This probably needs some editing but I just really liked the way it turned out and will probably edit it later maybe add more to it. Who knows. I'd love some feedback. I haven't written a fanfiction piece in awhile. This takes place after "Chosen" when Buffy is in Rome.

Smoking Cigarettes

Smoking cigarettes at night
I can't cope with this
Smoking cigarettes at night
Your the one to help me quit
Smoking cigarettes at night
In the midnight hour
Late midnight hour –

Tweet, Smoking Cigarettes

The cigarette burned against her lips. The filter seemed to fade away between her fingertips. She took the last few drags and then dropped the cigarette to the ground used the heal of her right shoe to stomp on it. A small amount of smoke sizzled up from the ground not enough to make her care just enough to make her stomp on it one last time before turning around and returning upstairs to the apartment. She'd taken up smoking although didn't explain this to anyone not even entirely to herself. But she hid it from everyone around her most of the time unless she could blame it on how much alcohol she had consumed, which recently had become too much. It didn't matter how much she would consume because nothing seemed to stay inside of her stomach anyway. She'd end up ten minutes later leaning against the bathroom toilet in one of the most popular clubs in Rome, her knees bent on the floor letting her insides come up gradually. Smoking seemed to be the only outlet she could understand. At least for brief moments in time when she wanted to admit that she understood her feelings at all.

The night was clear, clearer than it had been in the first months she'd come to Rome. She still couldn't get a grip on ever calling it home because it doesn't feel like home. Everyone was split up. The family she once knew no longer existed and Dawn's life had clearly become more interesting then her own since she couldn't even keep up most of the time where Dawn was and who she was with. Maybe this is why she started smoking cigarettes late at night, into the early morning. She wasn't addicted, she would tell herself. Never addicted. There would always be cigarettes left to smoke but maybe that's because she bought packs of cigarettes together in bulk and then she'd hide them in places Dawn wouldn't find them and Andrew when he was around. She'd spray herself with vanilla perfume from down the block and no one would know the difference. It was easier not to admit why she needed a crutch and that crutch then to admit why she needed it in the first place and really just wanted it and wouldn't give it up. It's easier to believe that things are simple when you are just left breathing and someone gives you something to hold onto but when you can't find that exact thing. That exact person you were holding onto for so long nothing makes sense.

Cigarettes in Rome weren't hard to come by and weren't expensive at least the cheap brand and she didn't seem to care which brand she was smoking as long as it left the taste of nicotine on her lips and tongue it made no difference to her. Her fingers would wrap around the small paper thin stick, suck on it, light it, take it and blow it out in round shapeless figures that just blended together. She used to think that he would be proud of her for being able to blow it out at all, for being able to pick up a cigarette and smoke it without hesitation, without a second thought. Like those last moments they had together where her hand pressed against his and the love seemed to blow up in flames right in front of her eyes, as he did. But she touched him, reached for him without hesitation just like every morning she reached for a cigarette and would step outside on her balcony when Dawn was gone look out onto the streets of Rome and light her cigarette, breathe it in and choke it down. He would never understand it even though she likes to think he would. That he would get it without her having to explain it. He couldn't possibly get it if only at those last moments he didn't actually get that what she told him was the truth which is why he could never understand why she had not so suddenly become so fixated on cigarettes.

They weren't the brand he had smoked. She knew that because she couldn't find them here and maybe that was a good thing because if she had she would only crave him more and smoke more then she already did. It was a crutch not an addiction. She made that clear to herself. She could quit if and when she wanted to, only she didn't want to quit because it would take her farther away from him and she couldn't stand to be farther away in spirit, in cold blood. It all seemed to blend together. The years she'd known him. The last year they'd spent together and that last night they spent in the cellar where she remembers kissing him for what felt like the first time while he cradled her against his chest. A chest, a body she had grown to love. A man she had grown to love with time with a past that could only tear them apart or bring them closer and there wasn't a day that went by now that she was not grateful for it bringing them closer together then farther apart although now to her he was gone. His hands had left hers and his lips would never touch hers again and so cigarettes were the consolation prize. That was his thing. Something he would do outside her house while he waited for her to come out. Something he would do because it was a part of him. Now she wanted it to be a part of her like it had consumed him.

She'd press her lips against the filter and hope that it would burn into her, become a part of her. Eventually the taste stayed on her lips and sometimes it was his taste. The way he tasted after he smoked a pack and would toss the cigarettes to the ground. Kiss her. Fuck her. He tasted like that. Like a million cigarettes, even smelled like them but it never bothered her. It only ever bothered her that she liked it sometimes even loved it. Now with him gone the taste must remain somehow, within her. It must make a curse upon her lips, her tongue. The inside of her mouth so that she would remember his taste and never lose it. She was often afraid that the way he smelt and tasted would somehow become a blank memory. A memory that would be chewed off by time and the only way to keep it alive, to keep remembering the memory was to smoke until her hearts content. She'd drink she'd smoke if only to keep that memory alive inside of her. At night if she closed her eyes, tilted her head upwards, smoked a cigarette she could feel him there, next to her breathing in the only lifeless way he could.

She'd smile for a moment then, remember why she loved him and why she needed him and things would somehow make sense again when she'd press another cigarette to her lips only minutes later savoring the taste. Remembering there last moments together the cigarette would become a part of her. Him and her entwined as one.