The short play Sunnydale High puts on for the middle schoolers is just a little thing, a requirement for class, and she can't even convince him to come with her. Just once, this one play, and he fears stepping out of his doorstep to be by her side.
Some part of her mind that sounds a lot like her mother points out that it probably isn't smart for a vampire to go to a noontime program, and that he has valid reasons for not going. It still fucking sucked.
It is well-tread ground for her to complain that she can't have even one part of her life that was normal. She's even accepted it, to some degree. But she can't take a walk in the park on a bright Saturday afternoon with him on her arm, can't watch him make a fool of himself at the water park. She doesn't even want any of those things, not really--just the *option.*
She made a choice going into this, something she didn't quite understand consciously while she was so blinded by the cut of his jacket, the dark red of his shirt against his skin, the outline of the tattoo on his shoulder. She chose to be without the stuff the other girls have, what Cordelia and Harmony all flaunt in the hallways. She doesn't get the random flowers with a schmoopy card, or a ride after school lets out. She gets a dangerous presence watching her back, and information on the latest bad guy. She gets passion, not sweet kisses behind the gym. A hooded, considering look instead of open appreciation.
When she dreams of a future, it's not the expensive house and dashing husband and two kids of Before Slayer. It's not even the hope that something could change when she became the Slayer. Now she dreams of seeing next Christmas, of graduating. She knows the mortality rates. She's seen the book on Giles's shelf he never gave her. Slayers don't live more than two or three years past their calling, and that's a time of death she's not prepared to deal with yet.
So instead she makes up issues, takes on things she knows is impossible. Angel is one of those things, a huge distraction she stumbled on to that keeps her from offing herself and saving someone else the trouble.
It doesn't make her feel any better, though, when she looks at Angel and see everything that's Not Hers. Instead she flees to the library and goes back to the corner near the rear window where they've set up an old, battered chair and a lamp. When the table just gets to be too much, or they have a few extra minutes before class or slayage, this is the place they crash. It's refuge. She goes there.
It's easy to curl up there. Giles has left; she called to check in after patrol, before the fight with Angel. She turns on the light for comfort, tucks her legs up beneath her, and closes her eyes. She dreams.
She doesn't need wings to fly: she can see all of Sunnydale from here, over the cliffs that overhang the city, where her classmates go to make out. When she tries to step in, though, she can't move in. The door is blocked, so she turns and sees Willow waving. When she goes to raise her hand, she finds it's chained to the rock. She's stuck, and she calls out for help, but no one hears.
A black shadow of a bird moves within her line of sight, and she jerks to see it more closely, but when she does it only caws at her and blinks rapidly. The bird isn't a bird, she sees now. It's a gryphon, and it takes a perch on the tree and turns to the side. In profile, it's like Angel's tattoo, and her throat catches.
She turns away, but when she peeks back through her two good hands, it's Angel. He's mouthing something, but she can't make out the words, so she gives him pen and paper. He looks at it dumbly, then pulls her close and kisses her.
"You can't make me forget that easily," she whispers in his ear--
--and then she's awake because Giles is carefully shaking her hand and murmuring her name.
She says sorry, and he tells her to call her mother. It's easy to make up an excuse, sleeping over at Willow's after too much studying. Her mother never even thinks to call and ask Willow's parents, not that they'll be there anyway.
When she goes out onto the quad to see Xander and Willow, she stops and basks in the sun for just a little while. It feels good on her cool skin, and she idly rubs the skin of her arm. She'll have to get a tan, soon. It will look strange against Angel's skin.
She will enjoy this while she can, because she has no illusions of permanence, as much as she tries to convince herself otherwise. So she will see him at the Roberts tomb that evening, and tell him about the silly little play, and he will look pained. She will quietly enjoy that, because it means that at least he's feeling something that he can't hide behind his general impassivity.
It still sucks, of course, and it always will. But sometimes his kisses are as ephemeral as those in her dream, so she cherishes them while she has them. She's learned to do so, in her line of work.
words © SA. characters, show, and people not mine. no infringement is intended.