Wish

Buffy/Angel

PG 13

This one’s for ba_rosebuds, five prompts, one story, in an AU Wishverse in which Buffy and Angel made it out of Sunnydale.

1. Far Away

He’s so…soft somehow, and it’s odd. She isn’t used to softness. Hasn’t been, not since her early days in Cleveland over three years ago, when she’d been staking vampires and sobbing herself to sleep at night, overwhelmed by the horrors of her new life. But she’d learned hardness after her first time being captured, after they’d tried to slice open her mouth to stop her screaming curses.

She doesn’t talk when she fights anymore. And neither does he, but she can see the emotions swimming through his eyes every time a demon gets in a blow and she reels back, every time they retreat to their current hideout and he treats her wounds. He’s soft. And he’s a vampire.

He says he has a soul. That he was meant to fight with her. She scoffs and mocks and wonders silently, but she can’t push him away yet. It isn’t for lack of trying- that first night after they’d left Sunnydale, she’d risen in the early morning and taken a bus to LA. And that night, he’d found her in the waiting area outside a flight to Cleveland, ready to return home. She’d snapped at him, harsh words that he didn’t respond to, but she’d left with him anyway when he’d mentioned the Gvalogh demon lurking in the streets beyond the airport. And it continues like that. Every time she runs, he’s there, forcing her attention to a new threat. She hates it- hates him. He doesn’t respond.

He’s stretched out now on the floor in the tiny apartment they’ve been living in now, hands clasped to his bare chest and eyes closed. He looks peaceful, the smile on his face seeming not quite dead, even though he doesn’t breathe, She peers over the side of the bed at the scarring that still covers his torso, relics of years of torture.

Years spent waiting for her.

He’s so soft, and she hates how it softens her, too.

2. Scar

He nearly gets his face sliced open a few days later, blocking a blow that had been meant for her. She attacks the vampires who’ve hurt him with newfound vigor and ferocity, her eyes burning death into each of their attackers.

She doesn’t want to think about why his injury infuriates her so much, not even once they’re back home and she’s pressing a blood-soaked washcloth to the thin line that splits his face in half. “It’s gonna leave a scar,” she predicts, her voice carefully cool and detached.

“Match yours,” he murmurs, and there’s a strange sort of smile on his face when he looks at her. It makes her squirm uncomfortably and dip her head as she wets the cloth, refusing to meet his eyes.

“It used to be worse,” she finally mutters. “Scars heal.” Hers had started a thin crisscross of lines over her mouth, a warning from old captors. Now it’s nearly nothing.

“Do they?” And she remembers his chest, the burns that endure even after weeks away from Sunnydale. But he’s reaching up to touch her lips, tracing the bump that mars them, and his fingers are soft against her.

“Sometimes they aren’t meant to,” she whispers, and he says nothing more.

3. Behind Closed Doors

Late at night, he talks about his past, about the century spent in sewers and lingering guilt and shame. She knows he does it because it’s the only way that she’ll do the same, speak of three years of misery, of her mother’s murder almost immediately after their move to Cleveland, of the watcher who treated her as a disposable tool, of the silence of the nights and the emptiness of the days.

His eyes darken with compassion no matter how nonchalantly she shares, and while it irritates her at times, it also spreads a funny warmth through her to see her pain find purchase within him. He feels her, and it strikes her as odd and stupid and pointless. Sharing her troubles doesn’t make them go away, doesn’t create some new bond between them, doesn’t make her maybe trust him a little. He’s still a vampire- a particularly screwed up one, yes, but still a vampire- and she has no interest in making friends, especially not with one of his kind.

She tells him that. All the time. Sometimes he listens, sometimes understanding flickers through his eyes, sometimes he doesn’t say anything but just holds up the side of the blanket until she can scoot underneath it beside him. It’s balmy for winter, and that’s why she lets him come up onto the bed at night now, cooling her off with his room-temperature body.

Her head rests in the crook of his shoulder and she traces the contours of his chest absent-mindedly as he speaks, watching the way it moves beneath her hand with every word. With every word, every story woven and regret confessed, her fingers dance a rhythm across his skin that makes him shudder beneath her. She can’t deny the power she has over him, and while it once disgusted her, now she can’t help but shudder in kind at the realization of it.

Soulful brown eyes meet hers, and when he pulls her up to face him and kisses her tenderly, she nearly weeps at the gentleness.

4. Impossible Dream

He envelops her with his emotions, overwhelms her with his love, and she can’t pull away because now there’s a searing need within her to seek more of his kisses, to find that softness she’d despised and watch his eyes brighten with it, to collapse beside him at night and listen to his simple adoration.

And suddenly, she’s that fifteen-year-old girl again, suppressing the urge to giggle silently about the boy she likes, unable to stop the smile that spreads across her face when he enters the room or they finish a fight and run to each other. She’s losing that harsh edge she’d once had with his every stroke against her tongue, shattering her own defenses each time he murmurs words of worship against the curve of her shoulder.

“Loved you since I found you. Before then, I don't know. So beautiful…so good…my Buffy...”

She doesn’t say the same to him, and it’s out of a selfish desire to keep herself safe. In power. She doesn’t do love anymore, anyway, not since she’d been taught the difficult way that love only weakens. She’d loved her mother, hadn’t she?

She doesn’t even know what love is anymore, and so she instead drinks in his reverence and offers him herself in return, letting her lips against his speak of affection when her heart won’t allow any more. But she knows he understands her not-words in every way she means them, in the way that she’s started calling their little lair ‘home,’ in the way that she’s started awakening him at sunset with a mug of warm blood, in the way that she wraps herself around him at night and won’t go to sleep until he’s settled against her.

They don’t date or anything. They’re warriors, not teenagers. And when they wander around at night with their arms around each other, it’s only because they’re hunting for vampires. When he takes her out to eat at nice restaurants and even orders food for himself- food that she steals off his plate until there’s nothing left- it’s just so that she eats something nutritious for a change. When they go to the beach at night when it’s empty and deserted and he tells her about the stars, that’s…it’s just relaxing. She doesn’t do dating.

She doesn’t do loving.

She doesn’t do a lot of things that she’s begun to contemplate doing with him.

5. Dead End

He takes her to a fair one night before patrol, and then they kill demons and find a place where she can indulge in frozen yogurt before they head home. It’s kind of perfect, and so is he, especially when he sheepishly admits that he’s been planning this for weeks to celebrate her birthday. She kisses him fervently and then the words she’s hidden away so often that she hardly believes them emerge, and she’s whispering, “I love you,” into the side of his neck as he attacks her own with his human teeth.

He stops what he’s doing and then starts again, with double the energy and she’s laughing and maybe crying a little, wrapping her arms around him, letting him lower her onto their bed and kiss a trail down her neck to the swell of her breasts.

She tears at his shirt, knowing what’s coming next and more than ready for it, and then she’s laughing nervously and kissing him and hoping that the amusement in his eyes is affectionate, not mocking.

Of course it is, and he’s whispering reassurance and asking for permission, and when he finally does slide between her legs and lave her with kisses in places that make her jerk in pleasure and sob out her need, it’s absolutely perfect and loving and right, and she knows that this is the pinnacle of her existence, the actualization of all that has come before, the lust and want and love, oh god, so much love…

His lips are on hers when he plunges within her, and she can see the joy in his eyes, the perfect happiness that her own gaze mirrors. And everything finally feels right when he collapses on top of her with their mutual release, and she drifts off to sleep feeling like she finally belongs somewhere, slayer and vampire locked in an eternal embrace.

(She doesn’t awaken when he runs from the room moments later.)

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