DISCLAIMER: I don't own them, but someday I will own JOSS! And when that day comes, be prepared for some changes. hah!
TIMELINE: Summer of season four.
SPOILERS: Nothing I can think of.
SYNOPSIS: The newly human Angel asks Buffy to run away with him.
DISTRIBUTION: Go ahead, but just mention it to me first.
AUTHOR'S
NOTES: This is in response to Sunnie's challenge, which you can find listed below. I thought it was a really interesting idea, so here it is. I don't think i strayed too far from the basics...
FEEDBACK: Go ahead, I'm all ears.
RATING: Probably PG-15, for some violence. This is a Fluffy piece! Do not be alarmed by what you *think* is angst. It's not. Well, sort of. NO! Its not! Just- just read it, okay? Please? :o)
Okay concept of story: Angel for some reason (up to you) asks Buffy to run away with him. Prefrebly she'll still be dating Riley. Buffy of course agrees and than they just go. Now they are basically taking a road trip. In that great convertible. Oh, and they go with no word to any one. They just pack up and go. They are having a great time. Doing all romantic thing and did I mention Angel was human? I don't think I did. Yeah, he's human. But when they get towardsâ?¦I don't know the desert, Riley catches up with them, and he is pist. So he and his intitive buddies all are packed up on drugs, so they hold Buffy while they kick the crapt out of Angel. Or how ever you want it. Angel just has to be beaten up, and Buffy can't help cause she is being held. (You really need to see the video to get it.) Angel ends up being seriously hurt, or dead by the end.
Musts:
Angel must have some personal item. That he has all the time. He gives it to Buffy after he is beaten. (See video again)
Make it good. Like have Buffy end up being pregnet after Angel is beaten to death or something. Also Fluff, people. I have to stress it enough. FLUFF. With some agnst I don't know why. I'm just in the mood.
Make Buffy think about it. You just don't make these kind of decions on the fly.
Details. Details. Details.

The sun was so strong that Buffy had to squint, even with dark glasses on. She sat on the porch with her legs stretched out before her, bare and golden tan in her bathing suit. There is no such thing as a healthy tan, but Buffy figured she wasn't going to live long enough to get skin cancer. Beside her, a glass of iced tea lazily went warm from the heat.

The cement sidewalk brought the glaring light right into the Slayer's eyes, and she could swear the sky itself was yellow and not blue. Hazy city smog loomed far in the distance, seemingly close enough to touch, and clouds of late summer dust sprung up as children played roughly on dirt that used to be a lawn.

Her skin shone brightly, tropical scented oil making the bees come often and repeatedly, confused and stupid with heat and the promise of lunch. Even Buffy's head was thudding with the temperature, and after only thirty minutes of lounging in daylight, she decided to retreat into the shadowy sanctuary of curtains and central air.

A new cloud of dust suddenly burst into the air, accompanied by a wretched stereo and the screech of tires. Buffy cringed and got to her feet, tea in hand. The dust-cyclone came at her as the car it obscured zoomed down her block. The choking, itchy, reddish dust felt hot as the sun and it stuck to her slick skin. She coughed, tasting its staleness on her tongue, and fanned the air in front of her face in an attempt to find suitable air to breathe.

The dust settled quickly, and she realized the car had stopped. Through the thick, dirty air a figure materialized and walked up her path. He was covered, just as she was, in a faint powdering of red that collected in his hair and lashes, and in the folds of his white t-shirt, which had been turned clay colored.

The glass, dripping with condensation, slipped out of her shocked fingers and shattered beside her. Everything happened very quickly after that. Buffy covered the distance between herself and Angel rapidly, managing to avoid the shards of glass that littered the walk.

His dusting of red earth saved her eyes the pain of seeing his marble- pale face reflecting sharp sunshine, but it did nothing to dampen the rush of joy and surprise his walking in sunlight cause her. He looked at her, glittering despite the coating of dust, deeply tan, golden blond, and wearing nothing more than a clinging, black bikini, and the ex-vampire's mouth hung open.

