Finding a Reason
Fic Title: Finding a Reason
Author: Meg (lit_chick08)
Pairing: Buffy/Angel
Rating: NC-17 for language and sex
Word Count: 5028
Spoilers: Everything from both “Buffy” and “Angel”
Summary: After “Not Fade Away,” Angel goes to Buffy to help teach the new Slayers. Both agree that they should wait to pursue a relationship. Unfortunately, things don’t always work the way they plan.
A/N: Written for the cya_ficathon Round 5
Request: Set: Post-NFA
Pairings you want : B/A
Other Characters/Pairings you want in the story too: Toss in who
else you want, but you can just leave it B/A
Things you want: Smut, a ball of yarn and Angel in jeans if you can make it work.
Things you don’t want: Death, sad endings, Spike screwing things up.
Extras: Fluff, you can throw in angst, but I need some fluff. Happy ending.
Buffy Summers had had many long days in her life: the day her mother died, the fight against the First, that time that Xander had gotten drunk and decided to sing every song from “The Sound of Music” without accompaniment. But no day had ever been as long or as terrifying as when Dawn had burst into the apartment that they shared in Rome and screamed for her to turn on the news. When Buffy saw the ruins of Los Angeles behind the reporter, she couldn’t breathe; when they announced the estimated death toll, her heart stopped. She and Dawn immediately packed their bags and flew to London where Giles, Wood, and Faith were rebuilding the Council and training the new Slayers; her life in Rome was completely forgotten, including her relationship with the Immortal, as she fled to her friends.
Faith had been waiting for her at Heathrow Airport, her own face streaked with tears, and even though they could barely hold a conversation without fighting, the sister Slayers cried in each other’s arms. Willow, Kennedy, and Xander flew in next, and, while they were trying to come up with a strategy to defeat the demons that had escaped LA, Buffy mourned the loss of the lover she had barely seen in five years. She had even tracked down Riley, begging his unit to scour the ruins for any sign of Angel. When nothing was found, she truly believed that Angel was lost forever.
For three weeks, Buffy was inconsolable. She was like a zombie, going through the motions much in the same way she had after her return from Heaven, and Giles was ready to schedule an intervention when she had gotten the phone call. It was four o’clock in the morning and she had been dead asleep. She fumbled for a moment with the receiver before hissing, “Hello?”
“Buffy?”
The sound of her name had never sounded so fabulous. She was already crying as she sighed, “Angel.”
He had managed to escape with his life but nothing else. Every possession he owned had been destroyed in the fire and brimstone; everyone was dead. He had been so severely injured that he had barely gotten out of LA, spending the past few weeks lying in a basement of an abandoned house in some suburb, subsisting off of rats. When he began to tell her the entire story, she had interrupted and instructed, “Get to the nearest airport. Giles will send the Council jet. Just get here.”
She had wanted to be on the plane that was going to pick him up, but Giles had talked her out of that, saying that if she was on that plane when Angel got on, the results might be disastrous, ie: Angelus might become an issue. Buffy couldn’t argue with the logic; there was a very good chance that she would maul Angel when she saw him. So instead Faith and Dawn had boarded the plane to retrieve the vampire.
When he had entered the massive building that Giles had appropriated to rebuild the Council, he looked like a shadow of his former self. He was scarily thin, almost skeletal, and unkempt. Angel had always epitomized elegance in her mind, and to see him like that was a shock to Buffy’s system. She had approached him almost wearily, unsure how he was going to react, but when he saw her, the grin that crossed his face was unlike anything she had ever seen and she released a breath that she hadn’t even realized she was holding.
A combination of butcher’s shop blood and blood appropriated from the blood bank nursed Angel back to full strength. As his body began to fill out and muscle began to once again form over his large frame, as his appearance returned to that of Buffy’s teenage memories, Buffy knew she was in trouble. She wanted him, wanted him stronger than she had in years, and she had no idea what to do. And it certainly didn’t help matters that Willow, Queen of the Witches, had found a way to anchor Angel’s soul, making sex a possibility.
Today, as Buffy sat in her office-which was really nothing more than a closet that Giles had gotten Xander to fix up so she’s stop bitching-trying desperately to solve her Angel problems without going to her friends, she felt him coming. It was a feeling that she had needed to get used to again. While she could sense vampires, what she felt when Angel was near was different, a primal tug at her heart. And, just as it had when she was sixteen, it made butterflies bloom in her stomach.
He appeared in her doorway a moment later, a pair of jeans hanging loose around his waist and a button down shirt pulled tight across the wide breadth of his shoulders, and Buffy melted just a little.
“You busy?”
“No. Take a seat.”
Trying to fold his body into one of her chairs, he said, “I thought that we should talk.”
“Yeah, we haven’t really had a chance to do that yet.”
A small smile tugging at his lips, he admitted, “I never thought I’d see you again.”
“You could’ve told me that you were going to wage war. I would’ve come, I would’ve helped.”
“It was my mistake, so it was my fight.”
“That didn’t matter.”
“I just figured you were….busy,” he said evasively, no longer looking at her.
“Well, shopping can be time consuming, but it’s not as important as, you know, saving the world, which, if you remember, is kind of a specialty of mine.”
Angel recognized the anger in her voice, knew that it was deserved, but he didn’t want to fight with her; he was tired of fighting. “Buffy…I can’t undo what I did.”
Sighing, hating how he had somehow made her feel guilty without even raising his voice, Buffy said, “I’m glad that you’re okay, Angel. I am, but I can’t help…”
“You blame me, don’t you?”
“Blame you?” she echoed, confused. “What would I blame you for?”
“Spike.”
Andrew had kept his word about Spike’s return until he had heard about the destruction of Los Angeles. When he had heard, he had begun to wail about Spike dying, and that was when she had discovered that her former lover wasn’t as dead as she thought. But unlike Andrew, she didn’t mourn him. In her mind, Spike had died over a year ago, and she had mourned him then.
“That’s what you think, that I blame you for Spike?”
Finally meeting her gaze, she could see the pain in his eyes as he informed her, “He told me that you two were…close, that you told him that you were closer to him than anyone else. Losing him-“
“I never had him,” she cut in, getting to her feet and moving from around her desk. Angel got to his feet reflexively, prepared to defend himself if necessary, and was momentarily stunned when Buffy didn’t strike him but rather cupped his face in her hands.
