riverviewlogs | (no subject)

who: Buffy Summers
what: Coffee shop ,patrol, blood donation, exploration of the area
when: March 21-27
where: Perimeter, clinic, general area
warnings: TBD

Morning is spent working her shift at the coffee shop. Being a barista is something that worked out for her at home and something that she chose to do here. As far as jobs go, she likes being a barista. Once her shift is done there, she'll head out for an early afternoon patrol.

The brownouts had made Buffy a little nervous, but when the blackouts started she got even more nervous. The assurances that the perimeter fence will hold don't do much to assure Buffy. She prefers patrol as a means of assurance. Besides, it's something she knows how to do. She can be found patrolling along the fence with a stake in hand. She looks casual and relaxed. In fact, she might not look like she's paying any attention at all, but especially where Buffy is concerned, looks can be deceiving.

She'd read the announcement about needing blood donations both for injuries and for food sources. It hits close enough to home that she stops by the clinic and donates blood (but not any tissue because she's a little weirded out by that). She gives some warnings about her blood possibly being like crack to vampires and maybe stick to using it for an injury since it could also help with some speedy healing.

Between afternoon patrol and evening patrol, Buffy does some exploring around town, checking things out and not only trying to get the layout of the town, but get an idea of how people are reacting to the power issues as well.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Buffy is complicated, at least she thinks she is. She's been told she's complicated, but she's also upfront. What you see is what you get with her and she's reached an age and confidence level where she refuses to apologize for herself (except for the foot-in-the-mouth thing that she still does, and really she thinks that deserves an apology). On top of that, she wants Alcide to know her, she wants to know him. Maybe that's why Alcide gets a good read on her.

Assuming that Buffy stays here (and she's got no reason to think that whomever or whatever brought her here will send her away), she knows that one of these days Spike will become someone that she loves the way she loves Angel, someone that she will always love, but not someone she's in love with anymore. It's pretty clear to Buffy that if Alcide continues to be patient, continues to be Alcide, he's the person she's going to be in love with and when she's in love with him, she won't want anyone else but him. It's the way that her heart works.

"Nope," Buffy admits, her voice drops a little as she continues to speak, "we were kind of staying on the downlow. I sort of ended up wanted by the FBI, but Willow fixed that," she assures him, her voice going back up to a normal speaking level. Buffy would love to be able to avoid trouble, but it finds her.

The laughter is a good reaction; it's the one she'd been going for. "Got it. No collars. No leashes. It's okay, I don't like to be tied up either." A split second later, she realizes what she just confessed and blushes scarlet. Well, there's really no fumbling her way out of that one, is there? She's just going to stew in her embarrassment and wish a hole would form in the ground to swallow her up.

She watches him, a slight smile tugging at the corners of her lips as she listens to him. "And now you want to have kids? Eventually, I mean."

Alcide would say that people are complicated in general. He's always thought so anyway. It's probably why he always ends up with the wrong ones - why he keeps thinking he can help them, fix them, be good enough for them, etc. Alcide has a lot of issues when it comes to being good enough for other people.

Sometimes, not very often, but sometimes, he wonders if that's why Buffy isn't with him yet - or if maybe he's a bad person for already being there, for falling so hard so quick. Then he reminds himself of the glaring differences between their situations. Sookie had run off with Bill after lying to him. Buffy is happy with whoever she's with back home. Spike, Alcide thinks his name is. Yes, very different circumstances. Apples and oranges.

"The FBI? That bad, huh?" She's alluded to it before but now that it's out there so plainly, he puts it all together pretty quickly. "People are afraid of what they don't understand, what they can't control. It's why shifters have stayed hidden for so long. People wouldn't understand." Except now everyone knows about them back home and those concerns have been proven true. "They don't understand."

However, at her response, Alcide looks at her, amused in every way, grin on his lips and eyebrows lifted. Yeah, he heard her clearly and all the innuendo sits there between them as he decides how to respond. "I mean if you're sure about that. I'll be sure to keep it less kinky, more straight and simple." Now he's just teasing her.

