Disclaimer – Don't own anything you might recognize. They all belong to their respective owners.
AN – First of all I'd like to apologize for taking so long to get this chapter out, even though I promised they'd be quicker from now on. But I've had a very mad month – especially finding out that I'm going to have a baby! So as you can imagine, my mind has been focused on other things. But I'm back now and I'm going to be trying my hardest to get as much writing in as I can over the next couple of months.
Also, there is a slight spoiler in this chapter for the film, Kal Ho Naa Ho. Nothing that would spoil the plot though if you're planning on watching it.
Vampires Suck
Buffy had been staring – no, glaring – at Dean for the past seven minutes and forty three seconds, and the ignorant douchebag still had yet to notice. Everybody noticed her steely glare. Demons ran in fear with their occasionally not so metaphorical tails between their slimy legs when she sent her steely glare in their direction. And yet Dean...clueless.
Jerk.
Enough was enough.
"What are you doing?" she asked him sharply, speaking for the first time in seven minutes and fifty six seconds.
Dean looked up quickly in confusion at the stern tone in her voice. "What does it look like I'm doing?" he responded, sounding an awful lot like a sullen teenager. He gestured towards the spread of weapons he had sitting around him on his bed.
"It looks like you're loading that gun up with silver bullets."
He pulled a 'duh' face and nodded. "Well yeah, standard procedure when dealing with werewolves, princess. Not everything goes poof when you shove a stick in it." He pronounced each word slowly and carefully as if he were talking to someone particularly dumb.
Buffy stood up. "Dean, we're not killing it!" she burst out.
He stopped loading bullets and looked up at her as if she'd declared that her greatest desire was to become a banana. "What do you mean we're not gonna kill it? What do you think we're gonna do with it? Tie a leash around its neck and take it for walkies?"
Buffy strode over to Sam's bed and picked up the tranquilizer gun she had prepared earlier in the afternoon, when they had first learned about the fact that there was a werewolf in the area. "We'll use this. This poor guy or girl is only a werewolf three nights of every month, Dean. They may not even know what's happened to them. They're probably scared and confused. We need to help them!"
"Yeah, great idea," he replied sarcastically. "And then when the next full moon comes around and this poor guy or girl kills a whole bunch of people, we can help them too. Oh wait, no we can't, because they'll all have beenripped to shreds."
"Gah! Why are you being such an ass about this? You're so damned stubborn!"
"Stubborn? Are you freakin' kidding me? I'm not being stubborn! This is simple math, baby-cakes. Werewolf equals demon, demon equals evil. We hunt evil, we kill it. End of story. Capiche?"
"Capiche this, you asshole," she answered through gritted teeth, stalking towards Dean with such a deadly glint in her eyes that he actually leaned back a little in fear. Buffy snatched the offending gun out of his hands and before he could even object, she had snapped it in two and thrown it back at him. "Things aren't always as black and white as you think they are," she said in a low voice, before turning, grabbing the tranquilizer gun and her jacket and storming towards the door.
Sam, who along with Faith had been watching the whole argument in bemusement, called out after her. "Buffy, where are you going?"
"To burn off some frustration in a nice, friendly graveyard," she barked in reply, before promptly disappearing out of the motel room door.
In the silence after her exit, Dean looked down at his broken gun pieces in disbelief, his mouth opening and closing as he tried to make sense of what had just happened. "She did not just do that!" he decided on eventually. Well, denial had worked for him before.
"Sister totally did," chimed in an amused Faith.
Huffing, Dean stood up with a determined frown set firmly on his face, fully intending on following Buffy and having this out. Unfortunately, or fortunately perhaps, Faith saw right to the center of his intentions straight away.
"Whoa there, cowboy!" she exclaimed, grabbing a hold of his sleeve to stop him from moving too far. "Take a chill pill, yeah? Give her time to calm down. Trust me when I say this is not a subject you want to get into with her when she's pissed. Hell, this ain't no subject you wanna be starting with Buffy when she's happy as a daisy."
He sighed in acceptance and pulled his arm free, moving back over to the bed to sit down. "What the hell is her damned problem, anyway? She knows the gig better than any of us. We kill demons, it's just what we do. When did she start getting all demon rights about it?"
