Title from "Demons" by Macy Gray and Fatboy Slim

December 2019

"Reminder: you've faced the end of the world, like, nine times by now."

"What's your point?"

"You look more nervous about talking to your dad than you have over nine apocalypses."

Standing on the sidewalk in front of her childhood home, Julie bounces on the balls of her feet, trying and failing to put her nerves into words. Luke leans in and bumps his nose to hers, and for a split second she feels calmer.

"According to movies," he murmurs. "I should be nervous and you should be reassuring. Kinda making me worry here."

She slips her hand into his, her skin tingling at the contact. They've only been dating for a couple weeks, but she already can't imagine how they went so long without this kind of casual physicality.

"It's just that with the no-Slayer talk at home, I have no idea how he's going to react to this, cause I don't really know how he feels about you. I mean, since you've been a ghost, he's only talked to you, what? Three times?"

Luke's face freezes in a tiny pout in that way it does when he's trying to hide tragic thoughts. It used to be mostly about her mom or about Slayer stuff, but she suspects it now includes memories from the months she was gone.

"More than that" is all he says.

She steps up into his space and claims his gaze. "Luke. We're kinda going into the lion's den here. If you know something, you should share with the class."

"I was the one who told him that you were…" He always avoids saying the d-word, more for his sake than for hers. "And then funeral arrangements, obviously." Of course. About a year into being the Slayer, the day after she first discovered Luke's grave, she'd gone to her Watcher and told him what she wanted for her funeral. It wasn't a conversation she'd wanted to subject her dad to, and she'd needed someone to know. But she hadn't really thought about how that meant that her father would have had to find out from Luke that he'd been left out of the loop. "The funeral, and then a couple times after that. But I haven't seen him since you came back."

She's not letting it go that easily. "'A couple times after that?'"

He scrunches up his face, as if he can avoid the question by just being silent long enough. "He came by a few times. … I guess Reg thought he would know what I was going through. You know, cause of Rose."

It shouldn't be a romantic moment—it's really not a romantic moment—but part of her warms at the idea that she is to Luke what her mother had been to her dad. She knows Luke loves her, knows how serious he is about her, but after years of not being able to talk about it, there's still something precious about every little moment he confirms it aloud. Even if that moment is wrapped in sadness.

She steps in close to him and buries her face into his chest. He wraps her in his arms and rests his chin on top of her head as he continues. "Cliff-notes version, I think once he realizes we can touch, he's not gonna be surprised by this. I dunno how he's gonna react, but… not with surprise. Now, are you ready to go in?"

Refusing to move from her cuddled spot in his arms, she asks, "Did you know it's actually CliffsNotes?"

"Jules, we still have to go in."

"I'm sharing fun facts."

"Nah, you're stalling. Come on, Molina. You've slain, like, a thousand vamps. You can talk to your dad."

"But what if he knows we've had sex?"

Luke pauses, and she cranes her neck up to see his queasy expression, which he quickly tries to shake off. "I mean, obviously, that's horrifying, but there's really nothing he can do about it at this point." He steps back and holds his hand out to her, and the familiarity of it brings her comfort. Even though her ability to take his hand is still relatively new, the gesture itself feels old. Ever since that first night in the cemetery, he's been here, offering his unwavering support and belief in her no matter what they face. So she takes his hand and lets him pull her towards the house.

Only then does he seem to process what she's said. "Wait, CliffsNotes. Like… Cliff's Notes? Like, a dude named Cliff just wrote a bunch of notes on books he read?"

She laughs. "Yeah, where did you think they came from?"

"… the universe?"

She dissolves into giggles as they reach the front door. He shoots her an embarrassed grin and knocks. As her father's footsteps approach the door, Luke releases her hand and tucks his hand into his pocket. She quirks her head, questioning, but he shrugs. "Unless that's how you wanna tell him?" Conceding, she slips her hand in her own pocket, feeling oddly cold even though Luke's room-temperature skin hadn't actually been providing any warmth.

