Title: Getting Away
Author: BeccaFran aka rbecca
Fandoms: Crossover, BtVS/SPN
Pairing: Buffy Summers/Sam Winchester
Length:
Summary: Everything seems so normal. But normal doesn't work for them.
Author's note: Written for Patty, who requested Sam and Buffy and something else I can't reveal without spoiling the fic. It's all her fault. Darling, you owe me a drink.
lj-cut text"Getting Away" Buffy could barely believe it: a road trip with her new boyfriend, leaving the city behind for a weekend in the country... She was approaching scary Stepford-like levels of normal, here.
She tucked her feet up on the seat, resting her chin on her knees and watching Sam's forearms flex as he drove. His hair sort of flopped in his eyes, and his nose was pointy, and even while sitting in the car he took up more space than was reasonable, but all that didn't change the fact that she couldn't take her eyes off him while they were together. Really, he was more attractive than he had any right to be. The car sped along the twisting road through thick, lush woods and picturesque farmland. Glancing over, he caught her looking and gave her that grin she loved, the one that just took up his entire face.
"You're quiet," Sam said, stretching out an arm and resting it along the seat behind her shoulders.
"Yeah," she agreed. "I haven't done this in a while." Sitting in a car with a boy, alone, without any knives or stakes or crazy mystical objects involved felt strange and unfamiliar. She could hardly remember the last time she'd actually called someone her boyfriend out loud. Sam was great, but if something freaky happened he'd be gone in a minute. And she was Buffy Summers: something i always /i happened. She just hoped it wouldn't be soon.
"This, what?" Sam teased. "Camping?"
Buffy laughed. "Yeah, that too." Then, remembering the way this whole conversation thing worked, she offered, "I went camping a few times in high school, but that was in the desert, so it was kinda different." Vision quest, camping. Same difference.
"The desert, huh? That's pretty hardcore."
"Well, you know me, I'm hardcore."
"I can see that," Sam answered, tweaking one blonde pigtail.
Buffy grinned at him. He had no idea. "Hey, look -- pick your own apples," she said, pointing to a faded sign on the side of the road.
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Sam eased the car off the highway in front of the fruit stand, little more than a shack. Beside him, Buffy looked tiny curled up on the seat, her knees under her chin. Her legs were tan, laid bare in the afternoon sun. She was beautiful: big green eyes and shiny blonde hair, with a curvy little body and a big smile that she saved for special occasions. In denim shorts and pigtails, she was small and sweet and casually sexy, practically a different person than the sophisticated, fashion-conscious girl in his religion class. Sam had to struggle to pay attention to the professor with her sitting there right in his line of sight, an erotic vision chewing absently on a pencil eraser. He needed to pass this class, too, if he wanted to actually finish his degree in less than eight years. But instead of studying, he'd spent two weeks working up the nerve to ask her out, practicing in front of the mirror like he was back in tenth grade and gearing up to ask Amanda Morgan to the drive in, his palms sweaty, Dean's annoying laughter behind him.
They climbed out of the car -- a 1970 Dodge station wagon, fully restored as a gift from Dean and Bobby, the world's worst car for a college student in Boston -- and Sam stretched, feeling his muscles unkink after hours in the same position. He ought to be used to it after the life he'd led, but a few months away from the road had made him soft. Buffy bounded ahead and collected a big wooden basket from the bearded man at the fruit stand.
Buffy stepped into the orchard ahead of him, swinging the basket at her side. Sam followed slowly behind, watching her. She was standing under the trees just a few yards away, but the distance seemed like miles. Buffy stood in the sunshine, stretching up to reach a ripe red apple, and for a moment he could see the years stretching away before him... but no. There was no way this could last. He knew what had happened with Jess, with his mom, even with Cassie. Normal didn't work for the Winchesters.
He'd enjoy this weekend while it lasted, and when they got back to Boston he'd break things off gently.
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As they were nearing the campground, Buffy shifted nervously in her seat. "So about this camping thing...?"
"You can handle it," Sam said. "You're hardcore, right?" His arm was off the back of the seat and resting on her shoulders now, heavy and warm. He held the wheel with one big, capable hand. Buffy imagined the way those hands felt on her body, and licked her lips.
"Totally. But, um, are there showers? Cause I'm not really Nature Girl."
"Relax. This isn't actually camping at all, I got us a cabin."
"You did?"
"Well, I thought it'd be more... um, romantic." There was a little bit of pink spreading across Sam's cheekbones.
