Chapter title from "Demons" by Macy Gray and Fatboy Slim

September 2017

"Luke, we have to digitize your library. This is getting ridiculous."

Luke glares at Julie over the pile of ancient demonology tomes he's reading at the desk in his living room. "How many times do I have to tell you the Moloch story?"

The nineteen-year-old, who sits cross legged on his desk, rolls her eyes. "Okay, first of all, I think 'my mom once scanned a demon into the computer' is just an excuse for you to be a Luddite, and second of all, my mom slayed Moloch. So let's just scan everything, I'll slay anything that comes out of it, and then we'll have a user-friendly database. Searching for keywords, Luke, not reading every single book you own whenever a new demon shows up."

"So eager to slay. I remember when you were horrified by the idea of beheading a vampire and joking about having a machete."

She swings her leg through him. "I'm still only joking. You were supposed to get me a machete for my birthday."

"Your father hates me enough already. I'm not adding to it by buying you weaponry."

"My dad doesn't hate you; he just thinks you're going to get me killed. If you get me a machete, I'm going to be a lot harder to kill."

He shoots her a pointed look. "There's no urgent apocalypse clock ticking. I can research the Fyarl demon myself. You don't need to stay if you've got an elsewhere to be." But he doesn't mean it. As much as Julie can be distracting, he loves her company and lately her being elsewhere has been more distracting for reasons he can't really pinpoint.

Her phone, which sits on the desk between them, lights up with an incoming call. "Nick."

Alright, he can pinpoint one reason.

She presses the decline button. He raises his eyebrows. "Trouble in paradise?"

"I never said it was paradise." He forces his eyebrows to go higher. She rolls her eyes. "He's started asking a lot of questions about the fact that I go out every night and that my body is occasionally covered in bruises"—Luke definitely doesn't want to hear about Nick seeing Julie's body—"and I can't tell him those aren't valid concerns because they are."

"You can tell him the truth if you want. We've never been that good at the secret identity thing anyways. Also, I'm trying to establish myself as the cool, laidback Watcher."

"I thought that was what the sleeveless shirts were for."

"You're very fixated on my shirts."

"They're noticeable." She doesn't quite meet his gaze.

He nudges her side, his arm passing through. "Nick?"

"I don't want to open his eyes to the supernatural horrors living in secret all around him and then, you know, dump him. Then he'll just have to be a regular guy terrified of everything in the world who doesn't have a Slayer girlfriend to protect him. If I felt more sure of him, then maybe, but—"

"Do you not feel sure of him?" Part of Luke feels extremely happy at the idea, and he staunchly refuses to think about why.

"He's… fine. If I wasn't the Slayer, I would keep dating him and see where it goes. I just don't think I'm 'confident about fundamentally disrupting his understanding of known reality' level into him, you know?"

"Personally, I don't think you should be dating someone if you can't sound more excited than 'he's fine.'"

"Yeah, well, what do you know about dating? You don't date."

"Yes, I do."

"Oh." Her tone is careful, and he can't get a read on her reaction.

"I mean, I can only date demons, and there's a very small number of good demons and most of them are dating Alex, and the rest of them are sorta put off by the fact that my whole thing is slaying demons, and also I'm dead which some people say 'isn't their type,' so I guess I don't really date, no." Her mouth wriggles, like she really wants to grin but she's trying to contain it for some reason.

"Please don't date Willie. He and Alex are super cute."

"You're ducking the point. Why are you dating Nick if you don't feel excited about him?"

She shrugs, like she has an answer that she doesn't want to share. "Dating is hard when you have a destiny."

"Jules."

She meets his gaze, and he's surprised by the pain in her eyes. "Fine, I'll tell you. But then I'm going to say goodbye and walk out because I'm not interested in talking about it, okay?" He holds up his hands, conceding, and pushes his chair further away from his desk so he can watch her face.

"My mom was 22 when she died. And in my mind, that's always been the timeline. If I'm lucky, I get five years as the Slayer. I'm almost halfway there, and there's still stuff I want to do before I die. And one of those things is that I want to be in a relationship with the person I'm in love with."

He's too focused on her timeline to clock the implications of her phrasing. "You know that dating someone you're not really interested in is the exact wrong way to go about that, right?"

She leans closer to him, making the area where his heart should be flutter. "BYE LUKE." She grabs her bag and rushes out.

Luke buries his face in his hands. Both Julie's mortality and her love life are topics he hates dwelling on, and here he's been handed a surprise double whammy. "Fuck."