The door opens to her father's smiling face. Which becomes less smile-y as soon as he notices Luke. As if bracing himself, her dad leans against the door jamb. She can almost see the mental math he's doing. Either some major Slayer business is going on, or Luke isn't here for business, and she's honestly not sure which he prefers.

Luke seems to be coming to the same conclusion because he blurts out, "Nothing bad is happening!"

She almost laughs, tempted to reach out and grab his hand to reassure him. Her father just raises his eyebrows, bemused but less suspicious. "At least you're not keeping me in suspense. Come in."

Both she and Luke move to the doorway at the same time. He stops short and awkwardly gestures for her to go first. Her father shoots them a confused glance. "Do you not just—" He tries to mimic walking through one another.

"Uh, no. Luke thinks it's rude—"

"Cause it is rude."

This at least makes her dad smile.

It seems like as good a time as any to reveal one of the things they've come to tell him. "Also, ever since I, um, came back…" In a split second, Julie tries to come up with the least suggestive way to touch Luke. She settles on thumping him heartily in the middle of the chest with her fist. He winces.

Her father's eyebrows rise further, as if that simple gesture has already told him what they're here to talk about. "In that case, one at a time."

Julie slips in ahead of Luke, paving the way to the kitchen. "Is Mom still at work?"

"For another couple hours."

As they enter the kitchen, her dad glances at her. "Do you want something? Juice? Tea? We're a bit low on food at the moment, but I think Carlos has a couple Gansitos in the freezer he thinks I don't know about?"

Luke shakes his head. "I can't eat or drink."

"… I was talking to Julie."

"Right. Obviously." Luke chuckles nervously.

"Just water, please." Julie rolls her eyes at Luke, and catches her dad grinning to himself as he turns to the sink.

"Luke, you can sit," she nods to the counter.

The ghost's gaze immediately shoots to her father, as if asking for permission. Bemused, her dad nods. "As she said."

Luke pops up on the counter, his legs swinging back and forth with nervous energy. At this rate, she'll be shocked if her father hasn't already figured out that they've had sex.

She takes her glass of water and slips into a seat at the kitchen table. Her father leans on the counter across from her.

"So, what is this about?" He eyes Luke as he says it.

Finally, they're back on practiced ground. Luke and Julie had discussed the order of operations here: give her father the good news first, then bring in the news that he might not love as much.

"There's two things. First of all, we found this scythe and…" As she begins to think of how much dense mythology there is to explain with the scythe, she exchanges a glance with Luke. Maybe they should have practiced this more.

"We found a magical weapon, and we used it to activate more Slayers," Luke summarizes.

"More Slayers?"

"We don't have an exact count yet, but probably 10,000ish."

Her father's eyes widen. "10,000?"

Luke's legs finally still, the ghost infinitely more comfortable now that he's in Watcher mode. "We're working with the Council to try to identify everyone who's been called. Then we can start informing them, getting them trained, seeing if they want to be Slayers."

"Why not just leave them alone?" There's an edge to her dad's voice—the same one she heard when he found out she was the Slayer and broke down in front of her, furious at the universe.

"It's not that simple, Papa," she cuts in. "Demons, the forces of darkness… they can sense Slayers. They come after them sometimes, even if they're not doing anything." Her father's gaze shoots to her, and she tries to keep her expression as neutral as possible. He doesn't need to know how many times she's been personally targeted. "We're not going to force anyone to become an active Slayer, but they need to know who they are and they need to be able to defend themselves."

"When you say 'we,' you mean the Council?"

Luke jumps back in. "Nah, we're working with the Council at the moment, but we wanna make sure we're at the helm of this. Ideally, we reduce the Council's role to academic support: librarians, researchers, scholars, archivists. Shift the center of military power and decision-making to the Slayers."

Her father doesn't look at Luke while he speaks, instead focusing on Julie. "'We' includes you?"

"Yeah. I'm not entirely sure of my exact role yet, but…"

"Commander-in-chief, I keep saying," Luke grins at her. Some of the tension in her gut releases—she wishes she could bottle that smile and drink it every time she gets stressed.

