Snow Angels

AUTHOR: Lamia Archer
RATING: NC-17
FANDOM: BtVS/AtS
PAIRING: Buffy/Angel
WORD COUNT: 1,641
SUMMARY: Love, honor, and obey, and good things happen.
SPOILERS: Post-“NFA” with absolutely no explanation of such except here.
PROMPT: dom Buffy, sex
DEDICATION: For Karla-with-a-K

**

“I want Christmas lights.”

It was snowing in Paris, and Angel, lost in the frost of winter, needed a moment to gain his footing.

“What?” he inquired eloquently, blinking up at his indignant wife from over the worn pages of his interrupted novel.

Buffy rolled her eyes. “You know, those colorful little lights that—”

“That we have strewn all over our house, those lights?” Angel asked, confused, looking around briefly at the kaleidoscope Buffy had made their living room.

She had insisted on a tree, which . . . okay, that had been nice, because he hadn’t had that since the last time he’d been human, over two hundred years ago. But then she’d put up lights – and tinsel, and fake snow, and mistletoe (okay, again, that was difficult to argue with) – over the doorways, and curling around all the banisters, and twirling around the legs of all the furniture, and their home was now, in short, a little frightening and possibly a fire hazard.

“. . . yes,” Buffy agreed begrudgingly. “Those lights.”

Angel regarded her without comprehension. “And there’s some square inch of our home that we have yet to cover with them, is there?”

Buffy brightened. “As a matter of fact, there is!”

She grabbed his hand and pulled him to his feet. Angel followed her reluctantly, not sure he liked where this was going.

Buffy pulled him down the stairs and all the way out the front door – without stopping for either of them to put on a coat, which they needed in the actual chill of a Cleveland winter – and out into the front yard, half a foot stiff with snow.

“There,” Buffy said triumphantly, staring up at the pleasant house front, dark without the cheerful illumination of hundreds of tiny Christmas lights.

Angel sighed. “But—”

“No!” she whined, and tugged at his arm. “See, look how all our neighbors have lights up already. We’re the only house on the street that doesn’t—”

“What about the Kandinski’s?” Angel asked listlessly.

“They’re Jewish,” Buffy pouted. “And look, even they have a little glowy menorah in the window! You’re making me look bad!”

Angel started. “I’m making you . . . ?”

Buffy crossed her arms over her chest and puffed her bottom lip out in an unmistakable Slayer pout, and Angel knew that there was no way he was getting out of this, ridiculous as the argument may have been.

“That’s right! You’re the man; you’re in charge of all prettying that takes place outside the house. And I want Christmas lights so that I can be June Frickin’ Cleaver like every other woman on this block—!”

Angel was about to argue that June Frickin’ Cleaver didn’t let her husband do all the cooking, and certainly didn’t spend her nights out slaughtering evil, but he thought that would cause more trouble than good, so he held his tongue.

“—if there aren’t lights on our house by nightfall, I’m going to pull a really great Leave it to Beaver impression—”

Here it comes, Angel thought; she’d been doing this more and more, ever since he’d started pressing about wanting to have kids. He’d made her nervous.

“—and we can sleep in twin beds separated by a nightstand for a while! How’s that?”

Angel managed to rein in the smile he felt creeping onto his face and instead look suitably cowed. He kissed his righteously-incensed wife gently.

“I’ll get my coat.”

***

Angel, armed with inexperience, an icy roof, a new staple gun, and newly-human reflexes, almost fell off the roof in appeasing his wife, but in the end he thought he got the lights up in a pattern that was fairly even and more or less approximated the lines of his house.

Buffy didn’t say a word about symmetry or lack thereof, because her will was done and her house was glowy now. She came out into the frosty yard, stared wordlessly for a moment at the illumination of the new lights, and then launched herself on Angel so forcefully that she propelled him into a freezing snow bank.

“You like it then,” he guessed, his teeth chattering softly. Snow cradled him, slipped against all the open folds of his clothes, but Buffy . . . God, she was so, so warm . . .

“No double beds for you,” she whispered, and brought her lips to his, in a warm, overly sweet kiss. She tasted like eggnog, and he laughed a little against her mouth, his hands folding more tightly around her, drawing her closer.

