DISCLAIMER: Not mine, not mine.
TIMELINE: Eh, post "The gift" but it doesn't matter.
SPOILERS: None
SYNOPSIS: Very dangerous reactions to each other.
DISTRIBUTION: Let me know.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Its been a while, sorry. I've been so, so busy, and will be for a long time. I hope you like it. Also, its barely proofread, I just wanted to get it out.
FEEDBACK: Yes please
RATING: R! heheheh

The darkness pushed its way into the room and Buffy smiled slightly. It didn't matter what anyone said, she loved the night. Sure, it held fear for her. Death stalked the slayer at every turn once the sun set… but it did that during the day, too.

Night was something to be savored for Buffy. It was release from the day's pressures and everyone's idea of who she should be. Maybe she couldn't admit it out loud, but she knew the truth. Buffy didn't belong in the day world. She'd never be a soccer mom, or an accountant. She could barely wait tables and go to school. Life was a challenge for Buffy, and had been that way since she was called.

She belonged in the night. She was a huntress, a power, a demon herself, almost. Buffy was meant for darkness and chill air, for stalking prey and protecting others. She was happy in the night time. Things were easier when she was out on foot, running down monsters.

Buffy leaned back on the pillows she had thrown on the floor of her room. She propped her feet on her window seat and sighed, thoughtfully watching shadows grow long and mean. If she listened very hard, she could hear them talking, and they were talking about him.

That was the other reason she loved the night. It had once brought her something very special. Buffy closed her eyes and pictured herself kissing him, a hand at the back of his neck holding him fast against her. Thin, warm shivers raced along her arms and legs.

He used to climb in through the window, stealthily, with the grace and hush of the shadows sprawling her ceiling. The night would fall, and the second the sun was out of sight her heart would pound. Any moment he could be there, beside her, touching her. Buffy spent every second of the night waiting for him.

There had been a time when she never needed to wait very long.

He'd appear, achingly perfect and strong, somewhere in the distance and come closer with urgency contained in subtle movements. If there were no one around, there would be no containment. If they were alone it was violent and rushed, a reckless interlocking of uncontrollable feeling.

Perhaps that could never be again, but she loved the night all the more for her Angel. Every time she felt the wind shift a certain way, or the tug of things otherworldly, Buffy couldn't help but think of her vampire and the way his eyes flashed gold-green when they kissed.

"Buffy?" Cordelia's voice crackled through the shitty phone connection.

"Cor?" Buffy questioned, feeling the floor drop away from her back. The ceiling was lit barely by the glow of headlights beyond her window, and then was dark again. "What's up?"

"We need help," the girl said, her words partially lost to static and background noise.

"Is everything okay?" the slayer asked, talking loudly for Cordy's benefit.

"Fine, for now. Hurry!" The phone went dead, and Buffy felt her chest getting tighter and tighter as she held it, silent, to her ear.

"I'm here, what's going on?" Buffy leaned over the desk and shook Cordelia to wake her up faster. The brunette yelped and shot out of her chair.

"Jesus! Buffy! OH!" she clutched at her stomach and panted, and Buffy felt bad for scaring her.

"Hi, sorry, what's wrong? What's going on?"

"The guys-" she stopped, took a deep breath, and leaned against the counter. "There out now. It's a thing with this power and supposedly… you have to be here…"

"Can you be a little more vague?" Buffy questioned when she didn't go on. She slammed a fist into the counter in exasperation when Cordy shrugged. "Angel's cryptic side is really wearing off on you!"

"It was a vision, they're not really all that detailed," Cordelia snapped, crossing her arms in defiance. They glared at one another for a beat, then Buffy relented.

"I'm sorry- I didn't mean to… I was- am worried." Cordelia melted a little.

"I know, its just… stress." She stepped closer to Buffy and they looked at one another in an awkward moment of `hug-or-not' indecision. "Are we going to…"

"Hug? Uh…" Buffy stalled, unsure. Both gave a slight negating shake of the head. They laughed a little nervously. "Why start now?"

"Buffy- he's okay." The swell of barely managed panic in Buffy's chest deflated somewhat, and she nodded silently. There was a sudden pulse of warmth at the base of her spine, and the slayer turned to the doors at the moment they opened, Angel moving quickly until he saw her standing there.

His steps faltered and he stopped, staring at her. Wesley nearly walked into him, and a girl with long, brown hair walked into Wesley.

"Uh, three stooges?" the fourth, who Buffy assumed was Gunn, laughed. He, too, stopped when he saw her, and stared.

"You're here," Angel said quietly.

"I- I go where I'm needed," Buffy answered after a moment of just looking at him. There it was, all perfect and thick and beating- the feeling of being near him. It rolled through her like a storm wave and she just barely kept upright.

"Hi, you must be Buffy," the girl said, a twinge of southern speech sticking to her words. She stepped out from between Wesley and Gunn and extended her hand. "I'm Fred and Angel rescued me from a dimension where I lived in a cave and…"

Buffy knew Fred continued on from there and that the others were giving the girl a patiently bored look, but she didn't care or pay attention. Angel was standing right there and it had been a long time since she'd seen him. Back then things had been so painful… Didn't matter, she thought, viciously protective of her old feelings for him. Buried and ignored or not, they were hers and she wouldn't pretend they were anything but the honest, pure, nameless screams of their connection.