Then he grabbed her and he kissed her, tasting skin and salt and lipgloss, feeling her heat with his own warmth, feeling the grittiness and slickness of her arms, then her ribs gliding beneath his fingers, the small of her back.

Buffy held onto him fiercely, feeling his body temperature add to the heat of the day and her own sudden rush of dizzy blood. He was dusty and dry, and where her hands, wet with the glass' moisture, touched him she left ruddy handprints. Where her limbs, doused in tanning oil, brushed his, they left bloody smears. It was a rite of marking her territory as she reaffirmed her knowledge of his mouth and body, smelling aftershave and shampoo and cologne and his own intensity mingling with tropical fragrance.

He detached himself first, his hands tangled in her curling, heavy hair, and stared at her intently.

"Come with me," he insisted, pressing a frantic kiss against her forehead. "Come with me."

"Wh- where?" she asked, struggling to find words.

"Anywhere, it doesn't matter. You and me," he said, rushing the words outs. She gaped at him, and Angel kissed her quickly. "I love you. I want to be with you."

"I love you," she echoed, unable to think.

"Then come away with me. Today. Now. Please." She pulled back slightly, remembering that they were standing right in front of her house, in the open, in the sunlight. She looked around wildly, wondering what the hell was happening. Buffy looked at him, and then agreed.

"Yes. Yes, let's go." The smile that spread across Angel's face would have been enough to keep Buffy warm inside forever, but she didn't linger on it. They ran into the house together, and she slammed the door.

~~~~~

Three days later.

It had been a mad-dash escape from Sunnydale, from her life. They'd left without a word to anyone, Buffy's hair still soaked from her two- minute shower, all her things thrown haphazardly into a bag without thought. They drove off laughing with the nervous energy of criminals who've gotten away with it.and are expecting to be caught at anytime.

They drove down the coast, keeping the blue jewel ocean always to their right. With the top down and the radio blasting, Buffy could breathe for the first time in as long as she could remember. The whole while there was a sky overhead, sometimes turquoise, sometimes velvet purple and starry.

There were fast food stops and quaint Mexican restaurant where the older women smiled at them knowingly, while a man with a mustache and an old guitar played together. They slept on the beach, warm with each other and blankets, or in the back of the car, twining sweaty limbs and losing articles of clothing to the wind.

On the third night of their flight, Angel asked her to marry him.

"Buffy?" he asked, as they sat watching the sun slip away while the sky turned opalescent orange and deeper blue. The rocky cliff was still warm, and their bare feet stroked the surface with caution.

"Hmm?" she sighed, lost in thought of color and the feeling of holding Angel's hand. He toyed with her fingers, tracing them and making them curve against his palm. Angel leaned in and softly brushed his mouth against her cheek to get her attention. She turned to face him and smiled, seeing his skin already darker and flushed with humanity. He fixed a lock of hair behind her ear and grinned, still toying with her fingers.

"You're my reason, Buffy," he said quietly. She looked at him with some understanding, but he wanted to say it all and continued. "You've been the reason from the time I was old enough to think about being alive and needing a purpose. I couldn't find you in Galway," he said, chuckling softly. "Even as a vampire, I was searching the whole world for you, for my reason to be here."

Buffy rested her forehead against his lips briefly to encourage a kiss, and, having gained the favor, she sat back a little.

"I finally found you, Buffy." He squeezed her hands, and she beamed, warm against the creeping night from the inside out. "And after everything. today, I think I get to keep you," he finished in a soft, whispery voice, inclining his mouth to hers. Their fingers flexed together as they kissed deeply, and Buffy gasped for air when they parted and Angel released her hands.

She looked at him carefully, and then at her lonely hands where they rested in her lap. A smile, very tiny and faint, grew on her face as she admired the circlet of impossibly shiny metal on the fourth finger of her left hand. She lifted her hand and held it first one way, then the other, and the ring caught the setting sunlight and changed all sorts of colors as if by magic.

"Are you still my girl?" he whispered seriously, tickling her ear with his warm mouth. Buffy slowly wrapped her arms around his neck and, pressing her lips against his ear, replied, in a hush.

"Always."

The sun set with great drama and beauty. It went unnoticed.

