Adult-FanFiction.org : Buffy

The White Picket Fences	By : QueenB Category: -Buffy the Vampire Slayer > Het - Male/Female Views: 2824 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Buffy the Vampire Slayer (BtVS), nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 1
- 2
Title: The White Picket Fences
Author: Queen Boadicea
Email: queenboadiceaoftheiceni@yahoo.com
Disclaimer: This belongs to the great and powerful Joss and the usual gang of idi …uh, geniuses
Pairing: B/R; other relationships canon
Distribution: http://www.fanfiction.net
Feedback: Do your worst—it can’t compare to my worst ;)
Notes: Spoilers for BtVS season five, episode “Into the Woods”
[thoughts]

The familiar lassitude was stealing along his limbs. First there was the sharp sting from the fangs. By now he was so used to the pain, he barely felt it any more. Then came the lightheadedness from the blood loss.

Yes. He was floating. He was flying. For a few brief moments, Riley was transported from his surroundings. The filthy, barely-lit room, the anguish drowning his soul, the thought of the golden-haired girl whose distance tore at him daily—all of it disappeared. He could feel his heart thudding in his chest, his pulse pounding in his eardrums. It was at these exact moments, when he was so close to dying, that he knew himself to be alive again. Riley brought his head up with difficulty to glance down at the emaciated fledging gnawing on his arm.

“Harder,” he whispered hoarsely. “Harder.” He was so caught up in his urgings that he didn’t register the door opening or realize he had an unwelcome audience until he heard the small gasp. He looked up and saw her standing in the doorway.

Buffy. Buffy and Spike. The vampire stood there with a hateful smile on his mug, mouthing an obvious lie about being concerned for Riley’s welfare. Buffy didn’t say anything. The horrified expression on her face said it all. She just turned and flew down the stairs. By the time Riley had thrown on his shirt, she had vanished into the night.

Buffy couldn’t believe it. She wouldn’t believe it. But it was true. There would be no wallowing in the river of denial for her. She’d seen him. Seen Riley half-naked while commanding some skinny dried-up vampire bitch to chew on him. It was beyond disgusting. It was obscene. She couldn’t look at it for a second longer. So she did the only thing she could do.

She ran. She tore out of that vampire hellhole. She barely registered the vampire that tried intercepting her as she grabbed him and flung him into the nearest wall. She only knew she had to get out of there.

She halted at the bottom of the stairs outside the nest. Buffy felt as if her insides had been ripped out. She could barely breathe; the shock was so great.

Spike raced after her, gleefully anticipating his victory. Ever since the self-revelation that he was in love with the Slayer, he’d been waiting for an opportunity to destroy Buffy’s relationship with Riley. He was certain the sight of Captain Cardboard being the snack for some vampire bint would do the trick nicely. He ran down the stairs in order to justify his actions to her. Otherwise, she just might be in the mood to stake him.

One look at her face, however, and the self-serving lies died in his throat. She looked as if her world had come to an end, as if every fine and wonderful thing she’d ever believed in had been destroyed. He had wanted to ruin Riley; he never meant to hurt Buffy. Of course, hurting her had been unavoidable but he had been hoping for rage…not grief.

“I thought you should know,” he told her. The words sounded hollow even to him and the wounded expression on her face told him she wasn’t impressed with his limp attempt at honesty. She ran past him without a word. She didn’t even grace him with a single blow. He was left standing alone in an empty street.

What had he expected? That she’d fly from Fishboy into his arms? Well, okay, that probably wasn’t on the schedule. Yet. But a little gratitude—was that so much to ask? Yeah, probably. He had never been grateful to learn when Drusilla had cheated on him and she had, often. In the depths of one of her insane bouts, Dru would forget him and go wandering off to muck about in the juices of some other demon. Sometimes she’d disappear for days at a time and attempts to find her were usually futile. Then she’d come back reeking of sexual encounters with her temporary playmates, blithely indifferent to his pain.

