Work Text:
“I do deserve love and happiness, right?” Buffy asked while playing with the straw in her pumpkin spice milkshake. Ordering it had been a bad idea, but she had to at least try. “I mean, everyone does, but I feel like there’s some kind of...Batman-ish curse on me or something. You know? The superhero can’t ever settle down and be happy because then there would be no story.”
“Doesn’t really seem fair to Batman,” Oz said with a contemplative look on his face. Since his return to Sunnydale, Buffy had been hanging out with him more and more. Maybe it was to give him another reason to stick around after things had officially ended with Willow. It had been harder on Buffy when he left than she’d wanted to let on, and she really wasn’t looking forward to a repeat of that. Or maybe it was because he was the one friend who had never let her down, no matter the circumstance. Or maybe- well, maybe she didn’t know, but was glad that it was happening.
Oz sipped his chocolate malted milk (with orange whipped cream on top) and looked even more contemplative. “Not to interrupt, but does it seem strange to you that a 1950s style diner just showed up on this corner one day? I know restaurants go in and out of business all the time, but I feel like we should be on the alert for...I don’t know. What kind of monster haunts 50s nostalgia diners? Quentin Tarantino?”
Buffy looked around, but aside from the crepe-paper bats someone had hung up (in poor taste, Buffy thought,) nothing suspicious immediately jumped out at her. Sure, the jukebox didn’t seem to carry anything recorded after 1965, but at least it was better than endless repetitions of the Monster Mash (a song that ought to have been illegal to play in Sunnydale.) The diner was reasonably crowded, but not so much so that she would suspect magical addictive ingredients in the burgers. The waitresses wore cute little collared blouses, but they hadn’t gone full poodle-skirt. Kitschy, yes, but not exactly sinister.
“It is a little funny,” she admitted. “I mean, can you imagine what this town must have actually been like in the 1950s? I’m thinking it was less Leave it to Beaver and more Invasion of the Body Snatchers. But you know what? I need this milkshake right now, so I’m not asking questions. If Twin Peaks kids can drown their romantic sorrows in diner food, so can I.” Buffy sighed and returned to the previous topic of conversation. “Anyway, I know it comes along with being the Slayer, but I’m not ready to swear a vow of celibacy just because of my after-class activities. But nothing works out! Not humans, not vampires.”
“Have you tried werewolves?”
Buffy looked up with wide eyes, and Oz gave her a smile.
“Good guys most of the time, with a little bit of bad boy once a month to spice things up. I hear we’re ideal boyfriends that way.”
“Are you, like...serious?” Buffy asked. Her breath was coming a bit more quickly now, especially when she realized that what she'd just said could be interpreted as a dismissive insult. "I didn't mean it like that! I meant it like, I don't know, but I meant it."
Oz shrugged.
“You’re pretty, and you’re nice, and you kill vampires. I’ve always found you attractive.”
Buffy blinked for a minute. If anyone else had said this, she would have responded ‘Well, duh. You have eyes.’ But Oz wasn’t just anyone else. If he said something like that, he meant it. She wasn’t going to shrug it off as a joke.
“That’s...wow. This whole time?” What did she want him to say in response? Part of her wanted him to say ‘ No, of course not, absence made the heart grow fonder’ , and part of her wanted him to say ‘Yes, even when we weren’t together.’
Oz responded with neither.
“Yeah,” he said, “but I never really thought about it before, because I was in love with Willow. You being attractive was just a fact of life, like me being a werewolf. But Willow and I have moved on, and you’re not dating anyone, and, well, I’d never forgive myself if I didn’t at least ask you out. I promise, I’m not going to be weird about it! If you say no, I’ll just rationalize it by telling myself you can’t handle a guy who’s both a werewolf and a rock star.”
The bustle of the diner covered the silence as Buffy blushed and looked back down into her milkshake. She was a college sophomore, not a highschool girl with her first crush, she shouldn’t have gotten embarrassed by something like that. When strange and mysterious men thought she was attractive, it was flattering, but only the first step- they still had to get to know the Buffy who liked to sit around and debate whether pleather skirts were last season or eternal. But Oz- she kept it secret that he was a werewolf, he kept it secret that the Slayer could be scared and selfish and all the other things she wasn’t supposed to be. And if he still felt for her...
“I always tried hard not to be jealous of Willow when you were dating,” she said at last. “She had a guy who cared about her in a good way, somebody she was able to have fun with. And, you know. Nobody looks good in highschool, but you were always pretty cute in an alternative sort of way.”
“A qualified compliment,” said Oz with a smile, “but I’ll take it.”
Buffy grinned fully, for the first time in- she wasn’t even sure how long it had been. Maybe since she and Riley had first started dating, before everything fell apart. Or maybe it had been even longer.
“So…,” asked Oz, “is this a date? Can I call this a date?”
“Oz, I’d really like it to be. But I can’t let you just walk into this without warning. I’d love to just go on a normal date with you, catch a bad movie or go on a road trip to find decent sushi or things like that. But that’s not what life with me is like. A date with me means patrolling the graveyard or breaking into academic libraries to find ancient scrolls in a language I don’t even read. I know how much you’ve already faced and fought, but it’s like that with me all the time. It’s my whole life. Even the dates.”
Oz slid his hand across the table, and Buffy took it without even thinking.
“If you’ve got to do everything all the time,” he said softly, “maybe it would be nice to have someone there for you all the time. Or just when you wanted it. Or when a superpowered monster would come in handy!”
“That is a lot, I’ll admit!” said Buffy. And she thought about everything she’d never let herself think because of Willow, everything she’d never let herself think because of Angel, everything she’d never let herself think because no matter what she said, some nasty part of her felt she didn’t deserve to be happy. But what was the worst thing that could happen if she did allow a little happiness into her life? Willow would get weird and overshare-y about her ex, and maybe Xander would whine about how all girls wanted guys in a band. Buffy could live with that.
She leaned forward and kissed him, a bit experimentally at first, then with more confidence when she felt Oz leaning back into her. In that moment, she didn’t have to think about her friends or her exes or anyone else except the boy in front of her, feeling the beginnings of scratchy stubble on his cheeks against her own soft skin. She reached out her hand to rest on the back of his head, and neither she nor Oz cared much about the fact that she nearly knocked both their milkshakes over.
And then the sound of laser pistols and screaming interrupted them. Crepe paper bats were singed as electric-green blasts exploded all around the diner. Oz and Buffy dodged flying plastic pumpkin centerpieces as the diner was invaded by a wave of honest-to-god little green men. Buffy had roughly ten seconds to think ‘This is a new one!’ before pulling Oz down beside her beneath the table. She was having to adjust her worldview very quickly amid the laser shots flying around the room and the whirr of machinery not of this earth.
She’d remembered to take Mr. Pointy in her purse, right? Damn it, why had she taken the big purse where it was impossible to find anything?
“Aliens!” Oz snapped his fingers. “That’s what haunts 1950s nostalgia joints!”
“Okay,” said Buffy as she reached for the steak knife tied up with her silverware in a napkin and a rubber band. “ Now it’s one of my dates.”