"You mean, it has a bed?"
"Yes, it does." He tweaked her pigtail again.
"You like the pigtails, huh?" she asked teasingly. "Too bad I didn't bring my schoolgirl outfit."
"You... you have a..." Sam's whole face was getting red now. Buffy couldn't hold back a laugh.
"No, actually not." He looked so disappointed for a moment that she gave in much quicker than she'd intended. "But when we get back, I could look into it..."
"Don't worry -- I think we can do without."
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It was night by the time they left the cabin.
Sam's muscles felt loose and relaxed, his wrists and knees ached pleasantly, and he could still taste Buffy on his tongue. He was completely satisfied in every sense of the word except one: the gaping chasm inside his stomach. If they didn't find some kind of restaurant or country store in the next ten minutes, he might die of hunger.
"I guess we should've brought food to cook or something," said Buffy doubtfully, trying to comb the tangles out of her hair as she walked toward the car.
He laughed and turned toward her, about to make some delightfully witty and suggestive comment, and stopped dead in his tracks. A dark figure loomed over the car, its shape huge and indistinct in the starlight. It was unnaturally big and its eyes gleamed orange from the shadows, like some kind of sasquatch or forest monster. And Buffy was walking right toward it.
Visions of possible outcomes flashed before Sam's eyes, all ending in blood and gore and pain, and all involving Buffy and that thing in the dark. Buffy sprawled on the ground, her blonde pigtails coated with blood. Buffy mauled and ravaged, staring with empty eyes. Buffy crying out for help, her voice thick with pain.
He'd left his gun in the glove compartment. Of course.
Buffy realized he'd fallen behind, and she stopped and turned back to face him. "Sam, what's--?"
Under the circumstances, there was only one option.
"Buffy, get down!" Sam shouted. Launching himself off the loose gravel driveway, he dove through the air to tackle her to the ground. Whatever that thing was, his priority had to be protecting Buffy, even with his own body if necessary. As soon as he jumped, he could feel things shifting between them, changing irrevocably. Still, he had to keep her safe, above all else.
She made a little i oof /i sound as she hit the ground, but didn't scream or yell at him. And Sam had a lot of experience with girls in this kind of situation. Usually, they would scream or cry or maybe get angry. Instead, Buffy rolled him neatly to the side, so that he was partially protected by the car's bumper, and flipped to her feet with a Bruce Lee move.
This wasn't the reaction he'd learned to expect from the damsel in distress. It was the reaction he expected from i Dean /i .
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He'd come out of nowhere. She'd been walking along, body still humming with post-coital endorphins, serene and relaxed, when i wham /i . All she felt was the gravel under her shoulder, Sam's body pushing her down, and every instinct screaming at her to get up, assess the threat, protect the civilian. But that's how the slayer thing worked -- it wasn't something she had to think about, she just reacted. Pushed Sam to the side, to safety, and jumped up to deal with the threat, whatever it was. Like clockwork, like a machine. She could worry about him later.
Turning on her heel, Buffy scanned the shadows, looking for anything out of place. The cabin sat quiet with one window glowing softly and trees crowding thickly around it. There was the car, solid and heavy in that way that new cars really weren't anymore. Behind it a pair of big orange eyes focused on her for a moment, then slowly blinked. i Ah /i .
Trying to draw it away from Sam, Buffy edged around the car. From the corner of her eye, she could see him getting slowly to his feet. Hopefully, he had enough common sense to stay out of this.
"Stay there," she yelled. She kept her focus on the thing with the blinky eyes, trying not to wonder what Sam must be thinking of her performance.
Once she'd rounded the corner of the car, she had a clear shot at the thing. In her mind, Buffy catalogued its appearance and compared it to the monsters she'd fought in the past. It was huge, nearly twice her height. A thick, shaggy coat covered its body, but in the dim light she couldn't make out the coloring. Below the gleaming orange eyes it had a protruding muzzle, and from the top of its head grew a pair of weirdly misshapen horns. It was like no other demon she'd ever seen.
She tensed, poised to strike.
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Sam was still standing in the patch of light cast by the cabin's window, and he couldn't see much in the darkness beyond. Buffy was standing facing the thing, the monster. She was probably shaking with fear. But the important thing was that she was okay, and she seemed to be.
