try turning a wrestler, but she was never one to dispute the illogical thought patterns of monsters.
When the taste of bile edged away from her throat, Buffy let herself slump down on the cool grass, enjoying the ambiance of the dusty cemetery grounds. She absently patted the tombstone beside her, skimming the engraved text. Roger, Buffy mused, must have been a beloved…oh, a wrestler. Huh, imagine that. Buffy hastily abandoned her spot, moving a polite distance away and nursing a twinge of guilty conscience. Rest in peace, Buffy thought weakly. Ashes to ashes and all that.
Trudging home, Buffy tried to remember whether or not Sunnydale High ever had a wrestling team. If they did, it wasn't a cheerleading sport, Buffy decided. She would've remembered a spectacle like W-R-E-S-T-L-E being spelled out in pom-poms. Rarely did words that complex, sounding-out-wise, escape a spotlight in cheerleading history, or at least bragging rights for a week. Just among the competition, of course.
It was as she contemplated the worth of bragging rights in high school athletics that Buffy realized she was feeling distinctly woozy and, just to have a word party, a little loopy and offbeat as well.
"Gosh," Buffy murmured. "My door is so blurry."
She promptly stumbled and tripped on the doorsteps that appeared out of nowhere, and in a moment of brilliant clarity, Buffy grabbed at her doorknob and twisted. It opened with a resounding crack, punctuated by a waking yelp from somewhere upstairs.
The door let in its bedraggled occupant and was closed securely, accompanied by a tiny choir of wooden pops.
Buffy shrugged reflexively and shed her jacket, moving to sit on a kitchen footstool placed conveniently by the doorway for this purpose. There was a passing thought that the first aid kit underneath it was rather cleverly placed, before Buffy let her head lean against the wall and quietly passed out.