Stupid Things

By Sweetprincipale

Completely AU. There are people who get inside you. That you love, that you get angry with, but they're still your person. The person who, no matter what they ask, and how much you say no, you will end up doing anything for them. Buffy and William have that kind of relationship as they grow up. Is there anything that can change it?

Author's Note: This story is told in a series of moments, sometimes minutes apart, sometimes months apart. Page breaks denote the shift in time.

Author's Second Note: I apologize for some confusion/ wrong conclusions readers may have experienced in the last chapter. I hope that by reading through this, things become clear.

Author's Third Note: There is a small section of the previous chapter leading off this chapter. You're still in the right place. All due credit to Nickel, for use of their lyrics to Stupid Thing.

Dedicated to Illusera, Tesslouise, Omslagspapper, JM89, AGriffinWriter, Rihannon, Jhiz, The Darkness Befalls, TieDyeJackson, Sirius120, and Ginar369.

Nothing of Buffy belongs to me, except my sincere admiration. However, this story is all mine.

Part III

"What exactly do you want with me?" He trailed her through shadows and street corners, into the underbelly of sewers where her dress caught the edges of water and made him a trail of wet sweeping marks to follow.

His questions and calls were usually met with giggles. This was all some merry chase to her, a game, or maybe a ritual, cat and mouse, perhaps. Only, he was losing track of the positions of predator and prey. Why was he trying to catch her, when she'd come to catch him?

"I'm done runnin'!" He finally bellowed. "You come to me an' you settle this, you're the one who started it!" He gripped the stake in his hand.

Footsteps stopped ahead. A whisper of a rustle, and something slammed into him in the dark, knocking him back against dark walls. He struggled to sit her up, keeping her teeth from his neck.

"Don't be cross, Sweet William." She purred and pouted. "I didn't think it hurt you the last time." Her hands freed themselves from his grip, and one cool finger touched the scar that wouldn't fade. "I think you liked it. You like the snip snap, the little bit of pain in your pleasure. I felt you press against me, flower between the pages of a book." Her other hand found his and led it down between her thighs, up into the hollow space where her dress bunched around his fist. "Pressed between, you long for that. Aren't you between, life and death, and dark and light? Lost lamb. I know what it's like, you see." She gently kissed his earlobe and rocked against his fingers as he pulled away.

"You wanna bite me, bite me, but don't dress it up."

Now the voice shook, carefully controlled madness mixed with rejection. "Don't tell lies to me. I see inside your pretty mind. And oh-" the voice lilted, enraptured, "it is pretty. Ever so beautiful." Now she was looking at the cement culvert overhead, but speaking to the heavens. "He's glowing. But is it sunshine you want, or do you like the stars?"

He swallowed. There were stars in her eyes. Big, blue stars, and they weren't- they weren't cold like other vampiric eyes he'd seen in his two odd years of battling alongside Buffy. She was special. And maybe she was partially right. How he pressed to her, the last time, how he had followed her this time, maybe it meant something.

"You're the stars, aren't you?" William asked. Drusilla nodded eagerly. "I'm not the sun. I'm not stars, either." The stake shifted from coat to hand silently- but he'd never realized silent is relative to the listener. Drusilla smacked his wrist sharply and the stake fell beside him.

"You have to choose." Drusilla grinned. "No taking the easy way out." She snapped the words off as his weapon rolled just out of reach.

"Who said it was easy?" His hands tangled with hers, but they weren't pulling away this time. They reached up, stroked her raven hair, and pallid skin. She was cold and dark, the ocean at night, waiting for him to swim in dangerous waters.

"So lonesome. I need light. His fire's gone all out, you see." Drusilla half crawled into his lap.

"Angel?"

"Shh. Angel killed my Angelus. Lord and Master. Oh, such a wicked, wicked master." She shivered deliciously, eyes shuttered in pleasure. When they opened, they were curiously fixed on his. "You're quite wicked yourself."

He swallowed. "Depends on your definition of wicked, princess."