~~~~~

The church was a pretty white washed building with a red tiled roof. It stood amongst red flowering cactus and one old, wise tree with a low canopy of foliage hanging weakly in the heat. The cross was copper turned green by the elements, and it shook when the single bell rang deep and sweet.

The priest was an old man, withered but smiling with pink gums and a few teeth. He wore his black shirt and pants, the white collar freshly starched and proud. His old hands gracefully held the worn bible, never trembling under its familiar weight. He married them in the language of the desert, with Angel calmly translating each word.

He wore his dark jeans and shoes, and a pale blue shirt with white plastic buttons and a collar Buffy took the time to straighten before they walked the aisle hand in hand. The Slayer wore a pale pink dress that reached below her knees, speckled with blue flowers. Her hair was loose, but decorated with tiny blue flowers Angel had disappeared to find in the sandy outdoors.

She carried a tiny bunch of them in one hand, and a few peeked their faces out of Angel's breast pocket.

The old priest asked no questions and required no fee (though Angel put a handful of bills into the collection plate). They exchanged vows within the coolness of tiled walls in a language Buffy didn't speak, but understood completely. They kissed, chastely, with warmth and promise, beneath the creaking wooden timbers of the roof.

Their first meal as man and wife was eaten on the rim of a fountain that stood, glittery granite and mosaic blue-purple tiles, beside a small cemetery that was older than the priest who had married them. They ate watermelon and drank cokes in the lengthening shadows of dusk, listening to the splashing at their backs and spitting the seeds as far as they could.

"I love you," Angel said quietly, watching another day end with his arms around her. She looked at their hands, her ring still rippling with silver color on the fourth finger of her left hand, Angel's Claddagh ring on his, the heart facing inward.

"I love you," Buffy said. She had never been happier.

~~~~~~

Three days later.

Angel turned the steering wheel and drove the car into the gas station. Buffy slept in the passenger seat, his jacket pillowed between her head and the door. He smiled, watching her for a beat before he got out of the car to fill the tank.

The sky was threatening rain, he noticed, as he worked the machinery. He'd have to wake her to put the top up. He sighed, and went to pay the man asleep in the small building a few meters away, when suddenly he felt the air change. Something wasn't right, and he turned quickly to make sure Buffy was okay.

She was still napping, her hair haloing about her. He breathed a sigh of relief, and thanked the powers for having a need to breathe. Angel politely woke the man at the counter, paid for his fuel, and turned back towards the car.

He heard the rumbling of another engine coming towards them, and decided he'd wait to put the top up. Angel thought about their next stop, and wondered if they could make it before darkness really fell. The other car, a jeep, pulled into the station.

Angel had a bad feeling.

He hurried to his car, reaching his door just as the jeep's doors banged open. Angel suddenly realized the true implications of being human. Of being mortal. He sucked in a breath and couldn't move as he heard the footfall of three, maybe four, men running towards him. Their boots smacked the gravel loudly, their stride belaying their power.

Angel studied Buffy, still sleeping curled in the corner of his big, black convertible car. She looked so peaceful, and even then she was turning to him, sitting up, staring at him sleepy and happy. He watched her mouth open in surprise, and the ex vampire readied himself for the pain.

In the instant that he felt the first blow, he saw the three other men, boys really, coming around the other side of the car. He opened his mouth to warn her, but never had the time. A heavy fist connected with his skull, and he was lost trying to fight.

~~~~~~

Buffy screamed in anger as several hands wrestled her from the car and dragged her away. Startled, caught off guard, she could do nothing but struggle and watch her Angel caught in a fight with Riley Finn. The hands were dragging her towards their jeep, and she twisted her head to see her captors. She knew two of them, friends of his, and the third had to be another army goon.

They all had their fatigues on, their boots, and malicious, determined expressions. She was going to kill them. Buffy went limp and managed to shake off one of her assailants. In the background, she could hear Angel and Riley fighting. She refused to think about Angel no longer being inhumanly strong. Instead, Buffy focused on the two men dragging her into a jeep.

