skip the light fandango

Title: At Night Series IV: The Night is My Companion
Author: Maren
Pairing: Buffy/Cordelia
Rating: 13+
Summary:At Night is a series of Buffy/Cordelia ficlets that gives little peeks into a post-Chosen relationship between Buffy and Cordy by showing flashes of the nights they spend together. This series is AU where Cordelia wakes up from her coma in Angel Season 5 and stays awake. Buffy is in New York. The rest of the story unfolds in glimpses.
Author's Note: Written for the Lyrical Ficathon, run by dknightshade. The lyrics I was given were from Sarah McLachlan's "Possession"-- "The night is my companion, solitude my guide".

Thanks to southernbangel for the beta, especially since I sent it to her before I ran a spell-check. Ack!



iv: the night is my companion
and solitude my guide
--“Possession” Sarah McLachlan

On the nights that Buffy sneaks out of bed to meet Faith, she is always torn between feelings of guilt and excitement, apprehension and longing. Tonight is one of those nights.

Cordelia is sleeping soundly next to her, a slight frown on her face as she lays nestled on her stomach. The twinge of guilt that Buffy has been feeling as she waits for Cordy to fall deeply asleep magnifies at the sight and she wishes she didn’t have to do this. But she does—she can’t ignore it any longer. Faith has been in town for days and there is a nagging itch inside her skin that Buffy knows won’t go away until she meets her.

Sliding from under the sheets as smoothly and quietly as possible, Buffy holds her breath as Cordy’s frown deepens and her arm moves out to rest in the warm space Buffy has just vacated. She lets the breath hiss slowly out when Cordy doesn’t wake up, and lets her eyes skip over the naked curve of her lover’s back, the luscious globe of her breast as it presses into the mattress, the bent leg that makes her sheet-covered hips cock up on one side. Cordy looks beautiful and soft and vulnerable, and Buffy prays that she won’t have nightmares tonight.

The added guilt of that might break something inside of her, and Buffy got tired of feeling broken long ago.

She quickly pulls on a black t-shirt and the leather pants that usually stay buried in the back of her closet, then grabs her boots and tiptoes out of the room. Her heart is pounding with anticipation as she glides across the wood floor and grabs her keys from the hook next to the door. Buffy doesn’t pull on her boots until she is in the hall and then she is flying down the stairs and out into the still-warm autumn air.

Faith’s hotel is five blocks away and by the time Buffy pushes through the front doors, her eyes are bright and her breath is fast. Taking the elevator to the third floor, she stops in front of the door marked “322” and pauses, her hand poised in mid-knock. But no matter how hard she tries to deny the fire in her blood, she wants this . . . she needs this. Two quick raps, and the door is swinging open before Buffy can pull her hand fully away.

Faith stands in the threshold, arms crossed in front of her breasts and a smirk on her face.

“Kinda thought maybe you wouldn’t come this time.”

Buffy frowns. “I’m here now.”

Dropping her arms, Faith’s smirk turns into a smile and she nods. “About fucking time, B. I was just about to leave without you. The vamps aren’t taking a siesta while you’re tucking in the princess.”

Buffy stiffens at the mention of Cordelia, hating to be reminded that she sneaks to be here, lies to Cordy about being out of the demon business . . . hating to be reminded that no matter how much she tries to convince herself that she can lead a semi-normal life of a first year grad student in the Art History and Archeology program at NYU, killing is in her blood and it calls to her every night as the sun fades behind the horizon. The night is her companion, comforting and familiar in a way that she cannot define.

On most nights, Buffy leaves the slaying to others. She has been trying for years now to figure out who she is when she isn’t The Slayer, and sometimes she thinks she’s getting close to something . . . some answer, some identity, some closure. But every time she starts to get comfortable in the skin of “Buffy Summers, NYU student”, her gift catches up with her and she loses the ability to deny what she still is, no matter how many other girls share her power now.

It always sneaks up on her, a stealthy and predatory feeling that makes her skin itch from the inside and her internal temperature rise until she is cranky and irritable. Buffy tries to deny it, clings desperately to the façade of her new, normal life and it always works for a little while. . . long days and nights where she struggles to hold onto what she’s built here in the city with Cordy, doing everything she can to avoid the breaking point.

There is always a breaking point, though, and it usually comes when Faith comes.

Most of the time she can ignore it, but never when Faith is in town. Slaying with Faith fills some need in her that is so deep and entrenched that Buffy can’t even put it into coherent thought and so here she is again, burning to get out there and lose herself in the parry and thrust of slaying.

“So quit with the third degree and let’s go,” Buffy snaps back, whirling around and stalking down the hall. The hours are waning and she needs to feel her body move with unconscious ease as she lets it do what it was made to do. She can hear Faith shutting her room door, and jogging to catch up.