"Being the slayer is different to being a hunter, and I don't just mean the skills thing. You have to learn that sometimes, making exceptions ain't a bad thing, and Buffy's learned that. And so will you. Sometimes, demons aren't all bad. Sometimes they are, but they can still help you out where others can't. Sometimes a demon's not a demon at all, but just a poor kid who had a real messed up thing happen to him."
Dean raised one lone eyebrow at her knowingly. "Why do I have a feeling there's a bigger story to this?"
Faith snorted. "With B? There's more than a story. More like a whole freakin' library. But these are tales you'll have to ask her about, 'cause I ain't your librarian."
"Aw, come on, Faith. You've gotta give us something. You can't just leave us hanging here like this," he wheedled.
"Dean, can't you just respect Buffy's privacy on this?" Sam spoke up for the first time since Faith and Dean had began talking. "If she wants us to know, she'll tell us herself."
"Shut up, whiney. If you don't wanna hear it you don't have to listen."
Faith looked between the two brothers', taking note of Dean's determination for answers and Sam's subtle curiosity. She sighed, knowing that she'd have to give them something. Not Spike, that was for sure. That story was private and belonged to Buffy only. And not Angel either. And not even that Anya chick. "There was this one kid she went to high school with. Oz, his name was. Nice guy. Little too quiet for my taste, but he was decent. Not judgmental like her other friends, and I appreciated that. He was bitten."
"By a werwolf?" Sam asked, his reluctance to enter the conversation soon forgotten.
"By his little cousin. Who yeah, also happened to be a werewolf. Point of the story is, Oz changed, became a werewolf three nights of every month. And each month he'd lock himself up, make sure he couldn't escape and hurt people – because that was the last thing he wanted. We even used to take it in turns to watch him. Anyway, the thing of it it, this kid had a demon inside him, but he was still a real good guy. He had this bad thing deep down, but he chose to fight it. So when Buffy tells you that not everything in this world is black and white, you better believe it. Because in this kinda life, you'll get nowhere without eventually stepping into that gray area."
As he processed Faith's words, Dean sat back against his headboard, folding his arms and biting his lip. After a long minute, he hung his head and groaned. "Guess I've managed to really piss her off again, huh?"
Faith shrugged. "Meh. Give her time to cool it. Let her patrol, burn off some energy on some vamps. She'll come back once she's had a chance to calm down. You know what she's like, she wont stay mad at you for long."
"Seriously, man. You need to stop pacing, you're making me dizzy," an annoyed Faith announced to Dean a while later as she painted her toenails on Sam's bed.
"It's been almost four hours," he replied in agitation. "Why isn't she back yet?"
"For the hundred and twenty eighth time, she's probably just out burning off some anger on some demon ass. Anger, I might add, that you caused her to have in the first place. Couldn't you tell how pissed she was when she left the room? I'm telling you, when B gets mad, she can go for hours."
"Fine, but why hasn't she at least checked in? She always checks in."
Faith grunted in irritation and twisted the lid back onto the bottle of nail polish and threw it onto the bed, reaching over for her cellphone instead. She dialed Buffy's number and after a long moment, she dropped the phone back onto the bed. "Her cell is off, probably ran out of battery or something. Happy now?"
No, actually, he wasn't. "I think I should go find her."
Sam didn't even know why he was about to bother to speak at all. Dean wouldn't hear him, not really. Not when Buffy was involved. "Faith's right," he piped up. "I'm sure Buffy's fine. She is a slayer."
Dean stopped pacing. They were probably right, he knew that. But he also knew that he was going after her. There was something inside of him that just couldn't help it. "I'll see you later," he mumbled, stuffing a stake into his back pocket and picking up an unbroken gun and a crossbow.
As he left the room, Sam looked over at Faith for a long moment. There was a sad, knowing look in her eyes, and Sam found that when she looked up at him, it was almost impossible for him to keep eye contact.
Dean was such an ass.
It didn't take Dean long to find her. It never took him long to find her.
This time, he found her in only the second cemetery her looked in. There were only three and if she hadn't of been in any of them he would have had to scale the whole town, so for this he was grateful.
