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The day after Graduation dawns bright and clear, promising to be another gorgeous Southern California day, and Buffy rises feeling lighter at heart than she’s been in recent memory. High school and the mayor’s Ascension are both worries of the past; the one is rubble and the other so much snake meat. Her lover is strong and well again. Her mother had actually listened to her for once and stayed clear of danger, and will be back home tonight. She and her loved ones have survived apocalypse season for another year, and all is about as close to well as it ever is in Buffy’s world.
(She tries not to think of Faith lying bruised and too still, surrounded by machines in her hospital bed. Her sister Slayer had made her own choices.)
That afternoon, she meets Willow at the Espresso Pump. Once they’ve gotten settled in with their drinks, Buffy turns to her best friend with a conspiratorial smile. “So, do I get to know why you showed up to Graduation five minutes late all disheveled and giddy?”
The redhead flushes to the roots of her hair and nearly spits out her mocha. “Um, panicking?” she offers.
Buffy arches an eyebrow. “That’s a new one. Panicking how, exactly?”
She wouldn’t have thought it possible for Willow’s blush to deepen, but it does. “So the other night, before everything went crazy with Faith and all, Oz and I were researching, trying to find a spell or something to help stop the mayor, and I was frustrated cause we were coming up with nothing and he was being all calm and ironical, you know the way he is, so I kinda got mad at him for not seeming to care because it was a crisis and normal people panic in a crisis –”
Struggling to process the torrent of words, Buffy cuts into her excited rambling with a hand on her shoulder. “Will. Breathe. I promise I won’t stop listening if you come up for air once in a while.”
“Right, sorry. Anyway, so he asked if it would help if he panicked and I said yes and then he kissed me. And I asked what he was doing and he said panicking and then he kissed me again, and laid me down, and, well, you know....” Willow twists her hands together.
“I get it,” Buffy assures her with a smile, amused by her friend’s inability to say the words. “Oh my God, Will, I’m so excited for you. That’s ... major.” Little Willow’s all grown up. Buffy has always felt a bit like the big sister in their friendship, and she is genuinely thrilled that this is something they can share now.
“I know, isn’t it?”
“So I take it before the ceremony was again, then?” Buffy resists the urge to make her friend squirm by forcing her to spell it out.
Willow nods sheepishly. “We thought we had more time.”
“Was it good?”
“Ohhh yeah,” Willow confirms. “Much with the wow. He was so sweet and gentle, and, I mean, even with it feeling like the world was falling down outside, it was pretty much the best night of my life.”
“Thought so,” Buffy says with satisfaction. “You’re all glowy. ...Not literally,” she hastens to add as she catches Willow’s concerned glance down at herself. Living on a Hellmouth has given them strange concerns. “Good. You deserve all the happy. Nothing like an apocalypse to make you seize the moment, huh?”
“Yeah, I guess you’ve been there.”
“I so have,” Buffy agrees. “It’s even better when it’s not apocalypse-y, though.”
“I look forward to finding out.” Willow ducks her head, but she’s grinning. “I feel like I don’t ever want to stop touching him now. Everything feels different. And I said that, and he said it feels different for him too, even though he’s been there before.”
“He loves you. That ... I think ... that makes it different.”
Willow giggles. “So speaketh Buffy, purveyor of Perfect Happiness?”
“Something like that,” Buffy agrees, and wonders at the fact that she’s in a place where she can make light of such things.
Willow’s giggles trail off, and a shadow crosses her expression. It’s always been transparent when something is weighing on the redhead’s mind, and Buffy is about to urge her to spill when she speaks up on her own. “I really am sorry about jumping to the worst of conclusions about Angel. Looking back, I probably should have guessed what you were planning when you threw us out.” She fidgets with her coffee cup until Buffy reaches out and squeezes her hand.
“I’m not the one you owe an apology,” the Slayer says. “But ... thank you all the same.”
“Are you guys okay?”
“I think so.” Buffy considers, with a grateful smile for her friend’s concern. She suspects there will be fallout still to come, but after talking last night and waking up in his arms this morning she’s feeling a lot more sanguine about the situation. “He’s being all guilt guy about it, even though I really didn’t give him a choice – big surprise there – but we had a good talk, and I think I managed to prevent maximum brood overdrive.”
“That’s good.”
“Can I tell you something sort of twisted?”
“You can tell me anything,” Willow assures her.
“When Angel ... drank me ... I, uh, kindagotoffonit.” Buffy finishes the sentence in a rush, barely able to voice the words aloud.
The redhead’s eyes go wide as saucers. “Wow. That’s, uh ... wow.”
“Like I said, twisted.” Buffy ducks her head: embarrassed, self-deprecating, worrying she’s said too much. “I’m probably the worst Slayer ever.”
“Buffy, no!” This time it’s Willow who grabs Buffy’s hand. “Don’t think that. You might be a level of kinky I’m not ready to contemplate, but you’re not a bad Slayer.” A dark look crosses the witch’s face. “That honor goes to the one who tried to kill us all.”
Buffy can’t quite think about Faith without feeling somehow responsible for all that went wrong, so she lets that aside pass. “God, Will, what am I going to do? He has every right to hate me for what I made him do, and yet there’s part of me that wants it to happen again. I mean, without the nearly dying part, obviously, but still.”
Willow gives her a helpless look, and Buffy instantly feels guilty for how much she’s burdening her with her concerns. Best friend or no, Buffy knows that question is way above her pay grade.
“You don’t have to answer that,” she adds. “I just kinda needed to vent to someone.”
“I get it,” Willow says supportively. “He loves you. You’ll work it out.”
“Thanks. ...Oh God, some best friend I am, look at me making this all about me. I’m sorry. We were talking about you, and Oz, and making with the sexytimes. Was there more you wanted to tell?”
Willow smiles shyly. “Well....”