But that was all over. The plan to get Buffy for himself was well underway. He’d wanted to separate her from the military moron and he had succeeded.

Somehow that knowledge didn’t make him feel any better about his part in the night’s events.

__________

Buffy pressed herself against her bedroom door. Thankfully, her mother and sister were still asleep. They hadn’t noticed her exit or re-entry into her home. Of course, she’d spent years sneaking in and out of the house unseen and unheard. She had it down to a science.

[Riley’s a real expert at the sneaking game, too. Wonder just how often he’s done this.] The bitter thought tore at her as she stripped off her clothes. She glanced at her bed and shuddered. The last thing she wanted was to sleep in a bed she had all too recently shared with…him. But it was either that or the floor.

Buffy stretched out gingerly on the mattress and stared sightlessly out the window. In spite of the overwrought jumble of her thoughts, she eventually fell into an exhausted sleep.

__________

Giles finished hanging the holiday sign above the cash register and peered at it critically. It featured greetings about the traditional upcoming December seasons as well as something called Gurenchar’s Homecoming. He had no notion what the latter was about but Anya insisted that it was a very special time amongst her people. He wisely refrained from pointing out that humans were now her people. The ex-demon still occasionally forgot about that.

Anya, Xander and Willow were quietly discussing where to place the new shipment of goods when Buffy came storming through the Magic Box doors. “I need to find out everything I can about a vamp nest downtown,” she snapped without preamble.

Giles blinked owlishly. “A nest?”

“There were people there,” she continued. “It looked like they were…paying vampires to bite them.”

“Who would pay to get bitten?” Willow was genuinely shocked. She couldn’t imagine anyone doing such a thing. Until last night, Buffy wouldn’t have believed it either. However, Anya’s explanation was matter-of-fact in its bluntness.

“Oh, that’s been going on for centuries. Humans hire vampires to feed off them. They get off on the rush. The vampires get cash, hot- and cold-running blood and they don’t leave any corpses behind so they don’t get hunted.” She didn’t see any reason to fuss; this kind of demon/human interaction was pretty mild by her standards.

“But still it can be terribly dangerous for humans. I mean, people can end up dying accidentally or meeting a vampire who only pretends to play by the house rules,” Giles pointed out.

Buffy stared at him. How was it she was just finding out about this now? It seemed Riley wasn’t the only one keeping nasty secrets from her. “You knew about this and you didn’t tell me?”

Giles hastened to defend himself.

“I-I haven’t seen it since my Ripper days. I had no idea it was going on in Sunnydale.”

“Well, it is. And I’m gonna stop it.” Buffy opened the weapons trunk and began picking out items.

“Buffy,” Giles protested, “even if I had known about this, I might not have told you right now. I’m not sure it’s where your efforts are best spent. Perhaps you should focus on less ambiguous evil. Glory, for instance.”

The Slayer wasn’t going to let him off the hook. “You said people are dying. Vampires are vampires and my job description is pretty clear.” She paused as she mentally rallied herself and swept the others with a determined gaze. “Back me up or not. I’m going.” Giles wavered for a moment then, after instructing Anya to stay and mind the store, got weapons with Xander and Willow.

The tension in the car was pretty high. Everyone could sense Buffy’s anger but weren’t aware of the cause. Giles tried pointing out that this was basically a social ill rather than true evil. It was on the level of prostitution and drug abuse in that it involved willing human victims. But his explanation petered out in the face of Buffy’s iron stare.

[Willing victim. That’s what Riley is. He was willing. He paid some horrible demon to suck the life out of him. Why? What’s wrong with him? What’s wrong with me that he would turn to such creatures?]

Buffy couldn’t stop thinking about it. Her mind had chased the questions around and around in her head during the night but all that useless introspection only left her feeling weak and sick. The only way she could get any kind of relief was by violent physical action. Destroying those vamp whores was the perfect solution.

