(Disclaimer: Nothing from BTVS is mine, of course. The plot is. Enjoy.)


Moth to Flame
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I sit here, between bright white flourescents and equally bright white linoleum, watching liquid dripping into a tube that threads over a bed rail and into an arm, pondering my life. Leaning forward in my chair, I once again grasp the hand attached to that arm, and feel nothing. Coldness. I sigh, leaning back, pulling myself out of range, breaking contact with that unnatural, deathly cold.

Not that I haven't felt it before. I feel this all the time. Most people feel like this to me, actually. Because what I wasn't feeling just there isn't body heat, it's magic. And every woman in my life has had it, in some fashion or other - except Cordelia, but that was just a mistake; I was looking for someone as "normal" as me, I think.

I realized that a few hours ago, when Willow came to sit with us. Her long red hair - since Sunnydale she hasn't cut it, and now it cascades down just to her belt - simply screams happy warm magic to me, just as I realize she always had. I've been drawn to her, like a moth to flame, since that day in kindergarten and the yellow crayon. Buffy was like that too - I was drawn to her from the day we met. And Anya. And Faith. All the Slayers, really. Miss Callender. Even Buffy's mother had a trickle of it. And the mummy girl, and the evil sub, and even Drusilla. And there's been a fair number of men like that too, though Giles was the first I met.

I turn back, looking at Dawn in the bed, her hair mussed from the pillows, IV tube in her arm, Willow's get-well stuffed animal tucked under the other arm. That must be why, I reason. Of course it would be - like a moth to flame. After a lifetime of being drawn to girls with a bit of magic - okay, in some, more than a bit - I've wound up engaged to the biggest magic-ball of them all.

But tonight, I don't feel it. I don't feel her. I close my eyes, and the only presence I sense is Willow. Willow says it's because of the morphine and the pain from the surgery. I can't stand it, and I don't care why it is. I just want to make it better. And I don't know what to do but sit here and wait for her to start glowing again. And the waiting is driving me insane.

Someone tell me where the matches are? Please?