© My Life is Different Ch. 01 By: Schlank Okay, so the whole "heterosexual girl goes to college and experiments with lesbianism" thing is a cliché. I know that. But it's kinda my story. Although, if you had read the research done by Alfred Kinsey on human sexual behavior, it would become pretty much apparent that labels like "heterosexual" and "lesbian" are kinda dishonest and misleading. Millions of people in America who are labeled as "heterosexual" or "homosexual", are actually bisexual to one degree or another. Alfred Kinsey had a scale that he used to measure a person's overall balance of heterosexuality and homosexuality. The scale ranged from 0 to 6, with 0 being completely heterosexual and 6 completely homosexual. Honestly I think that I'm probably a 3 or a 4, so when I labeled myself as "straight", that was somewhat misleading and dishonest. However labeling myself as "lesbian" is somewhat dishonest too. But, am I going to go around telling my friends and classmates that I rate 4 on the Kinsey scale? Most of my friends won't even understand what that means. So, I just simplify it. I used to have a boyfriend, and now I have a girlfriend. Saying "gay now" is less complicated. It's sort of shorthand for explaining my sexual history and current romantic status. And trying to simplify my life is important. You see, my girlfriend is Buffy Summers, and there is nothing simple about having Buffy Summers as your girlfriend. She had been going out with Angel, which is complicated in and of itself. I mean, Angel is a vampire and Buffy is a vampire slayer. Can you say conflict of interest? It's almost like a chicken being romantically involved with Colonel Sanders. Or possibly, like Anne Frank being romantically involved with a Nazi. At any rate, things started to change for me when Angel dumped Buffy, which left her emotionally unbalanced and feeling insecure and undesirable. She had a temporary recovery when Parker wooed her and seduced her, but once he got her naked and turned her into a sexual conquest, he abandoned her, and left Buffy feeling more insecure, awkward, unloved and undesirable than ever. Buffy cried on my soldier, but somehow it wasn't enough for Buffy to make a full recovery. And then Oz abandoned me, making me feel insecure, awkward, unloved and undesirable too. Buffy let me cry on her shoulder. I let her cry on my shoulder, but neither one of us were really happy. Then, somehow one day, Buffy realized that my shoulder wasn't really the part of my anatomy that she needed the most. The first time I kissed Buffy, I realized that she was the perfect cure for what ailed me. Oz had abandoned me and left me feeling empty and hurting, but Buffy would never do that. Buffy had been my best friend and protector since the 10th grade. I could rely on her, in a way that I could never rely on Oz. The fact that she was female was almost immaterial. Of course, when your girlfriend is the Chosen One and the slayer of vampires, holidays apparently are different for you than they are for other people. Buffy and I had intended to enjoy a quiet Thanksgiving, with lots of snuggling and smoochies and chronic nudity, so that I could admire Buffy's perfectly firm and athletic body. But Giles called and it turns out that Xander had somehow summoned an ancient Chumash spirit of vengeance. As the Chosen One, it was Buffy's job to fight the Spirit of Vengeance and slay him before he killed anybody else. Oh yeah, did I mention he killed Professor Gerhardt? Oh, also Spike is tied up in Giles's apartment and Xander has smallpox and syphilis. How many of you ever had a Thanksgiving infested with unpleasant complications like that? Once I got past the Caucasian guilt over the slaughter and enslavement of the Native Americans that I kinda-sorta associated with Thanksgiving and the history of white America's interactions with the Chumash Indians, it occurred to me that you can't kill a spirit of vengeance. They're already dead. So, how do you deal with a problem like Hus, if you can't kill him? According to Kessler's tome on zombies, spirits and possessions, Spirits of Vengeance can only manifest when activated by a talisman. Xander probably activated some sort of talisman when he fell into the sunken Sunnydale Mission. All I needed to do was find the talisman and destroy it. Xander insisted on coming with, and actually it made some sense. Okay, actually it was kind of insane for the guy with smallpox and syphilis and possibly malaria to get up out of his sickbed, but I had no idea what the Chumash vengeance talisman looked like, and if Xander could tell me what he touched when he fell