Except the nest was deserted. Buffy looked around, ready for action, but it was clear there was none to be had. “I don’t understand. This place was doing serious business last night.”

“I guess everybody jumped ship once the word got out that the Slayer found their crib. I’m sure you’ll get them next time, champ.” Xander was attempting to lighten the mood. Like Giles and Willow, he saw these creatures as ordinary, run-of-the-mill vampires. He couldn’t understand why Buffy was stressing herself over their destruction.

The blonde woman wanted to scream from frustration. She’d hoped to work off steam with a bit of good old-fashioned vamp slayage and it looked like she wasn’t going to get the chance. But there had to be something she could do…

Before anybody could divine her intention, she picked up a small brazier that lay on the floor and hurled it at the nearest wall. In seconds, the whole side of the room was in flames. The others gave each other worried looks and followed her out in silence.

__________

Spike couldn’t really muster any surprise when Riley slammed open the door of his crypt. A visit from either one brassed-off Slayer or Fishboy was rather predictable. He didn’t bother to get up from where he was sprawled in his chair. “What took you? Takes a while to get to full strength after bites…” Riley didn’t grace him with a reply. He just grabbed Spike by his black T-shirt and threw him up against a nearby pillar.

Shit! That hurt! The boy was seriously pissed and, while Spike didn’t usually fear humans, his chip meant there wasn’t any way he could retaliate against Riley. “Hey, hey, let’s be reasonable about this!”

Riley slugged him hard in the jaw.

“You may have noticed, Spike, I left reasonable about 30 exits back.”

There was a vicious gleam in his eye the vampire was quick to recognize. He’d seen it in Buffy’s on many occasions when he’d had to sweet-talk his way out of her staking him. “Look, I’m not the one who got you into this. Don’t kill the messenger.”

Riley pulled a stake out of his jacket and rammed it home into the vampire’s chest. “Why the hell not?”

Spike’s eyes widened and he howled at the agony. “Ow! Bloody hell!”

That was as far as he got. Seconds later he exploded into dust. Riley stood there for a moment, his limbs trembling with the aftermath of his vented rage. He’d put paid to one of the demons haunting him. Now he had to deal with the others.

__________

Xander peered at the door to the training room. According to Anya, Buffy had been in there for quite a long stretch. She hadn’t even said anything to the ex-demoness. The brunette was anxious. The fire Buffy ignited at the vamp nest apparently hadn’t improved her bad mood. He wondered just how much more damage she’d wreak before she got it out of her system.

He glanced over his shoulder as the bell to the Magic Box rang. His hopes for restored peace momentarily soared when he saw it was Riley. Maybe he could talk some sense into Buffy or at least get to the bottom of this seriously wiggy destructive behavior.

“She in there?” Riley nodded in the direction of the training room door.

“She’s training.” Xander didn’t elaborate. There was a drawn, haunted expression in Riley’s eyes. Xander had been seeing it for weeks now even though Buffy was apparently oblivious to it. He realized that whatever was going on with Buffy, Riley was probably involved. The question was how?

“Would you guys mind clearing out? I need a minute alone with her.”

Anya smiled knowingly as he headed past her. “A little after hours hanky panky in the training room, huh? Xander and I could tell you some stories.”

“Not now, Anya.”

Xander began hustling his girlfriend out before she could commence on another round of tales of their shared sex life. No matter how often he chided her, she continued to blurt out details of their amorous adventures whenever they crossed her mind—which they seemed to do every ten minutes.

Buffy threw solid jabs at the punching bag. “Harder.” Each time she closed her eyes, she saw him in that squalid little room. How could he do this? How could he do that to himself, to her? Why would he hurt her like this?

“Harder.” She’d give him harder, all right. She continued her assault on the bag.

Riley watched her for a moment. He was taking a risk talking to her now and he knew it. He recalled the cracked rib she’d given him after one of their sparring matches. Then she had only been playing. Now there was no telling what she would do to him if she decided to take advantage of her slayer strength. “We need to talk.”