“Angel, no matter who else there was, it was still…you there with me. Why do you think that every relationship I’ve had since you has crashed and burned miserably? You crawled inside of me and I can’t get you out no matter what I do and after all of this, I’m not even sure I want to.”
The kiss caught her off-guard, but she didn’t fight it, didn’t even realize she was doing it until Angel had picked her up and set her on the edge of her desk, her legs automatically locking around his hips. It was a muscle memory, an instinct that she had thought was long since dead, and she was glad that she hadn’t forgotten.
His big hands cupped her face, moving her head to get a better angle, and Buffy encircled his neck with her arms, trying to pull herself up, wanting the kiss to be deeper and harder, never wanting to stop. As she strained, her core brushed against the rapidly growing bulge inside of his jeans, and Angel groaned into her mouth before pushing away.
“Angel, what’s wrong?” she gasped, echoing the words she had said to him after the first time they had ever kissed.
His hands trembled as he ran them through his hair, visibly shaken, and he confessed, “My control’s not very good right now, Buffy.”
“Control? You wanted to bite me?” she misinterpreted.
“No! I want-I want-“ With a sigh, he said, “You know what I want.”
“I really don’t.”
“I want what I’ve always wanted! I want you!”
Hopping off the desk, throwing her arms open, she declared, “Well, I’m right here! I’m here and the curse isn’t an issue and you can have me, so get with the having!”
“We agreed to wait. I want to wait.”
Stung, tears pricking her eyes, she snapped, “Right, we really need to let those six years of sexual tension finish simmering!”
“Buffy, please-“
“Don’t!” Keeping her back turned, rifling aimlessly through a stack of papers on her desk, she lied, “I have to meet Giles. You should go.”
He said nothing for several moments before finally leaving and Buffy had forgotten just how deafening silence could be.
* * *
“Six weeks, Will!” Buffy cried as she flung herself onto the couch beside her best friend, just barely missing the tiny kitten that Kennedy had gotten her for her birthday that was playing with a ball of yarn.
“Care to elaborate?”
“Six weeks of nothing! Not a kiss, not a touch; he hasn’t even inappropriately brushed against me in the hallway! I can’t take it anymore. It’s cruel and unusual punishment!”
Willow smiled. “I think you might be over-reacting just a little, Buff.”
“This is not overreacting! It’s sexual torture!” Heading towards the kitchen and the bottle of wine that Willow always had, she demanded, “Do you know what I saw him doing today?”
“No?”
“He was practicing T’ai Chi without his shirt on with a bunch of the young Slayers! They all have huge crushes on him and he does that! It’s irresponsible of him!”
“Irresponsible of him to teach them an ancient Chinese form of exercise?”
“No, to take off his shirt! It’s just plain wrong to tease teenage girls like that!”
“To tease teenager girls or tease you?”
Sitting back down, pouring each of them a glass of wine, Buffy miserably declared, “It’s like I’m in hell. I feel like I’m 17 again and it’s another lifetime of ‘look but don’t touch,’ and I want to touch! I need to touch!”
Taking a sip of the sweet wine, Willow smiled. Ever since she had been brought back to life three years ago, Buffy had been a shadow of her former self; her tears were filled with less pain, her laughter with less joy. For the first time since everything had gone down-being brought back, the destruction of Sunnydale, everything-Buffy seemed like the Buffy Summers that Willow remembered meeting all those years ago in the courtyard of Sunnydale High, the girl who had giggled over Angel and kept herself wrapped up in a too large leather jacket.
“Have you considered asking him out on a date?”
“A date?! Will, he’s my freaking soulmate! I sent the guy to Hell and he still came back to be with me! I think we’re past the having coffee stage!”
“And what stage are you at?”
“The stage where we have lots of wild, sweaty sex!”
“Oh!” Xander exclaimed as he entered the living room. “Can we not have this conversation with me present?”
Buffy groaned, tossing back a heavy swallow of her wine. “Xand, what do you think I should do?”
“I hear that being a nun is very fulfilling profession.”
“Xander!” Willow chastised while Buffy rolled her eyes.
“Seriously, Buffy, just talk to him.”
“How can I talk to him when every time I see him, I’m in danger of raping him?”
“Okay, now I need a drink,” Xander announced.
* * *
Angel’s room was in the basement of the building, a storage room that Xander had begrudgingly converted into a bedroom for the vampire with a soul. When Buffy had not found him there, she knew that there could only be one other place.
The July air was a touch chilly as Buffy stepped out onto the roof of the building, the wind tossing her hair in several different directions. As she suspected, Angel was seated on the ledge, staring out at the lights of the city. Faith had told her that he came up here often to just think, and sometimes the dark haired Slayer joined him. Buffy hated it, their easy camaraderie, the way that Faith could get him to smile, and it tugged at that insecure part of her heart that was left over from high school, the part that knew his claims of not wanting the bad girl anymore was a lie. In her head she knew that Faith loved Wood as much as she had loved anyone in her life, but she still couldn’t help admitting to herself that Faith and Angel had far more in common than they ever had.
“Is something wrong?” Angel queried without turning to face her, his gaze remaining firmly on the bustling city.
“Stupid vampire hearing. Can’t even sneak up on you,” she mock-lamented, sitting down beside him, though she kept her legs firmly on the roof rather than dangle them freely over the edge. Slayer or not, there was no way she was coming back from a fall of ten stories; besides, ever since the dive from Glory’s tower, she hadn’t been that crazy about heights.
“Vampire smelling actually,” he corrected. “I always smell you long before I hear you.”
“Okay, that’s slightly creepy.” Intrigued, she added, “What do I smell like?”
“Right now, wine and frustration with a little vanilla. You always smell like vanilla.”
“It’s my shampoo.”
“I know.”
A moment of comfortable silence passed before Angel broke it with, “I dated this woman in LA named Nina; she smelled like vanilla too.”
Buffy had almost forgotten what it felt like to have her heart shredded, but, just like kissing him, it came rushing back to her. “Oh.”
“She was a werewolf, and she was always so paranoid that she’d smell like dog that she’d practically bathe in vanilla perfume to cover it.”
Too afraid to speak for fear of crying, Buffy just nodded.
