Chapter Text
Maybe it was the comfort of being in her own bed again.
No, she had been home for three days now. God, was it really only three? It felt more like a week. Though maybe that was her muscles talking. Boy, was she out of shape. Three months without slaying would do that to you. And she had had to slay things two out of the three days already. She was definitely back in Sunnyhell.
So why was she sleeping so well? So dreamlessly? Maybe it was the muscle thing. No energy to move after the fight with zombies and Oval Mow Bunny - or, you know what, with Pat. Poor Pat. Poor Mom. No repressing for her anymore, she won a straight ticket to depressing. Probably wasn't sleeping so well as Buffy.
Except for now, when she was suddenly wide awake wondering why she was deep asleep a minute ago. Was it a bad sign when you woke up from not having a nightmare? Or was it from the numbness in her arm?
She'd been laying flat on it so long - ugh, tingles. But her attempt to roll was met with stiff resistance by the arm slung over her waist.
Willow was fast asleep, unawares of her death grip. Probably dreaming of tadpoles or some such. Zombies, probably actually more likely at the moment, considering the events of this evening.
Buffy assumed that was why Willow was still there, anyway. Why she lingered long after they cleaned up the house; at least, as much as humanly and Slayerly possible. Long after everybody else left until Mom finally asked if Willow had called her parents yet, let them know where she was.
It felt like normal then, like when Willow finally hugged her. Just another sleepover, whether it was because they were having too much fun to part, or because Willow was scared and wanted the Slayer next to her. Better than sleeping with garlic, Buffy told her once. She wouldn't smell funny afterward. Willow's little giggle had been totally worth the bad joke.
Buffy slid her hand underneath Willow's, lifted very, very slowly, and -
Willow's arm came back down like a vice that made even Buffy gasp. And laugh a little. Will always had been stronger than she knew. The subtle approach wasn't going to work.
"Will," she whispered. "Willow."
A puff of breath hit the back of her neck, and a smile stretched Buffy's worn lips. She traced her fingers along the fine hairs of Willow's forearm, twirling circles until she felt a proper twinge and a shudder go through the redhead.
"Mm, hey...tickles." Willow's fingers gathered at Buffy's shirt.
"Will, let go, my arm's asleep."
"Why isn't the rest of you asleep?"
Again, a little laugh creaked out. "The rest of me will join in when I can feel my fingers again. Come on, just unclench a little so I can roll over."
"No."
What. Buffy craned her neck again, but Willow's eyes were shut tight.
"And why not?"
The answer was nothing more than a mumble, too faint for a dog to pick up. Buffy nudged her elbow back.
"What?"
"I said I don't want you to go."
Oh.
"Will, I'm not going anywhere. I'm just rolling over, I promise."
Buffy listened. There was nothing but the monotonous ticking of the clock on her nightstand. She was beginning to think Willow had fallen back asleep and she was either going to have dead arm tomorrow or have to really wake Will up tonight when the arm moved, just a fraction. Enough.
She wriggled her way around until she was facing Willow, finding herself with another unfamiliar smile. It was beginning to make her cheeks hurt, but. It was kind of a good hurt. Just like Willow's arm, clutching her again. Or her arm, waking up - ugh, prickles.
Maybe a reassurance would help her relax. Buffy brushed Willow's hair from her forehead.
"See? Still here."
"Good. When you were gone...it was bad."
"I'm sorry," she murmured, tangled her fingers up in red.
Willow opened her eyes, and Buffy dropped her hand to the pillow between them.
"Buffy?"
"I'm here."
"You're not still thinking about leaving again, are you?" Her fingers gripped at Buffy's shirt again.
"No," she breathed. "Willow - "
"But your suitcase is still packed."
Oh. Right.
In all the chaos, Buffy had forgotten about it. What had she even done with it?
"I'll unpack it in the morning. With all the zombies, I just..."
Willow sounded remarkably more chipper. "I'll help you! Unpack. An-and then maybe we can get pumped up at the Espresso Pump," she giggled, her adorable pun giggle, "so we can do the shopping together and get you all ready for school, and then maybe after we can go to the Bronze before patrol, or-or vice versa, and then, well, it’ll be Monday, I’ll-we’ll be in school, but you could come see us at lunch or something! We’re seniors now, after all, if we don’t eat off campus, it’d be like, like breaking one of those unspoken societal rules, like how you’re not supposed to sit in an empty seat next to somebody you don’t know, you know? Like nobody says anything, but you can just see it in their eyes… Oh, and then after school, we could - ”
Buffy was almost always on board with a good Willow ramble, but she was starting to get the picture. The very full, structured, scheduled picture. Was it progress? Going from total avoidance to -
She grimaced. “Be together, all the time, or at least have plans to be together in the near future, so that maybe I don’t have time to think about leaving again?”
