Title: Home Improvements
Author:
fluffernutter8Word Count: 445
Prompt: No Place Like Home
Summary: Slayers don't have all the skills. Fluffy future fic (surprised?)
She had just wanted to touch up the bathroom. As a former vampire and as an artist, Angel's eyes were still sensitive to aspects of their house that were invisible to her. What wasn't invisible was they way that, as they brushed their teeth, his gaze would slide to the corners of the room, to the edges of the mirror where the red was fading slightly. He would wince and then smile and say, "Nothing," when she asked what was wrong. And when she pushed he would say that really, after everything, his life was perfect. So she would kiss him and they would end up in bed and still his eyes would shift slightly to the faded patches on the wall.
"Angel." She snorted as she levered the top off of the can of Chili Pepper Red. "Maybe he should be called Anal." She sat up suddenly. "Wow, that came out dirtier than expected." Too late, she realized that moving quickly while the screwdriver was still in the paint can had caused the entire bathroom floor to look like a nunnery after an Angelus and Darla party.
"Damn, that was morbid," she muttered. She grabbed one of the insanely expensive towels that Angel had insisted upon buying (not like she had exactly complained that much- once you'd felt Brazilian cotton against your skin after your shower, there was no turning back) and started to mop up the floor. Maybe the red wouldn't show up on the black towels.
It did show up on her jeans and t-shirt, though. They were her painting clothes, luckily, because not even Angel was worth ruining a pair of nice Calvins, but her knees left marks as she crawled around on the once-white floor.
"Crap." Trying to do something nice for your husband apparently didn't pay. She was planning a route to the door so she could change without getting any more paint on her clothes or on anything in the hallway, when Angel came up the stairs.
"You're human now, Angel. Making noise is the new sneaking around. Get with the times," she grumbled.
Angel leaned against the wall, raising an eyebrow at his wife as she hopped around, attempting to take off her sneakers while not touching anything. Unfortunately, that just meant that the tiles now had a lovely footprint pattern on them. "Is making your bathroom look like the inside of a tomato another new thing to do?"
She gave up on taking off her shoe, and collapsed on the floor. She curled up cross-legged, looking very small and very innocent, and smiled up at him winningly.
"You just came at a really bad time."