“I treated her badly; I used her, and I think she knew it. Whenever we were in bed-“
“Angel, I don’t want to hear this,” she blurted out before she could stop herself, feeling bile sting her throat, practically sprinting away from the ledge. Oh, god, she hoped that Spike had never told him the things that they had done; was this his way of punishing her, making her listen to his sexual exploits with vanilla scented Nina?
“Whenever we were in bed,” he repeated more emphatically, “if I saw the blonde hair, smelled the perfume, I could pretend she was you, and she could feel that.”
Buffy froze mid-step, turning to face her former lover, who was slowly making his way towards her, determination in his face. Knowing he now had her attention, he continued, “Spike told me that he felt the same way every time you were together, like he was just holding my place. Was he?”
She knew it was a betrayal to Spike to tell the truth, a slap in the face for all of the good deeds he had done for her and Dawn, but Angel deserved to hear it.
“Yes,” she whispered, a tear escaping the corner of her right eye. “He was the closest thing I had to you.”
Angel slid his hands around her back, his cold flesh a sharp contrast against the warm skin of her back, left exposed by the halter top that she wore. Pressing one hand against the small of her back, the other trailed up her spine, stopping at the back of her neck, drawing her closer. In a whisper against her lips, he confessed, “I can’t wait anymore.”
Buffy kissed him hungrily, all passion and ferocity, six years of unfulfilled lust igniting between them. It lacked finesse and romanticism, but she didn’t care. Angel was here, in her arms, with nothing to stop them from being together in the way they hadn’t been able to since that one perfect night on her seventeenth birthday.
Angel’s sure fingers began to tug at the knot that held her top up, strong enough to untie it but lacking the desperation of their kisses. When he pulled back, Buffy whimpered, trying to follow, but he stilled her movement. Brushing a brief kiss against her swollen lips, he rasped, “We have all night.”
Every muscle in Buffy’s body was taut with tension as Angel walked behind her. As he pressed a wet kiss against her shoulder, he asked, “Do you want to go back to your room or mine?”
“Dawn’s home,” she pointed out, twisting her body to face him.
“My room then.”
Angel was surprised when Buffy jumped up, her arms wrapping around his neck while her legs simultaneously locked around his waist, but he didn’t dare let go. As his Slayer pressed gentle kisses and nipped at his throat, Angel used every ounce of self-control he possessed to stumble to the elevator. The moment the doors slid open, Angel pressed her against the wall of the elevator and groaned, “Jesus, Buffy, you’re killing me.”
“Now you know how I’ve felt for the last month and a half,” she quipped with a groan as he flexed his hips, pressing his erection against her center.
Buffy’s hands began to fumble with the buttons of his shirt, desperate to get him naked whether or not they were in the elevator. As their tongues tangled and the buttons from Angel’s shirt now decorated the floor of the elevator, the doors dinged, opening to reveal several of the new Slayers staring with their jaws dropped at the writhing couple.
“Somebody get the hose,” one of the girls giggle, and Angel jumped away like a teenage boy who had just been caught with his hand up the shirt of a very large man’s daughter.
Buffy, on the other hand, was far too aroused to be embarrassed. Firmly grabbing both sides of Angel’s opened shirt, she tugged him out of the elevator, pushing through the throng of girls with a crisp, “Excuse me!”
As they stumbled towards Angel’s room, Buffy couldn’t help but smile against his mouth when she heard one of the girls wistfully sigh, “She is so lucky.”
“I can’t believe they saw us,” Angel mumbled into her mouth as Buffy opened his door, which he was certain was locked, never ceasing the quest of her hands across his body.
“I can’t believe you care,” she countered, playing tossing him onto the double bed that occupied most of the room. “I didn’t figure you’d be that shocked with a little exhibitionism.”
Pulling Buffy atop him, he teased, “I don’t want to share you with anyone right now, even if it is a bunch of teenage girls.”
Pushing his shirt off of him, tracing the lines of his abs that were slowly redefining themselves, she playfully retorted, “If memory serves, you liked teenage girls.”
All teasing leaving his words, he finished untying her top, almost reverently removing the scrap of fabric. “I liked you,” he corrected.
Leaning over, Buffy pressed her lips against his, the kiss slow and lingering before withdrawing. “I liked you too,” she whispered against his mouth, her hands sliding downward towards the button of his jeans.
Angel, officially tired of being passive, used his strength to roll them, Buffy now beneath them. He drew back for a moment, sitting back on his heels to just look at her. It had been years since he had seen Buffy like this, bare to his gaze, flushed with arousal. She wasn’t the self-conscious teenager who had covered her breasts in embarrassment that cold, rainy night nor was she the passionate ingénue who had been so desperate to learn every type of sexual pleasure on the day that wasn’t. No, this Buffy was the woman he had never had the pleasure of exploring with, the woman who was comfortable with her body and her skill as a lover.
Carefully, as if she was a sketch that he was shading, Angel began to trace the lines of her body. Starting at her hairline, he trailed a finger down her face, her throat; he drew designs on her collarbone, symbols on her breastbone. When she moved restlessly, her dusky pink nipples erect and aching for contact, he brushed his thumbs simultaneously against them, drawing a soft, keening sound from her throat.
“You’re so beautiful,” he declared, unable to keep the awe from his voice.
“You make me that way,” she replied.
Angel undid the button to her jeans effortlessly, sliding the denim down her legs until she was clad only in a lacy pink thong that made him smile as he remembered the last time they had made love and she had worn white cotton panties with tiny flowers on them. She had changed so much, and, Angel realized, so had he.
“Angel,” she murmured when he paused, afraid that he was having second thoughts, terrified that he didn’t want this, her, after all.
“How did I ever live without you?” he mused, his large hands sliding around her back, lifting her so that he could remove the last barrier that remained between him and every inch of her flesh.
His kisses started at the swell of her breasts, whisper soft, and Buffy couldn’t help the tears that stung her eyes as she remembered their only time together. He had been so gentle then too, and, having spent the better part of a year being roughly fucked by a vampire who loved to hurt her, she had almost forgotten how wonderful it felt to be made love to.
She couldn’t stop saying his name, as if trying to reaffirm that he was there, really there, and her fingers slid into his thick, dark hair, silky compared to the bleached locks she had nearly pulled out so many times.