down into the mission, it could really speed up the process of figuring out which thing to destroy. Also, Spike was annoying the hell out of Xander, and Xander wanted to get away from him. "I don't understand why Buffy didn't just stick a stake in him," Xander grumbled. "I mean killing vampires is Buffy's job! And Spike's tried to kill us lots of times!" "Yeah, but Spike seems to have the inside scoop on that secret group of heavily-armed secretive soldiers," I replied. "And if Spike can tell us where their secret base is, that would be worth keeping him alive, right? And did I say 'secret' too many times?" Xander made a grunting noise and I helped him balance himself after he snuck in through the window of the Anthropology Department. I shined my flashlight across the room and Xander said, "Are you sure it'll even be here? It could still be underground in the mission." "I don't think so. I talked to one of the girls in my Western History class, and she said that the anthropology department was like an army of ants down there. They just spent hours going down into the hole and bringing up everything they could find." Xander looked around the room and said, "My vision is going blurry. I'm not really sure if I touched any of this stuff." I looked around the room. There were clay pots and clay bowls and wicker baskets and some primitive tools made out of stone or bone. I wasn't at all certain what I should be looking for. "Hey," Xander called out with alarm, "Is blurry vision a side-effect of the smallpox or the syphilis?" Honestly, I don't know why that would matter to Xander. The Chumash curse was making him sicker and sicker. What did it matter if the wonkiness to his vision was caused by the smallpox or the syphilis? Either way, it would all clear up when we destroyed the talisman. Then Xander picked up a painted clay pot and held it up to his ear and shook it. He looked like a little kid with a Christmas present, trying to determine what was inside without unwrapping it. "Xander," I said, trying very hard not to laugh at him, "I don't think that's going to help." "Well, maybe we should just break everything," Xander replied. "Even if we don't know which of these things is the talisman, if we destroy them all, the talisman would have to get destroyed at some point in the process." Xander's logic made sense, but I hated to the idea of destroying every artifact in the Chumash room of the Anthropology Department. The Chumash people had already been slaughtered. It seemed unforgivable to go ahead and destroy all of the meager belongings that they'd left behind. It would be a further injustice inflicted on a people who had already suffered far too many injustices to begin with. Then I heard it. It was a lot like a drumbeat, but muffled and not like any modern rhythm I'd heard from a modern band. "Sssshhh," I admonished Xander. "I think I hear something." I closed in on the source of the sound. There in one of the display cases was an odd piece that looked like a bracelet made of human finger bones, held together with a piece of string or cord. I picked it up and held it close. The percussive beat became stronger as I held it closer. And I realized that I wasn't so much hearing it as feeling it. I had read that as witches became more skilled in their magic that they could sense things that ordinary people couldn't sense. It was like our nervous systems became finely tuned enough that we could sense the presence of mystic phenomena as well as physical phenomena. Actually, upon closer examination I decided that the bracelet wasn't made of finger bones, but probably the centra of a shark's vertebrae. And it was definitely mystical. I could feel the magic radiating off of it, sort of similar to the way you can feel a powerful engine revving if you place your hand on the hood of a car. "This is the talisman." I told Xander. "I can feel the thrumming of mystic energies. It's the only mystical thing in this room." Without saying a word, Xander snatched the talisman from my hands and threw it on the floor. Then he began to stomp on it and grind it underneath the heel of his shoe. "Hey," I exclaimed loudly and indignantly. If he wanted me to hand the talisman over all he had to do was ask. He didn't need to grab it from me. "Well, do you know a better way to break the curse?" Xander asked me. It turns out that Xander made the right decision. Within a few seconds, the symptoms of Xander's malaria and smallpox and syphilis began to clear up. "So, does that mean we got rid of the angry ghost guy?" Technically, Hus was a vengeance spirit, but I didn't bother to correct Xander. After