Buffy grunted with another short punch. “I’m not ready to talk to you yet.”

He grabbed the bag, holding it still. “Too bad. We need to have this out, Buffy. Right now.”

Buffy’s look was stony as she peeled off her training gloves. “And say what, Riley?” ‘What were you thinking?’ ‘How long have you been lying to me?’ Nothing you say right now is going to make this better.” She walked away with a stiff angry stride. He ran after her and grabbed her arm.

“I realize that! I don’t expect—” He drew in a deep breath and strove for control. Buffy was angrier than he’d ever seen her and she had every reason to be. But nothing was to be gained by losing his temper, too. “I just need you to hear me out.”

“Fine,” was the cold response. “Get your hand off me.”

He backed away from that hostile glare and tried to order his thoughts. “I think this thing started—it was just some stupid immature game. I wanted to even the score after you let Dracula bite you.”

“I did not let Dracula bite me!”

“I realize that,” he interjected. “On some level, I know that. But I was still spun. I don’t know...I wanted to know what you felt. I wanted to know why Dracula and Angel have so much power over you.”

“Okay, Dracula was playing a sick mindgame and Angel—I loved Angel. If you think love has something to do with that kind of control and dominance, you so don’t get what love is, Riley Finn.”

“I wanted to get it. I wanted to get you. It’s just…these girls—”

“Vampires. Killers,” came the blunt correction.

Riley winced at the cold contradiction but he couldn’t refute the statement. “They made me feel something, Buffy, something I didn’t even know I was missing.”

“Fine! Tell me about your whores,” she bit out. “Tell me what on earth they were giving you that I can’t.”

“They needed me,” he said flatly.

“They needed your money. It wasn’t about you,” Buffy retorted.

“No, on some basic level, it was about me. My blood. My body.”

Riley stopped speaking, his breath coming in harsh pants. He was starting to shake just thinking about those many nights of dark desire when he let those girls feed off him and for a moment he couldn’t meet those accusing green eyes.

When he regained some of his composure, he continued, his tone soft and introspective as he attempted to make Buffy understand why the yearning kept resurfacing, pulling him back night after night. “When they bit me, it was beyond passion. They wanted to devour me. All of me. It wasn’t real. I knew it was just physical. But the fact that I craved it, even if it was fleeting…they made me feel they had such hunger for me.”

Buffy stood there, trying to fight down her nausea. When she resumed speaking, her slow, measured words barely hid the icy rage behind them. “Riley, I want you to listen to me very carefully. Those things didn’t want you. They wanted a snack, a meal. Anya told me about this practice. She was a demon for over 1100 years and she’s definitely got the inside track when it comes to this sort of thing. She says this has been going on for centuries. Humans do this for the high, the thrill. Vampires do it for the money, the blood and the opportunity to get fed without leaving telltale bodies behind them so they won’t find themselves on the business end of a stake. You may have had some twisted fantasy running through your head to justify what you were doing with those creatures. But they had no such illusions about you. Any one of them might have gotten the urge to take things too far and you would have ended up just another blood-drained corpse. Do you understand that?”

His answer was so low she almost didn’t hear it. “I know exactly what they feel when they bite me because I feel it every time we’re together. It’s like the whole world falls away and all there is is you.”

“Well, obviously, I wasn’t on your mind when those creatures were draining you, so how much could I have really meant to you?” Buffy wondered just how awful this confrontation was going to get. Riley had done nothing but proclaim his neediness for these vampire whores and hint that she wasn’t enough for him and the nauseous feeling in her stomach was growing stronger by the minute.

“It wasn’t about how little you meant to me. It was about how little I meant to you. You didn’t even call me when your mom went into the hospital.”

Buffy was stung. How dare he compare his…his…whatever his problem was with her very real pain! “Oh, I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I couldn’t take care of you when I thought my mother was dying!”