"I'm going to be honest," Reggie's voice floats over from the other side of the living room. "I often feel like you two get so wrapped up in one another that you don't notice I'm here."

Alex strides into the apartment that the three guys share to find Luke pacing. He glances at Reggie, who is perched on the couch with his entire attention on his phone. "What's going on?"

"He's having a Julie crisis," Reggie drawls.

"Ah. Is he coming to the obvious conclusion?"

"Not as of yet, no."

"Alright then, I need a drink. Can I get you something?"

"Pigs' blood?"

Luke spins towards Alex. "What's the obvious conclusion?"

"That I need a rum and coke to have this conversation."

Not letting it drop that easily, Luke follows Alex to the kitchen, with Reggie trailing reluctantly behind. Luke is about to start interrogating Alex when he realizes what Reggie is looking at. "Are you watching an insta live of a sunrise?"

"I miss the sunrise. I mean, not that I ever got up in time to see it when I was alive, but now I'm really feeling like I missed out. It's so bright and shiny."

Alex takes a bag of blood out of the fridge and, with a flick of a finger, floats it over to Reggie. "Catch."

Reggie tucks his phone in his pocket and begins sipping on the blood bag. "Oh, before we get derailed by the Julie crisis, you should hear the actual big news of the day. According to Luke, Luke dates."

"What? Are you talking about that one time you got coffee with Clem? Because Clem definitely isn't interested in you." Alex observes shrewdly as he charms the rum bottle to pour a generous thumb into his glass.

"Why wouldn't Clem be interested in me?"

Reggie kicks Luke's foot, unimpressed. "Oh, so because he's a Loose-Skinned demon, he has to be interested in you?"

"That's not—okay, Clem is not the point. I just haven't met anyone who I click with, you know?"

Reggie gestures to Alex. "You see what I mean?"

Alex directs the Coke to add itself to his glass and stirs it by twirling his finger. "Give him time. He'll get there."

"Will he? It's been two years."

"Reggie, you're immortal. You're going to have to learn some patience."

Luke groans loudly. "Are either of you gonna help me or are you just gonna be smug?"

Alex takes a deep sip of his drink and exhales blissfully. "Okay, Luke, tell me of your Julie crisis."

"She wants to be in love before she dies and she's going about it wrong."

As if fact-checking, Alex glances to Reggie. "Her exact words were 'I want to be in a relationship with the person I'm in love with,'" the vampire clarifies.

"Oooh, that's different."

"How is that different from what I said?"

Reggie rubs his face. "See, never gonna get there on his own."

"Alex," Luke begs.

Taking pity on him, the warlock gestures for Luke to sit. He pops up onto the kitchen counter. "It sounds like she's already in love."

Luke feels as if he's been smacked in the face with a paperweight. "… with Nick?"

"No, not with Nick."

"Then who is she in love with?"

"Julie hasn't told me anything."

"But you're Alex. You don't need to be told about feelings. You just, like, know. It's your superpower."

"I think my superpower is that I can do literal magic, but sure, basic emotional intelligence as well."

"Aleeeex."

Alex sends Luke the same shriveling look he uses whenever Luke and Julie disagree about how to handle a Slayer thing, and Luke makes the mistake of asking Alex to pick a side. "Luke, I don't have any information. I have a theory, but if Julie wanted you to know who she's in love with, she would have told you."

Luke's voice turns pleading, as if he can somehow convince Alex that Julie's just mis-filed some paperwork and would actually like Alex to correct the mistake. "Why wouldn't she tell me? We talk about everything."

Reggie snorts loudly. "No, you don't."

"What are you talking about?"

Reggie waves pleading hands towards Alex, who sighs and gestures for Reggie to go ahead.

"For starters, you haven't told her you're in love with anyone."

"… cause I'm not?"

Reggie stares at him in disbelief, then begins shaking his head. "Nope." He spins around and marches out of the kitchen. They can hear him saying, "nope, nope, nope" loudly to himself all the way down the hallway until he reaches his bedroom.

Alex just claps the air behind Luke's back. "This is a journey you have to go on yourself, I'm afraid."

Realistically, Luke knows there are only so many people Reggie and Alex could be talking about, even if Luke has become more sociable over the past year and a half. Aside from Clem (and he will go to his, well, second grave insisting that that had been a date), he hasn't really dated anyone. He and Reggie had a weird vibe for a few months, but neither of them ever pursued it because, well, that's his Slayer's brother. Only a year into their relationship, Alex and Willie are more married than most actually married people. Flynn is a steady part of their circle of friends (which she's nicknamed the Scooby gang), but Luke's relationship with Flynn is very tied to the group. Whenever everyone else leaves the two of them alone in a room, there are long awkward silences and a lot of pretending to be texting. (Luke doesn't want to brag, but he's really starting to nail the T9 on his new flip phone. (Julie has begged him to stop portraying that as a brag.))

