"So, I hear Anne Hathaway is making a move on Chris Hemsworth."

Buffy dragged her spoon through the half-melted, butter pecan-chocolate fudge combo. She still hadn't taken a bite. "That's nice."

Justin shook his head, more amused than annoyed. "Buffy, where are you?"

It had never occurred to Buffy that demon hunting could possibly lead to a meet cute. She had watched most of the Julia Roberts-Meg Ryan-Sandra Bullock required chick flicks, and no one had ever been drenched in monster guts prior to the all important happily ever after fadeout.

It had been a fairly standard patrol night, when she had heard the sounds of a struggle on a side street.. The poor guy had apparently just finished food shopping as his groceries were spilled onto the ground. A vampire already had his fangs buried by the time she got there. As soon as he was dust, his victim had slid to the ground, pale and shaking.

"That was a vampire," he finally choked out.

"Yeah." Most people were in denial about what had actually happened to them, but on the rare occasions that someone recognized the truth, Buffy didn't find it productive to sugar coat.

Once he was steady enough on his feet, she walked the man back to his house after helping him pick up his spilled purchases. During the walk, she discreetly gave him a once over. He had a mop of light brown curly hair that kept falling into his eyes, a medium build and at least one dimple. He told her his name was Justin, but mostly he was quiet, obviously still somewhat in shock over the incident.

"Take it easy for a day or so and drink OJ, eat some cookies. You'll be fine. Maybe a sexy scar."

"You sure I won't turn into a vampire?"

"Not to worry, he has to drink from you, you have to drink from him. Kind of like sharing bubblegum and spit when you were a kid, but even grosser. Now if that had been a werewolf, you would have been in trouble."

"There are werewolves?" he said weakly.

"So you believe in vampires but not werewolves? Seems a bit speciest to me."

They had made it to his house, so she turned to go.

"Wait, what's your name?"

"Buffy," she said with a smile and a nod.

"Thank you, Buffy, for saving my life."

Two days later he called her. That he had tracked her down was impressive, there wasn't a yellow pages listing for monster hunter. However, the school's landline was listed under Buffy Summers, and she suspected that there weren't a heck of a lot of Buffys out in the world. (Buffy had heard of Buffy Saint Marie but she wasn't even sure who she was, or if Ms Saint Marie was alive, and if she was, Buffy doubted that her number was listed.) So, when Xander had picked up the phone and yelled that some guy was on the line for her, Buffy's curiosity was piqued. Justin insisted on taking her out to dinner (it was the least he could do, he made that clear) and they had really hit it off.

They had been together a little over a month now. It was different from any other relationship she'd ever had, and she liked that. For one thing, Justin knew about her day job (well, technically a night job), and was fine with it, but had absolutely no desire to become a part of it. He was more than happy being an optometrist.

"Buffy?" he repeated, a little louder.

She finally heard him, and pinked a bit. "Sorry. I know I've been distracted. Work issue, that's all." A six foot tall, broad shouldered, suddenly not dead, not even undead work issue.

His eyes widened a bit. "Should I learn how to use a battle ax?" Justin frowned, apparently thinking about this in more depth. "What is a battle ax anyway? And since a regular ax can cut down extremely large trees, why would you need a special one?"

"Ah, I think battle axes are used by Vikings? Occasionally trolls." She shrugged, with an expression that indicated this was not her area of expertise.

His demeanor immediately shifted. "I don't even know how to use a regular ax," Justin admitted. "I will continue to let you deal with ax usage. Ax slayage? Ax beheading?" Justin shook his head a bit, obviously having no desire to delve into whatever Buffy actually did with an ax.. "Maybe just talking about whatever has you worried could be useful?"

She saw his obvious concern and she was tempted. Maybe a different perspective would be helpful.

She was still checking out that spotted demon for Andrew. It looked like there was a vampire nest a couple of towns over that had to be dealt with. Two people had been murdered recently. That one seemed to be a human perpetrator, but they needed to make sure. One of the girls had gotten into a fight with another girl. And just the usual difficulties of dealing with a hundred plus young women. But as she ran through the list, she immediately discounted sharing any of it with him. It wasn't something he should have to deal with.

"It's just the usual basically. It's just hard to fit everything in that needs to be done." She took a bite of her butter pecan, chocolate fudge ice cream combo.

He nodded sympathetically.

"You know what, though," she said thoughtfully. "Maybe there is something you could help with. A sounding board would be useful no matter what."

"Fire away. I'm all ears."

She couldn't help but smile at his enthusiasm. "It's a bit out of the ordinary. Of course, a lot of my life is out of the ordinary, but this is non-normal unordinary." She explained further, "It's a person."

"Well, when you have a house full of teenage girls, I guess, you're bound to have some drama."

"Honestly, you're not wrong about that. Two weeks ago Nadia accused Iris of taking her favorite stake…" She trailed off when she saw the look Justin was giving her. "But that's not what I was referring to," she hurriedly added.

"Someone I knew from high school showed up at the school."

"At the risk of getting smacked, wouldn't that have been a while ago?"

"Yeah, it is."

"She just showed up at your doorstep? No warning?"

