Show, Don’t Tell (1/5)

It’s April 20th in my time zone!  I hope I am not stepping on anyone’s toes in an earlier time zone by posting at the crack of 12:30 AM.  Today I have a 25,000-word fic in five parts.  Assuming there’s no Internet failure in my hotel later, I will post everything today.  Thank you so much ladyofthelog, snickfic, angearia, and all the taggers for maintaining this wonderful community!

Title: Show, Don’t Tell (1/5)
Author: gryfndor_godess
Setting: Post-NFA, January 2006
Rating: R
Word Count: 5,000/25,500
Genre: Biting
Summary: Anya wants to know why she never sees Spike’s bite marks on Buffy’s neck. Buffy wants to know why Spike never asked her to do anything of the sort.

A/N: This fic is set in my post-NFA verse in early 2006. A complete list of the fics in the verse is here, but it’s not necessary to have read any of them to read this. All you need to know is:
-The PTB rewarded Angel, Spike, and Gunn for destroying LA’s W&H by saving Gunn’s life and resurrecting Cordelia and Anya at the vampires’ requests.
-After spending two years in London the Scooby gang moved to New Sunnydale, which has been rebuilt but is not a hellmouth, in summer 2005 to open a second, U.S. based slayer academy.
The established couples are Buffy/Spike, Anya/Xander, Willow/Oz, Cordelia/Angel, and Dawn/Gunn.

Part 1

“We’re going to West Coast Bombay, that new Indian restaurant. Do you and Xander want to- why are you staring at my neck?” Buffy frowned and felt her neck for any pimple or blemish that might have developed in the hour since she’d last looked in a mirror in the university bathroom. “Did you get turned into a vampire recently?”

“I wouldn’t tell you if I got turned into a vampire. You’d try to kill me again,” said Anya absent-mindedly, her eyes still trained on Buffy’s neck. “Oh, you were joking. No, I’m looking for bite marks. I don’t understand why I never see them.”

“My…” Buffy’s fingers found the scars left by the Master, Angel, and Dracula with unwelcome ease.

“I don’t mean those,” said Anya. Buffy wondered if she could actually see them or if she was just following the Slayer’s train of thought. Buffy hoped for the latter.

“Spike’s bite marks,” Anya clarified. “Why don’t we ever see them? I know you heal fast, but even you get scars.”

Anya asked it with such surety and blitheness that for a split second Buffy’s fingertips danced around her neck, automatically feeling for the answer. Then she registered Anaya’s implication and gaped.

“Unless he bites you in other places. I’ve read that the inside of the leg is-”

“Spike doesn’t bite me!” Self-consciously, she dropped her hand to her side, then thought better and crossed her arms.

“Really?” Anya’s eyebrows rose. “You’ve never-”

“No! Why would you think that?” Buffy didn’t hide her indignation, but she tried not to sound furious. She didn’t want to offend Anya when she wasn’t actually angry. Just surprised. Vehemently so.

“Because he’s a vampire,” said Anya slowly, the unspoken ‘duh’ ringing at the end.

Okay, maybe she was angry.

“That doesn’t mean I let him bite me!” The rationale for her kneejerk anger crystallized in her mind. “You think that just because I’m his girlfriend I’m also his free lunch? That he has the right-”

“Could you stop overreacting,” interrupted Anya. Other people might have been cowed by the Slayer’s reaction, but the 1000-year-old ex-vengeance demon merely looked impatient, like she’d had enough of a five-year-old’s tantrum.

“I didn’t mean your neck was his all-you-can-eat buffet. I meant biting during sex.”

For moment Buffy couldn’t speak, which only emphasized the growing heat in her cheeks.

“You think we…”

“Well, clearly you don’t,” said Anya. “We’ve established that by now.”

“But why would you think…”

Anya shrugged, frowned, and rubbed a smudge on the glass counter next to her register.

“I see Cordelia’s bite marks all the time, and I wondered why I never saw yours.”

“Cordelia’s…” Buffy swallowed, half-hoping that she had misunderstood. “You mean Angel…”

“Of course,” said Anya. “Not every time, obviously. But occasionally.”

“I’ve never seen any bite marks.”

Anya rolled her eyes. “Yes, because the world is so black and white that something that can’t be seen obviously can’t exist.”

Times like this reminded Buffy why it had taken her and Willow so many years to warm up to Anya in the first place. Before she could come up with a sharp retort, Anya continued,

“They’d be easy to overlook if you didn’t know they were there. And I see Cordelia way more than you do, since I’m her best friend and you guys are only normal friends.”