She whispered in his ear, dark deeds he'd dreamed of, dark thoughts that came to him unbidden, of blood and lust, death and pain, all mixed together in poetic confusion. "You're not truly wicked. Oh, you could be wicked, fully wicked. You've talents in there, my William, untold talents. You've been hurt so much, and you'll be terrible in your vengeance." Drusilla whispered gleefully. He began to protest, and she shushed him, finger gently on his lips. "Not now. You're simply longing for what you want, any way you can have it. And since you don't know what you want, that's going to be the fun part..." her finger caressed down his chin, as her lips came out, "...finding out."

She's wrong. William let himself be kissed, he kissed back, and this time when she started opening to him, he didn't pull away.

I know what I want. I want Buffy. I want this to be Buffy. All of this. Her fangs sank into his neck, much less violently then he'd imagined, as his body sank into hers.

His eyes closed, and mouth opened, gasping out, "Buffy..."

"I don't like when you say her name like that. You're only supposed to have eyes for me- and if you don't, I'll pluck them out and send them to her." Drusilla scolded her reluctant lover as he whispered another's name.

Maybe this is what Buffy means- the edge. The bad urges an' the good feelings... but the truth wins, doesn't it? "I love her, I don't love you." William was honest, even though he was clinging onto this dark beauty, pushing into her as she bore down on him.

"Naughty. You won't feel that way when she's dead, though. You'll learn. You'll learn it's nothing to do with love."

"What's it to do with, then?"

"Pleasure." She squeezed him. "Pain." She tore the skin of his brow with a sudden gouging nail. When he winced, she purred like a jungle cat. "Giving the demon its due."

"Why's it due... anything?" Will asked. Blood poured over his eye and down his collar now. The monster on top of him changed from blue eyes to amber and lapped at both punctures in his skin.

"Gives you life, you give it life. But the lives are both taken in death. It's a circle of life and death, a rose and a thorn."

"What happens if- you don't feed it life?"

"Oh, you have to. Give it blood or it gets cranky and weak and it won't come to tea on Tuesdays."

Sorting the nonsense from the fact, William asked another question. "Angel lives off of beef blood. He's in control of his demon, isn't he?"

She snarled and nipped at him. "Soul curse. We don't have those."

"Well, I like my ruddy soul." William snarled back. The blood loss made him light headed, and her body confused his, but he remembered one thing. He needed to get out of this okay, 'cause he promised it to Buffy, years ago. Hafta be okay... Have to make it back...

"You won't miss it. I did at first, but it's only until the demon wakes the first time."

He feigned consideration, time to distract her, as well as genuine curiosity. "An' then it's better?"

"Yes, you'll wake up, so hungry, so very, very hungry. But mummy'll have treats for you, Sweet William. I'll even share the Slayer with you, make you grow up big and strong." She reached down and caressed his length between the movements inside her. "Very big, indeed, the blood of a Slayer... they say it'll do things to you, make you invincible. We'll drink her together. I'll be queen, you be my dark prince?"

His eyes fluttered dangerously, the blackness of the tunnel seemed even more black than before. "Not gonna- hurt... the Slayer."

"You won't. The demon will." This seemed to excite her, and she rocked forward to him, head bowed to his as she whispered eagerly, "You'll be fading away, and the demon will rule."

"Not... me."

"Brave boy, you can think it all you want, but your first kill- you won't be able to help it. The hunger is something you can't fight. No. Options." She bit his ear smartly between words. "Play. By. The. Demon's. Rules."

"I... don't give... a fuck... for the... rules!"

She felt his hands pull back for balance- and something else. She shrieked and screeched, pulling off of him, and then flying back onto him, this time in pure rage as she realized what he was doing.

"Use me, will you? How dare you play with the gifts I offer you?" She seemed genuinely distraught, and William could see again how glaring her madness was.

"It's not a gift, is it?" William staked her, only in the shoulder as they were grappling before she fully had the advantage again. "It's not a gift to me, it's a gift to you! You're lonely- buy a soddin' parakeet!"

The last thing he remembered was her hand wheeling hard across his face as she yanked the stake free. He realized as the world swam that his attempt to stand failed, and concrete tunnels rushed up to meet him.

Angel winced at the scents. Blood. Sex. Drusilla and William. Disgusting. This patch of the tunnel was full of it. He rumbled in his throat, anger boiling in him. Multiple types of anger.