“It’s about me taking care of you. It’s about letting me in so you don’t have to be on top of everything all the time!” Riley was beginning to feel as if this conversation was going nowhere. They were both too wrapped up in their individual despair to understand or empathize with each other. He wanted Buffy to know she could lean on him. Hell, he’d been trained as a soldier for most of his young life; it was in his nature to want to shelter and protect the people around him. But Buffy wouldn’t let him. Even now she was trying to defend her behavior.

“But I have to be on top of things. That’s part of what being a Slayer is.” She stopped talking as a realization struck her. “And that’s what this is really about, isn’t it? You can’t handle the fact that I’m stronger than you.”

Riley swallowed and shifted his feet slightly; it was obvious her words had struck a nerve. “It’s hard, sometimes, yeah. But that’s not it.”

“Oh, I think it is. Your macho pride got all bent out of shape when you learned I’d had more kills than you. It upset you when you realized I held back in my sparring sessions for fear I’d hurt you. You wouldn’t get that rapid heartbeat problem fixed until it almost killed you because you were stronger with it than without it and you wanted desperately to keep up with me. That’s why you wanted those women. They played the needy, weak female card that I can’t.

“‘Cause I’m telling you. This is it. This is me. This is the package. And if it’s so deficient that you need to get your kicks elsewhere, then we really have a problem.”

Hazel eyes stared into green ones as the silence stretched out interminably between them. Then Riley dropped the bombshell. The military wanted him back. They were going on a covert operation with no civilians allowed. He’d be going deep undercover. And they were leaving tonight

Just when she thought things couldn’t get any worse, they did. “Are you going?” she asked and she hated the trembling she heard in her voice.

“I don’t know. If we can’t work this out—”

Her eyes widened in shock. “Then what? This is goodbye?”

He didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. His silence spoke volumes. The anger spiralled upwards in her, higher than ever. Riley had committed this loathsome act with those demonic creatures and yet she was the one who was supposed to prove her affections? “You. Are. Unbelievable. You’re giving me an ultimatum?!?”

“No, I’m not—”

“Yes, you are!” She walked away from him again, pacing up and down like an angry jungle cat. “You know what really burns me about this conversation, Riley? In all this hate-filled spillage about payback, self-pity, blame and finally a ‘love me or else’ deal, you never once said you were sorry about what you did. Which means you see yourself as a martyr and me as the ballbusting girlfriend who drove you into the arms of hookers! Well, you know what? I’m not the villain here and I’m not taking the blame for your rotten lapse in judgment.”

“Buffy, I’m not asking you to. This isn’t about blame. I love you.”

“Well, you’ve got a funny way of showing it, mister!” Buffy halted, shaking in every limb though she tried not to let him see it. “Don’t leave me, Riley. Not like—” She pulled herself up short; no need to bring him into this again. Mentioning his name would only make things worse.

Buffy tried to put all her heart into her words. “Riley, I love you. I don’t know what I can do to prove it. But I know that our relationship has real problems that can’t be solved in a single day. If you’re willing to stay, I will do whatever it takes to fix things. But you have to try, too. This isn’t going to work if only one of us makes the effort.”

“I’m leaving, Buffy,” came the quiet rejoinder. “Unless you give me a reason to stay, I’m leaving tonight.”

Buffy picked up her coat and slowly made her way to the door. She waited for as long as she could for some word from him to call her back. But there was no sound at all.

The small blonde meandered down the street. She felt the same insides-ripped-out sensation she had experienced when she first learned what Riley was up to at night. Only, instead of the dizzying pain, there was an awful creeping numbness. It was almost like what she’d felt when Angel left her. Almost as bad but not quite. Maybe she was getting used to being dumped.

However, a familiar clenching in her gut swiftly dispelled the numbness. Vampires. Lots of them. She turned around carefully and found herself face to face with a bloodsucker. The streetlight was dim but she nevertheless recognized him as a vampire from the torched nest.