She bowed her body and jack knifed, snapping thighs to her chest and catching their faces with her boots. Hurt, they dropped her to the ground. Her head thunked on the metal step built into the side of the jeep. Everything grayed, but she pushed herself to her feet and fought.

The goons fought well and hard, and Buffy knew they weren't going on human alone. She could practically smell the drugs in them, and it made her afraid for Angel.

"Angel!" she called out desperately. He didn't answer her, and Buffy's heart leapt into her throat and stayed there, jackhammering painfully. She punched the redhead she knew from class so hard she heard the bones in his head crack. He went down and stayed down. Buffy wasn't sure if he was dead.

She tried to run to Angel, but someone twisted a hand in her ponytail and yanked painfully. Off balance, she fell to the ground. The remaining two came at her, seemingly at an advantage, one brandishing a stun gun that crackled evilly with blue and green light.

Buffy pulled her leg back and kicked for that one's shin. She missed her intended spot, instead hitting the knee with enough force to make his leg bend in the opposite direction. His loud, shrilling cry went on and on and on as she and her final attacker faced off.

He looked sick with nerves, and, had Buffy the time, she would have said something witty, played with him a little. She ran at him, doubled her hands together, and rammed them into his sternum. She could hear the air whoosh out of him even above the shriek of his fallen brother.

Buffy ran to the convertible, not waiting to see him go down, to see if he would be drowning in his own blood or not. Angel was on the ground. Riley was kicking him. He made soft, wounded noises that were obviously not satisfactory to his attacker. Finn kept kicking and screaming and.. the sounds all mixed in Buffy's head as she got close enough to see the blood that was Angel's splattering the ground.

"RILEY!!" she screamed, a roar that would have surprised her any other time. He paused in his assault to look at her and leer. He pulled his leg back for another kick, but Buffy didn't waste time. She leapt at him, a demon herself, and rolled him to the rocky ground. The slayer heard his head smack into the ground and rejoiced in causing him pain.

Buffy reached for his belt, where she knew he kept a knife. She tugged it free of its sheath smoothly, and pressed it against his throat.

"Wait!" he rasped, feeling her fingers as well as the blade digging into his skin.

"No," she said icily, about to thrust the blade into his neck-

"Buffy.?" Angel wheezed. She cried out, grief being a physical pain, and paused only to tear a gash in Riley's cheek.

"Take your bodies and go. I'll kill you later," she promised as she got to her feet and swiftly kicked him in the ribs. Buffy hurried to Angel, and found him semi conscious beside the car. He struggled to sit up, but could not.

"Angel- Angel, god, Angel," she whispered almost in prayer. "Please be okay, please," she begged, holding his bruised and swelling face in her hands. Blood, warm, thick, sticky, was covering her hands as she frantically looked him over. There was so much of it, warmer than she ever knew it could be.

His eyes opened to slits, swollen almost shut, and there were tears of pain and anguish there. He started to say something, but she wouldn't let him.

"Buffy." he rasped, and Buffy felt hot tears burning on her face. He was bleeding out, she knew, and the world was getting darker. She didn't even know if there was a hospital. "Buffy, I- love you-" he muttered, practically unconscious, struggling to raise himself off the ground.

"I love you, now be quiet, okay?" she asked, shaky fear coloring her words, sobs building in her chest. It couldn't happen now. It couldn't, not when they were happy. except it was always when they were happy. "Don't think you can get away from me that easy," she sniffed. "Not hell, not heaven, not this, okay?" she insisted, her voice sharp and scared and unrecognizable to her.

He was shifting, pulling at his hand. The silver Claddagh slipped from his broken fingers and hit the ground with a metallic clinking, spinning for just a second before it lay still. Again he struggled, going for the pocket of his blue shirt, the one he had been wearing just three days earlier at their wedding. His hands left bloody smears on his clothing but he managed to carefully pull the flowers, wilted but brilliantly colored, out of his pocket. He'd been keeping them next to his heart since then.

"Take. the ring. and this." he gasped, and she took the flowers gently from him and placed his hand back onto his chest. She left ruddy handprints on his shirt. Buffy already had the ring tightly closed in her fist.