Incredulous. He's supposed to be her best friend, what the hell is he doing sticking it to Drusilla? She wants to kill Buffy! What kind of best friend sleeps with the person trying to kill you?

Remorseful. She might have done things to him, to make him think ... to make him think anything.I saw what she did to Giles to make him talk, make him think he was talking to someone he trusted... I taught her how to play the worst kind of mind games. She probably made him think he was making love to Buffy.

Jealousy. I bet that was it. I bet he wants that bad enough to let her do anything she wants. She bit him. I bet he didn't even mind. Freak.

Concerned. What am I doing? What am I saying? Buffy's going to die when she finds out William's been bit. What if he's dead? Oh, please, please don't let him be dead. Or if he is dead, let him stay dead. No one should have to stake their best friend...

"You sit right there. You're not quite done yet." Drusilla pressed him into a chair, roping his wrists to it loosely, and then laid her head to his chest. Stubborn heart. Still boom-thudding away, though it seemed ever softer, and the breathing was out of tune. "I hope you'll be ready by the time dinner arrives. I could speed it up, but I do so hate when we fight. You look so much lovelier like this. My sleeping angel." She kissed his forehead, licked his bleeding brow, and fussed around him, cooing a little lullaby in her demented cross between mother, lover, and captor. The word "angel" earned a quirking of his lips, even as he was dying.

"You're right, you can't be that. Nor a devil, for you have too much of the sunshine in you... You're the edge between them, that little spike of darkness in the light, and light in the blackness. Somebody's fly in the ointment, too."

"No." A voice from the stairwell made Drusilla straighten up quickly and face the sound. "That'd be me." Buffy, pale and pissed off looking, stood in the shadows, ready to shoot her crossbow from the hip once Drusilla was away from her best friend.

"Naughty girl, you came in without knocking." Drusilla vamped and put herself between the boy and the Slayer.

Buffy's lips tightened as Drusilla seemed to guard her prize. "No one was home." Buffy shrugged innocently, walking down the steps slowly, holding a heavy crossbow in her hand, keeping it from shaking with effort that caused her muscles to scream.

"You're ruining my tea party. You're too early." Drusilla said petulantly.

"Well, you kinda screwed up my birthday party- twice. Give Will back and let's call it even." Buffy tried not to faint when she looked past the figure, blood soaked and spattered white dress bearing evidence of what she'd done to the slumped figure in the chair, himself now a mess of black and white and blood red. "You- let me get him out of here, and I'll let you walk out of here." A dangerous bargain to make, but she didn't care. Will would do it for her. There are people you put above everyone else, even when you know you shouldn't...

It didn't matter. Drusilla wouldn't cooperate. "He won't be your friend soon. He'll be my Sweet William, my Spike, shining up, all through me." Her hands ran down the front of her dress, over breasts and past her thighs, looking hungrily enraptured.

Buffy blanched. "What do you mean soon?" I heard her talking to him. So he can't be dead. Unless he's undead. Or she just felt like talking to him, because, hey she's looney and she's a dead person, too. I don't see any real barriers to conversation after all.

"His heart beat for you, once." Drusilla purred. A smarter demon would have made the kill and been done. She was trained by Angelus. A good kill is never worth as much as a good time, he'd taught her that, and so she danced them round. "But when his heart is still, it'll belong to me. Always."

"I don't think so." Buffy whispered, coming closer. Risky, but she had no aim, was losing strength as she spoke. The shot had to be short range, dead through the heart. "You don't know him like I do."

"You don't know him as much as you think you do..." The vampire made a pirouette suddenly, and launched herself into Buffy, yellow eyes and slick fangs manifesting. "Boo."

There was grappling in the foyer of the ground floor, and stillness in the dilapidated parlor where William slumped, heart pumping more slowly by the second.

Moments passed, not many, but to Buffy, they seemed like hours. She was so focused on the man in front of her, that she forgot about the men who'd been behind her in their various roles. There seemed to be splintering in unison, doors breaking down or smashing in.

Angel came up from the basement, Giles came in through the front, hellbent on helping save Buffy.

They didn't expect her to be more concerned about saving William.

