Redefinition

A fluffy little Christmas ditty for my Secret Santa recipient, evil_little_dog.

Title: Redefinition
Rating: PG
Summary: She's happy. Completely.
Title: Redefinition
Rating: PG
Summary: She's happy. Completely.

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It’s Christmas evening and she is late. Impossibly late. Too late, really. But that’s been the case with them for years now and a few more minutes isn’t going to make any real difference, so she stops at what appears to be the only open store in southern California and parks her rental car. Just one more thing and her gift will be complete.

When she walks into the small store, the middle-aged man behind the counter stalks her with his eyes. Once that might have put her on edge but these days she is used to this kind of attention from men and anyway, it’s not like there’s much chance of him being a soulless demon masquerading as a human perv. Not after what she and Angel pulled off three years ago in this very city. The demons are few and far between in this dimension now, and the gateways between dimensions are well-protected. The human pervs are still prolific, but ridding the world of Chester the Molesters was never in her job description so she’s forced to deal with them like any other woman would and to her, there is good in that normalcy.

Still, now that normal is more within her reach than it ever was, it isn’t as important to her as it used to be when she was young and naïve and searching for a way to pretend that she was other than what she was. Now she is almost 30 and she is ready. Ready to accept her faults and embrace her strengths. Ready to really share herself with the people she loves, no longer afraid of letting them see the real her.

Ready to love herself. Ready to let him love her.

It is a realization that has brought her here late on Christmas. She’d woken up early to help Dawn fix breakfast for everyone, smiled and laughed as they opened the gifts, and that’s when she realized how happy she was. Surrounded by the friends who had become her family over the years and the new additions who made the people who lived in her heart smile, she realized that she was happy. Completely.

And that’s when she understood she was ready.

Jumping up quickly, she’d sloshed coffee on herself as she announced that she was sorry to run out on everyone, but there was something she had to do and it just couldn’t wait. The brightness of her smile and the joy in her voice gave her mission away and when she left to run to the airport an hour later, her departure was accompanied by teases about just trying to get out of dish duty and Dawn’s admonishment that ‘it was about time’.

She hands the man at the counter some cash and ignores him when he leers at her. Usually she would wipe the look off his face with a few well-placed words, or at least shoot him her patented look of death, but right now she is busy being nervous. In minutes she will be at the address that graces the upper-left corner of the myriad letters he has written her over the past several years. She knows from their last conversation that he is spending the day with Connor and his “adopted” family and she can only hope that he makes it back home before she has too much time to convince herself that he won’t want her gift in spite of the mountain of written and spoken evidence to the contrary.

But when she walks into his building and is finally standing in front of his door, she can hear the sounds of classical music wafting out and she knows that after all of this waiting there is nothing more to wait for and she is glad. It takes just a moment to tie the gold ribbon that she bought at the store in a bow around her neck, another few seconds to smooth down the soft cashmere of the beaded shell she is wearing and to make sure that there isn’t any travel grime showing on the matching winter-white pants. Taking a deep breath, she raises her hand and after a short pause, raps her knuckle lightly on the door.

An eternity passes before it opens, or at least that’s what it feels like to this woman who is seizing her destiny after running from it for half her life. A sliver turns into a crack which turns into a gap and then it is open and there he is. Just as tall and broad and heart achingly perfect as she remembers. Her heart is pounding in her chest and she is waiting for the words to come as she stands in the threshold in the spotlight of his unwavering gaze.

She can’t know that he is just as incapable of speaking as she is, or that even if he could talk he wouldn’t want to in this moment. Not when she is standing there looking so beautiful and vulnerable and strong and happy. Not when she is glowing in a way he has never seen before. She can’t know that earlier in the day Connor had laughingly asked him if Santa brought him everything he wanted for Christmas and his thoughts had flown to her, briefly dimming the joy of spending the holiday with his son.

No, she can’t know any of these things, not for absolutely sure anyway even though she may have some idea from the look on his face, so when she finally speaks it is with a touch of hesitation that belies the soft smile that graces her mouth.

“I brought you a present,” she says and her eyes twinkle as she points to the bow around her neck. His eyes widen and she laughs softly in response. “Now that I’m here, I realize it’s a little conceited and maybe you’re all stocked up on blonde women but. . .”

Suddenly she isn’t standing in the hall anymore and she certainly isn’t talking because his lips are on hers and the only sound she is capable of making is a soft moaning sigh in the back of her throat. She is acutely aware of the feeling of a large hand gripping her waist as the fingers of the other trail slowly up her bare arm. Then his fingers are on the ribbon around her neck as he tugs to release the bow. She feels the satin slide off her shoulder only to be replaced by his lips as he presses feather-light kisses to her throat and threads his hand in her up-swept hair.

“I love you, Angel,” she breathes, eyes fluttering open as she pulls back slightly so that she can look up at him. “I woke up this morning and realized that I am happy and I am complete but I still love you and want you more than I could ever really say. I’m just hoping that there’s still a place in your life for me because I’m ready. Please say you’re ready too.”

Her definition of complete happiness is altered in the wake of the brilliance of his answering smile.

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