"Nice Surprise"
Author: Starla
Email: Starla@Buffymail.com
I've spent the last three hours staring down at her. She wrinkles her nose in her sleep, occasionally, her eyes twitching, her lips slipping in and out of vibrant smiles and ominous scowls. She breathes, and lives, and loves, and is perfect even in her flaws.
I'm hopelessly in love with her, still, after all these years, after all the pain and rage and jealousy. All it takes is a smile from her, a trademark wiseass crack, a roll of her eyes, to make me feel like I can survive.
I pull her against my chest, and grin, grin foolishly and clownishly and joyfully, because she's here, she's home, in my arms.
She showed up just last night, and somehow managed to make it all the way through the empty hotel and to my suite door before I felt her presence.
Quite a nice surprise, really.
I was standing at my kitchen table, looking down at the paper spread across the surface before me. I'm ashamed to admit I was reading the comics.
Hey! Peanuts happens to be an in-depth social commentary, I'll have you know.
Just look at the group dynamic...
Off topic.
She opened the door without knocking, and leaned her head through the door, grinning at my startled jump of surprise.
"Some predator you are," she smirked, her beautiful eyes sparkling and dancing even in the dim light.
"I-" I stopped for a moment, my mouth having gone dry at the sight of her. "Hey."
She giggled, sliding into the room and closing the door behind her. She leaned against it, watching me. "Hey."
There was a moment of silence in which we each took silent inventory of our mate's wellbeing, before we relaxed, satisfied. One of the worst things, being apart from her, was that I was constantly worried about her safety - in our line of work, all it takes is one wrong move. I spent hours, sometimes, fretting over the weird feelings that settled in my belly, before I gave in and called Giles to check on her.
"Not that it's not - " I succumbed to dry-mouth again, and stopped, clearing my throat. "Not that I'm not glad to see you, or anything, but what are you doing here?"
She grinned at me again, and my heart filled with love and lust and affection for her, and for her smile.
"Well," she said, her tone one I remembered well. "According to Will and Tara, I've been no fun lately."
"Really," I said evenly, not sure where she was going.
She slid up to me, slipping her arms around my neck. The pressure of her breasts against my chest was excruciating...in a fuzzy, pleasant way. She stood on the tips of her toes so that our faces where close together. Her voice was a throaty whisper.
"They've decided I need to get laid."
I stared at her, a little stunned. She knew we couldn't go there. She knew! I was starting to wonder what I'd done to make her want to torture me, though, especially with the gentle touch of her fingers at the back of my neck, playing with my hair.
"B-Buffy," I stuttered, trying to push myself away from her. She held fast. "Buffy, you know we can't do th-"
She cut me off with a kiss, and, oh god, in that moment I didn't care about my soul at all.
//Just stake me when we're done...//
I always feel like she's breathing life into me with her kisses.
She pulled back after barely a few seconds, gazing at me tenderly. Her lips twitched, and she spoke gently. "Willow and Tara," she said, enunciating clearly, as if I were a child, "are witches," she pressed a kiss to my forehead, "who are way into the study of curses at the moment. You're their most recent pet project..."
"Oh, god, they - "
"They fixed you," she said with a happy smile. "You were all broken, so they got out that wiccan crazy glue..."
I pulled her more firmly against me, and felt my own smile getting out of hand. She lifted her fingers and rubbed at my cheek, just grinning.
And then she kissed me.
I can't press this point too much: Buffy's kisses are paradise, to me. She's calming and invigorating and warming and cooling all at once. She's safe, and she's dangerous, and she tastes like sunshine and m&ms. She tastes human, and more than human. She's...god, I can't describe her. She's Buffy.
We didn't make love, right away. We wanted to, and yet...there were other things, things we needed to talk about, and share, wounds that needed to be healed and hurts tended to...so I pulled her over to the armchair, and I sat in it, pulling her onto my lap. She curled up contentedly against my chest, her fingers playing with my buttons, and we talked... and it felt wonderful.
Spike once said that we'd never be friends, but that's not true. We can be friends, we'll always be friends, but it's impossible for us to be *just* friends. There's so much more in our relationship...we're so many things to each other, it's impossible to really label what we are.
Buffy is, really, my best friend. The first friend I ever really had. She's the one I trust above all, and the one who makes me laugh when everything seems hopeless. She's the person I can talk to.