This was true; Anya and Cordelia met halfway between LA and New Sunnydale for lunch and shopping once every other week or so. Buffy only saw her old classmate several times a year.

“Fine. Maybe I’m oblivious. But just because Cordelia lets Angel bite her doesn’t mean it’s normal,” said Buffy stiffly.

“Actually it is,” said Anya matter-of-factly. “Vampires usually exchange more than one bodily fluid during sex. For someone who’s dated multiple vampires, you don’t know a whole lot about it.”

Buffy’s cheeks were flaming again. Her fingers itched to ball into fists. “And what makes you the expert?” Insults rose on her tongue, about Anyanka screwing the undead during the good old days or screwing Spike in the Magic Box. Buffy winced inwardly at that particular memory and then felt a flutter of panic; had Spike bitten Anya when they-?

“Cordelia,” said Anya simply. “She tells me about it.”

Buffy’s ire dimmed; she felt grateful she had restrained her tongue. “What does she tell you?” She tried to sound nonchalant and failed.

“That it can feel really good. Angel usually bites her during orgasm and-”

“Too many details!” cried Buffy. She raised her hands halfway toward her face, as though to shield her ears. ‘Angel’ and ‘orgasm’ were words that she would probably never get used to hearing in the same sentence.

Anya rolled her eyes. “You asked.”

“Doesn’t it- doesn’t it hurt?” Dracula’s bite hadn’t hurt much because she’d been in some sort of trance, but she had vivid memories of the fiery pain in her neck when she’d forced Angel to bite her.

“A little,” admitted Anya. “But I think the orgasms help. It’s not that different from using nails or teeth- human teeth, I mean- during sex. You know, pain as a form of pleasure, that sort of-”

“Yes, I know what you mean,” said Buffy hastily.

“In any case, Cordelia doesn’t mind,” said Anya. “She does it for Angel. Because he’s a vampire and for better or for worse-” She shrugged again. “Biting is what vampires do.”

Buffy didn’t know how to respond.

“Spike’s never asked you?”

She suddenly felt self-conscious again and answered in a small voice that didn’t sound like her own. “No.”

“Huh.”

Buffy wanted to demand what ‘huh’ meant, but the bell over the front door rang as a man and woman entered. Even if she could have formulated a response, Anya was lost to her now. She watched her friend leave the register to greet the customers, a wide, genuine smile blooming on her face, and wondered what she was supposed to do now.

They were very white, Buffy thought; for someone who had been around for one hundred fifty years and smoked several generations’ worth of cigarettes. And they were straight enough that you’d think he was a child of the modern age of braces, rather than of the 1860s.

Spike’s teeth disappeared from view as he closed his mouth over a samosa and chewed.

“Could have used one of those spells for the Bronze,” said Buffy, after a moment’s hesitation that could be chalked up to swallowing her own food, rather than the fact that she had to remember it was her turn to speak- and what they were talking about.

Work. Spike was planning to ask Lorne if he was still friends with the sorceresses who had cast a spell of no violence over his old establishment in LA. Some vampires had tried to make the Hellmouth their playground last week, which Spike took as personally as though he owned the club.

“Would have made things less exciting, though,” she added, and Spike smirked.

There was no innuendo behind it, but Buffy’s spine straightened anyway. She reached for her glass of ice water and found herself avoiding his gaze.

Which brought hers back to his teeth.

What would Spike say if he knew what she had been obsessing over all afternoon?

Maybe he’d choke on his curry and she would pound his back and offer him water, even though he needed neither, because that was just the normal thing to do. He’d stare at her wide-eyed, say, “Have you gone completely carrot-top?”, and reassure her that Anya was just being her usual eccentric, pervy self.

Or maybe he’d give her his filthiest, most intoxicating leer, like the one that had made her request doggy bags for their food before it had even been delivered at that fancy French restaurant last month.

Buffy wasn’t sure which reaction would make her feel better.

“Ernie’s whinging again about how he knew he shouldn’t have bought property here and maybe he should just sell the place. Makes me want to find the owners of the Bronze and borrow their backbone.”

She wanted, suddenly, to see his other teeth.

His real teeth, said a small voice in the back of her head.

Buffy ignored the voice. They were just fangs.

So if they were “just” fangs, why did her thighs clamp together even as she reached for the ice water again?