"Buffy!" Giles shouted, bursting in, as Angel yelled, "Buffy, look out!"

Confusion, shouting, sunlight. Angel and Drusilla both in its harmful rays, temporarily splitting the foursome, humans in the light, Angel by the basement door, Drusilla retreating towards the dark, creaking stairwell. Only one figure didn't move.

"Buffy, finish it!" Angel tossed her a stake once he observed her weaponless state. He motioned her frantically to cross the sun's path and follow the demon.

Buffy ignored him and turned away from both vampires, after something different and more important than revenge or duty. "Will? Will! Will, Will, Will, William!" Her frantic cries increased in tempo and desperation, though they went unanswered as she pushed past debris to her bound friend.

Giles saw what had occurred for the first time. Stricken, he was immobile for a second, then he moved with lightning speed to his nephew's side. "Will? Come along, now, Will, look at me..." He took his wrist in hand and passed Buffy a handkerchief to press to the slowly trickling neck wounds. "He's been badly bitten, but he has a pulse!"

"Thank God."

"Buffy!" Angel called, but there was no reaction to his panicked tone as Drusilla's footsteps were heard on the groaning boards overhead. With an impatient sigh he pulled his long leather coat over his face and sprinted through the shafts of afternoon sun to chase down the vampire.

"Do you have your car?" Buffy asked as Giles half carried, half dragged the unconscious body.

"I did, I came from Travers' hotel. Arrogant bastard wouldn't listen to reason, I- I thought perhaps I could -"

"Come over and take care of the crazy vampire for me? Seems like you Giles men have a dangerous streak when it comes to women." Buffy tried to joke through her tears.

"No, darling." His own face was wet, tears and sweat mingling. "Only when it comes to you."

She escaped out of boarded windows, scorching in the sun until she rolled and hid, quaking with pain and anger in the bushes, then running again, for the tunnels. Angel followed closed behind, but never quite caught up with her. He told himself it was because he knew it was more important to get back to Buffy, but he also knew how much old pains make you lie.

"Your actions are reprehensible on multiple counts."

"I don't care." Giles stonily stared down the unwelcome presence in the empty hospital waiting room. "This is not the time, nor the place."

"It doesn't matter, time and place are immaterial at this moment. I'm sorry for your nephew's involvement, but that is one of the key factors I wish to address."

"I'm getting my strength back." Buffy said tonelessly from behind her Watcher. "You should leave before I kick your tweedy ass."

"Nonetheless." Travers smiled coldly at her, then looked icily at Giles. "First, the preparations for the test- you failed to administer the medication properly. You failed to keep the element of surprise necessary to accurately gauge a Slayer's abilities under fire. You argued with the testing protocol. Secondly, the administration of the actual test. You encouraged mutinous behavior in your Slayer. You failed to keep civilians out of the testing area. You tried to usurp the Council's will and attempted to fight in your Slayer's place."

Buffy looked at Giles as these points were tolled from the stern-faced head of Council.

It was like she'd never really seen her Watcher before. All the time we spend watching and looking- and not really seeing, huh? "You- did all that for me?"

He didn't reply. Travers shook his head. "You are no longer an 'objective' Watcher."

"I am hopeful that no one would be 'objective' in the scenario I witnessed unfolding today." Giles replied, back ramrod stiff, eyes unflinching.

"You are relieved of your duties, effective immediately. You have grown to love your charge, and are therefore no longer to be trusted in assigning her tasks."

"No. That makes him the only one I trust to assign me anything." Buffy came forward slowly, and took Giles' hand. "You can relieve him all you want, but this man-" her fingers gripped his tighter, "will always be my Watcher."

Travers was unmoved. "Ms. Summers, yes, on to you. Your test results are inconclusive. You reached the house within the time limit, that is, on your 18th birthday while still under the effects of the medication. You attempted to fight the target unassisted. It is my belief that you didn't ask anyone to fight in your place. You lost the vampire, Drusilla, but you saved the life of an innocent man by rushing him to the hospital. You did fail to prevent his attack, but that in part is due to Council error."

"You mean the part where the guards were eaten, and the vampire got loose?" Buffy glared.