He knew she was in the cemetery the second he entered through the large, metal gates – he could hear the muffled, strained sounds of a fight taking place, and he headed in that direction immediately, no doubt in his mind that it was the sound of her kicking some demon butt.
He was about a hundred feet away when he finally caught sight of her.
She was fighting four vampires on the top of a large mausoleum. Dean smiled to himself – the vampires didn't have a chance. She was quick, deadly, vicious, beautiful. All he could do was stop and stare, something that had become a habit in her company as of late.
He watched as she delivered a perfect set of punches, before twisting and ducking away from oncoming attacks. She was doing perfectly.
That was until a fifth vampire whipped up the wall of the mausoleum, flipped over the edge and landed behind her. Buffy hadn't seen the newest vampire addition as of yet, nor had she seen his big, ugly sword.
"Buffy!" Dean yelled out in warning.
It was all his fault.
When he called out her name – though his intentions were good – Buffy, surprised to hear him there, turned her head momentarily, distracted for one, tiny half of a second. That one, tiny half of a second was all it took for the vampires to gain the upper hand and take over the fight.
One vampire kicked away the tranquilizer gun she must have dropped when the fight had begun, another batted away the stake in her hand, causing it to fly away and land on the grass somewhere below them. A third span around and high kicked her in the chest.
It seemed to Dean like it all happened in slow motion after that.
One moment she was on the top of the mausoleum, the next the force of the kick had her soaring through the air and landing on the hard ground some feet away.
It hadn't been that high, and normally Buffy would have been able to simply shrug off the fall and roll back up onto her feet, ready to get back into the fight. But the sound of her head cracking against a gravestone as she landed on the floor seemed to resonate through the entire cemetery, and right through Dean's soul.
He paused for an entire second – a second that lasted so long that he could have lived right through three ordinary lives – before he was running, running faster than he'd ever ran in his entire life. "No!" he bellowed in horror as he approached her lifeless looking body.
But before he could reach her, the five vampires had jumped off the roof of the mausoleum and were surrounding her. Dean wanted to be sick.
He didn't even think about the numbers, think about the fact that he was just an ordinary man with no special powers, think about the fact that in any normal situation they would have probably overpowered him. His mind was blank as he reached for his stake.
It was only a minute later that he found himself blinking in surprise, alone and standing in a cloud of dust.
No, not alone.
"Buffy," he mumbled, dropping to his knees besides her. He rolled her over so that he could see her face. "Oh God."
There was so much blood. All clumped up in her hair and dripping down the side of her face from the nasty gash on the side of her head. Her eyes were closed and her skin had gone a deathly pale. Desperately, he placed his fingers on her pulse point, tears of relief filling his eyes when he found it was still beating, though faint at best.
"Buffy," he choked out, pulling her into his lap and shaking her gently. "Buffy...sweetheart, wake up. Please."
But she didn't, no matter how many times he begged her too.
With his tears finally released and slowly making their tracks down his cheeks, Dean gathered up Buffy into his arms and stood, turning and taking off at a run towards the cemetery gates, and out towards the nearest hospital.
Dean burst through the hospital doors with a cry of relief, out of breath from running the whole mile and a half distance from the cemetery to the hospital with an unconscious and bleeding Buffy in his arms. If only he hadn't of left his car at the motel he might have gotten there quicker.
Everyone in the room stopped what they were doing and stared up at him in shock as he made his dramatic entrance.
"Please," he gasped, heading straight over towards the woman behind the desk. "I need help. It's my...it's Buffy...she's...she's..."
The woman nodded, her eyes widening as she caught a proper look at Buffy.
As he continued to fight for his breath, and the overwhelming worry for Buffy's life, the next couple of minutes seemed to slow down to a blurry jumble for Dean – contrary to the way things had sped up earlier in the cemetery.
Later on, all he would be able to remember was the woman at the desk – Ashley, he later learned her name was – yelling a whole bunch of things and then a lot of other serious looking people arriving with a wheeley stretcher thing that Dean couldn't remember the name of for the life of him, and then they were all yelling a whole bunch of things. Then they had told him that he had to let her go and he had adamantly refused so they yelled some more and told him that if he didn't let go of her then she was probably going to die so he yelled a whole bunch of things before finally letting her go. Watching her be wheeled away from him and not following after her felt like it was probably one of the hardest things he'd ever had to do.