Luke knows Alex and Reggie can only be talking about Julie, but he isn't in love with Julie. She's his Slayer, one of his best friends, and she was indirectly responsible for bringing him back from the dead, so their relationship is intense and complicated and important, but that doesn't mean he's in love with her. Sure, there are moments when he gets lost in bantering with her, and moments when they fight together where they seem to read each other's minds and exchange intense looks, but he has that with everyone he battles with. He constantly exudes a flirty energy. That doesn't mean he's in love with Julie.

He still feels very on display when he poofs to the cemetery the next night to meet with the rest of the Scooby Gang. Flynn and Julie, he notices immediately, are standing off to the side talking seriously, with Flynn shooting looks his way. Julie defiantly spins her favorite weapon, a hand axe like Rose's old one with a wooden stake as the handle. She usually spins it when people try to tell her things she doesn't want to hear.

But of course, he's not looking at them, because he's not in love with Julie.

Instead, he tries to focus on the guys. Reggie is showing Alex and Willie something on his phone. Alex is standing behind Willie, with his elbow resting on Willie's shoulder and his chin on his forearm, cheek pressed against Willie's. All at once, Luke is hit with an acute pang of loneliness and longing. Not just for the romantic bond between the two, but also the casualness with which Reggie can lean into them. The easy touching between friends, bonding them to one another, tethering them to the world. Sure, Luke can touch Reggie and Willie, but at the end of the day, he'll never feel that casual, easy connection to the living world ever again.

For a moment, Luke stands still, letting himself wallow in his pain.

Alex glances up and something of what Luke's feeling must show on his face, because Alex cocks his head, concerned, and mouths, "You okay?"

Luke shakes his head slightly. He feels a brief heat on the side of his face, like someone is looking his way, but when he glances in that direction, Julie's eyes are very determinedly set on Flynn's face.

Trying to shake it off, Luke claps his hand to get everyone's attention. "Okay, entire bus turned into vampires and buried today. Twenty-one people, and we gotta make 'em all dust before they get past those fences." He takes out a couple maps of the fresh graves they need to target.

"Is this gonna take long?" Flynn asks. "I have an essay to write."

"If you can't stay, you don't have to."

"Of course I have to."

"… why?"

"FOMO. Obviously."

"If we're strategic about this, we should be able to get through it pretty quickly. There are thirteen people buried on the east side and eight on the west, so I figure four of us work the east, two the west, and if anyone finishes up early, go help out the other group?" Everyone nods, so he turns to Julie. "Julie, you take the west, and I'll —"

"I'll take Flynn." She cuts him off, linking arms with her friend.

"Oh." Normally, if they split into groups, Luke and Julie pair up. "You sure? Cause eight is a lot, might be good to have two supernatural people—"

"We'll catch you later. Be safe, everyone." She smiles encouragingly at everyone, not meeting his eyes, and heads toward the west side. Dazed, he passes the map to Reggie, who hands it to Flynn. He searches her face for clues as to what's going on with Julie, but of all the Scoobies, Flynn is the best at maintaining a deadpan.

Luke turns to the rest of the group. Part of him wants to ask if anyone else thinks that was weird, but he knows if he verbalizes it, then he's saying that he thinks it's weird and that just validates Alex and Reggie's whole ridiculous theory. "Okay, let's dust some vamps."

Their fourteen vamps fall fast, too fast, and by the time they're down to their last two, Luke is nervous. If it was this quick for the four of them, the Slayer should have finished ages ago. So he poofs over to the west side.

He's lucky he appears behind a mausoleum, because things on the other side are… not great. Five vampires have Julie surrounded, and one is holding onto Flynn. But in the middle of it all is Julie, held up in the air by a tall, veiny, horned demon. Fuck, the Fyarl demon they've been hunting all week. Julie wriggles in its grip, unable to free herself. Which is terrifying in and of itself.

But as per Julie, she's not focused on herself or even the Fyarl demon, but instead on the vampire holding Flynn. "Let her go. That's your one warning," she snaps.

"Or what? You'll hurt us with your words?"

Realizes Julie is unarmed, Luke looks around and sees her axe gleaming in the grass. He steps forward silently, catching her eyes briefly as he picks up her weapon.