As his mouth began to worship at the curve of her stomach, his tongue teasingly playing at her navel, she blurted out, “I’m sorry.”
Angel paused, confused. “For what?”
She didn’t want to say his name, not here when Angel was in her arms. Saying his name would remind him of her betrayal, so she instead said, “Everything.”
“You don’t ever have to apologize to me, Buffy,” he stated. “It’s the past.”
“I know, but-“
“Shhh. It’s just us now, sweetheart. It’s just us.”
“I love you,” she sighed.
“I love you.” With a small smile, he added, “How about letting me show you?”
Buffy nodded and then gasped as he moved lightning quick between her thighs, tossing her legs over his broad shoulders, his hands cradling her hips. With one last glance spared to her face, Angel took a breath and began to lap at the wetness seeping from her body.
Buffy bolted upright in shock at the first touch of Angel’s tongue to her clit, so aroused that she could barely breathe. She reached for his head, her fingers tangling into his hair as she tried to verbalize how amazing everything felt. All she had managed to eke out was, “Angel,” before he sweetly suckled her throbbing flesh between his lips, his tongue gently lashing it to the beat of her pulse. Suddenly the hands that she had meant to hold him still were now trying to pull him even closer, and her voice was now begging him to not stop, to never stop.
She tasted like truth in his mouth, like sunshine and passion and hope. The flavor of her exploded against his tongue, waking up senses that he didn’t even remember that he possessed, senses that had been beaten into submission during his tenure at Wolfram and Hart and in his pseudo-relationship with Nina. Here, Buffy Summers’s tanned thighs framing his body, the sweetness of her juices spilling into his mouth, her fingers twining in his hair to direct him to where she needed him, Angel found an absolution that he had thought would never come to him. Let the Powers keep his Shanshu; as long as he had this, he would be satisfied.
“Oh God, Angel,” Buffy began to keen, rolling her hips in an attempt to get more friction where she desperately needed it. “Angel, please, god, Angel, yes!”
Sliding two fingers inside of her, her wetness so plentiful that it was soaking his hand, Angel crooked his fingers upward, searching until he found what he was looking for: the telltale bump that would send her screaming into pleasure. The moment his fingers began to stroke it, Angel applied harsh suction to her clit. Buffy screamed, alerting everyone in the building and probably greater London to her enjoyment, her hands pulling painfully at his hair, but Angel didn’t care as long as she kept crying his name like that.
As he backed off, his erection pressing painfully against his zipper, he watched as Buffy began to suck as much oxygen as she could into her lungs, body twitching with aftershocks of pleasure, a blush now covering her body. She looked thoroughly debauched, and Angel couldn’t help the swell of masculine pride that came with having made the love of his life so pleased.
As she closed her eyes, pressing a hand to her forehead in an attempt to calm down, Angel moved from the bed, quickly shedding the constricting jeans, before returning to his lover, who was beginning to regain her faculties in the wake of her orgasm.
He blanketed her body with his, bearing his weight on his hands, and Buffy softly queried, “Don’t you want-“
“I want you,” he cut in, “and I might just turn to dust right now if we don’t do this right now.”
Her smile was so achingly sweet that, in that moment, Angel saw the sixteen-year-old that had effortlessly captured his heart. “Make love to me, Angel.”
Buffy gasped as Angel filled her, her nails biting into the corded muscles of his back. She had forgotten what it felt like to have him inside of her, at the way he delightfully stretched her in ways that no one else had ever been able to, at the absolute sense of rightness that accompanied it.
And she knew that Angel felt the exact same way when he shakily exhaled and pressed his forehead against her shoulder as he fought for control. He was dreadfully close to embarrassing himself as if he were still a boy in Galway and not a vampire with 250+ years of experience. It was flattering for Buffy to think that she could cause him to lose control so easily, but it was not going to be good for Angel’s self-esteem at all if he ruined their first time since reuniting.
After a moment of pause, Angel carefully flexed his hips, moving deeper into her, and Buffy moaned in pleasure, bending her legs to encircle his waist, urging him on. His next thrust was harder, deeper, and he angled himself so that he stroked her clit each time. As his thrusts began to gain speed, Buffy began to pant out his name along with the occasional urge to move faster, thrust harder, and general cry to God. They were moving as one, so close that Buffy wasn’t sure where she ended and he began, when someone began to bang on Angel’s door.
“Are you kidding me?” Angel groaned into Buffy’s golden hair, never ceasing the motion of his hips.
If she wasn’t so close to orgasm, Buffy would’ve laughed. Instead, she snapped, “Of course not. The Powers knew we were going to actually enjoy ourselves and had to ruin it.”
“Hey, big guy!” Faith called through the door. “You in there?!”
“Oh, I’m going to kill her!” Buffy hissed through clenched teeth before stifling a moan as Angel’s latest thrust hit her g-spot.
“Angel!” Faith continued to shout. “C’mon, man, open the door!”
“God, she ruins everything!” Buffy complained as she tightened the legs wrapped around Angel, desperate to come.
“She isn’t ruining anything,” Angel swore, his thrusts picking up speed. “I’m not stopping for anything.”
Faith left another thirty seconds of fruitless pounding on the door, oblivious to the fact that Buffy and Angel were straining towards orgasm, sweat soaking their bodies, the force of their hips meeting enough to cause pain to either of them had they been average humans.
As Buffy reached her peak, her internal muscles clutching at Angel, the vampire groaned as he came, his coolness soothing the burning inside of her. Panting heavily, they remained the way that they were before Buffy sleepily asked, “You’ll be here when I wake up, right?”
Rolling off of her, pulling her tightly into the crook of his arm, he declared, “I’m not going anywhere ever again.”
Snuggling against him, her hand resting on his stomach, she murmured, “Good,” before drifting off to sleep.
Angel watched her for a few minutes before he joined her in sleep, feeling more content than he had in years. If this was the end result of every horrible event of the past five years-losing Doyle, Cordelia, Wes, Fred, Gunn, even Spike-then maybe his quest for redemption hadn’t been in vain after all.
When Buffy woke up the next morning to Angel sleeping beside her, the last chain of sorrow that had been wrapped around her heart for so long fell away. She had earned this happiness, earned Angel, and it was time that she quit living life like it was a burden.
She had been given a second chance with the man she loved more than anything else in the world. If that wasn’t proof enough that life was worth living, she wasn’t sure what was.