And then Ashley was back and getting him to fill in paperwork and asking him questions, like whether or not he and Buffy were related – husband and wife, he answered – and how exactly she had gotten such an injury in the first place. As she had asked this last question, Ashley had looked at Dean like he was nothing more than scum, and he just knew that she was thinking something sick like domestic violence, especially when she had asked him whether or not they had a good marriage. His look of disgust had been enough to spur Ashley on to other questions.
She'd asked him whether there were any other relatives that could come and sit with him, and it was only then that he remembered Faith and Sam.
Faith was almost as pale as Buffy had been when she stormed into the hospital not long later, a distressed Sam hurrying in behind her.
One look at Dean's troubled and rigid body was all it took for her to know that this time, it was bad.
He was hunched over in one of the hospital chairs, his whole body shaking violently. His hands and gray t-shirt were covered in what Faith assumed must be Buffy's blood, and there were streaks of it on his face and in his hair from where he'd been continuously running his hands through it in anxiousness.
For the first time in her life, Faith had no words. All she could do was listen as Sam did his best to get what had happened out of a disturbed Dean.
Over an hour and a half had passed and Dean, Faith and Sam were still in the waiting room of the hospital, just...waiting.
After Dean had done what he could to explain the events of the evening to Faith and Sam, he had gone back to his hunched over position and hadn't since moved. Faith, unable to sit still for any length of time while she was so nervous and agitated, had taken to pacing the small corridor, her hands balled up tightly and her face closed off. Sam had spent his time torn between sitting, getting cups of coffee for everybody, and asking the nurses and doctors whether there was any news yet.
"Anything?" Faith demanded, once Sam had returned for the sixth time.
He shook his head sadly. "No. And the nurse told me very firmly that when there is news she'll come and tell me. I think I'm beginning to piss them off."
Faith heaved a weary sigh and threw herself down onto one of the seats opposite Sam and Dean. She rubbed her hands over her face. "She has to be okay, right?"
Sam nodded, trying his hardest to work his face into a reassuring expression. "I'm sure she'll be fine." And he had to keep on repeating that to himself, otherwise he'd go crazy with worry.
Faith brought her boot clad feet up onto the seat in front of her and wrapped her arms around her legs, resting her chin on her knees. Her wide eyes stared unblinkingly down at the corridor floor and it occurred to Sam for the first time since meeting her that although she did her damnedest to hide it, Faith could actually be quite vulnerable, when it came to the right person.
"Are you okay?" he asked her.
She started and glanced over at him in surprise, shrugging helplessly. "Sure. Why wouldn't I be? I'm not the one fighting for my life."
"That's not what I meant."
"Enlighten me then."
"I mean emotionally. Just, I know how close you and Buffy are. You must be terrified for her."
The fact that Faith didn't immediately scoff the moment Sam brought up the E-word was testimony to just how upset she really was. Instead, she simply nodded slowly. "We weren't always, you know."
Sam raised his eyebrows in interest. Neither Faith nor Buffy had ever really spoke much about their history before now, but from what he'd gathered, it hadn't been all plain sailing. He'd wanted to ask but honestly, he was a little bit frightened. He knew that Buffy had been the only slayer up until Faith had come along for whatever reason. Maybe that had caused problems for the two? After all, before Buffy had cast that spell to turn all those young potential slayer girls into real slayers, two slayers existing at the same time had been unheard of. From what Sam had read, it was almost unnatural. "Go on," he encouraged. He had to admit to himself that only half of his encouragement was because he knew that she needed to talk and get it all out, and the other half was simply because he was curious.
Faith wasn't even looking in his direction when she continued. "When Buffy and I first met we tried to work together. Two slayers in one town...you'd think we'd be unstoppable, right? But there was always this rivalry between us, even if we tried to hide it. I wanted what she had, and she wanted to be the best. So what could have been a brilliant team was...well, not. And even though we were the only two people in the entire world who could relate to each other, really understand what the other was going through...we were never close. And then I snapped. Did a whole world of bad things, and you know what?"
"What?"
