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Buffy: Ho Ho, the Mistletoe

Buffy gapes at the beauty before her.

Real pine garlands hang in ribboned swags above the street, white fairy lights twinkle cheerily along storefronts, carolers serenade shoppers as they pass. Greatcoated gentlemen escort muffed and bonneted sweethearts outfitted in long fur-trimmed coats of red or green or jaunty tartan with black velvet collars.

It’s snowing, soft fluffy flakes drifting down to lie in thick sparkling layers over everything, forming halos of gold around glowing gaslights. The air cool but not cold.

"Looks just like home."

Buffy sighs and stretches out her left hand for the clasp of cool fingers, turns and looks not into the brown eyes of her memory but clear, shining blue. And smiles in pure joy. "Come on," she cries, eager as a child, and tugs his hand. He laughs and falls into step beside her.

They amble along aimlessly, nodding politely as tall hats lift in greeting, pausing occasionally beside excited children peering into shop windows. Delicious aromas waft from the tea shop and he nods a question toward the door. She shakes her head, smiling, and glances at the streetlight above them. His eyes catch fire as he answers her smile with a knee-melting smirk and draws closer to her.

Christmas kiss under the mistletoe, sweet and chaste, smiling lips to smiling lips. When it ends her eyes spark mischieviously and she darts away, laughing. He runs after her, catches her hand and pulls her under the next garlanded streetlight for another kiss, lingering. He’s really, really wonderful at this, she’s never had better (he was right about that), and she sighs against his lips as if in surrender, yet when he relaxes she spins out of his gentle hold with an impish giggle and flees across the street.

Back and forth they go, heedlessly skidding and slipping on the snow, converging and parting with squeals of laughter and sighs of delight. She’s giddy as a girl, it’s such a wonderful game, the mistletoe leading them like clues in a treasure hunt, surely toward some marvelous prize, or maybe each of them is prize to the other, and they’re being led to a place where they may open their gifts together. Sometimes she leads the merry chase, sometimes he, and their sides ache from laughing while other parts begin aching in quite a different way. Each capture and pause for kisses grows longer, more intense.

He catches her near the end of the street, swings her around, laughing – and then abruptly stops, looking at the streetlight then down at their feet, frowning curiously. "Buffy?" He nods at a few dried-out leaves lying there on the nearly snowless ground, reaches up to touch the garland, then draws his hand back as if stung. The leaves are browning, the ribbon frayed and drooping, and the wind rakes cold fingers through her hair but her blood runs fast and hot in her veins and she does not care. She grins and snatches him close for an open-mouthed kiss, warm and wet. His eyes flicker gold for a moment and he returns her grin, lunging for her as she twists away.

The chase goes on, intensity building, cool hands sliding beneath jacket beneath sweater, warm hands clutching at ivory-smooth flanks, blood welling from pricked lips and licked away with a cool facile tongue. Giggles and squeals becoming gasps and moans and her fingers fumble at his belt when suddenly he freezes, blue eyes wide with dismay and growing dread, under the last streetlight.

Under dead, bedraggled mistletoe, withered berries and tattered ribbon, rattling in a gust of icy wind. The gaslight shines sullenly on the entrance to an alley.

She smirks and quirks a lascivious brow, then frowns when he steps back.

"No - Buffy - "

She narrows her eyes, irritated (What’s his problem?) and grasps black leather in her fists. "Come on!" she demands, dragging him into the alley, fastening her mouth on his and thrusting her tongue past his suddenly stiff lips. He struggles and that really ticks her off, she grasps his head in her hands and slams him against the bricks. Once, twice, again… finally his knees buckle, the back of his head leaving a red smear on the bricks as he sinks down to settle, dazed and prone on the dirty asphalt.

Just the way she wants him. She grins slyly and leaps astride. He recovers enough to squirm, pushing at her:

“Buffy, stop. Not like this again, not now - ”

How dare he? How. Dare He. Refuse her?

Her rage boils and roils, hot lava explosion coming, coming - and his nose erupts in a bright pash of blood beneath her furious fist. "You do what I say!" she hisses. "You hear me? Otherwise you’re just useless!" His hands rise defensively but she brushes them aside, aiming hard strikes at his face as punctuation to her screeching. "You're lucky - I even - look at you! You're nothing! You're just an evil - disgusting - thing - ” He pleads for her to stop, lips broken oozing blood, more blood trickling from his ruined nose, bruises blooming, and he’s so damned pathetic, it's sickening - that’s it, she’s had it with him.

“The hell with this.” Baring her teeth in a cruel grin she pulls out her stake, displays it to terrified blue eyes. “I should’ve done this long ago.” She brings down the wood and laughs as he crumbles to dust beneath her -

“Spike!” Her shriek wakes her and she sits up, shaking in every limb. Within seconds her door flies open.

"Buffy!" Chestnut hair sailing behind, Dawn rushes to her side, clasps her close. Buffy slumps into Dawn's slender arms and chokes back a sob, hot salt swelling and burning her eyes as she tries to find her voice.

“Dawn - " The guttural moan doesn’t even sound like her, drawn from a deep aching hollow within.

"I know," her sister soothes. "I know." She strokes Buffy's back over and over, lays her cheek against Buffy's tangled hair and murmurs, "You'll find him, Buffy. I know you will."

Buffy leans away, just enough to look into Dawn's eyes, finding a wealth of sympathy and love that tears her heart even as it comforts because she knows he has no such solace, wherever he is. "I just hope I won’t be too late."

Dawn swallows hard and glances away. She can say it now, here in the dark where truth comes easier. "Me too."

Buffy's face crumples, so Dawn gathers her in once more, rocking her like a child.

Fin





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