“And hello to you too, sunshine,” Faith mutters as she matches steps with Buffy’s and hands her an extra stake.

*

It’s an hour before dawn when Buffy unlocks the apartment door, her body singing with a mixture of adrenaline and pain. She tries not to wince at the sound of the deadbolt as it turns, then tries not to wince again as she jostles her injured side against the doorframe on the way inside. Buffy isn’t sure how she’s going to hide the wound from Cordelia over the next couple of days it will take to heal, but she’ll figure it out after she takes a shower and washes away the other evidence of her activities.

Two steps into the room and Buffy sees Cordy sitting in the overstuffed chair by the bank of windows, her face hidden in the dark shadows of the room even as her outline is highlighted in the stray street light streaming inside. Her body freezes and her mind races, wondering what to do, what to say, what to do.

Silence stretches thickly between them, and then Cordy’s voice breaks through it, strong and sure.

“You were with Faith.”

Buffy’s eyes widen and her heart lurches. In that moment she realizes what it must look like, her sneaking out and trying to sneak back in after visiting Faith at her hotel.

“It’s not what you think, Cordy… I didn’t… we didn’t…”

A tight, derisive sound spills roughly from Cordelia’s throat. “Oh please. I know you aren’t cheating on me with Faith, Buffy.”

Buffy lets out a breath she didn’t realize she was holding and slowly walks toward Cordy, not sure what to say to defend herself, not even knowing if she should try. What she has been doing is unforgivable, and her throat feels tight with the knowledge that things will never be the same from this point forward. Cordelia moved here to get away from gods and demons and other creatures of the night. Buffy moved here to get away from herself—her destiny, her decisions, her detractors. It occurs to Buffy that she is one of the creatures of the night that Cordy was trying so hard to leave behind, and the thought makes her stop in front of the row of windows, short of the chair that holds the woman with whom she is in love. She reaches out a hand and touches the palm to the cool glass pane, enjoying the feel against her heated skin.

Gazing out at the street below, Buffy stares at the blue glow that emanates from the sign of the all-night diner just down the block from their apartment. Sometimes she meets Cordy and her cast mates there after a performance. She and Cordy share Belgian waffles with whipped cream and fend off laughing innuendo from the others about how they manage to keep off the pounds. It is normal and perfect and Buffy cherishes that even as her body hums with satisfaction in the aftermath of her slaying. She doesn’t want to lose this, but she’s so tired of denying who she is, what she is, even to herself.

There is a sound of fabric shifting against fabric, and then Cordelia is standing next to her—just a hair’s breadth away but it feels like miles.

“I’ve known for a while now, Buffy. I just wasn’t ready to know, you know?” Cordy lets out a breath of a laugh and Buffy sees her shake her head out of the corner of her eye. “And you’ll just have to believe me when I say that makes sense in my head.”

Buffy smiles—she can’t help it. She and Cordy speak the same language and there used to be a time when the very idea would make her cringe with a petty kind of horror. The smile fades as she considers what she can say to make this better; better for whom, she isn’t sure. Maybe her, maybe Cordelia, hopefully both of them.

“I’m sorry for lying to you. I know you don’t want this and I didn’t want to bring this craziness back into your life. I… it’s just…”

“It’s who you are,” Cordy finishes for her, quiet and sure as though there was no other way that Buffy could have ended her thought.

The statement brings Buffy up short, even though she’s been flirting with that thought for days, weeks, months—maybe years. Somehow, said out-loud in Cordy’s voice with Cordy’s unflinching honesty, it takes on a weight that Buffy hasn’t ever allowed. It is exhilarating and terrifying at the same time.

“I guess it is,” she confirms with a touch of sadness.

Buffy’s heart speeds up a little as Cordelia lifts a hand and places it over hers. They twine together against the glass, one dirty and smudged with blood, one clean and soft. The dueling sensations from Cordy’s hand and the window envelop her hand in warm and cool and it sends a shiver up Buffy’s spine. The gesture is unselfish and giving and Buffy feels a surge of emotion travel from belly to throat, where it gets caught until she begins to speak through it.

“Cordy, I love you. I don’t want to hurt you and I really don’t want to lose you. But I’ve been punishing this part of myself, thinking that if I just tried hard enough I could push it away. It’s just. . . I don’t think it’s going to go away. I’ve tried to deny this piece of myself since Sunnydale…maybe even before that, when everyone and their dog were telling me I could somehow be a normal girl if I just dated the right person or had the right friends or let Kendra or Faith take over the slaying. It doesn’t work like that, though, and it’s taken me a decade to realize it.” By the time she finishes, Buffy is looking at Cordelia, seeing her face in the dim light for the first time since returning to the apartment. Her eyes are dry, but slightly puffy and Buffy knows that she must have been crying earlier. Buffy aches with the knowledge.