"She still tried to save me. Kept on trying to save me until the only other thing she could do was kill me."
Even Dean pulled himself out of his stupor at this.
"As much as it pains me to say this, I had it coming," Faith admitted. "Buffy's job was to destroy evil, and I was evil. And obviously it didn't work, 'cause here I am, alive and kicking. So anyway, I did my best to ruin her life even more before finally realizing just what the hell I'd become – oh yeah, after she'd saved my life, once again. And then I did my time, went back to Sunnyhell and helped B and her crew save the damned world. You did hear about Sunnydale, right?"
"It was a Hellmouth, wasn't it?" Sam answered. "Yeah, Buffy told me all about it."
"So get this, after we shut it down, all of Buffy's little Scooby Gang just expected me to pick up and leave, right. They told me I'd done my job and I didn't need to stick around any longer than necessary. A couple of weeks before, they'd been electing me their freakin' leader so this was a giant kick in the teeth, I can tell ya. But Buffy says to them all – and this was after all the crap I'd put her through over the years – she says 'If Faith goes, I go'. Just like that. No one's ever stuck up for me like that before. Never. Not without wanting something in return. That girl's been there for me in ways that no one else ever has. I love her, you know? Love her to pieces. She's my family, and I just can't lose her, okay? I just can't."
Sam swallowed, his emotions running high. Faith had never shared anything like this with him. Ever. "You won't," he promised. "You won't lose her."
If only he could guarantee his words.
It had been a long while since Dean had stopped hoping that when Sam came back from one of his walks, this time he'd bring some actual news. So when he heard the sounds of his brother's returning footsteps for the thirty six millionth time, he didn't even bother to look up to gauge Sam's expression. Not even when his brother came to a halt right in front of him.
"Dean," Sam cajoled softly.
Dean ignored him. Sam was probably just trying to force another disgusting hospital coffee down his throat or was going to suggest that he go back to the motel and get a shower and a rest. He'd suggested the same thing at least five times now. How many times did a guy have to say no already? He knew he looked half dead, he knew he was covered in blood and beginning to freak other people out. He just didn't care.
"Dean." Sam's tone was more insistent this time. "Dean!"
Dean finally raised his head, but only in annoyance. "Sam, for the love of God, I'm not leaving this hospital! I don't give a flying crap if I look like hell and I don't give a flying crap what you say-" He stopped ranting as the shit-eating grin on Sam's face finally registered in his brain. "What are you so happy about?"
"She's stable."
Dean unfolded himself from the chair and stood up abruptly. "What?"
"Buffy's stable. I mean, she's still conked out on drugs and all but she's gonna be okay, man." Sam laughed gleefully. "The doctors think it's some kind of miracle, the way she's healing so fast. Of course, we could explain that she possesses mystical slayer healing abilities but I don't think they'd quite understand..."
The rest of Sam's happy babbling was drowned out by the other voice taking over Dean's mind. The voice yelling 'She's okay. She's okay! She's okay!'
"I need to see her," Dean choked out, interrupting the one sided conversation Sam was still having. "Can we see her? Hell, I don't even care, I'll see her anyway. Yeah, I'm gonna see her."
"Dean, calm down a minute will you? Yes, we're allowed to go in and see her, but only one person at a time. Faith was there when we got the news so she's gone in first. We'll take it in turns to sit with Buffy until she wakes up, okay?"
Dean nodded and sat back down slowly. He wanted to see Buffy now, but he couldn't begrudge Faith her own time with her. He'd just have to wait his turn.
Man, this was gonna be hard.
True to Sam's promise, he, Faith and Dean all took turns sitting with Buffy while she slept. Once Dean had seen and spent time with her and had been reassured that she was in fact going to make it, he finally agreed to head on back to the motel room to take a shower. He even allowed himself a whole one hours sleep before making his way back to the hospital.
Despite desperately wanting to be, it wasn't Dean who was there when she finally woke up, it was Sam. After chatting with her for a while and letting her know how much he'd missed her, Sam excused himself so that somebody else could go in and see her while she was still awake. And as Faith had gone back to the motel to rest up for a little while, this somebody else happened to be Dean.
With his heart fluttering madly in his chest, he pushed open the door to her room.