Caught out, Willow wavered between gaping and pouting before settling decidedly on the latter. “Well - ” she puffed. “But you did. Leave, and almost left again, just tonight.”
“Hey.” Buffy held her hand up in the dark, until Willow reached up and gripped it back. “It was touch and go there for a while, I admit, but...I can take Xander’s snide remarks and my mom telling total strangers about my mental health issues. As long as I’ve got my Willow on my side.” She smiled, and spied Willow grinning back at her before it got swallowed down by another sobering whisper.
“Is it true she told you never to come back?”
Buffy could only nod.
“I’m sorry…” Willow was biting on her lip. “Why...why didn’t you come to me? Or Xander, or Giles? You know we would’ve - ”
“Will, it was just too much,” she breathed, gripping tighter. “I got fooled, again , and you all got hurt because of it. Again. Xander’s arm, your head, Kendra…” Tears and bile were beginning to thicken Buffy’s throat. “And Giles, God, Giles . First Ms. Calendar and then… And then I had to kill him, and it wasn’t his fault. It was mine. And after everything, I just felt like...you’d all be better off without me.”
“Oh, Buffy.”
She felt Willow moving closer, realizing only then that at some point she’d closed her eyes, unable to look into those earnest doe eyes in all her ugliness. How could Willow not see it? How was she not repulsed by it? Wrapping herself even tighter, until Buffy could feel every breath exchanged on her cheeks, stroking little circles on her back.
“It isn’t true.”
“Isn’t it?” Buffy managed to crack her eyes open, but she couldn’t stand to look for more than a second. “If it weren’t for me, you and Xander would be living normal teenager lives, worrying about homework, not the apocalypse. Angel and Kendra and Ms. Calendar would be alive and with Giles.”
“If it weren’t for you, we wouldn’t be worrying about anything, because we’d all be dead.” Willow sighed, softening. “Look, Buffy, nobody knew what would happen with you and Angel, not even Angel, and he was the one with the curse! You did the best that you could, you know?”
“I don’t know what’s scarier. Thinking it was my best, or that it wasn’t.”
Willow’s bottom lip puckered slightly. “I just wish you wouldn’t be so hard on yourself.”
“Kind of a big redirection from earlier when you guys thought I wasn’t being hard enough.” Her brow wrinkled. “On myself.”
“That’s not what I wanted, I just. I didn’t want you to leave again...and I wanted you to see that it hurt me, and why it hurt me, because I love you, Buffy.”
Why was she smiling again? This was a very serious moment. Willow’s voice was raw with pain again, expressing how badly Buffy had hurt their relationship, had hurt Willow. Yet Buffy’s cheeks hurt with happiness.
Maybe because it was the first time those words had passed between them. Willow was smiling, too, now, trying not to.
“I love you, too.” She squeezed Willow’s fingers, burrowed her free hand in red hair, and grinned. “I promise, next time I decide to skip town, I will one hundred percent call first to see if you want to come with.”
“Buffy,” Willow whined, but she was rolling her eyes fondly.
“I kid. I promise.” She stared hard into those big eyes. “I will never leave you again.”
It was Willow’s turn to smile like an idiot. “Well. It’s okay if you have to go to the bathroom sometimes, or…”
Buffy grinned. Ouch.
“I just want you to know that, I know I was upset and being all avoidy, but even so, we can always work it out,” she continued, more genuinely now. “An-and you can always come to me, even if my head is squished. I just don’t want to be without you.” Even in the dark, Buffy could see a layer of red coat Willow’s cheeks. “I mean, when you were gone, i-it was like, having a missing arm or something. Like I would still have this instinct to call you or talk to you and then, I had to realize you were gone over and over.”
“I’m so sorry, Will.” She bit at her bottom lip. “If it helps, I felt the same way. I know it’s different, because I could’ve called - and, again, I’m really sorry that I didn’t, but it... felt like I couldn’t.”
