Real World
Mondays. Even when it was actually, well, Wednesday - it was her Monday and walking back into the basement had the same affect as waking from cold water thrown in her face.
The weekend, or more precisely her weekend, was over and thinking back on it felt like she’d had a really long, extremely detailed dream. Erotic dream. She’d officially had more sex over her days off than in the sum total of the rest of her life. She’d done things, and had things done to her, that she’d never experienced before. And if she had to choose a word that would wrap it all up in a nice, neat little package that would be embarrassed.
She knew, logically, that there really wasn’t anything to be embarrassed about. She was a grown woman, and she was involved in a monogamous relationship, and if she wanted to spend two days eating junk food and having sex that was her perogative.
But she still couldn’t look at him in the glare of the bad flourescent lighting and not fight the blush that would be a dead give-away to the rumor mill. He was at the next desk, trying to pound the difference between a robbery and a burglary into the head of this month’s trainee, and she noticed that it was a different trainee than the one he’d had the day it all really started. The month had changed over while she was lost in her own head, and the trainees had rotated again. This one at least seemed to get what he was saying, and when she caught Will’s eye his lips quirked in her general direction.
It made heat flood places better not thought about while at work, and she went back to staring at her display. There was nothing happening. Absolutely nothing. Rush hour wouldn’t start for another hour, and the phones were slow while the town slept. She wished something would happen, just to give her something to think about that didn’t involve her. That thought made her feel vaguely guilty, knowing that her phone actually ringing more times than not meant someone was going through something she wouldn’t wish on anyone. But she ignored it in favor of wanting the distraction.
She didn’t recognize herself anymore. She kept having these flashes, brief moments when she felt like she was waking up from a long nightmare, but they would fade and she remember that the nightmare was actually the real world and she’d supposedly gotten used to it.
Will hadn’t left her house until early afternoon yesterday, and every hour since then the overwhelming feeling of embarassment and the feeling that she’d been monumentally stupid grew more powerful. It didn’t help that he hadn’t even spoken to her today, even with the occasional glance. She told herself that she’d insisted on no one knowing, and they were at work, and that he knew she would be angry if he outted them to the whole shift. But still, there was little girl in the back of her head saying he’d forgotten the whole thing already and she should be ready for the fact that he’d gotten what he’d wanted now and wouldn’t talk to her again.
Stupid Buffy. Elizabeth. Elizabeth. Buffy was a silly little girl she’d outgrown ages ago.
She didn’t think about the reasons behind her name change, or even what she’d meant when she put away the old one. It was ingrained now. Elizabeth was an adult, a professional, alone. Buffy had been bubbly and idealistic and had a real future doing the things she wanted to do instead of the things someone had to. Buffy had died years ago, and the resurgence of those old feelings wasn’t the good thing it felt like.
Those were the things her mind said. Since Will, more and more of the time she found herself thinking of Buffy as her true self, something lost that she might have a chance of recapturing. Laughter. Love. Security.
She wanted her mommy. Wanted to ask her which part of her was telling the truth. Wanted someone who knew things to tell her what to do.
Finally - her phone rang, and there was something more important than herself to think about.
Well, it seemed like maybe he was out of the dog house.
Will grinned while he listened to the kid taking the call. Andrew was a strange little man, and he thought most probably gay, but he was catching on quick. It had been so long since Will had a trainee worth trying to train that he almost felt like shouting.
Of course, that could have something to do with the way Summers kept looking at him out of the corner of her eye, and the blushes that she couldn’t seem to hide. He pretended not to notice, and actually hoped no one else had, but it made a soft warm feeling settle in the middle of his chest.
He felt alive again.
“Giles.” He looked up into Sarge’s grinning face, nodded at the signal to meet in the office, and tried to hold onto that warm feeling.
“Trainee?”
“Have him listen to -” there was a pause while the other man looked around, “Mclay, I guess. She’s good.”
His hands were barely shaking at all while he disconnected the monitor and set the kid up to listen to Tara. She smiled over her shoulder at him, and he smiled back. She would have the kid calm and confident by the time he got back, and he distracted himself briefly by thinking again how if he were in charge of such things he’d hound her until she agreed to train. She’d been here long enough, and was really exceptional on the medical side of things.
Then he was in the office, and the door was closing behind him, and he wished more than anything he was back inside that house with it’s homey feel and a warm woman snuggled close to him. Instead, he tried to manage not to fidget while his supervisor read the file that he knew he’d have to face eventually. It was faster this time. He’d just taken the damned psyche yesterday afternoon, and hadn’t wanted to leave Elizabeth that long.
But she’d wanted him to, or she would have asked where it was he had to go, wouldn’t she?