"Sorry," Fred finished quietly, ducking behind Wesley and holding onto her sweater.

"I'm Gunn," Charles Gunn said, nodding. Buffy grasped his predatory sense and a defiance that she recognized in herself. She could tell he was tough. She liked him at once. The girl, Fred, on the other hand, seemed a little off. Buffy wasn't exactly concerned with her or Wesley, who raised his hand in a half wave and said something polite.

"So," Buffy said after a measurable silence, "What can you tell me?"

"Not much," Angel answered, moving at a careful distance from her around the hotel's lobby. He went to the desk and grabbed a sheet of parchment. He got close enough to hand it to her, then retreated as she studied the drawing of a horned demon and the columns of strange lettering below it.

"Wants to kill us, I think," Angel said softly.

"Surprise, surprise," Buffy sighed, attempting to decipher whatever the bottom of the page said.

"You and me, I mean… Specifically."

"That's nothing new, Angel," Buffy said, trying to keep it light. She held out the paper to him and he took it. "Anything else I need to know?"

"It can only do so when we're together. Buffy's mouth dropped open and she gaped at him.

"So you made it so we're in the same room?" the slayer said acidly. Angel winced, and she regretted her tone instantly.

"We're the only ones who can kill it… and we have to kill it together," he explained.

"Makes sense," Buffy shrugged, turning away to hide her embarrassment while pretending to be studying the architecture. "Nice place you've got here, Angel." It felt strange to say his name out loud after so long, the very syllables making her mouth burn unexpectedly. She bit her lip stifle the growl of need in her throat. It slipped out regardless, sounding like a cough more than anything.

"Thanks," Angel said softly, and she knew he knew. "We throw great parties on the weekends," he joked, ducking his head. They all knew.

"Yeah, we usually have about ten minutes between crissies to really get down with our bad selves," Cordelia said, valiantly trying to ease the tension. "But, kidding aside. We have work to do."

The others walked quickly into a room beyond the front desk, and Buffy went to follow. Angel stopped her right outside the doorway.

"Thank you for coming here," he said, dark eyes trying to find hers. She nodded, and walked past him quickly, trying to breath.

**

It was late, almost morning, when the five of them returned to the hotel. The horned demon was dead, Buffy and Angel were alive. They were exhausted, but alive.

"You can have my room," Angel said, his voice unsure and somewhat lost in the darkness of the hallway. Cordelia had just left with Wesley and Gunn, and Fred had gone to her rooms elsewhere in the mansion. The moony eyed girl was pleasant enough, Buffy had decided, but there was something… an encroachment on her territory, perhaps, that Buffy couldn't abide enough to be more than polite to her.

"You'd think there would be more furnished rooms," he said nervously. Buffy stared at her feet and tried not to fall into pieces at his. Fighting together had been like foreplay, she though dismally, her hands clenching and unclenching around each other. It was their primal courtship of violence and poetic movements, and it harmonized every part of each of them into something strong and impossible to ignore.

"But," Angel went on, "there was some structural damage, and then it seemed pointless to fix up rooms if no one was going to stay in them…" he realized that he was rambling, and let the sentence end where it would. He opened the door to his apartments and motioned for her to enter.

Buffy thought it was nice inside, very comfortable, and let her backpack drop by a chair. She pulled the scruchie out of her hair and fingercombed the tangles a little. The ache in her temples eased slightly and she turned to face Angel.

"I'll take the couch," he said, always the gentleman. Buffy shook her head.

"The couch is fine for me. You keep your bed."

"No, no. You-"

"Angel," she stopped him. "I owe you one," Buffy said, half smiling. He looked at her strangely, and she wondered if he had forgotten the night he'd slept on the floor of her bedroom. Something ripped inside her and she walked quickly towards the back of his rooms, pretending to be interested in the décor.

The truth was, she didn't even see the décor. She was overcome by the sense of Angel in everything around her. She could smell him, feel him- sucking in a deep breath through her mouth, Buffy could taste him. The room reverberated with his presence, and the slayer couldn't fathom how she'd be able to spend any long period of time there without losing it completely.

"I'm going to go take a shower," Angel said, and Buffy suspected he wanted to escape as much as she did. She looked at him, feeling faint and lost. "Downstairs. There's a shower- I-" he took a breath and forced his eyes to look steadily at her. "There's a bathroom right off the bedroom, if you want to…" The words were running out for them, and both she and Angel knew it.

In a few moments, there wouldn't be anything left to say that consisted of normal conversations. It would be the silence and the pain loud enough to topple their respective walls or restraint.

"I'm going to go downstairs," he said again. "If you need anything…"

"I'll call room service," Buffy joked lamely.

