Disclaimer: Characters belong to Joss Whedon and Co. 'She Will Be Loved' is property of Maroon 5. The plot is mine.
Dedication: To My Girls...you know who you are
Summary: Sometime into the future...Buffy's married and has two children, but is she really happy? *Angel POV*
Pairings: B/A, B/other
Rating: PG
AN: Angel is human
Feedback: yes please, with a cherry on top lilmisslovly@swbell.net

It's been five years, one hundred and thirty-eight days, fourteen hours, twenty-seven minutes and six seconds since I became human. It seems much longer than that. Before I even felt my heart beat for the first time in two hundred and sixty some-odd years, I was on a plane to Rome. I can still hear her footsteps as she came to answer the door that day...and I can still feel my heart break when she told me that there was someone else. It's not like I expected her to wait around on me for all those years. She is a woman, she has needs. She wanted children and sunlight and things that my vampiric self couldn't give her.

I am a horrible liar.

I wanted her to wait for eternity. We deserved our forever...but things change. I remember when I got the invitation to her wedding. I was shocked to see that I was even invited. We had agreed to say in touch and to keep our friendship solid. What's that quote again...

"Friendship often ends in love, but love in friendship---never."

So, I moved on.

I moved on to sitting in my apartment, thinking about her...brooding. I was just trying to put the pieces of my heart back together. I can still hear the soft knock on that day, two years after her wedding (which I did not attend). She was soaked from the rain that had been plaguing Los Angeles and it took me back to her seventeenth birthday. I snapped out of it long enough to invite her in. She looked so upset, and that was when I noticed the cut on her cheek. I grabbed my coat and headed for the door, hell bent on killing the being that would dare to marr her beauty. She stopped me of course, begging me to just hold her...

Of course that was a mistake. My holding her turned into my kissing her and then my unbuttoning her blouse and us making love for the rest of the night while the rain slapped against my bedroom window in a fury. My heart felt whole again.

Then morning came.

I watched her as she slept, swearing to myself that she was an angel. Her eyes fluttered open and she smiled for a moment before reality set in. She shot out of the bed, frantic to find her clothes. I got up, trying to calm her, and she started to cry, collapsing on the bed.

"I just cheated on my husband."

I took her in my arms and hugged her as tight as I could and tried to calm her down, but reality was setting in on my world too. This was a one time thing...a fluke. She was married, had two kids. I wasn't a part of that.

I told her that it was okay, that I was here any time she needed me.

It's been this way ever since.

I get up to answer the door for the second time this week. She stands there, awkwardly and then looks at me with those eyes that are all Buffy. As she steps inside, she takes off her jacket and turns to give me a hug.

"I missed you," she whispers in my ear.

I lean back, just enough to capture her lips in a kiss. God, she is so beautiful. We move slowly to the bed and I begin to remove her clothing and mine. She moans and digs her nails into my back as I make love to her. When its over, we lie there, entwined with one another and she begins to cry softly.

She has become a shell of her former self. That bastard did this to her, and I want to rip his throat out...but of course she won't let me. I try to talk to her again about leaving him, but she shushes me and begs me to make love to her again.

"I want to feel you...make him go away," she pleads.

I stop and look at her. I want to scream at her that she can make him go away. But I know how that ends. She would cry and tell me that she can't leave him because he would take Michael and Adrian from her and I don't think she could survive without her children. So I kiss her and make love to her and then we fall asleep...

This is what we are reduced to.

The mornings are always the same. Regret, denial, crying...And then I swoop in like the super hero I use to be and try to save her from something she doesn't want to be saved from. She gets dressed and we make small talk about the boys and her job and anything else besides the fact that we're still in love with one another and then she leaves...

And my heart breaks again.

But then I realize it's been broken since that day.

And I know that she'll be back when he gets to be too much and she can't take his incessant bitching any longer. This may not be how I had pictured our future so many years ago, but for now, it's the closest thing I've got.

//Tap on my window, Knock on my door
I want to make you feel beautiful\\

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