He continued unperterbed. "My personal recommendation is that you be assigned another test once your new Watcher arrives." He sighed. "However, I feel the Council will look unfavorably upon that request as it seems you have quite a lot to attend to, with the Hellmouth and all."

"Yes, those pesky actual duties." Giles said sarcastically.

"Send whatever you want. Whoever you want. I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing. Saving people. Killing baddies. Not being poisoned. Excuse me, I have to go celebrate the last few hours of my birthday with my best friend- if he's still breathing."

She pushed past Travers, and Giles turned to follow her. Nothing the little man now standing alone in the waiting room seemed to matter much at this point.

It was just a minute. A brief minute when he was alone, nothing but machines and soft beeps of life support and blood transfusers. In the stillness came a "tap tap" on the glass and he heard her soft voice asking to come in. He murmured a puzzled, "Come," in a half awake voice, barely whispering through his inflamed throat.

"The Angel-beast has been running me round and round, but I came to say goodbye, my sweet Spike." A cool kiss on his brow. "I'm not cross anymore."

His eyes opened, but they were unfocused. All he saw above him was white and black, something soft and beautiful in a fearsome way. "Dru?" The shortened version of her name came easily, in a dream state, as if calling to an acquaintance of long standing. Somehow, he wasn't afraid.

She smiled. "A pet name from my pet, how delicious."

"Come back to finish-"

"Shh. There'll be another time. I tasted your death, but it must be too early." She licked her finger, and then rested it thoughtfully on her chin. "I remember you saying you didn't want to find out, from me."

What was this? When? What? "What?" He asked feebly.

"Death, my lamb. Before and after. All the things you wonder. You don't want to find out yet. But when you do- I'll be there. I'll be waiting for you to find me, this time. It's your turn, you see."

He couldn't shake his head, too many tubes. He croaked out, "Never."

"Oh no. Just not now." Drusilla stepped away from his bed and slid back out of the window, into the night.

"I ran her out, I guess. I couldn't find her and her scent ended in his room- probably on him- his clothes." Angel spared her the pain of knowing about the sexual encounter. For now, at least. "How is he?"

"Breathing on his own, not looking so pasty anymore." Buffy leaned against Angel. "I told Mom I'd get a ride home. Giles wants to stay here, obviously. Can you walk with me?"

"Of course!" Angel wrapped his arm around her shoulders and they began to walk slowly down echoing hospital stairwells. She seemed to sag against him, looking so much smaller than he was, and so unlike the warrior she usually was. His heart tugged towards hers, and he sought for words to mend things between them. "Um. About Drusilla- I didn't know she was in town before I got there. I didn't tell you right away, because I was just- I was worried about you, I wanted to take care of everything for you. But I would have told you. You know that?"

She did. But she suddenly... didn't. Wait. It's Angel. Don't I trust him anymore?

There was a hollow in her mind where an emphatic reassurance should have been.

At the end of the day, the official end of her childhood, at the end of so much more, though she knew there was so much more to come, she didn't question. The overwhelming feeling at the second, in the wake of his words, was relief.

"I get it. Thank you. Thank you so much." Buffy said sincerely as they left the hospital halls. "For everything you did today. I don't know what I would have done without you."

"I still didn't give you your birthday present."

"Will's alive. It's really all the present I want." She laughed weakly.

Angel was silent for a beat. "Right. You're right, that's what matters."

"Oh. Oh no! Not that I don't want- like - I'm sorry, Buffy brain coordination is at zero right now. I can't wait for my Angel gift." She paused to kiss him with a sigh.

"I wrote you a song. What with me bein' broke an' all." Will put the guitar across his knee. "You promise not to laugh? I still sound wheezy." His neck was taped up, bruises showed through pale skin. "Was gonna get Rupert to do it up, but he's a bit preoccupied. Bein' fired from his life's calling doesn't suit him."

"I hate Quentin Travers. And the guy they're sending- they're going to put him in the school library. What is it with Watchers and libraries?"

"Feel at home, I guess. Nothing but books and alphabetical order."

"Says the English major with the work study at the campus bookstore." Buffy coughed.