all, he had just recovered from syphilis. "Well, in theory, the talisman should have been the only thing that held Hus here in the physical world. With it destroyed he shouldn't be able to stay here with us in the land of the living. But I don't wanna say anything for sure until the sun comes up and there are no more dead bodies." * * * * * * * * * * When Xander and I returned to Giles's apartment, Buffy and Giles gave me the confirmation I needed to make me confident that the Chumash threat was all over. Apparently while Xander and I were at the Anthropology Department, Hus had attacked Buffy and Giles (and Spike too, but nobody really cares what happens to Spike) and in the middle of pitched combat, Hus and his band of Chumash warriors just mysteriously disappeared. "Undoubtedly, you've done them in, Willow." That was Giles's stuffy, British way of saying that I made the bad guys go poof. "Without the talisman to hold the Spirits of Vengeance here in the physical realm, Hus and his Indian braves returned to the spirit realm and thus he is no longer a threat to those of us in the land of the living." Again, that's British-speak for I made them go poof. "So, now that Little Red Riding Hood has saved Goldilocks and Prince Boring over there could somebody please pull these arrows out of me? These things bloody hurt!!" I was kinda surprised to see almost a dozen arrows sticking out of Spike. Apparently when the Chumash Indians attacked, they attacked anybody who looked Anglo-Saxon. Of course Spike is the whitest of all the white people I know, so he must have made a very inviting target. I'll bet the Chumash must have been really confused when they shot Spike over and over again, but he still refused to die. "Y'know Spike, I was kinda hoping one of these arrows would've got you through the heart. After all the times you've tried to kill me and Willow...and how you've threatened Xander and how you threatened Riley at that party, I've kinda got mixed feelings about keeping you alive." As Buffy talked, she broke the arrows in half and then slipped the other halves out of Spike's perforated flesh, so he could heal. "Riley? That the big bloke with the broad shoulders? I wasn't sure you cared about him anymore." "Why wouldn't I care?" Buffy asked as she yanked a Chumash arrow out of Spike's thigh. "He's still human. He's still one of the good guys." "Well, it's just that you're shagging Little Red Riding Hood now," Spike said casually. "The way I figured it; now that you're a lesbian; big lumberjack-looking types like Riley wouldn't even be on your radar anymore." For a few seconds there was silence in the room. I stopped breathing. Buffy stopped breathing. Xander's jaw dropped open in a shocked, comical expression, and Giles just kept up with his typical stoic British demeanor. Buffy was the first one to break the silence. "Who the hell told you that Willow and I were having sex together?" She was still holding a Chumash arrow in her hand when she said it. She looked like she might plunge it directly into Spike's heart. Spike tried to keep up a cool façade. Even though he was tied up and helpless and Buffy was holding a weapon on him, Spike had a reputation for being a dangerous predator. It was beneath his pride to ever act nervous or fearful. "Well, it was you, wasn't it?" You come in here with Red Riding Hood's scent all over you. It's like you bathed in her! You don't get all covered in another person's smell by sharing the same textbook, kiddies. You don't get it by sharing the same hairbrush or the same toothbrush either. There's only one way that you could be so thoroughly covered in another person's scent, and that's if the two of you had hot, passionate, sweaty, feverish sex together." I was still too stunned to speak. I tried to, but all that came out of my mouth were some inarticulate vowel sounds, and just then Xander chose that moment to blurt something out. "First Anya turns lesbian and dumps me, and now Buffy and Willow too? What? Is the whole town going gay?" Spike gave Xander a long, hard look before saying anything. But when he finally spoke he said, "Normally mate, I wouldn't give a damn about your girl troubles, but Harmony just dumped me so she could hook up with a female vampire. So, I'm kinda feeling that we've bonded. We should go down to the pub and sink a few pints." "Spike, you aren't going anywhere," Buffy admonished the vampire. "You and I and Xander are not friends, and you're not going anywhere until you tell us everything you know about those paramilitary guys on campus!" Xander ignored everything Buffy just said and interjected, "Wait! Harmony