So, last night, in my quiet, deserted hotel - //Your places just keep getting broodier and broodier, you know that? I mean, that tiny little apartment, okay. Big scary mansion, fine. Bat Cave, getting weird. Damn huge haunted hotel? You're too strange.// - we talked about what was going to happen in the morning. We talked about Angelus, and Hell, and Faith, and *all of it*. We talked about what had happened to us while we were on our own.
"Darla. You're kidding me."
"I wish I was."
She laid her hand over my cheek and gazed into my eyes. "You 'kay?"
I smiled and tightened my arms around her body. "I am now."
"What happened?"
"I went a little nuts. No big."
She turned sceptical eyes on me, and I laughed. "Okay, so it was big at the time. But that was like, what? 2 years ago."
"Barely the blink of an eye for you. Stop avoiding the question. What happened?"
"She was - human. At first. And then she wasn't."
Buffy kissed my forehead and waited patiently.
I sighed. "They held me down and Drusilla turned her in front of me... I'd just been getting through to her, you know? She was just beginning to see."
"Did you love her?" she asked me gently, and I lifted my eyes to hers, gauging her mood. She wasn't jealous - (much) - nor angry, just concerned for me.
"I don't know. Maybe. I think.. I think I could have, a little, if she'd just been given a chance," and then, as an afterthought, "I love you."
She giggled, "Duh," and then leaned her head against my shoulder. "I'm sorry about Darla."
"I slept with her...after."
"Feelin' less sorry now," Buffy said dryly, but her heart wasn't in it.
"I just - just wanted it to stop. I wanted to lose my soul in her..."
"But you didn't."
"I wasn't in a good place...and she wasn't you."
"Are you okay now?"
"Yeah."
"Good."
There was a comfortable silence.
It was Buffy who broke it, almost out of nowhere.
"Riley paid vampires to suck his blood."
My eyes, which had been closed in quiet contemplation, flew open. "What?"
"He said - he said that he wanted to know what it was I felt. He thought I was a vampire junkie or something," she swallowed, "He said that he felt like they needed him, and that I didn't, and that I never opened up to him and never let him be there for me and that I never gave him anything and -" she sighed. "And he was right. About most of it, at least. Not the part where he thought I was just under your thrall, and that the thing with you was just like the thing with Dracula, but the part where I didn't love him or need him enough, that was true."
"He did *what*?" I was still lost in a protective rage for her... if I ever saw him again, I would not hesitate to kick his ass. Again.
"He went to vampire whores."
"I'll kill him."
"Angel..."
"Please?"
"No."
I frowned, sulking, and started muttering under my breath about young men today not giving women the respect they deserve.
I mean, *I* never cheated on my girlfriend with whores when *I* was human.
Nope, I just skipped the girlfriend part and went straight to the whores.
"He left pretty much straight after that. Gave *me* an ultimatum, if you can believe it. Prove I needed him, or he was out of there...he left. I ran after him, but he didn't see me...and I'm glad, because I *didn't* need him, and I didn't love him...I just wanted what he represented..." she gazed at me lovingly, "and I don't even want that anymore." She cuddled up to me, playing with one of my buttons, "Just you."
I caught her lips in a kiss, and gave her an affectionate squeeze.
We talked for hours, about her mother's death, and about Dawn and Glory, and me and my Wolfram and Hart obsession, and about the hotel, and Spike being in love with her - //If he touches you, I'll kill him. I'm his Grand-Sire, I can do that. Painfully.//- about Kate, and Rebecca, and my worry for Cordelia. She giggled when I told her how great Wesley was, and cried when I told her Doyle had died. She told me about Oz leaving, and about how awful she felt that she hadn't known what was going on with Tara and Willow - //This is Willow! I can normally predict a Willow crush at 5km!...I wasn't spending enough time with her.//- and about how the thing with Riley had separated her from her friends a little. We talked about the Initiative, and about the first Slayer, and about her classes and her friends and her life. She told me about Dracula...and I growled. Very audibly, and very possessively. She just giggled.
"Come on, I was under his *thrall*."
"You drank his blood."
She shifted uncomfortably. "I wanted to know what it would be like."
"And he drank yours."
"It wasn't enough to turn me into a vampire!"