Author: Meg (lit_chick08)
Pairing: Buffy/Angel
Rating: NC-17 for language and sex
Word Count: 5028
Spoilers: Everything from both “Buffy” and “Angel”
Summary: After “Not Fade Away,” Angel goes to Buffy to help teach the new Slayers. Both agree that they should wait to pursue a relationship. Unfortunately, things don’t always work the way they plan.
A/N: Written for the cya_ficathon Round 5
Request: Set: Post-NFA
Pairings you want : B/A
Other Characters/Pairings you want in the story too: Toss in who
else you want, but you can just leave it B/A
Things you want: Smut, a ball of yarn and Angel in jeans if you can make it work.
Things you don’t want: Death, sad endings, Spike screwing things up.
Extras: Fluff, you can throw in angst, but I need some fluff. Happy ending.
Buffy Summers had had many long days in her life: the day her mother died, the fight against the First, that time that Xander had gotten drunk and decided to sing every song from “The Sound of Music” without accompaniment. But no day had ever been as long or as terrifying as when Dawn had burst into the apartment that they shared in Rome and screamed for her to turn on the news. When Buffy saw the ruins of Los Angeles behind the reporter, she couldn’t breathe; when they announced the estimated death toll, her heart stopped. She and Dawn immediately packed their bags and flew to London where Giles, Wood, and Faith were rebuilding the Council and training the new Slayers; her life in Rome was completely forgotten, including her relationship with the Immortal, as she fled to her friends.
Faith had been waiting for her at Heathrow Airport, her own face streaked with tears, and even though they could barely hold a conversation without fighting, the sister Slayers cried in each other’s arms. Willow, Kennedy, and Xander flew in next, and, while they were trying to come up with a strategy to defeat the demons that had escaped LA, Buffy mourned the loss of the lover she had barely seen in five years. She had even tracked down Riley, begging his unit to scour the ruins for any sign of Angel. When nothing was found, she truly believed that Angel was lost forever.
For three weeks, Buffy was inconsolable. She was like a zombie, going through the motions much in the same way she had after her return from Heaven, and Giles was ready to schedule an intervention when she had gotten the phone call. It was four o’clock in the morning and she had been dead asleep. She fumbled for a moment with the receiver before hissing, “Hello?”
“Buffy?”
The sound of her name had never sounded so fabulous. She was already crying as she sighed, “Angel.”
He had managed to escape with his life but nothing else. Every possession he owned had been destroyed in the fire and brimstone; everyone was dead. He had been so severely injured that he had barely gotten out of LA, spending the past few weeks lying in a basement of an abandoned house in some suburb, subsisting off of rats. When he began to tell her the entire story, she had interrupted and instructed, “Get to the nearest airport. Giles will send the Council jet. Just get here.”
She had wanted to be on the plane that was going to pick him up, but Giles had talked her out of that, saying that if she was on that plane when Angel got on, the results might be disastrous, ie: Angelus might become an issue. Buffy couldn’t argue with the logic; there was a very good chance that she would maul Angel when she saw him. So instead Faith and Dawn had boarded the plane to retrieve the vampire.
When he had entered the massive building that Giles had appropriated to rebuild the Council, he looked like a shadow of his former self. He was scarily thin, almost skeletal, and unkempt. Angel had always epitomized elegance in her mind, and to see him like that was a shock to Buffy’s system. She had approached him almost wearily, unsure how he was going to react, but when he saw her, the grin that crossed his face was unlike anything she had ever seen and she released a breath that she hadn’t even realized she was holding.
A combination of butcher’s shop blood and blood appropriated from the blood bank nursed Angel back to full strength. As his body began to fill out and muscle began to once again form over his large frame, as his appearance returned to that of Buffy’s teenage memories, Buffy knew she was in trouble. She wanted him, wanted him stronger than she had in years, and she had no idea what to do. And it certainly didn’t help matters that Willow, Queen of the Witches, had found a way to anchor Angel’s soul, making sex a possibility.
Today, as Buffy sat in her office-which was really nothing more than a closet that Giles had gotten Xander to fix up so she’s stop bitching-trying desperately to solve her Angel problems without going to her friends, she felt him coming. It was a feeling that she had needed to get used to again. While she could sense vampires, what she felt when Angel was near was different, a primal tug at her heart. And, just as it had when she was sixteen, it made butterflies bloom in her stomach.
He appeared in her doorway a moment later, a pair of jeans hanging loose around his waist and a button down shirt pulled tight across the wide breadth of his shoulders, and Buffy melted just a little.
“You busy?”
“No. Take a seat.”
Trying to fold his body into one of her chairs, he said, “I thought that we should talk.”
“Yeah, we haven’t really had a chance to do that yet.”
A small smile tugging at his lips, he admitted, “I never thought I’d see you again.”
“You could’ve told me that you were going to wage war. I would’ve come, I would’ve helped.”
“It was my mistake, so it was my fight.”
“That didn’t matter.”
“I just figured you were….busy,” he said evasively, no longer looking at her.
“Well, shopping can be time consuming, but it’s not as important as, you know, saving the world, which, if you remember, is kind of a specialty of mine.”
Angel recognized the anger in her voice, knew that it was deserved, but he didn’t want to fight with her; he was tired of fighting. “Buffy…I can’t undo what I did.”
Sighing, hating how he had somehow made her feel guilty without even raising his voice, Buffy said, “I’m glad that you’re okay, Angel. I am, but I can’t help…”
“You blame me, don’t you?”
“Blame you?” she echoed, confused. “What would I blame you for?”
“Spike.”
Andrew had kept his word about Spike’s return until he had heard about the destruction of Los Angeles. When he had heard, he had begun to wail about Spike dying, and that was when she had discovered that her former lover wasn’t as dead as she thought. But unlike Andrew, she didn’t mourn him. In her mind, Spike had died over a year ago, and she had mourned him then.
“That’s what you think, that I blame you for Spike?”
Finally meeting her gaze, she could see the pain in his eyes as he informed her, “He told me that you two were…close, that you told him that you were closer to him than anyone else. Losing him-“
“I never had him,” she cut in, getting to her feet and moving from around her desk. Angel got to his feet reflexively, prepared to defend himself if necessary, and was momentarily stunned when Buffy didn’t strike him but rather cupped his face in her hands.