She couldn’t remember ever having given his vampire visage much thought. Years ago it hadn’t mattered because he’d been her enemy; wrinkles and bumps were par for the course. She had rarely seen it during the bad year, though the brief reminders of what she was screwing had infuriated and repulsed her. When he was being controlled by the First the sight had sickened her; not because she was disgusted by what he was, but because she hated that he was being used as a monster against his will; the fangs came when the First did.

And now…now she had a hard time remembering the last time she had even seen his game face. He rarely fought with it; he didn’t drink blood with it. Buffy never forgot what he was, obviously, but somewhere along the line she had stopped associating Spike with the bumpy faces she regularly turned into dust.

The realization discomforted her, though Buffy wasn’t sure why.

“How were your classes?”

“Which ones?”

“You taught today?” he clarified, sounding surprised.

Buffy shrugged. “I was antsy earlier, so I went to HQ. It wasn’t a class so much as I wanted to spar, and a few slayers were willing to…”

“To have their arses handed to them?” said Spike with a chuckle. “One-on-one sessions. You’re spoiling them.”

Buffy felt herself smile.

“Could have called me,” he added, and she heard the unspoken question.

“I knew you were meeting with Ernie,” said Buffy, even though she also knew his boss had come in at lunchtime, not in the afternoon; this morning Spike had complained about having to use the sewers to get to work.

“And it was more work-out-the-day’s-frustrations than Buffy-and-Spike sexy time.”

She flashed a suggestive smile, hoping her wording would distract him. She didn’t want him to be offended, but sparring with Spike was the last thing she had wanted to do after leaving the Magic Box with Anya’s questions to ponder.

“If it’s frustration, the girls might thank you to use a punching bag instead of them,” said Spike. “I speak from experience.”

His teasing grin only lasted a moment before he said, more seriously, “Did it work? Do you want to talk about it?”

“It wasn’t anything important,” said Buffy hastily. “Class today was just a little annoying. It was research methods and data analysis, and you know how much I love that.”

Spike bought it, as she’d known he would; she had complained often enough last semester about the research labs her psychology major required her to take.

He wore a sympathetic frown. “Too bad you can’t have the slayerettes do it for you like they do the council research.”

“Mmm.” Buffy allowed herself a moment’s daydream.

“So you worked those kinks out. Have any others I might be able to help with?” he asked innocently.

Buffy stifled a grin, even as her fingers twitched in her lap, wanting to creep up to her neck.

“It’s a definite possibility.”

She hadn’t decided yet whether she would even bring up- that- so why was her pulse skyrocketing?

It was a good thing they were in a restaurant, she thought suddenly. She couldn’t ask to see his fangs here even if she wanted to. Which she didn’t. Did. Didn’t. Did?

“What did you think?” asked Spike, indicating her empty plate before beckoning the waiter.

“It was okay,” said Buffy. She had barely paid attention to what she put in her mouth.

“I don’t think Indian is my thing,” said Spike thoughtfully. “Too many vegetarian dishes. Although I like the spicy curries. Certainly better than that bland Italian place.”

That was one of the nice things about New Sunnydale. Property prices were still low enough that new, inexpensive restaurants opened seemingly every week.

“Mmm,” murmured Buffy again.

What were his fangs like compared to other vampires’? She had never thought to wonder about the differences, but surely they existed just as human teeth differed. Were Spike’s longer? Bigger?

Sharper?

Despite her shock toward Anya in the Magic Box, Buffy had considered the possibility before. She just didn’t have good associations with those thoughts. She’d had them during The Year Of Complete Shit (pronounced “tocks”; the ‘y’ was silent), as Anya had dubbed the year after her resurrection.

She used to daydream about Spike biting her. It was never about pleasure or sex, though. In her imagination she offered Spike a taste and never told him to stop…and he didn’t realize it was too late until he’d had his one good day. Then he suffered the blame and guilt, and no one said suicide.

It shamed Buffy now that she had considered, however fancifully, using him that way.

Occasionally during their affair she wondered why he didn’t ask to bite her- they did all other manner of perverse things after all. Sometimes she wished he would ask, because then she really could have left him- broken her addiction once and for all. Knowing he was a monster couldn’t stop her from needing him, but if he tried to be one, her self-righteousness could have overcome her libido.

She suspected he had known this too.

