She kissed me. I didn’t even see it coming. Well, I knew she was kissing me, I just didn’t realize it was actually her. Then, like a ponce, I’d pulled away and looked at her, stupidly. I should’ve just gone with it. But it was such a shock. Her lips so much warmer; so much softer. So much more like I had imagined them. I can’t tell you what made me realize what was happening. I saw her lean in and out of habit, met her halfway, taking for granted that it would be fake lips and man-made feeling. It was such a simple, light kiss, barely even a kiss, but it was beautiful. It took me a moment, but I realized something was different. The heat of it, maybe? Perhaps a difference in technique. One so insistent and the other so giving. Or maybe it was that certain gentleness that she exuded when dealing with things she cared about.
Things she cared about. It hurts just saying it that way. Past tense.
She kissed me. It wasn’t the first time, mind, but somehow it was better. The first time, we were under a spell. She thought she loved me. I guess I already loved her. That’s what Dru told me, anyway. The spell had made us think we were getting married. I remember being so happy, so truly happy, when she said, "Of course its yes!" I know its pathetic, I still remember her exact words. And I remember her kisses, too. Full of love and lust. But it was fake. She didn’t really love me, didn’t really feel those emotions.
But this kiss, even though it didn’t have the slightest hint of passion, it was better. Because it was real. She knew what she was doing and she wanted to kiss me. The one honest kiss out of all the artificial ones. The only one there ever will be.
She kissed me. I can still see her face when I pulled away. Her look saying, ‘I know what you did. Don’t let it happen again.’ She really should have been a teacher. Children would have cringed from a look like that. I certainly did. She waited until I understood exactly what she’d done, then turned away. I felt ashamed and blessed at the same time. Then she was lecturing me on the obscenity I had had created in her likeness.
That bloody robot. I’m not even sure it was worth the trouble. She was right; the robot hadn’t been real. It had been a fantasy. But that kiss was real. And what she said after. About how what I had done for her and Dawn was real. And how she would never forget it. Those things were worth all the bruises and so much more. That’s the memory I go back to, you see. Whenever my mind conjures up her broken body lying in the rubble, I go back to when –
She kissed me. Her scent, like honeysuckle and sunshine, surrounding me as I slowly realized what was happening. She had the air of a parent, scolding a child, but still humble enough to thank me. She couldn’t look at me while she thanked me, but she did, and it was enough.
I wonder if she knew how much that kiss meant to me; means to me, still. Always. And her words after. She had to know how much I loved her, just had to. Sure I’d told her before, but it had been wrong then. Trying to threaten the feeling out of her. I should have known she wouldn’t have been afraid. She was so strong, so beautiful.
Was.
Which is part of the reason I was so surprised that she kissed me. You know, the whole tying her up bit. I couldn’t believe my senses at first, my brain shouting that it was a human standing before me, her lips to mine. But then, when we broke, that annoyed look she always had when she was around me surfaced and I knew.
Maybe sitting there and admitting, when I thought it wasn’t her, about how I’d let Glory kill me before I’d let any more pain come her way. Maybe that was what made her kiss me. I kinda think she didn’t believe I loved her ‘til then. Obsession, sure, wouldn’t put it past a vampire. But love? I think it took Glory torturing me for her to realize how much I loved her. Bleeding bitch, that Glory. I wish it had been me who killed her, or Ben, or whoever it was in the end. I’d have ripped her apart for starting this whole end of the world thing. For putting my Slayer in that position. For making her choose between Dawn’s life and sacrificing herself.
But that’s when she kissed me. Right after I said that about not letting her get hurt. She had to have known how much I loved her. And then at her house, when she invited me in, like it was nothing. After all those months of being held outside her home and heart, simply because I’m a monster. I didn’t tell her then that I loved her, not exactly, but she had to have known. I promised her that I would protect her sister with my life; that I would die for Dawn. She had to have known it all came from the love of her.
But, I couldn’t save the niblet. I let her get cut, let her be bled. Let that Doc fellow push me off the bloody scaffold. As soon as I saw her lying dead on the bricks, I knew it had been my fault. She did what I couldn’t. She saved us all.
She kissed me. I can still feel her lips on mine. It was only a few seconds, but it reached right into where my soul used to be and warmed me from the inside. I felt alive for the first time in forever. Not just alive, I felt like a man. Pure bliss in under a minute.
I was too shocked at first to hold the kiss and I regret that now. I run over it in my head, seeing ways it could have gone. If I’d continued kissing her, would she have stopped it? In my mind’s eye, I didn’t pull away from her, even though I realized it was really her. I see how I deepened the kiss, trying to show her how much I loved her. I see her finally understanding that vampires can love, too.
But I think she realized that, near the end. I think she knew how much I loved her. I just wish she were here so I could ask her.
She kissed me. Just two or three weeks ago. Full on the lips, she did. Did it of her own free will, wanting to thank me, I guess. It’s enough for me that she did it at all; I don’t have to know her motives. It would have been nice if there had been more behind it besides the thanks, but I know better. I know she could never truly love me. I know she didn’t. But it helps to think about the kiss. Because it was so tender, so gentle, so soft, it almost makes me believe in the maybes. Maybe, if she could kiss me with such feeling, she could have loved me. I know how much love she had to have had in her, to take a dive like that.
So maybe, just maybe, she had a little of that love left over in there for me.
The End
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