“Angel, no matter who else there was, it was still…you there with me. Why do you think that every relationship I’ve had since you has crashed and burned miserably? You crawled inside of me and I can’t get you out no matter what I do and after all of this, I’m not even sure I want to.”
The kiss caught her off-guard, but she didn’t fight it, didn’t even realize she was doing it until Angel had picked her up and set her on the edge of her desk, her legs automatically locking around his hips. It was a muscle memory, an instinct that she had thought was long since dead, and she was glad that she hadn’t forgotten.
His big hands cupped her face, moving her head to get a better angle, and Buffy encircled his neck with her arms, trying to pull herself up, wanting the kiss to be deeper and harder, never wanting to stop. As she strained, her core brushed against the rapidly growing bulge inside of his jeans, and Angel groaned into her mouth before pushing away.
“Angel, what’s wrong?” she gasped, echoing the words she had said to him after the first time they had ever kissed.
His hands trembled as he ran them through his hair, visibly shaken, and he confessed, “My control’s not very good right now, Buffy.”
“Control? You wanted to bite me?” she misinterpreted.
“No! I want-I want-“ With a sigh, he said, “You know what I want.”
“I really don’t.”
“I want what I’ve always wanted! I want you!”
Hopping off the desk, throwing her arms open, she declared, “Well, I’m right here! I’m here and the curse isn’t an issue and you can have me, so get with the having!”
“We agreed to wait. I want to wait.”
Stung, tears pricking her eyes, she snapped, “Right, we really need to let those six years of sexual tension finish simmering!”
“Buffy, please-“
“Don’t!” Keeping her back turned, rifling aimlessly through a stack of papers on her desk, she lied, “I have to meet Giles. You should go.”
He said nothing for several moments before finally leaving and Buffy had forgotten just how deafening silence could be.
* * *
“Six weeks, Will!” Buffy cried as she flung herself onto the couch beside her best friend, just barely missing the tiny kitten that Kennedy had gotten her for her birthday that was playing with a ball of yarn.
“Care to elaborate?”
“Six weeks of nothing! Not a kiss, not a touch; he hasn’t even inappropriately brushed against me in the hallway! I can’t take it anymore. It’s cruel and unusual punishment!”
Willow smiled. “I think you might be over-reacting just a little, Buff.”
“This is not overreacting! It’s sexual torture!” Heading towards the kitchen and the bottle of wine that Willow always had, she demanded, “Do you know what I saw him doing today?”
“No?”
“He was practicing T’ai Chi without his shirt on with a bunch of the young Slayers! They all have huge crushes on him and he does that! It’s irresponsible of him!”
“Irresponsible of him to teach them an ancient Chinese form of exercise?”
“No, to take off his shirt! It’s just plain wrong to tease teenage girls like that!”
“To tease teenager girls or tease you?”
Sitting back down, pouring each of them a glass of wine, Buffy miserably declared, “It’s like I’m in hell. I feel like I’m 17 again and it’s another lifetime of ‘look but don’t touch,’ and I want to touch! I need to touch!”
Taking a sip of the sweet wine, Willow smiled. Ever since she had been brought back to life three years ago, Buffy had been a shadow of her former self; her tears were filled with less pain, her laughter with less joy. For the first time since everything had gone down-being brought back, the destruction of Sunnydale, everything-Buffy seemed like the Buffy Summers that Willow remembered meeting all those years ago in the courtyard of Sunnydale High, the girl who had giggled over Angel and kept herself wrapped up in a too large leather jacket.
“Have you considered asking him out on a date?”
“A date?! Will, he’s my freaking soulmate! I sent the guy to Hell and he still came back to be with me! I think we’re past the having coffee stage!”
“And what stage are you at?”
“The stage where we have lots of wild, sweaty sex!”
“Oh!” Xander exclaimed as he entered the living room. “Can we not have this conversation with me present?”
Buffy groaned, tossing back a heavy swallow of her wine. “Xand, what do you think I should do?”
“I hear that being a nun is very fulfilling profession.”
“Xander!” Willow chastised while Buffy rolled her eyes.
“Seriously, Buffy, just talk to him.”
“How can I talk to him when every time I see him, I’m in danger of raping him?”
“Okay, now I need a drink,” Xander announced.
* * *
Angel’s room was in the basement of the building, a storage room that Xander had begrudgingly converted into a bedroom for the vampire with a soul. When Buffy had not found him there, she knew that there could only be one other place.
The July air was a touch chilly as Buffy stepped out onto the roof of the building, the wind tossing her hair in several different directions. As she suspected, Angel was seated on the ledge, staring out at the lights of the city. Faith had told her that he came up here often to just think, and sometimes the dark haired Slayer joined him. Buffy hated it, their easy camaraderie, the way that Faith could get him to smile, and it tugged at that insecure part of her heart that was left over from high school, the part that knew his claims of not wanting the bad girl anymore was a lie. In her head she knew that Faith loved Wood as much as she had loved anyone in her life, but she still couldn’t help admitting to herself that Faith and Angel had far more in common than they ever had.
“Is something wrong?” Angel queried without turning to face her, his gaze remaining firmly on the bustling city.
“Stupid vampire hearing. Can’t even sneak up on you,” she mock-lamented, sitting down beside him, though she kept her legs firmly on the roof rather than dangle them freely over the edge. Slayer or not, there was no way she was coming back from a fall of ten stories; besides, ever since the dive from Glory’s tower, she hadn’t been that crazy about heights.
“Vampire smelling actually,” he corrected. “I always smell you long before I hear you.”
“Okay, that’s slightly creepy.” Intrigued, she added, “What do I smell like?”
“Right now, wine and frustration with a little vanilla. You always smell like vanilla.”
“It’s my shampoo.”
“I know.”
A moment of comfortable silence passed before Angel broke it with, “I dated this woman in LA named Nina; she smelled like vanilla too.”
Buffy had almost forgotten what it felt like to have her heart shredded, but, just like kissing him, it came rushing back to her. “Oh.”
“She was a werewolf, and she was always so paranoid that she’d smell like dog that she’d practically bathe in vanilla perfume to cover it.”
Too afraid to speak for fear of crying, Buffy just nodded.