"Shut up and let me sing, Slayer." Chords tumbled out, soft and uncertain at first, the musician playing with closed eyes and head bowed. The notes gained strength until his voice whispered his song.

"My soul is wrapped in harsh repose

Midnight descends in raven colored clothes

But soft, behold! A sunlight beam

Cutting a swath of glimmering gleam

My heart expands, 'tis grown a bulge in it,

Inspired by your beauty effulgent."

Buffy sat still, hands on knees, eyes closed.

He softly put the instrument down. "I- uh- hm. Was a poem. Put it to music."

"I thought it might have been." Buffy opened her eyes and beamed at him. But the beam wavered. "Am I- sunlight?"

"You are."

"So... who's in the raven midnight?" Because if some of the poem had real basis, maybe all of it did.

William paused. "Dunno. Just- a cloudy feeling I have in me sometimes. Somethin' dark growin'."

"Can I help?"

"You already help."

"Will... Drusilla ... she took you right there, didn't she? Right to - that ending spot." Buffy replaced her hands on her knees and avoided his eyes again.

"Yeah..."

His hands caught hers, then lifted her chin up. "But I wasn't ready to go."

"We can't go on like this." Had he meant it to sound so dramatic?

"Wait- what are you saying?" Buffy's smile faded, puzzlement on her face, even though, somehow she knew exactly what was happening.

Angel paused. Joyce came to see him that day. He hadn't even known she had his address. It didn't matter. Wasn't a social call, and she wouldn't be returning. Her words were to the point, once delivered, she was gone, though Angel seemed to feel her presence echoing everywhere, voice giving him no peace.

My daughter may be a Slayer. She may not have chosen this life, but she doesn't have to let it consume her. She has a chance for a healthy, normal life.

If you're not in it.

Maybe not that condensed, but that was the message. "I'm saying- this isn't fair to you. You're always going to be stuck in the same place, as long as you're with me."

"I'm stuck in Sunnydale anyway. Hellmouth." Buffy shook her head. "Who says I want that to change?"

"I say you do. I say...you're staying with me because you think you have to." Joyce thinks she has to. He repeated her words nearly verbatim. "You're like any young woman in love. You have such a good heart. You think that a couple has to stay together and work through anything. I came back and you thought- you thought you should give me a second chance."

"Angel! That's not true. This- this is still our first chance. It got interrupted, but we couldn't help that. I love you, Angel. I was so heartbroken without you, and-" she took a deep breath, steadying her voice, "and I know it's hard, but I love you and I choose you. I didn't have to when you came back, and you didn't have to choose me either. But we did."

"We were wrong." Her sweet mouth broke into a quiver, and his heart stung. He tried to explain the harsh words. "We should have been friends. Just friends. Not lovers. We're not even lovers, Buffy, we can never be together. We can never do more than kiss, and sometimes, lately..." His eyes flared with Halloween flame for a moment before fading back to black, "Sometimes I want to do more."

She felt her temperature rise a few notches, but she swallowed and shook her head. "That's natural. But there are lots of couples who want to do more but can't. P-people with medical conditions, or people who work in different parts of the country for m-months at a time." Her voice stuttered with unshed tears.

"People have cures for medical conditions. People have planes and long weekends halfway between cities. There's no cure for a curse, and there's no halfway point for us. Except- being just friends. I love you enough not to let anything happen to you. I love you enough to let you go, to give you a better chance at happy."

"I don't want to be 'let go', I don't want chances, I don't want happy, I want you."

"You don't have to say these things, Buffy-"

"I'm not just saying this now! You can even ask Will, I told him right after I met you that I need the- I need the spark."

Angel shook his head at her folly. "The spark? You mean the danger?"

"My whole life is danger!"

"Well, this one part shouldn't be!" Angel cried.

She cried. She cried on Willow's shoulder, on William's shoulder, into Giles' best teacups and all over the books her new Watcher shoved at her, staring with open bewilderment, at a loss that a Slayer was mourning the loss of a vampire's love. Or that she loved at all.

"Gonna make you smile, or I'm gonna go torch that jerk's mansion. What'cha fancy?" William said one evening as he checked her math homework and handed it back, half full of wrong answers corrected.

