The title is a lyric from Cupid by Alexandra Savior. I found the layers in this conversation fascinating, so I had to examine them in some way.
"I guess we have to talk," Riley said, looking her in the eye with a new intensity.
Buffy refused to flinch, given that he had seen the crossbow in her hands at the same moment she had seen his. "I guess we do," she replied.
He glanced down and let his eyes rest on the carpet, or maybe on her bag of things to bring slaying. Either option was equally likely, given how careless she tended to be, but it didn't seem to matter much anymore. Buffy cast around for something to say that wasn't flippant and entirely inappropriate, and came up with nothing.
The silence was making things overwhelmingly awkward. She wished she knew how to begin the discussion, or how to have any part of the discussion. Hadn't Kendra mentioned a Slayer's handbook to Giles two years ago or so, and hadn't Giles brushed her off? Explaining her occupation to a potential boyfriend should have been in the handbook.
Things hadn't been nearly this uncomfortable with Angel. Then again, his initial reaction had been to defenestrate himself and confronting him had mostly been a confusing mix of shock, horror, betrayal, and then pity. Angel's immediate slaying of his sire had proved once and for all which side he was on and that he could handle himself well enough to be a real asset. Confronting Riley, so far, had mostly been staring at her own lap and wondering what to say to make things less awkward.
"Well," Buffy murmured finally, "somebody should speak before one of us graduates."
Riley stood from where he had been sitting on Willow's bed. Distantly, she wondered where Willow had gone and if she would return. She had assumed that Willow had been here, asleep, when she had been patrolling and discovering things about Riley, but there was no sign of her. Buffy tried to remember what, if anything, she had said about what she might have been doing.
She glanced up at Riley, who was pacing across the room, footsteps silent on the carpet. At the other end, he turned around and stared at her like she was something hostile.
"What are you?"
What was she? She probably shouldn't have expected anything else from someone she already suspected had a hand in unethical experiments on demons, but it still took her by surprise. The intent behind the question was likely innocent, but there was always the off-chance it wasn't and he was fishing for details before trapping her in a cell.
She had to remember that nothing he had said before was genuine and anything might have been a lie. He was smoother than her with his slip-ups, if there were any slip-ups to speak of. If she hadn't seen him in mid-fight, she might have gone on suspecting nothing.
"Capricorn," she replied coldly, hoping to let him know exactly how she had taken his words. "On the cusp of Aquarius. You?"
"Sorry," he said immediately, glancing down and looking a bit ashamed. "Came out a little blunter than I intended. It's just..."
He paused, looking as though he were searching for words he didn't have the objectivity to say. Riley gave her an admiring sort of look and told her, "You're amazing. Your speed, your strength-"
"Also passionate, artistic and inquisitive," she added in a bright voice. There were parallels to be drawn between the way he talked about Buffy and the way Giles talked when he was being all Watcher-y, and these sorts of responses were almost habit now. She didn't know what it meant for any potential future that he had to take a moment before he seemed to remember that she was more than a weapon.
"Who are you?"
"You know who I am," he told her softly with sincere eyes. "The rest... what I do... I can't tell you."
Of course not. That would be too easy. Buffy regarded him with a less forgiving gaze.
"Then, let me," she suggested, standing up and assessing him with new eyes. "You're part of some military monster squad that captures demons, vampires - probably have official-sounding euphemisms for them like Unfriendlies or Non-Sapiens.. "
"Hostile Sub-Terrestrials," Riley confirmed, a new wariness in the set of his mouth.
"So," Buffy acknowledged lightly, beginning to pace towards the window. "You deliver these..." she turned the term over in her mind a few times, searching for an acronym or a way to shorten it somehow. She raised her eyebrows mockingly and continued with, "HSTs to a bunch of lab coats who perform experiments which, among other things, turn some into harmless bunnies. How am I doing so far?"
"A little too well," he admitted quietly, with something uneasy in his voice.
"Meanwhile, by day, you pretend to be Riley Finn, corn-fed Iowa boy. You ever been to lowa, Riley?" She challenged him, then remembered that she had to assume nothing he told her was true. "God, if that's even your name."
"It is. Born and raised. And hey, bulletin," he reminded her, "I'm not the only one who's been less than honest here."
She hated to admit it, but Riley had a point. Buffy was extremely unimpressed with his team's methods, so she paused before answering and sat back down on her bed.
"I thought a professional demon chaser like you would've figured it out by now," she said, deciding to be petty and let figure it out. What with Giles's reaction to her initial arrival in Sunnydale, Angel's immediate "friendship", and the way vampires hissed Slayer at the sight of her, she assumed he would figure it out.
He still looked blank, meaning that he was either interestingly uninformed or uninterestingly unintelligent. She decided to take pity on him.
"I'm the Slayer."
There was absolutely no acknowledgement of the term. His eyebrows raised, as if he were asking, should I be impressed?
He must have been a pretty poor demon hunter if he'd never heard her title. The experience of not being recognised by it was entirely foreign, especially when it came to someone whose job description was uncomfortably similar to hers.
"Slay-er," Buffy elaborated, watching him for a reaction. "Chosen One? She who hangs out a lot in cemeteries?"
He shrugged at her, an apologetic look on his face. It was refreshing, in a way, not to have centuries of lore and legend attached to her, but it was also making this series of explanations very difficult.