Hearing the squeak of the door, Buffy turned her head slightly in curiosity. When she saw who it was she broke out into a luminous smile. "Hey," she greeted weakly.
Dean turned his head. Nope, there was no one behind him. That smile really was for him. How could she be looking at him so warmly after what he'd done? "Hey you," he replied, his voice slightly hoarse.
Buffy motioned for him to come closer. After he had taken the seat next to her bed, she grabbed his hand and laced her fingers through his. "Sam told me what happened," she informed him, having no problems with getting straight down to business. "You saved my life."
The sweet smile she sent his way caused Dean's heart to ache, and he shook his head and tried to remove his hand. Buffy would have none of it, however, and simply held on tighter. "You wouldn't have needed saving if it wasn't for me."
Buffy frowned at him and let out a frustrated sigh. "Dean Winchester, don't even think of blaming yourself for this!"
"But if I hadn't of called your name out like I did-"
"Then I would have been shishkabobbed by that sword. And in past experiences I've found a little bump to the head to be much less hassle than a sword through the chest."
"But-"
"No buts, Dean," she declared, interrupting him once again. "Listen to me, okay? I'm the slayer. And in case you haven't noticed this fun and interesting fact, I kinda face danger on an annoyingly every day basis. It's just in the job description. And yeah, sometimes I'm gonna get hurt, and sometimes it's gonna be worse than other times. This time happened to have been pretty bad, I'll admit that. But look at me now, I'm fine, I'm gonna be okay. And if you hadn't of gotten me to the hospital when you did, you'd be dealing with one dead Buffy right about now. Which is a whole lot worse than just a bang on the head Buffy, right?"
Throughout Buffy's entire speech, the weight on Dean's shoulders had literally been slipping away as his whole body relaxed. She didn't blame him! Just when he thought this girl couldn't get any more wonderful than her pain in the ass little self already was, she went and did or said something like this – something that made him feel like a whole lot better or of a person, a whole lot more of a man. His shoulders sagged as the tension he'd been feeling over the past couple of days left his bofy and he pulled her hand up to his mouth to place little kisses over her fingertips. "You have no idea how frightened I was," he growled into her hand, before sighing and laying his head down on her bed. He kept a hold of her hand, and wrapped his other arm around her thighs. "I can't lose you."
"You won't," a touched Buffy assured him, his words causing her heart to thump harder in her chest.
"Vampires suck," he said a moment later, his voice sounding muffled.
Buffy giggled and let out an unladylike snort. "Literally."
"That's what mean. Vampires are supposed to rip open your neck and suck your blood. And what are these guys doing? Pushing girls off of walls. Yeah, they're the big bad alright."
"Hmm, true. Their standards are really slipping."
Dean chuckled, and snuggled his head further into her thin hospital blanket. He looked exhausted, and Buffy knew him well enough by now to know exactly why. Like with everything that went wrong in any of their lives, he blamed himself for her accident, and the guilt had been eating him up inside – keeping him from eating, sleeping, even resting. And now she had successfully removed that guilt from him, he was exhausted. He couldn't even keep his eyes open.
A moment later, Buffy heard the sound of Dean snoring softly as he slipped into a deep slumber. She smiled to herself and closed her eyes, letting her fingers rest softly entwined in his hair. They both needed to rest, and she'd rather do it with him than on her own.
"Jeez Buff, if I got a dollar for every scrape you've gotten yourself into lately I'd be a whole lot richer than I've ever been," Faith commented lightly as she sat down in the now empty chair next to Buffy's bed later that afternoon, after Buffy had finally managed to persuade Dean to go back to the motel to get a proper nights rest.
Buffy watched Faith with knowing eyes. Her tone of voice was jokey, but there was a seriousness in her eyes that let Buffy know just how relieved Faith was that she was okay, even if she did have a little trouble getting it out verbally.
She took a hold of Faith's hand, and Faith instantly closed her mouth from whatever nonsense she had been about to babble. Her eyes moistened and she let out a sniff, making sure to look anywhere else but at her hospitalized friend, although her hand did squeeze Buffy's back so tightly that it almost hurt.
That action alone meant more to Buffy than any number of words ever could.