"It's enough to make him think he's got some ridiculous claim as your mate."
She rolled her eyes, "It didn't scar. You scarred - which we're gonna talk about, later - so technically, I can't be claimed as someone else's, right?"
"Right," I sighed, "That's not the point. He could have killed you."
"So could that vamp who stabbed me with my own stake, but do you hear me - "
"He did *what*?"
She laughed at me. She did that a lot, last night.
Like I said, we talked for hours, and when we finally gave in and made love, right there on the armchair, I - god, I love her.
She surprised me when she started to unbutton my shirt. I'd been talking, telling her about a demon we'd killed a couple of weeks ago, and I'd almost forgotten what we were anticipating. Almost.
She lowered her lips to my neck, pressing a kiss to my Adam's Apple before looking at me, "I'm sorry, I can't wait anymore."
I pulled her lips to mine, and we kissed, tangled up in love and lust and a world of new possibilities.
"I love you," she whispered into my lips, her hands finishing the task of unbuttoning my shirt. I leaned forward, and she slipped it of my shoulders, sliding her hands down my back, kneading gently at the muscles she found there.
Pulling back and smiling gently at her, I slid one hand up her stomach, underneath the purple tank top she wore, feeling the dewy texture of her skin beneath my fingers. I love her stomach, I've always loved her stomach. We used to lie together, my head pillowed her soft, soft stomach, her fingers combing through my hair, and I'd feel safe, and loved.
I let my hand linger on her stomach for a moment, before moving it up, touching her breasts, her nipples, grinning when she gasped. She leaned forward and kissed my cheek, my eyelid, my forehead, my ear, murmuring lovingly to me, words that I cannot remember but are burned into my soul nonetheless.
I peeled the singlet away from her body, over her head, and felt a contented purr rumbling up inside me as I gazed at her beautiful body, as I absorbed the energy that crackled around her skin. She was life, and sunshine, and love...and she was here, on my lap, in my arms.
I smoothed her hair back over her shoulder, and leaned down to brush my lips over the scar that would forever mark her as -
"Mine," I rumbled softly, nipping at the skin, feeling her squirm.
"Yeah," she murmured, "Yours."
She kissed me, and we made love in the armchair, and later, whispered words of devotion and eternity to one another... and then we made love again, in the shower, and again, in the bed...
And now she lays in my arms, sleeping, almost 24 hours later...
About 6 hours ago, Cordelia started to get worried, and broke the 'Let Sleeping Vamps Lie' rule to come and wake me up. She stood outside the door, banging, and ranting, and Buffy and I sat inside and laughed, until Buffy put her finger to her lips and grinned at me, moving from the bed, dressing in my black silk shirt as she went.
Cordelia was still ranting outside. "Angel, I swear to god, if Darla is in your dreams again, I will KILL you, because I REFUSE to be FIRED again because of that-"
She stopped abruptly as Buffy opened the door, grinning calmly. I could see Cordy's eyes widen as she looked from Buffy, dressed in my Sunday best, to me, dressed in my birthday suit and a strategically placed sheet, trying to contain my laughter.
"Hi, Cordy," my lover and I said in unison.
"I-" she blushed sheepishly, "I don't know what I was expecting, but it wasn't this." She narrowed her eyes at me, "Do you have a soul?"
"Yeah. Don't worry about it, Cordy."
"You're sure."
"We're sure, Cordy. Now go the hell away! We've earned this," Buffy said, but despite the words, she was grinning good-naturedly.
Cordelia sighed and walked away, and I could hear her grumbling..."Great, now everybody is getting laid but *me*."
Buffy giggled, shut the door, and came back to bed, "Maybe we could set her up with Spike."
"No way."
"Aww, come on, he's kinda sexy."
"No. Way."
And then, a moment later, when my fuzzy mind caught up to my ears, "You think he's sexy?"
She just giggled, and stretched her body out along mine. "Not as sexy as you."
"But you're attracted to him."
She sighed, and stared me into submission. "Quit it, poindexter. I'm yours."
I grinned sheepishly. "Sorry."
"S'okay," she mumbled sleepily, burrowing into my chest, "I like that there aren't any secrets, now."
And then she fell asleep...
And I watched her, for hours.
But I still haven't told her about the forgotten day.
The End