But she pulls her gaze back to her father. "General, trainer, some fieldwork sometimes."

"Oh." She knows that look. It comes out when her father is trying desperately to be supportive in a situation where he fundamentally disagrees.

"I thought this would make you happy," she says haltingly.

"I thought you would want to retire."

This is a conversation she and Luke have been having for the past two weeks, and she's suddenly grateful all over again for his quiet support that entire time, how he's given her space to sort out how she feels about the idea herself, how he's never once pushed the idea or indicated his preference. Because she's able to answer now with a single, confident word.

"No."

"So you would like to keep putting your life in danger?"

"Papi—"

He holds up a hand. "I'm just trying to understand."

She feels the gap in knowledge between her dad and the Scooby gang acutely. Even if her friends all want her out of the battlefield, they've fought by her side for years. They know the stakes, they know how important slaying is, and none of them need her to explain why she isn't going to just quit. She's never really had to explain it until now, and she struggles to put it into words.

"Being a Slayer… it's not something you give up. It's who I am—it has been for almost five years. I can't just sit back now and ask everyone else to put their lives in danger." She reaches out and grabs her father's hand, desperate to bring him comfort. "I'll probably be in the field a lot less. But with four and a half years as the Slayer, I have so much experience to offer. If someone's gonna be in charge, it makes sense for it to be me."

"It hasn't been exactly four and a half years though, has it?" Her father meets her gaze, and there it is again. Just like with Luke, the pain that everyone still carries from her death is an ever-present wound that she keeps bumping into and not fully understanding.

"Papa, this is a good thing. It's a lot less dangerous, and it's a chance for us to actually beat back the forces of darkness, maybe permanently. And then no one will ever need to be a Slayer again."

"I just always assumed that if you had a choice, you would choose to be safe and happy, mija. You'll have to give me some time with that."

She can only nod. This part of the conversation is really not going how she expected it to—is this one of those talks Luke claims are easier to have without the Slayer present? Maybe it's not the best time to tell him about her and Luke.

But her father isn't about to forget that she told him they had two pieces of news, and he eyes her shrewdly. "You had something else to tell me."

She tries to think how to say it. Luke and I are dating seems too flippant given the years of history. Luke and I are in love is not something she's going to say to her dad. She starts to turn towards Luke for help, but before she even has to ask, he poofs to her side and wraps his hand around hers on the table. She glances up at his face, but he's just looking steadily at her father.

"Ah" is all her dad says.

"Why has no one acted surprised?" she asks Luke.

"I think if people were surprised, it would be a bad sign, Jules."

Her father leans over to her, conspiratorially. "I have a memory of you and Carlos coming back from the ice cream shop and Carlos teasing you about the 'sleeveless boy.'" He glances pointedly at Luke, who immediately looks like he regrets not wearing a jacket. "That memory is from 2017, so I know it's not real. Which means that ancient monks who never met you would not have been surprised to find out that you are dating."

The corner of his mouth turns up in a smile. That smile gives Julie a moment of hope, which dashes when he looks to Luke. "You're still a ghost?"

"Uh, yeah. Yes, sir."

"But," Julie cuts in. "He ages visually, so it's not going to be some weird thing where I look old and he doesn't, and he"—don't say he can touch you, don't say he can touch you—"is corporeal to me. Being a ghost is a… technicality, really."

Her dad pointedly sticks out his hand for Luke to shake.

"Dad—"

Luke sighs and looks away. Her dad's eyes slide back to her. "Doesn't seem like a technicality."

All at once, she realizes this is one of those conversations that are easier to have without the subject in the room. She threads her fingers through Luke's for a moment to give his hand a proper squeeze. "Go pee," she insists.

"But I don't—"

"Luke."

He turns to her dad. "May I use your bathroom?"

"You may."

He immediately poofs away.

Julie pops out of her seat and starts to pace. Her father comes around to her side of the kitchen table, watching her apprehensively.

"Julie, I just want you to be happy."

"Awesome. He's what makes me happy."

"Okay, I want you to be happy and to date someone alive."