Buffy’s hands, feather soft in cashmere gloves, cradled his face. He leaned into her ridiculously delicate touch, felt for the reassuring strength beneath her girlish mittens. She kissed him again, and this time he tasted the alcohol beneath the syrupy sweet of the eggnog, and murmured quietly into her mouth, his mind immediately indulging in the fantasy of growing drunk off her.

Tiny fingers in soft gloves slipped over the large buttons of Angel’s winter coat. He tensed, briefly, waiting for her to slip the discs from their eyes and bare him to winter, but she didn’t; she just slid her fingers over them one at a time as though she were taking stock, her mouth milking against his like she was searching for succor there. Angel tried to lay still in the snow, to be patient for her, even with the discomfort it caused him – as much as he wanted to wriggle like an impatient child – even as he felt his big body leaving a deep impression in the yard.

The cashmere gloves stopped counting buttons and slipped below the hem of Angel’s jacket, rested between his legs. The snow had already soaked his jeans, made the backs of his thighs numb, but that part he could feel perfectly well, and when Buffy did start undressing him, he was very aware of it.

“We can’t—”

She looked confused, and she was almost pouting again. “How come?”

He cocked a little bit of a smile to appease her. “June and Ward Cleaver wouldn’t ever have—”

Buffy grinned. “I never watched that show.”

It was dark except for the Christmas lights, and he’d be covered up a little by the hem of his jacket, but mostly he didn’t care. Not at all. Buffy’s gloves were so, so soft, it was even worth it to weather the shock of having his pants pulled down to the chill of the snow. He gasped but tried his best not to move, closing his eyes and riding it out, his shoulders driving further into the bank beneath him. Buffy watched, smiling, and when Angel had recovered enough, she ran her cashmere knuckles over the tops of his exposed thighs, down his hard, ready length.

It was difficult for her not to laugh. She didn’t know the last time she’d seen Angel fight so hard to control himself; his bare thighs – God, how pretty was he like that, with his pants around his knees, under the glow of the Christmas lights? – trembling, his jaw jerking. His eyes closed, like he was praying.

Thank you, God. Thank you, Buffy.

You’re welcome.

Once Angel had composed himself enough that it would be fun again, Buffy palmed his ready cock in her cashmere-soft hand. Angel gasped and thrust against her, closing his eyes and collapsing heavily back against the snow. Buffy closed her grinning mouth tight around a giggle and instead concentrated on getting her husband to let loose all sorts of pleasant noises, which he did readily enough as she ran her teasingly soft, closed hand up and down the length of him. Soon he was panting and flushed even though he was all but buried in the snow bank; shining crystals in his hair, his clothes, glistening wet on his face. His teeth were chattering a little, but he was too drunk with sex to notice.

Buffy had been planning to tease him a little longer, but she was a starting to worry that he’d get hypothermia and not notice, so she leaned close against his shivering body, kissed his chattering mouth with her warm, candy-sweet one, and brought him to release. Angel breathed harsh and leaned against her as he came, and then collapsed into the snow.

Buffy kissed his cold face and started to rise from his trembling body to pull his pants up and help him to his feet and into the warm house, but then a flicker of movement in her periphery stilled her.

“Nice night, isn’t it?”

Buffy stilled, half alarmed, half exhilarated. The Petersons, devout Presbyterians and chairs of the Neighborhood Watch. Excellent.

Buffy looked up from Angel’s suddenly terrified visage.

“It’s a lovely night,” she said smoothly. “Angel just put up our Christmas lights; aren’t they pretty?”

The Petersons agreed that they were. Angel had begun to hyperventilate a little.

Then Mr. Peterson frowned, suddenly realizing the position his neighbors were in. “What, exactly, are you doing?”

Beneath her, Angel’s muscles tautened to steel. Buffy smiled pleasantly.

“Making snow angels,” she said sweetly.

Angel made a strangled noise in the back of his throat. Still smiling, Buffy elbowed him quietly; the Petersons didn’t seem to notice. They were smiling again.

“Ah. Nice night for that, too.”

“It sure is,” Buffy agreed. “’Tis the season, and all . . .”

“Well, you two have a nice night,” Mr. Peterson said. “And have a very merry Christmas.”

“I’m sure we will,” Buffy assured him. “Merry Christmas to you, too.”

They walked off. Angel, pale as death, finally relaxed again.

“Snow angels?” he asked desperately.

Buffy laughed. “It’s not exactly a lie—”

He hit her with an impromptu snowball, which fell apart on impact. She tried to retaliate, but found she was laughing too hard.

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