Worlds

Author: Cassie T

Distribution: velvetandlace and Fray-Adjacent. You're willing to reproduce it anywhere, just let me know first!
Rating: PG
Timeline: mid season three.
Disclaimer: Nothing belongs to me (Damnit!)
A/N: This is for the people whose wonderful writing have reminded me how I love the Buffy/Angel dynamic.

It was late, and the mansion was deeply dark; the kind of black that presses on your skin with damp fingers, reminding you that this reality is not, in fact, just created for the two of you. Stillness permeates dark; dances with it, bows and curtsies, until you're not sure if you're seeing your lover's breathing or you're hearing the shadows creep across the stone floors. It's synaesthesia, and it's thrilling, and you're drowning in it.

Is the floor, the walls really that solid? Because you're falling through the cracks, hurtling into a place that has no solidity, no boundaries, no stone to keep you away. Obstacles slide away (both the physical and the emotional) and the only things to keep you grounded, to keep you sane, are those hands.

God, those hands. They are the only strength in this space, with fingers that waltz over shivering skin, balancing carefully on the line of your jaw. These hands know you, intimately, and they are speaking a language that requires no thought or speech. It is instinct that guides them gently over your face; passion that traces your lips; love that soothes a monster's hands, makes them tremble as they worship you.

Hands are tangible; you can feel their reassuring presence whenever you wish, and it comforts you. Hands don't deceive, or hide, or tell you that the relationship is doomed. Hands speak with the rawness the rational mind cannot even begin to comprehend; and his hands on yours make rationality shrivel, disappear into the blankness. For everything that is not he and you are blank; no matter what the misted breeze insists.

You rest in his arms as his hands continue to meander, claim your face with a caress that reminds you of the wisp of smoke trailing after the last candle is snuffed. The warmth from his fingered candles has remained. Not in a physical sense, as the deliciously pale coldness of his knuckles will attest, but in the emotional, in the strength of adoration spilling from skin, pouring into you, filling you with a comfort you liken to clouds.

There's a moon outside; part of you knows this, recognises the beams of ethereality spilling onto the grey. The rest of you sees only the light it leaves and never stops to acknowledge the source. There is no source of anything when he is with you. Nothing is ordered, destined. There is just you and he and the faintest reminder of a bigger world outside your union.

That world, however, is of no importance here. No need for thought when he is holding you so protectively; you feel as though you could melt into his arms and you wouldn't care, it wouldn't matter, all that would matter is being close to him, near him.

Feeling the muscles and tendons around every bone stretch and contort to hold you. Knowing that you are the sole reason his body is moving. His complex, careful, meandering movements summoned by his brain are for you.

You feel like the princess little girls always wanted to be, though you are happy just to feel like a girl. A girl who has love, and happiness, and hands like a rush of fizzing ocean wave-foam making their way carefully across your jaw. It is enough for you to feel wanted, needed, loved, and to know you want, need, and love in return. Here, in these capable, dizzying heights of arms and hands and lips and eyes you don't have to worry that a destiny preaching destruction is unjust; that perhaps you will lose yourself to the primal call within. Here it is only love.

Love in the dark, away from eyes and thoughts and disapproval. Away from sunlight. You don't even need the sun. You have tasted the allure of the moon now, spotted the sharp-edged, chilling beauty of the moon's borrowed light, and it's hard, unwavering gleam softens you as his eyes gaze silently (speaking volumes) into your own.

His eyes watch you and it’s as though he doesn't need to blink, doesn't need anything but to see your face. You've cursed this face and it's imperfections in front of a mirror more times than you can count, but this man with hands tracing collarbones, this man who lives without mirrors, sees only an honest, unabashed beauty and he cherishes you for it; vowing to protect the fragility you hide from everyone but he.

How could you hide it from him? He sees you, knows you inside out, has seen you fall apart and seen you pick up those pieces and with each moment of eye contact, he falls deeper in love with you. And you're giddy, and your arms are so tight across his back because you don't want to fall without him, can't leave him behind.

He is still with you; he's come back to you, and you can only know it proves how strong your love is. That concepts of death and life and even afterlife have no place here, no place in the world you both keep private and yet only borrow from the universe. They are irrelevant because your love is the essence of love, it is the seed and the egg and it's a circle, a flaming circle that knows nothing of convention, of callings. It knows only souls - your soul, his soul, and the way they've enjoined, ignited, rushing a wave of pure warmth and emotion that makes your fingers press into him tighter, so he knows, so he understands, that your love is so fulfilling you're overflowing and his hands are still moving, concentric circles forming with his fingers on your shoulders as you breathe deeply, breathe in the dark and the air and his eyes, and you love him and it's almost more than you can stand, and even the darkness is too bright and you need to close your eyes, the heat so strongly lit it's like an inferno dancing in front of you.

And it's with clarity, certainty that you know he loves you, that he needs you more than is possible to say. And you both thrive in the darkness for the light carries too much strength; it shows you each infinitesimal square of longing in both your hearts, beating or not, and you begin to fear you'll both turn to dust.

The sunrise is approaching; you can feel the moon's light slipping over the stone floor and through the wall as the humming of imminent dawn is seen right in front of you. And you remember what the air's been telling you all along, that you don't have a private world for just you two, where the static confettis above your heads and through the tiniest atoms of space between you.

His hands slip away, and you stand, to enter the morning alone.

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