Dean made his way through the hospital, taking a route he'd memorized perfectly over the past few days since Buffy had been moved to another room after she'd woken up. As much as he just wanted to take her away from here, he didn't mind making these visits. Hell, he'd stay in the damned hospital twenty four hours a day if only Buffy would let him. But he knew Buffy wasn't happy here – unsurprising since she hated hospitals so much – and so he was glad that they'd be able to leave with her the next day.
When he arrived at Buffy's room, whistling cheerfully, he was extremely perturbed to find her balling out her pretty little eyes. His whistle faded like a dying out firework.
"Angel-face, what's wrong?" he asked urgently, moving swiftly towards her bed and running a hand over her hair. "Are you in pain? Did one of the doctors upset you? Or one of the nurses? Or a patient? Because I'll kick their ass, I swear, even if they are sick."
Buffy shook her head at his questions and gestured towards the laptop sitting on the bed. Dean hadn't even noticed it in his haste. "Sam let me borrow it so I wouldn't get bored," she explained. "I was watching a movie." She dabbed a tissue underneath her eyes and blew her nose. "It's so sad!"
"Oh," Dean replied slowly, rolling his eyes as her explanation processed in his mind. He let go of her and sat down in the chair near her bed, shaking his head and muttering 'women' under his breath.
"Hey!" Buffy grumbled. "I heard that, jerk face."
"Let me guess," Dean said, his tone of voice mocking. "It's a film about a pretty boy and a hot girl and a whole lot of pansy-show-you-nothing lovin', tears, heartbreak and a good ol' happy ending. Am I right?"
Buffy pffted at his accusations. "No. It's sort of a love triangle. It's very moving, and also kinda cheesy."
He snorted in bemusement. "Sounds fantabulous. Please tell me, whatever is the name of this heartbreakingly beautiful motion picture? Actually, unless it's called 'Three In A Bed', I'm not sure I wanna know."
"Actually it's called 'Kal Ho Naa Ho. It's Indian," she added, when Dean raised a questioning eyebrow in her direction.
"Subtitled?"
"Yuh huh."
"I didn't know you could read."
"Ha ha ha, Dean's a comedian."
"Well I gotta tell you, beautiful, it sounds absolutely riveting," he teased dryly. "Positively tear-jerking."
"Did you know that sarcasm is the lowest form of social conduct?"
"And yet it's my favorite form of wit."
Realizing that her not so persuasive manner was getting nowhere in convincing him, Buffy huffed and moved over as far as she could towards the edge of the bed.
"What are you doing?" Dean inquired curiously.
"Moving over so that you can come up here and watch the film with me."
"Ha!" he scoffed. "Like hell am I watching some soppy chick flick crap. I'd rather eat beetles."
"You totally are watching this movie with me. Just 'cause I'm in a hospital bed doesn't mean I'm not strong enough to hurl you up here. And if you're not watery eyed by the end of the movie I'll give you a hundred dollars."
"But you've just watched it," he pointed out.
Buffy shrugged. "I could watch it again. It was a good movie. And I missed half of it because the tears were in the way."
"There's not enough room on the bed." His excuses were getting more pitiful by the second.
Buffy rolled her eyes. "Why do you think I just moved up? Just squash up next to me, dumbo." She patted the tiny little space next to her.
Dean heaved out a giant sigh, pretending to be annoyed as he conceded. But honestly, he'd just realized that by watching the movie, he'd get the perfect excuse to get up close with Buffy, and now he was cursing himself for fighting her over it in the first place.
He moved over towards her and slid into the bed next to her. There really wasn't enough space for the two of them on the tiny hospital bed, so Dean, smiling gleefully to himself, pulled Buffy carefully into his arms.
He had to refrain from yelling out in triumph when she didn't pull away, but snuggled in even closer to his warm chest.
As the end credits ran down the length of the laptop screen, Buffy was doing her damned hardest not to let out a hysterical giggle.
A helplessly damp eyed Dean was lying next to her, holding his breath and biting down hard on his lip to try and hide his emotional state.
"So," she said casually. "Did you like the movie?"
He shrugged nonchalantly. "Was okay."
His could-care-less attitude was ruined when he let out an unforgiving sniff.