"Actually, it's a he. And yup." Buffy could see Justin slowly thinking through the possible implications of this.

"And you used to be in the same classes together?" The question was asked in a careful, measured tone.

"No, no, we didn't share any classes. We were in some of the same after school activities." Basically introduction to demon slaying and cemetery smooching 101. "He moved after senior year."

"So, you lost touch at that point?"

"We traded Christmas cards for a few years." Buffy told herself this was just a white lie. A once a year kiss was pretty similar, wasn't it? Both were kind of a "hello, how are you" kind of thing. Except Christmas cards rarely made your knees buckle. "But we lost contact, and it's been close to a decade." This was the important part in her eyes. The rest was just unnecessary complications.

"What does he want?"

Buffy shrugged. "Don't know."

"Don't you think you should ask?"

She shrugged again, letting a drop of the chocolate fudge drip off the spoon into the butter pecan sludge. It looked vaguely like a dark brown eye staring expectantly at her. She stabbed her spoon into the bowl and stirred the entire mess into a uniform color.

"I mean, I'm planning on it," she defended herself, "but it's just been a very busy week. Willow invited him to stay, so for now he's living at the school. We have the room."

Justin steepled his fingers, deep in thought. "I would assume he came to your location for a reason. Maybe he has a supernatural problem and hasn't known how to bring it up, since it's obvious you have other priorities?"

"That's a thought." Considering that Angel had actually been a supernatural problem for over a century, and that he and his team had spent their time solving supernatural problems, she pretty much doubted it though. There was also the Gabrielle portion of the equation. Since that first time she had seen them together, they had eaten lunch and dinner together every day, always off in a corner. The two of them engaged in intense conversation (to be totally fair, mostly it was Gabrielle doing the conversing. Angel tended to simply listen.), both of them staring at the other, ignoring everyone else in the room. Buffy looked down at her ice cream. It seemed very unappealing.

She smiled across the table at Justin and abruptly stood up. "Do you want to leave? I think we should leave. I'm in the mood for a lot less people."

"Is that so?" he said, smirking.

"Your place. Let's go to your place."

"One of these days," he said, following her out the door, "I am going to insist on going to your place."

—-—-

As always, as Buffy approached the school, she felt a familiar tension take hold of her. Was anyone awake? And if they were, would they be able to figure out that she had been on a date? Five years after the initial activation of the potentials, a year and a half after Angel and Spike were presumed dead, she had started seeing a young man named Kevin. Before the third date, word had somehow spread around the school and her love life became a topic for speculation. Whenever she walked into a room, conversation stopped. When she was eating dinner, the younger slayers were constantly eyeing her and looking away. A fifth date never occurred, she just couldn't deal with being the object of so much fascination. Both Dawn and Willow had tried to put her mind at ease. It wasn't done out of maliciousness, but as the number one slayer, everything she did held meaning. Buffy didn't care what the reason was, she hated it. As a result, whenever she dated, she took pains to make sure no one outside of the original scoobies had a clue. One of the big problems in running an all girl school was that half the time it felt like she was auditioning for "Gossip Girl". She didn't need her love life to be the starring role of rumor central.

She pulled into the area on the left side in the front of the house that had been turned into a defacto parking lot. None of the vehicles were brand new, but fortunately a few of the girls had an interest in cars, and unless there was a major issue they were able to take care of the maintenance. Buffy could see that Luisa and Olga were on the bench that sat to the right of the front door. They were taking advantage of the nice night by engaging in some major smooching, but had stopped when they saw Buffy approach.

"Hey Buffy," Olga called out.

"Hi Olga. Hi Luisa." Internally Buffy relaxed. Olga and Luisa were among the more experienced slayers and whether it was their relative age or just lack of interest, she knew they would not be starting any scuttlebutt about her love life. The whispers had finally died down about Angel, she didn't need them to start up again. Still, she remained on high alert.

Buffy slipped her key into the lock and silently opened the front door. She took a step inside, and was brought up short. Angel was sitting there, staring at her.

"What are you doing here?" she hissed at him. "I don't appreciate people spying on me. My private life is private." Her stomach clenched. She liked Justin, and she didn't want to have to break up with him because she was suddenly news of the day.

He opened his mouth as if to say something and then snapped it shut again. Shame crossed his features as he hung his head.

She stormed into the kitchen with her arms crossed over her chest, eyes flashing in anger. She stood for a moment and then marched over to one of the cabinets and grabbed a glass. Turning the sink on, she let it run for a moment. After filling her glass and gulping some water, she found herself calming down.

Now that she was in a more rational state of mind, she wondered if she might have done some conclusion jumping. Why would he have any idea that she was still out? And even if he knew she was, why would it mean anything other than an exceptionally long night of slaying. Wouldn't be the first time. She bit her lip, suddenly feeling foolish.

She stepped back out of the kitchen and walked back to the entryway. Angel had vanished, but the chair he had taken from the dining room had been left behind.

It was then that she noticed the chair was angled funny, definitely not facing the front door. She turned and followed the chair's sight line right to the big bay window. The sun was just breaking over the horizon.

"Damn it," she muttered as she dragged the chair back to where it belonged.