A silence fell between them, and the warmth leftover from hearing love - who knew it could feel just as good from a friend, a best friend? - seeped from Buffy with each passing second. Had she said the wrong thing, again? Willow didn’t look angry, just sort of sad and thoughtful, but Willow brains were far more advanced than Buffy brains, and who knew what kind of sad and thoughtful thoughts were happening in there? Thoughts about Buffy not calling, like an idiot, leaving Willow and everyone else to imagine the worst, knowing they were probably imagining the worst and still not calling because she felt like she couldn’t? Thoughts about what a lame excuse that was and how -
“Buffy?”
“Mm? Yeah?”
“What made you decide to come back?”
Buffy was wordless. No one had bothered to ask that particular question yet, and Buffy hadn’t bothered to come up with an answer to that question yet. It was Lily’s fault - well, Anne’s, sort of, wasn’t it?
“Well, I ran into an old friend…”
By the time she finished the whole story, her other arm was falling asleep and Willow was gaping at her.
“Wow.”
“Yeah. I called her this morning, she seems to be doing okay so far.”
“No - I mean, that’s great, but Buffy. Why didn’t you tell us?”
She shrugged. “Didn’t seem that important. Like, our average week in Sunnydale includes at least one demon on a power trip bad mouthing humans.”
“But you almost - ”
“And me almost dying. Or sometimes actually dying.”
Willow chewed on her lip. “So is that what made you come back?”
“Almost dying? Sort of. I guess the whole thing made me realize the same lesson I keep learning over and over again - that I’m the Slayer and I can’t escape that, even if I go back to LA or change my name or stop looking for evil to fight. But it was also just, realizing that I needed to deal. Closing my eyes and running away wasn’t going to make it go away, it was with me, all the time.”
“Oh.”
Willow looked upset again. What had she done wrong now?
“Hey.” Buffy squeezed her fingers until she had Willow’s eyes again. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s nothing, it’s stupid.” She shook her head.
“Come on, we were doing great with the honesty thing here, don’t spoil it now. Tell me.”
She was going to chew that lip right off. “I just, guess I was hoping you...missed us. Me.”
“I did. So much, Will. Look, I came back for a lot of reasons, but one of them is that if I have to be the Slayer and I have to deal with all this stuff, then I’d rather do it with the people I love. With my best friend.”
Willow smiled her almost giddy smile. “With me?”
“No, with Cordelia,” she deadpanned.
“Don’t joke about that, it was almost true.”
Buffy’s smirk dropped. “Not even. I picked you, remember?”
Willow looked almost as awestruck as the day they met, though now there was a smile hovering around her mouth, a glow in her eyes replacing the anxious, darting glances Buffy found so endearing in the shy, unassuming redhead. The girl before her now was still shy and a little unassuming, but there was confidence now, too, purpose. A little of Buffy rubbing off on her, or the result of becoming an occult expert - a magic dabbler, even - fighting the forces of darkness alongside the Slayer? Or the true Willow peeking out from behind years of bullying, being ignored?
Who knew? Those questions and their answers were for big brained people like Willow or Giles. Buffy wasn’t a thinker, she was a feeler. And the way Willow was looking at her made her feel warm and happy, and Buffy leaned into the little space that remained between them and kissed her chastley.
Willow was owl-eyed after the brief contact. “What was that for?”
Buffy supposed she was too nice to say ‘what the hell are you doing,’ though it was a valid question. What the hell was she doing? She just kissed a girl. She just kissed her best friend. She just kissed Willow.
“I don’t know.” She hoped her tone was actually as cool as it sounded in her head. “It felt like a hug moment, but…” She glanced down at Willow’s arm, still secure at her waist, but those big eyes didn’t follow. Buffy’s stomach started to dance. “Was it...is that okay?”
Tick tock, Willow. Her stomach could only handle so much. Any moment now, she was going to start spewing word salad. Of course she didn’t mean it that way , it’s just that they were already hugging, so she couldn’t rehug her, and besides, lots of girl friends kissed, okay, so usually it was a kiss on the cheek, but a quick peck on the lips was normal, too, and anyway -
“Yeah.”
What. Buffy blinked, focusing her eyes in on Willow’s little smile.
“It felt nice,” she said.
Oh.
“Cool.” Buffy smiled. “We should really sleep. I don’t think Mom’s threat to start throwing out pancakes if we’re not up by ten was an idle one.”
Willow nodded happily. “Okay. Good night, Buffy.”
“Night, Will.”
When she finally fell asleep again, her dreams were back, and they were filled with red.