just went gay too? So, that's Anya, Buffy, Harmony and Willow all in the same month?" "Actually," Giles began in a tone much calmer than Xander's, "I was in a wine shop in the center of town the other day. One of the female employees is divorcing her husband due to irreconcilable differences....she's no longer sexually attracted to men." "Coincidence?" Actually, I didn't know what it was. Possibly all of these women were bisexual to begin with and eventually just grew tired of or, or dissatisfied with their male companions for some reason. As I said, lots of women are bisexual to some degree or another. "Coincidence," Xander blurted out incredulously. "Will, six straight women all suddenly going gay in the same month in a town this size can't be a coincidence! It's gotta be the Hellmouth. It's an early warning sign of another apocalypse about to happen!" "Xander, Sunnydale isn't exactly small. We've got a university, a museum an art gallery, forty-three churches, a zoo, twelve gothic cemeteries, a huge hospital, a train station, a bus station, a small airport and a small military base. You call that a small town?" "Well, not exactly small per se," Xander began, but I cut him off before he could finish. "Xander the hospital alone has over six-hundred employees! And UC Sunnydale has about five-hundred employees! And Fort Fremont military base has thousands of people! There's got to be over three-hundred-thousand people living in Sunnydale! Six women turning gay in a town of three-hundred-thousand shouldn't be considered a big deal!" "I could still fancy a pint," Spike interjected. "My woman dumped me and I got shot full of arrows. That should entitle me to a drink, shouldn't it?" I actually found myself starting to agree with Spike on this one. I mean...Harmony dumped him so that she could be with a lesbian and then he shot a dozen times by a bunch of angry Indians...that sounded like the title to a country-western song. "Spike, I'll tell you what," Giles began. "Tell us everything you know about the paramilitary group on Buffy's campus and I'll buy you a bottle of Jameson." "Six bottles of Jameson and twelve bottles of Guinness," Spike countered. "I get half up front and the other half when I've told you everything I know." Giles countered with one bottle of Jameson and ten bottles of Guinness and Spike could have one pint of Guinness up front and the remainder after he told everything. Spike was insulted by Giles's counteroffer, and the vampire and the watcher proceeded to haggle in earnest. That's when Buffy and Xander and I decided it was time to go home. I could tell that Spike and Giles weren't going to resolve this anytime soon. They'd probably be at it for hours. Buffy and I held hands as we walked back to campus. I figured as long as Xander already knew, there was no point in hiding our affections any longer. "I don't get it," Xander complained. "First you're with Angel, and I never approved of Angel, but at least he was a guy. He had that whole XY chromosome thing goin' on. But, now you're with Willow. And no offense to Willow, but she-" Buffy cut Xander off at that point and sharply added, "Xander, Angel dumped me. I saved Angel's life and then he dumped me! When he went to L.A., he stomped all over my heart and maybe, just maybe, I'm with Willow now because I know she won't ever pull a bone-headed move like that on me ever!" I smiled at Buffy, giving her a non-verbal. It was a non-verbal that I appreciated the compliment and also a non-verbal that confirmed that I would never dump her and leave town like Angel did. "So, when a guy dumps a girl, they automatically turn lesbian?" "Everybody is different, Xand," I explained. "When Oz abandoned me I ran to the arms of my best friend...which just happened to be Buffy. And Buffy makes me happy, so we're gonna stay together. But every girl is different. Not every girl is gonna react the same way. Some girls will turn to drugs or alcohol to deal with the pain. Some will turn to chocolate. Some girls turn to kick-boxing or mixed-martial arts and beat the crap out of their opponents. Some girls just wallow in the pain and listen to lots and lots of country music. At the mention of country music, both Buffy and Xander shuddered. Country music really sucked and we all knew it. Since it was Thanksgiving and none of us had eaten anything since Breakfast, we all stopped in at a place called Mike's Bar and Grill and Buffy bought us all dinner. Explaining the whole lesbian thing to Xander wasn't easy. He had had a crush on Buffy even since the 10th grade and to have Buffy suddenly go gay on him was really an emotional