If her shame hadn’t made her dismiss out of hand any idea of biting in the fifteen months they had officially been together, an incident from the beginning of their relationship would have. Spike had become noticeably aroused in bed one night when she was on her period, and after much embarrassed hesitation, he admitted he wanted to go down on her. The matter hadn’t come up at all during their affair because she had been so thin during TYOCS that her period, always small to begin with, had been virtually nonexistent.

Too taken aback to consider all the implications, Buffy had agreed, only to find herself squirming and irrationally mortified when he actually tried. Spike hadn’t asked since.

The faucet stopped running in the bathroom, and Spike came back into the bedroom, rousing Buffy from her thoughts. He still wore his clothes and lingered at the foot of the bed, which told her he was in the mood for her to take them off for him. She glanced at the psychology textbook splayed open on her stomach and gave him a wry smile; she couldn’t even pretend she had been studying.

The slow, Cheshire cat smirk he gave in return made heat curl in her belly. She tossed the textbook on the ground and nudged the sheet away from her legs so she was unencumbered. Relatively speaking, at least; Spike would take care of her shorts and tee.

“Do you want me?” His murmur was a low, gravelly rumble.

“Always,” breathed Buffy.

But as he knelt on the foot of the bed and his hands skimmed up her legs, pausing momentarily to rub the tension in her calf muscles, the question that played through her mind was, ‘What do you want?’

Did she want his fangs in their bed?

All of a sudden her throat was dry and she was swallowing convulsively. They were home now, and if she asked she could see his fangs in a heartbeat; it wasn’t like at the restaurant, in public, where the satiation of her curiosity was hypothetical.

She pictured his game face in her mind’s eye and…

And found she didn’t particularly care for picturing it.

Dismay filled her. She loved him regardless of whether he was a vampire- no, Spike wouldn’t be Spike so she never would have fallen for him if he weren’t a vampire- but deep down she wanted to ignore his ugly, demon face?

Was she really so shallow?

Buffy struggled to remember feeling the way she had with Angel in the ice skating rink so many years ago, when she hadn’t cared what face he wore, but the girl she had been- and all her perceptions of the world- was a distant memory. It had been easy to look at Angel then and not care, because at that point he was a vampire in name only. She hadn’t met Angelus yet. She had no idea what horrors his demon visage represented. And though of course she had loved him and seen his game face plenty of times after Angelus, she didn’t think she could have kissed him, fangs and all, with the same insouciance.

“Buffy?”

“Hmm?” She craned her neck to see Spike watching her, his head propped in his hand and his elbow on the bed.

“You okay, love?”

“Yeah. Why?”

A hint of amusement shone through his worry. “Well, I’ve been tugging at your shorts for the past minute, and you haven’t moved your hips…I could rip them, of course.” He waggled one eyebrow. “But you usually like some advance warning when I destroy your clothes.”

“Oh.” Buffy felt heat bloom in her cheeks. “Sorry. I…” She tilted her hips slightly. Spike didn’t move. His pretty, pretty human face was creased with concern.

“If you’re not up for it, we don’t have to…”

“No, I am,” Buffy insisted. She shimmied her hips. “Very, very up. Well, you’re probably up. I’m just…ready.” She wasn’t really, though. She had barely felt Spike’s previous ministrations. His confusion was understandable given the passion their “Do you want me?” catchphrase usually inspired.

Spike slid her shorts and panties off in one fast motion, and then his lips were pressing the inside of her thigh, moving higher and higher…

“Unless he bites you in other places. I’ve read that the inside of the leg is-”

Her breath left Buffy in a rush, along with a wheezy, “Wait.”

Spike looked up.

“Come here.” She beckoned before he could look worried again. As he stretched out beside her Buffy turned onto her side so they were facing. Without thinking about what she doing, she stroked her fingers down the hollow of one cheekbone until she cupped his jaw and could brush the base of the opposite plane with her thumb. God, he had such sexy cheekbones. She’d thought so even when she loathed him; it had annoyed her to no end that someone so evil had landed such good genes.

She touched her index finger to the side of his nose and trailed it down to trace his lips; first the top and then the bottom. Spike didn’t nibble her finger or draw it into his mouth like he normally would have. He just watched her steadily, his blue eyes confused but completely trusting.

Buffy felt a rush of love- and, finally, another rush of heat- as their gazes met. He was patient, no matter how strange her behavior; he knew she needed something else tonight and would wait for her to find it.