Every second counted in a situation like this, and he needed to deal with this thing fast, before it could hurt Buffy. He reached automatically for his gun, expecting to feel the warmed metal at the small of his back where he'd carried it for years. Instead, he felt only denim. He'd left his gun in the car, neatly hidden away so that Buffy wouldn't stumble over it and think he was some kind of gun-toting weirdo.
A gun-toting weirdo would be a lot better off right now.
He made the calculations in his head, quickly. Time to get the gun versus Buffy's location versus the creature's potential speed. There were just too many unknowns, and he was too out of practice. That meant he needed the gun even more.
"Get back," he yelled to Buffy. She didn't listen, though, didn't step back. Sam didn't stop to worry about why, just wrenched the car door open and reached under the seat. His hand touched cool metal and he grabbed the gun and cocked it as he brought it up to firing position, his elbows resting on the top of the car. He was long past worrying what Buffy thought about him. She could think what she wanted. None of that mattered as long as she was alive. It was a lesson he'd learned the hard way.
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"What did you say?" Buffy asked. Did college boy over there just tell her to step back? Dropping out of her attack position, she turned to face Sam, keeping one eye on the thing in the shadows. She was just in time to see him pull a shiny silver gun out from under the car seat and take aim at the creature. "Oh, you have got to be kidding me."
"What?" Sam said, glancing away from his gun toward her for a moment.
"Those things are i not /i safe. Most people just end up hurting a family member, you know."
"I really don't think that's the issue right now."
"Look, why don't you put that thing away and let someone who knows what they're doing handle this."
"Like who? You?" He managed to sound both concerned and irritated. It reminded her of Angel. And there was an association she could've lived without. "Look, we can talk about this later but I seriously doubt you've dealt with something like that before."
"You can't even imagine the things I've seen," she said, getting angry now.
"Oh, I think I have a pretty good idea," Sam said. His voice was grim and almost hollow, and it made her pause. For the first time since the creature had appeared, she pulled her attention completely away and focused entirely on her new boyfriend. His feet were planted, body tensed and at attention but with his knees and elbows loose, arms resting on the roof of the car, gun aimed straight-on at the thing beneath the trees. She hadn't seen him put any bullets in the gun, so it must've been loaded all along.
"You had a i loaded gun /i in the car this whole time?" Buffy asked, incredulous. "Hello, bad idea?"
"Hey, at least one of us was prepared for this thing."
Buffy just looked at him. It's true, he was prepared. Who went on a camping trip with a loaded handgun under his seat? Who would be prepared for a demon attack on a weekend getaway? Okay, sure, she would. But she was the slayer. She-who-gets-attacked-on-weekend-getaways. But he was just--
"You have got to be kidding me," she said again.
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"So you're just going to shoot it, huh?" Buffy asked. Her voice was hard, angry. Not disbelieving, but pissed off.
"That's the plan," Sam said. How was he the bad guy in this scenario? Whatever the hell was standing in the trees threatening them was the real bad guy here. He tore his attention away from Buffy and looked back at the thing. At the same time, she turned in that way that pretty girls did when they were pissed off, and flipped her hair a little.
A car drove by the cabin on the road a few dozen yards away, and its high-beams lit up the scene. They glanced off Buffy's hair and she seemed to shimmer briefly. Then the light tracked across the dusty old station wagon, across Sam and his gun, across the densely wooded forest, and across the monster.
In that moment, Sam saw the creature clearly for the first time. It was not a monster; it was a moose.
Startled by the headlights, the moose brayed loudly. It had thick, shaggy brown fur and an imposing set of antlers, above an elongated face. Its eyes gleamed dully in the light, no longer a demonic orange but just plain brown. Buffy and Sam were completely still, shocked, bodies frozen in place. The moment lasted longer than it should've, as they stood and looked at the animal, and it looked at them. Finally the car passed by, the scene went dark once again, and the moose turned and ambled into the forest.
Sam looked at his gun. The metal gleamed, and in it there was a little of his own reflection. Very carefully, he clicked the safety back into place and reached around behind him, tucking it into the back of his waistband. Only then did he look at Buffy.
She'd relaxed from the fighting stance she'd held earlier. He knew now that he hadn't imagined that. She stood with one hand resting on the station wagon, as if for support. Her eyes were hazel-green with long lashes, like his. He could see that even in the low light.
Buffy blinked slowly, seemed to take in the sight of him for the first time. He could feel the reassuring weight of the gun at the small of his back, where it belonged. He straightened his shoulders and met her gaze.
"We need to talk," she said.
"Yeah," Sam said. "Yeah, we do." He could not have agreed more.