blow for him. I think that he thought he might have a chance with Buffy after Angel broke up with her and left town. And then there was the moment when I got up to go to the lady's room and walked past the bar. There were two married guys sitting at the bar complaining about how their wives no longer cooked for them because they discovered "the joys of lesbian sex" and now their wives had girlfriends and they were never home at night. Both guys were middle-aged and unattractive. One of them looked kind of like Joe Pantoliano and the other one was seriously overweight. "You know who I blame this on?" asked the Joe Pantoliano guy. "Our wives?" ventured the overweight guy, slurring his words slightly and obviously working on a good buzz. "Janet Reno," replied the Joe Pantoliano guy. "She's a woman...but she's also the attorney general. You make a woman the top lawman in the country and it causes gender confusion. It's like she thinks she's a man. And women all over America see Janet Reno in a man's job. One of the most powerful men in America is a woman! That gives women strange ideas! Dontcha think? I heard 'em talkin' about it on Fox News Channel." My Life is Different Ch. 01 "So, when Clinton hired a woman to be attorney general, he made our wives gay?" The Joe Pantoliano guy took a swig from his drink, coughed loudly and replied, "Our wives aren't gay, Arnie! They're just sexually confused! And it's mostly Janet Reno's fault! I heard it on Fox News! If we get women out of law-enforcement and put men in charge again, I'll bet our wives ...." "They'll come to their senses, right? They'll realize that men do manly things and that women do womanly things!" "Yeah! Like what you said!" I didn't stick around to hear anymore. I could almost have felt sorry for those two when I first heard that they were having problems with their marriage. But then, once I realized what sort of misogynistic, sexist pigs they were, I only felt anger and contempt. And I don't know who they're married to, but whoever it is, they probably deserved better than these two knuckle-dragging sub-monkeys! * * * * * * * * * * Eventually Xander went home and Buffy and I returned to campus. It was Thanksgiving Day and it was just a few minutes to midnight and the campus was dead. I couldn't see or hear another person anywhere. Except for Buffy and me, the whole campus looked deserted. "Hey, Will," Buffy said as we walked arms linked together, "There's still some time left to create a new Thanksgiving Day tradition." I checked my watch and nodded my head in agreement. "We've got eleven whole minutes." "And I was thinking," Buffy continued, "That it would be a really cool Thanksgiving if you were to walk naked across the campus. After all, the place is deserted right now. Everybody's cleared out for the Thanksgiving holiday, so where's the bad?" It sounded like a scary idea to me. A lot of the nightmares I've had over the past four years involved showing up at school naked, but I looked to my left and to my right and scanned the campus in every direction. No matter where I looked, the campus seemed to be completely deserted. Even with the campus appearing deserted, I was still nervous. My mouth went dry and hands shook as they touched the hem of my shirt. Was I really going to strip down naked on the campus lawn? We were only a few yards from the student parking lot. What if a student came back for some reason? They could be here within seconds and spotlight my nudity with their headlights! "Tick tock," said Buffy, getting impatient. "Time's a factor here, Will. Thanksgiving will be over soon. You gotta do this now." "You want me to strip?" I asked nervously. "Here? Now?" "That's right," Buffy said in her authoritative, prison-guard of cell-block-D voice, "Strip! Here! Now!" When Buffy does that voice it really gets to me. Before I knew it I was barefoot and handing my shoes to her. Then I slipped my t-shirt over my head and handed that to Buffy as well. Unbuttoning and unzipping my skinny jeans came next, but they were so tight it took quite a bit of time and effort to slide them off of my hips and down my thighs. "C'mon, Will," Buffy said impatiently, "Bra and panties too." My fingers shook as I reached around back and searched for the catches to unfasten my bra. It took several attempts but I finally got it. Then finally I stood on the school lawn, wearing nothing but my Victoria's Secret hip-hugger panties with the white lace trim. "The panties too, Will," Buffy said, still using her authoritative prison guard voice. "It's no good unless you take it all off." I took one last look around the campus and