"Smiling. Don't hurt him or his stuff. He's still... a friend." Buffy whispered.

William didn't mean to speak with such contempt. It still came out. "You two? You're not gonna make it as 'friends'."

"Hey!"

The sneer was evident in his voice, and he wished he could stop speaking, but his mouth refused to still. "You'll never be friends. You'll be in love till it kills you both. You'll fight, and you'll shag, or try not to, and when he does the barmy things he does, when he pulls his noble soul crap on you and makes you cry, when he treats like you can't make up your own damn mind- you'll hate him. He'll hate you right back, Luv, because you're the one thing he loves and can't have, the thing he should hold onto and he pushed away. Tryin' to be smart an' mature, both of you-" He shook his head at her, swallowing anger and all the million things he should have said already. "Love isn't brains, Buffy. It's in your blood. It's inside of you and you can't get it out or shut it off. Not even death is gonna stop it. It'll scream inside you until you- until you listen."

She stared at him, stunned. "At least we're trying something. Isn't it better than nothing?"

Like what we have. What we are. We're not lovers, not in love, but we're wrapped up together, and we love each other. Isn't it better than nothing at all? Init the same kind of lie? He didn't know right then. "Get Willow to help you with trig, that's beyond my pay scale, Buffy." He muttered and left the room, ignoring the shock in her eyes, and the pain on her face.

He should apologize. He knew it. The torrent of words was misguided and frustrated, and probably hurt her. She was broken up enough inside already, didn't need anymore pain.

Stupid things I said probably scarred her up, only I'll never see the mark. He touched his own scars absently. A little memento from Drusilla right on the brow. Like her. Always lurking just out of the corner of his mind's eye. At his throat- always pulsing with him, reminding him how close he'd been- and that he still had questions she hadn't answered.

He groaned, pushed the thoughts away, and went back to his work in the campus bookstore's stockroom. He was working another afternoon shift, alone, with nothing but piped in campus broadcasting for company.

"This is Radio UC Sunnydale, with another local band making it from the airwaves to your earwaves. Hey, Joel, who do we have next?

"Next we have a dedication to William, from Buffy, who says she knows he's listening right now. She says she hopes he 'gets it'. It's Nickel, with Stupid Thing."

I did a stupid thing last night

I called you

a moment of weakness

no, not a moment

more like three months of weakness

Will dropped the order sheet back to the shelf and slowly walked to the speaker controls.

I'm one step away

from crashing to my knees

one step away

from spilling my guts to you

He turned the song up.

I did a stupid thing last night

I called you

I'm doing alright

no, don't feel sorry for me

really, I'm alright

"God, she's really something." He murmured to himself.

And I'm one step away

from crashing to my knees

one step away

from spilling my guts to you

You see, there's this huge chunk of me missing

it's gone

and I can't feel it, I can't feel it

I can't feel...

Isn't that what's wrong? We're both so close to feeling it, and yet somehow, we don't quite? I do, but she doesn't, or sometimes, she does, but I don't? Bloody hell. The stupid little things, they just keep getting bigger.

I did a stupid thing last night

I called you

it's the last time

and maybe tomorrow night

will be the last time...

"Hi." A tiny voice cut in under the music.

He jumped, peered at the speaker, and then realized it wasn't coming from there. She was really here. William slowly turned towards the door of the stock room. "Buff."

"Like the song?" She asked in a semi-scared, half-hopeful voice, stepping towards him.

When I'm one step away

from crashing to my knees

one step away

from crashing to my knees

one step away

from spilling my guts to you

from crashing to my knees...

"Love it." He replied honestly.

"Can- Can this be our song?" She held out her hands.

His heart raced. "Is there an us?"

"There will always be an us, Will. I think- I think maybe it's not done being assembled. Like a puzzle missing a piece. O-or with the wrong pieces in some of the spaces?"

"You're cute when you try to use similes." He grabbed onto her hands and squeezed like he would never let go.

Her fears released in a whoosh of air as she nodded, "Cute is a good thing."

They hugged in the room with impersonal shelves, and cold concrete floors, a tiny island of warmth and life.

In the middle of city built on death. "There are things you don't know. About- all my pieces." He followed her train.