"Papa, being the Slayer, it's hard enough to balance with a relationship. Dating regular, mortal humans, it was too hard for me. Having people I couldn't be honest with, whose safety I was constantly worried about… It's scary enough having Luke by my side, being terrified of anything happening to him, and he's a ghost. Someone who didn't have any powers, I couldn't do it."

There's a look of hurt on her dad's face that she doesn't understand until he asks, "Do you think that's how Rose felt?"

She steps toward him, as if she can physically remove the thought from his head. "No, you and Mom were different. You were together before. I had no choice but to fall in love after I was called. I've never been in a relationship without being the Slayer, so I never got to date without slaying being a consideration."

Her father sighs and sinks into a chair. "I just worry that as soon as you met him, you never gave anyone else a chance."

"I did try. I dated. Like Nick."

"Nick was boring. That was never going to last."

"Dad!" Her father smiles knowingly. "You said you liked him!"

"He was inoffensive."

Julie hears a very quiet snicker from the dining room. So that's where Luke poofed to. She rolls her eyes, both at her father and at her boyfriend, and refocuses the conversation.

"Dating someone who's tied into all this supernatural stuff, it has perks too. Reggie's soul."

Confused, her father repeats the line Reggie told them years ago. "A witch cursed him because he attacked her family."

Julie shakes her head. "Luke. He knew what to do: the ritual, the ingredients, the warlock—"

"—at the Bronze?"

The idea of her dad knowing anything about warlocks throws her for a moment, like seeing Luke wearing sleeves or Reggie without flannel. "How did you know?"

"Oh, Rose hated his warlock at the Bronze. Though I suppose she would have to change her tune now that he's helped Reggie." Her father shrugs helplessly, and she's struck all at once by how small and fragile he seems. "I don't know, mija. I'm so out of my depth with this Slayer stuff. I wish… Rose would be better at this."

She studies her father, hesitating for a moment. She's never really talked to him about the time she was dead. With Luke's encouragement, she had eventually come clean about where she'd been, but she hadn't wanted to go into too much detail. But now seems like the time.

Cautiously, she perches against the counter next to him. "When I was dead… I was just kind of free-floating through this hazy, happy, cozy air. It's hard to describe. Kinda like I was a bath bomb dissolved in warm water, and I was mixed together with all these good people and feelings around me. And I felt…" She forces herself to meet his gaze. "I felt Mom there with me."

Tears start to pool in her dad's eyes, torn between pain and joy.

"It wasn't like we had physical forms or a conversation. We weren't sitting around chatting over coffee or anything, but I could feel what she felt. I felt her bravery and her kindness, and how important being the Slayer was to her, and how much she loved you and me, and Luke. I don't know how she would have felt about us being together, but I know she loved her 'well-intentioned disaster child.'" Her father laughs wetly, clearly recognizing the phrase. "And I think she would have understood that Slayer stuff is messy and hard and scary, and all you can do is hold onto the things that make you feel happy and strong and brave and…" A lump she can't dislodge blocks her throat.

Rising to his feet, her father rests comforting hands on her arms.

"Mija, I'm not trying to be a blockade in your love story. You don't need my approval."

"But I want it."

He shrugs helplessly. "I don't know if I'm a responsible father if I encourage this. He could cross over at any minute—isn't that what ghosts do? I worry about you showing up on my doorstep one day heartbroken because you've built a life with him and he's vanished."

It's something Julie thinks about too. No matter how whole-heartedly she wants to believe that Luke's unfinished business is to live a long, happy life with her, they'll never be sure what he needs to do to cross over until he completes it. She wonders if this is how Luke feels about her, part of him constantly worried about when she'll be taken from him. They talk about everything… except their fear of the other vanishing. As cowardly as it feels, she's more able to speak her mind about it when he's listening from the other room than she does when he's right in front of her.

"Papi, you knew Mom was going to die someday. Even before she was the Slayer, but especially after she was called. Would you have just walked away?" Her father can only shake his head. "If he vanishes tomorrow or six decades from tomorrow, I don't care. I won't waste any more of my life denying myself the moments I could have had with him because I'm scared of the moments I won't get."