nervously slipped off the flimsy nylon/spandex garment. It weighed almost nothing and when I handed it to Buffy I felt like a thousand eyes were watching me from the darkness. I'd never felt this naked and exposed in my life before. "Okay, Will," Buffy said with her arms full of my clothing, panties visible and prominent on the top of the pile. "You just have to make your way back to our dorm room and you get your clothes back. It's just that simple." Then Buffy ran off with my clothes, heading in the direction of Stevenson Hall. I tried to run after her, but running in your bare feet is a lot harder than you might think. Every pebble and pine needle and tree root that you step on hurts the soles of your feet. I had to slow down to a much more moderate pace and follow Buffy naked and slowly and carefully and naked across campus. Did I mention I was naked? I just wanted to make sure I didn't forget to mention that. It's very disconcerting to walk naked across the lawn of a public place. Even though I didn't see anybody, I felt certain that at any moment somebody would pop out of nowhere see my naked body and shout... "Willow, is that you?" I yelped in surprise and clutched at my heart. Never in all the years of vampire attacks and zombies rising from the grave did anything scare me so much as the voice of one of my fellow college students greeting me as I tried to walk stealthily across the campus lawn while totally and completely naked. When I was certain I wasn't going to die of embarrassment, my brain was able to identify the girl who spoke. Her name was Terri Radcliffe and she was wearing a sports bra, running shoes and very, very tight running shorts. Probably some sort of hybrid fabric of spandex and nylon. She had worked up quite a sweat, so she'd probably been out running for quite some time. "Terri," I exclaimed, sounding just as out of breath as she did. "You scared me half to death!" "Sorry," she said, sounding genuinely sympathetic. "I thought everybody had gone home for the holidays. I wasn't expecting to see any of the students out naked on the school lawn." There was a very short pause (perhaps about one or two heartbeats) and then Terri asked, "Why are you out naked on the school lawn?" I'm horrible at lying so I tried being vague instead. I fidgeted with my hands and said, "I kinda lost a bet....well not really a bet... it's more like a close friend of mine sorta dared me to do it.... Well not really a dare either... it's more like..... Well, I just hafta to do it, but I can't really explain why, but if you could please not tell anybody that you saw me out here like this, I would totally owe you and a huge favor and please say yes. Yes, meaning that you won't tell anybody...not yes to the favor. Although I totally will owe you a favor if you keep this a secret. Please?" Terri got an amused smirk on her face as I babbled. My babbling has that effect on people sometimes. "I'll tell you what, Willow; you seem like a nice girl, so I'll keep this our little secret." I let out a sigh of relief and then Terri said, "Be careful though. I saw the campus police on patrol while I was on my run. Thanksgiving may be a major holiday, but they still do random patrols. If they see you wandering around naked, they won't be as understanding about it as I am." A chill went down my spine as the thought of getting caught by campus police occurred to me. I must have looked pretty shaken at the thought because Terri immediately tried to comfort me. "I'll tell you what, Willow," she said, "I'll head back toward campus security and if I find 'em, I'll fake an ankle injury and ask them if they can help me limp back to my dorm room. That should buy you some extra time to get yourself back inside. I thanked Terri and started to walk back towards Stevenson Hall, but before she ran off she called out to me, "By the way, Willow, you have got one seriously cute ass!" I felt my face got hot at the compliment. I don't know why it didn't occur to me that Terri might find my naked body sexually attractive. I mean, Sunnydale seemed to be filled with lesbians these days. Why wouldn't Terri be one of them? As I walked it occurred to me that when Terri asked me to repay the favor I owed her, it might be sexual in nature. Then I wondered how Buffy would feel about that. Was that even worth worrying about now, or should I just wait until later and worry about it when Terri brought it up? If she brought it up. There was a possibility that she might not even remember that I owed her a favor! Of course, if it had been me who had seen a naked college girl with a cute butt on campus and she owed me