“I always thought all the blows to the head must have had some mental consequences,” Cordy teases, but there is a dark undercurrent to her voice that makes Buffy tense up in preparation for what is to come.

Cordy looks away, shifting her gaze out the window and up into the night sky.

“Did I ever tell you about what I saw when I was up there?” she asks, nodding toward the sky.

Buffy shakes her head and follows Cordy’s gaze, trying to make something out in the vista above them but the city lights make it impossible to find even one star. Cordelia has never talked about her ascension in any kind of detail and Buffy is only slightly surprised to see a tear well in the corner of Cordy’s eye. She pulls her hand away from the window and turns it around so that she can fully clasp Cordelia’s hand, palm to palm, thumb gently caressing. It doesn’t seem like enough, but she isn’t sure what Cordy will allow and she’s afraid to push.

With a deep breath, Cordy begins. “She…Jasmine… showed me things from the past, mostly from Angel’s past. You were part of it. She wanted me to see the things he’d done without a soul and hate him, and if that didn’t work, I think she wanted me to really see you and what you meant to him, to scare me away and manipulate us in any way she could.” Cordy’s eyes are far away as she speaks and Buffy wonders what she sees. They don’t talk about Angel much—it’s a subject too full of pain and old jealousies and they have an unspoken agreement to leave their pasts with him in the past. It hurts to hear this, but Buffy knows it is costing Cordy much more to say. She wishes she knew what to say in return, but she doesn’t, so she stays silent and pours her emotion into the small stroking gesture of her thumb.

Cordelia shakes her head and shifts her gaze back down, looking at Buffy with a soft smile. “I saw you, Buffy. I saw the strength of your heart and your soul. You are good . . . not perfect, but you are a gift to this world and it needs you. I saw that then, as a Higher Being, and I see it now as not-so-plain Cordelia Chase. I’ve been fooling myself to think that you could, or should, give it up.”

Buffy sighs and leans into her, reaching up to gently comb through Cordy’s sleep-mussed waves with the fingers of her free hand. She feels overwhelmed by Cordy’s words, not sure exactly what to think and more than a little stunned at the admission. There is a part of her that has thought she’d already given all of the gifts that she had to give, that she is used up and stale in light of the other slayers who now hunt in the dark. But the fact is that there is something inside of her that refuses to fade away and Buffy is through fighting it.

“Lots of fools around here. You’re in good company,” Buffy teases lightly, then sobers before continuing. “The thing is, I like our lives. I like school and I like our friends and I don’t want to give that up to be out on the streets every night. Maybe I just need to let myself slay once in a while—get to know the other slayers in the city and offer to help out when they need it,” she thinks aloud, mulling over the possibilities in her head. Then she remembers the way Cordy used to wake up screaming from the nightmares that kind of life gave her, and she frowns as she untangles her fingers from hand and hair and moves her arms around Cordelia in a tight hug. The movement stretches the skin of the wound in her side and she hisses with the pain, loosening her arms a little even as Cordy tries to pull away.

“You’re hurt,” she accuses, running her hands lightly down Buffy’s torso until she finds the tear in her shirt that is still a little wet with her blood.

Buffy sucks in a breath at the touch and nods. “Just a scratch—a two-inch-deep-scratch, but I’ll live.” Cordy’s face flickers with a mixture of concern and fear, and Buffy grabs the hand that is gently probing her for more injuries, stilling it as she takes a step back.

“Are you sure, Cordy? You came to New York to get away from this kind of life. I don’t want to force it back on you.”

There is a moment of silence as Cordelia looks at Buffy, then pulls her hand away to look at the blood that stains her fingers. Her voice is soft, but determined, when she answers.

“I’d be lying through my very expensive orthodonture work if I said the thought of opening my life up to all this again doesn’t bother me, and I definitely don’t want to immerse myself in research-girl mode—not yet. Maybe not ever. But I can guarantee you that it takes a hell of a lot more than a few vamp fights to scare me away. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt.”

“You got a t-shirt? Why didn’t I get a t-shirt?” Buffy whines, relief spreading over her face in the form of a smile as she realizes that she isn’t going to lose Cordelia over this. She feels the weight of that fear lift from her chest and she feels lighter than she has in a long time.

“You got super-powers. I think you can live if I get the accessories,” Cordy says as she begins to pull Buffy toward the bathroom. “Oh, and one more thing before I get you all bandaged up.”

“What?”

“Don’t even think about slinking out of our bed to meet Faith in those leather pants again.”

Buffy tries to stifle a grin at the note of jealousy in her lover’s voice, and obediently follows Cordelia to the First Aid kit.