Her touch to his brow was tentative. She imagined the skin beneath her fingertips shifting, growing furrows and ridges. Her thumb brushed the smooth space between his eyes and she imagined bumps. She traced the scar her fellow Slayer had given him before he killed her, the scar that she also found sexy. She pictured his beautiful blue eyes turning gold, and she waited, fearfully, for instinctive revulsion.

It didn’t come.

Her small shudder of relief reverberated up her fingers, which she steadied by stroking his brow again, firmly this time. Maybe she didn’t care to picture it, but she didn’t think his game face in their bed would repulse her. He was hers, bumps, wrinklies, and all.

She caressed his cheek again, and this time when she slid her finger to his lower lip, she tugged gently at it. He kissed the tip.

In an instant Buffy had captured his mouth with her own. She wrapped her arm around his back, closing the space between them.

Yes, he was hers.

Her body felt aflame, as though it were making up for lost time, and she wasn’t aware of whose hands were yanking whose clothes. But as her shirt came over her head their eyes met, and time seemed to pause. He watched her, and though his eyes were now lidded in lust, his curiosity was evident, too.

Buffy opened her mouth.

“Do you…”

The question wouldn’t come.

Buffy leaned forward again.

Not tonight. She wouldn’t force herself to ask tonight, not when they were already in the moment and she was gasping and he was moaning and she just wanted to stop thinking.

Another day…

What did she want?

She didn’t want him to bite her. That didn’t mean she couldn’t maybe, possibly be talked into it, but Anya’s questions hadn’t lit any flames of desire for the kink on her own behalf.

But she did want to know if Spike wanted it.

And if he did, why had he never asked?

Buffy picked up the phone as soon as Spike left to play pool with Xander, but she didn’t work up the nerve to dial the numbers for a good ten minutes. When she finally had and multiple rings passed without an answer, she couldn’t help hoping that maybe she was out for the evening, on a date or following up on a vision…

“Hello?”

Buffy’s first sound was a gurgle. Right. She was actually doing this.

“Hi, Cordelia. It’s Buffy.”

“Oh, hey.”

“How are you?” She had rehearsed this: start politely, no upfront interrogation.

“I’m doing fine. Lots of demons to kill, evil plans to thwart, damsels to rescue. You probably know what I mean.”

Buffy smiled despite herself. “Sounds familiar.” How hard would she have laughed in high school if told that she and Queen C could one day trade demon-hunting stories? Well, not as hard as she would have laughed if told that she would one day call to ask about Cordelia’s sex life with Angel.

“How are you doing?”

“I’m fine,” said Buffy automatically. “School’s started again, so that’s keeping me busy. Is this a good time, by the way? I don’t want to interrupt you if you’re busy.”

“No, it’s fine.”

“Ah.” That was…good. Totally of the good. She tried to remember the next step of her plan. Be polite, ask about Cordelia’s life, try not to make it embarrassingly obvious that she was only calling for gossip…

“So it’s been a while, huh?” Four or five months, if memory served, since Cordelia and Angel had had to take care of some business at the office when Dawn and Gunn drove up for her birthday party last week. “Weren’t you negotiating with a demon clan the last time we…”

“Buffy.” The one word held a lot of amusement.

“Yes?”

“It’s okay. I know why you’re calling. We don’t have to make small talk.”

Relief flooded her, even as she winced. “You know?”

“Anya called to tell me she may have accidentally opened a can of worms.”

“Ah,” said Buffy again. “Well that’s awkward.”

“But good for cutting to the chase,” said Cordelia. “So here it is. Yes, Angel bites me sometimes when we have sex. What else do you want to know?”

Just like that, Cordelia was giving her carte blanche? Guilt tugged at Buffy as she scrambled to orient her thoughts. If their positions were reversed, she never would have been so gracious, especially not with someone she only saw a few times a year.

“A-are you sure you don’t mind talking about it? I don’t want…” She couldn’t even finish her clumsy, disingenuous reply; she needed this, even if she didn’t necessarily want it.

“Really, Buffy, I don’t mind.” Cordelia still sounded amused. Buffy was glad suddenly that they were doing this over the phone and not in person.

She took a deep breath. “All right. Thanks. Um…” She should have written down a list. “When and…how did you start? Why?”

“We started around…probably last June or July. It was a few months after we got his soul anchored. We were fooling around one night, and he asked me.”

“He asked you?” Buffy didn’t mean to interrupt. She didn’t know if this was one of those stories where it was so intensely personal that any distraction might halt the flow entirely, but she couldn’t help herself.