His eyes sparkle with tears. "When did you get so wise?"

"When the fate of the world was put on my shoulders." A small smile curls the corner of her mouth. "Or maybe when I died."

He shakes his head. "I don't think I'll ever find your death quite as funny as you do."

"Half of my friend group has died. You get kind of inoculated."

He meets her gaze, appraising her in a way he never has before. For the last four years, he's looked at her like she's fragile porcelain, and like there are parts of her he can't stand to see. For the first time since she was called, she feels like he's actually looking at her, at the Slayer, and seeing all of her.

A small smile slides across his face. "I've missed a lot, haven't I? Here you've been growing into this woman, and I didn't let you talk about it."

"I know it's hard."

"But as you said, I've been denying myself moments. I don't know what to say about your big Slayer news or about your… boyfriend because I don't know anything about your world."

"Do you want to?"

For a second, he seems to be searching within himself. Then he smiles again. "I do."

It's one of those moments where she's reminded that it's possible to feel so much joy and love that it feels like your heart is breaking in the best way. She flings her arms around her father and hugs him tightly.

"Oof, careful there."

"Sorry, Slayer strength."

He pulls back, switching into business mode. "Okay, so I assume you're busy right now with all your new Slayers, but maybe when things are a little more settled, we can take a day and you can tell me all about your adventures over the past few years?"

"I'd love that."

"And I know he doesn't eat, but maybe when your Luke is free, he can start joining us for Monday night dinners?"

There's that heartbreaking happiness again. Unwilling to let Luke get away with his eavesdropping anymore, she asks the dining room, "Luke, you're free on Monday nights, right?"

Her father tenses. "He's been there the whole time?"

"He's not great with boundaries. Everyone needs a flaw."

Luke poofs into the room, hands shoved awkwardly into his pockets. "I don't pee. I didn't know when to come back!"

Her dad looks from Luke to her. "He's not off to the best start," he stage whispers.

Julie grabs her boyfriend's hand, smiling as he squeezes back. "He grows on you."

Her dad eyes the ghost, a very clear "we'll see" evident on his face. But then he gives Luke a grateful nod. "Thank you, for my son's soul."

"Anytime." Her dad raises an eyebrow. "I mean, I really hope it won't come up again, but… you get it." He glances at Julie. "He gets it."

From the look on her dad's face, he's starting to appreciate the comedic potential of teasing her boyfriend.

He gets to his feet. "Then I suppose, congratulations on your scythe. And I look forward to getting to know you"—he focuses on Luke—"on Monday nights."

He walks them to the door, gives Julie a final hug and kiss, and Luke a nod. As the door starts to close, Luke turns to her.

"I really thought the 'we met when you were a baby' thing was gonna be more of a problem."

She can see her father's face turn horrified right before the door closes.

Exasperated, she groans at Luke. "Well, at least now we know what we'll be talking about on Monday."

He grabs her hand and swings their arms playfully as he tugs her away from the house. "Probably more about how happy I make you."

"I'm going to start badmouthing you when you're not around so you learn a lesson about eavesdropping."

"Is it possible to badmouth perfection?"

She rolls her eyes at him, but he pulls her in to kiss her. "That went okay, right?" he asks, resting his forehead on hers.

"Yeah, I think that was good."

He cups her face, stroking her cheek. "To a lifetime of moments, then." A look of understanding passes between them. She kisses his palm, and he gently boops her nose with his thumb. Then he pulls back and they start towards her car, arms swinging again. "Now tell me more about Cliff's Notes."

"Okay, so there was this guy, Clifton Hillegass…"

The next oneshot, "Love Me for Who I Am and for Who I'm Gonna Be," focuses on the Willex relationship (aka sexy magic lessons)!

Episodes of Buffy referenced:
• "The Prom"
• "Afterlife"
• Also probably vaguely some of the Dark Horse comics, but as per always, I've largely blocked them from my mind, so I'm not exactly sure