"You're kidding," Buffy pleaded, and sighed at the small shake of his head. She didn't have to make it easy for him, she thought to herself as she stood and walked over to the window, especially if it meant quoting Giles. "Ask around. Look it up: Slayer, comma, the."
"And you fight demons," he clarified, and something cruel in the back of her head whispered, yes, when you're not falling in love with them. She met his gaze and tried not to look as small as she felt.
Riley's face was half in shadow, and if Buffy were the sort of person who enjoyed metaphors, she could have made one about his black and white line of thought. "I mean, you wailed on those guys."
"You did pretty well yourself," she remarked.
"But I'm a walking bruise today. See me with my clothes off, I look like..." He glanced at her, seemed to realise exactly which words he had used, and crimsoned. "I mean, I have bruises... purple. I don't see a scratch on you."
Buffy supposed that her hair must have hidden the scar on her neck from her first death and, more recently, from Angel. If Riley couldn't see even a hint of her scratches, then she was a better actress than she felt and he was blind. "Not looking hard enough."
Riley fixed her with an unfamiliarly intense gaze. Silence filled the air before he told her, "I'm looking pretty hard."
She watched him watch her, and wondered why she ever thought they could work out. Buffy had never felt particularly mature, but in that moment, she felt decades older than him with no way to bridge the gap.
Riley broke the eye contact first, glancing away and over his shoulder. Quietly, he asked, "So, then, what do we do?"
"I don't know." She almost smiled, saying it aloud. The universe could never be so kind. "I really thought you were a nice, normal guy."
He seemed amused. "I am a nice, normal guy."
Yeah, if she compared him to Angel, Riley was surprisingly normal. Compared to anyone else she could have met on campus, he was far from the decent, average guy she had thought she was getting to know.
"Maybe by this town's standards," she allowed, annoyed that she had let herself fall into the same trap, "but I'm not grading on a curve."
Riley wasn't Angel, but he might be something worse if she let him be. His ties to some government organisation could doom their relationship from the start, and knowing that he would gladly lock up and kill her ex-boyfriend didn't do much for her. She needed to know that he was someone she could trust, someone Angel couldn't be.
"I think we both need a little time to process everything," she said haltingly, "maybe then -"
"Yeah. Yeah, I think that's a good idea." Riley nodded, and stood up.
She imagined, for a moment, what it would be like to be able to trust him. They could patrol together, fight together, trade quips like she had always wanted to do with someone.
And then, if they were really lucky, they could sleep with each other and he could threaten to kill everyone she loved, and she would kiss him with closed eyes and push him into hell. Buffy barely managed a tight smile at him as he turned to leave.
He half-turned towards her and murmured, "Oh, um, I don't think I need to tell you..."
Buffy, of all people, understood what he was trying to say. She nodded. "I won't say a word to anybody."
"Good." Riley nodded at her, and god, there had been too many nods recently. "It'll be safer for all-"
For some reason, that was the moment Amy the rat chose to go completely berserk. She started squealing, which was strange on its own (Amy had always been a surprisingly well-behaved pet) and rattling the bars of her cage.
Amy was no ordinary rat, though. She was a witch, and Willow had been looking for ways to turn her back into a human for months. She had been miles ahead of Willow in the magic department, but she had been panicking in a near-death situation and had called upon the goddess Hecate for a quick escape. If Amy sensed something was up, Buffy trusted her, even if she was still very non-human.
"-concerned," Riley finished, looking quite concerned himself.
Buffy's stomach went cold and her chest tightened. Something was very, verywrong. "What's-"
That was when the floor started shaking underneath them and something magicky of Willow's smashed on the carpet. The low humming sound was something she had almost forgotten, but images of the Sunnydale High library with the walls of the stacks with jagged cracks through them and Angel and Giles comparing prophecies forced themselves to the front of her mind.
Acting on what must have been instinct, Riley guided her quickly to the doorframe. "Over here," he said, and though she had only seen him in one truly unguarded moment, she could tell that the shaking alarmed him. The close contact the doorframe forced them into didn't bother her, but the hand he placed on her thigh a moment later did.
The last time the earth shook like this -
It stopped quickly, but Buffy still felt shaky and apprehensive. Her neck was tingling where The Master had drank her blood before, and there were sirens going off outside from car alarms. She felt sixteen again, in a dress her mother bought under the assumption that she was going to a party and with the cross Angel had given her around her neck. She had almost forgotten Riley was there until he laughed.
"Wow, that was some ride," he said enthusiastically, taking his hand off her thigh before she could say anything.
She desperately wanted to bring a hand to the scar on her throat or maybe punch someone, but she settled for slowly crossing over to the window to watch the panic on the streets.
"Sorry I'm so excited, it's my first earthquake," Riley explained, sounding far less terrified than he should have.
The last time the ground had shaken like that, it had been one in a series of omens signalling The Master's ascension. The last time there had been an earthquake, she had died.
Riley was just someone who, for whatever reason, liked to dress up in military garb and run around tasering demons. He wasn't a part of this, and it was very likely that this was his first experience with apocalypse omens. She almost envied him.
She walked into the center of the room, trying to sense if anything was still off and ignoring the voice in the back of her head warning her about aftershocks. There were a phantom set of teeth at her throat, and she refused to turn around and let Riley see how vulnerable she felt.
Quietly, Buffy murmured, "It isn't mine."