“I treated her badly; I used her, and I think she knew it. Whenever we were in bed-“
“Angel, I don’t want to hear this,” she blurted out before she could stop herself, feeling bile sting her throat, practically sprinting away from the ledge. Oh, god, she hoped that Spike had never told him the things that they had done; was this his way of punishing her, making her listen to his sexual exploits with vanilla scented Nina?
“Whenever we were in bed,” he repeated more emphatically, “if I saw the blonde hair, smelled the perfume, I could pretend she was you, and she could feel that.”
Buffy froze mid-step, turning to face her former lover, who was slowly making his way towards her, determination in his face. Knowing he now had her attention, he continued, “Spike told me that he felt the same way every time you were together, like he was just holding my place. Was he?”
She knew it was a betrayal to Spike to tell the truth, a slap in the face for all of the good deeds he had done for her and Dawn, but Angel deserved to hear it.
“Yes,” she whispered, a tear escaping the corner of her right eye. “He was the closest thing I had to you.”
Angel slid his hands around her back, his cold flesh a sharp contrast against the warm skin of her back, left exposed by the halter top that she wore. Pressing one hand against the small of her back, the other trailed up her spine, stopping at the back of her neck, drawing her closer. In a whisper against her lips, he confessed, “I can’t wait anymore.”
Buffy kissed him hungrily, all passion and ferocity, six years of unfulfilled lust igniting between them. It lacked finesse and romanticism, but she didn’t care. Angel was here, in her arms, with nothing to stop them from being together in the way they hadn’t been able to since that one perfect night on her seventeenth birthday.
Angel’s sure fingers began to tug at the knot that held her top up, strong enough to untie it but lacking the desperation of their kisses. When he pulled back, Buffy whimpered, trying to follow, but he stilled her movement. Brushing a brief kiss against her swollen lips, he rasped, “We have all night.”
Every muscle in Buffy’s body was taut with tension as Angel walked behind her. As he pressed a wet kiss against her shoulder, he asked, “Do you want to go back to your room or mine?”
“Dawn’s home,” she pointed out, twisting her body to face him.
“My room then.”
Angel was surprised when Buffy jumped up, her arms wrapping around his neck while her legs simultaneously locked around his waist, but he didn’t dare let go. As his Slayer pressed gentle kisses and nipped at his throat, Angel used every ounce of self-control he possessed to stumble to the elevator. The moment the doors slid open, Angel pressed her against the wall of the elevator and groaned, “Jesus, Buffy, you’re killing me.”
“Now you know how I’ve felt for the last month and a half,” she quipped with a groan as he flexed his hips, pressing his erection against her center.
Buffy’s hands began to fumble with the buttons of his shirt, desperate to get him naked whether or not they were in the elevator. As their tongues tangled and the buttons from Angel’s shirt now decorated the floor of the elevator, the doors dinged, opening to reveal several of the new Slayers staring with their jaws dropped at the writhing couple.
“Somebody get the hose,” one of the girls giggle, and Angel jumped away like a teenage boy who had just been caught with his hand up the shirt of a very large man’s daughter.
Buffy, on the other hand, was far too aroused to be embarrassed. Firmly grabbing both sides of Angel’s opened shirt, she tugged him out of the elevator, pushing through the throng of girls with a crisp, “Excuse me!”
As they stumbled towards Angel’s room, Buffy couldn’t help but smile against his mouth when she heard one of the girls wistfully sigh, “She is so lucky.”
“I can’t believe they saw us,” Angel mumbled into her mouth as Buffy opened his door, which he was certain was locked, never ceasing the quest of her hands across his body.
“I can’t believe you care,” she countered, playing tossing him onto the double bed that occupied most of the room. “I didn’t figure you’d be that shocked with a little exhibitionism.”
Pulling Buffy atop him, he teased, “I don’t want to share you with anyone right now, even if it is a bunch of teenage girls.”
Pushing his shirt off of him, tracing the lines of his abs that were slowly redefining themselves, she playfully retorted, “If memory serves, you liked teenage girls.”
All teasing leaving his words, he finished untying her top, almost reverently removing the scrap of fabric. “I liked you,” he corrected.
Leaning over, Buffy pressed her lips against his, the kiss slow and lingering before withdrawing. “I liked you too,” she whispered against his mouth, her hands sliding downward towards the button of his jeans.
Angel, officially tired of being passive, used his strength to roll them, Buffy now beneath them. He drew back for a moment, sitting back on his heels to just look at her. It had been years since he had seen Buffy like this, bare to his gaze, flushed with arousal. She wasn’t the self-conscious teenager who had covered her breasts in embarrassment that cold, rainy night nor was she the passionate ingénue who had been so desperate to learn every type of sexual pleasure on the day that wasn’t. No, this Buffy was the woman he had never had the pleasure of exploring with, the woman who was comfortable with her body and her skill as a lover.
Carefully, as if she was a sketch that he was shading, Angel began to trace the lines of her body. Starting at her hairline, he trailed a finger down her face, her throat; he drew designs on her collarbone, symbols on her breastbone. When she moved restlessly, her dusky pink nipples erect and aching for contact, he brushed his thumbs simultaneously against them, drawing a soft, keening sound from her throat.
“You’re so beautiful,” he declared, unable to keep the awe from his voice.
“You make me that way,” she replied.
Angel undid the button to her jeans effortlessly, sliding the denim down her legs until she was clad only in a lacy pink thong that made him smile as he remembered the last time they had made love and she had worn white cotton panties with tiny flowers on them. She had changed so much, and, Angel realized, so had he.
“Angel,” she murmured when he paused, afraid that he was having second thoughts, terrified that he didn’t want this, her, after all.
“How did I ever live without you?” he mused, his large hands sliding around her back, lifting her so that he could remove the last barrier that remained between him and every inch of her flesh.
His kisses started at the swell of her breasts, whisper soft, and Buffy couldn’t help the tears that stung her eyes as she remembered their only time together. He had been so gentle then too, and, having spent the better part of a year being roughly fucked by a vampire who loved to hurt her, she had almost forgotten how wonderful it felt to be made love to.
She couldn’t stop saying his name, as if trying to reaffirm that he was there, really there, and her fingers slid into his thick, dark hair, silky compared to the bleached locks she had nearly pulled out so many times.
As his mouth began to worship at the curve of her stomach, his tongue teasingly playing at her navel, she blurted out, “I’m sorry.”
