On the one hand, Buffy was glad to have everything out in the open with her mom. It meant she didn’t have to sneak out her bedroom window to go on patrol, didn’t have to make excuses for her clothes getting torn, or disappearing altogether because she had to throw them in the trash. She could be honest, she could even come home dripping alien slime everywhere and her mom would just sigh and tell her to rinse the worst off, then throw her clothes in the washing machine. That was all to the good.

On the other hand, her mom was too much! Buffy was grateful she was trying to be supportive, providing snacks, being interested, and sympathetic when another of Buffy’s favorite tops got ruined instead of getting mad at her, but… She wanted to know EVERYTHING, and she worried just as much now she knew the truth as she had when she’d thought she was raising a juvenile delinquent. Maybe more.

And there was a limit to how open Buffy was willing to be about everything, especially the Angel situation. Buffy knew that bothered her mom more than most things; the age difference, the fact that he was a vampire, and that Buffy had, on one, single occasion, had sex with him, which could never happen again. Buffy had told her that much. She couldn’t put Angel’s soul at risk a second time, and Angel wouldn’t either, no matter how tempting it might be, or how much they wanted to be together… The pleasure simply wouldn’t be worth the result, not that Buffy would EVER discuss her sex life, or lack of one, with her mother.

It was a balancing act between telling her mum as much as she needed to know, without telling her every detail.


The End