"I guessed that." Angel hinted at it, not right away, a few weeks later, after William was better. Hinted that he hadn't just been something for bait, for Drusilla's easy prey.

"Tall, dark, and obnoxious tell you?" He thought the vampire knew, though he never came out and confronted him.

"I told him you told me already. 'Cause I knew you would. You don't lie to me." She looked into his eyes with a half smile. "Funny. He and I - not so much with the truth sometimes. But you and I-"

"Always do the honesty thing." Honest about events and ideas, confused thoughts sometimes stay hidden, handed out to her in poems, sung to her in little bits of song. "When I was chasin' her down in the tunnels, we started mixin' it up, an' you know she bit me- know she always gets in my head."

"I know." And she wished, because she wasn't aware that it was already so, that she could get into Will's head, too.

"She kissed me, and she ... we..." It felt like a betrayal to the woman in front of him, a betrayal to himself even, yet, he hadn't let it betray either of them in the end. "I didn't sleep with her, but we had about five minutes of sex and biting."

"Oh." How come that hurt her so much? A horrible thought leaped immediately into her mind as soon as that burst of anguish faded. "She- did she make-?"

"No." There was no 'force', for all the violence between them. There was reluctance, and struggle, but Drusilla had been right when she said he wanted to press into her. "I wouldn't say that. It definitely wasn't with love, Buffy, definitely wasn't planned. Was almost like part of the fight "

Buffy tried to imagine it. Sexual tension in the midst of fighting? No, she couldn't say she'd ever experienced it. But- a sudden image sprang to her subconscious, of fighting with Will, maybe not fighting, training, the blows traded, the heavy breathing, the intensity- she could almost imagine herself throwing herself into his arms and... she blushed. "I get it. You don't have to explain it away." She whispered.

"Yeah, I do. Wanted to tell you before that, well," he coughed, "funny thing is, she was my second one. Funny thing is- never really seem to enjoy it. Mind's always..." the blue eyes raked her with naked flame, "someplace else."

The someplace was her. It had to be. Everything twisted inside her, something physical and emotional, reaching to those flames. "Can we go someplace... together?"

"To...?" Oh yes. Oh no. No, not like this. It's gotta be special with her. The real first time.

"Not to do... that." She blushed. He blushed back. "I don't know if it's wrong, but I just feel like, I want to, and I don't, all at the same time. Like something is missing. Puzzle pieces again." I just told Will I want to have sex with him. And that I don't. He's going to think I'm so messed up.

Or he'll prove he's totally the best guy ever, and he'll get it.

"That's okay. You're right." She was, no matter how much he'd prefer her to be wrong, for this to be simple. "Are we still friends?"

He never lets me down. Her smile was ten thousand watts of pure happiness. "Do you have to ask?" She slapped his arm. "I don't care what the history teacher said, there are such things as stupid questions."

"No roughin' me up- even if I do think I might get off on it." He admitted with a leer.

Her cheeks flamed, and so did a little spark lower down, deep in her softest parts. "Well, I'm not gonna be too rough. I think I could bruise a boyfriend." Buffy ruefully admitted.

They both realized what she had said.

"Too soon?" Will croaked out helpfully. They still had the Mayor to stop, a few weeks of school left, and her breakup with her big love was still fresh, heart still raw and broken. The git was still around, too.

"Is it wrong of me to say yes- but tell you I wish it wasn't?"

"No."

"Is it wrong to say- I think it started a long time ago?" Her voice dropped to a whisper.

William shook his head. "I don't think tellin' the truth is ever wrong, Luv." He cupped her cheek, like he'd been wanting to for such a bloody long time. "Maybe dangerous, maybe stupid- but never wrong." Their lips came within brushing distance, and then stopped, mutually. So in sync her and I, yet we're always just one beat away from making that perfect harmony. Oh well, at least our timin' is starting to come together. "Hold the thought, Pet?"

She nodded eagerly. "I promise."

He breathed against her, bottom lips brushing, before they smiled together, heads bowing, eyes smiling into each other's. "We always keep our promises, don't we?"

"And don't you forget it."

He chuckled as they straightened up. As if anything could make me ever forget her. She'll always be my girl...

To be continued.