But the Fyarl demon won't be killed by an axe. Only something silver being shoved into its heart.

He holds up five fingers where Julie can see them and counts them down. As he gets to two, he hears her say, "No, silly. With weapons." He poofs over to the vampire holding Flynn and slams the stake into his heart from behind. The vamp explodes into dust and Flynn stumbles away, massaging her neck and coughing.

"Are you okay?"

She nods, waving him off. "Help Julie," she rasps.

He poofs to his apartment and grabs the only silver item he owns: a teapot. Poofs back to the cemetery and tosses it into the air. Julie grabs it, shooting him a brief skeptical look, and slams the spout into the Fyarl demon's chest. The demon crumples to his knees and she rolls, coming to an elegant landing just in time for Luke to poof next to her and toss her her axe.

She seizes it and swings it through the air, slicing off the nearest vampire's head.

As one of the vampires tries to flee, Julie chucks her axe. It flies through the air, landing stake first in his heart. One of the closer vampires rushes towards her, thinking that she's unarmed, but Luke poofs over to the fleeing vampire and collects the axe. He poofs back to Julie and throws it to her. She grins, partly at the astonished vampire who finds himself in front of an armed Slayer, partly at Luke. "Better than a boomerang."

That smile, triumphant, vibrant, in control. It does something to him.

She kicks the vampire in the chest, sending him stumbling back, but he grabs her foot and tosses her through the air. Luke turns to fight the final vampire but Flynn, filled with indignant fury, has tackled him and seems to getting herself some vengeance.

The remaining vampire, engaged in a furious battle with Julie, rams backwards into Luke. Luke spins around and stabs his stake into the vampire's back. As the vampire turns to dust, he realizes that his is not the only stake in the vampire's heart. Julie has staked him from the front, and their stakes seem to touch as the vampire dissolves. They're standing close, maybe closer than they've ever stood before, and she's out of breath, gleaming with sweat and victory and power and fucking beaming at him and so gorgeous and in her element and he suddenly just knows.

"Jinx, you owe me a soda" is what comes out though. Because he's pathetic.

She lowers her axe but doesn't move away from him. "But you can't drink." Her voice is hushed, like they're having a private conversation.

"Can't I just want a victory soda? Why you always gotta make it a ghost thing?" He matches her volume, whispering back.

She bites her lip, smiling playfully. "Because I worry that an undrunk victory soda will feel lonely."

"Fine, then, you can drink my victory soda." Something about their closeness, their quiet voices, and the weird energy between them makes him feel like he's asking her out, like "drink my victory soda" is an invitation to an event instead of just a weird thing to say. The slight hesitation from her makes him wonder if she feels it too.

"So basically, you're inviting me to buy myself a soda."

"The soda's still for me. That bit's important."

"Julie." Flynn draws their attention off one another. She raises a pointed eyebrow at her friend. "Weren't you planning to study tonight? With Nick?"

Julie glances back at Luke for a second, like she thinks he'll give her the answer. "Um, yeah. If we're all done here?"

"Yeah." He tries to smile, but he's not sure he makes the muscles quite work right. It feels more like an aggressive spasm. "Do what you gotta do."

The text an hour later asking him to let her in takes him by surprise. He grabs his keys and poofs down to open the door for her.

She slips into the apartment hallway with him. "Aren't you not supposed to poof in public places?" she asks, her voice low.

"Everyone in this complex is of the spooky variety. What are you doing here?"

She glances at her feet quickly, then back up at him. "I broke up with Nick. And I owed you a soda." She holds up a can.

He raises an eyebrow. "I like Grape Fanta?"

"You do."

"Wow. I'm lucky I'm cute." He rests his eyes on her face as he says it. He can feel the same weird energy from the cemetery, egged on by their hushed voices in the hallway. "You wanna come up?"

She nods and follows him. They stay silent the whole walk up to the third floor. He doesn't know that they've ever been silent with each other for that long before, and it's so awkward that he almost wishes he'd poofed up to avoid it, but the awkwardness feels meaningful.

The sounds of the door opening and closing and his keys being dropped on the counter are too loud in the silence between them. There's a ring to it that feels… if he weren't a ghost and they'd met normally, he'd feel like he was bringing her home for the night.

He turns back to her. Usually, she'd plop down on the couch or at his desk, but she's hovering by the door, like she's waiting for something. He moves close to her. Putting all his focus into his fingers, he gently pries the soda out of her hand. She looks up in surprised delight—taking something directly out of her hand like that is the closest they've ever come to touching. Normally, it's more effort than it's worth, but right now… it's worth the effort.