“Well, it looks like you’ll be leaving us, Giles. I’d gotten used to having you around.” It was phrased as a statement, although it was obviously a question he didn’t have to answer if he didn’t want to.
“Sir?”
“You passed. Good marks on everything. You are hereby free to return to the patrol division.”
Ten years. He’d been here ten years. He’d re-initiated his application for patrol three years ago, and had been going through the evals faithfully ever since, but he’d never actually thought they’d let him back. It was about choice, he’d told himself. He didn’t really want to leave.
But his heart rate picked up, and he felt a rush of adrenaline. Free. He could leave. Be outside of the basement. Out in the world, even if it was the dark side of said world. Damn, it had been too long since his life had fresh air and windows. It would raise his pay by half, like every hour he worked was at his overtime rate.
He realized he was standing with his mouth hanging open.
“I passed the psyche?”
“You sound as surprised as I am.” It was meant as a joke, but it stung a little anyway. “There’s paperwork, of course. You’ll need to see the Patrol Captain, sign a few things, but you are once again officially a police officer.”
“You mean I can be. I mean, not yet, right?” He needed to talk to Elizabeth. He’d avoided the conversation while they were off, distracting the both of them with more pleasant things, but now it was - shit, it was possible.
If anything, the grin got larger when his seemed to sink in, and Sarge looked at him. “Well, you could officially request a permanent transfer and so on and so forth, and I’ve got it on good authority we’d want to keep you around, but officially you already belong to them, you know.”
“Well, yeah, but I thought - I mean - I’ve been here ten years.”
Sarge shrugged. “My guess is you’ll do three months or so with a training officer in the field, but that’s unofficial and just my guess. They may want one month, they may want six, but in the end the result is the same. Unless you want to turn down the opportunity?”
He had meant to say the words immediately, all those times he’d thought about this moment. But he couldn’t. Everything was happening too damned fast.
“Do I have to know today?” Ouch. That sounded really bad.
The grin faded. “I could lose this for a couple of days, if for instance you were out on sick leave, but I’d have to know as soon as you came back.” He was serious now, and Will wondered if his saying something like that meant he actually hoped to keep him in Comm.
“I wouldn’t be lying if I said I felt decidedly nauseous right now.” He’d just said that out loud, hadn’t he? He must have, because his supervisor was indulging in a full out belly laugh.
“Get the hell out of here. But you’d better be ready to receive this news officially when you come back.”
“I owe you, sir.” He meant it. He would do whatever he had to pay back this man. “I mean it.”
“Yeah, yeah. That’s what they all say. Ask ‘em for a double shift and you’re a demon sent from hell again.”
“Well, yeah. It’s a double shift.” He snarked back as he walked out the door.
Damn. Elizabeth was on the phone, her eyebrows drawn together and her bottom lip working it’s way between her teeth in the pauses. He couldn’t distract her, couldn’t walk over and ask her to take a break. It would be obvious, and people would talk, and she’d dump him if anyone so much as suspected.
So he just sucked a deep breath in between his teeth and slipped out the door, climbing the stairs and shoving open the door.
Walking into the daylight felt almost symbolic.
She noticed it when he left, but it was peripheral. Unimportant.
She was talking to a girl not much older than her. Sarah woke up late because her husband hadn’t woke her, and found him dead in the bed beside her. She was halfway through opening the airway when Sarah said that she couldn’t tilt the head back because he was stiff. And cold. And Elizabeth knew there was nothing she could do beyond talking to the other woman and waiting for someone to get there so she wouldn’t be alone with her new husband’s body.
She was falling apart, and something inside of Elizabeth that had been trying to heal broke all over again.
To feel that, to think she was safe and secure in bed with someone who wasn’t even really there anymore. In her mind, she’d woken up and found Will gone, and that was on wrong on more levels than she could count.
First of all, one did not make such connections with the caller. You connected enough to do your job and no more. Best case scenario, you managed to fake the connection, you didn’t let it touch you. And then there was the fact that this girl was married, had every right to expect her husband to wake up where he’d fallen asleep. Elizabeth was barely even seeing Spike, and that she would make that particular connection at all wasn’t good. It lead to thoughts she shouldn’t have yet, and feelings she knew she wasn’t capable of having.
Three quarters of the way through the call she felt her cell phone vibrate against her hip, and she snuck it off her belt to read the text message the second she hung up.
It was from Will, asking her to meet him at his apartment after work. With lots of question marks. She faked a bathroom break, sent him a text message that there was an extra key at the kitchen door underneath a flower pot, then tried to go back to concentrating on her job.
She should have begged off. One little message from him, and she’s inviting him back to her house. While she wasn’t even there.
That was very relationshippy. She had to put a stop to it before it turned into more than she was willing to risk. She had to.
She wanted to. She was almost sure.