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Title: Enough – Part 2 – Fish or Cut Bait
Author: Xanfan
Rating: PG-13 (for now)
Pairing: mentions of B/R and Xander/Anya with a possible future slash
Summary: Xander confronts Buffy about her feelings for Riley.
Spoilers: After The Replacement, season five
Warnings: AU, possible M/M in the future.
Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective
owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way
associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is
intended.
A/N: A day or two after The Replacement. Goes AU after that.
_________________________________
Buffy paced her living room nervously. She had sent her mom and sister out for dinner and a movie, so
she had the house to herself while she anxiously waited for Riley to show up.
She took a few deep, calming breaths when she heard the knock at the front door.
Riley smiled at her in greeting when she opened the door, and leaned in for a kiss; she turned her face
so that her cheek received the kiss instead of her lips.
Riley frowned as he followed his silent girlfriend into her living room. He didn’t know what was going on,
but he was pretty sure he wasn’t going to like it.
“Riley, we need to talk,” Buffy said.
Now Riley knew he wasn’t going to like whatever was happening.
“This can’t be good,” he commented.
Buffy gazed at her boyfriend and saw him for the first time in a long time. Saw the shadows of sadness
and pain in his eyes. Saw the telltale smudges beneath those eyes, smudges that spoke of stress and
sleepless nights. She wondered if she had caused it with the things she’d done or hadn’t done. She
remembered looking at Xander’s face the other night and seeing similar shadows and she wondered
how much she had hurt Riley without realizing it. Was she damaging all the men around her like she had
Xander and Riley?
Riley looked at his girlfriend and saw, for the first time in a long time, genuine awareness and concern,
about him. He had fleeting hope that this was a good sign, a fresh start in their relationship. But he was
no longer really good at lying to himself, so he couldn’t pretend for long that this was anything other
than what it was: the beginning of the end.
“He said something, didn’t he?” Riley asked in a defeated tone; he had only spoken to one person,
however briefly, about his thoughts on Buffy’s feelings. Leave it to him to talk to the one person who was
observant enough to fill in the blanks and noble enough to confront Buffy.
Buffy didn’t even pretend to misunderstand.
“More like he verbally kicked my butt,” she said with a slight smile.
Riley tried to return the smile, but couldn’t manage to. He tried to be mad at Xander, but he couldn’t
manage to.
“He shouldn’t have said anything,” Riley said numbly.
“Xander didn’t do it to hurt you, or betray your confidence. He did it because he cares. About me, about
you, he cares. I’ve been hurting you, and I didn’t even know it. I wasn’t paying attention.”
“So he told you to dump me?”
“No, of course not. He told me to love you back or let you go,” Buffy admitted softly.
“And you choose option B?” Riley said, bitterly.
“I care about you, Riley, and I do love you, just not the way I should. Not the way you need me to. But I
do need you. Don’t you snort at me, Riley Finn! I do need you. I may not tell you or even show you, I’m
not good at that, but I’m trying to get better,” Buffy said fiercely.
“What are you saying?” Riley asked in confusion.
“I’m saying, you deserve better. You deserve to be loved the way you need to be loved, the way you
love, and right now I can’t give that to you. Maybe not ever. I’m not sure I have it in me anymore. You
are an amazing man and a great fighter. I know it’s selfish of me, but I still want you fighting by my side,
no matter what. So, yes, I’m breaking up with you. But, I don’t want you to leave. I know you can. I know
you have family and a job waiting for you with the military, but I’m asking you to stay. I need all the help I
can get with Glory, not to mention my mom. You’ve become part of my family, my friend, and I don’t want
to give that up. I’m selfish that way, I admit it,” Buffy said ruefully.
“Basically, what you’re saying is, ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ and ‘let’s be friends’? Can you get anymore
cliché?” Riley joked lamely.
“Apparently not,” Buffy responded.
“I’m going to need a few days to think about the whole staying thing,” Riley said.
“Yeah, I’ve made the mistake of saying the whole, ‘this town’s not big enough for the both of us’ before, I’
m not doing that again. If you want to skip tomorrow’s Scooby meeting, you can. I’ll tell them what
happened,” Buffy offered.
“I probably will do that, skip the meeting I mean.”
“Riley?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t be mad at him, don’t take it out on him? He doesn’t deserve it, and he really doesn’t need it right
now,” Buffy said, not unkindly.
“What do you mean?”
“Xander opened my eyes to a lot of things during our ‘talk’ and…you’re not that different, you and he,”
Buffy said vaguely. Then she continued in a sad whisper, “And Anya and I aren’t as different as I
thought either, I guess.”
Riley searched her face, trying to understand what she wasn’t saying, when it finally dawned on him.
“Anya doesn’t love him?”
“He loves her. She… I’m not sure she understands what love is, or how to love someone. And… I think
he thinks he’ll never find someone to love him back,” Buffy said sadly.
Riley didn’t know what to say, so he kept quiet.
Buffy looked down at her hands fidgeting in her lap. “He said that if I didn’t do something, that
eventually, you’d leave. Not because you wanted to, but because I made you feel like you couldn’t stay. I’
m not sure he knows how to leave. How to fight for himself. He knows how to fight for his girls and Giles
and you; he’d even defend Spike if it came down to it. But he’s long learned not to expect things for
himself. Not to believe that he deserves better. I… helped teach him that. I wasn’t the only one, but I had
a part in it.”
“Buffy…” Riley began.
“I’m not the only one who needs you to stay, Riley. Giles, Willow and I are too used to pushing him aside,
pushing him down. We take him for granted. He needs someone to really be his friend and be on his
side. Someone to tell us we’re treating him like crap, because he sure won’t, and we don’t usually realize
we’re doing it. I know it’s not fair of me to ask this of you, but… Riley, he’s damaged and I don’t know
how to fix him. And I helped break him, we all did. I know I don’t have a right to ask you this, considering
everything. I’m not saying you have to fix him. I’m just saying, be his friend, because he’s been yours,”
Buffy said desperately.
Riley sat back, taking a moment to process. He had been so caught up in his own pain that he hadn’t
noticed what was going on around him. Sure, he had thought a couple of times that the ‘Scoobies’
tended to treat Xander like a ‘doughnut boy’, but Riley had never said anything. He thought about
Xander’s interactions with the group and Anya in particular, and he could see what Buffy was talking
about. Anya and Xander’s relationship was definitely of the one-sided variety. Xander treated Anya like a
goddess and Anya accepted it as her due.
“So what are we going to do about it?” Riley asked decisively.
Buffy smiled at her freshly ex-boyfriend and said, “I’m going to start by being the friend to Xander that he
was to me.”
“Meaning?”
Buffy gave a slight smile before she answered, “I have a coffee date with Anya before patrol. We need
to have a little talk.”
Part 3
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