At the last question he shrugs. "Maybe. Maybe not. I thought maybe with Sookie... but, that's never gonna happen now and I know that. So I'll just play it by ear. Gotta have a decent place to raise kids in too. Home wasn't that... yet. Neither is here, from what I can tell so far. Plus... we don't know about the whole sterile thing from the Complex, if it carries over into here." Yeah, he's thought about it. "What about you? Eventually."

Buffy is pretty sure that he's right about that. She's still out on whether people can be fixed or not. She knows that people can change, that they can fix themselves. She's not sure it's possible for someone else to fix a person. As far as Alcide being good enough, he's as good a person as Buffy has ever met. Any girl, her included, would be lucky to have Alcide and he deserves to be treated right, to be loved. As uncertain as she is about what she wants with Alcide, she is certain of that.

He's not a bad person and the reason she's not with him right now is that she wants to be able to commit to Alcide completely. She doesn't want to be half in on their relationship and that's the only reason they aren't together right now. He's right though, her situation is very different from his situation. He can't compare the two, or at least he shouldn't.

She shrugs. "I cratered a town with help. Everyone had already evacuated but I'm still a terrorist in their eyes." Yeah, it was that bad. Willow had managed to get them out of the country. "No they don't and they don't take the time to find out," she sighs. "I mean...I get it. Vampires, werewolves...they're scary, but especially in your world where they're still people...they deserve the chance to be understood." Yeah, she's talking a little bit about herself, but most of the time humans aren't scared of her. She doesn't hurt them. In fact, as oblivious as they can be, they realize she usually protects them.

Yeah, she sees that amusement and she shakes her head at him. It's better that he be amused than other reactions, she guesses. "Oh, I wouldn't have any issues tying you up," she fires back, deciding that she's in this hole; she might as well make herself comfortable. It's a whole claustrophobia thing combined with control issues.

She's quiet for a while, considering his question. The whole sterile thing aside--and she's still upset about that--"I don't know. I thought I was pregnant once. Back home." It ended up being a robot thing but..."and I wanted it, but I don't know if I'd actually try to have kids. I'm kind of a bullseye back home for everything supernatural and evil. That's not going to change anytime soon. If the world were perfect..." she bites her bottom lip, holding her breath for a moment, "yeah. I think so."

Alcide isn't new to destruction or violence. In fact, he's seen quite a bit of it. But a whole town cratered? That's a new one. The sheer scale of that kind of destruction is just a little bit beyond him. Not to mention what it would take to evacuate a whole town. Alcide is assuming that as overpopulated as California is, towns in California, even the smaller ones, aren't like the backwater Louisiana towns he's used to.

Sometimes, when Buffy gives him these small snippets of information from her life back home, Alcide thinks she's lived more in her lifetime than most people do in half of theirs.

He shakes his head. "You know, I've seen a ton of crazy shit back home in my time. But I'm startin' to get that you've seen way more than your fair share too." Alcide shrugs. "But yeah, I don't get along with most others; Fangers, Shifters, Fae... even my own kind. It was kind of brainwashed into me back in my pack days to distrust the others. But with my own kind, that was learned over time. And then, more recently, guess I started to finally look at all of it on more of a case by case basis instead of a group. Took awhile to get there... but I mean when you grow up bein' told to hate this or hate that... you do it until you learn otherwise. Most other wolves, they don't try to think for themselves. They just do what their Pack Master tells them. Hell, I did for a long time too... until I got smart about it."

Actually, it took his dad being booted as Pack Master for being a thieving asshole for Alcide to finally start to think for himself. Fallen idols will do that to a person.

On the more lighter topic that Alcide is glad is there because it makes talking about the darker stuff easier, he smirks when she says she'd be fine with tying him up. "Or the other way around, right? Me tyin' you up?" He tosses right back at her around a boyish grin. "Seems like turnabout is fair play or somethin' like that." Of course now he's imagining both tying her up and being tied up by her. It's both terrifying and sexy as hell. A little fear in foreplay can be fun though, he thinks.

He glances over to her, sobering a bit. "But the world isn't perfect." Which is part of his problem with the idea too. "It never will be. Plus there's the fact that my kind of wolf is passed down through the bloodline, not by biting someone. So I'd be dooming someone to live with this for forever..." Not so bad without a pack. With a pack, it's just a heap of trouble.