"I'll hear you," Angel mumbled, and Buffy knew it was a promise of something… she couldn't process it though, and went to pick up her bag. Angel retreated quickly to the doorway and began to leave, but he stopped. "Buffy?" he called.

"Hmm?"

"The floor wasn't bad at all."

Buffy leaned against the tiled wall of the shower and let the water block out the light. The sound of it, blessed white noise, kept her head clear as she could hope for. At first, she ran the water as hot as she could stand. Buffy's skin flushed all over with blood and suddenly the tiles spun. Blindly, she wrenched the faucet down and the water was painfully cold. Her bones ached and her teeth chattered.

Clean and freezing, Buffy used Angel's dark, fluffy towel to rub feeling back into her extremities. His soap on her skin, his shampoo in her hair, the slayer had the oddest sensation of losing herself in Angel like she used to years ago. It was almost like kissing him, but stranger still because he was no where near her. Buffy held onto the marble countertop to keep from falling.

Dressing quickly in sweats, Buffy wrapped her head in a towel and vacated the bathroom. It was dark and cool in Angel's bedroom. She had planned on moving as quickly as she could manage from the shower to her couch, and then falling asleep as fast as humanly possible. Sleep might mean dreams, but those she could manage. Real world Angel was what she was couldn't deal with.

But there was a flicker of light that caught her eye.

She looked for a candle, but there was none, and the bedside lamp glowed steadily. Her eyes came to rest on the unmade bed, its sheets rumpled invitingly and the pillows thrown haphazardly. She got the impression he didn't sleep well. Maybe sleeping like the dead wasn't so peaceful.

Buffy took a step and stopped, realized she had moved towards the bed. Something drew her closer, maybe the idea that that was where he slept… maybe where she should be sleeping too.

Before she knew it was happening, Buffy was sitting on the bed. Her fingers curled against the smooth, dark red sheets. She smoothed her hand over his pillow and felt the feathers give way under her hand. Unable to stop, she hugged it to her chest and pressed her face into the softness.

She inhaled deeply and tears smarted in the corners of her eyes. She wanted to die, right there, entirely in his scent. Sleepiness surged through her, and Buffy felt warmth flow from her neck and outward down her spine.

"Buffy?"

She jumped, and turned to see Angel standing right behind her. The tears stung in her eyes and she bleakly looked for a way to escape or possibly end her life. She opened her mouth to say something but could only stare at him guiltily, her arms tightly around his pillow.

He was so tall above her, white wife beater and black pajama pants, hair wet and spikey. He was godlike. He was everything she ever wanted to be and everything she ever wanted to have and everything she ever wanted.

Something inside her was shivering itself to pieces as she stared at him in utter silence. He was so impressive, so beautiful, it was breaking things into pieces inside her. Her breath caught in hitches, and Buffy knew something was coming. She unfolded her legs from beneath her and stood, expecting him to take a step back.

He didn't.

She panted, feeling something she hadn't felt fully in a very long time. It pounded in her, and her eyes were wild with its force. Angel's face was a cool mask of nothing that she knew hid things so deep it was unimaginable to her.

Her teeth ached.

Her fingers flexed and Buffy let the pillow drop with a muffled sound on the floor. It was building, becoming stronger, the rushing in her ears getting louder… She was swaying and drowning in Angel's eyes and-

She grabbed him and kissed him and couldn't stop anything. Her fingernails dug into his bare shoulders and she wanted to tear him into tiny pieces and swallow him down into her and keep him safe.

He kissed her back with that same intensity. The distance they had put between them through years of denial and anger and ruined devotion was reduced to nothing, something fictional, something that had never existed at all.

And then he threw her away from himself. She hit the bed and slid across the soft sheets. Buffy stared up at him, lips bruised, scared. Angel backed up and stumbled over nothing, barely got his feet back beneath him. Oh god, oh god. It all hurt worse, and she had only succeeded in making things terrible for the both of them.

Their appetites had been whetted, sharpened, cut them apart from the inside out. Angel had meant to push her away from him, but now she was lying across the bed and her hair was messy and damp and she was mixing their scents into something enthralling- he couldn't take it.

Angel was on top of her suddenly, pinning her shoulders down and kissing her neck. They rolled together furiously, Buffy straddling him one moment, Angel holding her captive beneath him the next. It was all consuming, and so violent and fast that Buffy couldn't even think about it. The shatter of a lamp breaking shocked her enough that she opened her eyes, banishing the red heat and low, animal noises they made long enough for her to see.

"How do we stop this?" she gasped, dimly aware that her clothes were gone and so were Angel's. there were sheets tangled around them and everything pulsed with feeling. Her whole body throbbed and the echoes reverberated through Angel, magnified…

"I don't want to," he growled and kissed her.

"Angel we have to stop," she pleaded, still kissing and licking his jaw. His hands framed her face as he stared her down.

"I. Don't. Care."

Thank god, Buffy thought. Neither of them could stop. The chance for self-restraint was past, and if they tried one of them was going to die.

One of them still might.

Or both.

Thank god, Buffy thought. Thank god.

Send feedback to CrazyCleverish

Back to the Fanfiction Archive