And He Will Be Loved
by Silvia
And she shall look on him with forgiveness and everybody will forgive and love... and he will be loved. So everything’s okay, right?
-- "Beneath You"
It's so stupid the way it happens, because he meant to put the container right away but then the phone rang.
The phone rang and it was Dawn with extra minutes on her card and she just wanted to say, "hi". So she did. She talked about the boy whose hair was too greasy for everyone's liking, all slicked back behind his ears, and her new shoes that cost too much. She needed more money and she was very sorry, and he said,
"Don't you worry about it."
--
He doesn't mean to spoil the milk, but it keeps on happening, and Buffy, she says it's because it doesn't involve him, because he can drink it no matter what.
"It involves you -- it involves me," he says, and he thinks she used to believe him but he can't honestly know.
It's so stupid that it's about milk, and he almost fills his bags up with the cartons instead, except he knows it's about fighting about milk and not the milk itself.
Which is good, because he'd hate to lose a taste for it. Always made him feel strangely home and warm.
--
She doesn't even raise her voice. She says, "Call me when you get there," and brushes her mouth lightly across his cheek.
"I don't—"
"When you figure it out," she says, and she's griping both hands around one of his fists long before he notices -- it's one of their reflexes.
They have so many, and he's believed some mornings that they breathe the same and it has to mean something, even though his is just dead air and habit.
--
He hadn't had a shirt on his back, but he'd had a pair of jeans that had suited him – worn in all the right places – and he looks for them but there's so much stuff. Stuff-- not another word for it. Nick knacks and thinga-ma-bobbers, and he doesn't have a motorcycle anymore or a boat and there's no sunset.
She's emptying the dishwasher when he comes down the stairs, rubbing at this stubborn bit on a spoon that won't come off, and she says, "You don't have to leave tonight," when she looks up.
"But I have to--"
"Yeah," she says, quiet (the sound almost hiding under her tongue).
--
"Buffy," he says, at the doorway, and he laughs at himself and his terrible poetry.
"What?" He mouths it with her.
"Nothing, just. I could." He shrugs in the way that makes her smile no matter where, no matter what, and he'll miss her like he still misses the real taste of cream, the smell of morning dew when it didn't make him hurry. "There was a time..."
There is a time for everything.
"Yeah," she says. "There was."