“Yep.” Luckily Cordelia still sounded amused; Buffy wondered absently when she should start feeling patronized by that. “We were kissing and he started nipping at my neck, and then he asked. Granted, it kind of spilled out. I don’t think he would have if he’d thought about it, but you know, heat of the moment and all.”

No, Buffy didn’t know. That is, she knew about losing all reservations when the moment struck, but 48 hours ago biting hadn’t even been a reservation. And the idea of Angel giving into the heat of the moment, considering how tortured and reluctant he had always been with her, was almost laughable. One of those occasional reminders, not that she needed any, that she barely knew him anymore.

“He tried to take it back,” continued Cordelia. “Play it cool. But I told him he couldn’t just say something like that and then not talk about it. So he admitted that he was jealous that Spike had bitten me. It’s a vampire thing, getting all possessive about who touches their mates.”

“Angel’s bitten me, and Spike never gets jealous about it,” said Buffy. She was too busy placing Cordelia’s words (oh yes- Spike had told her about Cordelia’s temporary return to life in LA) to think about what she was saying. As soon as she played back her words, though, she wondered if they were really true. Spike was an equal opportunity nuzzler when it came to her neck, but before he’d gotten his soul, he had definitely favored the side with her scars.

She recalled suddenly one night during their affair when he’d kissed her neck with bruising intensity, sucking and nipping with his blunt teeth, and even though it felt good she yelled at him to stop, that she didn’t want his disgusting hickeys. Buffy shivered slightly at the memory. Okay fine, he was probably jealous. Still…

“He never says anything out loud anyway.”

Cordelia sighed. “That’s because occasionally- very, very rarely- and if you ever tell anyone I said this I will deny it and then kill you- Spike is actually more mature than Angel.”

Buffy felt herself grin.

“So anyway, Angel clearly wanted to bite me, and I said I would think about it, and a few days later we did it.”

“But, um…” Buffy licked her lips. “What made you decide to say yes?”

Cordelia was silent for several seconds, and Buffy struggled to figure out if she’d unintentionally said something offensive. When Cordelia spoke, though, she was matter-of-fact.

“Because I love him. He’s a vampire, and for better or for worse, vampires get a kick from sucking blood. And I don’t mean that in a food sort of way. When Angel bites me he’s not feeding. Obviously he gets, uh, nutrition, or whatever you’d call it, in the process, but that’s not the point of it. It’s a little about possession but it’s also about love and trust and being- okay, this sounds stupid- being joined, as completely as possible.”

That did sound stupid, Buffy thought.

So why was her throat suddenly parched and her face hot? Another unexpected memory assailed her. Angel’s bite had burned and hurt, but beneath the pain there had definitely been burning of another kind. And love and trust and possession had all been integral to that incident.

“Does that make sense?” asked Cordelia.

“Y-yes.” Buffy cleared her throat. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

For a moment Buffy wondered if that was that- if she was supposed to hang up- but then she couldn’t keep from blurting, “Doesn’t it hurt?”

Cordelia let out a short laugh. “It’s certainly not a neck massage. Yeah, it hurts a little, but not as much as you’d think. It’s not brutal tearing like it is when they’re feeding.”

Brutal tearing described Angel’s more-than-a-little-painful bite. But then, he had been feeding.

“Vampires are actually capable of sliding their fangs in smoothly if they want. It still stings, and the sucking can hurt, but it’s not terrible. Besides, there’s usually plenty of foreplay to distract me, and if he bites at the right time it can even be-”

Buffy held her breath as Cordelia broke off, unsure if she could stand to hear more- and if she could bear not hearing the answer.

“Let’s just say that those vampire romance novels have a little bit of truth to them.” Cordelia sounded composed again.

“It can feel good?” said Buffy doubtfully. Her voice cracked.

“Sometimes,” said Cordelia. “But it’s all right even when it doesn’t feel great. It feels great for Angel, and that’s what counts.” Her voice softened. “It’s part of the way I show him that I love him.”

Buffy’s throat tightened.

After a moment passed and Cordelia didn’t continue, she cleared her throat. “Thank you. I- I really appreciate this.”

“You’re welcome,” repeated Cordelia. Buffy was about to hang up when she heard, “Oh, and Buffy?”

“Yes?”

“Have fun!

A click followed, and the line went dead.

Next

Originally posted at http://seasonal-spuffy.livejournal.com/458838.html