a favor, would I ever forget? Then, as I walked nervously on uncertain legs across the campus lawn, somebody else snuck up behind me. I was certain that it was campus security on a random patrol and I wondered how they had managed to come upon me so quickly, but when I turned around it was a vampire with her fangs already bared. She struck one of those melodramatic poses, with her fingers clenched all claw-like and her arms spread wide as if she was getting ready to grab me and her knees bent as if she was ready to pounce on me. "Willow Rosenberg," she announced in a classic villainy melodramatic booming voice, "I've been following you for hours! I knew that if I bided my time, I'd eventually catch you alone! And now, without the slayer to protect you, I'll drain you dry! And with your death, the slayer's morale will plummet! She'll become despondent and disheartened! With her spirit crushed, she'll become half the slayer that she once was, and when that happens, I'll take advantage of her vulnerable state and..." I knew this type of vampire. She could go on for hours with the posturing and the gloating. Some vampires are just in love with the sound of their own voices. I was in no immediate danger, but at some point she'd stop with the posturing and the gloating and the speech-making and she'd bite me. Rather than wait for that moment, I held my hand up, palm flat and I spoke the words, "Sol, succurro tuus filia." The vampire was apparently expecting me to cower or run or faint or tremble in fear. When; instead; I held up my hand and spoke in Latin, she got a look on her face that was nine parts confusion, one part disappointment. "What?" That was all the vampire had time to say. Then just above my outstretched hand a small hole formed in the fabric of reality. Sunlight shone through the jagged hole and suddenly there was enough sunlight on the dark Sunnydale campus to illuminate both the vampire and me. The vampire screamed inarticulately as she burst into flames and then she rapidly went from flaming flesh to a pile of smoking dust on the campus lawn. The vampire had screamed long and loud before she died. I was worried that the campus police would come running when they heard her screams, but they must have been too far away. Man, I really, really do owe Terri a big favor.   "Will!!!!" Suddenly I saw Buffy running across the campus lawn at a speed that any Olympic sprinter would envy. There was fear in her eyes and her legs pumped like pistons as she covered a hundred years like it was ten feet. She slid across the lawn like a baseball player sliding into home-plate and stopped right in front of me. The vampire was already dust, but Buffy's intentions were clear. She must have seen the vampire before it got to me and she dropped my clothes and came running back to rescue me. "Will?" she asked when she had come to a complete stop. "Sunlight spell," I explained. "I've been working on it ever since Angel went on his killing spree. It's a lot more complicated than it looks. But I think I've finally worked out all the kinks."   "You think?" Buffy asked, looking down at the smoldering ashes that had once been a vampire. "Will, no matter how long I know you, you keep coming up with new surprises." I didn't really have a clever response to that, so I just said, "uh-huh". "So, now that you're all big and impressive with the magic and can kill vampires without any help from me, does that mean that you're not my little lesbian submissive anymore? The look on Buffy's face totally surprised me. She was actually worried that if I became her equal in vampire slaying that I'd somehow not be willing to be submissive to her anymore. She looked so distressed. I almost laughed at her concern. She had nothing to worry about. I loved being her lesbian submissive! "Buffy, I will always want to be your little lesbian submissive! That's not even a question! It's the vampires I don't wanna be submissive to!" Buffy squealed and threw me over her shoulder. Soon I was looking at Buffy's shapely, denim-clad butt as she carried me and marched back to Stevenson Hall. My naked butt would be well on display, at eye level as Buffy carried me like that, but I was really enjoying how submissive Buffy made me feel carrying me naked, and over her shoulder like that with her strong arm around my waist. Then it occurred to me to ask, "Buffy, where are my clothes?" There were somewhere on the campus lawn. Buffy had dropped them when she ran to rescue me from the vampire, but it was too dark to go looking for them and so Buffy just carried me naked to Stevenson Hall, up the stairs and into our dorm room.