“The pyro act was a bad idea, Slayer.” He had a decidedly cocky note in his voice. His crew outnumbered her eight to one, all of them itching to take down the girl who’d destroyed their home and business.

“Walk away. I’m serious. Don’t do this. Not now.” After her tense confrontation with Riley, she had no more energy or inclination to finish what she’d started with them and Buffy was sorely tempted simply to let them go. They were nothing: a social evil like Giles had said. They weren’t the problem, after all. People with their addictions were. People like Riley.

The head vampire mistook her tension for fear. The demon responded, “I’m not running and you’re not shutting me down. In fact, you’re not gonna make it through the night.”

“I’d take her up on her offer if I were you,” came a quiet voice from behind them. The vamps turned and Buffy drew in a breath from surprise. It was Riley. He was holding what Buffy recognized as a taser in his arms.

The leader smirked at the display. Either he didn’t know the weapon for what it was or he didn’t care. “Well, look who it is. The guy who brought the Slayer to our doorstep. Listen, bud, you’re a favorite customer with us so I’m willing to let that mistake slide. Just let us handle this little ‘pest’ problem and we’ll set up house elsewhere. We’ll be back in business before you know it and you can look us up again when we do. Okay?”

“No, it really isn’t okay. The people I work for don’t stand idly by while civilians get killed by hostiles.”

Riley quickly brought up the taser and blasted the nearest vamp. The creature squawked and crumbled to the ground and the fight was on.

The skirmish was short but decisive. Buffy took out the majority of the creatures with a weapon handily provided by a vamp that tried to hit her with a jagged wooden board. Riley dispatched two with a stake concealed under his jacket.

Buffy cast aside the board. For a moment, there was an awkward silence as they gazed at each other. “So. You’re still here.”

“Yeah. Guess I am.” There was a short pause while the two tried to sort out their feelings. “Buffy—”

“Riley—”

“What?”

“No, what did you want to say?”

“That’s…I mean, it’s okay. Ladies first.”

Buffy was secretly amused at this sign of old-fashioned chivalry but she wanted to know what had brought Riley back. “No, you were going to say something. I-I really want to hear it.”

Riley gazed at the girl who held his heart in her deceptively small hands. Did she even realize how much he cared about her? He’d just seen her kill several vampires without breaking a sweat but now she looked so fearful as if a wrong word would crush her. It was what he wanted—or thought he had wanted.

“I was going to say…I got all the way to the chopper and then I thought about what you said. I did something horrible to you, something really heartless and cruel. I put you through hell. And then when you found out, I took the coward’s way out and decided to run. A soldier shouldn’t do that. Hell, a man shouldn’t do that. You were right. If we’re going to solve our problems, I need to stick around not just take off when the going gets rough.”

“And the taser?”

He glanced down at it almost sheepishly. “Hey, this is Sunnydale. It was getting dark and, knowing my luck, I figured I’d run into some hostile ready to take me down just when I had somewhere I really needed to be. I grabbed it from the chopper and headed back here as quickly as I could.”

Buffy couldn’t prevent the brief smile that flickered across her face. [Boys and their toys.] Then she sighed and directed her eyes at the ground. “I guess you were right about a few things, too. About me not letting you in. I-I just had this crazy idea of protecting you by keeping you in the dark. If that’s what I really wanted to do, I’d never have told you about me being the Slayer. So—if you’re staying in Sunnydale, there’s a few things you need to know. About Dawn, for instance.”

“What about Dawn?” Riley was a bit surprised by the turn the conversation had taken. He’d thought she was going to talk to him about her mom, her new closeness with Spike, the Glory threat. Somehow her bratty kid sister hadn’t figured in his concerns about her.

The petite woman glanced around furtively. “I’d prefer not to talk about it in the open.” She proceeded back down the street and then paused to smile at him almost shyly. “Walk me home?”

Riley’s returning smile was just as tentative. They weren’t back to normal by a long shot. But at least it was a start.

TBC
- 1
- 2
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

The White Picket Fences