Crouched by his side, she cried uncontrollably, and kissed him, smelling aftershave and wind and copper.

She kissed him goodbye

~~~~~~

Three weeks later.

Buffy lay in bed, covered in a cold sweat. She kept dreaming about the gas station, about the whole trip, the freedom, the world she had run from and the paradise she and Angel had found. She got heavily to her feet and made it to the bathroom in enough time to throw up neatly in the toilet.

Feeling not at all better, she leaned against the tub and pressed her flushed face against the cool porcelain. There was so much to do, now, she realized, and never enough time. She needed to grow up, move on from that night. She needed to move on from all those nights, every time he had gone away.

Buffy clamped her mind shut, refusing to think about anything except the task at hand. She needed to wash her face and get out of the freezing house, with its dead, central air and darkness. She got dressed and checked her watch. She was late.

Showering and changing in moments, her hair was still soaking wet when she finally thrust the door open and walked into the sunshine. The heavy, almost oppressive heat blanketed her pleasantly and chased away the lingering feeling of ice in her fingers and toes.

On the fourth finger of her left hand, the band of luminescent, precious metal glinted in the sun. The thicker, larger ring of silver caught the light where in hung around her neck. She walked tiredly down the block to the bus stop, still checking her watch from time to time. She was still late.

Buffy had doctor appointments to keep. They probably would mark her down as a bad mother if she showed up late to her first meeting the OB/GYN.

Well, she thought, at least I'm not an unwed mother.

Buffy rested her hands protectively over her still flat stomach, and wondered if she was the first slayer to ever get pregnant. Maybe, maybe not. After all, back in the day, she reasoned, girls were really young when they had kids. maybe before they were even called. It bothered her to think about it, so she didn't.

She thought about Angel. She compared notes with her former self about which Angel she loved the most, night Angel, or day Angel. That inner dialogue lasted her to the hospital, where she decided that there was no way to choose.

The doctor's office was nice, but it was hard to sit there alone and take in everything she was saying. It was all so strange, Buffy realized, being pregnant. Having created life as opposed to just saving it was new to her. She resigned herself to take everything as it came. The worst part was when The Doctor asked about the father.

Buffy explained as much as she could, tears falling as she did so. The Doctor, a woman about her mother's age with a kind, round face and blue-black hair, came around the desk and offered her a tissue. She gladly accepted, and the woman offered her a gentle pat on the shoulder. They finished their meeting and scheduled the first of many appointments.

Buffy took a familiar path down the hall. She'd been there enough times to know the way. She passed the children's wing where she had stayed, violently ill with the flu back in high school. She hung a left towards the room Willow had occupied after the bookcase had fallen on her during a fight with Angelus' boys. Turning a final time, she headed toward the last sight on the tour.

It was the room she had occupied for only a few hours, right before her graduation from high school. She had made Angel drink her blood, and he had lost control. Her vampire had protected her even when he was trying to kill her, stopping at the last possible moment and bringing her here. He saved her life.

Buffy stopped outside the door and caught her breath a moment, leaning against the wall. She hated the fact that she always ended up in the hospital, one way or another. The thought made her laugh bitterly, and the sound was almost a taste. Tears smarted in her eyes.

"Nurse?" a groggy voice called out from within the room. "I told you." the man sort of slurred, "I don't like Jell-O." Buffy wiped her eyes carefully, trying to keep from smudging her makeup. She didn't want to look like she had been crying. Putting on that day's version of a `normal' face, she squared her shoulders and stepped through the doorway.

"Not even with fruit in it?" Buffy asked as cheerily as she could, her hands on her hips.

"Especially not with fruit!" Angel slurred, smiling at Buffy through his still healing bruises. Her heart thudded almost painfully as she restrained herself from running into his arms and hugging him as tightly as she could. She had done it twice on impulse, and it wasn't really pleasant for Angel, what with his severe injuries.