Angel paused, confused. “For what?”
She didn’t want to say his name, not here when Angel was in her arms. Saying his name would remind him of her betrayal, so she instead said, “Everything.”
“You don’t ever have to apologize to me, Buffy,” he stated. “It’s the past.”
“I know, but-“
“Shhh. It’s just us now, sweetheart. It’s just us.”
“I love you,” she sighed.
“I love you.” With a small smile, he added, “How about letting me show you?”
Buffy nodded and then gasped as he moved lightning quick between her thighs, tossing her legs over his broad shoulders, his hands cradling her hips. With one last glance spared to her face, Angel took a breath and began to lap at the wetness seeping from her body.
Buffy bolted upright in shock at the first touch of Angel’s tongue to her clit, so aroused that she could barely breathe. She reached for his head, her fingers tangling into his hair as she tried to verbalize how amazing everything felt. All she had managed to eke out was, “Angel,” before he sweetly suckled her throbbing flesh between his lips, his tongue gently lashing it to the beat of her pulse. Suddenly the hands that she had meant to hold him still were now trying to pull him even closer, and her voice was now begging him to not stop, to never stop.
She tasted like truth in his mouth, like sunshine and passion and hope. The flavor of her exploded against his tongue, waking up senses that he didn’t even remember that he possessed, senses that had been beaten into submission during his tenure at Wolfram and Hart and in his pseudo-relationship with Nina. Here, Buffy Summers’s tanned thighs framing his body, the sweetness of her juices spilling into his mouth, her fingers twining in his hair to direct him to where she needed him, Angel found an absolution that he had thought would never come to him. Let the Powers keep his Shanshu; as long as he had this, he would be satisfied.
“Oh God, Angel,” Buffy began to keen, rolling her hips in an attempt to get more friction where she desperately needed it. “Angel, please, god, Angel, yes!”
Sliding two fingers inside of her, her wetness so plentiful that it was soaking his hand, Angel crooked his fingers upward, searching until he found what he was looking for: the telltale bump that would send her screaming into pleasure. The moment his fingers began to stroke it, Angel applied harsh suction to her clit. Buffy screamed, alerting everyone in the building and probably greater London to her enjoyment, her hands pulling painfully at his hair, but Angel didn’t care as long as she kept crying his name like that.
As he backed off, his erection pressing painfully against his zipper, he watched as Buffy began to suck as much oxygen as she could into her lungs, body twitching with aftershocks of pleasure, a blush now covering her body. She looked thoroughly debauched, and Angel couldn’t help the swell of masculine pride that came with having made the love of his life so pleased.
As she closed her eyes, pressing a hand to her forehead in an attempt to calm down, Angel moved from the bed, quickly shedding the constricting jeans, before returning to his lover, who was beginning to regain her faculties in the wake of her orgasm.
He blanketed her body with his, bearing his weight on his hands, and Buffy softly queried, “Don’t you want-“
“I want you,” he cut in, “and I might just turn to dust right now if we don’t do this right now.”
Her smile was so achingly sweet that, in that moment, Angel saw the sixteen-year-old that had effortlessly captured his heart. “Make love to me, Angel.”
Buffy gasped as Angel filled her, her nails biting into the corded muscles of his back. She had forgotten what it felt like to have him inside of her, at the way he delightfully stretched her in ways that no one else had ever been able to, at the absolute sense of rightness that accompanied it.
And she knew that Angel felt the exact same way when he shakily exhaled and pressed his forehead against her shoulder as he fought for control. He was dreadfully close to embarrassing himself as if he were still a boy in Galway and not a vampire with 250+ years of experience. It was flattering for Buffy to think that she could cause him to lose control so easily, but it was not going to be good for Angel’s self-esteem at all if he ruined their first time since reuniting.
After a moment of pause, Angel carefully flexed his hips, moving deeper into her, and Buffy moaned in pleasure, bending her legs to encircle his waist, urging him on. His next thrust was harder, deeper, and he angled himself so that he stroked her clit each time. As his thrusts began to gain speed, Buffy began to pant out his name along with the occasional urge to move faster, thrust harder, and general cry to God. They were moving as one, so close that Buffy wasn’t sure where she ended and he began, when someone began to bang on Angel’s door.
“Are you kidding me?” Angel groaned into Buffy’s golden hair, never ceasing the motion of his hips.
If she wasn’t so close to orgasm, Buffy would’ve laughed. Instead, she snapped, “Of course not. The Powers knew we were going to actually enjoy ourselves and had to ruin it.”
“Hey, big guy!” Faith called through the door. “You in there?!”
“Oh, I’m going to kill her!” Buffy hissed through clenched teeth before stifling a moan as Angel’s latest thrust hit her g-spot.
“Angel!” Faith continued to shout. “C’mon, man, open the door!”
“God, she ruins everything!” Buffy complained as she tightened the legs wrapped around Angel, desperate to come.
“She isn’t ruining anything,” Angel swore, his thrusts picking up speed. “I’m not stopping for anything.”
Faith left another thirty seconds of fruitless pounding on the door, oblivious to the fact that Buffy and Angel were straining towards orgasm, sweat soaking their bodies, the force of their hips meeting enough to cause pain to either of them had they been average humans.
As Buffy reached her peak, her internal muscles clutching at Angel, the vampire groaned as he came, his coolness soothing the burning inside of her. Panting heavily, they remained the way that they were before Buffy sleepily asked, “You’ll be here when I wake up, right?”
Rolling off of her, pulling her tightly into the crook of his arm, he declared, “I’m not going anywhere ever again.”
Snuggling against him, her hand resting on his stomach, she murmured, “Good,” before drifting off to sleep.
Angel watched her for a few minutes before he joined her in sleep, feeling more content than he had in years. If this was the end result of every horrible event of the past five years-losing Doyle, Cordelia, Wes, Fred, Gunn, even Spike-then maybe his quest for redemption hadn’t been in vain after all.
When Buffy woke up the next morning to Angel sleeping beside her, the last chain of sorrow that had been wrapped around her heart for so long fell away. She had earned this happiness, earned Angel, and it was time that she quit living life like it was a burden.
She had been given a second chance with the man she loved more than anything else in the world. If that wasn’t proof enough that life was worth living, she wasn’t sure what was.