"My soda," he murmurs. He pauses for a second. "Present for you," and slips it back into her hand.

She shakes her head slightly. "You're ridiculous." Her movements are controlled, her voice low. Maybe he's projecting, but it seems like she's feeling that same tense, sparking, post-date energy. Like something is going to happen that's inevitable, and they're just waiting to see who will push them towards it first.

But it's impossible, so instead he asks, "Do you want to talk about the Nick thing?" and nods towards the couch area.

She shakes her head. "I'm good, it wasn't…" She sits in the loveseat, sets the soda on the floor, and pats the seat next to her. He can't help but notice that she's chosen the smallest couch for them to share. "It feels mean to say it wasn't that important, but it's like you said. The most enthusiastic thing I could say about him was 'it's fine.'"

"So why do you have your thinking face on?"

"I don't have a thinking face."

"You do, it's like this." He tries to create as many wrinkles between his eyebrows as possible.

"That is not my face." He just looks at her, steady on. She shrugs. "I thought I wanted something in my life that wasn't about slaying. But my love life can't be that, can it? Being the Slayer has become this huge part of who I am. If someone doesn't know that part of me, they don't know me." Maybe he's biased, but he agrees. He doesn't love Julie because she's the Slayer, but it doesn't feel possible to really know Julie without knowing how she puts her friends first in battles or how she relentlessly resists the Council's bureaucracy or what her face looks like when she wins a fight. "How did other Slayers date?"

"The old Watchers' diaries don't mention it that much. More focused on talking about demon physiology in excruciating detail, but when it does come up it tends to be reformed demons, vampires with a soul like Reggie, humans who know about all this stuff, and…" He hesitates, but every part of him is screaming say it say it say it say it "... Watchers." Her eyes snap to his. He's silent for a moment, and neither of them says anything. That, more than anything, answers his question of whether he's alone in this. If she didn't feel the same way, she'd make a joke to diffuse the tension. Saying nothing leaves it there as a possibility. He swallows and tries to give them some conversational distance from the idea. "That doesn't mean Slayers haven't dated civilians—maybe most Watchers only write about the stuff that seems relevant to the job."

"What do you write in your diaries?"

"Oh, all the dirt. How you eat tubs of frosting when you feel sad, how you leave teabags in mugs until they go moldy, how you sing to yourself when you patrol alone—"

"How would you even know that?"

"You get so into it that you never notice me. As your Watcher, I'd be concerned, but you somehow keep singing while fighting vampires? And now I'm gonna have to write an entry about your boring ex-boyfriend. Sorry, I'm just being thorough." She picks up a pillow and drops it through his head. He shivers as it ripples through him. "Rude, dude!"

But then she shocks him by completely changing topics.

"Have you ever been in love?"

Oh, what a fun question. He's not sure how much eye contact is the right amount of eye contact while answering that question. "I have."

"What did it feel like?" There's no added weight to the way she says it—she clearly doesn't realize that he's talking about her. He desperately wants to correct her but he also really can't.

"Inevitable. Like as soon as we met, there was no other way it could have gone." She looks up at him through her eyelashes, her face open and vulnerable and reflecting something back at him that he feels he's displaying to her. He's never wanted so badly to take the hand lying on the couch, and his hand twitches. It's halfway towards hers before he remembers that it's pointless. There's a reality that he can't ignore. "But I'm dead now, and that's not fair to anyone."

Her face closes down slightly and she nods. "I've never said I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"For your death."

He wants to be flippant, but… yeah. He's dead. And it fucking sucks, and moments like this just remind him of how much it sucks.

"Can I give you a hug?" she asks.

"Literally, no."

She grins. "I have an idea. Can I try something?" He nods. "Lay on your side."

He lies down, stretching awkwardly along the length of the couch. She arranges pillows in front of his torso and legs, forming a line down his body, then hands him a pillow to put on his hip. Then she lies down on the other side of the pillow barricade and rests her hand on the pillow over his hip. If they were corporeal, if there were no pillows, they would be lying face-to-face and cuddling. This isn't really touching. It's more that he can feel a pressure in various parts of the pillows, and he knows it's her. But it's as close as they can get.

They lie there together for a while, and eventually her breathing gets steady and she falls asleep, her face inches from his.

When Reggie gets home early in the morning and sees them on the couch together, Luke nods at him.

"Yeah, okay. I got there."

Episodes of Buffy referenced in this chapter:
• "I, Robot… You, Jane"
• "A New Man"