"What have they got you on today?" she asked, trying to find her husband in his dilated pupils. He pressed a button beside his bed and half of the bed raised itself until he was sitting upright. She was sat in the chair beside him.

"Its not as good as the first stuff," he insisted, mostly kidding as Buffy gently kissed him on the mouth.

"They've turned my husband into a drug addict!" she wailed in jest.

"And they've ruined my reflection," he quipped, leaning back against his pillows. Slipping the compact mirror Buffy had snuck him from under the mattress he looked himself over. There had been two fractures in his cheekbone, and one in his forehead. They were still swollen. His eyes had returned to normal, but there were four small, raised pink scars along his jaw and at his temple on the right side. "Damn," he smiled.

Three fingers on his left hand, two on his right, as well as the wrist, were broken. There had been bleeding internally from the fight, including some damage to a kidney, but only one. Buffy supposed that was good news.

For the millionth time, she thanked the powers that the man at the gas station had called an ambulance. Then she thanked them for the millionth and one time. She hated seeing him lying in bed like this, with the crap sheets the nurses dared to call bed linen. He looked sick. He looked injured.

She had never seen him like that. He was the one who healed instantly. Buffy was the one who had hospital stays to stitch things back together. It was a little too much of a role reversal.

"What's on your mind?" Angel asked, serious and watching.

"Nothing." she lied. "The doctors say you're making much, much faster progress than they expected. Especially when they told me you were dead in the ambulance and there was no hope," she snarled. He reached a hand out and rested it on her knee.

"It's a good thing you threatened the Doctor," he said, almost sagely. She couldn't help but smile, even through her angry tears.

"I guess you've got a little vampire in you yet." He stared at her, watching her with mild suspicion.

"I guess." he whispered, and Buffy felt his eyes lingering on her.

"They say you'll be home in a week or so," she said quickly, trying to distract him.

"Then no more Jell-O."

"No more Jell-O," she laughed. "And there's supposed to be some sort of healing spell. Oddly enough, the special ingredient is slayer blood, so we've got that covered," she prattled on nervously.

"Buffy," he interrupted, squeezing her leg.

"Yeah?"

"I told you, you don't have to come see me everyday. I know this freaks you out." Buffy was annoyed by the tone of complete understanding in his voice. It made it harder not to listen and just book right then and there.

"No it's not that." He gave her a look. "Well, yeah, it is that," she conceded, rolling her shoulders. "Its just, well, I have news."

"Yeah?" he said slowly, and Buffy could tell he was trying not to smile.

"YOU KNOW ALREADY!" she yelped, as she shot to her feet.

"Know what?" he said with feigning ignorance. Buffy rolled her eyes, but couldn't resist Angel when he held his arms out to her. She sat carefully beside him and hugged him, casts, stitches, and all.

"How did you know?"

"About our baby?" he said with wonderment coating the words and making them feathery. She nodded, and rested her forehead on his shoulder.

"The doctor with the black hair came down here looking for you. You left your purse in her office," he chuckled, rubbing her back. "She offered her congratulations."

"I'd lose my head if it weren't screwed on," Buffy sniffled, and realized she was crying again. Sitting up she cursed, and grabbed a tissue off the nightstand. "How many times am I going to cry today?" she said, half laughing.

Angel reached for her hand and held it gently between his palms, disregarding the casts. He was crying too, but wasn't fazed by it. "We're going to have baby," he said simply.

"Don't think I'm not pissed I didn't get to tell you."

"You can tell me next time," he smiled.

"Next time?" she squeaked, and Angel chuckled. "We'll see," she warned. "I'm not making any promises that I'll give you the Irish Catholic family of ten you've always wanted."

"I don't want ten. Five maybe," he teased.

"Try 2.4, buddy."

"Fine, 2.4," he agreed, and kissed her softly. "You're still my girl," he whispered to himself as he held her against his chest. Buffy heard the pain in his voice and knew it was very terrible pain of the `almost-lost.' "You're still my girl," he said again.

I'm so glad he's okay, she thought to herself, nearly overcome with tears yet again. Instead, she swallowed the `almost-lost.' She pushed it away from her, and instead listened to the solid beating of Angel's heart.

"I'm your own. Always."

Always.

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